The Black Tortoise

by Ronald Tierney

  “I’m sure that’s true. No matter how talented you are, there’s no way to get that kind of money from the foundation without it showing. But you’ve lied about so much.”

  “That’s why I came here tonight. I wanted to get it all out. With David’s death and the investigation, other things, embarrassing things, might surface.” He gave that vulnerable little-orphan look. “I have no one but you—”

  “And Patrick.”

  “—and Patrick to turn to, and I’m not sure he would understand. You can see I’m on the verge of losing everything. And only you can help me.”

  “Emelio?” I waited until he was fully focused on what I had to say.

  “What?” he asked.

  “There is no Patrick.”

  I’ll give Emelio credit. He knew just how far to take it. And he knew when it was over. It became clear to me that Emelio was afraid his whole world would collapse. That in a homicide investigation, the police would dig into everything. My question continued to be, had David known too much? And, in connection with Emelio’s hidden wealth, did I?

  Yet I am a curious fellow. And I still didn’t know enough to satisfy my curiosity. How could someone like Emelio have title to more than several million dollars’ worth of real estate?

  “My family,” he said, “is part of a drug cartel. I’m helping them launder money through the buying and selling of real estate. I don’t own those houses. The cartel does. My house is my take.” He sighed. “There it is.”

  “Did they kill David because he found out?”

  “No. Not that they wouldn’t kill him, or me, or”—he glanced at me—“anyone who threatened their freedom or livelihood.” Emelio shook his head. “He knew nothing. And there was no way for him to find out. This wasn’t connected to the foundation in any way.”

  “He knew a lot about computers. Suppose…”

  “David knew about computer hardware. He knew how to set up the physical systems, networks, equipment, hard drives and cables. He knew very little of programs.”

  “Madeline seemed to think he did.”

  Emelio laughed. “She didn’t know what an average three-year-old knows. She once kept going in circles in a parking lot because the voice on her car’s GPS system kept telling her to turn left at the next opportunity. He helped her download apps, set up bookmarks and remember passwords.”

  “Anything else?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Undo any more lies before I find them myself.”

  “The way I grew up…I was never bullied. I might have been small and effeminate, but I could be nasty. I had a reputation. Nobody crossed me more than once.” He smiled. His eyes grew cold. “Family trait.”

  He downed the last of the wine in his glass and headed toward the door. “Peter?”

  “Yes?”

  “I didn’t murder David. I’m not stealing money. Keep my secrets.” He went to the door, exited with a bit of a flourish, but stopped just before disappearing. “Don’t forget to lock up.” He pulled his hands out of his coat pockets. Gloves, not guns. Even so, lock up wasn’t friendly advice.

  I don’t think he understood the mistake he'd made with the threat. I wasn’t going to take any action on his citizenship. And I was thinking about just staying out of this possible money-laundering situation if it had nothing to do with the foundation. Given that everything he’d ever told me was a lie, I could easily make a fool of myself. I feared I could do that without taking further risks. All I could really do was what I was hired to do. That is to deal with foundation issues, not with any unrelated actions of its staff, no matter how dicey. His lies and threats, however, freed me from any sympathy or loyalty I might otherwise have felt. I have no need to protect Emelio or his identity, whatever it was.

  The morning brought Hadley as well as the fog. The fog would go away. Hadley probably wouldn’t. We stood by her unmarked but hardly anonymous police car.

  “Nice house,” she said, making it sound like an accusation. She sipped coffee from a paper cup.

  “I used to think of it as my hideaway. Have you been on the stakeout long?”

  “Where are you headed?” she asked.

  “I never got to complete my talk with Mad Madeline. After that, as far as I’m concerned, I'll write a report for my client and move on.”

  “Conclusions?”

  “Unless Madeline’s answers change how I am thinking, it’s over for me. If I can’t find any evidence of accounting crimes. I’ve done what I was hired to do.”

  “And the murder?” she asked, smiling.

  “Murder isn’t my business.”

  “No severe marks on his body,” Hadley continued, despite my attempts to express disinterest, “except for the marks indicating he went backward through the railing. And the bruises on the shoulder, suggesting he was forcibly held underwater by someone stronger than he was.”

  “Two of them then?” I suggested.

  “Could be one. Someone pushes him in and jumps in after. We spent more time on his laptop. In addition to the video games, he did visit some porn sites. Mild. Conventional man-woman stuff made by professionals. Emails to friends back home. Almost too ordinary.”

  “Too ordinary?” I asked.

  “Most people have some kind of obsession, some intense interest. David led one of the most vanilla lives I’ve ever investigated. Okay, I’ve spilled my guts. Your turn,” Hadley said.

  I shrugged.

  “You had a visitor last night,” she said.

  “You do have me staked out.”

  She smiled.

  I told her everything. Had Emelio not threatened me, I might have kept some things to myself. But if I died, I thought, I wanted the facts out there. I’m not naturally vindictive, but threats of death bring out the worst in me.

  When I was done with the story of Emelio’s visit, she again asked me where I was going.

