by Pat Muir
“Dane, thanks very much for showing up. I’ll take full responsibility for this gig. We need to be watching the parking lot between us until Bailey shows up if indeed I’m right. We’ll get Flynn to cancel his insurance policy tomorrow so we won’t then have to worry about his being murdered. I’m going to get a meal here in this coffee shop while you watch the parking lot. Then you come and eat here. I don’t want to go to your room. It might look odd if Bailey is watching somewhere.”
Dane agreed, so I ordered a fish and chips dinner, eating it slowly so I could actually read some of the newspaper I had bought earlier. After I had eaten, I called Dane, and he came down to eat. I told him not to sit with me or acknowledge my presence. He returned to his room and phoned me to say he was in a monitoring position. He could see the cars in the parking lot, but the glare of the parking lot lights made it impossible to see if there was anybody sitting inside any car. I took a toilet break. I was wondering where I would go when the coffee shop shut. Dane would call me as cars arrived or left the hotel. I recognized one of them as belonging to a well-known pimp in an older Cadillac, who unloaded his girl and watched her saunter to one of the motel rooms. This was not the time to arrest him. I watched him leave. Around eleven o’clock, Dane phoned, saying a car with a pizza delivery sign on it had arrived in the parking lot.
“The driver’s getting out. No, it’s not Bailey. He’s too short. He’s going to a room below me. I’m not sure which one.” Jeez. Has Flynn ordered a pizza? I looked across the parking lot and saw a heavily built man leave a parked car in the lot and stealthily and quickly get right behind the pizza delivery man. He pulled a weapon from his waistband.
“It’s Bailey!” Dane and I barked into our phones. The pizza man knocked on the door of Flynn’s room and announced, “Pizza.” I sprinted across the parking lot, yelling, “Stop!” I heard Dane exiting his room above.
Flynn opened the door exactly as Bailey wheeled around and fired at me. He missed. I dropped to the ground and fumbled to get my gun from its holster. Bailey fired at me once more, hitting me in my arm. I yelled in pain. I could see Bailey turning to face Flynn, and I thought, God I’ll be crucified for putting a man in danger and watching him get killed.
There was a shot. But not from Bailey’s gun. It had come from Dane Hanson’s Glock. Bailey dropped to the ground, and the pizza man and Flynn looked down at him with horrified expressions on their faces. Dane quickly ran to the downed man and removed his gun. He waved the pizza man off, a young fellow, perhaps a college student, whose fear was staining his pants. Dane ran over to me. The slug had passed right through my arm, and I was bleeding heavily.
“Flynn, bring me a pillow case!” Dane yelled.
The desk clerk and several of hotel guests appeared in the parking lot. “I’ve called the police.” said the desk clerk. “Call for two ambulances as well,” Dane told him. “Tell them an officer has been shot.”
Dane took the pillow case from Flynn and made a tourniquet with it on my arm.
“Is Bailey dead?” I asked between groaning with pain.
“Don’t know. I shot him in the chest. He’s still breathing.”
The nearby patrol car arrived, and the deputy began to secure the area. He told people to return to their rooms, and he parked his car outside Flynn’s room to protect the area. The first ambulance arrived, and their crew worked on Bailey, whose condition was more critical than mine. They were loading him into their ambulance when the second one arrived. I told Dane to go with the first one and to arrange for a full-time guard to be posted outside Bailey’s hospital room. The second ambulance arrived, and their crew quickly replaced the pillowcase tourniquet and injected me with a painkiller. I passed out and didn’t remember anything more until the next morning, when I found myself in a hospital bed as well. The nurse saw I was awake and notified the resident doctor, who immediately came to my bedside. He asked me how I was feeling. The painkiller was wearing off.
“Like shit.”
The resident smiled. “Ms. Notfarg, you have been lucky. You were hit with a small-caliber round that passed right through your arm. It damaged your artery and a tendon, but not a single bone. We have stitched up the artery and tendon, and there is no reason not to discharge you.”
“You’ll give me something for the pain. It hurts like hell at the moment.”
“The nurse will give you a shot, and you will be discharged with a fifteen-day supply of codeine pills. There’ll be enough for you to take them one in the morning and one before you go to bed.”
I thanked him and asked the nurse for my cell phone. I phoned Dane to find out what was happening. “How are you feeling?” he asked, recognizing my call.
“As well as can be expected,” I growled. “Did Bailey die?”
