Death on the Rocks (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 1)

by Michael Allegretto

  At six-fifty the students began filing in. None of them paid much attention to me. They scattered about the room and took their seats. Their ages ranged from late teens to one old geezer who must have been eighty. He sat in the front row, right corner. He and I were the only ones without notebooks or Levi’s.

  At seven Gofman came in, smiling.

  He was a small man with quick movements and a gray goatee. He wore designer jeans, a yellow Western-style shirt with mother-of pearl buttons, and lizardskin boots teetering on two-inch heels. The heels boosted him up to five seven. He put his briefcase on the desk and nodded a few hellos. When he saw me, he frowned briefly, then looked away.

  “Tonight we’ll discuss the director’s complex relationship with the actors …”

  For the next two hours he lectured and answered questions. He seemed to know his stuff. I tried not to doze.

  At nine the students got up and filed out. A young man and woman stayed behind to talk to Gofman while he replaced papers in his briefcase. I pried myself out of the chair. My foot was asleep. I followed Gofman and his two groupies out the door and tried not to limp. The two students descended the near staircase. Gofman continued down the hall, and I caught up with him.

  “Mr. Gofman?”

  “Yes?” He didn’t break stride. If someone his height could be said to stride.

  “I want to talk to you about … well, um … I don’t quite know how to put it.”

  “If you wish to attend any more of my classes, you’ll have to pay like everyone else. The registration office opens in the morning at eight.”

  “It’s not about the class.”

  “Well, what?”

  “I’m a friend of Cassandra O’Day.”

  “Cassandra?”

  He stopped and looked up at me the way mean little dogs look at postmen.

  “What the hell do you want?” he snapped.

  “She said that you would … that is, maybe you could fix me up.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “You know. With girls.”

  A few people passed us in the hall. Gofman waited for them to get out of earshot. His cheeks were red. Whether from anger or embarrassment, I couldn’t tell. But they did contrast nicely with his gray whiskers.

  “You go remind Miss O’Day that she’s the one in the whoring business, not me.”

  “But she said you could help.”

  “She’s dead fucking wrong.”

  He spun on his bootheel and stomped down the hall. I stayed with him. When he reached the staircase, he turned and faced me and struck his most aggressive pose. It was spoiled, though, because he had to look up.

  “Listen, friend—”

  “Jacob Lomax.”

  “Mr. Lomax. A few months ago Cassandra sent another man to me with the same request.”

  “No kidding? Who?”

  “He never gave his name, and no, I’m not kidding. I told him to buzz off. I’m telling you the same thing.”

  He stomped down the stairs and out the door.

  I counted to ten, then went outside. The street was poorly lit, and for a moment I thought I’d lost him. But there he was in the Faculty Only parking lot climbing into his car. A red Rabbit.

  I hustled back up the street and got in the Olds. The Rabbit came out of the lot in my direction, and I lay down on the seat. Gofman drove past. I made a U-turn and dropped in behind him. He turned right on Asbury and left on University Boulevard toward the center of town: There was plenty of traffic, but I had no trouble getting close enough to read his license. It was an ego tag: “TAKE 1.” What a clever guy.

  I fell back to let a few cars get between us and followed him all the way home. He lived in the building I’d checked out last night. He stepped through the foyer, unlocked the glass door, and walked inside.

  I drove home, thinking about Gofman.

  Even though Townsend had approached him, I found it hard to believe that the little man could or would have taken advantage of the situation. He didn’t seem the type. Also, if he were guilty, he wouldn’t have been so ready to admit that he knew Cassandra and that he’d been solicited by her friend.

  But Gofman knew more than he was telling. Because Townsend hadn’t gone back to Cassandra. And he’d found what he was looking for.

  I opened a fresh bottle of Jack Daniel’s and poured some in a tumbler. Whiskey and ice. Death on the rocks, Sister Mary Theresa used to call it. Maybe it would kill my thoughts. I turned on the TV and stared at the local news, then at reruns on Channel 2, then at a late movie, then at another rerun. I tried not to think about Cassandra O’Day. She reminded me of dreamland.

