Death on a High Floor (44 page)

I walked a few blocks, enjoying my freedom. A couple of people stared, but nobody approached me. After a while, the rain began to intensify. I was soon going to be seriously wet if I didn’t find shelter. I realized that I was only a block from the DownUnder, and that I could probably stop by and borrow an umbrella from the owner, Tommy Flannery. A good stiff drink sounded great, too. After all, I wasn’t driving. I promised myself that I would exchange only pleasantries with Tommy. And since it was not yet four o’clock, the place wasn’t likely to be crowded with other people. I quickened my pace, got to the DownUnder, and headed down the steps. Carefully, because they were slippery from the rain.

Upon entering, I was stunned to see Detective Spritz sitting at the bar. He was the only customer. I pivoted and started to head back out, but he had apparently seen me.

“Wanna join me for a drink, Tarza?” he yelled.

“I don’t think so,” I said, without turning to face him.

“Big bad lawyer is afraid?”

In my newfound state of euphoria, I reasoned this way to myself: I wouldn’t need to say anything to him, but maybe I’d learn something useful from him. I pushed the “record” eraser on the mechanical pencil, turned back around, and went and sat down next to him. He was obviously drunk.

“Where’s your girlfriend, huh?” he asked, not bothering to turn his head.

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

He turned and looked at me. “If you say so. But whatever, she won’t like it, you talkin’ to me. Not supposed to, you know. Might tell me some deep dark secret or somethin.”

“I’m an adult,” I said. “I can talk to anyone I want. And right now I’m happy to have a drink and talk to you.”

Just then, Tommy Flannery, who had been drying glasses down at the other end of the bar, sauntered over. I’d known him for more than thirty years. He had once been a very large Irishman with flaming red hair. Thirty years had removed most of the hair and all of the color from the residual fringe. He now looked like a very large, mostly bald leprechaun.

Flannery displayed not even a raised eyebrow at seeing the accused felon-of-the- moment sitting at his bar, right beside his chief accuser. “The usual, Roberto?” he asked. Flannery had years ago fallen into the habit of Latinizing everyone’s name. Not unlike the food on his breakfast menu. At least Spritz wasn’t eating Huevos Pancho Villa.

“No, I’ll have a Bloody Mary,” I said.

“No martini? Never seen you drink anything else.”

“Times change,” I said. Flannery shrugged and went to look for the Bloody Mary mix.

Spritz was still staring directly at me. “When you drink do you throw up?”

“No.”

“Okay, then. Whadya wanna talk about, huh?”

“Not a thing. I just want to have a drink.”

“You wouldna come over here if ya didn’t want to ask something.”

I did have a couple questions. And I had a recorder. Maybe it was a crime to record it, but I was already charged with a much bigger crime. Information is power.

“Who was having breakfast with you here that day, Detective?”

“Like I said in court, nobody.”

“Who else was here who you knew?”

“Buncha people. Didn’t know any of ’em.”

Spritz turned back to staring down his drink. It was a scotch and soda, and it was almost empty. Flannery came back and plunked my bloody Mary down in front of me. I picked it up, took a sip, and stole a glance at Spritz. The
DownUnder
is fairly dark, and the bar area is even darker. When I first sat down, my eyes hadn’t fully dark adapted, so I hadn’t been able to see Spritz very well. Now I could. He had large, dark circles under his eyes and his skin looked pasty. I looked at the drink in front of him and wondered how many he’d had.

“Okay,” I said, after more than a minute of drink-sipping silence had gone by, “Let me ask you a different question. Where were you this afternoon?”

“None of your business.”

“It is my business. You’re trying to send me to jail for twenty years, remember?”

“Twenty-
five.
”

“Whichever. You owe me an explanation.”

“I don’ owe you shit, Tarza. But you know what, huh? It’s gonna come out in court tomorrow anyway, so maybe I should jus’ fucking tell you.”

I was immediately suspicious. This was too easy. I looked down the bar at Flannery and mouthed the words “How many?” He held up four fingers and then spread his thumb and forefinger wide apart. If Spritz had already had four big ones, he was seriously gone. So maybe he was going to tell me the straight scoop with no devious motive.

“Go ahead,” I said.

“I was staking out Harry Marfan’s house in Manhattan Beach.”

