“Look at that bastard sweat,” Russ said. “He did it.”
“Probably not, but if he did, there’s a sixty-one percent chance he wouldn’t lose his job at the IRS.”
Russ stared at me. “Say what?”
“Fact: sixty-one percent of IRS personnel who get caught cheating on their taxes do not lose their job. Tax cheats have a fair idea of how the system works, and knowing how the system works is job security in the IRS. Firing good employees isn’t the best way to keep the revenue floodgates open.”
“Jesus. But how good are they if they get caught?”
“Once they know how they got caught, they’re even better at it. The knowledge circulates. It’s called professionalism.”
“Jesus H. Christ.”
“Know how many people in the IRS pay mortgage interest and property taxes on a second home?”
“Do I want to know?”
“A lot more than own a second home, Russ.”
“Shitfire.”
Then Don Kreuger entered the room with Officer Day. Day was present to keep Warley Sullivan from going nuts and killing Kreuger—Warley weighing in at one-sixty-one, Kreuger at two-fourteen. They were both six-two—but one looked like a Roman gladiator, the other looked desiccated.
A transcript of the interview is available to personnel with a need to know at RPD, and the FBI has a copy, but the essence of it went like this:
Kreuger: You kill him?
Sullivan: No.
Kreuger: Okay, then. We’ll be in touch.
There was more to it than that, but boring. Sullivan said he didn’t put the skull in the convertible. Never saw the car. Didn’t know Mortimer Angel was going to be at the Green Room. He didn’t know there was a car, or a skull. He didn’t know anything about anything. Yes, he’d spoken to Angel at the bar, got a good tip about a bar at the Atlantis Casino called the Oasis where IRS agents weren’t assassinated, said hi to Ma, and that was that for the evening. He’d gone home, gone to bed, slept okay, woke up at six twenty that morning, had some coffee and a bagel, found out about Soranden after he got the crossword done.
“That about all?” Russ asked me as Kreuger was wrapping it up with Warley.
“Not sure about that bagel or the crossword.”
Russ stared at me.
“Pretty much,” I said. “He hit the relevant high points.”
“Guy’s a ball of fire, huh?”
“Not yet. Will be after he’s turned away from the Pearly Gates though.”
* * *
Fingerprints on Soranden’s skull were all mine and Lucy’s. No partials under either of ours, so it was determined that we hadn’t destroyed evidence. It also made us suspects, especially me since I’d worked under Soranden, knew him as The Toad.
The skull was clean, inside and out. Not easy to get the interior of a skull that clean, said the coroner, Boyce Carroll. I got the story on the skull secondhand from Russ because he and I were buddies, but informally, not something known within the department at large. I was permitted in the viewing room as an observer who not only knew Sullivan from the past but might also detect inaccuracies and omissions in his account of what had taken place in the Green Room the night before.
But the skull was pristine, like few skulls are unless they’d been buried for fifty-plus years, and if they had there would be weather pitting, yellowing, other signs of age. Moreover, Ronald had been in full possession of his own skull at least up until July of this year. It was Boyce’s considered opinion that Soranden’s skull had been picked clean by hundreds of those huge ants that Lucy had found in the car, not that we mentioned we’d kept two of them, one for us and one for Ma, and that we might have ours bronzed. It might have taken less than a day for a big colony to strip every bit of flesh off the skull, inside and out. An LED light and a borescope through the eye sockets and the neck showed that the brain was entirely gone, cleaned out as neatly as all the external flesh. All that incomprehensible and contradictory IRS knowledge had been relocated into an anthill somewhere. With luck, it would stay there.
“Groovy,” Lucy said when I told her. “So we’re looking for someone with a bunch of giant ants.”
“Nope,” I said.
“Someone with a monster private anthill, like in their backyard?”
“Not sure how that’s different, and nope again.”
“Still nope?”
“It’s not our case so we’re not looking for any of that. It has nothing to do with us and how we put bread on the table.”
“Except the skull was left in my car. So it’s mine.”
“Don’t count on possession being nine-tenths of the law in this instance, kiddo.”
