“You don’t want to know.”
“Connected to this?”
“I doubt it. Just a misunderstanding at the hotel. That’s why I was late.”
“You feel up to giving us a rundown on this case?”
“Sure.” I told them everything I knew and suspected about the previous night. I told them about the attorney and his young gangster companion so they would have a feeling for the opposition, if in fact that was the source, and if there really was an opposition. I told them about Peters’s death, and the missing millions, and his wife seeing him alive after he’d been cremated. I left nothing out. They were both cops. They’d both been in situations like this before and probably had over seventy years of combined experience between them. I needed their experience as much as their presence.
“It could have been just some kid,” said Thomas.
“Not with the graffiti on the car.” Farrell shook his head.
“That was a warning. And the fact that the kid didn’t leave when the maid went out. Even after you arrived. A casual prowler or a Peeping Tom would have been long gone.”
“You’re talking as if the kid in the backyard and the kid with the lawyer were the same,” I said.
Juanita finished dressing my wound and I sat up. I could see my reflection in one of the windows. A white bandage decorated the center of my forehead. Already a drop of blood leaked through. It looked like a target.
Farrell peered at me through thick lenses. “You think?”
“I’m keeping my options open. He’s my employer.”
Thomas smirked. “That’s right. He’s paying you.”
I nodded. “He’s paying you, too. Mrs. Peters is his client. Ultimately the money is coming from her, but he’s your boss, and it’s always a good idea not to screw with your boss unless you’ve got a real good reason.”
“So we look for a kid, a gangster,” said Thomas. “We look for low-rider cars because that’s what they drive. Or stolen muscle cars. That’s what they use when they drive-by. And we wait.”
“That’s what you do. And if Mrs. Peters sees something, or thinks she sees something, check it out. But don’t get into trouble.”
Farrell chuckled. “I’ve been in trouble my whole life.”
“You armed?”
“Shotguns and side arms,” said Thomas. “Big flashlights tonight. Hatley wants to rig up temporary lights in the backyard with motion sensors, something to give us an edge if somebody calls.”
“Do it. If it ever stops raining.”
“Sunny Southern California.”
“Yeah. Maybe Seattle slipped south or something. I don’t remember it raining this much when I was stationed here.”
“You were in the navy here?” Farrell squinted at me. He had baby-blue eyes like Paul Newman’s, startlingly young in the old, weathered face, except Farrell’s eyes were cold. Killer eyes.
“Naval Amfib Base, Coronado. Couple of times in the seventies and the early eighties.”
“I ever arrest you?”
“Never been arrested in this country, Mr. Farrell,” I replied. “Nothing that ever stuck, anyway.”
17
“Meester Caine, Mees Claire wants to see you.” Juanita wore a worried expression. She knew Claire would react when she saw me.
Claire had endured some great stresses over the past several months. Her habit of taking a drink before turning in or even getting slightly sloppy might or might not have been something she did before I knew her. I wasn’t the one to judge. Like Old Blue Eyes, I was a firm believer in whatever it takes to get you through the night.
I saw her as coping well. Before me, only Barbara had believed her. There were even indications that her trusted legal adviser might have set her up, betrayals piling upon betrayals.
And there were those missing seven million dollars, and a company she’d built, fallen into ruins.
On reflection, had those same blows fallen on me, one right after another, I’m not sure how I would have reacted. Probably grabbed the skeet gun and holed up in the bedroom.
“Oh, my God!” Claire said when she saw me, her face pale. “Juanita said you’d been stabbed.”
“I fell through a looking glass. Like Alice. I met the Mad Hatter and his faithful Indian companion Tonto.”
Claire stared blankly.
“Juanita took a piece of glass from my back. I couldn’t reach it. It was an accident.”
“That’s not what Juanita said. She told me you’d been attacked at your hotel.” I winced. Juanita had been there when I’d briefed Thomas and Farrell. I wondered what else she’d said, but I didn’t worry. She wouldn’t say anything to Claire that would intentionally upset her. She had to tell her boss something about my injuries because they were impossible to ignore, but I was confident she wouldn’t report my suspicions about Stevenson.
“It was just a simple tourist mugging,” I said. “It wasn’t related to you. A couple of guys picked my room out of a thousand others, probably. because they saw room service deliver and knew someone was there.”
Her eyes told me she didn’t believe me.
“It was random, Claire. Like getting hit by lightning.”
“Do you feel okay?” she asked. “Would you like a brandy?” She had a snifter next to her with only a swish of amber liquid at the bottom. A crystal decanter and an empty snifter sat next to hers.
“That sounds fine. Thank you.”
She smiled. “I didn’t think you wanted to drink with me.”
“I just didn’t want to drink that night. It didn’t matter if I didn’t drink alone, or with someone.”
Claire turned the snifter on its side and poured the brandy until it reached the brim, righted the glass, and handed it to me. She had done this before.
“Cheers.”
“And all the ships at sea,” I agreed. I sipped the brandy and immediately regretted it. The alcohol discovered a cut in my mouth I hadn’t been aware of and it burned until the brandy numbed it. I took another sip, a small one. It didn’t hurt as much.
