Whisper Death

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  Bonnar stood back from the car and rested his hands lightly on his hips. He stared off toward the hills as he spoke.

  “Found some dude a couple of nights ago out near the Coachella nature preserve area, a few miles south and east of here. Quite a mess. Guy was wearin’ nothing but a couple of thirty-eight bullets in his skull.”

  “Art Lumsden told me about it.” McGuire pushed the button on the dashboard, activating the security gate. He glanced at Glynnis Vargas, who was staring trancelike at her hands, folded loosely in her lap.

  Bonnar’s eyes shifted in McGuire’s direction. “Did he, now?” He looked carefully at McGuire, shot a glance at Glynnis Vargas, and caught McGuire’s eye again.

  “You go ahead and drive it in,” McGuire said to Glynnis. “I’ll see you inside in a moment.”

  She slid quickly across to the driver’s side and guided the car through the gates while McGuire and Bonnar watched.

  “We got the slugs out of this dude back from forensics in pretty good shape,” Bonnar said, his eyes still on the Mercedes. “Did a readin’ on the riflin’ marks. Care to guess what we found?”

  “Beats the hell out of me.”

  Bonnar stared back at McGuire, watching for his reaction. “They match, McGuire. The gun used to kill that poor sucker was the same one used to poke holes in Bunker Crawford and your partner. Now just what in hell would you make of that?”

  McGuire mixed two vodka tonics at the bar while the portrait of Glynnis Vargas looked down at him with its seductive expression. Sipping from one drink, he sat staring through the tinted glass at the heat of the desert afternoon and thinking about the news Bonnar had brought with him.

  The body of a naked man found in the desert. Two bullets in his head. No identification. Aged between twenty and thirty. “‘Course, it gets kinda hard to tell much after a couple of days in the sun and all,” Bonnar had added. “Wouldn’t have found him at all except a couple of young fellows in a dune buggy ran out of gas and started hikin’ cross country to Indio. Saw some buzzards in the air. Thought it was nothing but a dead dog.”

  “You’re sure about the bullets matching?” McGuire had asked.

  “Got the best damn forensics man in the state here,” Bonnar assured him. “Willing to bet his Porsche on it.”

  “Was he killed there?” McGuire asked. “Or somewhere else and just dropped?”

  “Happened there. Looks like he was kneeling in the sand and somebody put the muzzle at the back of his head. Naked when he was shot. Blood, brain tissue, all down his bare back. No sign of the weapon. No tracks, either. Somebody dragged a tumbleweed back to a rock shelf that stretches all the way to the road. Very tidy son of a gun.”

  “None of his clothes around?”

  “Not a sock.”

  “Any idea when?”

  “Two days ago. Maybe more. Like I say, you leave a body in the sun out here for a couple of days, all kinds of nasty things happen to it.”

  McGuire recounted Bonnar’s information to Glynnis in the atrium room, avoiding graphic descriptions of the body. She turned quickly away and covered her mouth with her hands. “Please make me a drink,” she implored McGuire, laying a hand on his arm. “I think I would like something cool and strong.” She stood and walked to the rear of the house, leaving McGuire with his thoughts.

  Who was the dead, naked man? And what connection did he have with the death of Bunker Crawford?

  “A lot of things go on out in the desert I don’t want to know about,” Bonnar had said. Like an unidentified man being murdered with the same weapon used to kill a prisoner two days earlier? Naked in the desert. How did he get there? Where were his clothes?

  “I have to talk to you.”

  McGuire looked up to see Glynnis Vargas gliding toward him wearing an embroidered silk dressing gown. She lifted the drink he had made for her from his hand and continued walking to the window, where she stood, her back to McGuire, and took a long swallow before speaking again.

  “This has to stop,” she said, in the same take-charge voice she had used with the museum curator. He recognized it as the voice of someone with the clarity and strength to make the correct choice among a confusing range of alternatives. It was a business voice, a commanding voice free of sentiment. A voice military men might assume in the heat of battle.

  “You mean us?” McGuire asked. “You and me?”

