The Ambassador, page 12
I rode northeast on the highways and byways heading into Boston. It was early and there wasn’t too much traffic. What little there was, was mostly delivery trucks finishing up their runs. There were few other cars heading in my direction. I got off the highway and nosed the Maverick into town. In another half an hour or so, traffic would be moving sluggishly along the ribbons of tar and concrete into Boston.
I got home and made my way upstairs to my apartment. Sir Leominster greeted me at the door. Mewing to let me know, not so much that he missed me, but that he missed my ability to open a can of food for him. He followed me into the kitchen and sat, twitching his tail impatiently while I found a can opener. I dumped the can on a saucer and put it down next to his bowl of water. He shut up long enough to plant his feline snout in the pile of foul-smelling meat-like stuff.
It was too early to call Watts, so I opted for a shower, clean clothes, and breakfast. Breakfast was uninspiring save the espresso. I found a banana that was more yellow than brown and ate that too. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was better than what I had in the diner below Kovach’s apartment. That breakfast had shaken my faith in diner food. I picked up the phone, figuring that I could catch Watts at home before she left for the office.
‘Hello,’ she answered.
‘Who’s your favorite private eye?’
‘I don’t have one.’
‘Ouch …’
‘Why are you calling me so early? Shouldn’t you still be hungover or something?’
‘Hah, I’ll have you know I have been up for several hours, and been quite productive, thank you.’
‘You’ve been up for hours and very productive … oh, that sounds scary. Usually when you think you’ve been productive, people get hurt.’
‘I took a trip to Fairhaven early this morning,’ I said, ignoring her pointed comments.
‘Andy … you didn’t do anything illegal?’
‘Other than a little B and E, no.’
‘Burglary if it’s at night.’
‘No, burglary is the entering of a dwelling at night with the intent to commit a felony therein. I had no intention of committing a felony, and I didn’t.’
‘Semantics,’ she countered.
‘Well, they are important occasionally.’
‘When?’
‘At sentencing mostly,’ I quipped.
‘OK, hypothetically, what did you do?’
‘I went to visit an old Army buddy in Fairhaven. When I got there and knocked on the door, it must have been poorly latched and swung open.’
‘Ugh, have you ever heard of the poisoned fruit of the poisoned tree?’
‘Yes, and I am not worried about testifying to anything right now. I don’t think Stevenson is looking for a conviction.’
‘No, probably not. What did you find?’
‘My buddy Arno wasn’t home, but I wanted to make sure no one had broken in. He lives alone, drinks a lot, and has guns and knives stashed around his apartment. Also, he isn’t much of a housekeeper.’
‘Andy, for all intents and purposes, you just described your own apartment.’
‘Hey, that’s not fair. My place is kind of clean.’
‘Was there anything else?’
‘No, not much …’ I trailed off.
‘Not worth the trip then.’
‘… except a cut-out newspaper article about Stevenson taped to his refrigerator.’ I enjoyed hearing the slight intake of breath at the other end of the line. I imagined her slightly biting her lower lip. It wasn’t a bad thing to contemplate.
‘It was a couple of years old. One of those “Meet the Writer” types of articles. Pictures of him with the dog, his Mercedes, and the French doors that got shot up. It was all in this one article.’
‘Jesus.’
‘It could still be a coincidence?’
‘Not likely. You were productive this morning.’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘OK. Now what? I can’t do much with this.’ There was mild exasperation in Watts’s voice.
‘I don’t know. I want to talk to Kovach. If he is on the road or something, it might be a while before he is around. I should probably tell Stevenson or that Pretty Boy who follows him around.’
‘He is the type to like status updates.’
‘Ha, there is nothing shocking about that.’ My own voice betrayed how little I liked having a boss.
‘OK. Good work, I guess. Keep me posted, but not too posted.’
Watts was never comfortable with my rare forays into felony land. ‘Thanks, will do.’
She hung up and I listened to the dial tone, wondering if it might be worth shaping up enough to convince her to take a chance on me. I put the handset in the cradle, no closer to having an answer than I ever did before. Sir Leominster came over and rubbed up against my shins. His standards were a lot lower than Watts’s.
