by Rex Burns
I smiled modestly and decided not to mention Owen McAllister as my source. “We try to be alert to trends and to move quickly when opportunities arise. That’s just good business, right?”
“Right. Good business.”
“Our principals are quite excited by this possibility. But of course we’d like to know a little more before we invest. The usual questions about the cost and income projections, growth potential, that sort of thing. Is there someone you could put me in touch with who might answer that type of question?”
“Well, I might. But you see, Mr. Kirk, we aren’t looking for any more backers. We have what we need. Things may come up in the future—we’re always looking ahead, you understand. But for these two, we don’t need any more … “
“That’s quite disappointing. We heard sometime back from Mr. Haas that you would be taking over the projects. But we weren’t in a position to move on it at that time.”
“Haas?”
“He worked for the McAllister Corporation before his untimely death.”
“I read something about that.”
“He said we should get in touch with you.”
“He said that?”
“I had the impression that he’d be leaving McAllister to work for you.”
“I hadn’t heard that.”
“And in fact he told me he was instrumental in your getting the contracts.”
The sleepy eyes did not blink, and the mind behind them wasn’t drowsy at all. Kaffey rested his forearms on the desk. “Just who are you working for? McAllister?”
“Me? No—I represent D.S.I.” I pointed to the calling card. “From Canada. Why do you think I work for McAllister?”
“Because he’s been making noises about some kind of lawsuit. He thinks Aegis stole his ideas. But he’s lying. We underbid him, that’s all.”
“Litigation? The projects might be tied up in the courts? That would certainly worry our principals.”
“You can stop acting, Kirk. Or whatever your name is. McAllister doesn’t have a case.” Kaffey picked up the calling card and ran his thumb over the engraved surface before he crumpled the pasteboard into a small wad. “So if you’re here trying to link the Aegis Group to Haas, you can forget it. Nobody here knew him.” He flipped the wad toward the oversized trash can where it rattled against the empty tin. “Tell McAllister he doesn’t have a prayer. And you—don’t you ever come into this building again. You understand?”
The secretary smiled brightly at me and said, “Have a nice day.”
“He made you?”
“As soon as I mentioned Haas. I think they’ve been waiting for someone to try to link them together.”
“That would help make the case, wouldn’t it? To show they had access to McAllister’s trade secrets.”
I nodded. “It would at least be a threat.”
“So Haas being dead means they don’t have to worry about him testifying.”
“It was a suicide, Bunch. Convenient, but still a suicide.”
“Convenient is right. And a hell of a good motive as well. If McAllister could prove damages, he could end up owning those projects after all.”
“You have to add ‘means’ and ‘opportunity,’ neither of which fits his suicide.”
“Maybe they drove him to it. Maybe they threatened him with McAllister.”
“Why should they? He was already under their thumb.”
“But damn it, it fits so well: with Haas out of the way, there’s no link to Aegis, no basis for a suit against them.”
“There’s also no reason to believe Haas committed suicide just to be a nice guy.” I wandered to the window and gazed out over the familiar flat roofs while above, equally familiar and as flat, the piano began a series of scales. “Is there anyone you can ask about Aegis?”
Bunch looked up. “Sure—White Collar division. You want a run-down?”
“Anything you can get.”
He telephoned a number and asked for Sergeant Lewellen. “Lew? This is Bunch … Yeah, fine. How about you?”
I half listened as Bunch traded jokes with his friend and finally asked if the White Collar Crimes section had any information on the Aegis Group. When he hung up, he shook his head. “They never ran across them. Lew says he’ll keep his eyes open, but there’s nothing on them now.”
The telephone rang and Bunch, his hand still on the receiver, picked it up. “Kirk and Associates—just a minute.” He held it out to me.
“This is Devlin Kirk.”
“And this is Vincent Landrum. You going to be there for a while, right?”
“For what?”
“For business, Kirk. You and me.” The line clicked into a buzz.
“That was Vinny Landrum. He’s coming over.”
“That low-life?” Bunch snorted something from his nose and went over to the window to spit it out. “What the hell’s he want?”
“He said it was business.”
“His kind of business gives the profession a bad name. You should have told him we don’t do divorces.”
The Vincent Landrum Detective Agency advertised itself for investigations of all kinds but the man’s specialty was divorce. Bunch guessed there wasn’t a motel owner within fifty miles who didn’t have Landrum’s business card tacked up by his telephone and a standing offer of a hundred dollars for cooperation. In Colorado, anybody could hang out his shingle and call himself a p.i., and Vinny was one of the anybodies. When he came into the office, it was with the rolling gait that some short people use to take up more space, and his glance around the room was as friendly as a tax form.
“The chairs—that’s real leather? And a new desk—real wood? You guys must be doing all right.”
“What are you after, Vinny?”
“Hey, Bunchcroft, I’m just trying to be friendly. We’re all in the same racket, right?”
“Don’t rub it in.”
“You said something about business, Vinny.”
He sat on the couch and tapped a cigarette out of its package, taking his time with the lighter and the first draw or two. His lank, sandy hair, blow dried into layers, was long enough to cover the tips of his ears, and his restless eyes touched on each item in the office. “I got a new client, name of Busey. Carrie Busey. Know her?”
