Blackbird

by Tom Wright

  ‘Zito,’ I said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘When’s he coming?’

  ‘By the dawn’s early light, I imagine.’

  I took a last look around, seeing nothing else I recognised as meaningful. LA and I shook hands with Morning Singer, thanked him for the walk-through and picked our way back out along the trail we’d come in on.

  Back in my living room, I got Dispatch on the phone and told them to find out what kind of vehicles were registered to Frix, then listened as somebody whose voice I didn’t know came on with the information. ‘Okay, thanks,’ I said when she’d finished. ‘No, nothing new.’

  Ending the call, I turned to LA. ‘A Miata and a Land Cruiser,’ I said. ‘That must have been them in what was left of the garage. Only two spaces in there and nothing parked in the driveway. So it’s Frix, and he was probably alone in the house.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘Let’s leave the whole group thing out of it,’ I said. ‘And forget the fire for a minute. Unfortunately for us that still leaves the kind of guy who gets murdered – never gonna be citizen of the year, has accomplices and enemies but no friends, doesn’t trust anybody, keeps most of his money in gold coins and bullion in a vault at his house. Along with his automatic weapons.’

  ‘Full automatic? Real machine guns,’ she said, bringing her index fingers into firing position, ‘like Dillinger?’

  ‘Pretty much. But he was a collector, not a hunter or competitor, hung out at gun shows and all that. Had an arrest for videotaping women in the restroom at his office with a hidden camera. He never went to trial for it, but I’m sure he was selling the tapes. I don’t know what all that adds up to psychologically.’

  ‘Adds up to a very hostile, undeveloped man.’

  ‘What do you call a guy like that technically?’

  ‘Narcissistic, paranoid. What Freud called a phallic character – overly competitive and vain, obsessed with status and power. Sexually immature, voyeuristic. Couldn’t stand to be wrong.’

  ‘Sounds like the ex of every divorced woman I know.’

  LA shrugged, picking up her glass.

  ‘I don’t want this to be connected,’ I said.

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘A burglary that went wrong.’

  ‘Put your money where your mouth is,’ LA said.

  I looked at her, trying to remember when I’d last won any kind of bet against her, if I ever had. Wayne hadn’t thought this was an incidental killing either. Or a smoking accident or bad wiring. He wouldn’t have asked Dispatch to call me if he had.

  ‘What are we betting?’

  ‘Dinner at whatchacallit, that place with the good chateaubriand.’

  ‘The Chanticleer.’

  ‘That’s it.’

  She was one of the few people I knew who still used a chequebook, and she brought hers out now. She wrote Chanticleer on the Pay To line, then signed the cheque in the same goofy way she always had, stringing the initials and last name together with no upper-case letters: larowe. I had asked her once why she did that but she’d just shrugged – another LA mystery. She tore the cheque out and smacked it down on the coffee table, saying, ‘Ante up, cowboy.’

  A brief pinprick of light flared somewhere out in the mental wilderness of things I should’ve realised but hadn’t, then vanished without explanation. I got out one of the two debit cards I carried – the one I was pretty sure had two hundred dollars or so behind it as of today – and laid it on the cheque. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But coincidences do happen, LA. You can’t deny that.’ My last desperate shot.

  She hmm’d non-committally as she sipped ginger ale. I walked over to boost Puccini back up to therapeutic volume, LA watching me and thinking her own thoughts.

  NINETEEN

  Benny’s offices were off Rockland, painted and carpeted in cooperative, cheery colours, nice ficus and umbrella plants in the corners, big Caribbean watercolours on the walls, comfortable-looking furniture. The magazines were slick, bright and mostly recent.

  I heard goings-on in the small kitchen and break room down the hall, and smelled just-brewed coffee. A second later Benny appeared from his office and hustled out to greet me.

  ‘Jim, it is very good to be seeing you!’ He was round, kinetic and full of smiles but as always wore a serious suit and snugly knotted tie even at the end of a long day. He seemed to shake off an impulse to go for the abrazo, stuck out his hand instead and showed me back to his consulting office where we sat in big tweedy chairs arranged around a teak coffee table away from the desk. Andrea brought in coffee, tea and fixings along with three kinds of cookies.

