Thrilling Thirteen

by Ponzo, Gary

  “Did he mention his name?”

  “Oh, no. He wasn’t chatty at all. He just asked where he could find . . . . Darn, I can’t remember. I do recall that his request struck me as unusual . . . .”

  “Why?”

  “Well, other than his lack of social skills, he didn’t seem the type to be interested in . . . . If I could just remember what he was looking for . . . .”

  “Accounting?” I asked, trying to prod her memory.

  “Um, no, no. That wasn’t it. Marketing? . . . no . . . .”

  “Something to do with finances?”

  “No, no. Not financial. It was something that didn’t fit his looks, know what I mean? Usually, they’re more . . . nerdy. That’s it! It was . . . game development.”

  “Game development?”

  “Yes, I remember thinking, he didn’t look like a computer game developer. They’re usually wimpy and wear glasses.” She giggled again.

  Game development. And the embezzled money was being used to purchase something on computer discs. Stolen programs for computer games maybe? Another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

  <><><>

  After I hung up with Kendall, I finished transcribing notes from our conversation and reviewed what I knew so far. When I got to the conversation with Elva McKutcheon, I slapped my forehead. Could the blond man have been the one looking for Cooper? The one Elva thought was a cop because, in her words, “he carried a piece”?

  If Blondie was a hit man, why was he looking for Cooper? Was Cooper his client or his quarry? Did he knock Cooper out and dump him in the canal to make it look accidental?

  I got up and began straightening and putting away files. Paperwork often took over my shoebox office. Doing something with my hands helped me clarify my thoughts.

  Assuming Cooper was murdered, who would want him dead? Could it have been his partners in crime, if he was in on the embezzlement? Maybe they got greedy and decided to off him. Did Cooper sense this? Did he leave Kozmik knowing they were out to get him?

  I stopped to look out the window. Dead leaves gathered at the bases of the street lamps and inside the iron tree guards around Main Street’s Bradford pears.

  Had Cooper posed a threat to someone because of Brad’s discovery? When Brad discovered the phony vendor, Cooper might have decided to take the evidence to headquarters, in exchange for cutting a deal for himself. Come clean and avoid prosecution.

  It would explain why Cooper had copies of the incriminating papers and why he rented at Elva’s. Too bad it didn’t work. But it didn’t explain the cash in Brad’s file drawer. An embezzler might have set Brad up and then dispatched Blondie to make sure Cooper never talked.

  It was obvious that high stakes were involved. A bundle had been stolen to buy discs. People were dying because of what was on those discs. I wished I could ask Cooper about it.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Like a pebble thrown into a pond, Cooper may have left some ripples—some evidence of his intentions. The contents of the fireproof box would soon be in my possession. Alex Kramer said the papers looked like “insurance” that Cooper was keeping as evidence of what the embezzlers were up to. If my hunch was right, Cooper had gone to Philadelphia for more than a cheesesteak. Perhaps he approached the parent company to cash in his policy, so to speak.

  I got online and looked for the parent company, Mid-Atlantic Entertainment, Inc. Before dialing, I jotted notes of what to say and a list of responses to questions they were likely to ask. After listening to a litany of choices, I pressed “0” for a human being—a woman who spoke in a high-pitched, nasal whine. I explained that I was a lawyer, interested in speaking to someone about a matter concerning their Kozmik Games subsidiary. I reviewed my crib notes as I spoke.

  “Can you tell me about the specific matter you wish to discuss?” The grating voice asked. “I want to direct you to the right person.”

  “I’m representing a Kozmik Games employee who’s been placed on administrative leave, pending a financial audit. I believe his supervisor, Darrell Cooper, may have contacted someone at your office to discuss something germane to the audit.”

  “Does this concern active litigation?”

  “No.” Not yet.

  There was some hemming and hawing. “I’ll direct you to Garland Perry, the vice president who handles that subsidiary.” She gave me a four-digit extension, in case we got disconnected, then said, “Hold please.”

