She hesitated. “Yes. The night before. Of course, at the time I didn’t know it was ‘the night before.’ He left the house late, around eleven. I was getting ready for bed. He said he’d be gone for a few hours and for me not to tell anyone.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was Foster with him?”
“No. At least, he didn’t come to the house.”
“You didn’t tell any of this to the police or the insurance company or the federal investigators, did you?”
“No, I… I was afraid.”
“Afraid you wouldn’t collect Martin’s life insurance?”
“Now just a damn minute,” Armis said. “You have no right to—”
“It’s all right, Roger,” Vivian said.
He closed his mouth and blew air through his nose.
“Yes,” she said to me. “The money was a consideration. After all, Martin was gone, and Chelsea and I were alone. But mostly I was afraid that the police would implicate me in what Martin had done. That is, what I thought he had done. Suicide… and murder. I was terrified they would put me in jail, or at the very least, take Chelsea away. So I lied. By omission. I told them nothing about Martin’s cancer or his two-day trip or his absence the night before the crash. And now he… threatens to tell.”
“You mean, someone who claims to be him.”
“It’s him.”
“ how could it be? The plane crash aside, he had inoperable cancer. He should be dead.”
Vivian shook her head. Her face looked pinched. “He didn’t have cancer. Some months after the crash I spoke to our family doctor. He said that Martin had been in perfect health.”
“I see. So why would he put a bomb on the plane?”
“He didn’t,” she said loudly. “He swore to me when he phoned. Martin is no murderer. He said someone else blew up the plane.”
“Who?”
“The man who died with Foster.”
“What’s his name?”
“Martin… wouldn’t tell me.”
“Did he say why the plane was blown up?”
“No,” she said quietly.
“Or why he disappeared?”
“No.”
“Or where he’s been for four years?”
“No. All I know is that he’s back.”
“But you haven’t actually seen him.”
She shook her head. “I’ve only spoken to him on the phone.”
“Are you sure it’s his voice?”
“His voice is… different. A harsh whisper. He said he had an accident that permanently damaged his larynx.”
“Oh, that’s convenient.”
“I know, I refused to believe him, too. And it wasn’t only his voice that was different. It was his attitude. He seemed cold. Mean. I knew he couldn’t be Martin.”
“What changed your mind?”
“He… called me ‘Kitten.’”
“Kitten.”
Armis shifted in his seat. He looked embarrassed. Vivian didn’t.
“It was a name we used… in bed. I was his kitten and he was my tiger. It was our secret. We never told anyone.”
“How can you be sure he didn’t?”
“It wasn’t only that, Mr. Lomax. I questioned him—not at length, because he said he couldn’t stay on the phone for long. But he knew almost everything I asked him.”
“Almost?”
“Look,” she said defensively, “we were together for less than two years, and we’ve been apart for four. Memories get cloudy.” She sighed. “Besides, there was one thing he knew in great detail. The events prior to the crash. And only three people knew about that—Martin, myself, and Lawrence Foster. And Foster’s body was positively identified. It has to be Martin who called.”
“Maybe he told someone else those things,” I said. “Perhaps inadvertently. A golf partner or a drinking buddy.”
“Martin rarely drank, certainly not in bars. And he didn’t play golf or any other sport. Unless you consider chess a sport.”
“Who did he play chess with?”
“No one in particular. He belonged to the Denver chess club. They met once a week. Tuesdays, I think.”
“Did he go every week?”
“Yes. Right up until he… disappeared.”
“Did he ever mention anyone’s name from the club?”
“Not that I recall,” she said with some impatience. “And really, Mr. Lomax, what does it matter? Martin has returned, and unless we pay him four hundred thousand dollars, he’ll… ruin our lives.”
She looked sick. And it wasn’t because of the money. The man she once had been married to, and had loved, had viciously turned against her. Or so it seemed.
“I think we should call his bluff,” I said.
They stared at me as if I were slobbering.