“Of course.”
“Yeah—she told me she talked with you. She don’t think her boss blew his own brains out. She thinks somebody did it for him.”
“I know.”
“Yeah. Well, she wants me to prove it.”
“Jesus,” muttered Bunch.
Landrum glanced at him. “The lady’s got a right to her suspicions, Bunchcroft. And this is a democracy—as long as she’s got the money, she has a right to find out if they’re true.”
“The police think it was a suicide,” I said.
“Yeah. I read the reports. But Miss Busey don’t believe it, and she’s paying.” He squirted a long thread of smoke into the air. “A real ice maiden, that one. But I bet she’s something else when she thaws out. That kind always are—they want it so much they’re afraid to admit it. But when they do get it, man, they go crazy!”
“She’s crazy already to hire you.”
Landrum glanced at Bunch and stifled what he was going to say. Instead he hunched around to face me alone. “She tells me you’re working on this, too. For McAllister.”
“We’re on it.”
“Well if we’re both on it, we’d be fools not to pool our information. There’s no sense going over the same ground twice, is there?”
“What the hell ground have you gone over once, Vinny? What have you got to pool that we don’t already know?”
“I can find out things, Bunchcroft, by God as good as you and maybe better! Look, I come over here with a business proposition. Save both of us a little time and overhead. You don’t want to work together, that’s fine with me! Probably do better on my own anyway.”
“All the information we have points to suicide,” I said.
“Pretty much what you do: the police report.”
“And what about this phone call—the one that said Haas was selling out to Aegis? You were on him for that before he died, right?”
“Maybe.”
“Yeah, maybe! So what’d you find out? Was he in bed with Aegis or not?”
“What do you have to trade?”
“Trade? Nothing right now. But anything I do get, you’ll get.”
Bunch snorted, “We don’t need AIDS.”
“We do our own work, Landrum. If you come up with something to trade, maybe we’ll cut a deal. But Vinny—I know that Carrie Busey thinks Haas’s wife killed him and that’s what she wants you to prove, whether it’s true or not. Anything you do come up with had better be squeaky clean.”
Landrum was on his feet, grinding out his cigarette under his toe. “Yeah, what I figured: you people think your shit don’t stink. You don’t want to work together, fine. But I get something, you can kiss my ass for it.”
“That’d be no worse than kissing your rosy sweet lips.” Bunch smiled at the door as it closed loudly behind Landrum. “I think he’s unhappy with us, Dev.”
“I think he wanted us to do his work for him.”
“What else is new? That broad—what’s her name? Busey? She didn’t waste much time.”
“She’s wasting her money.”
“Sure. But who did finger Haas?”
I shrugged. “If we ever find out, we’ll probably get our proof whether or not he was guilty.”
“As far as I’m concerned, we got our proof: that pipeline to Aegis. And if he wasn’t, why’d he commit suicide?”
We were back at the fundamental conflict: the strongest indication that Haas was the thief was his suicide. Yet the evidence to so conveniently explain his suicide was weak.
“I don’t know, Bunch. That’s what we’re supposed to find out, and right now I don’t have a single idea that leads anywhere. Come on—we’re late for our workout.”
CHAPTER 8
WE MET SUSAN at the health club, the three of us joining the scattering of other joggers running around the green strip of padded track that circled the rows of exercise machines. Susan’s trim leotard gradually dampened with perspiration as we clicked off each quarter-mile, and Bunch simply sweated, soaking the heavy cotton of his sleeveless shirt.
“I don’t like running inside,” he said. “It’s too damn hot and boring.”
That was true; the steady thump of feet and the constantly repeated series of walls and machines created a mind-numbing monotony.
But Susan’s thoughts weren’t on the running. “One of our clients committed suicide last night.”
“There’s that word again,” said Bunch.
I listened to the muffled thud of my heels.
“He was fourteen. They found him this morning in his room when he didn’t come down to breakfast.”
“This was at the Refuge Home?”
She nodded, the blond ponytail jerking from side to side with her pace. “We thought we were making progress with him. He was an abused child with minor learning disabilities. He kept slipping through the cracks in school because he wasn’t sufficiently handicapped to get help there, but we finally got a placement for him.”
Bunch said, “Another one of God’s little jokes. I think that’s where half the people come from that we lock up.”
“I really thought we were making progress.”
We ran another half lap, the steady slap of shoes pacing my thoughts. “Do you feel like it’s your fault?”
“I wonder what more I could have done. I wonder where I screwed up.”
I knew the feeling.
“You don’t want to start that,” said Bunch. “There’s too many variables. You start blaming yourself for that, pretty soon you’re blaming yourself for everything. Ask Dev.”
We finished the twentieth lap and slowed to a walk, stretching our muscles as they cooled down. “I thought of that,” she said. “You and Mrs. Haas—and how much worse it must be for you two.”
It wasn’t something I wanted to talk about, but the tone of her voice told me how much she hurt. “You just have to figure there were reasons you could never know or anticipate—that it would have happened no matter what you did.”
