The Watchman jp-1

by Robert Crais

  Cole said, “You doin’ okay over there?”

  Larkin was busy with the numbers.

  “It isn’t calculus.”

  “I’m going to make my call. Don’t interrupt.”

  She gave him the finger again.

  Cole phoned Lizabeth Little and scored on the first try. Lizabeth sounded as if she was in a rush.

  “Yes, this is Lizabeth Little.”

  “My name is Elvis Cole. I’m a private investigator who-”

  “How did you get this number?”

  “It’s that private-eye thing. Ma’am, I’m calling about a property you have for sale. I represent an interested buyer.”

  The ol’ greed ploy. Gets’m every time.

  “Which property?”

  “A warehouse space downtown. 18185.”

  “Oh, sure. That’s my dad’s. We’re dissolving the trust. I’ll try to answer your questions, but you should speak with our broker about the terms.”

  She sounded normal. Not like someone who would bag away a couple of bodies, or know a person who would.

  Cole said, “I just want a little background on the property.”

  “You’re working with a buyer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then you should know this up front. We’ll consider offers, but any offer we accept will be in a backup position. Is your buyer okay with that?”

  “A backup. Has the building been sold?”

  “We have an option arrangement with a buyer for all seven of our properties. I don’t think your buyer needs to worry about it, though. The option is about to expire.”

  “Someone is buying all seven properties?”

  “The upside potential here is enormous with the way downtown real estate is booming. Would your buyer be interested in all seven?”

  “What are we talking about, pricewise?”

  “The low twos.”

  “Two million dollars?”

  She laughed.

  “Two hundred million.”

  “That was me being funny. I knew what you meant.”

  “I got it. Options are common in deals of this size. People need time to raise the money. Sometimes the deals happen, sometimes they don’t. This one looks like it might not. If that’s the case, we’ll sell the properties individually. If your buyer is interested, we should still talk.”

  “I’ll pass that along. How long was the option period?”

  “In this case, four months.”

  “Uh-huh, and how much does a four-month option cost for two hundred million dollars’ worth of warehouses?”

  “In this case, six million.”

  “Which you keep when the option lapses?”

  “Oh, yes. I think it lapses in, oh, let me think, I don’t have my calendar-another four days. Three days, maybe. You can call the broker for the exact date.”

  “I’ll pass that along. One more question: You mind naming the buyer?”

  “Not at all. Stentorum Real Holdings. I don’t have the number, but my broker will give it to you. Since they haven’t been able to raise the money, maybe your buyer could help and leverage a partial position. We’d love to have this deal go through.”

  Cole copied the name onto his pad. Stentorum Real Holdings. He hung up as Joe Pike walked in.

  Pike stopped inside the door and stood like a statue.

  The girl chirped up.

  “Hey, man!”

  Cole said, “Yo.”

  Pike didn’t move or speak. Pike always looked strange, but now he looked even stranger. Cole wondered what was wrong.

  “You talk to the brother?”

  Pike walked out of the living room and into the bathroom. Strange.

  Cole picked up his phone again and dialed the information operator.

  He said, “I need a listing for Stentorum Real Holdings, please. That’s in Los Angeles.”

  Larkin looked up.

  “What did you say?”

  “Stentorum Real Holdings.”

  “That’s one of my father’s companies.”

  The information computer came on with the number. Cole copied it, but never looked away from the girl. When he finished, he went to the table. He put his pad on the table, then turned it so she could read it. Stentorum Real Holdings.

  “Your father owns this?”

  “I own it, too, technically. It’s one of our family’s companies.”

  The water stopped and Pike stepped from the bathroom. He was shirtless and scrubbed, as if he had come home needing to wash away wherever he had been or whoever he was with. A spiderweb of old scars draped his chest where he had been shot. He pulled on his sweatshirt.

  Cole said, “We need you.”

  Cole waited until Pike joined them.

  Pike said, “What?”

  “Larkin’s father owns something called Stentorum Real Holdings. Stentorum is trying to buy 18185, along with six other buildings from the same owner. They optioned the right to buy four months ago, but their option is about to lapse.”

  Cole stared at Pike, with Pike staring back, his face unknowable and empty. Larkin sensed it was bad, but didn’t understand why because she didn’t yet know what they knew. Cole was letting Pike make the call, what to tell her, what not.

  Larkin shook her head.

  “What does that mean? Are you sure? My father is buying the building where we found the bodies?”

  Pike reached across the table and offered his hand. Larkin placed her fingers on his. Pike squeezed. Cole had seen Pike do push-ups on his thumbs; push-ups using only the two index fingers. Pike popped walnuts like soap bubbles, but not now.

  Pike said, “Stay with me, okay? Harden up, because it’s about to get worse.”

  Five minutes ago, Cole thought Larkin looked twelve. Now she looked one hundred years old. She glanced at Cole, then looked back at Pike and nodded.

  “Bring it. Both barrels.”

  “Your father and Gordon Kline both knew Meesh was Khali Vahnich. They worked out a deal with Pitman to keep you in the dark. Pitman said it wasn’t his idea. Said it was your dad’s.”

