Calculated Risk (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  “Yeah. Right.” Canelli moved away from the wall beside the door, stepped to the opposite wall, faced the door.

  “You go right,” Hastings breathed. “I’ll go left.” Revolver ready, he took Canelli’s place beside the door. One last time, they nodded. Revolver raised, Canelli lunged forward, struck the door just below the knob with his right foot. Wood splintered, the door swung sharply open, banged against an interior wall as Canelli fell flat to the right in the open doorway. Hastings leaped left, traversed the small foyer in two strides. Crouched low, shouting “Police! Freeze!” he trained his revolver on the trio in the room. Hubble sat on a sofa beside a young woman: Joyce Trigstadt, terrified, her whole body rigid, frozen by fear. Hubble’s left hand was knotted in the woman’s long, tangled blond hair. His right hand held a Buck knife against her neck, just below the ear. Beneath the knife, blood streaked the woman’s neck. It was a superficial cut, not serious.

  Seated in an armchair across a large, cluttered glass-topped coffee table, Janet Collier held her Glock nine-millimeter semiautomatic in both hands, the approved combat grip. The Glock was aimed at Hubble, who was pressed close beside Joyce Trigstadt. It was a standoff.

  With his revolver trained on Hubble, Hastings spoke softly over his shoulder to Canelli: “Outside, Joe. Close the door and keep it closed.”

  “Yessir,” Canelli breathed.

  “Make the calls.”

  “Yessir.” With his own revolver trained on Hubble, Canelli began backing toward the door. When Hastings heard the door close, then heard Canelli speaking into his radio, he slowly advanced until he stood beside Janet Collier.

  “How long’s it been?” Hastings asked.

  “About an hour,” Collier answered. Her voice was steady, her eyes were hot and bold, staring at Hubble, hardly blinking. Collier was outraged. The Glock was steady as death.

  Hastings turned to face Hubble. Saying: “I’m a lieutenant in Homicide, co-commander. My name is Frank Hastings. Anything you’ve got to say, you say it to me. I’m the man.”

  “Yeah …” Hubble was smiling, playing his ultra-tough, extra-cool role to perfection. He moved his eyes to Collier. “Yeah, she’s been telling me about you, how you’re the man, all right.”

  “We’ve got to talk, Claude. Let’s put the weapons away. Then we’ll talk.” Hastings lowered his revolver until the muzzle pointed to the floor. After a moment’s hesitation, Collier did the same. Both pistols remained cocked.

  “I’ll bet,” Hubble said, “that there’ll be maybe fifty cops outside. I bet they’ll have the whole building covered. I bet they’ve got assault rifles, and helmets, and vests, the whole thing. And the TV crews, they’re out there, too. All that, because of this—” He drew back the knife a scant few inches, fondly rotating the blade. The blade was bright, polished steel, flecked with fresh blood.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Joyce Trigstadt moaned. “Jesus, Claude. Please. Listen to what they say.”

  “What they’re saying, Joyce, is for me to put down the knife, and let them take me off to jail. That’s what they’re saying.”

  “Claude …” Terrified, the woman tried to move away from her tormentor. Instantly, the knife touched her neck.

  With his eyes locked into Hubble’s bully-boy gaze, Hastings spoke to Janet Collier.

  “How’d it get to this?”

  “She came home about one thirty,” Collier said. “She saw me in my car, in front of the building, and she came over. She wanted to talk upstairs. I’d talked to her last night, and I thought we could connect. I knew Canelli would be back in a few minutes, so I didn’t think it was a risk. I set my radio, and came up here with her. Hubble was already in the bedroom.”

  “He was waiting for you. Is that it?”

  Hubble answered the question: “They came through the door, Joyce first. I was in the bedroom, sleeping. But I was quick. I heard a key in the lock, I was already behind the door, waiting for it to open. I was ready.”

  “You played off a knife against a gun.” Hastings spoke scornfully, a calculated blow to the ego. “You call that ready?”

  “Yeah, well, she was pretty quick with her gun, I’ll say that for her.” He smiled at Collier. She nodded grim acknowledgment. Her Glock still pointed down.

