Thrilling Thirteen

by Ponzo, Gary

  “I should bodyguard you more often.”

  “Thanks for dinner. And thanks for coming over. I’m still feeling shaky.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. He placed his hand on mine. I thought about moving it, but didn’t. “I’m here for you.”

  I thought about Ray and the difficulties of getting involved with a business associate. His touch conveyed concern, maybe more. I told myself that Duvall and I should remain friends.

  “But you can’t look after me day and night,” I said. “When the hell is that detective going to call?” I added, trying to change the subject.

  “I’ll do what I can. Maybe we can go to the cops tomorrow and insist on seeing someone. I know people there. I can pull some strings.”

  “I can’t rely on you all the time to protect me and pull strings for me,” I protested.

  He looked at me. “Why? That’s what friends are for.”

  Without thinking, I leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  “What was that for?” he asked.

  “For friendship,” I said. “And a great omelet.”

  My phone rang. Detective Harris relieved us of the need to say anything further.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “We’ll bring Powell in for questioning,” Detective Harris said, after I explained what I’d seen in his office. “And get a warrant to seize those photos. We’ll need a statement from you, too.”

  “Okay.” I’d have to remember to bring in my copies of Cooper’s calendar and the ITN invoices, which I still had stuffed in the file. “The question is, if I give a statement, will you have enough to hold him?”

  “It seems likely. It’s the most solid evidence we have of a connection between Powell, Cooper, and the child porn operation. It provides a strong motive for murder, if we can show Shanae Jackson knew about it.” It was one big “if,” and not the unqualified “yes” I was looking for. But it would have to do.

  “Have you made any progress in finding Don Diezman?” I asked.

  “Detective Willard is trying to track him down.”

  “How about Tina?”

  Detective Harris drew a big sigh. “We’re doing everything we can to find her. She wasn’t at the motel where her uncle was staying.”

  My heart sank. Where could she be? “And her father? How’s he doing?”

  After a pause, she said, “I’m afraid he’s dead.”

  The news hit me like a gut punch. With her parents dead and her uncle headed to the slammer for murder, what would happen to Tina?

  <><><>

  Duvall had an important surveillance job the next day, and I wasn’t about to keep him from it.

  “Go,” I said. “You can’t be my full-time babysitter.”

  “I suppose.” He looked reluctant. “I’d put this off if I could, but unfortunately . . . .”

  “Please. You have a business to run, and for that matter, so do I. Do what you have to. I’ll see you later.”

  “All right,” he said. “Promise me you’ll be careful. Stay home today.”

  “The last time I saw Diesel, he’d broken into my apartment. Maybe that’s the wrong thing to do. I should probably go to a library or a coffee shop. Some public place where he won’t be able to harm me.”

  He nodded. “That’s a thought. But watch your back.”

  “Don’t worry, Dad. I won’t take any candy from strangers.”

  My dismissive remark made him smile, but did little to calm my own nerves.

  <><><>

  After Duvall left, I called the attorney in my “bruised knee” case. He made it sound like we were on the road to a settlement. Then I called Sheila to check on my mail. In addition to the usual bills and junk, a couple of things from the court clerk and an oversized envelope from Slippery Steve awaited my return. He’d probably sent something to placate me. Whether it was enough, remained to be seen.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. Things seemed to be looking up.

  I stopped at the office to fetch the mail and went to the Starbucks where I’d been working lately. As I bought my “grande” Italian Roast, I felt a twinge of guilt about giving my money to “Big Coffee” instead of my favorite neighborhood coffee shop, but Starbucks had wi-fi access.

  I was reviewing the answers to interrogatories Slippery Steve had sent when my phone rang. The number was blocked, but I answered anyway.

  “Hello, Ms. McRae.” The voice was deep, with a hint of menace.

  “Who is this?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew.

  “I should feel offended that you don’t remember me, chickie-poo. Of course, we didn’t meet under the happiest circumstances, did we?”

  Diesel. How had he gotten my cell number? Duh! My calls were still being forwarded from the office. Checking my assumption, I asked, “How did you get this number?” I forced my voice to stay low and calm.

  “You’re listed in the phone book, aren’t you? Anyway, a friend of yours has your card. Perhaps you’d like to speak to her.” There was a pause, then I heard Tina. “Sam,” she said, in a quavering voice. “This man . . . he come to the motel and made me leave wit’ him.”

  “Tina, are you okay?”

  “I’m all right, but I wanna go home. I wanna see my pops.”

  Her tone was full of naked fear. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her uncle had killed her father.

  “Tina, don’t panic. The man won’t hurt you if you go along with him.” I hoped to God this was true. When I heard no response, I said, “Tina? Tina, are you there?”

  “Excellent advice, Ms. McRae. I keep telling little Tina that if she’ll simply behave, everything will go fine. Now, if you’ll behave, too, we’ll all be happy.”

  I’d had enough of this psycho-bully’s verbal fencing. “What do you want?” I said, with a steely confidence I didn’t feel.

