Private Heat: An Art Hardin Mystery

By Robert E. Bailey

Private detective and retired counterintelligence officer Art Hardin usually stays away from the flashy kind of PI work, paying his bills by doing surveillance, checking up on false disability claims, and the like. So when the senior partner one of the premier legal firms in Grand Rapids approaches Hardin about a job protecting his niece from her soon-to-be ex-husband for a couple of days, Hardin isn't exactly eager to take on the job, not the least because the niece herself is under house-arrest pending a murder investigation of her former boss . . . and the sudden disappearance of eleven million dollars . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ignition Books
• Release date: Feb 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781937868000

Book preview

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1

Everybody wants to be a detective, carry a big shiny gun, and be all the rage at cocktail parties. Nobody wants to get up at o-dark-thirty and drive ninety-three miles to see if Joe Insurance Claimant—who has been collecting a total disability check for the last three years—is also working for wages on the sly, but that’s the kind of work that usually pays the bills, not the flashy stuff you see on the tube.

This morning’s Joe Claimant was definitely double-dipping and that’s the type of information guaranteed to warm the frozen cockles of any insurance adjuster’s heart, including that of Virginia Hampton, the adjuster who had ordered this morning’s surveillance.

Virginia was usually at her desk by eight-thirty, so I punched up Pacific Casualty on the speed dialer. She picked up the line; her switchboard doesn’t open until nine.

Pacific Casualty Claims, she said, cold and all business.

Morning, Ginny, I said. I rocked my chair back and stacked the heels of my western boots on the corner of my cluttered desktop. Art Hardin, over at the Ladin Agency. How’s your Cinco de Mayo so far?

Sink-o-de-what? she wanted to know.

Mexican Independence Day, I said. Like our Fourth of July. Only it’s today.

Must be good news for you to call me this early, she said, her voice friendly now.

Nah, I just called to be social, I said. You have to scrape the frost off your windshield this morning?

She hadn’t. Just a little dew she cleared with the windshield wipers.

Guess I was up and out a little earlier than you.

Do tell, she said. I could hear her digging in her desk drawer, maybe sorting out a ballpoint pen.

You hit the lotto last night?

Arthur!

I’ll take that as a no, I said. I don’t think Mr. Fleming picked the right numbers either, because he went to work this morning.

She was pleased.

He left his house at five-twenty this morning and drove to Mount Pleasant Pallet Suppliers. He parked in the employee parking lot.

She wanted to know if I was positive of the identification.

Matches the picture on the insured’s company ID card you sent me.

She wanted to know what he was wearing and if he was using his walker.

Jeans, a T-shirt, and a lightweight jacket, I said, and no walker or cane. I watched him drive a lift truck for about half an hour. He’s pretty good. He can really stack up and move those pallets, vroom, vroom, you know.

She wanted to know if I had placed a pretext call to verify his employment.

No, I told her. I have no idea who owns the pallet outfit. Could be a friend or relative who’s paying him cash off the books. Since he’s abandoned his walker, I think we ought to run a little film.

No one has actually taken film in ten or fifteen years. Videotape with time/date generation has become the standard for documentation of surveillance work. I say film only because I’m getting a little gray in the muzzle.

She wanted to know what the tab was.

Five hours and two hundred miles, I said.

How much for surveillance with film, Ginny wanted to know. She lived in the hope that I’d bid low.

Sixteen to twenty hours, about four hundred miles, and the rental on a van, I told her.

Ginny said she’d have to review the file with her supervisor.

I heard the lock in the front door turn and looked up to check the video monitor that hung from the ceiling across the room from my desk. A chip-cam—a very small video camera—hidden in a smoke detector mounted behind the reception desk provided the pictures.

I watched Marg—Margaret Ladin, my late partner’s wife—trundle in the front door with a soft-sided attaché case in her hand and a purse the size of a golf bag hanging from her shoulder. She runs an accounting business from the front office, answers my phone, and takes care of the agency books.

Pete Ladin passed away peaceably enough while attending an American Society of Industrial Security dinner meeting. One minute he’s scarfing the rubber chicken dinner, the next minute he’s complaining about seeing double, and then—bang—out cold on the floor.

