Lanyon, Josh - Adrien English 04 - Death of a Pirate King (11 page)

They weren’t hard to find. The half page ad proclaimed
Lying spouses? Spying Louses? We are
discreet and diligen
t
! There was
a cartoon of a man who looked disturbingly like Luigi from
Super Mario Brothers
smiling through a spyglass at his prospective
clients.

Me, if I was reduced to setting a shamus on my straying
spouse, I’d go for a company that looked less…fun. I noted the Web site address
and looked them up on my laptop. No goofy logo. Just a picture of a generic Los
Angeles skyline and the information that Markopoulos Investigations was bonded,
licensed, and insured -- with an “eleven-year track record.”

I phoned and asked for Roscoe. The secretary came back and
asked who she should say was calling. I told her. She put me on hold --
treating me to some fuzzy local radio -- and then returned to ask what it was
in regards to. I told her. Back on hold in time to hear Miley Cyrus -- a big
favorite with Emma -- singing about having the best of both worlds.

Miley disappeared and a brusque male voice asked,
“Markopoulos. Can I help you?”

I reintroduced myself. “I understand you were working for
Porter Jones, the film producer.”

Silence. At last, the voice said grudgingly, “Maybe.”

“Then you’re probably aware that he was the victim of a
homicide a couple of days ago.”

Another silence. Either Mr. Markopoulos didn’t read the
newspaper or he was processing very slowly.

“Maybe,” he said finally.

I said, “Would it be possible to meet and go over a few
things?”

“Are you with the media?” he asked suspiciously.

“No. Absolutely not. I’ve been asked to look into a few
things.”

“You another investigator?”

“Something like that.”

Silence.

“I’m going out of town this afternoon,” Markopoulos announced
at last. “I’ll be gone for nine days. Call me in nine days.”

“If I could just have a half an hour,” I said quickly. I
glanced at the astronaut clock hanging above the desk. “I could be there within
the hour.”

Silence.

“If you can get here before three o’clock,” he said
grudgingly.

I hung up and told Natalie I was going out.

“This is why we need help!” she called as I started up the
stairs. I nodded distractedly, already dialing Jake.

My call went straight to message. I dialed again. Straight to
message. I changed out my jeans and T-shirt into trousers and a tailored white
shirt. I called Jake again. It went to message.

I opened my mouth, then rethought. If I was doing this -- and
I obviously was -- maybe it would be a better idea to talk to Jake when my
meeting with Markopoulos was a fait accompli. I settled for asking him to call
when he had a chance -- and then I turned my phone off.

“Where are you going?” Natalie asked as I returned
downstairs. “Are you working a case?”

The queen’s spies -- that would be the other queen -- were
everywhere. “Don’t worry,” I assured her. “I’ll be back in plenty of time for
my close-up.”

“Adrien!”

I closed the door firmly on her protest.

Chapter Nine

“Mr. Markopoulos will see you now,” recited the receptionist
at Markopoulos Investigations. I tossed aside the copy of
SC Magazine
I’d been browsing, and she buzzed me into the hallway
leading to the inner offices.

It wasn’t Pinkerton’s, but Markopoulos Investigations -- or
MI as they now called themselves -- was more than a grubby guy in an office
with a bimbo secretary and a bottle of rye in the right-hand drawer. In fact,
the receptionist didn’t look old enough to drink. Come to think of it, I’m not
sure she looked old enough to work. Maybe it was the Elly May pigtails. Or the
Tootsie Pop. Were there intern positions for receptionists?

She led me down a starkly lit hallway past three other empty
offices. The nameplate beside each door bore the last name Markopoulos. Roscoe
had the corner office overlooking Wilshire Boulevard.

He rose from behind his desk, a small, energetic man with an
enormous mustache. He bore a disconcerting resemblance to the Luigi character
of the phone book ad.

We shook hands and sat down. I declined an offer of coffee.

“I’ve been out of town,” Markopoulos told me. “That’s how
come I hadn’t heard about Mr. Jones. You say you’re working with the police?”

I sidestepped that one. “Not on Jones’s murder, no.”

“The cops!” He shook his head like, what could you do with
pesky law enforcement underfoot all the time? “So what are you working on?”

