by Joseph Flynn
Ron finished his burger with a smack of his lips. He knew he’d have to do an extra half hour in the gym that night to work off his indulgence. A price well worth paying, to his mind.
On impulse, he decided to take a break from looking for Didi DuPree.
He’d go and see if he could find Texas Jack Telford at home today.
Ron not only found Texas Jack at home, he found him atop it. Jack was up on the roof of the new addition to his house nailing a sheet of plywood to the frame. With all his hammering, Jack didn’t hear Ron drive up. Nor did he hear the chief approach on foot. In fact, Ron had to call out to the five time poker champ before the man knew he had company.
And then the presence of someone so unexpectedly close startled Texas Jack. He sent a box of nails flying. Ron had to duck as a torrent of pointed steel missiles flew at him.
“Jesus, who was that?” Jack yelled from his perch. “Are you all right?”
Ron lowered the forearm he’d raised to shield his eyes. It was polka-dotted with a dozen beads of blood, but none of the wounds felt more than superficial.
“It’s me, Jack. Ron Ketchum. Sorry I took you by surprise like that.”
“I’ll be right down, Ron. Hope to hell you didn’t get hurt.”
“No, I’m all right.”
The chief bent to pick up the nails that had scattered all over the ground near him. He’d gathered a handful when he experienced the shock of recognition. These were exactly the same kind of nail that had been taken out of Isaac Cardwell. He looked over his shoulder and saw Texas Jack had his back to him as he made his way down the ladder from the roof.
Ron pocketed one of the nails.
He couldn’t conceive of any reason why Jack would have wanted to kill Isaac Cardwell. But the man had been Jimmy Thunder’s alibi. He was supposed to have been at Thunder’s estate on the night of the murder. Who knew what kind of relationship the poker champ had with the televangelist? Ron certainly didn’t. But he was going to bring his purloined nail into the lab and compare it with the ones taken from the crime scene. Just to make sure he wasn’t imagining things.
“Good Lord, look at your arm!” Texas Jack said, hurrying toward the chief.
Jack was in his early sixties, but he was as whipcord lean as any cowboy from his namesake state. A multi-millionaire from his winnings and his books on how to play poker, he looked completely at home in his work worn jeans and denim shirt. He had steel gray hair worn short enough that he didn’t have to mess with it, and deep blue eyes that missed absolutely nothing that went on at a card table.
But his poker face was almost comically distorted as he gawked at Ron’s arm. The blood from each of the puncture wounds had run down Ron’s forearm and combined with the flow from the others. The chief looked like he’d been slashed from wrist to elbow.
“It’s not nearly as bad as it seems,” Ron said. “If you’ve got a paper towel, I can just blot up the blood.”
But Texas Jack insisted Ron come inside. When Maria, the housekeeper, saw the chief’s arm, she exclaimed and fussed over him, too. Ron washed off his arm with cold water in the kitchen sink, dried himself off with paper towels, and applied the antiseptic spray he was given.
He declined Jack’s offer of a shot of whiskey, but took Maria up on an iced tea.
When the two of them were sure Ron was all right, Maria disappeared, and Jack seated Ron at his kitchen table. That was fine with the chief; it was time they got down to business.
“Jack, I’m investigating the murder of Reverend Isaac Cardwell, and the reason I’m here is that your name has come up.”
Now, the cardplayer’s face and voice were perfectly neutral. “It has?”
“Yeah. Jimmy Thunder told me he was playing cards with you last Thursday night.”
“Oh, okay. I see now. Well, that’s right. We were playing cards. We play once, sometimes twice a month. Usually at his place. But every once in a great while he’ll come out here.”
Ron told Texas Jack that Thunder had claimed the game had gone on all night.
“That’s what usually happens when we play. And I don’t own a wristwatch so I can’t tell you exactly what time I left his place. But I can tell you it wasn’t dawn or even close to it. Let’s just say it was several hands and several grand earlier than normal.”