  I visualized what a guy named Garland Perry would look like and wondered why on earth a parent would choose such a moniker for a son. I repeated my story to an administrative assistant who put me on hold a moment, then patched me through to a man. His pleasant, bland voice told me he was bound for a lifetime of service in middle management. I pictured someone of medium height with a soft midsection and thinning hair, possibly a comb-over.

  “A lawyer, eh? I’m not sure I’m supposed to be talking to you . . . .”

  “If I promise not to use any Latin words, will you humor me?”

  He laughed—a hearty Chamber of Commerce–mixer laugh. “And a charming lady lawyer, too. You’re dangerous.”

  “‘I’m not bad,’” I quoted Jessica Rabbit. “‘I’m just drawn that way.’”

  Garland laughed again. I was getting good at this.

  “Oh, dear,” he said, still chuckling. “Charming and funny. You’re lethal.” He composed himself. “Well, how can I help you today?”

  His manner was light and casual, but his voice had a purposeful undertone. Garland was no fool.

  “I was hoping to talk to Darrell Cooper, but he’s left Kozmik. I understand he moved to Philadelphia. I’ve been having a heck of a time finding him.” I paused to let it sink in. “I hope you can provide a lead.” I skipped over the part about Darrell being dead.

  “Interesting.” Long pause. I wondered if Garland knew about Darrell. Had I said the wrong thing? Maybe he’d hung up. “What makes you think I would know where he is?”

  Garland may not have been a fool, but he was no expert at this game. An answer like that was too guarded, too cagey. I had the distinct feeling that he knew more about Darrell than he was telling. Smelling blood, I shoved my crib notes aside.

  “As the vice president responsible for this subsidiary, I assumed you might be aware of the fact that Cooper left Kozmik shortly after the, uh, situation there arose.” I avoided the term “embezzlement,” because it reeked of legalese. “When I heard he went to Philadelphia, I thought, perhaps, he might approach you about a new job or a reference.” I paused, sighing for dramatic effect. In my best forlorn voice, I said, “I don’t know. I was just taking a shot.”

  Another silence. Please, please, I thought. Throw me a crumb.

  “Cooper did call me recently, but not about a job or a reference. And I’m afraid I don’t know where he is.”

  “What was it—?”

  “Now, that’s all I’m at liberty to say.” Garland was all business now. “If you have any other questions, you’ll have to direct them to our legal department.”

  Ah, the legal department. That pretty much said it all. “Okay,” I said, working to keep my voice even and somber. “Thanks.”

  “Certainly.”

  I hung up, clapped my hands and said, “Yes!” The conversation had been short and Garland never gave me anything. But I would have bet my next retainer check that Cooper had gone to Philadelphia to use the contents of his lock box to rat out the Kozmik embezzlers. And, with any luck, those papers could clear Brad and point to the culprits.

  <><><>

  The next day, I had a lengthy conversation with the asshole attorney about the discovery dispute in the Divorce from Hell. In my experience, the term applied to all litigious divorces. I told him I wouldn’t withdraw my motion to compel until he’d provided better answers. He said he had nothing more. Stalemate, putting it squarely in the judge’s hands. The judge wouldn’t like having to spend time listening to us argue. Judges always prefer that attorneys work
things out. And my client wouldn’t like it, because he’d have to pay for my time. I was running through his money quicker than a shoe freak at a Manolo Blahnik store.

  I left the office and picked up the photos of our suspect, then drove to CID to leave one with the homicide detective on the Sondra Jones murder. At the front desk I was referred to Detective James Willard. He wasn’t in. I remembered Willard from a case I’d handled as a public defender. He was the stoic, cynical type. Walt and I would have difficulty convincing him to shift his investigation from Brad—with a possible motive and the murder weapon— to someone doing business with Kozmik, who may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  I gave the desk sergeant my card with a note asking Willard to call me. As I turned to leave, I saw another familiar face—Detective Martin Derry, whom I’d dealt with on several occasions, not always happy. His navy suit enhanced his blue eyes. He stopped beside me.

  “Do we have business?” he asked.

  “No. I’m here about one of Detective Willard’s cases.” Despite the tension between us, I felt regret. He, on the other hand, looked relieved.

