Meter Maids Eat Their Young (4 page)

“Hey, Morris,” I said, seating myself on the far end of the bench. The air was heavy with the scent of Old Spice, liniment and mothballs. I glanced over at the box. The carving on the side showed a large, thick-haired dog, head high, ears erect, its bushy tail curled over its back. I turned back to him. “How's Neb?” I said.

“Nebuchadnezzer, Shadrack, Meshach, Abednego, and the Figure in the Fiery Furnace, sir,” he said. He looked over at me, a toothy grin breaking his seamed face. “But Neb is as fine a handle as any on such a beautiful day as this.”

His smile widened, a hint of recognition sparkled in his pale blue eyes. “I know you, young sir,” he said. “You write for our local paper and a fine gift for words you have indeed. I've missed them in your long absence, though I have recently noticed their return. Have you come to ask me of the morning's festival?”

“Festival?” I said, flattered that he both remembered me and liked my writing.

“Yes, indeed! Roman candles. Quite a few of them. And glorious they were but for the smoke and the awful stench. I'm sure that had some negative consequences for the environment. It certainly made poor Nebuchadnezzer sneeze.”

I glanced at the box and back at Morris, feeling a shiver roll up my spine. “Did you see anything else? A car in the parking lot, perhaps? Or maybe notice who set off the, uh, Roman candles?”

His eyes glittered and he gave me a sly wink. “'Twasn't a who,” he said and smiled. “'Twas a what.”

He leaned close to me. I could smell the peppermint on his breath.

“Can't say I remember a car. An unlikely event that time of night anyway. But a Dementor, from those
Harry Potter
books? That you would remember.”

He tilted his head toward the heavens, his eyes misty and unfocused, his breathing deep. “Oh, I do so enjoy those stories.” He sighed.

I waited, knowing he would come back from whichever memory his ancient mind flirted with.

“Nebuchadnezzer likes them too,” he said at last. “Though we can no longer read them ourselves. The good Sisters are gracious enough to supply us with those Books-on-Tape editions. Quite enjoyable to listen to.”

“A Dementor?” I said, turning him back to the subject.

“Well …” He shrugged. “Not really, I suppose. That is fiction, after all. But it looked like what I imagine one would look like. Gliding down the dark street, cloaked and hooded. Tall, it was, very tall. And willowy. It touched each candle in passing and they burst into glorious fire. It was a real treat.”

“Did you see where it went?” I said.

He considered my question, scanning the park. “It stopped, not quite finished with its task. It shrieked, I believe, and glided quite fast up the hill. Mounted a two-wheeled vehicle just there,” he said, pointing toward the monorail station. “Rode off in that direction.” He swept his arm toward the north end of the park.

I looked off in the direction he was pointing. I was about to ask him if he'd seen anything else when he stood up and pulled a long, well-worn purple leash from the pocket of his coat.

“It is time for us to depart, young sir,” he said, moving toward the skateboard, the leash dangling from his hand. “The sun will be hitting its zenith soon and Nebuchadnezzer is prone to heat stroke.”

He attached the leash to an eye-hook on the front end of the skateboard, retrieved the ball from beneath the wheels and began walking away, the skateboard trailing behind him, bumping over the thick grass.

“You have a good day, young sir,” he called back over his shoulder.

“And you and Neb as well,” I called back to him.

As he disappeared over the hill, I considered his take on the morning's activities. I had to admit that the Dementor thing was an interesting observation; at least as good as a vampire, if not more original. Tall; willowy; rode off on a bicycle. Sort of matched Skeeter's description, minus the gender, as did the abrupt departure.  The shriek. Could the Mangler have stumbled across Harrison's body?

I checked my notes, flipping back over several pages. A tall, dark figure, wearing a cape, had been seen outside the courthouse parking structure two weeks earlier, shortly before the second set of parking meters installed there had their circuits fired. Count Dracula that time. The source had been about as reliable as Morris and Skeeter: old Shotgun Sam, the town Sterno freak. Why was it the only witnesses to the Meter Mangler's escapades seemed to be several bricks short of a full load?

I made a note to look up Sam, have another talk with him, maybe when the social security checks came out and he stepped off the Squeeze platform and boarded the Night Train.  Squeeze – Sterno stuffed in an old sock and twisted until the clear liquid ran – was a rage-filled aperitif.  I've heard it said the grungier the sock the better the taste.  Not something I'd want to test for myself.

There wasn't a ticket on the Altima when I got back to it. Wonder of wonders as I had forgotten to feed the meter. Though I try to stay objective in my journalistic work, as it was beginning to look as if the Mangler had nothing to do with Harrison's death, I was back to secretly rooting for him. Now if I could only figure out why he was doing what he was doing. Shaking my head, I started up the car and was about to pull away when I spotted something that made me pause.

A dark-colored SUV was cresting the hill about a hundred yards away.  When the crumpled fender on the passenger side came into view, I clicked the door lock and ducked down in the seat.  The rumble of the exhaust drew closer, stopped.  The SUV idled alongside me for a moment and then moved on, the sound of the exhaust diminishing as it drew farther away.  When I could no longer hear it, I sat up, shifted position, noted the license number and watched as it rolled to the bottom of the hill and turned away, in the opposite direction to the Monorail Station.

Twice in one day.  Definitely not a coincidence.

Starting up the car, I pulled out and made my slow way home, phoning in the story, such as it was, to Felice.  When I tried to reach Marion, I was told he was unavailable.  They kicked me over to voicemail and I left him a message, giving him the license number and a better description of the SUV.  I debated withholding the fact I had seen the car earlier in the day, out by the construction site but decided against it.  It would piss him off that I'd held it back at all, but there wasn't a lot I could do about that now.  

