The Bricklayer

THIRTY-FOUR

THE INGLEWOOD ADDRESS TURNED OUT TO BE A MODEST RANCH IN A neighborhood of similarly unpretentious homes. Other than the residence’s grass being a little more brown than green, the lawn and the few shrubs edging it were recently and precisely trimmed. It had an attached one-car garage. After using the door opener, Vail drove into the uncluttered garage, pushing the button again to close it.
He got out and opened the trunk. Inside were two large suitcases that looked new. He opened one and found it was empty. He took it out and placed it on the floor. As soon as he hefted the second bag he knew it was also empty. The only other items in the trunk were the spare and a pair of jumper cables. “That would have been a little too easy, wouldn’t it, Vic?” he said out loud. He took a closer look at the suitcases and estimated that they were large enough to carry the entire five million dollars. Vail tossed the bags back into the trunk and closed it.
Of the remaining four keys only one appeared to be a house key. It opened the door leading from the garage. The kitchen was clean and the sink free of dishes. There was a small living room and no dining room. The first bedroom was apparently where Radek slept. The bed was made and everything was put away. In the closet, the little clothing that he had was hung in an orderly row. The bathroom had a tub shower. Vail searched the medicine cabinet for multiple residents. There was only enough inside to indicate a single male occupant.
The other bedroom had been turned into an office. A secondhand metal desk sat beneath a small shaded window. The top right-hand drawer of the desk was locked. There were two keys on Radek’s ring that were not house or car keys. The first one he tried opened the drawer. The only thing inside was a round plastic object that appeared to be an old distributor cap. It had been wiped down but engine grease and grime were still embedded in its recesses. He searched the rest of the drawers and, other than some cheap pens and a pad of paper, found nothing.
He turned on the desk light and held the plastic cap up against it, turning it slowly. It looked clunky, old clunky, made when things were built to last. Inside was a series of numbers stamped into it. He set it down on the desk and stared at it. Did it have any significance, or was it simply a new level of Radek’s red herrings? After all, he had already used a key to mislead the FBI. Was he taking it one step further by adding some mundane object and locking it away as though it were an extortionist’s Rosetta stone?
On the ring there were still two unidentified keys. One was cut on a generic blank and from its length and shape was most probably for a car. The other was short with a cylindrical hole in the head that fit over a pin in the center of a lock. If the long one was for a car, maybe it was the same vehicle that the distributor cap fit. There couldn’t be any more than a million cars in the Greater Los Angeles area. That sounded like a typical piece of Radek misdirection, so why not? But why a distributor cap? The car key was certainly enough. Vail ordered himself to complete the search of the house before wasting any more time with pointless theories.
When he had driven up to the house, he noticed that the roof was so flat that any space between the roof and the first-floor ceiling would be too small to allow someone to crawl through. That left the basement. Back in the kitchen he found a door leading downstairs. He flipped on the light switch and walked down.
At one end was a furnace and hot water heater partitioned off. At the opposite end was a fairly elaborate collection of weight-lifting equipment: dumbbells, bars, plates, and a bench similar to the ones at the steam cleaners where Radek had stored the two million dollars. The walls were painted concrete, eliminating the possibility of false compartments. The ceiling was unfinished, exposing the joists supporting the first floor. Unlike the cleaners, there was nothing covering the concrete floor where the weights were sitting.
Returning to the bedroom, Vail picked up the distributor cap and again considered its possible significance. He also had an unidentified car key. At this point he had no choice but to assume that the two items were connected to the money. He went to the kitchen and called the FBI office, asking for Tom Demick.
“Steve, I was sorry to hear about what happened. Nobody around here can believe they let you go.”
“Tom, I need one last favor.”
“Just promise me it’ll make Kaulcrick look like an idiot.”
“I don’t think you can improve on perfection,” Vail said. “Can you get the radio room to run a Terry A. Frost for all vehicles?”
“Hold on.” Vail heard him get up and go to another phone. Hopefully there would be more than the Chevrolet registered to Radek under his alias. If so, it might reveal the make and model of the car that the key and distributor cap fit. Demick came back on the line. “Just one car, Steve. A Chevy Caprice. Do you want the plate and VIN?”
“No, Tom, that’s not the one I’m looking for. Thanks for the help. All your help.”
“It’s been a pleasure.”
In the cabinet over the phone, Vail found the Yellow Pages and looked up auto parts stores. There were several, so he decided to take the book. The closest one was less than half a mile away. It was a national chain and the counterman was young. He looked at the distributor cap briefly before asking, “What kind of car is it for?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. There are some numbers stamped on the inside.”
