Blood Truth

by Matt Coyle

  Stone stood up from behind a massive desk. A panoramic view of the harbor took up the back half of the office. He flashed a smile that made it all the way to his eyes. The first friendly looking smile I’d ever seen from him. A vein in my neck throbbed.

  “Thank you, Svetlana.”

  “May I prepare you an espresso, tea, a beverage?” Svetlana pointed the question at me and glided her hand toward a bar area in the corner of the office. I looked at Stone, and he raised his eyebrows echoing her question.

  “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  Svetlana left the room and I couldn’t help but watch her do so. Then I remembered where I was and turned to face the predator cloaked in civility. He still wore the same friendly smile.

  “Rick. Please. Have a seat.” The baritone voice rolled out smooth like a fruit smoothie. Not an ounce of condescension. He pointed to a leather chair in front of his desk. I sat and so did he. “What happened to your eye?”

  The vein in my neck kept throbbing. I waited for a trap door to open under my chair. This was the Peter Stone the public saw. The successful businessman who used his wealth to fund charities.

  I did a quick scan of the room. No one else was there.

  “You can drop the act, Stone. It’s just you and me.”

  “I hope you’re here to tell me you have a flash drive in your possession that you took off Sophia’s body before you called the police Sunday.” Hard edges closed in around his eyes and his smile went cobra. “If that is the case, I’ll forget your intrusion into my office.”

  “Sorry, Stone. Sophia didn’t have a flash drive on her. She was naked when someone butchered her.” I thought of the gaping wounds, the dried blood, and the dead eyes. Nausea circled in my stomach and threatened to rise up. I fought it back. I wasn’t there about Sophia. LJPD could handle that on their own. “The only thing in the car was your briefcase in the trunk next to her body. I have no idea what was in it. The police have it now.”

  “I’ve talked to the police, Rick. So, if this is some remedial attempt at a shakedown, you’re wasting your time. And mine.”

  “I’m returning your equipment.” I pulled the audio recorder and the transmitter from my coat pocket and tossed them onto the desk. “I’ll overlook this one and the assault from your surveillance guys.” I pointed at my eye, then leaned over the desk and stared him in those dead eyes. “But if you ever send someone to break into my house again, I won’t come down to your office in the middle of the morning and talk about it over an espresso. I’ll come to your house in the middle of the night while you’re sleeping and I won’t ring the bell first.”

  Stone looked at the surveillance equipment on the desk then back at me. I’d just threatened him and meant it. I expected to see malevolence straining on a leash. I saw uncertainty instead.

  “Someone attempted to bug your home?” A real question. No venom. No smirk. No sign that he was enjoying my troubles.

  “Yes, but I found it right away. Then yesterday I caught a couple guys dressed as Spectrum reps checking the transmitter they’d hidden outside my house.” I studied his face for a tell. “You’re telling me they weren’t yours?”

  “No. When did they plant the listening device?” Life in his eyes. At the molecular level and primitive, only concerned with self-preservation. He was telling the truth and he was worried.

  Why?

  “Saturday afternoon.” If Stone hadn’t bugged my home, who did?

  “Before or after I called you?”

  “After.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “When I got home late Saturday afternoon, a Spectrum cable van just like the one with the two dudes who jumped me yesterday was parked on my street. I took my dog down to Fiesta Island for an hour and a half. When I got home the van was gone, but I noticed something had been moved on my bookshelf. I looked and found the mini recorder.” I pointed at the device I’d tossed on his desk. “They’d been waiting for both me and my dog to be out of the house at the same time.”

  “And you didn’t come to my home until the next morning.” He seemed to be talking to himself.

  The always-composed veneer was gone. Stone was spooked. Normally, I’d have been elated. Now it just made me nervous. Whoever could spook Stone had to be dangerous. And lethal.

  “Right. What’s going on?” Did I really want to know? I had my own problems, but if Stone’s problem was someone bugging my house, then his problem was mine, too. “Who’s behind this, Stone?”

