Victims

by Collin Wilcox

  “What is it? I’m packing, and I don’t have much time.”

  “Are you leaving town?”

  She nodded. “That’s right. I’m going to L.A. I never should’ve left.”

  “Do you come from Los Angeles?”

  With her hands on her hips, she raised one shoulder. “I’ve been in Los Angeles longer than I’ve been anywhere. I grew up in Chicago, though.”

  “How long did you live with Charlie Quade?”

  She winced, as if the question caused her pain. “Two years. A little less, maybe. I forget.”

  “Can I sit down?” I gestured to the littered living room. “I won’t take much of your time.” Without waiting for her to reply I sat on one end of a Naugahyde sofa, piled with boxes and transparent plastic garment bags.

  Loudly sighing, exasperated, she sat in a straight-back chair, crossing her right leg over her left and drumming long, crimson fingernails on her knee.

  “You aren’t staying for Charlie’s funeral,” I said.

  “No, I’m not.” She fixed her eyes on the fake logs arranged in the fake fireplace. Accompanying her busy fingers, her right foot began bobbing impatiently.

  “You don’t seem exactly prostrated with grief.”

  “No, I’m not.” She looked at me for a moment with her bitter eyes, then returned her gaze to the fireplace.

  I let a long moment of silence pass while I stared at her, wondering whether I could rattle her with a cold, hard stare. I quickly discovered that I couldn’t. She sat as before, silently hostile, implacably waiting for me to do what I’d come to do, then leave. Finally I decided to say, “You don’t have much time, you say. So I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll tell you what I know about Charlie. That’ll save time. Then you tell me what I’ve left out. Then, if everything fits, I’ll be on my way. Fair?”

  She looked at me again, shrugged, and looked away. “Sure. Why not?”

  “What I know about Charlie divides into two parts,” I said. “I know that, when he was a cop, he was almost always just one step ahead of an Internal Affairs man—and just a couple of steps ahead of a departmental reprimand. Finally it all caught up with him, and he was lucky to get out with his skin a couple of years ago. After that, he did what ex-policemen do. He worked for private investigators and private security companies. Eventually, he went into business for himself—just him and his desk space and his answering machine. He operated then the way he operated when he was a cop. He tried to cut corners and work hustles instead of settling down to do the job. He made a couple of shady scores, but that was about it. I’m sure he borrowed two dollars for every dollar he earned.

  “Then, six or eight months ago, he started doing odd jobs for Lester Bennett. Lester Bennett’s specialty is child stealing for divorced parents—rich divorced parents. Charlie did some of Lester’s surveillance for him. He was in the process of setting up John Kramer, Alexander Guest’s grandson, when—”

  At the mention of Guest’s name, I saw her eyes flicker.

  “Alexander Guest,” I repeated. “You’ve heard of him.”

  Her eyes darted covertly to my face, then darted cautiously away. I decided to finish my story, then question her.

  “But Lester Bennett decided he didn’t want to take a chance, stealing Alexander Guest’s grandson. So, instead, he told Guest what was happening, tipped Guest off that his grandson could be stolen. As a result, Guest hired Charlie to guard the boy, presumably to compensate Charlie for the surveillance work he lost when Bennett sold out his client. Maybe Charlie did other jobs for Guest, too. Anyhow, as it turned out, it was Charlie’s last job, guarding John Kramer.” I stopped speaking, waited for her to look at me, then said, “That’s all I know. What else can you tell me?”

  “Nothing.”

  I raised a forefinger, as if to warn her. “There’s got to be something you can tell me.”

  Plainly puzzled, she frowned. “No. Honest, there’s nothing.”

  “Listen, Miss Barnes—I’ve been working Homicide for a lot of years. And I can tell you that about half the time, in an unsolved murder, we find the answers we want in the details of the victim’s life—the hour-to-hour, day-to-day, week-to-week details, that people take completely for granted. People like you—the ones who knew the victims best, saw him every day—you’ve got the answers we need.”

