by Dave Daren
“Have you eaten anything?” Vicki asked her. “Are you hungry?”
“No, I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just worried.”
“He’s going to be fine,” I said. “We’ve got him an immunity deal.”
“AJ, honey,” a woman approached us. “I brought you something. You need to eat.”
“Is this--” I gestured toward the woman.
“Vicki, Henry, this is my mom, Ana,” she said.
AJ had never said a word about her family. Ana was tall and skinny, and wore jeans and a fitted white tee. She looked like an older version of AJ, with long dark hair, and Hispanic features.
“You’re Henry and Vicki,” she smiled and held out her hand. “I’ve heard so much about you. Good to finally meet you.”
“Good to meet you too,” I said and shook her hand.
“Hi, Ana,” Vicki shook her hand. “Thanks for sharing AJ with us. We love her to death.”
AJ unwrapped the breakfast sandwich, and rolled her eyes.
“Oh,” she said. “She loves you guys, and this must be that diamond I’ve heard so much about. Let me see. Let me see.”
Vicki laughed and showed her the ring.
“That is huge,” Ana gushed. “Look at this honey.”
AJ took a bite of her sandwich and just nodded.
“Wow,” Ana said. “It’s so big. So it was a family ring, right?”
She turned to me for confirmation and I was surprised she knew that much. What else had AJ told her?
“Yeah,” I said. “My great grandmother was a British aristocrat.”
“Well it’s just lovely,” she said.
“Well the wedding’s in April,” Vicki told her. “We’d love it if you came.”
She turned to AJ who stood and put on a fake smile.
“We’d love to,” Ana said and she wrapped her arm around AJ. “We’ll have to find something to wear to a sophisticated L.A. wedding.”
“Well,” Vicki said. “We’re probably going to have it here in town. So, it will be Sedona style.”
“Sedona style,” Ana smiled. “I like that. I’ll wear my cowboy boots.”
“Sure,” Vicki smiled.
“Mom, no,” AJ protested. “You have dress clothes. She has dress clothes. Don’t encourage this.”
Vicki and I laughed and AJ looked like she wanted to throw up.
Eh, suck it up, kid. Your parents will embarrass you for the rest of your life and you’re just going to have to get over it. Eventually, it won’t bother you anymore. Or so I was told.
“Well,” Ana said. “We can’t thank you enough for what you’re doing for Tony.”
“Oh, it’s our pleasure,” I replied.
“He’s just such a lost soul,” Ana said. “He just needs someone to put him on the right path. I think putting him with that Wright Way Construction is a great thing. They have people that have been where he’s been that can talk to him. Help him turn his life around. He needs someone like that.”
“We’re glad we could help,” I told her. “He seems like he’s a good guy.”
“He is,” Ana replied vehemently. “He’s got a good heart. He just fell in with the wrong crowd early on.”
I wasn’t much for the wrong crowd argument. I thought it was a cop out. I believed people were responsible for their own choices, independent of their peers. But then again, I came from a stable, loving, home with both biological parents, and a wealthy grandmother to pay for college. What did I know about the school of hard knocks?
“You’re here to see Tony?” Bernice the officer usually on desk duty asked us.
“Yeah,” I turned around. It was good to see her back at the desk. It was normal that way. “You’re back on desk, huh?”
“Well, federal’s got things running pretty tight,” she said. “But they stopped taking over, so that’s good. Sign in please.”
I shrugged and we signed in. Given my experiences with SPD, I wondered if a federal takeover of SPD wouldn’t be that bad of an idea.
“Tony’s in the interrogation room,” she said. “They’re waiting for you to start.”
“Can we come?” Ana asked us.
“No,” I said. “It’s got to be just him. Friends and family members in the room can cause the witness to omit things or change details. So, they don’t like anyone else in the room. We’ll let you know how it went as soon as it’s done. And then we’ll try to get you in there to see him as soon as possible.”
Ana and AJ both nodded solemnly. Vicki and I walked down the hall to the interrogation room, and Tony looked beat.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Like a steam roller just drove over me,” he mumbled.
“That’s a vivid analogy,” I said as I sat.
“So AJ and Ana are in the lobby,” Vicki told him.
“I wish they weren’t,” he grumbled.
“They’re worried about you,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “This is all shitty enough, without freaking out your relatives.”
“Well,” I said. “I know AJ pretty well, and she’s a solid cookie. She can handle it. And we’ll get you through this,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “And afterward?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“After I name them all,” he said. “What then?”
“They’ll all go to jail,” I said. “And your confession is totally anonymous.”
Agents Winslow, Johnson and Willis breezed into the room, intimidating types in FBI windbreakers.
“Good morning, Mr. Irving, Ms. Park, Mr. Sanchez,” Agent Winslow said.
“Morning,” I said.
Vicki and Tony nodded and we all sat down. Winslow slipped a sheaf of papers to me. It was the immunity agreement. I was still fairly new to criminal law, so I hadn’t read one. But I was versed well enough in contract law, so I read it, and then slipped it over to Tony.
“What is this?” he picked it up and shrugged.
Right. I remembered. Reading problems.