The door opened and another customer came in. “Sorry, I got no way to look them up on something that old,” the employee said, and then to the man behind Vail asked, “Can I help you?”
The next store, another national chain, met with almost identical results. Vail scanned the Yellow Pages looking for a smaller store. He found one that was about a forty-five-minute drive away, which advertised “in business for four decades.” When he walked in, the counterman, in his mid-sixties, was reading a newspaper. His greeting was an unhurried “hi.”
Vail said, “Are you the owner?”
“For thirty-seven glorious years.” “Glorious” was meant to be sarcastic, but Vail could see the pride in his eyes. He was already eyeing the cap in Vail’s hand, so Vail placed it on the counter. The owner picked it up, holding it appraisingly as if it were a rare gemstone. “That’s older than my store.”
“Any idea what it belongs on?”
He looked at Vail curiously, now knowing he wasn’t there to buy anything. “Usually people who come in here know what kind of car they drive.”
Although he had no identification, Vail thought he’d try to invoke the magic three letters one last time. “This is part of an FBI investigation.”
“Not the one that’s been in the paper where they’ve been having those shootings?”
“Actually, yes.”
“I’ve got to admit you look like an FBI agent, but I’ve had enough dealings with cops to know the first thing they do is show a badge. You didn’t.”
“I was fired today.”
“Was that you in the shooting?”
“It was.”
“Fired for what?” the owner asked in a way that told Vail if he answered the question correctly, they would be on the same side.
“Not letting management in on things they would screw up.”
The owner laughed. “Now you know why I started my own business thirty-seven years ago. Bill Burton.” He held out his hand. “Besides, business has been slow, so I’ll do anything short of extremely illegal to keep from going nuts.”
They shook hands. “Steve Vail. That’s more or less how I got here.”
Burton turned the cap upside down. “There’s some numbers stamped inside. I can’t read them.” He handed it to Vail. “Can you make them out?” Vail read them and the owner wrote them down. “Come on in the back. I never throw anything away. I think I’ve got every parts catalog all the way back to the stagecoaches.”
Once they reached the large storage room, Vail discovered that Burton hadn’t been exaggerating. The shelves were organized but crammed full. Boxes were stacked along the walls almost to the ceiling. Burton stepped behind a six-foot tower of them and said, “The old catalogs from the fifties are back here. By the construction, that’d be my first guess when your car was manufactured.” On the floor were piles of stained catalogs. He handed them out to Vail a dozen at a time until he had more than fifty of them. “This’ll go a lot faster if you can give me a hand.”
“Just show me what to look for.”
For the next two hours, they pored over the catalogs, Vail occasionally asking for clarification. A couple of times customers came in and Burton stopped to wait on them.
Finally the owner said, “I’ve got it.”
Vail stepped behind Burton, reading over his shoulder. “A 1957 Packard Clipper. That’s the right number.”
“Do you know what they look like?” the owner asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, you’re a little young. They were huge. You could run one of today’s cars into them and you’d total it, but that old Packard wouldn’t even be dented. Come on, I’ll show you what it looks like.” Vail followed him into an even more cramped office. Burton typed on his computer and after a few seconds turned the monitor so Vail could see it. “There it is. The thing’s a tank, isn’t it?”
Vail studied the boxy vehicle with the heavy rolled chrome bumpers and could see how it would have been indestructible. “I need to find the one that distributor cap belongs to. Any ideas?”
“I suppose there are a few around belonging to collectors, but I haven’t seen one in—I’ll bet—thirty years. I don’t know where you’d even get parts for one.” Burton started to say something else, but Vail’s focus had become distant, causing the owner to stop speaking.
Finally Vail said, “I think I do.” He held out his hand to the owner. “Thanks to you, Bill.”


THE HOUSE ON SPRING STREET where they’d found Bertok’s body looked the same with the exception of the yellow crime-scene tape, which was a little more windblown and droopy because of the recent rain. A newly installed hasp and lock again secured the front entrance. The iron gate protecting it was also relocked. Vail pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine.
He grabbed the distributor cap, got out, and walked over to the fence that separated the house from the auto graveyard. Turning it in his hand almost as if it were a compass, he now understood its importance. He hadn’t taken the time to consider why Salton was watching the house the day that Kate and Vail discovered the secret to Stan Bertok’s “suicide,” or why he would be driving around with the three million dollars in his trunk. It had nothing to do with the house. He, and possibly Radek with the two million in his car, was there to hide the money in the salvage yard. Then, having spotted Vail, they would know that their frame of the dead agent was going to blow up if they didn’t do something about it.
