“Crawford might have been part of some kind of military scam years ago,” McGuire said. “Along with somebody named Lafaro, who’s been AWOL since then. This guy, Lafaro, if he’s alive maybe he did it. At least he had a motive.”
Ralph rolled his head away.
“I’m staying down here,” McGuire said, standing with his hands in his pockets. “Until something pops.” He headed for the door. “Just thought I’d let you know,” he added.
Ralph called his name. “You be there?” he asked.
“Where?” McGuire’s hand was on the doorknob.
“At the airport. When I go.”
“You want me to be?”
A shadowy smile. “Yeah. We’re a team, aren’t we?”
“Sure,” McGuire replied. “I’ll be there.”
He ate lunch at an open-air restaurant on Palm Canyon Drive, watching beautiful women of every age arrive and depart in open cars: ivory Mercedes, white BMWs and sand Rolls-Royce Corniche convertibles.
McGuire marvelled at the power of money. The women, and the men who drove darker-coloured versions of the same vehicles, measured their identity and self-worth entirely against the wealth they acquired. Money was not an extension of the power they wielded; money was the power and the identity.
Why can’t it be merely freedom? McGuire wondered.
He paid the bill to the overly friendly waitress and drove to the airport.
The chartered air ambulance, a converted executive jet, was parked in a shaded area just beyond the terminal when McGuire arrived. A fuel truck drove away as McGuire showed his ID to the uniformed Palm Springs cop guarding the steps to the aircraft.
“You from down here?” A tall, slim man in his thirties with tight, curly brown hair and a plastic smile was standing at the top of the steps. McGuire guessed he was the pilot.
“Boston,” McGuire replied.
“Yeah?” The pilot pulled a package of breath mints from his pocket, shook two into his hand and popped them in his mouth. “Hey, you the guy who was with this cop when he was shot? I read about it in the Globe.”
“Who’s on board?” McGuire asked.
“Nobody. Some dude came to pick up the two cops and the reporters who rode down with the medics. One of the cops is a woman. Some honey. Jesus, I’d spend a year in solitary if she’d join me for one night.”
“When are they coming back?” McGuire asked.
The pilot looked at his watch. “Should be any minute,” he said. “We’re set to be gone by fourteen-twenty. Listen, do you know this cop, this Parsons broad? What’s she like? Couldn’t get her to say much on the way down. Invited her up to the cockpit and everything.” He shrugged. “Maybe she doesn’t have a thing for pilots. Most of them do, but . . .” He shrugged again, then looked up, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Looks like our passenger’s here.”
McGuire turned to watch two marked patrol cars escort an ambulance and black limousine through the chain-link fence and across the concrete apron in front of the terminal building. Uniformed officers emerged from the patrol cars and surrounded the ambulance as Eddie Vance, Bonnar and two casually dressed men stepped out of the limousine. Vance’s eyes caught McGuire’s immediately.
“I want to talk to you, McGuire,” Vance said. He walked at an angle away from the limousine to a spot behind the wing of the chartered jet. Bonnar and the two other men, one of whom had several cameras suspended from his neck, clustered at the rear door of the ambulance.
“Bonnar says you’re not cooperating fully with his investigation,” Vance said. He pulled at his moustache as he talked. “That’s not what you led me to understand.”
“Bonnar’s lying,” McGuire said coolly. “He and his people are getting nowhere on this. I’m just a fall guy.”
Vance’s pie-shaped face was already shiny with perspiration, and he moved further into the shadow cast by the aircraft. “He says if you’re down here any longer, you’d better become part of the team.”
“What do you think, Eddie?”
Fat Eddie had never enjoyed being asked for his opinion. Opinions weren’t facts or directives. They were subject to errors of judgment. Opinions were for editorial writers, not for decisive leaders. He looked away from McGuire, who was pinning him to the spot with a steady stare.
“We’re really short-handed back home,” he said finally. “Maybe you should wrap things up here and be back in Boston on Monday.”
