by Bruce Most
“People he buys off?” Perdue said nothing. “I’m not looking to make trouble, Moroni. I want in on things.”
Disillusionment clouded Perdue’s face., I realized he was as disappointed in me as I was in him. But I couldn’t let that stop my plan.
“Cough it up, Moroni. How did you get mixed up with him?”
He sighed. “I was on duty one night, me and another guy. I’d gotten a tip the previous week that some asshole was roughing up hookers. Not paying them, then roughing ’em up. A real shitass. Got this from an informant I’d developed, just like you taught me.”
At least he learned something good from me.
“We find this guy working over a hooker in a cheap hotel on Colfax. Drunk as shit. Came at me and I took him down. Hauled in his ass. Felt proud. Next day he’s out before I finish breakfast. Seems he was the son of the deputy mayor. I protested, but was warned by command, in no uncertain terms, there would be no case. And I could forget promotions if I ever did it again. No chance of making detective. You know what that’s like. I mean, how the hell was I supposed to know who the kid was?”
“How did that lead you to Dominic?” I pressed.
“He learned what happened. Union boss and all. Said he’d go to bat for me. Got me back in the department’s good graces. Got me switched to Morals. But he wanted something in return. By then I was beginning to think wearing our ‘glory badge’ was a lot of crap. Jesus, Joe, either we enforce the laws or we don’t. Sure, we overlook the small stuff. But assholes like this guy—Jesus!”
I nodded sympathetically. “It happens more than it should.”
“Did you hear about that patrolman over in District Two? Reports a couple of cops for stealing from a meat locker. Caught ’em red-handed. It goes up the chain of command. How far, no one knows, but word comes back to drop it. The two cops skate, but the honest cop starts gettin’ shunned at roll call. Guys won’t work with him. Call him a stool pigeon when they pass him. The guy quits.”
I’d heard the same story though I was never certain it was true.
“When I heard that story, I said fuck it,” Perdue said. “If I can’t be an honest, effective cop, I might as well be a rich one. I went along with Zingano.” His head dropped in surrender. “I took the big dive.”
He fell into abject silence. Part of me felt for him. It was uphill too many days, being an honest cop. An endless and dispiriting war with criminals, and sometimes your own people. When I watched saints like Benedict go bad . . .
I realized now why Perdue had changed so much since I’d last partnered with him—the smoking and drinking, the decline in his body. His life had gone to hell. Another time, I might have pushed him to bail on Zingano and go clean. For all he’d done for me in the Seth Rawlins case, he deserved better. But I had more immediate worries.
“How do you guys set up a job?” I asked.
“We usually case a place while we’re on duty. Assess security with the owner, then hit the business at night. If we set off an alarm, we’ll wait for dispatch to put the call out on the radio and then take the call ourselves. Then we heist the place at our leisure. Hell, sometimes we investigate the very jobs we pull. Gives us a chance to remove fingerprints, any incriminating evidence we accidentally left.”
Perdue stopped and stared off into the darkness. His shoulders slumped. “It’s so easy.”
“How does Zingano know which cops to trust? To bring in on these jobs?”
Perdue shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe he sizes guys up through the police union. Finds guys in a bind with the department, or disillusioned like me. He seems to sense which officers are open to becoming burglars. Some guys don’t want to get that involved, but they can be counted on to provide support.”
Could I persuade Zingano to trust me?
“How did Benedict get hooked up with them? How’d he even know about you guys?”
“Seek and ye shall find.”
God, was it really that easy? “He came to them?”
“That’s what I heard. Needed a fistful of money, fast, and was willing to steal for it. Wes Jackson was drunk one night, gloatin’ over how Benedict wasn’t any more saintly than the rest of us. Everybody’s crooked when you get down to it, he said.”
“Any idea why Benedict needed the money?”
Perdue looked at me in surprise. “He didn’t tell you? His partner?”
My eyes focused hard on Perdue. “Partners don’t always tell their partners things.”
Perdue looked away, embarrassed. “I don’t know why he needed money. I wasn’t involved like you seem to think I was, Joe. I was just the hired help. I never worked any jobs with Benedict.”
“I wouldn’t think Zingano would have trusted him. Not with his straight-arrow reputation.”
“Musta seen something in him.”
“They had a falling out several weeks before Benedict died. What was that over?”
“I dunno. That same night Wes was drunk, he and Dominic got into it over Greene quitting. I gathered Jackson had objected to bringing in Greene in the first place. Didn’t trust him. He told Dominic that guys couldn’t just leave. Said they needed to do something about it.”
“Do what?”
“He didn’t say. Dominic told Wes to shut up at that point. There were others of us around.”
“What about Hector Diaz?”
Perdue cocked his head. “What about him?”
“Did they express the same concern about Diaz after he was brought in for questioning for killing Benedict? That they needed to do something about him?”
Perdue appeared appalled at my question. “Why would they do that?”
“Because Diaz fenced for them.”
“He did?”
I ground out my cigarette with my shoe and let out a long sigh for Perdue’s benefit. “Forget it. I’ll go along with Zingano if that’s what I gotta do. Tell him what I need. He can take his fucking cut.”
