Shadow Of Greed

by Nora Kane

  “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

  “I said I’d make it worth your while.”

  “Okay, my hand’s empty.”

  Margot took her palm off the elbow but kept a grip on her wrist as Trixie pulled her hand out from under the cushion.

  Once Margot saw she wasn’t holding anything, she pointed to the other side of the sofa and said, “Sit over there.”

  Trixie did as she was told.

  Margot lifted the cushion and found a little twenty-two semi-automatic. She picked it up and put it in her purse.

  “Popular gun,” she said, thinking it was the same caliber as Katrina Stone’s pistol.

  “It’s not mine,” Trixie said.

  “I don’t really care.”

  “They’ll be mad if you take it.”

  “Once we’re done, I’ll put it back.”

  Trixie rubbed her face where the door hit her, “You better not have given me a black eye.”

  “Why? I bet you make more that way especially at the dump you're working. Stay where you are.”

  Margot went into the kitchen and found a bag of frozen peas in the freezer. She came back and tossed them to Trixie who put the bag against her face.

  “You know, I know a dozen guys who would kick your ass for me at just the hint I might screw them.”

  “Are they here right now? If not, I’d keep that to myself. If I’m going to get my ass kicked over this I might as well break that arm.”

  “You’re not very nice.”

  “That makes two of us. You were with Dr. Barger last night.”

  “You telling me or asking me?”

  “Telling. You left early. Why?”

  “So he could afford me.”

  “So he could afford you?”

  “Yeah, that’s what he told me. He wasn’t wrong. I’m not cheap.”

  “He had a client.”

  “I guess.”

  “What kind of client?”

  “Someone who needed medical attention but didn’t want to go to the hospital.”

  “A gunshot.”

  Trixie shrugged. “Probably, they have to report those to the police, so that’s what he usually gets.”

  “He tell you that?”

  “Yeah, he likes to brag about what a great surgeon he is.”

  “He talk about that a lot?”

  “Guys who like to do coke tend to talk. Guys on coke who think highly of themselves tend to talk about themselves.”

  “Did he tell you how he lost his license?”

  “Something about how everybody in San Francisco is an asshole.”

  “That and he killed his San Francisco version of you when she tried to blackmail him,” Margot told her. In addition to the address, Mal had sent over some old newspaper articles detailing the end of Barger’s’ days as a legitimate surgeon.

  “I think they do worse than take your medical license for that.”

  “They couldn’t prove it.”

  “Then why’d he lose his license?”

  “He killed her too late. She’d already ratted him out.”

  Trixie nodded. “I’m not surprised, but when you start blackmailing people, you have to know they won’t like it.”

  “Did you see his client?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, he doesn’t want me and his work to mix. I guess after his last experience I don’t blame him. If he gets on the wrong side of the kind of people he works with these days, they’ll do a lot worse than take his license. If it helps, I saw his car. Doc made me wait for my Uber on the corner, but my Uber was slow and his client was fast.”

  “You saw the car but not him?”

  “Doc has them pull into the garage. It’s more discreet if they aren’t parked on the street.”

  “What did he drive?”

  “One of those Chryslers.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “It was black…it didn’t look new but not old either, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do. Do you know which Chrysler it was?”

  “A three hundred I think. Nice car.”

  “What time did he arrive?”

  “Around midnight. I couldn’t get more specific than that.”

  “Two doors or four?”

  Trixie thought about that for a second before saying, “Four.”

  “You remember anything else?”

  “No, if my Uber hadn’t gotten lost, I couldn’t have told you that much.”

  Margot stayed silent while she thought it over for a second.

  “Do I get my money?” Trixie asked.

  Margot reached in her purse and took five twenties out of her wallet. She wasn’t sure how to justify it, but she made a mental note to put these hundred bucks onto Dean Stone’s bill. Margot folded the money and handed it to Trixie.

  “Was that worth beating me up?”

  Margot considered telling her a sore face was not anywhere near getting beat up but instead said, “Would it help if I apologized?”

  “Yeah, it kind of would.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry I called you pig dick breath.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  “I take it that you’re not going to tell the Doc I talked to you? I don’t want to end up like that girl up North.”

  “He’ll never know I was here. Unless you tell him.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  Margot nodded and took the gun out of her purse. She ejected the magazine and made sure there wasn’t a bullet in the chamber. She tossed the magazine into an empty pizza box and left the gun by the door.

  “You didn’t have to do that. I wasn’t going to shoot you.”

  “Better safe than sorry.”

  “I was telling the truth about how he likes to talk about himself.”

  “I believed you.”

  “The thing is, he’ll talk about this guy he saw last night. No names or what he looked like, but he’ll tell me about what he did to him, mostly so he can talk about how great he is.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I could use another hundred without a kick to the face if you're interested. I’ll probably see him tonight after my shift at the club.”

  “I am interested,” Margot said as she got a business card out of her purse. She handed it to Trixie. “Put the number in your phone and then get rid of the card. You don’t want Barger finding that.”

  Trixie nodded and read from the card, “Private detective? Cool. How do you get a job like that?”

  “You ruin all your other options.”

  “No shit, that’s how I got my job too.”

  “Call me anytime.”

  “You got it Margot,” Trixie said before she blew a kiss.

  Margot walked out, not sure if Trixie was just messing with her or not.

  Chapter 9

  Margot spent the drive over to Mal’s ‘safe house’ trying to not think about how she had used Trixie as a punching bag for no real reason other than she could. She had plenty of time to think since, in trying to make sure she wasn’t followed, she turned a fifteen-minute drive into a forty-five-minute one. She could think of multiple plays she could have employed before kicking in the door. Anything she told herself to justify it just sounded like the things she’d heard out of Randy’s mouth—or even worse, her dad’s—after they’d spoken with their fists instead of their words.

