talked for another twenty minutes, following which Mermelstein made Jaywalker copies of whatever documents he had in his file. There wasn’t much: the felony complaint, Drake’s rap sheet, a summary of an accident report prepared by the state police and a couple of other pieces of paper.
“Firestone hasn’t exactly flooded you with discovery,” Jaywalker observed.
“Abe?” said Mermelstein. “He’s so tight his ass squeaks when he walks.”
They exchanged goodbyes and promised to share anything either of them found out.
“And give my best to Amanda,” said Mermelstein.
“I will,” said Jaywalker, noticing that she was suddenly no longer Mrs. Drake, and wondering if she’d followed Judah Mermelstein around for two days and then slept with him, too, before hiring him.
Nah, he liked the Yellow Pages story better.
From Judah Mermelstein’s office, Jaywalker headed west and then north, toward the site of the accident that had claimed nine lives. He drove carefully, not because he was afraid of becoming a tenth victim, but because his Mercury was pretty much on life support. Owning a car in the city was something of a double-edged sword. You didn’t need one to get around, and with parking impossible and garages charging a fortune, you were better off without one. Until you had to get somewhere else.
So Jaywalker had compromised. He’d bought the cheapest car he could find, a ‘57 Mercury with no extras and, so far as he knew, the last remaining three-speed manual transmission in America. Then he’d found an open-air parking lot so far over on the West Side that you had to hike halfway to New Jersey just to get there. He’d bargained the manager down from the usual hundred and twenty-five a month to seventy-five dollars cash, no tax, explaining that since he almost never used the thing, they could bury it way in the back, where it would take about a week and a half to get it out. And because he started it up so rarely and drove it even less, it performed, well, about like a neglected ’57 Mercury with 185,000 miles under its belt. So when he did drive it, he tended to creep along. But even creeping, it took him less than twenty minutes to get from Judah Mer-melstein’s office to the spot marked with a black × on the accident-report summary.
It was nothing but a bend in the road, where the northbound lane had little room for a shoulder. About all that separated it from the drop-off was what remained of a low guardrail, its metal twisted grotesquely and torn away where the van had breached it. There were a handful of makeshift memorials marking the spot—flowers, candles, other stuff. Jaywalker found a place to pull over a hundred yards or so past it, and shut off the Merc’s engine. From there he walked back to the site.
There were eight memorials. One, he guessed, for each child that had died there. He’d seen others like them often enough before—arrays of crosses, flowers and jars containing candles—but only from the cocoon of a car, as he sped by on the highway. Though he’d known what they signified, they hadn’t really touched him. Now, up close, they were something very different. There were Bibles—Old Testaments, no doubt. There were hand-written notes from classmates. There were framed color photographs of smiling children who would never smile again. There was a tiny pink party dress with matching shoes, possibly never worn. There were a couple of stuffed animals, a bear and something that looked like a cross between a small rabbit and a large mouse. There was a leather baseball glove, complete with five impossibly tiny fingers.
The earth leading downhill from the torn-away guardrail was still scarred, and down the embankment there were a couple of trees with fresh damage visible. And then a large, circular charred area, where new grass was just beginning to sprout through the blackness. And there were boulders, big enough, jagged enough and numerous enough to insure that the tumbling van had never had a chance of finding a safe landing spot.
There was a reason why they’d called it Rockland County.
He’d brought a camera along, an old Nikon his daughter had given him years ago when she’d gone digital. As far as he knew, it was the last one left in the world that still took a roll of real film. He snapped a few photos of the scene. Not that there was much of a reason to do so. The police would have taken dozens, and the defense would get copies in due time. But Jaywalker was an investigator today, and it seemed like an investigator-like thing to do.
Then he walked back to the Merc and headed south, to the city.
That night Jaywalker went over his notes and took stock of his investigation. Over two days, he’d familiarized himself with the newspaper accounts of the case, conferred with both of the lawyers who’d represented Carter Drake so far, gotten hold of a few sheets of paper and visited the scene of the crime. Even if it was a good beginning, it had turned up nothing really useful. Still on his checklist were subpoenaing police reports, locating and interviewing witnesses, and researching the law on precisely what it took to elevate a motor vehicle accident into a murder case.
But all of those things could wait a day or two. The next order of business would take Jaywalker back up to New City. Knowing that, and figuring he’d be using the Mercury on a more or less regular basis, he decided he might as well park it on the street. But that was a momentous decision, given that he lived in Manhattan. He spent the next forty-five minutes searching for a legal parking place. Every empty spot turned out to be a fire hydrant, a bus stop or the private driveway to some building. Twice he had to get out and squint at the fine print on the alternate-side-of-the-street parking signs, which were obviously intended to entrap the unwary motorist. Did NO PARKING 10AM TO 11:30 AM MON AND THURS mean you could park there at other times? Or was that sign subject to the one above it that said NO STANDING 4 PM TO 7 PM? And since both of them included the red-letter warning TOW-AWAY ZONE, it appeared to matter.
Back up in his apartment, more or less legally parked, Jaywalker had made a dozen phone calls just to find out what credentials he’d need and what procedures he’d have to follow for what he was planning to do. Next, he’d gone onto his computer and, using a mix of type fonts, print sizes and images, and about two hours of unbillable trial-and-error labor, had managed to create a rather impressive-looking identification card.
Private Investigator in the STATE OF NEW YORK…
HARRISON J. WALKER
| HEIGHT: | 5’11” |
| WEIGHT: | 175 |
| EYES: | Blue |
| SEX: | Male |
In the lower right-hand corner, Jaywalker glued a photograph of himself. He looked younger in it, and a lot less gray. Then again, it had to be at least a dozen years old. He knew that because he’d clipped it out of a photograph of him and his wife, after silently begging her forgiveness. Now, as he admired the laminated and trimmed results of his handiwork, he thought of her again and decided she’d be understanding about it.
Not that he believed in any of that afterlife stuff.
He’d avoided the temptation to fill in the blank following “Sex” with “Yes” or “Hoping” or anything else stupid. He’d been equally careful to omit the modifier “licensed” right before “private investigator.” Other than the one that permitted him to drive, the only license