“Why?”

“Witnessing the heroin drop. Hardly news to you, I’m sure, huh.”

“I seriously have no clue what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you don’t. You were a part of it, remember?” He drained what was left of his scotch. “Tommy, gimme another okay? A double this time.”

“Part of what?” I asked.

“Part of a clever deal to import heroin from South America into L.A. via Hawaii.”

“You’re out of your mind. Not to mention drunk.”

“The Honolulu office was opened when you were the managing partner, wasn’t it, huh?

“Yes.”

“There aren’t any other major L.A. firms with a Honolulu office, are there?”

“We have a big client there. Simon did, anyway. And it’s the gateway to Asia, where we have a lot of clients.”

“We?”

“M&M,” I said. “The law firm.”

Flannery put the double down in front of Spritz. “Okay, Spritzo,” he said. “Four plus two makes six. No more after this one, Detective.”

By way of reply, Spritz picked up the glass and tossed down a big swallow.

Then he turned back to me. “It’s clever. No one’s ever used a big-deal law firm to move drugs before, huh?”

“I know zero about any of it,” I said. “But if Harry’s involved in drug smuggling, so was Simon.”

“How do you know that?” Spritz asked.

“They were like father and son.”

“Well, look,” Spritz said. “You say what you want, huh. We’ve got it nailed. The whole thing. First you guys move the stuff from Rio, where you also conveniently have an office, to Hawaii. Use unsuspecting associates goin’ on business. First give ’em firm-issued brief cases with sniff-proof false bottoms. Clean-cut guys in suits. Or even girls. What narc is gonna suspect snotty skirts like that as mules, huh?”

It was true that we gave each new associate a leather M&M briefcase. The big kind that come with their own wheels. It had been Simon’s idea. A welcome-to-the-firm gift.

Spritz wasn’t done. “Then someone in your Honolulu office moves the stuff to LAX. They don’t check incoming domestic flights for drugs much. Then someone takes it to your big-deal firm in L.A. Gets repackaged right there in your office, huh? Shove those pretty fake coins aside and cut it up, right there on the coffee table.”

He took another long drink. “And then down to Manhattan Beach, so Marfan can give it to the mules to move it out in small boats.”

“What on earth makes you think I was involved in that?”

“Makes sense, huh? Marfan dreams it all up when he’s managing partner. You’re the next chief guy, so you do it. With a little help from that building security manager, huh? Whatever the hell her name is. That way you guys can come and go at night with no elevator records. And then Rafer takes over as head honcho and he runs it.”

“I’m astounded,” I said. I picked up my still almost full glass and drank it down in two swallows.

“Yeah, sure you’re astounded,” Spritz said. He took another big swig of his scotch and plowed on. “As astounded as when Rafer tried to back out and you drew the short straw and hadda kill him, huh?”

Up until that moment, I had actually liked his story, implausible as it seemed. They were all involved in drugs and fell out; Stewart had mentioned something similar. But since I was not involved in drugs, it meant that someone else had killed Simon over drugs. Now it seemed I was part of it, at least in Spritz’s mind.

“You’ve had way too many scotches,” I said.

“You’re right,” Spritz said, and started to get up from the barstool. “I should go home, huh.”

“Wait,” I said. “Why did Simon try to back out?”

“The usual reason.”

“Which is?”

“Fell in love with your lady lawyer. Wanted out so they could have kiddies and live happily ever after.”

I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. He had a lot of facts, but he had put them together wrong. If all these interlinked theories were going to be brought out in court, I was in even deeper likely conviction shit than I had thought. If that was possible.

“Hey,” Spritz said, “I have a question for you, huh. Fair’s fair.”

“All right, what?”

“That coin shit? Using those things to wash money? What the hell was that all about? Better ways to put drug money in the wash, huh? Amateurs. Jesus. And all those fake e-mails back and forth about you cheating him? Why bother?”

“The coin I sold him wasn’t fake. And I, at least, wasn’t washing anything.”

Spritz was by now on his feet, if unsteadily. “Sure, sure,” he said, and started stumbling toward the door. I watched him go and then turned back to my empty glass, thinking whether to order another one. Flannery was behind the bar, right in front of me. I supposed he had heard most of it. Maybe all of it.

