“I wish there were, but given what you’ve just told us and the P.I.’s report, we’re pretty sure of it. Chuck Zuccari is your father.”
Alma sat, her eyes filled with unbelieving tears. And then, from somewhere deep in her soul, she moaned, a sound of betrayal that dissolved the space between us. I could feel myself slipping inside her skin, feel the corrosiveness of old secrets eating away at her life, as they had at mine, eat away at flesh and bone, blood and marrow.
But the moment passed and I was back in my own skin, watching Alma gulp and gasp for air, hyperventilating to the point where she began to slump in her wheelchair. I hurried to her side and held her steady while Billie exited the interview room, blowing past Jerry Gales, who was waiting outside.
“What happened?” Gales demanded as he stepped into the room. “What did you say to her?”
“She’s had a bit of a shock is all, sir,” I assured him. “She’ll be all right.”
Billie returned with a cup of ice. After a few minutes of ice applied to Alma’s neck and gentle reassurance, we were able to bring her back. But as her eyes opened I could tell this was not the place she wanted to be, nor Gales, Billie, and I the people she wanted to see. “I need to talk to my mother,” she whispered.
“At the appropriate time, we can give you the number we have for her,” I assured her.
She motioned me closer and whispered, her lips barely moving: “Please don’t tell Jerry about . . . I’d hate for something like this to tarnish Chuck’s legacy.”
After the hell Chuck Zuccari’s lies had put her and her mother through, I was stunned at Alma’s willingness to protect the man. “We’ll do our best, ma’am.”
Gales moved behind her chair. “Perhaps I should be getting Mrs. Zuccari back home, Detective,” he said, oblivious to how she cringed at the title.
“Of course, sir, but I just have a couple more questions for your client.”
“Haven’t you badgered this poor woman enough?” Gales said.
Alma held up a hand. “No, Jerry, let them do their job. We’ve got to get to the bottom of who shot my . . . Chuck and killed poor Malik.”
Unless she was the greatest actress on earth, Alma’s willingness to go on just convinced me she had nothing to do with the shooting. I motioned Gales to a seat and gave Alma a few more moments to compose herself. “Did your—did Chuck mention a project he was working on with Mr. Engalla shortly before the shooting? Or mention any concerns he had about Mario, or an employee named Natalie Johnson?”
“The only thing Chuck talked about during that time was the joint venture with Malik and Habiba Shareef.” Again her blue eyes welled up with tears. Had it occurred to her that Chuck might have pushed her toward the Shareefs and their venture because he knew who she was?
Oblivious to what was transpiring, Gales patted Alma’s hand reassuringly. “We understand the LAPD and FBI seized records from the company and Mr. Zuccari’s children. Are we to assume Mario and this Johnson woman are suspects in the shooting?”
Disregarding his question, I spoke directly to Alma. “It would help us tremendously if you could provide us access to Mr. Zuccari’s personal financial records. We need to be sure someone wasn’t trying to blackmail him.”
“Why would someone want to blackmail Chuck?” Gales said, antennae up.
Ignoring the question, Billie asked Alma whether Chuck had told her about the threatening letter. “He mentioned it,” she replied, “but he never showed it to me. Now I can understand why.”
Gales looked from Alma to Billie to me, a baffled look on his face. “Am I missing something here?” he asked.
“So was my—” Here, Alma hesitated, unsure of what to say. “Is that who you think might have blackmailed Chuck?”
“It’s something we have to look at.”
“I see.” The possibility seemed to shake Chuck and Isabelle’s daughter to her core. “You have my permission to review anything you like.”
“Alma,” Gales broke in. “Are you sure you want to open Chuck’s personal affairs to the police and the Feds without a subpoena?”
“We can certainly obtain one,” I assured the attorney. “But we’d be wasting valuable time that I frankly don’t think we have, given Mr. Zuccari’s condition.”
Alma turned to her attorney. “She’s right, Jerry. I want to be able to go back to that hospital and tell my—tell Chuck they’ve arrested the person who shot him and my baby.” Focusing her attention on me, she said: “If you can provide Mr. Gales with a list of items you need, we can have everything sent up to you tonight.”