“We’ve lost a prisoner and damn near lost a first-class detective down here,” McGuire said. “And there’s evidence that Crawford’s murder may have involved US Secret Service personnel.”
Vance looked even more uncomfortable. He wiped a hand across his shiny forehead. “I’m not familiar with those facts,” he said.
“The hell you’re not—”
“It’s all conjecture—”
“Bonnar let the prisoner be interrogated for almost an hour—”
“It was within his rights . . .”
“—in total privacy, by two men whose identity he didn’t even record!” McGuire exploded.
Bonnar and the reporter were looking in McGuire’s direction, their attention attracted by his shouts of anger.
Vance began walking away from McGuire with his hands raised, shaking them to ward off further comment. “You’re off-base, McGuire,” he said, heading for the ambulance. “Monday. Don’t forget. Monday,” he repeated.
Janet Parsons emerged from the ambulance where she had been riding with Ralph and the medical team. She followed the eyes of the others to meet McGuire’s, and gave him a tight smile.
McGuire watched the ambulance team carry Ralph out of the vehicle and lower the wheels of the mobile stretcher. Eddie Vance strode quickly over to speak to Innes. A doctor and grey-haired nurse stepped out next, pausing for the photographer to shoot several photos of Fat Eddie posing next to Ralph’s cot, looking at the camera with a sombre expression.
Finally, the procession began moving in McGuire’s direction. Two uniformed officers led the way, their eyes scanning the area for suspicious activity. They were followed by the two ambulance attendants wheeling Ralph on the cot, flanked by the doctor and nurse who had accompanied Fat Eddie and Janet from Boston. Vance, Janet, Bonnar and the reporter brought up the rear while the photographer scurried around them, shifting quickly among the three Nikons dangling from his neck.
“Nice of you to make it,” Janet said coolly as she approached McGuire. She offered her hand and a smile. Her hair had been pulled back in a loose ponytail and she wore only a hint of make-up.
“Said I would,” McGuire murmured.
Janet’s smile grew wider; she turned to watch the ambulance attendants prepare to lift Ralph’s stretcher aboard the aircraft.
“You’re looking good.” McGuire smiled down at Ralph who lay with one arm under his head. He had been watching McGuire and Janet as they talked.
“I’m feeling better,” Ralph replied. An IV bottle swung from its hanger like a pendulum as the attendants began to lift him aboard.
“We may be getting somewhere,” McGuire offered. He reached out to touch Ralph’s shoulder as he passed. “I’ll keep you posted.”
“Sure,” Ralph said as he was carried into the aircraft. The doctor and nurse stepped aboard, followed by Janet Parsons and the reporter. Vance posed while the photographer took several shots with each Nikon. He photographed Vance shaking hands with Bonnar, Vance and the Palm Springs detective smiling at each other, Vance looking grim-faced into the camera, with one foot on the steps of the aircraft. Finally Fat Eddie climbed aboard, followed by the scrambling photographer.
McGuire saw Janet Parsons looking out at him sadly. He raised a hand to her and she returned the gesture as the door swung closed and the jet’s engines began their warm up.
It was more than a wave goodbye from Palm Springs, McGuire knew. It was a wave that swept
aside all they had been and all they might have been. She was Ralph’s now. He needed her more than McGuire did. Janet had made her choice. And McGuire had made his. But he couldn’t remember when. Or why. And it was too late now anyway.
McGuire walked back to the terminal. He heard the aircraft begin to move and the roar of its engines fade as it taxied into position for takeoff. Someone called McGuire’s name, and he turned to see Bonnar in the front seat of the limousine, the window lowered.
“Art Lumsden tells me you might have uncovered something,” Bonnar said as McGuire approached the car.
McGuire stood waiting for the other man to continue.
“Lumsden told me he ran a name through the trace computer and the damn thing practically did a dance.”
“Lafaro,” McGuire said.
“Sounds like the name. Where’d you pick that up?”
