by David Wind
The ride took seven minutes, three of which I used to call Chris and leave a message on his voice mail about what was happening. The cab arrived at the precinct just as the two detectives walked Tarz inside.
I followed, walking next to Tarz as Marks waltzed him first through the detectives’ squad room and into one of the small interview rooms. As we crossed the squad room, I tossed a casual two finger wave to a couple of detectives I knew. In the interview room, Marks sat Tarz across from him at a scratched and yellowed Formica table. I stood while his partner went outside.
The room was a garden-variety interrogation room, eight by eight, with a darkened glass window running along one wall: a poster on the wall behind Tarz listed the ‘bill of rights’. But Tarz wasn’t under arrest, so Marks hadn’t read him his rights.
After the initial shock of having Marks take him in, Tarz had regained his composure and sat without showing any fear, his hands were folded together on the table, waiting for Marks to start. I had known Tarz since we were cellmates. Tarz was tough.
The questioning began slowly, with Marks writing down each of Tarz’s responses. He had a recorder going at the same time. The questioning lasted twenty minutes, and to every question, Tarz replied in an even voice until Marks asked, “Is there anyone who can verify you were at home at six that morning?”
“I was asleep, and alone.” Frustration edging into his words pushed them out tense and fast. He closed his eyes for a second, took a breath and spoke in a calmer voice. “Like I told you, I got home about ten. Two of the guys from the play dropped me off. I went inside, watched some tube and fell asleep around midnight. I woke up at eight and left for the hall at nine. We had a nine-thirty call.”
“There are no witnesses to alibi you?” He voice was level and his eyes were locked on Tarz’s face, looking for the little signs that come with lies: a slight flaring of nostrils, a tug at the corners of his mouth.
Tarz shook his head. “There was no-one.” He leaned forward. “Scotty gave me the chance of a lifetime. Why would I mess up? Why would I hurt him?”
The homicide cop smiled. “Well now, ain’t that exactly what we’re trying to figure out? So, if it wasn’t you, who was it?”
Tarz unfolded his hands and spread his palms upward. “I don’t know anyone who would want to hurt Scotty. He was….” Tarz ran a hand through his thick hair. “He was the nicest guy I knew.”
“Yeah? Well, newsflash, Mondale, someone didn’t think so.” Marks picked up the pace and like a boxer, he mixed things up, hitting different spots, trying to rattle him, but Tarz took the questions and gave slow thoughtful responses until the waste of time got to me.
I leaned toward Marks. “You about finished, Sergeant?”
Marks gave me a glare, and then looked at Tarz. “When was the last time you reported in to your parole officer?”
“Four months ago. I’m done—no more parole.”
The detective nodded. “I’m going to be straight with you, Mondale. Storm here thinks you aren’t involved. And while I’m not so sure myself, I’m willing to give you a pass for now. But, keep in mind you’re a suspect in Scotty Granger’s murder, so don’t plan on going anywhere outside my jurisdiction.”
Before I could tell Marks he had no right to pull that crap with Tarz, Tarz said, “We’ve got six to eight weeks before the show opens. Only place I’m going is to work.”
“That’s it for now, but be aware, Mondale, we’ll be watching.”
Tarz smiled and his eyes sparkled with humor. “I’ll have two tickets reserved for you for opening night, Sergeant Marks.”
I didn’t just smile, I laughed.
<><><>
I accepted that the morning had gotten away from me; and, my earlier inclination towards a real schedule had been trashed so it was early afternoon by the time I got to sit at my desk. Yet, all in all, I wasn’t unhappy. After taking Tarz back to the theatre, I’d gone to St. Vincent’s hospital, where I paid a call on Rabbit, who had been awake, alert, and apologetic about getting us into the jam.
When I’d told him to let it go, he’d breathed a sigh of relief. But I’d still needed to find out whom he had talked to yesterday, and about Scotty.
