Linda was at the dining room table when Stone and Rico arrived. She had changed to a tee shirt and Capri pants, which seemed to suit her small body. Her mousy brown hair and soft features gave her a gentle, almost helpless look. Stone and Steele joined her at the table.
“Okay, so you guys want to talk business?” Linda asked. “Let’s get to it while Danny’s watching TV. Who are you guys, why are you after my boss, and what do you want from me?”
“I think we’ll ask the questions today,” Stone said. His briefcase was leaning against the buffet behind him. He pulled it to him, opened it, and drew out a note pad. He realized that he and Steele were a bit less intimidating in knit shirts and jeans than they were in suits the day before, but he wanted to control the conversation if he could.
“Please,” Linda said, rolling her eyes. “I appreciate all you’ve done, Mr. Mason, to keep me out of danger and all. And your wife is a doll and I sure appreciate how kind she’s been to me and Danny. But I know I’m here because you need something from me just as much as I needed help from you. But I need to know the deal before I just start running my mouth about my boss, you know?”
“We think your boss is mixed up in some pretty nasty stuff, Linda,” Stone said. “Maybe you’re in it too.”
Linda leaned forward, elbows on the table, arms crossed. “Can it. If you thought I was dirty I’d be in jail now. Sure, if I go back to work I know what’s in store for me. But they’re not going to look too hard for a gal who they think screwed up and left an office door unlocked. What’s to stop me from just taking my kid and grabbing a Greyhound for Vegas?”
“They will be looking for you,” Stone said. “They’ll hunt you down, because they probably think you’ve got this.”
Stone pulled the thin green ledger from his briefcase and dropped it on the maple tabletop. He could not miss the change that his casual action caused in Linda. She sat back, as if he had placed a tarantula in front of her. Her eyes grew to silver dollars and her mouth fell slightly open.
“You took the ledger,” she said in hushed tones, and her skin flushed a hot pink.
“Yes, and at first look, this looks pretty incriminating,” Stone said with a smug expression. “All the writing is in a very feminine hand. Should we have a handwriting analyst see if it matches yours?”
“Yeah, it’s all me,” Linda said. “But hang on here. Cops sure don’t take stuff like that away from a place when they had no warrant to get in. Now I really got to know who you guys are. A rival gang, maybe?”
Rico Steele pushed the heel of his left palm against Stone’s temple, giving his partner a playful push that tipped him to the side a bit. “Why you want to be a hard ass about this, Stone? We need her cooperation, so let’s just bring her in.”
“In to what?” Linda asked. “What am I mixed up in here? Who the hell are you guys?”
With a broad smile Rico leaned an elbow on the table himself. “Look, we’re private investigators. We don’t worry about what the cops will do, and don’t care much about organized crime as such. We work for an agency that cares about cops. Your boss seems to be in the unpleasant habit of doing bad things to cops in court.”
“Yeah, he’s really got a hard on for the police,” Linda said, and then looked up like a guilty child. “I mean, he’s got something against them. He only seems to work defending the bad guys, and I think he may have falsified evidence and testimony and stuff.”
Steele chuckled. “Yeah, I get it. Anyhow, we want to put him out of business. If it hurts the mob at the same time, well, so much the better. And it will be a lot easier to put Jerome down for good with your insider knowledge of the operation.”
Linda had curled her lips in, making her “I’m thinking” face, when Sherry entered carrying a tray. In addition to the sugar bowl and creamer Stone noticed steam rising from four cups of coffee, not three. As Sherry set the tray beside the ledger book, she said, “You want to help them, dear. They’re the good guys. Really.”
Linda squeezed Sherry’s hand, and Sherry sat at the end of the table. While everyone fixed their coffee the way they wanted it, Linda said, “I’m not worried about me. I can take care of myself. But I worry about little Danny. I know the police couldn’t protect him. Can you guys keep him safe?”
