by Bruce Most
No, no, that “we” didn’t make sense. Benedict quit Zingano Security after a falling out with Dominic, weeks before his murder. That suggested the “we” was a different group of dark riders. Did the union boss suspect Benedict was moonlighting with his own ring—and I was one of them?
Chapter 11
Perdue and I finished roll call and were headed for our vehicle the next afternoon when Hector Diaz’s parole officer intercepted us.
“Diaz didn’t show for his appointment yesterday,” said Simon Fitch, half-eying Perdue. “Which means he’s broken parole. I’ve been trying to track him down but I can’t find his ass anywhere.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do?” I said.
“Well, you were looking for him. You ever catch up with him?”
I shot a glance at Perdue, cautioning him with my eyes, then looked back at Fitch.
“No,” I said. “The guy’s dropped off the planet.”
Fitch worried the matchstick in his mouth. “Shit. This ain’t gonna look good on my record. A murder suspect—a cop killer—skips on my watch.”
“Doesn’t seem your fault,” said Perdue.
“Tell that to my boss.”
Sergeant Hawkins and two uniforms walked out of the muster room. We fell silent. Hawkins nodded as he passed, his eyes checking out Fitch dressed in civvies but wearing a .38 holstered on his hip.
“Would you guys ask around for Diaz while you’re on shift?” Fitch asked when Hawkins got out of earshot. “Call me right away if you get a lead.” He handed me a slip of paper with his office and home phone numbers scribbled on it.
“Sure,” I said. “We’re taking a short five at Al’s and then we’re hitting the streets.”
That was our routine, and the routine of many patrol cops, to take a coffee break before starting our shift. A long five for dinner came several hours later.
Fitch glanced warily at Perdue, then nodded for me to separate myself from my partner.
Outside, the parole officer leaned against a curbed two-door 1946 blue Chevy coupe. He fidgeted as he spoke. “I didn’t want to appear rude to your partner or nothing, but I don’t know him. Maybe he’s a straight guy, maybe he ain’t. Maybe I can’t trust you, either.”
“Decide,” I said, annoyed.
Shaded under a pork-pie hat that looked silly on him, his dark brown eyes blinked rapidly. “What concerns me is not so much that Hector missed his meeting. He ain’t never been what you call a model parolee. But what you said last week, that he might be hiding because he’s worried cops will kill him for murdering your partner . . . ”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I’m hearing another possible reason for his disappearance.”
“What’s that?”
“My sources say Hector might be working with some crooked cops. Fencing, helping them burglarize stores, that sort of shit. Definitely not allowed in the parolee handbook.”
Shit, where the hell had he picked up that? I’d said nothing to him at his office.
“Sounds like bullshit to me,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s fucking crazy that cops would be bustin’ into places. But something scared Hector into hiding. I’m just worried that if those rumors are true, he might already be a dead man. We gotta to find him quick.”
Perdue walked up as Fitch drove away. “You two apparently met before,” he said.
“Yeah. When I first went huntin’ for Diaz.”
“Why the secret pow-wow?”
“He seemed to think I wasn’t being candid in front of you,” I lied.
“Did you tell him about the other night when you caught up with Diaz?”
“Hell, no. I don’t want word getting back to homicide. Especially Bock. And especially if shit goes south with Hector.”
“Are we going to look for him like the PO wanted?”
“I’m not going out of my way. But we can ask around.”
We hit the streets. Our first stop was out of our way: the 3300 block of Vallejo where we’d caught Diaz with his young poontang. No signs of his red pickup. The rest of the shift, we asked around about the Mex. No one had seen him or knew where he might be.
I said nothing to Perdue, but the reality was, the parole officer’s sources claiming Diaz was fencing for dirty cops confirmed my earlier information. Diaz’s cousin said Hector boasted of doing just that. When I cornered Diaz, he’d made it clear he’d be murdered if he ratted out any dirty cops, that he was willing to spend the rest of his life in prison before doing that.
