Chasing Charlie Chan - Special Edition: Includes Catching Water in a Net

by J. L. Abramo

  “Three zero. Ray said you were interested in finding out if Frank Raft was playing footsy with Jackson Masters recently. I told him I’d look into it. It won’t be easy. The County DA’s office is going to be tougher to penetrate than the Vatican because of the Simpson arrest,” Stephens said. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “I appreciate it, but don’t go out on a limb,” Jimmy said. “It’s probably nothing.”

  “But, if it is something, it could be tied into the homicide I caught yesterday. The woman did come out of the Masters’ mansion, so, it doesn’t feel like nothing. It is circumstantial. If Raft murdered her, it could have nothing at all to do with her visit to North Linden Drive. Raft could have been Jackson Masters’ bowling partner and it wouldn’t necessarily mean a thing. I suppose you could go out and ask Reginald Masters about the woman, why she was there. I doubt the LAPD brass would like me going into Beverly Hills to hassle the old man. He has a good deal of clout and let’s not forget his son was once Governor.”

  “Do you think Reginald Masters would even talk to me?” Jimmy asked.

  “I doubt it.”

  “That’s a great help. Maybe someone can tell us about the woman,” Jimmy said. “Give us something we can sink our teeth into. If Fellows will run the photograph, who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  Stephens rolled the car into the parking area in back of the newspaper office and both men climbed out.

  “And this is all about what, Jimmy? I mean for you,” Sam asked.

  “It’s about why Lenny and Richards were killed.”

  “Knowing who killed them isn’t enough for you, is that it? You can’t handle not knowing why. As Boyle reminds me whenever he gets the chance, motive isn’t everything.”

  “I admit it bothers me, not knowing why they were murdered. What bothers me more, what’s driving me is I don’t believe Lenny or Richards really knew why they were murdered. That’s what really fucking bothers me.”

  Pam Walker stood mute, directly in front of the door to Jimmy Pigeon’s apartment. Seth Cady stood to the left of the doorway, leveling the gun at her chest. He nodded and she raised her hand to rap on the door. She wanted to warn Jimmy somehow. She wanted to survive. She needed to alert Jimmy and she could think of only one way she might be able to do it and live to tell.

  “Jimmy,” she called, as she knocked on the door. “It’s Meg. Sorry I’m so late.”

  The sound of her voice made Cady cringe, he nearly squeezed the trigger of his handgun. He looked at Pam with murder in his eyes.

  She glared back at him and she lip-synched the words, He was expecting me earlier.

  In the apartment, Nate Archer sat frozen in Jimmy’s armchair. Red flags waving.

  He knew it wasn’t Meg at the door. That voice is not Meg’s, he thought, and the circumstance was all wrong.

  Meg was aware Nate was there, waiting for Jimmy to return. She had sent Nate over with the keys. If she had talked to Jimmy after speaking with Nate, had expected Jimmy to be there, Nate would have heard about it from one of them before now.

  No, it wasn’t Meg. But who was it and why was this woman claiming to be Meg Kelly?

  Nate softly placed the Dumas novel on the floor at his feet and quietly rose from the armchair. He looked over to the entry door, knowing it was unlocked. A baseball bat leaned against the wall at the doorway. He slipped out of his shoes and tried to imagine himself the world’s greatest ventriloquist.

  “C’mon in, Meg, it’s unlocked,” he called. “I’m in the kitchen.”

  Then he moved as silently as possible toward the front door.

  Pam was confused. She had tried her best not to sound anything like Meg. She had raised the pitch of her voice to further contrast Meg’s baritone. But the voice that replied was not Jimmy’s and she wasn’t sure what that meant.

  Pam looked at Cady for a sign, he gave it to her with a wave of his gun and two whispered words, Go ahead.

  Then he stepped behind her as she turned the doorknob and pushed the door in.

  The door swung into the apartment. Nate stood behind the door with a Louisville Slugger gripped in both hands.

  The woman walked in first. Definitely not Meg. She was staring straight ahead, unblinkingly.

  She looked as stiff and as fragile as an icicle.