Which inclined Texas Jack’s story closer to that of Buster Lurie, the gas station attendant, than the one Jimmy Thunder told.
“What was the reverend’s mood that night?”
“Well, that was a little off, too. I mean he’s not a bad player for an amateur, and he knows to keep a straight face when he plays his cards. But there was something about his eyes, I remember, like he was a little edgy. And I didn’t think it had to do with the game.”
“Does the reverend set himself a limit for what he can lose?”
Texas Jack’s face remained as impassive as ever, but he took an unusually long time to answer. In fact, Ron had to prompt him.
“Is this too personal a question?”
“No. It’s … well, you may have heard I have a hard time getting any kind of a game in town these days. There are only two, maybe three fellas in town who’ll play me. Jimmy’s one of them. So it isn’t so much they decide how much they can lose. It’s more like I decide how much I’ll take on any given night. I make it enough so they don’t think I’m coddling them, but not so much they stop playing.”
Ron nodded.
“I hear you still like to play basketball,” Jack said.
“That’s right.”
“Well, imagine how you’d feel if nobody’d ever let you touch a ball again.”
“Awful,” Ron said sincerely. Thwarted, desperate and depressed, too.
“So that’s why I called it an early night. As I say, Jimmy looked spooked about something and I felt I better go easy.”
“He didn’t mention what was bothering him, did he?”
“No, he didn’t.”
Ron thanked Texas Jack for his time and the iced tea.
Jack said he was welcome. Then he asked Ron if he could hitch a ride with him. Jack’s car had conked out on the way back from Nevada yesterday, and he wanted to pick it up at the garage.
“Sure. My pleasure,” Ron said.
On the drive into town, the chief picked up on something that had niggled at his mind the past few minutes.
“The mayor must be one of those two or three guys who’ll play cards with you.”
“Why do you say that?” Texas Jack asked.
“He’s the only source I can think of for how you know I play basketball.”
Texas Jack gave Ron a crooked grin.
“You’re not going to go out and arrest your boss if I admit it, are you?” he asked
Ron laughed at the idea and shook his head.
“Well, then, I’ll admit that when Clay Steadman is in town he writes me a check every few weeks that makes my remaining years more secure.”
Jack’s reference to a means of payment sparked a synapse for Ron. It made him think about the idea that Jimmy Thunder might be going into the money-laundering business. Which brought up another question.
“Does Reverend Thunder pay by check, too? Or does he use cash?”
Texas Jack chose to remain silent again.
“I’m afraid that’s more than idle curiosity, Jack. It could have a bearing on my investigation.” Not that the chief wanted to tell Texas Jack, but if there was dirty money already in Thunder’s pipeline, and he used any of it to pay his gambling debts, Ron might have to impound Jack’s winnings. Assuming the poker champ still had the cash on hand.
“Is this a private conversation we’re having here?” Texas Jack wanted to know.
“Nobody in the car but you and me.”
“Well, like I told you, I don’t like to win too much at any one time. But the problem with Jimmy is, he’s run up quite a tab with me. He owes me close to two hundred thousand dollars. That was another reason I went home early that night. W
hat’s the point of building up a pile of markers?”
“You don’t think Jimmy Thunder will repay you?”
“I’ve got my doubts,” Texas Jack admitted. “At least for the short term. I think the man has himself a serious cash flow problem.”
Just what Ashanti Royce and DaChelle Chenier had told Ron.
Jack’s assessment lent further credibility to the idea that Jimmy Thunder might be desperate enough to get into some big time crime with Didi DuPree. But would Thunder have been desperate enough to have his own son killed?
The more Ron thought about it, the more he wanted to talk with DuPree. He also wanted to renew his conversation with Ms. Royce and Ms. Chenier. They may have been providing sexual favors to Jimmy Thunder, but it made more sense to the chief that their primary purpose had been to further the money-laundering scheme — rather than to help Thunder with his ministry, as they had claimed. It was just too much of a coincidence that the two women and DuPree should all leave Thunder’s mansion within days of each other.
