“What the hell is the matter with people?” he said.
“What?”
“E-Zee Kleen? Can you tell me what the point of that is? Is there a reason he can’t spell it correctly?”
“It has more pizzazz that way,” I said. “Catchier.”
He gave me a withering look. “Spare me.”
We went inside. Two women were loading laundry into the washing machines, and a short Chinese man was at the counter, talking in an agitated voice with the clerk, a bored-looking middle-aged woman. Joe and I stood behind him, waiting. He was ranting about a rip that had appeared in a suit he’d left to be dry-cleaned. The clerk was explaining that she couldn’t help him if he didn’t have a receipt and the supposed damage had occurred six months earlier, as he said. This was not the response he’d been seeking, and he let her know that for about five minutes while Joe and I grew increasingly impatient. Eventually, Joe cleared his throat and spoke over the man.
“We’re here to see Dan Beckley. Is he around?”
The clerk nodded her head at the door behind her. “He’s in the office, but he might be on the phone. Go on in, though.”
The Chinese man turned to us and glared at Joe. “Excuse you for interrupting. I was talking.”
Joe stared at him. “No,” he said, “you were babbling.” Then he walked around the counter and opened the door.
I looked at the outraged man and shrugged. “He’s not a morning person,” I said. “But, then again, not so much of an afternoon or evening person, either.”
I followed Joe into the office. It was a small, square room, occupied by an old metal desk and one filing cabinet. A tiny television sat on the filing cabinet, tuned to a morning talk show. The room smelled of beer and body odor. A large, ruddy man with fat cheeks and small, sunken eyes sat behind the desk. He wore a plaid shirt, with the first few buttons undone, revealing a thin gold chain amid a cluster of gray chest hair.
“You here about the dryer?” he asked.
Joe shook his head. “No.”
The man sighed. “Figures. Those sons of bitches have been promising to come out here for days, and they still haven’t showed. Meanwhile I got only four dryers that work. Sucks.” Joe looked at him blankly and didn’t say anything. The man said, “So what do you want?”
“You Dan Beckley?”
“That’s right. Who wants to know?”
I looked at Joe. Who wants to know? There are some things that sound cool when said by Robert DeNiro that sound ridiculous when said by anyone else. Joe gave Beckley our business card, and he looked at it and then dropped it on his desk.
“I figured this day was going to suck,” he said. “What’s the problem?”
“No problem,” Joe said. “We just wanted to talk to you.”
“About?”
“About Jeremiah Hubbard.”
Beckley screwed up his face like he’d tasted something foul. “I got nothing to say about Hubbard.”
“You sold a fair amount of property to him not too long ago,” I said. “Originally, you told him you weren’t interested. Then you reconsidered, and from what we’ve heard, you didn’t make out too well on the deal. What happened?”
“What happened? Nothing happened.” He crossed his arms over his ample stomach. “I decided to sell, that’s all.”
I nodded. “I see. You ever hear of a guy named Wayne Weston?”
He frowned. “No.”
“He’s an associate of Hubbard’s,” I said. “An investigator, like us. He was murdered about a week ago.”
Something changed in Beckley’s face—not when I mentioned the murder, but a split second earlier when I told him Weston was an investigator.
“I don’t watch the news shows much,” he said. “I don’t care to hear about murders and drug wars and the rest of that crap. And I never heard of this Weston guy, either.” He tilted his chin up at us, defiant.
“Why’d you reconsider on the property deal?” Joe asked. “There has to be some reason. A guy like Hubbard has plenty of money. You probably could have taken him for a lot more than you did.”
“I made out fine on that deal,” he said. “Just fine, thank you. I got what I wanted to get, and I moved on. I don’t see why it’s any concern of yours.”
Sometimes you just feel it. Call it a hunch, a gut reaction, intuition, an instinct—sometimes you can feel the truth in a way that’s hard to explain, a deep, subconscious tug that tells you when something doesn’t feel right. As I stood in Beckley’s office and watched him glaring at us, with his arms folded over his stomach and his shoulders pulled back in a defensive posture, I had that tug.
