by Tami Hoag
“Do this ass-backward and anything you find that could lead you to your perp is going to get thrown out because the search was no good. You want another one to take a walk because you—”
Parker threw the receiver down again. He walked out of the squad, went into the men’s room, and washed his face in cold water, then stood there holding his wrists under the faucet.
He stared at himself in the mirror, but he didn’t ask himself how long he was going to be made to pay for the crime of arrogance. He didn’t bother to go over the old ground that he’d been singled out as a scapegoat, and that it wasn’t fair.
He never offered excuses. What had happened had happened. Even if other people wouldn’t, he had to leave it in the past and own his present. He would find a way to get the car. He couldn’t waste time and energy being angry that it wasn’t a walk in the spring rain.
When he went back into the squad, Kray’s phone was still off the hook, and playing “Isn’t She Lovely.”
Captain Fuentes came out of his office and crooked a finger. “Kev? Can I see you in here?”
Parker followed him and closed the door behind him. “I didn’t do it. It’s not mine. And I swear she was nineteen.”
Fuentes, who was a good guy and had an easy sense of humor, didn’t laugh. He had soulful black eyes that seemed to carry the sorrows of the world when he was serious like this.
“You look like you’re about to tell me I have six weeks to live,” Parker said.
“I got a call a little while ago. RHD is taking your homicide.”
Parker shook his head. The rage seemed to start boiling in his feet and pushed its way upward. This was worse than being told he had six weeks to live. In six weeks’ time he at least had the chance to try to save himself. He was losing his case, today, now, not six weeks from today. The first case he’d had in years that smelled big. The kind of case a detective made his chops on—or rode back out of purgatory.
“No,” he said. “Not Lowell.”
“There’s nothing I can do, Kev.”
“Did they give any explanation?” In his mind’s eye he could picture the scene Diane had described to him over the phone. Bradley Kyle and his partner, Moose Roddick, and Tony Giradello with their heads together.
“Captain Florek told me they thought it might tie into something they already have.”
I just overheard your name in a conversation. . . .
“That’s all he said,” Fuentes told him. “You know as well as I do, they don’t need a reason. He could have said, ‘Because the sky is blue,’ and what could I do about it? I’m sorry, Kev.”
No, not now, Parker thought. Not when it was all right there just beneath the surface. All he needed was to dig just a little harder, just a little longer.
“You can pretend we haven’t had this conversation yet,” he said.
“Kev—”
“I’m not here. You haven’t seen me. I’m not on the radio. My cell phone isn’t working.”
“Kev, you’re not going to close the case in the next three hours, are you?”
Parker said nothing.
“They want everything you’ve got,” Fuentes said. “Pull it together and take it over to Parker Center.”
“No.”
“Kev—”
“I won’t do it. I won’t go over there. If Bradley Kyle wants this case, the little prick can come here and get it. I’m not going over there like some, some—”
Parker put a hand over his mouth and stopped himself before his control slipped any further. He took a deep breath and exhaled. He looked at Fuentes, willing him to say what he wanted to hear. Fuentes just looked at him with something much too close to pity in his eyes.
“You haven’t seen me,” Parker said quietly. “We haven’t spoken.”
“I can’t put them off for long.”
“I know.” Parker nodded. “Whatever you can do. I appreciate it, Captain.”
“Get out of here,” Fuentes said, sitting down behind his desk. He settled a pair of reading glasses on the high bridge of his nose, and reached for some paperwork. “I haven’t seen you. We haven’t spoken.”
Parker stepped out of Fuentes’ office, closing the door behind him. Ruiz was watching him like a hawk. Good instincts, when she wanted to get out of her own way and use them, Parker thought.
She had Eta Fitzgerald’s murder. Fitzgerald’s murder was tied to Lowell’s murder. He would stay in that way. Bradley Kyle wasn’t going to be rid of him so easily.
Ruiz got out of her chair and came to him. “You’ve got your court order,” she said quietly. “What’s going on?”
