“Nice place,” Shawn said, glancing around him. “We’ve been thinking about moving our offices. Mind saying what the rent is on something like this?”
Gus knew what Shawn was doing: He was channeling Humphrey Bogart. But he still had to fight off a wince. There was a fine line between cocky insouciance and the kind of rudeness that could get you keelhauled, and Shawn had never been particularly good with fine lines.
But if Rushton was offended, he didn’t show it. Of course, Gus thought, if Rushton was so enraged he was about to turn into Lou Ferrigno, he wouldn’t show that, either.
“You say Archie Kane was your client,” Rushton said. “Do you have any evidence of that? A contract, perhaps? Or a deal memo? Even a retainer check?”
“Not that I’m free to show you,” Shawn said.
“I see.” Rushton reached for the phone. Gus half-expected him to order the dogs to be released. “Helen, my business meeting seems to have turned into a social call,” he said into the intercom. “Feel free to put through calls.”
Gus wondered if they were supposed to leave at this point. Fortunately, Shawn was no better at supposed to than he was at fine lines. He was looking around the room again, and this time Gus realized he wasn’t just admiring the decor.
Shawn looked around the office and he saw. Saw among the framed photos one of a much younger Rushton-already in a wheelchair in his forties-shaking hands with Marcel Marceau. Saw among all the expensive nautical antiques on Rushton’s desk a cheap trophy with WORLD’S GREATEST BOSS embossed on a metal plate flaking with age. Saw a plaque honoring the lawyer with an award from something called the “Second Chance for Kids Foundation.” Saw a snapshot of a young mime imitating the lawyer behind his back. Saw Rushton’s calendar on the desk opened to today’s date, with the initials AK scrawled in the first hourly slot at the top of the page.
Shawn turned back to Rushton. “Not that I can show you,” he said. “But I can tell you.”
Rushton glanced at his watch. “My personal services run up to five thousand dollars per hour,” he said. “I’ll give you two minutes for free. Anything above that will incur the hourly charge. And people don’t refuse to pay my bills.”
“Archie Kane worked for you for many years,” Shawn said. “Officially for the firm, but his loyalty was always with you. That’s because you met him when he was a troubled youth. If you hadn’t given him a minimum-wage job in your office when he was still a teenager, he would have ended up on the street trying to support himself as a mime. And we both know how far his particular set of miming skills would have taken him. Over the years he proved himself to be completely loyal and reliable, so much so that even though he never became a lawyer, he was a valuable part of this firm. Valuable, again, to you more than to the firm itself. But then, you are the firm.”
“The other founding partners are dead, it’s true,” Rushton said.
“Archie would have done anything to protect you,” Shawn said. “And when he began to realize there was someone in this firm who was using it as the base for a criminal conspiracy, smuggling stolen tech secrets, he tried to alert you. But he didn’t have any evidence, and he couldn’t tell you who it was, so you dismissed it as him being overprotective. Archie wouldn’t let anyone do you harm, even yourself, so he started to investigate on his own. He did uncover the conspiracy, and he was planning to reveal it to you this morning. But he was careless, and they found out about him first. I suspect when the police examine that Town Car they’ll discover the brake line was cut.”
“I just got off the phone with them,” Rushton said. “It was. Go on.”
Shawn leaned back in his armchair. “The first two minutes were free. Anything above that is going to incur the hourly charge. And while people do refuse to pay our bills sometimes, it really hurts my feelings.”
“Is that why you’re here, Mr. Spencer?” Rushton said. “To collect a fee for the work you did for Archie Kane?”
Shawn leaned forward in his chair and punched a finger at Rushton. “Archie Kane was our client,” he said. “‘When a man’s client is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make a difference what you thought of him. He was your client and you’re supposed to do something about it. And it happens we’re in the detective business. When one of your organization gets killed, it’s bad business to let the killer get away with it, bad all around, bad for every detective everywhere. ’ ”
“You did that well, Mr. Spencer,” Rushton said. “Not as well as Humphrey Bogart, but then you didn’t have John Huston directing you.”
