Five Knives_Thriller_Series Prequel

by D. F. Bailey

  “So why do you need to see her?”

  “Something new on the story. Jojo’s pimp, Seamus Henman, I’m sure he couldn’t have thrown Gio Esposito through that window. He was a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter.”

  “Really?”

  “At least. Sure, he could push Jojo and a few other teen girls around. But not Esposito.”

  “So what are you thinking?”

  “That a third man was in the Chinatown apartment. The guy who threw Esposito onto the street, may be the same guy who killed Henman. If that’s the case, Jojo probably knows who he is.”

  ※

  Before Finch made the trek out to Jordan Park and Jojo’s group home on Euclid Avenue, he borrowed a hand-held digital recorder from the Post receptionist. He usually relied on his notebook to record salient information, but when he needed to, he could recall exact quotes by memory alone. In fact, as a party trick, Will liked to recite memorable lines from writers and politicians, especially the one- and two-sentence barbs from Mark Twain. He could also regurgitate word-for-word zingers from Winston Churchill. His favorite was the retort to Harry Truman when the president described Churchill’s successor, Clement Attlee, as “a modest sort of fellow.” Churchill’s reply: “He’s got a lot to be modest about.”

  Despite his excellent memory, Will wanted to get Jojo’s words formally on the record because he knew that if she revealed the name of the third man in the apartment, it could serve as evidence in court. It would also provide some protection against any defamation lawsuit that might be filed against him.

  When he knocked on the door to the group home, he quickly realized that he would have to take Jojo out of the building to do a comprehensive interview. The rooms in the Victorian house were small, the walls paper-thin. Furthermore, a constant stream of teenagers rolled up and down the staircase into the kitchen, bathroom and living room.

  “You again?” Jojo said as she descended the stairs to the main floor hallway.

  “Surprised?” He smiled. It felt good to see her again. She rubbed a hand over her eyes and he wondered if she’d been sleeping. She wore a soft pink cotton blouse and denim jeans with parallel razor cuts at the knees. Almost like the healthy, average seventeen-year-old girl Biscombe predicted she would soon become.

  “Yes and no.” She waved him along the hallway. They stood at the front door. “Your friend got me out.”

  “I know. He was the one who told me you were here.”

  “I think I want to be a lawyer.” She cracked a smile. “You think I can?”

  Her comment took him by surprise, and he grinned. From teen hooker to attorney in forty-eight hours. “Yes. Of course. I imagine you could do just about anything you set your mind on. But how’d you decide that so fast?”

  “The way he got me out.” She snapped her fingers. “One day I want to do that.”

  He nodded, thinking, well maybe. She had the guts for it. And the street smarts.

  “So this place doesn’t look too bad.” He swept a hand toward the living room. The white, lacy curtains. The plush, heavy cushions on the sofas and chairs. The brick fireplace. “Way better than I imagined.”

  “Yeah, except they have rules.”

  “Everyone has rules, Jojo.”

  She rolled her face into a broad sneer and brushed her hair bangs aside. “Not like this. Curfew’s at eight every night.”

  He shrugged, surprised that she couldn’t recognize how good she had it here. There was jail or this. Pick one.

  He checked his watch. Three-ten. “You hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  She was in the mood for a burger and led Finch down to the corner of Arguello Boulevard. From there they took a right on Clement and strolled over to the corner of 2nd Avenue to a restaurant nestled under a bright red awning called EATS. A crowd of teenagers and twenty-somethings sat around the crush of tables, talking in a loud buzz above the sound of samba jazz streaming from two speakers suspended from the ceiling.

  Finch found a table at the far end of the room next to the corridor that led to the washrooms. When they sat he could tell that her flippant mood had shifted to something more agreeable. Besides, she was hungry now and let him know it.

  “Can I have the twin burger and a Diet Coke?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “With yam fries.”

  He laughed at that. “If you want.”

