boystown (22 page)

“Who’s the check from?” I asked, then hastily added, “I mean that might help me remember.”

“LB Services.” That didn’t mean anything to me -- other than L and B were Lenny’s initials.

“Would you like to take this any further?” she asked.

“Not right now, thanks.” I said goodbye and hung up.

Lenny had already called them and set the investigation of the deposit in motion. That meant he didn’t know where the deposit had come from. Someone with access to his checkbook had made the deposit, someone who’d been able to reasonably fake his signature. But why? Why give Lenny money? And why such an odd amount? Three thousand, five hundred, and sixty-four dollars? I folded up his bank statement and went back to work.

When I got back to the forty-second floor, a frightened secretary was running around telling everyone the president had been shot. Within minutes, half the company had tromped by my desk on their way to find a radio. The youngest people on the floor seemed unfazed. The older ones were thrown back to the sixties. Even the ones who didn’t much like the Gipper couldn’t help but think about Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers. Most everyone on the floor spent the rest of the afternoon standing in an office down the hall listening to a clock radio. Even Campbell went down for a while. I stayed at my desk.

Taking the opportunity, I slipped off my jacket and then looked around my workstation as thoroughly as I could. In the drawers, there was nothing but supplies. I knew that already. There were overhead shelves with flip-up doors. I peeked in there, but there was nothing but empty folders. I ran my fingers above the overheads, but only found dust.

I got down on my knees and crawled under the workstation. The two-drawer file cabinets were not attached to the desk surface and were moveable. I slid one out and peeked behind it. Nothing.

After pushing it back, I crawled around to the other side of the workstation and was about to do
Boystown - 126

the same with the other file drawer when a flash of white caught my eye. I looked up and saw an envelope taped to the underside of the desk.

Carefully, I peeled the tape back and pulled the envelope away from the wood. The envelope had already been opened, and I slipped out its contents. In a glance, I saw that it was a bill for a post office box. It was sent to Lenny, but the address was JTM, not his apartment. I was ready to get up and slip the envelope into one of the drawers, when I heard Campbell’s voice behind me,

“Lose something?”

Quickly, I slid the envelope under the two-drawer file cabinet and yanked a button off my shirt. I stood up. “I popped a button.” With two fingers, I pulled open my shirt and showed him my navel.

He looked at the sliver of belly for a moment, raised his eyes to meet mine, and said, “I thought only fat people popped buttons.”

“It’s an old shirt.”

* * *

The next few days were hectic. JTM V was launching in less than two months and the brochures weren’t even begun. Half a dozen designers showed up for meetings with Campbell to show him possible ideas for the next brochure. Most of them seemed to be friends of his from when he was a student at The Art Institute. I had to keep all the appointments straight even though they kept moving around, conflicting with his social life and his workout routine. Plus, I had to make sure the conference room was booked for the larger meetings.

I found I didn’t much like being a secretary; it was hours of boredom punctuated by brief periods of humiliation. The work was dull, and if I took even the smallest initiative, Campbell shut me down. Every day I reminded myself that next time I tried some kind of undercover work, I should pick something a little more interesting. Or maybe I should skip undercover work entirely.

To make matters worse, Campbell had put me at the disposal of his fiancée, Julie Monroe. They were planning a Christmas wedding, and several times a day she called and issued commands in a way that made me think she was Cleopatra in a past life. Wednesday afternoon she read me a list of thirty guests to call who’d RSVP-ed but neglected to check off chicken or fish. It took so long, I wondered if it wouldn’t have been faster had she just called them herself.

Meanwhile, people on the floor were still talking about the president getting shot. It was pretty clear the old guy was going to be okay, so I didn’t know what the fascination was. I overheard Terri talking with a secretary from accounts payable. Both seemed to think the president was dead and “they” were stalling to give them time to put in a look-alike. Whoever “they” were.

One of the sales guys came by and made it clear he disagreed. The president was alive. The cover-up had to do with the fact that the Russians were behind the assassination attempt. "They"

were hiding that fact to avoid nuclear war.

