by Susan Dunlap
CHAPTER 24
GETTING THE FINAL STATEMENT from Rick Lamott took nearly two hours. He tried to make deals. He jockeyed for position. His open-throttle face was flushed with the thrill of the game, the same expression he’d had driving his Lotus. By the end of the first half hour, I could picture Lamott at an audit with that same look, eyeing the competition, making moves, tossing out deals, trying to slip in five thousand dollars of questionable travel and entertainment for deleting three thousand of office supplies (which he could then claim under publicity). But this investigation was not a game or a race, and in any case Lamott was running on empty. By the time he signed his statement, he was as deflated as the driver of the last car in the Indianapolis 500.
Energy doesn’t disappear; it merely moves on. In the normal run of things it should have moved on to me. But it hadn’t. I felt as if I’d been driving in a circle too. Maria Zalles had turned out to be no more than a pit stop. With Rick Lamott I’d seen the checkered flag. But that had been a mirage.
It was eleven o’clock. I couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten. No, I could: the stale donut I’d grabbed as we raced to the airport. It was still poking its crystallized sugar corners into the edges of my stomach. I trudged out of the station. The fog had rolled in and was now so thick, I had to use the windshield wipers. It seemed appropriate.
I sat in my Volkswagen waiting while the engine warmed and realized that despite my exhaustion, the thing I wanted most was to hash over the case, to stretch it like pizza dough, sticking a finger in one option, maybe Lyn Takai, and pulling that as far as it would go before the dough split and I had to discard her as a suspect. Howard was great at that. He’d been known to stretch the pizza dough of a case so far that it ended up as a breadstick. But Howard, if he was home, was going to be in no mood to talk.
I shifted into first. Till now, I hadn’t realized just how much I’d missed the old Howard—the guy who threw everything into the chase, the lighthearted plotter who could sniff out foibles at two hundred paces and weave them into a museum-quality net, who basked in being the ultimate sting artist—Howard whom I’d loved and maybe lost to his prison of a house and the prison of society’s rules for women. It made me cringe to think that he of all men couldn’t see the bars all the safety precautions made.
Again I had to fight the urge to get on the freeway, turn the radio up, and just keep driving.
Howard was asleep when I got home. His tax forms were still spread ominously and haphazardly over the door cum table.
I took a shower and climbed into bed. It’s a big bed. He wasn’t near me. But I heard the rustle of the sheet against his skin, and felt the tension of his body. His breathing was tight, angry. He was awake. I waited, but his breathing didn’t ease, and he didn’t say anything. And I was damned if I was going to. I’d put up with the taxes, the renovations, and the paint fumes that suddenly clogged my nostrils with that milk-of-magnesia smell. I could feel my neck tensing. My eyes refused to close. Dammit, I couldn’t afford to be so pissed off it kept me awake. Not while he lay there playing possum. I—
“Your case,” he murmured. “What happened?” It wasn’t a giant step into admission of error. It was a toe inching forward, testing the waters of truce, a toe pushing out the first of those prison bars. Shoptalk—it was the way we always handled situations we couldn’t handle. But it was only a toe, not the whole foot or leg. But once I grabbed that toe, the foot would come. Tomorrow, when we weren’t exhausted, we’d talk about the prisons and the jogger and the house. We’d talk on a level we hadn’t before. I wasn’t looking forward to it at all. For now, the toe was plenty. My eyes welled with tears of relief. “The case has dead-ended,” I said, my voice tight.
He started to roll over toward me but stopped. Clearly, he knew what he’d committed himself to tomorrow and that a truce is no more than a truce. “Nothing has to be a dead end. What have you got?” His voice cracked.
I threaded my fingers through his. I hadn’t realized he was so upset, that I’d hurt him that much. I could feel the nearness of his body, the heat almost warming me as I lay icily still. “Philip Drem wanted to get his wife away from the toxins in the air here. He needed money, so he offered to sell the TCMP figures to Rick Lamott. They arranged a meeting at PFA. Lamott drove around the block three times but chickened out. He couldn’t quite bring himself to do something so dangerous.”
