The baby let out another whoop. She pulled the phone from her mouth, but not far enough to keep me from hearing her clearly. “Kirsten, stop that. Don’t wave that thing at little Dodo.” She came back, picking up where she’d left off as if nothing had happened. “He might even leave early, I don’t know.”
I couldn’t stop myself. “Dodo?”
“His name is Tommy, but Kirsten calls him Dodo.” She started rattling on about kids and their pronunciation and so forth. I checked the clock.
She paused for breath, and in the interest of cutting the child development lesson short, I asked, “Where’s the dealership?” so fast, it sounded like one word.
She gave me the name and an intersection. Even as we spoke, I was looking it up online. “Thanks for your help.”
“Sure. He’s supposed to be there ’til six. Maybe call first, to make sure he hasn’t left.”
“OK, thanks. Bye.”
“Bye.” As she hung up, I heard her cry out, “Stop that, stop that now.” Sounded like it was going to be a fun trip to the beach.
Simpson Motors was on Pulaski Highway. Like Route 1, Pulaski was a showcase of Rust Belt economy—more junk yards, more tire and transmission shops, more fast food, and more decaying motels, interspersed with modern box stores like Home Depot and Circuit City. The dealership was at a busy corner, marked by a string of pennants in carnival colors, looking limp and dissolute in the afternoon heat. Rows of new cars glared with the monotonous pattern of the sun’s reflection.
Inside the glassy, air-conditioned showroom, a few customers drifted around, idly checking the display models, while men in suits watched them the way lions might watch zebras. I headed toward a small knot of suits hanging around the offices drinking coffee and acting like they’d just met at a dull party. The way a couple of them looked at me, you would have thought I was the hired stripper.
“Hi, I’m looking for Ryan Bledsoe,” I said.
Heads turned toward a guy in a dark gray suit and a skinny black tie, with brown hair moussed into a modern do that said, “This is not your father’s auto salesman.” Bledsoe must have been in his thirties, but he looked about ten years younger. He blinked at me from behind glasses with thin, rectangular frames, giving him a mild-mannered, slightly geeky persona.
“Could we talk somewhere private?” I asked, handing him my card upside down.
He read it, ignoring the other boys’ stares. Looking puzzled, he said, “Mind if we go outside?”
“Fine.”
As I followed him, I could hear low voices and laughter behind us. Bledsoe seemed to care what they thought as much as I did. In the back parking lot, we sat in the building’s shadow on an old picnic bench someone had thoughtfully placed along the wall and watched cars navigate the McDonald’s drive-through next door.
“So,” I said. “Those offices you use for customer negotiations—they really are bugged then?”
Bledsoe managed a weak smile. “Am I being sued or what?”
“Actually, I’m representing a woman who’s been accused of murdering Tom Garvey. Did you know him?”
He shook his head. “Should I?”
“He had a friend named Gregory Knudsen. You know him, right?”
Bledsoe stared at me, his expression transforming from geeky to threatening. “Any friend of Knudsen’s is no friend of mine,” he said, the hint of a snarl in his voice.
“You went to school with Knudsen. Was it college? High school?”
He squinted at me. “Are you with the cops?”
“I’m an attorney, like the card says.”
“So why all these questions?”
“I told you. I’m representing someone accused of murder—”
Bledsoe shot off the bench as if it were red-hot. “Well, I don’t know anything about it.” His voice had raised a notch, in volume and tone. “I haven’t seen Greg Knudsen in years and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“You were friends once. In school?”
“Yeah, high school. So what? I knew plenty of people in high school. That doesn’t mean I know them now.” Bledsoe started to walk off.