Chapter Twenty-two
All the rooms on this side of The Harmony House Suites had interior windows that looked out to the hotel’s wide center atrium. In answer to my knock, room 484’s curtains twitched. The deadbolt clicked, and the door opened, but only a crack. I could have fit through just fine if I was Gumby.
“Felix?”
“It’s me, Miss Shanahan.” Felix’s voice was quiet, but not subdued. It was hard for Felix to restrain his innate enthusiasm for just about everything. The crack expanded to reveal the white-tipped hair, the dark eyes. “Are you alone, Miss Shanahan?”
“No. I brought someone to meet you.” Jack stepped out so Felix could see him. “We have another assignment for you.”
“Cool.”
I waited. And waited. “Can we come in, Felix?”
“Oh. Oh, sure. Absolutely. Sorry. Come in.”
He opened the door and let us slip through. Apparently, he’d taken over room 484 at The Suites and turned it into his command center. It looked like the one John had stayed in, only the floor plan was reversed. It also had a few additions. There were multiple electronic products around the room—a couple of printers, one of which seemed to be in many pieces on the floor, a scanner, what looked like some sort of external high-density drive, a CD player, and lots of hardware I couldn’t identify. The center of all the gadgets was a laptop, which sat on the coffee table in front of the couch. With all the wires and cables running out of it, it looked like a post-op patient in the trauma ward.
“Felix, this is Jack Dolan. He’s a private investigator.”
“Hello, son.” Jack extended his hand and Felix shook it. They were quite a contrast, these two. Jack with his calm, squinty-eyed, seen-it-all PI’s stare, and Felix Melendez Jr. with eyes that couldn’t have gotten any bigger, so clearly delighted to meet a real live private investigator. I loved this kid’s transparency. He moved to the seat on the couch in front of his laptop. The maestro preparing to work.
“What is a Limp Bizkit?” Jack was staring down at the mouse pad on the coffee table.
“It’s a band,” Felix said, waiting for the next question.
“We need to know whose signature this is.” I handed him the credit card receipt. “Can you work with that?”
He snapped it out of my hand and checked it over. His face began to glow. He was like a kid at a spelling bee who had been given an easy word. “Just give me a couple of minutes, okay?”
“Can I watch?” I asked.
He was already deeply immersed. Jack settled into the armchair next to the couch, stuck his legs out, and crossed them at the ankles. I sat on the couch next to Felix and watched what he was doing. I didn’t understand a lot of it, but eventually he got to some program that seemed to be doing a high-speed comparison between the credit card number we’d provided and a large database of other numbers.
“This is going to take a few minutes.” He relaxed, but only slightly.
“Anything on Speath yet, Felix? Anything suspicious in the financials?” I asked.
“Nothing so far, Miss Shanahan, but I haven’t had much time to work on it. We had a fire alarm yesterday and then there was a problem with a parrot that got loose and my restaurant manager called in sick—”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I told you not to ignore your day job. In fact, are you sure you should be using the hotel to do this work for us?”
“I’m not working on the hotel’s time. They’re getting, like, totally more coverage from me since I’m around here so much. I’m using my own computer and equipment. And I plan to bill you for the room and the phone calls. But,” he hastened to add, “I get an awesome discount.”
“You know, Felix, we haven’t talked about this, but I should be paying you. What’s the going rate for someone like you?”
“To do this kind of work, maybe $100… $150 an hour.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry, Miss Shanahan. I figure if you can help me get a job at the airport, it will be worth it.” I was definitely getting the better end of that deal. “I’ll have something to you on Mr. Speath as soon as I crack the firewall. It shouldn’t be much longer.”
“Firewall?” Jack asked the question, but only because he beat me to it. “Speath has a firewall?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s a good one, too. Most of his data is really accessible, but there’s this one section he has walled off. I tried every way I know of to get past and I couldn’t. But I will. I’ve been talking to some of my friends about it. We have ideas.”
“It must be sophisticated,” I said, “if you can’t get in.”
Felix’s olive skin flushed, starting at his throat and rising all the way to his white tips. “Thank you, Miss Shanahan. And I will find a way in. I’ve just never seen one like this before. It’s, like”—he stared up at the ceiling— “wicked tight, you know? It’s a vault.”
I looked at Jack. “Why would a little aviation repair company have a need for a data vault?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “but I’d like to know what’s in there. I’d also like to know why he was here at the hotel that night.”
“I have a theory on that,” I said. “We’re interested in Speath because the FBI is interested and because his car was in the lot the night of the murder.”
“Yes,” Jack said. “We hate coincidences.”
“What if it’s not a coincidence? What if the two things are not independent variables, but dependent?”
“What does that mean?”
“What if the FBI is interested in George because his car was in the lot, and his car was in the lot for totally innocent reasons?”
“Like what?”
“Why do people go to hotels in their own city? Maybe he got a room with Margie.”
“Who’s Margie?”
“She’s his assistant, and she’s an attractive blonde. A few too many ankle bracelets for my taste. But still, maybe we’re looking at an appropriate application of your porking theory. Or maybe they were in the bar having a drink.”
