There was a woman standing next to a shadow that might have been a car. Rap squinted; his binoculars were on the boat.
The woman bent down and he saw the movement of hair.
Long hair. Not Dana, then.
Jan. Jan out here spying. On him.
How much had she seen? And what would she do about it?
No, that wasn’t the question. What would he do about her? And how soon?
The second watcher knew what he was going to do about it. Dale Krepke had returned to his bike, binoculars at his eyes. He hadn’t bothered following Rap out to the dunes; he’d just staked out the place where the Layla was moored.
The fact that Joel Rapaport hadn’t even bothered to move the boat confirmed Dale’s suspicion that the dealer was paying off the people who were supposed to enforce the law.
And now he had proof that someone else was involved as well. He trained his lenses on the little car trapped in the dune and memorized its license number. He’d run the plate back at the office. And no matter what anybody said, he was going to be the guy who finally brought Joel Alan Rapaport to justice.
Jan took off her jacket and placed it under the other wheel. She hopped back in the driver’s seat and rocked the car back and forth, jerking the stick and pumping the clutch in a frenzy of fear. God, please, she prayed, don’t let Rap find me.
At last, the car lurched forward and promptly stalled. But it was no longer mired. She started it again and roared out of her hiding place, no longer concerned about the noise. Rap must have heard the car; the only thing she could count on now was that he had no idea who was driving.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I woke up feeling like hell. Like I was in hell, to be exact. I hadn’t turned up the air conditioning when I came home and fell into bed wearing just a pair of panties. The sweat-soaked sheets were tangled around my legs, and to make matters worse, there was a persistent knocking at the door.
It was late morning. That much I could tell by the amount and brightness of the sunlight trying to force its way in through the slats in the mauve blinds.
“Coming,” I called in a voice that could have sung the baritone part in a light opera. I felt as if I’d smoked a pack of cigarettes. My head pounded and I was afraid I was going to be sick before I reached the door to stop that horrible knocking.
I stumbled to the closet and slipped on an oversized T-shirt, then veered toward the door. “What?” I asked, opening the door on Zack, who stood in the doorway with a look of exaggerated patience on his face—and, more to the point, a thermal pitcher of coffee in one hand, a mug in the other.
“Bless you,” I said with feeling, opening the door wide.
“No problem,” he replied. He made for the tiny table next to the television cabinet. “I’ve been where you are a few times myself.”
“Hey, don’t get the wrong idea.” I padded toward the table. “I don’t get drunk like this every night. It was the pressure of the situation. I got a little carried away.” Actually, I’d gotten very carried away, staying in the bar with Rap and talking over old times until I got sloppy and maudlin. We’d covered everything from the Fourth of July tornado to Sunday evening band concerts at the Toledo Zoo, with lions and peacocks adding new notes to the Gershwin tunes.
“Using alcohol to push away feelings is one of the warning signs of alcoholism,” Zack replied. There was a fanatic’s gleam in his eyes; I was in for the lecture all reformed drinkers seem obliged to deliver to anyone who has more than three in a row.
“Do tell me the others,” I muttered. I could forgive this man almost anything for bringing the coffee, but gratitude could go only so far.
Irony was lost on this guy. He started ticking them off on his blunt fingers. “One is drinking alone. Another is having blackouts, not remembering things that happened while you were drunk.”
“I know what a blackout is.”
“Have you ever had one?”
“Once or twice. Not for a long time. In college, you know how that is.”
“If you’re admitting to one or two,” he said quietly, “then there were probably four or five. And not as long ago as you’d like me to believe, either.”
I swallowed the coffee black and hot, letting it scald my tongue. I used the time to think. There were two options here: I could throw Zack out of my room and give him hell for insinuating that I had anything in common with a self-professed drunk—or I could admit that I scared myself sometimes with my dependence on alcohol.
