Double Tap

by Steve Martini

  “We’ll bring somebody in.”

  “Who?”

  “Let me work on it,” I tell him.

  “One other thing,” he adds. “We need to find out why Ruiz left the gun at her house when the security assignment ended. That’s a pretty expensive firearm to just leave behind when you change jobs.”

  “The cops asked him that.”

  “I didn’t see it,” says Harry.

  “Said he just forgot it was there. According to Ruiz, he never carried it concealed. It was too big. He carried a small, compact Glock, a nine millimeter, when he needed to be armed.”

  “So why was it at the house?” Harry wonders aloud.

  I shake my head. “Let’s find out.”

  Harry makes a note to talk to Ruiz about it just as soon as we can corner him at the jail.

  “Anything else?” I ask.

  He looks down his list. “Just this Orb thing. I don’t know about you, but I get the sense it was worth a bundle.”

  “She had an extensive collection of art glass, according to the reports. I doubt, given her position, her income, that she bought junk.”

  “It’s more than that. The cops are playing hide-the-receipt. They won’t say what she paid for it. By now they’ve gotta know. They talked to the owner of the shop where Chapman bought it. They would have seized any bill of sale. Probably found the corresponding copy in her purse or in her car after they found her body.”

  Harry is right. It was purchased the afternoon she was murdered.

  “So why hide it?” says Harry.

  “Motive?”

  Harry nods. “That’s what I’m thinking. If somebody saw her buy it, knew what she paid for it …”

  “Let’s find out. Subpoena her bank and credit card statements. All of them. If we have to, get an order for discovery. Force them to cough up the bill of sale. While you’re at it, see if we can get some background on this thing. What was it called?”

  “Orb at the Edge,” says Harry.

  “This Orb. If she wanted it as part of her collection, it probably has a history. Find out who owned it, where it came from, who might have wanted to own it, when it was made, everything you can regarding its pedigree.”

  The building is well past its prime. If I had to guess I would say something from the late forties, put up during the postwar building boom when materials were at a premium. It is a universe away from the opulent government palaces built by dollar-a-day WPA artisans during the Depression: post office buildings with soaring Doric columns of granite and Tennessee marble lining the walls and floors. Today the best of these have all been squatted on by the federal courts and refurbished to within an inch of their original splendor.

  What I am looking at from across the street isn’t even a distant relative. Five stories high, it stands ten blocks to the south of the trendy Gaslamp Quarter and maybe a decade from the grasping clutches and wrecking ball of urban renewal.

  I skip across the street midblock, dodging cars, and climb the two cement steps leading to the main entrance. Inside is a directory, names and office numbers behind smudged glass with a hodgepodge of block letters of varying sizes and colors, some metal, some plastic. I find the one I’m looking for and take the elevator to the third floor.

  The office is on the back side of the building.

  The lights are on inside, enough illumination for me to see the hulking shadow of a figure, its outline skipping across the dappled glass every few seconds as it moves. No voices, so I assume he is not on the phone.

  As I turn the knob and swing the door open without knocking, I see Herman Diggs, his massive shoulders hunched, neck bowed like a Brahma bull, his eyes trained on a piece of paper. Several piles of papers are neatly stacked across the top of his desk. As Herman looks up, it takes a second before he makes the leap from written word to familiar face, then he smiles. His missing front tooth looks like a gap in a fence.

  “Whoa. Look what the wind blew in. Is that Paul Madriani I see?”

  “In the flesh,” I tell him.

  “Didn’t expect to see you.” Herman pushes his chair back from the desk. It takes him a second to get to his feet. “How you been?”

  “I’m fine. But you should learn to keep your door locked if you’re going to do dangerous work.”

  “What you talkin’ ‘bout, ‘dangerous work’?” He’s smiling, moving around the desk to greet me.

  “I’ve been told you’re doing divorce cases. It doesn’t get any more dangerous than that.”