“What’d Hubbard have on you?” I asked softly.
He jerked his head back as if I’d given him a jab on the chin. “What did you say?”
“What’d he have on you?” I repeated. It was his reaction to my description of Weston as an investigator that had given me the tug. Somehow, that had made something click in his mind; it had explained something he’d wondered about in the past.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
Joe took a half step backward, an almost unnoticeable movement, but he was clearing out of the way, realizing that I was operating on a feeling he didn’t share.
“Dan,” I said, “do us both a favor and don’t bullshit me.”
“I’d like you to leave. Now.” He pointed at the door.
“We’re not leaving, Dan,” I said, my voice still soft. “You didn’t sell out so low to Hubbard just because you felt like it. You’re too smart for that. You’d look at Hubbard, think about how deep his pockets are, and you’d bleed every cent you could out of him. Every last cent. Now why didn’t you?”
“Go to hell.”
I ignored him and leaned forward, placing my palms on his desk and lowering my face toward his.
“Listen to me, Dan. There are two ways of handling this. You can either tell me what Hubbard had on you, or you can let me find it out on my own. One way or the other, I’m going to get the information. And I don’t like being lied to. You’re lying to me now, and until I find out what you’re lying about, I’m going to make you my life’s work. You’re going to be my obsession, Dan. I’m not going away.”
He looked up at me, and the defiant chin quivered slightly. He breathed heavily out of his nose and clenched his hands together. Angry. Then he pulled open one of the desk drawers, removed an envelope, and threw it at me. It hit me in the chest and fell to the floor.
“Go on,” he said, his lip curling up in a snarl, spitting the words at me. “Go on and take a look.”
I retrieved the envelope from the floor and opened it. There were photographs inside. I went through them slowly while Joe looked over my shoulder. In the first picture, Dan Beckley was in a car, talking to a woman on the sidewalk who wore stiletto heels and a short red skirt with black fishnet stockings. In the next, he was passing her money, and then she was in the car, her head buried in his lap. In the final photograph, she was out of the car again, walking away, while Beckley sat in the driver’s seat.
I slipped the photographs back into the envelope. “So that’s how it went,” I said. “Hubbard sent you photographs of you with the hooker, and you made the deal?”
He shook his head. “Can’t prove it was him. All I got were the photographs and a little Post-it note with the price he’d offered me written on it. The message was pretty clear, though.” He looked down at the desk. “I got a wife and a son. I didn’t want them seeing that shit.”
“Did you call Hubbard on it,” Joe asked, “or did you just agree to the deal?”
“I didn’t call him out, but we both knew what was going on.”
I dropped the envelope back on his desk. “Thanks for your time, Dan. And don’t worry, this isn’t going to leave the room.”
He flipped me off and kept his eyes on the desk. Joe and I left. The Chinese man was still yammering at the clerk, who looked ready to strangle him. He shut up when Jo
e brushed against him, but he was back at it when we reached the door.
We sat in the truck, and I started the engine but didn’t shift out of park.
“So that’s what Weston was doing for him,” I said. “No wonder the guy has such good luck with business deals.”
“Explains why Weston didn’t appear to be a legitimate investigator,” Joe said. “He was just a well-paid extortionist. Hubbard probably gave him plenty of business.”
“If Weston had been doing this for a while, it would add to the list of people who’d have liked to kill him.”
“What about the Russians?” Joe said.
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. “Yes. What about the Russians?”
We sat there for a while, and then I said, “We could go back to Hubbard, confront him with it, and see what he gives us.”
Joe shook his head. “I don’t like that. Not yet, at least.”
“All right. So what now?”
“Back to the office. Let’s take another look at those faxes from Amy and see who else Hubbard might have been putting the squeeze on. Then we’ll give Agent Cody a call.”
