"Lapinski," Cori piped up. "Do we look like we're suffering?"
"Detective Anderson," Thomas said, his tone softening, his eyes wilting, his arms rising as if to embrace Cori in her time of need. "You might look perfect – and I do mean perfect – on the outside, but there are things going on inside your body that are impossible to detect except with a most expert—"
"That's it." Finn was out of his chair, looming over the attorney. "First, you cannot speak to Detective Anderson in that manner. Secondly, we work for the city. If it's the city you're thinking of suing, you can just think again. We won't be party to that."
Thomas jumped off the desk and held his palms out to stop Finn.
"Ah detective, you are assuming that you would jeopardize your careers. Nothing could be further from the truth. Cops, firemen, social workers – I've helped them all. Lawsuits are part of city business. All I need are your signatures to begin the process. I have the paperwork right here."
Thomas reached for the latches on his briefcase but Finn was fast and his big hand slapped down on the case as if he would crush the darn thing before he allowed it to be opened.
"Perhaps I wasn't clear," Finn said evenly. "We will not be suing anyone."
Thomas lowered his voice, dipped his chin and spoke mano-a-mano.
"I'm there for you, detective. Seriously. You catch any flack, if they threaten to toss you off the force, I'll stand up to them. Bring them on: the union, the mayor, the press. There are precedents."
Finn swung his head: "Detective Anderson. Perhaps you might have the words this person will understand."
"Mr. Lapinski," she said. "Before you beat your gums to death, let me point out that there is nothing to sue the city for. We're not hurt. Got it?"
"Did you do that making tea, detective?" Thomas pointed at Finn's hand. He swung back to Cori. "There was no safety railing on that bridge. Did you know there are exactly twenty-five notices from concerned citizens regarding that location? It was negligence pure and simple. A woman is dead. People were hurt including you, Detective O'Brien."
"Neither of us lost any work time, so don't you bother trying to tap that tree 'cause there ain't no sap," Cori said. "Now, I think you should just take your song and dance out of here and let us get back to work."
"Detective Anderson, a minute more." Lapinski pumped his palms and did a two-step to keep her from showing him the door. "Think about it because you'll only get one chance."
Finn stepped around the desk. With one hand he swiped that giant briefcase up and with the other he took Thomas Lapinski by the arm and helped the man out of the office, but the lawyer wasn't going down without a fight. He raised his voice to appeal to Cori.
"Headaches? You have headaches, don't you, Detective Anderson? Bad dreams? I'll bet. Are you losing sleep?" He was almost in the hall when he managed to dodge Finn and stick his head back into the office. "Are you in therapy? Are you married, Detective Anderson? Loss of conjugal rights is worth big bucks. We're talking real money." He pulled his head back, put a hand on Finn's arm, lowered his voice and asked: "Is she married?"
Appreciative of the man's tenacity and taste – and grateful that Cori was far enough away that she would not squish him like a bug – Finn nonetheless handed him his briefcase and left him in the hall.
"Good day, Mr. Lapinski." Finn closed the door but the lawyer was still at it. They could clearly hear his every word.
"I've signed them all, you know. Mrs. Greaton had two children in the car. Mr. Johnson in the Mercedes. He signed up."
Finn shook his head and Cori started to laugh, until they heard:
"I've signed up that dead woman's grandmother too!"
Finn ripped open the door, ready to give chase if need be but the lawyer was standing right where Finn left him.
"You're representing the woman's family?" he asked.
"Yes."
Thomas rotated his shoulders, adjusted his jacket, and hitched his briefcase. His eyes clicked a millimeter to the left of Finn's when he added:
"Sort of."
CHAPTER 12
On the one hand Thomas Lapinski had tried Finn's patience by refusing to name the jumper or her family without certain concessions; on the other hand, the detective was awestruck by the little man's ability to withstand two LAPD detectives such as themselves pressuring him to give up his information. Should Finn ever need a lawyer, Thomas would be his man. No doubt he would drive any judge and jury mad and they would rule in Finn's favor just to stop the little man talking in circles.
