The Forgotten Man

by Robert Crais

  Pike didn't ask why; he only asked where. I gave him Dana's address.

  Ken Wilson was right. Dead ends don't exist. Lucy had gone, but she would return.

  35

  People lie. Half the people in jail were arrested because they lied even though they hadn't done anything wrong. A cop asked where they were Tuesday night, and they didn't say they were having a beer at the Starlite Lounge; they said they were in Bakersfield. Next thing they knew, they were popped for a Bakersfield stickup because they matched a description. They suddenly remembered they were at the Starlite, but then it was too late. They had lied, been arrested and booked, and by the time the detectives figured out they were telling the truth about the Starlite, the detectives had also found an outstanding warrant for failure to pay child support or skipping a court appearance. All because they lied about having a beer. Many people are like that. Lying is their automatic reaction.

  Thomas and Dana probably lied because they had something to hide. I didn't see how their lies had anything to do with Reinnike's murder, but I wanted to see their pictures.

  Dana's street was well lit in a small-town way, with gold light softening the cheap stucco buildings to make everything seem nicer than it was. Cars lined both curbs like too many puppies crowding their mother. It was after eleven as I crept past Dana's building; the neighborhood had settled for the night.

  Pike's Jeep was blocking a drive two buildings beyond Dana's. Pike was a motionless black smudge masked by black shadows. His window was down.

  Pike's low voice came quietly from the darkness.

  "I couldn't tell if they're home. The drapes are pulled and everything's quiet."

  "You could've kicked in the door."

  "Waiting for you."

  "Okay. Let's see."

  I told Pike how I wanted to play it, then walked down the drive to Dana's apartment. Behind me, Pike slipped from the Jeep. The interior light did not come on when his door opened.

  I went to Dana's door, listened, then rang the bell. Her apartment was dark. The windows were cheap aluminum sliders with spring-loaded handles serving as clip locks. I tried to slide the glass, but the latches held firm. I padded the muzzle of my gun with my handkerchief, pressed the muzzle to the glass alongside the handle, then smacked the butt hard with the heel of my hand. The muzzle popped through the glass, leaving a jagged hole the size of a tennis ball. I opened the window, hoisted myself inside, then closed the drapes.

  "Hello?"

  I flipped on the lights, then checked the bedroom and bath to be sure no one was hidden. Like lying, people often hide, and then you don't see them coming. It can ruin your whole day.

  When I visited their apartment two days ago, a camera with a big lens was on the dining room table beside the computer. Now, the camera was gone. The desk was cluttered with papers, a cordless phone, and dust bunnies, but a clean new LAPD business card stood out. Detective Jeff Pardy. I smiled when I saw the card. Pardy might be a flathead, but he was doing his job. It made me feel better about him.

  I went back to the living room, sat on the couch, and waited. It was eleven twenty-six when I started waiting. At twelve-seventeen, voices approached. I went back to the dining room, turned the chair to face the front door, and made myself comfortable.

  A key ground into the deadbolt lock.

  Outside, Dana said, "But I turned off the lights."

  Thomas stepped inside, not seeing me because he was looking at Dana. He was carrying the camera. He didn't see me until Dana stepped inside past him, but by then it was too late.

  Thomas said, "You—"

  Pike came in behind Thomas fast, and hooked his left arm tight around Thomas's neck. He turned Thomas's right hand high behind his back and lifted him inside. Thomas made a gurgling sound, and the camera hit the floor with a clunk.

  Dana said, "Hey! What are you doing? Stop it!"

  Pike let Thomas's weight ride the bent arm. Thomas tried to reach Pike with his free hand, but Pike was out of reach. Thomas kicked and twisted, but Pike lifted higher and cut off Thomas's air. You can't get much leverage when you're hanging by your neck with your tongue turning purple.

  I closed the door behind them, then brought Dana to the couch.

  "He's okay. You sit here and don't get up."

  I picked up the camera and sat beside Dana. It was a professional-grade Sony digital with ports for extra memory chips and buttons I didn't understand. I gave the card and phone to Dana.

  "Here, hold these, okay?"