“He’s going to kill himself,” I said. “Not to mention the other driver.”

“Nah,” Flannery said. “I ordered him a cab about ten minutes ago. It’s sitting out front. The cabbie will take him home . . . huh?” And he laughed.

“Why do you think he got so drunk? What’s eating at him?”

“Truth? He goes on binges. This one started yesterday evening.”

“Really? That’s not something I’d have guessed about him.”

“He has his demons, like the rest of us.”

“I used to think I didn’t have any. What are his?”

“Can’t say. Bartender-customer privilege.”

I laughed. “You think it’s still raining out?”

“No reason to think it’s not. They were predicting a storm.”

“Maybe I’ll have another, then,” I said.

Flannery was wiping the bar with a red cloth, making large circles, then smaller ones inside them. “You’re not drunk, but you don’t need another drink.”

“You’re right,” I said.

“Know something?”

“What?”

“He told you the truth about that morning. There were four or five other people here, I think, but I doubt Spritzo knew any of them.”

“So I was going up a blind alley.”

“Not quite. I think
you
know one of them.”

“Who?”

“Guy from your firm who comes here a lot. Stewart Broder.”

“Stewart was here with three or four other people?”

“No, he was alone. Sitting in a booth. But he didn’t eat anything. Just drank coffee. Maybe four cups. And then he asked me for a tea bag.”

“He drank tea after four cups of coffee?”

“No. I saw him put the tea bag in his pocket. That’s all. But he’s a weird guy, you know.”

“Yeah, he is,” I said. An absolutely crazy plan was beginning to form in my head. “Tomasito”—that’s what he truly likes to be called—“is there still a Hertz place across the street?”

“There was this morning.”

“Thanks.” I paid the bill and left.

As I crossed the street, the rain was coming down more heavily than it had when I arrived. By the time I got to Hertz, my suit was more than damp. I had forgotten to borrow an umbrella. All Hertz had left was a single green Honda Accord, so I grabbed it. My credit card even worked. Jenna had, at some point, gotten it restored.

It took me almost two hours of driving in steady rain to make the forty-five minute drive to Manhattan Beach. Harry was down there, and my gut told me that he knew what I needed to know. It wasn’t going to be like the last time. If he wouldn’t tell me all of it, I was going to beat the shit out of him until he did. I’d never even hit anyone before, but I felt angrier than I had ever felt before.

I parked several blocks away, where my car wouldn’t be seen. My Chicago trip had taught me a lot. When I got out, the rain was coming down in buckets. By the time I made it to Harry’s front door, I was soaked.

The door was wide open, and I stepped inside, mostly to get out of the rain. The lights were on, but there was no sound. I walked cautiously into the living room.

Harry was face down on the floor, with a small dagger plunged into his back.

He wasn’t moving, and there was a lot of blood. This time I noted where the dagger was. Low down and slightly to the left of the spine. To the right of the dagger, there was a dime-sized dark spot, partially covered in blood. I bent down to look at it more closely. It was another
Ides
.

This time I didn’t touch the body. I just turned and ran.

By the time I got back to my car, I was shivering badly. Maybe from my soaked clothes. More likely from shock. If I’d had a cell phone with me, I might well have called someone. But I hadn’t been taking it to the courthouse. My hand shook so much that I had trouble unlocking the car. I finally got the door open, then took my dripping jacket off and tossed it on the back seat. I got back in the car, turned on the engine, and turned up the heat. After maybe ten minutes, my shaking finally stopped. I put the car in gear and headed home.

The traffic was worse going back than it had been coming, so it took me well over two hours to get home. Which unfortunately gave me a lot of time to think. One of the things I dwelled on was the dagger in Harry’s back. I had recognized it instantly. It had a unique miniature painting on the handle—Richard the Lionheart with his foot on a slain stag. A dagger with an identical image had been the pride of my collection.

As I neared my house, I considered whether to continue my criminal ways by parking a few blocks away and then trying to sneak in through the back door. Or to pull boldly into the driveway and let the Blob have its way with me. I opted for the driveway. If they hassled me, I would give them all the finger. The photo would look nice in the paper, probably above the fold.