“Kind of ruins him as a murder candidate.”
“I know. I really had hopes for Lamott.”
Howard sat up, awkwardly pulling the cover over his chest with his right hand, keeping his left clasped with mine. I had to sit too, or smother. Clumsily, I stuffed the ends of the covers around my shoulder. Howard didn’t offer to help. I’m sure he didn’t dare. I could hardly ask. And I couldn’t do more than catch one fold of blanket behind my shoulder. The cold air poured down my side. Freedom isn’t free.
“So,” I said in a soft voice, “Drem’s in the theater where he goes every Friday night, and while he’s in there, the killer comes and sticks a tiny hypodermic between the double seats of his bicycle. He uses a plaster-of-paris-type substance that he could have gotten anywhere.” I pressed my arm against my side. I was freezing.
“Okay, Jill, so the needle is planted. Drem sits on it. Then what?”
“He rides the bicycle up to College Avenue and turns right.”
“That tips the killer that he’s not going home.”
“Right. Home would have meant a left turn. With the poison beginning to work, Drem couldn’t have been moving fast. It would have been easy for the killer to follow him.”
“And by the time Drem rode a block or two, he would have been shaky, right?” Not waiting for an answer, Howard went on. “Drem pedals along to Dwight. He’s either got to turn uphill or down. Well, down’s a safe guess, even if it’s against the traffic.”
“Figuring that, the killer can run downhill on Dwight, probably faster than Drem’s pedaling. He can keep an eye on Drem, who’s too out of it to be looking right or left. Drem comes to the corner and makes his final turn—”
“He watches Drem stagger off the bike and into the street. Then, while Drem’s collapsing half a block away, he sidles up to the bike and steals the briefcase. Ta-da!” he said, with the wave of a hand.
The covers fell forward. I laughed and grabbed. Howard yanked them back up and tucked them back in place, but he didn’t let go of my hand.
I snuggled back into the pillow, wishing I were certain of his conclusion about the killer. “That’s fine, Howard, except that Lamott said the only person around was a cop. And one of the street guys swore the cop took the briefcase.”
“Course, both of those guys were there, and they didn’t see each other.”
“They wouldn’t have to have. Regent’s a long block there. Lamott was occupied with Drem and calling for help. The street person could have been at the other end by the bicycle then. He was planning to boost it. So when he realized he wasn’t alone, of course he split.”
“But they both said there was a cop at the scene. And we know there wasn’t, right?”
“We sure hope that’s right. If you accept Lamott’s description of his cop, at least it wasn’t Leonard.”
“What about Acosta?”
“Description doesn’t rule him out. But, Howard, I just can’t imagine—”
“No, not Mercurio.” Howard’s fingers tightened on my hand. I hadn’t ridden down this cop thing. I’d put it off as a road of last resort. Nothing wrecks a department like the idea that one of its members, one of our friends, has been light-fingered. And lying to the rest of us. We can’t trust many people. When we can’t trust each other, it’s like driving on ice with bald tires. Neither of us even mentioned Pereira. We couldn’t face that thought.
Howard sat up straighter. “But there could have been someone who looked like a cop. Or sort of like a cop.”
I pictured Pereira with her blond hair hanging just over the edge of her tan jacket coll
ar, strolling forward, her revolver swaying, the bullets and cuffs and the rest of the gear on the belt riding awkwardly on her hips. It reminded me how glad I’d been to get out of uniform.
Howard turned away, grappling on the floor beside the bed. The light was still off—we weren’t ready to face each other—and I could hear a paper bag rustling. He sat back up and held the bag in front of me. Another time we would have sparred about the dangers of my sticking my hand in. But we weren’t ready to face that either.
I reached in. “Ah, chocolate old-fashioneds. You knew I’d be starved.”
“Safe guess.”
At times like this, there’s something to be said for sublimating one appetite by sating another.
“Let’s move on to motive, Jill. Takai’s being audited. Drem knows she’s switched her bathroom sink for the better one at the hotel. Probably he’s wondering what else she’s taken.”
“Likely,” I said between bites of chocolate.
