The Hanging

by Wendy Hornsby

  He checked for my reaction to that. I gave him a little smile. He was one of those blowhards who loved to talk once he got started. All I had to do was let him run.

  “Old Park really left the girl hanging in the wind when he bailed out of Congress,” he said. “To make ends meet, Clarice started selling off her own collection of Chinese antiques—good stuff, she knew what she was doing when she bought it. She did well enough to set up a gallery. When she heard the courts awarded me that pile of fake shit, she offered to try to sell it on consignment.”

  “Did she know it was all fake?”

  “Know?” He threw back his head and laughed. Hooted, actually. “She owned the workshop where it was all made.”

  “When did you know that the dictator put up fakes as collateral for your arms deal?”

  “I refuse to answer on the grounds that it might...”

  “Fair enough,” I said.

  “The thing I want you to know,” he said, “is that Park didn’t know until later, not until after the Honorable President for Life of the Noble Republic of yada, yada got the heave-ho and the shit hit the fan. Park was thrown for a loop, said we all used him, betrayed him; and we did. He bailed out of Congress when he found out, dumped Clarice, tried to off himself. He couldn’t live with the thought of scandal, though in the end it was kept pretty quiet. Scandal like that isn’t good for anybody’s business.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “My suppliers threatened to bring me up on charges, but they gave it up because I had a detailed map of the weapons industry’s graveyard, if you know what I mean. Still, I got blackballed, lost everything.”

  A wry smile emerged from his air of gloom.

  “Worst luck, I lost everything except my wife, Phillida,” he said. “Phillida. What kind of name is that for a woman? I called her Phil once when we were dating and a new Ice Age descended; you might remember the chill.”

  “How did you end up in construction?”

  “Hiram,” he said. “I don’t have a criminal record, but I don’t exactly have star quality references, either. When contracts of this size go out, everyone in the company gets a thorough looking-at. Hiram said to wait until the project got underway and he’d put in the word for me, because after the work starts, no one looks at new hires. Hiram always knows the back door to walk through.”

  “What is that back door?” I asked. “The same company you work for won the contract to complete a major building program at Anacapa College where Hiram and Park have been working. A four-hundred-million-dollar bond project. What is Hiram’s connection to the construction company?”

  He shook his head. “All I know is, I did Clarice a favor, Hiram did me a favor. Now we’re even. Finished.”

  “Hiram and Clarice are close?”

  “They’re kin of some kind. It was Hiram who introduced her to Park during a trade junket to China, years ago.”

  He looked at his watch.

  “All this talk has made me thirsty,” he said. “How about I buy you a drink?”

  “I would,” I said. “But what would Phillida say?”

  He tossed his head to the side, grimaced good-naturedly at the mention of his wife. There was a sort of smarmy charm about him, the salesman’s glibness and sense of humor. He might be fun at a backyard barbecue, but I wasn’t sure he could ever be sufficiently domesticated to bring indoors.

  I rose and offered my hand.

  “Thank you for your time.”

  “Sure,” he said, taking my hand in both of his and holding on to it. “I have nothing else to do with my time except put up a new hospital wing. All the time in the world.”

  I tugged my hand and he released it.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll repeat any of this on camera for me?” I said.

  “Not a chance in hell.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “You’d film like a champ.”

  He laughed. “I bet Hiram already turned you down, didn’t he? If I know Hiram, he’s milking a cash cow somehow at that college and he won’t risk losing hold of the teat by talking to you.”

  “You seem to have some affection for him.”

  He shrugged. “Hiram and I go back a long way. We had some good times, put together some big deals. Everything fell apart, sure, but it seems to me those were better times than these.”

  There was sadness in his smile. “Does that make me sound old?”

  “No, it makes you sound human,” I said. “Mr. Weidermeyer, I’m sorry to tell you. Hiram Chin passed away this morning.”

  He paled, visibly upset. “I didn’t know he was sick.”

  “Only sick at heart,” I said. “He went by his own hand.”

  Chapter 25

  Uncle Max was waiting for me on the tarmac outside the executive jet terminal at Burbank Airport.

  “Flying like a plutocrat now, huh?” he said, wrapping an arm around me and guiding me toward the exit.

  I looked back at the sleek little jet the network had provided for my quick jaunt to Vegas.

  “I could get used to that,” I said. “If only to skip the airport security shuffle.”

  He gave me a squeeze. “Glad you’re home safe. Successful trip?”

  “Very.” I asked, “Did you go to Frankie Weidermeyer’s arraignment this afternoon?”

  “As you asked. D.A. said attempted murder, added lying in wait and use of firearm as special circumstances, asked for remand. Frankie told the judge he was indigent, drew a public defender, declared not guilty, got remanded—no bail—to the county lockup until trial.”

  “How did he look?”

  “How did he look?”

  “That’s what I asked.”

  “Like a deer caught in the headlights.”

  “Poor kid.”

  Max’s Beemer was parked at the curb. After we were buckled in and headed toward the exit, I turned toward him.

  “The most productive part of this very long, strange day was the quiet time alone during the flight home. Some time to think.”

  “Can be dangerous, thinking. So, did you figure it all out?”

