'I just arrived,' says Noone. 'Good meeting?'
Berens is the one who'd suggested coffee here after her meeting at CBS.
She smiles brightly and cocks her head on one side. 'It was a meeting. They're all good, aren't they?'
Both of them laugh. Berens orders an espresso and places her phone flat on the counter so she can see any messages as they arrive. Hollywood etiquette: phone on silent, but messages can be glanced at.
'And now you got another one.' Noone makes an apologetic face.
'Oh, meetings with you aren't meetings, silly. They're fun.'
Berens isn't kidding. She does enjoy Noone's company. He is fun. If she wasn't happily married she might even have slept with him.
He looks sceptical.
'You're not pushy,' says Berens. 'Most of my clients . . .' She lets the sentence drift. It's true. Ben Noone doesn't have the desperation most of the actors on her books have. She imagines it's the family money that gives him that confidence but there's something else there that Berens can see. A deeper sense that Noone knows exactly who he is and what he wants. She'd seen it before in other actors who made the grade. They just know.
The possibilities for her new client excite her.
As the espresso arrives there is a commotion over towards a Korean place. Berens and Noone glance across to where a small crowd has gathered.
'Always something in LA,' says Noone.
Berens nods. She takes a sip of coffee and starts talking business.
Noone barely listens – he has almost zero interest in obtaining roles now that he is playing the biggest role of his life – but he lets her chirp on about developing projects and meetings with casting directors. From time to time he interjects with some sort of encouraging word while, over Berens' shoulder, he watches an ambulance arrive and take away the man he's just killed.
Noone hopes the Australian cop won't be a problem.
There's less than a week before the big one.
Twenty-Two
Frank's not the only one worried about the scale of the thing they appear to have stumbled into. Dooley's veneer of cool has evaporated like spit on a desert road. It's like Koop's put down a grenade on the table.
'Uh-huh, no, no fucking way.' He pushes the photos back across the table as if needing to put a physical distance between himself and the knowledge of the connection between Sheehan and Noone.
He leans back, shaking his head. 'Have you any idea of the amount of shit something like that could bring down? You guys are fucking deluded if you think I'm gonna go near that mess. I'm not happy you even told me.' He looks around as if expecting a SWAT team at any moment. 'I mean what the fuck, man? Sheehan?' His voice is low, urgent. 'Are you fucking kidding me?'
Koop holds up his hands. 'Listen, Sam, there's no reason to go off. We're just trying to make sense of this. We have zero proof that Sheehan is Noone's father. And even if we did, it doesn't add anything to the case against Noone. Sheehan might be covering up that he'd fathered a child. At the time of Noone's birth Sheehan was married. He's a conservative and he stood on a platform of family values. There's every reason for him to cover it up but so far we can't see any crime he's committed.'
'If we're right,' says Frank, 'it explains a lot about the case. If Daedalus were tailing Noone they might have seen things relating to the deaths that I'm investigating. They were doing something similar in Liverpool, I'm pretty sure.' Frank flashes on the American putting him on the bathroom floor in Bean. 'At the very least it would be good to talk to them.'
'You need to take this to the Feds,' says Dooley. 'I can't do anything. Even if I wanted to. Which I definitely don't.'
'Noted,' says Frank. 'But we still want you to remember that we showed you this. In case it does get really nasty. In case something happens.'
Dooley rolls his eyes.
'Oh, you don't think it could?' says Koop. 'Some of these guys were underground in Baghdad for months. Do you think they'll worry about knocking off a few nosy Brits and Aussies?'
'We're going to take it to the FBI,' says Frank. 'But I suspect that they'll just take it away from us and do nothing. Now that might be OK if Noone isn't planning to carry on killing. It might also be OK if he hadn't killed six people in Liverpool including a sixteen-year-old boy. And if the Feds don't want to do anything about Noone, I do. I want that fucker – I mean, I really want him – and you can help us without doing very much. You don't have to do anything except track the records on Deborah Sterling. It'll take us forever. I'm going to ask my official connections here to do the same but I have a suspicion that the evidence might go the same way that the CCTV footage did at JFK.'
