‘Stressful? No. The police asked that question too, and I told them the same thing. Whatever pressures might have led Bobby to get himself killed that way, they didn’t have anything to do with his work here at Coughlin. He had a good job, he did it well, and everybody here seemed to like him. End of story.’ He stood up. ‘Now, I’m sorry, Mr White, but that’s really all the time I can give you today.’
‘Of course. Many thanks for your help,’ I said, getting to my own feet for fear he might carry me out otherwise, chair and all. I shook his hand, said, ‘If I left you my number, would you have Doug Wilmore call me when he has a chance? Providing he’d be willing?’
When Owens grunted affirmatively, I wrote the number on the back of one of his business cards and left it on his desk. ‘Now where would I find HR?’
He gave me directions and I started for the door, only to turn back at the last minute, as if I’d just remembered something I’d nearly forgotten to ask. ‘Oh, one last thing . . .’
He had his arms crossed now. ‘Yes?’
‘When I called today, I originally asked to speak with Mr Allen, but the receptionist told me she couldn’t find anybody by that name in her directory. That’s how I ended up talking to you. Is Mr Allen no longer with the company?’
I thought I saw the man’s eyes flicker slightly, but I could have been mistaken. ‘I don’t know anybody named Allen. Who’s he?’
‘R.J.’s daughter says he’s the man at Coughlin who originally got R.J. hired on here. The name’s not familiar?’
‘I’m afraid not. Maybe he left before I came aboard.’
‘How about Darrel Eastman? That name ring any bells?’
‘Eastman? Sorry.’ He shook his head.
‘You’ve got a bad fan in that PC case,’ I said by way of farewell, gesturing at the computer behind Owens as its cooling fan’s death knell started up again. ‘You might want to get it replaced before you cook your motherboard.’
My conversation with Sylvia Nuňez was woefully brief. A full-bodied, almond-skinned woman with dark brown hair and flawless skin whom I took to be in her middle forties, she was seated at the first desk I saw when I walked into Coughlin’s Human Resources office. She was warm and friendly for about five seconds, and then I told her who I was and what I wanted.
‘Mr Owens told you to talk to me?’ she asked, keeping her voice low out of obvious concern for the one other person in the room, an older white woman feeding documents into a copying machine behind her.
‘He said you and R.J. were good friends. I was wondering—’
‘R.J.? You mean Bobby?’
‘Bobby, right. R.J.’s what we called him in high school. Listen, if you’d rather we don’t talk about this here—’
‘There isn’t anything to talk about,’ she said, cutting me off for the second straight time. ‘Bobby and I were friends, sure, but I’m friends with a lot of people here. I can’t tell you anything about him that anyone else who worked with him couldn’t.’
She wasn’t going to change her mind, no matter what I cared to offer in the way of encouragement. Some people braced themselves for a fight in such a way that their body language alone made the futility of pushing them abundantly clear, and Sylvia Nuňez was one of them. Perhaps this was why R.J. had been drawn to her, as I could sense myself being drawn to her now.
I apologized for bothering her and left.
Out in the parking lot, just as I was unlocking the door to my rental car, I saw a white Ford Explorer with the Coughlin insignia emblazoned upon its doors pull into a marked space along a row lined with similar vehicles. The middle-aged white man who got out from behind the wheel happened to be someone else I remembered seeing at R.J.’s funeral seven days before. The surly, firmly set expression on his face was the same, but today he was wearing a dark blue blazer with the Coughlin logo stitched on to its breast pocket, and as he approached the administration building’s main entrance, he walked with the authority of someone who knew the place backwards and forward.
‘Pardon me,’ I said, closing my car door to approach him carefully. ‘You wouldn’t be Doug Wilmore, by any chance?’
He stopped and regarded me with some suspicion, eyes like a bird of prey’s taking me in from head to foot. ‘That’s me. How can I help you?’
