Something for Nothing (42 page)

He lay there on his bunk and tried to sort things out. I'm in my boat, in Jack London Square Marina. Linda and the kids are at Sharon's house, in Oakland. Val and Angela are dead—someone killed them. Probably Hano. Yesterday I went to Val's house, saw what happened, then found Val's money. I counted it, buried it, and then went to my house. Then Hano fucking called me, claimed he didn't know what was going on, that he was worried, scared, and the rest of it. Now I'm here.

Martin sat up, rubbed his eyes, stretched, yawned. Sometimes—like today—he noticed himself doing these waking-up things and felt silly, as if he'd been taught at some point how to properly rouse himself from a resting state, and now did it mindlessly, thinking it was natural.

Hano. In some respects, the phone call had seemed genuine. “You should get out of there.” That wasn't the sort of thing someone said when they were trying to hunt you down and kill you. But wasn't that just the posture he was assuming in order to convince Martin that he hadn't committed the murders? That he was freaked out, didn't know who'd done it?

But was that really Hano's goal? No, what he really wanted was the
money, and maybe he was thinking that the best way to get to Martin was to put him at ease, make him think they were on the same side. Us versus Ramirez. Ramirez and the rest of those jerk-off drug guys. Jesus. They're fucking crazy, Martin. Tell me what's going on—where the money is—and we can figure this out together. Two is better than one, right? Let's meet up. We can figure this out. That was the sort of thing someone said when he was trying to pull a double cross, wasn't it?

Martin groaned, stumbled into the bathroom, sat down to pee (yes, a recent habit, especially in the morning, one he'd been hiding from Linda). He cleaned himself up a little bit. He had to hunt around to find toothpaste, but he eventually found a mostly squeezed-out tube of Crest, brushed, then washed his face. He needed to shave, but he didn't have a razor . . . or shaving cream. His toupee looked crazy, so he peeled it off his head. Ouch. But it felt better, less itchy. Okay, he thought, I'm bald, and today I don't really care (though he knew he needed a trim to clean up the ring of hair that was left. He was starting to look like Ben Franklin on a hundred-dollar bill).

He flicked on the TV, but the news wasn't on, just some exercise thing with Jack LaLanne. Jesus, he thought, look at that clown, with his tight clothes, prancing around. Sure, he was strong, but come on.

He needed to call the police. He needed to act like he'd just heard, and was horrified—not to mention worried about his horse (and it was true: who was taking care of him now?). But he was nervous about talking to anyone connected with the police. Would he reveal, somehow, that he knew more than he was letting on? He'd have to get into the mindset of someone who'd just heard that his friends had been murdered, and forget that he'd actually been there, seen the bodies (and stolen the money).

Even if he didn't call, the police were going to come around at some point, probably with a bunch of questions about him and Val. It would be much better to seem forthright and act like a guy with nothing to hide. But would they know anything about Val's connection to the whole drug thing in Mexico? Hard to say . . . though a chopped-off
finger and a ransacked house (a swanky house) were probably giveaways, especially to the discerning eye of a narcotics detective.

Martin thought about Jim Slater. Of course, Slater's investigation into the plane that went down in Humboldt County was unrelated, but how long would it be before he put two and two together? He could just hear it, Slater going through the paperwork and talking to his partner, or some other detective sitting at the desk next to him: “Hey, wait a second—it says here that Val Desmond was the horse trainer for that Martin Anderson guy. You know, the one I talked to out in Walnut Station. The airplane guy. He sold the plane to the guys who went down up in Humboldt Country, and then I flew around with him, looking for that landing strip in Livermore. That's quite a coincidence, don't you think? I think we need to do some digging.”

Really, though, how much was there to find, regardless of how much digging Slater did? That was the question. Martin's trips to Mexico were pretty much invisible. Sure, he'd logged out of the Hayward Airport, but he'd listed Reno as the location—a day at the casinos. And they never checked you out up there. Too many people coming and going. It was like parking your car; there was no way to know if you'd actually been there or not. As for Santa Barbara, he'd used fake information there, and he hadn't talked face-to-face with anyone. The guy on the radio had just asked for the serial number on his plane, and Martin had given him a fake one. It was like he'd never been there. Sure, if someone had taken pictures of him there with Hano, he'd have some explaining to do. But that wasn't going to happen, because this wasn't some sort of movie where the police were really fucking smart and two steps ahead of the the bad guys. No, here the bad guy (Martin) was going to disappear into the ether, because with Val dead, there just weren't any strings attached to who he was or what he'd done. At least for the police—Hano was a different story.