“I can check that.” We both looked at Felix. “I mean I can try to see if they were here for other reasons, like… you know, like if they got a room together. We already know they didn’t register their car with us, so they probably didn’t, you know, use their real names. But they might be regulars. I can see who was registered that night and if they’ve been here before. I can check the registration cards for local addresses. After a while, you get so you can recognize certain things. I can also ask the bartender to go through credit card receipts. Sometimes people park out there who are just here for a drink.”
“Do that,” I said. “Maybe we can eliminate George from consideration altogether.”
“Oh, hey. It’s up.” Felix checked his screen. “Here it is. Your data’s up.”
Jack came around to Felix’s other side. “What are we looking at, son?”
Felix pointed out the highlights with his finger. “The credit card was issued against a Cray Fund corporate account, and here’s the list of people who have cards.” He ran his finger down the list. When he stopped, I leaned in to see who the winner was. “There’s one Arturo,” he said. “Arturo Polonia.”
“I’ll be damned.” Jack shook his head. “This is supposed to be secure data. And you hacked in? Just like that?”
Felix puffed up his narrow chest. “One way or another, I can get in almost anywhere. And I’ll crack Mr. Speath’s vault, too. I’ll figure it out.”
“How about an address or social security number on this Arturo character? I can get someone to run it and see if he has a record.”
“Piece of cake, Mr. Dolan.”
While they looked for that, I found the file Vanessa had given me and searched the list of employees. I read over it twice.
“I think we just narrowed our search, Jack. There is no Arturo Polonia on the Cray employee list.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Jack paused between bites of his chile relleno. “Maybe sh
e forgot,” he said.
“Does Vanessa Cray strike you as a scatterbrain, Jack?”
“No. But she did strike me as someone who could get absorbed in what she was doing to the exclusion of everything else. She checked out on us before we ever left her office.”
We were at the Texas Taco Factory for an early dinner, a storefront fajita bar in Jack’s South Beach neighborhood. It had a neon Corona beer logo in the window and a hand-lettered sign that announced a senior citizens discount, although the place didn’t strike me as a seniors’ kind of hangout. It was dark, with scarred heavy wooden tables and long benches to sit on. Next door was Pucci’s Pizza and the Top Dog Gun Shop. Shorty and Fred’s Ford Dealership was across the street.
“I still think having Felix do a background check on her is a good idea. He’s dying to help us. All he would have to do is a quick search of the periodical databases at the library—magazines, newspapers, especially the business publications. I’d also like to know where she went to school, and if she worked anywhere before she started that fund of hers. That extremely successful fund of hers.”
“You wouldn’t be jealous, would you?”
“You mean because she turned out to be sexy and glamorous and beautiful and successful, probably rich, and undoubtedly more together in her life than I am in mine at the moment?” I threw back a mineral water chaser. “Heavens, no. I’m not jealous.”
Jack crunched a few more taco chips. I took another bite of my fajita. I was trying to space them out, since I had to towel down after each bite. The salsa and other unidentified juices tended to leak out of the sides of the soft tortilla and run down my arm.
“What I want to know,” I said, “is why you’re dismissing her. Her car was at the hotel, she lied to us about this Arturo guy, and I still don’t get why she would have screwed with us the way she did if she wasn’t hiding something.”
Jack was working on his main course—scrambled eggs, a choice for dinner I always found strange. But he said he’d had a taste for huevos rancheros all day. “She answered every question,” he said. “She gave us what we asked for, and she volunteered her cars for inspection, so I don’t see how she screwed with us. I’m not dismissing her. I’ll get someone to run Arturo Polonia for me.”
He took another long drink of ice water from a tall plastic glass. He was throwing down lots of water, no doubt to counteract the extra-hot salsa he’d ordered on the huevos.
“I’m just trying to get you to think about this critically,” he said. “You don’t see many women in the dirty parts trade, especially ones who wear silk. She’s way, way out of Jimmy and Bobby’s league, and if you’re saying you think she killed John, I don’t see how. He was stabbed, which means he was physically overwhelmed. And someone had to lift him into that Dumpster. You told me he was a big man.”
“Maybe someone helped her. Maybe this Arturo person.”
“Then let’s talk about motive.” More water. “You dismissed Ottavio because you couldn’t conceive of a motive that made sense, and yet you think John might have come in contact with this woman? John was in no way involved in drugs, but he may have invested in a hedge fund. Is that your speculation?”
I had to smile. Jack’s sarcasm was too gentle. Good sarcasm was supposed to be sharp enough to make you bleed. Yet he always managed to make his point.
“All right, that’s fair.” It was time to make another fajita, a process at least as treacherous as eating them. I pulled out a tortilla and started piling—meat and peppers and guac and salsa. “How about this? I get to consider the idea that Vanessa is involved if I open up to the possibility that Ottavio could also be involved. Be open to all the possibilities. That’s what you said.” Sour cream, rice, some refried beans. “I can do that. I would never want to be accused of being less than rigorous in my analytical approach.”
“Now you’re talking.”
“I just feel something from her, Jack. I can’t explain it.”