“It’s the immunity agreement,” I said. “You can sign it.”
Tony signed it quickly and I sighed. It was a good thing I was honest, otherwise this guy might have signed over anything.
“Mr. Sanchez,” Agent Winslow began. “You were an accomplice to Brent Levinson and Irwin Montague in transporting illegal goods across the U.S. border, is that correct?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“What can you tell me about what you were doing?” she asked.
“I worked for a company called Universal Shipping,” he rubbed his palms together under the table. “It was a good job, good hard work, paid good money. Real good money, at least for me.”
He shrugged and looked awkward in the room.
“What was the nature of your job?” Agent Winslow asked.
“We worked with a lot of cargo companies,” he said. “We had a freight company we worked with a lot. Our job was to accept and load the materials into containers and get them out by rail usually. It was a good job, I liked it.”
“And how did you get involved with Mr. Levinson?” she asked.
“I never met Mr. Levinson,” he said. “I have heard of him. But, I usually worked…”
He hesitated and squirmed in his seat and looked at me pleadingly.
“The man I worked with was local,” he rephrased.
I raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t going to get away with not naming names, but I found it interesting that he thought he could.
“Two years ago,” he said, “I got into some pretty bad debt. I owed a lot of people a lot of money.”
“And what was the nature of this debt?”
Everyone in the room could tell exactly what the nature of this debt was, and I wasn’t about to let him admit it.
“That’s not relevant,” I said.
“Yeah,” Tony squirmed in his seat. “So, I didn’t have the money, and I thought the guys I owed money to were going to kill me. They tied
me down and they almost cut off my toe, but they didn’t. They said instead, I could work off my debt by doing a job for a client.”
“And who was this client, do you know?” Winslow asked.
“They didn’t tell me at first,” Tony said. “They said I would be approached by a man soon. Then they let me go. Two days later, I was in a bar, and I was approached by…”
He looked like he was going to be sick.
“Do I have to do this?” Tony turned to me.
“Unless you want to go to jail,” I said.
He turned to Agent Winslow and looked her dead in the eye.
“Roy Oberland,” he spat out. “Roy told me that he needed me to pick up a crate, and make sure it didn’t go through inspection before it went out. He gave the address and that was it.”
“Did you know what was in the shipment?” Winslow asked.
“Not in the beginning,” he said. “I went to the address he gave me, it was at Irwin Montague’s house. Irwin said it was an art piece, and then he told me to load it and get it out. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. So, I loaded it, and made sure it bypassed the inspection and then got the shipment out. And I thought that it was over.”
“So you did additional shipments then?” Agent Winslow asked.
“Many,” he admitted. “A few weeks later, Roy came to me and said that the shipment had made it to the client, and Irwin was pleased. Then Roy handed me an envelope with five thousand dollars. He said it was to pick up another shipment, and that I would get five thousand more once the shipment was complete. So, I did another one, and another one, and another one.”
“How many shipments did you do for Roy Oberland?” Agent Winslow asked.
“It’s hard to say,” Tony answered. “After a few months, Roy said that Irwin’s name was getting hot, and so he wanted me to pick up items and create shipments, and get them past the inspection point. That was a lot harder. So I started picking up jewels, and elephant tusks, and a lot of other things. I would load them in a crate and get them to the address.”
“Drugs?” Agent Winslow asked.
“No,” Tony shook his head. “Never drugs. Sometimes it was antique items that I knew were stolen, but it was never drugs for some reason.”
“And did you know what was being done with these things?” Agent Winslow asked.
“They were being shipped to clients for a long time,” he said. “But, then it started changing about a year ago. I was told that all the shipments were going to some rich guy’s house in Mexico.”
“Mr. Levinson?” Agent Winslow said.
“Yeah,” he said. “He had a house in Cancun. We started shipping the packages out there.”
“Do you know who Kelsi Matthews is?” Agent Winslow asked.
Tony sighed long. “Fuck.”
He rubbed his face. “Yeah, I know Kelsi. That was Roy’s girl.”
“But she was married to James Matthews,” Agent Winslow prompted.
Tony snorted. “Not the way Roy saw it. He thought she should be with him, and so he was going to get her back. That’s why he...that’s why he got involved with Brent Levinson in California. He was going to become a millionaire, by screwing over her husband.”
“How was he going to do that?” Agent Winslow asked.
“He created a contract with James Matthews,” Tony said. “That would bind him to James for five years. Then, he got involved with this Brent guy, and made a lot of money. He told James he was going to make him famous, and got him the deal with Brent’s record company, La Vista. But Brent was crooked, so Roy made sure his name wasn’t anywhere on anything.”
“So the contract was with James only?” Agent Winslow asked.
“Yeah,” Tony said.
“We have a copy of that contract,” I said as I pulled it up on my phone. “We can verify that Mr. Matthews’ name was exclusively on the contract.
Agent Winslow nodded. “I’ll see that when you’re ready. Go ahead Mr. Sanchez. Then what happened?”
“It was a great idea, really,” Tony said. “So, Roy turned the band into a smuggling front, without any trace of being involved. And as soon as Roy made millions off it, he was going to turn them all in. Then, he and Kelsi would live happily ever after.”
