The Brick House was currently in the same space as my old haunt, The Velvet Dog. It was in midtown Kansas City, right by the large radio tower that used to be called the KCMO Tower, but was currently called KCTV Tower – this was a tower that I used to imagine was The Eiffel Tower, because it was shaped like the Eiffel Tower. It always lit up the night like a beacon, and I was fascinated by it. I was likewise fascinated by The Velvet Dog – it was once the hippest martini bar in town. Retro vibe, dark red walls, two levels and a patio, and the best selections of martinis in the city. I never quite understood why it went out of business. Something about problems between the owners of that bar and another bar called The Empire Room. Both of those bars had the same kind of retro hipster vibe and gave Martini Corner its name.
Now there was the Brick House, which was just another neighborhood bar and didn’t have the distinctive vibe that The Velvet Dog had. And my wife was apparently drinking there while our daughter lays in a hospital bed, scared to death. And, even worse than that, I suspected that Sarah was drinking there with somebody who wasn’t a female. I suspected that Sarah was drinking with John Gibson, who was, ironically enough, one of my former co-workers at the Public Defender’s Office and was currently making the big bucks in a large personal injury firm.
I knew that Sarah was having an affair, but I was all out of fucks to give at that point. My only focus was on Amelia getting well. Everything else in my life was secondary.
Of course, I was also worried about my different cases that I was working on. That was always a point of stress. I wanted to make sure that Betsy Ward, Austin’s mom, got some modicum of justice for losing her son in such a way. As much as I secretly thought that the whole thing was a blessing, because Austin was really, really sick, I also thought that it was a travesty. He shouldn’t have died like that.
Or should he have? His death was literally painless. He went to sleep for his surgery and never woke up. That doctor possibly saved him many years of pain and relapses. That doctor possibly saved his mother years of stress – getting her hopes up, having them crash down, again and again. The endless cycle of thinking that this was it, my child is cured, only to get the bad news, once again, in the doctor’s office. The tears begin anew, the panicking re-starts, everything re-sets to the moment when you first found out how sick your child is. You have to have hope, but that hope dims with every passing day. Cancer is impossible for families, and impossible for the children suffering from it. Watching your child’s light slowly dim was indescribably heart-breaking.
Was Betsy merely spared years of that kind of agony? She had no choice, at the moment, but to make her peace with what had happened. She was able to get some closure on Austin’s life and his illness. For many families, the ones who went through years of hopes that bloomed, then were cruelly dashed, their closure never would come until their child either got permanently well or passed away. Betsy’s healing could begin.
Yet, there had been hope for Austin. Hope that another experimental treatment might have been his ticket. That he might yet fulfill his dream of working for NASA. It was that kernel of hope that was taken by the careless doctors in his case. It was that kernel of hope that I needed to sell to the jury if I was to get any kind of settlement for Betsy.
I checked on Nate, who was sitting in his room, playing a video game. I spent about an hour with him, making sure his homework was done and just chatting about life, before I went to my home office and examined my cases. I had a full roster of things on my plate, from robbery and burglary cases that were sure to plead out – most cases pled out – to these two large cases that probably were going to result in a trial. Betsy Ward and Erik Gregorian. Two people who couldn’t be more different, yet both of them needed me all the same. Erik was technically Harper’s case, but I had the feeling that she was going to lean on me to get the acquittal that she desperately needed. Both of these cases were in their nascent stage, which meant that they both could take a turn at any moment. Something was going to pop up during investigation that would either be the saving grace or the death knell. That was usually how it worked. It was my job to either run with the saving grace or find every way possible to ensure that the death knell wasn’t actually fatal.
I checked the clock. It was only 10. Garrett was no doubt still awake. That man hardly slept. Maybe he and I could grab a drink together and I could pick his brain on what he was finding out on the Austin Ward case. Give him the facts on Erik’s case and see what he could find out there. I was restless that evening, and, deep down, spoiling for a fight.