  “How long was it between our phone call and the cable van showing up on your block?”

  “How ’bout you answer my questions first?”

  “Answer my question.” He snapped the words off. His ever-present spearmint cool melted. “How long?”

  I thought back to Saturday afternoon and Stone’s veiled threat about Kim. I’d gotten off the phone with him and drove right over to Kim’s house, punched her husband, searched the house, and came back home.

  “An hour at the most.”

  Stone’s eyes rolled up to expose his whites. The eyes of a Great White when it was about to strike prey with a kill shot. But Stone wasn’t preparing to attack, he was thinking. So was I. Probably about the same thing.

  An hour.

  Not enough time to scramble a surveillance team from a dead stop and get them to my house in cover uniforms and a vehicle. Not even the CIA could do that from scratch.

  “An hour’s not enough time.” I walked back and forth in front of Stone’s desk. “And the catalyst would have to have been the phone call you made to me. That would mean that either one or both our phones are bugged, or wherever you made the call from is bugged. And if they’re listening to our phone calls, why even bother with a bug that needs a Wi-Fi transmitter nearby? None of this makes any sense.”

  Stone stared at me through his predator eyes. The spark of life I’d seen earlier was gone. The computer in his head was running numbers, scenarios, assets and liabilities. My life’s worth may have just been calculated down to a spreadsheet or a pie chart. Someone had bugged my house. I might know something, even by accident, that could hurt Stone. Was I worth more to Stone alive so he could use me to draw someone out—or dead on the chance that I might know something?

  An asset or a liability?

  “Think it through, Stone. The timing doesn’t work. The bug doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

  “You might be right.” The smirk. He was back in control. “And you might be wrong. Did you know that I started in the, let’s just call it the business, as an odds maker?”

  “You mean a bookie.”

  “Your word, not mine.”

  “No, I didn’t know you were, ah, an odds maker.” I didn’t like where this could go, but at least I was back on familiar ground. The dangerous man behind the hundred-million-dollar mask. “I’ll bet your charitable foundation friends don’t either?”

  “If they bothered to look hard enough, they could find out. But they wouldn’t want to risk stopping my checks from coming in.” He swiveled his chair around looking at the view to remind me that he was wealthy, in case I’d forgotten. “Anyway, my proficiency at calculating the odds for some of my friends in the business helped me climb all the way up the ladder to a partnership in a casino.”

  “Your point?”

  “Either someone bugged your house because of your connection to me or because of something else.” He steepled his fingers and raised his eyebrows. “Either way, the odds are not in your favor, Rick. Enjoy the rest of your day.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  I CHECKED MY rearview mirror the whole drive home. No one was following me. Yet.

  I could have just left the bug disabled or destroyed it and gone on with my life. But I had to prove to Stone how smart I was, and in doing so, I’d proven how stupid I was, instead. And vulnerable.

  Stone was afraid of somebody, and I’d put myself right in the middle of his fear. And put a target on my back. Yet, I still believed the bug did
n’t have anything to do with him. I could only hope that Stone would come around to sharing my view. Before he looked at his asset and liability spreadsheet one last time.

  Midnight greeted me at the front door. I knelt down and scratched his neck. He delicately sniffed around my black eye, then licked me on the cheek. I still had somebody in my corner. I let him outside and went into the kitchen to grab a water out of the refrigerator. The folder with the information about the Trent Phelps murder that Jack Anton had given me was still on the kitchen table.

  Phelps. My father. The safe deposit box.

  A chill started along the back of my neck and echoed in my stomach. I sat down at the table.

  An hour hadn’t been enough time to get a surveillance team to my house, but how about four or five hours? That would be enough time. Start with a white van the team already had. Paint the Spectrum logo on it. Two, three hours max. An hour to dry. Drive over to my house, knock on the door to see if anyone’s home. They hear Midnight bark from inside the house, go back to the van and wait. They got lucky that I came home and took Midnight to Fiesta Island. If I hadn’t left, maybe they would have tried to use a sales pitch to get inside the house. One guy distracts me with some questions in the kitchen while the other plants the bug in the living room.

