“So you’re saying it is murder.”
Newspeople. Always putting words in your mouth.
I could only imagine the orgasm he’d be having if he knew I’d been the last man to sleep with Scarlet, only minutes before her death.
“No, you’re saying that,” I said. “That hasn’t been determined yet. Thus our little friendly conversation in the airport bar.”
Lyons made this little crooked, kissing motion with his lips and nodded.
“I’m not ruling anything out,” I said. “I’ve got the rules of engagement to pursue before I can determine anything.”
He bit his lip.
Outside the big picture window, the chopper body came alive as it bounced up and down on the tarmac, its scarlet, blue and white overhead and undercarriage lights flashing on and off. Beyond that, a U.S. Air 727 taking off on the main north-south runway.
“My guess is that Cain must be having a real fit over your intention to investigate. Because naturally, old man Montana has got to be pissing his pants.”
“His own wife,” I added. “No evidence of a break-in.”
“Montana can probably feel the County Prosecutor breathing down the back of his fat neck. And you know as well as I do that if O’Connor decides to pursue him, then I.A. will follow. They start pulling out cards at random, the whole place will tumble.”
I said, “The only thing they have going for them now is the suicide theory.”
“Right now, Divine, everyone is holding their water waiting to see how things are going to play out. Let’s face it, those stiffs at I.A. got no more loyalty than the prosecutor’s office. Only to themselves, their own advancement. They’re all politicians.”
“Go figure,” I said.
“Go figure,” Lyons chuckled.
Anna Mae brought us another round without our having to ask. Either she was a real good barkeep, or Lyons was somewhat of a regular. I guessed a little of both.
“Okay,” he said, “I’m gonna level with you. I’ve been ordered by my own Editor in Chief to lay off this one.”
“Screw the First Amendment,” I said.
“Lay off for now,” he said, firing up another smoke. “You have any idea what ‘lay off’ means to a city deskman?”
I pulled back on the beer.
“Lay off,” I said, picturing a giant red flag in my head. “Lot of that going around lately.”
We drank for a while. Not saying much of anything. In fact, I was contemplating heading out when Lyons suddenly perked up.
I said, “Anything else you wanna ask me?”
He slid off his stool, reached into his trouser pockets, came out with a twenty, laid it atop the bar.
“I have a small proposition for you.”
I finished up my beer, got up from the stool.
“In the course of your Scarlet Montana investigation,” he said, “if you should happen upon any evidence of a, let’s say, irrefutable nature that would somehow lead to murder, how’s about giving me a little heads up?”
He said it. Exactly what I wanted him to say.
“What about your boss?” I said. “The gag order?”
“A serious journalist has his integrity to think of.”
“And in return?”
“You see justice served.”
What more could I want? Moral payola.
I held out my hand. He shook it, then bent down, grabbed his briefcase.
He said, “Remember, irrefutable evidence or this whole thing will be shot.”
“We’re after the same thing,” I said, just as the giant chopper rotors went full blast. So loud you could hear them flapping, feel them vibrating through the soundproof glass.
I was happy on the solid ground.
Lyons started to leave. But then he stopped to look at me.
“Is it true what they say?” he asked. “About your … head? The bullet is still lodged inside there?”
“A fragment. I try not to think about it much,” I lied.
“S.P.D. placed you on disability over three years ago,” he said. “Why work at all?”
“T.V. sucks,” I said. “Besides, I’m learning to be a masseuse. But I’m also still a part-time cop. And I like a good mystery now and again.”
“Death,” he said. “Ain’t no mystery in being dead.”
“I’ll let you know,” I said, “soon as I get there.”
26
BACK ON THE FIRST floor of the terminal, I couldn’t help but take notice of the giant television that took up most of the building’s northwest wall. Actually not a single monitor, but dozens of digital flat screens joined together to form one giant electronic display.
The giant T.V. had been tuned to one of the local news channels. They were running a kind of photo montage of Scarlet Montana. From what I could tell, the montage was intended to tell the story of her life through pictures, beginning with when she was just a kid growing up in what I knew were the suburbs of L.A., to her graduation from high school (not long after both her parents had perished in a car crash in San Bernardino) to her commencement from Russell Sage College in Troy, New York—the very place she would meet up with Jake back when he was still an officer for the Troy P.D.
There were photographs of her working with disadvantaged youths in Stormville’s south end and even a photo taken of she and Jake as they walked arm in arm down the church aisle on their wedding day.
No photos of Scarlet drinking herself to sleep.
No photos of her and I having sex.
Standing there inside the terminal, with the extra long lines of people queued up two hours early to make it through added security, I wasn’t quite sure if I felt dumbstruck or just downright sad. I suppose in a way, I was no better than Jake. Because looking at her face, I never realized how beautiful she really was. Pretty, yes. Gorgeous even. But I mean beautiful. The kind of beautiful that makes you feel good just to be with her. But then, I also realized how little of her I really knew.