  “Every day—” She said it softly, bitterly. “God, sometimes I was lucky to see him once a week. Which was fine with me. Except that he never left me money enough to do anything but buy a bottle of Gallo wine and a box of corn flakes.”

  “I always thought of Charlie as a big spender,” I said, hoping to needle her into saying more than she intended.

  “Big spender—” She snorted. “He spent big on himself. Big car, fancy clothes, throwing twenty dollar bills on the table up at Reno. But at home—” As she spoke, she looked resentfully around the cluttered living room, shaking her head. “Around here,” she said, “he was a goddam miser.”

  “Still,” I said quietly, “he’s dead. You lived with him. I’d think that you’d at least want to go to his—”

  “He’s got kids,” she flared. “He’s got two kids, grown, and a wife who’s always calling up for money, for God’s sake. Let them go to his goddam funeral. Me, I spent all day yesterday hauling stuff down to the pawnshop to get enough money to buy a second-hand suitcase and a plane ticket out of town. And that’s where I’m going, out of town. Tonight. And if that shocks you, then I’m sorry. But the truth is, I’d already decided that, the next time he went to New York, I was going to load up the stereo, and the TV, and whatever else I could pawn, and I was going to—”

  “When did he go to New York?” I asked. “How often? What dates?”

  “How should I know which dates? God, I’m lucky if he even left me enough money for newspapers, so I could—”

  “Listen, Miss Barnes—” I sat forward on the rickety couch and dropped my voice to a harsh, official sounding note.

  “Let’s get something straight, you and I. Right now.” I waited for her to look at me. Then: “I didn’t think much of Charlie, either. I was responsible for getting him to turn in his shield, in fact. But Charlie’s dead, and it’s my job to find his murderer. And that’s what I intend to do—find his murderer. Now, you probably know that we’ve got a suspect in custody. It’s even money that he’ll be indicted for the murder, and stand trial. So what I’m doing now—right now—is getting as much evidence as I can against the suspect. And what I need most of all is connections between Charlie and the suspect. I also need to know everything I can find out about Charlie, especially about his activities during the past several months, when he got involved with Lester Bennett, and then with Alexander Guest. Now—” I let another beat pass, let my voice drop another slow, somber octave. “Now you might have information I need. You—”

  “But I’m telling you what I know. I’m—”

  “You’re just hitting the high spots. I want details. Dates. I want you to cooperate—work with me, instead of against me. We’ve been at this for fifteen minutes, now, and all you’ve told me is how much you hated Charlie, and how cheap Charlie was. I’ve got to have more than that.”

  “But I don’t have anything more,” she wailed. “I’m trying to tell you that.”

  “And I’m telling you that you aren’t trying hard enough. You aren’t thinking. You’re talking, but you aren’t thinking.” I broke off, giving the words time to penetrate. Then, locking my eyes with hers, I spoke slowly, distinctly. “Whether you know it or not, you have information I need, information I’ve got to have. That makes you a material witness in a homicide investigation. Do you know what that means?”

  Her eyes narrowed; the small pink tip of her tongue circled bright red lips. Finally, I’d gotten her attention.

  “That means,” I said, “that, if I ask him to do it, the D.A. will stipulate that you can be held in custody until we’re satisfied that we’ve got all the information that you—” />
  “But—Christ—I’ve told you everything I know. Everything. There’s nothing more to tell. Nothing.”

  “Maybe that’s so, maybe it isn’t. But if I were you—if you don’t want to spend the night in custody—I’d start telling me, in detail, everything you know about Charlie’s connection to Lester Bennett, and Alexander Guest, and Gordon Kramer. And John Kramer, too.”

  As I spoke, I saw her face begin to come apart. The hard-eyed, tough-talking street-corner defiance had deserted her, left her suddenly defenseless, hopeless. I knew why. Katherine Barnes was a loser. She’d always been a victim—someone’s victim, anyone’s victim.

  “You’d—” She swallowed. “You’d lock me up?”

  “It doesn’t have to come to that. Just tell me what you know. Everything you know. If you cooperate, I’ll have someone drive you to the airport. We’ll even help you haul things to the pawnshop, if that’ll help.”