“Robbery-Homicide is taking Lowell.”
“Why?”
“Because they can.”
Parker felt like he had bees in his head. He needed a strategy, had to move fast, had to make a break happen. He only had a few hours to live, in relation to this case.
“What are you going to do?” Ruiz asked.
Before Parker could formulate an answer, Obidia Jones let out a little yelp of excitement.
“That’s him! That’s your perpetuator, right there!” he said, poking a long, gnarled finger at a photograph in the book before him.
Parker and Ruiz both went to him, Ruiz pinching her nose closed with thumb and forefinger.
“Who’ve you got there, Mr. Jones?” Parker asked.
The old man slid his finger down from the face in the photograph, revealing exactly what Jones had told them: a head like a cinder block; small, mean eyes; five o’clock shadow. Eddie Boyd Davis.
“Only he had a piece of tape across his nose,” Jones said. “Like someone maybe busted it for him.”
“Mr. Jones, you are a fine citizen,” Parker said. “I think Ms. Ruiz should kiss you full on the mouth.”
Jones looked both scandalized and hopeful.
“But that would be against regulations,” Ruiz said.
Parker looked again at the face of the man who had murdered Eta Fitzgerald in cold blood. He tapped his finger under the name, and spoke to Ruiz in a low voice.
“Dig up everything you can find on this mutt. I want to know if he has any connection to Lenny Lowell. And if Bradley Kyle comes in here, you don’t know anything, and you haven’t seen me.”
“Wishful thinking,” she muttered.
Parker’s mind was already engaged elsewhere. “You’re a doll,” he said, patting her cheek.
He went through a couple of desk drawers, took out a file, pulled some papers from a wire tray on top of his desk. He grabbed the binder that was the murder book on the Lowell case, containing reports and official notes, sketches of the scene, Polaroids—everything to do with the homicide except for his personal notes. He put it all in a plastic mail carton he kept under his desk for just this purpose, then went around to Ruiz’s desk to use her phone.
“You’re not going to have seen me walk out of here with that container,” he told Ruiz as he dialed Hollywood Division. “Right?”
“Right,” she said, but there was a hesitation first.
“It’s your case too,” Parker said. “Lowell and Fitzgerald: If they take one, they take the other. Is that what you want?”
“It’s Robbery-Homicide. They’ll do whatever they want to do. We can’t stop them.”
Parker gave her the hard stare. “You sell me out to Bradley Kyle and you’ll make an enemy you’ll wish you didn’t have.”
“Jesus, I said all right,” she said grudgingly. “Don’t threaten me.”
“What are you going to do?” he sneered. “Call Internal Affairs?”
“Fuck you, Parker. Just leave me out of it.”
She would sell him out in a heartbeat, Parker thought, remembering what Diane had predicted. She would sell him out to Kyle because Kyle could get her noticed by the right people in RHD.
“LAPD, Hollywood Division. How may I direct your call?”
Parker said nothing and hung up the phone. He reached across the desktop, grabbed his dictionary,
and dropped it on Ruiz’s blotter.
“Your lesson for today,” he said. “Look up the word partner. I’ll call you later.”
He grabbed the plastic box and left the room, then the building. He had only a few hours to live. He couldn’t waste a minute.
31
Parker called Joel Coen from his car as he made his way to the City National Bank branch where Lenny Lowell’s safe-deposit box lived.
Coen picked up on the second ring. Still young enough to be eager.
“Joel, Kev Parker. I’ve got something for you on the Lowell B&E, but you have to jump on it ASAP, got it?”
“What is it?”
“I’ve got your getaway car. It’s sitting behind a fish market in Chinatown. Black Mini Cooper, damage to the left taillight, match on the partial plate.”
“Geez, how’d you get that so fast?”
“I’m hyperactive. Do you know what color the minivan was?”
“Silver.”