I called my overnight baby-sitter, whose name was Emily. I couldn’t get Heather to work late on school nights, but Emily was a bit older and was in college. She also lived in the neighborhood and was always happy to make some extra money sitting for Nate when I had to work really late and Sarah was out doing god-knew-what. I knew that she just came over and worked on her schoolwork, cramming for a pop quiz in one of her humanities classes, while Nate slept, but that was okay. I obviously needed somebody to stay with Nate, so I was happy to get Emily to do it.
She agreed to come over and, when she got there, I put on my leather jacket and left.
I had arranged to meet Garrett at the Brick House. Yeah, it was spying, but so what? Sarah deserved it.
Chapter 7
I met Garrett at the bar. He was already there, sitting at a table, a vodka and water in his glass. He smiled and waved his glass in the air as I walked in. “Hey, buddy,” he said as I sat down. “I know why you chose this place.” He gestured to the loft area upstairs. “Your wife is here with some guy.”
Some guy. I think that I knew who that some guy was, but I was going to wait until one of them came down the stairs to find out. There was a bar upstairs, however, so it might be awhile before one or both of them made their appearance. In the meantime, I was going to pick Garrett’s brain.
Tom Garrett was a guy that I came to know in prison. He was a street guy, just like myself, who joined a gang when he was only 10 years old. He had the same kind of home life that I did – an alcoholic mother, an absent father, men in the house who would come and go. Many of those men were violent and abusive. Of all the prison types, Garrett and his ilk were the ones that I got along with the best. We bonded over our shared stories.
Garrett was serving a five-year stint for armed robbery when I met him. He was good for the robbery, so he wasn’t too upset to be serving time. In fact, he was happy that his Public Defender got him such a light sentence in the first place. He had to roll on the instigator of the robbery in order to get that sentence, so he was always looking over his shoulder, but that was a small price to pay. Once he was out, he vowed to go straight, so he hung out a shingle as a private detective. He was good at what he did, mainly because he still knew the players on the street. He was able to get information from snitches and rats much easier than any cop could, because he was friends with just about everybody in the underground world.
Besides, Garrett was a big guy – 6’5” of solid muscle. He was one of those guys who was always pumping iron in the prison gym, so he ended up packing on as much muscle as an NFL linebacker. Nobody was going to mess with Garrett. He was always afraid that somebody was going to pump him full of lead as revenge for him rolling on his robbery partner, Freddy Lithgow, but he never lived in fear that somebody was going to get the best of him in hand-to-hand combat.
What was funny to me was that Garrett had a dog, but it wasn’t the kind of dog that you would associate with a huge guy with a body covered with tattoos. It wasn’t a Pit Bull or a Rottweiler or a Doberman or any of those “manly” dogs. It was a little Shih-tzu who Garrett named Trudy. And, since Garrett wasn’t married or had any kids that he knew about, Trudy was the current love of his life. He bought little dresses for Trudy and took her to the grocery store and to any restaurant that had a dog-friendly patio. To me, there was nothing funnier than seeing Garrett walking that dog with her silly little dress and little bows in her hair.
“What does this ‘some guy’ look like?” I asked Garrett as the waitress came around and took my drink order.
Garrett shrugged. “He looks like an asshole, if you ask me. Slicked-back hair, a golf shirt, khaki pants. You know the type. I’m sorry, but that slicked-back hair always says ‘prick’ to me.”
I laughed, because I usually thought the same damn thing. And, I had to admit, the description did seem to match that of John Gibson. He looked like an asshole, and he really was one. That was why he ended up working at the Public Defender’s Office for the trial experience, not because he was actually interested in defending the indigent. He high-tailed it out of there for the big bucks as fast as he could.
The waitress came back with my scotch and water and I took the drink and tipped her five bucks. “Keep ‘em coming,” I said, and she nodded.
“That kind of night, huh?” Garrett said. “I wondered why you called me to come out tonight.”