  I was prepared for her reaction. I knew that her lip would curl as she remembered all the other promises people like me had made—and then broken. I was also prepared for the hopeless sigh, the defeated sag of her shoulders, the resignation in her voice as she began talking.

  “It’s like I said—honest to God, I never knew anything about what he was doing, what he was working at. He never told me anything. The only thing he ever did was brag about all the deals he was going to make. Once in a while, though, he really would make a score. And then, maybe, we’d go out to dinner, or maybe he’d buy me something.”

  She paused, shaking her head as she remembered. “There was only one time, about a year ago, that he really did make a score. So he bought me an outfit, I remember—a real silk outfit. God knows where he got it, maybe someone stole it, and he bought it hot. But, anyhow, I remember we went out to dinner and a movie. I was wearing the silk outfit. So then, when we got home, here, he started drinking. I mean, really drinking, on top of all the wine we’d had, and the martinis. So then, naturally, he started knocking me around. And he bloodied my nose, bad. And it ruined the outfit.” She shook her head, and bit her lip.

  “In my whole life,” she said, “It was the only real silk outfit I ever had. The only one.”

  “Did he knock you around a lot?”

  She nodded. “All the time. Every time he got drunk. Really drunk. Which was once a month, at least. That’s why I was leaving, see. Because he beat me up.”

  “I’m not surprised, that he’d knock you around.” I looked at her a moment, hopeful she’d believe that I was sorry for her. But, quickly, she looked away.

  “The last two or three months,” I said, “did Charlie brag about any big deal?”

  “Yeah. Once. He went to New York a couple of times—two times. And after the first time, when he got drunk, he said that he was going to score big. He said he was going to get a Camaro, that time. But he never did.”

  “When was that—the first time he went to New York?”

  “It was—lessee—” The tip of her pink tongue circled the red lips again. “This is September. So that was May, some time. Maybe the middle of May.”

  The middle of May …

  Almost exactly the time Bennett told Guest that Kramer intended to steal John.

  “Did Charlie ever mention Gordon Kramer, or Alexander Guest, or Lester Bennett?”

  “Bennett, he mentioned. Off and on. I mean, I knew he worked for Bennett. I’d get messages from Bennett, every once in a while. And I heard him talking to Bennett on the phone a couple of times about Alexander Guest. At least, I think it was Guest they were talking about. I never paid much attention.”

  “Didn’t you listen, when he was talking on the phone?”

  Contemptuously, she shook her head. “Why should I listen? I didn’t care what he was talking about. I couldn’t care less what he was talking about.”

  “During the last few weeks, did Charlie seem nervous about anything? Apprehensive?”

  “Well—” Once more the pink tongue circled the bright red lips. “I wouldn’t say he was nervous, exactly. I mean, Charlie was always—you know—always bragging about how he could always take care of himself, and everything. But, now that you mention it, I remember that, the second time he came back from New York, he seemed kind of—you know—kind of quiet. Like he was thinking things over, sort of.”

  “Was he worried, would you say?”

  She shrugged, then tentatively nodded. “I guess I’d say he was as worried as he ever got.”

  “Did he talk about why he was worried?”

  “Not to me, he didn’t. But I did hear him on the phone, once, saying something about how he didn’t like being put in the middle.”

  “What’d he mean by that, do you think?”

  She shrugged again. “Search me.”

  “He was talking about his business in New York, though, when he said it?”

  “I thought so. But I could be wrong. Like I said, I never paid any attention to—”

  At my belt, my electronic pager buzzed. Using Charlie Quade’s phone, I dialed Communications, and was put through to Friedman.

  “I was just about to go home,” he said, “when Diane Kramer called. She’s Gordon Kramer’s wife, and she just got in town, apparently. She wants to talk to whoever’s in charge. She’s staying at the Saint Francis, room 1204. I thought that one of us should talk to her.”

  “I’ll do it.” I wrote St Fran 1204 in my notebook. “I’m finished here.”