“That’s it. I couldn’t get a warrant—extenuating circumstances—but you won’t have a problem. Call the DA’s office and make sure you do not talk to Langfield. And when you get the car dusted for prints, make sure they go to Joanie at Latent. Tell her I sent you, and that she’s looking for a match with my homicide.”
“Got it.”
“And move fast, Joel. There’s a shitstorm coming. If Robbery-Homicide gets a sniff of this car, it’s gone, and so’s your case.”
“RHD? Why would they—”
“Don’t ask. The less you know, the better. Beat it over to Chinatown. I’ve got a unit sitting on the car.”
He gave Coen the address, and ended the call as the bank came into sight. Half expecting to see Bradley Kyle and his partner waiting at the door, Parker parked his car and went inside, court order in hand.
The manager checked the document for crossed t’s and dotted i’s, and escorted him to the lower level, to the location of the boxes. Lowell’s was the largest size available. They put the box on a long walnut table in a private room. Parker put on a pair of latex gloves, took a deep breath, and opened the lid.
Cool, green, cash money. Stacks of it. Stacks and stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Parker took them out and piled them on the table. Twenty-five thousand dollars. And under the money, at the bottom of the box, a small envelope containing a single photographic negative, and a bank deposit slip with numbers scribbled on the back.
“That slimy old son of a bitch,” Parker murmured. He didn’t have to know who was in the photograph to know what this was about. Blackmail.
Turning on one of his own clients. That had to be it. Lowell had put someone between a rock and a hard place and squeezed. That explained the pricey condo, the new Cadillac, the cash.
He held the negative up to the light. Two people, shot from a distance. They might have been shaking hands or exchanging something. It was impossible to tell.
The first line of numbers written on the deposit slip looked like an out-of-the-country phone number. The line of numbers below might be an account number, he guessed, and he thought back to finding the travel brochure on the floor of Lenny’s office. The Cayman Islands. Lovely place to visit—or to hide money in a numbered account.
Parker put the negative and the slip back in the envelope. He asked the manager for a bank bag for the money, tagged it as evidence, and put everything in a brown paper Ralph’s grocery sack he had brought in with him.
The elevator ride to the ground floor was silent. If the bank manager wondered what was going on, he didn’t show it, and he didn’t ask. He had probably seen cops take stranger things than money out of clients’ boxes. Parker himself had once popped the lid of a suspected murderer’s safe-deposit box and found a collection of mummified human fingers.
The elevator doors opened, framing a live portrait of Abby Lowell sitting on a marble bench, waiting. She had a hell of a wardrobe for a law student. Camel tweed wool suit with a slim skirt and a forties-inspired close-fitted jacket, belted at the waist with a thin band of brown crocodile. Matching shoes, matching bag. Maybe it paid to be the daughter of a blackmailer.
In one elegant move, she unfolded herself from the bench as Parker stepped out of the elevator. She looked directly at him, her expression calm but with an underlying quality of steel that had to scare the crap out of guys her own age.
“Did you find my father’s papers?”
“And good morning to you, Ms. Lowell. I see you survived the night. Great suit. Prada?”
She didn’t answer, but fell into step beside him as he started for the side door.
“Did you find my father’s papers?” she asked again.
“In a manner of speaking.”
“What does that mean?”
“Neither his will nor his life insurance policy was in the box,” he said, sliding on his shades as they walked. The heels of her crocodile shoes clacked a staccato rhythm on the terrazzo floor.
“Then what do you have in that bag?”
“Evidence.”
“Evidence of what? My father was the victim.”
“Your father is dead,” Parker said. “Anything I can find that will point to why he was killed or who killed him is evidence, as far as I’m concerned. Don’t worry. You’ll get it all back eventually—unless it turns out you killed him.”
She snatched a breath to say something, thought better of it, tried again. Frustration knit her brow.
“What’s the matter, Ms. Lowell? Can’t figure out a way to ask the question without incriminating yourself?”