I shrugged. “Yeah. I didn’t think that I could sleep. Anyhow, I need to pick your brain about a case that I’m going to give you. Erik Gregorian. You know anything about him?”
Garrett snorted. “What, do you think that I wouldn’t know about that psycho? The Gregorian branch of the Armenian Power are a bad bunch of dudes, even by my standards. I mean, I’m no angel, as you well know, but even I find kidnapping innocent girls and selling them into slavery to be disgusting. But, yes, I know Erik and I know his whole filthy clan. Why?”
“He’s my client. Actually, he’s Harper’s client, but I have a feeling that I’m going to be taking the lead on this one. Harper doesn’t seem to have the stomach for it.”
Garrett shook his head. “To each his own, buddy, but why did she take his case if she doesn’t have the stomach for it? Seriously, isn’t there a serial killer she could represent? I have much more respect for those dudes than I do for somebody like Erik Gregorian. At least they have an excuse – they’re pretty much insane. But Gregorian just does that shit for the money.”
An interesting distinction, I thought, but didn’t say as much. “She was forced into taking it by Erik’s father, Sargis Gregorian. He’s one of the largest bosses in the Southern California area and he apparently has Harper’s number. He’s threatened her – he told her that she has to take Erik’s case, or else he’s going to kill her and have her daughters kidnapped and sold. So, she’s terrified. She also has to somehow get an acquittal for Erik. She obviously doesn’t want anything to do with this case, so I think that I’m going to take the lead on it. Anything you can tell me about Erik would be helpful, and then I’m going to have you do the investigation on the murder of Shelly McMason. I’m sure that you’ve heard of that case. Everybody has.”
When I mention Shelly’s case, Garrett shakes his head. “That poor girl,” he said. “She had everything going for her, and then she got mixed up with that clan, and that was that.”
“What do you know about her case? Have you heard anything?”
He shrugged. “No, but I’ll surely ask around and see if anybody bites. I do know that she was infiltrated in Gregorian’s group as a computer hacker. I know some of the guys who worked with her when she was doing that shit underground. That was how she earned her money for school, from what I understand. Her parents are richer than Croesus, but I’ve heard that they cut her off because she was engaged to a Muslim man. It’s ridiculous how prejudice works.”
I cocked my head. Shelly McMason was becoming more interesting to me by the second. I didn’t even know that her parents had cut her off. I found the reason for them cutting her off to be ridiculous, but, then again, maybe there was something more to the story. Maybe her parents cut her off for some other reason. “Her parents cut her off,” I said. “Just because she was engaged to a Muslim man? Are you sure that’s the only reason why they cut her off?”
“That’s what I heard. Her parents are old money. They live in Mission Hills. I’m pretty sure that they’re the type who are horrified by people who aren’t like them. Listen, with people like that, there are any number of reasons why they’re going to cut their kids off. Maybe the kid likes somebody poor, or maybe they want to pursue some kind of profession that doesn’t make them wealthy. Maybe they refuse to go into the family business. Who knows? What I do know is that Shelly’s parents obviously used their money to try to manipulate her to do what they wanted her to do. That’s pretty safe to say.”
“So,” I said. “What you know is that she made money to pay for her schooling by doing underground hacking and that her parents cut her off financially. Do you know anything else about her? Anything else about her murder?”
Garrett steepled his hands and took a drink of his vodka. “I did hear a few other things about her, all unconfirmed. When her murder started making the news, I started asking around. I figured that I could maybe drum up some business with the person who was representing Erik Gregorian. I never dreamed that person would be you, but that’s pretty lucky that it is. But, yeah, I found out a few other things about her.”
“What are these other things?”
“I’ve heard that the Muslim man wasn’t the only guy she was banging. She was also apparently involved with Wells Armstrong.”
“Wells Armstrong? Where have I heard that name before?”