I pulled out of the lot and started to drive, then realized Joe was looking at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Just thinking about you pushing Beckley back there,” he said. “You’ve got some kind of instincts, LP.”
“Lucky guess,” I said.
Back at the office, the telephone message indicator was blinking. Joe checked the voice mail while I browsed through the faxes from Amy, writing down all the names she’d associated with Hubbard in recent months. I had a list of seven names by the time Joe hung up the phone. His face was thoughtful.
“Who was it?”
“Cody,” he said. “He had his guys check the plate on that green Oldsmobile we saw yesterday.”
“Yeah?”
“Plate’s not registered to the car.”
“It’d be too easy if it were. Maybe I should ask the Russians for the VIN number. They’ve been eager to help me so far.”
He frowned. “I don’t think this guy is with them. Why’s he camped outside their house if they’re associates? You ask me, he’s working against them in some capacity. And he’s definitely interested in Weston.”
“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it.”
“Uh-huh.” He tapped a pencil on the desk and stared at the wall. “The plate was reported stolen from South Carolina, though. Two days ago, Cody said, in Myrtle Beach. That’s a hell of a drive.”
“If he drove. Could have stolen the plate beforehand, then flown up here, rented a car, and swapped the plates to cover himself.”
“Now why’s a guy from Myrtle Beach come to Cleveland with a phony badge to question Weston’s neighbors? And how the hell does he know about the Russians? Even if he flew in, according to the license plate he couldn’t have been here for more than two days. So we can assume he knew about the Russians beforehand.”
“Knew what?”
He shrugged. “Something, anyhow. He’s asking the neighbors about the night of Weston’s death. Why?”
“Another investigator?”
“Who’s he working for, then?”
I sighed and shook my head. I didn’t have any answers. A dull ache had crept into my shoulders, and I rolled them slightly, trying to relieve the tension. I needed a good workout, or maybe a massage.
“What do you think of Agent Cody?” Joe asked.
“A Bureau boy, through and through,” I said. “Smart, flashy, cocky. And probably full of shit.”
He nodded. “That’s what I think, too. I don’t know if he lied to us last night, but I’m sure he didn’t tell us everything he knew. He says the FBI took over this investigation just because Weston’s name came up on a wiretap? Bullshit. There’s got to be more than that involved.”
“Do you think we should tell him about Dan Beckley?”
“I don’t know. Our first duty is to John Weston. The FBI can make it awfully hard for us to get anywhere with this case if they don’t like where we’re going with it. I don’t want that to happen.”
“We can assume Weston was working for Hubbard, providing him blackmail material to use in his business negotiations,” I said. “Hell, he’s pretty active in city government, too. There’s no telling how many secrets Weston gave him over the years.”
“Enough to make some people mad enough to kill him.”
“Sure. But where do the Russians fit in, then? I can see dozens of people willing to whack Weston for extortion if they caught him, but not many of them would involve his family. That sounds more like a mob tactic.”
“And then we’ve got this guy in the green Olds,” Joe said. “I’m thinking maybe he’s FBI after all.”
“Cody said he wasn’t. And Swanders was pissed about it, when we told him the guy was flashing a badge and claiming to be CPD.”
“Uh-huh,” Joe said. “I believe Swanders is clueless, but I wouldn’t put it past Cody. You know how the Bureau protects their agents, especially if they’re undercover. If he didn’t want to claim the guy as one of theirs, he wouldn’t hesitate to lie about it. And it wasn’t Swanders who left the message about the license plate being lifted in Myrtle Beach. It was Cody.”
“You’re saying he lied about that, too.”
“I’m saying he could have.”