  I’d last seen Derry several months before on a case in which he’d had to placate an FBI agent while investigating a homicide. Because it also involved identity theft, federal agents from an alphabet soup of agencies ended up crawling like flies all over the matter. Derry and I were hardly pals. Nonetheless, he ended up as the “good cop” to the FBI’s “bad.”

  My problems with Derry began when I worked as a public defender. I’d won an acquittal for a man accused of killing his fiancée because the evidence against him had been mishandled. Sometimes I wondered if we would ever reach a truce. And even though it happened years ago, I knew that time doesn’t always heal wounds. “Anything interesting?” he said, drawing me back to the present.

  “The Sondra Jones murder.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Derry’s chin dipped in a semi-nod. “The White Collar Killing. I thought Walt Shapiro was representing the perp.”

  “Alleged perp,” I said. His jaw clenched. “The case has acquired a nickname, huh?”

  “Let’s just say it’s not representative of our caseload.” He meant drug killings, domestic disputes, gang killings—most of them involving minorities.

  “Well, you may have to change the name, if the evidence I have for Willard turns up any other leads.” I waved the tape before him. “The surveillance camera showed someone who did business with the suspect’s employer coming and leaving ten or fifteen minutes before our client arrived. This guy.” I held up the photo.

  Derry did a double-take and squinted at the image. “Looks familiar. May I?” He took the photo and examined it.

  “Do you watch old movies? He could’ve played a thug in a Forties gangster flick.”

  One corner of Derry’s mouth upturned in a half smile. Shaking his head, he said, “Somewhere else.” He looked at me. “I can pass this along to Willard.”

  I had hoped to deliver the photo to Willard myself. In the spirit of détente, I let him have it. “I’ll let you, on one condition. When you figure it out, you agree to tell me who it is and where you’ve seen him.”

  His mouth pursed and his mustache curled over his bottom lip. “You know I can’t promise that. It’s not even my case.”

  Trying not to appear desperate, I looked him in the eye. “Please.” Groveling to a cop. Jesus!

  Sighing, he said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

  On the way back to the office, I resolved to set up a time to see Tina. We were overdue for a talk about Rochelle’s gang and the kid who’d been at her house around the time of the murder. No doubt, she felt abandoned and scared in detention. I wanted to tell her I was doing everything I could to get her sprung, without raising her hopes.

  On the phone, I was bounced around to various people, until being handed off to the superintendent.

  “Ms. McRae, I understand you wish to visit your client, Tina Jackson?”

  “That’s right.” Something was wrong. They wouldn’t route me to the woman in charge to arrange a simple visit. I remembered Tina’s description of girls with toothbrush shivs. Fear gripped me. “Is she all right?”

  “This is . . . difficult for me . . . .”

  “What’s happened?” I said, my voice rising with my anxiety.

  “Tina . . . has escaped.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The superintendent didn’t mince words: Tina had escaped with another girl. End of story. Shit. Where the hell could she be?

  I felt a mix of relief, that Tina was no longer locked up, and fear about her roaming a dangerous world alone. If I found her, I’d have to turn her in. The thought made me sick. To defend her, I had to talk to her. First, I had to find her.

  Little D had left a message for me while I was on the phone. I called back immediately.

  “Tina’s escaped the Patuxent Detention Center,” I said. “Do you think she’ll go to her father’s?”

  “Mmm,” he hummed. It sounded like low C on a pipe organ. “It’s possible.”

  “Can you nose around Fisher’s? See if she shows up there? Or tell me if you hear anything on the street? I’m very worried.”

  “Me, too. But try to stay calm. She’s pretty good at lookin’ after herself.”

  Pretty good isn’t enough, I thought.

  “I called to remind you about tomorrow,” he said. “Calvert Road Park. Half past noon.”

  “How’d the Iverson meet go?”

  He chuckled. “Jus’ fine. I got a pitcher of ole’ Blue Jumpsuit givin’ the package to Narsh. We followed the dude in the jumpsuit to Silver Hill Intermediate School. Found out later he’s a janitor there.”

