Saratoga Payback Page 11

  Downtown Troy had gone through a period of near urban collapse, with the once handsome brownstones becoming shabby and poor. But over the past ten years gentrification had begun—bricks had been repointed, stone steps had been repaired and the wood trim shone. The poor were gone, wherever they went, to some shabbier place, as if there had been a concerted effort to have them repopulate a crumbling ghost town in the middle of the country.

  Joan Miller lived in such a brownstone on Second Street about two blocks from Russell Sage College, where, as it turned out, she worked as a secretary in the dean’s office. She was in her forties and reminded Charlie of a large suitcase—solid, squarish and difficult to move. Her graying hair was cut short and she wore a thick blue terry-cloth bathrobe. She held a tissue to her nose and snuffled into it. Charlie noticed she wore no wedding ring.

  “And why should I talk to you?” she asked, closing the door a little. “I’ve already talked to the police.”

  Charlie had given her one of his cards, which she studied without enthusiasm. “I’ve just come from Mickey’s funeral and I wanted to ask you a few questions. It won’t take a minute.”

  The woman pointed to his card. “What does this mean? ‘Consultant, Legal and Otherwise.’ Are you a crook?”

  “No, no, it means advice. You know, suggestions. Ideas. My daughter made them up for me. She’s sixteen. Not that I’m blaming her; she’s a wonderful girl.” What in the world am I dithering about? thought Charlie. Only old farts dither.

  Joan Miller looked skeptical. “You were a friend of Mickey’s?”

  Charlie shrugged. “I don’t believe Mickey had any friends in Saratoga. That’s not to insult him, or you either for that matter, but most people couldn’t stand him. It’s just a statement of fact. But he was killed on my sidewalk and I want to know why.” Charlie tried to look harmless but sympathetic. If it turned out that Joan Miller doted on her brother, then Charlie guessed he’d be walking back to his car in about two seconds. He waited.

  “Well, I’ll catch pneumonia if I keep standing here. You might as well come in. But don’t expect to learn anything from me. I hadn’t seen Mickey for fifteen years and I counted that as a blessing. And don’t get too close, I’ve got a nasty cold.”

  Joan Miller’s living room was as tidy and self-contained as Joan Miller herself. The couch, two armchairs, TV, several small tables and bookcase were all exactly parallel or exactly perpendicular to one another. The rug had a pattern of small blue squares; even the two pictures were square and set in the exact middle of two white walls. Both were black-and-white photographs of wilderness scenes from a western national park, scenes in which nothing was square or symmetrical.

  Charlie had quickly put his shoes and socks back on in the car. The socks were still wet and the left sock bunched beneath his instep so he limped. Joan Miller watched him move with mild sympathy, as if Charlie suffered from an old war wound.

  After Charlie had taken off his overcoat and was seated in an armchair, he said, “I wonder if you could tell me, Mrs. Miller—”

  Joan Miller was seated across from him in the second armchair with a box of tissues in her lap. She held up one hand like a traffic policeman. “You may call me Joan or you may call me Miller. I haven’t been Mrs. Miller for twenty years. Good riddance to bad rubbish, is what I say.”

  “You paid for Mickey’s funeral. Are you his heir?” It was the sort of question Charlie often asked late in an interview, but he wanted to see if he could ruffle her.

  “What would I inherit, a pair of old socks? I don’t think Mickey ever had an extra dime to his name. He was a spender, not a saver. That was one of his problems. As for paying for his funeral, it was something that had to be done. He might have been bad family, but he was still family.” She blew her nose, making a noise that geese make in cartoons. She shook her head. “I should have taken the ten dollars I paid for my flu shot and just thrown it in the street.”

  “You bought a coffin and burial plot. Presumably you’ll put up a stone. You could have cremated him for a lot less.”

  Joan Miller’s eyes narrowed. “I wanted him to lie in his cheap coffin and brood about what a bastard he was. I wanted him to brood till he had rotted away.”

  Charlie started to speak, but then thought better of it. He scratched the back of his neck. “Why’d he been sent to prison?”