“I personally guarantee it,” Stone said in a solemn voice. “For P.I.s we maintain a pretty low profile, and we have safe houses and other operatives who can create our own temporary witness protection program.”
“And you saw what we did to those freaks in Jerome’s office,” Steele added.
“Yeah,” Linda said. “You guys can sure kick ass, I’ll give you that.” Her eyes went to Sherry, and she ducked her head again, as if caught swearing by her teacher. That guilt ran pretty deep.
“Catholic school?” Stone asked.
“Yeah. How did you…?”
“Not important,” Stone said, flipping the cover of the ledger with a finger. “What can you tell us about what’s in here?”
“Not all that much to tell,” Linda said, pointing at the pages. “These entries are payments made by these companies. This column is checks deposited for services. As you can see, a lot of them are regular amounts. That’s retainers. That means…”
“We know what a retainer is,” Steele said, elbowing his partner. “That’s money you get whether you do any work or not.”
“Right. I guess P.I.s work that way too. This column is cash payments. He never declares any of that income, of course.”
“P.I.’s don’t work that way,” Stone said. He listened to the Power Rangers playing on his living room television in the background and briefly considered the big-screen TV he’d have in the den if he and Steele were willing to accept under-the-table work. “I see some sizeable payments there. I’d guess that’s money for the cases when the evidence was stacked against Jerome’s client. Do you make these deposits?”
“Nope,” Linda said, shaking her head. “I never even see the cash. Don’t know where it goes, but it sure isn’t put in any account I know about.”
“That’ll make it tougher,” Steele said, sipping his coffee.
“You got that right,” Stone said. He leaned in close, smelling the musty paper scent of the book as his eyes scanned a page thoroughly, then a second and a third. “I don’t see any mention of Jerome anywhere on this ledger. We’ve got a few known mob fronts listed in here, and some other businesses that the cops should probably watch a lot more closely, but nothing that connects this book to our favorite legal eagle.” Then he looked up at Linda. “Except you.”
“Yeah, like anybody’s going to take my word for it. Make no mistake, guys, just cause he’s in with a bad crowd don’t change the fact that Irv Jerome is one hell of a lawyer. You can bet there’s no connecting him to the ledger, and he’d make me look like an idiot on the witness stand.”
“We’ve seen what he does to cops in court,” Steele said. “Wouldn’t want to do that to you.”
Stone was still staring at the ledger pages. “There’s a letter code here, in the column next to a lot of the cash payments. Actually looks like Elvin runes or something, like in Lord of the Rings.”
“Oh, I love those movies. Anyhow, that’s how he knows which case that money was paid against,” Linda said, sounding eager to be helpful. “Each of those symbols signifies a particular client.”
Stone looked up, wearing his first real smile of the day. “The case connection. Now that’s what we need, to reel this guy in,”
Linda sat back, her straight brown locks flipping up from her forehead. “What part of code didn’t you get? Those marks are just gibberish without the code key.”
“You used that code key to make all these entries?” Sherry asked. “That’s quite a sophisticated system.”
“Sorry, ma’am, but I don’t remember any of it. It’s complicated. That’s why I have to use the key.”
“Which is where?” Stone pressed.
“It’s hidden in the office,” L
inda said. Her voice slowed, as if she sensed where this was all going.
“Armed with that code key we can put this guy out of business for good,” Stone said to Rico, “and make it so no one would ever dream of touching Linda.”
“But that would mean putting her at risk now,” Sherry said, her eyes going from Stone’s face to Steele’s, and back to Stone. “You can’t ask her to go back into that office after all that’s happened.”
Just then Danny appeared at the dining room entrance. He had his mother’s big, dark eyes and her hair, only a bit longer so it hung nearly to his eyes. He brushed his hair away from his forehead before he spoke.
“Mommy, when’s lunch? I’m getting hungry.”
Linda looked into his face where he stood behind Sherry, and then her focus shifted forward to Sherry’s anxious visage.
“They don’t have to ask me.”
