The Innocents Club

by Taylor Smith

  “Looks like Hiroshima the morning after,” Scheiber said.

  The only furniture on the patio was a couple of low, complicated wooden chairs that looked uncomfortable as hell. A flat-topped stone boulder between them had probably been put there on purpose to do double duty as a table, although a person might almost believe it had rolled down the San Gabriel Mountains in the last major earthquake, coming to rest just a few feet shy of the building-block house. A regrettable miss, some might say.

  “I don’t know,” Eckert said. “It’s kind of interesting,”

  Scheiber gave him a skeptical glance. “Yeah, you would think so.” There were days when he thought Eckert saw himself as the cultural dean of the NBPD. “Anyway,” he added, “we were discussing Iris and your love life. Spill your guts, buddy. And don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. That woman had her eye on you from the moment she showed up here. Between your panting and her eyelash batting, I thought I was going to have to throw the both of you under a cold shower.”

  Eckert stopped at the edge of the slate patio. “We went out to hear some jazz on the weekend, that’s all.”

  “Jazz, huh?”

  “Yeah. She happens to like jazz, as a matter of fact.”

  “That so? You take her home and show her your collection? Let her touch your Bang & Olufsen? Huh, Dave? Didja?”

  “You are a sick, sick puppy, you know that?”

  Scheiber grinned. He’d been in Eckert’s Costa Mesa apartment once, and it was as meticulous as the Korman place had been disordered. His European stereo system was to die for, and all his records, tapes and CDs—more than three hundred, Eckert said—were tidily shelved in alphabetical order, from Louis Armstrong through Lester Young, each artist’s albums arranged in chronological sequence from earliest works to most recent. His darkroom looked the same—chemicals neatly labeled, bottles stored in a straight, gleaming row, bamboo tongs lined up in a holder like a well-tended, leafless little forest. Even the prints and negatives Eckert hung to dry were always evenly spaced to the last millimeter. For a guy who couldn’t manage to put his hat on the right way around, he was a bit of a neat freak, Scheiber reflected. Iris Klassen, on the other hand, gave no indication she even owned an iron. Must be a classic case of opposites attracting.

  “Iris is good people,” he said, relenting. Poor Dave could use a little disorder in his life.

  As they crossed the brown slate patio, a shadow stirred at ground level behind the opaque glass block windows next to the door. Scheiber depressed a lighted glass button and a muted gong replied from inside like something out of a “National Geographic” special on Tibetan monasteries. At the same time, the shadow at the bottom of the window went crazy. A deep, frenzied baying accompanied the scrabbling of claws on metal. The door, painted the color of dried blood, seemed to be made of solid steel.

  A muffled voice from behind the door cried, “Down, Kermit! Get down! Away from the door!”

  As the claw-on-metal scrape continued, Scheiber winced, imagining what the paint job on the other side of the door must look like. As far as struggles for alpha dog status went, Korman’s neighbor had obviously lost that battle.

  “Just a moment!” the man sang through the closed door. “I need to tie up the dog.”

  “Newport Beach Police,” Scheiber called back. “We’ll wait.” He rolled his eyes, then pulled out his notebook, flipping back a few pages to the name Livermore had given him. “Porter,” he said quietly to Eckert. “Douglas Porter.”

  “We know what Mr. Porter does for a living?”

  Scheiber cocked his thumb at the spartan, rock-faced courtyard. “Monk?” he suggested. “Quarryman? No, wait, I’ve got it. Fred Flintstone. Changed his name after his series went off the air and retired to Newport to get away from the fans.”

  “Cool. I always thought Wilma was hot stuff.”

  “I’m more of a Betty Rubble guy myself, but Livermore figured Fred here was more likely to be shacking up with Barney.”

  “Is that right? Man, am I disillusioned,” Eckert said. “These Hollywood types are so phony, you know?”

  The door finally opened. Porter was tall and bullet-headed under a rapidly receding hairline. He seemed only slightly flustered after his struggle with the dog, now baying from another room upstairs. “Hi! Sorry about that. He’s friendly, but he slobbers.”

