He was quiet for a few seconds. “What the hell, okay.” He laughed. “I know, what are the odds, right? I’m Irish and I drink.” His voice sounded a little lighter.
“We can toast the old country.” Like Whelan said, what the hell.
“I don’t give a shit what we toast, but I’m gonna take you up on your offer. I really don’t think you have any idea what you’ve gotten yourself into,” he said, laughing. We agreed to meet at seven at an Irish pub about ten minutes from the Strip. I’d never been there before, but Sean recommended it enthusiastically.
Before I left, I finished off some leftover Chinese food and tried calling Mel Block in San Diego, again without luck. I figured Block could be on vacation. It was July, after all, and he might have a summer place or something. But at least there should be an answering machine, I thought. Or maybe I just had the wrong number.
O’Callaghan’s Irish Pub & Grille looked kitschy and formulaic from the outside, as if someone had assembled the place from a build-your-own Irish pub kit. On the inside, though, it was surprisingly homey and comfortable. If anything, the Irish pub theme was understated. Lieutenant Whelan was sitting by himself at the corner of a large square bar, perched with a good view of the Yankees-Indians game on ESPN. He was bulkier than I’d thought, but I recognized him from the description he’d given me: red-faced with a curly mess of yellowish-white hair. By the time I sat down, he’d already done some damage to a tall glass of stout. I wondered if it was his first.
He looked like he hadn’t slept well, with bags hanging from his eyes and a pronounced slump to his frame. Or maybe he’d just gone on a three-day bender. We made our introductions, and I ordered a Guinness of my own. Whelan wasn’t shy about looking me over. I was dressed pretty conservatively, with a short-sleeved white oxford shirt buttoned up most of the way and a pair of thin beige linen shorts. Pink sandals were the only interesting things I was wearing.
“I have to say,” he said, “you’re not what I was expecting.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“I think so. Is it still legal in this country to pay a woman a compliment? Or is that some kind of harassment or something?”
I smiled. “I’ve got a pretty thick skin. You can compliment me all you want.”
“That’s good.” He looked around. “You’re really a detective?”
I nodded.
“Sorry,” he said. “With my wife splitting this week, I’m just paranoid some sleazebag lawyer is trying to get pictures of me with a younger woman.”
I didn’t feel comfortable getting so personal with a guy I’d just met, so I dove in to the purpose of our visit. “I’ve been hired to take another look at the Masterson case,” I explained. “Basically, my client wants enough evidence to take the case before a civil jury.”
“Wow.” He whistled for effect and thought about it for a minute. “You work for Mrs. Hannity?”
“Yes. She’s a friend of mine. I’m wondering what your thoughts about the verdict are and whether there was much in the way of evidence you had that didn’t make it into the trial.”
“She looks a lot like you, actually. Except that she’s blond, of course.”
I nodded. He was still on the looks thing.
“Fair enough,” he said, picking up on my silent impatience. He drained his beer and signaled to the bartender. “Couple of Irish car bombs for my friend and me.” He turned to me and grinned. “Guinness ain’t working fast enough,” he whispered conspiratorially.
The waiter brought over two foaming pints of Guinness and a pair of shot glasses. He poured a half-inch of Bailey’s Irish Cream in each shot glass and topped them off with Jameson whiskey. He waited a few seconds while the head on the Guinness settled, and then he dropped the shot glasses into the beers.
“Chug,” Whelan said, pushing one of the glasses over to me. We both chugged for what felt like a full two minutes, and both of us wound up wearing brown foamy mustaches.
“Wow,” I said, impressed. “Where has that drink been all my life?”
Whelan seemed pleased. “They’re big with the guys in the fire department. I kind of stole that one from them awhile ago.” He signaled the bartender again and turned to me. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to let you buy me some plain old whiskey. My bladder isn’t what it used to be,” he confided under his breath. I told him I’d gladly join him in a couple double Jamesons on the rocks. It was my dad’s old drink.
