by Bill Bernico
“Because Stewart here is the one who sold him the drugs, aren’t you, Stewart,” I said, putting it all together in my mind.
Worthington said nothing, like a petulant child.
Bud flipped open his wallet, briefly exposing his shield and I.D. before flipping if closed again and dropping it back into his pocket. “Now,” Bud said, “You’re going to tell us all about your friend there and about your part in his condition.”
“I want a lawyer,” Worthington said.
Bud holstered his .38 and flexed his knuckles. “You won’t need a lawyer,” Bud said, “You’re going to need a good dentist.” He made a fist and stepped up to Worthington. Bud turned back to me and said, “Watch the hallway while I have a talk with Stewart.”
I gave Bud a knowing smile and headed for the door.
Worthington raised a hand and shouted, “No, wait, I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
Bud unclenched his fist and held his hand out toward Worthington, who just looked at it suspiciously. “Come on,” Bud said. “I’m just trying to help you up. I’m getting a stiff neck looking down at you.” Bud grabbed Worthington’s hand and was hoisted to a standing position. “Now go and sit down over there and spill it.”
Worthington seemed to be searching for just the right words to begin his explanation but still hadn’t spoken.
“Need help finding the right words?” I said. “How’s this? And tell me if I get any of it wrong. Your friend on the floor over there came here to buy his fix and was too impatient to wait until he got home before he popped. He took too much and passed out. You, being the good neighbor that you are didn’t want to be found with this lowlife in his apartment so you decide to drag him out in the hall and maybe throw his sorry ass down the stairs. How am I doing so far?”
Worthington looked at me incredulously. “That’s absurd,” he said. “Why would I kill off a paying customer?”
“Skip your paying customer for now,” I said. “Let’s cut to the chase—the reason we’re her in the first place. Were you aware that your name is mentioned in a will? Were you also aware that the other two people mentioned in this same will were recently found dead? That conveniently leaves you as the sole beneficiary. You obviously didn’t know any of this or you wouldn’t be wasting your time nickel and diming these slugs for drug money.”
Worthington’s mouth fell open. “I’m what?” he said. “Whose will am I in? How much was left to me?”
“You remember Elmer Whittaker, don’t you?” I said. “It’s his will and he left all his worldly possessions to you and three other people, only the other three people are already dead, leaving just you.”
Worthington broke out in spontaneous laughter. “Whittaker?” he said. “That’s whose will I’m in? Don’t make me laugh. Elmer didn’t have a dime to leave anyone. He lost everything when our company went belly-up a few years ago. He was actually living on the street there for a while and he got picked up for shoplifting. So don’t dangle that carrot in my face.”
I pulled the will from my pocket and unfolded it. I handed it to Worthington, who took it from me and read it over briefly. When he finished, he handed it back to me. “Did you see the date on this thing?” Worthington said. “He made that out back when our company was still in the black. I made out one just like it naming him as my beneficiary, only I don’t have anything left to leave him, either.”
Bud looked at me. “Doesn’t seem like ol’ Stewart here has much of a reason to want to see Whittaker dead, does it?” he said.
“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “We may be barking up the wrong tree here, Bud.”
Just then the unconscious man on the floor stirred and moaned. He tried to roll over and sit up, but couldn’t keep his balance and flopped back down like an oxygen-starved fish. He tried again and this time was able to prop himself up on one elbow. “Stew,” he said. “That was some good shit. Let me have another hit.”
Worthington rolled his eyes. “Go on home, Jake,” he said.
“We’re not done with this whole thing just yet, Worthington,” Bud said. “Just because you somehow ended up as the sole heir for Whittaker, doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. We’ll be in touch.”
Bud motioned for me to follow him. We stepped over the man on the floor and out into the hallway again. Bud turned to me and said, “Something is still not tracking right here, Elliott. I think we’d better do a little background check on Worthington. Next time we meet him, we’d better know more about him than he knows about himself.”