At the end of his rope, Finn finally suggested a compromise: Thomas would tell them everything he knew about the dead woman and her family and in return Finn would not put the lawyer through the wall. Thomas considered this and then countered. He wouldn't talk unless they took him along to see the grandmother – to protect the interest of his almost-client, naturally. Since Cori had to be home to watch Tucker while Amber went out and, not wanting to miss what was going to go down, she took it upon herself to split the baby. Finn would drive and Thomas could go along on the condition he zipped his lip until the detectives finished questioning the woman.
Now they were sitting in their car eyeing the small house where Thomas said she had lived. The detectives, having made good on their promise, listened to Thomas hold up his end of the bargain.
"The dead woman's name was Takrit. She had been thirty years old. She worked at a post-production house in Santa Monica called Silent C Productions. The receptionist – a guy by the way – gave me Takrit's address but he called her Diane. Before you ask, I don't know why he called her that," Thomas said. "I can speculate. She might have wanted a more American sounding name for work. Anyway, that guy sends me here and I come over to see the grandmother. I told her who I was but it was pretty clear that she didn't know what happened to her granddaughter. When she finally understood what I was saying, she just kind of deflated. She said 'Takrit'. That's how I know her real name."
Thomas paused as much for breath as for reflection.
"Poor old lady. She just kind of moaned and she said some stuff I didn't understand. Anyway, she left me standing on the stoop, went to the bedroom and that was it. I left my card, called to her that I'd come back today and closed the door. Now here we are. The three of us."
Cori almost smiled at him but let it go. She might regret any gesture that could be construed as encouragement. Still, she had respect for someone who enjoyed the challenges and opportunities of his profession as much as Thomas did.
"If you spilled the beans that her granddaughter was dead, why didn't the grandmother come forward?" Cori whirled her finger telling him she'd like to speed things up a bit.
"How many possibilities do you want, Detective Anderson?" Thomas said. " She needed time to process? She didn't know where to go or what to do? Maybe Takrit and the old lady didn't get along and it was good riddance as far as she was concerned. I've seen that a lot, young immigrants getting on the wrong side of the old ones. The young ones get westernized fast and the old ones don't like it. But I don't think that was it. The grandma looked pretty sad."
"What did you tell her about how Takrit died?" Cori asked.
"I started to explain it was a tragic accident but she doesn't speak a lot of English, so I didn't waste my breath." Thomas beetled his brow. "It was a tragic accident, wasn't it? I mean suicide would be a total bummer. Much harder to prove negligence. That's going to cut into the settlement big time unless I go with the attractive nuisance argument. Yeah, I could still pull a few hundred thousand out of the city, but…"
Cori and Finn exchanged a look as Lapinski babbled on. He had all the tact of a man with Tourette's talking to a nun.
"We're not sure of anything. That's why we're investigating," Finn said.
"Whew." Thomas breathed easier. "You had me worried."
"That's the last thing we'd want to do, Thomas," Finn said, knowing the man would have apoplexy should he find out they were investigating a possible murder. There
was no margin in that for the lawyer.
Finn put his hand on the door latch but changed his mind about getting on with things. Something had been bothering him about Thomas's story and now he knew what it was. He looked into the rearview mirror at the man in the backseat.
"Thomas," he said. "How did you discover where this woman worked?"
"Ah, trade secret…" Thomas tapped his temple with one finger but his voice trailed off and his smile faded when Finn turned deliberately, draped his arms over the back of the car seat and looked hard at him. "Okay. Okay. Okay. Promise you won't tell anyone. I'm going to ask your word on this. It would seriously be a deal breaker if you can't promise that."
"Cross our shriveled little cop hearts," Cori drawled.
"Detective Anderson, you become more alluring by the moment."