  At some point the booze and the tube were defeated by sleep.

  Later, I woke up in a sweat. The woman’s screams echoed in my brain. Her face, Cassandra’s face, faded back into the darkness.

  The next morning I phoned Cassandra O’Day’s answering service and left a message for her to call me. Then I checked Gus Gofman’s schedule. He had one class today, from one till three.

  At noon I was parked down the street from his red Rabbit.

  At twelve-forty Gofman came out of the apartment building. He carried a briefcase. He got in his car and drove off. I gave him fifteen minutes to remember anything important he might have left behind. He didn’t come back.

  I walked to the building’s entrance wearing running shoes, Levi’s, and a polo shirt. A racquet handle stuck out of my gym bag. Just an aging jock home from his workout. The bag was for my burglar tools.

  In the foyer I pushed Gofman’s button. No answer. I leaned on the buzzer long enough for anyone who might be taking a nap to get up and tell the jerk downstairs to hit the road. No answer. I began pushing most of the buttons, skipping the folks on the first floor, because they could look down the hall and see who it was. After a few dozen tries, a voice raided through the tin speaker.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s me.” Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. This time I got lucky.

  The door buzzed and in I went.

  I rode the elevator up to the fourth floor. There were five apartments on either side of the hallway. Gofman’s was the third one on the right.

  The door was metal with a deadbolt lock. There was no way to force it without sounding like a demolition crew. I’d have to pick the lock. And since it was pickproof, it would take me a full minute, maybe longer. Long enough to get caught in the act by a curious neighbor or someone stepping off the elevator. But I didn’t have much choice.

  I got out the picks, slid the first one into the lock, and worked it back to the last tumbler, the seventh. I worked in the second pick. Then the third.

  The elevator door opened.

  I grabbed my bag and jogged toward the elevator. A young woman stepped out. She had a sack of groceries in one hand and a little boy in the other. She looked surprised to see me.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Good timing.”

  She was still looking at me when the elevator doors closed.

  I rode down to one and waited a few minutes. The mother with the groceries might not have spotted my picks in Gofman’s lock. Unless she lived with Gofman. In which case, the cops were probably on their way. Even if she hadn’t seen the picks, she might have been suspicious enough to call the cops. That’s right, officer, a stranger, rather large, carrying a burglar’s bag.

  I rode back up to four.

  The hallway was empty. My picks were still there.

  As fast as I could, I got the last four picks in place. When I turned all seven together, the lock clicked. I opened the door and slid out the picks, then kicked my bag into the apartment and shut the door behind me.

  The living room looked too pretty to belong to a guy. Lots of hanging plants, shiny surfaces, and pastel colors. What the hell, Gofman was artsy.

  There was a kitchen, bedroom, bath, and a room with a locked door. Probably meant to keep out nosy guests. I slipped the lock with a thin metal strip. The room was Gofman’s work area
. There were several cameras, a 16-mm projector, a screen, a viewer, a splicer, and one of those other things, I forget what you call them.

  And there were racks of film.

  Each film can bore a strip of white tape with a title in block letters. They seemed to fall into three categories.

  The first was training films: “Coors Porcelain Plant—Operation of the Melbourne Impactor” and “Production Line Safety at the Gates Rubber Company.”

  The second category was documentaries: “Backpacking in the High Country,” “Aspen: The Jet Set Comes to the Rockies.”

  And the third was entertainments, as Cassandra O’Day had called them: “Outlaws of the Open Road,” “She Couldn’t Say No.” And the ever-popular “Vacuum Cleaner Salesman.”

  I took the last one out of its can and threaded it through the projector.

  Gus Gofman was too modest to list himself in the credits. He settled for “GG Productions.” The movie had color and sound. The photography wasn’t too bad. The acting was. But the leading man was well equipped and the housewives were friendly.

