by Nero Blanc
The response was a measured: “I’d say you’re a liar, pal.”
“It was all over the gauges.”
“The gauges? Hell, man that was plain old fish blood. We filleted them. Tuna meat’s red and bloody. Ask anyone.”
“Sorry, Vic. The police lab says there’s some of both. Tuna and human . . . A positive. Same as Jamaica Nevisson.”
Fogram stood and walked between Rosco and the sleeping area. “You’re talkin’ outta your hat. I got nothin’ more to say.”
Rosco also rose. “This isn’t going to blow over, Fogram. It’s going to get worse. Call me. You’ve got my card.”
“That ain’t likely to happen.”
“You never know . . .” Rosco sniffed the air and gave Vic a broad smile. “Nice perfume . . . Say hello to Doris for me when she wakes up.”
Fogram swung his left fist while Doris Quick bolted upright in the bed and yelled something indecipherable. Rosco ducked the first blow, but Vic countered with a hard right, slamming his beer bottle into the corner of the detective’s left eye and instantly opening a half-inch gash below his eyebrow.
“Get the hell outta here before I kill you!” Fogram raised the bottle over his shoulder and heaved it toward the door frame behind Rosco’s head. Beer suds and shards of amber glass rained down upon him as Vic continued to advance. “I’m gonna kill you, I swear . . .”
Rosco found the doorknob and jumped for the wooden landing. Fogram was right behind him. For a moment the two men stood, suspended in time one story above the grimy pavement. They stared hard at each other. “Get lost, Polycrates. And don’t show up here again. This is harassment. That’s what it is. I’ll get a lawyer.”
“That may not be such a bad idea . . . Thanks for the fifteen minutes,” Rosco answered. “And the memento . . . I won’t forget it too soon.”
Rosco walked down the stairs, reentered the garbage-strewn alley, and dabbed at the cut with his handkerchief while he slipped behind the wheel of his Jeep. Then he twisted the rearview mirror to study the wound. The bleeding was slowing; it wouldn’t require stitches. But his cheek and brow were already showing signs of swelling.
“Great,” he muttered, “just, great. ‘Another Black-eye Sunday Morning.’ Sounds like a C and W tune . . .” He lifted his jacket to his nose. “I smell like a booze hound . . . And Bud, too . . . At least, it could have been an import . . .”
He balled up the handkerchief, applying it like a compress while he activated his phone and checked for messages. There was one from Belle, requesting that he “beam in” for some “vital information.”
“Guess who just called?” she demanded the second she answered the phone.
Rosco didn’t have time to answer; Belle’s voice hurried forward before he could open his mouth. “Bartholomew Kerr.” Her tone indicated that this was the important news she’d wanted to share.
Rosco massaged his swelling eye. “Little early for gossip, isn’t it?” he asked, then decided: Ice. I’ve got to get some ice. It seemed ironic that the Red Admiral with its steady supply lay in plain view. He considered telling Belle what had just transpired, but opted against it. “What did Biz-y Buzz want?” he said instead.
“He just heard a peculiar story. It seems your pal Al Lever made an arrest late last night.”
Rosco sighed. His eye and cheek were beginning to throb. “Anybody I know?”
“Did you ever hear of a guy named Reggie Flack?”
24
After speaking with Belle, Rosco had U-turned on Water Street and headed the Jeep east on Fifth in the direction of Newcastle police headquarters. The eight-block ride had given him time to make two more phone calls: the first to Al Lever to ensure that he hadn’t yet left the NPD building, the second to Tom Pepper.
“Mr. Pepper, the police picked up Reggie Flack last night—”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Polycrates. Where the hell do you think they picked him up, Disneyland? He was in my kitchen.”
“What . . . ?”
“He didn’t start out there.” Pepper said this with a low chuckle. “Anson and I caught the slimeball crawling through the rhododendrons at two A.M. last night. After I made the creep eat his camera, we hog-tied him and called the cops. Flack’s going to rot in jail for twenty years if I have anything to say about it.”
“I’m headed to the NPD now. I’ll see what information I can get out of him.”