  ‘Hi, Lieutenant,’ she said. ‘I’m on my way out. If you need anything else, Dr B can show you where it is.’

  Benny and I reassured each other about our health, disapproved of the weather and politicians, and traded generic family news. Then he tutted, saying, ‘These terrible deaths that are happening.’ He shook his head.

  ‘Did you know Frix?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I have never met him personally, pero que lastima – he was anyway a human being. My friend, the world is too ugly.’

  ‘Can’t argue with that,’ I said, picking up a cookie with something that looked like apricot jam in the centre. ‘What about Dr Gold?’

  ‘En realidad, I am not so sure how well I knew her. We never had the social relationships. Sometimes we consulted.’

  ‘How’d that go?’

  Benny looked pained. ‘I would not be able to say she was very good with people.’

  ‘Sounds unhandy in this line of work.’ I drank some iced tea. ‘Are you talking about talent, training or attitude?’

  ‘Probably we should say it is the personality. Dr Gold was intelligent, no question at all, but she was very difficult and critical in her talking of her peers. Always the troubles, many chasings of the patients, many complaints to the boards. Many lawsuits.’ He spread his hands. ‘Nobody is resting at peace.’

  ‘What do you know about her relationship with Mark Pendergrass?’

  Benny rolled his eyes. ‘Ai, Dios, it is a mess. These two, they are having a boxfight over the schedule book, directly in the waiting room! They are screaming, the patients are screaming, the secretaries are screaming – tal locura! They sue each other from it!’

  ‘What happened with that?’

  ‘The judge, he throws them out. Each one keeps whoever they are seeing. He lectures them, they are bad children, he will have no more of this nonsense in his courtroom.’

  ‘She must have had a lot of patients,’ I said. ‘I’m wondering what they’d say about her.’

  He examined his coffee for a while, then leaned forward and set it on the table in front of him. He seemed to be noticing that his clothes were too tight. He took in a deep breath through his nose. Finally he said, ‘This is where it is becoming tricky. There is a problem of the confidentiality.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said, then exercised my right to remain silent. I sipped tea and reached for another cookie.

  He leaned back in his chair and thoughtfully put the tip of a manicured forefinger to his lips. ‘But maybe I am thinking of something.’

  I waited.

  He picked up his coffee again. ‘First, it is to know the general attitude from her ex-patients – ’

  ‘How do you know about that?’

  ‘Some of them, they leave her and come to me. They are usually feeling she doesn’t listen to them very much, she is taking the telephone calls all the time when they are there.’

  ‘During the sessions?’

  He nodded. ‘This is what I am hearing.’

  ‘Who is she talking to? And about what?’

  ‘Everybody. Everything. Other patients, insurance companies, lawyers, they are all calling. If somebody cancels an appointment, she is calling the patient to complain, telling them they have to be there, they cannot cancel on her, the insurance will not pay.’

  ‘Sounds like a confidentiality problem rig
ht there – ’

  ‘She is one who does not worry herself about that, my friend. A few years ago she loses a big lawsuit about it.’

  A vague memory floated up. ‘Was it something about a suicide?’

  ‘It was, yes. A woman comes to her with a sexual problem. She is depressed, confused, doesn’t know what to do. Dr Gold, she is always loyal to the money, she is calling the husband, who is rich, saying the woman is dangerous to her children, he should come in and see her, they will make a plan. There is a huge fee and then a divorce, and pretty soon the woman she kills herself. Her family, they sue Dr Gold and get a big settlement.’

  ‘Did the settlement actually hurt Dr Gold financially?’

  ‘Probably. If not then, later. We usually have one million or three million dollars of liability insurance. If the lawyers can make a settlement for less than that, she is off the hook, but then the insurance company is probably cancelling her and it is harder to get the coverage, and it will cost more. If the judgement is for more than the policy, she will have to be paying for the difference.’

  ‘How able was she to do that?’

  ‘She has some money, I believe. She is marrying the computer guy – ’ Benny searched the air for a name, pinching his lip.