“No, he survived the shot. It hit a rib, tore an artery, and punctured a lung. The ambulance crew were able to save him from bleeding to death. The surgeons operated on him. He’s still unconscious, and we’re waiting to interview him when he comes to.”
“Are we waiting for him to recover before we charge Marge Holmes?’
“No. We don’t need to wait. I checked his cell phone. You were right. Holmes called him at exactly the time you saw her phoning at the courthouse. We’re preparing the arrest warrant now. I’ll be arresting her as soon as I get it.”
“I’d love to serve it myself, but I’ll have the pleasure of seeing her in court… For God’s sake, contact Flynn and tell him to call Lily Gross to get that damned insurance policy cancelled.”
Dane said he would. He must have handed his phone to Steve. “Congratulations, Shane. An outstanding piece of detective work. Enjoy being disabled for a while. I’ll have Dane cover your cases until you recover.”
They wheeled me out of the hospital in the early afternoon. I took a taxi home, where I took it easy and awaited the local television news. However, it only said that there had been a shooting at the Super Ten Motel in Mission Valley the previous night. Two people had been shot, one of them in critical condition. The other, a police officer, had been treated and discharged from hospital. Our public relations department must have decided to hold the news until Marge Holmes had been arrested and brought in to be questioned.
The next day, the San Diego Union paper had a major headline: “Margery Holmes, Girlfriend of Former Money Launderer Laurence Swift, Arrested for Murder and Attempted Murder.” Below the headlines were details about Marge Holmes, Arthur Flynn, and Laurence Swift. The Union reporter had interviewed Art Flynn and had reported the details of his burying his neighbor near Guerneville. It made for juicy reading.
I went back to work a week later. There was a loud cheer from my peers as I entered the homicide section. I felt good. My arm had stopped aching. I was ready to prepare the evidence against Marge Holmes. Dane Hanson had already questioned her in the presence of her attorney from the public defender office. She’d said that it must have been Arzeta who had called for the murder of Flynn and Andy Collins. Bailey had been questioned. He had initially refused to say anything., but when Brenda Williams had said she would reduce the charge to second-degree murder, which took the death penalty off the table, he’d become willing to turn evidence against Holmes. They were both tried in state court. Bailey got twenty-five years to life for his role, and Holmes got the same sentence. Amendez succeeded in getting a plea deal for Art Flynn, a total of two years in prison, so I did not have to give evidence against him. Arzeta was never caught. I doubt if he’s in the country.
EPILOGUE
The saddest thing about the whole business concerned Swift. He had been convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and was serving time for it. He requested a hearing to have his sentence vacated, and it took over a year before the court granted his request. I had to give evidence at his hearing. Did he ever look savagely at me!
A few months later, I decided to drive around the various businesses that Swift had owned. I went by his beautiful house in Lake San Marcos. It had been sold, of course
. Five cars sat around the front, serviceable vehicles, not antiques. I deduced the house had been sold to a family with high school and college-aged children. Swift’s office building looked the same. His former office was occupied by a data analysis consulting service. Wayne Collins was still in business. A bookkeeping service now rented Andy Collins’s studio.
I made the round of the car washes. Two of them were vacant, and weeds were poking their way through cracks in the parking lot. The two liquor stores had been taken over by other operators and, from the stream of customers, were doing good business. The check cashing businesses stood vacant. I was informed most banks had declined to service them due to money laundering concerns.
Marge should have been satisfied with the large allowance Larry Swift was giving her. Instead, she’d wanted the large extra that would have come from the accidental death of her former husband. Her actions had triggered the imprisonment of her wealthy boyfriend. They had left her unable to pay for the treatment of Sally and hence her sick child’s death. They had led to her imprisonment. They had led to the loss of employment of over one hundred people and to the blight of many of Swift’s businesses. I was reminded of what a stock broker had once told me: “Bulls make money, bears make money, but pigs never do.”
I ran into my old boss Harry Thompson one day and had lunch with him. I mentioned my thoughts about Marge Holmes to him. “Shane,” he said, “those actions led to the shutdown of a major money laundering activity that supported the evils of illicit drug use. Closure of that money laundering led to a sixteen percent increase in our budget for that year. The result was very helpful for society.”
“But was it constitutional to seize Wayne Collins’s assets or those of the legitimate businesses owned by regular investors without any criminal conviction?”
“It was, or is, until the courts or legislature decides otherwise,” he replied.
