Authors: John Donohue
that had some sort of engraving in the base. The desktop was
polished and totally devoid of paper.
“So you’re the researcher,” he smiled. It wasn’t a crack; Fio-
rella seemed relaxed and open to my presence. “Lori told me
you’d be coming by.”
“I guess you’re supposed to bring me up to speed so I can
figure out what to do next. That’s what Roy tells me.”
Fiorella made a face. “Roy. What a troll. They get you set up
okay, with a room and everything?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “A bit more elegant than the Motel 6.”
Fiorella grinned. “Just a bit. I gotta warn ya, though. Lori
will want her pound of flesh…”
“She seems like someone who’s used to getting what she
wants.”
Fiorella’s eyes went slightly out of focus as if he were men-
tally reviewing data for a second. “That’s probably a pretty
accurate observation, Dr. Burke.”
“Connor,” I told him.
Fiorella looked at me and squinted. “I got the background
on you. I ran across your brother once at a conference in New
York.” He seemed like he wanted to say more. It’s not an
unusual occurrence when I meet people who’ve met Micky.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” I was trying to
place his faint accent.
Fiorella smiled. “Not many people are. The Southwest is
filling up with people from all over. Nah,” he said, getting to
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my question. “I retired as chief of homicide in Buffalo and
decided that fifty-five years of snow was enough.”
“How was the transition?”
“You know, Connor, every time there was a homicide in the
city of Buffalo, the chief had to be called in. Day or night. Hol-
idays. Weekends. I spent so much time at crime scenes talking
to the TV people, that my friends started to call me Captain
Video. Here? I get to sleep nights. I can get a full round of golf
in before work. I got a good staff of young, ambitious types and
a bunch of rich people staying for a few days, maybe drinking
too much or screwing too much, but that’s it. I keep a lid on
the over exuberant and keep the troops from stepping over the
line. It’s like a paid vacation.”
“You’ve got a homicide on your hands now,” I reminded
him. “Or at least that’s what your boss thinks.”
Charlie Fiorella grimaced. “There’s some differing opinions
on that…”
“But she’s got you working it, doesn’t she?”
He smiled. “You too.”
I held my hands up. “I’m just supposed to read her father’s
books and render an opinion.”
Fiorella stood up: a pretty good size, but trim and fit. He
was wearing creased gray trousers and shiny oxblood loafers
with little tassels on them. He swung a navy blazer off a chair,
straightened his tie. “Let’s take a walk, Connor.”
“What? The walls have ears?”
Fiorella shrugged. “Who knows? Probably. Mostly, it’s time
for me to make the rounds. Show my face to the troops.”
We wandered around the hotel grounds. Fiorella moved with
an easy economy, like someone who’d done it for a long time.
He’d stop occasionally and have brief, low-voiced conversations
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John Donohue
with various people. They all smiled and seemed both respect-
ful and genuinely glad to see him. If Lori Westmann’s presence
made everyone stiffen up, Charlie Fiorella seemed to have the
knack for making people feel comfortable. Probably not a bad
skill for an investigator.
“You know what Lori wants you to find don’t you?” he
asked me as we ambled along a shaded colonnade by a pool.
Attendants were busy collecting wet towels and taking drink
orders from vacationers in various stages of sunburn. Dressed
to be part of the shadows, fully clothed people flitted silently
in the background, sweeping walks and working the various
pieces of invisible machinery that spins below the surface of
any resort. Fiorella greeted them by name. They looked up to
respond with brief smiles, then saw me and quickly returned
their eyes to their work.
“Sure, I know what she wants,” I answered him. “She wants
me to prove that her father’s books weren’t fiction and that he
was murdered for revealing the secrets of some ancient sect of
mystics.”
Fiorella nodded as I explained. We stepped to one side as
another electric cart whizzed by. “Anything about this strike
you as odd?” He pressed.
“Well, yeah,” I admitted. “Like why wait thirty years to
send a hit squad. The damage was long done.”
Fiorella smiled. His teeth were bright against the tanned
skin. “Good start. Anything else?”
“Why bother killing someone for revealing secrets when
most of the world thinks they’re not true anyway?”
Charlie Fiorella led me up to a bar. We sat and turned to
watch the action in a pool with a huge slide and dozens of
screaming kids. The bartender greeted him and slid two cocktail
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Kage
napkins into place. He snapped the tops off two Coronas. The
bottles made a happy little fizzing sound. The bartender slipped
some lime into them. “I like the way your mind works, Con-
nor,” Fiorella said. He reached for a bottle. “Cheers.”
We sipped the beers for a while. The kids shrieked and
bobbed and splashed around. Their parents sipped fruity drinks
under awnings. Fiorella watched it all with a benign watchful-
ness. I’m pretty sure I detected a pistol in an ankle holster.
“So,” he continued. “I’ve got some friends on the local force.
I get copies of the crime scene report. I talk to the investigator
of record.”
“And?”
He shrugged. “Eliot Westmann was a flake. His personal
life was a mess. He’d been through three marriages and would
shack up with almost anything in a skirt. Big with the New
Age crowd. Spent most of his time at his retreat up in the hills.
Nice place.”
“Is that where he died?”
“Yeah. They found him at the bottom of a staircase. Stone
steps. Hard landing, ya know? He bled a bit, but basically he
broke his neck falling down the stairs.”
“No sign of…”
“Foul play?” he asked playfully. “Far as I can tell, the people
from Stolichnaya did him in. The guy was a drinker, and the
blood work confirms that he was severely intoxicated at the
time of the incident.”
