Free Fall

by Robert Crais

  Riggens was wearing a baggy beachcomber's shirt with the tail out, but you could still make out the butt of his piece riding high on his right hip. He reached up under the shirt and came out with a Sig 9-mil and said, "Get your ass against the goddamned wall."

  I said, "Come on."

  Mark Thurman came in off the balcony and pushed the gun down. "Jesus Christ, Floyd, take it easy. He doesn't know what this is about."

  "He keeps dicking with me, he won't make it long enough to find out."

  I said, "Let me guess. You guys work for Ed McMahon and you've come to tell me that I've won the Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes for a million bucks."

  Riggens tried to lift his gun but Thurman kept the pressure on. Riggens's face went red to match his eyes and the veins swelled in his forehead, but Thurman was a lot stronger, and sober, so it wasn't much of a problem. I wondered if Riggens acted like this on the street, and if he did, how long he had been getting away with it.

  Stuff like this will get you killed. Thurman said, "Stop it, Floyd. That's not why we're here."

  Riggens fought it a little longer, then gave it up, and when he did Thurman let go. Riggens put the Sig away and made a big deal with the hand moves and the body language to let everyone know he was disgusted. "You want to do it, then do it, and let's get out of here. This asshole says she wasn't even here." He went to the couch and sat down. Petulant.

  Thurman sort of shook his head, like he couldn't figure Riggens out, like he had tried for a long time and was maybe getting tired of trying. He turned back to me. "My name is Mark Thurman. This is my partner, Floyd Riggens. We know she was up here because Floyd followed her up."

  I glanced at Floyd again. He was staring at the Pinocchio clock. "Maybe Floyd got confused. There's an insurance office across the hall. Maybe she went there."

  Floyd said, "Okay, she wasn't here. We're not here, either, you want to play it that way. You fell asleep and you're dreaming all this." He got up and went to the clock for a closer look "Hurry up, Mark. I don't wanna spend the day." Like a little kid.

  Thurman looked nervous, but maybe he was just uncomfortable. His partner was looking bad and that made him look bad. He said, "We called in about you and the word is that you're a straight shooter, so I thought we should talk."

  "Okay."

  "Jennifer and I are having some trouble."

  "You mean, this isn't official police business?"

  Riggens went back to the couch and sat down. "It could be, you want. We could have information that you been up to something. We could even find a snitch to back it up. That would look real good for your license."

  Thurman's face went dark and he said, "Shut up, Floyd."

  Riggens spread his hands. What?

  Thurman came to the front of my desk and sat in the right-side director's chair. He leaned forward when he sat and stared at me the way you stare at someone when you're trying to figure out how to say something you don't want to say. "I'm here for personal reasons, and they have to do with me and Jennifer. You want to pretend she wasn't here, that's fine. I understand that. But we still have to talk. See?"

  "Okay."

  Riggens went, "Jesus Christ, get on with it."

  Thurman's face clouded again and he once more looked at Riggens and said, "If you don't shut the fuck up, I'm going to clock you, Floyd." Enough's enough.

  Riggens frowned and crossed his arms and drew himself into kind of a knot. Drunk enough to be pissed, but sober enough to know that he'd stepped over the line. These guys were something.

  Thurman turned back to me and sat there, his mouth working. He was having trouble with it, and he didn't strike me as a guy who'd have trouble with a lot. He made a little blowing move with his lips, then laced his fingers and leaned forward. "We followed her because she's been pressing me pretty hard about some stuff, and I knew she'd try something like this. She's pretty strong-willed, and she gets a head on about things, if you know what I mean."

  Riggens made a snorting sound, then recrossed his arms and put his feet up on the little coffee table I have in front of the couch. I didn't like it, but I didn't say anything.

  Thurman said, "Jennifer and I have been going together since we were kids. I've been acting kind of distant with her for the past couple of months and I haven't told her why, and Jennifer has it figured that I'm mixed up in something. I know that's what she talked to you about, because that's what she talks to me about. Only, that isn't it at all."

  "No?"

  "No." Mark Thurman looked down at his feet and worked his jaw harder and then he looked up at me. "I've got another girlfriend."

  I stared at him.

  "I knew that if she hired someone, they'd find out and tell her, and I don't want that. Do you see?"

  I said, "Another woman."

