The Innocents Club

by Taylor Smith

  A guard finally showed up around seven to tell him he was being released. As he dropped off the bunk, the drunk grabbed his arm, urging him to reform his wicked ways. “I’m turning over a new leaf,” he said boozily. His rheumy eyes went wide as he added in awestruck whisper, “The voice of God spoke to me in the night.” Touching a nicotine-stained finger to his lips, he glanced disdainfully at the other two snoozing reprobates, obviously deeming them unworthy to receive the Good News.

  “Yeah, sure, pal. It’ll be our little secret,” Tucker dryly assured him, head shaking as he walked out of the cell.

  By then, he was ready for just about anything—except the shock of being led to an interview room, where he found Mariah, looking surprisingly small and very upset, sitting opposite Detectives Scheiber and Ripley at a long interview table. From the look of the situation, Tucker guessed they’d told her that Chap Korman and Louis Urquhart were dead. When she spotted him, though, Mariah dredged up a smile and leaped to her feet.

  “There you are, finally! Are you all right?” When she embraced him, he wanted to hold on to her in the worst way, but he felt grimy and disgusting after the night he’d had. He patted her back a couple of times, then pulled away from her.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked gruffly, shooting a scowl over her head to the two detectives.

  She relayed how Scheiber had tracked her down at the hotel that morning. “They told me about Louis Urquhart and the mix-up over the witness. And, oh God, Frank, Chap Korman’s dead. Did they tell you?”

  “I heard, kiddo. I’m sorry. I know he was a good friend.”

  She nodded. “To me and to my mother,” she said, her voice trembling. “He was always there for us. Long before my father’s work took off the way it did, Chap would be calling, making sure we were all right and that we had enough to get by…schoolbooks, clothes…whatever. If it hadn’t been for him—” Her tears finally spilled over. “My mother told me once there were a couple times we wouldn’t have had Christmas without his help. He was such a good person.”

  Tucker nodded and took her hand, cupping it between his own. “I know,” he said quietly. Then he looked up at the two detectives. “We’re both free to go?”

  “Hold on. We’ve still got some questions,” Ripley said.

  “Yeah, well, that may be,” Tucker said, “but not now. This has been tough news for Ms. Bolt. You’re going to give her some time. And as for me, Ripley, I’ve given you as much time as I intend to. I’m out of here.”

  “Tucker, wait!” Scheiber protested. “I got up at four-thirty this morning so I could hit LAX and get a statement from that flight attendant before she took off back to D.C.”

  “Yeah, well, at four-thirty, I was still awake in a cell with three scumbags,” Tucker replied testily. He exhaled heavily. “But thanks. It shouldn’t have been necessary for either one of us, but I appreciate you going the extra mile on this.”

  Scheiber nodded. “It’s okay. That’s my job. But now, I really need you to tell me what you know about these two cases.”

  Tucker stiffened. “I didn’t—”

  “I’m not saying you had anything to do with either Korman’s or Urquhart’s deaths,” Scheiber said. “But they’re obviously linked. The common denominator has to be something to do with Benjamin Bolt.”

  “You said my father’s papers were missing,” Mariah said. “Are you absolutely certain about that?”

  “No,” Scheiber said. “I’m not certain about anything. I looked for them after I heard your phone message, Ms. Bolt, but I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for. I’m probably going back to Korman’s house again later. I wouldn’t mind it if you’d come along. It’s in your own interest, after all. Those papers do belong to you, don’t they?”

  She nodded slowly. “I might be willing to do that. But not today, Detective. I just can’t. I’ve got my daughter to think about. She just arrived, and she’s going to be upset, too, when she hears about Chap.”

  “Tomorrow, then?” Scheiber pressed.

  “Maybe. Can I call you?”

  Scheiber withdrew a business card from one pocket and a pen from another, wrote on the card, then slid it across the table to her. “My office number is there, and I’ve added my cell-phone number. Call me anytime, night or day. Please.”

  She took the card and studied it, then slipped it into the pocket of her dress. Tucker took her elbow. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “Tucker, wait, dammit!” Scheiber said, rising to his feet as they headed for the door. “I know you suspect something about how they died. Tell me, for God’s sake.”

  Tucker had his hand on the door, but he paused, then turned reluctantly back to the man. He owed him something, he supposed. “I’m not certain,” he ventured.

  “I don’t need certain, I just need an idea. Tell me what you think,” Scheiber pleaded. “Point me in a direction.”

  “Transdermal toxins,” Tucker said.

  “Trans-what?”

  “Transdermal toxins,” Tucker repeated. “Poisons delivered through the skin. When they do the autopsies and the tox screens, have them look for signs of chemicals delivered either through intramuscular injection or via skin absorption.”

  “I gather we’re not talking your average pharmaceutical opiates and such?” Scheiber asked. “We found sleeping pills and antidepressants at Korman’s place, and he’d been drinking.”