  “Did you do any good?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

  TEN

  “I’VE GOT NOTHING TO HIDE,” Diane Kramer said. “Nothing at all. And neither has Gordon. John’s his son. And Gordon has a perfect right to—”

  “Listen, Mrs. Kramer. It’s Sunday. I’m supposed to be off duty. I’d rather be off duty. I’m here because Lieutenant Friedman said you wanted to see someone in charge. Well, I’m in charge. And I’m here. I’m ready to hear whatever you’ve got to say. But I’m not going to listen to you tell me about your husband’s rights. Not on my day off. Do you understand?”

  For a moment Diane Kramer didn’t reply; she simply stared at me with cold, clear eyes. She looked to be in her late twenties: a slim woman, medium height, with a narrow torso, small breasts, long legs. Her features were regular, pleasing but not pretty. Her ash-blond hair was coiled severely on top of her head. She was obviously intelligent, obviously determined. Her movements and her mannerisms revealed a kind of taut, impatient restlessness, tempered by a hard-edged confidence and self-control. She struck me as a fighter, a possessor. She would fight for her husband instinctively, simply because he was hers. Diane Kramer was the New York version of the liberated woman: quick-thinking, quick-talking, quick-acting. Sitting in a straight-back chair, long, silken legs crossed, dressed in an expensive wool travel suit, she looked like a fast-rising female executive. She spoke crisply and concisely, unsmiling.

  “All right,” she said, “as long as your time is so valuable, why don’t you tell me what you want to know, which questions you want answered?”

  “I’d like to know everything about your husband. Anything and everything. Starting at the beginning, and ending the last time you saw him.”

  She thought about the request for a moment. Then she shrugged, signifying that she had nothing to lose by telling the story. “I’ve known Gordon for four years. I met him when I went to work for him, as his secretary. That was just before he moved to San Francisco—with his wife and son. There were two of us running the New York office after he left. From the first time I saw Gordon, I liked him—a lot. Maybe it was because we came from similar backgrounds. We’re both Jewish, both from poor families. We both grew up in New York—in the wrong neighborhoods. Gordon’s father died when Gordon was five years old, and his mother’s health was always bad. So Gordon had to work from the time he was twelve. It was the same with me. I always worked. All the way through C.C.N.Y. I worked. When Gordon was sixteen, he started with a bail bondsman, doing odd jobs. Two years late
r, he was working for a small loan company. By the time he was twenty-one, he was managing the business. When he was twenty-five, he started his own small loan business. Then he got into venture capital. By the time he was thirty, he was working on his second million, maybe his third or fourth million. About that time he—”

  “Excuse me. What’s venture capital, exactly?”

  “It’s investment banking on a small scale. He invests in small businesses, new businesses, and takes a piece of the business in lieu of cash repayment on the loan. If the business makes it big, so does Gordon. If the business fails, it’s a writeoff. Right from the start, he was a success—a big success. About that time, when he was thirty years old, he met Marie Guest. She’d just divorced her first husband, a man named Beresford, who had married her for her money.”

  “How long have you and Kramer been married?”

  “About two years.”

  “When did Kramer decide he wanted to take John?”

  “Do you mean take him physically? Or try to get custody through the courts?”

  “I mean physically.”

  “About six months ago, I’d say. Gordon was divorced three years ago. The divorce almost ruined him—financially, and emotionally. I don’t know how Guest did it. Gordon never talked about it. But, somehow Guest forced Gordon to leave San Francisco, permanently. So Gordon went back to New York, where he still had an office—where I was still working. He began working like a madman, to forget about his wife, and Guest, and his son. We started going out together. Then—” Momentarily she hesitated, obviously reluctant to venture into intimacies. “Then I moved in. I quit working for him, and moved in. Except that—” Her lips curved in a tight smile. “Except that I never saw him, he was working so hard. We lived together for six months, and then we got married. We—” She broke off again as her gaze wandered thoughtfully away. I saw her eyes soften. In that moment, with her vulnerability fleetingly revealed, I felt the tension between us easing.