The Innocents Club

by Taylor Smith

  The soup course was served, and Mariah turned her attention to it and away from the wrestler-turned-bodyguard, keeping one ear dutifully cocked to the official conversation at the center of the table. When the main course came, however, she noticed Belenko regarding her closely. “What?” she asked. “Have I got spinach on my teeth?”

  “No. I was just wondering.”

  “What?”

  “Well, my little joke with the secretary about my minister being a fan of your father—I hope it was not out of place? I never hear you speak of him yourself.”

  Mariah trotted out her stock answer, usually sufficient to blow off the subject. “No offense taken. He moved out when I was very young, that’s all. I scarcely remember him.”

  “What about his work? Do you like it?”

  She thought about that for a moment. It was an interesting question, one no one had ever thought to ask her before. Did she like her father’s work? “It’s hard for me to read it with detachment,” she said finally. “I see the power in the writing, but I can’t help thinking about what was going on in his life—in our lives—as he was producing it. When he writes about a woman, for example, I can’t help wondering what woman he was thinking of.”

  “Your mother, perhaps?”

  “In some cases, yes. But it’s no great secret that my father had a few lovers along the way. When I read a description of a woman who’s obviously not my mother, I wonder who she was. And since my mother always proofread his work before he sent it out, I also can’t help thinking it must have hurt her.”

  “It’s not easy to live with an artist,” Belenko said, nodding. “But perhaps he was more attached to your mother than you know.”

  Mariah broke a piece of bread and watched the crumbs spill onto her plate. “I think my father believed in marriage and family,” she said, “but only in the abstract. He never had a real family life as a child, so he never quite got the idea that a family is a kind of social contract. A bargain with the future. You give up a small piece of your freedom in exchange for the good of the whole, especially children. Ben wasn’t prepared to sacrifice his own needs, though. They always came first.”

  “Perhaps the demands of family life interfered with his art?”

  Mariah was dubious. “My mother made it possible for him to write. After he left her, he produced very little, and he didn’t even live all that long. By all accounts, his self-indulgence was what killed him.”

  “He destroyed his family for his art,” Belenko said quietly. “Sad, but interesting. In my country, for a very long time, it was the other way around. Artists strangled their creativity so they and their families could survive in the climate of censorship.” He frowned into his plate. He seemed genuinely troubled, and Mariah sensed it was the first time she’d ever caught a glimpse beneath the playfulness that underscored all their conversations. But then, like a passing cloud, the moment passed. Belenko looked up and gave her one of his disarming smiles. As she returned it, she noticed that there was only one other person besides themselves not hanging on the ministers’ every word.

  Belenko raised his glass. “To better times, Mariah.”

  “Better times,” she answered.

  At the clink of their goblets, Lermontov, the bodyguard, scowled.

  Chapter Nineteen

  By late afternoon, the low, gray concrete headquarters of the Newport Beach Police Department were virtually deserted. Everyone who wasn’t actually out on patrol had snuck away to get a head start on the long holiday weekend, but the uniforms would all be back tomorrow night and out on the street in full force. Two-thirds of the city’s annual arrest numbers would be racked up on the Fourth of July blowout, as dozens of party animals landed in the department’s tiny lockup for various misdemeanors, mostly of the drunk and disorderly or disturbing the peace variety. In the meantime, anyone who could sneak in a little advance beach time was doing it.

  Not Scheiber, though. Liz had called to say Lucas’s play date had shifted to their house when the other mother pleaded a sick younger child. So much for afternoon delight. “Okay, look,” he said, coward that he was, “I’m going to stick around here for a while and do the paperwork on this old guy we found this morning.”

  “Ha! You just don’t want to land in the middle of this mayhem,” Liz said. In the background, he heard the annoying shriek of the toy laser guns Lucas’s stepmother had thoughtfully bought for his birthday, then refused to allow him to keep at their house for the rare weekends she actually let him stay.

