Edge of the Knife

by A. D. Miller

  “You could at least have the decency to admit it. A boy that age wouldn’t have said those things unless someone put him up to it.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Besides accusing me of murder?”

  “He thought you killed Alana Bell?”

  Salas’ eyes narrowed. “You know exactly what he thought. He came by my office on Friday, hardly an hour after you’d left. He said all the same things you’d said, but in much uglier language. The two of you were obviously working together.”

  A familiar-looking young man—one of the aides Nyman had seen in City Hall—stepped out of the crowd and asked Salas if Nyman was causing a disturbance.

  Salas gave a forced smile. “He’s making a nuisance of himself, Brian, but I think that’s what comes naturally to him.”

  “Would you like me to have him removed?”

  Salas said it wouldn’t be necessary and told the aide she’d see him back at the office. Taking a long look at Nyman, the aide nodded and turned away.

  When he was out of earshot, Nyman said: “Trujillo wasn’t working for me. I only met him once, and we didn’t exactly hit it off.”

  Doubt or weariness softened the edge in Salas’ voice. “You’re lucky, then. I got to meet him twice. The second time was bright and early the next morning.”

  “At your office?”

  “At my house. With my grandchildren sleeping inside. He banged on my door at seven o’clock, looking like he’d been up all night.”

  “Where’d he get your address?”

  “Oh, I’ve never made a secret of where I live. Which was a mistake, obviously. The boy could’ve killed me there on the porch—and I have no doubt he wanted to. He said he was the only one who knew the truth about me.”

  “What kind of truth?”

  She shrugged and wiped the sweat from her eyes. “He thought there was some kind of conspiracy going on and I was at the center of it. He said it was only a matter of time before the police came for me, so I might as well deal with him instead.”

  Nyman asked if Trujillo had mentioned any other members of the supposed conspiracy.

  “God knows. The boy was talking so fast I could hardly understand him. He threw out half-a-dozen names, one right after the other.”

  “Names like Howard Searle?”

  “Who’s Howard Searle?”

  “I think you know who he is,” Nyman said. “According to the Ethics Commission, he’s been an even bigger contributor to your campaigns than Ethan Kovac.”

  Salas gave another bitter laugh and started walking, as if the conversation were over, to a Prius that was parked at the curb.

  “Last year,” Nyman went on, walking beside her, “Searle contributed to your reelection bid at the maximum amount. His wife and his children also contributed, along with several other Savannah Group executives. All of whom are residents of Nevada.”

  Salas had reached the car and stood smiling beside the door. “You think people in Nevada are inherently corrupt?”

  “No. But I don’t see why someone in Vegas would care about who gets elected to the city council of L.A. Not unless he knew his company would be doing business here.”

  “Savannah Group does business all over the country.”

  “They also make political contributions all over the country.”

  “Trust me, Tom, no one wants to get money out of politics more than I do. But just because you’ve accepted a contribution doesn’t mean you’re beholden to the contributor. And even if I was beholden to Howard Searle, I would never murder someone on his behalf. The idea is crazy.”

  “What about Michael Freed? Would he murder on your behalf?”

  “Freed? What possible incentive would he have?”

  “I’m not sure. Trujillo seemed to think he was connected to you.”

  “That boy,” Salas said, “was out of his mind. Probably on drugs. When I told the police he’d been to my house, they said he was a well-known dealer around Skid Row. That’s probably what killed him—a deal gone bad.”

  “What about yourself? Were you anywhere near Skid Row late Saturday night?”

  “I was at home with my grandchildren,” Salas said. “The youngest had a fever and I was up with her half the night.”

  “Is there anyone who can corroborate that?”

  “Besides my family? No. I’m not in the habit of manufacturing alibis. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”

  She unlocked the door and was lowering herself into the seat when Nyman said:

  “Does the word Meridian mean anything to you?”

  “Not a thing, Tom.”

  She shut the door and started the engine. The car eased out onto Alhambra Avenue and turned west toward downtown.

  It was painted a dark, metallic red.

  Chapter 34

  Nyman drove to his office. Apart from the mailman, no one seemed to have visited during his absence. Mail lay scattered on the floor; on the edge of the desk stood the coffee cup he’d given to Alana Bell.

  He picked up the envelopes, glanced at the return addresses, tossed them into the trash can, left the cup where it was, and sat down behind the desk.

  His eyes, gazing at the cup, were bright with concentration. After several minutes he took the notebook from his pocket and found the number of the coroner’s office.

  He asked the operator for Ruiz, got Ruiz’s answering machine, and said in his message that he was calling about the Alana Bell case. “I’m wondering if you found anything in her clothes. Paint chips from the car, for instance.”

  He told her the number of his new phone and hung up. A shaft of sunlight came in through the window and fell across the coffee cup, showing the dark ring at the base where the paper had absorbed the liquid. He put the cup in a drawer of his desk and left the office.

  * * *

  The restaurant next door was mostly empty. Bottles of mescal stood on a shelf behind the bar; on the walls were faded postcards of Puerto Escondido and Monte Albán.

