HEINZ NOONAN
and
Captain Heinz Noonan, the "Bearded Holmes" of the Sandersonville Police Department, was seated at the corner table of the Lorenzo's Grille overlooking the dark and filthy backwaters of Elliot Bay waiting for his wife when he got the nod from Luigi -- at least that was what it read on his name tag -- who looked more like a Robert or Harold, didn't speak Italian and couldn't tell the difference between linguini and testicoli. Lorenzo's was a great place to eat if you liked the clientele, mostly Italian-Americans who wanted authentic dishes of the old country and didn't mind sitting at tables with red-and-white checkered cloths and sprinkling salt with a table knife from a cellar. Chianti was the primary elixir and if you didn’t read Italian you couldn't understand the menu. Luigi didn't need to read the menu because he was the bar tender.
"You've got a call, Captain. You can take it in the office."
Noonan was well-known in Lorenzo's. The food was excellent, the wine dependable, the clientele friendly without being boorish and, most important, very few people knew of the place much less that he could be frequently found here. This led him to the logical conclusion that the individual on the phone was his wife, primarily because she was the only one who knew where he was and, secondly, because she was always 15 minutes late. As she was 15 minutes late at this precise moment, she was clearly calling to tell him she was on her way.
"Yes, my love, I know. You want me to order the calamari appetizer and have another glass of Chianti."
"No. Actually I'd like you tell me how a corpse can get into a locked car that's traveling at 35 miles an hour."
"That's a pretty good trick and this is not my wife."
"You're right on both counts. This is Freesia Harrison. I'm a Public Defender in a town you've never heard of but it's near Detroit."
"Isn't everything in Michigan near Detroit?"
"Sometimes it seems that way. I'm sorry to bother you like this but I have a client that is in a bit of a pickle."
"You're a Public Defender and you've only got one client who's in a pickle?"
"Let's just say this is one is pretty clearly innocent as opposed to my other clients who are just run-of-the-mill badly misunderstood individuals who have run afoul of a racist system in which they . . ."
"Save the polemics for the courtroom, Ms. Harrison."
"Certainly. Your wife . . ."
"That I guessed."
"Basically, Captain, I've got a client with a story so bizarre it has to be true."
"I've heard that before."
"This story, I assure you is different. He's got a bail hearing tomorrow at two and I'm looking for some kind of an explanation to give the judge."
"Go ahead and state the problem. But be quick, I've got a wife on her way here."
"Not yet, Sir. She said to tell you to order the calamari appetizer . . ."
". . . and have another glass of Chianti." Noonan cut in. Luigi looked up from his Post-Intelligencer and Noonan nodded at him. "I've been here before. Now, your problem?"
"My client, Harold Holliman, is a tow truck operator, the kind that is hired to go around town and remove cars that have been abandoned, have too many parking tickets, are blocking alleys, that kind of thing. Two days ago he jacked up a car that had 15 outstanding tickets and dragged the vehicle into the city's impound yard. When he got there and lowered the car there was a dead body in the front seat. But there wasn't one when he jacked the car up half an hour earlier."
"The dead body just appeared?" Noonan nodded a thanks as Luigi brought him a glass of Chianti.
"Just appeared."
"How do you know the body wasn't there before he lifted the car off the ground?"
"It couldn't have been. It was on the front seat and Holliman had to get into the car to release the parking brake. The body could not have been in there then."
"How did he get into the car?"
"Pass key. He's got those kind of keys."
"He made no stops?"
"None other than at red lights and stop signs."
"How many did he go through?"
"Oh, I'd say six or seven."
"You checked for secret compartments and trap doors in the car?"
Harrison laughed. "It's just a regular Mercedes 210 with regular seats and a regular trunk and no trap doors in the floor, doors or ceiling."
"Tell me about Holliman." Noonan dragged the phone as far as the cord would allow and sat down on a bar stool. Luigi handed him a basket of garlic bread.
"Holliman, admittedly, is a small time operator. This isn't the first time he's run afoul of the law but it's probably the first time he's innocent."
"What's he been run in for?"
"Gambling, dealing in stolen property, credit card fraud."
"A regular citizen, eh?"
"Yeah, my usual client. But murder is not his cup of tea."