“He’s the guy who’s been in the news lately. He was the CEO of Armstrong Pharmaceuticals, but he was forced to resign when it was discovered that his company was involved in tainted chemotherapy drugs. You might have remembered that happening about six months back. When that scandal hit the news, Armstrong’s stock dropped like a stone and Wells was forced out. He landed on his feet, though – his company gave him a golden parachute worth $50 million.” Garrett shook his head. “Nice work if you can get it. Your company kills people with tainted drugs, your stock drops through the floor, you get forced out but you get millions on your way out the door. Where can I sign up for such a gig?”
“Where can any of us sign up for such a gig? So, Shelly was involved with this Wells guy. So what? I mean, is that important?”
“Well, yeah, it is. Wells is married. No biggy, of course. Lots of married guys banging around with young girls. But you have to understand that Armstrong Pharmaceuticals was the big rival for Andrew McMason’s company. You have to remember that Andrew’s grandfather founded Argyros Pharmaceuticals. That’s the largest company that is founded in Kansas City, and also one of the oldest. Who do you think benefited the most when Armstrong’s stock took a dive?”
“Argyros, obviously, since those two companies were the biggest players in the area.” I nodded my head. “Sounds like we have some pretty decent leads on other people who might have killed Shelly. See what you can do to follow up on those leads. See what you can find out.”
“I will.” Garrett shook his head. “But Erik Gregorian is still looking good to me for that murder. At least, somebody in the Gregorian clan is looking good to me. Since he’s the head of the Kansas City clan, if anybody in the clan killed her, it was approved by Erik. There’s no getting around that, and there’s no getting around the fact that Shelly was about to expose the Gregorian’s foul deeds to the world.”
“Be that as it may, we have to find alternative suspects, and that’s where you come in. See what you can find out.” I paused. “And what did you find out about Vardan Dorian?”
“Vardan Dorian,” he said. “He was Erik’s friend, and he was the one who referred Shelly over to Erik.” He looked at his notes. “There wasn’t much that I could find about him, except that he knew some of the hackers that Shelly worked with and those hackers told Vardan that Shelly was on the up and up. That was all I found out about him. I found no indication that he was trying to sabotage Erik or that he knew what Shelly was up to. You have to understand that there wasn’t any tracing Shelly to the newspaper. Because she was an investigative journalist who was infiltrating a dangerous mob, the newspaper was extremely secretive about her employment. I had difficulties trying to find ou
t that she worked for the newspaper. I had to really know who to ask about her. So, there really isn’t any reason to suspect that Vardan knew what Shelly was doing. As far as he knew, Shelly was a hacker, and that was that.”
Garrett saluted me and returned to his drink. “Anything else on your mind?”
“Yeah. Have you found out anything else about my other case? The med mal case? I know that I just gave it to you a week ago, so I don’t expect anything just yet. I just thought I would ask.”
Garrett shrugged. “Nothing yet. I’m doing some digging on that anesthesiologist who gave that poor kid the drug, and I don’t see anything dirty with Dr. Kim just yet. That doesn’t mean that there’s not something there, though.”
“I know. I’m just going to have to figure that case out myself. I have some depositions scheduled with some of the key players next week. I’ll see if I can do some digging of my own and find out what I can about what happened. I know that there was a mistake that was made, but I’m really trying to see if there’s an angle where we can get punitive damages. If we can’t, I think that this case will literally be nothing but a money sink.”
That was always the problem with something like a medical malpractice case. When you tried one, and you sunk $100,000 into the investigative process before everything is said and done, you had to try for a jury verdict in the millions to make it worth your while. There was just no way that the actual damages in Austin’s case was going to warrant that. If I couldn’t prove that there was some kind of willfulness or intent, then Harper was probably right. I was probably going to have to abandon that case, as painful as it was to do so.
Just then, I looked up and saw my wife coming down the stairs. She met my eyes and looked away. The man behind her, John Gibson, looked at me quizzically and then looked at her.
There was going to be a confrontation at last. And I didn’t think it was going to be pretty.
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