Whelan was a little overweight, but not exactly fat. He looked about fifty-five—old for a cop—but had a full mop of hair. I wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting at the bar before I got there, but the man seemed like he could hold his liquor and knew what he was doing. I hoped he did, because my stomach was getting nervous about the prospect of drinking whiskey on top of a pint of beer. On top of two-day-old Chinese food.
“So you want to know about Cody Masterson,” he said and took a long swig of Jameson. “I still think about that case, do you believe that? Everyone’s got a white whale, I guess, but that one still nags at me.”
“How come?”
“Well, let me put it this way. If you’re looking for more evidence, you’re not gonna find any. We gave it everything we had, and the jerk still got off.”
“I was kind of afraid of that,” I said. “So you’re convinced he did it?”
He paused, studying the ice cubes melting in his drink. “I’m convinced he should have been convicted,” he said. “Whether he actually did it or not, that’s another question.” He looked at me and smiled. “How’s that for my impersonation of a lawyer?”
“Not bad, except for the fact that you don’t have horns. So what was Cody like in the interrogation room?”
“Cool. Never cracked. Personally I think he’d been very well coached, but one of my guys actually believed him. Remember, he had Charlie Frank representing him. The man is a snake, but if the shit ever hit the fan for me, he’d be the first guy I’d call.”
“That’s about the best compliment a lawyer could ever expect to receive,” I said. “So why aren’t you completely sure about Masterson?”
He sighed and waved the bartender over for another round. I was still nursing mine, but he’d polished his whiskey off like it was sweet tea. I began wondering what his plan was for getting home, or if cops simply didn’t worry about DUI’s.
“I’m set to retire in another year, full pension. Although if my wife makes it official and divorces me, I’ll be working ‘til I die. Anyway, the point being I don’t give a shit like I used to.”
The bartender poured him another double, and I put a hand over my glass to signal I was fine. “What bothered me about that case was how the ball got rolling in the first place. You know, we were all set to call it a random street killing, a carjacking, until we got an anonymous tip to search Masterson’s backyard.”
I nodded. “Where you found the gun.”
“Yeah. We found that thing buried back there, no prints. It was either wiped down or the killer used gloves. The point is, either someone knew Cody did it and knew where the weapon was, or someone planted the gun in his yard to frame him. We went with the first option.”
“Occam’s Razor,” I said. “Usually the simplest explanation is the right one,” I said. I pulled that one out of my ass.
Whelan’s eyes got big. “Wow. Beautiful and smart.”
I twirled my hair playfully and grinned. “So no one ever suggested someone was trying to set Cody up, right?”
“Exactly. Well, they had to come up with something, but it was pretty vague. How else do you explain the murder weapon being buried in your yard if you didn’t do it?”
The beer and whiskey were affecting my brain a little bit, but I was still able to process what Whelan was saying. I couldn’t help thinking that it was surprisingly similar to what Les Trondheim had told me. These were the people most intimately familiar with the case, and none of them were as convinced of Cody’s guilt as the man on the street seemed to be. If the
se people weren’t certain, it was beginning to make sense that a jury of twelve didn’t find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. On the other hand, lawyers, cops, and journalists were trained to be skeptics. Sometimes the conventional wisdom was right because it was based on common sense.
“Well, I guess it doesn’t look promising for me,” I said.
“Sorry, I don’t know what else to tell you.”
We sat in silence for a minute, our eyes fixed on the baseball game. I checked my watch discreetly. It was only 7:45. That meant we’d polished off a night’s worth of booze in less than an hour, and Whelan seemed only to be hitting his stride. I expected if I left him alone he’d stay by himself for five or six more whiskeys. He hadn’t opened up about his marital troubles at all, but it seemed like the man could use some company—and maybe something to distract him from his problems on the home front.