“It would be faster to have one of our people go with you and pick them up.”
While Billie walked Gales out to Detective Perkins to get a complete list, Alma sat in her wheelchair, her face suffused with pain as her emotions caught up with her. “D-does this mean Mario is my brother?”
“Most likely, yes.”
She nodded as if confirming something to herself. “You know, from the day I met him at that convention, I felt like I’d known Mario all my life. He was like a kindred spirit . . . so intent on succeeding, and yet so sad. It’s like there was a piece of him missing. Just like in me.” She frowned suddenly and asked: “Is it possible—could Mario have known about all this?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Last night, when Chuck took a turn for the worse, I called Mario and Gabriella. After all, they are his children.” Her voice faltered, perhaps sensing the irony of her words, but she struggled on. “When Mario got to the hospital, he said something about chickens coming home to roost that I thought was sort of odd, but I thought he was still upset about not being named as president. Now I’m not so sure what he meant.”
“I appreciate you telling me this, ma’am,” I said as I gathered up my notebook. “And we’ll certainly follow up on it. But in the meantime, it’s essential that you not say anything about this to Mario or anyone else.”
She smiled bitterly. “Who could I tell something like this?”
She seemed to have aged another ten years since coming through the door. “If there’s nothing else, Detective Justice, I need to head back to find those documents, and go back to the hospital.” She slowly moved her wheelchair to the door.
“There is one more thing.” At Alma’s mention of the hospital, a memory flickered into my consciousness that sent me back to my notebook. “Detective Thorfinsen asked you something at the hospital on Monday about the night of the shooting that I just need to doublecheck.”
I found my notation, hastily scribbled when I’d walked in on her conversation with Thor. “‘The last thing I remember,’ you said, ‘was Chuck turning around and pushing me away from him as we were waiting for the valet to bring our car.’ You said you couldn’t remember whether he pushed you toward the building or the street.”
Her gaze focused on the far wall, Alma seemed lost in thought. Then she shuddered, her attention back on me. “I remember now. It was toward the building.”
“You’re certain?”
“Of course I’m certain!” she said, that same agitated note in her voice that I heard when she spoke to Thor. She reached into her handbag. “He was trying to shield me from that car!”
I watched as she started rearranging items in her bag, aware that she seemed unable to look me in the eye. Billie had just reentered the room when I said: “Frankly, ma’am, I’m confused.”
“Confused about what?” Annoyed, Alma looked up from what she was doing and shifted her shoulders against the back of the chair. “I told you what happened!”
“But how can you be so sure in which direction he pushed you today when you’ve never been able to remember anything else about the moments leading up to the shooting or much of what happened afterward?”
Alma’s hands started fluttering in her lap. “I guess the shock of all this jogged my memory.” She sighed again and clenched her hands over her bag. “Up until ten minutes ago, that was the worst day of my life, Detective. Can you bla
me me for not being able to remember until now?”
I saw the defiance and pain on her face and flipped my notebook closed. “Thank you for your time.” I walked over and took her hand. “Please call us if anything else occurs to you in the coming days. And we are truly sorry about everything.”
She nodded, swallowing hard. “So am I, Detective.”
Billie and I watched her move slowly down the hall. She was joined by Gales and Perkins, who Billie told me was going to follow them to Chuck and Alma’s house to get those records. “What was with the question about which way her husband pushed her?” she asked.
“When she was talking to Thor about it on Monday, something just struck me as odd. And just now it hit me—we’ve been wondering if Alma might have had her husband shot to keep him from finding out she was black, or Chuck contracted to have her killed when he heard the news from Merritt. But what if it was more than that?”
I read to Billie from my notes. “‘That’s about when my memory of that night runs out,’ ” she said. “Then she asked Thor if it mattered.”
Billie frowned. “I’m not following you.”
