I hadn’t called Eugene, but it was the weekend, and by Monday it wouldn’t matter what spying he’d done, because I’d no longer be suspended from Aames & Associates. I’d be fired. My meeting with Shelly Greenblatt wasn’t until tomorrow. Even though Gordon knew the NeuroMed report was missing, he didn’t know it was probably permanently missing. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. Not yet.
I brought the tea into the living room and began looking through Polk’s boxes again. Nothing resonated until I opened the file I’d put together for his accountant and noticed the coffee receipt. Polk wasn’t one to pick up the tab if he didn’t have to, but I wondered why he’d bothered to send this receipt to himself. The printing was hard to read, so I held it up to the light to get a better look. The server’s name was Benito. The receipt also had a date and time imprinted on the paper. In faint blue letters was what looked like a water seal. Heat prickled my face when I read the name under the logo: Marina Yacht Club.
According to this receipt, fifteen minutes after midnight on Saturday, the night he’d been killed, Milton Polk was drinking coffee at the club’s bar. He must have gone there after leaving the Project Rescue dinner, and after picking up the NeuroMed package.
I felt a surge of adrenaline as I called the number listed for the club and learned that Benito was due at work in three hours, at six p.m. I was too pumped to concentrate, so while finishing the tea, I picked up the Project Rescue newsletter Mona had given me. I skimmed over an article about the alarming increase in domestic violence in Mexico. The article stated that it was a crime that often went unpunished, dismissed by authorities as crímenes pasionales, crimes of passion. On the same page was a picture of Wade Covington holding his Man of the Year award. The award appeared to be a glass or Lucite sculpture of an angular wing in flight. It looked lethal.
I was thinking about that award when I remembered another I’d seen recently, on the mantel in Covington’s den: the silver cup in recognition of his term as commodore of the Marina Yacht Club. The implication swept over me slowly. The night Polk died, he was to have met someone. He left the Project Rescue dinner after he was seen talking to Covington. He stopped briefly at the Center and then drove on to the yacht club, where he drank a cup of coffee and, presumably, waited for his contact to arrive.
Perhaps Polk hadn’t been looking for the NeuroMed package that night at all. Perhaps he’d been hunting for the thing I’d found hidden away in Wade Covington’s briefcase, the thing that was, at this very moment, tucked inside a shredded wheat box in my kitchen cupboard: Teresa García’s medical file.
My hopes now hinged on whether Benito remembered seeing Milton Polk or the person he was meeting Saturday night. I slipped the newsletter into my purse so I could show Benito the picture of Wade Covington.
I was feeling nervous but hopeful when the phone rang. The woman’s voice on the line was hushed. When she identified herself, my heart began to pound. It was Francine Chalmers.
“I don’t have much time,” she whispered. “Kenny will be home from the shop any second. We have to talk.”
“About what? Bail bonds?”
“I can fix everything,” she whimpered. “Put the money back. I just need you to explain to her how it wasn’t my fault.”
The disdain in her voice was clear. She’d reduced Mona Polk to an emphasized pronoun.
“It’s too late for that,” I said. “You need a lawyer.”
“You don’t understand,” she blurted out. “Dr. Polk couldn’t make payroll, so I loaned him money, but he couldn’t give it back right away. I had to return the money to our account before Kenny found out. Please, if he comes home, he won’t let me leave. Can I come to your place?”
Yeah, as if I just fell off a turnip truck.
“My roommate’s here, training his rottweilers,” I said. “You know how that goes.”
“There’s a little café in Hollywood. Gorky’s. It’s quiet. We can talk. I’ll meet you in an hour.”
I had no intention of meeting Francine anywhere. Not that I didn’t trust her, but I didn’t trust her.
“And tell me again why I should help you?” I said skeptically.
She paused. Then her voice became sly. “That report you wrote for Dr. Polk—somebody changed it, and you’re in a lot of trouble. But there’s more. Things you don’t know about . . . things that could get you in bigger trouble.”