The autopsy revealed a walnut-sized cerebral aneurysm that had burst. In the county coroner’s opinion, Pete had been dead when he hit the floor.

Marg later sold me her half of the agency for the accounts receivable and one dollar. I got the agency, the license, and accounts payable. Ladin Associates enjoyed a good reputation in the Grand Rapids business community and the logo was painted on the window. I think that last part made Marg feel at home. I didn’t change the name. I told her it was because we’d just bought stationery.

Now we split the office rent. Marg pays a third of it, and I pay the rest. I also pay for the phone, including her private line, and the utilities. She’s sweet with the clients, can read my handwriting, and types the reports and invoices, all of which outweigh the fact that Marg is a shrew.

Let me know what you want to do, I said to Ginny. I’ll send the report and an invoice for what we’ve got. We made polite good-byes, and I hung up the telephone.

Morning, Marg, I called through my office door without getting up. I tried to sound breezy and upbeat.

Marg didn’t answer. I heard bundles thump on her desktop.

I need some walking-around money, I said.

You don’t have any money, she said as she walked by my office door to hang her coat on the rack in the investigators’ room. She’d done her dark brown hair big with a little flip at the end. Her straight blue business suit defied you to notice her ample figure. Get your fanny out on the street and make some, she said while she jangled some hangers on the coat rack.

I’ve been busy.

You’ve been on the phone, she said.

I shrugged and put my feet back on the floor. Sometimes it’s best to let her have her coffee before I make any requests. I stirred the clutter on the top of my desk until a yellow pad surfaced. What I can describe to an adjuster in a few sentences requires five pages of see Dick run and Jane threw the ball before the insurance company’s attorney will embrace the concept of a fraudulent claim.

The telephone rang. Marg hustled back to her desk and picked up the line. Peter A. Ladin Agency, she purred into the phone in a feline alto. How may we be of service?

I swear the woman has a split personality.

Yes, Mr. Hardin is in. Just a moment, please.

Van Pelham and Timmer on line one, she announced from her desk, her voice accusatory.

Van Pelham and Timmer, one of the premier legal firms in Grand Rapids, listed so many partners their letterhead looked like a bingo card. I had a lot of it in my file because I’d sued a county south of Kent for false arrest, and they had hired Van Pelham and Timmer to shovel paper on me in hopes that I’d suffocate. A federal judge awarded me one dollar and attorney fees from the county. Van Pelham and Timmer bleached the county’s bones until they needed a bond issue to replace their patrol fleet. The attorney from Van Pelham and Timmer had painted my character pretty dark all over the federal courthouse, so unless they were calling to thank me for the tasty billing, I was at a loss for what they could possibly want.

Hello. Art Hardin, didn’t seem to admit any kind of culpability, so that’s what I said.

Martin Van Pelham. His voice was imperious hollow-ground gravel that squeaked only faintly from age—the bold-print Van Pelham.

It’s a pleasure to speak with you, Mr. Van Pelham. If this has to do with the Berrien matter, send it to Freeman. Anything else, send to Finney down on Forty-fourth, and we’ll sort it out from there.

Mr. Hardin, he said, I am not suing you. If I were, you’d be talking to a process server.

So what’s this about?

I have a rather pressing problem that I think you may be able to help me with. Are you free for lunch?

No, Mr. Van Pelham. I’m fifty dollars an hour, but if you spring for lunch I’ll forego the four-hour minimum. The line went silent for a moment. I expected him to hang up. He didn’t.

Very well, he said finally. Someplace out of the way.

Grand Rapids is the biggest small town in Michigan. Over a million people inhabit the metropolitan area, but they all know each other and take notes. The usual downtown haunts were out.

How about the Choo-Choo up by Leonard on Plainfield? The Choo-Choo Restaurant had been retired as a train station in the early fifties and had served as a diner ever since. Despite its size—about as big as a two-car garage—and a coat of red paint over the brick, it still exudes that certain railway charm.

Once upon a time in Grand Rapids, there had been a minor league ice hockey team called the Owls. Some of the fans, players, and hangers-on, most now retired, gather daily to fill the Choo-Choo’s two tables and short counter for breakfast and spirited conversation. The lunch traffic, mostly carry-out, comprises a blue-collar trade that pit-stops for the best burgers in Grand Rapids. If you want one of the two tables, you have to get there early.

