Death on a High Floor (18 page)

“What?”

“They slipped a copy of the search warrant under my office door.”

“Would you stop calling it your office?”

“Okay. They left a copy of the search warrant under my bedroom door.”

“And?”

“It included the garden. Do you have any idea why they wanted to look in the garden?”

“No.” As I said it, we both moved, as if by agreement, to the kitchen window, which overlooked the garden. It was still dark out, so I flipped on the outside floods.

“Wow,” Jenna said.

A large but shallow hole had been dug in the northeast corner of the garden. The dirt from the dig was piled beside the hole.

“I wonder what they found,” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Lots of dirt and some old pottery shards would be my guess. Anyway, I need to make my airline reservations. You can inspect the garden later if you want.”

“Shall I bring out my computer?”

“No. I’ll just use the phone.”

Which is what I did.

United
and
American
were booked solid. I finally called
Southwest
and discovered that they had a 10:30 a.m. flight that got into Chicago Midway at about seven in the evening. It stopped in Kansas City, but that wasn’t a big deal. Then I called and made a reservation at
Swissôtel
, down by the River on East Wacker. Not the most elegant hotel in Chicago, but it’s got a terrific view, and it’s only about a ten-minute drive from Hyde Park. That’s where Serappo has his office. If you can call it an office.

It didn’t take long to pack my small roll-aboard. I was planning to stay only one night, so I figured I could get away with wearing the same suit a second day, much as I hated that. All I needed was a clean shirt, some underwear, and my travel kit. I picked up Volume III of Grueber’s
Coins of the Roman Republic in the British Museum
and tossed it
on top of the clothes. Maybe when I had a little spare time I could take a look at the list of hoard finds in the front of the book and see if there were any for the
Ides
. Then I thought better of it and took it back out. It would make the roll-aboard too heavy. It was still a little early to leave for the flight, but I decided I might as well go early and miss the traffic. I could grab a bite at the airport and spend the extra time there instead of gridlocked on the 405.

When I came out of the bedroom, heading for the door to the garage, Jenna was standing there, still in her bathrobe, sipping a cup of coffee.

“Hey, can I say something before you go?” she said.

“Sure.”

“I need to apologize to you.”

“For what?”

“I’ve been kind of snotty to you the last couple of days.”

“Not really.”

“Well, yes, really. I’ve been behaving like I know it all, and you know nothing. Maybe it’s because I’m nervous about all this responsibility. Extra nervous now that Oscar has quit. Anyway, I just want you to know that I really care about you, and I’m going to try to do a really great job.”

All of a sudden, I was brought back to the reality that my lead counsel had departed and that Jenna was now my only lawyer—a seventh-year associate with very little criminal law experience. Even if she did know the difference between a subpoena and a search warrant. But I no longer cared. In the last couple of days, I had come to think of Jenna as the adult. We had reversed roles. Now she was giving me a chance to bail out if I wanted to. I didn’t want to. I had a premonition about Jenna. A good one.

“Jenna, I know you’ll do a great job,” I said. “I have a lot of faith in you to first-chair this. When it’s all over, we’ll go out again and drink martinis. Just like the old days.”

She came over and gave me a big hug. “Thank you, Robert. Be careful in Chicago, and remember the rule.”

“What rule?”

“The one you taught me about interviewing: Ask lots of questions. Don’t answer any.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said.

I went out and got in my car. I clicked the garage door open, turned the key in the ignition, and started to put the car in gear. Then I took it out of gear again, sat there for a moment, and thought carefully about what I had just said to Jenna. I turned the car back off, clicked the garage door shut, and went back into the house. Jenna was again at the kitchen table. She looked up.

“I forgot something,” I said.

“What?”

“Something about your new law firm.”

“You think we need trendier offices to attract good clients?” She grinned.

“No, I think you need to add something to continue to attract this client.”

Her look turned serious. “Like what?”

“Like a senior lawyer to partner with James and Associates. In particular, a replacement for Oscar as lead counsel.”

“You thought I was good enough to be first chair two minutes ago, but now you’ve changed your mind?”

“Yes. I came to my senses in the garage. For the next guy, you will be good enough. But let’s face it, you’re still too inexperienced in criminal law.”

She looked crestfallen. In the past, Jenna had often gotten her way with me by using that look. Not this time.

“Don’t take it so hard,” I said. “Just make a list of candidates. We’ll go over it when I get back.”

I didn’t wait for her response. I went back out, got back in my car, reopened the garage door, and drove out. At normal speed for a change, because the Blob was still missing.

Some days at six forty-five in the morning, the 405 is jammed. Other days, at exactly the same time, it’s nearly empty. It’s utterly unpredictable. This was one of those utterly unpredictable nearly empty days. So I was at the airport and parked in what seemed like no time.

