by K. K. Beck
———
AFTER his call to Jessica, Tyler felt worse, not better. He had expected her to be more interested in what he’d just discovered. Maybe even grateful. But she sounded lukewarm, if not actually cold. And then three customers in a row stiffed him on a tip. Maybe it was his demeanor, because he was so worried about everything.
He made a little vow to be positive and confident with everyone. When Vic came back to the booth, Tyler gave him a big friendly smile. “How’s it going, Vic?” he said.
Vic scowled at him. “What were you doing under that car?” he demanded. “You can’t be messing with customer’s cars.”
“I told you. I was looking for my phone under that car.”
“Those customers told me you said you were looking for a phone in the banquet room, too,” said Vic. “They thought you might have been trying to eavesdrop on their business conference.” He narrowed his eyes in a menacing way that made Vic seem totally stupid, like a little kid trying to be creepy—and that was what set Tyler off.
Suddenly, he was furious. He hadn’t been so mad since that night he turned twenty-one at the Viking Valhalla and keyed that Corvette. There was no way he was going to be afraid of Vic, even if he was all mobbed up. Vic was just too stupid. Surely his thug buddies didn’t take him seriously.
“You know what?” he said, stepping toward Vic and lifting his chin in a belligerent way. “I kinda resent hearing any of this from you. As far as I can tell, you’re one of the laziest, most useless valets I’ve ever worked with. Crappy attitude with the customers. So why are you all of sudden so interested in my job performance?”
“Maybe because I’m Shift Lead,” said Vic, pushing him on the shoulder.
“Well, you were filling in for Chip and he’s back. So if you’ve got a problem, talk to him,” said Tyler. “And don’t touch me again!”
Vic glowered and pushed Tyler’s shoulder once more. “Don’t fuck with me,” he said quietly. “Or my associates from Donna’s.”
“Associates!” said Tyler, laughing. “Your associates! That’s what people say in gangster movies!” He figured that laughing at Vic might enrage him, and he wanted Vic to be enraged so he would try to hit Tyler and Tyler could hit him back. “And didn’t you hear me? I told you not to touch me again.” Tyler now pushed Vic, using one hand on each shoulder, and managed to get him to stumble back awkwardly and fall against the booth.
Just then a Ford Taurus pulled up. Tyler sprang to the passenger door and opened it, saying, “Buona sera! Welcome to Ristorante Alba.” He was astonished to see that the passenger was his boss, Jessica. From the alarmed expression on her face, he could see she had just watched him push Vic into the valet booth.
Behind her was a second car. Vic was still lingering by the booth, proving, Tyler thought, that he was indeed useless. Why wasn’t he trotting over to the second car?
Seeing as Jessica was part of Elite Valet, Tyler instinctively went to open the doors for the paying customers in that second car. He was startled to see that the occupants of this car were detectives Lukowski and MacNab. “Up to your old tricks?” said MacNab. “Assault, I mean?” He looked over at Vic. “You okay, son?”
Chapter Eighteen
BEFORE VIC HAD A CHANCE TO ANSWER, the driver of the car Jessica had arrived in had let himself out of the car and was striding over to Tyler. He took in the suit and tasseled loafers and figured he was one of the Elite Valet executives. “Is this the associate we were talking about?” the man said to Jessica.
Tyler felt suddenly giddy, and as if he were operating in one of those dreams where everything keeps going wrong. “Associate!” he repeated. He had just laughed at Vic for calling those thugs associates, and now he was being called an associate. “Associate? Yes, I guess I am,” he said vaguely. He wondered if he sounded as crazy as he felt.
“We need to talk,” said the guy with the pink tie to Tyler. He nodded at Vic. “Can you take care of these gentlemen?” He indicated the two detectives.
“We need to talk to him first,” said Lukowski, pointing at Tyler.
The guy in the pink tie said, “Our other associate will be glad to help you,” in a firm tone. Tyler was horrified to hear himself snickering. The word “associate” was setting him off.
