The Samaritan

by Cross, Mason

  But it wasn’t the whole truth. The whole truth required more consideration before she let anyone in on it, even the man she trusted most in the department. All she knew was that there would be more.

  “You’re right,” Mazzucco admitted. “I’d have told them to keep digging myself. I don’t think they’d have needed to be told, to be honest. But the way you said it, the way you were staring at the body . . . It wasn’t just an educated guess. It was like you know.”

  Allen smiled and shook her head, feeling guilty as she did so. “Headache’s making me pessimistic. Maybe they won’t find anything.”

  “Maybe,” he repeated, looking unconvinced.

  Allen, uncomfortable with the expression on Mazzucco’s face, turned away to gaze back up at the hill. The body was still in place, covered with a sheet. Soon it would be transported to the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office for postmortem.

  “The missing girl,” Allen said. “Sarah Dutton, wasn’t it?”

  “Sarah Dutton.”

  “You think it’s her?”

  “I haven’t seen a picture, but she fits: slim, white, brunette, twenty-two years old.”

  “Mulholland’s close by,” Allen said, drawing on her limited knowledge of LA geography. She pointed roughly north: “It’s over there, right?”

  Mazzucco smiled as though she was doing okay for a fresh transplant. “Sure, but we have to go around the long way. Mandeville dead-ends just before you get to Mulholland.”

  “Okay. Let’s go talk to the father.”

  7

  FORT LAUDERDALE

  If I’m looking for you, it could be for any one of a hundred reasons.

  Perhaps you’ve done something you shouldn’t have, or are planning to. Perhaps you took something that didn’t belong to you. Perhaps you haven’t done anything wrong, but someone would like to know you’re okay. The one constant is that I find the subject—the subject doesn’t find me.

  The job Conrad Church had asked me to do had been a straightforward proposition at the outset. Almost too straightforward for me to take an interest, in fact. The problems of rich guys and their spoiled, wayward rich kids aren’t usually my area of expertise. I’m at my best when I’m playing for higher stakes than that.

  However, not having anything else going on, I agreed to take the job when it was offered to me. As happens from time to time, a straightforward assignment had turned complicated. Church had been looking for a professional to find his daughter. Caroline was the wayward type but had never disappeared as effectively or for as long as she had this time, and he was starting to worry that something had happened to her. I met with Church and decided that he was on the level: he just wanted to make sure his kid was alive and safe. I gave him the usual terms: no interference, no questions, half up front, half on completion. He’d agreed readily and I’d gotten to work, appreciating the novelty of looking for someone who wasn’t likely to be armed and dangerous.

  It was early spring and still cold in Massachusetts, which to my instincts made it more than likely she’d gone south. It hadn’t taken me long to identify a trail that confirmed that direction of travel, and as it turned out, she’d gone all the way south, to Florida. Church wanted to travel down with me. I reminded him of my terms but told him he was free to make his own arrangements, which he did.

  I narrowed the location to Lauderdale and within twenty-four hours, I’d tracked her as far as the hotel and the guy who’d sold her the used Audi for two grand cash. Then it was a simple matter of cutting down the possibilities. It was a Saturday night, and there were only so many dive bars and only one of them had a red Audi parked nearby. Everything had gone smoothly, right up until the bar and the complication of Caroline’s erstwhile boyfriend.

  After reuniting her with her father, I had taken a walk down to a quiet section of the beach. There I’d wiped the two HK45s down and thrown them as far as I could out into the ocean, one after the other. I didn’t worry too much about them washing up on the beach; they weren’t mine, after all. Then I drove the Audi to a long-term parking lot serving the airport and parked as deep into the compound as I could get. I wiped down all the surfaces in the car and the touch surfaces on the exterior too, not forgetting the spot where Zoran’s man had slapped the roof. I checked the trunk, the glove box, and beneath the seats, finding only a used lip gloss stick. Plus fifteen thousand dollars that I’d managed to forget all about. I removed both and locked the car, dropping the keys and the lip gloss in a trash can on my way out of the lot.

  A shuttle bus took me back into town, and I got off a couple of blocks from my hotel. There were three charity thrift stores right by the bus stop. I split the cash into four wads by feel: three bundles of roughly four grand each, and a slightly smaller bundle making up the difference. I slipped a bundle of each through each store’s mail slot and deposited the last one in the saxophone case of a late-night street musician. He didn’t notice, or if he did, it didn’t interrupt his interpretation of “Rhapsody in Blue.”

  Ten hours and a restless night later, I was walking into a nondescript diner on the opposite side of South Atlantic Boulevard from the beach. Most of the customers seemed to be sitting outside at tables beneath red and blue parasols. I passed them by and took a seat inside next to one of the picture windows. I ordered a cup of coffee and drank it as I stared out at the ocean. An Otis Redding song played through the diner’s sound system. Not “Dock of the Bay,” which would have been appropriate, but one of the lesser-known ones.

  I’d received a text from Church to let me know that he and Caroline were safely aboard the eight-a.m. flight to Logan. As long as she dyed her hair back to brunette and didn’t broadcast the details of her Florida adventure, I thought it was extremely unlikely they’d experience any trouble from Zoran.

