Play Dead

“You’d testify to that?”

“With pleasure.”

She still has a bunch of questions about how Reggie survived whatever his ordeal had been, but I don’t have the answers. Not now. Maybe not ever.

* * * * *

I PLACE A call to Sam Willis as soon as I get home.

Sam is my accountant, a role that took on an increased importance when I inherited my money. He’s also a computer hacking genius, able to get pretty much any information at any time from anywhere. He sometimes crosses the cyber-line between legal and illegal information gathering, and I once helped him when he was caught doing so.

Sam has become a key investigator for me, using his computer prowess to get me answers that I might never be able to get on my own. It is in that role that I’m calling on him now; I need more answers than I have questions.

I call him on his cell phone, since that is the only phone he owns and uses. He cannot believe that I still use a landline in my home and office, likening it to someone tooling around Paterson in a horse and buggy. Wireless is everything, according to Sam, but the truth is, I’m barely starting to get comfortable with cordless.

I can hear a loud public address announcer as Sam is talking, and he explains that he’s at Logan Airport in Boston. He’s a Red Sox fanatic, a rarity in the New York area, and he goes up there about five times a year to see games. This time he’s been there for almost a week.

His flight lands in an hour and a half, and I tell him that I’ll pick him up at the airport because I want to talk to him about a job.

“On a case?” he asks, hopefully, since he loves this kind of investigatory work.

“On a case.”

For some reason, I’ve always been a person who picks other people up at airports. I know that when I land I like someone to be there, even if it’s just a driver. It’s depressing to arrive and see all these people holding up signs with names on them, and none says “Carpenter.” It makes me feel as if I have my own sign on my forehead-“Loser.”

Sam flies into Newark rather than LaGuardia, which is where most Boston flights arrive. I share Sam’s dislike for LaGuardia; it’s tiny and old and so close to the city it feels as though the plane were landing on East Eighty-fourth Street. Newark is far more accessible and feels like a real airport.

Newark is far more accessible and feels like a real airport.

Sam is outside and in my car within five minutes of landing, because he did not check a bag. Sam wouldn’t check a bag if he were going away for six months; he doesn’t think it’s something a real man should do.

Sam has some mental issues.

As Sam gets in the car, I realize I haven’t prepared for the song talking game that dominates our relationship. The trick is to work song lyrics smoothly into the conversation, and Sam has so outdistanced me in his ability to do this that he has taken to adjusting the rules so he won’t be bored. Now he will sometimes do movie dialogue instead of song lyrics, and I never know which it’s going to be. Unfortunately, I have not prepared for either.

The good news is that Sam is so interested in finding out about the upcoming investigation that song or movie talking doesn’t seem to be on his mind.

I brief him on what I know, and “brief” is the proper word, since I know very little. “For now I want you to focus on the victim, Stacy Harriman,” I say. “There is very little about her in the record.”

“You know where she’s from, age, that kind of thing?” he asks.

“Some. What I don’t have I’ll get.”

“Is this a rush?”

I nod. “Evans sits in jail until we can get him out. So it’s a rush.”

“I’ll get right on it,” he says.

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

He shrugs that off. “No problem. Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me.”

He’s doing Brando from The Godfather. It’s a movie I know very well, so there’s a chance I can compete, but right now my mind is a blank. “Sam, I want you to be careful, okay?” I say this because two people in my life have died because of material they have uncovered in this kind of investigation. One of the victims was Sam’s former assistant.

“Right,” Sam says, shrugging off the warning.

“I mean it, Sam. You’ve got to take this stuff more seriously. We could be dealing with dangerous people.”

He looks wounded. “What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? If you’d come to me in friendship, then these people would be suffering this very day. And if by chance an honest man like yourself should make enemies, they would become my enemies. And they would fear you.”

He is incorrigible. “Thank you, Godfather,” I say. “You want to work out of my office?”

He frowns. “You must be kidding. On your computer? It would take me a year.”

“I can set up whatever system you want,” I say.

He shakes his head. “No, I’ll work at home… I’ve got wireless and a cable modem.” Then all of a sudden he’s yelling, “At my home! Where my wife sleeps! Where my children come to play with their toys!”