You’re good at playing dumb, McGuire said to the other man silently. “Somebody keeps calling me at the motel. He even sent me to Las Vegas.” McGuire leaned on the door of the car, looking at Bonnar, ready to evaluate his response. “Where I met your two Secret Service buddies.”
“They’re no buddies of mine, McGuire.” Bonnar jabbed a manicured finger at McGuire. “Look, you’re crossing state lines and that makes this an FBI matter. Besides, you’re out of your jurisdiction down here. If you want to help us find out what happened to your prisoner and your partner, you work hand in glove with Art Lumsden, is that clear?”
“Lumsden seems like a good guy,” McGuire offered.
“He is a good guy,” Bonnar agreed. “Either stay in your motel room and work with him, or get the hell out of town. Choose one or the other, McGuire.” He spoke to the driver and the limousine sped away, followed by the patrol cars, as the plane carrying Fat Eddie, Janet Parsons and Ralph Innes began its take-off.
Chapter Eleven
He felt free. With Ralph Innes no longer in a nearby intensive-care ward to remind him of his folly two evenings ago, McGuire was free to follow his instincts.
And his instincts led him back to Via Linda.
The maid’s voice crackled through the speaker on the stone pillar in response to McGuire’s ring. McGuire introduced himself and asked to see Mrs. Vargas, then waited for a response, scanning the sky and the hills behind the house.
The gates began sliding silently apart, and McGuire walked through the courtyard to the carved wooden doors. As he arrived, the doors swung open and the maid, her eyes avoiding his, stood aside and nodded toward the rear of the house.
He entered the high-ceilinged room where Glynnis Vargas had made her first appearance. The stereo was playing soft and vaguely familiar music. McGuire walked to the white brick fireplace and looked up at the portrait of Glynnis Vargas. He wondered how her husband had responded to such an erotic presentation of his wife. He might have wanted it painted that way, McGuire speculated. Some men, especially men of power, enjoy exhibiting their wives as objects of desire. It was a way of displaying another facet of their success.
“Do you approve?”
McGuire turned to see Glynnis Vargas watching him from the doorway, leaning against the frame with her arms folded across her chest and a mischievous smile on her face. She wore a brilliant crimson blouse, tied just below her breasts, and tight denim jeans; her feet were clad in delicate leather sandals. Lacy lines radiated from her eyes and small dimples formed quarter-moons at the corners of her mouth.
On the evening at the museum she had carried her beauty like a benediction, a gift to be bestowed upon whomever she chose. Now, relaxed and with just a trace of make-up, she was an attainable goddess.
McGuire breathed deeply, struck as he had been so many times in his life by the power that the beauty of some women had over him. It was a power he tried to deny, as though by denying it he would defend himself from its consequences.
“Of course,” he said casually, glancing back at the portrait. “Did you break the artist’s heart?”
Her smile broadened and she entered the room, touching a bouquet of fresh flowers as she passed. “What an interesting thing to ask, Mr. McGuire. I have had many responses to that portrait, but no one has ever asked me that.”
“I bet you did,” McGuire replied. “Break his heart, I mean.”
“I believe I did as well.” She stretched out on the sofa, her legs extended. One hand threaded its way through her hair and began twisting its copper locks. “But we can’t be responsible for other people’s fantasies, can we?”
“What did your husband think of it?”
“He approved. He approved of everything I did, which is why I loved him so much. Please sit down, Mr. McGuire. May I have Rosalie bring you a drink?”
McGuire shook his head no.
“I expected to hear from you yesterday,” she said. Her eyes were fixed on McGuire’s. “Rosalie said you called with a message. I was disappointed when you didn’t phone again. But I assumed you had other things to do, perhaps other people to see.”
“I was contacted by somebody who was at the museum Wednesday night,” McGuire explained. He described the calls from the strange man who referred to McGuire as Mozart and who spoke of Bunker Crawford as though they were friends. As he talked, he watched her face grow cloudy and dark.