“So I don’t get it,” I told him. “The locals think it’s an acci-
dent. So do you. Why is Lori Westmann so hot to pursue this?”
Fiorella thoughtfully finished the last of his Corona. Mine
was done as well, the slice of lime sitting sadly at the bottom
of the bottle. The bartender approached and looked at me. I
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John Donohue
shook my head no. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see
Fiorella watching the exchange with approval.
“There are any number of explanations, I suppose,” he
began. “People have a hard time accepting accidents of this
type.”
“Were they close?”
Fiorella pushed off the bar and we headed off in another
direction, away from the crowds. “That type of closeness is not
something I tend to associate with Lori,” he said judiciously.
“Her father had been mostly in and out of her life at best until
a few years ago.”
“What happened? Late life crisis of conscience?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Drunks get that way. I’m not dis-
counting it.”
Something in his voice told me that he was skeptical. “But
what?” I pressed.
He grinned, and the lines at the side of his eyes creased in
pleasure. “It’s my own little theory that he had bought that
big place out in the hills with the idea of turning it into some
New Age retreat center. And maybe, because he was a flake and
drinker, he realized that he needed a little help with the project.
You know, math and contracts and managing the help…”
“Lucky he had a daughter with some real world skills.”
Fiorella snorted. “You could say that. She’s a tough cookie.
Anyways, I’d be surprised if some of their newfound affection
wasn’t fueled by a profit motive.”
“How nice,” I commented.
“The world’s a complex place, Connor. You see it for what
it is.”
I’d heard that before from my brother. “So they had some
mutual business interests. But why her insistence on pursuing
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Kage
the murder theory? It’s not an insurance issue is it?”
He shook his head. “Investigation would slow down a
settlement.”
“She the sole heir?”
“Yep. All the ex-wives are dead. No other kids.”
“So,” I pursued, “then I don’t get it. Is it just that she’s got
this fixation and isn’t used to being told no?”
“There may be some of that,” he admitted. “But she’s some-
one who’s got her emotional side pretty well caged up. I’m
like you—I can’t quite figure the angle.” We wandered along
a twisting path, the blank walls of private patios and carefully
manicured bushes offering a sense of privacy to the conversa-
tion. “And I don’t know whether I really have to.”
“She’s got the money to pay for any investigation she wants,
I guess.”
“And she usually gets what she wants,” Fiorella concluded.
“It’s a bit cynical,” I commented. We emerged into a more
open area, turned left and found ourselves at my suite.
“I read about you, Connor. All the Asian martial arts stuff.”
He paused. “What’s the definition of the word
samurai
?”
I was monetarily puzzled at the change in topic. “Well, they
were the hereditary warrior class of feudal Japan…”
He waived the explanation away. “What does the
word
mean?”
“Oh,” I said, getting his point even as I spoke. “It means
‘those who serve.’”
Fiorella stopped and smiled at me. “The lady’s father dies
and she’s got money to spend to make sure nobody’s over-
looked anything. Who’s it gonna hurt? The guy’s already dead.
In the meantime, you get to spend some time out here in the
sunshine.” He smiled pleasantly. “Get yourself settled in. I’ll
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John Donohue
have the crime scene report sent over for background. I’ve also
got some biographical stuff on Westmann. Have a nice dinner,
maybe a swim. Tomorrow, I’ll take you out to his place. All the
books and notes are in his library there.”
It seemed fair enough. I shook his hand and headed toward
the door. Then a thought occurred to me and I turned to ask
a question.
“Charlie?” He stood smiling, squinting in the sun.
“Anybody who might have a grudge or motive, however
farfetched? Anybody in the mix here look like they were hard
enough to do Westmann in?”
“Connor,” he laughed. “You mean outside of you, me, a
coupla dozen members of the Tucson underworld, and your
fabled Asian assassins?”
“Yeah.”
“The only other person I can think of is the nice lady who
employs us.”
Now there was a comforting thought.
58
5
Jizo
In Japan, small stone statues of Jizo stand silently in
deserted places and graveyards. In Buddhism, Jizo is, among
other things, the patron of travelers and pilgrims. I stood in
the dust of the high desert, watching the eyes of the men sur-
rounding me. Jizo often carries a six-foot staff. I wished I had
one with me now.
I’d picked up a hotel car that morning and followed Charlie
Fiorella out into the hills toward Westmann’s desert retreat. We
wound our way up along roads that were increasingly devoid
of signs of human presence, with only power lines strung along
the wayside to serve as a connector to town.
Westmann had used some of his abundant royalty money to
invest in a failed resort property that he had attempted to trans-
form into a personal refuge and a mystic conference center. He
gathered transient groups of like-minded “seekers”: kids push-
ing the envelope of life, rejects from interdisciplinary graduate
programs, and old hippies nearing retirement who were saddled
with money to burn and a backlog of unanswered questions. He
cal ed it The Kiva, after the ritual centers of the old pueblos.
I read the report that Fiorel a had provided about the place. I
wasn’t impressed: it seemed both self-indulgent and unfocused.
The Kiva consisted of a few hundred acres with several unat-
tached buildings clustered around a central courtyard. You came
into the property through stone pil ars artful y crafted to look
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John Donohue
ancient. The road dust helped as wel . We got out of our cars.
The sunlight was white with intensity. In the quiet, you could
hear a faint musical tinkling coming from a wind chime that
moved fitful y under the eaves of a deep front porch. Our car
engines pinged faintly, throwing off heat into a world that was
already far too hot for my taste. There were a few pickups with
a contractor’s logo on the doors parked in a steadily diminishing
pool of shade. Other than that, there was no sign of life.