Late Payments Page 8

  “Ah, yes,” Tidmarsh said, remembering that Powder spent years in charge of Night Cover. Then, “You know, your friend Mencelli is a genuinely devious character.”

  “You make it sound like a compliment.”

  “I checked some of his source numbers, just a few. And he’s worked out some impressive techniques to get into the out-of-state data banks he drew on. He certainly gets an A-plus for hacking.”

  “But you say there’s a flaw?”

  “It has to do with the way the periods of comparison are defined. Mencelli’s argument is that more people in certain categories died than would be expected. But to say that, you must choose what numbers you compare to what and that determines how many you would expect to die.”

  “Oh,” Powder said.

  “I think that he has picked the comparisons that maximize the effect he thinks he’s found rather than what might, objectively, be considered the best comparisons.”

  Powder looked thoughtful.

  “He hasn’t done anything wrong,” Tidmarsh said, “but it is possible to do it differently and that way you can reduce the chances of the effect really being there. You can get the statistical significance down from over ninety-nine percent to a little better than sixty-seven percent.”

  “So it’s still better than even that something’s happening.”

  “Ah,” Tidmarsh said, “in one sense, yes, but in a statistical sense it means that it could well be insignificant.”

  “Reinterpreted the way you’ve done it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there any reason to say one interpretation is more right than the other?”

  “No,” Tidmarsh said definitely. “But if our guideline is that we have to be as sure as we can be, then we are a lot less sure now than we were before.”

  “Even though more people in those categories have died recently in Indiana than in the other states.”

  “It may just be chance. That’s what we’re talking about, Powder. You could flip a coin and get heads seven times in a row, but that doesn’t mean the coin has two heads. A thousand heads in a row isn’t a guarantee either, but it is much better evidence.”

  Powder took a deep breath and rubbed his face with both hands. “Do you know how long this thing has been going on, if it’s going on?” Powder asked.

  “The effect, if it exists, began about seven years ago,” Tidmarsh said.

  “And did you ever work on how many people it would have had to involve?”

  “About twenty-six hundred.”

  Powder’s eyebrows went up. “Twenty-six hundred people died who wouldn’t have been expected to and you still don’t know whether there was an ‘effect’ or not?”

  Tidmarsh smiled patiently. “Two thousand six hundred, plus or minus nearly two thousand. Spread over seven years. It could be less than a hundred a year. And those divided between several categories.”

  “But there could be”—Powder calculated—“there could be six hundred and fifty people a year for seven years.”

  “Yes.”

  Powder rubbed his face. “Two full jumbo jets a year for seven years.”

  “Statistics is a blunt tool, Powder. It may just be the luck of the draw.”

  “You say there are two ways to approach whether it all exists or not.”

  “Two at the extremes. There would be other ways that would give answers in between.”

  Powder rose from his chair and approached Tidmarsh’s desk. “You’re a cop,” he said. “And not a bad one.”

  “Thanks very much.”

  “I want to talk to you as a cop now, and not as a glorified adding machine. I want your gut feeling on this, Tidmarsh. Which way do you go?”

  Tidmarsh shook his head. “I can’t play like that. Powder. All I know for sure is that the evidence so far indicates we should do more work on it all.”

  Powder returned to his chair. He sat. He exhaled heavily. “Are you going to do more work on it?”

  “Ah,” Tidmarsh said. “That’s another problem.”

  “Is it now?”

  “I’ve thought it through as carefully as I can, but I cannot see any way that I could let Mencelli use our computers. It’s not just the security problems and the data that he shouldn’t have access to under any circumstances. I can’t even see any practical way I could give him the required computer time without it being found out.”

  “Even if he worked through the night.”

  Tidmarsh spread his hands. “I just don’t think it can be done.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Powder walked thoughtfully down the stairs to the first floor.

  When he entered the Missing Persons office, Howard Haddix was talking intently to Sue Swatts at the counter. Fleetwood worked at her desk.

