Calculated Risk (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  “How’s Janet working out?” Friedman asked. It was a bland question, but Hastings knew where it was leading. He decided on a first strike:

  “She’s doing great. She’s smart, and she works hard. She’s a good interrogator, too. She has a feel for it. She knows when to keep quiet and listen.”

  “She’s also got a feeling for keeping the guys in the squadroom in line. With a body like hers, that’s a neat trick.”

  Finishing his own coffee, Hastings made no reply. He knew there was more.

  “Some guys,” Friedman said, “seem to doubt their masculinity if they aren’t hitting on good-looking women. But like I said, Janet handles it just right. I hear, a few years back, when she was in Bunco, she got involved with Kellerman, in Vice. That was before he took the job with the feds. The affair cost her, but she learned from it. Which is where I started with this—complimenting her. She’s cultivated the light touch, and most of the guys are happy to go along. She’s liked, is what I’m saying. She plays by the rules.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say it.”

  “But then …” Friedman dropped his voice to a more significant note. They’d come, Hastings knew, to the crux of the matter: “Then,” Friedman repeated, “inevitably, there’re the assholes. Marsten, for instance.”

  Hastings began drawing designs on the white tablecloth with the tines of his fork.

  “Marsten,” Friedman said, “has a plan. As always.”

  No response.

  “Marsten is after your job,” Friedman said. “As always. Except that, this time around, he figures he’s got an angle.”

  Hastings concentrated on embellishing the tablecloth design.

  “He figures you lust after Janet Collier. Therefore, he figures that if he really comes on to her, makes a big thing of it in the squadroom, then you’ll get involved. Which, obviously, would be a big mistake. Which is exactly what Marsten wants you to do—make a big mistake.” Friedman paused for emphasis. Then, speaking with quiet precision: “Which is why, of course, office romances are a bad idea.”

  Still working on the design, eyes lowered, carefully considering his response, Hastings waited until he was sure the other man had finished. Then, raising his eyes, he said, “We talked about this when we hired her, Pete. That’s almost three months ago.”

  “The first year’s always provisional.”

  “Does that mean you want to send her back to Bunco? Is that what you’re saying?” Hastings made no effort to hide his sudden flare of anger.

  “It means,” Friedman said, his voice dead level, “that she’s been here for three months. She’s due for a review.”

  “Her work is first-rate.”

  Friedman nodded solemnly. “No question. None.”

  “But it’s not her work we’re talking about.”

  Deeply reluctant, Friedman drew a long breath. “That’s true, Frank. We aren’t talking about Janet’s work.”

  “We’re talking about me.”

  Once more, Friedman nodded. For a long moment they stared at each other across the remains of their lunch. Finally Friedman spoke: “We’ve never discussed it in so many words, but after all these years, I figure we’re friends. I figure that we care what happens to each other.”

  “Of course.” It was an exasperated response. But a quick glance at Friedman’s face revealed that the other man understood the exasperation, no damage done.

  “Which is why,” Friedman went on, “I feel compelled to tell you that, from where I sit, it looks to me like you’re making a mistake. Which is to say, it looks to me like you and Janet are an item.” He let a beat pass, hopeful of a response. When none came, he said, “Now, in ordinary circumstances, we wouldn’t even be talking about this. But the point is, these aren’t ordinary circumstances. These are problems that could affect the smooth-running operation of what I like to think is one of the best homicide operations in the country.”

  “What d’you mean by ‘item’?” Hastings was satisfied with his dead-level response.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I guess you know,” Hastings answered, “that you’re about the only person I’d even be discussing this with.”

  “I take that as a compliment. So thanks.”