“The kinds of things you’re looking for probably won’t be available in his public records,” I said. “It would probably be best if we asked around his neighborhood, starting with this apartment building. Come on, let’s get on the elevator. I’ll start one floor below this one and you can start two floors down. Cover every other floor and I’ll meet you in the lobby.”
“You got it, boss,” Bud said.
The elevator began its slow descent and while we waited for it to stop one floor down, I turned to Bud. “Look,” I said, “I know you’re probably kidding around, but could you please stop calling me boss? I feel a little uneasy about it.”
The smile dropped off Bud’s face and he laid a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Elliott,” he said. “You’re right. I have been just kidding around with you, but if it makes you uncomfortable, I won’t do it anymore.”
“Thanks, Bud,” I said. “And besides, I thought we had a pretty good working relationship and I never thought of us a boss or employee but more like partners.”
“That means a lot coming from you,” Bud said.
The doors opened and I stepped out. I just had time to say, “Catch you later,” before the doors closed again. It took us a little better than an hour before we could meet in the lobby and compare notes. “I talked with several people one floor below Worthington,” I told Bud, “and most of them couldn’t tell me anything more than that he kept to himself a lot. The people in the apartment directly below his told me that they’d heard loud noises coming from the Worthington apartment at odd hours of the night. They said it sounded like arguing but they couldn’t make out any specific words. How’d you do?”
Similar to your results,” Bud said. “Most didn’t know the man and the few who did only knew him to exchange small talk as they passed him in the lobby or at the wall of mailboxes. One woman said that as she was getting her mail, Worthington got on the elevator, followed by another man who immediately began yelling at him. She didn’t hear much, but she was able to hear something about Worthington owing the other man money before the doors closed.”
“Well,” I said, “That’s a start. Unfortunately we don’t have the luxury of being able to stake him out for a week to see what shakes loose. We’ll have to take a more active role if we expect to get anything on him.”
Bud snapped his fingers. “I may have one or two guys who may know something about Worthington,” he said. “I still know a couple of my old snitches from my years on the force. I’ll look them up and see if they’ve heard anything about our guy.”
“We’d better stop back at the office for a minute,” I said. “I want to leave Daisy there while we check your guys out.”
“We’re going that way anyway,” Bud said. “One of my snitches hangs out near Hollywood and Vine.” He looked at his watch. “He’s probably near there right about now.”
I took Daisy back up to my office and she headed straight for her padded bed and curled up. “We’ll be back later, girl,” I told her and left the office again.
Bud waited in the van and we drove the two blocks to Vine Street and parked around the corner. We got out and started walking up Hollywood Boulevard. It didn’t take long before Bud spotted Jimmy, one of his former informants, trying to force open a newspaper vending box. Bud laid a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder, startling the skinny man, who immediately stood erect and pretended to be fishing money out of his pocket for a paper. He relaxed and let out a deep breath when he rec
ognized Bud.
“You scared the beejeebers out of me, Bud,” Jimmy said. “Why don’t you give a guy some warning before you grab him?”
Bud gestured toward the newspaper vending box. “Eager to catch up on current events, Jimmy?” he said. “Or were you maybe trying to help the L.A. Times by doing their collecting for them?”
“Oh come on, Officer Burke,” Jimmy said. “You got me all wrong. You know me.”
“That’s right,” Bud said. “I know you all too well, but seeing as how you didn’t actually break into the box, I’m going to make a trade with you. “I’ll let you off with just a warning this time.”
“And what do I have to do for you?” Jimmy said.
“I’m getting to that,” Bud said. “Do you know a guy named Stewart Worthington?”
“Everybody down here on the boulevard knows Stew,” Jimmy said.
“Have you heard anything about him recently?” Bud said. “Has anyone been after him for anything?”
“Anything, like what?” Jimmy said.
“Gambling, narcotics, numbers,” Bud said. “Take your pick.”
