“Yessir, I understand.”
“I realize,” he said, “that my confidences before the fact and after the fact tonight might well make professional problems for you—conflicts of interest and duty. But—” He lifted a blue-veined hand, then let it fall helplessly back on the counterpane. “But I don’t have a choice. I have to trust someone. I need someone beyond my immediate circle, an officer of the law. You.”
“Yes. I know. I’m—I’m flattered, sir, that you trust me.”
“Well,” he said, “I’m glad you feel that way, Lieutenant. In honesty, though, I must tell you that I’d rather we weren’t having this little talk.” Once more he smiled, this time more successfully.
“Yes—” I answered his smile. “I understand.”
For a moment he lay motionless, head heavy against the pillow, eyes closed, mouth slack, hands as still as a dead man’s laid out in his coffin. In the silence, I heard the sound of a siren from the street far below. Did the sound have anything to do with me? At my belt, my electronic pager was switched off. I was on my own time—alone with Donald Ryan, a fading, frightened American institution.
Finally he opened his eyes and said, “Tell me what you know, Lieutenant. Tell me what you know and what you suspect.”
Friedman and I hadn’t had a chance to decide how much I should tell him without checking with Dwyer first, privately. So, walking down the corridor with my FBI escort, I’d had to consider all the possibilities. I’d decided to tell Ryan all of the facts but none of the speculation.
“Do you know who killed Juanita?” he asked. His voice was neutral, his eyes blank. He was inert, totally unresponsive. Was he using all his energy to keep himself together? Or instead was he making a performer’s effort to keep his misgivings from showing?
“We have a suspect,” I said. “But frankly, I don’t think I should go into detail until I’ve talked to my superior officers.”
He nodded, moving a hand in indifferent acknowledgment of my point, as if he wasn’t really curious about the suspect’s identity. Was he acting again? Did he realize that his bodyguard was the prime suspect? Looking at him closely, I couldn’t decide. So I tried to probe deeper. “I’ve interrogated several people since Richter first called me. I’ve talked to Byron Tharp, the victim’s brother. And I’ve talked to—” I hesitated, taking a deep breath. The hard part was next: “And I’ve talked to your wife and your daughter, trying to find Frederick Tharp. That was before I knew his identity.” I paused for a reaction. This time I saw him wince, as if he’d felt a small pain but nothing more. Instead, he allowed his eyes to slowly, deliberately close. To myself, I smiled. In all the interrogations I’d conducted over the years, I couldn’t remember anyone simply closing his eyes to avoid revealing telltale emotion. Senator Ryan had scored a first.
“Also,” I said, “we were in touch with the city hall in Santa Barbara. We understand that Juanita Tharp had a baby, Frederick Tharp, twenty-six years ago. Our information indicates that she—” I breathed deeply before plunging off the precipice: “She believed that you were the baby’s father. We know that her brother asked you for money to support the mother and child. The brother says that, in fact, he’s been getting money from you all these years. He says the payments were approved by Mrs. Bayliss and routed through a Swiss bank. Of course, that’s speculation on his part.
“What’s not speculation, though, is the fact that the baby, Frederick Tharp, died two weeks after he was born.” Again I broke off, watching his face for some sign of emotion. Again I was disappointed. With eyes closed, mouth compressed, his motionless, colorless face could have been a death mask.
“Then about a year later,” I went on, “Mrs. Tharp was given another baby to raise, according to Byron Tharp. We don’t have a birth certificate for that baby. But we do know that he was raised as Frederick Tharp. And we also know that Mrs. Tharp and the baby were supported by the same bank account in Switzerland.”
This time, I decided to wait until he reacted. The seconds dragged by while the face on the pillow remained as before: eyes closed, motionless, silent. Then I saw his lips move.
“The birth certificate is in Bermuda,” he said. “The name is—” For a final moment he hesitated, then plunged off his own private precipice.