  Finch ordered a cappuccino, and when Jojo’s meal arrived, he studied her while he sipped his coffee. As she ate, her hair swung from side to side to cover one cheek, then the other. He noticed that her eyes had cleared, the smudged mascara washed away. Today she looked her age: seventeen. The night they met, twenty-five. Despite her shifting identity, there seemed to be something steady about her, he decided. An inner resilience. Maybe Biscombe was right. She was intense and alert; that would always be part of her. But the stress of the evening she’d spent handcuffed to the bed — and the next two days locked up in Central Station — all of that was now gone. In its place, a kind of strength welled through her.

  “How are the yam fries? All right?”

  “Good.” She smiled a faint grin that exposed her chipped tooth. “Everyone says they’re the best.”

  “Everyone?”

  “In the group home.”

  “You going to be all right there?”

  She offered an indifferent shrug. “Maybe. For now at least.” A hesitation. “Why do you care?”

  “You want the truth?”

  She sipped some Diet Coke through a straw.

  “Or just more BS?” He offered this as an alternative, knowing which one she’d choose.

  “I heard you were the one who found See-see.” She studied him now and held his eyes without breaking away.

  “You mean Seamus?”

  “That’s his real name? Everyone calls him See-see.”

  “Okay. Well” — Will drew a breath — “he’s dead.”

  “Yeah. So I heard.” She closed her eyes for a moment and considered this. “What happened to him?”

  “The FBI is on it. So I can’t tell you exactly.”

  “The FBI.” She coughed up a cynical laugh. “What? They made you promise?”

  “As a matter of fact, they did.”

  She frowned to suggest that she knew he was straying from the facts. Preparing to feed her more BS. “Look, who are you anyway? Why did you want to find See-see? And like, why are we even talking?”

  “Fair question.” He leaned forward. “I have a contract to write a story for the San Francisco Post. The story started with Gio Esposito, the guy who went through the window. Now it’s about Seamus Henman, too.”

  “Henman?” She laughed as if she couldn’t quite believe it. “That’s See-see’s last name?”

  “Yeah.” When he recalled she didn’t know Henman’s surname, he wondered if she could tell him anything useful about the third man. Mr. X. “Look, Jojo. I want to ask you a few more questions. And I want to record what we talk about.”

  He fished the digital recorder from his courier bag and showed it to her.

  “Okay?”

  She gave him an I-don’t-care shrug and took another pull on the straw.

  He clicked on the recorder and lay it on the tabletop between them.

  “All right. I’m just going to say a few things to make sure everything’s clear.” He paused and smiled at her. “This is Will Finch speaking to Joanne Joleena, about the events that happened three nights ago.” He stated the date and time and place where they were now talking. With the preliminaries out of the way, he leaned back a little. He smiled again.

  “So, you’ve already told me about the night in the apartment. About Gio Esposito and then Seamus Henman, the man you call See-see. Right?”

  “Yeah, so?” She slurped the last sip of Diet Coke and pushed the glass to one side and lay her hands flat on the table.

  “So I want you to look at a picture of a man. I have it on my camera. I want you to tell m
e his name if you recognize him, okay?”

  He drew the camera from his bag and took a moment to find the image of the photograph he’d taken of the fax sheet in Henman’s apartment. He held the camera about a foot from her face. Her eyes dilated, and he could tell that she recognized him. The rectangular face, the ape-like ridge in his brow, the dimpled chin. She pulled the camera into her hands with a gasp.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Who is he?”

  She glanced away as if she was trying to clarify the image of his face from her memory.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “From See-See. It was in his apartment.” He leaned forward. “Jojo, who is he?”

  She set the camera on the table. “Felix.”

  “Felix who?”

  “Just Felix.” Her eyes seemed to study something in the distance as she tried to sort out the logical connections between the three men. “I guess See-see must of called him in.”

  Finch struggled to put the pieces together. “So you think Felix was there that night? In the apartment?”

