“Congratulations,” I said. “That was some round!”
“Thanks. Another drink?”
“I could use one. I had to go to that rally today.”
“I know what you mean. I’ll be right back.”
When he brought it, I said, “The governor surprised me. That company geologist really raked his good friend and host over the coals, and got no word of defense from the governor.”
He sat down and sipped his drink. “Lois told me about it. Maybe His Honor got wind of Judson’s interest in the Trinity Investment Company.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not too clear on it. The lawyers around town refer to it as ‘the unholy trinity.’ There’s some hoodlum front money in it, I guess. They own that property that surrounds the plant. The way I hear it, they were planning to build a luxury housing development there with six tennis courts and an eighteen-hole golf course.”
“Did Barlow own the land originally?”
He nodded. “You know, Jud and I used to be pretty close friends. But lately—” He shook his head.
I smiled. “He’s lost you and the governor, huh?”
“He’s lost me. He and the governor were classmates at Princeton. They’ve been friends for a long time. Jud poured plenty of money into his campaigns. But no politician can afford to be linked to the syndicate.” He paused. “At least, not publicly.”
“And not too many luxury-home buyers would want to live near a nuclear power plant, would they?”
“You’ve got the picture,” he said. “Maybe we’d better get something to eat before those hippies clean out all the tables.”
We left early, as I’d promised Jan. Our phone was ringing when we opened the front door.
I got to it in time. It was Vogel. “I’ve been calling you for three hours. Where the hell have you been?”
“I had a kilo of heroin to deliver,” I told him, “and the buyer kept haggling over the price. Why do you ask?”
“Because I got a couple calls from Puma’s neighbors. They said you drove into his garage twice today. Why?”
“That’s where I store the heroin. What makes it police business?”
“I made it clear to you this morning that this case is our business. What were you hauling out of there?”
“Lieutenant, are we friends or aren’t we?”
“We are. But you’re crowding it, Brock.”
“So are you. My business with Mrs. Puma and her son is personal.”
“I’ll ask you once more. What were you hauling?”
“Good night, Bernie,” I said, and hung up.
He didn’t call back. He would sleep on it. He would cool off. He had to make noises like a cop to protect his pension, but way down deep he trusted me. We were friends.
“There’s nothing but garbage on the tube,” Jan said. “I think I’ll read.”
“Me, too,” I said.
She read her book in the den; I took the Puma reports to the dining-room table where I could spread them out.
There were names and addresses and phone numbers for some clients, and a hodgepodge of scattered names, numbers and addresses that only Joe would understand. There were records of payments and their dates.
One name jumped off the page—Mrs. Stuart Engelke. That had to be the matador’s wife. How many Stuart Engelkes were there in this town, or any town?
Another coincidence. … If there was a pattern here, it would need a mind more complex than mine to find a line of inquiry in it.
Mrs. Stuart Engelke had paid Joe Puma $263.40. Would that mean two days of work and $23.40 in expenses?
When a wife is the client, it’s usually divorce work. Maybe Mrs. Engelke had made a two-day check of her husband’s movements and found him innocent. I hoped so. I still admired that man, even if he was on the wrong side of the CANA controversy.
These, Ellen Puma had told me, were Joe’s important cases. A two-day divorce investigation didn’t seem to belong in that category. The records of those would be in his office file along with the credit and security checks. That was the file the police probably had custody of by now.
So far as I could tell from Joe’s hieroglyphics, this was the only divorce case in his home file. These would be the cases where Joe walked that thin line between the legal and the illegal, and occasionally stepped over it.
It was eleven o’clock now, too late to phone Vogel at home. I would phone him at the station tomorrow. I would buy him an expensive lunch.
6
I PHONED HIM AFTER breakfast. “Lunch at Pierre’s?” he said. “You paying for it?”
“Unless you want to.”
“I don’t. What do you think you can buy with a fancy lunch?”
“Your forgiveness. I was rude to you last night.”
“I see. And now you’ve decided to tell me what you hauled out of Puma’s garage?”
“We can talk about it. I’m willing to cooperate.”
“Cooperation is a two-way street. This Puma business is a one-way street and we’re on it.”
“Okay. But Pierre has fresh sole today. Sole amandine and a bottle of Chateau Lavigne Blanc?”
He sighed. “One o’clock?”
“One o’clock at Pierre’s. Wear a tie.”
When I came back to the breakfast room for another cup of coffee, Jan said, “There’s a piece in the Times about the murder.” She handed me the paper.
The Los Angeles Times had given it less ink than the local papers, but they had included an account of Joe’s part in the Scarlatti kidnapping. The F.B.I. had taken a very dim view of his role in that. Paying off kidnappers without Bureau participation, they believed, rarely led to the apprehension of the kidnappers. So did paying them off with their participation, but they didn’t publish those statistics.
“Who were you talking to?” Jan asked.
“Bernie. I apologized to him for my rudeness of last night. I’m taking him to lunch.”
“And getting involved in his business?”