  “Hell, only dangerous work I ever did was workin’ for you.” Herman’s laughing, hobbling a little on a stiff leg, one hand on the furniture to steady himself, evidence of the truth in his last statement. He offers me his hand, big and beefy, the size of a baseball glove.

  “I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.”

  “Be a sad day when I don’t have time for friends,” says Herman.

  “I should have called first, but I was in the area.”

  “Hey, don’t be foolish. Actually I’m busy as hell. You know how it is. When you’re good at what you do, your services are always in demand. But I can always make time for a friend. My next appointment’s not till”—he looks at his watch—“let’s see, next Wednesday.” Herman laughs, full of his own version of blarney and bluster. “How ‘bout a cup of coffee so’s we can sit and bullshit a little longer? Keep me from that pile of papers over on my desk there.”

  “Not for me. Just had lunch downtown. A meeting with a client.”

  I take a seat in one of his client chairs. The chairs, like Herman’s desk, are scarred with someone’s carved initials, grooved and tattooed in assorted colors of ink. “So how’s business?”

  “It’s growin’, comin’ along,” he says. “Picking up a few cases here, a few there. It takes time. You know what I mean?”

  “I do. I almost didn’t stop in. I thought you might be out working the shoe leather.”

  “Fact is, you saved me from a fate worse than death.” He gestures toward the stacks on his desk. “Don’t have a secretary as yet, so I gots to do my own filing. Hate that shit.” Herman moves to a little table by one of the filing cabinets against the wall, a coffeemaker and some cups on top of it. He pours himself a cup.

  “How’s the leg?”

  “Oh, that. It’s no problem.” He moves his right leg a little, heel and toe tapping—Fred Astaire on one leg—as he rests all his weight on the other foot, a demonstration to show me that the leg still works. “It’s nothin’. Just tends to stiffen up when I sit too long.”

  Herman is like the soldier shot in both lungs who told the medic he was okay since it only hurt when he breathed.

  “Be fine,” he says. “All I need is to pick up a few more clients so I can get out an’ about. This sittin’ behind a desk is not good. Puttin’ on weight, too.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that right off.” Herman is a brick, solid muscle, well over six feet. He probably tips the scale at 250 pounds and claps his hands between his hundred push-ups every morning.

  He settles his behind on the edge of his desk, cup in hand as he sips and smiles down at me. I met Herman two years ago while trying to tie up loose ends on a case down in Mexico, the Yucatán Peninsula. Herman had been brought in as part of a security team. At the time he was working for a large firm out of Chicago. He ended up taking two bullets, an act that would have ended my life if he hadn’t. I’ve not forgotten it.

  “Harry said he heard you were in town. Said he saw an ad in one of the community throwaways. Little yellow tabloid.”

  Herman thinks for a second, then slaps his good leg. “Triple Nickel,” he says. “Little gold mine. As I recall, I picked up three clients from that one. Divorcées out in the east county. You know, cowboy country. Good ad. Know, ‘cuz I wrote it myself. How’d it go?” He closes his eyes and traces the words with a finger through air as he recites. “‘Put a tail behind your husband. Put your mind at ease. Make sure he’s got no tail on the side. Discreet Investi
gations. Herman Diggs and Associates.”’ He opens his eyes, gives me a smile. “Not bad for a guy never finished college, huh? What the man said: ‘You gotta keep ‘em entertained—you gonna put your hand in their pocket.”’

  “So how long have you been here?”

  “What? This place?”

  “In town, I mean.”

  “Oh, I dunno. Three, four months.”

  “And you didn’t stop by?”

  “Been busy,” he says. “All kindsa things to do when you open a business. You know how it is. Gotta get furniture and phones in. Name and number in the yellow pages. My license over there… .” Herman gestures with an offhand nod and a dip of his shoulder toward a lonely certificate under glass in a black frame hanging high on the wall behind his desk chair. This is as casual as it gets for a man who tips the scales at eighteen stone and was once viewed as budding lineback material by the NFL. Herman went south to work in Mexico after his college scholarship did the same, the result of an early knee injury.

