by Lee Goldberg
"There are a lot more files where this one came from," Penmore said. "Tomorrow we're arresting city housing chief Delmar Campos for corruption and his contractor buddy Douglas Lorusso for bribery. And that's just for starters. Campos will crack and Lorusso's little crime family will collapse. We've wanted to take Lorusso down for years. That day is finally here."
Steve shook his head. "Hard to believe we owe it all to a blackmailer."
Burnside smiled. "Hell, when this is over, Stryker may deserve a statue in front of City Hall."
After his dinner on Fisherman's Wharf, Mark cruised by the front desk of the hotel, hoping to be offered two more hot cookies, but apparently that was a perk reserved exclusively for people checking in. He gave up after a few passes, went up to his room, and called his son at home.
Steve answered on the first ring.
"You're not going to believe why Nick Stryker was visiting Bert Yankton," Mark said.
"It doesn't really matter anymore," Steve said. "We've solved Nick Stryker's murder."
"You found his body?"
"Not yet," Steve said. He went on to tell his father about the arrest of Detective Harley Brule and the discovery that the charred corpse in Stryker's dumpster was one of Brule's men, Detective Arturo Sandoval. "We've got a sworn deposition from Brule saying that Sandoval wanted to kill Stryker and burn his files rather than pay him off. Between the deposition and the circumstantial evidence, the DA and my captain are satisfied. The homicide investigation is officially closed."
"You're going to close the case without a body," Mark said.
"And without the hassle and expense of a trial. Sweet, isn't it?" Steve said. "But we're confident that if Sandoval was alive, we could have convicted him of murder."
"So you're satisfied, too."
"You say that as if you aren't." Steve said. 'What more do you want?"
"A corpse," Mark said.
"We've convicted killers before without ever finding the bodies of their victims. Bert Yankton, for instance. What difference would it make if we found Stryker's body now."
"The way Stryker was killed and forensic clues at the scene could possibly exclude Sandoval and implicate somebody else," Mark said. "I would hate to see someone get away with murder simply because it's more convenient for the DA and the police to hold a dead man responsible."
"Dad, do you really think if that was what was going on that I'd play along with it?"
"No, of course not."
"The truth is, I think Brule may have ordered Sandoval to kill Stryker, but I can't prove it, Steve said. "So I'll settle for this. It's an empty victory for Brule. He's still in for a long stretch in prison. Justice is being served."
"I suppose you're right," Mark said.
"So why do you sound so glum."
"I'm just tired," Mark said. "I'm heading home first thing in the morning. If you're free at noon tomorrow, I'll buy you lunch at Barbeque Bob's."
"When have you ever paid for a meal at Barbeque Bob's?"
"Never," Mark said. "That's why it's my favorite place to take people to lunch."
Some people believe that dreams are a manifestation of the mental filing and sorting of experience, emotion, and knowledge that's necessary to keep the mind organized and running smoothly.
If that's true, then Mark's mind was trying to organize a lot of mental clutter as he slept that night.
He once again found himself running through an onion field, only the onions were made of tightly rolled vintage currency.
The crows were there again, too, gathered on the shoulders of a Nick Stryker scarecrow and holding smoking cigars in their beaks. One of the crows dropped his cigar down the scarecrow's faded overalls and set the straw man ablaze.
Mark awoke at five in the morning, the dream still vivid in his mind. Instead of going back to sleep, he decided he'd might as well get up. His alarm was set for six anyway. He showered and shaved, made a quick visit to the hotel's breakfast buffet, and was on the road by the time he'd originally intended to wake up.
He managed not to think about Nick Stryker, Bert Yankton, or Jimmy Cale for the next forty minutes, distracting himself by listening to National Public Radio and appreciating the verdant farmland on either side of Highway 101.
And then the fields of lettuce, artichokes, and tomatoes gave way to the guard towers, razor-wire fences, and barracks of the Salinas Valley State Prison, located along the freeway leading into the farming community of Soledad. A sign on the highway warned drivers not to pick up hitchhikers, particularly those, Mark thought, wearing orange prison jumpsuits.