  It was funny: every time I let my mind wander, it drifted back to the look on his face as he realized I had the drop on him and that there was every likelihood he was about to die. A look of surprise. A look that said, Wait a second. This isn’t supposed to happen to me. There’s been some terrible mistake.

  I wondered if that would be the look on my face when it was my turn. Everybody thinks they’re invincible, until they’re not.

  Absently, I let my fingers play over the knot of scar tissue on the right-hand side of my stomach. A reminder of Wardell and Chicago, when my turn had very nearly come around.

  The Otis Redding song finished and was replaced by Percy Sledge. Outside, on the street, a figure caught my attention. A heavyset, tanned man in his fifties. He was walking stiffly, as though in mild pain. He wore mirrored shades, a blue T-shirt that was a little too small for him, and knee-length shorts that were at least two decades too young for him. He carried a battered brown leather briefcase, just to complete the ensemble. I pretended to keep my eyes on the view, watching out of the corner of my eye as the man paused at the doorway and entered the diner.

  A shadow fell across my face and I heard a familiar voice. “Getting sloppy, Blake. I snuck right up on you.”

  I kept my eyes on the view. “You’re limping, Coop. Rheumatism?”

  He laughed. “I sprained it playing racquetball. I approve of the location, by the way.”

  I looked up at last. “Easy commute for you,” I agreed. “Or did you mean this place?”

  “No, this place could be better. They don’t serve liquor.”

  “It’s eleven o’clock in the morning, Coop,” I pointed out. He shrugged. I waved a hand at the chair across from me and he sat down.

  “So you found the prodigal daughter. Everything go okay?”

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  “So I hear.”

  I smiled and said nothing. Nobody had died, and I didn’t think Zoran and his guys would be filing a police report anytime soon. There had been nothing on the news about an incident involving firearms in a dicey neighborhood. I wondered if Coop had heard something from another source, or if he was just being Coop.

  “So, this
is an honor,” Coop said, raising his bushy eyebrows. He was referring to how unusual it was for us to meet in person, the majority of our interactions being carried out over the phone or by secure email.

  “It seemed silly not to meet up, since I was in the neighborhood.”

  “And it means you can buy me a drink to thank me for everything I do for you.”

  “They don’t sell alcohol, remember? Besides, don’t I thank you by paying you?”

  “There is that.”

  “So what do you have for me?”

  He smiled. “Same old Blake—straight down to business.” He reached down and snapped the catches off the briefcase, withdrawing a thin plastic document wallet. “I got something.”

  “Black, white, or gray?” I asked. The question was standard. I like to know up front how legitimate a prospective job is, and that usually comes down to the character of the employer. A black or gray job isn’t necessarily a barrier, but it’s good to go in with eyes open.

  He wavered a second. “Off-white.”

  “Off-white?” I repeated skeptically.

  “It’s a big company. They operate out of New Jersey. Denncorp. They make semiconductors or something.”

  “Who have they lost?”

  “A senior accounts manager. They were cagey with the details. He jumped ship with some sensitive information, and they can’t find him to have a discussion.”

  “So he knows they’re doing something they shouldn’t be, and they don’t want him to tell anybody. What’s their desired output?”

  “Desired output? Jesus, you sound like one of them.”

  “Gotta match the terminology to the client, Coop.”

  “They want you to find him and bring him to them. Location to follow.”

  I shook my head. “They mean they want me to find him and bring him to a storage unit where they can have somebody beat him up. Or worse.”

  Coop shrugged. “It’s a good offer . . .”

  “I don’t work for bad guys, Coop.”

  “Bullshit,” he said immediately.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “But I don’t help bad guys do bad things. It’s a rule.”

  “You got a lot of rules, Blake. Anyone ever tell you, you might be OCD?”

  “Yeah. But only you.”

  He smiled as though he’d half expected me to turn this one down. He slid the document wallet back into the briefcase.

  “Nothing else?” I asked.

  “Nothing that would meet your stringent criteria, anyway.”

  “I probably don’t want to know.”

  Coop didn’t respond to that. He turned away from me and signaled the waitress, who strolled over and took his order. Iced tea.

  “So what now?” he asked once she’d gone. “Some downtime, catch some Florida rays? You could use some sun, you know.”

  “I don’t like to stick around too long after a job,” I said. “But downtime sounds good. I’ll stay tonight. Tomorrow I’ll probably rent a car, head back home the slow way.”

  “And where’s home?”

  “Better you don’t know.”

  Coop smiled again and turned his head to look out the window at the harbor and the calm expanse of the Atlantic. Another soul song kicked in on the diner’s playlist: Sam Cooke’s “Bring It on Home to Me.” That song always reminds me of Carol, and I thought about our half-joking, inexpert waltz to that song, in a hotel room as the rain poured down outside. The night before the last time I ever saw her.

  After a long moment, Coop spoke again. “It’s funny, Blake, isn’t it? How easy it is for two personable guys like you and me to maintain the illusion.”

  “What illusion’s that?”

  “The illusion that we actually know each other.”

