Severed Relations

by Rebecca Forster

  "How did you get there? You took the car, didn't you? Didn't you?"

  Mort shook Medium Man but all the man did was blubber, and sob, and roll away and clutch at himself. Now Medium Man was sorry that Mort had come to see him. Mort wasn't being nice. Still, he would be so alone if Mort left and he wouldn't have any work. It had been hard enough hooking up with Mort in the first place. So Medium Man cried and cried thinking about Mort leaving, and his dead boy, and being out of work. Mort sat back on his heels and shook his head. It was a pitiful sound to hear a man cry. It was even more pitiful to hear Medium Man cry. Even though Mort was very tired, he knew he had to rally and take care of things.

  "Where'd you do it?" Mort asked.

  "A couple of blocks down. In an alley," Medium Man sobbed.

  "Okay. Okay." Mort patted the other man's shoulder. Then he took Medium Man's hands in his. He crossed them, wrist over wrist and held them tight. He promised: "I'll find him. You don't worry, okay?"

  "Aw, Mort, you'd do that for me? You're like a brother to me. Just like a brother." Medium Man said, rolling over and showing Mort a tear stained face.

  "Yeah, I'm a real prince."

  Medium Man smiled at his one, true friend. He looked like a beaten puppy that still stupidly hopes his abuser will pet him. Mort held Medium Man's hands in one of his. He gave them a little shake, looked at his compadre and said:

  "Hush now."

  The apartment building was brick, and there was no doubt it would collapse when the big one hit. Rotting fire escapes zigzagged up the side. Windows were open, catching nothing more than noise and dead air. People driving the freeway could look into the windows, but even at a crawl they would be gone too fast to fully appreciate the unique poverty and epic marginalization of the people who lived in this place. To the right and left of it were similar buildings, some with their windows blown out, some abandoned, some partially inhabited. One or two were under renovation. They were being turned into lofts. Young professionals would buy them in the hopes of staying alive long enough to see the area gentrified so they could turn a profit on their property.

  There was a shoe repair shop to the left of the entrance of the building and a liquor store half a block down and across the street. Finn took the liquor store and Cori the shoe repair. When Finn came back Cori said:

  "The cobbler hardly spoke English. I got nothing."

  "No worries. Our man bought a fifth of Jim Beam. Came in all bloody. He scared the guy in the liquor store half to death, but he said Kramer just pointed, paid and went on his way. He knows he went this way because he watched to make sure he wasn't coming back."

  "What time?"

  "About five-thirty this morning," Finn said.

  "Let's do it, then," Cori said.

  Finn needed no more encouragement. He opened the narrow glass door that was scourged with graffiti. At one time there had been a doorknob but now there was only a round hole. Inside, the tiny lobby smelled of pee and smoke and sadness. The linoleum was cracked and peeling. Cori made for the mailboxes. Half of them were rusted shut, the other half hung open. Cori looked at apartment 201 but Kramer hadn't bothered to put his name on the box if he did live there.

  They started up the stairs and the climbing was hard. The building was narrow and the builder had created an unnatural rise on the steps. The carpet was ripped, the stairs underneath concrete and the handrail wobbly. Finn was fairly certain that if they fell their heads would be cracked open long before they hit the linoleum.

  The second floor was no different than the first. The air was close and hot, the light dim.

  "They ought to nuke this place," Cori muttered.

  Finn didn't disagree but he wasn't in a chatty frame of mind. They passed a payphone. Cori stuck a finger in the coin slot but it was empty. Finn got a step ahead of her so she caught up with him and took hold of the sleeve of his jacket. He stopped and looked at her.

  "Do you want to call for a car?" she said.

  "Lot of good it did us last time. You all right with that?"

  "Yes."

  Finn gave her hand a pat and they made their final approach. Cori moved ahead of Finn and positioned herself to the left of the door. Finn put himself on the right. He unzipped his jacket and retrieved his weapon; Cori strapped her purse across her body, opened it and got her gun. Finn raised his fist to knock but the minute he touched the door it opened an inch. He and Cori made eye contact. Finn put up his chin warning her to wait.