  ‘Andy Jamison,’ I said.

  ‘Si, Jamison. And she gets her name on everything. It is a good business, so after that she can go to Israel whenever she likes.’

  ‘What about that?’ I said. ‘I mean the way she ended up with Jamison. He’s a patient, she picks him off when his marriage falls apart – isn’t there an ethics problem there, a psychologist getting involved with a patient?’

  ‘It is a maximum no-no,’ Benny said, wagging a forefinger from side to side. ‘But maybe there is not a complaint to the board, no se, but anyway nothing happens to her. Now I think it would be different, much more difficult to get away with this.’

  ‘What about Jamison’s wife? What’s her reaction to Dr Gold poaching her husband like that?’

  ‘I do not know from a direct certainty but I am sure she is angry, depressed. Maybe the marriage is already not so good, it is in the crappers anyway, I don’t know. But I don’t believe it is so.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It is by a patient who knew her. I cannot say who she is. This person is believing the problems they are having are bad ones but not too impossible to solve, Mrs Jamison is willing to have a reconciliation, it is like so many marriages after a few years, usually there can be a resolution.’

  ‘Who is the ex?’

  ‘She is Jackie Milner. A high-school teacher for the twelfth grade, in the Terrebonne.’

  ‘Could she carry enough of a grudge to have Gold killed?’

  ‘Quien sabe?’

  ‘Did she get married again?’

  ‘I do not know. I think she cares for her work. I believe her students love her pretty much for being a good teacher. They are bringing her flowers, candy, tickets for the movie. She is being made Educator of the Year.’

  ‘Who loves her, the boys or the girls?’

  Benny seemed surprised by the question. He thought for a moment. ‘I believe it is mostly the boys, you know, now that I am thinking of it. Why is it that you ask?’

  ‘Just trying to get a picture of her in my head. She and Jamison had kids, didn’t they?’

  ‘Yes, two. One is a girl, twelve, the other is a boy who is fourteen.’

  ‘How are they doing?’

  ‘They are not seeing their father very much. Dr Gold is not making them feel welcome, I think.’

  ‘What’s the boy like?’

  ‘His soul is of the artist. He studies the dance. A very kind boy.’ From the way Benny said this I knew the boy was his patient.

  ‘You’re saying he’s gay?’

  ‘I am not believing it is for me to say.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Okay, Benny, I appreciate this,’ I said. ‘I think it’s going to help us a lot.’

  ‘The other thing is a certain patient I am thinking of,’ he said. ‘I will ask if she would be agreeing to talk with you. I believe her judgement is good to decide this. I am sure she would not suffer harm to do it.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Thanks. If she agrees, just let me know when and where. What the hell would we do without you?’

  He smiled broadly. ‘You flatter me too much. We are after all on the same side together, no? Please let me help in any way that I can.’

  ‘By the way,’ I said. ‘Does the word “glowen” ring a bell with you?’

  ‘Como?’

  I wrote it out on a sticky note from his desk and handed it to him.

  He studied it a moment. ‘I do not like this word,’ he said.

  ‘Why? Do you know what it means?’

  ‘No, I do not, but it has a feeling that is not good.’

  ‘What feeling?’

  ‘Un sentimiento de maldad,’ he said. ‘Here.’ He placed his hand over his heart.

  ‘Okay, can we go back a little bit? I’m wondering if you know whether Dr Gold had sex with any other patients.’

  ‘Yes, I am hearing that this is so.’

  ‘What about underage patients?’

  ‘Me temo que es tan, I am having pains to say.’

  ‘Would that be with males or females?’

  He shrugged. ‘Quien sabe?’

  When I described the interview to LA later, she asked for details of phrasing, body language, pauses, respiration rate, eye movements. When she’d heard it all she said, ‘He’s not hiding anything important.’

  Jana said, ‘He’s required to report that stuff about kids, isn’t he?’

  ‘Not necessarily, when it’s just rumours,’ LA said. ‘Kind of a fine line there sometimes.’