  “The essentials, maybe,” I said. “After everything I’ve learned, I finally realized that, at its heart, this is a story about two young men more than it is about a congressman who lost his way.”

  He furrowed his brow. “Is it?”

  “Think about it, Max. First, there’s Sly, who has no idea who his father is, junkie mother, raised by the county from the time he was a baby, spent some time living on the streets at the tender age of nine, surviving by his wits. Yet, along the way he acquired this great network of supporters who truly care about him. He grows up to become a supremely talented, and now, recognized artist. The best part is, I think he’s happy.”

  “You can take the credit for that, sweetheart.”

  “Only a small share of the credit. I brought Sly in off the street, but it was Mike and his son, Michael, who made certain that Sly got everything he needed, especially unconditional love. Especially love.” I felt my throat constrict and my eyes fill. “I wish Mike could be there next week for the hanging ceremony.”

  “He’d be so damn proud.”

  Max turned onto Hollywood Way and headed toward the freeway.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “My house,” he said. “You’re staying over; you shouldn’t be alone tonight.”

  “Thanks, Uncle. I’ll need to borrow some skivvies.”

  He laughed. “It’s your mother’s idea, Maggot. She and Gracie went to your house this afternoon to kibitz with the glazier when he was replacing your windows. While they were there they packed a nice little bag of necessities for you and brought it to my office.”

  “Dear God.” The image of my mother and her friend rifling through my underwear drawer flashed behind my eyes like a bad scene from a bad comedy.

  Max put the conversation back on topic. “The other boy you’re thinking about is the Weidermeyer kid?”

  “Yes,” I said. “
Except he turns out to be Holloway’s kid.”

  “Wow!” Max glanced at me. “Is that true?”

  “Seems so.”

  “That’s big, honey. Really big.”

  “What it is, is cruel,” I said. “Think about it: All of his life, Frankie has known who his father was, and apparently spent a certain amount of time with him. His father was very prominent, but Frankie was never publicly acknowledged. He was even denied the right to use his father’s name. Kept hidden in what the older Mr. Weidermeyer called the parents’ love nest. Until...”

  I let that hang in the air.

  He gripped my knee. “Don’t be mean. Until what?”

  “Until his father, the late Park Holloway, promised that he would use his influence on the art award committee at the college so that his son’s sculpture would win the competition and be enshrined, forever, in that great monument to his own tenure at Anacapa College, the Taj Ma’Holloway. A gesture far short of announcing paternity, but a public embrace, nonetheless.”

  “Interesting,” Max said. “Must have hurt when Sly won.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” I said. “The other day, I got really angry with one of my students, a kid named Preston Nguyen, for digging up facts about Sly’s mother and spreading them around.”

  “That’s a natural reaction,” Max said. “You were protecting your boy.”

  “I was. And Preston was being a good investigative journalist, though a bit of a gossip. I owe him an apology,” I said. “I owe him more than that. As background for an article he’s writing for the student newspaper about Sly’s sculpture, Preston sought out Frankie and asked him how he felt about losing to Sly. He also told him about Sly’s mother, which was gratuitous, in my humble and very biased opinion. It was after that conversation that Frankie let us know exactly how he felt.”

  “He came gunning for you,” Max said.

  “The first episode, with the pellet gun, I think he hit his intended target, Sly, with the graffiti, and I was collateral damage. But when he came to my house last night, I wonder if he was trying to protect his mother from me.”

  “Your visit to her gallery certainly set a few things in motion.”

  “It was Jean-Paul who set things in motion for Clarice Snow,” I said. “Do you think Frankie could have been gunning for Jean-Paul?”

  “Only the kid can answer that.”

  “Max, all the way home, I kept flashing on Sly’s anger last Friday when Holloway told him that his sculpture would come down after a year. Something magnificent had been yanked out from under him, and he did not know how to handle his grief and his rage over it.”

  “Sure he did,” Max said. “He went to you. And once again, you got everything made right.”

  “When you say it that way, it sounds like a reproach.”

  “That wasn’t my intention,” he said.

  After a quick glance to check on me, he said, “I still owe you a dinner at the Pacific Dining Car. The one on Wilshire. I’m ready for a steak. You hungry?”

  Food was the last thing on my mind, but I wanted to be out for a while longer, surrounded by people, so I said, “Good idea.”

  “You were saying?” he said.

  “When Sly won that competition,” I said, “everything turned to shit for Frankie. As a consolation prize, Holloway—his father—promised him that he would win in the end. Sly’s work would come down, and Frankie’s would come in. Forever.

  “To make that happen, Holloway went out and raised a ton of cash from the college’s donor pool. He actually bought the kid’s big sculpture.”

  “The bronze bowling pin?”

  “The same,” I said. “On Friday, we blocked Holloway from making good on that promise. How do you imagine Frankie reacted to that ultimate disappointment when he was told? Could he have felt any less grief and rage than Sly had? But who could Frankie turn to? His father? Friends? The man whose name he carries referred to him as a ‘dumb fuck.’ Poor kid.”

  “What are you thinking, Maggot?”

  “I need a favor from my beloved uncle,” I said.

  “I’m shaking in my boots already.”