  “I never did get that interview with Madeline.”

  It was not a good morning. The sky was dark, clouds swollen with rain. The morning was still steely gray when I arrived at the Fog City Arts Center and the foundation offices. A light rain fell. On the street I ran into Vanessa. She got out of a black BMW, opening a big pastel-colored, polka-dot umbrella more suited to LA than San Francisco.

  I was pretty sure it was Jorge Medina, Emelio’s dream guy, behind the wheel. He was wearing a slick, dark rain poncho, and the hood was pulled up over his face. He either didn’t see me or didn’t recognize me from Emelio’s party. Or maybe he was in no mood to be civil. All three were plausible. Vanessa gave me a glance without a show of recognition, let alone a greeting.

  The outer office was cold and damp. Marguerite was not happy to see me either. I watched her disappear into her office. Craig was setting out a box of beignets. He announced he’d picked them up at Brenda’s, a Louisiana-oriented restaurant, on his way to work. I leaned into Emelio’s office. He refused to look at me.

  “I’m looking for Madeline,” I said anyway.

  “She’s onstage.”

  “Onstage?” I asked, not quite grasping he meant exactly what he said.

  “She’s suffering in the theater.”

  By the time I got to Madeline, I was in no mood to dance around people’s moods.

  The theater was dark. The stage was lit by a shadeless floor lamp, the traditional way to keep people from falling off the edge of the stage. There were two upholstered armchairs facing each other near the lamp. In one of them sat Madeline, puffing away on a cigarette. The other chair was empty.

  “Isn’t smoking illegal in here?” I asked, climbing the stairs to the stage.

  “There is a waiver for theatrical productions.” She didn’t look at me either. I could develop a complex.

  “Probably just during performances.”

  “Your point being?”

  “May I?” I asked as I moved toward the other chair. I sat. I could see her clearly, as I could the first few rows of empty seats.

  The sma
ll circle of light created an intimate line of vision with nothing to distract us from each other.

  “We have an author interview here tonight,” she explained. “You are sitting in her chair. If only you were that interesting.”

  “Just a few questions. You are the interesting one at the moment.”

  “Am I subject to torture for the rest of my life?” she asked, her face looking like she had just bitten into a dill pickle.

  “I’m not that bad, am I?”

  “I’ve had worse curses. You’re more of a gnat than a bumblebee. What do you want?”

  “To finally finish our talk.”

  “I would think a murder would trump any ill-founded suspicion of embezzlement,” she said.

  “It works the other way, Madeline. I had wrapped it up until David was found floating in the bay.”

  “Nothing breaks my way, it seems.”

  “You don’t seem to be too concerned about David.”

  “It’s a tough life,” she said. “People come, people go. Some stay too long.” She gave me half a smile and took a drag from her cigarette.

  “You two were close. He helped you with your digital inadequacies.”

  “He was paid well to do so.”

  “To help you with your personal business? You were handling a lot of personal business on foundation time, weren’t you?” I asked, filling in the hostile silence.

  “I’m afraid you have me confused with an hourly worker, Mr. Strand.”

  “Oh no, you are a visionary who presides over an operation where expenses increase and revenue goes down. A decent business course might advise you to do that the other way around.”

  “Why don’t you go back to your petty little bean-counting world and let the adults do the serious work?”

  “As you did with that grand old theater you ran back east?”

  “We were well respected nationally. Every major star came through there,” she said.

  “Until it was closed down for funny finances.”

  “None of that had anything to do with me. Like most arts organizations, we needed some funding. We were absolutely vital to that little town, the only thing that put it on the map. The mayor, who was desperate to keep us there, helped with a grant that turned out to be part of a questionable deal. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “A chunk of that grant was to provide you with a big bonus.”

  “It was investigated. The mayor went to jail. I was not charged. I wouldn’t do anything illegal. Ever. Not because I am a good or moral person, but because I could not stand a moment in prison. I could not survive in there with my skills.” She laughed. “My style of intimidation wouldn’t work in prison.” She flicked an ash and stared out into the vast, empty space. “Are you too young to understand? Has your life been so easy? Getting through until the end means being the smartest, the toughest. Otherwise you will be left along the way, and if not devoured, then tossed aside like a broken umbrella. I have a family. I am the provider.” She smiled with a manufactured haughtiness one could have seen from the back row. “I use what skills I have to hide, attack—”

  “Kill,” I said.

  “Killing is illegal. Your time is up, Mr.…”

  “Strand,” I said, to end her fake forgetfulness. “Be happy to go, but first a compliment. You’ve put the screws to the Black Tortoise Foundation in a way that would inspire scam artists everywhere. They paid for your move out here to escape your past. And when you are discovered to be incompetent—and you will be—you will leave with a fortune. Much smarter than simple theft.”

  “I will survive. Do what I have to do, be who I have to be. Will you?”

  It was a good question. I left, headed toward the lit hallway. I looked back. She continued to sit, exhaling puffs of smoke that disappeared up into the darkness.

  The door to the box office, a small room, was open. Craig was inside, fumbling around with a laptop.

