Choke (18 page)

“Why don’t you want to see his widow?”

“He told her about our agreement; she’ll probably look for the papers so she can destroy them before anyone else sees them.”

“Why would she do that? So she can inherit all this?” He waved an arm at the contents of the room.

“There’s some money in the bank, and there’s the business. She knows I could keep it going.”

“Did you and Barry have a little thing going, Rita?”

She nodded. “He had already left her; the divorce was in the works. Your turn again: Why do you want to know who hired Barry to find Marinello?”

“I think there may be a Key West connection to Barry’s murder. I want to find out what he reported back to his client, what he found out in Key West.” This was less than the whole truth, but he had to hang on to some of his cards.

“You think maybe Marinello’s in Key West and that he murdered Barry?”

Tommy shook his head. “The guy Barry thought might be Marinello is dead. He was killed right before Barry arrived in town.”

“Shit!” she said.

“Huh?”

“Finding Marinello would have been a big plum for Barry; the money would have gotten us through the divorce settlement.”

Tommy nodded. “Tough break. Listen, is there a bar open this late? Can I buy you a drink?”

Rita stood up and laid the pistol on her chair. “I’ll buy you one,” she said. She went to Carman’s desk, opened a bottom drawer, and extracted a bottle of Wild Turkey and two glasses. “Barry didn’t drink much. He kept this in the hope that one day, some gorgeous blonde would walk in here in tears and he could whip out a bottle, like Sam Spade, and offer her a drink.” She poured two healthy shots and handed him one.

“Better days,” Tommy said, raising his glass.

She raised hers and took a sip, then returned to her chair. “Tell me something, Tommy,” she said.

“Anything.”

“If Marinello was this guy in Key West, and he died, the money didn’t die with him, did it?”

“I guess not.”

“Where would it go, do you think?”

“The guy had a wife.”

“Then the wife’s got the money?”

“Depends on what kind of planner Marinello was.”

“Oh, Marinello was a big-time planner, believe me. He couldn’t have walked with all that money without being a very good planner.”

“Then the wife might have the money. If she’s the wife.”

“What do you mean, ‘If she’s the wife’?”

“I’ve no way of knowing for sure that my murder victim in Key West was Marinello.”

“He was murdered?”

“That’s right.”

She got up and poured them both another drink. “Tommy, you and I have a lot of talking to do,” she said.

T
ommy watched Rita Cortez as she talked, and he liked what he saw. She was short, like himself. And like Rosie. He didn’t have anything in mind, he just appreciated her neat body, her short, dark hair, and the way she seemed to trust him so soon after their bad introduction.

“I only spent a couple of years as a street cop,” she said. “The rest of the time I was in Records, and I was good at it. Barry was always coming in wanting somebody’s sheet or something, and I always delivered for him in a hurry. Then, when he was having some problems with the captain of the precinct, he decided to put his papers in and go private. He took me to lunch and laid it all out, and it sounded pretty good. I was bored, so when he asked me to come to work with him I took the chance. Worked out well, too. Barry had a lot of friends on the force and down at the courthouse, so he got a lot of referrals. He was a good investigator and he produced for his clients, so we did okay.” She got up, went to a file cabinet, and starting flipping through it. “This Marinello thing was our first shot at some really good money, though. Barry was offered a hundred grand to turn him up.”

“That’s good money, all right,” Tommy said. “Who hired him?”

Rita stopped flipping through the files and looked at him. “Later, maybe,” she said, then went back to the files.

Maybe she didn’t trust him so much after all. “Any luck in the files?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“Did Barry have a safe?”

She nodded. “Right-hand side of the desk, what looks like two drawers is a door. He never gave me the combination.”

Tommy opened the door and looked at the safe. “Too good for me.” He began opening desk drawers, feeling the edges and bottoms.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ll bet he wrote down the combination somewhere. Most people don’t trust themselves to remember.” He continued searching the desk.

“If it was in the desk, then Myrna has already been into the safe.”

“The wife?”

She nodded. “I’m sure she’s been through the place thoroughly.” She looked up from the file drawer. “The computer,” she said.

Tommy turned and looked at the system, which rested on a built-in cabinet along the wall. “Did he use it a lot?”