I’d been giving this some thought on the drive over, and I
said, “There are some questions regarding Jones’s will. You know the kind of
thing: what his mental and emotional state might have been in at the time of
his death.” I shrugged. “I think the fact that he had considered divorcing his
wife --”

“He wasn’t just considering it,” Markopoulos interrupted. “He
was just getting his ducks in a row.”

“And were his ducks in a row?”

Markopoulos grinned toothily. “His ducks were lined up like
they were in a shooting gallery.”

I said, “So the wife was having an affair?”

He nodded his head up and down like one of those oil derricks
along Santa Barbara. “Oh yeah.”

“And you handed that proof over to Jones?”

“Yep. Every last photograph.”

“Can I ask --?”

He contemplated me with his dark, alert eyes. “Well, let me
ask you this, Mr. English. What’s it worth to your client?”

I had to think about that one. “The going rate?” I suggested.

He startled me by laughing. “It’s the first wife, isn’t it?
Your client is Marla Vicenza?”

I smiled and spread my hands.

He pointed at me and laughed harder. I laughed too -- a
little giddily.

He considered. “Okay,” he said. “Professional courtesy. Five
hundred bucks and you get it all.”

I decided Paul Kane could afford it. “Done.”

He swiveled his chair around, did some typing at the
computer, and then buzzed his secretary and requested the file for JON398.

I wrote out a check while we waited for the secretary to
bring the file in. She bounced in. Markopoulos handed her the check and me the
file.

There were photos -- lots of photos -- of Ally with a stocky,
good-looking man I recognized as her funeral escort.

“Does he have a name?” I inquired, flipping through the
photos.

“Duncan Roe,” Markopoulos said with satisfaction. “He’s her
personal trainer.”

“What’s he training her to do?”

He laughed.

I shuffled through the log of times and dates and locations. I
tried to think of innocent reasons why Ally and Duncan Roe needed to meet at
the Luxe Hotel once a week for two and three hours at a time. Ally already had
her own tennis courts, pool, and exercise room. True, I’d heard nice things
about the Zen-inspired spa at the Luxe.

“Kelly will make you copies of anything you need.”

“Thanks.” I held up a picture of Ally and Duncan lunching on
the bougainvillea-covered terrace of Hotel Bel-Air. They sure as hell didn’t
appear to be concerned with covering their tracks. “You followed her for six
weeks. Any idea of how long it was going on?” I asked.

“Three or four months, as far as I could make out.”

I thanked him and asked for copies of everything in the file.
Roscoe left while Kelly was Xeroxing.

“You like the PI business?” I asked her.

She shifted her Tootsie Pop to reply. “It’s a living.”

* * * * *

Checking my messages when I climbed in the Forester, I saw
that Jake had called.

I clicked on the message and listened to him politely ask me
to call him back, and I thought again how odd it was to be on formal terms with
someone you had once permitted to lick your ears.

I called him back -- prepared for another round of phone tag
-- but he picked up, catching me off guard.

“Uh, hey,” I said. “It’s Adrien. English.”

There was a pause and he said, “I haven’t forgotten your
voice. Let alone your last name.”

A funny little tingle rippled down my spine -- infuriating,
considering everything that I knew.

“Right. Well, I tried to get you earlier but -- anyway, Kane
came up with the name of the PI Jones hired.”

Silence. But I thought I knew that silence. Knew that
undertone of anger. And I assumed Paul Kane knew it as well, but apparently he
was immune to it. That must have been some inoculation period.

“Which is what?”

His tone was neutral -- his beef was with Kane, not me -- but
I knew he was wondering why Kane had handed me that information instead of
giving it to him. Or maybe he knew Kane well enough to know how his brain
worked. It wasn’t my problem.

I gave up Markopoulos’s name and address, and then steeled
myself to tell him the rest of it. Not like I didn’t know how this went, but I
also knew there was a good chance he would kick me off the case. And to be
honest, I wasn’t sure if I minded or not. In a way I didn’t want to examine too
carefully, it would be a relief.

“Look, Jake,” I said. “You’re not going to be happy.
Markopoulos agreed to see me. He was on his way out of town and there wasn’t
time to talk to you first.”

There was an astonished pause. “Are you telling me you went
to see Markopoulos after I asked you not to?”

I took a deep breath. “Pretty much. Yeah.”

