by Dan Ames
“Have a nice day,” the woman said, and handed the passport back to the Spook. He put the Buick in gear and proceeded to enter the United States.
9
The restaurant was called The Thai Flower and it was located in a section of Grosse Pointe called ‘The Hill,” which was a second set of shops, restaurants and small businesses just up from the main village of Grosse Pointe. The restaurant was tiny, with ten tables placed in front of a counter behind which a window provided a glimpse into the kitchen.
The air was pungent with the smell of spices, tea and hot oil.
Nate had already gotten a table along the far wall. He had seated himself so no one was behind him and he had a clear view of the door and front windows. Maybe it was just because he was a reporter, but I always got the feeling that Nate didn’t like surprises. Especially when he was eating.
I sat down across from him and thought my oldest friend looked tired.
Nate Becker was a short, overweight man with a giant head and a thick beard. He was extremely intelligent and although he had a good poker face, I suspected he was an emotional guy. Nate’s wife was a petite woman and their daughter, a lively girl the same age as Isabel, was a fun-loving kid with a quick sense of humor. When she was born, she was missing a pulmonary artery. Yeah, somehow all of the ultrasounds had missed that one. So immediately upon birth, emergency surgery was needed to save her life. The operation had been a success but it was just the beginning. A long trail of medical procedures had followed which ultimately left the young girl healthy and her parents drowning in debt.
They had made some progress, but I knew they were still pretty deep in the hole.
“What looks good today?” I said.
“The right side of the menu,” he answered.
Our server, a tiny older woman, came and Nate ordered a bunch of dishes that made no sense to me. I asked for water. There was no sense in ordering something for myself. Nate’s meals usually took up the whole table and I just picked at the dishes I would soon be surrounded with.
After some polite checkups on each other’s families, we got down to business.
“So what entitles me to a working lunch?” he asked.
“There is no doubt in my mind that the man who killed Benjamin Collins was the same contract killer involved in the Shannon Sparrow case.”
Nate sighed. “Are you sure you’re not seeing what you want to believe?” he said. “Happens all the time to reporters. They want so badly for a story to go a certain way that they see the evidence through a prism. It never works out.”
“I believe what I saw,” I said. “I’m the only person who saw him both times. I was there. It was him. No delusions.”
A different server brought the first set of plates that contained stacks of meat on skewers and two cups of soup.
“Okay, let’s go with that,” Nate said, as he slid said meat from the skewer into his mouth.
“If we’re starting with that premise, then the question becomes, who hired him to kill the Collins kid and why,” I said.
“A conspiracy?” Nate asked. A trace of skepticism, but not much.
“Not out of the question,” I replied. “But you don’t start there. You begin with who would have had the means to hire this guy in the first place. You know the case; you know the backgrounds of the people involved.”
Nate slurped from his soup. I tried mine. Egg something. It was good.
“The only money guy involved was the uncle.” Nate looked at the ceiling for a moment. “And he wasn’t really involved.”
“Tripp,” I said. “Tripp Collins.”
Nate nodded. “That’s the guy.”
“Stockbroker,” I added. “And a drunk.”
“Great with money, terrible with booze, if I recall.”
Our empty dishes were cleared and the tiny woman who first took our orders brought a big bowl of rice and two platters. One had chicken with peppers in an orange-ish sauce, the other had beef and vegetables and was green. Shows you how much I know about Thai food.
“His alibi was airtight and he had nothing to gain,” Nate pointed out.
“Maybe he didn’t have anything to gain financially, because he didn’t need it. Maybe he benefited in some other way.”
“I doubt it,” Nate said. “But you can always ask.”
I speared a piece of chicken from the orange platter. It was good but spicy and it tasted like coconut.
“Anything you can give me on him?” I said. “Any way to make him talk?”
Nate always had an infinite amount of dirt on anyone involved with Grosse Pointe. It was just one mark of his genius. “His firm got into some trouble during the mortgage crisis,” he said. “A lot of really shady mortgages not just in Detroit, but nationally. I think they had to pay a pretty hefty fine but that was about it. No one’s really exposed how much Tripp Collins’ firm was involved. I’m sure Tripp would like to keep it that way.”
“Look, if he’s the only guy right now that had the means to hire someone, can you help me look into his business a little? Keep your ear out about anything shady?”
Nate looked at me. “I know a guy who covers economic stuff. I can put out a feeler but no guarantees.”
“No guarantees required,” I said. Nate usually underplayed his hand. I suspected he would do more than just put out a feeler and call it a day. He loved to sniff things out.
Nate devoured a couple more plates of food and we talked about the kids, school and the wives until there was only one platter left. It was about half full of shrimp, noodles and some miniature corn that looked like it was green. I expected Nate to polish that one off, too. Instead, he pushed the plate away, which shocked me. Nate leaving food on the table was like a rock star leaving a hotel room without trashing it.
“You don’t like it?” I said, feeling a little foolish. After all, he’d eaten two appetizers and the better part of two entrees.
“I’m trying to cut back a little,” he said with a sheepish expression on his face.
I signaled for the check.