  He nodded.

  "You've been seeing another woman and Jennifer knows something is up, but she doesn't know what. And you're trying to head me off so I won't blow the whistle."

  He nodded again.

  Riggens uncurled his arms and pushed up from the couch. "You don't need to know anything else. The word is that you're a straight shooter and we're looking for a break. It was me I'd slap the bitch down and move on, but he doesn't want to play it that way. Why don't you give the kid a hand?"

  I said, "Jesus Christ, Riggens, why'd you come along? Moral support?"

  Riggens said, "No one's trying to muscle you, smart guy. Everyone's playing straight up." Riggens jerked his head toward Thurman. "Tell him we're playing straight up."

  Mark Thurman looked back at me, only now there was a lost quality to his eyes. "I didn't want you telling Jennifer. When it comes, it's got to come from me." He was leaning forward so far I thought he'd fall out of the chair. "Do you see?"

  "Sure. I see."

  "It's personal. That's how it should stay."

  "Sure."

  Riggens said, "No one's asking you to turn down the fee. Just play it smart. Do us the favor and someday you'll get a payback."

  "But I can keep the fee."

  "No problem."

  I looked at Thurman. "Some right guy you've got as a partner, Thurman, saying it's okay for me to stiff your girlfriend."

  Riggens said, "Fuck you," and banged out. Thurman sat in the director's chair, not saying anything, and then he pushed himself up. He was twenty-four years old and he looked like a baby. When I was twenty-four I looked a million years old. Vietnam. He said, "You do what you want, Cole. No one's telling you what to do. But I'm asking you not to tell her what I said. I get ready, I should be the one tells her. Shouldn't I?"

  "Sure."

  "I just got to work this out, that's all I'm saying." Like he was in the principal's office, like he had been caught throwing eggs at the class geek's house, and now he was ashamed of it. He went to the door. Riggens was already down the hall.

  I said, "Thurman."

  He stopped and looked back at me with his right hand on the handle.

  "Why don't you just tell her?"

  He didn't answer. He stood there, sort of staring, like he didn't know what to say. Maybe he didn't.

  I said, "She didn't say anything to me about crime. She said that she thought you were seeing another woman. She said that she always knew you were that way."

  Mark Thurman went as red as Jennifer Sheridan when I told her that I hadn't been making a pass. He stared at me with the sort of look you'd have if you were in a hurry one day and backed out your drive without looking and ran over a child. Like someone had pushed an ice spike through your heart. He stared at me like that, and then he went out. He didn't close the door.

  I went to the little balcony and stood back from the rail and watched the street. Mark Thurman and Floyd Riggens came out of my building, climbed back into the brown sedan, and drove away. Neither of them spoke, as far as I could tell, and neither of them looked particularly happy. It was six minutes after one, and it looked as if my case was solved.

  I closed the glass doors
, sat on my couch, and thought about what I might say when I was inducted into the Detective's Hall of Fame. Perhaps they would bill me as Elvis Cole, World's Fastest Detective. Wouldn't Jennifer Sheridan be pleased. She could say I knew him when. At six minutes after one, Jennifer Sheridan would be sitting in Marty Beale's outer office, not expecting a phone call in which the detective that she had hired only moments before would crush her heart with one fell blow, service with a smile, thank you, ma'am, and the bill is in the mail. Of course, since I had made such a big deal to Jennifer Sheridan about her lack of proof, she might inquire as to mine, and I had none. I had only Mark Thurman's word, and maybe he had lied. People do.

  I put aside my thoughts of the Hall of Fame and called a guy I know named Rusty Swetaggen. For twenty-four years he drove a black-and-white in and around the city of Los Angeles, then his wife's father died and he inherited a pretty nice restaurant in Venice, about four blocks from the beach. He likes it better than being a cop. He said, "Rusty's."

  I made hissing and cracking noises into the phone. "I'm calling from the new car phone. Pretty good, huh?"

  Rusty Swetaggen said, "Bullshit, you got a car phone." Then he yelled at someone in the background. "It's the big-time op, making like he's got a car phone." Someone said something and then he came back on the line. "Emma says hey."

  "Hey back. I need to find out about an officer and I don't want him to know."

  "This guy active duty?"

  "Yeah. His name is Mark Thurman. He works a REACT team out of the Seventy-seventh."

