by Otto Penzler
Arnie read through everything in the pathetically thin folder. What he found provocative, although it didn’t surprise him, was that the investigation never came anywhere near focusing on any of Jeff’s friends who’d been at the track with him. There were no transcriptions of taped interviews from Frankel, Grant, or Ropa. The only one mentioned in any of the reports was Ropa, who’d been Vaughn’s roommate, but who’d been visiting his family in San Diego for several days on either side of the crime.
The investigation’s conclusion was clear: Vaughn’s murder was one of those tragic, random events that were all too common in big cities. The white boy should have known better than to walk through the ghetto at night. His killer was never caught.
• • •
Ropa was easy to find. He was listed in the phone book in San Jose. His wife, Stella, was home when Arnie called, identifying himself as a policeman. After assuring her that her husband was in no trouble, she told him that he worked as a paralegal for a law firm in Santa Clara, and Arnie could call him directly there.
They met in the Starbucks near his work at 5:15. Ropa was, from Arnie’s perspective, a bit of an unusual guy. His gray hair was pulled back off the face of an Aztec chief. Braided, it hung to his belt. A diamond earring gleamed on one earlobe. But he wore a business suit and spoke perfect, educated English. Like Les Frankel, he was probably close to sixty-five, but he was in better shape than Les had been, and much taller.
At Arnie’s quizzical glance, he volunteered that he was mosdy, still, a musician—a percussionist with Latin bands— but it didn’t pay the bills, so he did this law gig in the daytime. Had been doing it for almost twenty years. It beat the constant scraping. He kept up an easy patter until they’d gotten settled over their lattes, then said, “So, this is about Les? I’m sad to hear he died. I haven’t heard his name in years.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, it’s really more about Jeff Vaughn. I understand you two were roommates.”
The strong, dark face clouded over immediately. “Stella said I wasn’t in trouble. If I am, that’s cool, but we don’t talk anymore. I go across the street and get a lawyer.”
“You think you need a lawyer?”
“Everybody needs a lawyer, inspector. Maybe not all the time, though. That’s what I’m wondering about right now.”
Arnie held up a palm. “I didn’t lie to your wife. The reports indicated you were out of town when it happened. I don’t doubt it.”
“Way out. I split for a week to chill at the beach. Things were way too heavy up here.”
“In what way?”
Ropa’s mouth turned, but it wasn’t quite a smile. “In what way not? Jeff was my partner back then. Music. We had a band going pretty good, close to a record deal even if you believed the rumors, and we did. But then suddenly all this weird shit started happening, and Jeff and I were getting ready to kill each other—manner of speaking, okay?—so I thought it would be smart to give ourselves some space, you know? So I split.”
“Why were you going to kill each other? Over the music?”
“No, the music was always good. Something else.”
“The bet he didn’t make?”
Ropa met Arnie’s eyes, then looked back down. He seemed to notice his coffee for the first time, and blew on it, but still didn’t drink. “How do you know about that?”
“Evidently, the day made an impression on Les. We got to be friends at the track.”
This almost brought another smile. “He went back to the nags, huh? Me, I haven’t been able to bring myself. I figure God told me once loud and clear—keep the fuck out of here. Next time I’ll really hurt you. I didn’t want to find out how.”
“So, it was a bad day, huh?”
“The worst. Really. But that’s got nothing to do with Jeff getting killed?”
It was half a question, and Arnie let it hang there.
“I mean, did it?”
“I don’t know. I was wondering whether the thought ever crossed your mind. That Jeff got killed on purpose?”
Ropa tugged at his earring, twisted the little diamond a couple of times. “No,” he said slowly. “Any real suspicion of anybody, you mean? I can’t…”
“Who would it have been?” Arnie interrupted on purpose. Talk always flowed more easily than when it started and stopped and he wanted Ropa’s impressions as they occurred, before he could reflect on them.
“Who would who have been?” he asked.
“The person you might have suspected.”
“Well, no one, really. Except it was just a little strange…”
“What was?”
“Well, Peter…” Now Ropa sat back, perhaps surprised at what he’d said. He put his palms up in front of him. “I’m not accusing anybody, you understand?”
“Of course. You’re talking Peter Grant, though. Right?”
“You’ve been working this, haven’t you?”
“A little bit. What was weird about Grant?”
“I mean…” He shifted in his chair, pulled at his earring again. “His leaving. Just like, ’boom,’ adios, gone. And never another word.”
“Ever?”
“No. Which like isn’t the weirdest thing in the world. I mean, we were kids, coming and going where and when the spirit moved. But the four of us…” A shrug. “I don’t know.”
“You were better friends than that?”
Another shrug. “Maybe not. I can’t say I’ve thought a lot about it.”
“Not even when Grant started showing up on TV?”
“No. I was happy for him. He wanted success so bad, like we all did.”
“And what was his field? What did he want to make it so badly in?”
“Pretty much what he does now, or did when he started out. Now I guess he’s mostly a face, huh? But back then he wanted to be the world’s greatest investigative reporter. He was good at secrets, finding stuff out.” Now Ropa broke a small smile, remembering. “He was such an arrogant son of a bitch, even before he was famous.”
