“The locksmith.”
“That’s him,” I said, walking into the study.
Harlan was the outsider in the group, hired to cut the keys for the stolen vehicles so they could go abroad in no-fuss driving condition. He was a southern boy down on his luck, trying to make a go of it up north and making extra cash on the wrong side.
All seven men were arrested and when the port cop died of his wound, the ante got raised. Because a person had died during the commission of a felony, they were all charged with murder.
“Can you check the Department of Corrections in Georgia to see if he’s still in?”
Billy had already pushed his chair to the other screen.
Harlan P. was the only one of the group who wasn’t connected to the offshore ring. As a result, he was the only one who had nothing to deal. He had no useful information for Customs, so no matter how much he wanted to cooperate he still ate the whole twenty-five to life. He’d been paid two hundred dollars for the job.
“Harlan P. Moticker, prisoner ID #3568649. The Haverford State Correctional Facility in Moultrie,” Billy read.
I suppose I’d felt for the guy. When we were writing up the case the older guys in the squad kept forwarding the calls from his young wife to me. He pleaded guilty to avoid a trial and when his attorney asked to have him swapped to a Georgia prison near his family for a Philadelphia mob flunky who wanted to come home, I was the one who gave the department’s blessing. Nobody else cared.
Now I suppose I felt lucky.
By noon the next day I was driving a rental down a secondary highway in south Georgia. Billy had found me an early flight out of West Palm Beach and he’d also made a call to his prosecutor friend in Atlanta. The lawyer balked at first, but because he owed Billy, he made the request for a visit.
The warden at Haverford said he could not figure why a private investigator from Florida would want to talk with Moticker. The inmate was one of the better behaved and more trustworthy of his 612 convicts. But in the spirit of cooperation, he didn’t object.
Well out of the city, the road I was on split an open forest of scrub pines and occasional patches of hardwood, and there were leaves on the forest floor. Here it was true fall. Colors not natural to South Florida dripped and fluttered in orange and red in the trees. Both the temperature and the humidity were under sixty. I rolled the windows down and inhaled the odor of sun-dried clay and slow- rotting leaves. It was almost idyllic—until I saw the flat sign for the prison and turned off onto a slowly curving blacktop road.
There were no buildings visible from the highway. It was just a well-maintained country road until I hit the guard gate to the parking area. I gave the man my name and while he checked I watched the sun glitter off a high, razor-wired fence in the distance. I had been inside prisons before and never liked the feeling.
The guard handed me a pass and pointed the way to administration. I parked, and as I followed the sidewalk I could see down the fence line to a guard tower where the silhouette of a marksman showed in the open window. Inside the offices I stood in a waiting area with uncomfortable cushioned chairs and a portrait of the new governor.
The warden’s name was Emanuel T. Bowe and he greeted me with a firm handshake across a state-issue desk. He was a tall black man with gray hair cut in a flat top and a beard that was carefully trimmed to follow the edges of his jaw line. He looked more like a college professor than a southern prison warden.
“So, Mr. Freeman. You were a detective in Philadelphia when our Mr. Moticker was convicted, do I have that right?”
“Yes sir.”
“And you are now working as a private detective on a case in South Florida?”
“Yes, sir. It’s in the very preliminary stages, sir,” I said, the lying coming easily since it was marginal.
“Well, I will be up-front with you, Mr. Freeman. I asked Mr. Moticker if he had any objections to speaking with you and although he said he remembered you and was willing, he seemed, as I am, perplexed as to what information he might have to help you.”
I only nodded.
“Frankly, I have only been