“So how are you? I hope you’re better than you look.”
“I usually am,” I said. That was the whole truth. There wasn’t much pain, nothing a couple of aspirin couldn’t cover.
“Those men downstairs,” said Claire. “They’re so, so old. Are you sure they can do the job?”
“They were recommended by the police department. They’re both ex-cops. They’re both armed. They’ve done this before.”
“But,” she said, “they don’t look like they could run very far or very fast.”
“If they’re guarding you, you don’t want them to run.”
She nodded, a point conceded. “All right. I’ll take your word for it. You spoke to them?”
“They know what’s happening and they know how to handle the situation. You’re in no danger.”
She looked out the window as if to assure herself of my honesty. It was black outside, reminding me of the other thing I wanted to tell her.
“They want to install temporary lights in the backyard. With motion sensors. Leave the switch on and if something moves across their field, the lights will come on. It will give you some control over what you can see out there, and it will discourage a repetition of last night.”
“Okay. If you think it would help.” The tone of her voice was flat.
“I think it would be best.”
“Then fine. Let them do it.” She said it as if it were a favor she was doing them, allowing them to work on her house. “John,” she said, “I want you to move out of the hotel. I thought about it last night, but I didn’t say anything and thought I’d better think about it some more. Now with this mugging, I think we’d both be better off if you were to stay here until this thing is over.”
I was happy at the hotel, but the prowler changed the equation. A while back I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and a woman was killed because of it. I wanted to be here if something were to happen again. The only thing I
feared was losing my privacy. I needed a place to get away and think. I could insist on that when I needed it, and I could use Olympia once the paperwork was done.
“Okay,” I said.
I wondered what Stevenson would do when he heard it. Not much, I guessed, since the client was paying the bills. He didn’t want me moving in on her. He had warned me about that. Was that what I was doing?
“Stay here tonight,” she said, “and you can check out tomorrow morning.”
“Okay.”
“You went to the office today?”
“I met Adrian. He seems angry.”
“He was working under one of the finest minds in the business. Now he’s presiding over the funeral of what would have been a great company.”
“Who does he blame?”
“Me, I guess. He idolized Paul. He had dozens of offers when he graduated from Cal Tech. He came to Petersoft for only one reason. Paul. He’s very bright. Now he doesn’t know what’s going to happen. Yesterday, federal investigators were there. There’s talk that they’re going to indict me.”
“What’s your attorney say?”
“He says wait and see.”
That didn’t sound like advice I’d want to take, considering the consequences. She needed a criminal attorney, a good one, and she needed one now.
“That’s all he said?”
“He believes he and his ex—Treasury agent are closing in on the money. That will take the pressure off me if they can recover it.”
I almost asked her if she believed that, but I didn’t. I wondered if there really was an ex—Treasury agent. That would be something I could find out. If he lied about that, the rest would follow.
I switched the conversation back to Adrian. “Adrian is going to get Paul’s Day-Timers for last December. Do you have his pocket ones here at the house?”
“He used an electronic one. It had everything in it. I’m not sure, but I think it might be here. No. He had it on him when he—when the explosion occurred.” She stuttered the last phrase, and I wondered if she had started questioning what she had seen.
“I’m going to Ensenada with the police in the morning,” I said. “Finally going to Mexico.”
She nodded. “You’re going to look at Calafia?”
“And the fuel dock. And I might speak with Teniente de la Peña, for what it’s worth.”
“Be back before dark, John. I know these guys are supposed to be good, but they’re old.”
“If we’re lucky, we all get that way.”
“And if we’re not?”
“Then we find out what comes next,” I said, thinking about Kate and a green cliff face on the north shore of a beautiful tropical island in the middle of the Pacific.
18
“So what happened to you?” It was becoming a tedious question. Sergeant Gregorio Esparza was only the latest to ask, and he didn’t particularly care. To him it was just conversation.
With me in the shotgun seat of an unmarked car in the parking lot of the Southern Division station, we waited for Ambrosio Rodriguez and Manuel Menchaca, the two other members of the team, killing time by getting to know each other. The storm continued and we passed the time talking and listening to the radio. During the news, the weatherman said he was going to the zoo to investigate a report that the keepers were loading pairs of animals on a big boat that they’d built in the parking lot.
“I met a couple of your Welcome Wagon ladies yesterday. They wanted to give me some lasting memories of your fair city. They wanted donations, of course.”
“They get anything?”
“They got hurt,” I said, and gave him the short version.
“City should give you a medal,” he said. He was about say something else when a new black pickup truck skidded into the parking lot and did a three-sixty, disappearing in rooster tails of rainwater.
“That’s Ambrosio,” said Esparza. “Manny’s with him.”
The truck halted, then backed into the space next to ours. Two men jumped out.
“Here,” Esparza said, handing me his stainless-steel automatic in a black-nylon pancake holster. “Give him this.” I rolled down my window. A Hispanic man with a fierce bandito mustache and wearing a waterproof windbreaker with the hood up approached the car. When he leaned in, I handed him the pistol.
“What’s this? You greet me with a gun in your hand?”
