“What was the girl’s name?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Francine. We had a deal: I help you; you help me. Remember?”
“You’ll speak with Mrs. Polk and the insurance companies?”
“I can’t promise it’ll do any good, but yes.”
She leaned back with a self-satisfied smile on her face. “The maid’s name was Teresa García.”
My breath came out as a soft little whistle. “Did anyone report the incident to the police?”
“No police.”
So the dead girl hadn’t fallen, as the newspaper article had stated. I wasn’t surprised that the Colorado authorities weren’t notified, but why wasn’t the girl’s family in Mexico asking questions? Apparently, everyone had accepted Covington’s explanation of what led to her death, and I was sure he wanted to keep it that way.
Covington must have realized that with Polk dead, whoever took over the Center, as well as the police, would have access to the girl’s medical file. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to find that chart. Apparently, he had, probably the night I saw him at NeuroMed. At least, it had been in his briefcase a couple of days later. It was a logical little scenario until I realized that there was something missing.
The night I’d run into Covington at NeuroMed, Polk’s body had just been identified—by me. I’d been the one to tell him that Polk was dead. He couldn’t have known before. Or could he? That thought made my head spin.
“Anyway, that’s all I know. I swear.” Francine checked her watch and glanced toward the door. “I’ve got to go. Kenny will be home soon. Thank you for helping me. Irene warned me not to tell you anything, but I knew she was wrong about you.”
I felt a flash of panic. “Irene Borodin? You didn’t tell her we were meeting here, did you?”
Her concentration seemed to disengage and wander around the room. “No,” she said.
I could tell she was lying. She had told Irene Borodin. The last thing I needed was for Countess Dracula to show up unannounced and create a scene. I had to get out of here.
I put some money on the table to cover the tab. A few minutes later, Francine left through the front door. I wanted to leave, too, but I’d had one too many brewskis, so I went looking for the restroom. No luck finding it, but I did locate the kitchen. One peek inside made me glad I hadn’t ordered any food. Ivan the Terrible Waiter was standing over a bubbling pot of something. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. When he saw me, he jumped to attention and the ash plopped in the brew. He flicked the butt on the floor and covered it with his shoe.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Where’s the ladies’ room?”
He gave me his hundred-watt smile and gestured like a magician with an invisible cape toward the back door. Great. The bathroom was probably a recycled Scud missile. Well, almost. What he pointed to was a separate building at the back of the parking lot, built of gray cinder blocks and with one small square window, high up on the wall. It looked like a Siberian gulag.
“Lights. Inside.” He smiled proudly and made a flicking gesture.
I thought, ah, and here’s to Mother Russia’s greatest invention, electricity. As I exited the back door, I looked around to make sure I wasn’t being watched. Three empty cars were parked along with mine in the back lot. There was also a white delivery van stationed near the door. Printed on the side were the words Gorky’s Catering. It looked as if it had never been driven.
When I reached the building, I realized that where the lock should have been there was only a hole in the door. Open to the public. Yuk. I opened the metal door and reached my hand around the corner, switching on the light. Not bad. The place was cavernous compared to the restaurant but smelled of strong disinfectant and bad plumbing. No heat. Four stalls. Four sinks. Swinging soap dispensers just like those at the Center. Same pungent odor of industrial soap. Simple but effective.
The quiet of the restroom was a respite after all that toasting and passion. I checked all the stalls and finally settled on the cleanest one, the one farthest away from the door. No sanitary seat covers, of course.
Francine’s theory that Armando had been on the ski trip with Covington sounded like a feeble attempt to divert attention away from Kenny. All the guys on that trip had been friends of Covington, according to what Polk had told her. That pretty much excluded Armando, I suspected.
All this mental badminton was stimulating, but I was on a schedule. Regardless of who had been at Aspen, Polk had been at the Marina Yacht Club the night he died. I could only hope that he’d had the NeuroMed file with him. I checked my watch. Benito was due at work in half an hour.
