Black Water (39 page)

"My name's Merci. What's yours?"

"Irene."

"Irene, just let me in, will you, dear?"

"I am leaving."

"I won't make you late. Just give us a few minutes."

Irene turned away and Merci wasted not one second, pressing in ahead of Zamorra, then turning to wave in Taser and Twelve Gauge. She kept her palm on the Pachmayr grip of the H&K as she followed Irene into the living room.

A lamp turned low, weak light, gray leather sofa and love seat, a glass coffee table. Zamorra moved into the kitchen. Irene watched the big-armed deputies jangle down a long hallway toward the bedrooms.

"You work for him?" asked Merci.

Irene shook her head quickly. "Yes and no."

"You help out."

"I help out."

"Are you his girlfriend?"

"This is not a word I use."

"Where is he?"

"Zlatan never tells. He comes when he comes. This house is one he bought for me. There are others. I don't know them and I don't want to know them."

"Do you make his pickups at the Bar Czar at one and nine?"

"Only sometimes."

"Tonight?"

"I am not told until."

Merci flipped on a wall switch and the overhead track lighting came on. She could see that Irene was probably late thirties. Her makeup was half finished, her eyes tired. One pearl earring. Irene looked at her, then away.

"Where can we find him?"

"Always moving."

"Where does he sleep?"

"I don't know. This is the truth. Sometimes here but not often, time each week, perhaps."

"And you don't know one single other place he might lay down for the night?"

"I do not."

"Or one single other place he does business, collects money, hangs out and drinks with his friends?"

"Bar Czar."

"When?"

"Impossible. I am not often there."

"What about Cherbrenko?"

"I have met him and seen him with Zlatan. Partners in business

"Show me his room."

Without a word Irene led her down the hallway to the end, opened a door and flicked on a light. Merci followed down two steps that led to a big bedroom. There was a gaudy brass bed with black sheets and covers, a gold ice bucket on a stand by one side, a huge television rising from beyond the foot of the bed stand. The room smelled of cologne and BO and cigarette smoke.

"Does he have an office here in the house?"

"Yes. This way."

She led Merci through the bedroom, past a huge master bath with a red-tile shower and whirlpool, toilet and bidet, all with gold fixtures.

"He's got horrible taste," said Merci.

Irene shrugged.

"Why don't you quit?"

"He knows where to find my daughter."

"Maybe I'll arrest him for murder, get him out of your hair."

Irene looked at her, the planes of her face weighted by fear. 'He’s everywhere. You must arrest them all."

"I'd like to."

They went through French doors and into a faintly lit back room paneled in dark wood, with a cluttered desk along one wall, a black leather sofa pushed against another. A big TV dominated a corner, viewable from sofa or desk. Irene turned on the lights and a ceiling fan began to turn. More smoke and cologne.

"What's he watch on all these big screens?"

"Shopping channels and pornography."

"Does he make his own movies?"

Irene actually colored. "No. They show amputated people and violence."

"Irene, are you going to tell me where to find this guy?"

"I can not."

"You can call me as soon as you know where he'll be."

"I should risk my child for you?"

"He'd never know."

"He will know, Sergeant. I am not a foolish girl anymore. Please do not behave that way to me."

Merci walked around the desk and stood by the chair. The seat was adjusted so high it came almost to her hips. The desk legs rested on cinder blocks, apparently spray-painted gold. On the desktop was a clean blotter, a small Russian flag upright in a holder, a notepad, an ashtray filled with butts, a calendar with August's model reclining invitingly in the back of a black stretch limousine. The promotional header above the photograph was of a neon car swooping through the sky. The name of the company was in hot blue text: Air Glide Limousines.

"Air Glide," said Merci.

"Friends of his," said Irene.

"No wonder they told me they didn't have any giants for drivers."

"No one talks about Zlatan. You must understand."

"Understand what?"

Irene stared at her and Merci stared back. "How he is without restraint."

"I'm beginning to."

"Then get out, please."

Serve and protect, thought Rayborn.

She pulled at the center desk drawer but it caught against its lock. The side drawers were locked also.

"Give me the key," she said. Irene sighed, then moved to the door and reached above the frame, She brought it to Rayborn, dropped it onto the blotter.

Top drawer: pencils, pens, a notepad promoting a company called NexLess. Merci held the pad to the light, saw no imprints on the top sheet but stripped it off and put it in her pocket anyway. There was a magnifying glass with a nice wooden handle. Matches, rubber band, paper clips. A key chain with a clear acrylic disk that said
OrganiVen.

"What did he say about Gwen Wildcraft?"

"Nothing."

"Archie Wildcraft."

"Nothing. I read the papers about them."

"Don't tell me he never said anything about OrganiVen."

"He did not. Why would he talk business with me?"

"Except the girls."

Merci looked at her, tried to figure the bend of Irene's psyche that accommodated Zlatan Vorapin in whatever way she did. Came up with nothing but fear. Confirmed by the flatness of Irene's green eyes she stared through her.

"He was here. The man with the bullet in his head."

Rayborn felt her pulse jump, then the cool fingers of adrenal moving through her. "When?"

"Afternoon today. He waited across the street in a sports utilitycar. I watched from a window. When he took off his hat and looked at head in the mirror, I knew it was him. From television."

Irene shook her head, looked at her watch and brought her hand to the ear without the pearl. "I must finish and go."