I walked into Terminal 1 and glanced behind me to see if I was being followed. No one seemed to be paying me any heed. I got my boarding pass from the automatic ticket machine and looked around again. Nothing. I passed through the security check point and scanned the crowd for a third time. Still nothing, although I must have looked rather furtive if anyone was paying attention. Apparently, no one was. Somehow, my anonymity had been at least temporarily restored.

The only place to have a hot food breakfast in Terminal 1 is at
McDonald’s
. I’m not normally a big patron of
McDonald’s
, but an Egg McMuffin seemed somehow the perfect meal to match my mood. That and a hot cup of coffee, even if it was in a paper cup. I have always believed that the decline of American civilization is made manifest by the ubiquity of coffee served in paper cups.

With more than an hour to spare, I screwed up my courage and bought an
L.A. Times
. Except for the one Jenna had thrust upon me, it was the first newspaper I’d really looked at in nearly a week. I paged quickly through it to see if there was any reference to me in the first section. There wasn’t. Nor in the second section. Maybe the whole thing had been a bad dream, and it would all just go away. Spritz would arrest the real killer, I’d go on the
Today
show
, talk about how dreadful it feels to be a “person of interest” in connection with a murder, and then just blend back into my real life.

So I relaxed for the first time in many days and read the paper front to back. It felt great.

I was in the group that boarded first. Since there are no assigned seats on Southwest, I moved to the very back of the plane and took a window seat. The number of people waiting suggested to me that the plane was going to be only moderately full, and that a lot of middle seats might stay empty. Eventually, a very tall gentleman wearing a bright red shirt came and took the aisle seat in my row. No one sat down between us.

We’d been in the air maybe five minutes when he turned to me and said, “Aren’t you Robert Tarza?”

I stiffened and considered denying it. But I didn’t.

“Yes, I suppose I am. Why?”

“Edwin Larson.
National Enquirer
.” He stuck out his hand. I didn’t take it.

“Shit.”

“Hey, don’t be so negative.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“We have sources, as they say. Your face has been all over the papers and TV. When you buy an Egg McMuffin in a public airport, someone is likely to notice you and give us a call. We’ve got a toll-free tip number. Somebody maybe got some bucks for phoning you in.”

“I’m so very happy for them.”

“Yeah, well, we’d like to interview you. An exclusive for a week. We’ll make it well worth your while.”

“I’m not interested,” I said.

“Money always comes in handy in a situation like yours.”

“Like I said, I’m not interested.”

“There are advantages besides the money.”

I should just have turned away and pulled out the in-flight magazine or something. But one of the problems with being a lawyer all your life is that you develop a built-in tendency to respond to statements like his with follow-up questions. Like a dog barking when the doorbell rings. “What advantages, exactly?”

“You get to tell your side of the story. For the first time.”

“And what? Have it run next to some story about alien babies?”

He looked genuinely offended. “We do
not
do alien baby stories. That was the
Weekly World News
when it was still around in print form.
We’re a serious paper. We broke a lot of the O. J. stuff. Those fat fucks at the
L.A. Times
actually had to read our paper to find out what was happening. So giving us an exclusive is a fast track to real people. The kind of people who’ll be on your jury.”

I had had a few dealings with the press before all this. I thought I knew the score with at least the print guys. I could probably get something out of this. Even as my responding words took shape in my brain, I could hear Jenna screaming at me: “Don’t even think about it!”

“It would have to be off the record,” I said.

“No problem.”

“Okay, then, call it a maybe. But first I want to ask
you
something, Mr. Larson.”

“Shoot.”

“Why is everybody so interested? Simon Rafer wasn’t a celebrity. No one had even heard of him before he was killed.”

Before he could answer, the flight attendant came by, asked if we wanted coffee or soft drinks, and handed us the inevitable packets of peanuts. I couldn’t help but think of the nice plate of bacon and eggs that would have been served aboard Peter’s
Citation
. I ordered an orange juice. My seatmate ordered a double vodka on the rocks.

The flight attendant departed up the aisle and Larson answered my question as if there had been no interruption. “They’d heard of him for sure,” he said. “He was a man about town. Honorary chair of the opera. Big charitable donor. Frequently photographed at society fund raisers. And the
pièce de résistance
—as we say over at the
Enquirer—
he used to date a big movie star. Deanna Cuvtin.”

“She hasn’t been in a film in ten years,” I said.

“Big movie stars are forever. It’s not like she did TV.”

“They broke up five years ago.”

“Maybe so,” he said. “But we’ve got a zillion pictures of the two of them doing the club scene.”

“You’re telling me the media’s after me because I supposedly killed a guy who used to go out with a washed-up movie star, and you’ve all got great five-year-old pictures?”

“Life’s a bitch, isn’t it?” He paused a second to wait for my response, which wasn’t forthcoming. “So how about that interview?”

“Explain to me again what’s in it for me.”