But when I pulled into my driveway, the Blob was nowhere to be seen. There were a few leavings—a couple of discarded Styrofoam cups and a short length of coaxial cable—but that was it. No people, no equipment. I got out of the car and noticed that it had finally stopped raining. I hadn’t been carrying my keys—I had minders who had keys—since the preliminary hearing started, so I walked up the path to the front door and rang my own doorbell.

I stood there, waiting, shivering a bit as the chill made its way again into my still wet clothes. After what seemed an interminable time, Jenna opened the door.

“Well,” she said, looking me up and down, “Detective Tarza returns.”

“Where’s the Blob?” I asked.

“We don’t know. About an hour ago, it just picked up and left. Like locusts leaving a picked-over wheat field. Probably found something more urgent to Blob up.”

Jenna was still standing in the doorway, blocking it. “Are you going to invite me in?” I asked.

She laughed and stepped aside. “Well, it is your house.”

“I’ve got to get out of these wet clothes,” I said, and headed for my bedroom. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Uncle Freddie and Oscar sitting on the semicircle of couches in the conversation pit, talking. They seemed relaxed. I stood in the hot shower for a very long time, then put on jeans, a sweatshirt, and dry shoes, and headed back out to the living room.

No one was talking. Instead, Jenna, Uncle Freddie, and Oscar were all rapt at whatever was on the TV, although they had muted the sound. I walked over, much warmed up, and plunked myself down on the couch next to Jenna.

“That’s where they went,” Jenna said, pointing at the TV. I looked. There was the Blob, gathered in front of Harry’s condo, which was cordoned off with yellow tape. The flashing lights of several squad cars lit the scene.

“Harry was murdered,” Jenna said.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “I was there.”

The other two heads snapped around to look at me.

“What do you mean you were there?” Oscar asked.

“Just that. I stopped in at the DownUnder on my walk and learned some things there that I thought Harry needed to explain, so I went to see him. When I got there, he was dead. He was lying on the floor, with a dagger in his back. In exactly the same spot as the dagger in Simon’s back, by the way.” I said it all in a matter-of-fact tone, like I might have reported seeing a dead bird on the sidewalk.

There was a long silence. Finally, Oscar asked, “What size shoes do you wear?”

“Size twelve,” I said. “I’m five-foot-ten, but have really big feet for my height. Why?”

“One of the reporters just said that the killer left footprints from wet shoes, and that whoever it was had really big feet.”

“That would make sense,” I said. “It was raining, and the soles of my shoes were no doubt quite wet.”

Uncle Freddie looked directly at me. “So, my good man, did
you
kill him?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Sorry,” he said, “I thought that I should cut to the chase. No offense meant.”

“No offense taken,” I said.

“You know,” Oscar said, “you’re a horse’s ass, Robert.”

“Why?” I asked.

“For playing at detective again,” he said. “First time, you did some damage, but not damage that can’t be repaired. Now you’ve fucked up all the good work Jenna’s done for you in the hearing by going and putting yourself in the middle of a murder scene . . . again.”

“Not to mention,” Jenna said, “the unfortunate fact that the victim was on the prosecution’s witness list.”

“There are a hundred people on that list,” I said. “They weren’t really going to call Harry.”

“Tell it to the Blob,” Jenna said. She pointed the remote at the TV and unmuted it. A reporter was looking into the camera and saying “. . . this murder by dagger of a prosecution witness throws another odd twist into what was already an odd day in court at the trial of alleged murderer Robert Tarza . . .” Jenna hit the mute button again.

“That detail rather piques my interest,” Uncle Freddie said. “Robert, were you able to determine the type of dagger utilized by the dastardly person who did the deed?”

“You bet,” I said. “It was exactly like a dagger in the collection that was stolen from me ten years ago. The prize piece, really. Had a miniature painting of Richard the Lionheart on the handle. Very rare. There are only maybe a dozen of them around.”

Uncle Freddie reached into a briefcase that had been sitting beside him on the floor and pulled out a manila folder. He removed a photo and handed it to me. “Was it like this one?”

I held it under a lamp so I could see it better. “Looks like the very one,” I said.

“That’s a photo of the small dagger that was hidden in the secret compartment in Stewart’s office,” he said. “One of my colleagues just handed me the print a bit ago.”

Jenna got up and came and looked at the photo over my shoulder. “Robert, when was your collection stolen, exactly?”