Everyone seemed to be staring at him, so he stopped laughing and looked down at the ground. Then MacNab pulled out a badge and stuck it into the face of the guy with the pink tie. “Seattle police,” he said. “We need to talk to him.”
“But I’m sure it’s all a mistake,” said the pink tie guy. “We’ll be contacting you after our internal investigation. We’d hate to bother you—if you were contacted by this associate…” Tyler bit his lip. That stupid word again. The pink tie guy’s confidence seemed to be ebbing. “Well…he wasn’t authorized to call you.”
“And you are…?” said MacNab.
“Chuck Green, Regional District Manager. Elite Valet,” he said, presenting MacNab with a business card, smiling and holding out a hand, as if the detectives would be honored to meet him. MacNab stuffed the card in his pocket without reading it, then looked down at the outstretched hand and after a beat, removed his hand from his pocket and shook it.
“We need to talk to young Tyler here. Ongoing investigation. What do you mean, he wasn’t authorized to call us? Since when does a citizen need permission from,” he retrieved the business card and scanned it, “the regional district manager of a car parking company to call the police?”
Chuck Green’s smile got smaller but didn’t vanish entirely. “Well, apparently Tyler here thought there might be some unusual activity here and came to the conclusion that this might somehow indicate some activity of a potentially criminal nature related to possible car theft. Naturally, we’d like to check this out before the police get involved. We know how busy you are and—”
MacNab cut him off. “We’re investigating a homicide.”
Green looked taken aback, and glanced over at Tyler with horror. MacNab continued, “But if Tyler here knows about any other crimes, we’ll be glad to talk to him about those, too. We’ll be in touch if there’s anything we need from you. I got your card.”
Lukowski smiled at Chuck Green and said, “Am I getting this right? Are you saying this young man thinks there was some illegal activity going on? Car theft?”
“Um, that’s right,” said Chuck.
Tyler felt stupid. They were talking about him and he was standing right there. He started to say something, and reached for his phone to show them the picture he’d taken.
But then he heard Chuck Green say, in a simpering voice, “I don’t want to talk about any of this until I talk to our legal people.” That reminded him of his own legal person, Veronica.
“Call me old-fashioned, but if you have knowledge of a crime, don’t you think you should share it with the police,” said MacNab. “As a matter of good citizenship?”
Tyler thought Chuck Green sounded like a spineless jerk talking about checking with the Elite Valet lawyers. But he also remembered what Grandpa’s lawyer had told him. Don’t talk to the cops. And after that grilling he’d undergone just a few days ago, he was determined to stick with the program.
MacNab turned around to Tyler. “What do you have to say about all this?”
“Um,” he said, “my attorney says I can’t talk to you about anything unless she’s there. Want me to call her?”
“Did she represent you in that felony trial?” asked MacNab. “Too bad she couldn’t get you off.”
Chuck Green wheeled toward Jessica. “Did you hear that? He has a record! We are going to have to begin the termination process!”
“Oh for God’s sake!” said Tyler. “If you want to fire me just go ahead and do it.”
“There is a process,” said Chuck. “But you better believe that process will be followed to the fullest.”
Jessica bit a corner of her lip and looked at Tyler with an apologetic Hey I’m sorry but there’s nothing I can do about i
t expression and a hopeless shrug. “Um, Tyler, we’ll need to put you on suspension for a week until we sort this out.”
Just then, Brian came out of the restaurant. “Hey, Tyler. Flavia wants to see you,” he said.
“Great!” said Tyler. “She probably wants to fire me, too.”
“Nobody’s firing you yet,” said Jessica. “You’re just on suspension.”
Before anyone could say anything more, Tyler turned away from his tormentors and headed toward the entrance.
MacNab started after Tyler but Lukowski put a hand on his arm and said, “Forget it. He won’t talk without his lawyer. We’ll call her and see if she has anything to say about his allegations, whatever they are.”
