“That’s a possibility.” The problem was, I didn’t have much else to grasp at. Mary picked up on what I suppose was a fleeting look of weariness. I liked her. I wasn’t convinced, but I didn’t feel like arguing with her. And she made me like her even more by offering me a cup of coffee. I accepted. She also offered me a chair behind the counter, near the stool she used. I sat down. Nice guys shouldn’t try to solve murders. Mary went off into a back room and returned with two mugs.
I sipped my coffee. “You know,” I said, “you might have met Smith.”
She had just enough time to raise her eyebrows before two more customers brought books up to the register. She made the sales and turned back to me.
“I don’t think so. Not that I know of, anyway. Why do you say that?”
“He bought a book in here, for his daughter. Probably the week before he died.”
She looked up at the calendar on the wall. “I wasn’t around much that week. Eric was pretty much on his own. Last week, too. I’m thinking of opening another store, in The City, and I’ve been spending a lot of time across the bridge, looking at sites. In fact, that’s why I’m working today, to give Eric a break. Monday’s my usual day off.”
I sipped my coffee. It was good. “Business is good, then?”
She smiled. “For a bookstore, we’re doing very well.”
I liked sitting around and talking to Mary. She was a restful person. “Have you always done this kind of thing?”
“Oh, my, no,” she laughed. “I used to be a social worker. Have you ever thought about how many people have changed their lives all around since the sixties? Divorce, remarriage, career changes. People who were lawyers, teachers, social workers, executives—”
“And cops,” I laughed, tapping my chest. “I guess there really was a revolution, after all.”
She sobered. “Yes, and so much of it was good. But there were the bad things, too. We saw a lot of that at the welfare department. Kids, desperate, homeless, strung out… that’s how I met Eric. He was looking for a runaway daughter. Of course, he was already divorced by then.”
I finished my coffee, bought a paperback P. D. James, and said goodbye.
Stopping at a phone booth, I put in a call to Bert Franklin at Bright Future. He remembered me, but he didn’t sound all that happy to hear from me until I offered to buy him drinks after work. He didn’t even ask why I wanted to see him. We agreed to meet at a bar just off 101 north of San Rafael. Then, I had lunch at a hamburger place on Miller and drove back to the canyon.
Rosie wasn’t around, but I found a note on my door from Julia that said I’d gotten a call from Chloe while I was gone. It said please call back as soon as possible. I crossed the footbridge to Artie’s side of the canyon and knocked on his door. No answer. I went in and made a second call to Bright Future. Chloe was at her desk.
“Jake,” she said, “I have to talk to you.”
“Okay, I’ll come right over.”
“God, no. I’ll meet you tonight. Do you know the Pink Salamander in Sausalito?” I didn’t. She gave me directions. I told her I’d see her there at eight.
The rest of the afternoon I spent hanging around the canyon waiting for Rosie, but by four-thirty she hadn’t showed up, and I decided I’d better start north for my date with Bert Franklin. He’d said he’d get to the bar a little after five, and I didn’t want him to have to buy his own first drink. Might put him in an off mood. Also, I knew that the commuter traffic from San Francisco across the Golden Gate and into Marin, Sonoma, and Napa, had been building for at least an hour.
The ten-minute drive took twenty minutes, and I arrived at the Hearthstone Inn well ahead of Franklin. The dining room was deserted. This was not the kind of place where people came in for an early dinner so they could get the kids to bed by seven. The bar, on the other hand, was filling up for happy hour.
It was a nice bar, one of those where everything seems to shine in the dim lighting. All the bottles and glasses sparkled. The dark wood bar top glowed. The mirror caught dazzling reflections of candlelight from the booths. The red plastic bar stools looked polished and so did the people sitting on them. Middle management. Young to middle-aged people on the way up. Somewhere. Somewhere in the hierarchies that inhabited the industrial parks of Marin and the financial district of San Francisco. I had a little time to watch while I sipped my Napa Valley white, and decided that none of the people who gathered here had gone as far as they wanted to go. They were restless, and trying too hard to look successful.
