In the Guise of Mercy (Maggie Macgowen Mysteries)

by Wendy Hornsby

  "Copies or originals or both?"

  "The originals. Did you know my house was broken into day before yesterday?"

  "I heard something." She put her hand on the boxes holding Mike's files, eyes wide. "Do you think that's what they were after?"

  "I'm beginning to wonder."

  "Very cool. I mean..." She searched for the right thing to say. "Okay, not cool. You probably were pretty scared. But it's interesting. Mysterious."

  "That it is," I said. "I need two sets of copies made, one for me to work from, and one to hand over to the police if they get insistent. Guido has some film school interns floating around here somewhere who can help you. Making copies would be a good assignment for them."

  "Good idea. Thanks."

  "And just for fun, here's another little job."

  I gave her the information about finding Alzheimer's facilities that John Pendergast had given me the night before and explained the Oscar problem. And then I set her free.

  Fergie lumbered to her feet, headed for her desk. At the door, she hesitated, and then, holding the doorframe, she turned to me and said, "I'm really sorry I missed Mike's funeral. If I'd known... You could have called me."

  "You'd planned that vacation for two years, Fergie," I said. "You were missed, but I'm glad you were having fun."

  "Well, I'm sorry I wasn't there for you, Maggie."

  "You're here now," I said. "And that's what's important, now."

  "Yeah." She turned again to leave. "Know a dermatologist?"

  "Casey's doctor is listed in my book."

  "Good. Thanks."

  After she left the room, she turned around and came back, handed me my second "Sgt. Lewis Banks" business card. "I forgot. This guy came by before you got here this morning."

  "Would you please call Sergeant Banks and set him up for an in-studio interview this afternoon?" I looked at the clock: Kenny Noble was on his way over. If I gave Kenny two hours... "Let's say one-thirty or two."

  "Got it."

  Kenny Noble watched the interview with Mayra and Julia as if transfixed. He seemed to concentrate not only on their words but also on their body language. Sometimes when Mayra was talking, Kenny was watching Julia. When it was over he asked for a copy, which Guido produced.

  I couldn't be miffed with him for being less than forthcoming about my trip to Corcoran. Eldon Washington was right. Kenny did what he needed to do and I got some of what I wanted as well. I guess that made us even. And there were a few things I wasn't sharing with Kenny at the moment, including Mike's personal files, his original pocket-size notebooks, and the information Phil Rascon gave me. All of that was currently in Fergie's capable hands.

  "Department should hire you two," Kenny said, pocketing the interview disc. "You ask good questions. People talk to you."

  "Would I get my own nightstick if I joined up?" Guido asked.

  "Sure thing." Kenny chuckled. "And I'll personally show you how to use it."

  "You'll need more than a nightstick," I said to Guido, "when the Department figures out you're a Commie."

  "Communism's dead, Mag," Guido said. "Didn't you get the memo?"

  "Musta missed it." I tapped the ticklish place under his ribs and ducked the hand that rose to swat me away. "I promised Kenny lunch in the commissary. Will you join us?"

  Guido's sardonic smile told me he was more than familiar with a visitor's interest in that particular institution. He said, "Delighted."

  We ran into Early as we crossed the parking lot on our way across the midway toward the administration building where the commissary was located. I asked him to join us also.

  "Kenny," I said, "you know Early, my neighbor."

  Another round of hand-shaking.

  Early handed Guido a disc. "Don't know if you can use this, don't know what the break-in at Maggie's was all about, but I shot some footage of the investigators at work at her house. Just in case. If this burglary has anything to do with the project..."

  Kenny furrowed his brow as he puzzled over that last comment. "If the burglary has what?"

  Early looked at me. "Did I misspeak?"

  "Don't worry," I said. "If it did, we wouldn't hide it from the police, or they from me. Right?"

  When we arrived at the next building, Guido reached first for the door, let Kenny and Early precede him. As I passed him, he patted the disc in his pocket and muttered, "Beware. Barbarians at our gate."

  I muttered back, "I love only you." He thumped my backside.