“In what way?”
“Well, you know. He had the same motto then that he uses now—’the cover story is always some kind of a lie.’ He could be a little abrasive about it, which was probably why he couldn’t get work in TV early on, but he was right often enough later. As the whole world now knows.”
Certainly, Arnie knew it. Peter Grant was the intellectual’s Geraldo Rivera. On his weekly magazine show, Moment of Truth, he’d broken more big national stories than 60 Minutes.
“Let me ask you one more question, Jose. Did you, personally, have any doubts about whether your friend Jeff made the bet or not?”
“No,” he said without hesitation. “What do you mean? Of course he didn’t make it. He…” But suddenly, the words ended. Ropa’s coffee cup stopped on its way to his mouth, which hung half open.
“I mean,” Arnie pressed, “you were living with him. Did he act funny in any way? Beyond being depressed as you all were about the missed opportunity?”
Ropa put his cup down, met the inspector’s eyes. “He was a different person,” he said. “That’s why I had to split for a few days. He was too weird to live with. He didn’t sleep for a minute.”
“And you thought it was because he’d lost all that money?”
“Right.” Then, defensively for his old friend, “He would never have done that.”
“What’s that, Jose?”
“Made the bet and then lied about it and kept the money.”
“I never said he did. I only asked if he acted different than usual.”
“He was just strung out,” Ropa said. He tipped up his coffee cup, tapped the cardboard side with his fingers. “He didn’t make the bet.” But something in the man’s manner reflected itself in his dark eyes and told Arnie that Mr. Ropa was no longer completely certain about that.
• • •
As a homicide inspector in San Francisco, Arnie was accustomed to gaining admittance when he wanted to talk to someone. Often, if
the person held some important position, he would go through the formality of making an appointment, although this wasn’t really necessary. One time, he’d had a problem getting with the head of one of the city’s biggest advertising firms. He’d called three or four times and Ms. Claire Patchett was always busy—until Arnie got the feeling she’d be busy for him until she retired. So he’d simply walked into her building, flashed his badge and identification, and the next thing Ms. Patchett knew, her extremely important presentation to the firm’s biggest client was interrupted and halted completely in absolutely medias res by Sergeant Arnold Knepp.
No hard feelings, but he was the police, after all. If he needed to talk to you, it would be on his time, thanks.
But now, in the foreign territory of Los Angeles and no longer working in any official capacity, he didn’t have the same prerogatives. For most of the first day, identifying himself to the receptionist as more or less himself, he learned that Mr. Grant was at least as busy as Ms. Patchett had been, maybe more so. By about 4:30, Arnie decided to modify his approach and told the receptionist that he was a San Francisco homicide inspector working on the ancient murder of a friend of Mr. Grant’s, a musician named Jeff Vaughn.
Mr. Grant called him back within fifteen minutes. Arnie, drinking a club soda and lime at Houston’s Bar in Century City, found the prompt return call somewhat instructive. The voice on the telephone sounded as it did on television—relaxed, avuncular, self-assured. “I’d understood that that case had been closed a long time ago,” Grant said.
“No. It’s still open. The murderer has never been caught.”
“I thought it was a random mugging.” A sigh. “Whatever, it was a terrible tragedy. So what are you looking into? Is there some new evidence? How can I possibly help? Of course I remember Jeff, but I barely knew him after all.”
The hairs stood up on Arnie’s arms as they often did when he got conflicting testimony. “Oh,” he said, “I had understood from Jose Ropa and Les Frankel that you four were more of a team than that.”
“Well,” the voice became softer, caressing, almost conspiratorial, “sergeant. It is sergeant, isn’t it? What did you say your name was again?”
“Knepp. Inspector Sergeant.” Arnie spelled it for him.
“Well, Inspector Sergeant Knepp, you know how that is. I’ve found as I’ve become more well known that people you knew when you were younger tend to remember you as closer acquaintances than perhaps you actually were. I don’t really see anything wrong with that if it makes them feel somehow a little more important.” He chortled. “But if I had a nickel for every girl who said we’d dated, maybe even really believed we had dated in some way, when I was single, I’d be a millionaire.”
Arnie forged ahead. “So you weren’t friends with Ropa or Frankel?”
“We were acquaintances, that’s all. I haven’t seen or heard from either of them since I moved down here. Why? Are one of them suspects?”
“In what?”
Grant paused. “Why, in Vaughn’s murder, I had supposed. That’s what you said you were investigating, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. But neither of them are suspects. Les Frankel, in fact, is dead. He died last week.” Arnie gave it a beat, then added pointedly. “At the racetrack.”
But this brought no clear response. “Well, I’m sorry to hear about that, of course. And don’t I seem to remember that Jose Ropa was out of town at the time?”
“Yes, he was.”
“Well, then. I’m afraid, inspector, I don’t see what all of this might have to do with me. What are you investigating, exactly? What brought this Jeff Vaughn case back up again?”
Arnie realized that he had come to an impasse. In his enthusiasm for the hunt, he realized that he hadn’t done enough homework, and didn’t really have any kind of workable plan. Embarrassed and frustrated, he mumbled a few platitudes, thanked the great man for his time, and asked permission to call him again if the case heated up.