Funny place for Bert Franklin to pick, I thought. Hard to believe he was a regular in this bar. My guess was that since someone else was paying, he wanted to go some place where they served more than shots and beer. Just for a change.
He walked in the door about ten after five, spotted me immediately at the bar, and, belly foremost, unsmiling, lumbered toward me. Despite the belly, despite the graceless walk, his rigidly squared shoulders gave him the look of an aging, overweight tom, scared of the new cat on the block but determined to maintain his dominance. What I had to do was convince him that I wasn’t out to rip his ears.
He was wearing a green and yellow plaid jacket, green double knit pants, and Hush Puppies.
I smiled happily, like I was glad to see him, and asked if he’d like to take a booth.
“Bar’s fine,” he grunted, plunking himself down on the stool next to mine. To the bartender he said, “Jack Daniels black. Rocks.” I put a five on the bar.
I asked about all the nice people at Bright Future. Franklin sucked down half his drink before he said everything was “terrific.” I ordered another drink for him, and he swallowed the rest of the first one fast enough to be ready when the second one arrived. I kept the chatter light and sociable through the second drink. He began to relax a little with his first sip of the third.
He took one of his elbows off the bar and swiveled slightly toward me.
“Listen, Samson, you didn’t invite me here for a friendly gossip. This is real nice and everything, but why don’t you ‘fess up?” He leered at me. “I don’t think you’re after my body— though these days it’s hard to tell— so order me another drink and get down to it.”
Controlling an impulse to gag at the thought of anybody wanting his body, I laughed and ordered him a double.
“Hell, Franklin, it’s just the same old journalistic shit. You know how it is. The editor wants a story, I see what I can dig up.”
He snickered. “Sure. A story on correspondence schools. What is it, a humor piece?” He started working on the double. I was on my second glass of wine.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll level with you. It is a story about correspondence schools.” He laughed, spraying Jack Daniels in my face. “No, really. You’ve got to admit that Bright Future is quite a phenomenon. An old, traditional company that’s got itself some hot new people”— I punched his shoulder— “and a hot new marketing plan that’s going to take it right up there. A success story. It’s good stuff.” He narrowed his eyes at me suspiciously, and I added, remembering the operative word in the company literature, “It’s exciting.”
“Marketing plan’s not that new,” he muttered. “But I see what you mean.” He was still watching me, assessing me. Wondering if I was as dumb as I sounded.
“That’s right,” I said. “You’re kind of an old hand at this sort of thing, aren’t you? Didn’t you work for another company that ran along the same lines?” I was fishing. I didn’t know that Perfect Day cosmetics, where he’d worked with Morton, had been the same setup. But I figured that the more I found out about that business that had gone under in some peculiar way— according to Arlene— the more I’d know about what Morton was doing at Bright Future. Which might lead me to the reasons for Smith’s death. Might. But what the hell.
Franklin had turned away from me again, casually, and put both his elbows back on the bar. He finished the double. I ordered him another one. “Whole different ball game,” he said.
&nbs
p; “What?”
“I said I don’t know where you heard that. Completely different kind of company.” He glanced at me sideways, and tilted a little in the process. He was not altogether sober. “No resemblance at all.” He spoke softly, and with careful control.
“Guess I got it wrong,” I told him. “But isn’t that where you met Morton? I just figured maybe he ran things the same way when he was there.”
“Not at all. Not the same at all.” He was still speaking very quietly.
“What was the name of the place? Perfect Day, something like that?” He swallowed the second double in two gulps.
“Thanks for the drinks, Samson. I got to go now.” He lurched off the stool, caught himself, and marched through the bar and out the door.
I took a look at the menu, decided Artie couldn’t afford the place, and stopped off in San Rafael for Chinese food. Then I got back on the freeway— still jammed going north— and turned south toward Sausalito.