I was just calculating how long it would take me to get to Marina del Rey when I heard footsteps from the parking lot outside. The stride was long and heavy. When I flushed, the water level rose to the top and spilled over, leaving my shoes wet and squishy. I hiked up my jeans and was ready to scramble to dry land when the outside door creaked slowly open. I thought, great, one of those drunken toasters stumbled in the wrong door. Just at that moment, the lights went out. I strained to focus, to get my bearings. My pulse pumped in my throat. I tried to quiet the urge to gulp air.
I considered those footsteps I’d heard. Man? Woman? Definitely man. Well, maybe he was into energy conservation. Just turning off the lights. No harm done. Right, Tucker? Slowly, the footsteps walked into the room. Toward me. Hard-soled shoes. Slapping down on the concrete floor. A funny scraping noise. Loose nail.
The light from a nearby streetlamp filtered through the small window, casting a dim shadow on the gray floor. There wasn’t much visibility, but probably enough for him to see my feet if he looked under the door. I carefully lifted the toilet seat and climbed onto the rim, making myself small. The door was high. Unless he was the Jolly Green Giant, he wouldn’t be able to see over the top. Unless he jumped. Oh, boy! My eyes stayed glued to the floor, squinting in the dim light. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear those shoes as they stopped just outside the door to my stall. Mine was the only door shut. It hadn’t taken much to figure that one out.
The whole stall quaked as he pulled on the door, testing the lock. The pulling became more forceful. A couple more jolts like that, and he’d have the door off. I could scream. That might spook him, but nobody would hear me over the toasting and shouting of the other merry Cossacks. The window? Forget it. Too high. Too far away. Besides all he had to do was wait outside and catch me on the way down. I was trapped. I inched off the toilet and knelt on the floor. I tried to flatten my body on the cement. It was cold and slimy from urine and soggy toilet paper. Quietly I inched my way under the stall partition. I tried not to gag or think of the new strains of microbes invading my immune system. Or to consider the stench. I tried to think about staying alive. Crawl. Don’t look back. Get to the door. Run.
The entire metal panel shook and creaked from his kick. I expected the whole thing to come unhinged from the wall. Please hold until I get to the door, was my only thought. And it did hold. Almost. I was through the third stall and headed for home, the door, and freedom when the second kick broke the hinges, sending the door bouncing against the toilet bowl. It settled on the cement floor. Strong guy. Empty stall.
Metal clanged against metal as he slammed open each door along the way until he got to me. Beefy hands grabbed my ankles and started pulling. Ahh, so close and yet so far. I clung to the base of the toilet bowl, my wet hands struggling to maintain contact with the slippery porcelain. I tried to scream, but my diaphragm was pressed hard to the floor, cutting off my air. My “Don’t fuck with me, you asshole” came out sounding more like “duhfummph.”
He yanked, and my grip gave way. My head hit the floor. Pain riveted through my jaw, my forehead. Another yank. My ankle socket popped. I felt heat as my stomach scraped across the rough concrete. I kicked with everything I had until one foot was free. I kept kicking and finally hit home. Suddenly the other foot was loose.
Purely by reflex, I rolled over on my butt, crab-walking away from him until I hit something solid. The wall. I waited on the cold concrete floor at Gorky’s Park and Pee, thinking, what next? Round two? I thought about Pookie and Muldoon and what to do next. Then I thought of Joe Deegan.
Again, the shadowy figure lumbered across the floor toward me. I waited until he came close enough for me to smell his rancid clothing. When he stooped over to grab me, I somehow found the strength to reach up toward his head. As soon as I felt hair, I pulled it.
He tried to break my grip, but I formed a fist with my free hand and punched as hard as I could, aiming for his throat, connecting. He fell to his knees, rasping for air, trying to say something, but through my haze and his pain, I couldn’t make out the words.