“Like I said, you get to tell your story. And I’ll trade you some information.”

“What have you got?” I asked.

“Tell me you’ll do the interview, and I’ll tell you. You won’t be disappointed.”

“That’s a sucker deal.”

“No, it’s not. I’ve been covering this thing full time for four days. I’ve talked to a lot of people. If you think what I tell you isn’t valuable, you can back out. Of course, I’ll think you’re a shit, and I’ll be out to get you, but I won’t be able to make you talk.”

I thought about it. The logic of mutual obligation in our culture is a topic unto itself. He had me hooked. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it this way. Tell me this great piece of information, and we’ll see.”

We were interrupted by the orange juice and the double vodka being plopped down on our trays. I sipped at my orange juice. Larson looked at me and said, “The police searched your garden.”

“I already know that.”

“Well, they found something.”

“I know that, too.” Of course, that was a bit of fudge. I had no idea what they had found in the hole they dug, if anything.

“I’m betting you don’t know what they found.”

“That would be correct.”

“They found an old metal box with a counterfeit Canadian passport in it.” He paused. “In your name.”

I wished I’d ordered the vodka instead of the orange juice. But I tried to maintain my aplomb. I think I succeeded. “Was there anything else in the box?”

“Why don’t I save that till later.”

I just sat there. After a while, Larson said, “You’re very quiet Robert. You don’t mind if I call you Robert, do you?”

“That’s fine.”

“How about that interview? When we’re done, I might know a few more things, too.”

I caved. “What do you want to know?”

It was odd to me, but what Larson mainly wanted to know about was what I knew about Simon’s affair with Deanna Cuvtin. Which wasn’t much, really. Although I did recount to him the time we had a New Year’s Eve toga party at my place, and Deanna was thrown into the hot tub wearing only a thin sheet. Larson wanted to know if I had any pictures of the event. I told him I didn’t.

It was only toward the end of the interview that he began to ask me about myself and Simon. I recognized the technique. Ask the person you’re interviewing a lot of easy stuff first, gain their confidence, and then get to what you really want to know.

So I ended up telling Larson that Simon and I were friends, that I had recruited him and supported him for partner, that I had no reason to kill him, and that I had, indeed, just stumbled on the body. I explained how I was usually an early bird. I told him everything I thought a juror would want to hear. It wasn’t until the very, very end, when I thought he had finished, that he got around to asking what he truly wanted to know.

“By the way, Robert, did you sell Simon Rafer some rare coin?” He asked it casually, as if he expected the answer to be no.

“I did,” I said.

“What was it?”

“An Ides denarius of Brutus.”

“Never heard of it. What is it?”

“The coin Brutus minted to commemorate his assassination of Julius Caesar. On the Ides of March.”

Mostly, Larson had been listening, without making notes. Now he made a note. “So it wasn’t some American silver dollar, like they said in the
Times
?”

“No. The
Times
got that wrong,” I said.

“Wow,” he said. “Assassination. That’s something we can do something with.” Then he muttered, almost to himself, “I wonder if our readers will know that he wasn’t a salad.”

The interview ended with my shaving the truth by a few millimeters. Larson’s very last question was whether Simon was dissatisfied with the coin I had sold him. I said no. I justified my answer, in my own head, by assuring myself that the coin I sold Simon had been genuine. So if Simon was dissatisfied with the coin, it wasn’t with the coin I sold him. It wasn’t with me. It was with whoever switched the coin. If anybody did.

I figured I had told him enough to gain the next piece of information. “So what else was in the box?”

“Ancient coins of some sort, with some guy pictured on the front. We’re trying to find out more.”

“Really.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Do you know who put the box there?” he asked.

“No.”

To my surprise, Larson didn’t press me about the box or its contents. Not that I would have been able to enlighten him.

Instead, he asked, “Is it true you’re going to take a plea deal?”

“No!”

“There have been rumors in the papers that your lawyers are discussing it.”

“They’re not.”

He apparently had no more questions burning a hole in his notepad, because he thanked me for the interview and assured me it would be attributed to “well-placed sources” or something like that. He gave me his card and said, “Call me if you learn anything else you’re willing to share with us. Or have one of your lawyers call. We can trade information.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He took a long sip of his vodka, pursed his lips, and seemed to hesitate. Then he said, “One last piece of information for you. When the police searched Rafer’s condo the day after he was killed, they didn’t find any coin. My sources tell me they didn’t know to look for it. The cops only figured out yesterday that a coin was involved. Something they found on a computer tipped them off. Now they’re wondering where the coin is.”

I thought about saying, “Well, obviously, dummkopf, it’s in the metal box.” Instead I said, “Did they ever go back and find it?”

“Well, they went back yesterday and really tore the place up looking for it, but came up with nothing. But . . . and here’s the big news. . . they think someone else broke in yesterday afternoon and took the coin out of a safe, right before they got there.”