  For another moment Hastings stared at the other man. Then, in precisely measured phrases, he said, “Janet and I were on the scene in the Rivak suicide, and we were both shook up. She’d never seen a dead one, and I’d never had brains spattered on my shirt. We helped each other through it, and I admired the way she handled herself. During the next few weeks, I realized that I was—ah—thinking a lot about her. She was still in Bunco, and I realized that I was making excuses to see her, talk to her. In other words, I was hooked. So …” As if he were admitting to something shameful, he dropped his eyes. But, doggedly now, he continued:

  “So we went out after work to that Chinese restaurant on Harrison—the Jade Palace—and we talked. I told her where I stood—which is living with Ann and paying child support for my two kids in Michigan. She told me where she stood, which is being a single mother to a teenager named Charlie, and no child support from her no-good ex-husband. Also, she helps support her mother. So …” With the hard part over, Hastings drew a deep breath, spoke with an air of finality. “So after a couple cups of tea and a couple of potstickers, we decided that, even though we’d like to get it on, we wouldn’t do it. We made the decision reluctantly. Very, very reluctantly.”

  Friedman permitted himself a small smile before he said, “That’s a remarkable story, Frank. Really. It—Christ—it reads like an old-fashioned novel. I admire you. Janet, too. Of course …” The smile widened slightly. “Of course, where it’s all going to lead, virtue over libido, that’s something else. But for now”—he glanced at his watch, then pushed back his chair—“but for now, we’ve at least cleared the air. Which was, after all, the purpose of the exercise.”

  Also pushing back his chair, Hastings smiled ruefully. “Some exercise. I’m glad I’m not paying the check.”

  “Hmmm.”

  9

  ABOUT TO RISE WHEN Janet Collier entered the office—a gentleman’s conditioned response—Friedman caught himself and merely nodded cordially as he gestured her to a chair at the opposite end of Hastings’s desk. Hastings was also smiling, watching her move, as she placed a half dozen manila file folders on one corner of the desk. Today she wore pleated twill slacks, utilitarian leather shoes with lug soles, a turtleneck, and a light doeskin leather jacket, thigh-length. The jacket was buttoned over the nine-millimeter Glock semiautomatic she carried holstered at the small of her back. She would also be carrying handcuffs, a pager, ten spare rounds of nine-millimeter solid-points, and the tiny surveillance radio newly issued to all inspectors. As always, she wore her dark brown hair in a ponytail. No lipstick, no eyeshadow. No fun and games. She had knocked on Hastings’s door at two o’clock, exactly the time of their meeting.

  “So,” Hastings said, smiling at her. “How’d it go, today?”

  “You were right,” she said. “Carpenter wanted to talk. Badly. As soon as he got into the car, on the way to the morgue, he started to talk—and talk. It was like we were the last two people on earth, honest to God. If I’d thought, I would’ve brought a wire, just so I wouldn’t forget any of it.” As she spoke, her dark, vivid eyes came alight with excitement. Hastings realized that she was experiencing the same quickening he’d felt working his first case from its inception. Like Janet, he’d only been in Homicide for a few months. A rapist had killed a teenager in the parking lot behind a four-screen movie house at the southern end of town. Hastings had been the first detective on the scene, making him the officer of record. And, yes, at the end it had been his collar, too: a sixteen-year-old straight-A student who heard voices. One of the voices was his dead father’s. Another was a neighbor’s Rottweiler.

  “Suppose you start at the beginning,” Friedman said.

  Collier nodded, opened the topmost manila folder, w
ithdrew a pad of yellow legal paper. Hastings caught a glimpse of her handwriting. Predictably, he thought, the writing was small and precise.

  “I got to Carpenter’s place about nine thirty this morning,” she began. “He was all dressed, ready to go. He said he hadn’t slept all night. He looked terrible, very thin, bad complexion. Those skin blotches—” Impatient with herself, she shook her head. “I can’t remember the name, but it’s typical of AIDS. Carpez syndrome, something like that. I’ll look it up, before I start writing my report.” She looked at Friedman, in a perfectionist’s apology. Friedman shrugged, nodded, flipped a casual hand.