“I understand. I don’t feel it about her, but I do feel it about Jimmy. I think he’s a much more promising suspect. I think George Speath is going to wind up being the key. He’s a nice guy, right?”
“He seemed very nice to me. More than nice. Sweet.”
“Nice guys are always suspect.”
“Where do you get that? The only thing we’ve determined about George is he likes to keep hackers out of his data. He’s an engineer. Maybe he just knows enough to protect himself. It would be hard to hack Felix, too, but that doesn’t make him a bad guy.”
Jack looked at me. I had become a tad more forceful in my defense of George than even I would have expected. “Why,” he asked, “do you like him so much?”
“He loves airplanes. He can’t be all bad.”
“So it’s a perspective you’ve gained through careful and diligent data gathering and analysis.”
“Exactly. Similar to the approach you’ve taken with Jimmy.”
“Jimmy is a bad guy. There is no question about that. And I submit that the man following you through the terminal the other day was one of Jimmy’s people.”
“Jimmy doesn’t know I exist.”
“Avidor does.”
“True. Why would he be following me?”
“To scare you. To scare me. I’m going to find out.” He scarfed down another handful of tortilla chips. Between the two of us, we were going through them pretty compulsively. “If you feel that strongly about Vanessa, you should pursue her.”
“I should pursue her?”
“I’m going to track down Ira and see what news he has for me.”
“Tonight?”
“I do my best work at night. So does he. And I have to follow up some leads on my helicopter case. I do have another client, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll call Felix and ask him to do the background check. Maybe we’ll come up with something that will help you remember where you know her from.”
“Tell him to look at the orchid societies.”
“That’s a great idea. And what about this employee list?” I asked. “Am I going to have to interview thirty-five people and all their friends and family by myself?”
“You said you wanted to be an investigator.” He said it with a twinkle in his eye.
“Actually, I think I said I wanted to watch you investigate.”
“Give it to me.” He took the list and folded it until it fit into the front pocket of his shirt. “I’ll see if Patty would like to have something the Bureau doesn’t have.”
“Excellent.” I finished off the last piece of skirt steak, wiped down, leaned back against the wall, and stretched my legs out on the long bench. My ankle was mostly fine, but it still throbbed at the end of a long day.
“You’re not going to see Jimmy tonight, are you, Jack? By yourself?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. But it strikes me as not a good idea for you to do that.”
“Why?”
“Because you keep telling me not to get emotionally involved. That it clouds my ability to get to the right answer. You have something going on with Jimmy that you choose not to share with me…”
I glanced over for a reaction, thinking I could guilt him into sharing with me. There was none. Nothing. His face had gone blank. I picked up my knife and concentrated on rolling it across the wooden table. Flat implements don’t roll well. “Anyway, whatever it is, it seems intensely emotional to me.”
“I’m not emotional about Jimmy.” Now his voice was blank, too. Flat.
“I can see it in you right now.” I had cleared a space and was twirling the knife, spinning it like a top. Harder and harder. Faster and faster. “You’re so cool about everything else, so in command. But when you talk about him—just me talking about him now—your reactions are different.”
“Different how?”
I shifted on the bench. It felt narrow. I hadn’t meant to go so deep with this line of discussion. I looked again into his eyes and couldn’t find anyt
hing to hold on to. It was as if a shroud had come down.
“Vulnerable, Jack. You seem very vulnerable around the subject of Jimmy. That’s the only way to describe it. It’s like he’s a flat spot for you. A place you can’t see and since you can’t see it, you can’t defend it. I don’t know him. I don’t know anything about him, but you said he’s pretty smart and—”
“Where did you get your psychological training?”
I stared at him, hoping for the mild curves and rounded corners that usually accompanied his ribbing. It wasn’t there. His eyes were hard. Mean, even.
“On the ramp in Boston,” I said. “Crash course.”
“And who’s going to protect me? You?”
His tone had moved beyond flat to sharp, sharp enough to make me bleed. He was getting the hang of this sarcasm thing, trying to hurt me, or at least push me away. I’d poked around in something that was none of my business. The restaurant had turned festive since we’d been in there. A large group had come in, gathered around the bar, and started doing shots. Loudly. They were just warming up while the temperature at our table had dropped below zero. For the first time, I felt uncomfortable with Jack Dolan.
“I’m sorry for digging around in your business and making assumptions I have no right to make. I do that, and I do it without permission.” I swiveled around, put my feet on the floor, and sat up straight. “But don’t ridicule my concern. I like you, and no, I can’t protect you from Jimmy. From anything, probably. Surely you know someone who can. All I’m saying is I don’t think… I would like for you not to go out and confront Jimmy on your own.”
When I had faced forward, he had taken my pose, turning to lean his back against the wall and putting his feet up on the bench. He drank again from his big plastic cup of water, finishing off the slushy ice-water mix. He stared up at the ceiling fan, which was turning at a lethargic pace. “There’s nothing you need to know about Jimmy and me,” he said. “All you need to know about him is he killed your friend.”
It was impossible not to feel the blunt finality of the statement. Nerves all through my body were twisting themselves into knots. It was as if the scenery I’d become familiar with had shifted and I was lost.
The Alex Shanahan Series Page 56