  A glimmer of recognition crossed her face. “Yeah. He just glanced at me from the living room. It was like, two seconds. At first, I didn’t recognize him. But seeing his picture now — yeah, it was Felix.” She brought Finch back into focus. “The only time anyone ever saw him was when there was trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Trouble-trouble.” She shook her head. “I mean he was the fucking trouble.”

  Finch understood now. “Jojo, this is important. What is Felix’s last name?”

  A flash of anger crossed her face. “How the fuck do I know? Nobody tells you their last name. All you ever get is some BS name like Jingles or See-see. Or Jojo,” she added and stared at him as if she’d finally realized that her world had imploded.

  The heat of her anger simmered and then seemed to vanish. Her cheeks slackened. She covered her eyes with her fingers and buried her hands under a long plume of her beautiful golden brown hair. A moment later Finch saw the tears roll down her cheeks as she sobbed quietly.

  Perhaps Bisk is right, he thought. She seemed ready to get this out of her system. To stop playing the call-girl for a string of losers and accept that she was a teenager who’d been robbed of her youth. Maybe she was ready to reclaim her life and set it back on track. And maybe one day she’d be the lady lawyer who springs underage hookers from jail. Maybe.

  ※

  Finch returned to his desk at the Post just before five. Ten to fifteen reporters clicked away at their keyboards, most of them trying to hit a deadline, he figured. Olivia Simmons was not in her cubicle, but her purse was tucked under her desk, and a jacket draped over her chair.

  Now that he had a first name — Felix — to attach to the picture on his phone, he felt the momentum of the story pick up again. He opened his laptop and started a new file. Will wanted to draft two hundred words before the six o’clock meeting with Wally. It would help if he had more information to add. Another angle. Details which showed the story had taken on a new dimension. Maybe Cecily had dug up the names corresponding to the list of telephone numbers from Gio Esposito’s landline.

  He called her at the Berkeley library, wondering if she’d already clocked off for the day. He felt a moment of relief when she picked up the phone on the second ring.

  “Good. You’re still there,” he said.

  “Yup. Busy day here.”

  “Really?” Did that mean she had no time to research the numbers?

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “And I can hear it in your voice.”

  “Hear what?”

  “Your question. Did I find time to check out those phone numbers?”

  From the way her voice rose with every syllable, and the way she let the words linger, he knew that she’d done it.

  “And you did, right?”

  “Yes, Mr. Finch, I did,” she growled. She called him Mr. Finch whenever she thought he was getting too pushy. Her way of establishing limits.

  “Okay, so you’re killing me here. Stop teasing and give me the names.”

  “Got a pen handy?”

  He typed “NAME” at the top of the file on his laptop and clicked to a new line. “Okay, shoot.”

  “First one, Golden Boy Pizza. Second, TD Ameritrade.” She read off the list of contacts. The first five were either business or fast-food calls. “Only three of the eight are connected to private numbers. Two of the three were the repeat calls you identified. Okay, so the first repeated call is to Seamus Henman.”

  “Seamus Henman? He’s the guy I found dead yesterday.” Finch blinked. “Wait a second, give me a minute to check something.”

  Will set the phone aside and dug his camera from his courier bag. He scrolled through images he’d taken in Henman’s apartment. And there it was, a picture of Seamus Henman’s telephone number under the transparent plastic cover of the phone base — an exact match to the numbers listed on Gio Esposito’s phone index. How had he missed that? He could have connected Henman to Esposito yesterday. It meant that the story was running ahead of him. Or that he was running behind it. He took this as a sign that he wasn’t as thorough as he should be. He chastised himself and picked up the phone handset again.

  “Yeah, it’s him,” he said, his lips barely moving. He didn’t want to explain his mistake to her. Not yet.

  “Oh my God. You mean the dead guy was one of them?” Her voice gasped as if someone had nudged her away from the phone. Then she asked, “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know yet.” Finch felt a rush of adrenaline as he typed Henman’s name. “So Seamus Henman took two calls?”