“See, I think she may have had her suspicions about Zuccari even then, but us telling her about his true identity just pushed her over the edge.” I trailed Billie to her desk. “Think about it. We tell Alma Zuccari that her husband—this paragon of perfection—not only found out she was passing for white but is most likely her father, and all of a sudden she remembers on the night of the shooting that he pushed her out of the line of fire. Maybe our conversation has made her wonder if he contracted to have her killed, and pushing her was part of the plan, but she doesn’t want to admit it.”
“How on earth can we prove that?”
I brought my hand down on the original murder book from last summer. “Check the crime scene photos and witness interviews. Then talk to the uniforms on the scene, see if they remember the exact location of Alma’s body in relation to Zuccari’s.”
“How about Habiba Shareef? Maybe she saw something.”
“Good idea.”
While Billie got busy I called Thor to brief him on our interview with Alma, catching him just as he was about to leave his daughter’s house for the airport. “Good God!” he exclaimed. “Are you sure about Zuccari being Alma’s father?”
“As sure as I can be without a paternity test talking to Belle Thornton myself. The latter of which I intend to do as soon as we’re off the phone.”
“Good. I drew a diagram of the crime scene as Alma described it at the hospital, if that’ll help Billie.”
“I’ll have her compare it with the one I drew last summer. Meanwhile, I’m also going to talk to the D.A. on call, see if we should try for a court to stop Alma from pulling Zuccari off of that ventilator.”
“Is he that far gone?”
“That’s what it sounds like. And if Alma Zuccari’s as angry at what Chuck’s done to her and her mother as she ought to be, the last thing we want is her making a decision about whether he should live or die.”
20
Nothing But the Son
By the time Mario appeared in our offices on Monday morning, flanked by the attorneys Merritt and Sarkisian, our team had been at it nonstop for almost twenty-four hours, making phone calls to Belle Thornton’s nursing home in New Jersey finalizing the review of Mario’s financial records, going over Chuck Zuccari’s, getting reports in from SID’s Latent Prints and Questioned Documents technicians, and conferring on strategy and jurisdictional issues with the Feds. While Billie was tracking down the officers at the scene that night, Thor, Perkins, and I met with Mario in MIA’s office, where we’d arrayed ourselves and all the paperwork at one end of the conference table. Wunderlich and an FBI agent we’d met on Friday occupied the other end, forcing Mario and his attorneys to sit in the middle.
Before we could begin, Sarkisian said: “My client would like to make a statement.”
“Okay.” Thor raised an eyebrow at our team while Wunderlich and the FBI agent sat up a little straighter in their chairs.
Mario pulled a typed sheet out of his jacket pocket and began to read. “As long ago as last September, I began to suspect that my father, Carlo Zuccari, had entered into a conspiracy to murder Mr. Malik Shareef, a business associate.”
Looks were exchanged around the room, but no one said a word. Mario licked his lips and continued. “The reasons for his actions, I believed, stem from his belief that his wife, Alma, was having an affair with Mr. Shareef. I have since confirmed that Pete Collins, the company’s security director, introduced my father to Jeff Leykis and Luis Ybarra, convicted felons known to Mr. Collins, whom my father paid to kill Mr. Shareef.”
Last night Perkins had found canceled checks that Chuck had written to Leykis and Ybarra for twenty-five thousand each shortly before the shooting as well as several small checks Mario had written to them totalling the same amount, so Mario coming forward with his statement now was too little too late. He was about to continue when I interrupted him. “You can save the prepared statement for the press, Mr. Zuccari. How did you come by this information?”
“Ah . . .” Mario looked hesitantly to Merritt, who nodded encouragement. “Pete came to me last October, saying that Leykis and Ybarra were demanding an additional payment for an undisclosed assignment they’d undertaken for my father. It didn’t take much to figure out what their assignment was and that what they were trying to do, in essence, was extort money from the company in exchange for their silence.”
Thor smiled grimly. “And you’re in the habit of opening your checkbook for every lowlife who comes knocking on your door demanding money?” As Mario blanched, Thor added: “We’ve seen the checks you wrote to them.”