  “We’d no sooner got in the car,” she continued, “than he started in on his life story. He was raised in New Canaan, in Connecticut. His father was in advertising, a big shot. His mother, I gather, was very social. There was a lot of money. The father made a lot, and the mother inherited a lot. Randy was an only child and was mostly raised by nannies. His father worked in New York, where he kept an apartment. According to Randy, both his parents played around, had a series of love affairs. The three of them took separate vacations, he kept talking about that. His mother would go to Bermuda, or wherever, maybe to meet a man, and his father’d go to Europe. Randy, meanwhile, went to camps—all kinds of camps. He was very bitter about that—summer camps, ski camps, sailing camps. Anything to get rid of him. Plus, of course, boarding schools, where he’d mostly stay at the school over Christmas.”

  “Poor little rich kid,” Friedman said.

  “Exactly. And the other kids—his classmates—never liked him. Apparently when he was still very young—nine, ten years old—it was pretty clear that he was homosexual. Meaning that his classmates made his life miserable.

  “Apparently, though, he was good at drawing and painting. His father started as an art director, in advertising, so maybe it was genetic. Anyhow, when Randy was in prep school, he started to get serious about art. Then he went to college and majored in fine arts. By that time, I think he’d come to terms with his homosexuality. Meaning that I think he came out when he was in college. Or anyhow, he had a few homosexual experiences.”

  “You say he came out when he was in college. Does that mean that his parents knew he was gay?”

  “By that time,” Collier said, “Carpenter’s parents had divorced and both had remarried. His mother, in fact, remarried twice. I don’t think they cared what he did. His father’s secretary sent him a check once a month, and that was it. His mother lives in Switzerland. Or maybe it’s Sweden.” She frowned at her notes, shuffled the sheets of yellow legal paper.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Hastings said. “We’ll be talking to him again.” He gestured. “Go ahead. Let’s finish this.”

  She glanced at him sharply. Was it a rebuke? Or well-meant guidance? His smile suggested the latter. But with Friedman watching, she must not return the smile.

  “When he got out of college,” she said, “he lived in Europe for a year or two. Then he came to San Francisco. He became a commercial artist—illustrating, graphics. He went to work for an art service and did very well. I think he was happy for the first time in his life. San Francisco was the place to be, for homosexuals. It still is, of course.”

  “Except,” Friedman said, “that about half the populace hates the gays. Among which populace, more than likely, there’s the guy we’re looking for.”

  “What about Charles Hardaway?” Hastings asked. “Did Carpenter talk about him?”

  “Oh, God, yes.” Her voice weighed heavily with sympathy. “It was heartbreaking.”

  “When I talked to him,” Hastings said, “Carpenter told me that Hardaway had been married. He had a child.”

  She nodded. “His ex-wife’s name is Doris. She lives in Detroit. There’s a son, too—eleven years old. And Hardaway had a sister.” Once more, she riffled the Yellow Pages. “Helen. She’s thirty-something, and lives in Los Angeles. She’s a social worker. Carpenter called her after we left, and she’s coming to San Francisco today or tomorrow. Apparently she was very sympathetic to her brother.”

  “How about Hardaway’s parents?” Friedman asked. “Have they been notified?”

  “Helen will call them, Carpenter says.”

  “How old was Hardaway?”

  “Thirty-five. He was a draftsman.” She recited the names of his employers, past and present. “According to Carpenter, he was good at what he did. Very conscientious.”

  “According to Carpenter,” Hastings said dryly, “Charles was perfect. Beautiful, too.”

  “God.” As if to acknowledge defeat, an admission of guilt, Friedman shook his head. “I have to admit it. I can’t—” For once at a loss, Friedman shook his head in bafflement. “I just don’t understand how two guys can—” He broke off, glanced at Janet Collier, shook his head.

  “It’s companionship,” Janet said. “Everybody needs somebody.” As she said it, she avoided Hastings’s eyes.

  Hastings pointed to the manila folders. “What else’ve you got?”

  She opened a folder that contained clipped-together sets of documents. “Hardaway’s bills, mostly,” she said. “And some ads, clipped from magazines. They have a very elaborate sound system, and a lot of the ads are for stereo equipment. Also bank statements and check stubs, plus statements from three mutual funds. There’s an address book, too.”