My nerve endings were doing Fourth of July fireworks just for me. Everything felt broken, bruised, or disabled. I had to get out of here before somebody clued this guy in that hands weren’t the same as a couple of Black Talon slugs in the head, and he came back to try again. I felt weak, but forced myself up. With all my might, I kicked him in the balls. Then I ran, and I didn’t look back.
When I got to my car, I took a quick inventory. Everything hurt: ankle, jaw, stomach. My lips felt like two boxing gloves, and a large knot was blooming on my forehead. No bones appeared to be broken, but I was a mess. Soggy tissue stuck to my sweater like shaving cream. Guess I should tell somebody, but who? Eric? No more. Deegan? No way. Besides, Deegan wouldn’t give a rip. To him I’d be just another crime statistic. Duane Kleinman probably wouldn’t care, either, but at least he’d appreciate the fact that my favorite sweater was now ruined.
It wasn’t until I peeled out of the parking lot that my body began to tremble so hard, I thought it would never stop. Get it together, Tucker. All you have to do is find Benito. He’ll tell you what you need to know, and then you’ll be home free. Only, somehow I had this eerie premonition that it wasn’t going to be nearly that easy.
27
all my body parts seemed to be working, but the adrenaline that had propelled me during the struggle was fading, leaving only weariness and awe that I’d just survived an assault that could have left me dead. I suppose the guy could have been one of the drunks from the restaurant, but I didn’t think so. I suspected Francine had set me up by telling Irene Borodin where we were meeting. Borodin must have figured out that I was on to her, and knew if I reported her billing fraud to the insurance companies, the resulting investigation would end her charmed life. She had to shut me up or, at the least, scare me off. Her hit man hadn’t succeeded, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try again.
I smelled like hell, but even if I’d had the strength to go home and change, I didn’t have the time. I had to get to the yacht club. It was a long shot, but Benito seemed like my last best hope for finding out who Polk met with the night he died. Maybe the doctor left the NeuroMed file with Benito for safekeeping. It was a ridiculous theory, but I had too much at stake not to test it.
On the way to Marina del Rey, I regained my composure enough to piece together the few facts that Francine had told me with what I already knew. Polk witnessed the aftermath of the assault on Teresa García. He must have known she was dead, perhaps even before he received that newspaper obituary. The person who mailed the article to him might have believed Polk would help expose García’s killer, or perhaps he had blackmail on his mind. On the other hand, I couldn’t discount the theory that Polk’s knowledge of the girl’s death, mixed with his cash flow problems, could add up to his own formula for blackmail. Either way, I wondered how far Polk had gone to make his NeuroMed dreams come true.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that Covington could easily have helped Polk alter those spreadsheets. A kaleidoscope of possibilities flashed through my mind: Rape . . . blackmail . . . murder . . . And rising up from the center of that unholy trinity was Wade Covington.
MARINA DEL REY is located on the ocean between the Los Angeles International Airport and Venice, a half hour and a world away from Hollywood. It was once a simple little marshland until the County made it into the largest man-made small-boat harbor in the world. Now, instead of migratory birds, upscale apartment houses nest along the fingers of the main channel, and multimillion-dollar homes lay claim to once open land.
The sun was setting. The moon and the city lights illuminated dark cumulus clouds. It looked like rain. I turned off Via Marina and into the Marina Yacht Club parking lot. No one was in the guardhouse. I grabbed the Project Rescue newsletter with Covington’s picture in it, and the gym bag with my extra clothes from the trunk of my car. I hoped to find a public restroom where I could clean up and change before going inside. I squeezed between the hedge and the gate and made my way along the sidewalk toward the clubhouse.
I paused for a moment at a chain-link fence and looked out at all the boats. All I could see in the distance were masts against masts, and rigging lines crisscrossing like a cat’s cradle. Directly in front of me I read a few names printed on the sterns. There were at least two Ecstasys, a Freedom, and a Sea Gal swaying with the wind and the current.