“If this man is Martin,” I explained, “he couldn’t possibly come forward. He can’t implicate you without implicating himself. The feds will land on him with both feet. In fact, you could cooperate with them, testify, and—”
Vivian was shaking her head no.
“He doesn’t intend to show himself,” she said. “He can prove to the authorities—anonymously, of course—that I lied during their investigation. I could be charged with obstructing justice, if not conspiracy to commit murder. So you see? We have to pay.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “We still have time to find a way out of this.”
“Less than a week,” Armis said. “Martin said he’d call Monday and for us to have the money ready.”
Vivian nodded in agreement. “There’s no other way.”
“There are always other ways. Let me keep looking into this. When we have more of the picture, we might see a solution. Right now there’s too much we don’t know. For instance, why would Martin want everyone to think he was dead?”
Vivian raised her eyebrows. “Well… I suppose for the money. The four hundred thousand.”
“If that were true, he wouldn’t have waited four years. The money could be gone. In fact, it is gone, isn’t it?”
“Well… yes.”
“So why would he want to fake his death?”
Vivian slowly shook her head. “I have no idea.”
I had three without even trying. Manny, Jack, and Wedge.
Before I left, I asked Vivian if I could borrow a photo of Blyleven. She gave me the same one I’d seen in Donald Warwick’s office, a three-by-five color shot from the chest up. Same triangular face and pointed chin, same narrow nose and wide-set eyes. Same smile.
Although now it seemed different.
Pained.
14
I DROVE TO THE Denver Police Building on Thirteenth Street to admire their collection of photographs.
Notwithstanding Vivian Armis’s conviction that Martin Blyleven was alive, I still wasn’t certain. The scales seemed balanced.
On the dead side was the preponderance of circumstantial evidence, the result of an exhaustive investigation by federal, state, and private cops: Blyleven got on the plane, the plane blew up, pieces of his body were found, and no one had seen him since. On the alive side was the blackmailer. True, thus far he was merely a voice on the telephone, but he seemed to know things that only Blyleven could know.
And then there was Blyleven’s mysterious two-day road trip. Did that indicate he was preparing for his death or preparing to fake his death?
And what about the blackmail artist? If he was a fraud, someone pretending to be Blyleven, how could he know so much? And why did he wait until now to come forward? On the other side, if it really was Blyleven, then why did he wait four years to resurrect himself?
Dead or alive? The scales were flat even.
One thing seemed certain. If it really was Blyleven, then to pull a stunt like this, to return in this way, he had to be desperate.
Or insane.
The only sure way to get all the answers was to find the man and ask him. For the moment, that was
impossible. I still had a few trails left to follow, though. One beckoned more than the others. Or perhaps it was merely my aching head and throbbing little finger.
The detective assigned to my assault was named Flannery, a beefy redhead with freckles on his face and the back of his hands. I described my assailants to him and answered his questions. Well, most of them. He sat me at a table at the edge of the busy squad room, plunked down a stack of mug books, and left me alone.
For most of the afternoon I flipped pages and scanned photographs. After a while they started to blur together, until it seemed as if there were only four men in those books, pictured over and over again: a White, a Black, a Hispanic, and an Asian.
I was looking primarily for Manny, the leader of the trio. I didn’t find him. Nor did I find the bear-man called Wedge. But I did come across a front and profile of one Jonathan Granger.
His friends called him Jack. I still had lumps on my head from his sap.
I waved Detective Flannery over and said, “This one looks kind of familiar. What do you have on him?”
Flannery pulled up Jack’s file on his computer screen.
“Oh, he’s a real sweetheart,” Flannery said.
Jack had a long list of arrests and half a dozen convictions, dating back to his teenage years in Wyoming. Most of it was strong-arm stuff: extortion, assault, assault with a deadly weapon. He’d done thirty-two months in Canon City for manslaughter.
I wasn’t as concerned with his resume, though, as with his whereabouts. His last known address was on West Twenty-fifth Avenue, just off Federal Boulevard.