“Well,” Jimmy said, “Now I wouldn’t know firsthand myself, but I hear tell that Stew has been known to supply a couple of the gentlemen on the street with stimulants from time to time.”
“I already know that, Jimmy,” Bud said. “What I want to know is if anyone has been threatening him or chasing him.”
Jimmy shook his head. “All I know is that he used to meet the same guy around the corner once a week and now I haven’t seen them there for two weeks in a row. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Do you know the other man’s name?” Bud said.
Jimmy shrugged. “You don’t always get real names here on the street,” he said. “Stew called the other guy Brick. If you ask me, that’s a shitty thing for a parent to do.”
“Huh?” Bud said. “What are you talking about?”
“I mean for a parent to name their kid Brick,” Jimmy said. “Don’t you think that’s a shitty thing to do to a person?”
“Like you said, Jimmy,” Bud told him, “You don’t always real names on the street. It’s probably a nickname of just a part of his real name. Thanks anyway. Now get out of here and keep your nose clean. And don’t let me catch you trying to break into any more newspaper vending boxes. Go on, scram.”
“Thanks, Officer Burke,” Jimmy said, and then hurried off down the street.
I looked at Bud out of the corner of my eye. “Very good, Officer Burke,” I said. “For a minute there, I almost believed you were a cop myself.”
“Hey,” Bud said, holding up both palms, “I never identified myself as a cop. I can’t help it if Jimmy assumes that I am.”
“Ever hear of this Brick character?” I said.
Bud shook his head. “Not by than name,” he said. “Let’s pay Eric a visit and see if we can look in the moniker file for someone named Brick.”
“He’ll want to know what we doing looking up aliases, won’t he?” I said. “Besides, he’s already agreed to pay us the minimum fifty bucks. Any further work we do on this case will end up being pro bono, which doesn’t pay any bills.”
“Elliott,” Bud said. “He’s paying us the one day minimum, so let’s give him a day’s work. Besides, think of the satisfaction you’ll have if we solve this case? You have another pressing case that we need to be on?”
I shook my head. I had to agree that continuing on this case beat sitting around the office with nothing to do. “Let’s go,” I said.
Lieutenant Anderson wasn’t in when we got to the twelfth precinct but since Bud knew almost everyone there, we had no problem finding a cop to let us have access to the moniker file. It didn’t take long to find the guy we were looking for. There were only three suspects in the moniker file with the alias of Brick. The first suspect was a former bricklayer who had killed his boss with a brick. He was currently serving a life sentence in San Quentin. The second suspect was a man named Elias ‘Brick’ Howard. He had gotten the nickname when three associates of his dumped him in the river with a bag of bricks tied around his ankles. Luckily for him the rope broke and he was able to swim to the opposite shore and get away from his would-be assassins.
It was the third suspect who held the most promise for us. He was a man named Bertram Brickman, whose recorded included arrests for gambling as well as drugs. He’d been arrested for suspicion of drug trafficking but had been released when his confiscated drugs mysteriously disappeared from the evidence room at the Burbank Police Department.
“That’s our guy,” Bud said. “I’d bet my mother’s pension on it.”
“I wouldn’t want to be your mother,” I said.
Bud rolled his eyes. “Mom’s been dead for a few years now,” he said. “What, you never heard that expression before?”
“Okay,” I said, “So now what? Do we find this Brickman character and make him tell us what’s going on with Worthington?”
“No,” Bud said. “We’ll have to be a little cagier than that. He’d know me by sight, but he wouldn’t necessarily know you. You could make the contact, pretending to be a drug buyer. You could tell him that you usually bought your drugs from Worthington, but that he stiffed you last time and you decided to try someone else. Brickman’s sure to open up to you.”
“It’s worth a shot,” I said. “But how are we going to find him?”
“Just leave that to me,” Bud said. “I have an idea.”
“Care to share it with me?” I said.
“First,” Bud said, “As long as we’re in the building, how about if we pay Andy Reynolds a visit? I want to see what he found with Whittaker’s ex-wife.”