To Ron, it was a case of three very slick rats abandoning a ship that if not actually sinking had at least sprung a serious leak.
Ashanti and DaChelle had indicated they were going to L.A. Ron still had friends in the LAPD. He’d call and ask if the department had a professional acquaintance with the ladies. Ask his pals to be on the lookout for DuPree, too, in case he showed up down there.
Driving on autopilot, Ron braked for an intersection with a four way stop. A pickup truck stopped across the intersection in the on-coming lane and honked its horn. The noise jarred Ron’s consciousness back into the here and now. There was no cross-traffic, so the chief didn’t know what the pickup driver was honking about.
Then Ron saw that the pickup driver was Art Gilbert.
Gilbert drove across the intersection and stopped even with Ron’s window.
“Glad I saw you,” the landscaper said. “I thought of something else you maybe should know.”
“What’s that?” Ron asked.
Gilbert noticed that there was someone with Ron. He scrunched down to see who it was. Texas Jack looked back at him.
“You want me to tell you now?” Gilbert asked.
Ron thought about it. He looked at Texas Jack. Jack was still looking at Art Gilbert.
“You’ll keep anything you hear to yourself, won’t you, Jack?” Ron asked.
Texas Jack nodded, finally putting his eyes on Ron. “Sure thing.”
“Okay, Mr. Gilbert. Go ahead.”
“Well, last week, there was this British fella. He tried to bribe his way onto my crew so he could gain access to Reverend Thunder’s estate.”
Colin Ring, Ron thought immediately. “What did you tell him?”
“Turned him down flat. He got kinda mouthy about it until I picked up an electric hedge trimmer. Then he went on his way.”
“This was before Isaac Cardwell was killed?”
“The day before. I don’t know if it means anything. I thought you could sort it out.”
“I’ll do my best. Thank you, Mr. Gilbert.”
Art Gilbert nodded and drove off. Ron put his patrol unit in motion.
“I know that guy from somewhere,” Texas Jack told the chief.
“Who? Art Gilbert?”
“Yeah. I’ve met him before. Or at least seen him.”
“He keeps the grounds for both Jimmy Thunder and the mayor. Maybe you saw him at one or both of their places.”
Texas Jack shook his head. “That’s not it.”
But Jack couldn’t recall where he’d met Art Gilbert. Not before Ron dropped him off.
Chapter 34
After reading as much of the collected works of Colin Ring as he could stomach, Oliver Gosden went to see Alta County District Attorney Bob Heath. The deputy chief explained to the DA his suspicions concerning Ring. Oliver asked if there was any way they could persuade a judge to issue a subpoena for Ring’s notes on his biography of Jimmy Thunder.
The deputy chief said he might find something incriminating in them.
But the district attorney only laughed. “Subpoena a writer’s notes based on nothing more than a cop’s hunch? Try that and you‘ll have the wrath of every scribbler in the country descend on you. You’ll be on shit lists from the supermarket tabloids to the Harvard Law Review.”
“What are they going to do me?” Oliver asked. “Send hit men?”
“Worse. They’ll send lawyers. They’ll fill your life with misery.”
“Hey, didn’t they subpoena that screenwriter’s stuff at the O.J. trial? You know, all those notes or whatever that proved Mark Fuhrman said, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’”
“The defense team did that. Not us minions of the state.”
“So what’s sauce for the goose ain’t sauce for us? Is that what you’re telling me? What about talking to some of the eggheads over at the CCL?”
The CCL was the Center for Constitutional Law, a think tank established in town by Clay Steadman as a counterpart to the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU’s charter was to protect the individual from a society that might deny him his constitutional rights. The CCL’s raison d’etre was to formulate constitutionally valid laws to protect society from individuals who refused to recognize anybody’s rights to be secure in their life, liberty or property.