Thomas flashed a smile her way and Cori grunted a laugh. He was good-looking, damn frustrating, totally obnoxious but somehow endearing. That was high praise considering her opinion of lawyers, or most men for that matter. Thomas lowered his voice. His eyes darted between the two of them.
"It's reverse imaging. You know, like Google or Facebook when it asks you if you want to identify all the people in your picture? My programs are more sophisticated than that, but I won't bore you with the particulars. Simplest way to explain it is this: I put a picture into specialized programs and if there's a hit then I follow that lead."
"Where did you get a picture to reverse?"
Cori put a leg up, too, and cocked an arm over the seat, intrigued by what he was saying. Thomas shrugged and fluttered his eyelashes.
"It's kind of brilliant if I do say so myself." Thomas beamed with delight. "I developed a full platform that would help me get in touch with potential clients – Twitter and Facebook and Instagram – but I figured out that I also needed to be proactive. There's a lot of clutter out there, so I created an advance team. Those people make the initial IDs and text the information to me. I'm like a legal Uber."
"Specifics, Thomas," Finn pressed.
"I pay for hits, Detective O'Brien," Thomas said, but his explanation was met with blank stares so he started his tutorial from the beginning. "Specifically, one of my team is driving to work and they see an accident, they slow down and take a picture of it with their phone and then forward it to me. If I get a hit and make contact with the victim, then I give a finder's fee to the guy who took the picture. It's a sweet deal. I don't have to actually sign the client; I just have to be able to identify them. I mean fair is fair, right? The driver makes a few extra bucks for pretty much doing nothing. We're all good."
"Except that you've violated a victim's rights and re-victimized them all over again when you show up on their doorstep." Cori was disgusted and turned her back on Thomas.
"Wrong. I'm protecting their rights." Thomas put his hand on her shoulder and when she shrugged him off he turned to Finn. "Look, most of the time we're talking fender benders. The people are out of their cars arguing. That means they're in a public space so my people get a picture of them, maybe the license plates, and a photo of the damage. When I contact them I already have a solid idea of what kind of settlement they'll see.
"There are plenty of tech companies doing cutting edge stuff in terms of recognition. I mean, there's Wolfram and Social Catfish. I really like TinEye. They can take color and break it down. This one was tough, though, I gotta tell you." Thomas shook his head remembering his righteous toil. "Anyway, I get the pictures and I can see if anyone else was inside the car. Kids are the best. The insurance companies settle fast for kids under ten."
"No doubt," Finn muttered and threw open his door.
"Hey, you want the scum lawyers to get to these people? I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to go to court. No long, protracted stuff for Thomas Lapinski's clients. I don't like to jerk anyone around. Most of the time it's just me and the insurance company negotiating. The victims get a nice big check and everyone wins."
"Except you're taking thirty or forty percent and expenses out of the settlement," Finn pointed out.
"What? You don't get paid for an honest day's work?" Thomas shot back and opened his door too.
"The key word is honest." Finn got out of the car. He had enough of Thomas and his cyber ambulance chasing. "Let's get this done and you can go back to snapping pictures of dead women on the freeway."
"Yeah, that made it tough, her being dead and all. Image searches usually only tag other pictures that kind of…well…look like live people."
It took a second for Thomas to realize he was talking to himself, but when he did he got out of the car. He was still talking when he joined them on the sidewalk.
"Give me some credit for ingenuity," he grumbled.
"Yeah, you get a gold star," Cori said. "Who took the picture?"
"I will only tell you that I had two people in that backup. One going southbound. My northbound was very close. Believe me, it's all good. All above board."
Thomas pointed at the house and they started walking, until Finn stopped him with a hand on the small man's arm.
"I was with that woman, Thomas," Finn said.
"Yes." The lawyer met the detective's eyes. "Yes, you were."
"And did you run me?"
"I did, detective." Thomas answered. "You've got quite a history. But, hey, who am I to judge? We all do what we have to, don't we?"
"Let me see it." Finn put out his hand.
"I keep the pictures on a special drive."