  Tucker waved it off. “No, forget that stuff. The poor bastard just muddied the killer’s tracks by having that stuff around. They’re going to have to look closer. It could be any one of a number of other possibilities. Curare, cobra venom—”

  “Cobra venom?” Ripley exclaimed. “Would you give me a frigging break? How the hell would a cobra—”

  “You don’t need the snake,” Tucker said. “All you need is the venom, or a synthetic chemical derivative that acts on the body in a similar fashion.” He shrugged. “Or maybe the guy did overdose himself. Like I said, I’m not sure. But if the M.E. can’t come up with a conventional explanation for what happened to these two guys, this is worth a look, believe me.”

  Mariah had been standing quietly at his side, but as her gray eyes widened, Tucker realized she understood where he was coming from. Her back was to the two detectives. “The Dzerzhinksy Borgia?” she whispered, incredulous. It was a nickname western intelligence had bestowed on Valery Zakharov, former KGB colonel, now foreign minister of Russia and well on his way to that country’s top office. Like the Borgias of fifteenth-century Italy, Zakharov’s route to power was reputed to have been via the noxious chemicals he’d kept stocked in his KGB offices in Dzerzhinsky Square.

  Tucker glanced over at the two detectives, but they obviously hadn’t heard her. He looked back down at her pale, stunned expression and nodded.

  “Wait a minute,” Ripley said. “I want to be clear on this. You’re saying someone’s going around injecting poison into people. There was no sign of struggle in these cases. How do you pull out a syringe and get a guy to sit quietly while you inject him with God knows what?”

  “The killer—or killers—don’t need syringes. Remember the case of the guy in London who was stabbed with a poison-tipped umbrella? Anything sharp will do. Say, in the case of Urquhart, his visitor shakes his hand, but he’s wearing a ring equipped with a barb on the inner surface.”

  Ripley grimaced. “Yeah, right, and two bucks will get you a hand buzzer at the joke store.”

  “Roses,” Scheiber said. When Ripley gave him a strange look, he added, “Mr. Korman’s hands were cut up. His neighbor said he’d been pruning his roses. Could that have done it?”

  “If someone had dipped the thorns, sure,” Tucker said. He nodded to Mariah. “Let’s go.”

  But she held back, looking torn. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Detective Ripley, do you know the disabled war veterans who sell plants in front of the Federal Building on Wilshire?”

  “Yes,” he said. “What about them?”

  “I
was walking across the plaza yesterday afternoon when a cyclist nearly collided with me. One of the vets knocked me aside and took the blow. He lost consciousness shortly afterward. They had to call an ambulance. They thought he’d overdosed on something. At the time, it seemed plausible, but now I’m wondering…” She glanced worriedly at Tucker. “He had a cut on his hand after the cyclist hit him. Maybe it’s nothing, but—”

  Tucker felt is if he were standing on a sandbar in the middle of a river, an upstream dam collapsing under the weight of her words. It was the Newport detective who voiced the possibility he couldn’t even bring himself to contemplate.

  “Somebody tried to kill you, too,” Scheiber said darkly.

  “Did you get a look at the cyclist?” Ripley asked.

  Mariah shook her head. “No, not really. He wore a helmet and sunglasses. The vet who took the hit was a big, bearded fellow. His friends called him Martin. I’m not sure what his last name was. Would you look into it?”

  Ripley nodded soberly.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Mariah’s day had started badly, and it skidded rapidly downhill from there. Before it was over, her very worst fears would be realized. For now, though, things seemed bad enough, with the news that Chap Korman had died not long after she’d last spoken to him, and that the mildewed papers she’d pulled out of her flooded storage locker had probably sparked a killing spree, claiming not only Chap, but Louis Urquhart, too.

  Her shock over those developments was only slightly greater than her astonishment at what she was learning about this man who’d been her mentor, colleague and closest friend for nearly two decades. “You destroyed them?” she repeated, incredulous when Frank briefed her on his quick turnaround trip to Moscow to visit the Navigator and about the files he’d brought back then shredded. “The evidence of Zakharov’s murderous dealings during his climb to the top? Why would you do that?”

  Frank stared into his coffee cup, as if the answer might be there. They’d taken a cab back to the hotel, stopping in the lobby lounge for a quick breakfast and to bring each other up to date on what they knew. Mariah had snagged a table in a recessed alcove where their quiet conversation wouldn’t be overheard but from where she could keep an eye out for Lindsay, who would surely be getting up any time now. Mariah had debated running up to see if she was awake, but before she faced her already troubled daughter to deliver even more bad news, she had to find out what Frank knew. Upset as she would undoubtedly be to learn about Chap, Lindsay was going to take all Mariah’s time and attention after that.

  Absentmindedly picking apart the flakes of a croissant, she waited for Frank to explain himself. He’d always been taciturn and stubborn, but she’d never known him to behave irrationally. Before now, anyway.

  “Zakharov has diplomatic immunity,” he said finally. “He can’t be arrested here, and he’ll never be charged in his own country. Not unless the democratic opposition over there gets its act together to oust him and his ilk, once and for all. Short of assassinating him myself, which is what Deriabin may have had in mind, for all I know, there’s no way to touch him.”

  “Surely Deriabin didn’t expect you personally to rid the world of the Dzerzhinsky Borgia? I mean, Zakharov got where he is today by destroying everyone who stood in his path, and the thought of him controlling one of the two largest nuclear arsenals on the planet is pretty scary. But if anything were to happen to him while he’s in this country, it would be seen by Moscow as a virtual declaration of war.”