There she was again, alive, bright eyes looking out at me from a candid snapshot taken during her high school graduation, donning white cap and gown, clutching a rolled- up diploma tight to her chest. She seemed to have nothing but the future to look forward to.
But then suddenly the smiling face was replaced with a video clip of a body being pulled out the back end of a black Chevy Suburban with tinted windows and in through the rear doors of the Stormville Medical Arts Center basement morgue.
With the sound muted, I had no way of telling just what was being reported about Scarlet’s death. No idea what the official theories were at this point as to how she died and who or what might have been responsible, although I knew it couldn’t be that different from what Lyons had reported this morning.
Then I saw my own face plastered up on the screen.
The transmission had shifted from the photo montage to the television anchor. Broadcast up on the right-hand corner of the screen, besides the anchor’s face, a still photograph of me.
Maybe it was just me (my cerebral cortex playing tricks), but I was sure that when the giant broadcaster’s lips moved they made the word “suspect.” I was certain of it.
I thought my chest was going to open up, my insides spilling out onto the terrazzo.
The broadcast photo was one I remembered well. Snapped not long after I’d earned my detective’s badge. A nice, professional quality photo that showed me clean shaven and sporting a full head of thick black hair. I was standing in front of a pole-mounted American flag that was set beside the official yellow and navy blue flag representing the Stormville Police Department.
For just those few seconds I stood there paralyzed, sure that Jake and Cain had just announced me as their primary suspect. But then, underneath the photo appeared the words I wanted to see: “S.P.D. Special Detective Richard Divine: the independent investigator in charge of the Montana inquest.”
There, I thought. Breathe easy, Divine. Lyons wasn’t kidding. They were making my involvement public.
I wasn’t a suspect after all. I was just a paranoid part-timer with a guilty conscience.
My heartbeat was slowing. But the news report had served as a kind of lesson. A warning. The sooner I got to the bottom of Scarlet’s death, the sooner I could remove myself from the Montana equation, get down to the business of nailing the real killer.
I looked down at my scarred palms.
Maybe I couldn’t explain where they came from, but at the same time, I did not see myself capable of killing anyone. Not to mention Scarlet.
But if there was a killer out there, I was going to find him.
If the killer was Jake, I’d nail him to the wall.
In the meantime, if Cain and Jake had it in their mind to make me a suspect, I’d prove them wrong.
If there were any kind of justice for Scarlet, I would dig it up. Even if I had to take out the whole S.P.D. in the process.
- - -
I drove across the flat lot in the direction of the manned exit booths where I paid three dollars worth of short term parking fees. Pressing my receipt into the unused ashtray, I might have felt at relative peace had I not taken immediate notice of the Toyota Landcruiser making its way into the lot, just as I was making my way out.
The white-skinned man I’d had a run-in with earlier was driving the car. He made a right-hand turn into the parking lot. He was going so slow along the one-way road, I could plainly see how his red eyes were lit up in the glare from the illuminated dash. We eyed one another for the entire few seconds it took him to drive by.
And then, just like that, he was gone.
Behind me, a taxi pulled up. Right on my bumper.
The driver hit the horn. I guess he didn’t know I was a cop—that I actually did own the road. Sort of.
No choice but to drive on through the exit, back out onto the main road. I peered into the rear view, into the side mirrors. Nothing ahead of me, nothing behind or to the sides.
No blue Toyota Landcruiser, that is.
But I had learned something: I was being tailed by a white-faced creep with a scar-tissue map on his lower right-hand side. Exactly who he was, what he wanted, I had no way of knowing. But I knew it couldn’t be good.
Reaching into my jacket, I pulled out my Browning, thumbed off the safety, set it on the seat beside me.
Browning High Power 9 mm, first introduced to U.S.A. law enforcement in 1935, the year my dad was born.
A most valuable companion.
27
THE LAW OFFICE WAS located on the top floor of a newly constructed downtown tower. Its floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooked the Hudson River, and miles beyond its banks, the green hills that defined the border between New York State and Massachusetts. Seated behind a large desk built of mahogany was Joel Howard, Esquire, a large, thickly black-haired lawyer of about fifty. Dressed in charcoal suit trousers and white button-down oxford, the sleeves rolled up neatly to just below the elbows, Howard sat back almost comfortably in his chair, horn-rim eyeglasses in one hand, a white handkerchief in the other. He was using the handkerchief to clean the eyeglass lenses while the big man seated before him explained the awkward position his wife’s sudden death was putting him in.
“I appreciate what you’re going through, Jake,” Howard said, sliding the now clean glasses back onto his round face. “It’s just that if I do what you’re asking me to do I could lose my license, be disbarred, run out of town … so to speak.”
Jake ran the palms of both hands down his ashen face.
When he stood up, Howard couldn’t help but appreciate the big man’s sheer volume of height and weight. He also couldn’t help but notice how wired the man appeared, his unshaven face tighter than a tick, dark hair disheveled, shirt and pants wrinkled, sweat stains visible beneath the armpits.
Standing facing the window and the river beyond it, Jake shoved hands into his pants pockets, stared out onto an inland seagull riding the wind gusts that shot past the tower.