He'd call the police after breakfast. He needed to wake up, get some coffee, eat. He was starving. He thought about calling Linda, but he knew it was too early. Had she heard about Val and Angela yet? It was
possible. Would she think he was involved? Unlikely. But she'd have a vague feeling that there were links. She wouldn't be able to see these links, of course, but she was likely to suspect something. It would be an intuition, one that set off little internal alarm bells. And her radar would be especially sensitive after having found Miriam's jewelry box (though Martin again congratulated himself on his fantastic cover story about that). She just wouldn't know what it was she suspected.

He hopped into his car and drove over to Nelda's in Hayward. Yes, this was going against his pledge to himself to stay in the boat, no exceptions, for forty-eight hours. But enough with the roughing it on canned food—was he supposed to have SpaghettiO's for breakfast? Plus, Hano wasn't going to be able to trace him to Nelda's. He listened to the radio as he drove—KCBS. Nothing about Val and Angela.

Nelda's was quiet. It was always dead early on the weekends. He didn't recognize anyone, except one or two of the employees and a couple of older Mexican guys who were always at the same booth in the corner. He downed some coffee, and then had two fried eggs, sunny-side up, a big slice of ham, hash browns, and toast. He was really hungry, and he wolfed his food down; he thought he saw his waitress (blue hair, grumpy) give him a disapproving look at one point. There wasn't anything about the murders in the Saturday
Tribune
or
Chronicle
. That figured; the weekend papers were mostly prepped in advance, and didn't really try to keep up with the news. Sure, if somebody had popped Ronald Reagan, for example, or captured Patty Hearst, they'd stop the presses and get it in there (especially at the
Chronicle,
which was the morning version of the
Examiner
). But no one held up production of a newspaper for some random horse trainer out in Pleasanton.

After breakfast he went back to the marina, walked around. It was a nice day, but Martin didn't have plans to take the boat out. Not a chance. He walked along the docks, looking at boats, watching the seagulls and checking out the schools of fish darting around in the gray-green water. He saw lots of other guys who reminded him of himself. Late forties, into their fifties. Maybe early sixties. Hanging out,
either avoiding the wife and family or out-and-out divorced. Everyone looked happy enough, but people also kept to themselves—quick hellos: how are you, how's it going. No chats, no effort to connect. It was an unwritten rule, one Martin had always followed.

Okay, he thought. Time to make the calls. He walked up to the pay phone, put in a couple of quarters, and dialed Sharon's number. They were still there—hadn't left yet for Santa Cruz.

“Help your brother find his trunks, Sarah!” Linda yelled before she even said hello.

He told her about Val. He said he'd just heard it on the news, and then listened to her freak out. It was the first time he'd talked about it with anyone (unless you counted Hano's phone call), and it was both good and bad. Good because he could actually say the words: someone had killed Val and Angela. But bad in that her reaction was so straightforward and honest. It had the effect of cutting through the layer of protective emotional covering that Martin had immediately applied to his memory of the scene.

“What?” she said. Screeched. “Someone what? Are you sure? How horrible! This is awful! Oh my God! Martin! I can't . . . I can't believe it! Poor Val—and oh my God! Angela!”

They talked for a long time, with Martin feeding quarters into the marina phone over and over. Eventually Linda got around to asking if he was all right, but by then the answer was no. Her horror had gotten through to him, and made him realize how badly things had gone. He pictured Val sitting there in his barn, the blank expression on his face, the flies buzzing around him, landing on his belly. The image of Angela was just as bad. Worse. Martin was pretty sure that she hadn't known the first thing about Val's drug-world deals. So she wouldn't have had the faintest idea what was going on. At least Val had known why he was going to die. Angela had just seen a guy with a gun marching toward her, run, and then felt the bullets tear into her. Jesus. Thank God her head had been turned away, and he hadn't seen her face. He was pretty sure she'd have a surprised expression—surprised and terrified.