“What, does everyone have that movie memorized?” Shawn said.
Gus saw this moment slipping away. More precisely, he saw it running away, being chased by the guard dogs that Rushton was undoubtedly about to release.
“The words aren’t ours, but the sentiment is,” Gus said quickly. “We didn’t know Archie Kane well, but we never doubted his devotion to this firm. Just about the first thing he ever said to us was that he wouldn’t let any harm come to you.”
“And he was wearing whiteface when he said it,” Shawn said. “If he was willing to break the mime’s solemn vow of silence, you know how much it meant to him.”
“He was dressed as a mime?” For the first time since he wheeled into the room, Rushton allowed a flicker of feeling to cross his face. “Archie hated miming. It was his counselor at the institute who pushed him down that path. And it turned out to be a good thing for him-it’s how I got to know the boy. I personally have always loved the art form. But when I hired Archie, he vowed he’d never mime again now that he had a purpose in life. And as far as I knew, he never did.”
“He did it for you,” Shawn said. “He died trying to protect you.”
“Because I wouldn’t listen to him,” Rushton said.
“Because one of the people working for you is a murderer,” Shawn said. “Archie Kane was the second victim; the first was a woman named Ellen Svaco, who seems to have been involved in the smuggling ring Archie was trying to expose.”
“Archie warned me it was someone close,” Rushton said. “One of my junior partners. Which one is it?”
“We don’t know,” Shawn said.
“Yet,” Gus added.
“What do you need from me?” Rushton said.
“Access,” Shawn said. “Instruct your people they’ve got to talk to us. Give us free rein for two days, and we’ll give you your killer.”
“I can give you something better than that,” Rushton said. “I can give you a job.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Babysitting. Decades on the force, a lifetime in detective work, and now Henry had become a professional babysitter. His sole job for the SBPD was to keep Chris Rasmussen occupied so the grown-ups could do the real work.
To make the day even more humiliating, every place Rasmussen had taken Henry felt like a stop any young child would want to make. They’d hit the local animal shelter to see if Ellen Svaco had tried to adopt a cat, and had to look through all the cat cages to see if there was a “Fluffy” there. They had been through half a dozen pet stores on a futile mission to see if anyone remembered the woman who’d had the name inscribed on all her cat implements. And to guarantee maximum embarrassment, wherever they went, Rasmussen would inevitably introduce himself by patting the badge printed on his polo shirt like a little boy with a tin star.
As they pulled up to one more useless stop, this one a veterinarian’s office, Rasmussen gave Henry a firm chuck on the shoulder with his fist. “The brainwork is the key, but it’s the leg-work that makes it turn in the lock.”
Henry sighed heavily. This whole day was like being trapped with a human fortune cookie-worse, because Henry had written all the fortunes himself. “I don’t understand how you know all these things I’ve said.” Henry got out of the car and waited for Rasmussen to join him at the vet’s entrance. “It’s not like I wrote a self-help book or anything.”
“That would be great,” Rasmussen s
aid. “I’d love to own a complete collection of your wisdom.”
“Where did you hear the stuff you’ve been parroting back to me?”
“Isla Vista Junior High,” Rasmussen said as he pushed through the door to the veterinary offices.
Henry had never worked a case at any junior high school anywhere, let alone Isla Vista. And while it was flattering to think his collected works were being studied by eleven-yearolds, the fact was he didn’t have any works, collected or otherwise. This guy had to be playing with him.
But when Henry entered the waiting room, Rasmussen didn’t seem to be playing. If anything, he was even more serious than before. He stood at the waist-high counter drumming his fingers impatiently as a young woman in scrubs wrestled with a border collie who had no intention of letting himself be weighed.
Henry joined Rasmussen at the counter. “I have to admit, I don’t remember what case brought me to your school,” he said. “Are you sure you have the right guy?”