  “Got a lead on that eighteen-year father, Howard?” Powder asked.

  Haddix looked up, puzzled. Then he shook his head slowly and said, “No, no. I’ve just been telling Sue I had a real bad attack from my shortness of breath again, since last night.”

  “Shouldn’t have washed it on such a high temperature,” Powder said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your breath,” Powder said.

  “I ...”

  “Don’t mind him, Howie,” Swatts said quietly.

  “Hey, Susan! You’re learning!” Powder said heartily. He approached and pounded her on the back. “Good old Swatts.” He looked at his watch. “Picked up the leaflets from Printing yet?”

  “I was just going.”

  “OK,” Powder said, nodding. “You take it easy now.”

  “I will,” Swatts said. “I will. You want to come along, Howie?”

  “Sure.”

  Walking slowly, at Haddix’s pace, they left the office.

  Fleetwood said sharply, “Powder, why can’t you just take the good things they have to offer without hassling them about the rest?”

  Powder shrugged.

  “Are you suddenly in a good mood?”

  He considered the question. “I don’t think so,” he said. “But I’d like to talk to you about some things.”

  “All right.”

  “Do you have any free minutes tonight?”

  She thought. “I can manage that,” she said. Then she asked, “Have you done anything about that money you’re getting?”

  “No.”

  “It’s naughty not to write a thank-you note.”

  His hands rose to his eyes and then followed his forehead all the way back to where they found some hair. “You’re not angling for a meal, are you?”

  Fleetwood said, “You may not be interested, but used right, somebody could do good things with that kind of cash.”

  “I’ve already seen a guy about investing in this great little vineyard in New Mexico.”

  “New Mexico?”

  A woman, walking uncertainly, entered the office.

  “Uh oh,” Powder said. “Another husband absconded with a teenage tootsie.”

  “I have it on the highest authority that in this office we never get flippant about other people’s troubles.”

  “I stand corrected,” Powder said.

  “Besides, isn’t it more likely to be yet another one of your old flames looking to be rekindled?”

  Powder sat down next to Noble Perkins. “How you doing, son?”

  “On your list, you mean?”

  “Sure do.”

  “Come on. Lieutenant. It’s hard sometimes to fit in the work that you want with the department routine I’m supposed to do. The forms and all that.”

  “I thought you’d have built yourself a little robot to work through the boring stuff.”

  “Give me some of that money you don’t seem to want and I will,” Perkins said intently.

  Powder was surprised that Perkins had paid enough attention to know about the inheritance. But he carried on, saying, “I know. Noble. I know. You’re doing a grand job.”

  “All I’ve done is put the names through the data bank.” />
  “What’s it turned up?”

  “The woman. Miles, has some minor offenses and two accessory-to-fraud convictions.” He found a page of printout. “There are two Henry Painters on file. Senior and Junior. Senior has a long record, but he’s dead. I didn’t print it. Thought I’d ask which was the one you wanted.”

  Fingering Martha Miles’s arrest record, Powder said, distantly, “Might as well pull the basics on both.”

  “OK.”

  “I shall return,” Powder said. He folded the computer printout and put it in a pocket.

  Imelda Nason remembered him. But the memory was not, from the expression on her face, one of pleasure. “You think you can just come around here anytime and talk to Earle?” she asked. “He’s a busy guy. He needs his peace and quiet.”

  “It’s you I would like to talk to, Mrs. Nason.”

  “What about?” Sharply.

  “May I come in?”

  She considered it for what felt a long time. Then she said, “Hang on.”

  After a good minute she came back. “He says to invite you in.”

  She held tight to the door as he went by.

  Earle Nason’s rocky figure filled a comfortable armchair in the couple’s living room. He sat with a magazine, in slippers. He wore a satin bathrobe with a curlicued EN monogram. “Our friend in blue,” he said affably. “You found my brother-in-law yet?”