The next order of the day was a trip to the office. I gathered up whatever yellow legal pads I had been writing case notes on at home and threw them in my old mail carrier’s bag. The red sky in the morning had proven to be more than just a catchy rhyme, and now big fat raindrops were beating steadily against the windows of my apartment. This would be a great time to curl up on the couch and take a nap after my early morning adventures. It would be, except that after finding an actual clue I felt excited, and the thought of not following up on it was a non-starter.
I pulled on my old, battered trench coat and my old Red Sox cap. Like all the faithful, I held out hope that we’d win the World Series someday. And like all true believers, I knew it was a leap of faith to think that.
Boston was a town like that. It required a lot of faith to live here. Faith that you would find a parking spot close to your destination. Faith that your car wouldn’t get crushed in a pothole. It required faith to get through long winters and then the false flag operation known as spring, where after a week or two of faint sunshine and near warm weather, we’d get buried by wet snow. Then, only a few months later, having to cope with the heat and humidity of summer’s cruelty.
Sir Leominster had curled up on the couch with his snout under his paw, sleeping the sleep of the just. Outside on the street, the rain had slowed to a persistent drizzle. I walked to the office thinking about Kovach and what I had seen in his apartment. He seemed like a lonely man but not stupid. He clearly saw the world as a dangerous place and wanted to be prepared for it. He drank a lot, and the only thing that stood out was the clipping of the article.
If I did manage to get him to answer the phone, I needed to have something better to say to him than, ‘Hey Arno, I broke into your apartment and I noticed that you like guns and whiskey too. Wanna hang out?’ Something told me that would start the conversation off on the wrong foot. I could try to bluff him, but eventually I would have to tell him the truth about why I was calling, and I would most likely only squander whatever goodwill I might curry leading up to that. I could try the honesty dodge and scare him off right away. ‘Hey Arno, my name is Andy, and I was hired to find out if you are writing threatening letters to the Ambassador. Oh, and by the way, are you trying to kill him too?’ That didn’t seem like a much better opening.
When I got to the office, the video store hadn’t magically turned into anything else, but at least the place wasn’t booby-trapped. I hung my wet trench coat on the coat rack and put my very damp baseball cap next to it. I put my postal bag on the desk and went about the business of cranking up the espresso machine. Then, because I didn’t have enough vices that required a lot of small steps, I took out my favorite pipe. Packing the bowl wasn’t unlike packing the basket of the espresso machine. By the time the espresso machine had built up a good head of steam, I had managed to get the pipe lit and drawing nicely. I opened the window a crack and then put the cup under the spigot, enjoying the sound of espresso filling the tiny cup.
I sat down and pulled the phone over. I dialed Kovach’s number and listened to it ring and ring. I hung up for the first time today, but knowing that it was far from the last time. I pulled the legal pads over and began to consolidate my notes. I wrote down my observations about Kovach’s apartment and the neighborhood – or, more accurately, industrial area – he lived in.
From Kovach’s point of view, it was a pretty good set-up. He had food, booze, and employment all right there. He could see anyone coming or going for tens of yards in any direction. He also had paranoid neighbors in the shipyard, so that meant neighborhood security was taken care of.
From my point of view, it presented a lot of challenges. There weren’t a lot of great places to lay up and watch Kovach’s apartment from. If I showed up there again, I was likely to get into a fight, or worse if I was seen. I wasn’t keen on breaking into Kovach’s apartment again. I had used up my number of complimentary felonies from the FBI.
I started to catalogue the guns as I remembered them and where they were found. I added the knives too. I was surprised he didn’t have a shotgun. They were unparalleled for close quarters, and Kovach seemed serious about stuff like that.
His books had mostly been history and some political science stuff. From what I saw, he was an anti-communist, which given his background wasn’t surprising. The Lodge Act soldiers tended to have a grudge against the Soviets, and with good reason. The books he had about Vietnam were mostly historical, but a lot of the ones that had been written certainly had a political slant. America had only in the last year or so gotten to the point where it could talk about the war during holiday gatherings without it devolving into a fight.