“There’d been rumors about Alma’s interest in Mr. Shareef,” Mario replied. “So I thought it best to pay them to go away. When they didn’t, I figured maybe we should hire them to watch over my father and Alma, inasmuch as I didn’t want to run the risk of retaliation from Mrs. Shareef for my father’s indiscretion.”
“Indiscretion?” Thor exclaimed, his smile growing to one of complete disbelief. “This little twerp did not call conspiracy to commit murder an indiscretion!”
At the same time, Wunderlich was saying: “That’s it. I’ve heard enough of this crap.” He gestured to his FBI colleague, who removed the handcuffs on his belt and approached the middle of the table. “Mario Zuccari, you’re under arrest for embezzlement.”
“What the—?” Merritt exclaimed as the agent pushed him aside, cuffed the protesting Mario, and moved him to their end of the table, where he sat squirming.
“Just a minute!” Sarkisian objected. “My client came here with every intention of cooperating in solving the murder of Mr. Shareef. Why are you accusing him of embezzlement?”
“Sit down and shut up, Mr. Sarkisian,” Thor ordered, while Mario was being read his rights. “I don’t know what kind of game your client is playing, but it’s over now.” He turned to Perkins. “Go on, Jackie. Tell them what we’ve got.”
“Natalie Johnson and Felton Carruthers have been conspiring for four years with one of your managers in the Phillipines to embezzle funds from the company, at a rate of one to four hundred thousand per month.” She flipped open a file and leafed through some papers. “Jose Agnafilo, a vice president in the company’s Philippine operations in Laguna, approved the phony invoices for payment to Sonrisa Safety and Security and then Johnson would countersign them, except for two or three which were countersigned by Carruthers when the amounts exceeded her authorization limit. We suspect Agnafilo then funneled the money back to accounts Johnson and Carruthers had set up here and in the Philippines, judging by the bank statements we seized from their homes.”
“Funny, your statement failed to mention any of this,” Wunderlich said to Mario, toying with him like a cat with a ball of yarn.
“We thought the LAPD was more interested in the murder than the embezzlement,” Merritt explained.
; Thor snorted. “That’s the lamest excuse I’ve heard in a long time. We’re interested in whatever Mr. Zuccari has to tell us that’s relevant to our investigation!”
“In exchange for?” Merritt asked.
“Mr. Zuccari’s in no real position to bargain,” Wunderlich replied, “given that he’s known about the embezzlement for a year and has done nothing to stop it.”
Mario’s jaw tightened as he glanced nervously at Merritt, who cleared his throat. “We’ve suspected Natalie and Felton for some time,” the attorney said. “At the board’s direction, Mario was investigating it quietly, through the company’s internal auditing department.”
“We were hoping we could get Johnson and Carruthers to make restitution,” Mario added, “and save the company and its stockholders a public scandal that could destroy shareholder value.”
“Seems your client wants to do everything quietly,” Thor said sarcastically, “even be an accessory after the fact to embezzlement and murder, as long as the company’s precious stock price isn’t compromised!”
“Wh-what are you talking about?” Mario’s voice came out in a squeak. “I had nothing to do with any of this!”
“Then how do you account for your forging Felton Carruthers’s signature on these authorizations to pay Sonrisa?” Perkins said, her hand resting on the report we’d received from Questioned Documents. “You signed them back in March of last year, a month after the audit manager from Shuttleworth and Bezney came to you with his suspicions.”
“That’s—that’s not my signature!” he sputtered. “Felton must have done that on his own.”
“Just like it’s not your signature authorizing hiring Mr. Leykis and Mr. Ybarra?” Thor asked.
“I explained why we hired them!”
“Ah, yes, the extortion,” Thor said, and shook his head. “Sorry, son, but we’re not buying it. I think you’re telling us about Leykis and Ybarra now because you knew we’d find the canceled checks you and the company wrote to them and wonder why they were being paid so handsomely. What happened—were these guys thugs you hired to shoot your father and then couldn’t get rid of after they botched the job?”
Strange Bedfellows v5 Page 25
