The Fall-Down Artist Read online

  “I’m not crazy about his motives, but money is nice to have around.”

  “I wholeheartedly agree about the money,” Dorsey said. “But tell me what you really think.”

  Gretchen propped herself on one elbow, her nipple grazing the hair on Dorsey’s chest. She smiled playfully. “What I think is this. It’s a wonderful world we live in when a jerk like you can make a living like you do, have someone offer to make you rich, and, best of all, get laid by a classy broad like me.”

  6

  “Hell’s wrong with him?” Al Rosek stood behind his oak bar cleaning beer mugs and rinsing them in clear water. He wiped his hands on his stained white linen apron. “Somebody stick a little Iron City where his Rolling Rock oughta be?”

  Al’s Bar consisted of a long room with the countertop running along the right, beginning at the entrance from South Seventeenth Street. To the left were three Formica-topped tables, each with four chairs. At the far end was a step-down entrance into a large back room, which held a tiled one-time dance floor and a jukebox. Dorsey and Bernie stood at the center of the bar, a few steps from the beer taps.

  “My friend must have your indulgence,” Bernie said, filling his glass from a Michelob bottle, careful not to splash his newest dark suit. “Have you never before seen the pensive look of the gifted investigator? The man has a theory, a case. He is not merely sneaking pictures or conducting interviews—and, let’s face it, only Johnny and Merv make the big dough holding interviews. But Dorsey here finds a pattern is developing. Now he must unmask the conspirators!”

  “Liked it better when you were taking pictures of people in bed,” Al said, leaning across the bar on his elbows. “That way, you showed the films and we all shared in your triumphs.”

  “Up yours,” Dorsey said through a mouthful of beer, twisting the green long-necked bottle, illustrating the technique Al was to use.

  “Buddy, I’m sorry,” Al said. “Ain’t seen ya in a while, missed givin’ you a hard time.” He waddled to the end of the bar to fill a customer’s glass.

  “Must be very important, this case,” Bernie said. “Up yours? Really, that’s not up to standard. It’s a disappointment to those of us who have come to rely on your wit for a reason to live.” Bernie sipped his beer. “So, anyways, last week you were in Johnstown.”

  “Last week in Johnstown,” Dorsey said, “was where it finally came up and bit me in the ass. Well, actually, it was this week, when I was in Greensburg and Somerset. Another one of Tang’s patients—the girl in Somerset, I mean. And while I’m going over it there were some locals in Pitcairn and Homestead that need a closer look. If I can get Corso to let me retrace my steps, pay me for it, I could make something out of it. Maybe build your goddamned pattern for you.”

  Bernie tapped his empty bottle on the bar top, signaling for a refill. “This Radovic in Johnstown, I know a little about him. Our firm does the defense work for Fidelity Casualty, just locally. They send cases over, every now and then, for us to look at in the early stages, and me being the lowest man on the totem pole, they all come to me. Radovic was in the last batch. Conjecture is all you have. Maybe the Maynard girl tipped him to the layoff, maybe not. But there’s still the medical from Dr. Tang. You may not like the guy, but you haven’t come up with a way to get around his medical opinion, either.”

  “There’s some fresh reports you haven’t seen,” Dorsey said. Al returned with two beers, collected money from Bernie’s change pile, and leaned forward into the conversation. “The woman out in Somerset,” Dorsey said, “the one who’s Tang’s patient; I filed my report on her. Anyway, she has a history of knee problems; some cartilage had to come out when she was a kid. She worked at this plant where they did specialty steel, and two weeks before the plant is to close she’s in this fender-bender. Neither car has more than two hundred dollars’ worth of damage, but she runs to Dr. Tang, and now she has lateral compartment syndrome. Can’t get around and sure can’t work. She gets a disability check from another carrier, but Fidelity Casualty is on the hook for the auto liability. Lost wages, present and future, services lost to her parents she lives with, maybe she’ll claim loss of consortium with her boyfriend. Depending on their favorite position.”

  “Wait. Hold up.” Bernie gestured with his right hand to silence Dorsey. “How much is fact and how much is dreamed up?”

