by Rex Burns
“That’s real efficiency,” Bunch said. “You’re a real genius. Tell us, genius, what was she doing with the key to your apartment?”
Landrum glanced at me and then back at Bunch. “We had this thing going.”
“You what?”
“It’s no big deal, Kirk. You and that Haas broad got your thing going. A little smoochy-smoochy on the front porch—I seen you. Well, me and Carrie had something going too.” He added, “She didn’t have all the money in the world, you know, and I was putting in a lot of time on this case. So I sort of did her a favor.”
“How do you pay your rent?”
“Come on, she wanted it as much as I did. I told you about the ice-maiden type. It was a business deal and she didn’t mind at all. Hell, she liked it—it’s not the size of the tool, you know.”
“You’re all tool, Vinny.” Bunch stepped back and was surveying the small office. “Are you missing anything?”
Landrum looked around too. “I don’t know. I just came in here and saw her and got the hell out again.”
“Where’d you call us from?”
“The White Spot, over on Speer. I drove around for a while trying to think what the hell was going on. And to make sure nobody was tailing me.”
“When did you find her?” I asked.
“Seven, seven thirty. I figure she was shot maybe an hour before. After working hours, anyway, or somebody around here would have heard it.”
That made sense. I kept my distance from the victim and walked slowly around the chair looking for anything that might be meaningful. Landrum began rifling through the drawers of his desk. Bunch, a handkerchief wrapped around his fingers, gingerly lifted the purse from Busey’s lap and brought it over to the light. Carefully, he used a pencil eraser to move the objects inside. “Her wallet’s here. It doesn’t look like it’s been opened.”
“I don’t think this was a robbery. Not for money, anyway.”
“Yeah.” But that didn’t tell either of us what else might have been taken from the open purse. “Dev, look here.”
I peered into the purse where Bunch used the pencil to unfold a slip of paper. In the glare of the desk lamp, I made out the word “Loomis” followed by a telephone number.
“What’d you guys find?” Landrum tried to look around Bunch’s arm, which kept moving in front of his eyes. “What’d you come up with?”
The rest of the purse’s contents were the things that should have been there: the wallet, a key case, some loose change and bills wadded up and dropped in, cosmetics, a small packet of Kleenex, a comb, a bottle of Midol, a Tampax.
“What do you know about Loomis?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Professor Michael Loomis.”
“I don’t know any professor.”
Bunch set the purse back in the corpse’s lap as it had been found. “Did Carrie Busey ever mention him?”
Landrum shook his head. “Not that I remember. What’s he got to do with this?”
That was a good question and neither Bunch nor I had an answer.
“What about your files for Busey?” I asked. “Did anyone go through those?”
“No. They were in the file drawer and it’s still locked. Hey—where’re you guys going?”
“Get a beer. Home for a good night’s sleep. The usual.”
“Hey—hey, wait a minute. I’m going with you.”
“You’re going to be busy talking to the cops, Vinny. We have things to do.”
“Don’t leave me here, Kirk!”
“Why not? It’s your office. Your client, too.”
“I told you, goddamn it—whoever did this might be after me!”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why! Why was she offed?”
“You tell us, Vinny.”
“I don’t know!”
“Then we can’t help you, can we?”
“But I don’t! I honest to God don’t know!”
Bunch followed me down the steps, and behind him Landrum hurried to turn off the lights and fumble with the door’s lock. He caught up with us at the bottom of the stairs, his whisper sharp in the dark. “Will you bastards wait up?”
“Got something to tell us?”
“If I knew something, I’d tell you. I swear it! But I don’t and that’s what’s got me scared. I don’t even know what they’re after!”
“Who’s they?”
“Whoever did this!” His thumb jerked toward the floor above. “I don’t know who they is. But she sure as hell didn’t do it herself.”
Our shadows loomed over the shorter man and finally I said, “Come on, then. We’ll get a cup of coffee and you’ll go over it with us. Everything you’ve been doing.”
“Okay—it’s a deal.” He stepped between the two shadows. “Let’s take your car.”
Landrum had left his car parked on the avenue in front of his office because he still wasn’t sure whether or not he was being tailed. “I figure if somebody’s on me, they’re out there watching my car, you know?” His baggy eyes looked hopefully up at us through the haze of steam rising from his cup. Working back from his meeting with Bunch and me in the alley, he detailed what he had been doing for Carrie Busey. Most of his time had been spent on periodic surveillance of Margaret—”I already interviewed all the neighbors before you tried to strong-arm me, Kirk”—and he had followed her when she and the children went out with me, a fact that robbed those times of some of their pleasure. “You never even knew you had a tail, did you?”
“What did you expect to find out?”
“Something that said she killed her husband. That’s all Carrie could think about. Talk about your one-track minds.”
“And?”
“And nothing. Total blank. It was driving Carrie nuts. I told her to let it alone for awhile—that Mrs. Haas was still looking over her shoulder. But Carrie kept saying that she would have to make a move for the money sooner or later.”
“What money?”