The truth was, I’d gone out with Rap determined to stay in control, to limit my drinks so I could keep my head and use the opportunity to interrogate the man I suspected of keeping so many secrets. Instead, I’d had too many rum-and-Cokes, I’d fallen apart, I’d been brought home and deposited in my room like a sack of potatoes by the guy I’d hoped to put on the defensive.
But I wasn’t ready to share all this with a missionary from AA.
“I need to get dressed,” I said, not looking at the big biker. “Could you please give me some privacy?”
“Sure,” he replied. He reached over and took my hand in his huge one. I took quick note that the hand belonged to the “Jesus Saves” arm. “If you ever want to talk, you know where I am.”
I nodded. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.
He left. I stood alone in the disheveled room, noting for the first time that I’d left my clothes in a pile on the floor, my purse overturned on the chair next to the little table.
I had no memory of coming back to this room. No memory of undressing.
No memory of Rap bringing me home.
Blackout.
For all I knew, Rap had thrown me on the bed and—
But who would want to? Who would want a motionless, sodden lump of drunken womanhood underneath him?
Bile rose in my throat. Tears started in my eyes.
I’d get a cab, head to the airport, get on a plane, and go back to Brooklyn.
I couldn’t face Rap again, not after last night.
I couldn’t face Zack again, not after the pitying look in his eyes.
And if Zack knew, then Ron knew.
I lifted the cup to my trembling lips and tried to stop my tears with lukewarm coffee.
It didn’t work; I was sobbing when I put down the cup and ran to the bathroom.
I ran a seriously hot shower and stood in the tub with my face directly under the nozzle. Hot water mingled with tears and mucus until the crying stopped. By the time I stepped out, I was rosy-red and a little more clearheaded. I ran cold water and downed three aspirin. While I was toweling myself off, the phone rang.
It was Luke Stoddard. “I think you and I should talk about this new development,” he said in his dark-chocolate voice.
For one wild, panicky moment, I thought he was referring to my drunken night with Rap. Then I guessed the real reason for his call.
“By new development,” I replied, after clearing my throat, “I take it you mean the fact that your prime defendant is in a coma.”
It was a tremendous relief to talk about something unrelated to my use of alcohol.
“Well, if I’ve only got one defendant,” Stoddard said, “then I’ll have to make my best case against him.”
“Or find out if he knows the things you thought Jan knew,” I replied, hoping to hell I’d made sense. I poured another cup of coffee and lifted it to my lips.
“I could take you to lunch,” the prosecutor offered.
I grabbed a glance at the bedside clock: 10:45. “Make it brunch in about twenty minutes and you’re on.”
“I’ll pick you up at your hotel.”
I surveyed that portion of my limited wardrobe that wasn’t lying in a rumpled heap on the floor. Linen and silk, I decided. Even if we weren’t going to court, it was important that I maintain the image of New York lawyer, big-city hotshot. I turned on the air conditioner and sat in front of it as I slid my last pair of clean panty hose over my legs.
Thinking of my former life i
n New York brought a sharp memory of old Pops, standing in the corridor of the Kings County Supreme Court, begging me not to abandon him.
I was due in Harry the Toop’s courtroom an hour ago. My head pounded and my stomach wouldn’t remain still. But I had to call and make my apologies. And hope poor old Pops wasn’t either warming a cell or fleeing a bench warrant.
It took several minutes and more than one operator to get me connected to the judge’s chambers. I explained the situation to the law secretary, who took the opportunity to read me the riot act for waiting until the last minute—no, an hour after the last minute—to make the call.
Pops was in the courtroom, sitting in the second row, hat in hand. That more than anything else was what got me the adjournment. He’d had the guts to show up, knowing he might be tossed in the can.
The irony struck me as I put the receiver down. When I’d first come to Toledo, I’d have given anything for an excuse to get on the next plane to Brooklyn, and now I’d begged for the chance to stay.
I knocked on Ron’s door to tell him where I was going. He and Zack were on their way out to the hospital to see Jan. “I hope she’s better,” I said, not meeting the eyes of either.