“You know,” I said to Flannery, tapping the photo in the mug book with my sore hand, “I’m not so sure, after all.”
“We could bring him in for a line-up, see how he looks in person.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
He turned from the monitor and gave me a tired look. “Meaning what?”
“I don’t think it’s him. I’m sorry.”
He squinted. “Don’t bullshit me. He’s one of your assailants, isn’t he?”
I said nothing.
“You’re not planning a little personal revenge, I hope.”
“Me?”
He reached over, took my sport coat by the lapel, and lifted it away from my side. “Have you got a carry permit for that?”
It seemed prudent to start packing the .38. I showed him the permit.
He made a face and shook his head. “A private dick.”
“Right.”
“Yeah, well, you’d better not get it caught in a wringer. Because if I find out you’ve been taking the law in your own hands, I’ll jump down your throat far enough to kick out your liver. Calling yourself a private eye doesn’t mean squat.”
“Don’t I know it.”
He gave me an impatient wave and said, “Get the fuck out of my sight.”
I drove to the last known address of Jonathan “Jack” Granger. It was in an area of north Denver that had once been Italian, but now was Hispanic. Many of the blocks in this part of town were poor, but well tended—pride in one’s home having nothing to do with money. Of course, there are slobs in every economic bracket.
Take Jack, for instance.
His address was one end of a triplex, the units arranged side by side, facing the street with sagging wooden porches, broken and taped windows, and a yard that hadn’t seen a lawn in decades.
There was a low-slung Chevy convertible, top and windows down, parked in the lengthening shade at the east end of the triplex. Four young Hispanics sat inside, their heads wrapped in blue bandannas, the air around them vibrating with the insistent thump of bass and the chiding of an angry rapper to quit putting up with this shit and go ice a cop. They passed around a joint and drank beer from quart bottles and watched me with hooded eyes.
I parked the Olds at the curb and crossed the packed dirt yard to the Chevy. Four brown faces, suspicious and alert. Their hands were low, out of sight. Rap music pounded my ears and resonated inside my chest.
I took out a twenty, creased it lengthwise down the middle, and laid it on the window ledge near the driver’s face. He was the oldest of the four, maybe seventeen. He had a wispy mustache that would someday look like Pancho Villa’s, if he lived long enough. He glanced from me to the twenty, then reached over and shut off the noise.
“What’s this?”
“For turning down the music,” I said.
He took it.
I got out another twenty and said, “This is for telling me who lives in the end unit.”
“You a fuckin’ cop?”
“Do I look like a cop?”
“Yeah, motherfucker, you do.”
“I can’t help it, I was born this way. Who lives there?”
The twenty disappeared. “Anglo motherfucker named Granger.”
“Is he a friend of yours?”
“He don’t bother us, and we don’t bother him.”
“Is he home now?”
“Go ask him.” He reached over and turned up the volume loud enough to jangle my eyes in their sockets.
I let the pounding bass push me toward Jack’s unit. I mounted the creaking porch, and slid the Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special from my hip holster, shielding my movement from the kids in the Chevy. Not that I thought they’d call the cops, no matter what they saw, but why take a chance?
I pulled open the drooping screen and knocked on the door. The snub-nosed revolver felt like a toy in my hand—it weighs less than twenty ounces and carries only five rounds. Of course, they’re .38 Special cartridges, so you only need one. But really, I wasn’t planning on using any, just poking the barrel in Jack’s eye and asking him some pointed questions.
I knocked again.
No answer.
I put my ear to the door. Silence. Except for the booming rap music from the Chevy. And a baby squalling from inside the unit next to Jack’s. And the rush of traffic on Federal Boulevard, honest citizens heading home from work.
I closed the screen, put away the gun, and stepped off the porch. It groaned.
I walked around the side of Jack’s unit, trying to peek through the shaded windows. When I got to the rear, a little brown dog started yapping at me. His chain was wrapped around a clothesline pole in the sun behind the middle unit, and he made enough noise to bring out the neighbors. Nobody seemed to care. At one of Jack’s rear windows I could see through a part in the ragged curtains—a dim kitchen, smaller even than mine. I checked the door lock. It looked easy enough.
