by Dani Amore
He looked at the fire. “Benjamin was a good kid, but distant. Always coming and going without saying much. I think he ran in some strange circles and someone either took a liking or a disliking to him in a big way. End of story. So go sell your crap somewhere else, I ain’t buyin’.”
“You can’t give me any names? No one he would have had contact with?”
Collins shook his head. “Nope. Just like I told the cops back then over and over. The kid had been through a lot. His parents had died, his sister was pretty much off on her own,” he said. “And I wasn’t about to try to manage his life. I wasn’t his father. I wasn’t anyone’s father for good reason. I work all the time and I like to have fun. Could you imagine me giving anyone advice?”
“Good point,” I said.
There was a loud crash from upstairs and Collins sort of staggered to his feet.
“Goddamn it Sun Yi! If that was the étagère I’m going to spank your ass!”
He winked at me. “That’s probably her plan.”
Collins refilled his glass and waved me toward the door. “I know you feel like an asshole, and you should. But don’t go stirring all of this up again. You messed up. A good kid died. Get on with what’s left of your life. But leave the rest of us alone.”
I bit back a reply and walked ahead of him to the door, opened it and stepped outside.
He slammed it shut behind me.
Chapter Eleven
The little fridge in my office had a carton of fat free cream cheese and a few bottles of beer. I grabbed one of the beers, twisted off the cap and took a drink. Collins had pissed me off, no doubt. But it had really been wasted effort. I hadn’t learned anything new.
Still, I had to stick to my guns.
Follow the money.
There was no doubt that Tripp Collins had a pile of money the size of Montana. But hiring someone to kill your nephew without any obvious motive didn’t make sense. Most people kill for love or money. It looked to me like Tripp Collins had so much money that he was buying love. Unless the Asian girls were exchange students. Yeah, not likely.
I set the beer on the desk next to my computer, launched Google, and dug around the Internet. I was looking for stories about the mortgage issues in Detroit that Nate had mentioned regarding Tripp Collins’ company.
Plenty of stories had been written, but none of them were exclusively about United Asset Management. UAM was Tripp Collins’s company. The only time UAM was mentioned was when it was listed alongside a half dozen other financial companies guilty of pushing through bad mortgages with a recklessness that would put drunken tourists in Vegas to shame.
I thought about the Asian girls that I’d seen at the house. They looked young, but who knew? Maybe they were in their twenties. Heck, I see college kids now they look like they should be in elementary school. Getting ready for recess.
So what if Tripp Collins liked young women? That didn’t make him guilty of hiring a hit man. Maybe he was a pervert–
There was a knock on my door, which startled me. Nobody came to my office anymore without an invitation. Everything was done over the Web these days. Email was so much more anonymous than showing up at a private investigator’s office. And frankly most people preferred to avoid face-to-face conversations when it came to discussing a suspicion that your husband or wife was playing hide-the-knockwurst with a co-worker.
Since my last case I had changed my stance on having a gun handy. I’ve never been anti-gun. Quite the opposite, actually. But when my stint as a cop came to an abrupt halt I lost the desire to carry. Mostly because having a gun on my hip brought back a lot of memories from my limited time on the force. Days I mostly wanted to forget.
But after the Shannon Sparrow case, I had gone out and bought a Smith & Wesson 640, which used to be called a Chief’s Special. If I ever got the chance, I wanted to be sure to tell Ellen the name of my gun. It’s a small, compact revolver and holds five rounds of .357 Magnums. I’ve been to the range many times with it and I’ve gotten pretty good.
One of the reasons I bought such a small gun was that I wasn’t planning on telling Anna about it. I also planned to never bring it into the house. I would keep it in the office. But if I ever had to carry it and bring it home, I didn’t want her to notice it. So I bought a hidden holster that goes on the inside of my belt. It’s practically invisible when I wear it.
Now, I retrieved the gun from my desk drawer, slipped it into the back of my waistband and went to the door. There’s a peephole and I used it to look through.
I was shocked to see Amanda Collins.
I opened the door.
“Hello. Come in,” I said. She walked in, looked around at the place. My lobby area is not something I’m terribly proud of. Like I said, most of my clients never set foot here so I’ve admittedly made it look like a dentist’s office. There are a few pictures of sailboats, some police magazines on the coffee table, and a general air of disuse. I made a mental note to jazz the place up a little bit.
The door to my office was open so I led her back there.
“Do you want a cup of coffee?” I asked, feeling a little foolish about my bottle of beer sitting on the desk.
“Do you have another one of those?” she asked, pointing at the beer.
“Sure.” I grabbed one from my fridge, twisted off the cap and apologized for not having a glass to pour it into.
“That’s okay,” she said. She took a drink and looked at me.
Amanda Collins looked tired, but still very beautiful. She had on jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with a black fleece vest. Her hair was up, and she had on dangly earrings.
“You know, I debated long and hard about coming to see you,” she said. “About even talking to you. A big part of me didn’t want to.”