Vail found the two fence boards that were not nailed at the bottom, pushed them to the side, and stepped through. He wound his way through row after row of cars, some of which had been crushed flat and stacked three high. A few of them he had to reconstruct mentally to decide whether they could be the boxy Packard. There must have been a couple hundred of them altogether. Finally, he found himself in a corner of the lot that was farthest from where he had entered the property. And there it was, sitting on the ground, its tires still inflated. Once pink and white, the steel body was now mostly pitted red-brown, but intact. He walked around to the driver’s side and tried the last long key in the door lock. It turned easily. He got in and gave the interior a cursory search, finding nothing but some old registration papers in the glove box.
He reached back and unlocked the rear door, getting out. The hinge on the back door was rusty, and he had to use considerable force to pull it open. The rear seat came up easily, but there was nothing underneath it. That left the thing that he had been avoiding—the trunk. Remembering the “flamethrower,” he slowly pushed the key into the trunk lock. Standing as far to the side as possible, he turned the key and suddenly felt his heart beat a couple of hard strokes when the lock snapped open. He held the lid down as he walked around the side of the car. When he was completely clear, he let it rise a couple of inches on its own. Nothing happened. He stepped a little closer and peered into the partially open trunk. It appeared to be empty. He raised the lid. All the way in the back of it was a new battery, which had a plastic carrying handle across the terminals.
Walking around to the front of the Packard, Vail searched under the hood with his hands until he found the release. Feeling around it, he tried to determine if there was anything connected that shouldn’t be, not that he would be able to identify anything out of place in such an old vehicle. Slowly he pulled the release. The hood popped up an inch. As he had done with the trunk, he went around the side of the car. A strip of chrome molding was hanging off the side. He tore it free and, again keeping as far to the side as he could, pried the hood up. When it was raised a foot, he could see there was nothing out of the ordinary, except that the battery and distributor cap were missing.
He stepped back a couple of feet and examined the position of the Packard. It was surrounded by other wrecks. There wasn’t enough room to drive it more than five feet forward, if that. So why had Radek disabled it by keeping the battery in the trunk and its distributor cap under lock and key at his home? Had the money been stored in the Packard’s trunk at one time and moved to another location? But then why keep the part and key? He looked around to see if there were any other cars that might have become a newer hiding place. Finally he decided this was one of those problems that if you stared at them too long, you’d never find the solution. He had found the car. If there was more to it, maybe it would come to him when he stopped thinking about it.
When he got back in Radek’s Chevrolet at the house, he took out the key ring and inspected the lone unidentified key again. It was definitely not a car key. Everything was starting to take a toll on him and he suddenly felt exhausted. He tried to remember when his last full night’s sleep had been, but his mind wouldn’t calculate anything more complicated than his most immediate perceptions. He leaned his head back and quickly fell asleep.
The 2 a.m. messenger came early, causing Vail’s eyes to snap open. It was dark. He checked his watch to figure out how long he had been sleeping, but he had no idea when he had dozed off. Not remembering where he had put the key ring, he searched himself quickly. Then he realized it was in the ignition. He held up the last unidentified key and said, “Now I think I know where you go.”
He went to the trunk and took out the two empty suitcases.
Turning on his flashlight, he made his way through the fence and back to the Packard. He shined the light under the car. The earth around three of its four tires looked flat and hard, but the left rear had the dirt pushed up around its base. Vail scraped it away with his hand. Underneath was a steel plate.
He took the battery out of the trunk and hooked it up to the terminals. Then he snapped on the distributor cap and attached the wires. He got in and turned the key in the ignition. It ground for a couple of seconds and then caught. He dropped it into gear and drove it forward until it hit the car five feet in front of it. After turning it off, he took the keys out of the ignition and went back to the steel plate, using his hand to clean the dirt off. Underneath was a two-foot square of steel with a keyhole in the middle. The metal had the color and rough-cut appearance of the steel plate that had almost crushed him in the factory and was the same as the box at the steam cleaners. The Packard’s rear tire had rested right on top of the keyhole, so the car had to be moved before it could be accessed. He shined the light into the tiny opening and there was a pin in the middle of the lock. Vail fit the last key into the opening and turned it. He felt something release and lifted the lid. Inside, the compartment was crammed with neatly banded stacks of cash.
Kaulcrick’s dismissive offer to let Vail keep the money if he could find it replayed itself hauntingly. He said to himself, “Well, Don, if you insist.” He unzipped the suitcase lids and flipped them open. Then with a certain degree of sensual pleasure he dug both his hands into the thick, cool bundles of one-hundred-dollar bills.