  The commissary has two large areas. The Primetime Grille has a service counter where one can order bacon and eggs in the morning, burgers, burritos and deli sandwiches the rest of the day. There are pizza slices and Chinese-ish offerings under heat lamps, a salad bar, self-serve coolers for drinks, sides, and desserts, and racks of chips and various other junk food. The floors are scrubbed linoleum, the tables and chairs are shiny chrome and bright red plastic; a standard-issue, utilitarian fast food venue.

  On the windows side of the room, separated from the Grille by movable screens and potted palms on wheels, is Emmy's. Carpet on the floor, white linens, table service provided by a wait-staff in starched jackets, meals ordered from a hand-written board listing the day's offerings. Usually there is a fish, a chicken or beef dish, something vegetarian, and, every day, a very good grilled-chicken Caesar salad.

  Kenny glanced over both areas before he chose the relative quiet of Emmy's. Better place to talk, he said. I made certain that our table was next to a window so that Kenny could watch for the comings and goings of TV talent driving their expensive cars up the midway between the studios and the administration building. At the table next to us, the host of the network's late night talk show, a famous funnyman, was in a very serious conversation with one of the nation's leading comedians. Not a laugh or even a chuckle emanated from the pair the entire time we were there.

  "Maggie." Kenny opened his linen napkin and spread it on his lap, and then he looked pointedly at me. "In all that mess in Mike's office, I didn't see any of his investigation notebooks."

  He pulled one of his own out of his pocket to show me, the standard-issue policeman's vade mecum. "Any idea what Mike did with them?"

  "I'm sure he put them away somewhere carefully," I said, equivocating; Mike's notebooks were in Fergie's hands, waiting to be copied along with his files. I was not ready to relinquish them.

  The phone in my pocket vibrated. I took it out and looked at the number in the caller ID window. It was Lana, from her cell phone. Before I answered the phone, I turned to Guido.

  "It's Lana, from New York," I told Guido. I turned to Kenny. "It's our exec producer calling from New York. I need to talk to her."

  He shrugged, as in, You gotta do what you gotta do.

  I walked out into the passageway to take the call. "Meeting over?" I asked Lana by way of greeting.

  "Congratulations," she said, "Pete and the boys bought the project. We had the usual wrestling match about final content approval, but we've beaten them down on control issues before. The concern I picked up is whether the project will be large enough to fill two hours. I don't mean long enough, Maggie, I mean large enough."

  "Big-time boffo, I promise," I said. "We'll give them sex, blood, passion, some gossip, and a couple of good recipes and decorating tips."

  "How's the film coming?"

  "We're hard at work. Tomorrow we're downtown, Sunday Guido's crew is filming at the morgue, and Monday a funeral at potter's field. How graphic do you want us to get?"

  "Do what you need to do," Lana said, without irony. She gave me a little pro forma pep talk, but I could hear a whole lot of stress in her voice. I suspected that the boys in New York had given her a pretty good beating up before they signed on with this one.

  Lana takes care of me because it works for her to do so. I would never hear the grim details of the meeting, how much of her soul she had to sell and how much of mine she promised. What I always have to remember is that the stakes are always greater f
or her than they are for me. My failure to deliver audience share would be hers, squared.

  I said good-bye to Lana, and turned my attention back to Kenny. Almost immediately, my phone buzzed again. I looked at the caller ID screen. It was Fergie.

  Fergie told me she was at the studio reception desk with Lewis Banks, who had told Fergie when she called him to set up an appointment that he was in the neighborhood and would just come on over for that conversation. And he had. I asked her to escort Banks to the commissary to join us. The more the merrier. Or was it protection in numbers?

  A few moments later when I saw the flash of Fergie's red hair at the commissary entrance, I walked over to greet Sgt. Banks. He was in full uniform, though he wouldn't be due at work until ten that evening. I asked him to wait for just a moment, and took Fergie aside for a word.

  When we were out of earshot, I whispered to her. "That little copying task? Take it upstairs to Lana's office. Have Security pick up the originals from there. Let the interns know that what they're doing is highly confidential. They shouldn't discuss it with anyone."