“Tell me the job. What is this place you want to hit?”
“No, no details. I don’t want Dominic crowding me out. Too much money. I give out the details only to those who need to know when they need to know them.”
“All right. I’ll talk to him.”
I sighed into the darkness. God help me.
Chapter 26
Before my shift the next day, I went hunting again for Kim Raschke. We needed to discuss her husband and Camp Amache.
I started with the bar where I’d last found her. She wasn’t there, but the bartender gave me a tip and I tracked her to a photographer’s studio in a rundown part of town. She was sitting stiffly on the edge of a fuchsia Davenport fronted by a black, asymmetrical coffee table decorated with a bowl of white mums. A magazine lay open across her gray skirt. She adjusted herself on the Davenport and patted at her hair. “Am I okay, Jack?”
“Glorious, babe, glorious,” said the photographer, a muscular man in blue jeans and thinning hair. “Now leaf through the magazine, Kimmy.”
She did as instructed while he snapped several photos with the air of a man making great art. He stopped. “Move the table out a few inches, Peter. Can’t crowd the Davenport. It’s our star. Gotta make the client happy. I’m getting glare, too. Turn that lower lamp shade outward.”
His assistant pulled the coffee table a few inches away from Mrs. Raschke. He adjusted one of three bullet-shaped metal shades protruding from a pogo stick pole lamp next to the sectional.
Kim Raschke took the opportunity to touch up her coral lipstick and check her eye makeup in a compact. Her eyes caught me watching her from the entrance to the ground-floor studio. She snapped her compact shut. The photographer saw her stiffen and he looked my way.
“Can I help you?” he said in a tone that didn’t offer help.
“I need to speak to Mrs. Raschke.”
“We’re in the middle of a shoot, pal. Come back later.”
I was wearing my suit, so I flashed my badge. “I’m in the middle of a murder investigation—pal. Your sh
oot can wait.”
“It’s all right, Jack,” she said, rising. “I’ll only be a few minutes.”
Mrs. Raschke approached, stepping over a tangle of black wires. A wide red belt, white blouse, and black pumps set off her gray skirt.
“I wasn’t aware you modeled,” I said.
“I have off and on for several years. Since Marcus died, I thought I would—what is it you want now?” she said in a hushed voice.
“I have questions concerning your husband and a dead Japanese girl.”
She sucked in a breath. “I’ll be outside, Jack,” she said huskily. We stepped onto the cracked sidewalk, trailed by the photographer’s voice telling her to make it snappy.
She held her head up, brown eyes squinting in the glare of the sun. Her skin looked coarse and granular in the harsh light. “Are you getting any closer to finding the people who killed my husband?”
“I am. Did you live with him while he worked at Camp Amache?”
Distaste wrinkled her mouth. “Not at the camp itself, god, no. We rented an apartment in Granada. I refused to live in those primitive barracks they called home for the staff.”
“Were you aware your husband was having an affair with a young camp internee named Mitsu Nakatoshi, the Jap girl who was murdered?”
Her eyes squinted a little harder in the glare. “Yes, I was aware. Marcus did have a way with women.”
“There were others at Amache?”
“Only her, I believe. But there were others over the years. At least two Negroes, a Mexican, and a Chinese. I lost count of the Caucasians. When it came to screwing, Marcus passionately lived up to his liberal ideals.”
In light of the shriveled man I’d seen in his study, I found the idea of Raschke as Casanova difficult to swallow. I didn’t bother to ask why the hell she hadn’t divorced him. “How did you find out he was having an affair with the Jap girl?”
“He told me.”
I paused. “He told you?”
She smiled sadly and looked down the street, as if answers from the past lay there. “Marcus always told me about his affairs. When they were over. He would come to me like a little boy, blubbering that he’d never do it again, begging forgiveness. And I always forgave him.” Her voice turned bitter. “Of course, he always did it again.”
“Where would your husband and the Jap girl meet?”
“A motel room or another apartment in town, I guess. It wasn’t our place.”
“Were you aware she was pregnant when she was killed?”
“Yes.”
“Pregnant by your husband?”
“He denied it, but I suspected it was him.”
“Did he tell you he beat her to death?”
She snapped her face toward me. “Marcus didn’t kill her!”
“Why are you so sure?”
“He told me he didn’t.”
“You believed him?”
“Yes, I believed him.”
“The same man who cheated on you and beat you?”
She looked away. “The beatings were . . . nothing.”
“Nothing in what way?”
She strangled a laugh. “You just want to hear the gory details.”
“How bad did he beat you? Capable of killing you?”
Her eyes turned hard and her voice dispassionate, as though she were speaking of another woman. “One time he broke my nose and some ribs. In one of his better moods, he shoved my head in the toilet after he’d urinated in it. He enjoyed calling me a bitch and a whore, and he never allowed me to have friends around.”
Just as suddenly, her eyes softened. “But as I said before, it was my fault. I deserved it. I should have been a better wife.”