“The name is Potter,” he whispered. “Donald Potter.” As he spoke, still with his eyes closed, the pale skin of his face seemed to tighten across the skull beneath. At his temple a vein throbbed.
“Potter?” I asked. “Whose name is that?”
“It’s Katherine’s maiden name,” he breathed.
Donald Potter—his name and hers, given to their bastard child.
I realized that my stomach had suddenly gone hollow. Because, incredibly, I had discovered a secret that could make me the master of Donald Ryan. I held power over one of the most powerful men in the world.
“Katherine Bayliss’s child,” I said. “And yours.”
His head moved, silently nodding. Then, as if to formally acknowledge the parentage, he whispered, “Yes. Her child. And mine.”
“Mr. Ryan—” I waited until he finally opened his eyes. Unknowingly, he was preparing himself to receive the final blow. “Mr. Ryan,” I repeated, “I’ve just come from Golden Gate Park. I—” My throat closed. Suddenly, inexplicably, I was afraid. Was it because the statement I was about to make could cause a heart attack—could kill him? Until that moment, the risk hadn’t seemed real.
But I’d given myself no choice. I had to finish it.
“I have to tell you, sir, that your son is dead. He was shot about eight o’clock this evening.”
His eyes were expressionless; his face revealed nothing. For a long moment we sat motionless, staring silently at each other. Until, finally, I saw his eyes fill with tears.
“I made so many mistakes,” he said. “All my life, I’ve made mistakes—terrible, heartbreaking mistakes. But there was never anyone to tell me. Even now they don’t tell me. My father told me. But he was an arrogant man. He wasn’t interested in knowing right from wrong, only what was expedient. And I didn’t care either. Not until I got sick. And then—now—it’s too late.” Slowly, sadly, he shook his head. “Too late,” he repeated.
“I hate to do this to you, sir,” I said. “I hate to put you through this. It’s a—a risk, considering your health. I realize that it’s a risk.”
He blinked against his tears and raised a trembling hand to wipe at his eyes. Then, unexpectedly, his mouth twisted into an exhausted smile. “No,” he said, “it’s not a risk. There comes a time, Lieutenant, when lies are the only risk. And that’s where we are now. This is the time for truth.”
“Then I’d like to talk to Lloyd Eason and Katherine Bayliss,” I said, catching his eye as I spoke. “I’d like to get the truth from them. And I’d like to talk to them now. Right now. Tonight.”
Once more he slowly shook his head. “It’s impossible, Lieutenant. They aren’t here. That’s why I sent for you. They’re both gone, and I’m worried. I want you to help me find them.”
“Then you’d better tell me all you know, Senator. You’d better tell me everything.”
“Yes—” He allowed his eyes to close. I saw him nod, as if he’d made some silent agreement with himself. At last he opened his eyes. His voice was steadier as he said, “Lloyd and Katherine are the only ones I really trust, as you know. Katherine and I—” He smiled. “We go way back. We understand each other. It was a mistake for her to give the baby away. I didn’t want her to do it. I wanted her to raise it as her own. But in those days she was just as intoxicated by power as I was. She knew where I was going, and she wanted to go along—all the way. And she knew that with the baby, it would have been impossible. So we decided to give the baby to Juanita to raise. I didn’t realize how neurotic Juanita was, of course.”
“Did Katherine keep in touch with the boy?”
He shook his head. “No. Not really. She never saw him, except over the schoolyard fence, that sort
of thing. And of course she told me about him.”
“You must have both suffered when he started to go bad.”
“Katherine suffered,” he said. “I didn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever suffered for someone else’s troubles. Not until now.”
“Now?”
“Tonight,” he answered. “Now. I’m suffering now. Finally.”
For a moment I didn’t answer. Then, quietly, I asked, “Did Eason know about Frederick—or Donald?”
“He knew about Juanita and her child—Frederick. But he didn’t know that Frederick died. Initially, before Frederick was born, Lloyd dealt with Byron Tharp, when Tharp was being difficult. But after that Katherine handled everything. Which is why it made sense, we thought, to give the baby to Juanita. Katherine knew she could handle Juanita, you see.”