“I’m going to pay before you change your mind.”
10
The money had ended up along with its intoxicated owner in a huge home on Windmill Pointe Drive surrounded by overgrown trees and shrubs. A Bentley sat in the driveway. I parked the Taurus, got out, and rang the bell. I didn’t hear any movement from inside. I waited awhile longer, watched a jogger in running shorts cruise past. His shorts were way too small. Who wants to see that?
I rang the bell again and no one came to answer the door so I reached up and clanged the brass knocker.
A few minutes later I saw a shadow pass across the peephole in the oversized oak door. I heard the sound of a metal deadbolt being thrown and then the door opened a crack, the security chain still visible.
“Yes?” a female voice said in a volume just above a whisper.
“I’m here to see Tripp Collins,” I said.
I heard more whispering and then the door closed. I waited. I heard a bird calling from the giant elm tree next to the house, and I heard a freighter blast its horn from somewhere on the lake.
The door creaked back open again and Tripp Collins looked out at me. Imagine a prototypical frat boy, now add twenty or thirty years and forty or fifty pounds. His face was red and flushed, a tie loose at the collar. His dress shirt was untucked and he was in bare feet. Behind him, three very young Asian women peeked out at me.
“Yeah?” he said. A fog of liquor hit me. Scotch, probably.
“I’m wondering if you have time for a quick chat, Mr. Collins. My name is John Rockne, I’m a private investigator.”
“Rockne?” He narrowed his eyes at me. “The cop?”
“Yes, I used to be a police officer.”
“You’re the asshole that gave up Benjamin! Why the hell would I want to talk to you?” He gave a lopsided, incredulous grin.
“I have some new information about the man who may have killed Benjamin,” I said.
<
br /> “You got a lot of balls coming out here, talking to me,” he said, but made no move to shut the door.
“We both want the same thing, Mr. Collins,” I said. “I’m hoping you can help.”
I could see him vacillating. Finally, he stepped back.
“’spose I can give you a couple of minutes.” He turned and walked away, not bothering to see if I was following.
I stepped into the giant foyer and shut the door behind me. Collins snatched up a glass he had set on the table next to the door.
“Come in here,” he said.
The Asian girls disappeared down a hallway and I followed Collins into a study lined with books and a roaring fire in the fireplace. It was incredibly warm and smelled like a mixture of wood smoke, booze and body sweat.
There were books on the floor, along with some articles of female clothing. A few dirty dishes and empty bottles were scattered around on various tables. There also seemed to be a fine layer of dust everywhere. I got the sense that Tripp Collins led a highly unorthodox life.
He sank into a leather chair facing the fireplace. I took its twin positioned opposite from him.
“So what’s the big news or are you bullshitting me?” He drained the rest of his Scotch and refilled it from a decanter next to the table. His motion was so practiced and fluid that I got the idea he had done that hundreds, if not thousands of times.
“My last case involved a contract killer,” I began. “I saw him firsthand and he was the same man I saw the night Benjamin was killed.”
“You mean the night you cost him his life.” He practically barked it at me. I didn’t flinch. Comments like that were nothing compared to what I had said to myself for years.
“There’s a very real possibility that someone paid to have Benjamin killed,” I said, my voice even. He wasn’t about to throw me off track with his brazen aggressiveness. That probably worked well for him in corporate America. But it didn’t bother me. “Which would cast a whole new light–”
“That’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard,” he said. He spoke in a slippery kind of way, his words sliding into each other. Not quite slurring, but close. “You’re just trying to make yourself feel better. If you can convince everyone it was some kind of conspiracy, then you’re off the hook. Is that the idea?”
I heard giggling, glanced over my shoulder and saw the Asian girls duck back behind a doorway.
“No, that’s not the idea at all,” I said. “The idea is to try to find out once and for all what really happened that night. You do realize Benjamin’s murder has never been solved?”
“Of course I know that,” he said. He slurped some more Scotch. “So what do you want to know?”
“Can you think of any reason anyone would have wanted to hurt Benjamin?”
He threw up his hands. “Oh come on, I went over this with the cops. No! No one in their right mind would have wanted to hurt that kid. Why would they? He was practically invisible.”
More giggling from behind me and I didn’t even bother to look.
“Sun Yi get your ass upstairs!” Collins bellowed.
I heard the corresponding sound of someone running down the hall. And more giggling.
“You’re full of shit,” Collins said to me. “You think someone hired this killer and I’m the guy with all the money. That’s why you’re here. Someone comes to see me out of the blue, it always has to do with money. I’m not buying your bullshit, man.”
I had to give the guy credit. He was half in the bag and he seemed to inhabit a world in disarray, but he wasn’t an idiot.
“Of course not,” I countered. “You have no motive.” It was my way of taking the wind out of his sails but also testing him for a response.
“You damn right. Even a frickin’ moron would know that.” He refilled his glass again. “Look, I manage money for everyone from mining magnates to auto czars to NFL football players. I make money. A lot of it. And I don’t really spend a lot, all things considered. That Bentley outside? It’s almost ten years old. Lotta guys with my kind of dough blow millions on cars, boats, condos and wives. Not me. Except when it comes to booze and…” he nodded his head toward the hallway where the girls had been.