  “I know, but I don’t think it was an accident that the Navigator’s handover of those files was timed to coincide with his official visit here.” Frank shook his head ruefully. “Who knows what went on in that old bastard’s Machiavellian brain?”

  He leaned back in his seat, and his hands passed wearily over his face. They were both operating on minimal sleep, but her bed, at least, had been comfortable, Mariah thought. The midmorning sunlight streaming through the tall, arched windows emphasized dark circles under Frank’s eyes and blue-black stubble on a chin that hadn’t met a razor since he’d left home. In any other city, he might have stuck out like a weed in a place as hushed and elegant as the Beverly Wilshire lounge, but L.A. had scruffy down to a fine art form. Frank looked positively buttoned-down compared to some MTV types Mariah and Lindsay had seen checking into the Presidential Suite when they’d arrived from the airport late last night.

  Tired as he was this morning, Mariah thought, Frank seemed a little more like her friend of old, but anyone keeping him under surveillance these past months would have seen how hard the death of his son had hit him. A manipulator like the Navigator might have even imagined him capable, given the right motivation, of being pushed over the edge into some rash act. Even as she thought it, Mariah’s chest tightened as she guessed the vulnerability the Navigator may have perceived in Frank. The key to waking the sleeping giant. The fact that Frank had dropped everything to come to her side now was proof of it. If he thought she was in trouble, he would do whatever necessary to help her, consequences be damned.

  It was something she’d sensed for a long time without ever allowing herself to ponder what it meant—much less put a name to it. Denial, after all, had been the defining rule of their relationship for almost as long as they’d known each other. When they’d first met, Frank had been married to a dying woman he deeply loved. By the time Joanne passed away, Mariah had been caught up in her life with David and Lindsay. At the time David died, Patty and Frank were an item, and Paul Chaney had been hovering in the wings. She and Frank had been moving in syncopated time for nearly two decades, always by unspoken mutual agreement, damping down the spark they both knew could flare between them, regardless of their other commitments. Personal chemistry is, after all, a volatile thing.

  Had the Navigator been watching all that time, she wondered, watching for an opportunity to use that spark to ignite his own schemes?

  She reached toward him. “You really wouldn’t do that, would you?”

  “What? Assassinate the Russian foreign minister?” He grimaced. “Why would I want to turn him into a national martyr?” He hesitated a moment, then slid his hand out from under hers. Mariah reached for the silver carafe, refilling his cup, then her own, relieved to know that whatever other impact his personal crises had had, Frank’s reasoning powers were functioning just fine. He folded his napkin on the table, and out of the blue asked, “Has Paul gone home?”

  “I have no idea,” she said, stirring milk into her coffee. “It’s over,” she added quietly. Frank was too discreet to probe for reasons, but she gave him a summary of what had happened at Spago, anyway, and what Renata had said about her father and the manuscript.

  “Maybe Chaney was trying to help,” Frank said, granting Paul more credit than she would have expected. It had been obvious from the outset that the two men had had little use for one another, a mutual antagonism she’d put down to an alpha-male thing, frustrated at feeling pulled between them.

  “The question is, was he looking to help me or himself by sneaking around behind my back like that?” she wondered aloud. “And then, knowing Renata would be lying in wait for me when I came out here, and not warning me? How could he do that?” She shook her head, disgusted.

  “I’m sorry,” Frank said, looking as if he really meant it.

  She waved it off. “No matter. That stunt was just the last straw. I’d already made up my mind the relationship wasn’t going anywhere, anyway. I don’t love him, it’s as simple as that. I don’t think I ever could. I thought it was because I was still grieving over David, or because Lindsay was unhappy about me seeing him, but it’s more than that. I could never be myself when Paul was around. I felt like there was some image I was supposed to be living up to, but kept falling short. To be perfectly honest, I’m relieved it’s over.”

  Frank nodded. “Well, that’s good then. But I’m still sorry this business about your father had to blow up in your face.”

  She looked up at him,
frowning. “I don’t know, Frank, call me crazy, but considering all of Ben’s other sins of commission and omission, what does it matter that he attended some Soviet-sponsored writers’ conference thirty years ago? Who cares?”

  “It’s more than that,” Frank said. “There was Anatoly Orlov, the Russian writer he betrayed.”

  She frowned. “Renata said he stole Orlov’s novel and was going to try to pass it off as his own. Professor Urquhart also suspected the manuscript I found was Orlov’s, but it doesn’t sound like he was accusing Ben of anything underhanded. Just that a mistake had been made.”

  “Urquhart was being generous, Mariah. I think Renata’s closer to the truth on this. The Navigator’s files said Orlov was betrayed by an American—to Zakharov, who was the KGB resident in France at the time. It had to be your father. He was Orlov’s constant companion at that conference, the only American who was. Orlov’s collapse was undoubtedly the result of Zakharov’s pharmacology, and it was Zakharov who dragged him back to Moscow. Then, when he died, Zakharov returned to Paris to eliminate the only witness to what had happened.”