  So Gofman supplemented his university income with pornography. Or vice versa. I wondered now if he supplemented them both with blackmail. I rewound the film, put it back in its can, and dropped it in my bag.

  I searched the bedroom.

  In the top drawer of the nightstand I found a .25-caliber automatic. It had a chrome barrel and mother-of-pearl grips. Gofman probably kept it for protection. He’d be safe, unless he was attacked by something bigger than a cocker spaniel. I checked the safety and slipped it in my pocket.

  Gofman’s closet was filled with designer jeans and bright-colored shirts. As far as I could tell, he didn’t own a tie. On the back shelf of the closet was a metal box. It was jammed with tax forms and receipts. On the bottom were ten U.S. Bonds for fifty bucks each.

  I searched the bathroom.

  There were three sizes of monogrammed towels carefully folded over a bar. The cover on the toilet seat matched the towels. The medicine cabinet was packed with drugstore remedies and an assortment of lotions and liquids meant to prevent a person from smelling like a human being.

  I searched the living room.

  There was an address book by the phone. Phillip Townsend wasn’t listed. Nor was Cassandra O’Day. There was a writing desk with a locked drawer underneath. Inside was a checkbook for GG Productions. Three checks per page, with stubs for the missing checks. They went back a few years. Most were made out to businesses for photo equipment, film, and developing. Some were for individuals, probably actors. The going rate was a hundred or so. One stub caught my eye. It was dated a year ago and made out for two thousand dollars. “Pay to the Order of Leonard Reese.”

  Leonard Reese. LR.

  I closed the book and checked my watch. Nearly three. Gofman’s class was almost over.

  The kitchen didn’t take long to search. It was neat and clean. The cupboards were well stocked and so was the refrigerator. Behind the orange juice I found two cans of Coors Light. Not my favorite brand, but when in the field, one must make do.

  I sat down and popped open a can and waited for Gus to come home from school.

  CHAPTER 16

  I WAS ON MY second beer when I heard Gofman’s key in the lock. Quickly, I moved over to the front wall. The door swung open, hiding me behind it. When Gofman withdrew his key, I reached around, yanked him into the room, and shut the door.

  He tried hard not to have a heart attack.

  “Hello, Gus.”

  He swallowed a couple of times before he got it right.

  “Wha—what do you want? How did you get in here?”

  “Relax. I just want to talk to you.”

  “You get out of here or I’ll call the police.”

  “First we talk about Phillip Townsend.”

  He backed away from me, toward the desk.

  He grabbed the phone and started punching out 911. I broke the connection with my thumb. He smashed at it with the receiver, then ran for the bedroom.

  “Hey, Gus, take it easy.”

  When I got to the doorway he was digging through the drawer of his nightstand.

  “Looking for this?”

  I showed him his gun. His face lost its color, what little of it there was.

  “Gus, if I wanted to hurt you, I could have done it by now, right? Now come out here and talk to me.”

  He eyed me uncertainly. I stepped back to let him pass. When he came out of the bedroom he glanced at the front door and estimated his chances for escape. Not so good. He sighed and went to the kitchen. I followed.

  “What the hell do you want from me?”

  I was still holding his toy gun. I removed the clip, checked the chamber, and dropped the piece on the table. Gofman glared at it.

  “Tell me about Phillip Townsend.”

  “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “Sure you do. He’s the guy who came to you looking for girls.”

  “Oh. Him.”

  Gofman turned away and took down a bottle of Canadian Club from the cupboard. He poured half a glass and added water from the faucet. He didn’t offer me any.

  “Well?”

  “Well what? I told you yesterday. This guy, what, Townsend? He never gave his name. He called me up and said he wanted to meet some girls. I told him to buzz off. End of story.”

  He sat at the table and sucked back his drink.

  “Not quite.”

  “Why, does this Townsend say different?”

  “He doesn’t say anything. He’s dead.”

  Gofman’s eyes widened in surprise. Then narrowed.