  “Embezzlement and extortion. He had a job at State Farm and submitted false claims. He got ten to fifteen years.”

  “That’s pretty stiff.”

  “It was his second conviction. He’d been caught embezzling money from a bank in Cohoes about a dozen years ago. And there’d been other arrests without convictions.”

  “How much of that second sentence did he serve?”

  “I hadn’t seen him for fifteen years. He’d stolen money from me, and it wasn’t the first time. I decided enough was enough. He got out of prison after serving a small part of his sentence. I told him I was sorry to hear it. He said he’d been working personally for the warden. He found it funny. He said he’d been a real hero so they’d paroled him. He asked for money to get on his feet. I said I’d give him two hundred and fifty dollars. He got huffy, said he needed at least a thousand. Fat chance, I told him. My partner at the time said I shouldn’t give him a dime. But he took the two fifty when he saw he wouldn’t get more. ‘Aren’t you going to thank me?’ I asked. On the phone, of course. ‘Yeah, thanks,’ he said. Of course he never paid it back.”

  “Did he have a parole officer in Albany?”

  “I couldn’t say. We weren’t chatty.”

  “When did you last hear from him?”

  “About a year ago. He called whenever he was feeling smug and had had a few drinks. He said he was making good money, though he didn’t tell me how he made it. I asked if he meant to pay back the money I’d lent him. That made him hang up fast enough.”

  “But you’ve no idea how he got the money?”

  “No idea. But he had that insurance business up in Saratoga. He had to have it registered under somebody else’s name because of his record. But the money he was talking about wasn’t the kind you make from an insurance business. I guessed it was some scam. Mickey loved scams.” Again she blew her nose.

  “Which of you was older, you or him?”

  Joan Miller narrowed her eyes again. “I’m two years older. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “I was curious about when Mickey began to go, you know, crooked.”

  “As far as I’m concerned he was born crooked—crooked and sneaky.” She paused and looked at her hands, first the backs, then turned them over to see the fronts. She had square palms and clear nail polish on the nails. “Our dad was killed in Vietnam. That probably didn’t help. And my mom was one of those weak women, always complaining and sneaking pints of vodka. She was afraid of Mickey, afraid he’d do something nasty. So she let him do what he wanted.”

  “But he couldn’t have been born bad,” Charlie insisted. “There must have been some times he was okay.”

  The woman shrugged. “He cried a lot. My mom’d say, ‘Listen to him singing.’ I’d look at him in his crib and his face would be all red. Later I had some stuffed animals and he liked playing with those, bears and rabbits and a sheep. He must have been two and a half or three. He’d have them talking to each other and doing tricks. Pretty stupid really.”

  “What about his insurance business? Won’t you inherit money from that?”

  “Bills,” said Joan. “He hadn’t paid his rent for months and he owed money to Mrs. Penfield. Mickey made her life a living hell.”

  “How so?”

  “He baited her. Made fun of how she dressed. I know for a fact she was looking for another job. Home Depot would hire her and she told me she’d been getting desperate enough to take it. At least it would have meant health insurance.”

  “Do you
know who worked for Mickey before Mrs. Penfield?”

  “I’ve no idea. Some poor soul Mickey never paid—at least that’s my educated opinion. No, I’ll sell the tables and chairs—his office furnishings—and whatever’s in his apartment, then divide up the money between the landlord and Mrs. Penfield. As for the others Mickey owed money to, that’s not my business. Can I get you a cup of chamomile tea? My throat’s scratchy.”

  Charlie said that would be nice and Joan went to the kitchen. The water tap was turned on, cupboards banged, the refrigerator door opened, the microwave hummed. At one point, Charlie had thought that Mickey wanted to borrow money from him, that it might have been the reason for his late-night visit, but Charlie knew he was one of the last people Mickey would ask. Then he thought Mickey might want to sell him something—not an object, but something along the lines of information. But what could it be? Just the fact that Mickey had shown up after midnight suggested he was desperate, unless he was drunk, which was doubtful. But Mickey had been afraid of something, afraid of someone who might be looking for him, someone he wouldn’t recognize. So he wanted to get out of town, but he was broke. Maybe he had a piece of information he couldn’t tell the police about. But why would Charlie be interested? Why would he pay money for it?