“Your fault, Mrs. Raschke? Your husband apparently beat the Jap girl on multiple occasions. Perhaps beat her to death. He also may have been involved in another murder that occurred a few weeks ago, here in Denver. I believe someone in turn murdered your husband, and I suspect all three murders are connected. His abuse of you was not your fault.”
She stared. “What other murder?”
“I can’t divulge that at the moment. The point is, your husband was a violent man. Violence followed him like a shadow. Why are you so certain he didn’t kill her?”
“A few days after they found her body, Marcus confessed about the affair. He admitted to me that he’d hit her that night. She’d told him she was pregnant with his child. He swore to me it wasn’t his. He claimed it was one of the Kibei. But I suspected he knew it was his. Whoever got her pregnant, Marcus flew into a rage and beat her. Pretty bad, I gathered, though he tried to minimize it.”
“This was at the camp?”
“No. In town. Where they usually screwed their brains out. He said one of the camp guards helped him sneak her back in. I think he was hoping to frame it on the Kibei. They left her in one of the kitchen barracks—not outside where she was found. It was December. It was freezing that night. He insisted they left her inside, alive, and that someone else must have dragged her outside.”
One of the guards helped him! Benedict? Was that their connection?
“She could have wandered outside on her own looking for help, passed out, froze to death,” I suggested. “Which would put her death on him.”
She looked away. “He was scared, really scared. I’d never seen him so scared.”
“Did he identify the guard who helped him?”
“No.”
“At the bar you said the man who showed up at your home back in March looked vaguely familiar. Any chance you saw him at Camp Amache? Perhaps with your husband.”
She thought for several moments, then nodded. “Maybe. But that was years ago. I didn’t associate much with camp personnel. Especially the guards.”
“Did your husband ever mention a California law firm named Bailey, Wilscom and Gable?”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t recall he did.”
“No mention of a law firm stealing property and money from the Jap internees?”
She shook her head again. “No.” Less convincing this time.
“What about the name Neil Thornton? He was part of the camp staff.”
She pursed her coral lips. “I recall the name but I don’t recall anything else about him.”
I showed her the picture of her husband and the shadow-faced man, but she couldn’t confirm it was him.
“What about—”
“Wait a minute.” She raised her hand. “He was in Denver several months ago, I believe.”
“Thornton?”
“Yes. Now I remember. Marcus came home one day from the university. He looked shaken. I asked him what was wrong but he wouldn’t say. I pressed him later that evening, after he’d downed several drinks. That was risky. He was most dangerous when full of booze. He said someone he’d known at Amache showed up at his office at school that day—someone he hadn’t seen since nineteen forty-five. Someone he didn’t want to see again.”
“This Thornton guy?”
“Possibly. Whoever it was, I got the impression he wasn’t going by that name anymore. Marcus didn’t say what name. He said the man worked under him at the camp. One of the administrators. A despicable man, he said. I think this man held some kind of sway over Marcus. He seemed very frightened of him.”
The photographer appeared at the door, impatient. “Kim!”
I stepped close enough to her the photographer couldn’t hear. “Did your husband ever receive a threatening note about the Jap girl’s death? Say after he ran into this Thornton?”
She wrinkled her brow. “No, not that I’m aware. But Marcus never revealed all the threats he received.”
After I left Kim Raschke, I called Lou Sheppard at the Rocky Mountain News from a pay phone. “I need a favor, Lou.”
“For a guy who’s all over my ass for running an honest story on crooked cops, you expect a favor?”
“Might be a story in it,” I teased.
He said nothing for a few moments. “What story
?”
“Can’t tell you right now. But the favor’s a start.”
A loud sigh. “Okay, what’s the favor?”
“I need you to check out a law firm in California.”
“Swell. You want me to drive out or can I fly?”
I was reluctant bringing in Sheppard. It raised too many questions I didn’t want to answer. But I was running out of time. The longer Paula and Olivia remained in hiding, the more likely they would eventually leave the state—maybe for good. The reporter’s contacts were better than mine and he’d be able to dig up the information far faster.
“You worked in Sacramento once, right?” I said. “Gotta be a reporter there who’d do you a favor. Dig through records. Make a few calls. He scratches your back, you scratch his. There must be public records of the firm, right?”
“Should be. What do you want to find out about this law firm?”
“Everything. My understanding is the firm was dissolved at the end of the war. I need to confirm if it existed during the war, who the principals were, was it ever investigated for possible fraud—everything you can dig up.”
“Why fraud?”
“Get the information and you’ll find out.” No response at the other end, but I could hear his mental gears grinding. “Don’t think too hard, Lou. You might break something. Just trust me on this.”
“This is something to do with your partner’s death, isn’t it? I said you couldn’t keep your nose out of it.”
My heart froze. Lou Sheppard could be a pest, but he was never stupid. “What the hell would a California law firm have to do with Benedict’s death?” I said in my most offended tone.
“Okay, what’s the name of this firm?”
“Bailey, Wilscom and Gable. Mean anything to you?”
“Naw, but there’re more lawyers than mosquitoes in this country. Where was this firm?”
“Thousand Oaks.”
“Nice of you not to leave me the whole state to cover.”
“One other question,” I said. “Ever come across a Detective Lancaster?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. He in DPD?”