The Big Con

by Adam Walker Phillips

  Five days later there was another memorial, this time at my house. The Palos Verdes home had been an option since I had the key among Rebecca’s belongings, but I felt uncomfortable pursuing that. Besides, we wouldn’t have been able to fill the smallest room there.

  No executives showed up, and without them, none of the pilot fish consultant gurus did either. The gathering was a random collection of people who sat on either end of an invoice—pool cleaners, gardeners, house cleaners, and the payroll folks from the various corporations Power of One had worked with.

  One additional person was there, but he stayed out of sight just in case Julie got sentimental and decided to show up. I spotted the young detective from Palos Verdes Estates in his car, parked down the road from my house. I pulled up next to him on my way back from the pastry shop.

  “Didn’t mean for you to come,” I told him. “Just wanted to let you know that Rebecca had passed.” I knew that wasn’t the reason for the visit. “Or are you waiting for someone?”

  “Was in the neighborhood,” he said.

  “She’s not going to show,” I told him.

  “Who’s that?”

  “The woman who killed Lois Hearns.”

  “Julie St. Jean didn’t kill her,” he said.

  “No? Who did?”

  “We found traces of the deceased’s blood—” he started, but must have picked up my wincing at the excessive use of jargon and decided to speak to me in plain English. “James Fitch. Her blood was on his clothes.”

  “Who killed Fitch then?”

  “That’s for my friends in Sierra Madre to figure out. I’m only worried about my area of responsibility.”

  “If that was true, you wouldn’t be here.”

  Although his department had declared Julie dead, he still had his doubts. I might have underestimated him, but then again, he was dumb enough to drive all the way across town to sit in a car all day on the chance that Julie would actually show up to say goodbye to Rebecca.

  “You going to come in?” I asked.

  “Don’t want to intrude,” he said.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that we could have used the extra body to help fill out the room.

  “If you change your mind, we’re just up the road.”

  Compelled to hold the service for my friend, I bore the disappointment that so few people had decided to show. I mercifully brought it to a close fairly quickly. The few folks who’d come filed out and then it was just me, Badger, and Detective Fortin.

  Detective Fortin wasted no time verbalizing the question on all our minds.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  With Rebecca’s death, there was no longer the need to search for Julie. The police or Arturo or someone else would eventually track her down. Even the unspoken desire to punish her somehow dissipated with Rebecca’s passing. Julie’s life was ruined to a point from which even she, the master of reinvention, couldn’t recover.

  The obvious choice was to walk down the the road and unload everything we’d learned about Julie to the doubting young detective. He had the basic pieces—the affair with Lois, the blackmail scheme, the connection to the murder in Sierra Madre—but he didn’t know anything about Julie’s past in Arizona, the missing money, or her double life.

  But no one seemed very interested in doing that.

  I studied the two men in the room with me. I had raised Detective Fortin’s hopes for a chance at redemption only to threaten to snatch it away. And Badger just looked like someone who wasn’t ready to end his morning “counting” ritual with Julie’s money.

  “It’s the correct thing to do,” Badger said.

  That got me to smile, because in this instance, Badger’s poor word choice was actually appropriate.

  “But not the right thing,” I added. “Let’s go get Julie.”

  TAP-TAP-TAP

  I was convinced I was right until the third day that nothing happened.

  I figured a person on the run needs a place to sleep and that simple requirement can be challenging for someone with no access to credit cards or ATMs and probably no cash left. By this point Julie’s car had to be a liability. Sleeping in it like the dozens of semi-homeless do near parks wasn’t worth the risk when patrols, pressed upon by angry neighborhood committees, constantly came around to scare them away to another spot. She had no loyal relatives with a blinding duty to family that allowed them to overlook the fact that they were hiding a murderer on the run. There was also a small detail I now recalled from when I first followed Rebecca out of the Omni Hotel.

  She had led me to the commercial building overlooking the 110 Freeway and, I presumed, had gone upstairs to the unfinished space that was supposed to become Power of One’s new headquarters. But then they ran into financial difficulties and had to stop construction. I remembered when Rebecca first entered the building she carried a small bag with her, but when she emerged she no longer had it with her.

  I asked my ex-wife to make some calls and get me a tour of the unfinished floor. Claire and I had remained on good terms after the divorce and seemed to forever hover in a space where after a few cocktails I wondered, just maybe, about the viability of a reunion. Morning sobriety always brought back clarity.

  Claire was a lawyer in commercial real estate and was pretty well connected to all of the building management companies in downtown Los Angeles. Posing as a potential lessee, I gained entrance to the floor and was able to snoop around—albeit with the building’s agent as a chaperone—for any signs of recent activity. I spied the bag Rebecca had left and it looked to be empty but I couldn’t be sure. I was already getting the squirrelly eye from the agent for my complete inability to provide details about the alleged tech start-up I’d founded. The fact that I spent the majority of the time examining the detritus of the construction site didn’t help build conviction.