  “Oh. Sorry to hear that.” He finished his drink and made another.

  “Let’s cut the crap, Gus. Townsend came to you looking for underage sex. You fixed him up and then captured the whole dirty business on videotape.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’ve seen the tape.”

  “Hey, I’ve never used videotape in my life, okay? It’s for amateurs.”

  I believed he meant it.

  “Maybe you didn’t tape Townsend, but you sure as hell set him up. Now you either talk to me or you talk to the police.”

  “The police, my ass. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Except for blackmail. And maybe murder.”

  “What? You’re crazy.” He tipped back his drink, spilling some on his whiskers.

  “The cops won’t think so, not after I explain things to them. Figure it out, Gus. Townsend opens his mail one day and finds a compromising tape of himself and a young girl. A week later he disposes of a large amount of cash. Then he gets conveniently killed in a car wreck. And all of this starts right after he comes to you, Gofman the pornographer.”

  He looked at me.

  “I’ve got one of your tapes in my bag. ‘Vacuum Cleaner Salesman.’ The cops will love it.”

  He gulped down the rest of his drink and poured another. This time he left out the water.

  “I’ll—I’ll have to take my chances.”

  He was afraid of something, and it was more than the cops.

  “You had means, motive, and opportunity. That’s all they need to put you away.”

  “But I didn’t do anything.”

  “Circumstantial evidence, Gus. They’ve put hundreds of guys in Canon City with nothing more than that.”

  He tossed back his bourbon. Even I can’t drink that fast.

  “How long you figure you’d last in the state pen, Gus? You know what they do to little men like you? I’ve heard of guys getting raped thirty times their first day.”

  Gofman was shaking his head. “Honest to God, I don’t know anything about it.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “It’s true, I don’t. I mean, okay, the guy kept calling me.”

  “Townsend.”

  “Whatever. He wouldn’t leave me alone. I even put in for an unlisted number, but that takes time. Meanwhile, this Townsend is calling me all the time and sh
owing up at the university and getting to be a giant pain in the ass. So …”

  I waited.

  “So I told him about a guy I know. Leonard Reese.”

  The name on the check stub.

  “Why send him to Reese?”

  “Because he knows the kind of women your friend was looking for.”

  “What is he, a pimp?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t think so.”

  “Why did you pay Reese two thousand dollars last year?”

  “How …?”

  “I found your checkbook.”

  “Jeezchrise,” Gofman said and poured himself another drink. He splashed some on the table. “That’s pretty low, you know? Going through a guy’s stuff like that.”

  “What about the two grand?”

  “It was for a film. Reese helped me on a film.”

  “A porno flick?”

  “No, gah-dammit.” He was starting to slur his words. A few more drinks and he’d be down for the count. “Porno ain’t all I do. Justa small part, in fact. Okay, so I make one now and then. It helps pay the bills, okay?”

  “What did Reese do on the film?”

  Gofman shrugged. “The film was about bikers. Reese knows some bikers. The money was sort of a finder’s fee. Also he helped during the filming. Relaying orders. Like that.” He gulped his drink and shook his head. “Never again, though.”

  “What, work with bikers?”

  “With Reese. He’s fucking nuts.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean he’s psycho. Violent, unpredictable. He’s a big bastard, your size, maybe taller, and I saw him slap the shit out of his girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, and she’s just a little bitty thing.”

  He poured himself more bourbon. The bottle was nearly empty.

  “He came at me once, too. I thought he was going to kill me. He tried to tell me how to direct a shot and I told him to stay out of my way. He grabbed me by the neck. Picked me clear off the ground. His eyes were wild, like an animal. A couple of bikers pulled him away from me. Two minutes later he was joking around like nothing happened. He scares the shit out of me.”

  “And you went right ahead and sent him Townsend.”

  “Now wait a minute. I never meant for any harm to come to your friend. He’s the one wouldn’t leave it alone, ya know. Ya know?”