Frank looks at Dooley. 'Get us a connection between Sterling and Sheehan before someone sees to it that there is no connection. That's it.'
Dooley slides out of the booth and gets to his feet.
'I'll think about it,' he says, and leaves.
Twenty-Three
From the coffee shop in Burbank, Frank and Koop head back to see Mills at West Street.
'I have to give them this,' says Frank.
Koop agrees. Information as explosive as this might prove to be needs to be passed along. Still, Koop's conscious that it's speculative. Without further evidence of the connection between Sheehan and Noone's mother, it's all conjecture. Coming hard on the heels of Hagenbaum's words about bringing something solid back to the table, both Frank and Koop aren't sure how this will play.
Mills, to his credit, sees Frank immediately, while Koop waits with the car. Frank's not ready to reveal openly he has help on the ground just yet. For all he knows, the Feds are fully aware of Koop and Warren but there's no need to make it easy for them.
The landscape of the investigation is shifting underneath his feet. Frank can feel it. Information is becoming currency and it doesn't come in any larger denominations than Dennis Sheehan. As the tectonic plates shift, Frank needs to retain some sort of edge, even if it's only to make him feel better.
Everything's a long way from the murders in Burlington Road. It's not a good feeling.
'Quick work,' says Mills when Frank hands over the file of printouts. 'You had this before our meeting earlier?'
Frank shakes his head. 'I'll need copies of those,' he says.
Mills puts the papers down on his desk and rubs his face. His reaction isn't so different from Dooley's.
There's a silence in the office. Frank can see the business of the department going on through the glass windows of Mills' office and he gets a sudden yearning to be tucked up nice and safe at Stanley Road.
'What do you want me to do with this?' says Mills.
Frank repeats what he asked Dooley. 'If I can establish the connection between Sheehan and Noone it'll help me obtain – or try to obtain – information from any Daedalus employees who might have been following Noone in Liverpool.'
'It's thin,' says Mills. 'I mean from the point of view of your case. As information . . .' Mills mimes an explosion with his hands. 'We'll have reporters crawling through the fucking air vents to get their hands on this.' He seems to be talking to himself so Frank says nothing.
Mills looks at him. 'Who else knows?'
'Just me,' says Frank. Mills looks unconvinced. 'Really? Because I'd have told someone if I was sitting on this.'
Is Mills making a threat? Frank decides not. And he has a point. Maybe it's a warning.
'I may have emailed my team,' says Frank. 'As a matter of protocol.'
'Protocol, hey?'
Mills pushes the material back across the desk. 'You keep this,' he says. 'If I need copies I can look up what you looked up.' He folds his hands across his stomach. 'The fewer people who know about this the better. It's political with a capital Fuck Me. Making a fishing trip to find witnesses – which I'm not saying is wrong – is one thing. Coming up with assertions like this Sheehan connection? That's trouble, right there. For you, for me, for Sheehan, for your department.'
'My department?'
'If this goes public watch how soon your actions get looked at. You Brits have a nosy press, right?'
Frank thinks of McSkimming sniffing at his heels when Nicky Peters was missing.
'But you'll pass this along to Hagenbaum?'
'Yes,' says Mills. 'As quickly as possible. I don't want any part of this if I can help it.'
'And the meeting with Noone?'
'We'll fix it.'
As Frank stands Mills speaks. 'I'm curious,' he says. 'What do you think Noone's gonna do? Assuming you're right about him?'
'Kill his father,' says Frank quickly, surprising himself. Until Mills had asked, Frank hadn't known that was what he thought.
'Why?'
Frank shrugs. 'I don't know.' He pushes open Mills' door and walks out, thinking: I need to speak to Salt.
Twenty-Four
'Look at this,' says Koop, pointing to the laptop.