Eleven-thirty, Van Pelham said and hung up.

I finished my report, stood up, and peeled my windbreaker off the back of my chair. I keep a sport jacket—this week, a brown herringbone in wool and Italian silk—and some ties on the coat rack in the investigators’ room. Ready-to-wear suits present a problem. It takes a forty-eight long to get around my chest and shoulders, but the trousers that come with a suit that size can’t be cut down enough to fit my waist.

This morning I’d dressed in the dark so as not to wake my wife, Wendy. Luck of the draw dealt me a yellow broadcloth shirt and black slacks. I passed on the brown tie in favor of a black-and-gold checked silk tie and took it, along with the sport coat, back to my office to saddle up. Properly attired, I clipped a billing slip onto my report and went out to beard the lioness.

Marg had her leave me the hell alone half glasses perched on the end of her nose. I dropped the report into Marg’s in-box and waited for her to finish a ledger entry.

What? she said.

I was serious, I said. I need a check.

Checks you got, she answered without looking up.

We billed twenty-five hundred last week, and the P&L says we have forty thousand in receivables!

And you’re on a thirty-day billing cycle. A lot of that isn’t due yet, and some of it is late. She fingered my battered ledger off the shelf next to her desk and smiled malevolently.

Oh, God, I said, don’t beat me with the book. That’s cruel and unusual. Just give me the short version.

Taxes and Social Security, she said and slipped the ledger back into its slot. Quarterly payments.

I’ve got to meet a client.

Twenty-three dollars.

I said, Great. Gimme a check for the double sawbuck, and tried to sound chipper.

You know they charge you for every check.

Let ’em take it out of the three spot.

You need to think about a retirement program, she said. She made a little sigh as she dragged out the checkbook.

Good. Let’s look at this as an investment.

Don’t get snippy, she told me. To get even, she made me take the tax payments, since I was going to the bank anyway.

Just short of seventeen thousand dollars swirled into the bank teller’s drawer. She smiled and stamped my coupons like it was nothing. I breezed out of the bank with twenty bucks to operate my business. My black Olds sedan drank a sawbuck for breakfast.

I got to the Choo-Choo at a quarter past eleven and parked on the hard-packed dirt lot that forms an uneven wreath around the building. Inside, railroad pictures covered the dark-stained knotty pine walls. The close quarters behind the counter shone in stainless steel and tile. The serving area featured chrome, speckled formica, and brown Naugahyde—here and there garnished with duct tape.

The usual breakfast crew still filled both tables and four of the seven counter stools. They were down to raucous conversation and lukewarm coffee. I slid onto a stool and ordered a cup of joe. After ten minutes, a table cleared and I hustled to take possession.

The service is better up here at the counter, said the owner/cook/waiter, a fellow as big as a landing craft with hair cut high and tight like a marine drill instructor. He hooked his thumbs in the straps of the starched white bib apron he wore over jeans and a white T-shirt. I don’t go out there unless there’s two or three people at a table.

I’m meeting a friend here in a couple of minutes, I said. How about setting us up with a couple of deluxe burger baskets?

Eight forty-eight, he said and pointed at a sign mounted next to the clock. PLEASE PAY WHEN YOU ORDER.

I fished out my ten spot and walked it over to the counter—a bad omen—Van Pelham had weaseled out of the lunch tab and he wasn’t even here yet.

The owner made my change and said, I’ll clear the table.

Van Pelham walked in wearing a blue pin-striped Italian suit. Pushing the door open, he exposed his left wrist and a gold Rolex watch that cost more than the diner grossed in a month. His hair, flecked with brown when we’d clashed in the Federal Courthouse, was now stark white and just long enough to lie down. Still ramrod straight and six feet tall, he weighed a lean one hundred fifty or sixty pounds and moved lithe as a cat despite his nearly three score and ten years. We shook hands and he said, I remember you as taller.

I remember you as younger.

I used to be younger, he said and gave me the deadpan face that only lawyers and serious card players can muster.

I used to be taller, I said and showed him to the table.

Van Pelham took out his hanky and dusted the chair before he sat. The counterman, wiping the table, scowled at him and two of the denizens seated on the stools appraised Van Pelham in an apparent effort to determine what he’d weigh dressed out.

