A Plague of Secrets

by John Lescroart

  But what if she talked to somebody, some reporter, anybody really? There was nothing more true about Harlen’s business than the fact that you couldn’t hide. He took it as a truism as universal as Murphy’s Law that a politician with a damaging secret somewhere out in the ozone was a finished politician. It would come out—the fact that he’d known Levon too. Hung with him.

  He kept asking himself, so what? So what?

  And the simple answer was that he didn’t know the consequences—from petty to profound—if the people already hounding him about these forfeiture issues got any more to chew on. No matter what, he thought, it would mean more headlines, and not the good kind. It was one thing to help a poor black kid get a job at ACT after a stretch in prison, but quite another to have partied with him and his doper friends and your own murder-suspect, dope-dealing sister. And even if it wasn’t a career-breaking matter to the general public, it would be to Kathy.

  It could finish him.

  And Cheryl knew all about it. And, yes, she’d told him that of course if it was important to him, she’d keep all that old stuff to herself. But what if . . . ?

  What if?

  He looked down at the gun in his hand. What did he think he was doing with that? Had he come down here thinking that his career, his life, was really so close to over, that perhaps he was really going to kill himself? What about Jeannette and the kids? What would they do without him?

  He had to relax. After all, nothing had happened yet. Maybe nothing ever would. And Cheryl had promised him that she’d keep it between them forever. Just like their other secrets from when they’d dated. She’d never betray him. She understood everything he’d told her and agreed that it was important.

  Super important, she’d actually said. And the insipid, Valley girl adjective had brought back one of the other realities about Cheryl the ex-cheerleader. She had been hot hot hot, no doubt, but also dumb, dumb, dumb. Super dumb.

  Was she too dumb to understand what she knew? Or should he try to contact her again? Set up an appointment.

  Make it clearer.

  Robert Tripp, in his scrubs, came out of the bathroom, peeled off his surgical gloves, and dropped them into the trash can in Jansey’s kitchen. “I think I got it all.” He started running the water in the sink, soaping up his hands. “But that was not a pretty job.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She sat at the kitchen table, a glass of wine in front of her. “I owe you. I just couldn’t handle that tonight.”

  Tripp turned. “What if I wouldn’t have been here?”

  “I would have quarantined the bathroom and forbidden flushing until I could call the plumber.”

  “You could always do it yourself.”

  She made a face. “I do a lot of good-mother stuff, Robert. I really do. But putting my hands in that—”

  Tripp held up his hands. “Gloves, then soap. Does wonders.”

  “Did he use the whole roll, you think?”

  “Most of it. Looked like it, anyway.”

  “Yuck. I’m sorry. But yuck.”

  “Lucky you got me.” He dried his hands and came to sit down across from her. “But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how’d you like the play?”

  She drank off about half her glass and shook her head. “It’s been a tough day, if you want to know. Tough all the way. I look at Maya sitting there across from me, and she looks so harmless, really, so pathetic almost. I think she’d been crying before she came into court. Then I feel like such a beast, somehow.”

  He reached across and put his hand over hers. “She did it, hon. I thought we were pretty clear about that. No matter what she looks like.”

  “I know. I know. But there’s just all this other stuff.”

  “What other stuff?”

  “You know. The insurance, when they’re going to pay out, whether the cops are still going to come after me for something about the business.”

  “Didn’t they say not?”

  “Well”—she shrugged—“if you believe them. But I never signed anything, so I guess they still could.”

  Tripp stood up and came around the table, pulling up a chair next to her. He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her toward him, kissed the hollow of her neck, and held himself there for a moment. “You’re just worrying. I love you.”

  “I just think what if it’s not her?”

  He pulled away. “But it is her. Who else would it be?”

  “I know. I know. But it was just way different actually facing her and saying all that stuff out loud. And I also know—don’t think I don’t—that once she’s convicted, it’s way better for us.”

  “Hey,” he said gently, “we’re cool. We don’t have to worry about us.”

  “But I do. I mean, if he calls me back again.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The defense guy. Mr. Hardy.”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, he didn’t even ask about us.”

  “Why would he?”

  “Well, you know, because . . .”

  “Because we’re an item?”

  She turned to him. “Not because we’re an item, now, Robert. Because we were an item. I mean, then. That’s never come out, and if it does . . .”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know. But something, I’d think.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it gives me a reason . . .” She blinked back the starts of tears.

  He pulled her again to him, his hand on her neck, whispered into her ear. “You’re just worn down, Janz. It’s been a long haul, that’s all. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve got all the reason in the world to have done him—which, by the way, you did . . .”

  “Don’t say that!”

  “All right. But the fact remains, it still doesn’t matter, since I said you were here.”

  “But I was here.”

  “Of course. But me saying it makes you really here, with an actual alibi, as they call it. You know what I mean.” He put a finger under her jaw, gently. Lifted it so that she was looking at him. “We’ve talked all about this. Lots of times.”

  “I know. I’m being stupid, I guess.”

  “Not so stupid.” He kissed her. “But really really cute, all upset the way you are.”

  She pouted, shook her head. “I don’t feel cute.”

