The Two Minute Rule

by Robert Crais

  Sanders nodded. Retired agents often took jobs with security firms or the smaller banking chains.

  Pollard said, “Anyway, I was told that LAPD was still running a case. You know anything about that?”

  “No. Why would they?”

  “That’s what I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “We’re not. They’re not. It’s a done deal.”

  “You sure?”

  “Run a case for what? We bagged’m. Marchenko and Parsons had no accomplices inside or outside the banks. We ran this thing, man—I mean we ran it—so we know. We found no evidence of any other party being involved either before or after the fact, so there was no reason to continue the investigation. LAPD knows that.”

  Pollard thought back over her conversation with Holman.

  “Were Marchenko and Parsons plugged in with the Frogtown gang?”

  “Nope. Never came up.”

  “Any gangs other than Frogtown?”

  Sanders pinched her donut between her thumb and forefinger, and ticked off the points she wanted to make on her remaining fingers.

  “We questioned Marchenko’s mother, their landlord, their mailman, some dork at a video store they frequented, and the neighbors at their apartment house. These guys had no friends or associates. They didn’t tell anyone—not anyone—what they were doing, so they sure as hell had no accomplices. And, except for a somewhat cheesy collection of gold necklaces and a two-thousand-dollar Rolex, they sat on the money. No flashy cars, no diamond rings—they lived in a dump.”

  “They must have spent something. You only recovered nine hundred K.”

  Nine hundred thousand was a lot of cash, but Marchenko and Parsons had hit twelve vaults. Pollard had done the math when she read the articles at Stan’s. Teller drawers could yield a couple of thousand at most, but a vault could net two or three hundred thousand and sometimes more. If Marchenko and Parsons scored three hundred K from each of the twelve vaults, that was 3.6 million, which left two and half million missing. Pollard hadn’t found this unusual because she had once bagged a thief who spent twenty thousand a night on strippers and lap dances, and a South Central gang who had flown to Vegas after their scores for two-hundred-thousand-dollar orgies of chartered jets, crack, and Texas Hold’em. Pollard assumed that Marchenko and Parsons had blown the missing money.

  Sanders finished her donut.

  “No, they didn’t blow it. They hid it. That nine we got was a freak scene. Parsons made up a little bed with it. He liked to sleep on it and jerk off.”

  “How much was their take?”

  “Sixteen-point-two million, less the nine.”

  Pollard whistled.

  “Jesus Christ, that’s a lot. What did they do with it?”

  Sanders eyed the remaining donuts, but finally closed the box.

  “We found no evidence of purchases, deposits, fund transfers, gifts—nothing; no receipts, no conspicuous consumption. We ran their phone calls for the entire year, investigating everyone they called—nothing. We worked that old lady—Marchenko’s mother, man, what a nasty bitch she is, a Ukrainian? Leeds thought for sure she knew what was up, but you know what? At the end of the day we cleared her. She couldn’t even afford to buy medicine. We don’t know what they did with the money. It’s probably sitting in a storage shed somewhere.”

  “So you let it drop?”

  “Sure. We did what we could.”

  The squad’s job was to bust bank robbers. Once the perpetrators of a particular crime were caught, the squad would attempt to recover any missing funds but ultimately its attention was turned to the other fifty or sixty crooks still robbing banks. Unless new evidence surfaced to indicate an at-large accomplice, Pollard knew the recovery of missing funds would be left to banking insurers.

  Pollard said, “Maybe LAPD is still running the case.”

  “Nah, we were in with Robbery Special every step of the way so we both hit the wall at the same time. That case is closed. The banks might have pooled to run a contract investigation, but I don’t know. I could find out if you want.”

  “Yeah. That would be great.”

  Pollard considered her options. If Sanders said the case was closed, then it was closed, but Holman’s son told his wife he was working it. Pollard wondered if LAPD had developed a lead to the missing money.

  “Listen, could you get a copy of the LAPD file on this?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “I’d like to see their witness lists. I’d like to see yours, too. I might have to talk to those people.”

  Sanders hesitated, then suddenly stood to make sure the office was empty. She glanced at her watch.

  “Leeds is going to kill me. I have to get going.”

  “How about the list?”

  “You’d better not let it get back to Leeds. He’ll have my ass.”

  “You know better than that.”

  “I’ll have to fax it to you.”

  Pollard left the building with Sanders, then went to her car. It was one forty-five. Her mother would be hammering the boys to clean their room and the day was still young. Pollard had an idea how she could find out what she wanted to know, but she would need Holman’s help. She found his cell number on the envelope and placed the call.

  18

  AFTER HOLMAN left Agent Pollard he returned to his Highlander and called Perry to let him know what was happening with the Mercury.

  “A couple of guys are bringing back your car. They’ll put it in the alley.”

  “Waitaminute. You let some other asshole drive my car? Where you get off doing something like that?”

  “I got a new set of wheels, Perry. How else could I get your car back?”

  “That bastard better not pick up a ticket or I’m making you pay.”

  “I got a cell phone, too. Let me give you the number.”

  “Why? In case I gotta call to say your fuckin’ friends have stolen my car?”