“Well, good luck. He wouldn’t say peep to me. Threatened to sue me for knocking out a few of his teeth, though. Hell, he’s lucky I didn’t finish him off. If I had a gun, I would have. And I would have been within my rights.”
Rosco refrained from groaning and saying, That’s debatable. Instead he only asked, “You’re pressing charges, then?”
“Absolutely!”
The viciousness of Pepper’s tone set Rosco’s teeth on edge. “I’ll keep you posted,” he said in an attempt to defuse the situation.
“You do that! That’s what I’m paying you for.” The line went dead before Rosco even had time to consider an answer.
Arriving at the south side of the NPD building, he slipped his Jeep into a parking space marked OFFICIAL USE ONLY, then walked up the main stairs and tapped on the glass paneled door marked HOMICIDE.
“Yeah?” Lever grumbled from the other side.
Rosco stepped through the door. “You don’t have any ice in here, do you, Al?”
“What happened? Don’t tell me Pepper belted you, too?” Lever reached into his lower desk drawer and tossed Rosco a chemically charged cold compress.
“Thanks . . . Someone clipped me with a beer bottle. I’ll get over it . . . You’re working Sundays now?” Rosco twisted the plastic package to start the cooling reaction, then placed it over his left eye.
“Thanks to you, Polly—Crates. I had a ten o’clock tee time. Kissed that baby good-bye a couple of hours ago.”
“Hey, Al”—Rosco shrugged—“none of this is my doing. It all would have ended up in your lap anyway.”
“Hmmph.” Lever lit a cigarette and began coughing.
“What’s with Flack?”
Lever inhaled again. “He’s not a talker . . . insists he’s waiting for The Globe’s attorney to get down from Boston. Bail’s been set at a quarter mil.”
Rosco whistled softly and said, “Wow. That much? How come?”
“Pepper’s got friends in very high places. Judge Lawrence considers Flack a flight risk. Thinks he’ll skip back to L.A. . . . Well, now he has a little incentive to return for a hearing if he does.”
“What’re you charging him with?”
“Trespassing, invasion of privacy, and criminal mischief.”
“. . . And two hundred and fifty thousand dollars bail?” Rosco laughed. “That has to be some sort of record, even if he is from Los Angeles . . . Mind if I talk to him?”
“He’s down in the hole. Be my guest.” Lever coughed again. “Damn these allergies. You’d think they’d let up by October, wouldn’t you?”
“A ‘killing frost,’ that’s what you need to get rid of pollen, Al.”
“Since when did you take up gardening, Polly—Crates?” The question wasn’t unkind.
“Maybe it’s not allergies, Al, have you considered that?”
“Don’t say it, Rosco. You . . . the wife, hell, even my doctor’s turning against me since he quit smoking. Now get out of here; I got work to do.” As Rosco headed for the door, Lever added, “Enjoy your conversation with our quarter-of-a-million-dollar man. Ask him if he likes being a local celebrity.”
“The hole,” as Al liked to call it, was composed of six large holding cells in the basement of the building. The compound sat at the end of a corridor bordered on the right by the Newcastle morgue and on the left by Abe Jones’s forensics lab. The walls were institutional green, and the lab and morgue doors were reinforced stainless steel with small shatterproof windows. When Rosco reached “the hole,” the heavily barred door was opened by a uniformed officer
.
“Hey, Rosco,” he said, “what happened to your eye?”
“Walked into a door . . . How’ve you been, Terry?”
“No complaints.”
“I’m here to see Flack.”
“Lever okay it?”
“Yep. Call him up if you want.”
Terry grimaced. “He missed his Sunday-morning golf game—”
“So I heard.”
“Flack’s in number two,” was Terry’s wry response.
A double set of three cells lined a center aisle; each holding area was separated only by iron bars, privacy not being a luxury afforded to inmates of “the hole.” Number two was the center facility on the left. One and three were empty; four, five, and six, to Rosco’s right, held one man apiece—obviously gents who’d done too much Saturday-night partying. All three were asleep on metal cots suspended from the cinder block walls. The place smelled like an airless locker room after a wrestling match—and that was a genteel description.
Rosco dragged a folding chair to the door of cell two, dropped into it, and propped his feet up on the bars.