“What was Katherine’s reaction when she learned that Frederick—or Donald—was threatening you?”
“She was disturbed, naturally. As I was. However—” He drew a slow, regretful breath. “However, we both realized that a danger to me might exist if the threats were real. We realized that I had to protect myself.”
“How did Frederick—Donald—discover that you were his father?”
“I have no idea, Lieutenant. Perhaps from his mother’s ravings.”
“Let’s get back to tonight, Senator. You say you want me to help you. How?”
“This afternoon,” he said, “we heard from Frederick again.” He waved a hand. “That’s how I think of him, as Frederick.”
“You say ‘we.’ Who actually took the call?”
“Katherine took it from Ferguson. Those are the new orders, you see. Any communications from Frederick go to Ferguson, and then to Katherine, and finally to me.”
I nodded. “I see. What did he say?”
“He was beside himself. We’d killed his mother, he said, and then we’d tried to kill him. I gather that the police chased him but couldn’t catch him.”
“That’s right,” I answered ruefully.
“He said that we were to deliver the money tonight. Either that or he’d kill me tomorrow at the ceremony. He said that even if he failed and was captured, I’d be the loser because the story of his parentage would come out. He knew it, and I knew it too. He had me in a vise.”
“So Eason handled the payoff,” I said. “Is that it?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Ostensibly, he was going to work with the FBI. But actually, of course, he couldn’t.”
“So he left with the money. He was going to Golden Gate Park to meet Tharp.”
He didn’t answer. But his eyes answered for him, revealing the terrible, mortal dread he must feel, facing the truth.
“Lloyd Eason killed him, Mr. Ryan,” I said, speaking quietly, regretfully. “And he probably killed Juanita, too. He thought he was protecting you, saving your reputation.”
“And maybe he was,” he whispered. “Maybe he was. We’ll never know, will we?”
“Did Eason have the money when he left? The whole million dollars?”
He nodded. “Yes. It was collected secretly over the last two days. The FBI thought we were only collecting twenty thousand. But Katherine got the rest. It wasn’t too difficult, actually. A million dollars isn’t as much as it was just a few years ago.”
“Have you heard from Eason since he left the hotel?”
“I haven’t heard from him,” he answered. “But about nine o’clock he called Katherine. He wanted her to meet him. He told her something had gone wrong and he needed help.”
“Where was she to meet him?”
“Somewhere on the Embarcadero. Pier 3.” He paused, then said, “Katherine was upset. She was as upset as I’d ever seen her. She was trying to control it. She’s a very controlled person, you know. A very cold, unfeeling person, some think. But—” He sighed deeply. “But I know better.”
“Did she know that her—that Frederick, or Donald, had been killed?”
“If she knew,” Ryan answered, “she didn’t tell me.”
I glanced at my watch. The time was eleven-fifteen. She’d been gone for more than two hours.
“I’ll see what I can do, Senator. I’ll see what I can find out, and I’ll try to help you. But I must tell you, sir—” I rose to my feet. “I must tell you that I’ve got my duty, where the law’s concerned. There’s a limit to how much I can help you.”
I saw a slow, sad smile tug at his pale lips. “I envy you your duty, Lieutenant. I envy you its clarity and its simplicity. I used to think, all these years, that I was acting out of a sense of duty. But it seems that I was wrong.”
“I don’t think you were wrong, Senator. I think we owe you a lot. All of us.” But, even as I said it, I knew I didn’t mean it. I was doing what they all did: I was telling him what he wanted to hear, to make myself feel more important for having told him.
He didn’t reply but only nodded. He didn’t believe it either. Not any more.
Thirty-one
“I HOPE WE AREN’T making a mistake,” Friedman said, peering out into the darkness at the criss-crossed thicket of wooden pilings that supported the pier. “It’s all very well to try and protect the senator’s anonymity, but we don’t want to get into something we can’t handle without more troops.”