"You don't have a sterling defendant, Ms. Harrison. Who's the corpse?"
"Good question. Latino male, clean shaven, black hair, 145 pounds, about 50 dressed in an expensive three-piece silk suit. All labels have been removed from the clothing. Nothing in any pockets."
"Fingerprints?"
"No match yet."
"Shoes?"
"Funny you should ask. Black tennis shoes. Not as in jogging or aerobic shoes but walking footgear."
"Belt?"
"Leather. It didn't have a hidden compartment."
"How was he killed?"
"Two slugs to the chest from a .38. There were no exit wounds. He died instantly. He was found on his back in the front seat. There was a little bit of blood on the seat but drops, not cups."
Noonan frowned and took a sip of the Chianti. "OK. What about the car?"
"Owned by a lawyer, of all people. Charles Harrison Sibley III. Old money. Father's a doctor, as in medical, and mother's a socialite. Family's probably worth 10 to 15 mill. Only son."
"He lives at home?"
"And what a home. Up on what we call Pill Hill. Where the wealthy people live. Yeah, he lives at home as in the guest house, all 3,000 square feet of it."
"What's his story? Why all the tickets?"
"Sibley thinks he's God's gift to mankind. He parks where he damn well pleases and then fights the tickets in court. It doesn't cost him anything and ties up the system so no one downtown pushes it. The meter maids give him the tickets and the traffic people lose his file rather than keep going to court."
"Then how'd Holliman chose that particular car to pick up?"
"The city has list of license plates of hot cars."
"As in stolen?"
"Right. Or as in having lots of parking tickets. Holliman didn't know whose car he was picking up. It was parked in an alley and someone thought it was suspicious. Holliman got the call, ran the plates and found it to be a hot car. He didn't know it was Holliman's."
"Would he have known to leave it be if he had known it was Sibley's car?"
"He does now."
Noonan laughed. "OK. I think you're looking in the wrong direction in this case. The key isn't how the body got there, it's why the body was discovered in Sibley's car. Run a check on Sibley, credit as well as criminal. Don't forget to run a public access search. Also run those checks in Ohio and Indiana, those states are nearby aren't they?"
"Sort of."
"And Canada is just across a river isn't it?"
"Right. Ontario."
"Run through your Canadian sources as well. Run Holliman's name too, let's cover all the bases."
"That's going to take some time."
"Good. My wife just walked in. A couple more things before you hang up. How long as the towing company been in business and how long has Holliman worked there? Was it Holliman's first pick-up of his shift? Was Holliman searched when the police arrested him? Why was Sibley's car parked in the alley? Does Sibley or any of his family members own a .38? What kind of a lawyer is Sibley? And, finally, where were Sibley's parking tickets given? Were they all in the same place? Where?"
"I'll do what I can."
"Fine. I'll be in my office from 7 a.m. on tomorrow." Noonan blew his wife a kiss. Lorelei started to say something but Noonan cut her off. "Yes, I know, my love. I'm talking to her now."
That seemed to satisfy Lorelei Noonan and she headed for their traditional table in the corner of the room. Luigi stumbled over himself bringing her a menu and carafe of Chianti.
"I take it your wife has arrived."
"You take it correctly and I will talk to you tomorrow." Harrison might have said something but Captain Heinz Noonan was already on his way across Lorenzo's Grille hoping to make it to his table before his wife took all the calamari.
DID NOONAN ASK EVERY QUESTION
HE SHOULD HAVE?
WAS THERE A QUESTION YOU
WOULD HAVE ASKED?
WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?
WRITE DOWN AN ANSWER AND
CONTINUE THE STORY.
Noonan was nursing a headache the next morning, brought on by the combined effects of a lengthy and meaningless visit by Police Commissioner Edward Paul Lizzard III about the public relations value of a proposed speech to the University of Washington, Student Law and Order Club -- known by its acronym SLOB among the officers who were seduced, cajoled or threatened to make an appearance before the group which, incidentally, was presidented by Lizzard's wife's sister's daughter -- and the impact of the third budget cut to his department is as many years, slashes to his fiscal integrity which would put four sergeants at risk, transfer three administrative assistants to Property, close two storage rooms in the Sandersonville crime lab and, most distressing, force him, Noonan, to shift funds from the overtime account to the popularly-known but supposedly-secret slush fund that could be accessed by, among a few others, Commissioner Lizzard, who was intent on funding a public relations campaign which declared that "The Officer On The Beat Is Your Friend" in spite of the fact that the Sandersonville Police did not have officers on the beat and the only time they were on the street was when they were out of their patrol cars on foot in pursuit of a perpetrator when the ground was not slick with ice, snow, slush or any other substance which made the pavement difficult to maneuver upon or across.