Stoddard drove a white Cadillac. I walked around to the passenger side before he had time to step out and open the door for me. I slid in, running my hand appreciatively over the dark red leather.
“What are you in the mood for?” he asked as he maneuvered the long car out of the parking lot.
I’d always considered eggs a good hangover remedy. And they were even better with hot peppers. “Do you know where we can get huevos rancheros?”
“There’s a great Mexican place out by the airport.”
“Okay.” I hoped he wouldn’t talk business before we started eating. I needed food and more caffeine if I was going to hold my own in a negotiation.
But what were we going to negotiate? Did Ron know things he could trade for his freedom?
If he did, he hadn’t told me about them. But that was nothing new; he hadn’t told me he and Jan were married either.
Perhaps my best tactic would be to act as if Ron had information Stoddard would want—so long as that information wouldn’t hurt Jan, if and when she woke up.
We passed neatly manicured suburban streets and shopping centers, movie theaters and fast-food joints. A blue sign with a plane on it gave the only clue that we were heading in the direction of the airport.
Had it only been two days ago that I’d landed at that tiny airport in the commuter plane from Cleveland? My head started to pound again.
Stoddard followed the blue airplane signs and finally took a right turn into a gravel parking lot next to a sprawling white clapboard restaurant. The name, Loma Linda’s, promised Tex-Mex, as did the spicy smell in the air. I perked up just getting out of the car.
The place was unpretentious; wooden tables and yellowing posters of Mexico on the walls. We ordered. Stoddard asked for a margarita, but I opted for more coffee. I dipped a tortilla chip into the salsa and smiled as my taste buds came alive.
While we waited for our food, I organized my thoughts. I liked taking the offensive with my opponents. I searched my brain for something I could say that would send a message to the U.S. attorney that I wasn’t here to be bullied, that I had weapons of my own.
But did I?
Before I had a chance to come up with one, Stoddard took away my initiative. “I told you I wanted Jan Gebhardt,” he said, “but I should have explained that I wanted her as a witness. I didn’t think she’d turn state’s evidence voluntarily, not with Harve Sobel turning her arrest into a crusade, so I was hoping you and your brother could persuade her to tell me what I need to know.”
“What you need to know about what?” A young woman in a Mexican peasant blouse and ruffled skirt set a plate of eggs, beans, rice, and soft tortillas in front of me. I nodded my gratitude and picked up a fork, grateful both for the food and for the chance to think.
Was he talking about Rap’s drug dealing? And what if anything did Ron know about whatever Rap was up to?
The refried beans were creamy and topped with melted cheese. I rolled them around in my mouth and let the rich, earthy flavor sink in. I lifted a forkful of egg and savored the hot chili peppers. A few more bites, and the fog lifted ever so slightly.
“Some of your friends were using the sanctuary movement, and the refugees, as a cover for making counterfeit airplane parts.”
“I know.” I forked another piece of egg and assumed a bland air that said nothing Stoddard told me was going to be a surprise. “Dana Sobel told me.”
The deep-sea smile showed white, even teeth in his dark face. “Did she also tell you she made a deal with Walt Koeppler back in 1982?”
One positive benefit of a hangover is that your reactions are dulled. This can pass for calm indifference if you play it right. I tried to play it right, looking into Stoddard’s brown eyes and asking, “So why wasn’t Rap prosecuted at the time?”
It was the right question. The smile left Stoddard’s face. “Because that was then and this is now.”
I forked another bite of egg as I deciphered this remark. “Nineteen eighty-two,” I murmured. “Reagan in the White House. Not exactly the most favorable climate for government regulation. So faulty parts in airplanes mostly flown overseas didn’t merit a full-scale prosecution.”
“The word came down from on high. Bury the whole thing. No negative publicity about plane crashes. Sawicki was called in and told in no uncertain terms that novice U.S. attorneys didn’t prosecute cases that belonged to the FAA.”