I didn’t feel like sucking back more drinks and then having to call a cab home, and I wasn’t about to ask Whelan if he wanted to go out for chocolate malts or ice cream sodas. The idea came to me in a flash.
Whelan drained his Jameson and replaced the glass on the bar extremely delicately, as though performing a part of some intricate Japanese tea ceremony. He was starting to seem a bit drunk. “Easy there, big fella,” I said. “Hey, my friend dances at Cougar’s, and I was going to head over there to catch her on stage. You in?” It seemed the perfect way to distract this horny Irishman.
Whelan gaped at me as though I had been speaking Swahili, but his expression was a mixture of confusion and interest. He looked perfectly sober except for the slightest tinge of pink in his eyes. Over the years I’d learned that although lots of men weren’t the strip club “type,” very few men actually said no when the opportunity arose. Whelan did not disappoint. “You shitting me?” he asked.
“Nope, let’s go. I’ll get a cab.”
“You sure? I don’t want to horn in on your social scene or anything.”
“You’d be doing me a favor,” I said. “I’ll feel like a weirdo if I go by myself.”
“Sold,” he said.
We got our things together, and I left a pile of cash on the bar. After our cab dropped us off, we shared a quick drink, and then I handed Whelan off to one of the most popular dancers working that night. When she led him away to the back room, Whelan looked like he’d just won the lottery. If anyone could take Whelan’s mind off his troubles, it was Shayla.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I was getting antsy. A whole week spent on a single case was a record for me, and I had almost nothing to show for it. Last night Lieutenant Whelan had pretty much confirmed what I already knew, which was that Cody Masterson was probably, but not definitely, guilty of the crime but that there was no other magic evidence lurking out there that could help Rachel win her civil case.
Mel Block, the former general manager at the Outpost who Rachel had said I should call, was about the only person in the world I hadn’t talked to about this case. He was getting on my nerves. In this day and age, who doesn’t have an answering machine or voicemail? I even Googled him. A blank. It was time to pay him a personal visit. I picked up the phone.
“Mike, it’s too hot here. You’ve got to come with me to San Diego.” It was totally out of left field, but I thought it was worth a shot.
Silence.
“It’s for this case I’m working on. You can bill the time to my client. And just think, you’d get your ten hours of supervising me done with all at once.”
Nothing.
“Hello?”
“Still here.”
“Well?”
“I have a report I need to get done today.”
“I’ll drive. Bring your laptop and write it in the car.”
“No,” he said. There was a pause and then an opening. “Where would we stay?”
“I don’t know, maybe a youth hostel?”
“A youth hostel.”
“A little joke. I’ll find something nice. Go home, pack for a night, and I’ll pick you up there. The client has deep pockets.” I didn’t tell him that the client also had empty pockets.
“You don’t know where I live.”
“I’m a detective, remember?”
“Strange how I forget that sometimes.”
“See you at noon.” What was he so afraid of? I didn’t bite. Hard.
That gave me all of an hour and a half to get ready and find a hotel online. We were only going for the night and I wouldn’t need to pack much. Packing for San Diego was easy: shorts, tank top, unmentionables, sandals, and sunscreen. The hotel was easy, too. According to the hotel’s website, it had a pool on the roof. And there was a shopping mall two blocks away in case we needed anything else.
I headed out of my building onto Russell Road and then hopped onto I-15 heading south towards Mike’s house. He was waiting for me out front of a nice ranch house with a palm tree next to the driveway. Nothing fancy, but it wasn’t a rat hole either. Mike had ditched the Willy Loman look in favor of a fitted brown t-shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals. A gray backpack was slung over his left shoulder. With his sunglasses on, he looked like a model in a sporting goods catalog. A definite improvement. He threw his bag in the back seat and got in the car.
“Thanks,” he said.
“What for?”
“I need to get out of here. I haven’t left town in months.”
“Buckle up,” I said. I patted him on the thigh. It had the approximate firmness of titanium. “Jesus, where do you work out?”