She’d definitely gotten my attention now. Obviously, Francine knew about the letter from Whitener’s lawyers, but did she also know who doctored the NeuroMed report? Maybe, but it was the “bigger trouble” I was worried about now.
“Okay, so tell me—”
She cut me off. “I have to go. Kenny’s back.” Then her voice faded to a desperate squeak.
“Francine. Wait!”
Click. Silence. Dial tone. My insides were churning. I briefly considered the wisdom of meeting Francine. But Gorky’s was a public place, so what did I have to worry about? A little voice answered, “It’s in Hollywood, you idiot.” Well, okay, there was that.
I was getting ready to leave when I remembered my date with Eric. Damn. I had to cancel, but an impersonal message machine wasn’t the way to tell him. With luck and a lead foot, it would take forty-five minutes to get to Gorky’s. That left fifteen minutes to stop by Eric’s condo. It wasn’t much time, but enough to tell him what was on my mind.
Mrs. Domanski wasn’t answering the door, so I slipped a spare door key into her mail slot, along with a note telling her where I’d be. I also hinted that Muldoon would appreciate an invitation for cocktails. Then I headed for Eric’s condo.
26
since our divorce, Eric had been leasing a high-rise condo on Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood, which had unofficially been declared a schlock-free zone. The decor was modern, the kitchen appliances European, and not even a daddy longlegs ventured closer than the neighbor’s balcony. The unit had spectacular city and ocean views, but it was so neat and tidy and perfect that it felt like a model on some showroom floor, not a place where real people lived.
I rang the buzzer and rehearsed the speech I’d formed in my head on the way over. My relationship with Eric had been molded and seasoned by individual successes and combined failures, but those experiences had created an ironclad bond that was irreplaceable.
When the door opened, my mouth went dry. A woman was standing in the entryway. A woman that wasn’t me, in Eric’s condo. She was petite, feminine, and dressed in an outfit that was both casual and cultivated. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her until I recognized the hair. It was the rich red-brown color of cinnamon. When I realized who she was, I felt both embarrassed and relieved. Eric had told me he’d be working at home this weekend. She was the client I’d seen with him by the elevator in his office.
When I asked for Eric, she told me her name was Becky and opened the door wider, gesturing for me to step into the foyer. But the last thing I wanted was to interrupt a business meeting.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m sort of pressed for time. Maybe you could just tell him I’m out here.”
She nodded and disappeared inside. When Eric finally came to the door, his face was flushed.
“Tucker, I thought we were meeting at the restaurant.”
He joined me in the hall, closing the door behind him. He kept running his hand through his hair, which was something he did when he was stressed.
“Actually, that’s why I dropped by,” I said. “I can’t make it.”
The time had come to tell him how I felt, so I gathered my courage, took a deep breath, and let it go.
“You know, when we were talking the other day? About relationships? I know what you were trying to tell me, Eric, and I’ve realized that I’m all for it. So much has happened, and I’ve learned that there’s nothing more important than having people you trust and love in your life, so—”
“Someone told you, right? Damn it. You let me go on babbling the other day like an idiot, when you knew
all along.” Eric’s words gushed out like a party balloon expelling air. “I guess it doesn’t matter. I’m just relieved it’s finally out in the open. It didn’t feel right keeping it from you. All I can say is, thanks for understanding, Tucker. God, why was I so worried to tell you about Becky and me? I think I wasn’t sure how you’d take it, you know, me being the first to get remarried and all, but Becky and I’ve been seeing each other for the past few months, and . . .”
I’m sure there was more, because I saw Eric’s lips move and heard what sounded like a novice violinist torturing the strings of his new fiddle. I’d stopped listening altogether by the time he put his arm around my shoulder and gave me a brotherly hug. No, not brotherly exactly. More like a teammate hug.
For what seemed like an eternity there was nothing inside my head but astonishment that he could actually think I would find any comfort in that gesture. Then an inexplicable weight settled on my chest. Eric and Becky. Becky and Eric. Eric married to Becky? Maybe I didn’t want to walk down the aisle again with him, but I realized that I wasn’t ready to see anyone else make that trip, either.