  “Getting ready for tonight’s show?” I asked.

  “Oh!” he said, startled. “Just checking sales for tonight.”

  “It’s all on there?”

  “Yes,” he said. He looked up. He was happy. “Going to be a sellout, looks like.”

  “That makes a difference to you?”

  “We get a fee for running the box office, and a cut. The bigger the turnout, the bigger the cut.”

  “How is the money handled?”

  “It isn’t. At least, not by hand. It’s all electronic and automatic. The fee was paid up front with rent. Box-office receipts are transferred to our clients’ bank accounts. Minus our cut, which is automatically transferred to our bank account. Prevents human error and human greed. Website operations with charge cards and electronic funds transfer.”

  He seemed satisfied.

  “No human intervention?” I asked.

  “Set up once. We just plug in the variable information with each new client, and it runs like a top. Used to be that bookkeeping was the hard part. Now it’s just a flick of the switch.”

  “Same for every client? It doesn’t have to be reprogrammed?”

  “No,” Craig said. “Ticket prices may be changed, or the ticket prices might vary depending on day or time, but the percentages remain the same. Genius.”

  “What are you two plotting?” Vanessa asked with a grin. She squeezed into the small space, her body brushing mine slowly and a little too sensuously to be an accident.

  “Mr. Strand is interested in how the box office works,” Craig said.

  “Peter. Call me Peter,” I said.

  “I certainly will,” Vanessa said. “And you told him all about it, did you?” she asked Craig.

  “Just what I knew,” he said.

  “It’s magic, I understand,” I said.

  I stopped by Marguerite’s office. She was having a gruff conversation with one of her maintenance workers. She dismissed him when she saw me.

  I explained what I wanted. She considered it. She nodded.

  I had to trust someone. And if my suspicions were right, she’d be the least likely person to be involved. Although she was the most qualified to deal with the cold water of the bay.

  Vanessa was in Emelio’s doorway as I headed out. They were having an animated conversation.

  I called Hadley from the dry, warm Embarcadero Hyatt lobby. There was some sort of convention going on—a big mystery writers’ convention, I found out later. Strange-looking people, these writers and their fans. Maybe they could figure this out.

  “Could you make sure everyone in the foundation office knows there will be a computer expert coming tomorrow afternoon? That they will be coming to examine the servers and all activity connected to the box office and all electronic transfers of money.”

  “And who would that be?” Hadley asked.

  “Doesn’t matter. Nobody is going to show up.”

  “You going to let me in on this?’

  “I just did. Make sure everyone gets the message as soon as possible. More tomorrow.” If I told her what I knew and what I believed, she would want—demand, probably—the police to handle it. In this case, the less they knew, the less they could screw it up.

  “Did I somehow forget I was working for you?” she asked.

  “If this works, I can give you the killer and all the proof you need by midmorning tomorrow.”

  “And if you can’t?”

  “We won’t have lost ground.”

  “How can I argue with that?”

  “Yes. See how easy it is for us to work together?” I asked.

  “This is your idea of working together?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” she said and disconnected.

  I had every intention of following her advice. But sometimes we don’t know we are doing something stupid. If we did know, we wouldn’t do it. Yet stupid stuff happens.

  Morning turned into afternoon. I went to the gym. I went to Dog Eared Books on Castro. Before heading up the Saturn Steps to
my home, I picked up half a roasted chicken and a bottle of pinot noir. There was no work to do on the case. I had set things in motion. I had until morning for my plan to play out. It seemed like an eternity, certainly enough time to relax.

  ELEVEN

  I’m not sure what woke me. It was dark. I had been in a deep sleep. Must have been the wine. I’d finished the bottle. I couldn’t move my hands or feet. I was bound to my big brass bed. When I tugged at what bound me, the sound was metal on metal. Handcuffs.

  “Do you always sleep in the nude?” a woman asked.

  “I wasn’t expecting company,” I said, trying to place the voice.

  “I’d probably be naked if I were,” she said.

  The light beside the bed went on, spilling some light into the room. The voice belonged to Vanessa. So, I assumed, did the naked body with the blond hair. I would not know if she was a bottle or a natural blond. But that seemed less a problem than the butcher knife she held in her hand.

  “You have a girlfriend?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “A boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Well,” she said, sitting in a chair by the door to the deck. “Tell me about yourself. Tell me about your life.”

  “It’s not very interesting,” I said.

  “You haven’t a clue, do you? The more you talk, the longer you live.”

  “I was born on a cold day in a cabin in the mountains,” I told her, preparing to tell her the longest tale I could.

  “In China?” she asked.

  “Arizona. The snowflakes, I was told, were as big as half-dollars.”

  “There are mountains in Arizona?”

  “I think they are still there.”

  “I mean, I want to know about you, what makes you tick, what you want out of life, who you are, who you really are. Down deep in your soul. This is your chance at a kind of confession where you will take your secrets with you. Who would I tell?” She seemed to take some sort of pride in her logic.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Did you know you snore?”

  “No, I didn’t.”