They've been back at the apartment for an hour. It's almost five. Koop's been working the internet while Frank makes calls. There's been nothing from Warren and Frank needs to wait a little longer until he can call MIT. He wants Harris to do some more digging and he wants to register their progress with the case files. He's already spoken to DC Rose, who's once again pulling a late one in Liverpool, but this is something Frank wants to go through with Harris. She'll be in around seven in the morning, 11 pm in LA.
'What is it?' says Frank.
'I was digging around into Sheehan and saw this.'
Frank follows Koop's finger. It's a news item about a presidential fundraiser dinner to be held in Los Angeles at the weekend, in four days' time. LA is a Democrat stronghold and the president will be in attendance at a dinner hosted by a movie star. Tickets for the best tables are being snapped up at $30,000 a pop. Despite his involvement as a witness in the congressional hearings, Dennis Sheehan will be attending.
'I thought he was a Republican?'
'Was,' says Koop. 'He retired from politics. Maybe now that he's just a humble businessman he likes to keep on the right side of whoever's winning.'
Frank reads out loud. 'Following an afternoon charity garden party hosted by the First Lady and her daughters in support of US veterans, the president will attend an evening dinner for the Hollywood community, whose contributions will make this the most expensive dinner in political history.'
'Daddy's coming to town,' says Koop. 'Might be worth talking to him.'
'Hmm.'
Frank sinks back onto the couch and pinches the bridge of his nose tightly. He's drowning here. All the work he's put in and all the effort involved in getting Koop and Warren out from Australia seems to have been swallowed up by the magnitude of Noone's connection to Sheehan. Frank tries to pinpoint what it is he's feeling and the answer is that he feels exactly as he did blundering through the darkened tunnels under Edge Hill. There's the same sense of being underneath a great weight. There are forces moving around him that he is barely aware of.
There's something else too that's been nagging him.
Why did Noone send the Theseus email? What's in it for him?
Before Frank can chase those thoughts down their particular rabbit holes, the phone rings.
It's Dooley.
'Deborah Sterling was employed as a nanny for Dennis and Mary Sheehan's youngest child, Cody,' says Dooley. 'Between June of 1982 and January of 1983.'
'Noone was born in July '83,' says Frank. 'Good.' It's not conclusive but it's a link, probably not enough to lever open the Daedalus machinery but a start.
'There's more,' says Dooley. He sounds reluctant, but Frank can also hear the note of triumph at a job well done.
'More?'
'I fished around into the listed father.'
'Larry?'
'Uh-huh, yeah. I can't find anything that shows that Deborah and Larry even met. Which don't mean they didn't hook up and make a baby one night without telling anyone, right?'
'True.'
'And then Larry conveniently died before Noone was born.'
'We know that.'
'But what you don't know,' says Dooley, 'and what maybe they didn't know either is that Larry had surgery in 1981 at Cedars-Sinai. Double inguinal orchiectomy. Larry had no nuts when he was supposed to be fathering your guy.'
'That would be . . . tricky,' says Frank.
'Fuck, yeah,' says Dooley.
'Would they have picked him, knowing he couldn't have kids?'
'Not if they knew, no. But you know what it's like with this kind of information. If the medical history didn't show it – and this was before computers, y'know? – then maybe they wouldn't know at the time. I got it from an updated records system. They may know now but it's so long ago they might figure it doesn't matter any more.'
'Makes sense. Thanks, Sam. Listen, I handed the information I gave you to my contact at West Street LAPD, Lieutenant Mills. I'm not going to mention you unless you want me to?'
'No, no mentions. You can get this stuff yourselves if you push Mills. Claim you thought it up yourselves, whatever the fuck you want. Leave me out. Peace.'
'Peace,' mutters Frank self-consciously as Dooley rings off. Koop smiles.
'You hear all that?' says Frank. 'Larry Grant couldn't have fathered Noone.'
'Dooley's a good feller,' says Koop.
Frank's phone rings again. It's Dooley.
'Sam,' says Frank. 'We were just . . .'
'Stop,' says Dooley. There's something different in his voice. 'Something else just came into the office. We get updates on all deaths in the divisions around Burbank. One of them caught my eye. They found a dead guy in a cold store at the Farmers Market this morning. Heart attack. Reason I noticed it is that the dude was an Australian.'