What I’d learned surprised me. Rabbit had spent his time trying to run down Streeter, but hadn’t been able to. He’d told me he’d hit every place he’d been able to think of, and no one had seen Streeter since a half hour after he’d made bail.
Rabbit had discovered Streeter ran a lot of underage hookers, and was supposed to be backed by one of the crime families, but Rabbit hadn’t been able to get much more, other than learning the hookers didn’t stick around for more than a few months before being shipped out.
When I’d asked what ‘shipped out’ meant, he’d said word was Streeter was part of a group moving hookers from city to city to keep the Johns supplied with what seemed like ‘fresh’ girls.
The concept bothered me. No one has the right to turn another person into a slave. Perhaps I was more naïve than I’d thought. Then I’d pushed him further, asking him to think hard and remember what he’d done to bring on the craziness at the Looker’s Club.
It had taken him a minute of thinking before telling me he’d gone into one bar, very late the night before, and met a couple of guys who were in the know about everything happening on the West Side. He’d asked them if they’d heard anything on the murder. He’d told me they’d given him a weird look before shaking their heads and turning to their drinks. “It were strange,” Rabbit had said, “I din’t tink about it much. I made a mistake, eh.?”
I’d told him to forget it. “What about the shooter? You get a look at him?”
Rabbit had shaken his head. “Na, he was in da dark all da time. Sorry.”
Before leaving, I’d asked him to call me when the docs let him out of the hospital. Then I’d gone to the billing office and gave them my credit card and instructions to put all charges on it: Rabbit had been working for me and didn’t have any insurance—not many ex-cons did. Besides, it was one of those cost of doing business things.
“Earth to Gabe.”
Female’s wake ‘em from the dead voice pulled me back from my meeting with Rabbit. “I’m here.”
I took a moment to look at her. She was tall and lithe and, not for the first time, I stopped myself from thinking about this all too sexy woman in a very out of context way. It was just a thought though, one any man would have when faced with someone as beautiful as Femalé, but not a thought to act on.
I took out the envelope Gina had given me and offered it to her.
“And this is?” she asked, holding the envelope between forefinger and thumb.
“FBI files on the backers. There’s a very interesting file on Lia Thornton. Take a look at it and then let’s talk.”
“Chris called. He said he’d be out of contact and to not worry about Mondale. That’s all that happened.”
“When you get a chance, get me Lia Thornton’s home address and telephone number.”
Femalé left me to my stymied thoughts. There was nothing to go on, except for two warnings to stay out of the case: one unknown gangster and one who ran the West Side.
I spent ten minutes thinking things through but gave up on all except one thought. What could Scotty have been involved in that would have gotten him killed? I pulled out the Flash drive with Scotty’s journal from my attaché and plugged it into the USB port on my computer, opened the file and advanced to where I’d left off the morning of the funeral and reread the entry.
She called today. She wants to have dinner tonight. I agreed. I’m starting to understand my feelings now. I should have known from the beginning what was wrong. But to bring up her past…. What kind of damage will I do? I need to speak to Amanda about it. She’ll know how I should handle this.
The entry still made no sense. The way he wrote it, and the phrasing itself threw me off. I picked up the phone and dialed Amanda Bolt’s number, hoping she would be home. She answered
on the second ring, surprised at hearing my voice.
“Gabe, how are you?”
Lately, everyone was asking the same question. “I’m fine. Amanda, by any chance did Scotty call you in the last week or so to talk about a woman he was seeing?”
“Dating?”
“No, I think she was a friend. He wrote a notation about needing to talk to you about her. It was something about your knowing how to handle a situation.”
“No, Gabe, I hadn’t spoken to Scotty in a couple of weeks. Not since our last board meeting for Save Them. What’s this about?”
I read her the journal entry. “Any thoughts?”
“That was weird. I can’t imagine what he meant. ‘How can I tell her? What kind of damage will I do?’ It sounds almost like….”
“Like?”
“Perhaps he found something out about her she wasn’t aware of, and whatever it was would somehow cause her hurt.”