I told him who I was and what I wanted, deviating little from the story I’d fed Mike Owens and Sylvia Nuňez moments earlier. Wilmore softened a little upon hearing it all, but not much; twenty seconds in his company, and I could already tell the only time he let his guard down was when he was asleep.
‘Bobby was a good guy. Naturally, I’d be happy to help you any way I can,’ he said. ‘Except, I don’t know what I could possibly tell you that the police don’t already know. Bobby and I just worked together, that’s all.’
‘Mike Owens says you were his closest friend here, that the two of you may have even started with the company at around the same time.’
‘That’s right, we did. I started back in March, ’87 and Bobby came aboard that same July. We worked together for a long time, so we were buds, sure. But it wasn’t like we were brothers or anything.’
‘Then you wouldn’t know what he might have been doing, on or off the job, that could have led to his murder?’
‘No. I wouldn’t. I wish I did.’
I ran Darrel Eastman’s name past him, just on the off chance it would mean something to him, but that was something else he couldn’t help me with. When I asked him about a Coughlin employee named Allen, however, his eyes took on a different light.
‘You mean Cleveland Allen?’
‘Is that his name?’
‘He’s the only Coughlin employee named Allen I ever heard of. What’s he got to do with Bobby?’
‘His daughter believes it was Allen who got him hired on here. She said they met while R.J. was still in prison and Allen was there running a job training program of some kind. You did know R.J. had been to prison?’
Wilmore nodded. ‘I knew.’
‘Then it’s possible he and Allen met the way I just described?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose so. Look, Mr White, I’d like to be of help, like I said, but I’ve just told you about all I know. What happened to Bobby was a dirty shame, and I hope they catch the asshole who killed him real quick.’
‘That makes two of us. But—’
‘Sorry, gotta go. Best of luck to you.’
He walked off and disappeared into the building. Something about bringing Cleveland Allen into our conversation had sent him ducking for cover.
On my way out of the Coughlin Construction complex, the same guard who had barely let me in stopped my car at the gate.
‘You Mr White?’ he asked.
‘That’s right. Something wrong?’
He handed me a note with a phone number scrawled across it. ‘Sly says you should call her at that number in an hour.’
‘Sly?’ I caught on before he could answer, said, ‘Oh, right. Sylvia.’
He raised the gate for me, his face as blank as a fresh sheet of cardboard. ‘Have a good day.’
Sylvia Nuňez had me meet her after work at a little coffee house out in Westchester, a full eight miles away from the Coughlin Construction offices. It seemed like a long way to drive just to talk, but I suspected she had put that much distance between the two sites for a reason.
We sat at a back table with my black coffee and her foam-capped latte, and at her urging, I told her all over again who I was, and why Mike Owens had suggested I share my questions about R.J. with her.
‘What kind of “friends” did he say we were? I’ll bet I can guess,’ she said. She was a handsome woman, but there was a snake spitting venom beneath all the sexy good looks, and she didn’t appear to care who knew it.
‘He said you were “good friends”.’
‘He didn’t say we were lovers?’
‘He gave me the impression R.J. was involved with somebody at Coughlin, but he didn’t say it was you,
specifically.’
‘Well, I guess it depends on your definition of “involved”.’
‘And yours is?’
‘We got together every now and then to talk and unwind. If that’s your idea of being involved, then I guess that’s what we were.’
She smiled, moved by nothing even remotely akin to amusement.
‘And sex wasn’t part of the deal?’
‘Of course it was. But only when I could get him to think about it, which I’m sad to say, wasn’t very often.’
‘You were in love with him?’
‘Love? No. I couldn’t afford to be in love with him. Bobby was a really fine man, and something you don’t see every day: a married man who didn’t really care for fooling around.’
‘Then he was happy at home.’
‘Have you tried asking his wife that question?’
‘In my experience, it isn’t usually the wife who knows the answer.’
She nodded her head. ‘Bobby wasn’t happy anywhere. Home, work, made no difference.’