She had a very direct way about her. Maybe it was the quality of depth her voice possessed. Or her overall bearing. It wasn’t that she was staring at me, but I felt the force of a very strong personality.
“I understand,” I said. “And I appreciate you coming here.”
She nodded. “I’m a big believer in instinct. And when you came to visit me, I got the sense that you are who you say you are, in the sense that you really do want to find out what happened. And if this man turns out to be a contract killer, then you may have been as much of a victim as Benjamin.”
I hadn’t quite looked at it that way, and I probably never would.
“I do want to find out what happened, but it has nothing to do with me,” I said. “The police don’t consider my new information to be substantial enough to merit re-opening the case, apparently. Of course, I think they’re wrong. But in the meantime, I am going to pursue what I know is a viable lead.”
She drank a little bit of her beer, set it down and let out a deep breath.
“Okay, I can help, a little bit. For starters, Benjamin and I were actually closer than anyone knew.”
I hid my surprise. If there was one factor that everyone seemed to agree on, it was that Amanda had left the Tripp Collins’ home for good at sixteen and never looked back. All of the interviews had pointed to a complete lack of communication between herself and anyone else in Grosse Pointe.
“We messaged each other once in awhile online,” she said. “But that was it. We never talked via cell phone or email.”
That was true. I remember reading reports stating that if Benjamin used a cell phone, he had somehow deleted all traces of it. The boy had seemed to move through his world like a ghost. No friends. Not even acquaintances.
Same with his home computer. He supposedly had a laptop, but no one had ever been able to locate it.
“Initially, he just wanted to know why I left,” Amanda said. “And why I left so suddenly. But he already knew, really. We both did.”
“Why did you? Did it have something to do with Tripp?” I asked. I was a little uncomfortable asking, but since she had come here, I felt we were past the point where it would’ve been out of line. If Amanda wanted to help me
, she obviously wanted me to keep investigating. So I was going to ask the questions that came to mind.
“No,” she said. “A lot of people thought that, but it wasn’t the case. Tripp was fine, a harmless drunk. It was because of school. I hated high school and the girls were so mean and bitchy.” She picked at the label on her beer bottle. “You’d think they would have been more supportive after my parents died, but it seemed like just the opposite. I hated it there.”
There wasn’t even a hint of quaver in her voice. Amanda Collins was a strong woman.
“Benjamin hated it, too,” she added. “And he planned to leave as soon as he could. At least, that’s how it was when I was still around.”
I sensed an opening. “Did that change at some point?”
She nodded.
“A month or so before he died he sent me a message, saying that Grosse Pointe wasn’t so bad,” she said. “Her face still carried some degree of surprise. As if she still couldn’t believe it. “I was shocked. I asked him what made him change his mind.”
She looked away from me then.
“He said he had met someone.”
Chapter Twelve
He loved America. In all of its abandoned, depraved and mangled beauty. He was a hunter returning to the terrain upon which he had feasted so many times.
A question occurred to him. Had his idol seen America the same way? Had Keith Richards looked at America as a huge plump cow waiting to be chopped up into beautiful thick steaks?
He knew Keith had homes all around the world. The guitarist was probably the most famous rock star of all time. Of course he was a globetrotter.
The Spook seemed to recall an interview with Keith in his home at that time. It was in Massachusetts. But he also knew that Keith spent a great time in the Caribbean. He made a decision right then and there. On his next research trip between jobs he would make a point of really trying to learn how Keith viewed America. Mostly in terms of musical conquest. Did he see it as his greatest? Or just another notch on his Fender?
Traffic was light coming out of the tunnel into Detroit, and The Spook easily navigated his way onto Woodward Avenue. He didn’t have far to go.
Detroit was one of his best job markets. When he had left government work and gone freelance, his first jobs had been in the Motor City. Over the years, he had completed nearly two dozen assignments in Detroit, all pulled off with flawless ease. Detroit was a great city to be a person who killed other people for a living. There were so many murders and the police force was so understaffed, investigation was almost always minimal.
He did quite a bit of work in Chicago as well, and some in both New York and Washington, D.C. Especially once word got out about his background and his extreme professionalism. But Detroit and Chicago were his bread and butter.
He loved Detroit. The capital of the Rust Belt, they said. But it was a great driving city, mainly because there were very few pedestrians. No tourists at all. Try that in Boston or D.C.
It didn’t take him long to find the Woodward Athletic and Social Club. He parked the Buick a few blocks away on a busy street. He pulled off the second shirt tied around his midsection and used it to wipe the makeup off his face. He spit out the cotton balls that he’d stuffed into his cheeks, and ran his fingers through his hair.
In the rearview mirror, he looked a little crazy. His hair was still partially gray, but without Irv Klapper’s big glasses he looked a lot younger.
He rolled down the windows and left the key in the ignition. Even though his fingerprints had been altered so many times they no longer matched anything on file, he wiped down the steering wheel and door handle, the only things he had touched. By his estimation, the car would be stolen, stripped and abandoned in less than twelve hours. The gun he had stashed in the trunk he decided to leave. There would be no need for it now. He left the car, saw a garbage can across the street, crossed over and dumped Irv Klapper’s shirt, glasses and passport into the trash.
