by Tim Green
"Knock him out somehow?" she said.
"And he doesn't remember?" Chris said dubiously. "How could that happen? Maybe the whole thing with Dobbins was a coincidence, or maybe Ike Webber has his times mixed up. He was at a party, don't forget, maybe drinking. It seems a lot more likely . . ."
"You're wrong," Tom said vehemently.
"Chris," Madison said, "remember what Brinson said to us? He said Clark's alcohol level was point one three and then he said there was something else in his system, a benza-daza-praline or something like that. Remember? Because after that he said it was probably Valium. I thought it was strange when he said it, but then I was thinking that Valium is something NFL players certainly have access to. They give them to guys when they go into those MRI machines because they're so big and the tube is so small. I just figured Clark had one lying around and maybe took it to calm his nerves. But Valium is sometimes used as an anesthetic, isn't it?"
Chris shrugged. So did Tom.
"What if Clark was anesthetized? With Valium or something like it?" Madison said. "That could be how they got him into the truck."
"But he'd remember!" Chris said. "Somehow someone would have to get that drug into his system."
"What about an amnesic?" Madison said. "Some anesthetics have those properties. They give them to people if they wake up during operations or if kids have to have something done. Jo-Jo had that one time when he had to have his lip stitched. They gave him something and he never remembered getting the stitches."
"That's got to be it!" Tom said. "I'm telling you, Clark would never kill himself. That's it."
"Remember the coffee table?" Chris said.
"With the beer bottles?"
"Yeah, but that table was trashed," Chris said. "I mean, maybe Clark did it himself. . ."
"Or maybe it was smashed during a scuffle," Madison said.
"They got him down, sedated him, and gave him that stuff you were talking about," Chris said. "Do you think whatever it was is still in his system?"
"I don't know," Madison said, heading for the ward, "but we'll find out."
Chapter 53
Zee sat at the bar just inside the glass doors. From his perch on a stool he could clearly see his boss as he chattered on the phone, ensconced between two simpering dancers or models or actresses or whatever they were calling themselves. A cold bottle of Smirnoff sat in front of him on the rich maple wood, sweating a puddle big enough to reach Zee's drink. Gently he slapped at the pool with the bottom rim of the glass, seeing how far the splattered droplets could reach. His head throbbed and his neck felt like it had been throttled with a bike chain.
To make matters worse, he'd heard on the radio about Clark Cromwell's rescue from death. It was big news. The bitch lawyer had saved his ass. The good part was that more than ever, people figured Cromwell killed the girl, and Zee had been lucky enough to put the drops in his nose even though at the time he thought it was a mistake. He knew for a fact that Clark would never remember a thing. No one ever did with that stuff.
Conrad hadn't been happy about his failure to take the white man out. But Zee had argued that dead or alive, he'd still managed to make Cromwell look guilty, and their tracks had been covered just as effectively as if the player were dead. After a mild verbal lashing over the phone, Conrad acquiesced and told Zee to come to work. Zee was in no mood for work, and he tried to get out of it, but Conrad had screamed at him like a bitch when he suggested a day off.
"You gettin' paid, ain't ya!"
Well, Zee was there in body only, not in spirit. He'd been sullen ever since he arrived, even though Conrad seemed not to notice. As a further protest, when he did arrive he'd plunked himself down at the bar with his bottle of vodka, and that's where he'd remained for the entire afternoon. He could damn well guard the agent's body from the bar as well as he could leaned up against the railing out there in the fading sunlight. When someone came in through the front of the house, though, Zee spun himself around on the chair for a better look.
"The fuck happened to yo' ass, Zee?"
It was Trane. He peered at the bodyguard through the gloom that was settling in on the interior of the house now that the sun was low in the sky.
"You lookin like the fuckin' Michelin man with a goddamn tire stuck in his throat," Trane said with a sarcastic snicker.
Zee only stared malignantly.
"Don't gimme that look," Trane said with a dark stare of his own. "I ain't no street chump that looks away from that shit. feah, I know all about you. You some kinda killer or some shit like that. I know how that shit goes, kill some chickenshit chump when he's good an' scared. But I ain't scared of that gangster shit. . ."
