Bubble Screen (Burnside Series Book 3)

by David Chill

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  Bubble Screen is the third installment in the Burnside Mystery series. My first two Burnside novels, Post Pattern and Fade Route, are available on Amazon.com. and there is now a fourth Burnside novel, Safety Valve. If you'd like to read an excerpt, I've attached chapter one of Safety Valve here. Read on!

  Thanks again,

  David

  Safety Valve Preview

  Chapter One

  Cliff Roper was someone I hoped I would never see again. He had been arrested numerous times, he had an obnoxious personality, and he possessed a manner that could easily engender mistrust. But when Cliff Roper was suspected of trying to kill his business partner, the calculus changed. He arrived at my office with $10,000 in cash, along with a story that was compelling, even if he himself came to it without a moral or ethical compass.

  "You gotta help me," he said.

  "I don't gotta do anything," I countered, wondering why my command of the English language had suddenly disappeared.

  "I'll pay you a month's wages."

  "I charge a thousand dollars a day," I informed him, suddenly raising my daily rate to factor in some combat pay that might well be needed with this case. It also served to give him pause.

  "You're kidding me."

  "I don't kid about money."

  "Crap," he said, as the wheels inside of his head seemed to turn furiously. The pause it gave him was short-lived. "Make it two weeks."

  "I never accept a job just because of the money. And I haven't even decided to accept you as a client yet."

  "Oh, you're going to decide? Like hell you will. I'm the decider here, Burnside. The client gets to choose. I know that from personal experience."

  He certainly had a lot of experience from which to draw. A small, wiry man with close-cropped silver hair, Cliff Roper was a successful sports agent. He represented athletes in nearly every sport you could think of, and possibly a few you couldn't. He was well-dressed, sporting a gray blazer and slacks, and wore a white oxford cloth shirt with the first three buttons open.

  Despite the debonair look, Cliff Roper was someone well acquainted with the inside of a jail cell. He had been detained numerous times for everything from embezzlement to manslaughter, although none of the charges ever turned into a conviction. He was tough, savvy, intense, and rich. And my one interaction with him last year was not pleasant. The thought of doing business with him made me more than a little apprehensive.

  "If I recall, you threatened to have me killed last year," I said, leaning back in my chair and eyeing him across my desk.

  "And if I recall," he countered evenly, "you threatened me with blackmail. Sounds like we're even."

  "Even?"

  "More or less. Look, why don't we just try and put all that history behind us. I need someone like you."

  I took a deep breath and looked around at my sparsely furnished office. Business had been very slow lately. With an upcoming wedding to pay for, not to mention my monthly bills, I was getting more than a little concerned. When I launched my business, I vowed never to take a case strictly for financial reasons. There had to be something more.

  "Why don't you start by telling me what brings you here," I said.

  "Someone's trying to frame me," he declared.

  "For what?"

  "For what? For attempted murder is for what."

  "Who'd you try to kill? Allegedly, of course," I asked.

  "I didn't try to kill anyone. That's the point. Geez. Do I have to spell it out for you?"

  "Yes. And start from the beginning. It'll make things easier. At least for me."

  Cliff Roper took a big, long sigh and glanced out my window for a moment. I doubt he saw anything more than a smoggy morning in April. The winter rains that moved through Southern California had ended by this time of year. Without them, the air had begun to grow stale and gray again. Diffuse sunlight was starting to emerge from the thicket in the sky.

  "I have this partner," Roper said. "Or former partner as of last week. Name is Gilbert Horne. We've been running a sports agency for a few years now. But I'm the only one bringing in new clients and he's the only one losing existing ones. It's not a good balance."

  "So you split up."

  "Yeah, yeah, we split up. Or more to the point, I told him to take a hike, because he wasn't holding up his end. He didn't like that too much. He made some threats."

  "What were the threats?"

  "Ah, the usual. He'd sue me, bankrupt me, ruin me. Chop me into little pieces."

  "I see. The usual."

  "Right," he said. "I told him to get lost. I've been threatened by guys a lot tougher than him."

  "Then what?'

  "Then last week my office gets burglarized. Someone cracked the safe. I don't keep a lot there, but they took some emergency cash, a few contracts. And they also took my Glock."

  "Your gun?" I peered at him, assuming he was referring to a Glock automatic pistol.

  "Yeah, yeah, my gun. It was a Glock 34 if you want to get technical."

  "You kept it in the safe."

  "Look, I'm not Wyatt Earp. I don't walk around carrying a heater."

  "And you think your partner took it."

  "He's the only one who could have figured out the combination. Anyway, what happened next is where it gets weird."

  "So now it's getting weird?" I asked, my eyebrows shooting up involuntarily. I was glad I didn't have anything else to do this morning. Cliff Roper had, if nothing else, high entertainment value.