  “I bet I could fix that in about five minutes.”

  She stared past him through the window into the darkness outside. “He never asked me about us at all,” she said.

  “That’s because you and me, we’re not what this is about. This is about Maya killing Dylan, and helping the prosecution prove it. That’s all it’s about.”

  “You’re really sure?”

  “I’m positive, hon. Absolutely positive.”

  Ruiz thought it would have been downright irresponsible, since they had the program in place and working smoothly, to simply abandon the business just because Dylan was gone, along with his steady supply of quality sensimilla. The other long-term employees at BBW weren’t likely to find any other job that gave them a monthly bonus even close to what Dylan had paid them for their loyalty and cooperation and Ruiz was, of course, ready to step in almost immediately once the heat just after the shooting had dissipated.

  Now, near midnight, Ruiz was in his ten-year-old Camaro crossing Golden Gate Park’s panhandle at Masonic, on his way to tonight’s meeting with his new source—actually his old friend, Jaime Gutierrez, but who knew he was dealing weed until you looked around?—and pick up some product for the upcoming week. Tuesday was always the night, and earlier on Jaime had left him a text message on his cell with the always different address, same as usual.

  So Ruiz had shut down BBW at ten o’clock and swung by his apartment on Parnassus, where he’d picked up his eight thousand dollars cash, which he knew was way too much to be carrying around normally, but it was only once a week and had to be done. He also grabbed the old funky revolver, a six-shooter actually, that Jaime had so
ld him once they’d done the first couple of deals and it had looked like it was going to keep working.

  Of course, Ruiz knew that having a gun hadn’t done any good for Dylan, but that’s because Dylan had gotten complacent over time. Everybody at BBW knew where he kept it at work and how he carried it in his jacket’s inside pocket whenever he was moving either product or money or both. And he was really, at base, such a trusting guy. Made a lot of money, gave a lot of it away, a sweetheart.

  Ruiz was smarter. Nobody at BBW knew he even had this gun. Or when he moved the money in and out. Or, especially, when or where he scored his product.

  Although, he had to admit, this was the area of the business where Dylan had shown a talent for organization and control, and Ruiz was planning on emulating that model once he could get himself into a bigger crib where he could grow his own in quantity, the way Dylan had done in his attic. Which had meant that Dylan didn’t have to go to these weekly buys that always felt a little sketchy. Dylan hadn’t had to buy; he only sold, and that made everything so much cleaner. Even after all their years together Ruiz never figured out where he’d stored the cash in or around the store. No one ever knew when he’d show up with the product, or leave with cash.

  So, the lesson to take home from that—keep all your logistics to yourself, as Dylan had done. The thing to watch for, Ruiz knew, was one of the other guys in the shop getting ideas that he could take over if Ruiz disappeared. Just as Ruiz had. Dylan had never considered that possibility, or at least never showed it if he did.

  Oh, well, times changed. Lives changed.

  And now in his new life, Ruiz parked on Turk down by Divisadero—the whole area darkened now since this neighborhood, the outer Fillmore, tended to be underserved by the Department of Public Works. Streetlights were not the biggest priority here—it was hard to say if, in fact, there were any other civic priorities either.

  Locking the car, checking for foot traffic—none—Ruiz heard hip-hop loud from a block or two away. The wind was light but very cold, and Ruiz pulled his parka up over his chin, hands in its pockets, around his gun in one and his money in the other, and checked doorways until he got to the address and stopped.

  It was an old-style apartment building, four stories. The lobby shimmered under dull ceiling fluorescents, their coverings yellowed with age and neglect. Ruiz tried the front door.

  Which was open.

  How Jaime found these places, he didn’t know.

  A large gray cat sat in a litter box just under the mailbox and from the smell, Ruiz was pretty sure it wasn’t the only animal that had relieved itself nearby. Maybe even some humans.

  He was looking for 3F, so he pressed the single elevator button, but it didn’t light up. He only waited twenty seconds or so before he gave up and turned for the stairway. The second floor was dimmer than the lobby, but somewhat to his relief the third was brighter. Sweating now with nerves and the exertion of the climb—he had to get going making his own garden grow—he turned out of the stair-well and walked back to 3F, where he knocked twice, then once.

  Spy shit. He chuckled at it. Ridiculous.

  And in a moment the door opens and here is Jaime, happy as ever, slapping his five, mellow, without a care in the world. Ruiz took a last look behind him on the landing, then stepped in and Jaime closed the door behind them, threw the dead bolt.

  An adequate apartment, if a little small—maybe one of Jaime’s girlfriends’. Living room, dining room, kitchen. Furnished in Goodwill, but not bad. Tasteful.

  Their usual protocol was they had a beer or two and caught up, exchanged money for product, made sure they were good for the next week, and said good-bye, and this is what they did now. The whole thing took twenty minutes, tops.

  And then they were saying their good-byes. Jaime was throwing back the dead bolt, starting to open the door, when suddenly it exploded in on them and they were being backed up by two guys in big parkas. Each carried a gun, pointed straight at Jaime and Ruiz. Both guns had extensions on their barrels.