  “Been in this office, what, maybe a month. Course, this is just a watering spot, you understand, a kinda way station like they say. Be workin’ my way toward greener pastures shortly.” What Herman means is when he actually catches up with all of those associates he currently has employed only in his ads and on his business card, one of which he plucks from a plastic holder on his desk and hands to me.

  Herman is hardworking, energetic, what you would call a natural self-starter. His enthusiasm is such that trying to chill any plan he has ever hatched is doomed to fail, like throwing cold water on a red-hot stove. With Herman, words of caution usually serve only to make steam. In any endeavor Herman is likely to make a fortune—that is, if he isn’t arrested first.

  “I needed three years’ experience workin’ in the field before I could even apply for my PI license,” he tells me. “But I got lucky. Just so happened my old employer—You remember them?”

  “How could I forget. They owned all those big SUVs we wrecked down on the Yucatán.”

  Herman laughs. “That’s the one. They was so nice after I got shot. It’s like I told them: I coulda been on disability the rest of my life. Know what I’m sayin’? You never know what a doctor’s going to say.” He winks at me.

  Herman should have been a lawyer.

  “Them’s almost my exact words to my employer,” he says. “You never know what a doctor’s gonna say.” Especially if he’s a surgeon and Herman is threatening to shake his hand.

  “They heard that and, well, they really got on top of things. That’s why they’re the big company they are.” Herman says this as if he has aspirations. “They’re into the details, know what I mean? Anyway, make a long story short, wouldn’t ya know, one of their personnel people found them employment records. And that’s all I needed. Did the trick.”

  “Which records would those be?”

  “The ones they forgot to withhold any taxes on,” replies Herman. “Seems I worked for ‘em during summers before college and during the school year.” He puts one finger to the side of his nose and winks at me. “I forgot all about it,” he says. “Why, they even went and paid the back taxes and penalties. Then they gimme the stubs showing everything, so’s I could give the information to the state and get my PI license. Saved me a whole year working for somebody else just so’s I could apply,” he concludes. “Now how lucky is that?”

  Luck to Herman is an eternal exercise in self-help.

  “Comes from living a clean life,” I tell him.

  “Ain’t that the truth.” He takes a sip of coffee, looking over the edge of his cup at me. “So what kinda sinnin’ you up to these days?”

  “Actually, I’m up to my ass. Buried in cases, mired in court, investigations I don’t have time for.”

  Herman’s eyebrows arch with the scent of opportunity.

  “Which is part of the reason I came by,” I tell him.

  “What? You mean to tell me you didn’t come by just to say hello?”

  “Actually I did, but …”

  “Never mind, I’ll get over it,” he says. “Just tell Uncle Herman what kinda work you got for him. And please don’t go tellin’ me it’s a divorce. Without worker’s comp, I don’t need to be shaggin’ any more bullets right now.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The county has finally sorted out the problem at the jail and eased up on the lockdown. Harry and I are back, closeted with Ruiz in the cement cubicle for another conference.

  According to the transcript of the preliminary hearing, the cops are operating on the theory that Chapman jilted Ruiz and that he smoldered for six months or so before he confronted her at her home and killed her. There is speculation in the press that he may have stalked her, but if the cops have evidence of this, they have yet to produce it.

  “You said you left the assignment six months before she was murdered?” I ask.

  “Right. I did. But she called. Said she had to talk to me. I told her I was busy, no longer on the assignment. But she said it regarded a matter of personal security. She was scared. She said she couldn’t discuss it on the phone but she had to talk to me.”

  “So you went to see her?”

  He nods.

  “Where?”

  “A small restaurant in San Diego, on the edge of the Gaslamp Quarter. She was careful. Didn’t want anybody to see us talking. She said it was far enough from La Jolla that people would be less likely to recognize her there. It was mid-morning, between breakfast and noon, so the place was empty. We talked about twenty minutes. She wanted to know if I could help her.”

