Treasure Hunt

by John Lescroart

  She was back to being hunched over, her breathing heavy.

  “Alicia?”

  At last, with a deep sigh, she straightened up. “The cops shouldn’t have it. It shouldn’t be on my record. I wasn’t even eighteen. It’s supposed to be erased. It was just a joyride and a stupid accident.”

  “Was anybody hurt?”

  “No. Just me, a little. But the car belonged to the house I was staying in, the guy there’s a fucking pervert, and I stole his fucking car, which ended that particular shot at my domestic bliss with stepparents. But the jail part was . . .” She stopped, looked pleadingly at him. “Nobody knows this except Ian.”

  “You don’t have to say,” Mickey said. “I’ve got a good imagination.”

  “I thought because there were only women on that side of the jail ...”

  Mickey moved over next to her, put his arm around her, and brought her in next to him. “Nobody’s going to let you go to jail,” he said. “That’s not going to happen. I promise.”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Mickey regretted them. You didn’t promise when you couldn’t absolutely deliver; it was one of the mantras he and Tamara had lived by—a promise is a promise, they used to say.

  But this particular horse was already out of the barn, and there was nothing he could do about it now.

  8

  When Wyatt Hunt opened his office door in Chinatown the next morning at eight forty-three, Tamara was at her old desk. She’d told him on Saturday night that if he’d take her back, she would be there, but actually seeing her in the flesh gave him a hopeful jolt of adrenaline. Maybe the firm would get back on its feet again and this was the first sign that things were turning around.

  She glanced at her wristwatch, then up to her boss, her face alight. “I didn’t realize that you’d changed your hours.”

  At a glance, she looked good, lightly made up with lipstick, mascara, and eye shadow. A black silk blouse under a multicolored scarf around her neck camouflaged her protruding collarbones. The overall effect was nothing like anorexia. She’d obviously lost some weight, of course, but Hunt might not have noticed anything amiss if he hadn’t seen her and had his arms around her two nights before.

  Still, reluctant to embarrass her on the one hand, or to scare her off with overeffusiveness on the other, he kept his greeting low-key. “So the cat actually did drag you in. For the record, I can’t tell you how good it is to see you sitting there again.”

  “I can’t tell you how good it feels to be sitting here again.” She hesitated, then added, “I really want to thank you for letting this happen, Wyatt. I don’t know too many other people who would be okay with taking me back.”

  “Anybody who’d had you working for them once would take you back in a New York minute, Tam. I’m the one who should be thanking you. And I do.”

  “Okay.” She lowered her eyes, then raised them back up to him, a trace of her old impish smile playing around her mouth. “Do you think we can be through with all of this yucky stuff pretty soon?”

  “Absolutely. No more yuck, starting now.”

  “Good. Mickey’s already out on that Len Turner list you gave him. He’ll check in when he’s done or a little before lunch, whichever comes first. And Devin Juhle called. No message, just please call him back when you get in.”

  “Got it. And, Tam”—he stopped on his way to the back office and stood by the side of her desk—“one last bit of yuck.”

  She sighed with some theatricality—one of her mannerisms from the old days which he loved. “Okay, one. What?”

  Striking fast, he leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Welcome back.”

  On his way to the Sunset Youth Project administrative offices at Ortega Street and Sunset Boulevard, Mickey couldn’t get Como’s $650,000 salary out of his brain. Or Sunset’s $50 million- per-year operating budget. These dollar figures shifted his initial take on Como’s murder. This much money around, it was likely in play.

  And as far as this went, it was good news for Alicia. If she was of any interest at all to the police, it was not because of money, but because of her relationship to Como.

  As Alicia had told him, information on nonprofits was a matter of public record, and hence easily accessible. With Len Turner’s list to guide him, Mickey had done some computer research last night and verified that the three largest nonprofits where Como had a seat on the board—the Mission Street Coalition, Sanctuary House, and Halfway Home—each operated with a budget of over $30 million per year. Since none of these quite matched the size and scope of the Sunset Youth Project, Mickey’s first call was on Como’s home turf.

  The two-story building wasn’t much of a scenic destination. The low, overcast skies didn’t help much either.

  Standing across the street, Mickey was struck by how sad and nondescript the place looked. The grounds took up an entire city block. Off to his left side, behind a twelve-foot cyclone fence with razor wire threaded around the top, were a deserted asphalt playground, four basketball hoops with no nets, a metallic climbing structure, and parking for half a dozen cars, including a Lincoln Town Car limousine.

  Over the front doorway, a flag hung at half-mast.

  Inside now, Mickey walked through the wide, low lobby—again, echoes of public schools he’d attended. A dozen or more young people loitered by the stairway on his right. He was headed toward a directory mounted on the wall in front of him, but noticed that the large office next to it, venetian blinds behind the glass, was lit up and obviously occupied, its door wide open. Stenciled on the glass were the words: Sunset Youth Project, Office of the Executive Director. Inside the large room, more loiterers stood around between the desks behind the counter. Mickey slapped on a smile and knocked. “Excuse me,” he said, “I’m looking for Lorraine Hess.”

  The associate director stood behind the desk in her office and reached out a hand to shake Mickey’s.