  Nyman sat down at the bar and waited until a small gray-haired man came out of a back room. The man acknowledged Nyman with a raised eyebrow and shouted to someone in the kitchen, then picked up the phone that was ringing by the cash register.

  A different, younger man came out of the kitchen and handed Nyman a plate of food. When the gray-haired man was finished with the phone, he came over to the bar and sat down on the next stool.

  “All right,” he said. “What is it?”

  “What’s what?”

  “Whatever’s been keeping you away. Haven’t seen you around for days.”

  Nyman said he’d been working on a case.

  “You mean a real case?” the man said. “With a client and everything?”

  “You don’t have to act so surprised.”

  “I’m not surprised. I’m happy. Maybe now you’ll pay for a meal once in a while.”

  Nyman told him not to get his hopes up. “I already lost most of the money. A guy took it out of my wallet on Saturday night.”

  The man smiled and shook his head. “You sure know a lot of nice people, Tom. That’s the same night the burglar tried to get in your office.”

  “Burglar?”

  The man nodded. “Around eleven, I think it was. When we were closing up. Saw a guy trying to get in your door. Went away when he couldn’t get it open.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Don’t I look like I’m serious?”

  “Did you recognize him?”

  “Why would I recognize him? Tall and blond—that’s all I could tell. I tried to call you, but you didn’t answer. I called twice.”

  “I had to get a new phone,” Nyman said, and wrote the new number on the back of one of his cards. Handing him the card, he said: “You’ll let me know if he comes back?”

  A pair of customers had come in and were waiting by the cash register. The man, rising from his stool, put the card in his pocket and said he’d think about it.

&nb
sp; Nyman ate the rest of the food, then reached for the phonebook that sat beside the mescal bottles. He found the number he wanted in the white pages and said after his call had been answered:

  “Mrs. Freed? ... Tom Nyman. Sorry to bother you at home, but I wanted to catch your husband away from the office ... Ah ... Well, maybe I could stop by and ask you a few questions, then ... No, nothing too serious. I took a trip this weekend and found out some things you might find interesting ... Yes ... See you soon.”

  * * *

  Michael and Sarah Freed lived in a low-slung bungalow in Los Feliz. Lavender and feathergrass grew along the front walk, shaded by lemon trees heavy with fruit. A boy of five or six was clinging to Sarah’s leg when she opened the door; in his dark eyes and dark hair there was more of his mother than his father.

  Sarah said: “You got here fast.”

  Nyman said that traffic hadn’t been bad. “This is your son?”

  “Yes. Maddox. Can you say hello, Maddox? This is Tom.”

  The boy said a shy hello and ran with thudding steps into the house, disappearing into another room. Sarah smiled and held out her hand.

  “Nice to see you again. Come in and I’ll give you something to drink.”

  The house had been built in a Spanish style and the Freeds had decorated accordingly. In the front room were red drapes hung on iron spears and chairs with beaded seats and straight wooden backs. Above the fireplace was a photo of the Freeds on their wedding day.

  Nyman, glancing around the room, said that it was a nice house.

  Sarah gave a groan of mock despair. “Oh god, don’t get me started on the house. You’d think for the amount of money we pay we could get enough space, but not in L.A.”

  Her son came running back into the room, trailed now by an older boy and a dog. Stopping them in front of the fireplace, Sarah said to the older boy:

  “What did I tell you about running with the dog?”

  The boy said: “Not in the house.”

  “And where are you?”

  “In the house.”

  “Can you introduce yourself to our guest?”

  The boy turned to Nyman and held out a hand. “Marcus Freed.”

  “Tom Nyman.”

  “Tom’s here to ask me some questions,” Sarah said to her sons, “so I need you to keep the noise to a minimum. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” Sarah said, and turned back to Nyman. “Well, now we can start the interrogation.”

  She led him through the house and out to a patio that was partly roofed by wooden lattice-work. A grill and picnic table stood in the shade; waiting on the table were two empty glasses and a ceramic pitcher.

  “The boys decided this morning they wanted to open a lemonade stand,” she said. “It lasted about twenty minutes.”

  “No customers?”

  “No work ethic. They take after me in that respect. I’ve also got some wine in the kitchen, if you’d prefer that.”

  “Lemonade is fine.”

  She filled the glasses, handed one to Nyman, and sat down across from him. Beyond the lattice-work, sunshine fell on the backyard, brightening the colors of the azaleas that grew along the fence. The smell of flowers and clipped grass mingled with the smell of Sarah Freed’s perfume.

  “Michael should be home before too long,” she said. “We got back late last night and he’s spent all day in the office, trying to catch up.”

  “Got back?”

  “From Santa Barbara. We went up for the weekend together. The library at the university has a special collection he wanted to see.”

  “What about the boys?”

  She gave a rueful smile. “We foisted them off on Marcella, like usual. We’ve been leaning on her a little too much lately.”

  Nyman asked her which collection Michael Freed had visited at the library.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Something about public housing or public transportation—something public. The research was really just a cover story, though. He takes me on these little trips every once in a while. It’s his way of apologizing.”