"Thank you. Just so you know, Vorapin put that bullet in the man’s head. Murdered his wife in her own bathroom, shot her once in heart and once in the brain."

She offered Irene a card and the woman backed away.

"That would be foolish."

"Yes, it would. You'll remember my name. The operator will give you the department number."

"I've done too much for you. You can do nothing good for me. Go and never say to Zlatan that we talked."

Rayborn pocketed her card and turned to find Zamorra and the two uniforms examining the shower in Vorapin's bathroom. Twelve Gauge pointed at the gold nozzle, situated a full foot higher than the standard. Merci joined them, disturbed by the height of the thing.

"He's got some newspapers in his laundry room," said Zamorra. "Just certain sections, not the whole paper. They go back a week, and every one of them has something about Archie or Gwen in it."

"OrganiVen stuff in his desk," said Merci. She looked at Irene, who stared through a window like she wanted to fly out of it.

On the way down the hall Merci stopped and glanced into one of the bedrooms. There was a makeup table set up along one wall, with a lighted mirror and a chair in front of it. The chair was pushed back. A cigarette had burned down in the ashtray and the dead ash snaked from the filter down into the glass. A pearl earring sat next to a large tumbler of something clear over ice.

By the time they got back to headquarters, Zamorra had called Sheriff Abelera at home and talked him into authorizing twelve-hour after-dark undercover surveillance on the Bar Czar, Air Glide Limousine, Vorapin's home in the Fullerton hills and Archie Wildcraft's million-five spread in Hunter Ranch.

"I know, sir. I understand. Thank you."

When Zamorra punched off Merci asked him what the sheriff had said.

"He said he was holding a press conference tomorrow at noon. He's going to do the talking himself. We'll have a dedicated line for information and people to answer it twenty-four/seven. I can tell he's not convinced on the Russians, but he wants to be. The last thing he wants is Archie guilty. But he's got to
act
like he wants Archie guilty so he doesn't look like he's covering his own. Like Brighton did. He's got the Deputy Association pulling him one way, that prick Dawes leaking our evidence to the media, guys like Gary Brice making entertainment out of it."

Merci said nothing, just looked out the window at the darkened county, the taillights, the signs flipping past overhead.

"I wouldn't want his job," said Zamorra.

"Neither would I."

A lie, but she'd never told him of her plan. It wasn't something you could tell someone without sounding crudely ambitious. But that was the old plan anyhow. It went exactly like this: head of Homicide Detail by age forty; head of the Crimes Against Persons Section by age fifty; elected sheriff by fifty-eight. There had been a time when she believed it was possible. It was the plan of her life.

"You'd make a good sheriff," said Zamorra. "But you'd have polish your press conference performances."

"Man, would I."

"You've thought about that, haven't you—the job?"

"I used to."

"Don't stop. Things change. Then they change again. That's what you told me when Janine died, and you were right." She looked out at the county buildings along Flower Street, solid in the fading light. Funny, she thought, how she used to believe that her ninety-two percent conviction rate on homicide cases would pave her way to the office of the sheriff. Simple cause and effect. Girlhood dreams. She felt so much older now. But more real, more keenly attuned to the signals of all that can go wrong.

T
im had dressed himself for his mother's return home: plaid shorts, rubber rain boots, a suede cowboy vest with fringe and a red cowboy hat with his name embroidered on the crown. Stringless bow in one hand, rubber-tipped arrow in the other.

He met her at the screen door as she came across the porch in the lingering heat.

"Awchie threw flowers from the heckilopter."

"Yes, he sure did."

Good to know that her father and son had been monitoring the Wildcraft case. She could see Clark in the depths of the kitchen, looking out at her, keeping an eye on his grandson, too.

Tim banged the door open and clomped across the porch. She swept him up—it took real leg strength to lift him now—and he hugged her as much as the bow and arrow would allow. She tilted back the cowboy hat to reveal a face stained by something orange.

"Awchie is gone in the heckilopter?"

"Gone for now."

"Can you find him?"

"I hope so, Tim. He needs a doctor."

Merci elbowed her way past the screen door, reached up and locked the little deadbolt when they got inside. She set him down and he dropped his bow.

"Can I have your gun?"

"No. Never touch the gun. You know the rule."

"I never touch the gun?"

"Never touch the gun. "

"I
can
touch the gun?"

"What do you guys do all day, Dad," she said over Tim. "Just stay home and figure out ways to defy me?"

"Pretty much," he said. "They've been showing Archie and the helicopter over and over on CNB."

"Slow news day."

"You ought to see it. You can't tell at first what's coming out the chopper, then they zoom in and you see it's flowers. Then they show petals on the coffin. It really gets you. After that they intervewed the families."

In his rubber boots Tim waded to the TV and turned it on, but it was a commercial for a local car dealership.

"New car?" he asked.

"No, thanks, Tim. The Impala's running fine."

It was too hot and humid to be inside, so they sat on the backyard patio. Merci shooed one of the cats off an Adirondack chair and huffed down into it, wondering why an allegedly classic design was so uncomfortable. Clark had made lemonade but Merci asked for a "hearty scotch and water over ice. In the near dark, Tim played with a hose on the grass, watering down his hat, vest, shorts, everything. He chased one of the cats but it outran him and his spray. He found a gopher hole, put the hose down it and squatted down to watch the bubbles and mud froth out. She loved the way he squatted.