  "What do you want? Why do I have to hold this?"

  "Pike, you good?"

  "Perfect."

  "Okay."

  The camera had a view screen for reviewing shots. I turned it on, then pressed a button labeled REVIEW. The screen filled with the picture of an ordinary street. It was the picture Thomas had most recently taken. A bright yellow bar across the top of the picture showed the number 18. Eighteen pictures were stored in the memory. I pressed the review button again to see the seventeenth picture, and clicked back through the remaining pictures one by one. The first four pictures were ordinary shots of ordinary things, but the fourteenth picture showed a dimly lit room through what might have been partially closed curtains. The image was small and orange, but I made out what seemed to be a woman's back and a man's legs. They were stretched out on a bed, and the woman was hunched over the legs. The only clear shot of Dana was when she first entered the room and was still on her feet. The angle showed a clear view of her face. None of the shots showed the Home Away Suites or George Reinnike, aka Herbert Faustina, but as soon as I saw them I knew what Thomas and Dana were hiding.

  I said, "This is sweet. Thomas here takes pictures of Dana with her johns. Why do you suppose he does that?"

  Pike said, "Blackmail?"

  Thomas thrashed as he kicked at Pike's legs, but Pike did something to the bent arm, and the thrashing stopped. Dana didn't try to get up. She seemed embarrassed.

  I said, "You and Mr. Three Strikes left something out of your story the other day. Herbert Faustina's real name is Reinnike. An eyewitness saw Thomas take a picture of you and Reinnike outside the Home Away Suites. I want to see it."

  Dana said, "We didn't take any pictures. Whoever said that was lying."

  "Tell you what, I want you to call Detective Pardy for me. You have his card and the phone. Let's see how it works for Thomas when he's booked for blackmail, extortion, and suspicion of murder."

  Thomas stiffened again, and his eyes widened. Dana held the phone.

  "Dana isn't helping, Thomas, so I'll have to dial. We'll tell Pardy you don't just pimp tricks for your girlfriend, you take pictures to blackmail her johns. Then we'll see if Stephen rats you out to save himself."

  Pike said, "Oops. Strike three."

  Dana suddenly pushed up from the couch, and dropped the phone.

  "It's Stephen. It isn't us. We don't blackmail anyone—it's Stephen!"

  Thomas made a grunting sound to warn her to shut up, but she shouted at him.

  "I'm not the one who told him about the car! I wasn't gonna say anything, but you had to say about the car!"

  I waited for Thomas, and watched the resignation settle into his eyes.

  "You going to talk to me if he lets go?"

  Thomas croaked a sound like a yes. Pike released the pressure, and Thomas staggered sideways, coughing, with his right arm hanging limp. Dana kept shouting.

  "You hadda say! You hadda tell him about the car!"

  Thomas glared at Dana, but there was more hurt in his eyes than anger.

  "It was my ass with the three strikes! Stephen already told him we were there. That bastard gave'm our names. I hadda give the man somethin', else they'd think we were holdin' out!"

  I said, "Show me Reinnike's picture."

  "I can't. I sent those pictures to Stephen."

  Those pictures. More than one picture of George Reinnike. More than one chance to see his license number.

  I picked up the phone and punched
in Pardy's number.

  "Listen, I'm telling you the truth. I sent'm to Stephen. After I sent them, I deleted them. He has them. I don't keep incriminating shit like that on my computer."

  I lowered the phone. I studied him, then glanced at his computer. Thomas was probably telling the truth, but I couldn't be sure.

  "What does Stephen do with the pictures?"

  "A lot of johns use credit cards, and expense the charge to their companies. Stephen's girlfriend has a brother works at a credit bureau, something like that, so he can get contact information. These guys go home, a few weeks later they get a copy of the picture. A lot of them, they cough up an extra grand to make Stephen go away. Stephen doesn't push it; he don't ask for too much or keep after them. Stephen ain't no hard-core badass; he's just looking for an easy dollar."

  "Reinnike paid with cash."

  "Here's this dude with all this cash, hiring all these girls— Stephen said it was worth a shot. I didn't get any sex stuff. Just them out in the parking lot. That was all I got, and I ain't even got that anymore. I sent'm to Stephen."