The sight of the prison immediately reminded him of his visit with Bert Yankton at San Quentin. Soon Mark found himself tormented again by all the unanswered questions about Nick Stryker's activities in the days before his murder.
Even though those questions didn't really matter any more, he couldn't help pondering them anyway. They were a mystery, something Mark couldn't resist. He needed something to occupy him for the next few hours. What difference did it make whether he thought some more about Stryker or listened to public radio? At least if he thought about Stryker, he wouldn't be nagged every twenty minutes to make a generous pledge.
Mark turned off the radio and let his mind work. He thought about Bert Yankton and his actions the night of Cale's murder. He thought about how Jimmy Cale was killed and the evidence that had convicted Yankton. He thought about his conversation with Betsy Cale and the kind of man Jimmy had been. And he thought about all the calls Stryker had made to currency dealers and brokers.
That was when Mark remembered it wasn't only Cale's currency collection that Stryker was interested in.
Stryker also called cigar stores, including Hampshire's, where Cale maintained his own private humidor.
Why did Stryker call cigar stores? What was the point of that?
There was only one way to find out, but it was still too early to call any cigar stores. They wouldn't be open for another couple of hours. So he waited, mulling over everything again. And again.
Around nine o'clock Mark stopped in Solvang for gas. The station had a windmill on its faux-thatched roof. It wasn't that unusual. Everybody had a windmill in Solvang, a town built by Danish settlers in the early 1900s that exactly emulated the architectural style of their homeland. Little did the settlers know they were creating California's first theme park. All that was missing was a roller coaster.
After filling his tank, Mark figured the cigar stores were probably open. He parked his car, rolled down the window for some air, and called Hampshire's Cigar Shop, where he told Hugh Tiplin, the proprietor, the same lie he'd told every one on the phone last night.
Like the others, Tiplin was glad to help the writer. Nobody could resist the opportunity to be acknowledged and immortalized in a book, especially a scandalous, true-crime tale rife with sex, money, and gory murder.
Tiplin described Cale's taste in cigars as refined and expensive. Cale once spent three hundred fifty dollars for a single stick from a box of pre-embargo Padron Cubans.
Cale loved the Havanas, but otherwise enjoyed double corona or Churchills made in the Dominican Republic using tobacco grown from seeds smuggled from Cuba before Castro took over.
To ensure that he got a steady supply of Fuente Opus X, a cigar made in limited quantities, Cale donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Fuente family's favorite charities.
He liked Partagas Salamones and Padron Anniversarios and Aston VSG, rare cigars that are so pricey they are usually bought one or two at a time. Cale bought them by the box.
Tiplin then began rhapsodizing about the pleasures of a relatively new cigar, the Davidoff Zino Platinum Crown, that Cale would have loved. It was a luxurious smoke of two different Dominican seeds, Piloto Cubano and San Vicente, blended with Peruvian tobacco, all wrapped in a semi-dark Connecticut seed grown in Ecuador.
All of that meant nothing to Mark. But he got the general idea. Cale had exacting standards when it came to choosing his
cigars.
Mark thanked Tiplin for his help and hung up, looking at the barely legible notes he'd made during the conversation and wondering why he'd bothered to take them at all.
What did he hope to learn from a bunch of cigar brand names?
About as much as he'd learn from his list of vintage paper money.
So he'd learned some trivial facts about the late Jimmy Cale. Big deal.
Knowing some of Cale's hobbies and personal pursuits wasn't going to get him any closer to figuring out what Nick Stryker was doing before one of the corrupt cops he was blackmailing decided to kill him.
It didn't matter anymore anyway.
The Stryker case was closed.
It also wasn't going to get him any closer to figuring out if Yankton was an innocent man, a cause that Mark wasn't convinced was worth pursuing.