  "Yeah," he continued. "Someone took a couple of shots at Horne the other night. Outside his home. Didn't hit him but the shots lodged into the outside wall of his house."

  "And he thinks it was you."

  "Who cares what he thinks. The important thing is the police think so. They think I'm trying to kill my ex-partner."

  "Where does Horne live?"

  "Lookout Mountain. Off of Laurel Canyon. Not far from where I live."

  "Hollywood Hills," I said.

  "Yeah. Close to my office. And I don't need to tell you this, but it's a rotten time for me to have a problem with the law. The NFL draft is next week. I got a lot on the line. Got a couple of college guys that could get picked early, but they're wavering now. Other agents are circling, trying to pull these guys away from me. There's big money on the table."

  "Your partner sign any college players?"

  Roper scoffed. "Just one. Some running back out of Buttcrack State. Gil said he was clocked at a 4.3 in the 40."

  "That's pretty darned fast. Starting to approach Olympic levels."

  "It's bull. He was clocked on his pro day at his cow college. And that college has a track that slopes downward. Everyone in the business knows that players' times there are artificially fast. That is everyone who pays attention. My numb nuts ex-partner didn't even know this. He even loaned the kid five large to get him to sign with our agency."

  I shook my head. A loan of $5,000 is tantamount to a bribe. In the agent world though, that's sometimes the price of doing business.

  Roper sensed my disapproval. "You want guys to sign with you? It's a difference maker."

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose and tried to get his attention focused once more on the shooting. A few things didn't quite add up here. "So let's go back to the other day. The bullets they found were from a Glock."

  "You're a genius. I just told you that, reme
mber?"

  "You file a police report on the burglary?" I asked.

  "I don't do that sort of thing."

  "Of course you don't," I said. "Because that would be a matter of public record. And it would alert your existing clients and maybe make them a little nervous about who's representing them."

  Roper nodded slowly as he looked at me. "I knew you weren't stupid."

  "And I know that too," I responded sharply. "The larger question is are you stupid?"

  "Me?" he asked, the shocked look on his face was far from feigned. I didn't imagine Cliff Roper had ever doubted himself in his life. "How'd you wind up there?"

  "Someone stole your pistol. They had plans for it. You don't report the theft. The gun gets used in a crime. It's fired at someone so it's attempted murder. They tie it back to you. In the eyes of the police, you're now a person of interest."

  Roper slumped back in his chair. It was hardly a soft chair, but Roper wasn't a soft man. He took a deep breath and his mouth contorted into an ugly expression. He did not strike me as a man who liked to be toyed with, and I could only imagine the revenge he was conjuring up in his head.

  "Okay," he said, finally. "You got me."

  "Let me ask you this. Who filed the police report regarding the shooting?"

  "Horne's wife. Said her husband was in hiding now. He knows someone wants him dead."

  "Did she identify you?"

  "I don't know what that crazy broad said. She's a gold digger. Anything that comes out of her mouth is designed to put money in her pocket or diamonds on her hands."

  "And the police questioned you when?"

  "Last night."

  "You have an alibi for where you were?"

  "Don't worry," he said, dismissing the concern with a wave of his hand. "I arranged for one."

  "Wonderful," I said. Clients like Cliff Roper were a double-edged sword. They paid a lot of money, but were high maintenance and they were flexible with the truth. It was nothing more than a tactic to get them past obstacles. They were untrustworthy and secretive and they withheld certain facts and details which they didn't feel like sharing. But I was starting to find this case intriguing, even if the client would be a burden.

  "Well then," I continued, "who do you think fired the shot at Horne?"

  Roper emitted a laugh that had a sneer hanging from the end of it. "I can give you a laundry list."

  "Fine. Anywhere you'd like to begin."

  "Hey, for starters, there are a couple of clients who were pissed as hell at him. He messed up Oscar Romeo's endorsement deal with a shoe company. Horne didn't follow through on the details, didn't present the client in the proper light. Cost Oscar $3 million, so he dumped our agency. Then there's Oscar's pal, Patrick Washington. The two have been friends forever. The Raiders sent Patrick a five-year renewal contract, fully guaranteed. It just had to be signed and faxed back by midnight at the end of March. Patrick signed it, but Horne, the dimwit, he couldn't figure out how to operate the fax machine, because his assistant wasn't working that night. The schmuck never thought of driving to Staples? So Patrick has to go the free agent route and his new agent still doesn't have a deal for him yet. Horne was asleep at the wheel. You can't operate like that in this business."

  I had heard about both players. Romeo and Washington grew up here in Los Angeles, although both had played college football elsewhere. Southern California was rich with talented prospects. Along with Texas and Florida, it was prime recruiting ground for every college football coach in America. The guys who did well in high school were offered scholarships to colleges all over the country. They sometimes made it to the pro ranks, but many still returned to make L.A. their home in the off-season.

  "Who else?"