To Tyler’s surprise, Vic followed him. As soon as they were out of sight of the detectives and the representatives of Elite Valet management, Vic grabbed him by the upper arm and leaned in close to his ear. “If you talk to anyone here or the cops about something you might have found on a car, those guys from Donna’s will kill you,” he said. “You don’t know what you are messing with. They will fucking kill you, I swear to God.” And then, to Tyler’s surprise and horror, he growled something at him in what sounded like Russian, and then switched back to English to hiss, “This is a fucking warning.”
“Everybody here is crazy!” said Tyler. Vic slinked away and Tyler threw open the door to the cubbyhole office next to the kitchen.
Flavia sat behind a pile of papers and a laptop. She looked up at him and he saw she was wearing the glasses he’d seen her wearing on campus.
He repeated himself. “Everybody here is crazy!” he said to her.
“I know,” she said. She pushed her wheeled chair away from the desk and he now saw she was wearing a fuzzy cardigan sweater over her power suit. She looked appealingly like a librarian who didn’t know she was actually attractive.
“I suppose you called me in here to fire me,” he said. “But forget it. You can’t fire me because I already am being fired. By Elite Valet! Sorry to deprive you of the satisfaction!”
Flavia removed her glasses and stared up at him. “Elite Valet. Do the Russians also own them?”
“Russians? You mean those guys who were here just now? No way!”
“You’re sure?”
Tyler thought about this. Would a company owned by gangsters with the thuggish manners of the little crew he’d just seen browbeating Flavia insist on all the bureaucratic paperwork he knew Jessica had to deal with? Or the mandatory on-line training an “associate” had to undergo in case a secret shopper had caught him out forgetting to smile or recite a stupid canned greeting? Not to mention the convoluted firing process that took weeks—the process Tyler was scheduled to begin immediately—all seemingly designed by HR specialists to avoid wrongful termination lawsuits? Surely thugs could figure out how to fire someone on the spot.
“Of course I’m sure!” he said. “It’s a national company based in Pittsburgh.”
Flavia looked doubtful.
“It takes them weeks to fire people,” he said. “And if someone gets hurt on the job, they make my boss fill out tons of paperwork. They’re afraid of people suing them.”
That they were concerned about litigation seemed to cinch it for Flavia. “Ah!” she said. “I thought the Russians owned them.”
“Why did you think that?”
“Because they made us use Elite Valet.” She sighed. “I don’t understand this country! Sometimes, everything is actually as it is supposed to appear to be.”
She frowned in concentration, and Tyler, tired of standing in front of her desk in a servile way, decided if he was going to be fired he may as well be comfortable. He took a seat in the straight-backed guest chair and hooked one arm around the back of it in a gesture designed to make him look as if he felt he owned the place.
Flavia didn’t seem to notice any of this body language. “Maybe your boss—this Jessica…somehow…” she said. She trailed off, turned to Tyler and raised her eyebrows in an interrogative manner. Was she suggesting Jessica was part of the Russian mafia—or on their payroll?
It seemed so ridiculous that Tyler actually laughed. “Jessica? She doesn’t know anything about any Russians. She told me it was Hughie who arranged for Elite Valet to get your business.”
“Hughie?” said Flavia. “Who is Hughie?”
“From Donna’s Casino. Another Elite Valet account. He’s Donna’s son. You never heard of Hughie?”
“No. Is he Russian?”
“No, but he hangs out with them. In the bar at Donna’s.” While it struck Tyler that Jessica was an extremely unlikely candidate to be part of a criminal conspiracy, Hughie might well fit the bill. He seemed stupid, and also seemed to be high a lot of the time. The Russians must have arranged for Hughie to set up the switch to Elite Valet.
Flavia said, “But why do you think I was going to fire you?”
“I thought you were mad I burst into the banquet room. And I heard you ask those Russians if you could fire anyone. And they said anyone but Chip or Vic.”
“Essactly,” said Flavia with a little flourish. Tyler loved it when she couldn’t pronounce the letter x before a t. It was about the only mistake she ever made. “So maybe I did want to fire you, but now it is Chip and Vic I would like to fire. Because I hate those Russians and they want me to keep them. Now I don’t want to fire you.” She gave him the same big smile he’d seen her give Scott Duckworth just before someone had tried to kill him. “I want you here.”