I considered going in right then and waiting for him to come home. But there were a few items I wanted to pick up first from a hardware store.
Besides, this was Tuesday. Chess night.
Before I left, I got the dog unwrapped from his pole. He wasn’t much more than a puppy. He wagged his tail and jumped all over me while I dumped the scummy water from his bowl, filled it at the outside tap, and set it next to the house in the shade.
“There you go, boy.”
He peed on my shoe. No good deed goes unpunished.
On the way home I made one stop at a hardware store. Then I dropped by Vaz’s apartment. Sophia answered the door. She’s a short, robust, busty lady in her sixties with iron-gray hair and soft brown eyes.
“Jacob, come in.”
“Hi, Sophia. Is Vaz around?”
“Yes, yes, I have him in the kitchen, slicing cucumbers for a salad. It’s too hot to cook. Will you stay and eat?”
“Well, I …”
She grabbed my hand and dragged me into the apartment. “Vassily, Jacob is here! He’ll be joining us for dinner!”
“I should wash up first.”
“Use our bathroom. You know where it is.”
With the door closed, I removed my jacket, undipped the holster, and jammed it and the piece in an outside pocket. Sophia hates guns.
During our dinner (a heaping salad of garden vegetables and crabmeat, hard-crusted bread, and chilled white wine) Sophia asked me if I’d
met the new tenant. Asked me knowingly. She is troubled by my bachelor status.
“Yes. This morning.”
“She’s a lovely girl, Jacob.”
“Sophia …” Vaz rolled his eyes and shook his head.
Sophia shushed him and smiled at me. “Did you ask her out?”
“Um, well, no.”
“But you will.”
“Gee, I don’t know, Sophia. I’ll see how it goes. She’s quite a bit younger than I am.”
“Oh, tush.” She reached over and patted me on the arm. “You’re a young man, Jacob.”
“Not so young anym—”
“I know,” she said brightly. “The four of us could have dinner together. I’ll bake a nice salmon. How does that sound?”
“Well …”
“Sometime soon, Jacob?”
Sigh. “Sure, why not.”
“Good.” Then she gave Vaz a look that said, You see?
I changed the subject and asked Vaz about the Denver chess club.
“Yes, they still meet on Tuesday nights,” he said. “But since they’ve moved out to west Denver, I don’t go as often as I used to. I don’t like driving too far at night.”
Which is the chess club’s loss, because Vaz is a semiretired grandmaster. Formerly of the Soviet Union, he was ranked right up there with Petrossian and Spassky. Years ago, he and Sophia defected to the West during a tournament in Iceland, and they eventually settled at the foot of the Rockies, which Vaz said reminded him somewhat of the hills of home. I play him occasionally. Once I even managed to hold him to a draw. Of course, his back was to the board and his Queen was still in the box.
“How’d you like to go there with me tonight?”
His eyebrows rose like kittens arching their backs. “Are you getting serious about chess?”
“Just about one particular player.”
15
BY THE TIME VAZ and I headed toward west Denver the sun had dropped below the jagged line of mountains. The air was already noticeably cooler. At this altitude it doesn’t hold the heat for long.
I’d already told Vaz about Blyleven, but when I showed him his photograph—surprise, surprise—Vaz remembered him.
Actually, I shouldn’t have been surprised. To reach the higher levels of chess, you need more than a deep understanding of the game, extreme self-confidence, and a killer instinct. You also need a terrific memory. Not just to memorize openings and multiple variations and critical positions—but entire games. And not only the hundreds, perhaps thousands of games that you’ve played, but thousands more than you’ve read about. Vaz once told me that he could replay from memory, move for move, every game he’d ever played, plus tell me the name of his opponent, the name of the tournament (if any), and the tournament champion (if not himself).
Grave Doubt (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 5) Page 8