Bud and I walked the length of the west hall, ending up in the morgue. Andy was standing over a body on the examination table when we walked in. “That Whittaker’s ex?” Bud said.
Andy nodded and then pointed to the overhead microphone he’d been speaking into. Bud shrugged and held his index finger up to his lips while Andy finished his assessment of the female body on the table. When he’d finished, Andy stepped away from the table and turned to Bud. “Now, what was that you were saying?” he said.
Bud gestured with his chin at the body. “I asked if that was Whittaker’s ex-wife?” he said. “The woman from the Yucca Avenue apartments?”
Andy pulled off his latex gloves and tossed them into the trash can. “That’s her,” he said. “Once again, not a mark on the body, except what the flies had done to her. That made me curious so I checked her ears and sure enough, I found a puncture wound in the right ear, just like the old man in the dumpster.”
“So this was no coincidence,” I said. “That kind of leads me back to Worthington as the prime suspect.”
Andy’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t understand.”
“Whittaker, the old man in the dumpster,” I explained, “Had a will naming his brother, his ex-wife and his former business partner as beneficiaries. Turns out the brother killed himself, or so it seems, two years ago. Now the ex-wife turns up dead and then Whittaker himself is found stabbed through the ear, leaving just one beneficiary—Stewart Worthington.”
But stepped in. “But we both agreed that Worthington had all but forgotten about the will,” he said. “And besides, he’s the one who told us that Whittaker didn’t have anything left to leave anybody.”
“As far as he knew,” I said. “But we never have checked out Whittaker’s assets in any great detail. We’re just assuming from seeing him that he had nothing to leave. I think we’d better look a little closer at the will. Thanks, Andy.”
Bud and I left the morgue and returned to my van. I pulled out the copy of Whittaker’s will and looked again at the provisions. He had listed forty-eight thousand dollars, which was all gone by now. He also listed his house, which the bank took when Whittaker went to prison. The finance company took the car that he was going to leave to his beneficiaries. That left only his stock options in the company he and Worthington ha
d started a dozen years earlier.
Bud and I drove to the hall of records and asked to see any papers they had on Witt-Wor, Inc., the company Whittaker and Worthington had started. The woman behind the counter brought us a manila folder and laid it out on the counter before us.
“Look at this,” I said, paging through the papers. “When Whittaker was sent to prison, his company spiraled and Worthington had to sell. Some outfit called Cal-Tex bought them out. Or they at least bought out Worthington’s shares. According to this, it looks like Whittaker hung on to his shares and refused to sell them even after he went to prison.”
“And what are those shares worth today?” Bud said.
I handed the manila folder back to the clerk and left the building with Bud. I drove back to the office and fired up my desktop computer. I got onto the stock market site and looked up Cal-Tex. Their stock was currently trading for Eighty-nine dollars a share. I checked the copy of Whittaker’s will again and turned to Bud.
“According to this,” I said, “Whittaker’s shares in Witt-Wor, now Cal-Tex, are now worth just over two hundred thirty thousand dollars and some change.”
“Think he knew that?” Bud said.
“Not likely,” I said. “Or he wouldn’t have been living on the street. But I’ll bet someone else knew of the stock’s value.”
“Who?” Bud said.
“Brickman,” I said.
“Brickman?” Bud said, confused.
“Yeah, Brickman,” I said. “Somehow he found out that Worthington had been named as one of the beneficiaries in Whittaker’s will. But he also knew that there were two other names on there as well. My guess is he started looking into the other and found out that Whittaker’s brother hung himself two years ago. That left only the ex-wife standing between Worthington and all that money.”
“And Elmer Whittaker,” Bud added. “At this point he was still alive.”
“He was the last to go,” I said. “Remember? The ex-wife died at least two days ago. Okay, so now the beneficiaries are taken care of, leaving just Worthington so now Elmer Whittaker has to go.”