“Okay, but it’s sort of our case, isn’t it? You said you used to work with Soranden, that you went on a few audits together before he became chief.”
“True. Those were obviously high points in my career. But like I said, his death has nothing to do with us.”
Ma seconded that. We were in her office, the one with the Feng shui–enhanced sideboard with its bullet hole, put there by a guy just released from prison who’d popped in with the intention of murdering Maude and was bounced around like a rag doll by my fiancée, Jeri, a year or two before she became my fiancée. He ended up in the hospital then back in lockup and will walk with a pronounced limp the rest of his life. So much for guns when you’re a half-wit.
“We got clients,” Ma reminded us. “Galbraith and Joss. We don’t need this Soranden mess.”
Galbraith and Joss, neither of whom were in the public eye. “Joss” was Evelyn Joss, a fifty-something CPA whose junior partner, Michael Volker, had, without Evelyn’s knowledge or permission, removed $13,600 in June from Joss & Volker’s business account. The other case, Karen Galbraith, was a small-business owner wanting to track down her daughter, Megan, age twenty. Megan’s last known address was somewhere in the San Fernando Valley, northwest of LA. Megan was missing, but not the least bit famous, so my unique skills didn’t apply.
“I want you to take Joss,” Ma said to me. “Lucy and I will have a go at Galbraith.”
Which was boring but made sense. My so-called expertise was in accounting, and funds were missing. Spreadsheets, ledgers, bank accounts, a job not unlike stalking tax cheats for Uncle. $13,600 wasn’t an ordinary accounting error. Volker had taken the money, left a trail a monkey could follow, and Evelyn Joss had learned of the embezzlement, if that’s what it was, only last week.
If that’s what it was … hah. Of course it was, although Volker was allowed to sign on the account so it might not meet the legal definition of embezzlement. But Joss was the senior partner and had, by unwritten agreement, asked Volker to let her know if he removed any significant funds from the account. By any reasonable measure, $13,600 was a significant amount. She hadn’t accosted Volker with the knowledge because maybe he had a good reason for taking the money and she didn’t want to pry or upset the partnership. The lady had a good heart but not a lot of sense. She’d asked around, found that Clary Investigations was the best in Reno, best in the state, and hired Ma to find out what was going on.
Ma and Lucy would handle the Galbraith deal, a missing-person case. Because Megan Galbraith’s last-known address was in the San Fernando Valley—the “Valley”—Lucy and Ma were headed that way. Lucy could use the trip to brush up on her Valley Girl lingo so she could sound fifteen if we were stopped by the highway patrol and maybe get a video of me being put in handcuffs. She and I were going to be apart for a while, and she and Ma were going to talk about me behind my back. Great. Of course, they might just go shopping, in which case I wouldn’t be a blip on the old estrogen radar.
“Do not,” Ma said to me, “dink around with that goddamn Soranden thing.”
Man, I take a lot of unwarranted flak.
“Dink around?” I said.
She gave me the evil eye, the one that executes gophers. “I don’t care if you found the head. Do not so much as breathe in that direction. And watch
out for that slippery damn Fairchild. He’ll drag you into that cluster-whatever-it-is if you let him.”
“Don’t know what Russ could possibly want, but a cop in my pocket, Ma—you don’t think that’s worth something?”
“It’s worth a lot, which is why I’ve got a shitload of cops, politicians, and lawyers owing me plenty, ready to jump the minute I say boo. But Fairchild’s already in your pocket, and mine, and if you fool around with Soranden, you’re fired.”
“Okay, then. Glad we got that cleared up. But—” I turned to Lucy—“open your purse. Let’s see that tissue.”
She reached in, got out the Kleenex. I opened it and set an ant the size of a warthog on Ma’s desk. Actually, we’d measured it and it was an inch and a quarter long. Big.
Ma scooted back in her chair. “Shit! What’s that?”
“An ant. It fell out of Soranden’s skull the night we got it.”
She scooted closer, touched it gingerly with a pencil. “Jesus Hummingbird Christ, that’s huge. Is it really an ant?”
“Yup. All yours if you want it. We kept one and left one for the cops to poke at with their pencils.”