If I’d been blessed with the gift of poetry, I could have looked deep inside myself to find some simple yet sublime words that would explain to the world, to Becky, to myself, why I felt that Eric still belonged to me, and why I wasn’t yet ready to let him go. But I knew that if I tried to express those feelings, they would only come out sounding like “Roses are red; violets are blue; I’m losing Eric; boo-hoo, boo-hoo.”
I might have stood there forever, searching for a graceful escape, if I hadn’t spotted Becky standing at the door. The last thing in the world I wanted was to like her. Quite the opposite, in fact. I desperately wanted her to be a sneaky bitch on wheels, to be eminently hateable, but there she stood, looking somewhat confused, very much in love, and eminently likable.
I tried to convince myself that Eric had betrayed me in some way. That little bit of faulty reasoning gave me the courage to turn my leaden body toward the exit. As I stepped onto the elevator, I took one last look at the happy couple, standing hand in hand like smiling figurines atop a wedding cake. Then I dredged up a wan smile for Eric, and in what felt like a magnanimous gesture under the circumstances, I said, “Congratulations,” as the door closed on our friendship.
By the time I reached the car, I’d skated past humiliation and self-loathing and transitioned at warp speed into anger. But none of those emotions helped to shake off that indelible old image of the tall, skinny girl with the geeky name whose boyfriend dumped her for her best friend in the world.
I rested my head on the steering wheel and waited for something to happen, but somehow I had already managed to bottle, cork, and get ready for aging all those unwieldy emotions. Just as well. This was no time to reopen old wounds. I had to meet Francine, so I started the car and headed for Hollywood.
GORKY’S WAS ON the ground floor of a decaying two-story building near the corner of Western Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard, in East Hollywood. I parked in the back lot, put some cash and my ID in my jeans pocket, and locked my purse in the trunk of the car. There didn’t appear to be any way to get into the restaurant except through the kitchen, so I walked around to the front entrance. The café was positioned between an occult-gift shop and a liquor store. Two small round tables were set up on the sidewalk outside the café, but nobody in their right mind would eat there. Too much pigeon poop, too many empty Mickey D’s boxes and scary-looking people—as though you might need a bodyguard to get to the borscht.
The interior was small, no more than eight tables. A samovar near the front was the only thing that gleamed; everything else was as dark and gloomy as a cave. It didn’t seem like the kind of place Francine would hang out in, but what did I know? Two of the tables were pushed together toward the back wall and were occupied by five middle-aged men raising their glasses in a one-upmanship toast-o-rama. A half-full bottle of vodka sat on the table. I didn’t understand Russian, but their toasts sounded like “and here’s to when we discovered the cure for polio.”
A man in his fifties approached me, wearing an outfit straight out of The Brothers Karamazov. He waved his arms and said, “No change for meter.”
“I don’t need change. I’m here for dinner.”
He looked at me as if I were certifiable. Then he shrugged and led me to a table by the front window. The toasting stopped momentarily as the men gave me the once-over. I was the only woman in the place. They had to think about that for a minute. Wooman. Woodka. Wooman. Woodka. Woodka. Oh, well. I ordered a Russian beer and watched the hookers cruise by as I waited for Francine.
Ivan Karamazov brought me a Budski Lite. So much for Russian beer. The five men appeared to be a bottomless vodka pit. As the alcohol flowed, the speeches got louder, more passionate, and more slurred. Still no Francine. I was beginning to worry that Kenny had prevented her from coming. The alternative theory, that Francine was a thief and a flake and I shouldn’t have come here in the first place, was shuffled into a back corner of my mind.
I was about to pay the check and leave when she came through the front door. She looked around furtively until she spotted me, and headed for my table. Her face was pale and haggard. She was wearing black stretch pants, an oversize black sweater, and little black ankle boots that made her look like a dowdy cat burglar. I offered her the menu, but she made it clear she wasn’t there to eat. Despite her protests, I ordered her a beer so it didn’t look like I was drinking alone.
“Kenny thinks I’m at the grocery store. I don’t have much time.”