  “No problem,” Scheiber said. He introduced himself and his partner. “We’d like to ask you a few questions about your neighbor—Mr. Korman. I understand you found the body?”

  Porter leaned on the doorjamb, folding his silk-shirted arms, his expression shifting to suitably stricken. Dressed all in black as he was, he looked like a professional mourner. “Yes, I did. It was very upsetting, I can tell you. I told the officer who arrived first that I was out walking Kermit—that’s my basset hound—when I noticed Chap’s cat going crazy inside those French doors off his living room. He’s a fat old thing and he hardly ever moves off his chair, so I thought he was behaving a little strangely.”

  “There’s no one home in the house on the other side of Mr. Korman’s, I noticed.”

  “Oh, no. That house is owned by some Iranians who live in Paris most of the year. That’s what Chap said, anyway. Personally, I’ve never seen anyone in the place.”

  “How long have you been living here yourself?”

  “I moved in April first.”

  “But you’ve gotten to know Mr. Korman pretty well?”

  “Actually, fairly well, yes. We both had home offices, for one thing. Poor old Chap was a literary agent, you know.” Scheiber nodded. Porter went on, “Myself, I’m an architect. We’d see each other nearly every day. You have to take a break and just get out sometimes, you know, even if it’s just to walk around the block or go for coffee or something. People think it must be great not to have to commute to an office every day, and it is, but it’s also very isolating. And then, of course, there’s the problem that you’re never really away from the office. You can’t close the door and go home, because you’re already there, and the work is, too, looking at you all day, making you feel guilty.”

  Scheiber nodded. “I guess that would be a problem. So, you spoke to Mr. Korman regularly?”

  “Yes, pretty much every day, like I said. He’d strike you as a crusty old guy when you first met him, but he was really very sweet. I think he was pretty lonely. His wife died just last year. Fifty years they’d been married. Imagine!”

  “Did they have any children? The coroner has responsibility to notify the next of kin, but we’re still trying to determine who that might be.”

  Porter nodded. “He has two sons back in New York. One teaches at Columbia, and one’s a stockbroker. Their names escape me at the moment,” he said, frowning. Then he brightened. “But I know how you can find them. I noticed Chap had their numbers listed on the AutoDial pad on his phone.”

  Scheiber made a note of it. “That’s helpful, thanks.” As his pen skipped on the notebook, he shook it, then looked up at Porter. “Do you think we could come in, Mr. Porter? I have a few more questions, and I’m not real good at taking notes standing up.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” Porter said, flustered. “Well, yes, sure, I suppose.” He stepped back from the door. “The place is a bit of a mess, I’m afraid. I’m in the middle of a big project and I just received a load of material samples yesterday. I haven’t had time to unpack them all.”

  They followed him down a long narrow hall into a large, open room. Its walls were painted in a mottled, muted gray, and, like the patio outside, it was minimally furnished in hypermodern pieces that looked a little hard and unyielding. He’d take his La-Z-Boy over this stuff anytime, Scheiber thought. On the other hand, it was probably right up Eckert’s alley. His partner, he noted, had taken off his sunglasses and hooked them on the collar of his shirt, and he was busy examining the artwork on the walls.

  Despite Porter’s modest protestations, the place looked neat enough to Scheiber
, although there were several packing crates stacked against one wall. As they walked into the sitting room, he noticed a large blueprint and an architectural rendering of a building tacked to a wall next to a drafting table angled across one corner of the room.

  Porter followed his gaze. “It’s a project I’m working on right now. Those blueprints and the front elevations were just delivered yesterday along with the material samples. I stuck them up last night to study them before I went to bed. I find it helps when I try to visualize a problem just before I go to sleep, don’t you? Then I let my subconscious go to work overnight.”

  “Did you design this building?” Scheiber asked. The multilevel complex looked like something out of Shangrila—or Las Vegas, come to think of it. Or something a wedding-cake maker on acid might whip up. The artist’s rendering featured lush greenery and fountains and a couple of Rolls-Royces pulled up along the complex’s long, winding drive. Another wall held aerial photos of what looked to be the project site.