  “No.” She turned and smiled briefly at him. “I mean the killings.”

  McGuire watched, waiting for her to continue. When she didn’t, he said: “I think you and I had better talk about some things.”

  “Like what?” She began to sip her drink again, then set it aside.

  “You tell me.”

  Drawing a deep breath that raised her breasts high and bold against the fabric of the dressing gown, she said softly:

  “I lied about Lafaro.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  The smile appeared again and was gone, a fleeting, unconscious expression, like blinking an eye. “I didn’t recognize it as a name Getti might have mentioned,” she said, walking to the sofa where McGuire sat. “I heard it from Grams. The last time I saw her alive.” She seated herself at the far end of the sofa, her eyes still focused on the arid landscape beyond her window.

  “Who was he?”

  “She didn’t know. He was living in a cave high on a hill just beyond town, near the entrance to Death Valley. A place called Tecopa Canyon. Grams used to hike there in the day and sit on a ledge outside the cave, watching the sun set. She told me he was an army deserter. There were a lot of them out there at one time, men who didn’t want to go to Vietnam. They would live in the desert looking for a hippie commune or waiting to go to Mexico or up to Canada. Grams let some of them use my room after I left. Then she found this one living in the cave. She would bring him food and drink. Books and newspapers, blankets . . . he was somebody to mother, he was a partner in her fight against the war and the government, against authority. Grams was always fighting against authority.”

  “Did you meet him?”

  She leaned to place her head in her hand. “No,” she said. “I never knew him. I just remember the name. It was the last thing we talked about. A few months later, Grams died.”

  “And where was Lafaro?”

  “I don’t know.” She suddenly became animated. “But listen, Joe, she told me something. She said he was keeping a journal, and that he had places in the cave to hide things. There might be something there now. It’s very desolate and nothing much happens around Shoshone anyway.”

  McGuire set his drink on the floor. “What are you saying?”

  “Somebody may think I know about Lafaro because of my connection with Grams. Perhaps that’s why that man . . . Crawford? Maybe that’s why he was here.” She pressed her hands to her temples and shook her head. “I don’t know . . . I just want it to stop. I want the killing to stop.”

  “I’ll tell Bonnar.”

  She nodded. “Whatever you think is best. But please do something else first.” She stood again. McGuire could see one knee trembling against the folds of her gown. “I’ve . . . while you were making the drinks, I made reservations for Los Angeles. At the Beverly Hills Hotel. I’ll be meeting my . . . Getti’s lawyers there tomorrow. Drive me there, Joe. I need to settle a few things. I’ll return after a few days and we’ll have a wonderful time together.”

  They drove into the afternoon sun, her Louis Vuitton luggage overflowing the Mercedes’ trunk. McGuire asked why they weren’t taking the Seville with its extra room and she responded that she hated the car, that it was only used to drive friends downtown for dinner at a Palm Springs restaurant.

  “Besides,” she said, toying with her hair, “I told you, you suit the Mercedes. And you enjoy driving it. I can tell. You get an expression on your face like a little boy riding a new bicycle. You’re like
so many tough men I’ve met. All grown up on the outside, but on the inside you’re still little boys, walking down the street with your fists clenched, looking for a tin can to kick.”

  Twice during the journey along the California freeways he asked her about Lafaro. Did Grams ever describe him?

  “Only in sketches. Dark, swarthy. Good-looking in a rough-hewn sort of way.”

  Wasn’t she frightened of him?

  “Grams was never afraid of anyone. Or anything.”

  Did she mention his presence to anybody?

  “No. She didn’t dare. Some of the rednecks in Shoshone would have turned him in.”

  Why had Glynnis lied to him about Lafaro, saying she might have heard his name from her husband?

  “I was fooling myself. And fooling you too. I didn’t want anything to affect my life here. I’m sorry.”

  “You should follow your own advice,” McGuire admonished her.

  “About apologizing? I owed you this one. Watch for the Hollywood Freeway exit coming up. We’ll be going north.”