I have to ask you, I said, pausing until we made eye contact, just what inspired you to call me? As I remember it, you described me as a ‘sleazy keyhole peeper’ in the hallway over at the Gerald R. Ford Building.

Let’s not recriminate, he said and looked over his shoulder at the door. When he turned back he added, I called you because I need your services.

The front door opened and a man in a grease-stained mechanic’s uniform breezed in and headed for the counter. Van Pelham did a quick head swivel to check him out.

You still don’t like cops? he said, like it was a fact I should stipulate to, to save the court’s time.

I have the greatest respect for the police, I said and waited till he was looking at me again. They do a difficult job. Most work hard and serve the public at great personal peril. However, I don’t believe that a badge is a license to—

He waved a halting backhand. I heard the speech at the trial. He folded his hands on the table and said, You sued the county when you could have walked away from a reasonable mistake and made some good friends in the law enforcement community.

Really? Damn! Sure would have cost you a bundle in billable hours.

That’s not the point.

That’s exactly the point. Trust me on this—with police agencies, respect is a lot more durable than friendship.

Van Pelham allowed me a little nod of his head. I had a similar thought this morning, he said.

The burger baskets arrived, and Van Pelham looked dumbstruck. He stared at the basket of fries and the top of the big sesame seed bun like he’d been served a snake in a bucket.

Take a walk on the wild side, I said and hauled my half-pounder out for a bite.

I haven’t eaten like this since I was an intern, he said and pushed the basket aside. My niece is going through a divorce. Her husband has assaulted her on several occasions and has made some very specific threats on her life.

I nodded through another bite, but his silence made it clear that it was my turn to talk. I take it, I said, using my napkin to wipe the ketchup off my mustache, your niece’s soon-to-be-ex is a police officer.

"Yes, he is. And that is the problem."

Get yourself a restraining order. If he gets out of hand, he has a lot to lose. I felt like I was preaching to the choir. If he’s assaulted her several times, he should be on the rubber gun squad already.

Van Pelham wagged his head in the negative. She pressed charges once. His sergeant came over and told her that he could get counseling through the department, so she dropped the charges. I still managed to get a restraining order. He should be served when he gets off shift tonight.

What flavor? I asked between bites.

Van Pelham twisted his head like a dog studying a worm on a wet sidewalk.

State? City? County? One of the suburbs?

City, he said and turned his head to check out a customer who had opened the door to leave.

Shit, I said. Go see the chief. The city is one of your clients. I’m sure he’ll make time for you and take it as a favor that you helped him head off some trouble.

Like he took care of the Rat? asked Van Pelham.

Rat is the nickname for a city police detective who married a district court judge. The newspaper made it an occasion for the city, with color pictures of the happy couple standing on the courthouse steps. But, like most fairy tales, it turned out to be an ugly story with a nasty ending.

One morning after the Rat’s customary breakfast of bourbon and beer, he walked into the judge’s chambers, shot her in the neck, and watched her bleed to death on the floor.

The police department took the position that the shooting was a domestic matter and not nearly as bad as if the Ratmeister had wandered into the courthouse and capped somebody at random. The prosecutor couldn’t find it in his heart to personally prosecute an old friend and professional associate, so he appointed a special prosecutor.

The Rat took a twenty-five-to-life murder fall in a federal penitentiary but not before his attorney mounted an unsuccessful diminished capacity defense, due to advanced alcoholism. When the good people of Grand Rapids started asking why an active alcoholic had been left on duty, in uniform, and entrusted with a firearm, the police chief mugged for the cameras.

Hey, I said with a shrug, "I saw the chief on the news. He flopped the Rat back in the bag from Major Cases because of manpower needs. A lateral transfer. Had him assigned to midnight foot patrol in the tenderloin. An administrative thing. The chief had no idea the Rat had a drinking problem. The press ate that spin with a spoon, and I believed him, too! Didn’t you?"

That’s the point, said Van Pelham. I’m afraid that after her husband gets served he’ll head straight over to the house.

Of course he will, I said. He has a right to pick up his clothes and personal property. Maybe this is a good time for your niece to take a long weekend. Chicago, maybe, or Traverse City is nice this time of year. The cherries are in bloom.

She can’t.