The parole officer’s fears were well-founded. Hector Diaz might already be a dead man.
And if he was, I had a growing suspicion of who might have killed him.
The next day, while Paula took Olivia to the pediatrician for a regular checkup, I retrieved the shoebox where I’d hidden Benedict’s notebook. I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and dug through the stiff, bloody pages. The last time through, I’d seen nothing linking Benedict to Diaz. This time, I focused on possible links to Zingano, Wes Jackson, and their Jet X laundromats.
But other than the phone number to Zingano Security I’d seen the first time, I came up empty.
Restless, and at a temporary dead end regarding Hector Diaz, I walked to a pay phone at the nearby branch library. While revisiting the notebook, I’d come across the initials M.R. and decided to again try the unlisted phone number for Marcus Raschke. This time the identical voice answered that had answered the first time I’d called.
“Professor Raschke—you are Marcus Raschke, right?” I said.
A long pause. “Who is this?”
“Detective Lancaster with the Denver Police Department.”
I didn’t want to use my own name, and I was curious whether the name of the elusive detective who’d called Benedict shortly before he died might draw a reaction from the professor. It drew an angry tone.
“Are you the one who called the other day?”
“Yes.”
“How did you find this number?”
“On the body of a dead man.”
The home of Marcus Raschke was a two-story brick affair in the University Park neighborhood. I stepped onto its large front porch and knocked. Next door, an old woman sitting on a porch fringed with bird feeders scrutinized me. I tipped my hat to block my face and knocked a second time. Moments later, a woman’s voice behind the door asked who I was.
“A police detective. Your husband is expecting me.”
Her muffled voice asked for identification. I’d intentionally not worn my uniform but had brought along my badge. I flashed it in front of the decorative glass pane edging the door. The badge was silver, not the gold shield of a detective, but hopefully she wouldn’t know the difference.
A woman in her thirties I assumed to be the former Miss Missouri opened the door and ushered me in. It was 11:15 in the morning, but Kim Raschke looked dressed for a fast night on the town. All ivory and pearls and jasmine perfume, blood-red fingernails, a close-fitting sequined half-hat that framed a short bouffant hairstyle favored by movie stars, and enough makeup to cover the entire right half of the Rockettes’ kick line. Headed out for one of her luncheons, no doubt. From what I’d read, she was something of a swell on the charity and political circuits, organizing balls, raffles, and glittering fundraisers for her husband’s pet causes.
Yet she carried a certain ragged quality to her. Her eyes were red and puffy below false eyelashes, as though she hadn’t slept in days. Her whole body, as sweetly as it was assembled, trembled in the late April air. What with her husband branded as a commie across the front pages, maybe her charity and political work was turning to dust. It didn’t help that she herself was suspected of Communist leanings, according to news stories, having once been a student of Raschke’s, becoming so enamored with his teachings she’d married him.
She gave my brown gabardine suit and fedora the once over. Clearly not up to her standards, but she offered to take the hat, nonetheless. Perhaps with the plan to d
eposit it in the trash. I kept my hat. She instructed me to wait and disappeared into the dark interior of the house.
Waiting like a good boy, I removed my hat and fiddled with the brim while I chewed on the lie I’d just told Paula. Again, I felt like a heel, but there seemed no other choice. Truth wasn’t an option these days. I needed to see Raschke as soon as possible after Paula and Olivia returned from the pediatrician’s, and we only had one car. I couldn’t leave without explanation. Not this far ahead of my shift. Yet I’d already milked the excuse that homicide wanted to chat with me about Benedict’s murder. If I were to continue digging into his murder, these off-duty situations would keep arising. I needed a more durable story.
When they returned home, I told Paula I needed to go in early because homicide now wanted my help investigating Benedict’s death.
“I thought they arrested their killer, this Diaz guy,” she said with immediate skepticism.