The mayor said in creating the CCL he was in no way diminishing the vital work of the ACLU. Rather he was trying to establish a balance of interests that previously had not existed. But the ACLU had been so pissed at Clay Steadman they refused to accept any further donations from him. On the other hand, cops all across the nation applauded the fact that they finally had some legal heavyweights working their corner of the ring.
Hence Oliver Gosdens suggestion to Bob Heath.
“I’ll do that for you, Deputy Chief. And maybe they’ll surprise me and come up with some angle to help you. But you know what I think they’ll say?”
“What?” Oliver asked dryly.
“I think they’ll say that if nothing else you won’t be able to get this man’s notes because all he’ll have to do is invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Because, at heart, you’re looking to hang him with his own words.”
“Shit,” Oliver lamented. Heath was right. Short of stealing Ring’s notes, he wasn’t going to get them.
“Sorry, Deputy Chief. If this guy is your killer, you’re going to have to do some more police work to get him.”
So, that was just what Oliver decided to do. He was going to stick as close to Ring as the man’s own shadow. He was going to dog his steps, make him sweat and scoop him up when he cracked. Problem was, Oliver couldn’t find the bastard.
He wasn’t at his hotel, and when the deputy chief started checking all of the writer’s local haunts, as squeezed out of his old friend the Swiss hotel manager, he was always one step behind. Ring had already come and gone. Or he didn’t show up at the same time every day. All the bartenders, waiters, waitresses, hostesses, customers and barflies that Oliver talked to knew Ring. They liked him, too. He was described as gregarious, quick to buy the next round, an amusing storyteller and a good tipper. And, man oh man, did he ever listen when you had any dirt to dish.
But after several hours of hard effort, Oliver hadn’t been able to find his man.
He had heard something interesting at his last stop, though. A bartender told Oliver, “Yeah, Colin was here about an hour and a half ago. Had a pint, saw there was no crowd to speak of and took off.”
No, the bartender told the deputy chief, Ring hadn’t said where he was heading.
“But here’s something,” the barman informed Oliver. “There was another guy looking for him, too.”
“Who was that?” the deputy chief inquired.
“Don’t know the gent, and he didn’t give a name.”
“What’d he look like?”
“Gray hat, shades and a goatee.”
“But you weren’t able to help him, either, right?
”
“No,” the bartender said. “But he came in just fifteen minutes after Colin split. So maybe he had better luck finding him.”
Ron’s manhunt for Didi DuPree failed to yield results by five that afternoon. With a dozen lower end motels still to check, Ron decided to turn his energies elsewhere for the remainder of the day. He returned to police headquarters and his office.
Dinah, his secretary, had gone home for the day, so he picked up his phone and called Sergeant Stanley’s extension himself. He asked the Sarge to bring in the evidence bag that contained the nails taken from the body of Isaac Cardwell. Sergeant Stanley appeared in his doorway within minutes.
“Come on in, Sarge, and close the door,” Ron said.
The sergeant followed orders and took a seat facing the chief across his desk. Sergeant Stanley laid the evidence bag containing the nails in front of Ron. The chief examined the nails through the transparent plastic of the evidence bag. Each of them was stained with blood from being driven through Isaac Cardwell’s body and being removed from the same. In addition to the bloodstains, there were smudges of black on the nails from penetrating the charred exterior of the lightning-struck incense cedar tree.
But for all their discoloration they were exactly the same kind of nails as the one Ron now took from his pocket. Sergeant Stanley’s eyes went wide when he saw the match.
“Jesus,” Caz Stanley whispered. “Where’d you get that nail?”
“Texas Jack Telford’s house,” the chief replied.
“You’re kidding?”
Ron shook his head. “It seems Reverend Thunder owes Jack almost two hundred thousand dollars in gambling debts.”
The sarge processed all the new information quickly.
“Chief, that might be a lot of coin to you or me, but it’s gotta be lunch money for Texas Jack.”
“He seemed to consider it a substantial sum when he mentioned it to me.”
Both men looked at the unblemished nail on the chief’s desk. Then the sarge asked, “Jack doesn’t know you have that, does he?”