  “Will you defend Frankie?”

  “For taking a shot at you?” He laughed. “No judge would allow that.”

  “No,” I said. “For killing his own father.”

  * * *

  Max and I were lingering over decaf when Thornbury joined us at the Pacific Dining Car. After our conversation in the car, Max had called him.

  “Do I need my Kevlar to sit near you, Maggie?” Thornbury said, sliding into the leather-upholstered booth next to me.

  “Not a bad idea,” I said, making room for him.

  The detective looked around the posh room appreciatively.

  “I’ve been to the Dining Car downtown a couple of times,” he said. “The LAPD Robbery-Homicide guys go there for breakfast on Fridays, but twenty-dollar eggs are a bit rich for my pocket.”

  “Have you eaten, Detective?” Max asked.

  “I almost got breakfast this morning.” He gave me a sarcastic grin. “But I got called out before I could eat it. Looked pretty good, too.”

  “Order whatever looks good to you,” Max said. “My treat.”

  “In that case...” Thornbury picked up his menu. After he gave his order to the waiter, he turned to me.

  “I spoke with that woman you’ve been worried about, Joan Givens,” he said. “She’s okay. You spooked her when you told her she needed to talk to the police for her own protection, so she borrowed Bobbie Cusato’s place up in Cambria for a few days to hide out, think things over. Mrs. Cusato told her about what Chin did this morning, and that scared her enough to finally call me.”

  “Did she tell you anything you hadn’t already heard?” I asked.

  “Not really.” The waiter set a martini in front of him. After a grateful sip, he continued. “The real news came from the FBI. They went into Holloway and Chin’s bank accounts, including accounts in the offshore bank you alerted us to.”

  “Thanks to Joan Givens.”

  “Okay. The thing is, Holloway washed a lot of money through his account. Six figures to that Santa Barbara gallery, six figures to a rehab facility up in Sacramento, more to a trust fund in the name of Harlan Holloway.”

  “His disabled son,” I said.

  “Makes sense, sort of,” he said. “It was a lot of money, but it was chump change compared to the swag Chin was hauling in. Your academic VP got regular payments from the construction company that’s putting up the new buildings at the college. He was also getting payments from some of the major suppliers. Do you have any idea how much building material is coming out of China?”

  “No idea at all,” I said. “But why am I not surprised? If you dig further, I’ll bet you find that Chin has some interest in the supplies that are going to a hospital construction project in Las Vegas, too.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll leave that to the FBI.” He drained his martini and sighed; Max signaled the waiter to bring a second. “I just wish I could make Chin for the Holloway killing, but he had a decent alibi.”

  The waiter replaced Thornbury’s empty glass with a full one. The detective gripped the stem as if it were a lifeline.

  “The thing I don’t get,” he said, “and I don’t know much about who does what in a college administration, but I wouldn’t expect some guy with the word ‘academic’ in his title to have much say over construction contracts.”

  “Therein lies the genius of Hiram Chin,” I said. “You’re right, the academic vice president wouldn’t have much input, except for talking with planners about classroom requirements. However, the college president would be involved at every level. I’m sure Hiram guided every decision Holloway made, using his old pal as the front for his own nefarious activities, a layer of protection.”

  “Nefarious, huh?” Thornbury chuckled softly.

  “And once again,” I said, “it looks like Holloway had no clue what Hiram was up to. Otherw
ise, when he needed money, wouldn’t he have tapped his old friend instead of groveling for chump change, as you called it, from college donors?”

  Thornbury looked at me through narrowed eyes, skepticism written on his expression.

  “After that other deal with Chin bit him on the ass big-time,” he said, “why would Holloway go back and work with him again?”

  “I asked Francis Weidermeyer a version of that question. The collapse of that first deal left these folks without a lot of options other than the gigs Hiram came up with. Besides, as Weidermeyer said, they’d had some pretty good times together. I think he was a bit nostalgic for the good old days.”

  “Jesus.” He sipped his drink. “The more I know about people, the less I understand them. And what I really can’t understand is why Chin took himself out like that.”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “He said something interesting this morning. He called Holloway his veneer. When you strip off the veneer, what you find underneath isn’t very attractive. Or marketable. Maybe he needed Holloway every bit as much as Holloway needed him.”

  “What do you call that, a symbiotic relationship?”

  “By God, Detective, you have hidden depths,” Max said.

  Thornbury only rolled his eyes.

  He said, “I’ve seen suicides after the fact plenty of times. But I’ve never seen anyone take himself out. And to do it with you standing so close, I don’t get it.”

  “I have a feeling he wanted me to be there,” I said. “Payback, maybe.”

  “Why on earth?”

  “He seemed to think I set his downfall in motion.”

  He sipped his drink, thinking.

  “Did you get a chance to talk to Frankie?” Max asked him, interrupting his reverie.

  “We tried to talk to him last night,” Thornbury said. “But he’s smart enough to keep his mouth shut.”

  “I saw you with his P.D. after the arraignment this afternoon. What do you think of the lawyer he drew?”

  “Pretty green,” Thornbury said. “He only passed the bar six months ago.”

  I caught Max’s eye and he gave me a nod.