21
Chloe was waiting for me at a table in the back of the bar. I picked up a beer on the way. She was drinking a straight-up martini, and there were three cigarette butts in the ashtray.
“What’s up?” I asked, searching her tired face for some clue to what might be wrong.
“I need to know what you’re doing,” she said, lighting another cigarette.
I stalled. “Why is it more important for you to know this week than it was last week?”
“Because if I’m going to lose my job I’d like to know what I’m losing it for.” I waited for her to go on. “I know you called Bert Franklin today at work. I know you invited him for a drink. Morton knows, too. The minute Franklin got off the phone with you he went to report to his buddy.”
“That’s not exactly a big surprise. I thought he might. What’s that got to do with you?”
“I’ll take it slowly so you understand,” she said with what I thought was unnecessary superiority. “Last week, you asked me out to lunch. Bert of course noticed. Bert of course told Morton.” I nodded to show I understood her so far. “Morton didn’t think much about it at the time, but this week you made a date with Bert. Obviously you are sneaking around trying to pump employees. Bert the loyal employee reported this fact to Morton. I, on the other hand, did not.”
“Ah hah!”
“Ah hah, indeed. Morton called me in right after he talked to Bert. He wanted to know what you and I talked about. He wanted to know why I hadn’t given him a full report. And the son of a bitch wanted to know— as he put it— how close we are. Was I seeing you? What happened at lunch? I want another drink.” I got it for her and brought it back to the table.
“Pretty paranoid stuff,” I said. “What did you tell him?”
“The truth. That you asked a lot of questions about Smith and about the company and I didn’t tell you anything. I also said I assumed he knew what you were doing since you’d also talked to him.”
“And he didn’t think that was reasonable.”
“No. He didn’t make any direct accusations, but he made a little speech about the importance of corporate security. Then, he got all jovial and made a ‘joke’ about how maybe I wanted a job with your magazine. So, what are you doing, Jake?”
I told her I was trying to find out who killed Smith.
She looked surprised. “Really?”
“Really.”
“For Probe?” Her expression made it clear that she wouldn’t swallow that.
“Well…”
“You’re not a reporter, are you?”
“No.”
“You’re Sam Spade.” I shrugged modestly. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
“Because everyone who knew him is a suspect.”
She smiled, and then she started laughing. “You’re right. Anyone who knew that jerk could have wanted to kill him.”
She sipped at her drink, still smiling. Then she sat back and studied my face. “Maybe Morton did it.” I didn’t say anything. “Did you know that Smith resigned just a few days before he was killed?”
I tried to look cool and knowing, but I don’t think I succeeded.
“Do you know why? Do the police know? Who else knew about it?”
“I didn’t think you knew,” she laughed. “Now, one question at a time. I don’t know why. I’m only middle management. Bowen just let me know that one of my vice presidents was leaving. As for the police, they must know. They certainly spent enough time around the office before they decided to arrest Alan. Who else knew? Besides Bowen, and me, Armand and Morton would have had to know.”
I drank some beer to gain thinking time. “I’ve gotten the impression that Smith and Morton didn’t get along. Wouldn’t Morton be glad he was leaving, glad to be rid of him? Why would he kill him?”
Chloe shook her head at me. “Jake, you’re not thinking clearly. How much money do you think people can make selling correspondence courses? Multi-level marketing is based on a pyramid-shaped collection of busy little people selling— something— and pumping money up to the top. The higher up you go toward the point, the higher your commissions are. The more people you have below you, the more money you’ve got coming in.”
I nodded.
“Do you also understand that the key is recruiting? And do you understand that making money from recruitment alone is against the law? That you can’t make people pay a little something to the guy who brings them in— just for bringing them in? And that you can’t pay people a little something for recruiting more bodies to recruit more bodies?”
“Are you saying that’s what’s going on there?”