  Joan stuck her head out of the kitchen. “Honey?”

  “Sure.”

  A moment later, Joan returned with a tray on which there were two mugs, a small cream pitcher and a plate of rust-colored cookies. She nodded toward the cookies as she set the tray on the table. “They’re organic.”

  Charlie poured a little milk into his tea and bit into a cookie. It was hard, as if made from ground-up rocks, and had a muddy taste. “Good,” he said.

  Joan looked pleased. “I make them myself.”

  “I sometimes make cookies as well.” Charlie paused, as if engaged in cookie thoughts, cookie memories. He sipped his tea. Looking down at the tea’s surface, he thought he saw little bee legs and bee wings from the honey. He set his cup carefully on the table.

  Joan bit into a cookie. The steady crunching was the only sound in the room. “You think I cooked them too long?”

  “They’re just right.”

  Ten minutes later Charlie was driving back to Saratoga. It was still raining, and by dark the rain would turn to ice. He thought of Mickey playing with stuffed bears and rabbits. Then he decided he was being sentimental and concentrated on his driving. After a minute, he remembered a stuffed bear he had as a child. He tried to recall its name. Jo Jo the Dancing Bear, that was it. What had become of it? Tossed in the trash most likely. Oh yes, it had a red beret.

  He drove to Mickey’s insurance office on Henry Street, three blocks east of Broadway: a two-story white clapboard building next to a garage. Mickey’s office took up about half of one story. The sign above the door said “Michael Martin, Insurance and Real Estate.” Charlie was surprised by the sign. He’d never thought of Mickey as a Michael, as if he lacked the gravitas to be called anything but Mickey. And is that why I’m called Charlie? he thought. But “Charles” was on his business cards and Janey sometimes called him Charles when she was irritated with him. It was still raining slightly and he hurried to the front door.

  It was locked, but a light was on inside. Charlie knocked, and after a moment Laura Penfield appeared. She had a worried look and Charlie supposed she almost always had a worried look, as if it were her default expression, the expression her face returned to when she relaxed.

  She pursed her lips and then unlocked the front door and opened it slightly.

  “May I come in?” asked Charlie.

  “The police won’t like it.” She spoke very exactly, putting a tiny space between each word.

  Charlie looked over his shoulder and then back. “We don’t have to tell them.”

  Mrs. Penfield opened the door just enough for Charlie to enter. “If you’re sure it’s all right . . .”

  The office was very plain, with two gray metal desks, five or six chairs and two file cabinets with their drawers open. Other doors led to an inner office, a closet and a lavatory. Three-quarters of the way up the lavatory door were silhouettes of a pudgy man and pudgy woman holding hands. The office, Charlie thought, was nearly as plain and shabby as his own, but at least he had a computer.

  “Don’t you have a computer?” asked Charlie.

  “We had two; the police took them. They took most of the files as well. I don’t know how I can close the accounts if I don’t have my computer. The policeman said it would only be a few days, but I don’t know.”

  Mrs. Penfield was a thin, gray woman. Her white blouse and light-colored slacks made a statement about the unlikelihood that she might be in mourning.

  “So the police searched the whole building?”

  “Just about.”

  “Is there a basement and attic?”

  “There’s another office above us, and downstairs there’s a half-basement and a furnace that isn’t used. Mr. Martin turned everything over to electric long before I got here. But the policemen looked in the basement. One got stuck in the space behind the furnace, it’s so small. Other men had to help him out. He was so . . .” Here she paused and seemed a bit flustered.

  “Fat?” asked Charlie.

  “Certainly overweight.”

  “Sorry I missed it.”

  They stood in the middle of the room on a dark carpet. Mrs. Penfield kept glancing through the window, as if expecting the police to burst in at any moment.