“Hurt? He wasn’t afraid of hurting her. Damage sounds a lot more than just hurt her.”
“Yes it does. But I’ll need to know more in order to make any type of guess.”
“I know. I was just hoping he’d spoken to you. I’ll send you a copy of this. Maybe you can think of something.”
“Okay…. Gabe, if you need to talk, I’m available.”
“Thanks.” I didn’t say that what I needed wasn’t a shrink; it was much more.
I hung up and looked back at the screen. “Who are you?”
“Who is who?” Femalé asked, striding into the office.
“No one, I’m just talking to the screen.” I waited as I read the impatience on her face.
“Did you read Lia Thornton’s file?”
“I scanned it in the cab. What?”
“Something’s not right.”
I held back and waited.
“I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right. There’s something there I can’t put my finger on. I want to dig, okay?”
“Since when do you ask me for permission?”
“I just thought you should know what I’m doing.” She put a paper on the desk and tapped it with a long finger. “Her address and phone are on the top page. I made a copy for you to see if you think I’m wrong about her.”
“I have no doubt you’ll let me know if you’re wrong. What else?”
“I read over Albright’s file, his list of clients and the surveillance reports from the bureau agents, none of which meant much. The fact he’s Lia Thornton’s stock broker bothers me.”
“Yeah, everything seems very convenient. If we do more cross checking, we’ll find most of the investors are his clients. But which one loaned him the money to invest?”
“My money’s on Thornton,” Femalé challenged.
“We’ll know soon enough. What am I looking for in her file?”
Femalé tilted her head to the side. “What isn’t there.”
I knew better than to jump deeper into this conversational whirlpool. Femalé was the best assistant in the world, but when she wasn’t ready to say something, it didn’t get said.
“I’ll read it.” As she left the office, I picked up the file.
Chapter 20
While the old adage ‘inspiration is ninety percent perspiration’ has always been a constant in my investigations, the harder I worked to find inspiration, the further it flies away. The inspiration I was looking for—a clue if you will—should pop out and say ‘Here I am!’ But by six, I’d read through everyone’s file and Lia Thornton’s file twice more and still didn’t get what Femalé had meant. Her file was straightforward: She’d been born thirty-seven years before, and was a year younger than I was. It documented her life through the dark dregs and her sudden upward movement into society’s rarified strata by her marriage to Jeremy Thornton. After her marriage, everything she did was respectable.
What I did learn was Thomas Albright was the most principle figure of all. Two-thirds of the Angels were his clients, Lia Thornton included. Of the total investors, Albright might have possible control of forty-eight percent while Scotty—now myself—and the other backers controlled fifty-two percent.
So, if Albright had murdered Scotty for management control of the play, he’d failed; which still meant nothing because it was senseless to kill Scotty for that reason alone. No, like Ponce De Leon’s search for the elusive fountain of youth, my search was for a thin tendril of fact to provide a motive for Scotty’s death—which seemed to be as elusive a quest as had been the ancient explorer’s mythical fountain.
I put the papers aside and reached for the phone to buzz Femalé, but her entrance through my open door beat me to it.
“All right, Boss, you figure it out?” she asked when she reached the edge of my desk.
“No.”
“It took me a while,” she admitted. “I read the damned thing five times and couldn’t find what wasn’t there. Then I read Albright’s file and I realized what was wrong with Thornton’s.”
She leaned back to stare at me, her hands firmly planted on her hips.
“And?” The question was pointless, so intent was she on impressing me.
“What wasn’t there was the first seventeen years.”
Now she’d gone to some esoteric level and left me behind. “I’m tired, Femalé, make sense.”
“I am. Thomas Albright’s file cleared it up for me. It starts with the date and place of his birth, lists the schools he attended, and then details his professional life. All the other files do as well. But,” she declared, her voice rising, “Lia Thornton’s file lists her date of birth and then jumps to her marriage at seventeen. What happened between birth and marriage?”