Then the phone rang.
"Yeah." Noonan was not having a good morning.
"Captain Noonan?" The voice of Ms. Harrison was far too cheery for this particular morning.
"Harrison, right?"
"That's right, Captain. I have some information for you. I hope you'll have some answers for me."
Noonan shook his head and looked at the door. "Who knows what evil may lurk in the hearts of men."
"The Shadow? I'm old enough to know that."
"Right." Noonan leaned back and kicked his boots off and then put his stocking feet into a drawer opened for just that purpose. "The materializing corpse, the body from nowhere, the cadaver from thin air."
"Am I catching you on a bad day?"
"Today is just as bad as any other day. Don't worry, I can use the mental exercise. OK, I'm prepared. What do you have for me?"
"It's a long list, got a pencil?"
Noonan shook his head. "I have a terrific memory. Go for it."
There was a pause on the other end of the line and Noonan could hear some papers being shuffled.
"First, let's take Sibley. He's 35, has been a lawyer for ten years in the firm of Harrison, Coriander, Smithson, Sibley and Baldern. It's a modest-sized law firm that specializes in anything that makes money. The Sibley in the firm's name, by the way, is not a relative. Our Sibley is not a principal but the general feeling is that his time is coming."
"But what kind of law does he do?"
"As near as I can tell, corporate. Boring stuff like taxes, leases, bonding, shelters. What he doesn't do is criminal, civil or divorce. His credit is good but his debt load is high." She paused for a moment and then continued, "but considering what I make and I spend, he's not doing that badly."
"So his financial situation is stable?"
"He's worth $1.5 million and makes $350,000 a year. Modest stock holdings, no bonds, and a few CDs here and there. That seems a little odd to me but then I have a net worth of a one two-bedroom house and three cats and I only make $38,750 plus bennies."
"How about criminal or civil matters?"
"None of merit. Other than the parking tickets he's got a drunk driving arrest that was dropped, a gambling arrest that was thrown out of court and a divorce."
"That's why he's only worth $1.5 million and making $350,000 a year," snorted Noonan.
"No, actually I thought that too. The divorce was amicable with an equal splitting of the property."
Noonan scratched his head. "What about the gambling arrest?"
"He was picked up in a raid of an after-hours club. There was gambling going on but he wasn't at a table."
". . . at the time or he wasn't gambling?"
"I don't know. All I do know is that the arresting officer apprehended him in the raid at the bar, not at a gambling table. Charges were dropped because they wanted to get the gamblers. He wasn't gambling, ergo, he was just visiting and therefore not prosecutable."
"Is that the way you do things up there?"
"Hey, I'm surprised they raided the place at all. Everyone knows everyone else's business in this town."
"And the drunk driving arrest?"
There was some shuffling of papers on the other end of the line. Noonan reached for a cup of coffee on his desk. He looked inside the mug and saw that it was empty. With a dissatisfied grunt he plopped it back on his desk.
"That was recent. About a year ago and it wasn't an arrest. There was a fender bender and the officer in charge suspected drunk driving as a cause. He pulled both parties in, one of them being Sibley. They were in the station for about four hours. Sibley talked his way out of a sobriety test and then started yelling about how this episode was nothing more than a sham to get him to pay for illegally-given parking tickets. We had a rookie on the desk that night and, well, Sibley walked. The other guy wasn't so lucky. He got a DWI."
"How about the search in the other states and Canada?"
"Not much. Nothing in the United States. But in Canada we did pick up a Sibley by the same name with a small trucking company. We called and it's not the same guy. He lives in Toronto. Sibley doesn't have a .38 registered and no one in his immediate family does either. In fact, there are no guns registered to the family. No other makes."
"OK. How about Holliman?"
