Blood Flag: A Paul Madriani Novel (37 page)

“I didn’t say I was dead,” said Harry. “I’m just suffering from a decision disorder. You pick the restaurant, and that way it’s my turn to complain.”

“Sounds like someone’s definition of the perfect division of labor,” said Gwyn. “I get to decide. You get to complain.”

“Anybody I know?” said Harry.

She laughed.

“You know this is serious stuff,” said Harry. “If we’re gonna make this thing work, you and I, we need to understand where our natural talents lie. You’re a world-class decision maker. And I respect you for that. I’m an Olympian complainer. I come from a long line of complainers. All the Hindses were great complainers. We’re proud of our complaining. If we don’t have something to complain about, we invent it. It’s what we’re good at,” said Harry. “That’s why we have diversity. You’re a liberal. You can understand that. I’m a conservative and I can’t. But that’s OK because I can complain about it. And as long as I can complain, everything’s fine.”

She giggled and said, “Yes, but do I have to listen to it?”

“No. You can buy earmuffs or headsets, drown it out with music if you like; that’s allowed. I don’t know about those little buds the kids stick in their ears. But we can talk about it. Some things are negotiable,” said Harry.

“OK, fine. You wore me down. You’re the only lawyer I know who can argue me into a hole. Just remember you’re barred from bringing a case in front of me—for life.” She waited for him to pick up on it, to say something like “that’s a long commitment,” but he didn’t. One of those awkward social lapses. Maybe she shouldn’t have said it. “OK, so you must be tired. I’ll pick the restaurant. Why don’t we do the Red Sails? I know we both like that. Would you like me to meet you on Shelter Island or do you want to come by and pick me up? Or do I have to make that decision, too?” She waited for him to answer.

He didn’t say anything.

“Harry, I didn’t hurt your feelings, did I? . . . Hello? Harry, are you there?” Gwyn looked at her cell phone. It was a wonderful device, a great convenience, except when it dropped calls. She hit “Favorites” and touched Harry’s name on the screen again.

This time she heard half a ring before her call rolled immediately to voicemail.

FIFTY-THREE

I
am on my knees, hands on top of my head, looking down the double barrels of the sawed-off shotgun. This after they used the car to run me into a row of trash cans that sent me tumbling onto the concrete.

The man, if you could call him that, holding the gun looks like something out of a sci-fi film,
Reptoids from Folsom
. He glares at me through sunken eyes. His long, graying hair, caught up in a ponytail, runs down the back of his studded leather jacket. The open collar in front reveals a tattoo crawling up his neck. It reads “Snake” with two blue-red fangs emerging from the top fork of the letter
k
just under his jaw. He’s the kind of man your daughter might bring home if an evil prince turned her into a frog.

He holds me under the gun as the driver goes through my wallet, looking at my driver’s license and a business card, then closes the wallet and puts it in his pocket. He asks me for the keys to my car.

I tell him they are in the ignition. “You want the car, take it.”

The guy looks at me and grins, a manifestation of evil made more sinister by the set of rings piercing his lower lip. “Why would we want that piece of crap?” he says.

“And here I was thinking it was a valuable relic,” I tell him.

“How did you make us?” he asks.

“High beams burning the back of my neck. You weren’t exactly elusive,” I tell him.

“Don’t get cute,” he says. “You looked right at us when you drove by. Was it the car?”

When I don’t answer, the guy with the gun says, “We can make this very painful if that’s what you want. I’d suggest you cooperate.”

“Serpents having a forked tongue, I halfway expected to hear a lisp,” I tell him. “Instead you sound like a college professor.”

“Diction can be deceiving,” he says. “Perhaps a little pain will dull your sense of humor.”

It’s better to throw them something than end up with broken ribs. “A witness saw your vehicle loitering near a house out on Winona a couple of months back,” I tell him. “We got a partial plate and we ran it.”

“You’re lying,” says the driver. “The plate’s not registered, so how could you find it?”

“You got stopped on a fix-it ticket in East County,” I tell him. “Your license number turned up in their computer. From that we got the description of the car.”

The Snake looks at his friend and says, “I told you. We should have changed our wheels two months ago.”