Zee continued to glower.
In a more friendly tone Trane said, "Man you got a chain mark on yo' neck that looks like they cut yo' head off an sewed that shit back on . . . Where is that big motherfuckin' chain you always wearin'? Somebody hang ya by it?"
Zee felt for his neck. It was swollen and sore and lacerated where his thick gold medallion had dug into the flesh. But Trane was right. The medallion was gone. He never took it off. On the end of its thick, heavy links was a fat gold disk with zee written in one-carat diamonds. Stuck to the back was, of course, the key to his safe-deposit box. He was so used to having the chain around his neck that it felt like it was still there even though it wasn't. Zee tried to think where he might have left it. He remembered treating his cuts with some salve when he arrived home the night before, then taking a sleeping pill to get some rest. He hadn't taken the chain off then, and now that he thought about it, he didn't remember seeing it. In a panic he remembered checking around Clark's living room . . . until someone came to the door.
"Fuck me," he said, suddenly realizing where it must be.
"Naw," Trane said, sliding behind the bar and pouring himself a Smirnoff from Zee's bottle. "I had a fat bitch last night."
Zee seemed almost not to hear him. He stared into the space that hung over the bar. A sick chill ran through him from top to bottom. It was all over. He would be found out. The medallion would give him away. And if they found it, they would have his key.
All the money he'd put away, the funding for his new life in Mexico where he would be the boss--all that would be gone. Zee felt the floor shift underneath him. Everything that had mattered only a few minutes ago suddenly didn't. He swallowed hard, but like a surge of vomit the panic rose up out of his stomach, making his lips twitch. Conrad would flip him in for the whole thing--Clark, that Angel Cassidy bitch, maybe even Maggs. When Conrad found out about the medallion he'd do more than just stand by and watch Zee take the fall. He'd help it along. Zee had been around his boss long enough to know that much. Conrad was a shark, and if he smelled blood on his own mother he'd turn on her and tear her to bits.
"Said I had a fat bitch last night. . ." Trane said, emboldened by Zee's silence.
Zee's head shot up and in an instant the insult hit home so hard it made him flinch.
"The fuck you gonna do 'bout that?" Trane said with a nasty smile, casually pouring himself another drink.
Zee flipped the Glock out of the waist of his pants and slid back the action with the smooth confidence of a short-order cook flipping an omelette. The forbidding eye of the gun's barrel stared into Trane's face. His drink went down the wrong way, and his face contorted with the effort it took not to choke.
"Who's a bitch?" Zee said menacingly. "You is . . . bitch."
The shot blew a hole through the back of Trane's head the size of a bread plate and sprayed the mirror behind the bar with scarlet gore. Trane's mouth worked open and closed in disbelief
"Bitch!" Zee growled again, and the player's body collapsed in a heap behind the bar.
"The fuck goin' on!" Conrad screamed as he charged in from the terrace. "Zee, goddamn! The fuck you doin' shootin' off a damn cap in the fuckin' house?"
The agent had no idea. In the gloom he didn't see the blood- spattered mirror. Zee stood still, the gun at his side, a dark sentinel besi
de the bar. Conrad stopped halfway across the room to let his eyes adjust. He wanted to see his man's face. His instincts already told him that rushing into the house had been a mistake.
"Zee?" he said, more calmly now. "The fuck, Zee? S'up?"
"I ain't up," Zee said, and as he raised the gun, "an' you goin down . . . bitch."
In rapid succession Zee ripped three shots into Conrad's chest, pummeling the agent back into a chair where he flipped over and lay twitching and bleeding on the carpet. Zee crossed the room and walked calmly out onto the terrace. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the flash of color as the girls ducked behind the poolside bar. He walked quickly and found them cowering under the sink. Like schoolgirls they closed their eyes and covered their ears when they saw him round the corner with his gun. Carefully he shot them both in the head. The shots echoed off the back of the house and faded into the sprawling city below, swallowed up like gumdrops.