  One hour, no. Four or five, yes. Subtract back five hours from when I returned from punching Jeffrey Parker at his house. Around ten a.m. About the time I was in Windsor Bank and Trust looking at the contents of my father’s safe deposit box. With Jules Windsor and Gloria Nakamura. Two spent twenty-five-caliber shells. In Charlie Cahill’s safe deposit box that had been kept active for over twenty-five years by a joint checking account with Antoinette King.

  The spent shells were the catalyst. Two small-caliber gunshot wounds to Trent Phelps’ head in a twenty-eight-year-old unsolved murder. I read about it myself in the old newspaper articles. Gloria Nakamura would have been no more than ten to fifteen years old twenty-eight years ago. Jules Windsor owned the oldest private bank in town then, just as he did now. He knew my father. He knew the goings-on in La Jolla, the hometown of his customers. Surely, he knew about the only unsolved murder in La Jolla in the last fifty years.

  The unproven speculation by the police was that the murder had been a professional job. Phelps owned five laundromats around San Diego. An all-cash business. Organized crime like all-cash businesses. Perfect places to hide their ill-gotten gains. The Mafia started the practice of money laundering by buying actual laundromats. A place to hide dirty money and comingle it with legitimate income and make it come out clean. Once clean, some of the money would go into a bank. Windsor owned a bank, but he was a pillar of society. So were a lot of bankers who got caught up in the savings and loan crisis of the eighties.

  The facts were that Windsor saw the spent shell casings in my father’s safe deposit box Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon someone bugged my house. Coincidence? Possibly. Maybe I’d just let my imagination off the leash and my ingrained paranoia ran alongside it. But someone bugged my house. I hadn’t imagined that. And they’d done it five hours after Windsor and Gloria Nakamura had seen the spent shells from the same caliber of gun that killed Trent Phelps. I hadn’t imagined that either. The police had verified that the murder weapon was a twenty-five caliber.

  The only case other than Phelps that I’d been investigating the past week was Jeffrey Parker’s sexual and work habits. Yes, he’d somehow gotten connected up with Peter Stone and Sophia Domingo and Sophia had been murdered. But she was already dead when someone put a bug in my house. I was convinced the Stone/Sophia connection had nothing to do with someone bugging my house.

  It had to be connected to the Phelps case and the first connection had to be Jules Windsor. Had he hired the team to bug my home or had he called someone else after he saw the contents of my father’s safe deposit box? Who? An old mob connection? Maybe.

  Even if it was the mob who sent two men to my house, they wouldn’t use the Spectrum employee ruse to bug my home. If they wanted information, they’d beat it out of me. The surveillance team smelled like specialized independents to me. Probably PIs, but they only do electronic surveillance. Specialized freelancers.

  So, if the mob hadn’t bugged my house, who sent the team that did? The only person I knew who could answer that was Jules Windsor.

  * * *

  Moira knocked on my door at eleven a.m. Time to split Stone’s fifteen grand. Midnight wagged his tail when I let her in and she scratched him behind the ear. She’d liked Midnight from the first time they’d met. The jury was still out on me.

  “You want some coffee?” I’d have to make it. I didn’t drink coffee, but I always kept some around for guests, on the rare occasion that I entertained. Probably too old and stale now for someone who could tell the difference.

  “What happened to your face?”

  “Caught somebody who bugged my house.” I led her to the kitchen table. “Sit down. I’m taking that as a no to coffee.”

  “No coffee.” She sat down and only her head and shoulders showed over the edge of the table. “Who were they? Did they have something to do with Sophia?”

  I’d called Moira Sunday after I’d discovered the body. Wanted her to know about it so she wouldn’t be surprised if the police contacted her.

  “I don’t know who they were.” I sat down at the head of the table next to her. A letter envelope sat on the table between us. “They got away, but I don’t think Stone hired them or that they had anything to do with Sophia.”