  “The word we have on you, Hubble,” Hastings said, “is that you’re smart. But this—” With his revolver, Hastings gestured in a short, mocking arc. “This is dumb. What’ll this get you but more trouble?”

  “Well, you want to know the truth, this whole thing was—” Hubble frowned, searching for the word. He was slim, wiry, and quick-talking. His voice was softly burred. He was dressed only in white boxer shorts and a white T-shirt. His arms and thighs were muscle-corded. He wore his hair naturally.

  “You really want to know,” Hubble said, “it was like a reflex. I mean, I was right behind the door, with the knife. They came through, Joyce came first. So I grabbed her. I mean, I figured she was setting me up. And maybe she was …” He tightened his grip in Joyce Trigstadt’s hair. “Who knows?”

  “I didn’t even know you were here,” the woman breathed. “How could I know? I—”

  “What you should be doing, Claude,” Hastings broke in, “is thinking ahead.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m doing a whole lot of thinking, don’t worry. I’m—”

  “There’s only two ways this can go,” Hastings said. “Either we cut you loose, or we hold on to you. And you know the answer to that one. You know you’re going to jail. The only question is, how much trouble are you going to cause us between now and then? You understand what I’m saying—what I’m really saying?”

  Hubble made no response. But his eyes were watchful.

  “What I’m really saying is that this thing can go two ways—either a domestic dispute, or a big hostage drama. You understand?”

  Still no response. But still their eyes were locked.

  “You want to make a big deal of it, that’s fine. Like you say, there’re people with guns out there. So you can probably get on the six-o’clock news, if that’s what you want. Or else you can be smart, do it the easy way. You don’t have a gun, just a knife. So right there, that’s a plus for you. I mean, an assault rifle, then that’d be a problem. But a knife …” Once more, dismissively, Hastings waved his cocked pistol.

  “Either way,” he continued, “you’re going to jail—or the morgue, if some rookie gets spooked. Which one, jail or the morgue, that depends on you, on how you decide to play it. Let’s say you play it smart. Let’s say, in about fifteen minutes, you hand over the knife. Right there, you’ve saved the city a lot of trouble—and expense. So we take you downtown, all very calm, very low-key. Then we talk.” A heavily laden moment passed. “We talk about Collingwood.”

  Having pronounced the fateful word, Hastings paused again, looking for a reaction. Would Hubble acknowledge the significance of Collingwood?

  “You tell us why it happened, on Collingwood. We know someone hired you. You’re not looking for kicks. You’re a businessman, and we want the name of your employer. So if you give us a name, then right away you’ve done yourself a lot of good. You’ve also saved the city a major hassle. So we tell the DA about how you gave up the knife, and how you cooperated and gave us a name. And we—”

  “It was an accident. It wasn’t meant to be murder.” Hubble spoke softly, intensely. For the first time, he looked steadily into Hastings’s eyes. Finally they’d come to the truth.

  Hastings nodded encouragement, at the same time drawing a straightback chair up to face Hubble across the cluttered coffee table, with Collier to his left. For the first time he could see that, even though she’d lowered her weapon, her grip on the gun was white-knuckled. Collier’s reserves were drawing taut. Her eyes did not leave the knife that now rested flat against Joyce Trigstadt’s neck.

  “An accident.” Hastings spoke quietly, speculatively. Signifying that the final bargaining had begun. “You were hired to work Hardaway over. But he wasn’t supposed to
die.” It was a soft-spoken statement, not a question.

  “When he fell, he hit his head on the curb.”

  Hastings nodded. Frowning, apparently deep in thought, he let a long moment pass as he glanced covertly at Collier, then looked again at Hubble. Now Hastings’s manner was earnest, entirely forthcoming:

  “Let’s suppose you put away your knife and we put away our guns. Then let’s suppose the three of us walk out of here. There’s no threats, no anger, nothing. We just go out into the hallway, and we say everything’s cool. Then we—”

  “What about Joyce?” Hubble asked.

  “She stays here. She’s out of it.” Hastings turned to Joyce Trigstadt. Saying: “You can clean up, have a drink, whatever. We’ll get a locksmith out here this evening, and tomorrow we’ll replace your door. All we want from you now is silence. As far as you’re concerned, there never was a knife. Hubble was here, but the four of us were just talking. Got it?”

