Hardboiled Crime Four-Pack

by Jack Bunker

“How would Nathaniel Strain know that?”

  “How do you think Lana met Gary in the first place? He was at a party at Nate’s house.”

  My glass stops halfway to my lips. “Nathaniel Strain and Gary Cogswell knew each other before Cogswell met Lana?” Visions of conspirators dance in my head.

  “Are you kidding? Gary’s older brother was Nate’s roommate at Yale. Nate and Gary have been golf buddies for years. I’ll bet they still play.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  I guess Gary Cogswell is not as fond of reunions as his old friend and classmate Jack Angel, because I was told to come alone. And that’s how I feel as I walk into the Odessa Social Club. Very alone.

  I’m wearing the same old suit I had on when I met Vlad the Impaler, but this time I’m wearing a tie and leather shoes, and I spent thirteen fifty to have my suit cleaned and pressed. I was lucky to get a parking space just a few feet from the club because more than thirty seconds between my car and the door, and I’d be drenched in sweat.

  It’s the same time of day as it was the last time I was here, so the same stab of sunlight hits the back table at the same angle, only this time it spotlights Cogswell. He’s sitting where Bakatin had been, minus the pirogies. Not even a glass of water. There’s just a blank, white-linen cloth on the table in front of him. No setups, no salt, no pepper. The message is clear. He’s not here to linger over lunch.

  His face is the same kind of blank as the table. Cold. Unwelcoming. Unrevealing. He stares right at me. No games. No pretense. State my business and get out.

  Big Ugly Guy and Bigger Ugly Guy stand up from opposite sides of the room, closing ranks to slam the castle gate. I get a sense of déjà vu and wonder if this move was choreographed. Maybe they have a practice session every morning. Maybe they rehearsed it before I walked in. They exude the stench of stale smoke, even through the tobacco cloud that fills the room. I can almost feel the pollution soak into my newly cleaned suit.

  “Gentlemen, please,” says Cogswell. He speaks in a soothing tone and so softly that he’s hard to hear across the room, but his words hit the Ugly Twins like choke collars. It’s a pretty impressive demonstration of power. The giant apes retreat to their respective posts, sliding open the human gate.

  “I understand you want to talk to me,” says Cogswell. He delivers his words just a notch above a whisper in a monotone that could put you to sleep. Luckily, I can depend on my nerves to keep me awake.

  “You’re a hard man to pin down.”

  “I don’t like being pinned down.” Beneath the poorly defined brow of that Mr. Potatohead face are two very sharp, very cold blue eyes. He waves at a chair. I sit like a well-trained dog.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Brown?” His affect is civilized, almost cordial. But all business. He strokes his tie, which I’m guessing is a $200 Ferragamo job, even though it’s just a hemmed and pressed piece of machine-woven silk. His suit looks English, probably hand-tailored on Savile Row, some kind of lightweight wool, blue to coordinate with his eyes.

  “I just wanted to ask you a few questions about Lana Strain. I’m working on a story.”

  “Mr. Bakatin mentioned that you described yourself as ‘barely a writer.’” I’ve got to watch these offhand remarks. They come back to haunt me. “Why would you want to dig up an old-news story like hers?”

  “It’s the twenty-year anniversary of her death. It means a lot to her fans.”

  “Mr. Bakatin doesn’t believe you. Neither do I. What are you really trying to uncover?”

  “You think I’d be foolish enough to lie to Vlad Bakatin?”

  “Don’t patronize me, Mr. Brown.”

  “If I get lucky, I’ll find out who killed her. That’s a big story.”

  “The flip side of luck could be deadly.”

  “You get that from a Jackie Chan movie?” I know I should be more respectful. I won’t learn anything by getting beaten and thrown out. But his emotionless monotone is getting to me.

  “If I’m boring you, you’re welcome to leave.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m a little edgy these days since someone broke into my house and smashed my unblended Scotch.”

  “Are you implying that I did that?”

  “Of course not. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you know who did.”

  “I know a great many things, Mr. Brown, most of which I have no interest in sharing. Ms. Porter did ask me to tell you, however, that her attorney found no matches between her subscription list and the Lana Strain witness list.”