  “Then who?”

  “I don’t know, yet, but I’ll figure it out. No need to worry.” I worried enough alone.

  “Didn’t say I was worried.” The staccato unfiltered cigarette voice.

  “Seventy-five hundred courtesy of Peter Stone.” I picked up the envelope that was full of hundred-dollar bills and handed it to her. “Thanks for the help on the Parker case. Hopefully, this helps make up for all the license plate and felony checks you’ve gotten me from the police pro bono over the last couple years.”

  “We’re even, Cahill.” She stuffed the envelope in the back pocket of her Levis. Her big brown eyes were even bigger than normal. With concern. “What about the guys bugging your house? Are you working another case already? Something dangerous?”

  “No.” Probably. “It’s under control.”

  “When have you ever had anything under control?” She had a point.

  I stood up like it was time for her to go. She got up, scratched Midnight, and headed for the front door. I followed her like a good host who kept stale coffee around for his guests. Moira stopped in front of the door and whipped around to face me.

  “It’s the other thing, isn’t it?” Moira’s eyes electric with the chase.

  I didn’t have a single person on my side of this errant knight’s errand I’d taken up to verify the truth I already knew about my father. Someone smarter than me and just as tough was sitting on the sidelines ready to help.

  “Yeah. It’s the other thing.”

  “Tell me what’s going on, Rick.” She thrust her hands out from her sides. “I can help.”

  “I can’t tell you what it’s about, Moira. Not now. Maybe never.” I shook my head. “But I could use your help. If you can work under those conditions, I’ll pay you double your rate.”

  “I offer to help you out of friendship and you insult me like that?” Her round eyes split in half and red bled through her tan cheeks. “I don’t want your money, you asshole.”

  My Adam’s apple tightened up. “When did we become friends?”

  “When I realized that you needed to have at least one in your life.” The anger left her face. “Keep your stupid money. I’ve got seventy-five hundred in my back pocket and some free time. What do you need me to do?”

  “Try to find out who the surveillance team is that bugged my house. Two men. White van made up to look like a Spectrum vehicle. White guy, late thirties, brown hair, good looking, lean, my height. Black g
uy, same age, bulkier, but in shape, short cropped hair.”

  “A black guy can’t be good looking?”

  “He could have been, but I mostly just saw his fist and his backside as he and the other guy ran to the van and took off.”

  “Okay. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  * * *

  Gloria Nakamura didn’t even try to hide her anger when she saw me standing at the information desk in Windsor Bank and Trust. She strode so quickly toward me that the girl behind the desk shot her eyebrows up.

  “Do you have a court order for the contents of your father’s safe deposit box, Mr. Cahill?” She folded her arms across her chest. “Otherwise, I can’t imagine why you are here.”

  “To talk to Jules Windsor.”

  “He’s not here, so I guess you can leave.”

  The woman sitting at the information desk pretended to concentrate on her computer monitor.

  “Then I need to talk to you.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible.” She shook her head. “I’m very busy.”

  “Walk outside with me. This will only take a minute.”

  “I told you. I’m busy.”

  I looked at the woman at the information desk, still staring intently at her computer monitor even though she hadn’t touched her keyboard since Gloria came over. I kept looking. The woman’s face turned pink.

  “I can wait here in the bank until you’re not busy anymore. Then we can talk.”

  Gloria walked over to the door to the bank and went outside. I followed. She planted herself under the overhang just outside the door and spun to face me.

  “Do you ever make it through a single day without threatening someone to get what you want?”

  “I wouldn’t consider telling someone I’d wait until they weren’t busy a threat.”

  “You know damn well what I mean.” She pointed a finger at my face. “You were going to try to embarrass me until I talked to you.”

  “You’re right. I apologize.” I lifted my hands up, palms facing me. “I know you have a job to do, but I need some help. If I was smarter or nicer, I’d have approached you in a different way. But you saw the empty bullet shells in my father’s safe deposit box. You know this is serious.”