He looked at the fire. “Benjamin was a good kid, but distant. Always coming and going without saying much. I think he ran in some strange circles and someone either took a liking or a disliking to him in a big way. End of story. So go sell your crap somewhere else, I ain’t buyin’.”
“You can’t give me any names? No one he would have had contact with?”
Collins shook his head. “Nope. Just like I told the cops back then over and over. The kid had been through a lot. His parents had died, his sister was pretty much off on her own,” he said. “And I wasn’t about to try to manage his life. I wasn’t his father. I wasn’t anyone’s father for good reason. I work all the time and I like to have fun. Could you imagine me giving anyone advice?”
“Good point,” I said.
There was a loud crash from upstairs and Collins sort of staggered to his feet.
“Goddamn it Sun Yi! If that was the étagère I’m going to spank your ass!”
He winked at me. “That’s probably her plan.”
Collins refilled his glass and waved me toward the door. “I know you feel like an asshole, and you should. But don’t go stirring all of this up again. You messed up. A good kid died. Get on with what’s left of your life. But leave the rest of us alone.”
I bit back a reply and walked ahead of him to the door, opened it and stepped outside.
He slammed it shut behind me.
11
The little fridge in my office had a carton of fat free cream cheese and a few bottles of beer. I grabbed one of the beers, twisted off the cap and took a drink. Collins had pissed me off, no doubt. But it had really been wasted effort. I hadn’t learned anything new.
Still, I had to stick to my guns.
Follow the money.
There was no doubt that Tripp Collins had a pile of money the size of Montana. But hiring someone to kill your nephew without any obvious motive didn’t make sense. Most people kill for love or money. It looked to me like Tripp Collins had so much money that he was buying love. Unless the Asian girls were exchange students. Yeah, not likely.
I set the beer on the desk next to my computer, launched Google, and dug around the Internet. I was looking for stories about the mortgage issues in Detroit that Nate had mentioned regarding Tripp Collins’ company.
Plenty of stories had been written, but none of them were exclusively about United Asset Management. UAM was Tripp Collins’s company. The only time UAM was mentioned was when it was listed alongside a half dozen other financial companies guilty of pushing through bad mortgages with a recklessness that would put drunken tourists in Vegas to shame.
I thought about the Asian girls that I’d seen at the house. They looked young, but who knew? Maybe they were in their twenties. Heck, I see college kids now that look like they should be in elementary school. Getting ready for recess.
So what if Tripp Collins liked young women? That didn’t make him guilty of hiring a hit man. Maybe he was a pervert–
There was a knock on my door, which startled me. Nobody came to my office anymore without an invitation. Everything was done over the Web these days. Email was so much more anonymous than showing up at a private investigator’s office. And frankly most people preferred to avoid face-to-face conversations when it came to discussing a suspicion that your husband or wife was playing hide-the-knockwurst with a co-worker.
Since my last case I had changed my stance on having a gun handy. I’ve never been anti-gun. Quite the opposite, actually. But when my stint as a cop came to an abrupt halt I lost the desire to carry. Mostly because having a gun on my hip brought back a lot of memories from my limited time on the force. Days I mostly wanted to forget.
But after the Shannon Sparrow case, I had gone out and bought a Smith & Wesson 640, which used to be call
ed a Chief’s Special. If I ever got the chance, I wanted to be sure to tell Ellen the name of my gun. It’s a small, compact revolver and holds five rounds of .357 Magnums. I’ve been to the range many times with it and I’ve gotten pretty good.
One of the reasons I bought such a small gun was that I wasn’t planning on telling Anna about it. I also planned to never bring it into the house. I would keep it in the office. But if I ever had to carry it and bring it home, I didn’t want her to notice it. So I bought a hidden holster that goes on the inside of my belt. It’s practically invisible when I wear it.
Now, I retrieved the gun from my desk drawer, slipped it into the back of my waistband and went to the door. There’s a peephole and I used it to look through.
I was shocked to see Amanda Collins.
I opened the door.
“Hello. Come in,” I said. She walked in, looked around at the place. My lobby area is not something I’m terribly proud of. Like I said, most of my clients never set foot here so I’ve admittedly made it look like a dentist’s office. There are a few pictures of sailboats, some police magazines on the coffee table, and a general air of disuse. I made a mental note to jazz the place up a little bit.
The door to my office was open so I led her back there.
“Do you want a cup of coffee?” I asked, feeling a little foolish about my bottle of beer sitting on the desk.
“Do you have another one of those?” she asked, pointing at the beer.
“Sure.” I grabbed one from my fridge, twisted off the cap and apologized for not having a glass to pour it into.
“That’s okay,” she said. She took a drink and looked at me.
Amanda Collins looked tired, but still very beautiful. She had on jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with a black fleece vest. Her hair was up, and she had on dangly earrings.
“You know, I debated long and hard about coming to see you,” she said. “About even talking to you. A big part of me didn’t want to.”