  “That delightful landlady of Cooper’s told me you came by and copied some of his paperwork, including his calendar and the ITN invoices. I want you to give me your copies of that information, along with all the information you got from that private eye in Philadelphia. Now don’t lie to me—I know the contents of that box were sent to you.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then you won’t be seeing your little friend alive again.”

  The evidence from Cooper’s room, which I had yet to take to the cops, linked Cooper to the embezzlement; and the calendar linked Cooper with Diesel and Powell. Apparently, Diesel didn't realize the cops had other evidence of his involvement. As long as he didn’t know that, I could negotiate for Tina’s release.

  “Okay,” I said. “How do we work this?”

  “Bring all the documents to Calvert Road Park in half an hour,” he said. “I believe you know where that is.”

  The phone went dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Twenty-five minutes later I sat in my car at Calvert Road Park, clutching the file as I waited for the black compact to appear.

  I had the radio on low. I could make out Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day singing a request that someone wake him up when September ended. I was beginning to feel that way about October. The last couple of weeks had passed slowly as molasses. I glanced at my watch and looked around the parking lot. No other cars. Nothing to duck behind, not in the lot anyway. I swiveled round to scan the trees behind me. At one end of the lot were restrooms in a nondescript building with a shabby forest-green roof.

  I didn’t see anyone. I tried to calm myself by singing along with Billy Joe.

  I watched a black car reach the entrance and turn into the lot.

  “Summer has come and passed,” I sang. “The innocent can never last . . . .”

  The car pulled in front of mine. Diesel was behind the wheel. I could see the top of Tina’s head. She slouched in the passenger seat.

  “Wake me up . . . when October ends,” I took some poetic license with the words and turned off the radio. I opened the door and slid out with the file. Diesel emerged from
the black car, unfolding his bulk until he stood looking as friendly as a blond grizzly bear.

  Holding the file up for inspection, I said, “Here it is. Is Tina all right?”

  He raised his chin a fraction in acknowledgment, then reached into the car and yanked Tina out by her arm. Holding her tight to him, he walked her around the back of his car.

  Tina looked terrified, but unharmed. I stepped a few feet from my car and waited. As he approached, he pulled a gun from under his jacket and pressed the barrel against Tina’s temple. She whimpered and sniffled, her face wet with tears. I focused on appearing confident, in charge. I tried to convey my false confidence to Tina by looking her in the eye and thinking, It’ll be all right . . . it’ll be all right.

  “I hope that’s all of it,” he said.

  I nodded and moved a little to his left, slowly. “I can show you, if you like.”

  Diesel pivoted. He faced me, Tina held in front of him as a shield. “Of course, I like,” he said, the scorn plain in his voice. “I want to see it all.”

  He moved closer. I stepped back.

  “Can I put this on your trunk?”

  He nodded and I moved toward his car, placing the file on it and fiddling with the contents. Diesel kept rotating so I was always in his line of sight. I made sure not to stand directly in front of him.

  Now would be nice, I thought.

  As if I’d willed it to happen, two popping sounds came from the woods. Diesel lurched and stiffened, blood spraying from two holes, one on each side of his chest. And inches from Tina’s head. He moaned as his arms went lax. Tina managed to wriggle free before he collapsed to the pavement. She ran to me, sobbing, and threw her arms around me. I hugged her and said, “It’ll be okay now.”

  Little D emerged from behind the building and walked over, gripping a handgun with a long-barreled silencer, and picked up Diesel’s gun. “Nice job,” he said. “You got him in exactly the right place for me to take my shots.” He gestured toward the bathrooms.

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to think about what we’d done.

  Little D checked the compact’s ignition. “Ah-ight. Keys still here.” He got in and started it, pulling it forward a few feet to allow me to leave. He switched off the motor and got out.

  “You gots to go now,” he said.

  “Thanks for coming, D,” I said. I looked at Diesel, who lay twitching and prone on the pavement, his breathing labored. “What . . . .?”

  “Don’t ask,” he said.

  Tina was still crying softly, clinging to me like a life raft. I disengaged myself from her grasp, while keeping an arm around her shoulder, and led her to my car. We got in and drove away, without looking back.

  <><><>

  Thirty minutes hadn’t given me much time to prepare, but it was just enough to make some calls and run to the office for the file. I’d tried calling CID and couldn’t reach a detective. Rather than waste precious time on police bureaucracy, I’d hung up and called Little D.

  He said he would park far from the meeting place and approach the lot from the woods. He assured me he could make it. I didn’t know he had until I heard the shots.

  We hadn’t discussed what would happen. And I hadn’t given it much thought. As I drove off with Tina beside me, I was struck by my lack of concern that Diesel was a dead man. Seemed like I should feel guilty, but I felt only relief, sweet relief.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I took Tina to CID, where Powell was being interrogated. Turning my evidence over to Detective Harris, I waited with Tina while arrangements were made to put her in emergency shelter care.

  Harris told me the police asked Mrs. Mallory, Shanae’s next-door neighbor, to come in. Maybe she could identify Powell as the person she saw leaving the house the night Shanae was killed. Powell was slight and light-skinned. In the right clothes, he could have passed for a gawky teenager. They would check the phone records, to see if he had placed a call to Shanae’s house or vice versa.