Sure she can. This isn’t about principle. This is about common sense. I leaned forward and showed Van Pelham my open palms. A trip to Toronto would be cheaper than paying me.

She’s on a tether.

You’re putting me on, I wanted to say. His face revealed that he was not. What’s her name? I said instead.

K. T. Smith, said Van Pelham—made it sound like Katie. He snapped his head to check someone who had opened the door.

Out of habit I’d taken the gunfighter’s chair—back to the wall, with a clear view of the door, and a short unobstructed route to the rear exit. It would have been a mercy to trade seats with Van Pelham. I didn’t. The voice of Sergeant Ochoa, my old ranger instructor, whispered to me from the dark recesses of my memory, Mercy may fall like gentle rain, but stupidity comes down in great-big-fucking chunks.

Karen Smith? I asked.

Karen Terisa, said Van Pelham. I’ve always called her K. T.

That saves me a trip to the courthouse to read the summons and complaint, I said. The story had been in the newspaper—front page and above the fold for three days. Karen Terisa had been boffing her boss, who ran a payroll check accounting firm. One week all the checks bounced and the boss disappeared. A neat package until the local FBI located his car parked in the long-term lot at Kent County International Airport and staked it out. After a week the car started to get ripe, so they pried opened the trunk and found out that he’d missed his flight.

Ms. Smith turned out to have a numbered account in the Bahamas. She’d been waiting for her boss at Lake Tahoe when he got whacked.

Officer Smith should be running away from her like she was on fire and he was wearing gasoline boxer shorts.

Officer Talon, said Van Pelham. She never took his name.

Talon was one of the brain surgeons on the Community Service crew. The Community Service Squad was a plainclothes decoy unit that had recently figured prominently in a rash of civil suits against the city, not to mention some of the members getting busted for assault and battery down in Kalamazoo—exploits reported in the local newspaper.

Oh, I don’t think so, I said.

Too much weight?

Absolutely. Way out of my league.

That’s not quite the whole story, is it, Colonel?

Yeah, well, I lied. I never used to be taller. I did used to be younger—just like you. The other’s all reserve crap. I’m retired, anyway.

NCIC said you had an SCI security clearance.

I’ve always wondered why it is that lawyers have to talk around the edges of things; it’s like eating pizza starting at the crust and working your way to the point. NCIC stands for National Crime Information Center. Their reports go to police agencies, not slick private practice lawyers. Even so, getting an NCIC report on me wouldn’t have been much of a magic trick; he’d been defending a sheriff’s department back when we were butting heads down at the federal courthouse.

So he found out that I had been a counterintelligence officer for the Defense Intelligence Service. So what? His niece was divorcing a police officer, not some Russian intelligence thug. I’d been a private investigator for a couple of years by the time I ran afoul of a backwoods sheriff in southwest Michigan.

That case was years ago, and your guy didn’t ask me that question on the stand.

Years ago we didn’t want the jury to hear the answer. What’s an SCI clearance anyway?

Secret Codename Intelligence. I haven’t the foggiest notion, I said. Make up any story you like. It won’t change the fact that your niece and this Talon character are a disaster looking for a chance to happen.

Van Pelham closed his eyes, tilted his head down, and measured a long breath. When he looked up, he said, Mr. Hardin, my sister and her husband were killed by a drunk driver. My wife and I raised K. T. like one of our own. She was only fourteen when I lost my wife. K. T. just seemed to go wild. I’ve done my best to protect her. He rapped his folded hands gently on the table. The motion exposed the French cuffs of his tailor-made linen shirt and gold cufflinks the size of postage stamps. The cufflinks were etched with rampant griffins in profile. Each griffin had a quarter-carat diamond eye. I have an appointment with Ralph Sehenlink this afternoon. I need you for two days, he said, maybe just one, maybe just tonight.

Cat was out of the bag—Sehenlink was the local U.S. attorney. Van Pelham was trying to barter his niece into a witness protection program. In state courts the prosecutor has the authority to make a deal. In federal courts it is the presiding judge who has that authority, and prosecutors are tentative at best. Whatever she knew was good—it had to be really good—but the judge wanted it all, and Sehenlink was playing hardball to get it.

Two days, I said, not a minute longer.