She considered that for a moment. “I might run this guy up to Paul Werner at the biology department at UNR. Never seen anything half this size around here.” She carefully put the ant aside, then looked up at me. “What day of the week is it?”
“See, when you get to a certain age, that’s the kind of thing you can no longer keep track—”
More evil eye. “It’s Saturday, boyo. Guess what days of the week are especially good for tracking down missing persons?”
“In my case, any doggone day of the week. Of course, they have always ended up, you know … dead.”
Lucy laughed. She could be dark too.
“Saturday and Sunday,” Ma said. “People are home a lot in the daytime. And neighbors who might know where a person is, or where they might’ve gone if they’re no longer there. So—”
“So you’ve already got plane tickets for you and Lucy, and you’re headed out today, ready to hit it big tomorrow.”
She tilted her head at me. “Okay, not bad, figuring out the tickets. We’re on Southwest at three forty-five. Gotta get to the airport an hour early for the strip search, which I wouldn’t miss for the world. We gotta be there—” she glanced at a clock on the wall—“in two and a half hours.”
“And, don’t tell me. I’m dropping you two off.”
“That’s right, boyo.”
Lucy hugged my arm. “That’s my gumshoe. Give him a few hints and facts and watch him go to town.”
Ma’s lips twisted. “If that’s all it was, I wouldn’t worry so much. It’s what he does without hints and facts that gives me heartburn.”
* * *
“I need my back scrubbed,” Lucy said.
“Your back is dirty?”
“It’s filthy. I can’t get on a plane like this. I would totally gross out the other passengers. The pilot wouldn’t take off with me like this.” She kicked off her shoes, removed her shirt, then pursed her lips and gave me her Valley Girl voice: “Your clothes are gonna get like totally sopping, mister.”
She sounded fifteen, looked seventeen. She was five-five, had a twenty-three-inch waist, thirty-three-inch hips. A shiver ran up my spine. We’d been together for almost three months, and I still hadn’t gotten used to this.
“Mort?”
“Uh-huh, yup, sopping clothes.”
“Only if you don’t get naked. Naked works better.”
“Right, right.” Spade and Hammer were in a corner of the room, rolling their eyes. Sam and Mike, couple of clowns. We were in my house, in the big upstairs bedroom with a view of the backyard. Lucy had her own place, a studio apartment a mile away, but sleepovers were common.
So I scrubbed her back and a lot of the rest of her. Flexible as she is, she apparently can’t reach her boobs, so I have to do those—which I do even though I complain a lot about the extra work. Then we had to take an afternoon nap, which never works out, napwise, then we had to pop back into the shower, then we had a quick bite to eat because afternoon naps use extra calories. I drove her over to Ma’s, then drove them both to the airport.
No strip search. Ma made it through security unscathed, but Lucy got a second look, not because she looked like a terrorist, but … just because. Or because her ID said she was thirty-one and she doesn’t look old enough to vote. When she really wants to push security buttons, she pitches her voice high and speaks in Valley Girl, looks and acts like a high school sophomore. I tell her it’s not a good idea to push TSA buttons because their sense of humor is modeled after IRS humor, which is modeled after Gestapo humor circa 1940–42, but she pushes buttons just to push and see what’ll happen.
Then the security vortex spit them out the other side and they were gone. I went to the parking garage and got into my car, sat there for a moment in the silence, found myself alone and in sole charge of the Joss investigation.
Hot damn. Three in the afternoon and Great Gumshoe was on the case.
Now what?
CHAPTER THREE
JUDO, OF COURSE. And street-fighting moves never seen in Olympic competition. Monday, Wednesday, and Saturdays were my regular judo days. Lucy’s, too. We tried to miss as few lessons as possible.
Rufus Booth is the last guy you’d want to attack in a dark alley, if you were inclined to do that sort of thing, which I’m not. Rufus is black, an even six feet tall, two hundred ten pounds, so we’re the same weight give or take two pounds, and any sort of similarity ends right there. Rufus could take on four of me and walk away whistling in six seconds. Okay, three of me would run away, and he would have to track them down, which would take time, but in the event those Mort clones decided to stick around and try their luck, Rufus would have them on the ground and in need of serious medical attention in six seconds.