“He mentioned someone else,” McGuire said. “Someone named Lafaro. Do you know that name?”
She turned her head away and closed her eyes. “It’s familiar,” she said. “That’s all. Only familiar.”
“From where?”
“My husband. He may have mentioned the name.” She looked back, her eyes filled with tears.
“Mrs. Vargas, just what did your husband do?”
“I told you. He was a wholesaler of gems in Brazil.”
“Which could have put him among some tough customers,” McGuire suggested.
Her face tensed, and for a moment McGuire expected her to explode in anger. Instead, she dabbed at her eyes with her hand and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mr. McGuire.” She pulled her hand away and gave him a sad smile. “May I call you Joe? Or do you prefer Joseph?”
McGuire told her Joe was fine.
“Forgive me, Joe, but I become angry and impatient with Americans who assume that anyone who deals with gems and is from South America must be tainted with a criminal past. It simply isn’t so. Getti was the most honest man I ever met, with very high integrity. The absolute highest. Many times I watched him agree to deals involving tens of millions of dollars on a simple handshake. That was his word. That was his bond. And for someone to accuse him of wrongdoing is simply unacceptable to me.”
“But you admit you recognize Lafaro’s name.”
“I admit it sounds familiar to me. Perhaps my husband mentioned it, or I might have read it in the paper, I simply don’t know.” She sat upright, her eyes avoiding McGuire’s. “But you know something about this person, don’t you?”
“I know some federal characters have been looking for him for over twenty years.”
“How?” she asked. She leaned back against the sofa, still avoiding his eyes. “How did you discover that?”
McGuire told her of his trip to Las Vegas, his being directed to a telephone booth and his abduction and interrogation. He said nothing of the theft of military equipment or the three-million-dollar ransom paid for it.
“Why was Crawford here?” she whispered when he finished.
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know!” She stood up quickly and walked to the window, her arms folded and her head bent. Her shoulders heaved with sobs. “I don’t know,” she repeated.
McGuire walked hesitantly towards her. “Mrs. Vargas . . .” he began, and touched her arm.
She turned and clung to him, and McGuire stood impassively, feeling the loneliness, the sadness, the need, ebb from her body to his and back again.
“It was a
mistake coming here.”
They were in the Florida room, facing an inner courtyard which McGuire had not known existed in the immense house. A stone fountain babbled merrily in the centre of the courtyard where poinsettias grew in wild profusion.
The room itself was finished in hand-painted Mexican tiles that covered the floor and ran halfway up three walls, where they gave way to textured white plaster. The entire expanse of the fourth wall was tinted, multi-layered glass that curved up to form the roof. Light flooded the room, reflected back from the polished tiles and white walls. Tropical plants hung from the metal frames of the glass ceiling, reaching down to others that sat in massive oriental and Mexican planters on the floor. Two oversized white wicker love seats flanked a matching side table; a large, weathered, free-form bronze sculpture completed the room’s furnishings. The total effect was a melding of cold white and vibrant green, extremes of sterility and life.
The maid brought a pitcher of iced tea and departed in sullen silence. Glynnis Vargas tucked her legs beneath her on one love seat; McGuire sat upright on the other.
“You told me you wanted to escape the reminders of poverty back in Brazil,” McGuire said. His arm swept in an arc encompassing the courtyard and the world beyond. “You did it.”
“Perhaps something followed me.” She was looking into her drink.
“Something your husband did or was involved in,” McGuire offered. “Something you don’t know about.”
“Perhaps.” She sipped her iced tea. “But that’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
“I meant that my husband’s money bought me everything I desired in Brazil. If you could block out the suffering around you, if you could forget about all those pleading eyes in the favelas, the slums on the hills above Rio, you could enjoy so much culture, so much of life that really matters. With enough money you can buy almost anything, Joe. But not everything.”
“What are you missing?”
“A life. Stability. Someone to share things with. I had all that with Getti. When he died, I thought I would find it here, and I was wrong.”
Whisper Death Page 14