  I walked over to his computer. A screen-saver pattern had appeared. A ball slowly bounced between the four sides of the screen, the ball trailing an expanding wake that overlapped and consumed itself. Thomas might be lying, but I believed he was telling the truth.

  "Here's my problem, Thomas. Those pictures could be sitting right here, and I couldn't find them. The experts at LAPD can turn this thing inside out."

  "I'm telling you they won't find nothing. I pick out the best shots, send them to Stephen, then get rid of the evidence. I don't keep that shit on my computer."

  "You e-mailed the pictures to Stephen?"

  "I sent the best three. The rest weren't so good. He got them. I know he got them—he wrote back and said."

  Pike said, "When?"

  "Five days ago, I guess. It hadda be five."

  Dana said, "The day after I saw him."

  I glanced at Pike, and Pike nodded. We were both thinking the same thing.

  I said, "Have you gotten an e-mail from Stephen in the past three days?"

  "No."

  Pike's mouth twitched. Stephen had been working at a laptop when we saw him three days ago. It was the only computer we saw, and we took it. George Reinnike's picture was in my car.

  I pushed Thomas's computer out of the way, put Stephen's laptop on the table, and turned it on. Thomas came over to see.

  "If you had Stephen's computer, why didn't you just ask him for the goddamned pictures?"

  Pike said, "Shut up."

  The screen filled with a dark blue desktop. The DESKTOP FILES icon opened the hard drive, but revealed nothing more than a long list of files with meaningless names. I knew the list of call girls and business records were somewhere in the files, but nothing was labeled BLACKMAIL or JOHNS. We would have to make Stephen show us, but Stephen had already told his lawyer that we had taken his computer. If Stephen turned up beaten to death, the lawyer would probably suspect.

  Pike said, "Anything?"

  "Nothing obvious. We'll have to go back to Stephen."

  Thomas said, "Let me ask you something. What's so important about me taking his picture? What you expect to see?"

  "Reinnike's license plate."

  Thomas seemed vague for a moment, but then his right eye flickered. Thomas was working on something.

  "I think I got that. You can see the back end of his car pretty good in one of the shots I sent."

  I said, "Do you know his password?"

  "You think he wants me checkin' his mail? Would you?"

  I waited. I didn't have to wait long. Thomas saw a way out and he was spooling up to make his offer.

  "I send him these pictures, he's gotta download them, right? He's gotta save'm, print'm, make copies, whatever, so he can use'm to shake down the johns. If he downloads them into a file, then we don't need his password to get into his e-mail; all we gotta do is find the picture files, right?"

  "Get to it."

  "I figure you got three ways to get'm. You take that thing to the police like you was gonna do with mine, and maybe they find'm and maybe they don't. The other way is you pack it back to Stephen like you said, hope he's home, there aren't any witnesses, nothing like that, then put a gun in his mouth and hope he don't delete'm while you're looking the other way."

  "What's the third way?"

  He stared at me without expression in a way that made me feel obvious. I felt myself flush.

  "What?"

  "Whatever you're after is important to you. You've been here twice now, and you're in a hurry. You don't want to wait for the police and you don't want to mess around with Stephen. I'm not saying I can find those pictures, but I got an idea how, so maybe I can save you some time."

  He let it hang. I knew what he wanted.

  "When I send Stephen the pictures I give each of them its own name. If Stephen didn't change the names, I might be able to find them. Save you all that time. But I gotta get a pass on the crimes. I got the three strikes."

  Pardy might go for it. He told me he wasn't interested in sex crimes, but this was a slam-dunk blackmail and extortion conviction, and it was a major case. If he wouldn't go for it, Diaz would go for it. I thought I could deliver the deal.

  "Show me the pictures."

  "You gotta get me a deal."

  "I'll get you the deal."

  Thomas sat at the laptop. He opened and closed several scrolls until a window appeared, asking which file he wanted to find. He typed DANA1.JPEG, then clicked a button to initiate the search. A tree chart showing files within files appeared with the DANA1.JPEG at the bottom.