  Fergie loves skulduggery and was happy to oblige.

  I walked Banks over to join the others.

  "Are you coming from or going to work?" I asked him.

  He ran a hand down the front of his uniform. "Had a security job early this morning. Traffic control at a movie shoot."

  I nodded. Lots of uniformed officers moonlight in Hollywood.

  We joined the others. "Lewis Banks, Ken Noble, have you met?"

  "We've run into each other," Banks said, shaking Ken's offered hand. I introduced Banks to Guido and Early, and Early pulled up a chair for him. Banks declined lunch but accepted coffee.

  "Nice of you to come in on such short notice," I said to Banks. "After lunch, maybe you'll come upstairs and let me ask you some questions on camera."

  "Concerning?" Kenny asked, scowling in Banks' direction.

  "Sergeant Banks knew Mike when he was still at Seventy-seventh Street," I said. "And he was working out of Central in 1999 when Jesus disappeared."

  "Ah," Kenny said. "The history. Do you call getting that kind of information deep background?"

  "I won't know what to call it until I hear what Sergeant Banks has to say," I said.

  Food arrived. The ceremonies of the peppermill and the bread basket followed. Drinks were replenished. When the wait-staff had finished their ministrations, Kenny picked up where I had cut him off when I left the table to talk to Lana.

  "You know how Mike was." Kenny, fork poised over a very nice piece of poached cod, smiled wistfully, winked at me. "He was a thorough investigator. Very meticulous. I know he kept good notes when he was in the field. I sure would like to get a look at his contemporaneous notes about Jesus."

  "Are you looking into the case again, Kenny?" I asked.

  "Since you brought it up, yeah. Political pressure from above."

  "Well, I'll take a look around for the notebooks."

  Guido and Early exchanged puzzled, but intrigued, glances, leaned forward, and in that gesture also moved closer to each other. They both knew that I had the notebooks. We had referred to them for chronology and police lingo when we worked on the promo.

  "You're fudging on the answer, Maggie," Kenny said, assertive but calm, smiling. "I know you have them. Those notes are potential evidence in an open investigation, the same as Mike's testimony now that he isn't with us, God rest his soul. We'll probably need the originals if we ever manage to file any aspect of the Jesus case with the D.A. Think about it."

  "Would you settle for a copy?" I asked.

  "For now. But don't let anything happen to the originals."

  "Count on it."

  Conversation during the rest of the meal was mostly cop stories, two old-timers, Kenny and Banks, playing a sort of tale-spinning one-upmanship. They were interesting enough that the two funnymen lunching at the next table leaned in to eavesdrop.

  Back at my office, Fergie had two film school graduate-level interns busy at a table in a back corner of the outer office with three-hole punches and stacks of photocopies and three-ring binders. I walked over and made sure that Kenny could only see the blank reverse sides of the pages. Fergie herself was busy with her post-vacation readjustment activities, drowning a weeklong tequila hangover with mineral water and aspirin, and making phone calls.

  The interns were young and attractive and efficient, and I supposed Kenny felt obligated to say something to them. So he told them he could get them clerical jobs at Parker Center any time they wanted. Good benefits.

  One of the interns managed to say, "Thanks," but the other could barely muster a polite smile.

  "Clerks and secretaries hold the world together," I said. "But these ladies are graduate film students working their way toward the production suites. They have a different career path in mind."

  He nodded. "Well, good luck with that. But if it doesn't work out..."

  Guido took Banks down the hall to a studio to set up for the interview. Early said he was due back in the newsroom. As a courtesy, I gave Kenny the nickel tour of the studio. We walked through the news facilities where I introduced him to the on-camera talent. He had a friendly conversation with the former pro footballer-now-meteorologist about the Southern California weather prospects for the weekend; warm and sunny was the forecast, as usual. We watched some of the warm-up act before the taping of a popular situation comedy, and stayed long enough to see the actors come out and wave to the audience before stepping on their marks to tape the first scene. Then we went up to the office of the same late night talk show host we had sat near at lunch so that I could introduce them.