  The two parkas advanced, but didn’t back up their targets for long, maybe a step or two.

  Then they opened fire.

  34

  “I know you’re awake. Pick up.”

  It was still dark out, 5:42 A.M., and Hardy was having his morning coffee and reading the front-page story in the paper about his day in court yesterday, when Jansey Ticknor had implicated his client in a long-standing and, he was sure, completely spurious affair with Dylan Vogler. For not the first time—and though he already had some marginally serviceable answers—he was asking himself why she had perjured herself so thoroughly and wondering if he had anything to gain by calling her back to the stand and taking her head off.

  But at the sound of Glitsky’s voice, these cogitations fled and he leaned over and grabbed the receiver. “This isn’t what we call a reasonable time.”

  “You’re in trial. I know you’re up.”

  “Frannie’s not in trial.”

  “I didn’t call that phone.”

  “You’ve got all the answers.”

  “Got to. I’m a cop. People depend on me.”

  “Actually, I’m glad you called. I was going to check in with you today about Lori Bradford.”

  “I figured you would someday, but that’s not what I called about. Do you know who Eugenio Ruiz is?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Diz. Don’t play games with me, please. Of course you know who he is, right?”

  “BBW. The new manager.”

  “Right. Except now he’s the new dead manager.”

  “Oh, my God, poor Eugenio.”

  “I don’t know, Maya. Maybe not so poor.”

  “So what does this mean?” she asked him. They were next to one another at the table in the glass-block-enclosed attorney visiting room. It was still a few minutes short of eight A.M. “Besides that, after this, now we’re definitely closing the place down. We should have done it before, but Joel wanted to make a stand against Glass. So you’re telling me they were still selling dope out of there.”

  “It looks like it. At least Eugenio was.” Hardy shrugged. This was by no means the most important issue of the day, nor the most unexpected. “Dylan had the whole system set up, everybody who worked there probably in on it. It makes sense somebody kept it going.”

  “Do they have any suspects? I mean for who shot him.”

  “No. It’s way too soon for that.”

  “I hope Joel has an alibi. If he found out that Eugenio was dealing again after all we’ve been through, he would have killed him.”

  “Let’s not mention that to anybody, okay? But it wasn’t Joel, even without an alibi. There were two different-caliber bullets, so it looks like two shooters. What it looks like, classically in fact, is a dope rip. Somebody followed somebody to where the money and the dope changed hands and just started blasting away.”

  “That happens over marijuana?”

  “Every day, Maya. Every day.”

  “It seems so strange. Remember when we were younger?”

  “I wasn’t young when you were, but I know what you mean.”

  “It’s so hard to imagine. I mean, a little grass was like nothing, no big deal at all, and now these people are dying over it.”

  “It’s illegal. So it’s prohibition all over again.”

  “They ought to just legalize it.”

  “That’s a different discussion which I’d love to have with you someday. But let’s not make the argument when you get on the stand. How’s that?”

  The comment clearly offended her. “I’m not stupid, Diz.”

  “Not even close, Maya.” He pushed his chair back a little from the table, crossed one leg over the other. “But you asked me what the killing of Ruiz meant for us. I’d like to pretend that Braun or maybe Stier will see this as the next step in a turf war that began with Dylan and Levon, and one that you couldn’t have been involved in, so they’ll just decide this whole prosecution and trial is
a mistake and let you go. But unfortunately, that is not happening, not in a million years.”

  “So. What’s left?”

  “What’s left is a guy named Paco, who Eugenio maybe could have identified, and now definitely can’t.”

  “Paco?”

  “Ring a bell?”

  “Well, actually, yes.”

  Hardy sat back with a little thrill of surprise and pleasure. “Tell me you know him and where he lives and you could pick him out of a lineup.”

  She bit her lip. “None of the above, I’m afraid. But I do know that name. He was a friend of Dylan’s. And Levon’s, too, for that matter.”

  “All dead guys now, you notice. When did Paco know them? Back in college?”

  She nodded. “Sometime back there. Evidently they were all kind of the in crowd before I became part of it. You know, Dylan and his pals always doing this crazy, dangerous stuff. And this kind of legendary guy named Paco.”

  “So what happened to him? You never met him?”

  “No. He was supposedly gone by the time I showed up.”

  “Dropped out, transferred, what?”

  “No idea, really. Maybe he wasn’t even in school with us, was just kind of a hanger-on. Except, you know, I’m pretty sure Paco wasn’t his real name. It was more like a nom de guerre. Sometimes I got the feeling it was somebody we all actually knew. I mean still knew, and still hung out with. It was just like Dylan to wrap it all up in a mystery and be the one keeping the big secret. Sound familiar?”

  “You think Dylan might have been blackmailing him too?”

  “I don’t know. I kind of doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I think first, he didn’t need to. He had me. And second, if you don’t have a weak and guilt-ridden person like me you’re dealing with, blackmail can be a little dangerous. I mean, you’d better know your mark. You threaten to expose the wrong thing about the wrong guy, and the guy goes, ‘Uh, no. I think I’ll kill you instead.’ You know what I’m saying?”