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Got a gym in the basement,” he mumbled.
I turned and smiled at him. He was blushing.
Mike clicked away on his computer for most of the ride. He seemed to have steady work chasing after deadbeats and casino cheats, but it didn’t seem very lucrative. Or exciting. After stopping for a light lunch, we hit the outskirts of L.A. a little after 2:00 and then veered south towards San Diego. I had only been to California a handful of times in my life, but somehow the names of the cities on the exits we passed had a familiar ring: San Bernardino, Riverside, Temecula, Escondido. I pulled out the map and had Mike guide me to the La Jolla address Rachel had given me. “He lives on a street named Fairway Road,” he said. “It’s probably on a golf course.”
I laughed. “Wow, you could be a private eye.” Would another pat on the thigh be too bold? I resisted the urge.
As Sherlock had predicted, Fairway Road was indeed on a golf course, an offshoot of Country Club Drive. The house was a large tan Mediterranean with a red tile roof, and the entire structure was covered in some kind of ivy. Two immense palm trees stood off to the left, providing shade to most of the yard. I couldn’t see through to the back, but I guessed that one of the golf course’s holes was adjacent to the back yard.
We parked across the street, and I dialed Block’s number one last time. I wasn’t exactly sure why. Courtesy?
“Someone’s in there,” Mike said.
“What?”
“Somebody just moved around when you called,” he said.
“Was it an old man?”
“I couldn’t see any details, just the shape of someone moving.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out if he lives here,” I said, opening the car door.
I walked up the driveway and noticed a small green Volkswagen Passat parked on a slab next to the garage. Mike waited in the car. Somebody’s home, all right. I climbed up the brick steps and rang the bell. While I waited I studied the front door, which was immense and finished in a deep amber stain that brought out the richness of the mahogany. There was no answer. The window on the door was too high to peek into, and I didn’t feel like snooping around, especially since Mike had seen someone inside. Someone who obviously didn’t want to chat.
“So that’s it?” he asked when I got back to the car.
“No, we should come back tomorrow too.”
“Next time, don’t call first. It only lets people know someone is l
ooking for them.”
“Good tip. For now, let’s check into the hotel and get some food,” I said. “I’m starving.”
We arrived at our hotel in downtown San Diego around 5:30 and checked in. We met up in the lobby and the concierge pointed us in the direction of the Gas Lamp District, a historic and slightly touristy section of town about a half mile from our hotel. We stumbled upon a Mexican place with outdoor seating. I wondered briefly: do Mormons eat Mexican food? Then again, why in the hell wouldn’t they?
“This okay?” I asked.
“Looks good to me.”
I ordered a blue margarita and Mike ordered a diet Sprite.
We studied the menus in silence. Mike decided on a baked tilapia special, while I ordered my old standby, ground beef chimichangas.
“You ever drink?” I asked.
“Once or twice. Religion says we’re not supposed to, you know.”
“Try mine. Just a sip.” I pushed my glass in front of him. I felt like a crack dealer trying to suck in a new customer.
We locked eyes for a few seconds and he gave me a little smile. “Okay,” he said, “just for you.”
With his finger he wiped some of the salt off the rim of the glass. Then he took a big gulp.
“Not bad,” he said. “What’s all in that?”
I explained the basics of margarita mixing to him. “The key is, never order a house margarita. They sit in those giant vats all day and there’s almost no booze in them.”
“Good tip,” he said, not meaning it.
The waitress returned a few minutes later with our food.
“Anything else I can get you folks?” she asked.
“I’ll have a house margarita,” Mike said. The waitress nodded gravely and left.
My mouth was hanging open. Mike tried to keep a straight face, but he burst out laughing.
“You bastard,” I said.
“Sorry. I just had to mess with you a little. I’m not a nun, you know.”
“No kidding. My great aunt’s a nun and she has a pint of schnapps every day.”
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