Gorman didn’t like hospitals. They were places of mystery, and their mysteries weren’t meant to be solved. Doctors made a point of keeping you in the dark about what they were doing, like auto mechanics who are afraid that if you understood what they were up to, you wouldn’t need them anymore.
Feeling helpless, he pressed one palm against the window to Alex Brooks’ room. Beyond the glass, Brooks lay on a bed, covered up, with a variety of tubes running into or out of both arms and one hand. His eyes were closed, but he was neither dead nor resting. His chest rose and fell unevenly, as if he were having an endless nightmare. Maybe he was. Maybe that was what brought him there.
Gorman had pulled on the first suit his hand hit and raced to this place. He found Francine Brooks and her daughter, Amy already there. Alex’s partner, Vinnie Giles, was also there, pacing the way a concerned spouse normally would. The actual spouse sat quite still after talking with the doctors. She saw Gorman at the window to her husband’s room, but never asked who he was. He imagined that if he were to reach out to her, he would find this woman cold to the touch.
After noting that all the monitors in the room were beeping or pulsing rhythmically, as they were supposed to, Gorman slapped Giles on the back and headed down the hall. Around the corner he found Chastity Chiba in the next waiting room. She sat in white boots and skirt, her arms hanging from the armrests and her head down. When she sensed Gorman’s presence, she raised her head no more than necessary to make eye contact.
“What happened?” Gorman asked.
“I almost missed it, G. Almost lost him.”
He beckoned for her to come out. They walked the antiseptic halls while they talked. His hands were clasped behind his back. Hers moved in front of her as she spoke.
“I had decided to maintain surveillance on them today,” Chastity began. “I got up and parked at a safe distance down the street where I could keep their doors in view and waited for activity. If Francine was going to the club, I planned to get ahead of her and try for another bonding session. As it was, both breakfast and the morning passed without incident. Then Francine and the daughter went next door.”
“How did they look?” Gorman stepped around a man pushing a wheeled I.V. holder. How fragile we are, he thought.
“No signs of agitation, sir,” Chastity said. “Both appeared quite relaxed. I figured there was nothing odd about the wife and daughter visiting neighbors without the husband.”
“I concur,” Gorman said. He next passed an elderly man in a wheelchair. All the infirmity surrounding him was starting to bother him.
“I had listened for part of the day with the bionic ear, but all I got was normal domestic chatter. After the girls left the house, I put the ear away so I could eat some lunch. A few minutes later, he started the car. I heard it start up through the garage door.”
“Was it your intent to follow him?” Gorman asked. He saw a haunted look in Chastity’s almond eyes. Her rice paper skin looked even paler than usual, and her usual exaggerated confidence seemed to have deserted her.
“I didn’t want to follow him. I was there to watch the wife, to see if she went anywhere. I guess that’s why I didn’t pay any attention at first. The engine was very quiet once the car was started. I was busy shoveling rice and vegetables into my mouth. I let minutes pass before it hit me.”
Gorman wondered why hospitals were always so bright. The halls of disease should be muted, so people will remember how often death holds sway here. So they will bow their heads and be solemn in his presence.
“Before it hit you that the car had not moved?”
A pause. Chastity’s eyes closed tight, and then opened. “Yes. That it had not moved. And then probably another minute while I tried to decide what to do. I was concerned that if Francine saw me there, my mission would be blown. Can you believe that?”
“A perfectly reasonable reaction,” Gorman said. “But when you moved, it was with all deliberate speed.”
“Of course. I raced down the block and threw the garage door open. Their van had thrown out quite a bit of carbon monoxide, but I held my breath while inside. The vehicle’s doors were locked and it took me almost another minute to Slim Jim it open.”
“You had the presence of mind to bring a Slim Jim?”
“Common sense. But when I got the door open I wasn’t sure he was breathing. I slammed his chest and felt for a pulse. That was there. I gave him a few rounds of CPR right there in the front seat, until he was breathing regularly. But of course, that’s no answer to CO poisoning.”