“He remains their number one, but as you know they let him go for now for lack of evidence. They need my help to drum up more evidence to put him back in jail. I’ve got the street sources. Better sources than they have. They figure I might find people who would squeal on Diaz. Killers boast more than you might think. Hell, homicide doesn’t even know where Diaz is at the moment, so I’m also supposed to help them find him.”
“A special assignment?” she said, distrust in her voice. A special assignment was the story I’d used during my unsanctioned investigation into the Seth Rawlins case, and that cover story hadn’t worked out well.
“I wouldn’t call it a special assignment, hon,” I said. Most of it could be done during my regular shift hours, I explained, but sometimes it would require extra hours—like today.
Distrust spread from her voice to her eyes. Yet I couldn’t tell her the truth. I couldn’t tell anyone what happened that night at the pawnshop. Not until I found the truth behind it.
“Are you getting paid extra for this?” she asked.
“No. But it’ll pay bennies with the department. Help me make detective some day. That means more money and less danger than street work.”
I’d left the house dressed in my patrol uniform, still unsure whether Paula accepted my story. On the way to Raschke’s, I stopped at a gas station restroom and changed from my uniform into my suit and hat I’d sneaked into the car. I could hardly show up at Raschke’s in my patrol uniform pretending to be Detective Lancaster.
Mrs. Raschke returned from the dark depths and lead me to a large study fronting the street. The study exhibited the ambiance of a funeral parlor. A thin shaft of crumpled morning light struggled through a crack in the drawn, heavy drapes, falling onto an oriental rug in the center of the room. Stray patches of light caught book spines and Japanese scroll paintings. The rest of the study shriveled in deep shadows.
At the far end, farthest from the front window, squatted a large wood desk with claw feet. Behind stacks of papers and books, and a glowing green banker’s lamp, a man with dark unruly hair sat hunched over, writing furiously. The lamp cast shadows over half of his thin face. In the weak light, it was difficult to gauge his size, but my sense was I wouldn’t want him leading point through a rowdy Friday night beer crowd on Larimer Street. For a man in seclusion, he looked dressed for one of his professorial lectures—a dark blue suit and vest, coat buttoned, and a bow tie. All he was missing were students.
Kim Raschke disappeared, but her husband kept writing, as if he had mere minutes to live and this was his last will and testament. I walked to his desk and stood hat in hand, the other hand in my trouser pocket fiddling with a book of matches. Maybe he was one of those ivory domes off in his own little world and didn’t realize a police detective was standing in front of him.
I cleared my throat.
“I’ll be with you in a moment, detective,” he said, his dark fountain pen never breaking stride on a white tablet, small, illegible letters racing to the end of the line. He hit a period, set down his pen, and looked up. The shadows on his face moved. Where the light struck, the flesh looked blanched and haggard. The newspapers said he was forty-one, but he looked ten years older.
“One must bottle these moments of inspiration or they are lost forever,” he said. “My apologies for the badge check at the door. I can’t be too careful these days. What did you say your name was?”
“Detective Lancaster.”
“So what may I do for the Denver Police Department?” He didn’t bother to rise or offer a hand. “Has Crawford Kane made another one of his slanderous accusations?”
“We’re investigating the murder of a police officer.”
Raschke shook his head in disbelief. “I’m not only accused of being a communist agent, now I’m accused of being a murderer?”
“No one is accusing you of being involved in the officer’s death, professor. But we found your unlisted phone number on his body.”
“What was his name?”
“Benedict Greene. Someone murdered him two weeks ago at a pawnshop. You must have read about it.”
Everyone except those living in caves must have read about it.
Raschke sank back in his chair, suddenly subdued. “I don’t pay attention to the news. It’s filled with lies and trash. You said he was murdered?”
“Yes.”
His face shrank deeper into shadow. “A tragedy. A victim, no doubt, of the pervasive moral blindness insidious in our society today. We have gangsters like Mister Cohen and Mister Costello, and public officials like the recent mayor of New York City and Senator McCarthy, and you can’t tell any of them apart.”