I’d driven the last hundred yards without lights, easing the car along the Embarcadero’s uneven cobblestones and across countless spur tracks, past the huge, boxlike shapes of the waterfront’s loading sheds. This section of the Embarcadero was derelict, part of the industrial flotsam left when San Francisco’s waterfront began to change from a working port to a tourist attraction. The trend had started at Fisherman’s Wharf and was gradually spreading south as trendy shops and business enterprises took over the old piers. But the renaissance had stopped far short of Pier 3, a massive rectangle jutting out so far into the bay that its farthest end was partially obscured by the thick fog that rose from the calm water.
I stopped short of the pier, pulled into the shadow of an abandoned loading shed and switched off the engine.
“Do you want to call for some backup?” I asked.
Still staring out into the darkness, Friedman said, “Let’s give it a few minutes.”
“You want to get out, or what?”
“You decide,” he answered. “After all, you’re the field man.”
“Let’s give it a while.”
“Suits me.” He settled down in his seat.
“I still think,” I said, stubbornly returning to the running argument we’d had, driving from the Fairmont to the Embarcadero, “that you made a mistake not telling Dwyer about Tharp. When he finds out, Dwyer’s going to make you pay.”
“I’ll just tell him that I couldn’t get him alone,” Friedman answered. “Which is the precise truth. Christ, he’s so infatuated, hanging out with Richter and Ferguson and, by proxy, with Donald Ryan, that he wouldn’t’ve cared if there’d been a general slaughter. Nothing would’ve gotten him out of that hotel room. I tried. Believe me, I tried.”
“Still—” Doubtfully, I shook my head, staring silently out into the fog-smudged night, registering my disagreement.
“What I’m wondering about,” Friedman said, “is why Katherine Bayliss took a cab when she left the Fairmont.”
“She didn’t want to take one of the Cadillacs,” I said. “It’s obvious.”
“But cabs can be traced.”
“Maybe she doesn’t have anything to hide.”
“I think,” Friedman said, “that both Eason and Bayliss have something to hide. For years they’ve had something to hide.”
“Not any more, they don’t. It’s all come out.”
“Yes and no,” he answered wryly. “To me, it’s plain that Ryan’s real purpose in telling you the whole story was his hope that you’d keep the lid on. For the good of the country and all that crap.”
I snorted.
“You laugh,” he said. “But it’s true. And what’s more, it’s working. You know damn well tha
t if ordinary mortals were involved in this thing, we’d have Eason in custody right now. After the Juanita Tharp murder, we’d’ve gone to work on him. We’d have an indictment right now. Which, incidentally, would’ve prevented another murder.
I shrugged. “That’s hindsight. You’re always telling me that you can’t look back in this business.”
Ignoring the remark, Friedman continued his musing: “Assuming that he went to the park to murder Frederick,” he said, “I wonder why he took the million dollars along. I mean—Christ—nobody in his right mind carries his wallet in Golden Gate Park after dark, never mind a million dollars.”
“If he didn’t take the million,” I answered, “Ryan or Katherine Bayliss would’ve suspected something was wrong.”
“That’s true,” Friedman admitted.
“I wonder why he called Katherine?” I said.
“Maybe Tharp wounded him,” Friedman said. “Maybe he needs help. Don’t forget, Tharp was shooting, too.”
“You could be right. Listen—” I gestured toward the pier. “Let’s take a look around. Okay?”
Friedman sighed. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
“You don’t want to?”
“No, not really.” He sighed again, and opened the door. “But I’ll do it.” He took a flashlight from under the dashboard and slipped out of the car, softly closing the door behind him. Side by side, we walked across the deserted street, our footing uncertain on the wet, uneven cobblestones. On the bay in front of us, a large vessel was moving slowly through the foggy night, its running lights disembodied against the dark, moonless sky. Overhead, green and red lights alternated, blinking. A big jet was letting down for its landing at San Francisco International ten miles to the south.
Stalking Horse (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Page 21