Mark tossed his notes onto the passenger seat and started up the car again. He was about to back out of his parking space when he felt the tickle, the tingle on the back of his neck that occurred when whatever was percolating in his subconscious finally emerged into his awareness.
All the disparate facts he had collected over the last two days suddenly coalesced into a truth that revealed itself to him with startling clarity.
Stryker wasn't looking for Jimmy Cale's killer.
He was looking for Jimmy Cale.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mark was already sitting at his usual booth at Barbeque Bob's, nursing his second root beer, when Steve came in at noon.
"You look tired," Mark said as Steve slid into the booth across from him.
"While you've been taking a driving tour of the Golden State, I've been busy arresting people," Steve said. "I've discovered that working Stryker's files is a full-time job
"It's amazing the information he gathered," Mark said. "Stryker had an incredible instinct for ferreting out criminal behavior."
"Because he was a crook and a ferret."
Steve waved over a waitress and ordered a root beer for himself and two slabs of ribs, hot corn bread, and baked beans for him and his father to share.
"Over the last few days I've developed newfound respect for Stryker's investigative skills," Mark said.
"You're joking."
"Not at all. He was a remarkable detective. Truly gifted."
"And corrupt, unethical, and immoral"
"That, too," Mark said. "Bert Yankton hired Stryker to find Jimmy Cale's killer."
Steve raised his eyebrows. "What did Stryker say, 'Look in the mirror'?"
"Stryker took the job."
"Of course he did. How could he resist? Yankton was asking to be ripped off. It was found money for doing absolutely nothing."
"That's just it, Steve. Stryker was working the case"
"What case? Yankton killed Cale."
"But let's say he didn't," Mark said.
"He did," Steve said.
Mark explained how Stryker began learning about all of Jimmy Cale's hobbies and passions, from smoking cigars to collecting paper money.
"I don't see the point," Steve said.
"I didn't either at first, Mark said. "But then I found out someone has been quietly recreating Cale's currency collection—if not the actual bills, then ones just like them."
"So?"
The waitress arrived at the table with their food and plenty of napkins. She'd seen them eat before. Mark tucked a napkin into his shirt collar like a bib and picked up a rib.
"What if Cale is still alive?" Mark said, starting to eat.
"He was hacked to pieces and buried in the desert," Steve said. "You're the doctor, you tell me. Could he have survived?"
"Let's say there never was a murder," Mark said.
"Cale took Yankton's wife and his money," Steve said between-bites of pork ribs slathered in barbecue sauce. "Cale's blood was all over his house, all over Yankton's house, all over Yankton's hatchet, and all over the trunk of Yankton's car, where, incidentally, we also found Cale's toe."
"What if Cale faked his death and framed Yankton for it?"
"Why would he do that?"
"I don't know," Mark said. "But what if he did? What if he ran off, had massive plastic surgery, and created a whole new life for himself somewhere else, leaving Yankton to rot in jail?"
Steve wiped some barbecue sauce off his face and tossed a rib bone into the basket he and his father were filling.
"You think that's what Stryker was onto?" Steve said.
Mark nodded. "He may have been a repugnant human being, but he understood people. He realized a man can change his face and his identity but he can't change who he is. Whoever Cale is now would indulge in all the same passions he did before he created his new life. He would still love money. Making it, collecting it, and gambling with it."
"So you think Stryker intended to find Cale and then blackmail him," Steve said. "That's a mighty big leap based on no evidence at all."
"It's based on Stryker's phone bills and my intuition."
"Like I said, no evidence at all," Steve said. "But let's take a step back. What made Stryker arrive at the conclusion so quickly that Cale is alive?"
"I don't know," Mark said. "Whatever happened to Vivian Yankton?"
"If you think she ran off with Cale, think again," Steve said. "Vivian became an actress, though I use that term loosely. She ended up doing direct-to-DVD, soft-core porn, starting with Triangle of Lust, based on the Yankton case. She played a thinly disguised, and thinly dressed, version of herself, only with much bigger boobs than before."
"You saw it, didn't you?"