Kovach had been in Vietnam and, more importantly, in Laos. He was a guy who requested through channels to marry a Laotian girl and had his request denied. He had publicly made threats against the Ambassador. He fitted the FBI profile and he lived an hour from Stevenson. It was a lot of circumstantial stuff, but I didn’t have to prove anything in a court of law. He looked good enough, and I didn’t have a lot of other likely candidates at this point.
Still, there were things that bothered me. I hadn’t seen a typewriter in Kovach’s apartment. That didn’t mean he didn’t have one or didn’t have access to one. Two, if you were going to shoot at Stevenson, the Ruger Mini-14 would have made a lot of noise on a suburban street. It would have attracted police attention pretty quickly. But if you were going to try and kill Stevenson, why would you use anything smaller if you had the Ruger available? Would a guy who has a small arsenal, stored ready for bear, be happy just writing letters or scaring Stevenson like that?
Mostly I couldn’t shake the feeling that Kovach’s apartment, and maybe Kovach himself, wasn’t very organized. It was neat but not clean. Also, the odds bothered me. It seemed like a long shot that the one and only name that came up so far was the guy responsible. Stevenson had to have pissed off a lot more people than just Kovach.
I picked up the phone again. An hour had passed, my pipe had gone out, and the demitasse cup was dry. I dialed and listened to the phone ring and ring at the other end of the line. I was beginning to suspect that after my successful recon of Kovach’s apartment, the rest of the day was going to turn out to be a lot of banging my head against the wall trying to reach him.
I decided to see if the Jungle Telegraph had anything to offer. I started calling guys I knew who had been in country around the time that Don Barry had said he had run into Kovach. Now that I had a lead, a name, I might be able to jar some memories, shake something useful loose. I started calling the names in my address book. I left messages about Kovach with wives, girlfriends, and answering machines. It wasn’t much, but it was what I had to work with, unless I could get old Arno to answer his phone.
Every hour that I called and listened to it ring and ring, it seemed less likely to pan out. Between calls to his seemingly unanswerable phone, I added to my notes. Normally I would take pictures of Arno’s apartment and points of interest around it, but something told me that wouldn’t go over well with the boys from the shipyard.
I had spent most of the morning taking notes and listening to phones at the other end of my handset ring and ring. I was hungry, frustrated, and starting to feel the effects of not enough sleep. It was mid-afternoon and the pain in my lower back, on top of everything else, was telling me it was time to leave. I packed my legal pads and pens in the mail bag and put on my now-dry trench coat and baseball cap.
The rain had given way to sunny weather, and I regretted not having any sunglasses with me. Sunlight glinted off the windows in the buildings and the puddles of dirty water that were splashed around. Water was meandering in streams along the gutters, carrying with it a flotilla of paper cups and fast-food wrappers. The sidewalks looked a little cleaner, but it was Boston and that wouldn’t last for very long.
I walked past the Eric Fuchs hobby shop, which fed the habits of model train builders and the military diorama types equally. If you needed a replica firearm or Airfix toy soldiers from England or an HO scale anything and all the glues, paints and brushes, Fuchs was the place. I passed under the giant gold teapot sign and made my way down a couple of blocks until I found myself at Provisions.
Provisions was a hidden gem down among the tall buildings near Government Center and the Courthouse. It was a small deli tucked between two larger buildings. Inside you could sit at one of the half a dozen tables, but good luck trying to get a seat between eleven thirty and two in the afternoon. The place was usually mobbed with business types, ties loosened and top button undone. You might find college kids or even the occasional tourist who stumbled in, slightly lost from the maze of streets that started their lives as winding cow paths a couple hundred years ago. They are the lucky ones.