"Like I said before, a small time hood. Gambling, dealing in stolen property, credit card fraud, GTA. All the little stuff when compared to murder. No records on him in any other state or Canada. Got a divorce here in Michigan which was not amiable but then again there wasn't any money to split up. He's got a wife somewhere upstate living under an assumed name and a kid in private prep school in Detroit. She's 17. His parole officer says Holliman talks to the kid weekly and hopes he never talks to the psychobitch from Hell he calls his ex-wife ever again."
"Get any fingerprints on the John Doe?"
"Yes and no. His fingerprints are close to partials on two drug-related homicides in Detroit. I find it kind of surprising that we would find his prints close to a partial but not have them on file. To be on the partial list means you've got prints on file somewhere."
"Maybe he's a federal under cover or in the Witness Protection Program."
"Could be. I'm working on that angle through the feds. They're pretty good at telling us to butt out when we start stumbling into their territory."
"Don't I know it." Noonan stretched his legs and then dug for a breath mint in his desk drawer. "How long has Holliman been out of the hoosegow?"
"Sixteen months. Looked like he was keeping his nose clean. Reported to his parole officer on the dot every Thursday. Wasn't drinking, no gambling. Made extra money by working swing and night shifts."
"Is he still doing the extra work?"
"Not for the past few months."
"Has he picked up any other side jobs since then?"
"According to his parole officer, no. He believes the man."
"OK. Now, how about the towing company?"
"This one's pretty clean, sorry about that, Chief. It's been in business for more than two decades. It's clean. So clean the police even use it to haul their vehicles."
"Why'd they hire Holliman?"
"Part of a rehabilitation program. It was the Police Department's idea that was supported by the Chamber of Commerce. Not a bad one, let me add quickly, and it seems to be working."
"So Holliman was hauling police cars too?"
"Well, there are not that many police cars that have to hauled anywhere. Usually it's impounded cars, wrecks whose tows are paid for by the city, cars with too many tickets that are seized, vehicles like that. Like I said before, we're a small town."
"But the police weren't picking up Sibley's car, were they? So much for law and order."
"That's right. But they weren't picking up his car because he refused to pay his tickets and fought each one."
"Did they stop ticketing him?"
"No. The Chief of Police wanted the tickets to keep coming so he could charge Sibley with a slug of them. Then it might be worth the police's while."
Noonan rubbed his beard thoughtfully and then slowly pulled himself to the classic seated position. "OK, now let's get to the good stuff. Tell me about Sibley's parking tickets."
"Of those that are outstanding, all of them are from the same block. And I mean the same. Right in front of his law firm. Talk about arrogance. The two that aren't are kind of strange. One is at the museum and the other is in front of the Federal Building."
"Were those last two recent?"
"Within the last month, right."
"The Federal Building being the last one?"
"A week ago. Is that significant?"
"I don't know yet. Where was Sibley when his car was towed?"
"The car was in an alley behind a string of midtown warehouses. It's not an industrial area, more like storage areas for department stores. It isn't an area that attracts riff-raff. Sibley was presumably in one of the warehouses."
"I'll bet that the Sibley pick-up was the last of the day."
"Right again. Holliman had been sent off on a wild goose chase in the neighborhood. Someone phoned in a call to have a car removed from in front of their business and when he got to the address in question, there was no car. He looked around the area and spotted the Mercedes 210 and ran its plates."
"He didn't know what kind of a car he was supposed to pick up?"
"Not really. That's not the way his business works. A lot of people don't know cars by sight any more. You and I in the law enforcement business do but the average Joe on the street, nope. So Holliman did was he was supposed to do. Canvas the area and run the plates on suspicious cars. Besides, he's paid to haul in cars from the hot sheet."
"When Holliman got back to the tow yard he was met immediately by someone?"
"They were closing down the yard for the night. Someone spotted the body as he drove in. Holliman hadn't even made it out of his truck."
"What was Sibley's response to the dead body?"
"Not much. He's still yelling and screaming about his vehicle being in the impound yard. Right after that, his hot button is the tickets he will fight in court. He doesn't seem that interested in the body."
"Well, he'd better be. It'll probably send him to jail for life."
"You've solved my problem?"
"No. I've made it worse."