  Dominic Como, Mickey was quickly learning, had an eye for lovely women. First the truly beautiful Alicia Thorpe, and now his assistant director. Solidly built, more than slightly overweight, and even in rimless eyeglasses, Lorraine Hess clearly at one time had been a babe and, except for the weight, wasn’t so far from still being one. She wore a rust-colored woolen suit over a plain white blouse, the ensemble a few years out of style. Her hair, shoulder-length and mostly gray, was a riot of mismanagement, but not unattractive, and of a piece with the sultry, sunken bedroom eyes. Once, not so long ago, she might have been distractingly prettier, and might even be now if she’d give more thought to her appearance. But this clearly wasn’t much of a concern to her. And especially not today, the first business day after the discovery of Como’s body.

  “As you can imagine,” she was telling him, “we’re in a state of complete numbness and disbelief around here. To say nothing of the personal devastation. None of us can understand how this could have happened, the random killing of such a wonderful man. Nobody who knew him could have wanted to do anything to harm Dominic. It’s just such a loss.”

  “That’s what I’m hearing from everybody,” Mickey said.

  “I’m not surprised. That’s what I told the police when they came by. It must have been a random thing, a mugging maybe. It couldn’t have been someone he knew, who knew him.”

  “Do you know who he was going to meet?”

  “No. He never told Al. Mr. Carter. His driver.”

  “I thought Alicia Thorpe was his driver.”

  Hess made a little moue. “Ms. Thorpe was one of several daytime drivers. That shift ends at three. Al Carter drove the rest of the time. In any event, you were asking if I knew who Dominic was going to meet, and the answer is no. Al just let him off early near his house and that was”—she swallowed against her emotion—“that was the last time anyone saw him.” She removed her glasses, rubbed her eyes, then replaced them, now looking at Mickey as though she were seeing him for the first time. “I’m sorry. You said you were with a private investigating firm
? Is there something you came here to tell me, or any way I can help you?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact . . .” And Mickey went into his prepared pitch on the reward, ending by telling her that Wyatt Hunt had cleared the idea with Len Turner, who would manage the reward fund.

  “You mean you’ll be working with Mr. Turner as well as the police?”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s kind of the plan. We’re assuming that once the idea gets out into the nonprofit community, the reward might become fairly substantial, and we’d then serve the purpose of evaluating the information received and passing the legitimate stuff along to the police. We’re hoping to elicit information from people in the community who might not normally cooperate much or willingly with law enforcement. At the same time, we’d screen calls from cranks and publicity seekers, since we know there’ll be some of them as well. Basically, we’d be acting as a clearinghouse. And of course validating the claimants for the reward, if any.”

  “But won’t the police be investigating as well?”

  “Sure. But Mr. Turner agrees that we could provide a valuable service by being a conduit to a community that doesn’t always willingly interact with law enforcement. Even if they have very persuasive stuff. That’s why you offer a reward. It’s a little more proactive. And, as of last night, the police had no active leads they were working on.”

  Hess made no real attempt to disguise the stress and fatigue of the days since Como’s disappearance. Now she leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes briefly, and let out a deep sigh. “And you’ve come to us, I presume, to sort of get the ball rolling?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Mr. Turner recommended that you call him if you have any questions or misgivings. We’re offering our services, that’s all. We’re trying to coordinate and facilitate the reward. But it’s entirely your call.”

  “Well,” Hess said, “I appreciate that, but I don’t know if I have the authority to make that decision. As you know, with Dominic gone, we’ve got a huge vacuum at the top right now, and . . .” Again, she closed her eyes, shook her head wearily, brought them back to Mickey. “On the other hand, if Mr. Turner says . . . I know we want to do all we can, as soon as we can, to find out who could have been responsible for this. How much money were you thinking you’d need to start?”

  “That would be entirely up to your discretion. But enough to incentivize somebody who otherwise might not be inclined to come forward. And as I’ve mentioned, Mr. Turner wasn’t thinking you’d be in this alone. He told us that Mr. Como was on several other boards. Maybe you’d want to set an example for them to follow.”

  “I would have to go to our board, but—” Suddenly, she seemed to come to some decision. A bit of color came back into her cheeks and she slapped her palm down on her desktop. “Hell, at least we’d be doing something instead of just sitting here waiting for the police and twiddling our thumbs. Do you think twenty thousand would be enough? I’m sure I could go to the board with that much in mind. I could reach them all this morning by phone.”

  “I think that might be a good start,” Mickey said, restraining an urge to let out a war whoop. In fact, he knew that this was about the maximum total reward that most professionals advised be offered. It was one thing, he knew, to offer $100 million for bin Laden, and another thing to dangle such a vast amount of money in a local case that it would serve as a distraction, attracting so many tips as to drown out any actual leads. But in this case, the idea was to generate every conceivable tip. Even paranoids have enemies, he knew, and even psychos sometimes possessed real information. But he kept his reply low-key. “That would give me something to go to the other charities with.”

  “Not till you hear back from me, though,” Hess said. “I’ll need the approval of our board.”

  “Absolutely,” Mickey said. “If you’d like, I could wait.”