  “And how long did you say you’d worked here?” Charlie continued.

  “Six months, though it seems longer. I should never have taken the job, but Mr. Martin promised me health insurance, as well as a raise after a certain time. Of course, he never mentioned them again after I came here. Then at the Stop and Shop, I ran into the woman who’d worked for Mr. Martin before me. She lasted eight months and said she’d never gotten a raise or health insurance either, though Mr. Martin had promised them to her as well. Nor had she been paid for her last weeks of work.”

  “Could you tell me her name?”

  “Margaret Ross. She works over at the high school now, lucky woman.”

  “You handled all the secretarial business, all the accounts and billing?”

  “Pretty much, though, as I said, Mr. Martin had his own computer. Even his own printer. He was quite private about it, not that I would have looked into it, and he always locked his office door when he left for lunch or an appointment. And he made sure to be in the office when the cleaning woman was here.”

  Charlie saw the office door had a dead-bolt lock. “How’d the police get in?”

  “They had to get a locksmith.”

  Charlie tried the door, but it was locked. “So Mickey might have had accounts you knew nothing about?”

  “My husband, Mr. Penfield, thought so. Many times Mr. Penfield told me that Mr. Martin was an absolute crook. Those were his words. But I tried to make it my business to pay as little attention to Mr. Martin as possible. He didn’t even like me to look at him, and more than once he asked what I was staring at.”

  Charlie imagined being shut up in a small space with Mickey Martin day after day. It didn’t make a pleasant picture. He considered asking Mrs. Penfield about Mickey’s urinous breath, but decided against it. “Did he act any differently in the few days before he was killed?”

  “Yes, he did, and I told the police the same thing.” Mrs. Penfield crossed her arms and again pursed her lips. “He was less brash, quieter, and at first I thought he was coming down with something. He spent more time in his office with the door shut, even locked. Sometimes I heard his printer. He didn’t come in on Monday at all, but I know for a fact he’d been here over the weekend, because he used the coffeemaker. He always left it dirty. He said it was my job to care for it and make sure that we never ran out of coffee and to buy half-and-half. A
nd several drawers in the file cabinets weren’t entirely closed.”

  “Had anything been removed?”

  “I couldn’t tell, but Mr. Penfield said he was trying to cover his tracks, that he probably meant to leave town and was getting rid of files that might be ‘incriminating’; that was Mr. Penfield’s word.”

  “Did he have any reason to think that?”

  “Not really, but he, well, he hated Mr. Martin. He always said bad things about him. In any case, Mr. Martin kept his most important files in his office.”

  “And I gather you’ve been talking to Joan Miller. How’d you meet her?”

  Mrs. Penfield looked embarrassed. “Margaret Ross had told me that Mr. Martin had a sister who lived in Troy. Then, three months ago, Mr. Martin didn’t come to the office for two weeks, a little longer. There were bills to sign and clients had been calling. I was nearly frantic. So I called Joan and asked if she’d seen him. She just laughed. But we had a long talk. She knew exactly what her brother was like and was quite sympathetic. After that she called several times to see how I was doing and I called her, I think twice, when I felt low. Mr. Martin had a dirty tongue and could be quite insulting. I called her the first time out of desperation and Joan told me to quit. I said I couldn’t, that we had too many bills; so she said I must ignore him and make sure that I didn’t weep again, at least where he could see me.”

  “Did Mickey ever mention her?”

  “Only once.” Mrs. Penfield reddened slightly. “He called her ‘that dyke bitch.’”

  Charlie talked to Mrs. Penfield for a few more minutes, then gave her his card and urged her to call if she discovered anything. “I don’t know why he was coming to see me,” he said. “I’d hate to think my family was in danger.” Saying this made him feel like a hypocrite, but he wanted to offer an excuse for being there if the police asked about him. Mrs. Penfield nodded sympathetically. Then, after getting the name of the landlord, Charlie hurried back to his car. He wasn’t wearing a hat and he hated cold drops of rain striking his bald spot.