Van Pelham offered his hand across the table.

I let it hang and ticked off the rest of the deal. Five thousand in a check from you, or your firm, today, and I take it to your bank before I start.

Van Pelham didn’t flinch. I should have asked for ten.

I need three copies of the restraining order.

He nodded.

If I get sued over this, your firm represents me.

He smiled and nodded again.

"I mean pro bono, Mr. Van Pelham, and you’re the barrister."

His reach got a little tentative.

I get charged with anything criminal, and you pay Pete Finney for my defense.

Van Pelham took his hand back. I have my own security people, he said.

Good, use ’em, I said and went back to my burger.

For that kind of money, you have to assume some of the risk.

I set my burger down, gave my mustache a final wipe, and then straightened the napkin onto my lap. Under the table I took the pistol off my hip and wrapped it in the napkin. I put the package in Van Pelham’s burger basket.

Do it yourself, I said. It’ll be free.

Van Pelham’s gaze fell unblinking to the package. When he looked back up at me his jaw was slack, but his eyes were predatory. He shoved the basket across the table. His lips started working silently, and he seemed to be trying out different words, none of them complimentary. Finally, he said, This isn’t about money.

Good, I said. "Tell me what this is about. Tell me why we couldn’t meet at your office and why you jump every time someone walks in the door. And what is this sudden fascination with my military background?"

Just my niece, said Van Pelham. This is all very embarrassing for a man in my position. I was glad when K. T. married a police officer. I’m disappointed that it didn’t work out. And I’m shocked about the current state of affairs. Given those parties and organizations we are up against, your military experience is essential.

I took the package out of the basket and put it in the pocket of my sport coat. I’m a parent, too, I said. I have three sons and I don’t always like what they do.

Van Pelham issued me a nod and a Yeah, stifled down to a grunt.

Even when they make me angry I don’t love them any less, but I do know about that little voice. The one that asks those hard questions, like, ‘Where did I screw up as a parent?’ And, ‘My God, what will people think?’ Nothing I can do will make that better for you. Five thousand dollars’ worth of conscience money doesn’t buy you the right to use me as a scapegoat if this all goes to hell.

I paused and locked hard eyes with his. He chose not to say what roiled behind the sneer that washed over his face. Against my better judgment I said, If we are joined at the hip for the sole purpose of protecting your niece’s life, then I’ll do the job. I’ll risk my health, my life, and my license for forty-eight hours. You know the terms.

I’ll have the check and a contract at my reception desk by one-thirty.

Is there anything else you need to tell me?

Van Pelham shook his head and slid his chair back from the table.

They ever catch the shooter who parked his trophy at the airport?

Van Pelham stood up and said, I think they’re going to get him very soon. He turned and walked out of the diner.

2

I picked up the mail at the Station C Post Office in Gas Light Village—an enclave of trendy restaurants and used-book stores where the streets are paved in red brick and illuminated by gaslights at night. Flipping through the envelopes, I found a new case from Atlantic Casualty and a couple of circulars from the computer search companies—but no money. I ripped the circulars in half and dropped them in the trash. If they were the future for the detective business, Marg was right: It was time to think of a retirement plan.

A short drive to Kentwood, the first suburb south of Grand Rapids, took me back to my office among the lawyers, dentists, and insurance adjusters that infest the row of three-story brick office buildings west of Breton Avenue on Forty-fourth Street. My first-floor space is down a flight of stairs and sort of half in the basement, where we occupy a location with a big window on the central court meant for a coffee shop or hair salon, both of which I threaten to open monthly.

Marg sat at her desk doing a diet soda and bag lunch when I strolled in the door. She pushed a couple of message slips at me as I passed her desk. One was from Virginia Hampton, the insurance adjuster I had spoken with this morning. I returned her call, but she’d gone to lunch and my call got diverted to her voice mail. The second slip informed me of an urgent call from Ron Craig, a good friend but also an energetic competitor.

Ron had worked in the private sector for the past several years. Budget considerations used to trim the CIA had cut short his budding career as a public servant.

I called his office but his answering service picked up. They said they’d page him. A recording reported his cell phone temporarily out of service.

Marg, I got a question, I said as I walked into the front office. She looked up with her soda in one hand and a pickle in the other. "If I sell a job for five