  This doesn’t surprise me. I knew it was a long shot. Especially since most of her subscribers probably use fake names.

  “I understand you contested Lana Strain’s will.”

  “That’s a matter of public record.”

  “Why’d you do it?”

  “As the fiduciary guardian of her daughters, it was my responsibility to look out for their interests. I shared Lana’s concern that their father’s lifestyle was inconsistent with the responsibilities of a legal guardian. When Lana was alive, she protected the girls from Billy. Without her, they’d be hapless victims of his prolonged absences, his emotional abuse, and his…lapses in pharmacological judgment.”

  Where does he get these phrases?

  “Billy had two convictions for drug abuse. He was spending nine months of the year on the road. You had a willing grandfather—a friend of yours, I understand—ready to step in as guardian. There were plenty of people around who could testify to the emotional abuse. How did you lose?”

  His face reveals nothing, but I can sense some invisible swelling of tension in the air around him, something on a molecular level that says he finds my question offensive.

  “I’ll tell you, Mr. Brown, but you will keep my name and that of my employer out of your story.”

  “I’m not sure I can do that. I don’t know where this story will take me yet.”

  “I’ll interpret that as a promise to do as I ask. And if some unfortunate soul were imprudent enough to break a promise to me, I would be inclined to turn the matter over to my associates for disposition.”

  He raises his finger about a half inch and the Uglies move at the speed of light, flanking both sides of me, snapping to attention with the precision of storm troopers. Very spry for their tonnage. Another impressive display.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  His eyes search mine, as if seeking data to run through some sort of truthometer in his head. Then he drops his finger, and the goons recede into the background.

  “The judge met with each girl in chambers,” he says, “and asked for her opinion on the guardian issue. After speaking to Ginger, he ruled against us.”

  “She defended Billy?”

  “Not exactly.” He’s not exactly forthcoming.

  “Are you going to make me drag this story out of you word by word, or will you save us both some time and just tell me?”

  He actually smiles. “After Lana died, Billy sent the girls into therapy. Ginger uncovered an alleged repressed memory.”

  “Alleged?”

  “She made an unsubstantiated accusation.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What was it?”

  Cogswell closes his eyes and rubs them as if he’s facing a difficult task, his first expression of anything bordering on emotion. Then he lowers his hands and reactivates his mask. “She said she’d been a victim of incest. She claimed it was Nathaniel Strain.”

  Bile rises in the back of my throat. For a moment I think I’m going to throw up. My mind travels back to that warehouse, watching Nathaniel Strain swing his head back and forth, eyes locked on that golf ball with such unwavering strength of will. I cringe at the thought of his turning that will to the task of molesting his younger granddaughter.

  “How can you play golf with a guy, knowing he raped his teenage grandchild?”

  “I’m not so sure he did. There were inconsistencies in her story. In fact, her sister accused her of lying about it. That’s when Ginger stabbed Sophia with
the scissors and the girls stopped speaking.”

  “What inconsistencies?”

  “The allegations just didn’t pass the sniff test. For example, a few weeks later she claimed to have been raped by her uncle as well. Billy’s brother, now deceased.”

  “How do you know she wasn’t?”

  “Uncle Bobby was impotent. That’s the kind of detail defense lawyers have wet dreams about.”

  “How well did you know her?”

  “Jane asked as a personal favor that I see you for five minutes. I believe the sand has run out.”

  “Just one more—”

  He raises his hand and cuts me off. Then his eyes ice up, and he says, “If I see you again, if you call me again, if I hear that you’ve been asking about me again, if you bother my lady friend again, or if you use my name or my employer’s name in print, you will spend several excruciating hours praying for death before you are lucky enough to achieve it.”

  And I thought we were hitting it off.

  I feel a hand in each armpit, and I’m lifted as if I weigh nothing. Then they launch me toward the door. I fly about ten feet and land hard. Both knees scrape through my favorite suit, leaving skin on the floor. I’m thinking if I had just listened to my wallet instead of my ego, I could have saved myself thirteen fifty on dry cleaning.