  “I don’t agree,” I said after a second.

  “You don’t?”

  I shook my head. “We don’t know anything about each other. That’s not the same thing. Where I live, where I came from . . . does any of that really matter? We know everything we need to know.”

  Coop looked back at me, a thoughtful, serious expression on his face. Eventually, he nodded in agreement. “I guess so.” He looked back out at the sun and the sand and the Atlantic. “It’s colder than here, though, right?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Home. Wherever you’re from is colder than here.”

  I smiled and changed the subject. We talked for another twenty minutes and another coffee for me and another ice tea for Coop, but the conversation never became as contemplative or as strangely personal as that again. We talked about Florida, about music, about the election next year. About everything but ourselves.

  After Coop had gone, no doubt to call somebody else about the off-white job in New York, I stayed awhile, watching the customers as the diner began to fill up for lunchtime. When I’d had enough of people, I turned back to the water and thought about the different places I’d called home. I thought about Carol.

  I thought a little about Winterlong, too. About how I’d come from somewhere colder.

  8

  LOS ANGELES

  Walter Dutton’s Mulholland Drive mansion was perhaps only a couple of miles or so from the makeshift grave across country, but more than half an hour by road. Maybe it was due to the fresh air, more likely it was just having something to focus on, but Allen’s headache had cleared, meaning this trip was more pleasant. At least, as pleasant as a trip to interview a man whose daughter was probably dead could ever be.

  Allen had seen homes like Dutton’s before, but only on television. Like many of the palatial residences that lined the route, it sat a respectable distance back from the road, behind eight-foot-high stucco walls. She wondered if it really was Brando’s old house. She’d caught the last half of The Godfather on TCM a couple of nights ago, but in truth she liked him better in his early roles: On the Waterfront, The Wild One—the pictures he made when he was still young and beautiful.

  There was a security gate between sandstone pillars. The gate was wood veneer, probably over a steel frame. There was a keypad and intercom set into the pillar on the driver’s side. Mazzucco pulled the nose of the Ford within six inches of the gate and then got out. He pushed the call button on the intercom and waited ten seconds before there was a burst of static and a crackly hello.

  “Detectives Mazzucco and Allen, LAPD Homicide. We’d like to speak to Mr. Dutton.”

  There was a long pause. Allen started to wonder if Mazzucco would have to buzz again, but at length a response came. Sitting in the car, Allen couldn’t hear it clearly over the static, but it sounded like “Jesus.”

  The static clicked off, and a sharp clunk heralded the disengaging of a heavy lock. The gates began to swing inward, painfully slowly. Mazzucco got back in the car and steered it through the gap as soon as it was wide enough.

  There was a long, gravel driveway that snaked through well-tended gardens. Allen took in the verdant surroundings as they crawled up the drive and thought about the purloined water of Los Angeles that made these gardens possible, deciding that William Mulholland had probably earned his name on this prime piece of real estate.

  There was a man waiting for them at the front door. Early fifties, dressed in gray slacks and a navy tennis shirt. He stood at the stop of the steps leading up to the door, one hand braced against a pillar supporting the porch roof. He looked as though he was debating whether he could trust his legs to carry him safely down the steps. Mazzucco parked and they got out, both detectives instinctively removing their sunglasses.

  “Walter Dutton?” Allen asked.

  The man nodded reluctantly. “What happened to her?”

  Allen held up her badge. “I’m Detective Jessica Allen; this is Detective Jon Mazzucco.” She nodded at the open door behind Dutton. “Could we go inside, please?”

  Dutton released his grip on the pillar and motioned for the two detectives to step inside.

  Mazzucco went in first. When Allen stepped across the threshold, she had to r
estrain herself from whistling. You couldn’t just have fitted her whole apartment into Dutton’s entrance foyer; you could just about have fitted her whole apartment building. It was a double-height space, with a marble-tiled floor stretching out for a couple hundred square feet. Black and white tiles, like a chessboard. There was a working fountain in the dead center, just before you got to the foot of two marble staircases curving languidly up in mirror images of each other. The staircases met at a landing that overlooked the entrance, at the level of a big crystal chandelier. Allen made brief eye contact with Mazzucco, and a telepathic message passed between them. Wow. Mazzucco might have been an LA native, but from the look on his face, this environment was as alien to him as it was to Allen. She composed herself before turning back to face Dutton, who was closing the door behind them.

  “Let’s get this over with, Detectives.”

  “Mr. Dutton,” Mazzucco said quietly, “I think we ought to sit down before we—”

  “My daughter is dead, isn’t she?” Dutton snapped, some steel coming back into his voice in sharp contrast to his previous, almost whispered sentences. “What goddamn difference does it make if I’m sitting down when you tell me?”

  “That’s not confirmed yet,” Allen said. “We need to—”

  “Yet. Oh my God.”

  Allen decided to switch tack. Perhaps getting Dutton to do something was a better approach than trying to put him at ease. How could you expect to put someone at ease in a situation like this, anyway? “Mr. Dutton, do you have a recent picture of your daughter?”

  He opened his mouth, as though about to rebuke her, and then sighed. “Wait a minute.”