It was cooler now; the first real feel of fall was in the air. Some litter skidded down the street blown by the wind. A homeless guy pushed a shopping cart over the curb.
The door to the club was held open for him and he walked in. He nodded to the man at the front desk and headed straight for the locker room. The club was one he frequented occasionally when he was in Detroit, which happened to be at least three or four times a year. Some of his clients preferred to meet at the club, and it was easier if he was a member.
The locker room was empty when he entered and went straight to locker number 23. It was a half-locker, paid in full for two years and operated with a combination as opposed to a key. Which came in handy when you were forcibly removed from your belongings.
He keyed the combination, opened the door and pulled out the black duffel bag. Inside was a change of clothes, all dark colors and a second bag, a shaving kit. Inside the shaving kit was a wallet with a Michigan drivers license and credit cards in the name of Dave Mather. The Spook smiled. He always chose names of Old West gunfighters for his backup identities. Dave Mather was known as “Mysterious Dave” because he had large gaps in his biography that no one could fill.
In addition to the wallet, there was three thousand dollars in cash and a .22 magnum auto with a silencer. He grabbed the bag and a towel, took a long, hot shower. His wounds were feeling better and he was careful not to let the shower spray reopen them.
Afterward, he changed into his new clothes, unscrewed the silencer from the pistol and slipped it into a pocket of his jacket. Next, he stuck the pistol down the back of his jeans and threw Klapper’s shirt into the wastebasket in the locker room bathroom.
The remaining items in the duffel bag were three pay as you go cell phones with a charger. He put two in the other pocket of his jacket and kept one in his hand.
He walked out to the lobby, found a chair with an outlet nearby, plugged in the charger and then plugged the charger cable into the phone.
Once it had enough juice to power up, he dialed a number from memory.
It was answered on the first ring.
He smiled.
Someone really wanted to talk to him.
Chapter Thirteen
“That’s all he said.”
Amanda Collins shook her head. “That he’d met someone. And Grosse Pointe didn’t seem as bad. Which obviously led me to believe it was a Grosse Pointer he was talking about.”
She finally looked up at me, and I could see the emotions waging war inside her. But her face remained steady. She wasn’t going to cry like she almost had back at her home in Birmingham.
The next question was very difficult to ask, but I had no choice.
“Did you get a feeling if the person was male or female?”
She actually gasped lightly at the intrusiveness of the question. But the fact was there had been a lot of speculation about Benjamin’s sexual orientation. The young man had very few friends and a totally ambiguous social presence, so no one could determine his orientation. The night of his murder, his killer had adopted a very effeminate affectation. Had it meant anything? No one knew.
Amanda recovered immediately from my query. She had to know that knowing the gender of a murder victim’s possible love interest was very important to the case.
“I was about to ask why that mattered, but then I realized why you asked,” she said. “But the answer is no. I don’t know. Benjamin and I never talked specifically about his private life. And we certainly didn’t talk about mine. I can honestly say I don’t know.”
I believed her.
Unfortunately, while the information was intriguing, it really didn’t get me anywhere. It was too incomplete.
“Anything else you can think of?” I asked.
Amanda shook her head, drained the last of her beer and handed me the empty.
“Another?” I asked. She shook her head. “I really have to be going. I’m not sure if what I told you was much of a help.”
“It could potentially be a huge hel
p,” I said. “But we need to know more.”
“I know. The problem is I don’t know anything more. Which is why I never told the police about it. I figured it wouldn’t do any good on its own and I had nothing else to add. But I figured with you, if new information was coming in. Maybe you could make sense of it. Or connect it to something else.”
She got to her feet.
“I hope I can,” I said. “I’m not going to stop now.”
“If I think of anything else I’ll call you,” she said.
“Thank you for stopping by. It…” I stumbled a little bit for the right words but she saved me.
“It’s okay. I just want to make the person…” She seemed to lose the thought. “I just don’t want them to get away with it. It’s just not right.”
She turned and walked out of the office, closing the door behind her.
I waited a minute or two, then collected the empties, put them in recycling and locked up the office.
Sometimes I walked home from the office, seeing as how it was less than a mile away. But now I felt like driving so I went to the Taurus, fired it up, and drove down to Jefferson Ave. I followed Jefferson until it curved down to the lake’s edge and became Lake Shore Drive. I sort of knew where I was going but took my time getting there. Night was falling but there was enough light to give the surface of the lake a silver sheen, with the far edge of Canada framing the image like a bordered canvas.
I followed the water’s edge for nearly a mile before I turned off onto a street I knew all too well. The homes here were substantial, nearly all of them with circular driveways that featured a BMW, Porsche or Mercedes-Benz. A lot of fans of the German auto industry here, which was funny because more than a few Detroit auto executives lived in this area.
It didn’t take long before I found a place to park near the exact place where I’d handed Benjamin Collins over to his killer. I parked the Taurus, rolled down the windows and sat.