“From the Aegis payoff her husband got. You thought I couldn’t figure that out, right? Carrie told me a little, the rest of it I put together. My guess is Margaret Haas popped hubby for the money, then she stashed it somewhere. Bank account, whatever. And she’s waiting for all the noise to die down before she goes after it. So far, she hasn’t spent a dime more than she can cover legitimately, so she’s still figuring how to account for the payoff money when she gets it.”
“You’re full of crap, Landrum.”
“Hey, I’m not playing kissy-face with her. I can look at the possibilities; you can’t.”
“Then why’d she hire me to find out whether or not her husband had worked for Aegis?”
“She hired you? I thought McAllister hired you.”
“Wrong, Landrum. She did.”
The man’s sandy eyebrows bunched together in puzzlement. “It don’t make sense.”
“It does if she didn’t kill her husband.”
“But Carrie was so sure the guy wouldn’t commit suicide …”
“You be sure of this, Landrum: if you ever have anything at all to do with Margaret Haas again, I’m going to unscrew your head from the waist up.”
“I got no reason to, Kirk. Not anymore.” He sipped his coffee. “I hope I got no reason to.”
“You don’t.”
“So you say. But tell me, why was Carrie blown away? And in my office? And what happened to the payoff?”
The money question was the same one that Margaret had asked so many weeks ago, and the only answer I had come up with was that Haas had opened a bank account in some other name or had hidden the cash somewhere. In either event the money was now lost. As for the death of Carrie Busey, nothing that Landrum told us offered any reason. Nor was there any reason why she should have Loomis’s name in her purse.
“Well,” Bunch picked up the check and glanced at the figures. “All this has been fun, Vinny. But the hour is late and my youth is fleeting. You going to call the cops?”
He
shook his head. “I figure I’ll wait and find her in the morning. Natural like, when I go in to work, you know? Less hassle that way.” He stood to leave when we did.
“Where are you going?”
“With you. I don’t have any wheels.”
“We’re going home, Vinny. You’re not going there.”
“Just give me a lift, okay? There’s this place I can stay tonight. It’s not too far, for God’s sake. You can at least do that much after all this crap you brought down on me.”
Discovery of the body came too late for the morning papers, but a short notice made the radio news as I joined the pulse of cross-town traffic that filled the one-way streets. A woman, age twenty-eight, found shot to death in a private detective’s office. Name withheld until next of kin notified. The story sounded like a good one, and the announcer’s voice stressed the angle of a local private detective.
Bunch was over at the hospital for the nine thirty visiting hours, and I started the day with a quick check of the previous night’s work at AeroLabs. Then I called Margaret. “I just wanted to know how you’re doing.”
“Aside from missing you, I’m doing fine.”
That was two reasons for me to feel good. We talked a bit about Susan and what Austin and Shauna had done, and about whether or not it would be safe to take them shopping. That’s when I told her about Carrie Busey’s death. The line was silent for a long time before she asked if there was any connection between that and Susan’s injury.
“Bunch and I have talked that over. I don’t think so. Granted, the Aegis Group does keep coming up—first with your husband, then those two hoods. But I don’t see any ties at all with Busey.”
“Why would anyone do that? It’s horrible.”
“Do you know if she and Loomis knew each other?”
“Professor Loomis? No, I don’t. Why?”
“His name and home telephone number were in her purse.”
She thought back. “I suppose they might have met. He’s a friend of Mr. McAllister and I’m sure he visited the offices.”
“Can you think of any reason why she would be in touch with him?”
“You mean because she was Austin’s secretary? I really don’t know, Devlin. You know I haven’t had much contact with the corporation since Austin’s death. What’s so important about it?”
“Nothing that I know of.”
“Then maybe you should ask Professor Loomis. There’s probably a commonplace explanation.” A note of quiet humor, “You’re so used to dealing with underhanded motives and devious plots, Dev, that I think you overlook the obvious sometimes.”
That was probably true, and it was as good a course of action as any. My next call was to the good professor—his home number, the one that matched the number found in Busey’s purse.
“It’s Devlin Kirk, Professor. I wondered if I might ask you something.”
The voice sounded slightly terse and strained. “Of course, Devlin. Certainly.”
“Austin Haas’s secretary, Carrie Busey, was found—”
“Shot. Yes, I know. I just finished talking with a policeman, and I’ll tell you the same thing I told him: as far as I know I never met the woman or talked with her.”
“Do you have any idea why she might have your name and number?”
“Absolutely none. She could easily have gotten it from someone at the McAllister Corporation. Perhaps she wanted my advice about an investment; perhaps she wanted information about one of my classes. It’s not uncommon for a prospective student to call and ask about my courses.”
Listening to the voice, I suddenly wished I could see the man’s eyes. “Do you know if she ever had any contact with the Aegis Group?”
“I have just told you, I did not know her at all.”
“But she was Haas’s secretary. If anyone would have known that he was dealing with Aegis, she would.”
“That may be true, Devlin. But it is beyond my ken. I repeat: I do not know the woman and I have no idea why she was murdered. I don’t wish to sound abrupt, but I’m late for an appointment already.”
“Thanks for your time, Professor.”
I was running the brief conversation through my mind and trying to trace out any threads and hints that the words generated when Bunch came into the office. “She woke up, Dev. She recognized me.”