“Then let’s cut to the chase. What’s all this trouble you were talking about on the phone?”
“First, you have to know that the whole insurance thing was Irene Borodin’s idea,” she said. “She promised me nobody would find out. And anyway, I was going to tell the insurance company it was just a flub and return the money as soon as Dr. Polk got his investors and paid me back.”
Yeah, sure. How many cops and judges had heard that line before? I hoped Francine wasn’t planning to waste my time making excuses for all her white-collar crimes.
“Did Dr. Polk know what you were up to?”
“Nobody knew,” she said. “Just me and Irene, and I think her brother was in on it, too. She told me she’d been doing it for years with other doctors. Nobody had ever said boo.”
“Why did you use my name?”
“Don’t worry. I never turned in any claims for you. It’s just that Irene promised me a higher percentage of the insurance refund for people I got on my own. Like I told you, I had to put the money back in our account before Kenny found out. He would have killed the doctor.” When her brain caught up with her mouth, the reunion produced an unsettling quality to her voice. “I know what you’re thinking, but that’s not what I meant.”
“Where was Kenny last Saturday night?”
“At home.”
“With you?”
She hesitated, as if weighing the pros and cons of telling me what she knew. “I was in Bakersfield for the weekend, visiting my mother, but Kenny didn’t kill Dr. Polk.”
The denial was too quick, as if she had formulated the answer because she’d already asked herself the question. I was asking it, too. From what I knew, Kenny had a short fuse, an animosity toward Milton Polk, and, now, a very serious alibi problem. And according to Madie, Kenny controlled his wife and her money like a jealous Scrooge. Maybe he’d found out about the loan and confronted Polk. When the doctor couldn’t come up with the cash to repay Francine, Kenny killed him.
“Francine, do you think it might have been Kenny that Dr. Polk was meeting after the Project Rescue dinner?”
“No way,” she said emphatically. “The doctor was meeting somebody about those business plans of yours.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m not stupid. I can put two and two together. I know Dr. Polk was mad because those reports got screwed up and everybody was in trouble, and I know he’s dead.”
Obviously, Francine didn’t know shit, but I decided to give her one more chance. “Could he have been meeting Wade Covington?”
“I told you before,” she said firmly, “I don’t know. He could have been meeting anyone—even her.”
“I don’t think Mona Polk has the expertise to fudge spreadsheets.”
“Why not? It was a lousy job, wasn’t it? Besides, cheating comes easy for her.”
The last dig was delivered with a heavy load of sarcasm, but Francine had a point. No one had ever accused Mona of being saintly—or stupid. She kept herself fit, organized the business of a large charity, managed a husband, and kept a boy-toy on the side. A lot of people might call her gifted.
“Dr. Polk would have told you if he was meeting his wife,” I said. “Why keep that a secret?”
“Maybe two people were with him that night; maybe it was her and the boyfriend. Dr. Polk told me that he knew something bad about this person’s past. If he was talking about her boyfriend, I don’t think the doctor would have wanted me to know that.”
“Wait a minute, Francine. You’re not making sense. Who are you talking about? Armando? What do you think he did that was so bad?”
“Rape.” She was on a roll, obviously grateful that the conversation had veered away from Kenny. “About a year ago Dr. Polk went on a ski trip to Aspen with Mr. Covington and some of his friends. They were gone a week, so Mr. Covington brought a maid from the city to clean and cook.”
My ears pricked up. Covington. Maid. I was getting a flashback here. “Armando was on that trip?”
“Well, I don’t know for sure,” she said. “Dr. Polk didn’t exactly give me the guest list, but he could have been there.”
I ignored her pique. And since I was finished with my beer and she hadn’t touched hers, I exchanged glasses.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“There was a party at Mr. Covington’s ski lodge,” she said. “Everybody was drinking. Dr. Polk wasn’t much of a skier or a drinker, so he went to bed early. In the middle of the night, someone woke him up.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “That maid had been raped and beaten. Dr. Polk wanted to take her to the hospital, but Mr. Covington insisted on flying her back to the city for treatment.”
False Profits Page 22