“Sure.” Grant’s voice was warm, even friendly, a chuckle at the edge of it. “I’m always looking to catch up with a good story.”
• • •
“No wonder they retired me, Cal. I’m a disaster. I was so focused on getting to talk to him that I forgot that I really had nothing to say once I got him.”
“So you’re out of practice. Figure out what you’ll say when you call him next time. Do you really think he might have done it?”
“My guts say yeah.”
“Without any proof at all?”
“Yep.”
“Do you think you’re likely to find any?”
“After twenty-eight years? Doubtful.”
Cal hesitated. “I hope you’re remembering the upside of not working with the police anymore.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re not going to like how this sounds, but maybe you don’t have to follow all the rules so completely. Maybe there’s some bend room.” She let him live with that forbidden thought for a beat before she continued. “So why are you so sure it’s him?”
“That’s what I’m trying to get to. I know I’ve got something in the computer up here between my ears. What I’m having trouble with is retrieving the data, which used to come so easy.”
It was Cal’s turn to chortle. “No, it didn’t. You’ve always gone through this agony where you feel like you know something before you’re aware of exactly what it is. You’ve got the clue and it’s tangible, but you can’t identify it yet, that’s all.”
“So what did I do about it, back in the old days when I worked?”
“Well, you’d start by clearing your mind and often, if you recall, I’d play some small role in that.”
“There is a vague memory,” he said.
“But after that, you’d get up and just replay everything, doodling on the kitchen table, until it settled out. Then, often enough, once you had it, you’d come back in with me.”
“That would have been twice in one day, which I keep hearing is impossible for a man my age.”
“I don’t think so. In fact, I’ll bet you a hundred dollars it’s not.”
“Done, the minute I’m back home. But what do I do now with you in San Francisco and me in LA?”
She was silent for a moment. “You know those dirty nine oh oh calls people pay for? We can pretend.”
At the desk in his hotel room, he grinned. “You’re bad, you know that?”
“I know,” she said. “I thought it was why you liked me.”
• • •
Late the following afternoon, Arnie placed his next call to the studios of Moment of Truth. As soon as he’d identified himself, the receptionist cut him off. “Excuse me” he said, “but Mr. Grant said to tell you if you called that he is a very busy man and he doesn’t have time for people who aren’t truthful with him. He’s a man who puts great stock in the truth.”
“As in, ’the cover story is always a lie’?” Arnie asked.
“Exactly.”
“And how was I not truthful with him?”
“You told him you were in homicide. But he phoned a friend in the San Francisco police department last night to verify your credentials and discovered that you no longer work for them. Isn’t that true?”
Arnie knew that if he answered this question, the telephone call would be over, and so, most likely, his investigation. “I’d just like you to forward a short message to him. Can you do that?”
“No. He’s not interested.”
“He will be, I promise. Tell him I stole his picture of Step-pin’ Pretty.”
“You what?”
“You heard me. I’ve just come from his house up in Bel-Air, big old gated thing. Still, his staff seemed very impressed with my badge and let me right in.”
“So you stole… ?”
“Steppin’ Pretty, framed on his office wall. You got that? Write it down.”
“All right, but what is it?”
“A horse. Just tell him. He’s still got my numb
er, but I’ll hold a minute.”
This time, when Grant came on feigning a fit of high dudgeon, Arnie demanded that busy or no, he should come out right now, alone and in person, and meet him at the bar at Houston’s.
“You’ve got no business ordering me around,” the anchor said in a voice puffed with self-righteous anger. “If you in fact entered my home under false pretenses as you say, I’ll bring the police down with me and have you arrested.”
“I don’t think you’ll want to do that, sir. It would be better if we just talked.”
• • •
In person, Grant did not appear as imposing as he did on the air, although he was still an instantly recognizable face to everyone in the restaurant. He was shorter, for one thing, and without makeup looked weary and very much older than Arnie, though they were close to the same age. Still, it was cocktail time in LA, and Grant had to run a gauntlet of groupies and well-wishers before Arnie, at the far end of the bar, finally got his attention by holding up his badge. Since he was Peter Grant, there was no problem seating them so early in a far private corner of the main dining room, where no one else had yet been seated.
He began aggressively enough, his usual style. “You’ve got a hell of a lot of sand trying to pull whatever crap this is. I don’t think you fully understand who you’re dealing with.”
His back to the corner, Arnie faced the humming room. He came forward to within six inches of Grant’s face, his elbows on the table. “I’m dealing with a murderer,” he said.
Grant threw his head back in histrionic indignation. “That’s the most absurd accusation I’ve ever heard.”
“Maybe,” Arnie said, “but you wouldn’t be here talking to me if it wasn’t true. You wouldn’t have answered my call yesterday. You wouldn’t have checked on my credentials after our completely nonthreatening conversation yesterday.” Seeing that Grant was about to respond again, he stabbed a finger into the air between them. “Don’t talk. Listen,” he said with quiet authority. “I know that Jeff Vaughn lied that day. He placed the bet that he told you he hadn’t, the only winning ticket, and decided to keep all the money for himself.”