“Scookie Hogan already hates him.”
I stuffed the rest of the donut in my mouth. I had really been starved. “Scookie’s bitterness is old stuff. You don’t kill for the past. You kill for the future. She wouldn’t kill him because she lost her business last year but because he knew something that would make her lose her home this year, or go to jail.”
“Hmmm.” Howard was tapping his fingers on my arm.
“Hmmm, indeed.” I thought about Howard and giving up his image, about the “cop” and the briefcase—and prison. “I’ve thought a lot about being imprisoned. It breaks your spirit, suffocates you emotionally, spiritually. But on a strict physical level, jail is a real nasty place. I’d do almost anything to avoid it. And if that thing was killing someone despicable …” I shrugged. “Stay out of jail and don’t lose the things that matter to you. It’d be real tempting. Too tempting for Drem’s killer.”
I reached over and turned on the light. Smiling, I said, “Howard, I believe I can tell you who that killer is. But you know what I need for proof?”
He grinned. It wasn’t quite the old Howard, but I’d deal with that later. He said, “You need a sting.”
CHAPTER 25
IT DIDN’T TAKE MUCH to get Lamott to cooperate in the sting. He’d been anxious to deal before. And the idea of wearing a wire appealed to him almost as much as not being reported to the IRS. The problem I was going to have with Rick Lamott was not forcing him to confront the owners of the Inspiration Hotel but reining him in.
Lamott set up the meeting for 8:00 P.M. Wednesday, April 15. Mason Moon squawked about the time—he hadn’t finished his taxes—but he was overruled.
I cleared the operation with Inspector Doyle. He wasn’t wild about it, but he admitted there was no other option, and since it didn’t take much manpower …
The rest of my day was devoted to rechecking backgrounds, vainly trying to goose the lab, and being informed that the residents of petri dishes can’t step up the tempo. And listening to Eggs bemoan his automotive misfortune. Finally the Mazda dealer had gotten his RX-7 in. Eggs had shifted the down-payment money to his checking account. He’d taken half a day of personal leave for the test drive. He’d gone to the dealership, opened the car door, climbed in, and found that his head scraped the roof. “Tilt the seat back,” the salesman said. Eggs tilted. Now his head was fine. He fitted into the sporty car of his dreams, the car he’d waited years to own. He fastened the seat belt, rested his hand on the gearstick, and looked through the windshield.
Or more accurately, didn’t look through the windshield. At this point in the telling Eggs glared at me. “I couldn’t sit at that angle and see through my bifocals!”
With Herculean restraint, I had neither laughed nor commented on midlife crisis. I went back to my own office with the sting ready to go and the hope that nothing happened during the day to screw it up.
By 8:00 P.M. Howard, Pereira, and I were down the street in a van. Howard was fingering a manila envelope addressed to the IRS. I’d promised Howard we’d swing the van by the main post office so he could get his return in the mail before midnight. I couldn’t imagine how he’d created order out of the heap of papers that had covered his door-desk last night. He hadn’t mentioned the outcome of his calls to the restaurant suppliers. I didn’t want to ask.
Rick Lamott strolled into the Inspiration Hotel lobby. “Pretty empty lobby. No tax-night party?” Lamott asked. Soft crackles of static flickered on the line, but the sarcastic tone of his voice came through loud and clear.
“Damn,” I muttered to Howard. “I knew Lamott was too much of a grandstander. He’s going to blow it.”
“Too late to change,” Howard said. “Just keep yourself in a three-point stance.”
“Very funny,” a woman answered Lamott. I realized how much Lyn Takai’s sharp voice reflected her appearance: small, spare, sharp-boned. I found myself picturing her in a leotard and jeans.
“We can pull up chairs behind the desk. No one’s going to be coming in here at this hour on a Wednesday,” Mason Moon said petulantly.
“Parts of what I say may be private.” Lamott.
“Somebody’s got to stay by the phone.” Scookie Hogan.
“Guess it’s Scookie’s night to work the desk,” Howard whispered, laughing at her put-out tone.