Finn moved tight to the man, towering over him. To his credit, Thomas didn't give an inch.
"I want it gone. Do you understand me, Thomas?"
"It's gone. As soon as I get back to the office. I swear," Thomas assured him.
Satisfied, Finn started to walk again, this time with Cori by his side and Thomas behind. They headed to the house where Takrit lived with her grandmother. White rocks were strewn over the flat roof, an architectural affectation left over from the fifties when the sparkling white rocks were said to reflect the hot L.A. sun and keep the interior of a house cool.
There was a narrow porch with an old chair sitting just beside the front window. The lawn was more dirt than grass, the beds bare except for one ancient hydrangea bush that was covered in big, pink pom-pom flowers. A driveway running between the neighbors on the left of the house was cracked and half sunk by age and earthquakes. The neighbor on the right had raised a massive hedge that threatened to engulf the little house where Takrit had lived. In the distance they could hear the sound of traffic.
When they reached the walkway, Thomas scooted ahead of the two, tall detectives and turned so that he was walking backward.
"Since she knows me, I'll do the talking. You know, introduce the two of you. Ease into it—"
Finn and Cori didn't miss a beat as they passed on either side of the lawyer. They smiled at the sound of his indignation and then nobody was smiling anymore because Thomas' chatter was drowned out by a bloodcurdling scream that came from inside the little house.
CHAPTER 13
Cori grabbed Thomas and ran to the right, pushing her way into the hedge, throwing Thomas behind her and pulling her gun out of her purse.
"Detective Ander—"
"Time to shut it, Lapinski," Cori muttered. "And stay put until I say you can move."
She inched back to the side of the house where she peered around the corner. Finn had gone left and was standing on the cracked driveway, hugging the other side of the house. He gave her a nod and a sign to wait. She fell back while Finn assessed the situation from his end.
Behind him was a dilapidated structure that looked like it was built to garage a Model T. There was a lock on the heavy door but he doubted there was anything inside there worth stealing. Above him was the kitchen window, too high for him to look through, too narrow to let in much light. He knew the floor plan well: cubes joined together to create a living room, two bedrooms, one bath and a kitchen. When his family first came to America all nine of t
hem lived in a house just like this. Finn put his hand on his weapon but didn't draw it because whoever was in the house had gone silent. Just as he took a step away from the wall to catch Cori's attention again, he heard:
"Hey. Hey." Finn turned. Above him, a happy man hung over the fence, his arms dangling, a joint held between thumb and forefinger of his right hand. The man raised his chin and indicated the house. "You know that old bat in there?"
"No," Finn said. "Do you?"
He shook his head and took a toke. "Nah. Not really. I was just hoping you could get her to stop doing that."
"Doing what?" Finn asked.
"Screaming, man. Moaning and crying. All sorts of shit."
"She's been doing this a lot has she?" Finn asked.
This time the man took a longer drag, held it, smiled and then croaked through his exhale.
"Yeah. Started yesterday but it seems like a friggin' week. I mean, I'm seriously going out of my mind here. A guy can't catch a few Zs with that going on."
"You're here all day, are you?" Finn asked.
"Yeah, man 'cause I'm, like, disabled. Disability. You know. Can't work."
The man's head went up and down, his eyes didn't quite focus on Finn but he smiled with such serenity that Finn found his own mind eased – until the woman in the little house did it again.
"Jesus, she's got a set of lungs on her," the man barked.
Finn stepped across the driveway and put his hand against the rickety fence. The man held out his roach. Finn shook his head.
"Do you know who lives here?"
"Nope, I don't." The fence man let his head swing like a pendulum. "Wait. Wait! I know she's not from here. I don't think the old lady speaks English. The young one does." The man smiled blissfully as he remembered Takrit. "She is so fine. She has her shit together. Haven't seen her in a while, though."
Foreign Relations: A Finn O'Brien Thriller (Finn O'Brien Thriller Series Book 2) Page 11