  “Did you stay on campus?”

  “No, at a boutique in town.”

  “Do you remember the name?”

  “Does it really matter?”

  “Normally it wouldn’t,” Nyman said, “but there’s been another murder.”

  She sat up straighter in her chair. “One of Michael’s students?”

  “No. A friend of Alana’s named Eric Trujillo. His body was found on Skid Row around one o’clock Sunday morning.”

  She exhaled with revulsion. “Do you know who did it?”

  “I have a few ideas. Nothing definite.”

  “I thought you didn’t speculate until you had evidence to speculate with.”

  “My standards are slipping.”

  She said: “Well, you can rule out Michael. He was in Santa Barbara with me the whole time.”

  “You went with him to the library?”

  She hesitated. “Not to the library, no. I dropped him off at the campus and went to the beach. But he was only there a few hours.”

  “Which day was this?”

  “Saturday. I dropped him off at noon and picked him up around four or five.”

  “So he had four or five hours to drive down to L.A. and back.”

  “Drive down and kill somebody? That would take some effort.”

  “Murder can be a pretty strong motivator.”

  “I’m sure it can. But if Michael murdered him during the day, he would’ve had to dump the body in broad daylight. And you said the body wasn’t found until the middle of the night.”

  Nyman looked down at his glass, frowning. “He could’ve had someone else dispose of the body.”

  “That seems a little unlikely, don’t you think?”

  “Getting a knife in the chest is unlikely, statistically speaking.”

  “Well, statistically speaking, there’s zero chance Michael killed that man.”

  “You were with him all of Saturday night?”

  She nodded. “And we didn’t go to bed until after midnight.”

  Nyman put his drink on the table and took out his notebook. “What was the name of the hotel?”

  “The Surf House,” she said. “On Channel Drive.”

  “There are employees who can vouch for your being there?”

  “Of course. Lots of them. I have a brochure in the house, if you want the number.”

  Nyman said he would get it later. “At the moment I’m wondering if you can tell me anything about Meridian.”

  “As in a line of longitude?”

  “As in the thing Trujillo was investigating just before he was killed. Something he thought your husband was involved in.”

  “Sorry. It doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “What about Las Vegas?”

  “What about it?”

  “Did you know that Michael went there with Alana two weeks before she was killed?”

  Abruptly the muscles of Sarah Freed’s face went slack. The skin sagged, showing age-lines that normally remained hidden. She gave Nyman a bleak smile.

  “Ah,” she said. “So you know about that.”

  Chapter 35

  Leaving him on the patio, she went into the house and came back out with a bottle of chardonnay and two glasses. She filled one glass with wine and offered the bottle to Nyman, saying:

  “It’s not very good, but it’s better than lemonade.”

  “I’m all right, thanks.”

  She shrugged and sat down. “That trip you mentioned on the phone. It was to Vegas, I take it?”

  “It was.”

  “You felt like doing some gambling?”

  Nyman told her about his trip, omitting certain details.

  “Personally,” she said when he was finished, “I can’t stand the place, but it seems to hold some kind of fascination for Michael. He goes there to blow off steam after every semester. Plays a lot of golf an
d blackjack.”

  “And takes Alana with him?”

  “Not usually. He only met her last fall, when she started the program. But apparently he thought taking her to Vegas would be a nice way to relax after finishing the Merchant South analysis.”

  “He told you that?”

  She nodded. “This weekend. That’s always part of the apology. Confessing his sins.”

  “Did he confess anything about getting twenty thousand dollars?”

  “At the casino, you mean? Just that he won it playing blackjack, and that he and Alana had a fight when he wouldn’t go along with her plan.”

  “Plan?”

  “Well, her suggestion, or whatever you want to call it. She told him he should take all the money he’d won and donate it. Give it to one of the homeless shelters downtown. She said it wasn’t really his to keep, since he’d won it by dumb luck.”

  “And what did he say to that?”

  “Something about how a man with a family at home can’t afford to give away that much money, no matter how he got it.”

  “Surely Alana understood that.”

  “You’d think so, but evidently not. Michael says they’d gone to a little bar off the Strip—some place their driver recommended. When Michael said no, she got angry and stormed out.”

  “Does your husband know where she went after storming out?”

  “Not that I know of. Do you?”

  Nyman told her about Howard Searle and Savannah Group. “They’re the company that’s developing Merchant South. They’re also the new owners of Kasbah. Where your husband won his money.”

  Reaching for the bottle, Sarah poured more wine into her glass. “It sounds like you’re saying the money was a payoff.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Is that what Alana thought?”

  “Maybe. It would explain why she went to Searle’s house. I was hoping your husband could tell me more about it.”

  From the house, a voice said: “Tell you more about what?”

  Michael Freed stood in the doorway, dressed in a shirt and tie and still holding his car keys. His handsome face was gray with exhaustion.

  Nyman said: “Why Alana went to see Howard Searle, and why you didn’t tell me you went with her to Vegas.”