by R. J. Jagger
So, Finger might possibly know what the dirt was.
But even if that was true, how could Song get him to tell her what it was?
She couldn’t.
That’s how.
SHE WAS HALFWAY through another spin when her phone rang. She jerked the chair to a stop, put her glasses on and answered. “Good news,” Nuwa said.
“How good?”
“Well, I just got out of the meeting with Rekker,” she said. “He was very cool and sophisticated and didn’t say or do anything improper, but he wants in my pants like nobody’s business.”
“You think?”
“Oh yeah, big time.”
“Did he buy the story?”
“As far as I can tell, yes, but we didn’t get into it that deep,” she said. “He only had a half hour for me because he was squeezing me in between other meetings. He was busy through six but said he’d fit me in after that if I wanted, given that the case was so volatile and time-sensitive. He said that’s when he usually ate dinner. I could either join him if I wanted or meet with him afterwards.”
“That’s called the politically correct way to ask your client to dinner. What’d you say?”
“I was just as politically correct and said dinner would be fine.”
Song spun the chair around 360.
“That raises a point.”
“What point?”
“We never talked about the boundaries,” she said. “No one expects you to sleep with him or anything like that.”
Nuwa laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Song said.
“If I do—sleep with him, that is—that pretty much makes you a pimp. I’m going to buy you a big floppy hat and a leopard jacket.”
51
Day 3—September 23
Wednesday Morning
GEORGE KARAMAZA was slight of build, slight of hair, slight of looks and over-closed his eyes when he blinked, something in the nature of a twitch. Forty years ago, he was the kid who got beat up for his lunch money.
Teffinger didn’t like him.
He didn’t trust him, either.
Luckily, neither of those two things factored into the equation. Karamaza was one of the co-owners of Passionate Interludes, a man who had learned to take his love for porn and find a way to make money at it. He was only meeting with Teffinger because Savannah pressed him to.
His office was big but had no windows.
The walls were covered with smut, mostly lesbian stuff.
Young lesbians.
Borderline kiddie-porn.
A five-line phone sat on his desk, next to a credit card processor.
He studied the printout of Condor, frowned and said, “I’ve never seen him but that doesn’t mean much. I hardly ever see anyone. If you want, I’ll tack it on the wall and ask the girls about him when they come in.”
“You got a pair of scissors?”
Yes.
He did.
Right there in the drawer.
Teffinger cut the printout so that only the face was left and handed it to the man. “Tack that much up. Here’s the more important thing, though. I have a credit card number I want you to run through your system. Find out if it’s ever been used here.”
The man brightened.
“I can do that, no problem.”
He ran it and smiled.
“HE’S A CUSTOMER ALRIGHT.”
The corner of Teffinger’s mouth turned up, ever so slightly.
Yeah, baby.
Yeah.
“Give me the date.”
“Let’s see … okay, June 5th,” Karamaza said.
Teffinger heard the date, heard it clearly, but still couldn’t believe the man actually said it.
“Did you say June 5th?”
Right.
June 5th.
As in, one, two, three, four, 5th.
The man must have read something registering in Teffinger’s brain because he scrunched his face, then brightened and said, “That’s when SJK struck, isn’t it? June 5th.”
Teffinger nodded.
“Wow, what a coincidence.” He got a distant look, then refocused and said, “Stress relief. That’s what you’re looking at, stress relief.”
“What do you mean?”
“He kills the woman earlier in the evening and gets all turned on,” Karamaza said. “Then he comes down here later that night for stress relief. Let me see … yeah just what I thought. His card got run at 11:42 p.m. that night.”
It made sense.
It really did.
“Who did he meet with?”
Karamaza consulted the ledger and frowned.
“Not good,” he said. “Falcon, that was her call name, her real name’s Kristie.”
“Kristie what?”
“Kristie I-Don’t Know and I never know because no one in this business has a last name,” Karamaza said. “What I do know is that she stopped working for us right after that.” His eyes fell on the ledger, then came back up. “June 27th was her last session.”
“Where’d she go?”
Karamaza shook his head.
“They never say,” he said. “They just disappear.”
52
Day 3—September 23
Wednesday Afternoon
THE FISHING BOAT PULLED ANCHOR and headed north. Jonk and Winter ran to the car and drove in the same direction, using the binoculars to keep it in sight as best they could and relying on Winter’s familiarity with the streets when they couldn’t. That actually worked for a while, then the worst thing that could happen did.
Flashing lights appeared behind them.
Winter looked down at the speedometer—52.
She was in a 35.
“Shit!”