  “Tina’s school.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “I don’t know. Just another odd coincidence.” The kind I don’t believe in.

  “And there’s something else you ought to know.”

  “What now?”

  I must have sounded worse than I felt. Little D just laughed and said, “No, this is good. After we followed the janitor, I convinced Narsh to let me make a couple copies of the disc in the package.”

  “Really? How’d you manage that?”

  “I figured he wouldn’t want Fisher to know how I out bad-assed his bad ass. Wouldn’t want me to tell Fisher what we got and how we got it. He wasn’t too happy, but he went along.”

  “So what’s on the disc?” I asked.

  “Haven’t checked yet, but I’ll let you know. Apparently, it’s images, not data, on a DVD. You want to get together sometime, have a look?”

  “How about you come over my place tomorrow, after the meet? Around five?”

  I gave him directions before we hung up. Images. For computer games? Maybe the embezzlers were paying top dollar to steal a competitor’s game concepts. If so, how did the janitor get them?

  If it hadn’t been for Little D, I wouldn’t have known any of this. I felt grateful for his help. And I saw what Duvall meant about D’s methods. They got results, but they were risky. It occurred to me that befriending a guy like Little D was like owning a pet scorpion.

  <><><>

  Saturday was a light-traffic day on the B-W Parkway. I got to Riverdale with ease. Twenty minutes before the appointed time, I pulled into the lot of Calvert Road Park, barely a quarter mile from Kozmik’s offices. I backed into a space and flipped through last month’s Maryland Bar Journal.

  The October weather had taken an abrupt turn toward winter. Clouds scudded across the sky, plunging the landscape into patches of shadow and light. I counted a few cars but saw no sign of life. I assumed people were out hiking or biking the trails. The breeze kicked up, causing dry brown leaves to spring to life and rattle across the lot. Cracking the window for air, I sneezed. Leaf mold and the smoke from burning firewood tickled my nostrils.

  At 12:20, Narsh pulled into the lot in a beat-up maroon compact. If he saw me, he never let on. I slumped in the seat. He backed into a spot across and a coupl
e of spaces down from me. Loud rap music thumped from the car.

  Five minutes later, a late model Saturn, light-blue, crept up beside Narsh’s car, drivers’ sides facing each other like cop cars. I saw the Saturn’s window roll down and caught a glimpse of a doughy-faced guy with glasses. Narsh and he had a short, intense conversation, after which Narsh handed him a brown envelope. My view was somewhat obstructed, but I snapped a few pictures with my digital camera before the Saturn’s window closed.

  Narsh left. As the Saturn backed out, I started my car. By the time the Saturn had turned onto Paint Branch, I was rolling. I followed the Saturn as he made a left at Kenilworth Avenue, reaching the intersection as the light turned yellow. Maintaining a distance of several car lengths between us, I followed the car up the ramp at the Greenbelt Road interchange and took a left, toward Beltway Plaza Mall.

  The Saturn hung a right onto Cherrywood Lane and turned into a parking lot in the Spring Hill Lake apartment complex. I knew it well, having lived there as a student at the University of Maryland.

  The car pulled into a spot. I kept an eye on it and cruised slowly past the lot’s entrance. Two guys got out—the driver, short and soft-looking, with long brown hair and black-rimmed glasses, and the passenger, tall and gaunt, with curly red hair and pale skin.

  I pulled over, snapped a couple of shots and noted the building they entered. While waiting to see if anything else went down, I checked my office voice mail. Detective Willard had left a message. I called him.

  “Yes, Ms. McRae,” he said, in his characteristic low rumble. “Detective Derry showed me that photo. I understand the man appears somewhere on the surveillance tape. Is that right?”

  “That’s right,” I said. I told him what times Blondie had appeared on the tape. I also gave Willard a brief rundown on everything, including the hulk’s previous visits to Kozmik Games, the trip to Philadelphia to see Cooper and Cooper’s demise. As I spoke, I kept an eye on the building, in case one or both men decided to leave.