  Laden with network logo T-shirts, caps, and mugs, Kenny was grinning when we finished the full studio circuit and arrived back downstairs. At the reception desk I gave him a hug, thanked him for something or other, and expected him to say good-bye.

  With his loot rolled into one of the T-shirts and tucked under an arm, he said, "You have to decide whom to trust."

  "I haven't made that decision yet, Kenny," I said. "I don't know enough yet to do that."

  When he started to argue, I said, "I know you had my conversation with Boni bugged, that you set me up to have a conversation he wouldn't have with you. I don't blame you, but you should have told me. You should have trusted me."

  "Touche." He gave me a firm, one-armed embrace.

  I said, "I have three questions, and I wonder if you can help me with them."

  He laughed. "Only three?"

  "At the moment."

  "Shoot."

  "One, on January 16, 1999, what time did Boni leave Parker Center after he dropped off Nelda? Add to that, where did he go after he left Parker Center? Two, who found Mayra?"

  "And three? What's three?"

  "Who do you think killed Rogelio Higgins?"

  There was a pregnant pause. "Who've you been talking to about Higgins?"

  "Mike, primarily," I said. "His notes. But a lot of people I've spoken with begin their recollections about Jesus with the death of Higgins. The assassination of Higgins."

  "Maggie, I'll help you with Jesus Ramon, but the drug trade is another matter. That's somewhere you don't want to go. Doesn't have anything to do with what happened to Jesus disappearing, and you could get yourself into some big trouble if you go through the wrong door."

  "We'll see. Can you answer my questions?"

  "The first one I'll have to look into for you, get back to you," he said. "But the third I remember. The Higgins shooting was one of the first cases Robbery-Homicide caught after I was promoted to lieutenant. You don't forget the first ones. Especially one that dirty.

  "Question two." He leaned a haunch on the corner of Fergie's desk. "Mayra was found in an abandoned factory down on First Street, down near the bridge, by a homeless woman named Orfelia Jones who was looking for a place to sleep off her load sometime before dawn. Jones flagged down a patrol car headed back to Parker Center and took the officers to the locatio
n."

  "Any idea where Orfelia Jones is now?"

  "That was ten years ago. You know what the life expectancy of a street person is?"

  "I can only guess. But the question remains on the table."

  "I'll ask health services, see if there's a death certificate on file. You might contact some of the local shelters."

  "Kenny, why weren't you forthcoming with me?"

  "You're press, I'm cops."

  "Bullshit," I said, but I was smiling.

  "Look, Maggie, I hoped you'd come to the same conclusion Mike and I did about where Jesus Ramon has been all these years and go public with it, clear Mike's reputation," he said. "Jesus was a street punk who took drugs with his aunt and they both OD'd. She was found in time. He wasn't. I thought that would be the end of your story."

  "It was more than an overdose," I said. "Jesus was murdered. I believe that Mayra was the intended target and that Jesus was collateral damage, but it was still murder."

  "You'll have to persuade me. Who would want to hurt Mayra?"

  "Someone who was afraid she would talk."

  "Know who yet?"

  "Whoever tried to take over Higgins's downtown territory."

  "Mike always bragged about you," Kenny said, sounding grim. "My apologies, I underestimated you."

  "And here we are," I said. "What next?"

  "Maggie, how many corpses did you run across in the process of reaching that supposition?"

  "Counting Rogelio Higgins and Jesus, five," I said.

  "Double that," he said.

  "And some of them were cops," I added.

  He sucked in some air. "You don't know what you're up against. You really think you know what that was all about?"

  "Parts of it."

  "You probably do. Give me a for-instance."

  "I suspect that when Boni Erquiaga made his bullshit charges against Mike et al. and managed to get a grand jury convened, that he was showing someone else what he was capable of stirring up. A warning, as it were, to keep quiet."

  "If you have half the brains I think you have, you'll keep what you figured out to yourself, Maggie."

  "To myself and the television viewing public," I said.