“And of course the FAA put the whole thing in the dumper,” I finished. “It’s only now, with a Democrat in charge and a few plane crashes that there’s a big flap in Washington about airline safety. So that’s why this has surfaced again.”
The deep-sea smile was back. “And guess who happens to be the investigator general over at the National Transportation Safety Board?”
I remembered now that I’d seen Catherine Sawicki on television. A fortyish blond with a taste for navy suits with white piping. A midwestern girl playing hardball with the big boys. And now she wanted vindication on the charges she’d tried to bring fourteen years ago.
“Who quashed the investigation? Who asked Sawicki to lay off?” I knew the answer. Rap, of course. Rap with his little deals and his secrets and his dirty money. I just wanted to see whether or not Stoddard would say the name out loud.
Now the smile threatened to eat me like the little fish I was in this particular pool. “A congressman named John Wesley Tannock.”
I tried and failed to dismiss Stoddard’s assertion. Wes and Tarky had made a point of reminding us that they weren’t involved in the sanctuary movement, but that didn’t mean Wes couldn’t have done a favor for a constituent. But would he really have been stupid enough to cover up for Rap?
I would definitely follow up on Stoddard’s information—after I went back to my room and lay down with an icebag on my head for several hours.
And never again, not in the history of time, would I take another drink.
But when Stoddard dropped me at the motel, Ted Havlicek was waiting for me in the lobby. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, “about that notebook Kenny was keeping.”
My head still pounded, but this was too promising a line of inquiry to be cut off. “Do you know where it is?”
He shook his head. “But I know where mine are. And maybe I wrote down something that might help us.”
“I thought reporters never kept their notes, in case some lawyer comes along and subpoenas them.” I was half teasing, but I also didn’t want to waste my time on a wild-goose chase when I could be sleeping off the rest of my hangover.
Ted gave me the crooked smile I remembered. He’d capped his teeth, but they were still engagingly off-kilter. “I was a kid, Cass. Those were my first-ever real reporter notebooks. I’d be willing to bet they’re in my mom’s attic.”
He
walked me to his rented Honda and opened the door to the passenger’s side. He drove along city streets, refusing to take the expressway. We passed dilapidated storefront blocks that were a sharp contrast to the spiffed-up downtown. Finally he turned on a street of large duplex houses and pulled up behind a pickup truck parked at the curb.
The senior Havliceks were out; a note on the kitchen table informed Ted that they were at the movies. Ted got a stepladder and removed the hatch to the attic, which was filled with table lamps, ceramic figurines, a bowling ball in a powder blue case, and several years’ worth of children’s outgrown clothes.
It took us over an hour, but finally I opened a cardboard box that had Central Catholic High School yearbooks on top. I lifted them off, resisting an impulse to find a particularly geeky picture of young Ted. Underneath, stacked neatly in two piles, were tan-colored steno pads.
“Bingo!” I cried, lifting one pile in the air and waving it at Ted, who sat on the other side of the room rummaging through a second carton. He raised himself to his feet and walked over to where I knelt. He took the stack from my hand and opened the top one. “Yeah,” he said, “these are from ’69, all right.”
I reached for the second pile. The top one contained an interview with Abrahan Murillo, leader of the migrant union. I flipped through it and set it aside.
The second one had Kenny Gebhardt’s name in pencil on the cover.
My breath felt trapped in my chest. Sweat congealed on my skin and a shiver shook me. This notebook was Kenny’s. That poor doomed kid wrote in this thing the very week he died.
“Ted,” I said, my voice sounding strange even to myself, “I think this one’s Kenny’s.”
He put down the stack of notebooks in his hand and leaned over my shoulder. “How did that get here? He never gave it to me.”
“Maybe he just shoved it into your desk at the Amigos Unidos office. Maybe he figured nobody would notice it there.”
I lifted the cardboard cover. This was the moment of truth. The moment when Kenny Gebhardt, dead almost twice as long as he’d been alive, would name his own killer.
Troubled Waters Page 18