“Well, I’m on suspension for a week,” he said.
Flavia waved her hand dismissively. “I’ll tell Jessica I want you to work here anyway.”
“Flavia,” said Tyler, realizing he’d never actually called her by her name before. This gave him pause. He started again. “Flavia, I think you’re in big trouble. I want to help you.”
———
DEBBIE Myers was sitting in Helene Applegate’s office at DuckSoft. “Will you do it?” she asked.
Helene’s eyes grew round. “Do you want me to wear a wire?” she asked.
“No, nothing like that! It’s just that I think Roger Benson has a big crush on you and I’d like you to talk to him and maybe see if you think he might have had anything to do with the assault on Scott. I really need some insight into his thinking, and I bet the reason you’ve been so successful in your career here is because you have a good insight into people.”
“I guess it looks bad that he was right there that night,” said Helene.
Debbie pressed on. “And you told me no one but you and Red Ott knew Scott would be there. But Roger’s son, Tyler, knew. And he must have told his dad.”
“I don’t know,” said Helene. “It was weird that Roger sent that email on the same day. And I haven’t really talked to him for twenty years or so; maybe he could have gone off the rails or something, and I never knew about it.”
“It’s clear he had a crush on you and still does. Did you ever have any feelings for him?” asked Debbie in the tone of a sensitive female friend.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Helene. “He was kind of helpless. I felt sorry for him. I like to take care of helpless people.”
“All helpless people, or just helpless men?” asked Debbie.
Helene thought for a second. “Helpless men,” she said. “I think women don’t need so much help.”
“But Scott needs your help now,” said Debbie. “Can you call Roger? Maybe have a little chat with him? He won’t talk to us. Maybe you can find out what he was thinking. You may be the only one who can help Scott,” she said. “I know he really counts on you. And your help. If you could get Roger Benson to tell you what he knows. And convince him to come in and make a statement or something…”
“I’ll do it,” said Helene, looking nervous but thrilled.
“Why don’t you call him right now,” said Debbie cheerfully.
———
ROGER was hunkered down in his office when the phone rang. He spent most of his
time here these days when Ingrid was home. It wasn’t enough that the police were trying to connect him to a homicidal assault! His own wife had turned on him, and that mean little butch lawyer his father-in-law, Gus, had dragged into his life wouldn’t let him talk to the cops and clear his name. She wouldn’t even let him try and get in touch with Scott.
“Hello,” he said warily, wondering what fresh hell was about to be revealed.
“Hi Roger. It’s Helene. Helene Applegate.”
“Helene!” he shouted. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”
“Um, I was just wondering how things were going,” she said. What a nice voice she had. That kind, sympathetic tone. Helene was really the only person he wanted to talk to right now.
“Could be a lot better,” he said. “I can’t believe it but the police have actually talked to me about what happened to Scott!”
“I know,” she said. “I guess they have to talk to everyone.”
“So I guess you showed them that email I sent.”
“Well yes,” said Helene. She sounded apologetic. He was so relieved that she sounded sorry. “They asked me if there’d been any disgruntled ex-employees. Oh, but I told them I couldn’t imagine you had anything to do with it.”
“You were always a truly decent person,” he said solemnly. “When all that stuff went down years ago and they asked me to resign, you were the only person who showed any sympathy.”
Suddenly the door to his office burst open and Tyler’s sister, Samantha, said, “Mom wants you to drive me to the orthodontist because she has to hang around waiting for the downstairs bathroom sink to get fixed.”
“Can’t you drive yourself?”
“God, Dad, how could you forget? She just took me off the insurance because I didn’t make honor roll! Remember?”
Roger swiveled around in his chair. She was glaring at him with her hands on her hips.
“I’m on the phone!” he barked, switching to more soothing tones to say, “Sorry, Helene. It’s a zoo around here. I work at home these days.”
“God, Dad,” said Samantha.