Flack made no indication of acknowledging his visitor; instead, he hunched over on his bunk, his feet planted on the concrete floor and his forearms resting loosely on his knees. One hand nursed a purple jaw. Although not a large or powerful man, he gave the impression of muscle and rage. When he finally lifted his head, Rosco recognized him as one of the two photographers Tom Pepper had pursued the afternoon of the incident at the Coast Guard station.
Under a “Geraldo”-type mustache, Flack’s mouth was a pulpy red, and he had a long blue-black bruise on his right cheek. He hadn’t shaved for three or four days, and his body gave off the rank odor of nerves and cunning. Lever’s assessment was correct; the man would be a tough nut to crack; he’d been around.
Rosco continued to stare; he kept his arms folded across his chest.
After several minutes Flack decided to speak; his missing teeth produced a pained and irritable lisp. “What is this? The old ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine? You guys watch a lot of TV in this burg, do you?” He stressed “TV” as if any yokels not residing in L.A. existed solely through stories fed them by the entertainment industry.
“I’m no cop,” Rosco said. “I work for the man whose house you broke into.”
“I didn’t break into anyone’s house, dude.”
Rosco smiled evenly. “The police cuffed you in his kitchen, from what I hear.”
“Pepper and some two-bit Brit thug dragged me there . . . ‘Blimey, matey, look what we have ’ere . . . a bloomin’ ’orse thief—’ ”
“That’s your story, Flack; I’ve got two policemen upstairs who maintain they found you in Pepper’s kitchen . . . But, hey, the facts will come out in court, right? No point in our wasting time determining whose human rights might have been violated.”
Flack looked up; he seemed to take Rosco’s measure. “What’s this about? I don’t have to talk to you.”
“That’s your decision—Mr. Flack. But let me present my employer’s view on this matter. If he drops charges, you’re out of here in an hour. If he presses them . . . you’re going to jail. Probably only for a year, but you will do time, and it’ll be hard time. This is Massachusetts, not California. I’m sure you’re smart enough to realize that Mr. Pepper is a powerful man in this ‘burg’ . . .”
Flack’s head drooped again; he stared at the stained floor. After a beat he muttered, “Where’s The Hollywood Globe attorney? I don’t have to speak without legal counsel present.”
“Good for you, Flack. So, you know your way around a station house, and Miranda v. Arizona? It doesn’t surprise me. However, I don’t operate under police guidelines. I’m just a messenger—here at Mr. Pepper’s behest. The questions I’m asking are his. And he’d like them answered in a timely manner. In an hour or two he may not feel so lenient. Your bail’s been set for a quarter of a million dollars—kinda high for a crime of this type, wouldn’t you say?”
Flack ran his fingers through his limp and greasy hair, then wiped his palms on his trousers. “What does he want to know?”
“First off: your obsession with Jamaica Nevisson.”
Flack’s wiry chest produced a snort of contempt. “Those pictures have paid my rent as long as I can remember, dude. Let me tell you something, PR’s a two-way street. Jamaica Nevisson needed me as much as I needed her. I wouldn’t expect some bozo hick to understand the PR biz, but it was Jamaica’s people—her agent, manager, press wrangler, et cetera—who put me onto her in the beginning. Her career would have gone nowhere without coverage in The Globe—or lack thereof.” The statement was followed by a smug laugh.
“Since you raise the issue of privacy, do you mind describing how you got those nudies of her on Catalina Island?”
Flack chortled again, shaking his head in amazement as if he were dealing with a five-year-old. “Her ‘mysterious male companion’ set up the photo op. See, he’s a newbie trying to jump-start his career. Just like everybody else on the Coast . . . So he supplies all the details of the trip, and I follow them out to the island . . . Buff young guy posing on muscle beach . . . Now he’s hot, and Jamaica’s not. C’est la guerre, dude, as the Frenchies say.”
“And you followed them out to Catalina on a boat?”
“No, dude, I swam . . . I’ve always had this thing for sharks.” Flack stared at the ceiling; sarcasm curled his thickened lips. “Welcome to Hicksville, Reggie,” he muttered, then reclined on the bunk as if finished with the interview.