  “Not yet, Mr. Nason.”

  “Gee, that’s too bad.” He put the magazine on his lap. “Pull up a hay bale.”

  Powder sat. Mrs. Nason remained standing.

  “Mel says it’s her you want to talk to. You want me to leave the room?” He looked an immovable object.

  “Nope,” Powder said.

  “So what do you want?” Imelda Nason asked.

  “Do you know where your sister is, Mrs. Nason?”

  Imelda Nason glanced at her husband. Then she said, “No. I said before. Don’t you remember?”

  “I remember,” Powder said amiably. “But you struck me as the type of person who valued family above all things.”

  “My family ain’t shit,” she said.

  “Still, you might have heard from her.”

  “Well,” Mrs. Nason said uneasily, “since she left him, maybe. But I don’t know where she is now. I haven’t had nothing from her for a long time.”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  “Where was she when you heard from her last?”

  “Again she looked at her husband. Nason said, “Go on. Help the guy. He’s just doing his job.”

  “Guadalajara.”

  “That’s somewhere in the West of Mexico, isn’t it?”

  “I guess.”

  “Who is she with?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I mean who was she with? When she ran away.”

  “Go on,” Nason urged.

  “This guy called Dolf Manan.”

  “What sort of business is he in?”

  “Look,” Imelda Nason said angrily, “what the hell is all this about? Why suddenly all the questions about Sunny and who she’s with and where she is?”

  “I am trying to find her husband, or ex-husband.”

  “What’s it to do with her?”

  “She might know where Sweet would have gone, better than the child does.”

  “Yeah? Well she doesn’t. She wouldn’t. They wasn’t getting on very good for a long time.”

  “Why was that?”

  “He was always a funny guy. Always. Edgy.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Always fussing around. He’d go out to get the newspaper and he’d lock the door behind him, you know? Sunny thought it was kind of cute at first. You know, when the guy was a bit lively. But by the time she took off, she didn’t have anything to do with him. She was just waiting for the chance to go.”

  “Despite the child?”

  “Well, the chance didn’t really include the kid, you know what I mean?”

  “And this Manan?”

  Imelda Nason shrugged. “Kind of a small-time operator, with a few connections in Mexico. I suppose she’s comfortable enough. The guy’s a few laughs at least.”

  Powder nodded, then turned to Earle Nason. “You said that you last saw Sweet in Leonardo’s.”

  Nason raised an eyebrow. “That’s right. Like I saw you last night.”

  “If Sweet wasn’t much on good times, what was he doing there?”

  “Tell you the truth, I think maybe he was looking around for Sunny.”

  “Did your sister-in-law spend time at Leonardo’s?”

  “Some.”

  “Is that where she met Dolf Manan?”

  “Coulda been. I don’t really know.”

  “But she hung out there?”

  “I seen all kinds of people at Leonardo’s. It’s a classy place. We’ve had senators there, and judges. That’s the way the boss likes it.”

  Powder nodded. “I would still like to find Mrs. Sweet,” he said. “Even if she doesn’t know where her husband is now, she still might have things that would help me.”

  “Like what?” Mrs. Nason asked.

  “She might know where his parents lived.”

  “They were dead.”

  “Or other relatives?”

  “He didn’t have any.”

  “Or she might have a picture of him. There aren’t any at his house.”

  “I’ve got a picture of him.”

  Powder’s face expressed surprise. “If I could borrow it, I would be very grateful.”

  Mrs. Nason chewed the inside of a cheek. She looked at her husband. He nodded. She left the room.

  Earle Nason said lightly, “Don’t mind Mel. She’s had a pretty rough ride, one time and another, from guys like you. So she don’t feel, you know, helpful right away when you come asking questions.”

  “We are a pretty nosy bunch of people,” Powder said.

  Nason laughed. “Yeah. Sticking all kinds of nose into other people’s business.”