“You were right, what can I say? So we’ll have to do it now. Get up!” The pierced one grabs me by the arm and hoists me onto my feet. The guy is stronger than he looks. “I hate goddamned lawyers,” he says, “so all you have to do is gimme an excuse.” He spins me around and pushes me from behind toward one of the trash cans against the fence. He bends me over the can and frisks me, feeling my pockets. He finds my cell phone and takes it. Then he feels down both legs all the way to my shoes. “You got a knife, a gun, any weapons?”

“If I had a gun, don’t you think I would have used it by now?”

“Anything in your car?” he says

“No.”

“Is your phone locked?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the code? The pin number,” he says.

I give it to him. “If you want money I can get it for you,” I tell him.

“Really? How much?”

“Whatever you want.”

“This guy must be loaded,” says the driver.

“Yeah, but even lawyers have a daily limit on their ATM,” says the Snake. “Looking at his car I’d say his isn’t very high.”

“Shut up,” says the driver.

“If it’s not money, then what are you after?” I ask.

“Relax,” says the driver. “Nobody’s gonna get hurt. My man here likes to play games sometimes.”

“Ssszz!” The guy with the shotgun is in my ear hissing like a snake.

The longer I can remain here and stay out of their car, or keep from being shot, the greater the chance that Herman and his people will find me. The directions I gave him on the phone weren’t great. But the skinhead has just solved that problem.

The four cell phones on our network, Harry’s and Herman’s, Joselyn’s and mine, are primed through the cloud for tracking, in case they are lost or stolen. The second that ring-lip turned mine on, he enabled the tracking app. As long as we stay here with my phone on, Herman and his guys can find us on the map in Herman’s phone. My biggest fear now is that the skinhead tosses my cell in the trash, throws me in the trunk of their car, and I disappear.

I’m bent over the can looking back at the phone in his hand when he catches my eye and says, “Does this thing have a tracking app?”

“I don’t think so. That’s an old phone,” I tell him.

“Listen to him. Damn lawyer and he can’t even lie straight,” says the driver. “He’s got a brand-new phone here and he’s tryin’ to bullshit us. Look at all the apps on this thing.” He shows it to his buddy. “I wish I had a phone like this.”

“Keep it,” I tell him. “It’s yours.”

“Gee, thanks. You mean it?”

“Sure.”

“How long before you think your friend’s gonna show up?” he asks.

“What friend?”

“What’s his name, Herman?”

I don’t say anything.

“What’s wrong, cat got your tongue? I wouldn’t want you to be too disappointed, but from what I understand, Herman and his friends won’t be joining us tonight. Seems they had a previous engagement.”

“Yeah, it was kind of a last-minute surprise,” says the Snake. “Let’s hope he enjoyed it,” he says and laughs.

The driver grabs me from behind by the collar of my suit jacket, stands me up straight, and says, “Mr. Madriani, put your hands behind your back. You can lower the gun,” he tells the Snake. “I’d show you my shield, but safety requirements don’t allow us to carry them when we’re working undercover. It’s considered hazardous.” He slaps a pair of handcuffs on my wrists, ratchets them closed until they’re tight, and then tugs me by the elbow and turns me around. When I look up I see the flashing overhead light bar of a patrol car racing this way, down the alley toward us.

“What the hell’s goin’ on?” I say. “Who the hell are you? Am I under arrest?”

“Just be quiet. Don’t give us any trouble,” he says.

FIFTY-FOUR

W
hoever said that the law is a jealous mistress knew the reality. Joselyn looked at the time. It was almost eight o’clock. Paul was late again. Increasingly this was becoming the norm. But she understood. It was the price paid for rebuilding a law practice that had withered for two years through no fault of the partners. Joselyn felt she had no right to complain.

She and Paul both understood what they were buying into when they became involved with each other. And after all, her own position with the foundation had her traveling regularly. There were periods when Joselyn was away for weeks at a time. It was the price they paid for her career and Paul didn’t complain. Joselyn felt she owed him the same.

She fought off the urge to call him and turned her attention instead back to the online research sites and the piles of paper on her desk. For Joselyn, this was not work. It was a quest for answers, for the cold, hard truth. She struggled to understand the meaning behind Sofia’s death, not in the metaphysical sense, but in terms of motive and reason: who was induced to kill the girl and why.