“Absolutely,” Rasmussen said. “Although you were there undercover.”
“You’ve got the wrong guy,” Henry said. “I never worked undercover at a school.”
“Sure, you did,” Rasmussen said. “You were going under the name Officer Friendly. But for me, you were Officer Role Model. Before I heard you speak, I wanted to design surfboards. Afterwards, I knew I was meant to be a cop.”
Now Henry remembered. Twenty years ago he’d gotten into a shouting match with his chief over a string of robberies, and as discipline he’d been assigned to travel to the area’s schools as Officer Friendly. It was a miserable assignment, and the only way he’d gotten through it was making sure to introduce Officer Friendly to Officer Bourbon every night as soon as he finished his daily lectures.
But this one kid had listened to every word. Listened and remembered. Remembered for all these years.
“I couldn’t have talked for more than forty-five minutes,” Henry said.
“It was enough.”
Henry thought of all the things he’d tried to teach Shawn, and how few of them actually took. If only his son had been this receptive to Henry’s wisdom, he’d be running a police department today. Maybe this kid wasn’t so bad after all.
The woman in scrubs managed to get a reading off the scale and sent the border collie off down a corridor with an attendant, then came up to Henry and Rasmussen.
“How can I help you?” she said.
Chris Rasmussen tapped the badge printed on his shirt. Oddly, this time Henry didn’t find the gesture annoying. Instead he saw the pride behind it. “I’m Officer Chris Rasmussen of the Isla Vista Foot Patrol,” he said. “This is Detective Henry Spencer of the Santa Barbara Police Department. We’re wondering if you have any record of a client by the name of Ellen Svaco.”
“I don’t know if I’m allowed to give out that information,” the woman said. “Isn’t there doctor-patient privilege?”
Rasmussen gave her a dazzling smile. “Only if we ask about her pet.”
She smiled back warmly. Henry had to admit, this kid had something going for him.
The woman went to a large filing cabinet against the back wall and started digging through a drawer.
As they were waiting, Henry glanced around the room. It was a standard vet’s office, with easy-to-clean linoleum floors, half-chewed waiting furniture, and, on the walls, pictures of grateful pets and posters warning of heartworm.
And in the corner was something Henry had never seen before. He nudged Rasmussen and pointed at it.
“Did I mention something to your class about looking too hard for information?”
“Sure,” Rasmussen said. “Don’t be so fixated on the thing you think you’re looking for that you don’t see what else is there.”
“Like that?”
It was a large cardboard standee of what might have been the cutest dog in canine history. A word balloon over its head claimed it was thinking, “Fluffy saved my life.” And at the bottom was a cartoon kitten and the slogan “When all else fails, Fluffy can help. The Fluffy Foundation.”
The woman came back up to the counter with a helpless shrug. “I’m afraid we’ve got no pet owners named Svaco,” she said. “Is there another name she might have used?”
“Who’s Fluffy?” Henry said, gesturing towards the standee.
The woman looked confused for a moment, then realized what he was talking about. “The Fluffy Foundation,” she said. “We love them. If your pet is sick and you can’t afford the treatment, they’ll pay for it.”
“That must cost a fortune,” Henry said. “Where does the money come from?”
“No one knows,” the woman said. “An anonymous donor. The only thing we know for sure is that whoever it was used to have a cat named Fluffy, and he died because his owner couldn’t afford treatment. So when she came into a lot of money, she donated huge amounts of it to start this foundation.”
“How huge?” Officer Rasmussen said.
“I have no idea,” she said.
“I do,” Henry said. “Enough to kill for.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The mood in Rushton, Morelock, and Weiss’ palatial conference room was somber. Even the view of the sunlight-speckled ocean seemed dimmer than it had when Shawn and Gus first took their seats.
That was only appropriate to the occasion. The firm’s senior partner had announced Archie Kane’s death as soon as the other five lawyers assembled around the mahogany table, and then spent the next half hour eulogizing his protege.