  Cole watched her hand in Pike’s. Her fingers tightened until the tendons stood out, but nothing showed on her face.

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Were they in business together, these disgusting people and my father?”

  “That’s what it looks like, yes.”

  Larkin leaned back and laughed, but still she held on to him.

  Cole said, “We’re just guessing about these things. We’ll ask.”

  “I grew up with this! I know a business dispute when I see it! They couldn’t close the deal, so somebody has to eat the deposit. Vahnich killed the Kings. Now he wants me and my-”

  She stared at the endless sheets of phone numbers before looking up.

  “Was it my father?”

  Cole didn’t understand what she was asking, but Pike seemed to know and answered her.

  “I’ll find out.”

  Her face paled, her eyes showing the kind of pain you’d feel if you were being crushed, as if the last bit of love were being wrung from your heart.

  She said, “I don’t want to find out. Please don’t find out. Please do not tell me.”

  Then Cole realized what she had asked of Pike-was her father the person telling Vahnich where to find her?

  Cole said, “We’re guessing too much. Let’s go be detectives.”

  Cole got up and went to the door. Pike lingered behind for a moment, then followed him out.

  38

  Larkin Conner Barkley

  Larkin watched Pike leaving, and in the moment he stepped outside, he was framed in the open door of their Echo Park house like a picture in a magazine, frozen in time and space. A big man, but not a giant. More average in size than not. With the sleeves covering his arms, and his face turned away, he seemed heartbreakingly normal, which made her love him even more. A superman risked nothing, but an average man ris
ked everything.

  When he glanced back before he pulled the door, she saw the emptiness in his face, the gleaming dark glasses; then the door closed and she was alone.

  “Make it right. Please make it right.”

  Said it to the empty house, then felt stupid and ashamed of herself for saying it.

  She was more frightened now than even those times when the men from Ecuador were shooting. If her father had abandoned her, then she was truly alone, more alone than she had ever felt or known or believed could be possible. Larkin felt as if she were having an out-of-body experience. She felt outside her own body, yet the air seemed alive on her skin, and the house was so quiet the silence was noise. Like being in the same place twice at the same time, each overlaid on the other and not quite connected. Except for the fear, she felt nothing. She tried to make herself feel something else. She thought she should be angry or resentful, but a switch had been thrown and now she was empty.

  Larkin went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. She wanted to see if the emptiness showed on her face the way she saw it on Pike’s. She couldn’t tell. Looking at herself, she saw her father. She had his eyes and ears and the line of his jaw. She had her mother’s nose and mouth.

  She said, “I don’t care.”

  She didn’t care what he had done. He was her father. If Pike could carry his father, she could carry hers.

  Larkin went back to the table and studied the lists of phone numbers and the phone trees she had been tracing. She found Khali Vahnich’s number, then searched for it through each of the twenty-six single-spaced pages. Each time she found it, she marked it. When she finished with the twenty-six pages, she went back to the beginning and picked out the numbers Vahnich had called.

  She found it near the bottom of the second page. She saw the number and recognized it because it was so familiar.

  Vahnich had called her company’s corporate headquarters. The Barkley Company.

  Larkin saw the number and thought, Wow, this is bizarre, because all she felt was the strange out-of-body sensation with the air humming on her skin. Her vision blurred, so she knew she was crying, but she didn’t gasp or sob and her nose didn’t clog; it was as if someone else was crying, and she was watching it from the inside.

  She wiped her eyes so she could see better, and kept searching through the list. She found the number twice more, then stopped because, really, what was the point?

  Joe and Elvis were right. Her father was connected with these people, and now they were both in trouble. Vahnich was trying to use her to get something from her father or punish him, and either way, he was fucking it up.

  Pike’s father had been a monster. Her father was a fuckup. Didn’t matter. She loved him.

  “Make it right.”

  She was speaking to herself.

  39

  The Barkley Company occupied the top three floors of a black glass fortress in Century City with enough armed guards, security stations, and metal detectors to secure an international airport. Pike called Bud to arrange the meet, expecting to see Barkley at home, but Bud told him Barkley had been called to his office. Pike did not explain why they wanted to see him, except that it was about Larkin. Bud agreed to meet them-they would need Bud to get through security.

  Bud said, “No guns, Joe. I can’t let you be armed.”

  Pike said, “Sure.”

  “You bringing Larkin?”

  “You bringing Pitman?”

  “I’m not going to tell Pitman a goddamned thing. I won’t even tell Barkley. Just meet me in the lobby and I’ll take you up.”

  Bud hung up.

  Parking at Barkley’s office was an adventure. When Pike and Cole arrived, attendants took their names and asked for identification, and guards with mirrors examined the bottom of Cole’s car.

  Cole said, “If we have to get out of this place fast, we’re screwed.”

  Pike didn’t play off Cole’s bait for a joke. He was thinking about the girl. He wanted to hurt the people who were hurting her. He kept reading the pain in her eyes, that she was trapped by herself in a tortured world, alone with a pain no one could share and from which she would never escape. And each time he saw it in her he saw it in himself, and wanted to punish them. He wanted to punish them badly enough that he would become his father to do it, and they would be him. He wanted them to know it like that-for hurting this girl. For abusing their power. For their arrogance.