  “No, it’s not that,” he lied.

  “Relax, I’m kidding. Although believe me, I’m envious. I wouldn’t want to be here, either. I just wish I’d remembered to hide those guns. Aaron’s staying for dinner, so don’t feel like you have to rush home. We can have a quiet dinner later, after Lucas goes to bed.”

  “To be honest,” he confessed, “I was half thinking I should run up to L.A., anyway.”

  “No problem from my end. What for?”

  “There’s a lady I’d like to talk to about the guy we found in the spa this morning. She’s staying at the Beverly Wilshire, but just for one more day, by the sound of it. If I don’t catch her there, I’m not sure I’ll be able to track her down.”

  “Did the man have a heart attack, like you thought?”

  “Probably, but we won’t know for sure until the autopsy. Meantime, though, I’m worried there might have been a theft from his house. If there was, and it turns out the guy’s death was from something other than natural causes, it’s a whole new ball game.”

  “And this lady at the Beverly Wilshire?”

  “She’s the daughter of Benjamin Bolt—the writer? The dead guy was Bolt’s literary agent. Apparently, he had some papers I’m guessing would have been pretty valuable, but when I went to look for them, I couldn’t find them anywhere in the house. For all I know, the old guy put them in a safe-deposit box or somewhere for safekeeping. If the daughter can clear up the mystery, maybe Dave and I won’t end up running around on a wild-goose chase. Speaking of Dave,” Scheiber added, looking up, “here he is.” As Eckert rounded the low wall of his cubicle, Scheiber held up a forefinger to let him know he’d be done shortly.

  “Tell him I said hi,” Liz said.

  “Liz says hi.”

  “Hi, Liz!” Eckert called, dragging an extra chair into Scheiber’s small cubbyhole and settling himself into it.

  On the phone, the pulsating whine of a mock laser interrupted her answer. “Oh, Lord, I’ve gotta go, Jim,” she said. “I think they’re trying to fry the fish tank.”

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Absolutely. If they get too rambunctious, I’m going to throw them both in the car and take them over to the swimming pool. Make the little buggers swim laps until they collapse from exhaustion.”

  He smiled. “Okay, I’ll call you later.”

  “Love you. Rain check on fun and games?”

  “You betcha. Me, too.” He hung up and turned to Eckert, whose sneakers were tapping with the nervous energy of news just waiting to be spilled. “What’s up?”

  “You know how Porter said he loved Ben Bolt so much, read everything by and about the guy, but didn’t know anything about those papers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I just did a quick Internet search on Ben Bolt, and guess what I found out? There’s been a whole ream of articles in the past few months about some journals and an unpublished novel showing up in a box of junk of his that his daughter had had in storage for years—the daughter being that Mariah woman who called and left the message while we were at Korman’s house. Kind of funny Porter didn’t know anything about it, don’t you think? Especially living right next door to Bolt’s agent?”

  “I don’t know. I never heard anything about it, either, and I look at a newspaper most every day.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not a Bolt fan, so you wouldn’t necessarily pick up on it.”

  “Maybe Porter doesn’t read anything but books and
architectural journals.”

  “Yeah, I suppose that’s possible,” Eckert conceded, “assuming Korman never mentioned it to him, which seems like a pretty big assumption to me. What do I know? But that’s not all. I also keyed Porter’s name into the search engine, and that turned up a little morsel of interesting information, too. Turns out he was one of the subcontractors on the early stages of the new Getty Museum up in Malibu a few years back, only he was dismissed from the project under murky circumstances.”

  “Murky? Like, legal problems?”

  Eckert pursed his lips and shrugged. “Not clear. The press reports mentioned him and a couple of other people in connection with a possible diversion of project funds, but it looks like the whole thing was hushed up by the Getty Trust. At the time, the museum was going through major hassles with environmentalists who didn’t think they should be bulldozing Malibu hillsides so the Gettys could beam their name across the city. The trust probably didn’t want any more public relations problems than they already had.”