I went inside and looked at the specials chalked on a blackboard. The muffuletta looked pretty exciting. I had spent a weekend I could barely remember in New Orleans once. On the other hand, the Roast Beast sandwich was enticing. The roast beef was roasted on the premises, every day, crusted in salt and black pepper, cooked to a perfect medium, and sliced very thin. Horseradish cream sauce was optional for everyone else, for me it was a must. They piled the roast beef on one side of the split loaf. On the other they laid down tomato slices, salted and peppered them, then added sliced black olives, sliced pepperoncini, and shredded iceberg lettuce. On top of the roast beef they laid slices of Havarti cheese with dill in it.
When I was able to get up to the counter, I ordered a small Roast Beast but kept thinking about the muffuletta the way you might think about the girl you almost chatted up in a bar. I added a bag of Cape Cod potato chips. They were kettle cooked and crunchy. In a world of flat, greasy chips, produced in factories that would have made Henry Ford proud, the Cape Cod potato chips were standouts.
I paid at the counter and waited for my order. I thought about Kovach. He looked like he might be good for menacing Stevenson. He was local, seemed to have reason to hate him, and didn’t seem to have much else going on in his life. The college-aged kid at the counter called my number and I paid. I put the sandwich and chips in my mail bag. Case notes and a big sandwich made for strange companions.
Walking home as the fall afternoon light began the gradual dipping behind and between buildings, I kept thinking about Kovach. Was he that angry about events in Laos that happened over a decade ago? What type of person had the energy to make so much effort after a decade?
I knew guys who had a tough time moving on from Vietnam, but this seemed like a bit much. Or maybe Kovach was a nutter and his pressure cooker had finally blown a gasket? From my point of view, it probably didn’t matter much. My job was to find the guy doing all of this, be it Kovach, an SOG guy, or someone Stevenson had wronged in the past. My job was to keep Stevenson safe by finding the guy threatening him, not to analyze motives.
I reached my apartment and let myself in. I took my case notes on their yellow legal pads out of my mail bag, the sandwich, and chips too. I poured a glass of water and sat down. I munched on the chips and the sandwich while I reviewed my notes. This was part of the process when I worked a case, go out and investigate, gather facts and talk to people, jot down notes, then try and tie it all together, summarize the notes, and attempt to make something coherent out of it all. I don’t know how other investigators work, but this was how I did it.
I crunched on the salty chips and looked at the stuff about Kovach. He looked good for all of it, but I couldn’t get over the feeling that Stevenson had screwed over a lot of people along the way to the nice house in Brookline, which came with the Mercedes and the young, leggy, blonde wife. The wife, I might add, who looked like she should be in a shampoo commercial. On the other hand, if I was right about Kovach wanting to marry a Laotian girl and Stevenson putting the kibosh on it … that was also someone from his past with a hell of a motive. Did all roads lead back to the war in Vietnam or, in this case, Laos?
Most of my cases were simple. Spouse A was sleeping with someone who wasn’t Spouse B. Usually this occurred at a cheap motel or wherever. Or a guy claims an injury at work. Claims his back is hurt because of his employer’s negligence and he can’t work, he can barely walk. Then I find him down on the Irish Riviera, aka Wollaston Beach, playing beach volleyball with a couple of young ladies from Eastern Nazarene College. I can’t prove it scientifically, but there seems to be a correlation between the size of the bikini and the religiousness of the college. That is the fun version of that type of case. More often it is the guy claiming a back injury lifting heavy stuff or doing construction. I watch and take pictures and don’t think too much about any of it. Simple.
Most of my cases weren’t mysteries, they were just a collection of people lying, cheating and/or committing low-level crimes. There were no supervillains with ambitious plans in my world, just human beings caught up in the drama of bad decisions and usually worse actions. Mostly it wasn’t exciting, it was just sad.
Most of the time, most of my cases were not exotic. Now I was dealing with a small, shabby piece of my past, my war gone by, or at least the war next door. A name, a person, had popped up and I was questioning it. There weren’t many more common motives than love lost, except for greed. Greed was universal. Maybe I just wanted a case involving the Ambassador to be more complex, more exciting than a lover who lost his love. It wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to think that because I didn’t like him, I wanted him to be the villain in this and not the victim.