Downtown was coming alive by the time I reached it and already the traffic was growing thick. A smaller group of protestors than I'd seen in the park had gathered on the steps of the Admin building. They were carrying signs and handing out leaflets to anyone who would take them. I noticed a lot of people reading them as they strolled down the street.

The courthouse parking garage meters had started the protest. The Department of Parking Enforcement had thrown fuel on the small flame when they installed meters around the park and at the Monorail station. When the Meter Mangler fried the new electronic meters at the garage, there had been a full-blown, spontaneous celebration the following day. The DPE immediately installed new meters, and despite the two night guards stationed at the garage, the Mangler fried those a week later.

That had been my first encounter with CARPE. I had tried to find out who started the group, who the leader was, if there was an office and where it might be located; those I talked to either didn't know or were holding back.

Through one of Felice's police contacts, I discovered how the Mangler had managed to skirt the guards: Pizza laced with Rohypnol. Interviewing the guards hadn't gained me much. One couldn't even remember eating a pizza, while all the other one gave me was a vague description of a tall, willowy guy in a long trench coat, wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, delivering the pizza and telling them it was from the department. Luckily, he also remembered the name of the pizza place.

There, I met Vera Dietz, the young lady who had taken the call that night. She remembered it because the police had interrogated her for several hours over the incident. Even if they hadn't come, she said, she would have remembered it. The guy who called had sounded a lot like James Earl Jones, she claimed, and he wanted the pizza delivered to the security desk at the Admin building, which she had done. She couldn't give me a good description of who paid for it but assured me the guy didn't look at all like James Earl Jones.James Earl Jones was the voice of Darth Vader.

As the news spread about the Monorail meters, the protesters were gathering for yet another celebration. A news van pulled up as I was passing by. Making a mental note to check out CARPE again, I turned down a side street to avoid the slowing traffic. A moment later I pulled into my driveway.

In the kitchen, I poured the last of the coffee from the French Press and set the mug in the microwave. While it irradiated, I rummaged through the junk drawer until I found the list of meeting times and places. Just my luck, there was one that evening at the church down the street from my house. So much for finding an excuse to put it off again. Higher Power works in mysterious ways.

The microwave dinged. I shoved the papers back in the drawer and slammed it shut, grabbed the cup of coffee, added some Stevia and milk, and headed toward the front of the house.

Halfway through the living room I noticed the call light was blinking on the answering machine. I hate phones in general, and landlines in particular, but it came with the house and I'd never shut it down. I did put an answering machine on it to fend off the telemarketers. I'm glad now I kept it. Somehow the Meter Mangler had found the number and had been leaving me cryptic little bits of information and egging me on. He was using a synthesized voice that sounded a lot like Darth Vader with a head cold. Or James Earl Jones with a head cold.

I pushed ‘rewind'. The first two messages were for a backyard pool and a life insurance policy I could take out despite my advancing years. I deleted those. The last was from the Mangler.

“I did not kill Harrison de Whitt. Find the answer to why I must exist and you'll find the answer to who killed him. Follow the money, Teller. It's always about the money.”

I played the tape three times and then popped the tape out and put in a fresh one. Follow the money. That was the overriding scheme of the Watergate affair. What the hell could it mean here? Follow the money? What money?

Shaking my head, I walked out onto the porch and found Jaz sitting in one of the chairs.

“Teller,” she said.

“Jaz.”

“Look, Teller, I'm sorry for the way I acted this morning. It was out of line. I was just … just stressed out and I didn't get a lot of sleep last night and then that early morning call and finding out Harrison de Whitt had been murdered. I'm just really sorry. I know he was your friend.”

“You knew him, didn't you?”

“Well, yeah, a little,” she said, looking away as she said it. Skeeter came to mind, and her insistence the vampire was a girl.

“He was a council member and a major pain in the ass for my boss,” she continued. “Always a good thing as far as I'm concerned.”

“Yeah, I knew the DPE was on his radar screen but he was keeping it close to the bone. Wouldn't tell me what it was about, even off the record. Said he wasn't ready for the news to break,” I said.

“Do you think the Mangler killed him?”

I debated telling her what Marion had told me and decided it couldn't hurt. The news would come out sooner or later anyway. “Not according to the CSI guys. Harrison was killed somewhere else and his body dumped in the parking lot as much as an hour before the Mangler even showed up. At the moment, there's no official connection between the Mangler and Harrison's death.”

“And unofficially?” she said.

“I'm keeping an open mind about that at the moment.”

I sipped the coffee, thinking about Harrison, not yet feeling the loss I knew would come, and come with a vengeance. Staring out the window at the playground across the street, I spotted a homeless guy passed out on the sidewalk, lying up against the fence. Shabby, food-stained brown coat, black watchman's cap over scraggly, unwashed hair, he looked an awful lot like the guy who had hit me for change back at the park.

I turned my attention to a couple of kids in the playground. Two girls in pigtails: One swinging, the other pushing. A little boy in short pants spinning himself dizzy on the go-round. A tramp passed out on some drug or another, children spinning themselves silly. What was there about human nature that makes us want to find any way possible to alter our reality?

“Did I ever tell you I lived in this house for almost a year when my Uncle Burt was in Europe?”

“No, you never mentioned that. What made you think of it?”

“The park across the street. Robyn and I used to sneak over there at night, swing on the swings, spin ourselves senseless on that go-round.”