The envelope Polk used to mail the coffee receipt to himself didn’t have a return address, but it was postmarked from Marina del Rey. I suppose he might have mailed it from the marina as some sort of cryptic clue to where he’d been that night. If he managed to get a stamped envelope for the receipt, perhaps he’d gotten one for the NeuroMed package as well. I just hoped he had a chance to mail that, too, before somebody destroyed it.
A man walked toward me, pulling a blue handcart full of groceries. He wore loose khaki shorts and a heavy navy sweater. His legs were tanned dark, and his face was deeply lined, as if it had never been introduced to sunscreen. He was around fifty, I guessed, though it was hard to tell. With him was a huge four-legged animal with coiled hair like a blond Rastafarian. The critter had homed in on the smell of urine on my clothes and was starting to get fresh.
“Janus. No,” the man said, grabbing the dog’s collar and pulling him back. The way he said it—“YAHnoosh”—sounded foreign, but I couldn’t quite place the accent. “Sorry. He’s komondor.”
Well, that explained it, and was I ever impressed. You didn’t always find a dog with a rank that high. Not wanting to breach military etiquette, I saluted.
“Aye, aye, Commander,” I said. “Permission to pass without getting sniffed.”
The man laughed and shook his head. “No, that is breed, komondor. Is Hungarian sheepdog. Janus, very good boy.” He patted the doggie’s head, which started his tail wagging and the thick white cords of his coat rippling like a bamboo curtain.
When I asked the man for directions to the restroom, he looked me up and down with an admiring smile. “You are new here?”
“Sort of.”
“Janus and I, we take you to shower.”
I guess Janus wasn’t the only one with a keen sense of smell. The man introduced himself as Franco. He was a live-aboard, so I thought he might have a little yacht club gossip to share with me, maybe even about Wade Covington. As he led me around the side of the building, I decided to try a little small talk. So I asked about his boat. Before responding, he tucked in his chin and pushed out his lips as if he were going to say woo-woo, which made me think he might be Italian.
“Isabella, she is beautiful. Janus and I, we are h
ere one month now. Soon we go to Mexico. Marquesas. But this is very nice place.”
I couldn’t imagine old Janus confined to a boat of any size. Muldoon got cranky cooped up in the house on a rainy day. Franco used his key to open a door near the rear of the clubhouse and pointed me toward the women’s shower facility.
“Thanks,” I said politely. “I bet Isabella is a knockout.”
A spontaneous smile spread across his face, making him look like a young man in love. “You come tonight. I make you dinner.”
I tucked his slip number into the pocket of my gym bag and promised to stop by after I spoke with Benito. With a wave, Franco retreated down the gangway as Janus let out a bark that liquefied my internal organs. That was one major puppy.
The mirror said it all. I looked like hell. The knot on my forehead was growing larger and redder. My hair was matted. The cold air had made every muscle in my body ache. I peeled off my soggy clothes and stood in the hot shower until my muscles relaxed, at least, as much as they could.
When I finished drying off with brown scratchy paper towels from a roll on the wall, I put on the sweats and athletic shoes from my gym bag. I dried my hair under the hand dryer and then retraced my steps around to the front entrance of the clubhouse. I grabbed a wooden handrail, which was varnished to a mirror shine, and headed up the stairs.
A thin young girl with unnaturally straight teeth sat behind a reception desk near the front door. She didn’t ask to see my membership card, nor did she seem the least bit disturbed by my appearance. She just smiled with that laissez-faire attitude of young people who don’t need to work. In case she changed her mind about the welcome, I decided to speed up my efforts to find Benito. The bar was in the front part of the building, facing the water. Photos and paintings of sailing regattas hung on the walls, and an assortment of burgees was displayed along the crown molding. I managed to get the bartender’s attention, but he didn’t look impressed by my outfit or the condition of my face.
False Profits Page 23