“You said you had a proposition. Go on.” Ethan Simonov.
Feet shuffled. The static was louder. I pictured the five of them moving behind the mahogany counter. Moon would prop himself against the back wall, cape hanging loose from his shoulders, his bushy Flemish-painter hair puffing out from his head just as the cotton double moon billowed on his T-shirt. Scookie would be in the desk clerk’s chair, her mouth drooping victimlike; she’d be dressed in swirls of blue and purple. Lyn Takai I envisioned nearest the exit, shifting from foot to foot. And Ethan Simonov would have planted himself directly across from Lamott, the other dealer here. Simonov, his dark ponytail hanging over his collar, would be tapping his fist with a hammer he’d pulled from his tool belt, like a judge calling for order.
Lamott said, “One of you has been audited. The trail has led to the hotel books, right?”
“Nobody’s asked for my books.” Moon, defensive.
“It’s just a matter of time. You all know that.” I could imagine Lamott in his expensive suit, waving an expensive arm in front of the sputtering Moon. “And, Mason, you were shit as an accountant. What you call books here is Swiss cheese.”
A babble of voices protested, but Lamott must have quieted them. “I can fix them.” Silence. “Look, I’ve seen books like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve had doctors arrive in my office without a single receipt and expect me to deduct thousands of dollars in entertainment. No verif whatsoever. But I handled it. Your problems are small potatoes. A little double-booking? We delete another guest. You ordered a chandelier for the lobby here, and it’s hanging in one of your dining rooms? We create a receipt for your payment to the hotel. No problem to create documentation—if you’re smart enough.”
“Cook the books, you mean,” Moon snorted.
“Semantics. Can it, Mason.” Takai.
“Are you saying you can do our books so that no matter who takes over Drem’s cases, they won’t find anything wrong?” Scookie sounded disbelieving.
“They’ll find an error here, a judgment call there. Flawless returns make them suspicious. But they won’t have red flags—nothing to make them search further.”
“Hey, wait!” Moon. “There won’t be any more audit anyway. When an investigator buys it, IRS has to start all over. The chain of evidence is broken, scattered in a million pieces.”
The line crackled. Otherwise, there was silence. Had I misjudged Lamott? But then he said, “You’re right, Moon. That’s what happens—normally. Not cost-effective for a new man to go over the same tracks. That’s if things are normal, Moon. If Drem had kicked the bucket from the big C, they’d have buried his cases with him. But IRS gets suspicious when one of their own is murdered. Could be they
’ll figure it’s worth the time to have another look. Of course, the choice is yours. If you’re all willing to take your chances, okay.” It was a moment before he said, “I’ll leave you alone to discuss it.”
Howard groaned. I nodded, seconding that groan. Scenario A ended with the killer admitting his guilt now. I had hoped for that, but I really hadn’t expected it in front of a stranger like Lamott, much less the rest of the Inspiration crew.
The hotel door closed. Lamott was on the stoop. A car passed. I heard it first live, then over the wire—delayed stereo. The wind rattled the sides of the van, strong wind off the Bay like the ones we normally get in late summer afternoons. It smacks the smog back against the Berkeley hills. Now it rattled the palm fronds and plane-tree leaves and tossed discarded newspapers against our fenders.
Howard shoved his tax papers back into the manila envelope. I wished we could see outside. We could have doused the lights and crept into the cab for a peek. Odds of being spotted were slim, but any chance was too great a risk.
After what seemed an hour but couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, Lamott walked back into the hotel. “So?” he asked, the soft thump of his footsteps forming a sort of background music. He was still walking, so the owners must still have been behind the desk.
“We may deal.” It was Simonov. The swap king was the logical spokesman in this type of situation. “You do our books, in return for …?”
“The TCMP figures from Drem’s briefcase.”
A couple of them gasped. But it was Simonov who said, “TC—what figures?”
“One of you knows what I’m talking about.”
“How would we have anything of Drem’s? He didn’t give Maria anything.” Scookie sounded defensive.
“Drem’s briefcase.” Takai. “You’re saying one of us got these figures out of his briefcase.”