“I’ve been told that’s the safest way,” I replied, watching the mustache levitate as he smiled.
“Ambrosio Rodriguez,” said Esparza, making the introduction, “this is John Caine, the private eye I told you about.”
“Oh, yeah? The guy from Hawaii? Pleased to meet you.” We shook hands through the window. He had a strong grip, but not punishing. He was letting me know I was all right, a member of the club. “Let me put this away,” he said, referring to the automatic. “You got anything on you? Any weapons?”
“Just a Buck knife,” I said.
“That’s not a weapon.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Whatever. What happened to you?”
“Ran into a door.”
Esparza laughed and Ambrosio disappeared. The rain cointinued falling, sheeting the windshield. Visibility was dismal and dropped even more when heavy gusts of wind increased the velocity of the rain.
“Let’s go, amigo!” Both rear doors opened and the two men jumped in. “Man, it’s raining out there!” Ambrosio slammed his door. “This is Manny Menchaca. He’s a little wet. He’s been climbing trees.”
The other policeman was trying to dry his long black hair by slicking it back with his hands like squeezing a sponge. Water poured down his back. His jacket was soaked through, the leather saturated as if he’d been out in the elements for hours.
“Nice to meet you,” said Manny. “We had a couple of errands to run this morning. Sorry we’re late.”
“We got her!” Ambrosio said, smiling. “Snapped her picture!”
“Three rolls,” added Manny. “It was raining so hard she never knew we were there.” There Was pride in his voice. “We were in a tree across the street. Nobody even looked.”
“Got tape, too?” Esparza was grinning.
“Yep. Audio’s shitty. The rain is background. Just about all white noise. But she’s on there. Got her doing the dirty deed. Red-handed. If it ain’t all it should be, maybe the lab can clean it up.”
Esparza backed out of the space and squinted ahead. The windshield wipers weren’t keeping up with the deluge. He was a very cautious driver. He slowly pulled into traffic and I wondered if we might reach our destination before nightfall.
“We’ve been working on a sensitive investigation,” Esparza explained. “A local politician with her hand out. Last night Manny heard rumors of a payoff. A where and a when. Came from a good source inside her office. Not only is she dishonest, she’s a bitch, too. It’ll make some people very happy to see her go down. Guess it was worth standing around for a couple of hours in the rain.”
“Says the man who spent the morning in the office,” said Manny, grinning.
“Fuckin’ A, man,” Ambrosio said.
“Rank still has some privileges.” Esparza grinned, watching the road ahead and keeping a death grip on the wheel.
“Where we going?”
“Ensenada, Manny.” Esparza glanced at me, then turned his attention back to the road. “We’ve got a stolen truck report. Guy said it was stolen out of his driveway. Not unusual for this border town.” He eased the big Chevrolet onto the freeway, toward Mexico. Traffic was heavy but he found a spot and slipped in. “Ambrosio here, he finds out the same truck was involved in a rollover in Mexico and totaled the day it was supposed to be stolen from San Diego. American insurance isn’t any good down there. This guy can’t collect. So Ambrosio thinks, well, maybe the guy doesn’t want to be out twenty thousand dollars or so, so he reports it stolen. He’s got a nasty, suspicious mind, does Ambrosio.”
“Yeah. Spent too much time
dealing with the public.”
“Ambrosio checks. Yep, federales have a report. And they have a name and a photograph of the guy who was driving, on account of he was arrested. That’s standard if you get into an accident, you know, whether you have insurance or not. You get into a fender bender, you go to jail in Mexico. If someone’s injured, even if it’s you, it’s a felony without insurance. Only your friendly insurance agent can get you out.
“Maybe this guy doesn’t have Mexican insurance, so he sees some way to get out of it, get his investment back. Maybe he’s greedy. Maybe just stupid. No matter. We’re going to spend fifteen minutes with the policia federales del caminos and then come back and put the cuffs on this guy for insurance fraud. That’s a felony up here.”
“And that’s what you do?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes’ other things.”
“Yeah,” said Manny, “like hanging around in a tree during the mother of all thunderstorms.”
“We’re mostly liaison between Mexico and San Diego. Sometimes we work with the feds, too, but—”
“But we try not to,” Ambrosio added.
“—but we spend most of our time assisting the Mexican police, either up here or down there, and having them assist us when we’ve got something going down there.”
“Like this insurance fraud.”
“Like that.” Esparza began slowing as we approached the border. In the median, a sign proclaimed GUNS ARE ILLEGAL IN MEXICO.
“We were in Anaheim yesterday, taking a couple of the federal judicial police up there to find one of their bad guys.”
“Found him, too.” Ambrosio’s bandito mustache rose a couple of notches as he smiled again.
“Yeah. That was satisfying.”
“What was he wanted for?”
“Murder. Killed his girlfriend and her parents. Then went north.”
“Oh.” It gave me a different perspective, hearing this. You hear about people committing crimes north of the border and heading south. It was like looking into a mirror. I’d never thought about it working the other way. Also, the specter of Mexican law enforcement crossing north to our side wasn’t something I’d considered before.
Sand Dollars Page 10