“I doubt it. He was definite about that. But it could have a peripheral connection to our CANA war and—”
“You’re lying,” she interrupted. “What possible connection could there be?”
“Well, Joe’s kid is one of our soldiers, and there are some other angles I’m not at liberty to discuss.”
“You’re not at liberty to discuss with your wife?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, honey. Only with the police. But if you want me to desert CANA and go back to golf—”
“You’re a phony,” she said.
“Why don’t you ask Lois what her husband told me last night?” I said patiently. “Ask her to tell you about the Trinity Investment Company.”
“You tell me.”
“Not me. I’m a phony. Ask your good friend. And now it’s time to go to work.” I went back to the dining room and the Puma papers.
There were four seven-digit numbers on one note-sized sheet of paper with nothing but letters after them. They could be the initials of people or some code of Joe’s.
I picked one that had the letters L.K. after it and dialed the number on the phone.
“The Kendfelt residence,” a female voice answered.
“Could I speak with Mr. Kendfelt please?”
“Mr. Oren or Mr. Lowell?”
“Lowell,” I said.
“I’m sorry. He’s not at home. Could he call you back?”
“I’m leaving the house now. I’ll phone him back later.”
There was, I discovered, no Kendfelt in the phone book. These were probably all unlisted numbers. I would check the other three, in time.
The rest of it was still only a collection of names and numbers. Eventually maybe at least some of them would have meaning.
Vogel held his glass of wine up to the light and admired it. “What did you drink,” he asked me, “before your uncle died and made you rich?”
“Same as you, beer and cheap bourbon.”
“
I drink Scotch,” he informed me. “The cheap bourbon is in my house for guests who don’t appreciate real whiskey. What’s on your mind?”
“I was wondering if you’d learned anything at Joe’s office.”
“Nothing that has given us a lead—yet. We had his files for about an hour before the Feds came and asked for them.”
“The F.B.I.?”
He shook his head. “Criminal Division of the Justice Department.”
“Why?”
“You tell me. He was your friend.”
“You mean they didn’t explain why they wanted the files?”
“Those boys? They don’t explain anything. Arrogant bastards!”
“And you just turned them over without a fight?”
“We turned over copies—and charged them for them. And now it’s your turn.”
I had planned to tell him the whole truth. I could work with him. But the Feds? I told him a truth that wasn’t whole. I said, “Joe had a one-drawer file at home. I put it in the trunk of my car. I never opened that trunk again until I brought the file back.”
He sipped his wine. “I lied to you last night. It wasn’t the neighbors who reported your two trips to Puma’s. It was the Feds.”
“They’re watching his house?”
“They must be.”
I said, “They’ll probably get a court order to check any records he might have there.”
Bernie shook his head. “I doubt it. They’re pussyfooting on this one. Very hush-hush. What I told you could get me into trouble. For the record, I didn’t tell you.”
I nodded.
“What was in the files, Brock?”
“I never took them out of the car until I brought them back!”
“I heard you the first time. What was in them?”
“Don’t try to trap me, Bernie. You’ve probably got them already.”
“Nope. And we’re not going to. At least for a while. Under orders from the chief.”
“Do you want them? I mean personally. Joe’s kid trusts me and so does his wife. And I trust you. If I ask them, they’ll give them to me. We’ll go over there together as soon as we’re through eating. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough,” he said.
We ate for a while in silence, and then I said, “Joe do much divorce work? This should be a profitable town for it.”
“Maybe a third of what I saw seemed to be. That really must be a crummy way to make a living, prowling around, prying into a man’s sex life.”
“Or a woman’s. It’s not any crummier than making porno movies, or working on the vice squad. A little more wine? Maybe a split?”
“A split should do it. It goes great with this sole.”
“You order it,” I said. “I’ll phone to see if the Pumas are home.”
“Don’t bother,” he said. “I’m not going over there. I was only testing you.”
I had guessed he was. I said, “Those Justice Department boys are now running the show, huh?”
“Order the wine and shut up,” he said.
“Bernie,” I said quietly. “Joe was murdered. Murder is not a federal crime. Didn’t the chief point that out to those Washington hotshots?”
“The justice department,” he said stiffly, “is not going to impede our investigation of your friend’s murder.” He beckoned to a waiter and pointed at the bottle of wine. “Another split, please?”
When the waiter went away, I said, “They’re not going to impede mine, either. You can tell them that.”
“You tell ’em,” he said. “I’m sick of arguing with you. You’re rich enough to post your own bail. You don’t have Puma for that anymore.”
“That was in the files, too?”
He nodded. “And they have a copy. I’m going to enjoy this, Callahan finally getting his lumps. I hope you’re not an easy bleeder.”
“I’m shaking with fright.”
“Not now,” he said. “But maybe later.”
I am not one of those eyes who keeps looking in the rearview mirror to see if some evil person is following me. But when Bernie and I had parted—friends again—on Pierre’s parking lot, I happened to notice this yellow Pinto hatchback with a Yosemite sticker on the windshield. There was a man sitting behind the wheel.