Eventually—finally—they ended the call, and Martin hung up. He needed to pee, then he'd call the police station. He headed back to the boat and flicked on the radio. Just the general blathering you got on KCBS, but as he was coming out of the bathroom he finally heard a spot about the murders.

“In the East Bay, police are searching for clues to the murder of a Pleasanton couple that was slain in their hillside home early Friday morning. Horse trainer Val Desmond and his wife Angela were found dead of gunshot wounds Friday morning. Police are not yet speculating as to a motive. Desmond was the trainer for several horses that had been racing at the Pleasanton County Fair in the days leading up to the murders. Anyone with information is asked to please contact the Alameda County Sheriff's Department.”

It felt strange hearing an official description of what he'd already seen. It also felt strange knowing how much they were leaving out (or—maybe—how much they didn't know). But the mention of the horse races at the fair sent a shock wave of fear through his body. The guy may as well have said, “By the way, he was hanging around with Martin Anderson all day—and if you don't believe me, check out the photo they took together in the winner's circle. They're right next to each other!”

He headed back out of the cabin, and walk-ran up the dock to the manager's office. He took out a five, got some change, and hustled over to the phone again. He dialed o for the operator, and waited while she connected him to the sheriff's department.

“Sheriff's Department,” a voice said. Was it the same guy he'd gotten yesterday when he called from Val's house? He couldn't tell, but he had exactly the sort of deep, gruff voice you'd expect.

“Hi, yeah,” Martin began. “I'm calling about the thing out in Pleasanton. Val Desmond and his wife. The murder, I mean. Uh, I was with him yesterday, at the track. And, well, my horse is actually at his house. And so I thought I ought to, you know . . .”

“Okay, sir, hold on a second. Can I get your name, please?”

Martin paused, didn't respond right away. He knew it was a normal question—pretty much the first thing they'd ask anyone who'd called about anything. (“My dog is missing.” “Can I get your name, please?”) But he felt suddenly that by giving his name he'd be confessing to everything—the flights to Mexico, stealing Val's money, and anything else he'd ever done wrong in his life (like fake his tax returns—something he hadn't thought about recently).

“Sir? Are you still there, sir?”

“Uh, yep, I'm still here. It's just that . . .”

“Is there a problem, sir?”

“No, sorry. No problem. Just . . . okay. My name is, uh, Martin Anderson. And like I said, I was with Val yesterday, at the track. In Pleasanton. And I don't know, I—”

“I understand, sir. I'm going to connect you to someone in a second. But can I get a phone number, Mister Anderson?”

Martin gave the guy his phone number out in Walnut Station, and then a minute later he was talking to a detective. Leon Grabowski. He stumbled a little bit, but overall he thought he did pretty well, all things considered (such as the fact that he was scared shitless). He said he'd just heard the news on KCBS, and that he'd picked up the phone right away—had run to a pay phone, in fact. It was horrible—terrible. He couldn't believe it, he didn't know how something like this could happen. “I was just with him. We had dinner at Antonio's, in Pleasanton.” He also said he was worried about his horse, which was at Val's house—because Val was his trainer. But mostly he just wanted to try to help out.

They went back and forth for a few minutes, with the guy apparently jotting some stuff down, asking a question or two, but basically sounding bored. Uh-huh, he'd say. Okay.

“Look,” the guy said after a few minutes. “Someone else has the lead on this, and I need to pass it along. But I think we've got most of this already. I mean, yeah, you should definitely plan to stay in the area for the time being. We'll want to send someone out to talk to you in a day or two. But just sit tight for now.”

And that was it. By the time Martin hung up, he had the distinct impression that the guy hadn't been really interested in what he had to say. He certainly hadn't been all that hot to do any sort of follow-up with him, anyway. Or at least not right away. In fact, it was so easy that Martin's first assumption was that the guy was just trying to throw him off the scent—make him think he was in the clear when in fact the noose was tightening even as they sat on the phone yakking. (Maybe, he thought, they'd been tracing the call, keeping him on the line just so that they could figure out that he was at the Jack London Square Marina. Send over a few cars—let's nail this guy right now, before he gets away.)