  "Mr. Kramer. LAPD. We'd like to have a word with you, sir." Cori looked over her shoulder. The doors pocking the hallway stayed shut. Finn called again: "Mr. Kramer, sir."

  When the response again was silence, Finn took a deep and silent breath. He pushed open the door and both of them lay tighter against their respective walls. In the next second when they weren't met with gunfire and no knife was flung at them, when they didn't hear the window being wrenched up as Kramer tried to go down the fire escape, they moved in, split-stepped, and gave the space a cop's once over.

  The apartment was dark, the shades drawn. There was a bathroom on the right near Finn but it was small and there was nowhere for anybody to hide. There was a couch, a chair and, on a mattress under the window, a fully clothed man. He was face down, his legs sprawled, his toes touched the floor, and his hands were underneath him. There was an empty bottle of booze on the floor beside the mattress. A shaft of sunlight wove its way through the drawn blinds and landed atop the man's head making him look like he had been scalped.

  "Mr. Kramer. LAPD."

  Finn locked his right arm to steady his weapon. Sweat trickled down his back. The gun felt like a stone in his hand. A prone man, a silent man, was no promise of an easily controlled man. He moved to the head of the mattress. Cori kicked at the man's foot.

  "Out cold." Cori trained her weapon on him as Finn holstered his. He bent from the waist and took hold of Kramer's shoulder to flip him but the man was damn heavy. He used both hands.

  "Mr. Kramer. Come, my friend," he said. "Wake up now and talk to us."

  Just then the man went over hard and Finn swore.

  "Ah, Mother of God."

  Cori's shoulder's slumped. She put her gun back in her purse and stood staring at the blood soaked mattress and the man's wrists that were cut deep and clean. Finn put two fingers to his throat.

  "Gone to God, he is," Finn said.

  "Least he didn't leave much of a mess," Cori said. "They'll have this place rented by tomorrow."

  Cori was right. John Kramer had known where to cut, rolled onto his stomach, and bled into the mattress beneath him. They would toss the mattress and that would be it, the end of Mr. Kramer as the world knew him. Except the world didn't know him. No one, it seemed, knew anything about this guy except for a boy who was lying in the morgue and a person with red hair. Without this man it was going to be hard to find the ginger. As Finn pondered their next step, Finn saw the knife that was wedged between the wall and the top of the mattress. He picked it up, careful to use only the tips of his fingers on the hilt. He held it in the shaft of light coming through the blinds. The blood on the finely honed blade sparkled and Finn O'Brien knew he had been wrong about where this man was headed. The knick at the end of that blade was pointing the way directly to hell.

  CHAPTER 41

  DAY 9 – LATE AFTERNOON

  They had been busy bees, calling for the meat wagon, directing the techs to go over the place with a fine-tooth comb in the hopes of identifying prints that might lead them to the red haired man who had been in the Barnett's house with John Kramer. By the time everyone arrived, Cori and Finn had already done a thorough sweep. There was little enough to see in the place: some clothes, processed food, a few dishes, a comic book, playing cards, and newspapers. Lots of newspapers. It did not escape their notice that the article about the Barnett girls' funeral and the one about the reward were set aside.

  When they were done, they headed back to Wilshire to assure Captain Fowler all was not lost and tha
t they would have DNA in a few short days to match against that under the nanny's nails, they would have confirmation on the knife as one of the murder weapons and they would move heaven and hell to get a handle on who John Kramer was, and his known associates. Finn assured their captain that they were closer to a press conference where he could put this matter to rest and the ladies of Fremont Place could be assured that all was right with the world again.

  "I'm going to hit the little girl's room," Cori said as they went down the hall. "Then I'll check in with Earl and see if they pulled up anything on Kramer yet."

  Finn nodded and went on to their office, wishing they had been assigned space in the bullpen. At times like this it was good to be with your own kind, drawing energy from the work of others. But an office was his home for now and when Finn turned into it he found that it was smaller still because another big man was sitting in his chair.