  Thomas suddenly laughed as the tension blew out of him.

  "Be damned."

  The tree chart showed that DANA1.JPEG was in a file called DUMMIES, which was in a file labeled ASSOCIATES, which was tucked within another file called ED'S VACATION, which had been stored in yet another file with the innocent name COVER LETTERS, which was located on the hard drive. Thomas copied the names, then closed the finder window to open the hard drive. He opened each file in reverse order, beginning with COVER LETTERS, then ED'S VACATION, then ASSOCIATES. Each time he opened a file, Dana and I leaned over his shoulders, trying to pick out the next name in a jumble of other files. When Thomas finally opened DUMMIES, the screen filled with a list of tiny file names in alphabetical order—

  ALLIE1.JPEG

  ALLIE2.JPEG

  ALLIE3.JPEG

  ANGELA1.JPEG

  ANGELA2.JPEG

  There were hundreds of JPEGs. Maybe a thousand. Many of the names showed more than one series—

  BARB1.JPEG

  BARB2.JPEG

  BARB3.JPEG

  BARB2/1.JPEG

  BARB2/2.JPEG

  I said, "Why the different series with some of the names?"

  "Different johns."

  "You took all these?"

  "Uh-huh."

  Pike said, "You're a piece of shit."

  Thomas knew better than to glance up. He knew better than to crack wise or give with an attitude.

  I pulled Thomas out of the chair and scrolled down the list-Dana had been photographed with seven different men. When I opened the first series, it showed a milky night shot of Dana outside a bar with an overweight man in a business suit. The angle of the picture suggested it had been taken from the opposite side of the street, and the pale colors indicated some sort of electronic light enhancement had been used instead of a flash. It was obvious by the man's expression he didn't know he was being photographed.

  The next series showed Dana, a second young woman, and two older men on a sleek white boat in Marina del Rey. Dana and the other woman were wearing thong bikinis and nose zinc. The angle and graininess indicated the picture had been taken with a long lens, probably from one of the restaurants or apartments that lined the marina.

  I opened the first picture in the last series, and saw George Reinnike. The photograph had the same milky quality as th
e other night shots—the colors bleached with a too-bright wash from the optical enhancer. Reinnike was wearing a plaid, long-sleeved shirt with the cuffs buttoned, but no jacket, and a set of car keys was clearly visible in his right hand. Dana was kissing his cheek, but he looked surprised and embarrassed, as if he didn't want this kind of attention in a public place. They were standing by the tail end of a brown Honda Accord, though the way they were standing I couldn't see the dent or the license plate.

  Thomas said, "Go on to the next one. I know you can see the plate in one of'm."

  The next picture was wider, revealing more of the surroundings. Dana was approaching Reinnike, but had not yet reached him. He was leaning toward the motel, as if caught in the awkward moment when he was deciding how to respond. His dubious expression suggested he was worried she was going to make a scene or ask for more money. I could see the top edge of the license plate, but it was blurry and unreadable.

  Thomas said, "Goddamnit, I know I had it. I got one more here. Open it."

  The third angle was the widest. Dana was on her toes, with her arms around Reinnike's neck. The dented left rear wheel well and the missing hubcap were obvious. Thomas hadn't remembered the car from a fast glance; he had studied the pictures to choose the best shots for Stephen. The entire license plate was visible, but blurry and unreadable, like a face in the fog.

  Thomas leaned closer.

  "Shit. I can't read it."

  It appeared to be a California plate, but I couldn't be sure.

  "Can you bring this into focus?"

  "Dude, that's science. I found the pictures. We got the deal, or what? You said we had a deal."

  I concentrated on the blurred license plate. It did not clear. A computer-graphics technician might be able to tighten the image. They can work miracles with this stuff. But not always. I closed the file. George Reinnike vanished.

  I tucked the laptop under my arm, then nodded at Pike. He went to the door and waited. I turned back to Thomas.

  "I'll set it up with Pardy. You'll have to testify against Stephen, but I'll make sure they cut you a deal. If you try to weasel or get funny, our deal is off and I'll let them have you. We clear on that?"