Adeline stiffened in my peripheral vision, less than pleased at this introduction. That would teach her to irritate Connor.
Tony’s gaze brushed over us. “Well, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. All of you.” Despite the words, his attention settled on Connor. Adeline probably didn’t like that much either. “Come and take a seat.”
Tony’s private office shared the design theme with the rest of the building, right down to the potted tree in the corner. Since there were only two visitor chairs, the receptionist came back wheeling a third, and we sat down.
Connor slipped his spiral-bound notepad out of his pocket, and Adeline, seeing this, reached into her dainty floral clutch (which matched her shoes, I realized belatedly) and retrieved a slim leather journal. Was she going to mimic everything Connor did?
She opened it and waited for something noteworthy to happen. I switched my attention to the man we were here to see but not before noticing that his desk was especially large—as if he were competing with Lyle. Had I missed the memo on desk size being the new compensation commodity?
Tony himself was in his late forties, with a prominent nose, shaggy eyebrows, and well-cared-for olive skin that made him look younger. He was stocky without being overweight and had a full head of immaculately greased hair. I had an inkling he was rather proud of it.
I willed Connor’s attention my way, not sure if he’d want to ask the questions in front of Adeline, but he gave me a nod, so I jumped in. “Thank you for speaking with us, Mr. Callahan. We’ll try not to take up too much of your time—”
“I’d appreciate that.”
Right. “Allow me to get straight to the point then. A source suggested you had a lot to gain from Isaac Anand’s death—”
“Let me guess. Was your source Damon Wood?” Tony was so sure of the guess that he didn’t wait for affirmation. “Fine, we might as well get comfortable while I go through the whole damn story again.” He mumbled something about “the relationship that just keeps on giving” and took a swig of water from the expensive-looking bottle on his desk.
“Story?”
“Did Damon mention when he was sticking you on my trail that we were romantically involved once? No? I didn’t think so.”
Darn, why wasn’t that in the report?
Adeline scribbled furiously in her notebook. A pointless exercise since the LAPD would seize it as part of the nondisclosure agreement she’d signed.
Tony continued. “Three years ago, for about five months, we were together. It ended badly, and he’s been flinging around accusations about me to anyone who’ll listen ever since. A textbook scorned lover.”
I allowed doubt to show on my face. “That seems extreme.”
“Yes,” Tony agreed, overlooking my doubt. “Damon is highly intelligent when it comes to tech, but his emotional intelligence is another matter. When I hired him, I didn’t care about that. When I fell for him, I didn’t care either. But when it ended—”
“Wait, he was your employee?” That had been in the file, but Mr. Callahan obviously liked to have the upper hand, so I’d give it to him and see what he’d volunteer.
“Yes. I know it goes against conventional propriety to have a boss and employee sleeping together, but it happens all the time. So long as it’s between two consenting adults, in most cases, there’s no harm done.”
Adeline made eyes at Connor.
“But?” I asked, struggling to focus.
“But Damon doesn’t have the maturity of most adults.”
It seemed Tony had tired of the subject.
Adeline returned to her energetic note-taking. She didn’t seem tired at all.
When the receptionist had wheeled in a third chair for us, I’d been closest and so had sat down on that one. Unlike the sleek aluminum creations Adeline and Connor were occupying, mine was a high-end office chair.
Which meant it could swivel.
I swiveled so Adeline was out of my peripheral vision. “Well, as a result of Mr. Wood’s suggestion, we did some research. And we noticed that when stocks in Isaac Anand’s company plummeted after the announcement of his death by a possible AI malfunction, you purchased every one of them you could get your hands on at an excellent price. Which gives you a controlling interest with Mr. Anand no longer around.”
I left Rick out of it. With zero connections between him and Tony, if Mr. Callahan was behind this, Rick was collateral damage.
“Sure, I saw an opportunity and took advantage of it. Nothing wrong with that.”
“It was convenient for you that the method of murder cast serious doubts on the worth of Mr. Anand’s research and intellectual property assets. A risk you didn’t mind taking in buying up all his stocks.”
“Was that a question?”
“No, just an observation.”
Tony clasped his hands together, unperturbed by our conversation. “Observe away, Ms. Avery. I spend a lot of my time monitoring the leading minds of the tech industry. Truth be told it’s what I do best. Most of my employees are far smarter than me when it comes to technology. My strength is in assembling talent, assessing the industry, and steering the two in a lucrative direction.”
He waved a hand at his luxurious office as if it proved his innocence.
“Naturally, I’d been watching Mr. Anand, and the rumors of his breakthrough were enough to entice me to take that risk. Not that it was much of a risk. I have a history of rewarding my investors very well, so those stock prices should rebound quickly with it coming under my parent company.”
“I see,” I said.
His calm explanation seemed entirely reasonable. So why did he make my skin crawl? I looked at Connor, seeing if he wanted to jump in with any questions. I was out.
Tony used the opportunity to put forth his own agenda. “In the interest of rewarding my investors, I must say I hope the LAPD is protecting the intellectual property assets on Mr. Anand’s computers that were seized. Any idea when I can expect to have access to them?”