The doors whooshed open before them, and they stepped out into the shade of an overhang. The morning was already blindingly bright.
“I resent the implication,” she said angrily. “I cared about Lenny.”
“But you said yourself, he wasn’t much of a father,” Parker said. “When you were a kid, he dragged you along behind him like you were a piece of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of his shoe. That had to hurt. Little girls love their dads. They want to be loved back.”
“I don’t need to be psychoanalyzed by you,” she snapped. “I pay someone quite handsomely to do that for me.”
“You certainly have Beverly Hills taste, Ms. Lowell,” Parker said. “Most students I know have beer budgets. Was Lenny footing the bill for your lifestyle? I wouldn’t have guessed he made that kind of money defending the people he defended. Did he have some other source of income?”
“I have my own money,” she said. “From my mother. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Then maybe you were footing the bill for his lifestyle,” Parker suggested. “Condo downtown, new Caddie . . .”
“And who pays for your lifestyle, Detective?” she asked pointedly. “Gucci loafers, Canali suit . . . I wouldn’t have guessed you made that kind of money as a public servant.”
Parker conceded the point with a tip of his head. “Touché, Ms. Lowell.”
“Are you taking bribes?” she asked. “Fixing cases? Ripping off drug dealers?”
“No, but I believe your father was blackmailing someone,” he said bluntly. “I just took twenty-five thousand dollars out of his safe-deposit box.”
If she wasn’t shocked, she was a fine actress, Parker thought. The brown eyes went wide, some of the color left her cheeks. She looked away, trying to collect herself. She covered by opening her handbag and fishing out a pair of Dior sunglasses.
“Where do you think all that money came from?” Parker asked.
He started across the parking lot, popping the trunk of his car with the remote. He didn’t mention the negative, just to see if she would ask if he had found anything else in the box. But if she wondered, she was too smart to say anything.
Parker glanced at her as she followed him. “Any idea?”
“No.”
“You’re delusional if you think I’m a fool, Ms. Lowell.” He put the paper sack in the trunk and shut the lid. “Your father is murdered and the killer calls you on your cell phone to tell you
. He breaks into your apartment, tosses the place, threatens to kill you, but you claim you don’t know what he’s looking for. You’re desperate to get into Lenny’s safe-deposit box, then I find twenty-five K in the box and you claim to know nothing about it. Do you think I was dropped on my head as a child?”
She had no answer to that. She pressed an elegantly manicured hand to her lips, as she always seemed to do when a moment became too difficult for her. Her other arm banded across her stomach, holding herself.
Supporting, comforting herself, Parker thought. It was probably something she’d learned to do as a little girl while sitting as an afterthought beside her father at the racetrack. Whatever else he thought about her, he felt sorry for the lonely child she must have been.
She turned in a slow, small circle, not knowing where to go. Couldn’t run, couldn’t hide.
“Who was he blackmailing?” Parker asked.
“I don’t believe that he was,” she said, but she didn’t look at him when she said it.
“Do you know a guy named Eddie Boyd Davis?”
She shook her head. She was fighting tears, fighting some internal battle Parker couldn’t read.
“If you know something about this,” he said, “now’s the time, Abby. Bail now before it goes too far. Lenny’s gone. His killer has you in his sights. A sack of money isn’t worth dying for.”
Her shoulders rose and fell as she let out a slow, measured breath and composed herself again.
“Don’t I pay taxes for you to serve and protect me?” she asked. “You’re supposed to keep me from getting killed.”
“I can’t fight what I don’t know, Abby.”
“What don’t you know?” she asked, impatient and frustrated. “Why can’t you find that bike messenger?”
“I don’t think the bike messenger had anything to do with it,” Parker said.
“He attacked me!”
“It doesn’t hold water.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“If he killed your father for the money in the safe, why would he stick around to come and see you?” Parker asked.
“I don’t know! Maybe he’s just a psycho and he singled out Lenny and now me.”