  “Have you returned the originals to Carpenter?” Friedman asked.

  “Not yet. There hasn’t been time. Besides, I wondered whether, legally, Hardaway’s sister—Helen—should have them.”

  Hastings unclipped his sheaf of papers, found copies of bank statements for the past three months. The statement for the month just past carried a balance of more than three thousand dollars. Next came bank-card statements from Visa, Discover, Chevron, and Texaco. Both the Visa and the Discover cards carried sizable running balances in three figures. The Chevron balance was almost two hundred dollars.

  Also studying the documents, Friedman said, “Looks like he owed about as much money as he had in the bank.”

  “Look at the bank balance for February,” Collier suggested. “Look at the deposits.”

  Hastings flipped the pages, found the statement. On the third and the sixteenth of the month, there were deposits of $1,183.40, obviously salary checks.

  On the eighteenth of the month, and again on the twenty-third, Hardaway had made identical deposits of seven thousand five hundred dollars.

  On the twenty-fifth, three checks for five thousand dollars each had been written.

  “In March, just the two salary checks were deposited. But now look at April,” Collier said. “Last month.”

  During April, Hardaway had deposited two salary checks, plus two deposits of five thousand dollars. In addition to miscellaneous checks drawn on the account during April, there was a round-number check written for ten thousand dollars.

  “Anyone giving odds that those four big deposits were for cash?” Friedman asked.

  Thoughtfully, Hastings riffled the pages before him. “So Charles Hardaway had something going on the side, it looks like.”

  “Twenty-five thousand in three months.” Friedman, too, riffled pages. “That comes to a hundred thousand a year. Plus his salary as a draftsman.”

  On a notepad, Hastings doodled the numbers: 7500—7500—5000—5000.

  “All even amounts,” he mused. “Very neat.”

  “There’s more.” Collier opened another folder, waved a sheaf of financial documents. “He had three mutual funds. There’s one money-market fund, one stock fund, and one bond fund. And, yes, deposits in the three funds correspond exactly to the four round-number checks we’re seeing in his account.”

  Friedman turned to Hastings. “Do you think Randy Carpenter would know if Hardaway was selling drugs?”

  “I think he would,” Hastings answered. “The feeling I got—their apartment—it was all shared. Everything suggested they knew all about each other.”

  “It could be,” Janet Collier
said, “that the money came from Hardaway’s family.”

  Dubiously, Hastings shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not according to what Carpenter said last night. No way.”

  For a moment, the three sat in silence. Finally Friedman said, “So what we’ve got, maybe, is drugs. Which would be a built-in motive for murder, never mind gay-bashing. Hardaway burned someone, and got killed.”

  Hastings pointed to Collier’s file folders. “Give me the originals. I’ll take them to Carpenter. That’ll be a good excuse to talk to him again.”

  “Do you—” Collier hesitated, glanced covertly at Friedman before she asked Hastings: “Do you want me to come with you?”

  Also glancing at Friedman, whose gaze studiously avoided them both, Hastings shook his head. “No. I want you to work on Hardaway’s bank account. Those big deposits—were they cash, or checks? Don’t let the bank jerk you around. The branch manager can get the information in an hour. They don’t like to do it—turn over records without a court order—but they can.” He glanced at his watch: almost three o’clock. “You’d better get on it.” He gave her his card, the one with his home phone number. It was a reflex, part of the procedure. Only when she took the card, and he saw her expression flicker, did he realize the significance of offering her the card—an entrée into his private life. His life, and Ann’s life. But he’d trapped himself; he could only go forward, play out the hand: “Call me at home, if it’s after six.”

  Brusquely, he turned to Friedman, who pointed to a spare set of documents as he said to Hastings, “Why don’t you tell Canelli to work on Hardaway’s address book? The entries are pretty sketchy. You know—‘Bob’ and a phone number. ‘Mechanic,’ ‘Cleaners.’ But there might be something. You know—like ‘CC’ and a number. For ‘Crack Connection.’”