  He was tall and narrow, where Finn was broad of shoulder and solid. This man's eyes were green and startling in his pale, narrow face. They were the only things Finn saw at first because his low brows and short lashes were so light as to be almost nonexistent. His hair was cropped close like a man who had seen service and it was red – not fiery red or even ginger but strawberry. He was conservatively well dressed in a dark suit and red tie. His shoes were spit shined. Finn knew this because those shoes were on his desk, this man's ankles crossed to show them off to their best advantage.

  "You're in my chair, friend," Finn said as he took off his jacket and hung it on the hook behind the door.

  The man's feet dropped. He apologized even though he looked none too sorry. "Nobody knew when you'd be back so I made myself at home."

  "What are you? Internal affairs? I warn you now, I'm not quite feeling it for Internal Affairs just at the moment."

  Finn stared down the man until he got the idea that he was in Finn's way. He stood up, shuffled around Finn to the other side of the desk, and sat in Cori's chair. Finn decided he had no manners and should be invited to go about his business elsewhere. Before Finn could move him on, he said:

  "Have you done something Internal Affairs would find interesting?"

  "If you have to ask that, then you are not one of them," Finn replied.

  The man reached over and put out his hand.

  "Taylor. SEC. Security and Exchange Commission."

  Finn's eyebrow rose. He took the man's hand and shook it.

  "O'Brien–"

  "Hey, O'Brien, we've got–" Cori came into the office with her nose buried in a ream of paper but she stopped short and glared at Taylor.

  "You're in my chair."

  Taylor got up again.

  "You people are touchy about your chairs."

  "Detective Anderson, this is Taylor. SEC. I was just about to ask to what do we owe the pleasure."

  "And I was about to tell you that I came to talk about Eros Manufacturing," he said and then he looked around. "Think I could get a chair?"

  "…so we took note of the activity. Your people were searching files on that company and we had it flagged. Then when you visited their offices, we really got interested. We'd like to know what your interest is in Eros?"

  "Why didn't you just call and ask?" Finn said.

  "I did, but you never returned the call," Taylor shifted in his chair. The only one Cori could find was straight backed and made of wood and she got the feeling Taylor was used to something a little cushier.

  "Sorry about that. Sometimes things coming to me get misplaced," Finn said.

  "I don't mind getting out of the office now and again to see how the other half lives," Taylor said. "So, what's your interest in Eros?"

  Finn swiveled and chanced a glance at Cori. The edge of her lip ticked up. She crossed her legs and her arms, as curious as he was.

  "We're investigating a triple murder involving a family: two children and a nanny. We've run down a possible problem with the mother and her work at a mental health clinic. That was a dead end. The nanny was dealing porn overseas, but we're not liking that link. The father is an attorney named Sam Barnett. He and the missus were over in Europe when this happened.

  "We are thinking there might be some involvement between the attorney and the nanny so we were running down European connections. We also talked to his former partner who indicated that Eros Manufacturing was the client that broke up the partnership. He wouldn't tell us what the problem was; he would only say there was a difference of opinion about taking them on. I went to the Eros offices hoping to find out what made the place a hot button, but I didn't get anything. The only intersection is that Mr. Barnett has been to Switzerland and the nanny shipped product to Switzerland. We're not into her computer yet so we have nothing to cross-reference with Barnett. Eros doesn't even have a sales rep in those countries. It looks like that's a dead end, too."

  Finn opened his hands and bounced a little in his chair.

  "I intend to go back to the ex-partner and see if I can get a more satisfactory answer out of him about the beef he and Barnett had over this client. We are getting desperate for a motive. My gut is telling me Barnett is somehow involved. My partner isn't so sure, and that's it."

  "I think you are on the right track, but it doesn't have anything to do with porn." Taylor said. "The Swiss connection is solid but it's more complicated than that. PolyGain is a conglomerate headquartered in Zurich and that's where we're looking. It owns a number of other companies that supply parts for airplanes, cars, and buses – pretty much anything that moves. Widgets are big business, but none has a bigger widget business than PolyGain."