Joselyn had yet to give up on the theory of the threatened Latin lover. One of the stacks of paper on her desk related to Ricardo Menard, his wealthy wife, and the sham that was their marriage. Joselyn had difficulty imagining someone as bright as Sofia being taken in by the likes of Menard. But if so, she wasn’t alone.

Paige Proctor had married the man. When it came to smarts, Mrs. Menard was no slacker. Paige held two advanced degrees at the time. She was older than Sofia and far more experienced with men. She had been involved in several relationships before she met Menard and had the benefit of her father’s private intelligence gathering. According to the social sheets, this included two investigative reports exposing Ricardo’s world-class womanizing. And still the Latin Lothario took her over the falls. It was possible she was just rebelling against her father. But to Joselyn, marrying Menard under those circumstances seemed an excessive way of acting out. What was more likely was that Ricardo was well practiced in the ways of deceiving women, even those who were more mature and informed.

It was clear that Menard could not afford a public scandal. Paige Menard might pretend to be blind and deaf, but only on condition that Ricardo’s volcanic appetite for a continuing stream of young women remained subterranean, confined to the farthest, darkest recesses of the deepest hole he could fine. If any of it erupted in public, Menard knew that his ride on the money train was over. Joselyn didn’t know the precise terms of the prenuptial agreement crafted by Paige’s father, Henry Proctor, and his lawyers. But she didn’t need the powers of a psychic to make a pretty good guess.

Menard possessed the bargaining leverage of a beggar when he entered the marriage. Paige’s father detested him and made no secret of it. The social columns were full of it. He did everything he could to publicly insult and humiliate Menard, up to and including libel. In an earlier age, honor would have dictated a duel between the two men, in which case, if Joselyn’s judgment of Ricardo was accurate, the man would have beat a hasty retreat home, his tail between his legs. Based on her research, money wasn’t the only thing lacking from Menard’s balance sheet.

Joselyn discovered things about Menard that Paul didn’t know. She read Spanish. Paul didn’t. Small news items off the Costa Rican Internet revealed that Menard had been pounded into the sand on three earlier occasions, twice by jealous Costa Rican husbands and once by another Tico who horned in on Menard’s date for the night. If anger was the product of hot Latin blood, it didn’t seem to flow through Ricardo’s veins. That he kept putting his manhood at risk seemed to be more of a testament to testosterone than anything else.

Had he screwed with Henry Proctor in a duel, the old man would have dispensed with the need for seconds, pulled a pistol, and dropped him on the spot. Proctor was the ultimate indignant father, and rich. His lawyers would have defended on grounds that it’s not homicide to shoot vermin. Joselyn, had she been on the jury, would have voted to acquit.

But that didn’t make Menard a killer. On the contrary, he displayed every aspect of the coward.

There was no doubt that a lawsuit by Sofia over the question of paternity would have pushed Ricardo’s infidelity out into the sunlight, center court, for all of Paige’s social set to see. Even an attempted hushed-up settlement would have been one peccadillo too far. While Ricardo’s DNA was still languishing, Joselyn harbored little doubt that he was the father of Sofia’s budding child. And if so, there was no question the man had a clear motive for murder. The only issue was whether he possessed the brass either to do it himself or hire it done. And as to either option, Joselyn was having serious doubts.

The second stack of papers on her desk was even more confounding. It was topped by the article on Jack the Ripper, the one that Joselyn found online, the same article that Paul had seen on Edward Pack’s desk during their visit to Tony and Lillian in Oklahoma City.

A researcher had used DNA extracted from a bloody shawl found at one of the Ripper’s crime scenes. Originally the shawl was believed to belong to the victim, Catherine Eddowes. But the researcher reasoned that it was too fine a garment to belong to the impoverished Eddowes, and instead theorized that it belonged to “Jack” and that he had left it behind after he killed Eddowes. Experts scanned the garment and discovered several different strains of DNA. Some were believed to derive from human semen, others from cellular material from human organ systems. The Ripper was known to dissect his victims. Working on this supposition, a lab extracted DNA from the various strains sufficient to establish a profile. According to their report, they matched it to an immigrant on a short list of suspects in the Ripper murders, a man named Aaron Kosminski, a Jewish itinerant from what was then the Polish area of Russia.