Then, because I was only a couple of blocks from his place, I decided to stop in and see Lenny.
As I walked up the steps to the porch of the converted mansion, I saw another yellow Pinto hatchback pull into the space behind my car. There are a lot of those models in town, but how many with a Yosemite sticker on the windshield?
The lady who ran the place told me Lenny was taking a nap and she thought he should get his sleep. He’d had a bad morning.
“Tell him I was here,” I said. “Tell him I’ll be back soon.”
“I certainly will. He enjoys your, visits so much!”
“Would it be all right,” I asked her, “if I went out through the backyard? It’s a shortcut to a friend’s house.”
“Of course,” she said. “I hope it’s not another sick friend?”
“Not yet,” I said.
Through the yard to the alley, down the alley to the front of her house again. The driver of the Pinto, a tall, thin man in bureaucratic blue, left his car and walked up the steps of the house. I waited at the foot of the steps.
It must have been at least five minutes before he reappeared. He saw me when he came out onto the porch. He stood there, staring down at me.
“Looking for me?” I asked him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I was visiting a friend.”
I went up the steps. “Let’s go in and ask the lady if you were visiting a friend.” I gripped him by the elbow. “Come on.”
He jerked his arm away. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“We both know that. Let’s go in and find out if you’re a liar.”
“Mr. Callahan,” he said in a voice he tried to make ominous, “I strongly advise you to drop the subject. I’m not looking for trouble and you’d be wise not to make any.”
“Mr. X,” I said, “if I ever catch you tailing me again, you are going to wind up with a lot less teeth than you now have.”
He took a breath. “I think you had better come down to police headquarters with me and get this straightened out.”
“Only if you’re a policeman. If you’re not, it’s already straightened out. Good day to you, sir.”
I turned my back on him and went down the steps to my car. He was still standing on the porch when I drove away.
So far as I could judge, the Engelke investigation was the only divorce case in Joe’s home file. According to Vogel, they made up a third of the files in his office. It was possible that Mrs. Engelke’s concern had not been adultery.
How could I ask her? Let me count the ways. …
I remembered the address, 6300 Calle Cortez, in the foothills on the north end of town. That was an expensive section. Stuart Engelke couldn’t earn that kind of money from the South Coast Electric Company, unless he owned it. Maybe, like Judge Alan Vaughan, he had married it.
The house was one of the older homes in the section, with an acre of formal garden in front through which the green concrete driveway curved to the canopied entrance. The architecture was Spanish, or maybe Moorish, with a red-tile roof and wrought-iron grillwork adorning the narrow windows.
The woman who answered the door had raven-black hair and large brown eyes and an olive skin. Her figure was full, but only an ultra-outré dress designer would consider it heavy.
“Mrs. Engelke?” I asked.
She nodded.
“My name is Brock Callahan. I’m on the Professional Ethics Committee of the California Association of Private Investigators. There have been some client complaints registered with us about a former member named Joseph Puma. He—”
“Isn’t he the man who was murdered?” she asked.
I nodded. “Unfortunately, because of what I consider
to be absurdly outdated Association rules, his widow’s pension will be substantially diminished unless—”
“Come in,” she said.
I came into an entry hall not much longer than the Holland Tunnel. An archway to the right opened into an immense living room, an archway to the left into a smaller, dimmer room, where she led me.
“Drink?” she asked, pointing to a small portable bar.
I was about to decline, until I saw the bottle of Wild Turkey. “Bourbon and water would suit me fine,” I said.
She poured me a big jolt, added some water, and poured one for herself without the water. She dropped the ice cubes in and brought the drinks over to where I stood.
“Sit down,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for an excuse for a drink all afternoon.”
“Me, too,” I said.
I sat in a large leather chair. She sat on a hassock across from me. She said, “Mr. Puma’s services were entirely satisfactory to me. Do the police have any idea of who killed him?”
“I don’t know. They don’t confide in me.”
She sipped her drink. “I had my husband followed for two days. I am a very jealous woman, Mr. Callahan, and my husband is a very handsome man.” She smiled. “Mr. Puma not only found my suspicions groundless, he gave me a fatherly lecture when he finished his report.”
“I’ve always thought of Joe as a solid family man,” I said.
“I’m sure he is. Are you Jan Callahan’s husband?”
I nodded. “Do you know Jan?”
“I met her once. At Lois Vaughan’s. Lois used to call me as a fill-in occasionally for her regular bridge group. But now that she’s so active in CANA—” She sighed. “My husband works for the South Coast Electric Company.”
“That’s an unfortunate situation,” I said. “It’s strained a lot of relationships in town.”
“Oh, yes! Lois is not the only friend who’s dropped us. I had the impression from your wife, Mr. Callahan, that you were retired.”
“I am. But I’m on the advisory board of the association and because I live here they asked me to check out these complaints.”
“I’m sure,” she said, “you’ll find Mr. Puma as innocent as he found my husband to be. You won’t be questioning my husband about this, will you?”
Cana Diversion Page 4