  "Barnett is an attorney for PolyGain? He's successful, but that puts his practice on another level," Finn noted.

  "PolyGain isn't his client, at least they aren't on the books," Taylor answered. "Mr. Barnett and others like him are retained to buy up stock in small companies. Eros isn't Barnett's client, it's his mark. Barnett's clients don't exist except as straw men for PolyGain. He handles all the legalities, stock transfers, etcetera, but what he is really doing is helping PolyGain monopolize the manufacturing market for items that control every form of mass transportation in the world. We are talking about knobs, levers, bolts, nuts, transformers. Barnett is buying up Eros stock for Polygain."

  Cori whistled. Finn was impressed, too.

  "They could shut down every train, airplane, car, and bus if they wanted," Finn said.

  "And that makes for a heck of a lot of leverage with every government in the world. No wonder hammers cost a grand," Cori said.

  "So you see why we wanted to intervene before you went too much further," Taylor said. "I needed to find out what you had."

  "Is Barnett going to be indicted?" Finn asked.

  "Not yet. We hope to get indictments in home countries simultaneously. We can't touch PolyGain without a few squealers." Taylor lost the half amused tone and got down to brass tacks. "The Barnett murders showed up on my desk three days ago. I didn't think much of it–"

  "You're a hard man, Taylor, if it didn't give you more than a pause," Finn noted.

  "As a human being I sympathized, as an agent it meant nothing to my investigation," Taylor responded. "So I was curious about what you were thinking when you moved into our territory and that was all. Then this morning something else came across my desk. There was an attorney in Italy who was cooperating. His house blew up killing the entire family. It looks like someone's trying to shut down our investigation the old fashioned way."

  "We've got two survivors on our end." Cori picked up the phone and dialed. She listened and then cut the call off.

  "Mrs. Barnett isn't answering."

  She dialed again and spoke to Barnett's secretary who said he was at home. Cori made one more call and then said:

  "Barnett isn't answering either."

  "I'll take her." Finn got up and reached for his jacket. "Cori, you get him. You have the mister's new address?"

  "I'm on it," she said as she grabbed her jacket and purse.

  T
aylor was up, too. He stepped in front of the door.

  "Hey. Hey. Hold up a minute," he said. "Don't go off half-cocked and compromise my investigation. You can corral them, but you make sure what I told you about PolyGain stays under wraps."

  Finn smiled and set him aside. "As I said, a superior human being, Mr. Taylor."

  Cori hurried out the door only a step behind Finn. The last thing he and Cori heard was a warning from the SEC agent.

  "You don't know who you're dealing with."

  Finn almost laughed at that. He had a damn good idea who he was dealing with. A dirty attorney named Sam Barnett.

  CHAPTER 42

  DAY 9 – EARLY EVENING

  There were four gardeners finishing their work when Finn drove up to the Barnett house. He parked behind the truck at the curb, got out, put on his jacket and breathed in the scent of grass clippings. The lawn was as neat as a putting green; the bushes pruned as precisely as a Brazilian wax.

  The man with a blower turned it aside while the detective went by. The house was quiet, the curtains drawn. It was a massive thing, too big even for a family. Now it was in danger of becoming Elizabeth Barnett's mausoleum and Finn was glad he was here to take her away. He rang the bell and when the door opened, the words of greeting for the missus were never uttered.

  "Mr. Barnett," Finn said.

  "What is it?" There was no pretense of civility.

  "Detective Anderson is on her way to your apartment."

  He stepped onto the porch and half closed the door. "What's going on?"

  "We have reason to believe that both of you might be in some danger. We want to get you some place safe until we figure out what's going on. So, if you would collect your wife–"

  "Either you tell me the nature of this threat or you get out of here. I've got my hands full with Elizabeth as it is."

  Sam Barnett gave Finn no more than thirty-seconds to answer before he stepped back inside and started to close the door. Finn put his hand out and stopped him.