“Yes, he did, every day; kept all sorts of notes on it.” She went to the machine, switched it on, then sat down and waited for it to boot up.

“What sort of file might it be in?” Tommy asked, looking over her shoulder.

“Probably a file of its own, if I knew Barry. He was very neat and organized, for a cop.” She typed “
TREE
” and watched as the computer displayed a list of directories.

“Try ‘Miscellaneous,’”Tommy said.

She switched to the directory and moved the cursor down the list. She stopped on a file called “Security” and opened it.

“Aha,” Tommy said as a list of numbers appeared on the screen. “That was easy.”

“It might not have been if you hadn’t been here,” Rita said. “I don’t know how long it would have taken me to think about going through the computer.”

“There’s something else,” Tommy said, pointing at a file called “Partner.”

Rita opened the file and began reading. “This is it,” she said. “He wrote the whole partnership plan down.”

“Trouble is, you can’t sign a document on a computer,” Tommy said. “There must be a hard copy somewhere.”

“Time to open the safe,” Rita said. She printed out a copy of the combination file, then knelt before the safe and began twirling the knob. In a moment she had it open and was shuffling through papers. “Here it is!” she cried. “Signed and notarized, and only two weeks ago!”

“Good for you,” Tommy said, clapping her on the back.

“There’s a copy of the will, too.” She flipped through the pages until she found what she wanted. “It refers to the partnership document and says I get the business!”

“That’s great, Rita,” Tommy said, genuinely glad for her. “Maybe you’d better make copies of these and put them back in the safe for Myrna to find. That way she can’t stiff you.”

Rita went to a copying machine against the wall, made the copies, and returned the originals to the safe. “There’s this, too,” she said, handing Tommy a photograph.

“Barry showed me this; it’s Marinello. I doubt if he still looks like this, though.”

“Yeah, this is at least fifteen, twenty years old, according to the client.”

“You said you were in Records at LAPD. When Marinello stole the money, did the client beef to the cops? If he did, there might be some good information there.”

Rita shook her head. “These are the kind of people who do their own missing persons work, if you get my drift.”

“I do. You ready to tell me who the client is?”

Rita flopped down in her chair. “I have the feeling you haven’t told me everything about this guy in Key West yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“You said he was murdered; who did it?”

“Tell you the truth, I don’t have a handle on that yet. There’s a suspect, but I don’t buy it. My boss does, though.”

“Is the wife involved?”

“A possibility.”

“If she knew about her husband’s past and if she had a handle on the money, is she the type to knock him off?”

Tommy had hardly thought about anything else lately, but he thought about this again. “She’s a pretty cool customer, but I don’t think she could have brought this off by herself. She strikes me as the type of woman who has always depended on her looks to get guys to do what she wanted, and I think that’s maybe what happened this time.”

“How old is the lady?”

“Early thirties, I’d say.”

“Marinello would be, let’s see, early sixties,” Rita said. “You think the missus traded him in on a newer model?”

Tommy grinned. “Great minds think alike. You should have been a detective.”

She smiled. “Maybe so. What was the murder victim’s name?”

Tommy shook his head. “Not yet. There’s more involved here.”

“What?”

“After you tell me who the client is, I want to go see him, and I don’t want him to know about the dead guy yet, if Barry didn’t already tell him. There’s a better than even chance that my guy wasn’t Marinello, and if he wasn’t, then I don’t want a bunch of goons coming onto my turf and calling on the widow. Okay, maybe she’s a regular black widow, but she may not be Mrs. Marinello, and she shouldn’t have to pay the guy’s dues.”

“I see your point.”

“So, who’s the client?”

“Wait a minute; you want me to tell all, but you’re going to hold back. That’s not fair.”

“Life is not fair, sweetheart, but sometimes it’s just. I want to do what I can to keep it that way. To you, too.”

She looked at him carefully. “Are you married?”

Tommy laughed. “Very.”

“Too bad; all the good ones are married.”

“Tell you what, Rita: you put me with the client, and when I’m sure that all my bases are covered, I’ll tell you the whole story.”

Rita looked at her watch. “He’s not open for business yet. Come on, I’ll buy you some breakfast.” She got up and headed for the door.