  Cole said, “You’re awfully quiet. Even for you.”

  “I’m good.”

  Bud was waiting in the lobby with two visitor passes they had to wear around their necks. Bud had already signed them in.

  Bud said, “You want to tell me what this is about before we go up?”

  “No.”

  Pike knew from Bud’s manner that Pitman hadn’t called. They passed through a metal detector, then boarded a special elevator that went directly to the top floor.

  As they rode up, Bud said, “How’s she doing?”

  “Not so good.”

  “You just keep her safe. That’s why you’re here. I think there’s a lot these bastards aren’t telling us.”

  When the doors opened, Bud led them into a reception area where an older woman with curly blond hair sat at a desk. She recognized Bud and waved them past.

  “He’s back there somewhere. If he’s not in his office, just ask. They’re having some kind of problem.”

  Cole nudged Pike and whispered, “Already? We just arrived.”

  They followed Bud down a long hall that looked like an art gallery, then past empty cubicles that should have been occupied by people Bud described as assistants. They found Conner Barkley outside his office with a small group of well-dressed men and women. They were immaculately groomed in Brioni and Donna Karan, but Barkley looked as if he had just rolled out of bed. His hair was sticking out at odd angles and his eyes were nervous and red. He blinked when he saw them approaching, then ran a hand over his head as he frowned at Bud.

  “I didn’t know you were bringing these people.”

  Pike grabbed Barkley by the throat and pushed him backwards into his office.

  Bud was caught off guard.

  “Joe!”

  Chaos exploded like incoming mortars, but Pike ignored it. The well-dressed people were shocked and shouting, and Cole told someone to back the fuck up. Pike pushed Barkley into the wall as Cole and Bud surged into the office behind him and slammed the door, Bud trying to pull him off Barkley.

  “Are you crazy? Did you lose your mind?”

  Pike squeezed Barkley’s throat. Not so hard. A little.

  Pike said, “Stentorum Real Holdings.”

  Barkley’s eyes floated in pink pools. He wheezed, and his words were gurgles.

  “I don’t know what you want.”

  Bud had Pike by the arm. Cole stepped up beside him.

  Bud saying, “Let go. Jesus, they’re calling the police! You want the police?”

  Cole saying, “How about I do the talking?”

  Pike stepped away. Barkley clutched at his throat, then coughed and spat on the floor.

  “Why did you do that? Why are you so mad?”

  Pike wondered if Barkley was insane.

  Bud moved between Pike and Barkley, raising his hands.

  “Let’s take it easy. Jesus, what are you doing?”

  Cole said, “Stentorum Real Holdings is a company owned by Mr. Barkley. Stentorum is trying to buy the building where we found the Kings’ bodies. They’ve had an agreement to buy that building for four months. It’s the building where Larkin had her accident with the Kings and Khali Vahnich.”

  Barkley was still rubbing his throat.

  “What are you talking about? I don’t know anything about that. I own Stentorum, yes, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Pike watched Barkley as Cole went through it. Pike read his eyes and his mouth, and the rubbery way Barkley held himself. He listened to the timbre of Barkley’s voic
e, gauging its rise and fall against Barkley’s shifting focus and the nervous movement of his hands. Pike decided Barkley was telling the truth.

  Pike said, “Did you know Alex Meesh was a lie?”

  Barkley flushed. His eye contact faltered, he glanced away, then his eyes rolled up and to the left. Pike saw he was ashamed of himself.

  “We thought it was the only way.”

  Bud took Barkley’s arm.

  “You knew about Vahnich? Jesus, Conner. For Christ’s sake.”

  Cole said, “What about the property? I spoke with the executor of the trust. She has an option-to-buy agreement with Stentorum Real Holdings.”

  “I don’t pay attention to those things. I have people for that.”

  Pike said, “Kline.”

  Barkley passed his hands over his head again, pushing the lank hair from his face.

  “Gordon left. He’s gone. I’ll show you-”

  Barkley led them down the hall to the far end of the building to Gordon Kline’s office. Pike understood why Barkley’s side of the floor was empty; a crowd of people were at Kline’s end of the floor, going through his files and computer, and the computers that were used by his assistants.

  Barkley said, “We think he left last night. I don’t know. Some things are missing-”

  Bud said, “Money?”

  “We think so, yes. There were discrepancies. He was living here. He moved into his office when this mess with Vahnich started. He said he was scared.”

  Cole went to Kline’s desk where a team of people were working at his computer.

  “Could he have used Stentorum to buy the property without your knowing about it?”

  “Of course he could. I let Gordon take care of these things. I trusted him.”

  Cole spoke loud to the room.

  “Who has his phone log? C’mon, you people must log the calls. Is someone checking the log?”

  Two women sitting together on a couch looked as if they didn’t know whether to answer, but Cole was with Mr. Barkley, so the older one raised her hand.

  “We have it.”