  Scheiber propped his feet up on the desk and folded his hands across his stomach. “If Porter got smeared on a big project like that, it might explain why he works overseas now. I’ve got to believe that if people as powerful as the Gettys put your name on a blacklist, there aren’t too many other developers in the country who will take a chance on you.” He nodded. “Okay, let’s run his name through the system, see what turns up. I was thinking we should be doing it, anyway, as a matter of course, since he was probably the last person to see Korman alive. I’d hate to have the M.E.’s report come in and find out the guy died of other than natural causes and we’ve lost valuable investigation time. And, speaking of the medical examiner, is there any chance you can prevail on your special relationship with the coroner’s office, see if they can hurry up that autopsy?”

  Eckert’s color elevated, but he didn’t protest, Scheiber noted. “Already talked to Iris, as a matter of fact.”

  “Aha! Making plans for the weekend, are we?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but yeah, as a matter of fact, we’re going to watch the fireworks down in Dana Point.”

  “You sly dog. Did you give her the names of Korman’s sons?” Following up on Porter’s information, they’d gone back into the house and found the names Michael and Philip at the top of Korman’s telephone AutoDial list. Cross-checking against a Rolodex on Korman’s desk, Scheiber had looked under the letter K and come up with New York home and work addresses and phone numbers for both a Michael Korman and a Philip Korman.

  “I did,” Eckert said. “She said thank you very much, we made her day much easier. She was going to give them a call right after she hung up from talking to me.”

  “What did she say about the autopsy?”

  “The M.E. wants to squeeze it in tomorrow morning. They’re trying to clear the decks over there before they get backed up with the holiday surge of binge drinkers and roadkill.”

  It was sad but true that people tended to die in greater numbers on holiday weekends, mostly from drinking-and traffic-related accidents. “So much for my Fourth of July,” Scheiber grumbled. Attending autopsies was his least favorite part of the job, but there was less chance of missing crucial evidence if he oversaw every step of the investigation, starting with any clues the body might turn up at autopsy. “What time?”

  “Iris is going to call back to let me know, but probably midmorning.”

  Scheiber picked up a pencil and tapped it on his knee. “Didn’t you do wedding pictures for somebody in the sheriff’s crime lab?”

  Eckert nodded. “Daughter of one of the examiners got married a couple of weeks ago. I just finished developing the pictures.”

  “Sure would be nice if we could get Korman’s tox screen hustled through there. Why don’t you hold off on delivering those pictures until the blood and tissue samples are ready?”

  “You want me to hold their firstborn child for ransom, too?”

  “Only if the wedding pics don’t get us the speeded-up service we need. Meantime, let’s see if there’s any criminal history on either Korman or Porter. I’m going to run up to L.A. and try to track down this Mariah Bolt person. Who knows? Maybe she can tell me if there’s any reason to suspect Korman might have been depressed enough over his dead wife to intentionally take a lethal cocktail before his dip in the spa.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Wanting something too much is a surefire guarantee of paying too high a price for it, Mariah thought as she sat on the edge of her hotel-room bed, holding the beach-house keys in her hand. She’d found them on the table when she came in, along with a note from Paul saying he’d be at the network studios all afternoon getting ready for his interview with Zakharov. She jangled the keys, feeling their heft. For a couple of small bits of brass and an address tag on a ring, they seemed awfully heavy. Must be the weight of all the guilt that came along with them, she decided.

  All she’d wanted was some quiet time to reconnect with a daughter who was the center of her wobbly universe. Lindsay had wanted a summer vacation in southern California, another phase in her effort to retrace the footsteps of the grandfather she’d only just begun to discover. Paul, ever the knight in shining armor, had stepped in with a hassle-free answer to both their prayers.