“You’ve been able to convince yourself of that?”
“Some of the time.”
“And the rest of the time you’re angry? At yourself? At your father?”
“Don’t forget God,” said Bunch. “He’s the one who claims He made all this.”
“Don’t start that again, Susan.”
“Well I admit to feeling anger. Toward myself, and toward Tim for wasting himself like that. And I’m trying to understand how to cope with such anger. How can you keep it so tightly bottled up?”
“Because there’s no sense pissing all over my shoe tops about it. It’s just something I live with.”
“And you’re afraid someone might think you’re looking for pity?”
“I don’t need pity.”
“Come on, you two. Cut it out, now.”
“It’s not asking for pity,” she said. “It’s trying to understand your own feelings about it. Granted there’s no clear answer to why they did it, but for our own sakes we ought to explore how we feel about it.”
“I know damned well how I feel about it: lousy. I know how you feel about it, too. But you’ve got your way of handling it, and I’ve got mine. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“Did you ever stop to think why you accepted the Haas case?”
“Because a client asked me to.”
“Yeah—and we like money.”
“You don’t think you might be trying to answer questions about your own father’s suicide by investigating his?”
I wondered if she seriously believed that or if it was just something else out of another textbook. “You’re letting theory take the place of fact, Susan. It’s a case I’m paid to investigate, and one we’re not having much luck on.”
“It’s also a case you’re more personally involved with than you’ll admit.”
Bunch was no help. All he did was grin. “Naw, Suze, he admits it. In fact he wants to serve and protect the widow Haas. I’ve tried to warn him. I told him only divorce lawyers sleep with their customers. But will he listen to me? No way.”
She ignored Bunch. “There are surface facts and there are subsurface facts, Dev. And you don’t seem to be aware of the latter.”
“I’m aware of hypothetical crock when I hear it. What I’m not aware of is what difference it makes to you.”
“Because now I have a clearer idea of how you feel about your father’s death. I’m aware of how much Tim’s suicide has colored my attitude toward other clients, and how easily my guilt feelings tempt me to treat them as if they were another Tim. Maybe I’ll even begin to feel anger toward them for still being alive. Just like you felt anger toward that man at the Chute. But if I know what to expect—if we know what to expect—we can control it.”
“I don’t think Haas is my father, if that worries you. And I don’t accept your analysis of what you know damned little about. Now, if it doesn’t disturb you too much, I’d like to lead my own life without you continually trying to assess it. If you want to pick on somebody, pick on Bunch.”
“She tries. It doesn’t work. That’s why she goes after you.”
Susan sighed and headed for one of the stomach-tightening machines. “I think that’s why I love you, Bunch. With you, there’s no possible worry about analysis.”
Bunch grinned at me. “She’s got a piece of the rock.”
Susan’s words stung enough to linger in my thoughts as I reached my new home, half of a remodeled townhouse near Washington Park. The affluence of Kirk and Associates had lifted me out of the small set of rooms I’d rented, and the tax break on home mortgage interest made it better to own than to lease. So I found a corner of Denver which wa
s one of those quiet residential enclaves that had old homes and large trees and a scattering of corner businesses—mom-and-pop grocery stores, laundries, liquor stores, an occasional neighborhood tavern or restaurant—that gave it a sense of community. A number of the homes were being bought by people moving back into the city, and I felt lucky to find a nineteenth-century duplex that an architect had lived in and remodeled. He had planned to keep it for himself, but finally decided to sell. And when he did, I was there with the bank’s cash. As I pulled the 3000 up to the high stone curbing and walked to my side of the building, Mrs. Ottoboni’s stereo quavered an operatic tenor that filled the two quiet porches with an aching, yearning note. The sound did not carry through the walls, though. The original builders, generous with cheap brick, had put a thickness between the two townhouses that not even a hammer could violate, and the architect had added extra soundproofing to keep out the street noises. The result was a sanctuary of silence that, after the abrasion of the city’s constant bustle, felt like cool shade on a hot day. But through the peaceful quiet of the living room with its high, old-fashioned ceiling, the red alert light of the telephone answering machine gleamed a hot summons. I listened to the messages replay as I trimmed the shades and windows to the late afternoon sun: someone else’s machine offering my machine a fantastic and rare opportunity to invest in mountain property, a notice that the Disabled Veterans truck would be in the neighborhood next Saturday, and a voice that said, “This is Michael Loomis, Devlin. Could you telephone me at your earliest convenience?” followed by his number. I poured a mug of thick Belhaven ale before dialing, and my mouth was full of the first long swallow when Loomis answered.
“This is Devlin. I’m returning your call, Professor.”
“Your voice sounds a bit odd.”
“Curing a dry throat. How have you been?”
“The flesh is undeniably weak, Devlin. One would think that a sedentary occupation such as mine wouldn’t make demands on one’s physique, but I seem to have a touch of sciatica lately. However, I didn’t call to complain about my health. I understand from Owen McAllister that you’re once more looking into the Austin Haas thing.”
“Yes.”