  We’d just finished dinner at Haddad’s, prime rib medium-rare and baked potato for me, a smidgen of haddock with steamed carrots and zucchini for LA, a veggie plate with portobellos, broccoli and red potatoes for Jana. The wreckage of all that had been cleared and we were having coffee while we waited for dessert. Casey and Jordan were overnighting with friends.

  ‘What about Jamison’s ex?’ I asked LA.

  ‘Not a good suspect.’ She sipped coffee.

  Jana nodded, picking up her tea cup. Female consensus. Case closed.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘This wasn’t a woman’s crime,’ said LA.

  ‘Anyway, how does somebody like her put together a crew to do it?’ said Jana. ‘Does she troll the Harley shops, KKK meetings, tattoo parlours?’

  ‘Okay, point taken,’ I said.

  ‘Second place, she wouldn’t have waited this long,’ said LA. ‘When women kill, it’s usually an affair of the heart and it’s usually impulsive, or else it’s surreptitious stuff like slow poisoning.’

  Our crème brulees came, LA eyeing hers suspiciously. Jana pushed her own across to me and asked the waitress for melon. I drifted off into reflection about the murders. I was sure Jana and LA were right. There was nothing about the Gold operation that seemed at all feminine, impulsive, hesitant or haphazard. In fact it had an almost military feel: focused killers who’d acted cold-bloodedly and with coordinated precision, each one knowing exactly what to do at every stage of the mission.

  Operation? I thought. Mission? Why was I calling it that? I didn’t know, but the way they’d planned and pulled it off – being ready with camouflage netting, timber, spikes large enough to nail a human being up to die, carrying a framing hammer around – made them sound to me like blue-collar guys, working stiffs but not necessarily career thugs, vets maybe, enlisted or low-level non-coms, knowing all about tools and timbers, guys who were agile and fit but not kids, working like well-drilled soldiers.

  ‘Or legionnaires,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ said LA, glancing at me.

  ‘He does that all the time when he’s on a case,’ said Jana. ‘Thinking out loud.’

  I realised I hadn’t told Jana about the coin. I described it to her.

 
‘Are you kidding me?’

  ‘Jay’s got a point,’ LA said. She took a tiny bite of crème. ‘You’re definitely dealing with something strange here, Bis.’

  ‘It is spooky,’ said Jana. ‘Like a Sherlock Holmes mystery.’ Her order came, half a dozen chilled cantaloupe and honeydew balls in what looked like a margarita glass, and she spooned one into her mouth.

  ‘You didn’t let the press have this, did you?’ LA asked me.

  ‘You know I didn’t.’

  She nodded. ‘Bet our bad guys wanted them to get it, though,’ she said. ‘Assuming they actually are twentieth-century crooks instead of real Roman soldiers risen from the sand.’

  It was my turn to nod. I took a bite of crème, which was sweet enough to make me wonder how long it had been since my last visit to the dentist. I laid my spoon down.

  ‘Why would they want that?’ asked Jana.

  ‘Because unless they dropped the coin there by accident, which is hard to believe, it was a message.’

  ‘So what are they trying to say?’ asked Jana. ‘And who are they saying it to?’

  After a few seconds of silence LA said, ‘Gonna have to wait for the third act to find out, huh?’

  TWENTY

  I cleared the last of the swipe-locks at the federal prison north of town in time to catch Dr Mark Pendergrass just as a slender kid with shaved head, spade-shaped goatee and at least three dozen tattoos was being escorted away in shackles.

  Long-term lockups are tireless engines of rage, despair and insanity that unspecifiably foul the air, and nothing about the bright prints and soft carpet in Pendergrass’s office or the Donald Duck tie he sported did anything to lighten the impression. He dropped a little bottle of hand sanitiser back into his desk drawer as he stood to shake hands.

  He was not quite my height, with a roundish face and light brown hair that tended to fall onto his forehead, giving him the look of a tassel-toed preppie hitting middle age while still in the grip of denial, a little soft in the middle but not really fat, still boylike in some way that was hard to pin down.

  He gestured toward a couple of comfortable-looking orange chairs set in conversational proximity across the room and said, ‘Can I get you something to drink?’