But beneath whatever sorrow the people in this room might have been feeling ran another emotion. Gus could feel the tension in the air, almost smell the suspicion. And he had no question what the cause of it was.
It was him.
More precisely, it was him and Shawn. They had been sitting on either side of Rushton at the head of the table when the other lawyers filed in for the meeting. But Rushton hadn’t introduced them, hadn’t even spared a single word or even a glance to acknowledge their existence. It was a testament to his power over his junior partners that not one of them asked anything about the two outsiders. Most of them wouldn’t even look at the detectives except in furtive glances, when they seemed to think no one would notice.
This left Gus free during Rushton’s eulogy to study those faces that were so studiously not looking at him. Three men, two women, all in their midthirties to early forties, all polished, buffed, waxed, and tanned to perfection. Gus didn’t know if there was such a thing as a human equivalent to the full detailing to which he treated the Echo every six months, but if there was, these people had it done to themselves on a weekly basis.
At first Gus was so blinded by the lawyers’ uniform perfection he could barely tell them apart. But as Rushton continued to speak, he began to spot differences between them. The first one who stood out was the closer of the two women. She had jet-black hair cut in bangs that fell low on her brow, and piercing blue eyes, a combination Gus suspected had not been crafted by nature. As he looked around the room, his eyes kept being drawn back to her. He tried to tell himself that it was because she had a uniquely forceful personality that overwhelmed the room even as she sat silently absorbing Rushton’s words, but the fact was that she was a dead ringer for Tanya Roberts in Beastmaster, except that she wasn’t climbing out of a sylvan pool naked. In Tanya’s honor, Gus mentally nicknamed her Kiri.
Feeling he was being unfair, Gus made himself focus on the other woman in the room. At least he did until his eyeballs began to hurt. It wasn’t that the short blond wasn’t beautiful. He assumed she was, anyway, since everyone else in the room could have been sculpted by Michelangelo. But her hat, her dress, her shoes, her purse, even her watchband were all such a bright green they seemed to radiate light with the intensity of your average lighthouse beacon. The result was that she seemed to be surrounded by a shimmering emerald haze not unlike a fairy’s aura in a Disney cartoon. He decided to call her Tinkerbell.
That made the man ne
xt to her Captain Hook. Not that he was missing a hand or had a habit of glancing nervously around the room for a ticking crocodile. But he had a wolfish, grasping look even as he attempted to convey the appropriate sorrow for his fallen comrade. Gus could practically see him laying out all the ways in which this new turn of events could be used to his advantage and how it could hurt him.
It was the man sitting next to the Captain whom Gus found most intriguing. He didn’t quite fit in with the others. Sure, his skin had that perfect poreless sheen, and each of the hairs on his head was so precisely cut and shaped that Gus suspected his barber trimmed only one before switching razors, and his suit fit better than Gus’ own skin and moved with his body so easily it seemed to have been woven out of mercury.
But unlike the other lawyers, this one actually seemed to have the occasional emotion, and some of these even played out on his face. There wasn’t a lot of sentiment present, and in another context Gus might never have noticed anything at all. But in a group of peers who betrayed somewhat less of whatever they were feeling than a group of department store dummies, the slight twitches and frowns this lawyer displayed and then banished almost as soon as they first appeared might as well have been semaphore signals. There was only one word for a man whose every emotional response is so much bigger, louder, and more extravagant than anyone else’s, so Gus decided to call him Shatner.
He’d turned to appraise the next lawyer in line when he noticed that the man had turned to stare directly at him.
They were all staring at him. Kiri and Tink and Captain Hook and Shatner and the guy who did not know he was waiting for a clever nickname. What did they want? Was he supposed to say something?
Gus realized he’d stopped listening to Rushton’s speech several minutes ago. Now he tried to call up back whatever might have penetrated his ears but bounced off his brain. It was no use. He had no idea what he was supposed to do or say.
The Call of the Mild p-3 Page 10