"Professional curiosity," Steve said. "I wanted to see the guy they got to play me."
"How come you never told me about this?"
"The character's name was Lieutenant Stockton Stone, and he interrogated Vivian by having sex with her. They ended up running off together at the end," Steve said. "It wasn't the most flattering portrayal."
"I still may want to talk with her," Mark said. "Did you ever get Stryker's credit-card statement?"
"Yeah."
"When and where was his last purchase?"
"Four days ago at a gas station in Victorville," Steve said.
"Interesting," Mark said.
"Why?"
"Because his last call was to Sanford Pelz, a currency broker in Kingman, Arizona, which isn't far from Victorville," Mark said. "I've tried calling Pelz repeatedly and can't reach him. Maybe Stryker had the same experience."
"So what's your next step?"
Mark sighed. "I'll drive to Kingman to see Sanford Pelz. He may have been the last person to see Stryker alive."
"When are you going?"
"Right after dessert," Mark said.
"Why bother? We know what happened to Stryker. And you don't really believe that Cale is alive, do you?"
"Arturo Sandoval may have killed Stryker, but I need to know if an innocent man is on death row."
"Yankton is guilty, Dad. I should know, I put him there," Steve said. "If word gets out about what you're doing, the press will be all over it."
"I'll poke around discreetly." Mark said. "I'm curious about what Stryker was doing, but I promise I won't let my curiosity jeopardize your career."
"I want you to make me a promise, but that wasn't it, Steve said. "Here it is. If you think Yankton is innocent, I want you to forget that the dumb cop who put him away was your son. Do whatever is necessary to set him free."
Mark smiled at his son. He'd never been more proud of him. "I promise."
"Then you deserve a slice of pecan pie," Steve said. He signaled the waitress, who came over and took their order. After she left, Steve let out a deep breath. "Looks like Burn- side was right"
"About what?"
"I may need all the glory that comes from these Stryker file arrests more than he does," Steve said. "If you're right about Cale, they may be the only thing that can save my career."
The five-hour journey to Kingman, Arizona, was memorable only for how unmemorable it
was, marked by seemingly interminable periods of crushing boredom, particularly along the Pearblossom Highway, a two-lane California road that cut across the empty desert scrub between Lancaster and Victorville.
It was so dull that people often dozed off at the wheel and drifted into oncoming traffic. But even if a driver managed to stay awake on this deceptively peaceful, straight stretch of desert highway, there were other dangers. Bored drivers in a hurry to put the dull road behind them, or perhaps just to quicken their deadening pulse, would attempt to pass the cars in front of them by speeding up in the westbound lane. They frequently miscalculated the speed they were traveling, the amount of open roadway they needed to pass the cars, and the time left until the oncoming tour bus smashed into them head-on.
The result was miles of highway shoulder lined with faded crosses and piles of dried flowers, makeshift memorials to the dead. It was why the highway was better known as Bloody Alley.
Mark Sloan managed to stay awake and alert, despite his many hours on the road, and reached Victorville without incident. He headed north on the interstate, which had the benefit of being wider and safer than Bloody Alley but wasn't any more interesting when it came to scenery.
At least there weren't crosses along the road here.
Before long, he came to the eastbound transition to Interstate 40, which replaced the famed Route 66, now fondly remembered by some as the Mother Road and by others as America's Main Street.
Most of Route 66 was either paved over in the sixties and seventies for new highways or bypassed entirely, leaving towns that once thrived on the cross-country traffic to decay into ruins not even worthy of mowing down for outlet malls. A few of those once prosperous towns managed to survive as out-of-the-way tourist traps, celebrated by road junkies in search of kitsch and motor-home retirees eager to relive the good old days.
The interstate ran right through Kingman. It's main attraction as a place to live was that no one else could imagine living there. It was far away from everything and offered neither natural beauty, historical interest, nor kitsch appeal. The town seemed to exist simply to service the basic needs of travelers who found themselves stuck midway between where they'd been and where they wanted to go. Presumably, some never left.