Zee went back to the house and checked the kitchen. He had seen Juanita, the housekeeper, go out for groceries a couple of hours ago, but he wanted to make sure she hadn't come back. The house was empty. Zee walked out onto the driveway, glancing all around, and got into his purple Bronco. With tires squealing he shot out into the winding road. Down the hillside he raced, checking in his rearview mirror every five seconds and expecting any moment to see a squad car with its lights flashing and its siren wailing. His mind switched channels to Mexico. He could just go. But he'd have nothing. He could start over again. But he'd never have the chance to make the money he did with the Zeus deal. He thought about Clark's house, the crime scene. What if the medallion was still there?
The idea ate away at his brain like a fast-moving cancer and soon it had a hold. What harm could it do to go back? It would be dark by the time he got there. He could see in, and if someone was in they couldn't see out. If the house was dark . . . The medallion could easily be lying there on the floor amid the mess. If the police had found it, wouldn't Conrad already have known? Through the whole deal he knew Conrad had been getting information from the police. Wouldn't a big gold medallion with diamonds spelling zee and a key stuck to its back have gotten a rise out of the cops?
It was worth the chance. If he got the key, he could get his cash and be across the border by tomorrow afternoon. He could see it, a place in Baja on the beach, not too far from Tijuana, young brown-skinned girls lolling around his pool, his pool. He would be the boss. It was worth everything. It was worth dying for.
Chapter 54
Brinson was sitting at a plastic table on the screened-in porch in the back of his house. His clammy feet were bare but he still wore his slacks and undershirt from the day. The sound of crickets in the lawn was so pervasive that he no longer noticed. He was reading the sports section under a bare bulb that hung from a chain. In front of him on the table was a big cookware bowl soiled with sauce and the very few strands of spaghetti lucky enough to escape his maw. Red stains marked his white tank top like splatters of blood, and the kitchen was filled with the small sounds of his wife cleaning up.
Brinson took a swig from a longneck bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon. He was deep into the sports, away from all the wild front-page speculation about Clark Cromwell and Brinson's own exhausting quotes of "no comment." It was comforting to know that despite all the tabloid coverage of the Annie Cassidy case there were still articles in the sports page that dug in to the viscera of the game. The big strategic question for the team was how well the double reverse offense would work without the recently reliable blocking of Clark Cromwell. Brinson was so engrossed in the story about the offensive strategy for the upcoming game in Buffalo that he never heard the doorbell.
Only the shuffling of feet in the kitchen and his wife's insistent calling disrupted his concentration. He looked up and blinked at the dim forms of Madison McCall and Chris Pelo. He felt violated.
"This is my home," he said, pulling his bare feet in under his groaning chair. "What do you want?"
Madison tried not to notice the detective's enormous belly messy from dinner or the stolen packs of Sweet 'n Low jammed into an old sugar bowl in the middle of the battered table. She felt like an intruder. At the same time she was fascinated with the sense of being in the cramped lair of an animal too big for its hole.
"We need your help," she said.
"Call me tomorrow at nine," Brinson replied curtly, with an exclamatory snap of his paper.
"You've heard of an equivocal death investigation," Chris said, stepping out onto the porch.
Brinson slid into detective mode. "Investigating an apparent suicide with the presumption of murder," he shot back. "What about it?"
"That's what we're going to do," Chris said.
"We want you with us," Madison added.
Brinson snorted so hard that his belly shook, rattling the sports page. "For Cromwell?" he said disdainfully. "Lawyer's tricks. If you'll excuse me, I'm reading the paper."
"You said there were traces of a benzodiazepine in Clark's system," Madison said. ""Vbu presumed Valium."
"Typical for a suicide," Brinson added.
"Yes," Madison said with a quick nod, "but there are other benzodiazepines."
"Anesthetics," Chris said.
"Amnesics," Madison said. "We've had his blood sent out for tests to find out exactly what it was that was in his system. But it would make sense. He didn't know what happened to him, Lieutenant. He couldn't remember!"