‘Any idea why?’
Sylvia Nuňez took a small sip of her latte, giving herself one last chance to walk away before telling me more about ‘Bobby’ Burrow than I had any right to know.
‘Because of what you did,’ she said.
The earth braked slowly to a stop beneath the legs of my chair. ‘Say again?’
‘You and him and the mayor. O’Neal Holden. Before the three of you promised never to see each other again.’
I could have acted like I didn’t understand, just to buy myself some time to think. But time to think wouldn’t have changed a thing about the spot I suddenly found myself in.
‘What did he say we did?’
‘You saying you don’t remember?’
‘I’m asking you what he told you.’
‘He told me you made a big mistake. That the three of you crossed somebody you never should have crossed and a lot of people got hurt because of it.’
I reached for my coffee cup, got it an inch off the table before putting it down again.
‘If you’re worrying somebody other than me might know about this, you can relax. I haven’t told anybody and I don’t think Bobby did, either. He said he couldn’t, that he was betraying a solemn vow just telling me what little he did.’
And so he had been. Just as we had all sworn that night in O’s mother’s garage never to see or speak to each other again, so too had we promised never to reveal our reasons for disbanding to anyone. That R.J. had apparently gone more than twenty years without breaking that promise, and then had only done so in the most vague and non-specific manner, was a testament to his having had more strength of conviction than either O’ or I had ever given him credit for.
‘What about the police?’ I asked. ‘You didn’t tell them?’
‘I had no reason to. Bobby said the guy you had all the trouble with has been dead for years, and all the police wanted to know was whether anybody at Coughlin ever saw him do drugs.’
‘And you said?’
‘I said I never saw him do any drugs, no.’
She gave me a look that insisted I try again.
‘But that was a lie.’
She fell silent, having come full circle back to that place where getting up and walking out without saying another word might be her smartest move.
‘You want an answer to that? We’d better get something straight first. I’ve been taking a big chance talking to you like this, Mr White. I’m a single mother with two kids in college who can’t afford to lose her job because she ran her mouth off to the wrong stranger. You want your business to be safe with me, I need to know mine and Bobby’s will be safe with you.’
‘I understand.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes. I do. Did you ever see R.J. do drugs?’
She gave herself one last chance to back out, decided not to take it. ‘Yes. But there was no way I could tell the police that. What was I supposed to say, “I watched him get high from time to time, but I never partied with him”? They would’ve laughed in my face.’
‘So what kind of drugs was he using?’
‘Grass, mostly.’
‘And?’
She looked away to hide her embarrassment. ‘A little rock. But only lately.’
‘What do you mean, “lately”?’
‘I mean all we ever did was weed until about five or six weeks ago. Then one day, he pulls out this pipe. I wasn’t down with it at first, at my age it seemed ridiculous, but’ – she shrugged – ‘it was Bobby, so . . .’
‘Why the switch?’
‘I don’t know. I asked him that myself, but he couldn’t say. I figured he was just looking for a different reaction. Something that would make him less depressed, not more.’
‘Exactly how depressed was he?’
‘It would depend. Some days, he was fine, but on others, he was miserable. All he could talk about was dying. Whatever you guys did, the guilt was killing him.’
She let her gaze, hard and unflinching, prompt me for a response.
‘You already know more about it than you should,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to trust me when I tell you you’re better off just leaving it at that.’
‘I deserve to know.’
‘No, you don’t. Nobody does. Knowing would only make you care for him less.’
I watched the tears I thought I’d see much sooner finally pool in her eyes.
‘Do you know who his connection was for the drugs?’
‘The grass was mostly mine. I don’t know where he got the rock.’
‘Any chance it could have come from a man named Darrel Eastman?’
‘Darrel Eastman? He knew somebody named Darrel, but I don’t know if his last name was Eastman.’
‘Who was that?’
‘Some kid he’d been trying to help for a while. He was mentoring him, I think.’
