in the floor. Rivulets squirted through the bottoms of the doors and from the undercarriage. The draining slowed, however, so that the steering wheel remained half submerged. Black mud and lake grass clotted the exterior.
Dick studied the pool of water still trapped in the car and remarked, ‘Look at that seal. These Japanese cars are something.’
‘Dick, they make these in Ohio,’ I informed him.
‘Still Japanese.’
Dick pulled open the driver’s door, releasing a wave of water over his shoes. He stamped around, angry.
Inside the car, a lawyer’s boxy trial case was wedged in the foot well behind the driver’s seat. I pulled it out and held it sideways so the water could run out of it, then set it down on the back gate of the Bronco. The case was filled with manila folders.
Dick looked over my shoulder. ‘You better pull them out yourself, Chief,’ he told me. With Dick, it was always Chief when he wanted me to do something, Ben when he wanted to do it himself.
I peeled the fattest folder away from the others and extracted it. The beige cardboard was sopped. I laid it on the carpeted back gate, gently, like a relic. On the front cover, a form was printed with blanks for Defendant, DOB, SSN, Address, Charge(s), Bail, Next Date, and Comments. It was rubber-stamped SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT . The handwriting on the file was barely legible, since much of the ink had dissolved.
Dick squinted to read the defendant’s name out loud: ‘Gerald McNeese, a.k.a. ‘G,’ a.k.a. G-Money, a.k.a. G-Mac. That’s a lot of names. He ought to pick one and stick with it.’ In a section marked Codefendants, Dick read out more names: ‘Harold Braxton. June Veris.’ He added, ‘You figure that’s a man or a woman, June Veris?’ Next to each name were the handwritten initials MP, circled. In large print at the top of the file someone had written, Trial Date: 10-6.
The papers inside the folder were mostly illegible. These included Boston Police incident-report forms, which were printed on pink paper, and a few yellow legal sheets. In a subfile marked Opening were several soaked yellow pages. Most of the ink on these pages had rinsed off, but you could make out a few faint words: Echo Park, heroin. The signature on court pleadings was legible too; it looked like Danzig. The notes Robert Danziger left on the cardboard file folder had held up better. One read clearly, Call Gittens re. Where is Ray Rat? On the inside cover was a handwritten organizational chart:
A series of arrows pointed from G-Mac to Veris to Braxton. That was apparently the route Danziger intended to follow: straight to the top.
The keys to the Honda were still in the ignition, still attached to a two-inch ring holding ten or fifteen other keys. Driver’s seat pushed as far back as it would go, although Danziger could not have been more than five-ten. Other flotsam in the car: a pair of running shoes, an oversize road atlas, a suitcase.
Dick ran the plate. It came back to Robert M. Danziger of West Roxbury, Massachusetts. He ran the names on Danziger’s folder through the NCIC computer too. The computer reported a substantial record for Harold Braxton, including a conviction for assault with intent to murder (five to seven years at MCI-Cedar Junction) and a dismissal on a charge of first-degree murder. Nothing on the other names. Of course, the NCIC computer was notoriously unreliable; submit the same suspect’s name ten times and you could get ten different results. I would have to call Boston to confirm the criminal records.
My eye was drawn to two stickers on Danziger’s back bumper. One was for a political campaign. Its message was simple enough: ANDREW LOWERY , DISTRICT ATTORNEY . The other featured the crest of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association and the motto I SUPPORT THE BOSTON POLICE .
Of course, I ought to have turned all this over to the Game-Show Hosts. The car, the files, everything. It was their case, not mine. But I
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