  It looked like a school because it still was a school, K through eight Sunrise School.

  He got outside onto the asphalt yard just as the recess bell sounded. As the kids came flying out all around him, he let himself through a small gate in a fence, turned the corner of the building, and found himself in the small parking lot he’d noticed from across the street.

  A tall, rangy, middle-aged black man was leaning back against the building, arms crossed over his chest, watching in a supervisory way as two other young men went over the limousine with sponges and hoses. On a hunch, Mickey sidled over to the area and caught the man’s attention. “Excuse me,” he said, “are you Al Carter?”

  With a questioning expression, the man straightened away from the wall. He exuded authority. Except for a well-buzzed tonsure, he was bald, and the high, clear forehead spoke of intelligence and patience. His voice, when he spoke, was low-pitched, unhurried, educated. “I have that name,” he said. “And you have the advantage of me.”

  Mickey extended his hand and introduced himself. “You don’t know me,” he went on, “but maybe you knew my grandfather, Jim Parr?”

  At that name’s mention, the closed-up face relaxed somewhat. “I certainly did know your grandfather. Is he still among the quick?”

  “I don’t know about that,” Mickey said. “He’s slowed down a little, but—”

  Carter chuckled, shaking his head, cutting him off. “The quick, young man,” he said, “in contradistinction to the dead. The quick and the dead. I was asking if Jim were still alive.”

  “As of this morning.”

  “Well, that’s wonderful news. Tell him hello for me.”

  “I will.” Mickey gestured toward the car. “So what are these guys doing?”

  Carter cast a throwaway glance in their direction. “We call this washing the limousine. It’s one of their tasks.”

  “Are they being punished for something?”

  A little half-laugh. “Punished? To the contrary, they’re being rewarded. These two young men were handpicked by Mr. Como to do this job and if they continue to do it effectively, they’ll be promoted to more responsible and important jobs.” Now his expressive face did cloud over. “Or they would have been.” Suddenly the eyes focused and he raised a finger in Mickey’s direction. “You’re the young man who found him.”

  “I am.”

  “And you are Jim Parr’s grandson as well?”

  “Right.”

  “That’s an extraordinary coincidence.”

  “Yes, it is,” Mickey said.

  “So how is it,” Carter asked, “that you’ve stayed involved in matters surrounding Mr. Como’s death?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you found his body. Your grandfather used to be his driver. Now”—he gestured to include their surroundings—“you’re here. The connection eludes me.”

  “There’s no mystery to it. I work for a private investigator. We’re offering to coordinate a reward program.”

  “Ah, a reward program. I don’t believe I’ve heard of that.”

  “It’s in its early stages. Ms. Hess is hoping that the Sunset Youth Project here is going to put up twenty thousand dollars. With others of Mr. Como’s charities kicking in, it could get to quite a substantial sum.”

  Carter’s eyebrows went up, his head canted to one side. “So,” he said, “the assumption being that there is information out there somewhere. Someone knows something he’s not talking about.”

  “I don’t know about assumption,” Mickey said. “More like a hope. Maybe someone knows something but doesn’t recognize its importance. The hope is that the money might get that person motivated to think a little harder about what they’ve seen or might have heard. You, for example, Mr. Carter. You were the last person to see him alive, if I’m not mistaken. Right?”

  “No. That would have been his killer.” Carter broke a sad smile. “A small, yet critical distinction, don’t you think? But the police have already spoken to me and I told them everything I knew, which, I’m afraid, wasn’t much. I left him off near his home on Tuesday night.”

  “How near?”
r />   “A couple of blocks.”

  “And he never mentioned who he was supposed to be seeing?”

  “Not by name, no. He said it was just an old acquaintance who was having problems. But old acquaintances of Mr. Como could fill the phone book, Mr. Dade. According to that criterion it could theoretically have even been your grandfather. And beyond that, it’s possible that he had his scheduled meeting with the old acquaintance he’d told me about and then, after that, met with his killer. Or, as I think Lorraine would like to believe, it was a random attack by some mugger.”

  “But you don’t think that?”

  “No,” Carter said. “No, I don’t think I do.”

  “Do you have any specific reason for not thinking that?”

  Carter shook his head. “I wish I did. I wish there was something I could point to, but it’s just a nebulous feeling.”

  “Well”—Mickey, his wallet out, removed one of his business cards—“if it gets to be more than that, call this number. Or, of course, the police. The information doesn’t have to come through us to qualify for the reward, if that’s a concern.”

  “It isn’t. I wouldn’t be doing it for the reward, Mr. Dade.”

  “No, of course not. I didn’t mean to imply that you would. And remember that as we speak right now the reward sits at zero. But still,” Mickey added, “if something does occur to you, or something new develops, it might be nice to know the money’s sitting there waiting for somebody to claim it.”

  Carter nodded, his face set in grim stone. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

  9

  First thing that Monday morning, Len Turner had talked to the mayor. The mayor had placed a phone call to the chief of police, who had personally called Devin Juhle and suggested—an order would have been inappropriate—that he extend “every courtesy” to the “concerned citizens who were assisting in the investigation” by offering this so-far nonexistent reward.