"This is not going to make me a happy camper, is it?"
"No, I'm afraid it won't."
YOU KNOW EVERYTHING
HEINZ NOONAN DOES --
WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?
CAN YOU BEAT THE DETECTIVE
TO THE ANSWER?
Noonan grimaced even though Harrison was half a continent away and I couldn't see his face. "I think you're client's lying. Here's how I read it. Your lawyer Sibley has some manner of major financial drain. He's making too much to only be worth a million and a half. He's gone over the edge and is now scrambling to cover himself. I'll bet it's gambling and he's gotten himself involved with some heavy who's leaning on him."
"That's quite a stretch from the information I gave you."
"Maybe. But let's look at all the facts. Holliman gets out of prison and starts working at a towing yard. He's busting himself to make every dime he can, probably to keep that daughter of his in that prep school. Then, all of a sudden, he doesn't need extra money. His parole officer says he didn't get another part time job so where was he getting that money?"
"Good question."
"Assuming that this all ties together, I'll bet that if you check your records you'll find that Sibley's car was towed by Holliman at that drunk driving incident. That's the connection between the two."
"I need some proof."
"OK. See how Holliman is paying for that prep school for his daughter. Follow the money back. I'll bet it will go to one of two places: one of the companies that owns the warehouse behind which Sibley's car was found or that shipping company in Toronto. More likely it'll be both."
"But that company is Canada is owned by a different Sibley!"
"How do you know? You said that you called and talked to the guy. So? This is the age of cellular phones and call forwarding. You were probably talking to your Sibley there in town. Check the paperwork on that shipping company."
"But . . ."
"And while you're checking the paperwork, find out what happened at the INS office on the day Sibley got that parking ticket. Your John Doe doesn't have any fingerprints on file. Why? Because he's probably not an American citizen. I'd bet he came in through Canada for some illegal work in Detroit, like those drug-related hits you mentioned, then got picked up for some minor offense. Sibley probably slipped him in using that shipping company in Toronto as a cover. Then, when the John Doe got picked up for something minor, Sibley was told to spring him. Sibley couldn't use his own name so he undoubtedly did it under an alias. That's what he was doing at the Federal Building. He took your John Doe back to the warehouse, shot him and dumped his body in his own car. Then he called Holliman and told him to pick up the car. When Holliman showed up, Sibley told him to take the body back to the tow yard and slip the body into another vehicle. Maybe even a police vehicle."
"Why would Holliman do it?"
"Why did Holliman do it? Because he was dependent on Sibley's money. That was his gravy train. If Sibley went, he went. No more fancy school for his daughter. No more extra money."
"There's got to be an easier way of getting rid of a body!"
"Not really. Sibley didn't see a link between himself and the illegal. He didn't sign in at INS so there was no way to link him that way. He's probably a very silent partner at the warehouse so even if you found his name what would it prove? There's nothing solid to link him to the murder. Holliman didn't have the means to get rid of the body. Like you said before, he's a small-time hood. He didn't have the connections to get rid of a body. So they both did the best they could. Actually it was a fairly foolproof plan. What would have happened if the police had found the John Doe a day later in another car?"
"Been very confused."
"Right. And both Sibley and Holliman would have been covered. After all, Holliman would swear that Sibley's car was empty and there was no apparent connection between the two. But when Holliman got back to the yard, the body was spotted. He didn't have any choice but to deny that the body had been there when he towed Sibley's car."
"It wasn't a very good lie."
"It was good enough to get you to call me."
Harrison was silent for a moment. "There's a lot of merit in what you say here but it's going to take a while to pull this case together."
Noonan sighed and shook his head. "Well, I'm betting you won't have that much work to do. If it was Sibley you called when you were checking on the shipping company, he's been tipped and is gone. But I wouldn't worry about it. The people who sent the John Doe aren't going to have any trouble putting one and one together and fingering Sibley as the hit man. He won't be around long, wherever he is."
"How about Holliman?"
"He should cut a deal. Now."
"I hate to say it but it looks like I've been fooled by a client."
"Get used to it. But you did learn one important thing from this case."
"Really? What was that?"
"Pay your parking tickets."
HOW DID YOU DO?
DID YOU SOLVE IT
FASTER
THAN THE MASTER?