“You don’t think that’s a little thin?” I asked before realizing she, of all people, was the right person to find something like that. An orphan looks at things with a different mindset.
“Of course not.” Reproach edged her words. “I did some quick surfing into the city records in New Orleans and I couldn’t find anything about her education, be it elementary, middle or high school. That’s significant.”
I let her words sink in. “It may be, but significant in what way? How does it fit in relationship to Scotty?”
“I don’t know yet. I have a feeling it means something. Did you see the way she acted at the funeral? The way she hovered over Scotty, touched his face?”
How could I forget it? “You think there was something going on between them?”
“I never thought about it—they… they wouldn’t have made a couple.”
“Why, because she was a fan? I don’t think so.”
“There was something between them—her actions say so!”
“And you think filling in her childhood years will help?”
Femalé nodded. “I know it will, I just don’t know how.”
I shrugged. “Okay, dig into it. I have something else I want you to work on as soon as you find out about Thornton.”
Her eyes widened. “Finish with Thornton first,” I told her. Knowing Femalé as well as I did, if there was anything to be found, she would have it on my desk by tomorrow.
“I, on the other hand, will see if I can find our Ms. Thornton and try to get some info of my own.”
“You can try, but that lady, she’s not going to be easy. I’ll bet five on who comes up with the info first?”
“Can you afford the loss?”
“I’m not worried, Boss….”
<><><>
An hour after Femalé left, I knew where I would be able to find Lia Thornton. After an unsuccessful attempt at reaching her on the cell phone, I tried her Sutton Place apartment. She wasn’t there either, the Latino housekeeper informed me; but, identifying myself as Detective Gabriel Storm, got me the information that Ms. Thornton had a dinner appointment at eight, and wouldn’t be home until very late.
With a few words of conversation, in Spanish, the housekeeper told me she was having dinner at the Four Seasons. It took five minutes to close the office and leave for Fifty
-second Street. According to my watch, Lia Thornton would have gotten there ten minutes before me.
My timing was perfect and, at eight-ten, I was on Fifty-second Street, just off of Park Avenue, looking at the unimpressive door that led to one of the great restaurants of the world.
I waited a few more minutes to make certain she was inside, and then crossed the street and entered the elegant restaurant. The coat-check room on the entry level was open. A young woman sat behind the counter guarding the packages and briefcases of those who came here from work or shopping.
I took the carpeted steps into the next level, and emerged at the bar area. The square bar was full tonight with people standing three deep in spots. Among them were several famous faces surrounded by the powerful and wealthy of the city.
While it had been a while since my last visit, I knew the restaurant well. For years, my father had a regular table, bringing clients and other attorneys to lunch several times a week. As a family, we’d eaten dinner here often. A dark memory interrupted my thoughts. I had proposed to Elaine here, endless years ago.
I went to the restaurant entrance, where a tall slim man in an elegant yet conservative suit stood at the reservation desk. Next to him was a young woman in a black dress. Her hair was drawn into a stylish bun, her makeup underdone yet pleasing: She held several menus crooked in her arm.
When I drew close, Alex Von Bidder, the managing partner of the restaurant offered me a warm smile. “Gabriel, it’s been a while. How are you?”
“Fine, Alex, thank you.” I took his extended hand and gripped it warmly.
“My condolences on Mr. Granger’s death,” he added before releasing my hand.
“Again, thank you.”
“Are you meeting someone?”
“Yes and no. She doesn’t know I’m here. Lia Thornton.”
Alex favored me with a careful glance. “She’s here, Gabriel, but didn’t say you were expected.”
“I’m not, Alex. But I do need to speak with her. It’s important.”
His careful glance deepened into scrutiny, but he found whatever he was looking for and, turning, he nodded to the girl in black. “Please show Mr. Storm to Mrs. Thornton’s table. She stepped into the entranceway as Alex said, “And, Gabe, don’t be a stranger.”