Tommy trailed along behind her.

T
ommy stood in front of his hotel, freshly shaved and dressed in a suit, and wondered if he had been stiffed. It was 3:20, and Rita had been supposed to pick him up at three. Had he misjudged the woman?

A red Volkswagen convertible screeched to a halt, top down, Rita at the wheel. “Sorry I’m late.”

Tommy got into the car. “You had me worried.”

“I was primping. This is the first time I’ve met the guy face-to-face, and I wanted to make a good impression.”

Tommy looked her over. “Don’t worry about it.”

She shot him a smile. “Thank you, kind sir.”

“What time’s our appointment?”

“Three forty-five. Don’t worry, we’ll make it. Century City isn’t all that far.”

“So who is the guy?”

“First I want to know what you’re going to say to him.”

“What I’m going to try to do is get information.”

“What’s in it for him?”

“Maybe I can help find Marinello.”

“What happens if you do?”

“Rita, baby, I don’t want the money, I promise you. I’ll see that you get all the credit.”

“It’s just that the money could help me a lot in making the transition to running the business. A lot of Barry’s buddies are going to stop making referrals now that he’s gone.”

“I understand, believe me; I’m on your side. Now tell me about the client.”

“His name is Barton Winfield.”

“Yeah? I was expecting a name that rhymed with macaroni.”

“Your expectations are not misplaced. The guy’s name used to be something else, the rumor is, but I guess he thought he’d get more business and attract less attention if he came on like a major WASP. That’s what Marinello did, too. By the time he was in college he’d changed his name to Ralph Marin, like the county, but his friends called him Rock.”

“What’s Winfield’s line?”

“He’s a lawyer. In fact, Barry said he was Marinello’s law partner in the old days, before our boy decamped with the cookie jar.”

“A mob lawyer, huh?”

“Oh, no; he’s an arm’s-length operator. The gossip in the legal community, if you can call it that, is that Winfield doesn’t represent any mob guys directly; he’s more of a consultant. He suggests who they hire if they’re busted, that sort of thing, and he’s supposed to be a key business advisor to the head of one of the families out here, but nobody could ever prove it. It’s also rumored that he oversees their money-laundering operation, from a distance. Barry figured that Marinello was doing all this before he lit out, and that’s how he got hold of so much cash all at once. Winfield, whom he’d known since Stanford Law School, replaced him.”

“So he knew Marinello well, huh? Perfect.”

“Perfect is always good,” Rita said.

The offices of Winfield & Carrington were like a movie set for a white-shoe law firm. There was lots of shiny paneling, and the furniture looked as if it were out of the Rockefellers’ attic. The receptionist was middle-aged and plump; nothing flashy for Winfield & Carrington. After a ten-minute wait they were shown into a corner office.

Winfield rose to meet them. He was sixtyish, widening at the middle, gray at the temples, and beautifully tailored. He was also very gracious.

“Please sit down, Ms. Cortez, Mr. Sculley.” He directed them to a grouping of sofas and chairs, rather than facing them across his desk. “Ms. Cortez, I was so very sorry to hear of Mr. Carman’s death. He always struck me as an extremely competent man.”

“Thank you, Mr. Winfield,” Rita replied. “I wanted you to know that since Barry and I were partners, I will now be running the firm.”

“Oh, good,” he said. “I hope we can send some work your way.” He turned to Tommy. “Tell me, Mr. Sculley, are you a private investigator as well?”

“No, sir,” Tommy said. “I’m a police officer in South Florida.”

Winfield blinked but recovered quickly. “Are you the investigating officer in Mr. Carman’s case?”

“No, sir, I’m involved in a more tangential way,” Tommy replied. “In fact, my visit here is entirely unofficial and off the record.”

“I see,” Winfield said, obviously not seeing at all. “And what can I do for you?”

“I’m aware of Barry Carman’s work for you, and …”

Winfield turned to Rita, and his voice was icy. “You brought the police into this?”

“Oh, no, sir,” Tommy said quickly, stepping in to save Rita, “nothing like that at all. I assure you, there is no official interest in your relationship to Barry Carman or his firm.”