  Then the gun, pointed at her head, less than a foot behind and the arm holding the weapon, coming into view from behind the door. Nate raised the bat and brought it down on the arm with all of his strength, swinging for the fences. The gun discharged. Nate heard a bone crack and heard the woman scream. Cady pounced on him and began beating him with the good arm.

  Nate went limp, lost consciousness. Cady hit him once more, for good measure, a jail yard roundhouse to the head. Cady turned to look for the gun. He found it. He found it in Pam Walker’s hand. He called her something she’d never been called before, growled like a wild beast and he started toward her. She squeezed the trigger, the shot deafening, the bullet knocking Cady to the floor. He tried rising, he growled again, a sound so vile and so terrifying she shot him again. And again.

  Hank Fellows was an easy sell.

  He would bump a display ad for a local restaurant from page two. Six inches, two columns. He could run the ad the following day.

  “Papa Luigi won’t complain,” Fellows said. “He owes us money. I can run the photo with a banner. Something simple like Do You Know Anything About This Woman? A few lines below the photo. Who should we name as a contact? LAPD?”

  “No, not LAPD and not the County Sheriff’s,” Stephens said. “And I wasn’t here today. Use the phones here at the newspaper to field calls. If you get anything on the woman before we do, let me know. Only me.”

  “You’ll do the same?” Fellows asked.

  “Absolutely, you’ll hear it first.”

  “Okay. Now beat it, I’ve got work to do,” Fellows said.

  “Can I use your phone?” Jimmy asked.

  “Make it quick.”

  Jimmy phoned Meg’s Café. Meg picked up.

  “Jimmy, where have you been? Nate Archer is up from San Diego. I gave him your house keys. He’s waiting there for you.”

  “I’d better get over there. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Jimmy ended the call and turned to Stephens.

  “Sam?”

  “What’s up?”

  “Do you have time to stop at my place before we head back to LA for my car?”

  “Sure, why not,” Stephens said.

  Nate Archer felt something cool against his forehead. He opened his eyes to find Pam Walker dabbing his face with a damp towel. He tried sitting up, felt dizzy, tried again, this time succeeding, using his arms for support.

  Pam was trembling.

  “He’s dead. I shot him,” she said.

  “Who was he?”

  “I don’t know. He was here for Jimmy. He grabbed me in the hallway.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Pam Walker. I was here for Jimmy also.”

  “Where’s the gun?”

  Pam pointed to the weapon, it was lying on the floor beside them. She wouldn’t touch it again. Nate took the towel from her hand.

  “Get out of here, now,” he said.

  “I need to see Jimmy.”

  “I’ll tell him. He’ll find you. You don’t want to be here when the police arrive and they won’t be long.”

  She didn’t argue.

  “Give this to him,” she said, handing him a business card, “tell him it’s important. Very important.”

  He glanced at the card. Jackson Masters’ card.

  “Go,” he said.

  Pam stood up, paused for a moment and rushed out of the apartment. She couldn’t look at Seth Cady’s body.

  Nate picked up the handgun and wiped it down with the towel. He struggled to his feet, moved over to the corpse, knelt and wrapped Cady’s dead hand around the grip and the trigger. Then he fired the gun once, into the wall behind him. He set the weapon on
the floor and crossed the room to the telephone.

  He dialed 9-1-1. An operator asked him to hold. Before she came back on the line there was pounding on the door with an admonition, “Santa Monica Police, open up and stand away.”

  “It’s unlocked,” Nate said. “I’m unarmed and I am well away from the door.”

  Two SMPD uniforms stepped in, weapons drawn.

  Nate stood near the telephone, arms raised high above his head. Feeling dizzy again. One officer pointed a gun at Nate. The other stared down at Seth Cady’s body. Into Cady’s eyes, wide open, filled with surprise.

  Nate made eye contact with the officer covering him. He was older, calmer. His arm, pointing the gun, steady.

  Nate might have felt relieved, if his head weren’t spinning.

  “Self-defense,” Nate said.

  “Save it,” said the older officer. “Tommy, call this in. Use the car radio. Homicide, try to find Barnum, the ME and crime scene techs. Go.”