  Holman gave him the number, then got off the line. Perry was wearing him out.

  Holman walked around Westwood looking for a place to have lunch. Most of the restaurants he passed looked too dressy. Holman was feeling self-conscious about his appearance since meeting with Agent Pollard. Even though he had ironed his clothes, he knew they looked cheap. They were prison clothes, bought from secondhand shops with prison money, ten years behind the style. Holman stopped outside a Gap and watched the kids going in and out with big Gap bags. He could probably set himself up with a new pair of jeans and a couple of shirts, but spending Chee’s money on clothes bothered him, so he talked himself out of it. A block later he bought a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers from a street vendor for nine dollars. He liked the way he looked in them, but didn’t realize until he was two blocks away that they were the same style glasses he wore when he was robbing banks.

  Holman found a Burger King across the street from the UCLA main gate, settled in with a Whopper and fries and the instruction manual for his new cell phone. He set up his voice mail and was programming the list of numbers he’d been keeping in his wallet into the phone’s memory when the phone made a chiming sound. Holman thought he had caused the chime by pressing the wrong button, then realized he was getting a call. It took him a moment to remember to answer by pressing the Send key.

  He said, “Hello?”

  “Holman, it’s Katherine Pollard. I have a question for you.”

  Holman wondered if anything was wrong. She had left him only an hour ago.

  “Okay. Sure.”

  “Have you met or spoken with Fowler’s widow?”

  “Yeah. I met her at the memorial.”

  “Good. We’re going to go see her.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yeah. I have the free time now, so now would be good. I want you to meet me back in Westwood. There’s a mystery bookstore on Broxton just south of Weyburn with a parking structure next door. Park in the structure and meet me outside the bookstore. I’ll do the driving.”

  “Okay, su
re, but why are we going to see her? Did you find out something?”

  “I’ve asked two people if LAPD was running an investigation and they both denied it, but I think it’s possible something was going on. She might be able to tell us.”

  “Why do you think Fowler’s wife knows?”

  “Your son told his wife, didn’t he?”

  The simplicity of that notion impressed Holman.

  “Should we call her or something? What if she isn’t home?”

  “You never call them, Holman. When you call, they always say no. We’ll take our chances. How long before you can get back to Westwood?”

  “I’m already there.”

  “Then I’ll see you in five.”

  Holman hung up, regretting that he hadn’t bought new clothes at the Gap.

  When Holman stepped out of the parking structure, Pollard was waiting in front of the bookstore in a blue Subaru with the windows raised and the engine running. It was several years old and needed a wash. He climbed into the passenger side and pulled the door closed.

  He said, “Man, you got back to me really fast.”

  She tore away from the curb.

  “Yeah, thanks, now listen—we have three things to cover with this woman: Was her husband participating in some kind of investigation involving Marchenko and Parsons? Did he tell her why he left the house to meet your son and the others that night, and what they were going to do? And, in either of the above conversations or at any other time, did he mention Marchenko and Parsons being connected with Frogtown or any other gang? Got it? That should tell us what you need to know.”

  Holman stared at her.

  “Is this what it was like when you were on the Feeb?”

  “Don’t call it the Feeb, Holman. I can call it the Feeb, but I don’t want to hear that kind of disrespect from you.”

  Holman turned to stare out the window. He felt like a child whose hand had been slapped for chewing with his mouth open.

  She said, “No sulking. Please don’t sulk, Holman. I’m hitting this fast because we have a lot of ground to cover and I don’t have much time. You came to me, remember?”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

  “Okay. She lives up in Canoga Park. Take us about twenty minutes if we stay ahead of the traffic.”

  Holman was irritated, but he liked that she had taken the lead and was pushing forward. He took it as a sign of her experience and professionalism.

  “So why do you think something is going on even though your friends said the case was closed?”

  Pollard swiveled her head like a fighter pilot on patrol, then gunned the Subaru onto the 405, heading north. Holman held on, wondering if she always drove like this.

  She said, “They never recovered the money.”

  “The papers said they got nine hundred thousand in Marchenko’s apartment.”

  “Chump change. Those guys netted over sixteen mil in their heists. It’s missing.”

  Holman stared at her.

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “No one knows.”

  They climbed the 405 out of Westwood toward the Sepulveda Pass. Holman turned in his seat to look out at the city. The city stretched away from him as far as he could see.

  He said, “All that money is just…out there?”

  “Don’t mention the money to this woman, okay, Holman? If she mentions it, fine, then we’ve learned something, but the idea here is that we want to find out what she knows. We don’t want to put ideas in her head. That’s called witness contamination.”

  Holman was still thinking about the sixteen million dollars. His biggest single take had been three thousand, one hundred, and twenty-seven dollars. The combined take from all nine of his robberies had been eighteen thousand, nine hundred, and forty-two dollars.

  “You think they were trying to find the money?”

  “Finding money isn’t the LAPD’s job. But if they had a lead to someone who had knowingly received stolen money or was holding it for Marchenko and Parsons or was in possession of the stolen cash, then, yeah, it would be their job to conduct an investigation.”