She said, “Oops,” and smiled her best smile when a cop appeared at the window. He wasn’t impressed and kept his face stone-cold to prove it. He was even less impressed when he found out the car didn’t belong to her. He had to run the plates to be sure it wasn’t stolen. There were computer problems on the other end. After an eternity he finished what he was being paid to do and headed back to his car. Winter crumpled the ticket, tossed it on the floor and cut back into traffic.
“They weren’t swinging around to the north piers,” she said. “My best guess is they’re headed to one of the marinas up around Sausalito. Should we try it?”
“Yes, go.”
Ten minutes later, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, Jonk pulled out the binoculars again and scouted the waters, training on one boat after another.
“Nothing,” he said.
Winter cut in and out of traffic, not to the point of being dangerous but to the point of racking up more than a few honks and just now even drawing the finger.
“Someone just gave me the bird,” she said.
Jonk wrinkled his forehead.
“The bird?”
“Yeah, you know, the bird.” She gave him the finger. “The California state bird.”
“Oh, that bird,” he said.
SAUSALITO TURNED OUT to be an attractive area given to waterside roadways, marinas filled with floating houses, quaint boulevards, cliffs, beaches, lush greenery and enough seagulls to keep the sky cluttered. There were worse places in the world to be.
Ordinarily, Jonk would be captivated.
He hardly paid any attention.
His mind was filled with Poon.
“What’s wrong?” Winter asked.
“I got too emotional after Poon told me to forget about Tag,” he said. “I cut myself out of the deal. What I should have done is just agreed with him and then focused on Tag anyway. He would have never known.”
“Call him back and patch it up.”
Jonk considered it.
“I’m not a perfect guy,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of stuff in my life. But even with all that, Poon disgusts me. When he called Tag collateral damage, something snapped. I’m really not interested in breathing the same air as him anymore.”
; “So what are you going to do?”
“Tag’s top priority,” he said. “But if I can get her back, then I’m going to go after the treasure.”
“You mean steal it out from under Poon?”
Jonk shrugged.
“That will be up to him.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I think what I’m going to do is this,” he said. “If Poon doesn’t send a hitman after me, I’m going to honor the deal I had with him, if I find the treasure. If he sends a hitman, though, all bets are off. I’ll keep the whole thing.”
“How will you know?”
“Know what? If he sends a hitman?”
Right.
That.
“If a bullet enters my brain, that will be my first clue.”
WINTER LOOKED AHEAD to find that the car in front of her had slowed and she was about to ride up the bumper. She slammed on the brakes, dropped a safe distance back and said, “I want in.”
“Poon’s a mean man,” Jonk said.
“I don’t care.”
“I’ll leave it up to you,” Jonk said. “It will be your option. Just think about it for an hour or two before you make up your mind.”
Silence.
“There’s a marina coming up in a half mile that caters to fishing boats.”
Jonk put his sunglasses on.
“Pull over a hundred yards before we get there.”
53
Day 3—September 23
Wednesday Afternoon
WITH THE PROSPECT OF FINDING DIRT on Haley Key in stall mode, Song refocused on Rekker himself, who turned out to be quite the public speaker. In the past few years alone he had been a keynote speaker at several luncheons across the country and had participated in more than twenty continuing legal education seminars.
Clearly the man never slept.
One of the themes he repeatedly hammered following the Greyson trial was that criminal defense attorneys should always question whether the cops fabricated the evidence. “I know, I know, I know. It seems improbable. Hell, it seems impossible. It seems like there would be too many checks and balances in place, but the reality is that any detective who gets motivated enough to make up evidence can do it. That’s the sad reality.”
The Greyson trial was the poster child.
To punctuate his point, he occasionally brought Kyle Greyson himself to the seminars so the members of the bar could actually lay eyes on a real, flesh-and-blood person who almost got sucked into the vortex of a fabricated world.
Ironically, Rekker and Greyson were actually participating in a seminar in London, England in late September, almost two years ago, when Pamela Zoom—the third SJK victim—was murdered.
IN THE END, Rekker’s speaking engagements were interesting but they were also wasting Song’s life.
She turned her attention back to his cases.
There was more dirt there somewhere.
She just needed to get smart enough to find it.
54
Day 3—September 23
Wednesday Afternoon
EARLY WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, Teffinger maneuvered Bertha across the Golden Gate Bridge, which was always risky because that’s where she liked to break down the most. In Sausalito, he wound his way up to the narrow lanes that fed the cobblestone driveways and gated estates of the people who had too much money.
The people who weren’t detectives.
Chase St. John lived in the last house on the right.
A six-foot, stone wall overgrown with vines shielded the property from view. The drive was guarded by an ornate, wrought iron gate with stone lions on each side.
Luckily, that ornate gate was already open.
Teffinger drove through and hated what he saw.
The house was contemporary with rich textures, lots of windows, an expensive entry and a gray tile roof. The circular driveway wrapped around an Italian fountain.