  Rusty didn't say anything. I guess he was writing. Then he said, "Is this guy dirty?" He didn't like asking. You could hear it in his voice. You ride the black-and-white for twenty-four years and you don't like asking.

  "I want to find out. Can you do this for me?"

  "Sure, Elvis. I'd do anything for you. You know that."

  "I know. I'll be by in a couple of hours. That okay?"

  "Fine."

  Rusty Swetaggen hung up, and then I hung up.

  I took the shoulder holster out of my bottom left drawer and put it on. It's a nice brushed-leather Bianchi rig that cost a fortune, but it's comfortable, and it's made for the Dan Wesson .38 revolver that I carry. Stylish detectives often carry automatics, but I have never been a slave to fashion.

  I took the Dan Wesson out of its drawer and seated it into the shoulder holster and then I covered the works with a light gray cotton sport coat. It looks great over my black-and-maroon Hawaiian beach shirt, and is ideal for hiding firearms in L.A.'s summer weather. I took the Watkins, Okum, & Beale stationery out of my desk, put it in the inside pocket of the sport coat, then called the deli and asked them if they still had my turkey and Swiss on baguette. They did.

  I walked the four flights down to the deli, ate my sandwich at a little table that they have by the door, then left to find out whether or not LAPD Officer Mark Thurman was telling the truth, or telling a lie.

  Either way, Jennifer Sheridan wouldn't like it.

  CHAPTER 3

  Driving along Santa Monica Boulevard

  through West Hollywood and Beverly Hills is a fine thing to be doing in late March, just at the end of the rainy season. It was warmer than it should have been, with highs in the mid-eighties and mare's-tail cirrus streaking the sky with feathery bands, and there were plenty of men in jogging shorts and women in biking pants and Day-Glo headbands. Most of the men weren't jogging and most of the women weren't biking, but everyone looked the part. That's L.A.

  At a traffic light in Westwood I pulled up next to a woman in pristine white biking pants and a white halter workout top sitting astride a white Japanese racing bike. I made her for Jennifer Sheridan's age, but maybe she was older. The line of her back was clean and straight, and she leaned to the right, her right toe extended down to kiss the street, her left toe poised on its pedal. Her skin was smooth and tanned, and her legs and body were lovely. She wore a ponytail and bronze-tinted sunglasses. I gave her the big smile. A little Dennis Quaid. A little Kevin Costner. She stared at me through the bronze lenses and said, "No." Then she pedaled away. Hmm. Maybe thirty-nine is older than I thought.

  At the western edge of UCLA, I climbed the ramp onto the 405 freeway and headed north into the San Fernando Valley. In another week the smog and haze would build and the sky would be bleached and obscured, but for now the weather was just right for boyfriends tailing girlfriends and girlfriends hiring private eyes to check up on boyfriends and private eyes spending their afternoons on long drives into the valley where they would risk life and limb snooping around police officers' apartments. If Randy Newman were here, he'd probably be singing I Love L.A.

  I edged off the 405 at Nordhoff and turned west, cruising past the southern edge of Cal State, North-ridge, with its broad open grounds and water-conscious landscaping and remnants of once-great orange groves. In the prewar years before freeways and superhighways the valley was mostly orange trees, but after the war the orange groves began to vanish and the valley became a bedroom community of low-cost family housing tracts. When I came to L.A. in the early seventies, there were still small bits of orchard dotted around Encino and Tarzana and Northridge, the trees laid out in geometric patterns, their trunks black with age but their fruit still sweet and brilliant with color. Little by little they have melted away into single-family homes and minimalls with high vacancy rates and high-density apartment complexes, also with high vacancy rates. I miss them. Minimalls are not as attractive as orange trees, but maybe that's just me.

  Mark Thurman lived in a converted garage apartment in the northwestern part of the San Fernando Valley, about a mile west of Cal State, Northridge, in an older area with stucco bungalows and clapboard duplexes and mature landscaping. Though the structures are old, the residents are not, and most of the apartments are rented to college students or junior faculty from the university or kids out on their own for the first time. Lots of bikes around. Lots of small foreign cars. Lots of music.