“How long we been working together, Joel?” he asked.
The lawyer crossed arms over his chest.
“Twenty, twenty-five years.”
“And in that time have I ever asked you to do anything illegal?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Is what I’m asking you to do now illegal?”
“Adding a clause calling for the cremation of your wife after the fact of her death may not necessarily be illegal, seeing as you are now the legal guardian to her estate, including her manner of death. It’s just unethical, that’s all.”
Outside the window, the seagull pulled in its wings, shot nose downward, until it spread the wings back out again, shot back up into its original position.
“It’s only unethical if people find out about it.”
The lawyer shook his head. He felt that by arguing with his client—the Captain of the Stormville Police—he would get nowhere. Still, he felt it his civic duty to voice his opinion in the matter.
“I understand there is an investigation underway to determine Scarlet’s cause of death?”
“I initiated the investigation myself.”
“Yet you want to alter her living will. Won’t this at the very least, place you in jeopardy? Make you a suspect?”
Jake, eyes still on the seagull as it hooked a right, flew out towards the river, its gray and white body quickly diminishing in the big open sky.
“I’ll worry about that.”
Silence filled the law office. So quiet and weighted that you couldn’t help but hear the heavy winds slamming against the glass walls.
“Can I ask you a personal question, Jake?” Howard posed after a time.
The big Captain nodded.
“Are trying to destroy your own body of evidence?”
Stepping away from the window, Jake slowly walked behind his lawyer’s desk. He stood over Joel Howard while reaching into his blazer pocket, pulled his 9 mm service revolver from its shoulder holster.
He cocked back the hammer, pointed the weapon at the lawyer’s head.
“Make the correction.”
Without a word, the lawyer shifted himself around in his chair, laid his hands out onto the computer keyboard. He brought up the living will of Scarlet Montana, scrolled down to the place where “Manner of Burial” was to be addressed. He deleted “traditional Christian burial” and fingered in its place, “immediate cremation.”
When the short task was accomplished, he printed the new living will that still retained the date in which it was originally created some four years prior.
He pulled it from the printer and without looking up at his handgun wielding client, said, “There, I’ve done what you asked me to do. Just don’t ask me to copy her signature.”
Pulling back the 9 mm, Jake re-holstered the weapon. He threw open the desk drawer, found a pen, executed Scarlet’s name in the necessary space, dated it and folded it up.
“There,” he said. “What’s done is done.”
“Shit,” Howard said with a roll of his eyes.
Jake Montana made his way towards the office door.
“If you would be so kind as to immediately currier a copy of the will to the M.E. at the Stormville Medical Arts Center. I need to get the ball rolling on this a.s.a.p.”
Howard stood, started shoving the will into a manila envelope.
“Anything else you want of me?”
The tone was as sarcastic as it was resigned.
“This goes no farther than the walls of this office,” Jake said. “I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble.”
“Gee, thanks,” Howard said.
“Fuckin’ lawyers,” Jake whispered as he left.
28
BY THE TIME I entered the St. Pious Catholic Church Gymnasium on Upper Loudon Road, the Psychic Fair was already in session. There were twelve of them sitting in folding chairs, circle formation, legs crossed, lotus style.
On the near end of the gym to my left, under the ceiling-mounted basketball hoop, w
as a long table. Set upon it were plates of sprouts, tofu, carrots, celery and lots of other mostly vegetarian fare. Plus one of those extra big, plug-in, percolating coffee pots.
No doughnuts.
As far as I could tell, the Fair was made up entirely of women of varying ages and builds. Except for one man whom I took for the leader. He was a tall, flabby man of about fifty, with long stark gray hair pulled back tight in a ponytail. He was dressed in what I can only describe as bright red and yellow pajamas.
No shoes.
Sandals.
His chin and upper lip were hidden behind a thick goatee.
He turned to me.
“Can I help you with something?”
I walked over to the table, poured some coffee into a Styrofoam cup, added a squirt of the only milk to be found: soy milk. No plastic stirrers.
“My psychic gateways need some clearing,” I smiled. “I was hoping you could help.”
A college age young woman with long hair and tie-dyed t-shirt chuckled.
Gray hair shot her an angry look. “Kismet,” he snapped. “Please.”
I thought, What ever happened to peace, love and understanding?
“I’m a P.I. investigating the death of one of your members,” I said. “Scarlet Montana.”
The entire group, as if on cue, immediately shifted their gaze from me to the floor.
Gray hair perked up.
“What is death, Mr. —”
“Divine,” I said.
“That’s a rather unusual name. Beautiful, but unusual all the same.”
“It was my grandfather’s name,” I said. “My father took it from his father, passed it down to me.”
For a brief moment, he seemed to be beaming.
He said, “Tell me, Mr. Divine, do you understand the transformation of the soul, the other side of silence as it were?”
I must have looked as dumb as I felt. Because gray hair offered up a sad smile.
“Allow me to speak more plainly: how would you describe death?”
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