I closed my eyes and waited for the sky to fall.

His tone was flat. “Why would you do that after I asked you
not to? After you told me you wouldn’t.”

“He was going out of town. I thought --”

“No, you didn’t think,” he cut in. “There was no good reason
for you to bypass me. I don’t give a shit if he was going out of town. I don’t
give a shit if he was going to Mars. We have recourse --”

He bit off the rest of it. There was a sharp silence. I
wondered if he heard the same echo I did. Remembered the last time we’d argued
a similar situation -- remembered the way it had ended.

He said into that resounding silence, “I’m disappointed in
you, Adrien.”

He was in the right all the way -- no question, really. I’d
wanted to hear firsthand what Markopoulos had to say. I didn’t want to wait for
Jake to filter it for me -- assuming he bothered -- but that particular choice
of word was…unfortunate.

“Really?” I said. “I disappointed you? I can’t imagine what
that feels like -- to be disappointed in someone you trusted. How’s it feel?”

He said tightly, “All right --”

“Does it? Feel all right? Terrific! Then I have something to
look forward to --”

“
God damn i
t
!” he said, and that quiet fury shut
me up like no amount of yelling could have.

I could hear him breathing hard. He said, “Listen, I know you
think I’m an asshole -- I
am
an
asshole -- but this is for your protection. I don’t --” He broke off whatever he
was about to say.

I snarled, “This isn’t for my protection. Who are you
kidding? You’re worried about me screwing up your case. Same thing you’ve
always been worried about. So don’t feed me some line of bullshit about giving
a fuck about what happens to me.” Acid reflux disease -- it was becoming
chronic with me.

“You don’t have a clue what I think,” he shot back. “And you
don’t have a clue what I feel. I’m not going to waste time with empty threats.
We both know I’m not going to throw you in jail. But I can -- and I will --
make it impossible for you to be involved in this goddamned mess. I don’t want
to go that route, and believe me,
you
don’t want me to go that route --”

I waited for him to finish it.

He inhaled and exhaled. I had driven him to deep breathing
exercises. With an obvious attempt at control, he said, “So will you just, for
once
in your bullheaded life, do the
reasonable thing and touch base with me -- like you gave me your word you would
-- before you interview anyone else?”

In the pause that followed his words I realized that he
wasn’t kicking me off the case. It took me a bewildered moment to register it.

“Yes,” I bit out. “I can do that.”

“Thank you,” he bit back. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“I can’t wait.”

He disconnected.

* * * * *

“Darling, that blue is just
wonderful
with your eyes,” my mother said as the photographer
busied himself setting up his equipment in the Dautens’ formal living room in
their Chatsworth Hills home.

“This old thing?” I inquired, glancing down at the silk Tommy
Bahama camp shirt she’d bought me for my last birthday.

Natalie snorted, and Lauren -- who I rarely saw these days --
bit her lip trying not to laugh. I found it entertaining that my mother never
bought me a garment in any color but blue. Different shades of blue -- and
occasionally a pattern -- but always and without fail, blue. I’d pointed this
out at the last Christmas extravaganza, and it had become a little family joke
-- that Lisa did not acknowledge.

“He even got a haircut for the occasion,” Natalie offered.

Narrowly eyeing the photographer’s shapely assistant who was
positioning Bill Dauten on the end of the sofa, Lisa replied absently, “That’s
nice. Are you sure you don’t want Guy to be part of this portrait?”

“I’m sure,” I said, and my three stepsisters gazed at me with
interest.

“It’s too late for that, darling,” Bill Dauten remonstrated
gently.

“You’re a bit shiny,” the assistant told him, and Dauten
grunted.

Dauten was a big man with the LA City Council. A big man in
general -- a little soft around the middle -- bald and tanned. He had that aura
of wealth and power that makes up for lack of looks and charm -- but he was
unexpectedly both shrewd and kind.

And he’d managed to spawn three darling daughters.

They
were
darlings,
too. Dolls. All three of them. Lovely, charming, intelligent girls bearing no
physical resemblance to Dauten -- except they all had those blazing bright blue
eyes. Maybe they took after Rebecca or Eleanor or whatever her name was: the
first Mrs. Dauten. Or maybe Dauten was cranking them out of a factory
somewhere.