‘Mentoring him?’
‘Yeah, you know – spending time with him on his off hours. Trying to keep him out of trouble.’
‘Drug trouble?’
Nuňez shook her head. ‘Bobby never said what kind. We never talked about him. I only know about him at all because Bobby used him as an excuse a few times not to see me. Who’s Darrel Eastman?’
I told her. Walt Fine wouldn’t like it, but I was fairly confident that if the Santa Monica PD found out I knew the identity of their prime suspect, it wouldn’t be because Sylvia Nuňez had called to tell them about it.
‘Oh, my God,’ she said.
‘You have any idea how I might find this Darrel R.J. was mentoring? Or where he and R.J. may have gone when they got together?’
‘No. I’m sorry.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m positive.’
‘He never visited R.J. at work?’
‘Not that I’m aware of. I mean, I’ve never seen him before, so I wouldn’t have known it if he had.’
I described the young brother I’d wrestled with in Moody’s parking lot the night before.
‘I don’t know anybody like that,’ she said.
‘OK.’ I didn’t want to let it go, but I couldn’t see the point in asking any more questions she didn’t have the answers to. ‘Tell me what you can about a Coughlin employee named Cleveland Allen.’
Again, as I had with Doug Wilmore earlier, I’d struck a nerve by dropping Allen’s name. ‘Mr Allen? He used to be a company VP. So?’
‘What do you mean, “used to be”?’
‘I mean the company fired him about a year ago. He liked to sexually harass female employees and we finally had to call him on it one too many times.’
‘A year ago?’ Mike Owens had said he’d been with Coughlin for nine years, and had never heard of anybody there named Allen.
‘Well, it might not have been a full year yet. It might be more like ten months. But what’s your interest in Mr Allen? You don’t think he had something to do with Bobby’s murder?’
‘I don’t have any
reason to think so, yet. But Mike Owens denied any knowledge of him and when I talked to Doug Wilmore on my way out of the Coughlin parking lot a few minutes ago, he treated Allen’s name like a four-alarm fire.’
‘You talked to Doug? Why?’
‘For the same reason I’m talking to you. Owens said he was one of R.J.’s closest friends at Coughlin.’ Off Nuňez’s silence, I asked, ‘Are you saying he wasn’t?’
‘No, they were friends, all right. I’m just surprised to hear that Doug agreed to talk to you. He can be a pretty surly character.’
‘Sounds like you could elaborate on that for a while if you wanted to.’
She shrugged. ‘Let’s just say Doug can sometimes have the same problem with a girl saying “no” as Mr Allen did. Only difference is, Doug knows how to go away after a while.’
‘And Allen didn’t?’
She shook her head. ‘He was a pig, and an expensive one at that. Before he was fired, Coughlin had to pay two female employees six figures each not to file suit against him and the company both. Which is probably why Mike and Doug acted the way you say they did when you mentioned his name. Nobody’s ever told us we can’t talk about Mr Allen, but they don’t exactly encourage it, either, especially on company grounds.’
‘Did Allen and R.J. work together?’
‘Sure. Mr Allen was head of sales and Bobby was the sales division’s chief of security for a while.’
‘Say that again?’
‘I know. It sounds weird, doesn’t it? Chief of security for sales. But those are the people who need watching the most sometimes. The ones who know where all the business is.’
‘Watching for what?’
‘Fraud, industrial espionage, vulnerability to terrorism – you name it.’
I mulled it over. ‘And that’s what R.J. was doing when Allen got fired? Looking for signs of impropriety on the part of the sales department?’
‘That was part of his job, yes.’
‘Then he could have been the one who blew the whistle on Allen.’
She thought about it. ‘I suppose so.’
‘Any idea where Allen is now? I’d like to talk to him.’
‘For what?’
‘If he blamed R.J. for what happened to him at Coughlin, he might have had a motive for murder. It does seem odd that he would have waited almost a year to do it, but—’
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