“About ten years ago,” I said. “I went to look for it one night in late September and found it gone. The last time I’d seen it before that was at the annual summer party at my house. In early August. Some new associates who were into collecting had wanted to see it. So it was stolen sometime between early August and late September.”

“Was Stewart at the party?” Jenna asked.

“I’m sure he was,” I said. “He was a regular at those things. But so were a lot of other people. Harry, for example.”

“So one possible inference we might draw,” Uncle Freddie said, “is that it was Stewart who spotted the collection at the party and later stole it. Then used one of the daggers from the collection to kill Simon and another to kill Harry.”

“It doesn’t really compute,” Oscar said. “It would mean that Stewart left the courtroom, after being seen by the Blob and publicly identified as the next witness, drove straight down to Manhattan Beach, probably followed by a reporter, and killed Harry. He’d have to be as dumb as our friend Detective Tarza here.”

“He’s not really very smart,” I said.

Oscar went silent. Uncle Freddie was looking thoughtful. “Robert,” he said, “we’ve not yet talked in detail about your fine adventure at the
DownUnder
.
What precisely did you learn there that persuaded you to drive to Manhattan Beach on such a lovely, rainy evening?”

“Well,” I said, “Spritz was there. He told me Harry, Simon, and Susan Apacha were running a heroin smuggling ring, Brazil to Hawaii to Los Angeles, using unsuspecting M&M associates as mules.”

“Righto,” Uncle Freddie said. “Taking advantage of the distinct possibility that drug searches of passengers arriving in Hawaii from Brazil would be light, and searches of those going from Hawaii to LAX would be light as well. Domestic flight. Clever. Very clever . . . if true.”

“You talked to Spritz?” Oscar asked, his eyebrows distinctly raised. “He was there?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He was drunk as a skunk and felt like talking. He even told me their motive. They killed Simon because he was trying to back out of the whole thing.”

“Why was he trying to back out?” Jenna asked.

“Supposedly because Simon had fallen in love with you and, to quote Spritz, ‘wanted to have kiddies and live happily ever after.’”

“Spritz was just jerking your chain,” Jenna said. “I told you before, we weren’t in love. Simon least of all.”

“Maybe there was more between you than you want to know,” I said.

Before Jenna had a chance to respond, the phone rang in the other room, and she leaped up to go and answer it. While she was gone, I filled Oscar and Uncle Freddie in on more of the details from my conversation with Spritz, including the fact that Stewart was at the
DownUnder
the morning of the murder and had asked for a tea bag to take with him. They seemed only mildly interested. I had the sense that their brains had moved on to the latest murder in which I was apparently about to be falsely accused.

Jenna came back into the room. “That was Spritz,” she said. “He wanted to know where the green Honda was. I told him I didn’t know what green Honda he was talking about. What green Honda
was
he talking about, Robert?”

“The one parked out front in the driveway,” I said. “I rented it at Hertz. I needed a car to get to Manhattan Beach, and mine was here. I didn’t want to be followed.”

“Jesus,” Oscar said. “You drove a rental car to get there? That you rented in your own name?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I did.”

Jenna interrupted Oscar’s incredulity. “Spritz wanted to know one more thing.”

“What?” I asked.

“What size shoes you wear.”

“Did you provide him that information?” Uncle Freddie asked.

“No, of course I didn’t. I told him I didn’t go around asking men their shoe size.”

“Good,” I said.

Jenna looked at me like I was an idiot. “Good? It won’t make any difference. You can expect a search warrant for your shoes first thing in the morning.”

Uncle Freddie was staring at my feet. I was wearing loafers. “I don’t suppose,” he said, “that is the footwear with which you were shod when you went to visit the late Harry, is it?”

“No,” I said. “I was wearing my black wingtips. Church.”

“English,” he said. Then he added, “I dare say there are not all that many citizens of this metropolis who wear Church wingtips.”

“No,” I said. “I suppose not. But I could care less. Bring ’em on. I’ll tell them exactly what I did and exactly what I found. If Spritz is right about the drug ring, it’s going to be pretty clear, once all the evidence comes out, that I didn’t kill Harry. It’s just one more killing among drug lords, and there’s no evidence of any kind that I’ve ever had anything to do with drugs.”