  “Right. Then someone named Julian Blomquist. Also two calls.”

  “Okay. He’s new. That’s B-l-o-m-q-u-i-s-t?”

  “Right.”

  “So who’s the last one?”

  “Felix Madden.”

  Bingo. Felix now had a last name. Madden. “That’s M-a-d-d-e-n, right?”

  “Yup, two d’s. Just one call to him.”

  He eased back in his chair. Felix Madden. He couldn’t quite believe that the man Jojo had identified from the photo had been on the phone with Gio Esposito the day before he died.

  “Cecily, this is magic. Amazing that you dug this up.”

  “There’s more.”

  “What kind of more are we talking about?”

  “I did some research on these guys.”

  “You did?” He leaned forward again, ready to make some new notes on the laptop. “So who are they?”

  “Blomquist is CEO of a company called TruForce — one word, and no ‘e’ in Tru — Investments. They have an office in the Financial District. Looks like they handle portfolios of some big league investors. And their board of directors is a Who's Who of retired politicians and corporate types.” She paused as if she might be shuffling pages of notes she’d printed out from her online research. “I can give you all this tonight if you want it.”

  “I do. What about the other two?”

  “Seamus Henman is like the invisible man. Except for an arrest for drug possession, which I think might’ve been dismissed. I don’t have access to criminal records. All I can search are directories, like the reverse-name database for phone numbers, and online archives from the media, mostly newspapers. Maybe Bisk can tell you.”

  “Maybe. I’ve already asked him to check it. What about Felix Madden?”

  “Okay, so you need to be careful with him.” She hesitated again. “He’s had a couple of convictions. The Post archives show that he’s done jail time in Ironwood Prison. Ten years ago he was front-page material. You’re not going to interview him are you?”

  “I don’t know.” He considered the possibility.

  “The guy is real trouble.”

  Exactly what Jojo had said. “If I do, I won’t go alone.”

  “You promise?”

  He nodded to himself, thinking, yeah, you can’t jeopardize anything. Not when she’s h
aving a baby. “Of course. I promise.”

  He paused as he pondered one last question.

  “Look. I’ve also got a fax number. I should have given it to you with the others. Can you look it up in your reverse directory?”

  “I think so.”

  “You got it in front of you?”

  “Yes. Shoot.”

  Finch gave her the number at the bottom of the fax he’d found under Henman’s telephone — the fax containing the image that Jojo had identified as Felix. He waited while Cecily ran the number through the database.

  “So here’s a coincidence,” she said.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “It’s from TruForce Investments.”

  “No. It’s from Blomquist’s home on California Street. I think it’s an address in Nob Hill.”

  “Blomquist. Again. That’s three hits from him.”

  “The research on him is puzzling. It’s like he suddenly appeared in 1998. Nothing before that.”

  Finch shrugged. “Well, the internet was just getting underway in the nineties. Google didn’t even launch until ninety-eight. Maybe the system just hasn’t caught up to his early life yet.”

  “Maybe.” She seemed doubtful.

  “I can’t believe you dug all this up.” He felt as though a dozen pieces of the jigsaw puzzle had suddenly clicked into place. “Thanks. I mean it.”

  “Sure.” Her voice sounded dismissive as if she did this sort of thing all the time. “I handled it on my lunch break.”

  “No lunch? Okay, that settles it. I’m taking you out for double sushi.”

  “Good. I’m starving.”

  Her voice sounded breathy, almost romantic — and it aroused a feeling in him. Then he checked his watch.

  “Okay, but … whoa, not tonight. I’ve got a meeting with Wally in twenty minutes.”

  “Who’s Wally?”

  “Gimbel. My editor.”

  “In other words, your boss.” She sighed. “So that definitely means no dinner.”

  “You’re right. Not tonight, anyway. So,” he said, “can we do another a rain-check on that?”

  ※

  Finch nailed down a hundred and fifty words on his new story before Olivia Simmons dug him out of his cubicle.