  I parked across the street from a flat-topped duplex and looked down the drive. The sheet of Watkins, Okum stationery said that Thurman drove a 1983 blue Ford Mustang as his personal car, but the Mustang wasn't around, and neither was the dark brown cop-mobile. Still out fighting crime, no doubt. Or tailing Jennifer Sheridan. A chain-link fence ran parallel to the drive along a row of eight-foot hedges. About halfway back, a little wrought-iron gate ran from the fence to the duplex, cutting the drive in half. Thurman's converted garage was in the rear yard behind the gate, snuggled against the hedges. A set of sliding glass doors had been installed where the garage door used to hang and someone had built a little sidewalk out of stepping-stones that ran around the side of the place by the hedges. A curtain of vertical blinds was drawn across the glass doors and pulled closed. It was a nice, neat, well-kept place, but it didn't look like the kind of place a cop taking down heavy graft would keep. Of course, maybe Mark Thurman was smart, and the outward appearance of his home was just a dodge to throw off unsuspecting PI's. Maybe the inside of the place looked like Uncle Scrooge's money bin and the walls were lined with cash and bricks of gold. Only one way to find out.

  I got out of the Corvette, strolled up the drive, and let myself through the little wrought-iron gate. A young German shepherd was lying by the gate beneath the hedges next door. He watched me come and when I let myself through the gate he lifted his head. I said, "Woof." He got up and walked with me. Police dog. If Thurman came home I'd have to go over the fence. Hope he didn't bite.

  There were three young women lying on towels in the little yard that separated the duplex from the guest house. One was on her belly, the other two were on their backs, and the one nearest to me was up on an elbow, adjusting a radio. U-2. Nobody was wearing very much in the way of clothes, and you could smell the suntan oil. The one with the radio saw me first and made a little gasping noise. I said, "Hi, ladies. Is Mark around?" Elvis Cole, the Smooth Detective.

  The one with the radio relaxed and the other two lo
oked over. The one without the radio was wearing little round sunglasses and the one on her belly smiled. The two on their backs were brunette, the one on her belly a blonde.

  The one with the radio said, "He's at work."

  I glanced at my watch and made a big deal out of looking disappointed. "He said he'd meet me here. I guess he got hung up."

  The one on her belly said, "Are you a cop, too?"

  I said, "Do I look like a cop?"

  The three of them nodded.

  I spread my hands. "I'd do great undercover, hunh?"

  The one on her belly said, "I don't know. You might."

  The other two laughed.

  The one with the little round glasses covered her mouth and said, "Ohmygod, do you know who he looks like? He looks like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. Don't you think so?"

  I was liking the one with the glasses just fine. Maybe thirty-nine wasn't so old after all.

  The one with the radio said, "If Mark told you he'd be here, he's probably on his way. He's pretty good about that kind of stuff."

  I said, "I've just got to drop something off. You think he'd mind?"

  Radio said, "You could leave it with us."

  "Couldn't do that. It's business-related. And it's sort of a surprise."

  The one on her belly looked interested. "Evidence."

  The one with the little round sunglasses said, "Allie likes cops. She wants to see your gun."

  Allie slugged Sunglasses in the leg, and all three of them laughed.

  The one with the radio said, "Go ahead. Mark's cool. He keeps a spare key in a little Sucrets box to the left of the landing behind a plant pot."

  "Thanks."

  The German shepherd was waiting for me when I went around the side of the guest house, and followed me to the door. The Sucrets box and the key were exactly where Radio said they'd be. Some neighbors, hunh? I took out the key and let myself in. The German shepherd sat on his haunches and stared after me and whined. Helluva police dog, too.

  Mark Thurman's garage had been converted into a pretty nice apartment. The side door opened into a living room, and from the door you could see the kitchen and another door that led to a bedroom and a bath. A brown cloth couch rested against the west wall and a shelving unit stood against the north. The east wall was the glass doors. A CD player and a Sony TV and a VCR and about a zillion CDs were in the wall unit, but the CD player and the VCR were low-end Pioneer and neither was a bank breaker, even on a police officer's take-home. There was an overstuffed chair at either end of the couch, and a coffee table of bright white pine that matched the wall unit. He would've bought the set from one of those discount places. Imported, they would have told him. Danish. There wasn't a sea of gold coins that you could dive into, or mounds of money bags scattered around, but I hadn't yet seen the bedroom. One shouldn't jump to conclusions.