  On the way to the pay-by-the-week motel Mal used when he needed to be scarce, she stopped by a taco shop and picked up a couple of Carne Asada burritos. The fact Mal had a regular arrangement with the owner of the Seashell Motor Lodge should have been a red flag back in the day when they were a couple. It should be a red flag today when he worked for her. Things like the Seashell Motor Lodge arrangement made it hard to keep believing he wasn’t as dirty as OSPD thought he was.

  Because by now the police could be looking for her car—and they were definitel
y looking for Mal—she parked a block away on the street and walked down an alley to get to the Seashell. Someone smart might figure it out, but it was better than parking in front of Mal’s room and more or less advertising where he was to any cop who drove by.

  She knocked on the door and said, “It’s me, Margot.”

  “Door’s open.”

  She walked in and found him sitting on the bed staring mindlessly at the television, his phone was on the nightstand and a chrome-plated Colt Python in his lap. She was glad she had identified herself before walking in.

  “New gun?”

  “Yeah, well new to me, anyway.”

  “I’m guessing you didn’t buy it two weeks ago,” Margot said, referring to the mandatory two-week waiting period to buy a handgun.

  Mal grinned like he always did when he was spewing out a line of bullshit, “Of course I did, otherwise it’d be illegal.”

  Margot decided she really didn’t want to know where and how Mal found himself a hand cannon. Instead she asked, “How are you feeling?”

  “Like some asshole shot me. Is that a Carne Asada burrito in the bag?”

  “Sure is.”

  “Then let's eat. I’m starving.”

  Margot decided that eating first was the way to go since Mal could get kind of edgy when he hadn’t eaten in a while. She left the food with him and went to the vending machine by the front desk and picked up a couple of Cokes. When she got back, Mal had eaten half his burrito.

  Mal waited until they both finished eating before he asked, “How was Trixie?”

  “You say that like you know her.”

  Mal shrugged. “We’ve met.”

  Margot decided not to tell him about kicking in the door and threatening to break Trixie’s arm. The last thing she wanted was to be judged by a guy who could acquire illegal weapons in less than an afternoon.

  “She didn’t know much, but he definitely had a patient and he drove a black Chrysler 300.”

  “Is that a sedan? On the large side?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Four-door?”

  “Yeah.”

  Mal smiled. “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  “Could be our car. Matches the description.”

  Margot took that in and then asked, “Just out of curiosity, did you take any pictures of Lefty’s parking lot?”

  “You mean some shots of Katrina’s car with Lefty’s neon sign flashing in the background to establish she was there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Of course I did,” Mal replied, sounding a little bit offended she had asked. “Didn’t you look at them? I emailed them all to you last night before everything went crazy.”

  “Sorry, I haven’t checked. I don’t know if you noticed, but things got a little crazy today too.”

  “Fair. When I get dragged in for questioning in a murder investigation I sometimes forget to check my email too. It doesn’t matter anyway; her mystery date didn’t drive a Chrysler 300. I would have noticed.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of the Chrysler being there.”

  “You think he was stalking her?”

  “He didn’t show up at her house until after she got home.”

  “True, but we don’t know if he came by earlier.”

  “Still, might be worth a look.”

  Mal pulled his phone from his front pocket and pulled up the pictures from the night before. Margot sat next to him so she could see them.

  “No Chrysler in this one,” Mal told her. “Doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. He could be on the other end of the lot or parked across the street.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Across the street, but I was inside for a while, so he could have parked without me knowing it.”

  “It was a long shot.”

  Mal scrolled through a bunch of shots of Katrina and the unnamed man having dinner and then stopped.

  “Here’s lover boy getting into his car, not a Chrysler in sight.”

  Mal flipped to the next photo and they both saw it. Katrina was getting into her convertible, parked next to her was what looked like it could be a Chrysler 300.

  “It wasn’t there before,” Margot said. “He arrived while she was there.”

  “Or someone else with a big black sedan did.”

  Margot got her phone and googled pictures of a Chrysler 300. She found plenty of different views on the Chrysler website, including one from the back.

  “Looks like the same car to me,” she said.

  “Sure does, that doesn’t mean it’s our guy.”

  “True, but it’s worth looking into. If it is him that means he showed up after they were there. That could mean he was tipped off about where she was and what she was doing.”

  “A guy like Dean Stone putting out a hit on his cheating wife while he’s out of town makes sense, but if that’s the situation, why hire you? Paying a witness to show up seems like a dumb play and Dean Stone isn’t dumb.”

  “Yeah, except it’s working out. All the blame is falling on you.”

  “Stone might know I work for you, but there’s no way he’d have known it’d be me last night.”

  “Maybe they wanted to set me up.”

  “You wouldn’t make a good fall guy. I would, but he’d go to me directly if he wanted me there. It would have worked too.”

  “Maybe I was supposed to be there to confirm his alibi.”

  “Could be, but there are a lot of easier ways to set up an alibi.”

  Margot looked at the photo again, “Can you get the plate?”

  Mal enlarged the picture and then smiled, “Most of it.”

  Margot smiled too. With the make and model, a partial would be enough.

  “I guess I need to call my one remaining fan in the department and see if she can run a plate.”

  Mal didn’t say anything. Instead, he put the gun back on his lap and put his right hand on top of it, just like he’d had it when she walked in. It seemed unnecessary.