  "That's not enough for you to start with?"

  "It is. I just like to be thorough."

  Roper processed this for a minute. "There's Brendan Webster."

  "The name sounds familiar."

  "It should. He was a five-star recruit out of Huntington Beach. Played defensive tackle at Texas A&M for three years. Was all set to go pro after his junior year. Then he got his knee torn up in a bowl game. Never recovered. Works as a leg breaker now. How's that for karma?"

  "Who does he work for?"

  Roper hesitated. "Couple of former associates. Let's leave it at that."

  "I take it Brendan didn't stay at A&M to get his degree."

  "You kidding? He was a moron. Guy couldn't spell dog if you spotted him the 'd' and the 'o' for crissakes. We fed him the answers to the Wonderlic test and he still got most of the questions wrong."

  The Wonderlic test measured cognitive abilities, and was developed to evaluate prospective employees before a firm hired them. It was also the standard exam given to college football players hoping to move on to the NFL, and served as a de facto I.Q. test for them. Interestingly, offensive lineman often scored highest on these exams. Brendan apparently wasn't one of these.

  "Tough break for the kid," I said, "especially if football was all he could do. You know, that's how my football career as a safety ended. Knee injury. I was a four year starter at USC. Only difference was I ended up in law enforcement. Sounds like Brendan ended up on the other side of the fence."

  Roper shrugged. "You're all part of the same sewer system. You just operate on different sides."

  "Thanks. You have a nice way of putting things. Anyone else a possibility?"

  "Look, Horne just got kicked out of his agency, he lost most of his clients and his other investments are tanking. The list can be as long as you want it to be. There's no shortage of people who might have wanted to take a pop at him."

  "Investments?" I asked. "What investments are tanking?"

  "Yeah, I forgot about that. He's part owner of a car dealership in Santa Monica. Luxury imports. Did well at first, but the recession took a lot of money off the table. Can't imagine things are going well there."

  "Guy sounds like he's got a lot of problems. Maybe contributed to his under-performing as an agent?"

  "Yeah, sure, whatever. But I don't care about excuses. I got a business to run. I can't carry dead weight."

  "Of course not," I said. "What about women?"

  "What about them?"

  "You said he was married. He have a girlfriend on the side?"

  "Sure. Who doesn't?"

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose once more. "Go on."

  "So he had a few girlfriends on the side. I don't know them personally. But I also don't know why they would take a shot at him. His wife, maybe. But not them."

  "Sometimes the girlfriend believes the guy will leave his wife."

  "No," he said, feigning disbelief. "You think?"

  I did my best to ignore his grating personality. It wasn't easy and I suspected part of that was because my own personality often grated on others. Getting a taste of your own medicine is often unpleasant. But this was just one of the factors causing internal conflict. Part of me wanted to throw him out of my office. Part of me needed the money. Part of me was very intrigued with this case. And a part of me was wondering if Cliff Roper really did have nothing to do with this shooting.

  "So you haven't brought up Horne's wife as a possibility," I pointed out. "When a violent act occurs, the spouse is normally the first suspect."

  "April? I dunno. If she knew his financial situation was dire, then no. Why kill a drowning man? I don't know what motive she'd have. Besides, she was right next to him when the shot was fired."

  "Okay," I said, trying to process all of this. "I think I have enough info to get started."

  "Then we're done here."

  I continued to think about the type of individual with whom I was about to become involved. The ethical side of me said to walk away from this case. The practical side of me said to take the money. The investigator in me was now actively curious, and that was what ultimately drew me in.

  "Not quite," I said.

  "Meaning?"

  "I'll need a retainer before I start.
I think two weeks should work."

  He nodded and his eyes narrowed. "Paying ten large up front is a lot of money."

  "It is. But I'm good and I think you know that I'm good. I'll do everything I can to find out who did this," I said, hoping that the culprit wasn't Roper himself. "You'll get your money's worth. That's the one thing I can promise you."

  "This your only case?"

  "I may have one other," I said, thinking about a phone call that I needed to follow up on with the Differential Insurance Company. "But yours is the one that's most pressing, and yours will come first. I'll work on the other when time permits."

  Roper looked out the window for a long moment before turning back to me and posing an odd question. "You were asking about his wife and girlfriends. How about you. Are you married?"

  "Engaged," I said. "Wedding's in a month. Why?"

  "You know a lot about me. I just want to know a little something about you. What's your fiancée's name?"

  "Gail," I answered, holding back on providing her last name.

  "Your first time at the plate?" he asked.

  "That's right."

  "I've struck out four times. Would've been five, but the first one got annulled. She was underage."

  "I'm planning on mine lasting forever."

  "Yeah," he said, opening up a briefcase filled with rolls of hundred dollar bills and dumping them on my desk. "That's what they all think."

  To read the rest of Safety Valve, please purchase it on Amazon.com. Thank you!