  “No, unfortunately, I’m just a subcontractor,” Porter said. “I’m working some of the interior structures, like the main ballroom and some of the larger hotel suites.”

  “What is this? Another Las Vegas casino?”

  Porter shook his head. “A casino-resort complex, but not Las Vegas. It’s an overseas project. I’m involved with a large international consortium that does projects around the world. Why don’t you sit over here?” he added, clearing some space at a low, lacquered black table shaped like the amoebas Scheiber remembered from his high-school biology textbook. “Can I get you something? Coffee? Iced tea, maybe?”

  “Not for me, thanks,” Scheiber said. Eckert also shook his head, and they settled onto a low, electric-blue settee. “We don’t want to hold you up any longer than we have to, Mr. Porter. I wonder if you could tell me what happened after you went back to Mr. Korman’s this morning?”

  Porter settled his lanky frame onto a stool by the drafting table and picked up a pencil. “The cat was yowling, like I said. I couldn’t understand why Chap wasn’t doing anything about it. He wasn’t crazy about that cat, but he’d never abuse or neglect it. Mr. Rochester—that’s the cat—belonged to Emma, Chap’s wife, so he would never let it go hungry or anything. I thought maybe Chap had gone out, but it was only about six-thirty, and Chap was not a morning person, believe me. I know he said he was going to go out today for groceries for the company he had coming tomorrow, but nothing much would be open at that hour. And, anyway, he would have fed the cat first. So, process of elimination,” Porter added, “the only remaining possibility I could think of was that he was sick or hurt.”

  “When was the last time you’d seen him?”

  “Working in his garden late yesterday afternoon. I was taking Kermit for a walk—again,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You must think I do nothing but walk my dog and snoop on my neighbors.”

  “No, not at all,” Scheiber assured him.

  “I try to be a responsible pet owner. Anyway, this morning, I knocked and rang the bell and called out, and then I finally tried the doors when there was no answer. The patio doors were locked, but I found the side door into the garage open, so I went in through the kitchen.”

  “When you say it was open, do you mean ajar, or just unlocked?”

  Porter frowned and thought about it for a moment as he doodled on a sketch pad in that awkward, hand-bent way left-handers had. “Neither, as a matter of fact. Seems to me that when I tried the handle, it didn’t turn, like it was locked. But when I pushed against it, the door opened right away. Like, maybe Chap meant to lock it, but the latch didn’t catch? So, anyway, his car was there, so I knew he had to be home. Wasn’t much of a walker. I tried to get him to come with Kermit and me a couple of times. Frankly, he could have used the exercise. He’d let himself get a little paunchy, you know? But Chap said he was allergic to exercise. To be fair, I think his knees were pretty arthritic, but really, even so. There’s always something you can do, you know, so your body doesn’t deteriorate like that, isn’t there?” He shuddered. “I don’t mean to sound catty, but I don’t know why someone would want to do that to himself. Why grow old before your time?”

  For seventy-seven, Scheiber thought, Korman was doing pretty well for himself to still be working as he’d been. But there was no mileage to be gained by disagreeing with a cooperative witness. “So you went inside…?” he prodded.

  “That’s about it. I called Chap’s name, but he never answered. Couldn’t, of course, poor old thing. Went upstairs, and there he was.”

  “You said he was expecting company tomorrow?” Eckert asked.

  “Yes, an old friend and her daughter. The woman’s the daughter of Ben Bolt—the author, you know? Chap had been Bolt’s agent. I had actually invited them and Chap out to watch the fireworks tomorrow night. On my sailboat,” Porter added, nodding to a silver-framed photo on the lacquered table. It showed him, shirtless, at the helm of a sloop. The name across the bow said Wright Think’r.

  “Wright as in Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect?” Eckert asked.

  “That’s right! Very good, Officer,” Porter said, nodding appreciatively, seeming to notice Eckert for the first time.