  But in life, there’s no free lunch, as Mariah was always careful to remind herself. Paul had obviously been looking for something in exchange for lining up the beach house. It was a measure of his decency that he’d come through with his end of the bargain even after she’d balked at paying the price he asked, which was to be included in their holiday.

  The note he’d left included a phone number where he could be reached that afternoon. She settled back onto the bed, leaning against the headboard, and listened as her call was bounced forward from the main network switchboard to wherever he was. When they were finally connected, Paul sounded distracted and rushed.

  “I won’t keep you,” she said. “I just wanted to let you know I’m back at the hotel and I found the keys. Thank you so much for doing this. Lindsay will be thrilled.”

  “You’re welcome. I just hope you’ll be okay with it.” There was an undercurrent in his voice that, to a guilty conscience like hers, sounded a lot like resentment. But maybe he was just preoccupied. He did have other things to think about, after all.

  “Are you sure you’re okay about it?” she asked. “I feel a little awkward about exploiting your connections like this.” And then expressly disinviting him to join them. She told herself it was for Lindsay’s sake, but maybe that was a bum rap. What if Lindsay had been better disposed toward Paul? Would Mariah have been eager to share her vacation with him then? She didn’t think so. Ever since David’s death, she’d been running on sheer, empty inertia, worrying about Lindsay, giving little thought to where she herself was going—her life transformed to driftwood, its course directed only by the shifting tide of her child’s needs. But the time was rapidly approaching when Lindsay would move on. College was just two years away, and at the moment, she seemed determined to choose one as far away as possible from the D.C. area. There wouldn’t be many more chances for them to have time alone together. And when Lindsay was launched on her own life? Mariah thought. What would she herself do with the rest of her days?

  “You’re not exploiting my connections,” Paul said, “but I want you to understand about this. When I said I wanted to be there with you—” He was interrupted by a muffled voice in the background, and Mariah waited while he excused himself to discuss camera angles with someone. Then he was back. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Look, it’s a little crowded in here. This is probably not the best time to talk.”

  “I know. And I do want us to talk, Paul, but you’ve got other things to worry about right now. I gather your interview with Zakharov is on?”

  “We’re just waiting for him to show up. His people called to say he would only talk to me if we taped the interview in a location near the port. They wouldn’t say w
hy, but I found out it’s because he’s staying on what’s reputed to be a Russian spy ship while he’s here in the city. Did you know that?”

  Her response was noncommittal. She’d long since given up trying to figure out Paul’s sources. There was very little he didn’t find out sooner or later, as often as not before she did.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “we were going to do the taping in Burbank, but then we had to scramble to get a suite in a hotel near the port. That’s where I am now. We’re set up, finally, but it took all afternoon for the techs to get the equipment in, and they’re still testing the feeds. We’re cutting things a little close. How did the luncheon with Kidd go?”

  “As well as could be expected,” Mariah said. “The official communiqué’s going to say that they had a ‘full and frank’ exchange of views.”

  “Ouch! That bad?”

  She smiled. Paul had been covering international affairs long enough to know diplomatic shorthand by now. When an official communiqué reported a “full and frank” discussion, it meant the normally genteel language of diplomacy had been abandoned in favor of blunt talk. If the communiqué said someone had given a “frank assessment” of a situation, chances were, an ultimatum had been issued. And if the pin-striped suits announced that an “open exchange of views” had taken place, it meant the delegates had been in each others’ faces like WWF pro wrestlers. “Let’s just say that the translators had their work cut out for them,” she said.

  “And the financial aid Zakharov was looking for? Did he get it?”

  “You know I can’t be telling tales out of school, but it should come as no great surprise that anything he gets will have strings attached. The package has to go before Congress, and Zakharov’s got to pass the terms by his own side, too, before any deal can be nailed down. You’d probably do well, though, to ask him what he knows about the routing of funds to the Kurdish and fundamentalist opposition to the Turkish government, and whether he’s willing to risk food and fuel this coming winter by undermining Washington’s efforts to mediate there.”