We could have continued throwing questions and complaints about the case at one another for an hour or two, but it wasn’t going to get us anywhere. Joe asked to look over the faxes from Amy again, so I passed those over, and, for lack of a better idea, I pulled out the small case file we had and began to look through it. The contents weren’t particularly awe inspiring: the notebook of recollections from John Weston, the folder of background on the Russians I’d taken from April Sortigan, and notes from my conversation with Deputy Prosecutor James Sellers. I read through it all again, searching for something I might have overlooked originally or for something that might have new meaning after our recent discoveries. I didn’t find much. Sortigan’s file wasn’t especially helpful, just basic notes from her court research. There was nothing I hadn’t already committed to memory, but I read through it anyhow.
My eye caught on a telephone number written on a yellow Post-it note and stuck to the outside of the folder. I tried to remember if it was related to the case or just a personal note she’d neglected to remove when she gave me the file. Then I remembered. Sortigan told me Weston had instructed her to fax information on the Russians to that number while he was out of town.
I turned on the computer and logged on to the Internet. There are a number of good databases for reverse lookups that take a phone number and match it with an address, or vice versa. I went to my favorite of them and typed in the number, then clicked the search button. A few seconds later the database reported there were no matches. I wasn’t surprised. The databases are effective only for listed phone numbers, and most fax numbers aren’t listed.
I stared at the monitor for a while, trying to think of another option. I could send a fax to the number on some pretext and hope someone responded. I couldn’t think of a good pretext, though. Maybe I should just be honest, send a fax with our company letterhead and try for intimidating. When people are intimidated by investigators they generally clam up rather than provide information. I studied the fax number again and then went to a different database. If nothing else, I could find out what cities matched the area code. I entered the three digits into the search engine, and it fed me an immediate match. The area code belonged to a portion of South Carolina that included Myrtle Beach.
“Hey, Joseph,” I said. He grunted in response. “When Weston told Sortigan to check out the Russians, he asked her to fax the information to him long distance. I can’t find a match on the phone number, but I checked on the area code, and guess what city it includes?”
“Myrtle Beach.”
I glared at him. “Do you have to be so damn clever? I was hoping to make a dramatic
announcement.”
He leaned over to look at the computer screen. “That’s interesting, though. Maybe Cody didn’t lie about the plate being stolen there after all.”
“What would Weston have been doing in Myrtle Beach just a few days before he was killed?”
“Does he know anyone there?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
Joe looked at the monitor and rubbed his jaw idly. “Call John and ask him.”
I picked up the phone and called John Weston. He answered on the second ring, and when I gave my name he said, “Yes, what is it?” with an expectant eagerness that made me want to sink lower in the chair. The days had seemed to go by quickly for Joe and me, but they were clearly passing with agonizing slowness for John Weston.
I explained that we were making some progress on the case, but I said we wouldn’t discuss details until we’d corroborated theories with facts. He did some grumbling about that, but I held my ground. The last thing I wanted was to tell the poor man we thought his son had been an extortionist who’d pissed off the Russian mob. I had a bad feeling we’d have to tell him that sooner or later, but I wasn’t about to rush into it until we were sure that was the case.
“We’ve turned up some connections to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina,” I told him. “It looks like Wayne went down there shortly before his death. We were wondering if you knew of any friends or acquaintances he had there?”
“He went to South Carolina?” Weston said. “Well, he never said anything about that to me. Are you sure?”
“Did he have any friends or acquaintances there?” I repeated patiently. I doubted Wayne Weston had been sharing many things with his father, but apparently the idea came as a surprise to the old man.
“Well, sure,” John Weston said. “Randy Hartwick. I told you about him already.”
“You did?”
“It’s all in the damned notebook,” he snapped. “That’s why I spent all that time writing everything down, so you’d have the information in front of you and you wouldn’t have to waste time calling me with every damn question that came up.”
I grabbed the notebook and flipped through it quickly. There was Randy Hartwick, listed under the “Friends” category. He was Wayne Weston’s old Marine Corps buddy, but in the notebook it said he lived in Florida.
Tonight I Said Goodbye lp-1 Page 10