  They had been driving for over an hour through an endless landscape of suburban sprawl. The roadside signs announced communities that were like relics of a dead civilization, remnants of settlements swallowed in the seamless Los Angeles sprawl. Ontario, Pomona, Covina, El Monte. The western slope of the mountains faced the outer chaos of Los Angeles, and no litany of community names could contradict that fact. The expanse of shopping malls, fast-food strips, tract housing, freeways and scrapyards stretched from the mountains to the sea, the effect more lifeless in its own way than the open desert could ever be.

  She guided him to Sunset Boulevard and the Beverly Hills Hotel. In the lobby he watched her take charge once again, dealing correctly with the concierge and bellman, polite yet aloof, the posture of someone accustomed to wealth and the respect it commanded.

  They were escorted to a villa by the pool, a flowery room decorated in pinks and greens with a matching floral pattern on the drapes, the walls, the love seat and the canopied bed. She sat on the edge of the bed and removed her shoes. McGuire walked to her, took her head in his hands and kissed her long and deeply, feeling her mouth broaden into an expectant smile beneath his.

  “You want to go back, don’t you?”

  They were on the flowered quilt, McGuire on his back, his hands behind his head, Glynnis Vargas on her side watching him.

  “Back where?”

  “Back to Palm Springs. You want to know all about Lafaro and about the man in the desert.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “That’s all you’ve been thinking about . . .”

  “Not all.” He turned and cupped her breast in his hand.

  “Except for the last fifteen minutes, I mean.”

  “But who’s counting, right?”

  “I think you should. Go back and tell Bonnar. Do your homicide detective act with him.”

  “It can wait.”

  She rose from the bed and began searching through her luggage for a robe. “I don’t want it to wait. I want it to be over. Besides, there’s another reason.”

  McGuire watched, waiting for her to continue.

  “I’ll be in meetings with my lawyers for the next two days. There are a number of decisions to be made about Getti’s estate.” She removed the robe and began shaking out the wrinkles. “Decisions have to be made about some substantial funds destined for charities and art groups. I take the responsibility very seriously. And there’s something else.”

  Again, McGuire waited without prompting, playing the experienced interrogator, letting her continue at her own pace.

  She stood fastening the robe around her waist, avoiding his eyes. “Getti was not a jealous man. But he was, after all, a Brazilian. There is a codicil in his will which states that if I should remarry or enter a long-term relationship with a man, I must share the management of the estate with the lawyers. It was put in for my protection. At least, that’s how the lawyers explain it. To keep me from being exploited by some greedy man with a waxed moustache and black top hat, I suppose. And I don’t want to share this responsibility with anybody. Especially with a team of high-powered Beverly Hills lawyers who would dearly love to exercise the codicil and become co-executors.”

  “So you don’t want them to see me here,” McGuire offered.

  “That’s right.” She leaned across the bed to him. “You understand, don’t you?”

  “Just how much money do you have?”

  She smiled at him, either deciding whether to tell him or in anticipation of his response. “Cash? Property? Securities?”

  “The whole ball of wax.”

  She said it slowly as though measuring it for him. “Two hundred and thirty million dollars.”

  McGuire dropped back on the bed in shock. “What the hell . . .” he began, and looked away.

  “I did it, Joe,” she said without trying to hide her amusement. “I became as rich as I wanted to be.”

  She gave him the keys to the Palm Springs house and explained how to disarm the security system when entering. Then, with only the briefest of smiles and a lowering of her eyelids, she excused herself and walked to the bathroom. “I want to relax in a long bath and enjoy a good night’s sleep,” she explained. “I’ll call you in the morning.” Pausing at the door, she looked back at him. “Be careful, Joseph,” she said before closing it behind her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  En route back to Palm Springs, McGuire became lost in the maze of Los Angeles freeways, finding himself heading south on the Santa Ana Freeway before abruptly swinging left across two lanes of screeching traffic to take the Riverside Freeway west.

  He arrived back at Las Palmas at ten o’clock and entered the darkened house, knowing what he had to do. And who he had to call.