  The younger uniform tore his eyes from the corpse and hurried out.

  “I need to sit,” Nate said. “I feel faint.”

  “Go ahead, take it slow.”

  Nate Archer collapsed onto the sofa.

  Sam Stephens pulled the car up to the curb opposite Jimmy’s apartment building. Two SMPD patrol cars sat in front of the building entrance. Jimmy watched Detective John Barnum walk into the building lobby. An ambulance siren screamed in the near distance.

  “What the fuck is all this?” Stephens said.

  “It has all of the characteristics of a bona fide disaster,” Jimmy said, jumping from the vehicle.

  Two hours later, Jimmy, Nate and Sam were left alone in the apartment. The dead body was gone. Barnum and his men were gone. Jimmy was mopping blood from the carpet.

  Pam Walker had not been mentioned while Barnum and his men were there.

  Cady was identified as a recently released convict. No one there connected him to Jimmy, except Jimmy himself.

  Roger Rollins would have known why Cady had come; Ray Boyle could have guessed. Jimmy saw it in Cady’s dead eyes. Cady had come thinking about settling the score. Jimmy knew it never worked that way.

  It would go down as a random break in. Armed robbery.

  Nate Archer had been waiting for Jimmy to return. He heard the sound of someone trying to break in and he moved toward the door. Cady entered, he saw Nate and he took a shot that missed. Nate grabbed the baseball bat, pummeled Cady’s arm, the gun discharged again and it dropped to the carpet. There was a struggle for the gun. Nate prevailed, Cady attacked, Nate pulled the trigger...three times.

  The forensics team found five slugs; three in Cady’s chest, one in the wall, one in the floor. Barnum did not care for the story, but the victim was a lifelong felon, just out of prison, violating parole, caught breaking and entering with a loaded weapon. Nate Archer was a well-respected investigator and John Barnum was very anxious to get back home to Father’s Day festivities.

  Barnum signed off on Nate’s testimony.

  “I thought it best to let Pam go,” Nate Archer said, more to Stephens, as if Sam, the law enforcer, needed an explanation or an apology for breaking the law. “It made no difference, he would have killed us both.”

  “Ray Boyle is going to love this one,” Stephens said, his way of foregoing judgment.

  “We should get moving, Jimmy, to see her, Pam,” Nate said. “She told me it was very important.”

  “Did she say what it was about?” Jimmy asked.

  “I think it’s about this,” Nate answered, handing the business card to Jimmy.

  “Jackson Masters. You want in on this, Sam?”

  “I’ll leave you to it. I’m way overdue at home. My wife chased me out, but I don’t think she meant it to be permanent. Can you get back to your car?”

  “I have my car,” Nate said. “We’re covered.”

  “Watch your backs and keep me in the loop.”

  Stephens left.

  Minutes later, Jimmy and Nate took off to speak with Pam Walker.

  JACKSON MASTERS

  Jackson Masters was at his desk early. Another nearly sleepless night, tossing, turning, his wife bothered by his restlessness, her complaining, intensifying his uneasiness, because her concern was about her, not him.

  Reaching downtown, the Criminal Courts Building over-run with media, the double homicide in Brentwood, cameras everywhere, microphones, questions called out for which he had no answers, hounds, barking up the wrong tree.

  At his desk, staring at the telephone, expecting it to ring, expecting the worst. Toying with a thought, thinking about grabbing the receiver before the phone rang. Call the old man, tell the old man it wasn’t over, it would never be over.

  The joke was Jackson Masters had no idea, no clue who the woman had been. How she had scared the old man. The old man who, in Jackson’s experience, had never shown fear. Never. And when his grandfather demanded his help, insisted on his loyalty, no questions asked, he had acquiesced, with no hesitation, not so much to honor his grandfather, but to protect his father who had somehow, mercifully, been passed over, been spared. If he had to protect the old man, to spare his father, he would.

  That was the joke. To have come so far, to have come so close, headed for big things. The head DA’s office, a desk in the Governor’s Mansion or a seat in the Senate. Only to be stopped cold, doomed to go down, fall, alone or doomed to keep clawing at the walls of the pit, deal with another accuser, deal with Pam Walker, try to breathe again before another pointing finger jabbed him, left him breathless.