  Now convinced that Julie was using the place to evade capture, I set a plan in motion. Badger, Detective Fortin, and I took shifts watching the building for any sign of Julie. For practical reasons we limited the work to the hours between six in the evening and six in the morning. I figured if she was using the space to hide out she would likely time her entrances and exits to the hours when as few people were around as possible. We divided the twelve-hour shift among the three of us, which meant four-hour stints sitting in a car, waiting.

  We all began as enthusiastic supporters of the idea. Badger, in particular, was the most eager, but then again he was the only one getting paid. I needed to respect the fact that, for me, it was a personal decision to continue the search for Julie, but for Badger, it was still his livelihood and I couldn’t deny him that. He cut me a break on his hourly rate and also took the job very seriously. He dressed in all black and came equipped each evening with a giant set of binoculars that could read hedge language off a pharmaceutical ad from a thousand yards away. An empty plastic bottle served as his personal porta-potty.

  Since I owned the first shift, there was no need to go home after work because the building was less than a mile from my office. I took advantage of that by firing off as many emails as possible after five o’clock to prove my dedication to the firm. Although I resisted the urge to open the emails with:

  You’re probably gone for the day.…

  I did subtly close each one with:

  Let’s connect when you get back in the office tomorrow.…

  Solidifying my position as the firm’s leading burner of the midnight oil, I’d grab a sandwich on the way out and make the short drive over to the building, where for the next three nights I watched a service entrance on a side street where absolutely nothing happened.

  Although two decades of meaningless conference calls conditioned me for prolonged periods of stationary life, this was something different. I didn’t have the distractions of someone babbling on about a nothing initiative to lull me into a near hibernation state, where I could slow my heart rate and still be able to throw out “value” comments to hide the fact tha
t I wasn’t listening. Instead, it was the wicked combination of silence and my own thoughts that made this a brutal experience.

  Counting the minutes in solitude also eroded whatever confidence remained in my theory that Julie was hiding out on the unfinished floor. After the third day, a feeling of dread grew as the hour when Badger relieved me approached. I couldn’t bear to see the look on his face—the most enthusiastic of the three of us—as he too started to lose faith.

  “Still nothing?” he said. This time he wasn’t wearing his customary full-body rain slicker with seaman’s cap—an outfit needed only if you planned on standing in the elements all night. He even had a newspaper tucked under his arm.

  “Nothing,” I confirmed.

  Early the following morning I decided to put an end to the wasted effort. I swung by the stakeout building on my way into work to tell Detective Fortin that we needed a new plan.

  But he wasn’t there.

  It was still more than an hour before his shift was technically supposed to end. Perhaps he had come to the same conclusion that I had and decided to call it early. I checked my phone again just in case I’d missed any texts while I was sleeping. The message list was empty.

  I didn’t think anything of it and went in to work, getting lost in the meaninglessness of a long day of meetings and conference calls. By late afternoon, when my texts to Detective Fortin hadn’t been returned, I started to worry and placed a call to Badger.

  “I saw him at two this morning,” he said.

  “Did you hear anything from him after that?”

  “No, why? Did he go MIA on us?” he asked acerbically.

  Although Badger had ceased antagonizing his “rival,” he hadn’t exactly grown to respect him. It still showed up in subtle digs at his advanced age and in not-so-subtle digs at his competency.

  “Guy probably realized he couldn’t hang,” said Badger. As if sensing that he had pushed it too far, he shifted to a slightly more conciliatory tone. “You know where he’s staying? I could swing by and check up on the poor fellow.”

  I didn’t have an address.

  “Let me try a few more times to get him on the phone,” I said.

  “Should we keep going on the stakeout?”

  The detective’s disappearance gave me hope that maybe the original idea was correct after all.

  “Yeah, let’s do one more night.”

  “Cool with me,” he said. “It’s your dime.”

  I wished it was only a dime.

  “You want me to take his shift, too?” Badger asked hopefully. I thought I heard him smack his lips.

  “Let’s split it up,” I suggested. “Come by at midnight.”

  The storms rolled back into the LA basin that afternoon and dropped a steady rain for hours on end. I had to keep a few windows cracked because the humidity in the car kept fogging up the glass, which obscured my view of the service entrance. Dark patches formed on the seats where the rain pooled and soaked into the fabric.

  I mimicked the tap-tap-tap of raindrops on my roof by tapping them out with my thumb on the steering wheel. This little game slowly grew stale, then turned maddening as I focused on the sound of rain crackling on the roof that seemingly grew louder the more intensely I listened to it. I tried singing but realized I didn’t actually know the words to many songs. Then I just sat there.

  “You’re watching the wrong entrance,” a voice breathed into one of the cracked windows.

  I stared into the darkness to my right. A face loomed in the window but was so obscured by shadow I couldn’t make out its defining features. The door opened and the car’s internal light clicked on.

  “Let’s go inside,” Arturo suggested.

  A QUICK EXCHANGE

  There was little illumination other than the signs above the elevator doors and the security lights dangling every twenty feet or so from the ceiling in yellow, plastic cages. Commercials playing on the city center’s giant screens across the freeway turned the space into a kaleidoscope of ambient light as they rolled from one brand to the next.