"You're suggesting that someone knocked him out, then put him in the garage to die?" Brinson said skeptically. "That someone tried to murder him?"
"That's what we have to presume," Madison said. "We won't know about the exact drug until tomorrow, but we're going back to Clark's house and we want you to come with us."
"If we find something," Chris said, "we want you there. We don't want anyone saying it was a lawyer's trick."
Brinson stared at them coldly. "I'm off work," he said flatly, then directed his gaze back down at the paper as if they weren't there. His wife ducked meekly back into the kitchen.
Chris gave Madison a helpless look.
She pursed her lips and said, "What are you afraid of, Lieutenant?"
Brinson kept his eyes on the paper, but the corners of his mouth pulled into a frown.
"What personal tragedy would it be for you if Clark Cromwell were innocent?" she said bitterly. "Does it scare you to think that someone who's constantly being described in your sports section as being so good really might be? Is that it? In your cop world of bad guys and lies and deception is it too much to think that a person who gets as much press as he does could be the real thing? Is that it, Lieutenant? Is that why you're afraid?"
Brinson just stared at his paper. He didn't bother to pretend he was reading it. He just stared and boiled.
Madison waited.
After two long minutes she said, "Come on Chris, let's go find a cop who cares more about the truth than his own goddamn prejudices . . ."
They were in the kitchen when Madison heard the scrape of Brinson's aluminum chair against the concrete porch.
"Wait," he said, and that was all. Madison watched him disappear through the other side of the kitchen. His wife glanced at them furtively, then silently went back to her dishes. In a moment Brinson returned with his shoes on and a windbreaker over the top of an enormous gray-green golf shirt. He was tucking a pistol into his belt as he came.
"We'll look," he growled. "I don't want no tricks. . ."
Madison gave him a satisfied nod. They left the house together and got into separate cars.
"What was that about?" Chris said when they were alone.
"Just something I saw. I thought there was something when he questioned Clark," Madison said, "a kind of joy in watching him come undone. Then at the hospital yesterday I was sure about it. But I think Brinson is basically a decent honest cop so I figured what the hell, if he does have any emotions I might as well play on them. We had nothing to lose . . ."
As she drove, Madison
thought about Clark. When they had gone to his room with Tom he was pathetic. It was a frightening notion. They could drug you into submission and it was worse than leather straps and a straitjacket. Clark had simply stared at them listlessly, his face sunken and gray. His mother and sister, down from Portland, were nothing but tears and gloom. While Tom prayed and Madison tried to cut through Clark's fog with some piercing questions, the two women fretted and cried. Tom was the one to explain to them in his self-assured way that Clark didn't try to commit suicide, but had been the victim of a terrible crime. Even though it did nothing for the women's condition, Madison hoped he was right.
Their theory about Clark being anesthetized had been met with almost total disbelief by the medical staff. Still, at Madison's insistence they had sent his blood off to determine exactly what benzodiazepine he had in his system, and one of the younger residents actually admitted that an amnesic would do just what they were describing. All in all though, it had been a depressing visit, and unless she and Chris could come up with some concrete ev- idence it was unlikely that Clark would be freed from his medical restraints anytime soon. As Brinson had said only a day before, they wanted to keep him alive.
"So they can kill him," she said out loud.
"What?" Chris said.
"I was just talking to myself, thinking that the police want to keep Clark alive so they can kill him."
"Don't start with me about the death penalty," Chris said.
"I'm not. . . Do you think we'll find something? I mean, wouldn't the police have found anything there was to find last night?"
"Not necessarily," Chris said. "I'm sure they thought it was a suicide. They would've been looking for a note, or Valium, or the beer bottles, but not much else. They already went through the place once with Clark's permission. No, if Clark struggled with someone there could be hair or fibers or who knows what else. There are plenty of things the police could have missed."
"Well," said Madison as they pulled up to the gates of Rancho Palos Verdes. "We'll see."
The guard wasn't the same as the one from the night before and Madison wondered whether or not she was going to hear from anybody about running the gate. The barrier had already been repaired, cobbled back together with pieces of raw wood.