Boystown - 127

Even though things were busy, during lunch on Tuesday I managed to get under the two-drawer file cabinet and retrieve the invoice for the PO box. Studying the invoice didn’t tell me much more than I already knew. It didn’t make sense that Lenny would rent a PO box and then have the bill sent to the office. It was a renewal. That meant he’d rented the box six months ago, and since he was a temp, it made no sense to have the bill sent to a job he might not be at when it came due.

And it made even less sense to hide the invoice.

Wednesday was April Fools’ Day. Right after the afternoon coffee break that I’d ended up working through, Campbell came out to my desk. He gave instructions on some calls he wanted me to make, one of which was to call around and see if I could find someone to soften the leather seats in his three year-old BMW -- I half expected him to say, ‘Ha-ha, April Fools’ on that one.

Unfortunately, he didn’t.

“I know this is none of my business, but I heard the last guy killed himself,” I said as casually as possible.

“Not the last guy, the guy before that.”

“Oh. Do you know why he killed himself?”

“We didn’t discuss it.”

“There weren’t any signs?”

He looked up at me. “I suppose. He came into work a few times high on something. You’re not going to come to work high, are you?”

“No.”

“Good. And you’re not planning to kill yourself?”

“No.”

“Then we’ll get along fine.”

I wanted to ask more questions, but knew I was pushing it. As casually as I could, I said, “He must not have been here very long.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, if he’d been here a long time, you would have noticed more.” And, though I didn’t say it, might seem to care.

Boystown - 128

“He was here six months. But it’s an office. People don’t bring their dirty laundry here.” The final bit was said almost as a warning. Then he turned and went back into his office. He’d managed not to tell me anything more than he’d told the police. But still, it was strange. When a person you knew killed themselves, it seemed normal to gossip about it, cathartic even. But Campbell seemed to discourage talk about it.

I still held onto the idea that Lenny had killed himself and was looking for the reason. Yes, there were things that made me suspicious: the money, the post office box, and, of course, the hostess who may have lied about what she saw the morning Lenny died. I did my best to work out explanations. The hostess may just have wanted the attention being a witness can bring. That was easy enough to explain. The money was harder. I might have considered blackmail if it wasn’t such an odd amount.

Yeah, I was becoming increasingly suspicious that something else might be going on or there was at least more to Lenny’s suicide than met the eye. By Thursday, I gave up the idea of suicide completely.

Around two o’clock Thursday afternoon, the phone rang. “Campbell Wayne’s office,” I said, when I picked it up.

“Is he there?” A woman asked.

“Who’s calling, please?”

“Jeanine Anderson.” My skin went cold. Campbell knew her. I buzzed him and said there was a Ms. Anderson on the line. He took the call right away.

Campbell knew the one witness to Lenny’s suicide. The one witness who couldn’t have seen what she said she’d seen. That was it for me. Mrs. Borlock was right; Lenny hadn’t killed himself. There were too many inconsistencies. Too many unexplained loose ends. But what had happened to Lenny?

* * *

That night I called Detective Harker and gave him enough information to get him interested. He suggested we meet for a drink at a bar on Sheffield. I’d heard of the bar before, Woody’s; they served cheap drinks and catered mostly to the starving actors working in the nearby storefront theaters.

Woody’s was about four blocks from where Daniel and I got bashed. On the way from my apartment, I walked by the spot -- as I often did. It was a small, futile act of defiance. I refused to let those kids ruin the city for me. They’d taken enough from me.

I walked into the bar. It looked straight out of the fifties: red vinyl stools, booths along one wall, a jukebox filled with rockabilly. Harker got there about fifteen minutes after I did. He wore the same wrinkled tan suit I’d seen him in before and a bad case of five o’clock shadow. I guessed
Boystown - 129

that his caseload was pretty heavy, and I wasn’t helping things. After looking the place over, as though to make sure he didn’t know anyone there, he walked over to me.

“You’re not going to be too popular if we have to open this thing up again,” he said when he sat down.