  He couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do it. He would call the old man. Tell the old man he was defeated. He would throw in the towel. Keep the old man out of it. Fall on the sword.

  Masters reached for the telephone. Too late. It rang angrily.

  Pam Walker, calling for a meeting, suggesting how many reasons he might need to give her to keep quiet about Frank Raft. Twenty thousand reasons.

  He agreed to meet her.

  Pam Walker placed the receiver down.

  Nate Archer switched off the tape recorder.

  “I don’t like it,” Jimmy said.

  They were at Jimmy’s office. Pam made the phone call, suggested a modest twenty thousand dollars and arranged to meet Masters at a coffee shop in Westwood. One hour.

  “What’s not to like?” Nate asked.

  “We could be putting Pam in danger.”

  “We’ll be right there. It’s a public place.”

  “Let’s use this tape. Confront him with the telephone conversation.”

  “There’s nothing here,” Nate said. “He hardly said a word. We need him to hand over the cash, to admit what the money is for. Pam will be wired, we’ll hear every sound. We’ll have some real ammunition.”

  “Masters is one of the smartest lawyers in the state,” Jimmy said. “It’s entrapment. He’ll know we can’t use it against him in court.”

  “It’s not about court. It’s about innuendo and the reputation of his family. The man is terrified that his name and the name Frank Raft show up in the same sentence. He tells us about Raft or we throw it to the press. Or we threaten to bring it to his father, the Governor.”

  “I still don’t like it,” Jimmy said, up against the ropes, but not ready to give up the argument.

  “I need to do this, Jimmy,” Pam said.

  That was the argument Jimmy knew he couldn’t win.

  “We have state of the art equipment right here in this office. Lenny only used the very best,” Nate said. “We will get every syllable, every sigh.”

  “What if Pam can’t get him to talk?”

  “She’ll have to bluff,” Nate said.

  “Bluff?”

  “Claim Raft told her more than he did. Pam?”

  “Yes, Nate?”

  “Can you lie with a straight face?”

  “I want to keep the twenty thousand,” she said.

  Jimmy looked at her with disbelief and disappointment. “Pam,
” he said, “that isn’t possible.”

  “I’m kidding, Jimmy,” she said.

  “There you go,” said Nate. “Let’s get you wired up. You’ll need to remove your blouse.”

  “Sure I will.”

  An espresso bar downtown.

  Jackson Masters at a small table, Pam Walker seated opposite.

  A shopping bag on the floor at their feet.

  Jimmy Pigeon and Nate Archer, sitting in a car across the street. Nate wearing headphones, turning dials, fine tuning the equipment, recording every word.

  A short meeting. Pam doing most of the talking before leaving with the shopping bag, filled with cash, walking to the street corner. Nate and Jimmy arriving moments later to pick her up. In the car, reviewing what they had on tape.

  Masters: What do you want?

  Walker: Compensation.

  Masters: What does it have to do with me?

  Walker: Detective Frank Raft enlisted me to help him in an investigation he claimed he was doing for the DA’s office, specifically for you.

  Masters: He said he was working for me?

  Walker: Yes. He showed me his Sheriff’s ID and he gave me your business card, to sell his case. Look. Raft used me, and he hurt me. I want to get out of LA, that’s all. I can use some cash to get started. I don’t know what you had to do with him and I don’t care. The bastard is dead, he was a one man crime wave; and whether you’re involved or not, I’m sure you would rather avoid any speculation.

  Masters: How do I know you won’t bother me again?

  Walker: Because I won’t.

  Masters: I’m going to leave. Wait a few minutes before you get up to go. Don’t forget your shopping bag.

  “Well?” Pam asked.

  “You did good, Pam,” Nate said.

  “Was it good enough?” she asked.

  “It will have to be,” Jimmy said. “What now, Nate?”

  “We play the tape for Masters, clue him to the woman’s photograph in this morning’s Santa Monica Outlook, tell him our next move will be a trip to visit his father. Then we cross our fingers.”