“Great!”
“Not all that great—she’s having problems talking, but at least she’s awake and she knows where she is and who she’s talking to.”
“When can I see her?”
“Probably tonight at visiting hours. The nurse said she’d be busy today with more x-rays and tests and crap. And a lot of rest. They want her system to get over the shock so they can find out how bad the damage is.” Bunch poured himself a cup of coffee and settled into the groan of one of the leather chairs. “Mrs. Faulk says they’ve even started therapy already. Movement exercises, that kind of thing. The sooner the better, she says.”
Bunch told me a little more about Susan’s condition and the extent of possible brain damage. “A lot of times the undamaged part of the brain can take over some of the functions of the damaged part.” Bunch liked the thought of the injury being only temporary and I hoped it was true, too. “But they say it’ll take time. It’s all a lot of maybes except that it’ll take time.” We talked, too, about Susan’s mother and what we could do for her. Finally, as we settled on taking her to dinner before visiting hours, the telephone rang and an unfamiliar voice asked for Bunch. “It’s yours.”
“Hey, Lew!” Bunch covered the mouthpiece and gestured. “Sergeant Lewellen—White Collar Crimes.”
I flipped on the telephone speaker in time to hear the voice say “… of those names are pretty interesting.”
“How’s that, Lew?”
“Nothing definite. But they’ve turned up in a couple of operations down in Vegas. Always on the fringes, you understand—fellow travelers, like.”
“Mob? You’re telling me the Aegis Group has mob connections?”
“I can’t tell you anything that definite. It’s pretty hazy. The names have turned up, that’s all. As far as I know, they’re legitimate businessmen. What I guess is they run the straight operations; the start-up money comes from the mob, and they set up businesses to put the money to work.”
“Fronts?”
“No. Not at first, anyway. Straight businesses—clean. It’s just that they get their bankroll cheap. They might do a little laundering; it depends on the kind of business that’s set up. But the wrinkle is to use the crooked money to diversify into legitimate areas: transportation, restaurants, brokerage firms, even diaper services.”
“Real-estate development?”
“Sure. That’s a favorite. It’s got close ties with construction and the Teamsters, and it can juggle a lot of money.”
“What names paid off?”
“Three: Brewer, Jacetti, and Neeley. Neeley’s a known associate of Spilotro down in Vegas. We think he’s probably one of Spilotro’s main money-movers, but that’s just a guess. The other two we don’t know much about at all. So far they’re just names that turned up a few times in the computer.”
“Jesus, Lew, I thought Denver was pretty clean of that stuff.”
“It is. From what I can find out, the Aegis Group is clean. That’s the angle: find a location that’s away from the main operations and in an investment area with good potential, then quietly set up a legitimate business that you can run your money through and make a profit on. The only thing is, the business gets its start with a hefty loan from the mob. And who knows what happens down the road when the mob gets hungry.”
That explained a lot about Kaffey and why he had no interest in taking money from Devlin Investments. It explained their paranoia about the break-in at their office—and their type of response. And it made the late spring sunlight dim a bit with the remnants of winter’s chill when I thought about all the new implications.
“And if things get sticky, they might ca
ll in a little muscle from the godfather, is that it?”
“Yeah, that too. But the idea is not to need it. Keep a low profile, you know?” The detective added, “If you hadn’t come to me, I wouldn’t have known about this company or the people in it. There’s no reason to. How’d you get on it?”
Bunch glanced my way and I mouthed, “Not over the phone.”
“Let’s meet and talk about that,” said Bunch.
The site was a park of reclaimed river bottom where Cherry Creek joined the South Platte river. It was the original site of Denver, where gold was first discovered, and now concrete terraces made broad steps down the banks to the plunge of dark water over boulders and retaining walls. Here and there, benches offered a little rest and, in the summer, time to watch kids splash in the pools of slack water or inner tube down the chutes from one level to the next. This early in spring, the water was too cold and swift for swimming, but half a dozen kayakers were testing their strength among the bamboo poles of a slalom course marked in a near channel of the river.
“You ever do that, Bunch?” Lewellen was in his forties and wore a brown, three piece suit that wrinkled comfortably as he lounged back in the sun.
“No. Devlin has. He likes to row boats.”
“I’d be afraid the thing would turn over and I couldn’t get up again.” The man’s heavy shoulders gave a convulsive twitch. “Christ, what a way to die.” He shifted on the bench and shoved the butt of his pistol to a more comfortable spot in his back. “Okay, so what led you to Aegis?”
I told him a little of our work for McAllister.
“I remember that Haas shooting. No question about it, a suicide. The only problem was motive, and now you’ve turned that up.”
“We checked out a telephone number and it tied Haas directly to Neeley.”
Lewellen used his thumb to push a corner of his brown mustache toward his teeth to chew on the hairs for a minute. “Did Aegis find out about you?”
“What’s that mean?” asked Bunch.
Lewellen’s wide hand swept past the park and the river. “Meeting here instead of talking over the phone. There’s got to be some reason.”
“Well, Lew, yeah.” Bunch cleared his throat and told him about the two men attacking me, and about the hit-and-run that injured Susan.