She looked away from me. “No. I’m not saying that at all. How would I know anything about that? I’m certainly not involved in anything like that and I don’t know it’s happening. But I do know that fortunes have been made that way, other times and other places. That sales of actual product had very little to do with those fortunes. That’s why there are laws now. Because a lot of little people got suckered into paying their money and taking their chances. And lost. Does Morton strike you as an honest man? He runs his own shop. Nobody interferes. Not even Armand.”
“And Smith was a moralist.”
“Right. Not enough of a moralist to object to the hype or even the useless course material. But outright lawbreaking? Maybe he was delivering an ultimatum when he delivered his resignation. In all the years I knew him, I never knew him to shaft anyone without warning them first. It was part of his code of honor.”
“Clean it up or I blow the whistle.”
“If there was anything to clean up.” She’d returned to her hear no evil, see no evil approach. I couldn’t blame her.
“And you can’t prove that Morton’s running a crooked operation.”
“No.”
“Can you tell me more about why you think he might be, and how you think he might be doing it?”
She was very quiet. “Give me a day or two,” she said softly. “I’ll see what I can dig up.”
“Why are you being so helpful all of a sudden?” I demanded. Her help might be valuable, if what she was saying was true, but that didn’t mean I could be absolutely sure I could trust her. Maybe she was just throwing a complicated, time-consuming, and smelly red herring at me.
“Because I don’t like being threatened, and Morton threatened me. Also, if he goes to jail he can’t fire me.”
“It seems funny,” I said, “that someone from Bright Future would trail Smith to the canyon to kill him.”
“What’s funny about that? It’s smarter than killing him in the executive toilet.”
Before we left each other, Chloe invited me to dinner on Wednesday. She said she would try to have something for me by then. That was fine with me. I had plans for Tuesday night. Poker. And I thought one of my poker regulars might be a good source of information on the legalities of running a Bright Future type of business. My old friend Hal, bright young Berkeley attorney with friends in the D.A.’s office.
I dr
ove back to the canyon thinking about the new information on Smith. Why had he quit his job? Had he been killed to cover up a scam of some sort? Even if Chloe wasn’t trying to lead me astray for sinister reasons, wasn’t it possible that she was indulging in wishful thinking? She had too much of a stake in getting rid of Morton.
So I was pretty preoccupied when I pulled into the canyon lot. I didn’t even notice the car that pulled into the canyon a few seconds after me. I opened the door and stepped out, closing it behind me.
That was when the bullet ripped past my chest.
I dropped to the ground and bellied my way under my Chevy and out the other side. Good old high-riding Chevy. Solid car between me and the man with the gun, for the moment. But he didn’t give me a lot of time to worry. He slammed into reverse and swerved back out of the canyon again. A blue Mercury. And when he was wrestling the wheel around to pull out onto the road, I caught a glimpse of elbow sticking out his open window. I couldn’t be sure of the colors in the night-lighted lot, but the sleeve was definitely plaid, and maybe green and yellow.
22
I wasn’t about to call the cops— although, for a moment, I thought of the solid presence of Sergeant Ricci, the sheriff’s department detective I’d met on that first day in the canyon— and tell them that Bert Franklin had shot at me because I was investigating a murder they’d already solved. And no one else in the canyon was very likely to call them. Not for one measly gunshot.
I realized I was shaking, so I stood there for a while calming myself down. Then I went back to the other side of the car. The wing window looked like a spider web with a hole in the middle. The bullet must have come close to hitting me. I unlocked the door and got the flashlight out of the dash compartment. I found the little killer lodged in the dash near the radio. It took me a couple of minutes to find it, because my hands weren’t working too well, but I dug it out with a pocket knife and dropped it into my pants pocket. Then I made my wobbly way up the steps to Rosie’s room. I was remembering that, just a little while before, I had been skeptical about someone from Bright Future following Smith to the canyon to kill him.
Free Draw (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 2) Page 14