  “But—”

  Collier spoke to the other woman: “Put some peroxide on that cut, and comb your hair over it. You’ll be fine.”

  “The three of us,” Hastings went on, speaking to Hubble, “will go downstairs and get into a police van. We’ll go downtown, and you’ll get booked, everything by the numbers. But the charge isn’t murder. The charge is aggravated assault. Or, worst case, manslaughter. And instead of adding great bodily harm and obstruction of justice and God knows whatever else we could come up with, we just forget about the last hour or two, because you were cooperative.” He smiled. “How’s that sound, Claude?”

  “It sounds too good to be true. It also sounds like I’m trusting you with my black ass. Which I’m not about to do.”

  “You don’t have a choice, Claude. I’m all you’ve got. Either we make a deal now—right now—or we do it the hard way. It’s your call. If you use that knife, you’ll die right in this room. If that doesn’t happen, then you could die in the gas chamber. That’s one way. The other way, you give us the names we want, and we all go downtown and you get booked for an aggravated assault on Collingwood on the night of Tuesday, May ninth. You choose.”

  Hubble stared one last time at Hastings before he disentangled his fingers from Joyce Trigstadt’s hair, shoved her away. As she flung herself blindly from the couch, Hubble calmly wiped the blade of the knife on the couch. He folded the knife closed, slipped it into the sheath on his belt. Reciprocating, Hastings holstered his revolver, nodded for Collier to holster the Glock.

  “Before you get dressed,” Hastings said, “I want names.”

  “I thought we did that downtown.”

  Hastings shook his head. “Wrong. You give us the names now. Downtown, we talk about it—about how it all came down. But we need the names now, to show good faith.”

  “A lawyer,” Hubble said. “We go downtown, I need a lawyer.”

  “No problem. Speaking of which …” Hastings read the suspect his Miranda rights, with Collier witnessing. In the bedroom, door closed, Joyce Trigstadt was crying loudly. After Hubble received his rights, he sighed, deeply resigned. He muttered fervently, “Ah, shit.”

  Still seated, Collier looked thoughtfully at the slim, dramatically muscled man sitting on the room’s only couch in his white underwear. Finally she said, “I checked out your record yesterday, Claude. You’ve been arrested three times, but you’ve never fallen. Right?”

  “Yeah. Right.” Once more, Hubble sighed deeply.

  “And you’ve never been involved in anything like this before. Murder—you’ve never been arrested for—”

  “Jesus, it wasn’t murder.” Angrily, hands spread, plaintively, he appealed to Hastings: “I thought we had a deal. I thought—”

  “I’m not talking about Collingwood, Claude,” Collier said. “I’m talking about your record. And I’m telling you that the lieutenant is making you a hell of a deal. Because even if you don’t beat the aggravated assault charge, or maybe manslaughter, you’ll still have only one felony conviction on your record. Which means that if you ever decide to make something of your life, you’ll have a shot. Especially if the DA asks for a suspended sentence.”

  “Which can happen,” Hastings said, “if you cooperate.”

  “If I cop, you mean,” Hubble said bitterly.

  “Call it what you want,” Collier countered. “What I’m telling you is, you look to me like you’re smart. You look like a winner to me. Not a loser.”

  “But if you don’t give us those names now,” Hastings said, “right now, then you’re a loser.”

  “What happened to our deal? I put up my knife, everything’s cool. We walk out together, no guns. We get in the van together, that’s what you said.”

  “That hasn’t changed,” Collier said. “The part about the names hasn’t changed, either. It’s just that we want them up front. Someone’s got to go first. And you’re it.”

  “Aw, shit.” He punched the sofa, hard. “Shit.”

  In the silence, Hastings and Collier waited. Finally, with his eyes cast down, he muttered, “Delbert Gay, he’s the one. He’s a low-life private eye. He’s the one.”

  Hastings nodded. “I know Delbert Gay.”

  “Well, he’s the one.”

  “He hired you.”

  “Right.”

  “For how much?”

  “A thousand.”

  “Why’d he hire you? Why’d he want Charles Hardaway worked over?”

  “He didn’t say. And I didn’t ask.”