I stood up. “I’m sure they’ll be released to you as soon as Isaac Anand’s murder is solved.”
“What did you think?” I asked as the three of us walked to the car.
I wasn’t directing the question at Adeline, but she was quick to share her opinion. “Seems reasonable to me. I know this one girl who found out her longtime partner was cheating on her, so she convinced him that they’d both get each other’s names tattooed over their hearts for their anniversary and got him to go first. When his was done, she broke up with him right there in the tattoo parlor and left her spite forever burned into his chest. What this Damon Wood guy did sounds pretty tame after that.” She pulled a section of wavy hair over her shoulder and primped it. “Plus Tony’s got this great sexy, sophisticated vibe going on. It’s a pity he’s gay.”
“He might be bisexual,” Connor pointed out. Was he trying to deflect Adeline’s attention away from himself?
She flicked her hair behind her. “No way. He didn’t look at me once.”
Well, at least she’d kept quiet during the interview. But if that was the sum of her conclusions, what had she been writing in that journal?
I nudged Connor, hoping for a more useful point of view.
“I don’t trust him any more than I trust Damon Wood, but he’s appearing to cooperate and we don’t have anything on him yet to push further. I say we pay Wood a visit. Tell him he’ll need to give us more if he wants to see Callahan go down for this. He might be more helpful with that motivation.”
I was pleased I’d been thinking along the same lines. “Let’s do it.”
Damon Wood worked half an hour away in an ugly, squat building in Downtown LA, a stone’s throw from a piñata store and a place advertising adult massages. The interior wasn’t much better than the exterior. Threadbare carpet, fluorescent lighting, and three guys sharing a room the size of Tony’s office. Tony’s office smelled a lot better too, but the computers here seemed equally top-end.
I coul
dn’t believe Damon had complained about the decor of the interrogation room.
His two colleagues stared at Adeline like elementary school kids at a magic show, and I was forced to admit there might be some merit to her gauge of Tony’s sexual orientation.
Of course, that wasn’t what we were here to investigate.
The report the LAPD had compiled on Damon Wood had revealed very little. Maybe suspiciously little. He’d worked here for the past two years, paid his (insignificant) taxes, had a good credit score, a crappy car, and an expensive internet plan. He rented a one-bedroom unit in Crenshaw not far from here, and his single apparent splurge outside his tech-related gear was a gym membership. One he actually used based on his physique.
Once again Connor did the introductions—conveniently implying without explicitly stating that I was associated with the LAPD too—and Damon led us to an adjacent meeting room. It had better carpet and plain but new furniture. I wondered if the big screen on the wall meant they preferred to have meetings via video calls to prevent prospective clients from seeing their locale.
Damon sat at the head of the table, so I took the second seat down and angled away from Adeline again to help me stay focused. “We did as you suggested and spoke with Tony Callahan.”
Damon arched a dark brow. “Let me guess, he claimed it was all just a personal vendetta because we used to be lovers.” It wasn’t a question.
Behind me, I could hear Adeline taking notes. It was easy to distinguish the difference between her wild scribbling and Connor’s quick, precise strokes as he jotted select information in shorthand. What had she even heard that was worth writing down this early in the interview?
I arched an eyebrow back at Damon. “It seems you two have danced this dance before. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because I wanted you to investigate him without the instant prejudice our history brings.”
That seemed reasonable too. An accusation against an ex-lover was instantly suspect, and Hunt had already been refusing to take him seriously.
“Is there any truth to it?” I asked.
“No. I mean, yes, we were lovers, but his shady activities were the reason we broke up, not something I invented afterward out of some kind of personal mission to ruin his life. I assume you noticed his company has benefited greatly from Isaac Anand’s death?”
“Yes, but it’s hardly solid evidence he had his hand in the double homicide.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
Adeline snickered, then coughed in a poor attempt to cover it.
Damon ignored her. “He’s a smart, successful businessman. He’s not about to leave a trail of incriminating evidence for you to follow straight to his door, and he’s rich enough to pay others to do the dirty work for him. Take Stanley Cox, for example. Owning up to a double homicide he didn’t commit. Doesn’t even know all the details of how it was committed. I’ve been thinking about that apparent oversight. I don’t suppose you’ve found the device, have you? Maybe it’ll link to Tony somehow. But no, if that were the case he would’ve paid off a dirty cop or something to retrieve it by now…”
Damon spoke fast, more to himself than to me. I waited until he’d wound it down before steering him back to his version of their relationship story. “What kind of shady activities did you witness while you were together?”
He rubbed his jaw. “You have to understand I was naive and head over heels in love. I let a lot of odd things pass by without questioning them too closely because I wanted to believe the best of my new boyfriend.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Well, first it was the little stuff. Like he was a very private man, never shared anything with me about his family or childhood or past, and he took a lot of phone calls in another room, many of them at odd hours in the middle of the night. That was all explainable enough though. I figured he’d had a hard childhood, wasn’t close to his family if he had one, and was a successful businessman with international contacts. But then there was this one time I found a bag of cash lying around the house. I mean hundreds of thousands of dollars. Who needs that much cash for anything but illicit activities? Even then I didn’t think about it too hard.” He glared at me as if I was somehow to blame for this oversight.