  “You got any idea what time it is?” Ollie Schantz demanded over his speaker telephone when McGuire identified himself. “It’s after one o’clock, you toad’s ass!”

  McGuire chuckled and took another sip of Glynnis Vargas’s Scotch from a Baccarat crystal tumbler. He was sitting back in the living room love seat, looking out at the darkness beyond the window. “Come on, Ollie,” he said, soothing the other man’s anger. “I didn’t wake you up. You were probably listening to the scanner, eavesdropping on all the calls out of Berkeley Street.”

  “Not the point. You’ve got Ronnie all upset, thinking you’re hanging by your thumbs in some CIA hospitality suite or something.” His wife’s voice sounded in the background, asking if McGuire was all right.

  “Tell Ronnie I’m fine,” McGuire offered. “I’m in a rich widow’s house with a glass of Scotch and a lot of good memories.”

  He heard Ollie convey the message before asking McGuire, in a warmer voice, “What’s up? Hear anything about the guy who got Ralph and your prisoner?”

  McGuire told his former partner about the body of the young man found naked in the desert with two bullets in his brain fired from the same gun used to shoot Ralph Innes and Bunker Crawford.

  “Was it done there or was it a drop?” Ollie asked.

  “There. Execution style. He was on his knees naked. Tracks were wiped out.” McGuire listened to several seconds of dead air on the line between Palm Springs and Boston. “Ideas?” he asked finally.

  “Not yet, Joseph,” Ollie Schantz replied. “Nothing yet.”

  “I need some information on a couple of people,” McGuire said. “Guy named Getti Vargas, Brazilian citizen, jewellery dealer. Had some connections up here, lived in Rio. Also his wife, Glynnis. Don’t know her maiden name, but she was born in Barstow forty-odd years ago, still has a US passport. Also, do a cross-check on this Amos character. So far, everything’s been traced through police and federal files. Can you do a local search? Municipality records, that kind of thing?”

  “What are you looking for?�
� Ollie Schantz asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m fishing. See if FBI, CIA, immigration, anybody has something on either of the Vargas people.”

  There was another pause. Then: “No clothes around?” Ollie asked. “He’s jaybird naked and there are no clothes? Nothing?”

  “Nothing,” McGuire assured him, knowing the other man would lie awake for hours sifting through the implications. “I’ll call you in the morning,” he said before hanging up. “Before noon. Say goodnight to Ronnie for me.”

  “Say it yourself,” Ollie said in a distracted tone. “She’s been standing here listening to everything,” and McGuire heard Ronnie Schantz call “Good night, Joe,” across the distance between them.

  McGuire allowed himself a moment or two of wistful memories of his life in Boston and the two people who were the closest thing to a family he had. Then, sweeping his thoughts aside and pulling the business card from his wallet, he made a second telephone call, this one more abrupt and carefully planned.

  The woman’s voice answered by repeating the last four digits of the telephone number. Hello, sweetheart, McGuire greeted her silently before delivering his rehearsed message. “This is Joe McGuire and I’ve got something for Baldy and Goggles, your two Mormon buddies. Tell them to check out a cave high in Tecopa Canyon near Shoshone, California. There might be evidence of Lafaro there. Then again, there might not. It’s the best I can do.” And he hung up.

  He finished his drink, thinking of the reaction his message would generate. His voice had been recorded, he was certain of that. It would probably be subjected to audio stress analyses to determine if he were telling the truth. But would they make the effort to inspect a cave for evidence? He thought they would. And if they found anything of substance, they would find him next. And they would insist on knowing his source. Well, he’d handle that when he came to it.

  He drained his glass, walked into the kitchen and returned with a table knife.

  It took him only a few minutes to pry the lock on the door, one of three leading off the hall from the living room to Glynnis’s bedroom, and he pushed it open to reveal an empty room. Thick carpeting covered the floor. In the dim light from the hallway he could discern pale rectangular shapes on the walls marking the location of paintings or pictures since removed. Otherwise, the room was barren.