  “Why don’t you call your nut-job friend and have him bring the money,” Arturo ordered.

  Before coming inside the building, Arturo searched the car and had me open the trunk just in case I had the money with me. He commended me on not being dumb enough to keep it on my person.

  “I thought you said you didn’t care about the money,” I said.

  “A guy can change his mind, right? Sorry, man, I wasn’t lying before,” he felt the need to add. “I really didn’t want the money. I’d give it up in a heartbeat as payment for finding her. But you found her without me having to do that!” he said, laughing. “I owe you, though.”

  “And what are you going to do if she shows?”

  “She’ll show.”

  “When she shows, then?”

  Arturo picked up on my concern that he might have more sinister motives in mind.

  “I’ve never killed anyone in my life,” he said. “And I’m not about to start now.”

  “What about Fitch?” I asked straight out.

  Arturo laughed. “Smart guy, Chuck, but you go off the rails sometimes. Why would I kill Fitch?”

  “Because you were angry at him for stealing your money.”

  “He didn’t take my money,” he corrected, and extended his hand. “Better if I take your phone.”

  I did as instructed.

  “What’s that guy’s name?” Arturo asked.

  “Ricohr,” I answered.

  It was the only name in my contacts who was in law enforcement. I hoped a random, mysterious text from me late in the evening would pique his curiosity enough to come find me.

  “Under R,” I said, hoping I hadn’t added “Detective” to his name.

  “Yeah, I got it,” Arturo said. He tapped away on the phone. “You said ‘Badger,’ right?” He looked up at me with a disappointed gaze. “Come on, Chuck, I thought we were friends. You haven’t texted or called that Ricohr character for over a year.”

  Back in the phone, Arturo went to the activity log from the day Rebecca had entered the hospital. He correctly assumed Badger was the right contact name but there was one number that perplexed him.

  “What’s this number with the Arizona area code?” he asked. “Who could that be?”

  He had stumbled upon Detective Fortin’s number. I hadn’t yet officially put him into my contacts so it came up as an unknown number. I watched Arturo’s mind race with all the possibilities, including one he didn’t necessarily want to believe.

  “Can’t be,” he whispered.

  My skin prickled.

  “You’ve been calling this number all day,” he said. He then went and read the texts I had sent, but they didn’t give him the answer he was looking for. “Who is it?”

  “Call and find out,” I suggested.

  I watched Arturo debate whether he should call the number to confirm whatever suspicions he had. I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing if he did. I never found out.

  “Let me guess, he gave himself the name?” Arturo asked, back on the original topic. “Badger,” he scoffed. “Bigger idiot than I thought. You still owe me for the damage to my car,” he said, switching back to our original discussion outside the coffee shop. “I’m gonna need to collect on that.”

  “Take it out of the money when it comes.”

  “But I’d be paying myself,” he said, smiling. “Don’t be going off the rails on me again.”

  Arturo gave me specific instructions on what to say to Badger along with a warning to not deviate or else suffer some unstated consequence.

  Badger picked up on the second ring.

  “Did she show?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” I replied, and then asked him to bring the money to the building. There was a long pause as his instincts told him something was wrong.

  “Sneeze twice if you’re in trouble,” he said.

  “He wants me to sneeze if I’m in danger,” I told A
rturo with my hand cupped over the phone.

  He snatched it away from me.

  “Pal, let’s not get all dramatic here. No one’s getting hurt unless someone decides to make things difficult. Just bring the money and I’ll set us square on the damage to my car. Once I have a chance to talk to her, you guys can call the cops and get the glory of the arrest. I’ll be long gone by that time.”

  Arturo handed the phone back to me.

  “I think he’s serious, Badger. Let’s just do what he wants. We don’t need any heroics right now.”

  Badger reluctantly agreed and hung up.

  “Is he going to play nice?” Arturo asked.

  “I have no idea.” There was something Arturo said that I wanted to confirm. “Did you mean that other part about being long gone?”

  “Chuck, I’ve been honest with you the whole time. I want two things—my money and to see her lying face. You guys—” he started but then corrected himself, “well, maybe just you, want to get back at her for what she did to that woman. You want to see her suffer a little bit, don’t you?”

  I didn’t answer but he knew what I was thinking.

  “I’d like to see you get that pleasure.”

  Badger arrived twenty minutes later and followed Arturo’s directions to the letter. The transaction was consummated without words. Badger laid the large bag of money on the floor. There was a brief moment when three guys stared at each other and not at the prize that sat between them. When it came time to leave, Badger backed out of the room while keeping his gaze on Arturo the entire time. Despite this awkward moment, the money was exchanged without incident.

  “Now we wait,” Arturo said, and sat down on a stack of dry mortar.

  For over three hours we sat in silence and watched the ever-changing shifts of light from the billboards across the way. I might have dozed off for a minute or two but couldn’t be sure. It felt like a sort of half-dream state anyway, until the elevator doors slid open and Julie walked in. She didn’t see us until Arturo rose up, and even then she wasn’t sure who was waiting for her.

  “Hello, Karen,” he said. “Been a long time.”