  “I’m not an officer, I’m a crime-scene investigator,” Eckert said, frowning down at his notebook. Guess he didn’t want to be appreciated, Scheiber thought, suppressing a grin.

  “Oh, well, good thinking, anyway,” Porter said, still directing his attention to Eckert, whom he’d obviously decided was no Philistine.

  And so cute, Scheiber thought mischievously, tempted to pinch Eckert’s pudgy cheek. But Eckert was beginning to squirm under the attention, so Scheiber decided to save him. “Have you met this writer’s daughter—what’s her name?” he asked Porter.

  “Mariah Bolt,” Porter said. “No, I haven’t, but I was really looking forward to it. I’m a huge Ben Bolt fan. I’ve read everything he ever wrote and pretty much everything that’s ever been written about him. He was such an interesting man, and I just adore his writing, don’t you?”

  “I can’t say that I’ve ever read it,” Scheiber confessed, “though I gather he’s supposed to be pretty good. Was she planning to stay with Mr. Korman while she was here?”

  “No, Chap said she and her daughter had a beach house close by they were going to be using while they were in town. God! I guess this is going to come as a real shock to her, isn’t it?”

  “Did Mr. Korman ever mention anything about new work he might be handling?”

  “Not really, though I know he did take on new clients from time to time.”

  “No, not a new client. I meant new work by Benjamin Bolt?”

  “By Bolt? How would that be possible? He died years ago.” Porter took his top lip between his teeth and frowned, head shaking. “No, not that I heard of.” Then he glanced at his watch. “I’m sorry, gentlemen. I’m going to have to wrap this up pretty soon, if you don’t mind. I’ve got some calls to Europe I need to make before they go to bed over there.”

  “Sure, we understand. Just one more thing,” Scheiber said. “Besides his arthritis, did Mr. Korman have any other health problems that you’re aware of?”

  Porter wrung his hands and looked very sad indeed. “He was seventy-seven years old, Detective. I’d be amazed if he didn’t, but he never discussed them with me. I thought he looked a little peaked yesterday. It did occur to me to wonder if his heart was in good enough shape to be handling strenuous work like that. Between you and me, and I’m not a medical expert, mind you, I’m sure the poor old dear just overexerted himself.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Scheiber said, ignoring eighteen years of experience that were telling his gut otherwise.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Being an object of curiosity was the pits. Was now, always had been. Mariah found herself second-guessing every step she took, feeling more and more paranoid in the process. Wondering who was watching, and what they knew—or thought they knew—about her. It wasn’t t
he first time she’d stepped through the looking glass into covert operations, but given past experience, she should have known better than to agree to this latest bit of skulduggery.

  It was a nasty fact of life that when you started poking your nose into private places, your own privacy went up for grabs. She knew she was being followed. She’d first noticed the tail the night before outside the hotel, and presumed it was related to her assignment to recruit Belenko—although after learning Renata had been making inquiries about her, she couldn’t even be sure of that. At this point, there was no telling the players without a scorecard. Now she’d picked up a tail again.

  Were Jack Geist’s people keeping watch as she tried to carry out his orders, or was it the Russians she sensed dogging her heels? And if the Russians, which faction? Those loyal to the presidential ambitions of Valery Zakharov, the bellicose foreign minister, or those opposed to him? Yuri Belenko’s easy association with an agent from the other camp would play right into the hands of anyone looking to weaken his boss. She didn’t so much mind the prospect of Zakharov being undercut, but she liked Yuri well enough to feel a flicker of concern over his prospects. He was an old hand at these games, and could no doubt take care of himself, but what if Zakharov himself had doubts about the loyalties of his aide? The man was reputed to be suspicious of everyone, even those closest to him, and his opponents had an unfortunate tendency to meet untimely ends.

  As a matter of fact, Belenko already looked as if he had one foot in the grave when Mariah met up with him at Ziggurat, the Grand Avenue restaurant where Secretary of State Kidd was hosting his luncheon for Zakharov. She found Belenko next to the bar in the private dining room reserved for the event, a glass of what looked like unadulterated soda water at his elbow.