  “Regards to Black Jack,” he says, referring to Angel’s law school nickname. As I limp toward the door, I marvel that such disparate men were once friends.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Gloria paints my left knee with 151 rum, the closest thing she’s got to rubbing alcohol. I grimace.

  “Don’t be such a wuss,” she says. “It’s just a scrape, for Christ’s sake.”

  “It hurts.”

  “Pain heightens the senses.”

  She’s trying to sound tough, but I can hear the ache in her voice. When I hurt, she hurts. That’s how close our connection is. Like Siamese twins.

  We’re sitting on the front steps of her Fairfax-district duplex, suffering the heat because I don’t want to bleed on her carpet.

  “Why are you home, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be solving crimes or something?”

  “At one o’clock this morning, I got called out to a floater in Echo Park Lake, and by the time they’d gotten the scene under control, pulled him out of the water, and done the coroner bit, it was ten. So I’m taking the rest of the day off.”

  I’m glad she’s free. It’s not that my knees are so desperate for care, I just want a reality check on what I learned from Cogswell. In her private life, Gloria may not be on the most intimate terms with reality, but there’s no one more clear-eyed when it comes to running evidence.

  She dabs me with a little more firewater, and I cry out.

  “Are you trying to turn me on?” she asks. “Because I’ll spank you right here in public.”

  I glance across the street at the long-bearded Hasidic Jew who’s sweating profusely in his black Prince Albert frock coat and black fedora. He waters a small patch of lawn and eyes us suspiciously. I glare back. Who is he to criticize me when he’s breaking the law by watering midday. I wonder what passes for kosher food in jail.

  She pours another splash of 151 on the wad of cotton gauze she found in her tiny cosmetics drawer.

  When I was living with Holly, she used to need three five-foot shelves to hold the beauty supplies she didn’t keep under the sink. Gloria makes do with a single foot-wide drawer. Pride is low on her list of deadly sins, lust being number one.

  She hands me the bottle to hold as she carefully refolds the gauze to expose a blood-free surface. I take a belt for anesthetic purposes and almost gag as the rum scorches my throat. At more than 75 percent alcohol, the stuff is better suited to fueling aircraft than drinking. She swabs the other knee.

  The pain takes me back to my childhood. Whenever I’d scrape a knee, my mother would sweep in like the Marquis de Sade, wielding some sort of unguent that felt like nails being driven into my flesh. The rum isn’t as bad as the unguent, but it’s no picnic. At least my throbbing knees are taking my mind off the impact bruise on my forehead.

  Gloria seals the deal with a couple of Band-Aids and gives me a sweet little peck on the lips. “How about a little intentional pain?” She traces my fly with her fingers. I suspect she’s doing it to embarrass the Hasid so he’ll stop watching us. He frowns and turns away.

  Sufficiently patched and somewhat apprehensive, I follow her inside. I’m wondering whether sex is such a good idea, but self-denial was never my strong suit.

  At first I’m delighted to see Runt, but then he leaps up, and all ninety pounds of him slam into my chest. My head whacks the door, and my wound feels like it’s been kicked by a mule wearing metal cleats. The pain bursts out in a primordial shriek. Gloria laughs. “You are such a pussy.” She grabs Runt’s collar and yanks him off me.

  Gloria lives in a Spanish-style apartment built sometime in the nineteen-thirties. Not fancy, but it has the character of age, with handcrafted archways, thick stucco walls, and built-in cupboards and shelf-nooks whose edges have been softened over the years by dozens of layers of paint. Her selection of furniture is random, as if she has no patience for decorating. There’s no consistency of style, whether it be antique, traditional, modern, postmodern, rustic, shabby, or Jetsonesque. No two chairs match or even come from the same decade. No two colors are purposely complementary. A ZZ Top poster in the style of an old pulp paperback shares the dining room wall with a reproduction of Breughel’s Parable of the Blind Leading the Blind and a photo of Albert Einstein riding a bicycle. There’s a well-worn Persian rug under the oak dining table and a bold asymmetrical Scandinavian rug under the glass-and-wrought-iron coffee table. A Mexican-tiled fireplace commands the living room. It would be a great-looking room if it weren’t for the huge, stained, brown-plaid eyesore of a dog bed from Target.