  “Next-door neighbor was pissed and had a lot to say about her.” Dorsey sipped at his beer. “I knocked on his door and caught him on his way to the evening shift. The guy, he’s laid off from the same plant and he’s got a night gig at a gas station on U.S. Thirty, feeds the kids with it. Believe me, he’s less than crazy about the young chick living next door with her retired parents getting eight hundred a month for shit. He told me the story was all over the shop, before the layoff, that she was going for disability. She bragged about it, said she had a friend who could show her the ropes. This friend supposedly told her it was now or never.”

  “Not so special,” Bernie said. “There’s been plenty of this before. A place is supposed to close down on Friday at five? Guess how many employees fall and hurt themselves at four-thirty. It’s common, real, everyday stuff.”

  Dorsey followed Al’s eyes as they drifted away from the conversation. Stepping out of the back room was a short squat man in his late fifties. Dressed in work pants and well-worn brown sweater, he wiped his bald pate and close-cropped side hair with a cloth handkerchief. His chest had the solid look that comes not with exercise but from a lifetime’s hard labor.

  “The cases stacked?” Al asked him as he stepped behind the bar and drew a glass of water.

  “By the far wall, like you said.” The short man drained the water and drew another from the faucet. “Kegs, too. But they’re right next to the tap hookup.”

  “How’s it been, Russie?” Dorsey asked. “Haven’t had much time to talk.”

  “Good, good,” Russie said. “How ’bout you and your dad, Mr. Dorsey? He’s still good, right? You see him much? Good fella, always a good fella.”

  “Just the other day, I was over his place.” Dorsey’s words sounded slow even to himself after Russie’s rapid fire. “He’s good, asks about you.”

  “Good fella, real good fella.” Russie stepped back around the bar, making for the door. “You got any work for me, any of you guys, gimme a call here at the bar.”

  When Russie had gone, Bernie asked Dorsey why he gave the old bum the time of day. Dorsey told him it was none of his fucking business.

  “Anyway,” Dorsey said, “getting back to what we were saying, the plant closing was a complete surprise. The guy I talked to, he had sixteen years in, two terms as shop steward. He had no idea of what was coming. But he says he thinks maybe the girl did.”

  “Good,” Bernie said, shaking his head. “So now you have two.”

  “There’s more,” Dorsey told him. “I’ve had a lot of work these last couple of months, you guys both know that. Mostly from Corso. A lot of it is work comp and auto. Now the majority—not all of them, but a majority—are these blue-collar singles. Some old and some young, but all are on some type of disability and negotiating on the auto settlement. And from what I pick up, they all were a nut hair from being laid off. There’s an epidemic of chintzy bullshit going on.”

  “Bernie’s right,” Al said, back in the conversation, ignoring a customer at the bar’s far end. “Guys have been doin’ that since I was a pup. Seen it myself down the street at J and L before I got this place. Young single guys like you said, they love that shit. They get plenty on disability, more than enough, and they take their time gettin’ better. Layoff time comes and the older guys with responsibilities, they get in on the act too.”

  “Maybe so.” Dorsey drank beer directly from the bottle, shunning the glass Al had set before him. “Seems funny to me, that’s all I’m saying. All these people were the same: radical types. Acted like I carried a disease and tossed me out of the house like I was the cat who pissed on the living room
carpet. Everyone the same.”

  “Anything else?” Bernie asked. “Besides Radovic and the girl. Anybody else treating with Tang?”

  “One more with Tang,” Dorsey said. “Another knee case. The rest are back problems treating with a group of chiropractors in Latrobe. Those bastards will say anything.”

  “Bad times,” Al said, shaking his head sorrowfully. “Chalk it up to bad times. Guys, they go nuts. Way of life is changin’ and nobody knows how to change with it. Things used to be: a steady check from the mill, now and again a short stay on unemployment, then back to the mill. Guys were content. Most have never seen anythin’ like what we have now. All they want is somethin’ steady comin’ in. Reliable. Drives ’em crazy.”

  “Ain’t blaming anyone, Al,” Dorsey said. “Just trying to be a success in my chosen profession.”