  When they told Tina about her uncle and her father, she showed little emotion. I had expected more tears or rage, but I think the child had shut down. She was past the point of feeling further pain. She stared, in an almost catatonic state, as we waited. When an officer came for her, I asked for five minutes. I crouched beside Tina.

  “Tina,” I said, handing her my card again. “You know you can call me, any time, if you ever want to talk.”

  “Why he do it?” she asked. “Why Mr. Powell kill my moms?”

  “He was involved in something that would have gotten him in big trouble. He would have lost his job, gone to prison. When your mom found out about Greg, it was only a matter of time before Mr. Powell would have been found out.”

  “But why he set me up? What I do to him?”

  I paused. “I don’t know. I guess he knew you and your mom didn’t get along. He knew you were associated with a gang. And he knew how girl gangs operate. I don’t think he was trying to pin it on you. Any girl in the gang would do.” I wasn’t sure I believed it. Or that Tina believed it either.

  She backhanded the tears off her cheeks. I handed her a tissue and she blew her nose. “What’s going to happen?”

  “They’ll find you a place to live. A group home, probably.”

  “A foster home.”

  “Yes.”

  “So now I ain’t got nobody. Not even my pops or my uncle.”

  “You have me.”

  She gave me a funny look.

  “I lost my parents when I was nine,” I said. “I had a cousin who took me in, but I learned to rely on myself a lot. I learned to trust my instincts. And I learned how to take care of myself. You can learn too. If you ever have a problem you feel you can’t handle alone, you can call me and talk about it.”

  “You saved my life,” she said. “But you ain’t my kin.”

  “No, but neither are these gangbangers you’ve been running with. And they’re not going to lead you anywhere good.”

  I could have said that her mother had been kin, for all the good she’d done Tina. I didn’t. Some things are best left unsaid.

  I told her that, no matter where she went, she was never alone as long as she had good friends to turn to. I told her to respect herself and make the kind of friends who respected themselves and her. There was more I wanted to say, but it didn’t seem like the right time. And I couldn’t be sure Tina understood all of it. When the officer came to take her, I felt a sense of loss over this girl I’d barely begun to know. I knew she faced an uncertain future. There were probably no big family dinners and white picket fences where she was going. She held her own fate in her hands. Or did she? I’ve often wondered what causes one person to succeed and another to fail. How much is in our own hands? Are some of us born with two strikes against us from the very beginning?

  <><><>

  Tina was represented by a private attorney who handled a lot of pro bono CINA—or “children in need of assistance”—cases. On occasion, we would talk about her. It looked like I might end up as a witness in the case. I felt too emotional about Tina’s situation to make an effective advocate. Having counsel who specialized in CINA cases seemed to be in her best interest. She ended up in a shelter home, but I don’t know where it is. She hasn’t called since I last saw her. At least, not yet. I hope we’ll talk again, after she’s had time to sort things out. She needs to be the one to decide when that is.

  Kozmik confirmed that the computers had been tampered with, but the work station couldn’t be identified. It was never established if Saltzman or LaRue, the game developers, or Fullbright, their boss, had done it. The old data were recovered. They revealed that the account had been set up before Brad started working at Kozmik. He was off the hook. There was insufficient evidence to indicate who had taken the money. The cops were unable to turn up child porn on any of the suspects’ computers.

  Based on the evidence, I was able to clear Brad of the murder charges.

  When Brad was exonerated, the Higg
ins family had a party after Walt was released from the hospital. Walt, a few friends and relatives, and I attended. After dinner Brad wowed us with a slideshow on his new laptop—pictures of a trip he had taken the previous year to the Tetons. He awed the guests with his digital deftness—enhancing images, playing with the colors, sharpening contrast, and zooming in on faraway objects.

  Afterward, when the guests went to the dining room for cake and coffee, I hung around while he packed up his laptop. “You’re good at working with digital photographs,” I said.

  “I told you. I like computers.”

  “As I recall, you said you particularly like computer games, right?”

  “Right.” He stuck the laptop in its carrying case. “I think it would be fun to create them for a living.”

  “Were you involved in creating new games with Chip Saltzman and Mike LaRue?”

  He gave me a blank look. “Huh?”

  “The child porn images. The cops never found them on their computers. They must have used someone else’s equipment.”

  “What makes you think they used mine?”

  “Our private investigator. It took a while to get the latest data, but your bank records showed an unusual increase in your savings account, a couple of months before you were accused of embezzlement.” I looked at him. “You didn’t embezzle that money, did you? But the embezzlers paid you to use of your sophisticated computer equipment.”

  “Of course not. My parents gave me that money.”

  “That should be easy to confirm. I’ll ask them right now.”

  “No!” Brad said, sharply. “Don’t bother.” He zipped up the carrying case.

  “You had to get it from somewhere. I remembered that you had expressed an interest in computer gaming and starting your own business. It occurred to me that maybe Fullbright, Saltzman, and LaRue weren’t the only ones involved in making the child porn game, even if they were the only ones taking money from the company.”

  Brad turned away, wearing a sly smile.

  “How did you get in on it?”