I pulled up the contract and showed it to Agent Winslow, who made a note of it and handed it back to me.
“There was only one problem,” Tony said. “James figured out that Roy and Kelsi were together. So, he decided he was going to leave her and the whole band. He said they all betrayed him, and that he hated them all, and was going to start all over in Las Vegas. He told Roy that night at the taping and they had a big fight.”
“And did Roy Oberland kill James Matthews, then?” Agent Winslow said.
Tony looked down at the table.
“No,” his voice cracked. “James Matthews….died of a heart arrhythmia.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“But you said earlier you knew who killed James Matthews,” Agent Winslow said.
“I lied, okay,” he said. “I just wanted to keep the immunity deal.”
“And did you lie about anything else you told me?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “The rest is all true. I just thought that Mr. Irving would drop me after I ran. I knew that he thinks James Matthews was murdered, and so I told him what he wanted to hear.”
He turned to me, but didn’t look at me.
“I’m sorry, Henry,” he said. “I don’t know who killed James Matthews.”
I nodded slowly. There was not a person in that room that believed him.
“Well,” Agent Winslow said. “The investigation on the death of James Matthews is not our jurisdiction so you’ll have to deal with SPD on that.”
“So,” he rubbed his palms together. “Are we done here?”
Agent Winslow sat with her hands on her hips and nodded slowly.
“For now,” she said. “But we’ll keep in touch.”
Tony breathed a sigh of relief and eyed the door.
“Yeah,” Agent Winslow said. “You’re free to go.”
“I’ll see you out,” Vicki stood and Tony followed her. I stayed with the agents, who remained seated.
“If he’s lying about the smuggling ring,” Agent Winslow told me, “it invalidates his immunity deal.”
“He’s not,” I said. “Everything he said corroborates with our own investigation.”
“Ours too,” she said.
“So we’re done with Kelsi, then?” I asked.
“As a prime suspect, yes,” she said. “As a person of interest, no.”
“I’ll take it,” I said as I rose. “For now.”
I left the room and joined Vicki, who had joined in the reunion with Ana and AJ. Ana pummeled him with questions interspersed with scolding. Tony took it all in stride.
“How did he do?” AJ asked me.
I nodded slowly.
“He gave them what they needed to hear,” I said. “He’s holding back, though.”
“Is he going to jail?” AJ asked.
I shook my head. “Not unless he lied.”
“Do you think he lied?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
She watched him and Ana for a moment.
“Thanks, Henry,” she said. “For everything.”
“Oh, no, AJ,” I smiled. “Thank you for everything.”
“No, seriously,” she said. “When I went to the art gallery that day and I met you, I was confused. I didn’t know what I was doing with my life. My little blog, it was just a stupid little project, for fun. And then you walked into my life, and then everything changed. Now, I’m a scriptwriter for a movie studio? I didn’t see that coming.”
I laughed. “Well, I own two businesses, and you’re smack dab in the middle of both of them. So, I couldn’t have done it without you either.”
She laughed. “Yeah, what’s with that? The Irving’s are taking over the town.”
“Damn
straight,” I said.
“AJ,” Ana interrupted. “We’re going to lunch. Come.”
“Yeah, mom,” she said. “Well, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you around.”
“Oh, you sure as hell will,” I said.
She chuckled and went off with her family, arms wrapped around each other. Vicki sidled up to me.
“I’m glad we could help them,” she said as we watched them leave the police station.
“I don’t think Tony’s off the hook, though,” I said.
“Oh no,” Vicki said. “Not by a long shot.”
“You think he killed James?” I asked her.
“No,” she said. “But he definitely knows who did.”
I shook my head and sighed long.
“Well,” Vicki perked up as we walked out to the parking lot. “Now we’ve got one last errand for our Saturday.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“We get to meet the wedding planner,” she smiled.
Chapter 20
“Love that,” Jessica Owens gushed. “It’s original, it’s gorg, and so perfect for you.”
“Isn’t it?” Vicki gushed. “It’s so perfect. I am so in love with this location.”
We were in Jessica’s office in Flagstaff and finally pinning down a wedding location.
It was an airy office, all done in pink and white, and fuzzy rugs and black and white framed art on the wall. I did, however, notice among the photos of Edgar Degas style ballerinas and nautilus shells, a movie still of Benedict Cumberbatch dressed to the nines as Sherlock Holmes. I chuckled.
My old firm had a client that was working with the BBC on that series. I got to fly to London for a day, and spent a couple of hours hanging around the set of that show.
“The Million Dollar Studio will be done with the renovations by the end of this year,” Jessica said as I tuned back into the conversation, “And the photos so far are stunning. Just stunning. Oh my gosh.”
The Million Dollar Studio was a luxury movie theatre built in the 1920’s, the golden age of film. It had been declared a historical landmark, given that they held lavish parties that had been attended by everyone from Greta Garbo to Marilyn Monroe. They went bankrupt in the late 1960’s, and the building had been largely shuttered ever since. The historical society ran a museum in the front part of the building, but most of it had been condemned until recently. Now, a private investor bought it with the intention of restoring it to its original glory.