  7

  The town of Washington was too short a drive, twenty-six miles, for an overnight stay, so Dorsey was forced to commute along Interstate 79 for the two-day job on Kenny Borek. He spent the first day on an uneventful surveillance of Borek, who left his apartment only once, for an afternoon newspaper. Although Borek’s Beau Street neighborhood was busy with shoppers and other pedestrians, forcing Dorsey to reposition himself several times, he was sure enough of Borek’s movements to file his first day’s report.

  The morning of the second day was equally dull, so much so that Dorsey intended to knock off at noon and move on to the next job. With most of his concentration split between his father’s offer of riches and daydreams of Gretchen, he interviewed a half dozen of Borek’s neighbors and decided the man qualified as a hermit. Most of them didn’t recognize Borek’s name, and only one elderly woman was willing to venture a guess that he might be the young man who rented the second floor of the house next door. To wrap up the assignment, Dorsey spoke to the owner of the corner grocery, where Borek had purchased his newspaper the day before.

  “Young guy, rents Ethel Stimic’s upstairs.” The owner, a small elderly man, stood behind a low counter loaded with bread. Wearing a cardigan sweater over a checked flannel shirt, he stuffed newspapers with advertising supplements as he spoke. “Comes in for cigarettes and the paper, smokes Winstons. Heard he was in a crack-up.”

  “He’s the one.” Dorsey watched a sly grin work its way over the shopkeeper’s face. “He’s off work because of it. You don’t see him much, huh?”

  “Cigarettes and the paper, that’s all he comes in for.” The old man held on to his smile, annoying Dorsey. What a lunatic, Dorsey thought.

  “Haven’t heard about him working anywhere, have you?” Dorsey asked. “Something under the table, bring in a little extra dough?”

  “All I know is he smokes. And if he can’t read, he’s wasting a quarter every afternoon.”

  The old man’s grinning got the best of Dorsey, and he decided to close out the conversation and head for Midland, the site of the next job. He gave the shopkeeper a business card and asked him to call if anything occurred to him about Borek.

  “Some kinda detective, huh?” The old man settled onto a stool behind the counter. “Supposed to be interesting work. You look bored, like I’m keepin’ you from something.”

  “We get our slow days too.” Dorsey turned for the door.

  “Maybe I can pick this one up for you.” The old man pulled the sweater closer to his chest.

  “What have you got?”

  “You sure can’t be their ace, I can tell,” the old man said. “Why waste your time going door-to-door? This Borek got hurt in a bad car crack-up, hurt so bad he can’t work. Tell ya something. I’ve been on this corner for thirty-seven years. Know ’em all, every house, every car and its parking spot. And none are missing. Borek, he got hurt driving a car, but he sure don’t own one.”

  In the front seat of the Buick, Dorsey reviewed portions of Borek’s claim file, spreading the statements and forms across the unholstery. On the day of his accident, Kenneth Edward Borek, age thirty-one, was operating a 1972 Electra, license plate 618-KE3. There was no indication that a full check on the ownership had been run.

  Dorsey drove to the Washington barracks of the state police, where for twenty minutes he sat in a chair of plastic-covered cushions waiting for Corporal Dennison. During that time Dorsey again decided to refuse his father’s offer. And then again the thought of being able to keep up with Gretchen financially, as the years went by, crept into his head. Money’s the biggest problem you two could have, Dorsey told himself. She’ll be making plenty and you’ll bring in shit by comparison. Lots of tension from that. It could be avoided.

  “This is what you do for a living?” Corporal Calvin Dennison watched the lines of information forming on the CRT at his desk. Tall and black, with short-cropped trooper’s hair, he laughed and gave Dorsey a playful slap on the shoulder. “Figured you for sheriff by now. You were hot shit, DA office detective. Good to see you got humble, good for the soul.”

  “You’ve done pretty well yourself.” Dorsey sat in a chair opposite the CRT. “Let’s see, you were a rookie at the Monroeville barracks eight or nine years ago. And now, after eight or nine years, you make corporal. That’s one hell of a leap.”

  “It’s the skin.” Dennison slipped a palm across his ebony chin. “Upper echelon still got it in for us. Figure if we’re too slow to go on the take with the rest, we just don’t have the stuff for the job. Me, I have every intention of taking a payoff and breaking the color line. Not for myself, you understand. I’ll be acting as a pioneer, in the service of my brethren.”