  “What did she want you to do?”

  He looks at me, then offers up a healthy sigh. “She … she said she had some security concerns. She wanted to know if I could follow her just for a few days. Keep an eye on her from a distance. She said it wouldn’t last long and that there was probably nothing to it.”

  “Why didn’t she just call the security detail back in?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. She said it was complicated. There were some issues she couldn’t discuss. There was some corporate infighting at Isotenics. Nothing unusual. Madelyn was always afraid she was losing ground on issues of control ever since the corporation had gone public a few years earlier. It was an obsession with her. With Madelyn you were either an ally—in which case she thought she owned you—or an enemy. There was nothing in between. Seems there was a minority faction on the board wanted to wrest control from her. She was sure she’d win in the end.”

  “I don’t understand,” says Harry. “What did that have to do with her personal security?”

  “Some members of the board had made an issue over some of the perks she was getting: the two corporate jets, the fleet of stretch limos, the entourage of security wherever she went. They said it was extravagant. And there had been some bad press. One of the national business magazines did a story, CEOs who live like rajas. Madelyn got her own picture. Half-page spread. She was fit to be tied, spitting vinegar. She suspected enemies on the board had fed the reporter information and then used the story against her.”

  “She told you this?”

  “Not in so many words. But I know that that’s why she canceled the personal security detail. She also unloaded the limos and ordered the red Ferrari so she could start driving herself around. If she went back to the board and told them she wanted the executive security detail brought back, she’d have to give them a reason. What she told me was that she couldn’t tell them why she needed it. She also refused to tell me.”

  “So whatever it was that frightened her, she didn’t want her own board to know about it?”

  “All I can tell you is what she told me. Whatever was going on, she didn’t want the board to know about it.”

  “You think she was violating directions that they’d given her?”

  “I don’t know. She was willing to pay me on the side for some informal security. I told her it was not a good idea. Whatever I did alone in my spare time was likely to have holes in
it—that if there was a real threat, it wouldn’t do much good if I was a hundred yards away watching through binoculars. Also I wasn’t available all the time. I had other assignments, clients with Karr, Rufus I had to attend to. She said she’d find somebody to spell me when I wasn’t available, that we could work out a schedule. She said it would only last for a week or ten days.”

  “And you agreed?” Harry asks.

  “Yeah.” He doesn’t seem happy about this. “I know I shouldn’t have done it. I’m thinking it probably did more harm than good. Probably gave her a false sense of security. It was a big mistake.”

  “Go on.”

  “Whoever it was who scared her, I think he killed her,” says Ruiz. “And I wasn’t there to stop it.”

  “Where were you that afternoon?”

  “At home. In my apartment, asleep. I was working the graveyard on another detail later that night. And of course there was nobody there with me. So I have no alibi.”

  “Did she hire anybody else, to back you up?”

  He shakes his head. “Not that I know of. She never got around to it. I’d watch the house two or three nights a week. I figured she’d be okay at the office. Besides, I couldn’t get on the Isotenics campus anyway. Not without explaining what I was doing there. And they had ample security on the grounds.”

  “Unless whoever threatened her was working there,” says Harry.

  “What else could I do?”

  “You think she might have been afraid of Satz?” I ask. “You said they had a falling-out.”

  “I don’t know. It’s possible. One thing she did tell me and it’s all I know. She said she’d promised something to someone and then she was unable to deliver. They were angry. Whoever it was was threatening her. Nothing in writing, ‘cuz I asked her about it. I figured if there was some evidence, she could take it to the cops. She said there wasn’t any evidence, but even if there was, she couldn’t go to the police. One thing is sure: whoever it was had her on the spot.”

  “If she couldn’t tell her board and couldn’t tell the cops,” says Harry, “could be that whatever she was involved in was illegal.”