“I wouldn’t know. All I care is we have a dead police officer and a case to solve.”
Raschke spread his hands like a priest offering benediction. “I sympathize with your task, detective. However, I remain perplexed as to why you perceive I might be able to assist you.”
“I’m puzzled now why Officer Greene had your unlisted phone number, yet you’ve never heard of him.”
The professor held his look of bewilderment longer than necessary. “I have no idea. I changed to an unlisted number two months ago due to the harassing phone calls. Including death threats. I can only speculate that in the course of this officer’s official duties someone provided my telephone number, though I don’t know why. Was he investigating me?”
“Not that we are aware of. Do you have reason to believe he was?”
He scoffed. “These days, everyone is investigating me. Everyone claims to know something about Marcus Raschke, though few have the spine to admit my acquaintance.”
“He carried your phone number and initials for a reason.”
The ex-professor looked less composed than when I’d first entered the study.
“Probably something to do with the McCarthyites,” he said. “They’ve infiltrated everywhere. Or the Tafties. One must never forget the Tafties. They’re McCarthyites without the chutzpah. They’re all nothing but a mob of patriotic philistines. They believe they are God’s legionnaires. Most of all, Crawford Kane. He’s so philistine he makes McCarthy look like a third cousin of Lenin. Teaching that course on communism is what triggered this hysteria. Idiocy. Pure idiocy. The Soviet Union is the largest nation in the world, yet Kane and his henchmen believe that the less we understand them, the better we’ll fight them. Medical schools teach students about syphilis and gonorrhea. That doesn’t mean they advocate sexual diseases. On the other hand, I can understand why Kane would not want syphilis discussed.”
I intercepted the professor in one of the rare moments he took a breath. “Where were you the night of April twelfth?”
The professor was growing testy at my questions. “Heavens, I don’t recall. That was two weeks ago.”
“The day after Truman fired General MacArthur.”
“Ahh, how could I forget that day? It was one of the few glorious days I’ve experienced these last months.” He burrowed under a pile of papers and dug up a small weekly calendar. He flipped back several pages. �
��No notation is written down for the twelfth, detective. I would conclude, therefore, I was here. I rarely venture out of this house, as you can imagine.”
“Then you weren’t visiting a pawnshop that night over on Acoma?”
Raschke harrumphed. “Definitely not.”
I didn’t believe him. Not that I suspected him of lying in ambush in the pawnshop. He didn’t strike me as a brazen a killer. Yet I didn’t buy his claim that he didn’t recognize Benedict’s name or had no idea why the dead officer had his phone number. I sensed it in his body movements, his eyes when I could make them out in the shadows. Yet for now, there was nowhere else to go. I would need to investigate Marcus Raschke further through other channels. Maybe Ellen Greene would recognize his name.
“Thank you for your time, professor.” On my way out, I stopped to admire one of the Japanese scroll paintings, this one depicting a young woman in bright traditional Japanese dress holding a parasol. At least I guessed it was traditional dress. I didn’t know Japanese art from barn art.
“From the 1800s,” said Raschke. “Ink on silk.”
I turned toward him. “Now I remember. You served as an administrator at that Jap relocation camp. Camp Amache.”
“Is this another area of your investigation? What I did during the war?”
“I read it in the newspapers.”
The professor stood, as preparing to lecture students. “Then you need to get it right, detective,” he admonished. “Amache was not a Jap camp. It was a Japanese-American camp. It was not a relocation camp, either, though that’s what our government euphemistically called the camps. It was a concentration camp. Like all the other so-called relocation camps in this country. Their sole purpose was to imprison loyal American citizens born to the misfortune of being of Japanese descent during a time of national hysteria. The government called them ‘residents,’ or ‘evacuees,’ as if they were being moved out of harm’s way in a war zone. Even the word ‘camp’ is deceptive. It evokes the great outdoors where you pitch your tent and cook over an open fire for pleasure. This camp was surrounded by barbed wire, armed troops, and gun towers.”