  “Yeah,” Powder said in a comradely way, “and putting all kinds of stuff together which is really just coincidence.”

  Still laughing, Nason said, “Suspicious bastards, cops. Not that I’ve had much to do with them since my little bit of trouble.”

  “Funny you should mention your little bit of trouble,” Powder said, smiling.

  “What you mean?” Nason asked easily.

  “A good example of a guy like me taking things and drawing conclusions.”

  Nason’s good humor went into a rapid decline.

  “What I mean,” Powder continued, “is how the man you killed without intending to just happened to be the brother of the man you work for now. The same brother that took over all the dead man’s business operations.”

  Nason’s expression lost all vestige of friendliness, but before he spoke again Imelda Nason returned to the room. She carried four photographs.

  She handed them to Powder. “These were from their wedding.”

  Powder rose. “I was just saying to your husband what a very nice house you have here. Good bit of land with it, and very comfortable inside. You must be very pleased he has such a well-paid job.”

  “We do OK,” Imelda Nason said. “But it hasn’t always been like this.”

  “That’s just what I was saying.” Powder held the pictures up and said, “I’ll take good care of them and I’ll get them back to you soon. Thanks very much for your help.”

  Powder moved to depart and Mrs. Nason seemed surprised that he had suddenly decided to leave.

  “Make sure the son of a bitch goes out the door,” Earle Nason said angrily to his wife.

  Powder quickly pulled away from the Nasons’ house, but at the end of the street he turned. After circling the block, he parked where he could see the Nasons’ driveway.

  Then he had a look at the photographs.

  Powder recognized only Imelda Nason among the nine people in the photograph
s. But of course, Earle would still have been in prison then.

  Even at his wedding Sidney Sweet had done his best to avoid a clear picture. But in one. Powder finally had a good look at the face of the man he was trying to find. Not by any stretch of the imagination a big man; sandy-haired, bright-eyed, wiry.

  Mrs. Nason’s sister, Sunny, was a small blond woman who looked appropriately radiant on her wedding day, and very young.

  An older couple might have been somebody’s parents. Two other men and a woman Powder had no ideas about.

  The ninth person, another man, looked rather like a basketball player gone to seed.

  Powder had been parked for fifteen of the thirty minutes he had allowed himself when Earle Nason left his house, now wearing a business suit and tie.

  Nason drove off quickly in a black Buick, and Powder almost lost him at first. But later, when they joined Massachusetts Avenue at 38th Street, Nason suddenly slowed down. He took a left on Kercheval, did the horseshoe and turned back onto Massachusetts, heading toward the city again.

  At Layman Avenue he went left, then pulled up and stopped.

  Powder drew in behind him.

  Nason got out of the car and walked back to Powder’s window. Powder leaned out. “Lost your way? Mass Av runs straight into Pendleton Pike.”

  “What the fuck do you want, cop?”

  “Nothing you haven’t already made clear to me,” Powder said. He revved his motor, backed up and squealed away past the angry bodyguard.

  Chapter Fourteen

  On his way back to police headquarters, Powder stopped at the insurance office of Morris Kijovsky.

  “Hey, Lieutenant!” Kijovsky said after Powder was led to his desk by a receptionist. “You’re lucky to find me in.” Kijovsky walked around to him, shook hands. “Found that missing man yet?”

  “No,” Powder said, “but I’d like to show you some pictures.”

  “Pictures? Sure. I like pictures.” Kijovsky dropped onto the edge of his desk. Powder passed him Sweet’s wedding photographs.

  “Hey, nice body on the bride,” Kijovsky said.

  “Do you recognize anyone?”

  Kijovsky handed them back. “Sure. That’s this guy Sweet.”

  “Show me.”

  Kijovsky pointed immediately to the basketball player.

  After parking in the Department lot. Powder went straight to the Photography Section. There he arranged for many enlarged copies of Sidney Sweet’s face and a few of the basketball player.