I nodded sympathetically. “Sure. So what did make you think about it?”
He shifted his glare to the table. “The breaking point was when he stole intellectual property from a friend I went to college with. There was this big contract coming up in vehicle fleet tracking and management. Tony had a team working on a tender for it, but they weren’t going to be able to achieve everything the company was after. I mentioned in passing that my friend had specialized in vehicle fleet management systems for years and made a few big advances, not thinking anything of it. Then a few days before contract submissions closed, I hear from my friend that there was a break-in at her office. I didn’t put two and two together until Tony took me out to dinner to celebrate landing the contract.”
Interesting. That painted Callahan’s “observation” and “talent-finding” in a different light.
Damon was still talking, lost in the story now. “I questioned him about it, and he claimed his project team had had a breakthrough, but the timing was way too convenient, and when I asked one of the guys on the team, he looked uncomfortable even while he confirmed what Tony had said. I mean, I know this industry is moving fast and a lot of people employ gray hat activities that push the ethical boundaries a bit—but to steal the life’s work of a little company just to fatten his own wallet? We broke up soon after.”
Wow.
Damon’s eyes refocused on me. “Then the bastard fired me and ruined my reputation in the industry, ensuring I’d never get another decent job. Exactly who is he accusing of pursuing a personal vendetta?”
13
“I suppose we’ll have to pay another visit to Tony Callahan,” I said, feeling like the ball in a game of Ping-Pong. We were back in the SUV after finishing up with Damon. “How are we supposed to figure this out when all we have are conflicting versions of events and only one man’s word against the other’s to go by?”
Connor answered before Adeline this time. Probably because she was busy admiring the piñata she’d insisted on buying for some party tonight.
“This is a game to them. So we keep applying pressure until it stops being fun. I just wish the bastards had the decency to work closer together.”
Adeline put the colorful dinosaur down and spoke up from the backseat. “Are you sure applying pressure is the right approach? I mean, you’re not getting very far with them, and I was watching YouTube videos last night, and they said the best method of interrogation is actually to establish rapport, make them feel like you understand them and that kind of thing. I could give it a go if it’d help. I’m great at getting people to like me.”
Connor and I shared a look and politely declined.
Half a long hour of politeness later, we were back in Ocean Park. Tony Callahan was not pleased to see our group again. Not even the oh-so-likable Adeline. But he allowed us into his office anyway.
The poor receptionist had taken the extra chair away since we’d left and so had to fetch it back. I nabbed it for myself, figuring it would be more comfortable than the aluminum ones and had the swivel capability to boot.
Since Connor had suggested we apply pressure, I didn’t bother with small talk. “Damon Wood told us you stole intellectual property from a friend of his. That that’s why you broke up.”
Tony let out a long-suffering sigh. “Did he tell you about my Japanese sex cushion too?”
What? Eww. “No.”
Adeline scribbled in her notebook.
“Oh good. He must have finally stopped spreading that rumor.” Callahan leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, and made direct eye contact with me. The unspoken yet clear-as-day message was that he couldn’t care less. That I was wasting his time.
I smiled pleasantly and gave him my own unspoke
n message: suck it up, princess. Aloud, I said, “We’ve confirmed the timing of your breakup coincided with landing the vehicle fleet management contract.”
The corners of Tony’s mouth turned down, reacting to my unspoken words rather than the spoken ones. “So what the hell does that prove? That he can spin a good lie? He was upset, he fixated on the break-in, and he either realized it was a great story that would be impossible to wholly refute or was deluded enough to convince himself it was true. Regardless, it doesn’t make his claims any less false.”
Tony’s denial didn’t prove Damon’s claims any more false either. But he wasn’t going to acknowledge that, so I stuck to the facts. “Then you fired him and blackballed him out of the industry.” The long drive between their offices had been handy for checking up on their stories.
“Is that another observation, Ms. Avery?” His arms slipped apart in irritation before he remembered himself and returned to his I couldn’t care less pose. “Yes, after Damon started spreading accusations about me, I fired him. I’m a businessman, and you can’t have someone casting aspersions on you in your own company.”
If Callahan’s scowl was anything to go by, the memory still pissed him off.
“He didn’t stop there either. He made so much noise there was an investigation into it—an investigation which turned up nothing, I’d like to point out—so after that, I made some phone calls to warn other companies about him. I’m not a saint. I had to do something to prevent him gaining credibility with which to continue his vendetta. But I’ve always told him that if he’ll just publicly retract all this and personally apologize, I’ll make sure he gets a job worthy of his skills.”
Despite Callahan’s denial of sainthood, he seemed pleased by his own generosity.
“I’m not a monster either,” he said, allowing his arms to fall to his sides, more relaxed now that he’d had a chance to vindicate himself. “I just couldn’t waste any more time dealing with the fallout of Damon’s smear campaign. He’s lucky I haven’t sued him.”
Duty and the Beast Page 12