Rosco ignored the performance. “I assume this frenzy over Jamaica’s disappearance has also benefited your career, Mr. Flack . . . Do you mind telling me when you arrived in Newcastle?”
The photographer lifted his head and squinted at Rosco. For the first time he seemed worried about his answer. “Last week, why?”
“I can always check with the airlines, but I was hoping you’d cooperate and supply something more specific—such as what day and hour? Was it before or after the Orion blaze?”
Again Flack turned evasive. “Come on, dude, what difference does that make?”
“As I said, it’s easy enough to check with the airlines . . .” Rosco stood as if to leave. “Mr. Pepper doesn’t like leaving loose ends—especially when it involves finding his wife—”
“Hold on.” Flack swung off the cot and hurried across to the cell’s bars. “I arrived last Saturday night—nine, ten o’clock . . . As soon as I heard Jamaica had lit out of L.A., I booked a flight.”
“Who told you she’d ‘lit out’?”
“Sources, dude, sources . . .” Flack started to sneer, then reconsidered the remark. His tone and body language grew wary. “Okay . . . the same guy she sailed to Catalina with. It’s worth his while to keep her name in the papers.”
“So you were here Sunday . . . You could have followed the Orion into Buzzards Bay.”
“Hey, hey . . . back up there . . . What are you saying? That I torched the boat?”
“Who said it was torched?”
Flack forced an unsteady laugh. “Torched . . . accident . . . who cares? Listen, if I’d been there when those babes bit it, I would have gotten photographs of the whole damn shooting match.”
“Who’s to say you don’t have them already?” Rosco stood for a moment, regarding Flack while the photographer mimicked unconcern. “Do you know what W. R. Hearst wired to his illustrator Frederic Remington after sending him to Cuba in 1898?”
Flack shrugged. “That’s what you cowboys talk about around here? Ancient history? Sorry, dude, that was a little before my time.”
“ ‘You furnish the pictures; I’ll furnish the war.’ Some folks will stoop pretty low to sell a few newspapers . . . Or jump-start a career.”
The photographer opened his mouth to speak, but Rosco cut him off. “Don’t waste brain cells on a response, ‘dude.’ Like you said, before your time . . . And possibly beyond your acumen.”
Then he turned and wa
lked to the corridor. In the greenish glare from a line of fluorescent overheads, he saw Abe Jones leaving the forensics lab, a dark brown file folder in his left hand. Rosco trotted to catch up. “It looks like NPD has everyone working today.”
Abe let out an elongated groan. “Overworked, is more like it . . . What happened to your eye?”
“Cut myself shaving . . . Did you get the DNA tests on the blood samples I turned in?”
“They won’t be ready till Tuesday.” Jones tapped the file folder. “I’m finished with the rest of it though—taking the results to Al now.”
“Any surprises?”
Jones thought for a minute. “The fire was started by the two oil lamps—as I’d figured during my initial examination. Fingerprints were scarce. The few I lifted belonged to the women or to Colberg, but I also found a couple that didn’t match. They’ve been sent to the FBI for analysis . . . I’ll stay with my original theory that the propane tank blew and knocked out most of the existing fire. But someone definitely appeared at the scene later and finished the job with CO2 extinguishers.”
“Fogram, the guy who leased the Dixie-Jack, admitted he and his buddies doused it,” Rosco said, then added a slow, “So, that’s it, huh?”
“Not completely, no. The most intriguing data isn’t from the Orion or the Dixie-Jack. It’s from the inflatable.”
“Oh?”
“First: the remaining portion of the Orion’s towline had been singed, but cut clean—not untied. The rope ending that was still attached to the inflatable isn’t singed, although the sever marks cleanly match those on board. I’d say the women escaped in the dinghy rather than jumping overboard. The fact that it was cut points to a hasty escape, probably panic; even experienced sailors can run afoul of a well-tied knot—especially in the dark with an escalating blaze. Next: Colberg maintains the outboard was gassed up when the yacht departed. When we retrieved the inflatable, the tank was almost empty, indicating that it had been run for almost two hours.”