All of which meant he was a hell of a teacher. When I got back from Australia, I thought a little training in self-defense was in order. A phone conversation with Jeri’s brother, Ron, had put me onto Rufus Booth. Ron DiFrazzia was one of North America’s finest judo and karate experts, but he lived over a hundred miles away. Booth was local, with a private dojo in his house on Plumas Street, not half a mile from Ma’s house. Ron had trained under Booth, who had taught him street-fighting moves you would never see in a regular dojo.
A decade before Ron DiFrazzia’s first try at the Olympics, Booth was already a six-time North American judo champ. He’d eventually given up Olympic competition, but he taught takedown moves to RPD and Washoe County sheriff’s deputies and gave private lessons to ex-IRS agents who’d turned gumshoe, so I qualified. Beautiful female art history majors training to be gumshoes also qualified, so Lucy was learning judo too.
Judo is all about repetition. It would be hard to find a better workout. Judo works muscles you didn’t know you had and a few that don’t exist. In addition to being a potential killer, Rufus is also a third-degree sadist, so I knew I was going to get a workout that would leave me limp the rest of the day. I always am. But I didn’t have anything else going on, so I called him up, asked if I could make it an hour early, he said c’mon over, and, like always, he damn near killed me.
“What up?” he said when I walked through the door. “And where’s Lucy?” I had a duffel bag with a fresh gi in it, and a yellow belt Booth had given me when he determined I was no longer a rank-ass beginner. Booth was a ninth-dan judo master as recognized by the Kōdōkan. Not many of those in the United States. By comparison, Ron DiFrazzia was sixth-dan, and there’s not many of those around, either.
“Lucy’s headed for LA with Ma. What’s up is I need the usual, and whatever else you want to show me.”
He grinned like a wolf. Overhead light shined on his bald dome. He was dark black and a hell of a nice guy who played a sax in local clubs with four other brothers, two black, two white.
“Too bad about Lucy,” he said. “Another couple weeks and she’
ll get her yellow. But get you outta them street clothes and I’ll tune you up, bro.”
Well, I’d asked for it, and I got it.
No point in enumerating the number of kicks, punches, and throws I made and defended against. Suffice it to say my legs were so weak when I left I could barely stand, and I might have trouble lifting a fork to my mouth. The love taps Rufus gave me made me feel fully tenderized, ready for the grill.
Repetition. Over and over, faster and faster, defense moves done slowly, then faster, trying for one smooth motion. Rufus was big into defense. In fact, Rufus was all about self-defense. He didn’t teach kicks and punches so someone could go out and whip ass. The point was, his students went out and hopefully didn’t get their asses whipped. That philosophy didn’t work well in Olympic competition. Two guys circling each other like two bears, both in full defensive mode, could starve to death before anyone made contact.
“Punch through your target,” Rufus said. “But not two feet through like you hear sometimes. Real shock and power is in that last few inches when your joints lock out. So hit four inches through a face, elbow, groin, knee, whatever. Now I want to feel your punch, not some wet-noodle love tap that’s got no sting in it. Gimme a piston, and if you give me a dumb-ass windmilling roundhouse, I’ll flatten you.”
Okay, so no dumb-ass windmilling roundhouse punches. A hundred piston punches with each arm and leg. Then a hundred more. Then a hundred more. Shitfire. And that was after three useful self-defense moves done a hundred times each, to stop an attack by an asshole gangbanger—Rufus’s non-PC description—who didn’t go by Queensbury Rules. Defense against a knife, a club, and a windmilling brawler. Easiest was defending against a brawler, hardest was someone with a club, like a baseball bat or a length of iron pipe.
At the end of the session as I was changing back into street clothes with arms and legs that no longer felt connected to the rest of me, he asked, “What’s your number one defensive tactic, Angel?”
“Avoid trouble, run if you can.”
“Got that right. Remember it. All this punching and kicking shit is last resort. Ain’t no dishonor in runnin’, ’specially if you know you could probably kick ass.”
Gumshoe Rock Page 3