  “Someone hired him. Delbert Gay was the middleman.”

  Hubble shrugged. “Probably.”

  “So the question is, who hired Delbert Gay?”

  Hubble’s eyes shifted warily, but he made no reply.

  “You know who hired Gay,” Collier said. “Don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “You’re lying, Claude. Don’t lie to us. Everything changes, if you lie. Everything’s off.”

  “I’m not lying. I don’t know.”

  “But you suspect,” Hastings said. “You have an idea.”

  “You talk about the DA. You going to tell him what I suspect? He going to court with something I suspect?” Contemptuously, he shook his head. “Shit.”

  “You’re quite a student of the law.” I try.

  “I’m going to give you a name. If he’s the one you suspect, you tell us. Understand?”

  No reply.

  “The name is Bruce Weston. He’s a lawyer.”

  Resigned, Hubble shrugged, then nodded. “Yeah, he’s the one.”

  “We get downtown, you tell us how you know his name. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “All right. Get dressed.”

  35

  “THERE.” HASTINGS POINTED. “IN the loading zone.”

  Canelli turned the cruiser into the loading zone, set the brake, switched off the engine.

  “You think Weston’ll see us?” Canelli asked.

  “He knows we’re coming. I doubt he’ll want a couple of cops cluttering up his fancy waiting room for very long.”

  “Could you fill me in, Lieutenant? I mean, I don’t know how much Hubble said yesterday.”

  “We made a deal. He admitted that Delbert Gay hired him to work Hardaway over. He also testified that on at least one occasion, he carried a package of what was probably money to Gay from Weston. And he saw Weston and Gay together twice during the period we’re talking about. In other words, Hubble cooperated. So he gets to cop. He’ll plead to aggravated assault on Hardaway in exchange for giving us Gay and Weston. The DA will raise the charge to manslaughter, and they’ll get a cooperative judge.”

  “But what about yesterday? Cutting his girlfriend.”

  “The girl’ll go along, won’t press charges. Collier is holding her hand today, getting her door fixed, buying her lunch, things like that.”

  “So the cutting never happened.” Canelli’s swarthy face softened into a conspiratorial grin. “False alarm.”

  “I want Weston and w
hoever gives Weston his orders. Hubble’s a little fish.”

  “Do you think this thing could go all the way up to Harold Best, Lieutenant? Is that what you’re thinking?”

  “Him and others. His wife, and her father. His campaign manager, too. Sobel.”

  “Jeez, this is pretty heavy stuff, Lieutenant. I mean, I just read an article saying Harold Best is the golden boy of American politics.”

  “To me, he looked like a spoiled kid who never grew up.” Hastings glanced at his watch. Nine o’clock on a cold, foggy morning in San Francisco’s financial district: wind-whipped concrete canyons, well-dressed minions of the marketplace hunched against the cold. “Ready?” he asked.

  “Ready.”

  “I am amazed,” Weston said. “Truly amazed. My God, you know Delbert Gay’s a certified liar. He’ll say anything—incriminate anyone—if there’s a dollar to be made.”

  “He’s admitted that he hired Claude Hubble to attack Hardaway. And he’s admitted that you hired him to get the job done.”

  “And you believe him.”

  “Yessir, I do.”

  Sitting behind his outsize desk, with his back to his prime view of San Francisco Bay, Weston shook his head incredulously as he fixed Hastings with a pitying stare. “You’re in over your head, Lieutenant. I hope you haven’t gone to the DA with this story. He’ll laugh you out of his office.”

  “Do you have connections with Harold Best or any of his people?”

  “You mean the Harold Best? The senatorial candidate?”

  Was it guarded surprise that Hastings saw in the other man’s face? Caution? Something else?

  “That’s right. The Harold Best.”

  “Then the answer is no. All I know about Harold Best is what I read on the cover of Time.”

  “His staff? His managers?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “At first,” Hastings said, “we didn’t have a motive for the Hardaway murder. We thought it was just a random gay-bashing. But now we know that Charles Hardaway was killed because he was blackmailing Harold Best.”

  No response. But behind his gold-rimmed designer glasses, Bruce Weston’s improbably blue eyes were speculative. Resting on the desk, his hands were contracting into loose fists.