“I’m not too popular as it is.” In general, I have to put up with a low level of police harassment --

mostly from relatives. It hadn’t been bad lately, but something like this was likely to kick it up again.

“Tell me again what you’ve got,” he said after he ordered a scotch and water.

“In her statement, Jeanine Anderson said she could see Lenny hanging around the spot he jumped from while she was setting up at her station. If you stand right where she claims to have been, you can only see the elevator.”

“What else?”

“Jeanine Anderson and Campbell Wayne have some kind of relationship.”

“What kind?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that she called him today.”

“And the money?”

“There’s a deposit to Lenny’s account from a company called LB Services. The amount is weird.

Three thousand, five hundred, and sixty-four dollars. He called customer service about it. It seems he wasn’t expecting the deposit. And then there’s the PO box. I found a copy of an invoice for a PO box taped to the bottom of Lenny’s desk. Like he was hiding it. But there’s nothing weird about it.”

“Except why would a kid like Lenny need a PO box?”

“Exactly,” I replied.

Harker chewed it all over for a minute. “I’ll poke around, ask a few questions, and then maybe reopen the whole thing. It’s gonna be a few days, though.” I nodded. “In the meantime, I want you out of there.”

“Why? I’m getting good stuff.”

“For one thing, it doesn’t go down so well with a jury if a PI has to testify to most of the evidence. Nothing personal, but juries aren’t all that fond of you guys. Plus it makes us cops look bad.” He paused and looked me right in the eye. “For another thing, if this guy has killed a man, you could get hurt.”

Boystown - 130

“He killed a kid who wrote poetry. I used to be a cop. It’s not the same thing.”

“I don’t like it.”

“It’s not up to you.”

He looked like he wanted to say more. A whole lot more. But he kept his mouth shut as we finished our drinks.

Outside the bar, we had an awkward moment saying goodbye. I couldn’t tell exactly what was going on with Harker. He placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. I was suddenly hyper-aware of him standing close to me. I took a step back.

“I want you to be careful,” he said. Before he walked away he handed me his card.

“You already gave me one of these.”

“And now I’m giving you another. If you need me, I want you to be able to find me.” The way he said it made me wonder exactly how many situations might qualify as
needing
him.

* * *

On Friday around noon, Julie Monroe showed up. She walked in like she owned the place, and being daughter to the M in JTM, she kind of did. She wore a tight black suit with a fur collar and sleeves that didn’t make it all the way to her wrists. Her hair was dyed a flat black, and her lips were painted fire engine red. From the way she dressed, you could tell her favorite movie was anything starring Joan Crawford. The only thing that kept her from looking like a time tourist from the forties was the clump of hair over her left eye she’d had dyed fluorescent pink.

She stopped at my cubicle and gave me the kind of smile that says, “I don’t like you, but I have to deal with you.”

“You’re Ted?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Julie Monroe.” She looked me up and down while I said it was nice to meet her. She didn’t bother to say the same. “Can I speak to you? Privately?”

She’d said it quietly and sweetly, so as I followed her to a conference room I was sure she was going to ask me to help surprise Campbell with a party for his birthday or pick out a special gift for the wedding. When we got into the empty room, she shut the door.

Boystown - 131

“Campbell doesn’t think I know about his little flirtations, but I do. So I just want to warn you...

stay the fuck away from him.” Her tone was hard and flinty. It crossed my mind that if I refused, she might pull a small Colt out of her purse and shoot me.

She didn’t wait for an answer; instead, she threw her shoulders back and marched out of the room. I was in shock. I’d known there was a possibility that Lenny had had a crush on Campbell.

Nothing about Campbell had suggested that the feelings might have been returned.

When I got back to my cubicle, Campbell was standing there with Julie -- her right hand possessively draped over his shoulder.

“What’s up with you two?” he asked.

“Nothing. Just wedding stuff,” Julie lied.

They floated off into Campbell’s office, but not before he asked me to make them a reservation at The Gold Mine. Campbell shut the door to his office.