  “What about the car?” Dorsey asked.

  “Not really supposed to do this,” Dennison said, craning his neck around the CRT to smile at Dorsey. “But you were a fellow soldier in the war against crime.”

  “Some people might figure me for a deserter.”

  “An amnesty is granted,” Dennison said. “Ford did it for the pussies who ducked out to Canada; I can exercise my official powers as well.” Dennison looked closer at the CRT. “Okay, here it comes. Electra, same plate. Registered to Carmen’s Rentals, Main Street in Brownsville. Hate the place.”

  “Carmen? Why do you hate his place?”

  “It’s Brownsville I hate, not Carmen.” Dennison cut the power to the CRT. “Nasty place, cramped little hole near the river. Carmen, he rents old secondhand bombs for cheap.”

  Back in his car, Dorsey concluded that Dennison could be right; Brownsville might be hell, but the road to hell was paved in rose petals. U.S. 40, the National Road, was the route to Brownsville through wooded countryside and farmland at the roadside. Touching on little hamlets named Scenery Hill and Richeyville, it was Dorsey’s favorite stretch of road, especially when autumn turned the woodlands into smears of reds and browns and yellows intermixed. For twenty miles or so, U.S. 40 could pull him away from depositions and court appearances and remembering to give the subject of his surveillance a block-and-a-half lead. And as he pulled into Brownsville, crossing the bridge and turning left at the Russian Orthodox Church to get to the business district, the beauty of the countryside held on to Dorsey long enough for him to conclude that factory towns were aberrations. Just sooty pockets of life dropped into valleys that were green in summer and surrounded by even greener hills.

  The show lot at Carmen’s Rentals, dominated at the center by an office trailer, was located near Water Street and was clogged with junkers. Dorsey figured them to be second-and third-hand models picked up cheap at the wholesale auction near Harrisburg. When he pulled into the lot and stepped away from the Buick, he found a comical pride in having the best-looking machine in sight. Once inside the office he identified himself to a receptionist and asked to see the owner. Leaving her desk and opening an inner door, she told an unseen someone that the guy from the insurance company was here.

  “How’s that, insurance company?” a voice from the office said. “Here about the accidents?”

  Dorsey shouted past the receptionist that he had come to discuss several of them. The recept
ionist quickly ushered him in and closed the door as she left.

  A fat young man dressed in jeans and a terry-cloth sport-shirt rose from his seat and offered his hand across a metal desk, the kind Dorsey remembered from community recreation centers. He introduced himself as Carmen Avolio and poured them each a cup of coffee from the Mr. Coffee sitting on a corner filing cabinet. Dorsey took the plastic cup in his fingertips to save his palms from burning.

  “So, what’s it gonna be?” Avolio strained his recliner chair to its limit. “How much higher can my rates go?”

  “The accidents.” Dorsey hoped to string Avolio along. “Face it, there’s been more than one.”

  “Too many in too short a time,” Avolio said. “The guy on the phone, the agent, that’s what he said. Still, look what’s on the lot. Crap on wheels. Shit, I get another rate hike, they should just come and shut me down.”

  “It’s the medical.” Dorsey sipped carefully at the coffee. “Crap, sure, but they’ve got people inside them when they get smacked. Borek, for instance.”

  “Fuckin’ shit, man.” Avolio pulled his weight forward and rested his elbows on the desktop. “Listen, I rent cars, fuckin’ cars. Fast and cheap. A guy comes here because he can’t come up with the daily rate at Hertz or Avis. Only way this place stays open. I start demanding customers take a defensive driving course, I better turn the place into a Seven-Eleven.”

  “Business is good? High volume?”

  “Real good,” Avolio said. “Rural place like this, where people are hard pressed for enough cash for even a used car? Sure, business is good. Young kids, they like to have a car for the weekend even if it’s only a rental. I have ’em coming from all over, hitchhiking to get here. And that’s where these accident-prone assholes come from. From all over.”

  “All over where?” Dorsey asked. The fat man began counting on his fingers.