Bertha’s brakes squeaked as she came to a stop.
Teffinger turned the engine off.
Blue smoke shot out of Bertha’s tailpipe with one last gasping cough.
The radiator hissed.
Then everything got quiet.
Teffinger stepped out, shut the door and walked towards the entry. It was only ten or twelve steps away but it gave him more than enough time to absorb the reality that Chase was out of his league.
He looked back at Bertha.
She was already dripping oil.
He got his finger to the buzzer but didn’t push.
It would be better to just turn around.
End it now.
Move on.
SUDDENLY THE DOOR OPENED and Chase was there before him. She wore a black tank-top that didn’t go all the way down to her skirt, leaving her bellybutton showing. Her skirt was white, short, expensive and flimsy.
Below that were legs.
Spa tanned.
Below those legs were bare feet.
And pink toenails.
Teffinger didn’t know why he was there. All he knew is that Chase called and wanted to talk to him about something as soon as possible and asked if he could meet her at her house.
She brought a small twisted cigarette to her mouth, took a long drag, held it and then blew smoke.
It wasn’t a regular cigarette.
It was one of those special ones.
She handed it to him, turned and headed into the structure. “Come on in.”
Teffinger closed the door.
Debated for a heartbeat.
Then took a long drag.
He followed her through a vaulted space with middle-eastern rugs and antique busts on black contemporary stands.
“We made a mistake last night,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Like not doing what we should have,” she said. “All I could think about since I left was correcting that mistake.” At the base of a winding staircase she stopped and turned. “Do you want to see the bedroom or the dungeon?”
Teffinger took another hit.
“You have a dungeon?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
She led him downstairs.
55
Day 3—September 23
Wednesday Afternoon
LOST MANGO.
That was the name of the boat they were looking for, a white Boston Whaler thirty feet or thereabouts with twin outboards. Jonk studied the maze of marina vessels through the PermaFocus while Winter pulled to the side of the road short of the marina. There must have been four or five hundred boats there, each hiding behind the other.
Half of them were sailboats.
The marina was a giant porcupine from the sky.
“See it?” Winter asked.
“No.”
“Should we go in?”
Good question.
They’d be obvious if they walked in together. But it would be dangerous to leave Winter alone. Jonk trained the binoculars on the open water—no Lost Mango. Suddenly Winter put her hand on the top of his head and pushed down, simultaneously falling to her side.
“He’s coming our way.”
Jonk stayed down.
“Walking or driving?”
“Driving.”
They waited while the noise of an approaching car got louder and then whooshed past. Jonk looked out the back window to see a white sedan going the other way. The driver had dark hair.
“Are you sure it’s him?”
“Pretty sure.”
Okay.
Go.
Go.
Go.
WINTER STAYED AS FAR BEHIND as she could, trying to keep at least two cars between them. “I have to be honest, I think it’s him but I’m not positive.”
“If it’s not, don’t worry about it.”
“You won’t be pissed?”
“Of course not.”
They headed south, across the Golden Gate Bridge, through San Francisco and out the other side.
“We never talked about what my cut’
s going to be,” Winter said.
“What do you think’s fair?”
She shrugged.
“I don’t know, 10 percent?”
“Okay,” he said. “It’s settled.”
“Ten percent?”
“No, one-third.”
“One-third?”
“You deserve it for what they did to Zoogie,” Jonk said. “Make no mistake, though. If you participate, Poon will find out. He’ll hunt you for the rest of your life. He’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth. You’ll need to become someone else and move to another city or, better yet, another country.”
“Paris,” she said.
“Whatever,” he said. “I just want to be sure you know what you’re getting into.”
She tilted her head.
“I can speak Spanish,” she said. “Language comes easy to me. I’ll bet I could learn to speak French. Have you ever been to Paris?”
Yes.
He had.
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s like every other place in the world,” he said. “If you’re young, good looking and have money, you own it. The only difference is that it’s a better place to own than most.”
“I want to see the Mona Lisa.”
“You strike me more as an impressionist woman. Van Gogh and Renoir, that kind of thing.”
She exhaled.
“That whole hippie thing was more Zoogie’s deal than mine,” she said. “I like to be comfortable, don’t get me wrong, but I’d like to be classy some day.”
Jonk looked at her.
“You already are.”
She smiled.
“You know what I mean.”
He did.
He did indeed.
“I could see you at a who’s-who party in a long black evening dress with your hair up and a not-too-big but not-too-small diamond necklace around your neck.”
She considered it.
“I never went to college,” she said. “If I ever got money, that’s what I’d do. You can’t be classy without being educated. Did you ever go to college?”
He had.
Hong Kong University.