  In the place of honor above the mantel hangs a surrealistic oil painting of a sunset in an oven, a gift from the artist, who was saved from lethal injection when Gloria caught the actual perpetrator of the murder for which he’d been convicted. It’s crooked. I walk over and straighten it.

  “Don’t,” she says.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t redecorate.” She walks up to me, dead serious. “Or I’ll have to truss you up and whip the cream out of you.”

  “Did your mother teach you to talk like that?”

  She puts her arms around me and pushes her hands under my waistband, forcing my belt buckle into my stomach. She grabs my ass and hauls me into a kiss. Her mouth is warm and welcoming. Her tongue slides between my bottom teeth and my lips, but I feel it between my legs.

  Then she steps back and, as only women do, crosses her arms in front of her to pull her blouse off over her head. Braless in black cargo shorts, Gloria looks fine. She grabs my head and pulls me to her nipple.

  “Bite it.”

  I obey. As her breathing accelerates I feel her soft tongue spelunking my ear. An hour later and a gallon of sweat lighter, we lie slick and naked on the edge of the Scandinavian rug. The place smells like a locker room.

  Runt snores on his bed, and I realize he’s been right next to us the whole time. I can’t believe he could have slept through the noise—Gloria can be very vocal. But if we disturbed him, he kept it to himself. Over the years he must have grown bored watching humans in their natural habitat.

  Even in his sleep, Runt’s tail wags. The metronomic precision reminds me of Nathaniel Strain’s golf exercise.

  “Do you think Ginger told the truth about Strain?” I ask.

  “Incest victims rarely lie about that.” Gloria isn’t a bit fazed by the abrupt transition. Another trait we have in common. Even in the warmth of the afterglow, she’s always up for dissecting a good murder. Holly used to hate it when I’d break the mood.

  “Maybe she thought she was telling the truth,” I say. “It’s not all that tough for someone in a position of authority to plant a seed of doubt and
feed it with psychotherapy. Before you know it, it’s a real live memory. Look at the McMartin case, which Karl Lynch worked on, by the way.”

  “Why would Lynch do that?” she asks. “What’s his motive?”

  Her finger idly traces my abs. The two of us lying together feels good, it feels right, it feels comfortable. If we didn’t know each other so well, I could imagine this going somewhere. But I suppress the fearsome thought. The power of our connection would kill us if we tried to define it as a relationship. Our intimacy is too strong for cohabitation. Confining it would be like living inside a pressure cooker, and we both know it. She rests her cheek on my chest.

  “Let’s assume everyone’s after the money in the estate,” I suggest. “In order to get it, you have to control the disbursement of funds. Disbursement requires two people: the executor to release the money and the girls’ guardian to receive it. So, in order to steal any significant amount money, the guardian would have to be in league with the executor.”

  “Go on.” She flicks her tongue across my nipple. Her mind is on the hypothesis, but her tongue has a mind of its own.

  “If Nathaniel wanted a piece of the estate,” I say, “he’d have to become either executor or guardian, so he’d have two choices: partner up with Cogswell to oust Billy or partner up with Billy to oust Cogswell. If I were Nathaniel, I’d try Cogswell because he’s presumably less likely than the girls’ father to care if they lose their inheritance.”

  “That could explain why Cogswell contested Lana’s will, but where does Karl Lynch come in?”

  “I’m getting there. Billy’s not an idiot. When Cogswell tried to oust him as guardian he would have figured Nathaniel was behind it because that’s the only way Cogswell could benefit. What better way to fight fire with fire than to discredit the old man? No court is going to allow custody of minors to an alleged incest aggressor.”

  Gloria laughs. “So Billy tried to bribe Karl Lynch to plant a memory in Ginger, hoping she’d publicly accuse her grandfather of incest? That’s pretty farfetched, Nob, even for you.” She checks the clock. “Shit. It’s already three thirty.” She jumps up and runs into the bathroom.