Frank feels sick.
'He was a cop,' says Dooley. 'Warren Eckhardt.'
Twenty-Five
Warren looks healthier dead than he had done alive.
Koop supposes there must have been a young Warren Eckhardt once, a Warren without the layering of lard and the shattered lungs and underpowered ticker, but he finds it hard to imagine. Warren, to Koop, will permanently be the wheezing wreck slumped in the armchair of the house in Nashua, cradling a beer in his nicotine-stained fingers.
Lying flat on the slab under the green sheet his skin looks smoother, his wrinkles less pronounced. His expression is mildly sardonic, as if dying is a sly joke and he'd just been told the punchline.
Koop nods at the doctor holding the sheet clear of Warren's face. 'It's him.'
They're at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Beverly Boulevard, the same place Larry Grant had been operated on in the eighties.
Frank and Koop walk slowly through the double doors of the mortuary display room and back into the warmer environment of the main hospital building. Frank's already argued with the medical staff about Warren being moved from the storage room. His insistence that Warren's death is a murder is getting little sympathy.
'Heart failure, Mr Keane,' says the doctor. 'It's simple. Your friend had a massive cardiac infarction.'
'Behind a Korean barbecue?'
The doctor holds his hands up in supplication. 'Not my area of expertise. All I can tell you is that there is overwhelming evidence that Mr Eckhardt died from natural causes. If you can say that about someone who smoked as he did. If you feel differently, please speak to the police.'
'Leave it, Frank,' says Koop. 'It's not this man's fault.' Koop turns to the doctor and shakes his hand. 'Thank you.'
Fifty minutes later Frank and Koop emerge from the hospital and stand in the concrete canyon outside the emergency room. It's almost midnight.
'What now?' says Frank. 'I should call Mills and Hagenbaum. See if they can place Noone at the Market . . .'
Koop puts a hand on Frank's arm. 'You think that's going to happen? They call the hospital and the doctor tells them what he just told us. Look at what Warren was like. Maybe Noone was involved. Maybe Warren mistook the storage room for the toilets and had a heart attack. Either way, he's dead and
we have nothing to give to the Americans that would help even if they were inclined to investigate. We can't get them to help much with the six dead in Liverpool and we know they were murdered. We're a long way from home.'
'So we do nothing?'
'Not now,' says Koop. 'Not until tomorrow, Frank. I'm going to find a bar and drink something. You coming?'
They leave the car in the hospital lot and walk without purpose until they find somewhere off the main drag. The doorman gives them the once-over but waves them inside without a problem. Inside the bar is half-full. Mostly men, with a scattering of women.
'You know this is a gay bar, Koop?' says Frank.
Koop's already ordering at the bar. 'Who gives a shit?' He's been in plenty of gay bars with Zoe.
Drink follows drink and bar follows bar in an endless spiral of oblivion. Koop tells stories Warren told him. There is some singing and an argument with a barman who won't serve them. Frank's sick outside the last place and they make it to the apartment around four.
Koop is unconscious within seconds of lying down but Frank is still restless. He drinks a large glass of water and sits heavily on the couch, the lights off, and stares stupidly at a spot on the wall opposite. His phone is wedged uncomfortably in his pocket and he fishes it out.
For a few seconds he sits with it held loosely in his hand. Then, concentrating hard to find the number, he calls Warren's phone and puts it to his ear. It rings and Frank can picture Warren's phone sitting in a plastic bag of his belongings on a shelf in an office at Cedars.
Just as Frank's about to hang up someone answers. In his drunken state Frank says, 'Warren?'
Whoever has answered says nothing. Frank sobers up fast. He sits up, listening intently to the silence on the other end of the call.
'Noone,' says Frank. 'I know that's you. We're coming, fucker. You hear that? We're coming.'
There is silence and then the call is ended. Frank looks at the phone for a long time.
Tomorrow things are going to change.
Down Among the Dead Men Page 31