  They were steaming north out of the mountains and across the Ventura Interchange. The San Fernando Valley spread out before them to the east and west, and north to the Santa Susana Mountains, a great flat valley filled with buildings and people. Holman kept thinking about the money. He couldn’t get the sixteen million out of his head. It might be anywhere.

  Holman said, “They were trying to find the money. You can’t let that much money just go.”

  Pollard laughed.

  “Holman, you wouldn’t believe how much dough we lose. Not with guys like you who we bag alive—you bag a guy, he’ll give it up if he has any left, trying to cut a deal—but the takeover guys like Marchenko and Parsons who get killed? One-point-two here, five hundred thousand there, just gone, and no one ever finds it. No one who reports it, anyway.”

  Holman glanced over at her. She was smiling.

  “That’s wild. I never thought about it.”

  “The banks don’t want losses like that in the papers. It would only encourage more assholes to rob banks. Anyway, listen—a friend of mine is pulling the LAPD file on this thing. As soon as we have it, we’ll know what’s what or we’ll know who to ask, so don’t worry about it. In the meantime, we’ll see what we get from this woman. For all we know, Fowler told her everything.”

  Holman nodded but did not answer. He watched the valley roll past: a pelt of houses and buildings covering the earth that reached to the mountains, cut by remote canyons and shadows. Some men would do anything for sixteen million dollars. Murdering four cops was nothing.

  The Fowlers had a small tract home in a development of similar homes, all with the stucco sides, composite roofs, and tiny yards typical of the post–World War II construction boom. Ancient orange trees decorated most of the yards, so old that their trunks were black and gnarled. Holman guessed the development had once been an orange grove. The trees were older than the houses.

  The woman who answered the door was Jacki Fowler, but she seemed like a coarse version of the woman Holman met at the memorial. Without makeup, her wide face was loose and blotchy, and her eyes were hard. She stared at him without recognition in a way that made Holman uncomfortable. He wished they had called.

  “I’m Max Holman, Mrs. Fowler, Richard Holman’s father. We met at the memorial.”

  Pollard held out a small bouquet of daisies. She had swung into a Vons Market to pick up the flowers when they reached Canoga Park.

  “My name is Katherine Pollard, Mrs. Fowler. I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

  Jacki Fowler took the flowers without comprehension, then looked at Holman.

  “Oh, that’s right. You lost your son.”

  Pollard said, “Would you mind if we come in for a few minutes, Mrs. Fowler? We’d like to pay our respects, and Max would like to talk about his son if you have the time.”

  Holman admired Pollard. In the time it took them to walk from the car to the door, the fast-talking frenetic driver had been replaced by a reassuring woman with a gentle voice and kind eyes. Holman was glad she was with him. He wouldn’t have known what to say.

  Mrs. Fowler showed them into a clean, well-kept living room. Holman saw an open bottle of red wine on a little table at the end of the couch, but no glass. He glanced at Pollard for some direction, but Pollard was still with Mrs. Fowler.

  Pollard said, “This must be really hard for you right now. Are you doing all right? Do you need anything?”

  “I have four sons, you know. The oldest, now he’s talking the big talk about going on the police. I told him, are you out of your mind?”

  “Tell him to be a lawyer. Lawyers make all the money.”

  “Do you have children?”

  “Two boys.”

  “Then you know. This is go
ing to sound terrible, but you know what I used to say? If he’s going to get killed, then please God let him get T-boned by some drunk-driving movie star with millions of dollars. At least I could sue the sonofabitch. But no—he has to get killed by some piece of shit cholo without a pot to piss in.”

  She glanced at Holman.

  “We should still look into that—me, you, and the other families. They say you can’t get blood from a stone, but who’s to know? Would you like a glass of wine? I was just about to have one, first of the day.”

  “No, thanks, but you help yourself.”

  Pollard said, “I’ll have one.”

  Mrs. Fowler told them to take a seat, then continued out to her dining room. A second bottle of wine was open on the table. She poured two glasses, then returned, offering one of the glasses to Pollard. Holman realized it was a long way from being the first of her day.

  As Jacki Fowler took a seat, she asked, “Did you know Mike? Is that why you’re here?”

  “No, ma’am. I didn’t know my son very well, either. That’s more why I’m here, about my son. My daughter-in-law—Richie’s wife—she told me that your husband was my son’s training officer. I guess they were good friends.”

  “I wouldn’t know. It’s like we lived two lives in this house. Are you a policeman, too?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Are you the one was in prison? Someone at the funeral said there was a convict.”

  Holman felt himself flush and glanced at Pollard, but Pollard wasn’t looking at him.

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s me. Officer Holman’s father.”

  “Jesus, that must have been something. What did you do?”

  “I robbed a bank.”

  Pollard said, “I used to be a police officer, Mrs. Fowler. I don’t know about you, but these murders have left Max with a lot of questions, like why his son went out in the middle of the night. Did Mike tell you anything about that?”

  Mrs. Fowler sipped her wine, then made a dismissive wave with the glass.

  “Mike went out in the middle of the night all the damned time. He was hardly ever home.”

  Pollard glanced at Holman, nodding that it was his turn to say something.