“Well, I know that Mrs. Brooks didn’t see you, and he’s here, alive,” Gorman rumbled. “So, what did you do?”
“All I could think of, sir. I leaned his head against the horn and ran, with the van still running but the garage door up, and then I lit out of there. Francine and her neighbor came out in less than a minute and found him there. They called the ambulance.”
Their wandering had brought them beside a stairwell door. Gorman took Chastity’s arm, pulled the door open and shoved her through it. She spun to look up at his face as he pulled the door closed behind them. She must have expected a lecture, because words rushed out of her mouth before he could begin.
“I have shamed you and my famous father, G. He would have reacted more quickly.”
Gorman knew he didn’t want to go there. “So what do you do now? Is this one of those seppuku situations?”
“What?”
“You people are obsessed with guilt,” Gorman roared, his lion’s mane of dark hair shaking with his emotions. “You always want to take the blame. It’s probably the only thing you have in common with the British. That twisted notion of nobility. Well, it ain’t noble and you ain’t guilty. Now us Americans, we have a fine tradition of selfishness. Any act that favors the other guy is cause for congratulations.”
“But, G, you don’t understand.”
“No, Ms. Chiba, you don’t understand. You saved the man’s life, for Christ’s sake. Despite his best efforts, he’s alive because of you. Can’t you just focus on that?”
Now Chastity shook, and despite her a tiny tear grew in the corner of her left eye. Before it could fall she lowered her face.
“Yes, sir. I can. I will. Thank you, sir.”
Gorman took a deep breath to regain his usual calm. Now, he needed Chastity to find out all the details of Francine Brooks’ plans, before it was too late. And he had to go back to that hospital room. When Brooks regained consciousness, Gorman would have to have a long talk with the man who had caused one of his best agents so much heartache.
Chapter Ten
Alex Brooks set his empty Styrofoam cup on the side table and licked his lips nervously. “Throat’s so dry.”
“The drugs will do that to you,” Gorman said. He had pulled his chair up beside the bed so that Brooks would not have to raise his voice. “And of course the oxygen they were blowing into you is completely dry.”
Brooks nodded. “Listen, Mr. Gorman, I appreciate you coming down here. I really do. Didn’t expect anyone to. Who else knows? I mean, do they know I’m in here back at the station ho
use?”
“As far as I know, no one’s alerted the station. Actually, I figured it could stay that way.”
“Thanks,” Brooks said, lifting a pitcher to refill his glass. “I don’t need that kind of pressure from the top. Something like this could kill a cop’s career, you know?”
“I know,” Gorman said. The purple under the kid’s eyes told Gorman how close he had come to killing himself. His breathing was raspy and his hand shook a little as he lifted the cup to his lips. “And I hear it’s pure dumb luck that you’re still with us at all. I heard some passerby called the cops.”
“Yeah. Lucky.” Brooks stared into space, listening to the announcements on the loudspeaker outside, as if waiting for his name to come up. When Brooks finished his water he put the cup down and let his hands drop to the sheet. Gorman leaned forward, covering one of Brooks’ hands with his own.
“You’re looking a lot better. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“What the hell were you thinking back there in that garage?” Gorman roared. He locked eyes with Brooks, one bushy eyebrow rising almost to his hairline. “Didn’t you even have the balls to just eat your gun? That’s the cop tradition, ain’t it?”
Brooks’ eyes flared wide and his mouth dropped. “What?”
“Cops don’t kill themselves! That’s the last act of a coward, and we don’t put cowards in uniform. Besides that, you’ve got a little girl to live for, who shouldn’t be losing her daddy in such a shameful way. So tell me, Einstein, what the hell were you thinking?”
The room was as quiet as a confessional, and Brooks sat straight back against the headboard like a man in a lineup. “You don’t understand. She’s going to divorce me. She’s going to leave me and take my little girl away. What would I have to live for then, huh? What the hell do you know?”
Beyond Blue Page 8
