01. Labyrinth of Dreams (6 page)

The motive for stiffing Little Jimmy was simple enough. When you think of the very rich, you think of them rolling in dough and lighting cigars with hundred-dollar bills. The truth is, most of the very rich don't have enough spare change for a Big Mac at McDonald's. The magic word is
liquidity.
His money was invested in stocks, bonds, certificates, real estate, you name it. His money didn't even go to him; he had a money-management firm that collected his interest and clipped his coupons and paid all his bills for him. The only real liquid asset he had was a Super NOW checking account with about ten grand in it for petty cash. The rich have the most valuable thing for living rich while their money works: almost unlimited credit. They just charge everything and the bills are sent to the business or the money managers or whatever. Must be nice.

He must not have figured on Little Jimmy wising up so fast. He
did
have reservations on a flight to San Francisco for next Sunday, but he hadn't even picked up the tickets yet. So now he's got over two million bucks in very liquid cash and convertibles, but he wasn't able to make good on his planned getaway. He couldn't use credit cards; that's the easiest way to be traced. This guy wasn't used to paying real cash, let alone using money to hide out from the mob. Still, he wasn't dumb. Even' the richest don't get nearly straight .A's at Harvard, they just use their money and connections to get hired over the poor slobs that do. But this guy was smart, real smart.

A check with the Philadelphia courthouse showed that he was real popular, too. One of my old contacts who still worked there told me that there were a bunch of federal examiners and marshals in town, and that Tri-State was already getting a going-over. That explained even more. If he thought the connection with the mob was about to be exposed and himself implicated, he'd have vanished right off. In fact, that may have saved him, although it made my life more complicated. The odds were that he might
not
know Little Jimmy was onto him yet; he might just have smelled the feds and bolted early. That saved his life, but it meant that the feds, at least, were looking for him right now. Worse, he was still an amateur at disappearing acts, and he'd had to panic, bolt, and run. That meant it would be messy and leave trails even an idiot or a fed could follow, and they had the lead.

That still left the question of why he was in this mess in the first place. Not that guys like him were honest; it was just that they generally let the underlings do the dirty work and take the big falls.

It took about three hours to get the file together on him, and that was just about the time Brandy returned with a whole mess of packages. These proved to be some shirts and pants for me and a small wardrobe for her, all off-the-rack stuff. She'd tried on only a couple of hers, and guessed at my sizes, but she was dead on. The sleeves on the sport coat were a little long, but it was a damn sight better than what I had at home.

I was a little surprised when she stayed with her old jeans and sandals and faded shirt. "I called Minnie," she explained, "and she's expecting me. Any black folks in
that
neighborhood don't look like Aunt Jemima are arrested for suspicion of burglary. You still got that old cop ID with the fake shield?"

I nodded. "Uh huh."

"Then you take the missus and I'll take Minnie."

We walked down to the street, and I was startled to see a new-looking Ford parked there behind ours. Brandy handed me the keys.

"You didn't charge
this!"

She laughed. "Sure I did. At Avis. Looks a lot like the cars the detectives drive. You take the front and it; I'll take our car and the servants' entrance. We'll meet back at the Midway Diner and compare notes while we buy each other dinner."

Whitlock's place was a simple one-story brick rancher off a long driveway in Ardmore, one of the richer suburbs of Philadelphia. The fact is, the place didn't look all that big from the front, but if you started walking around you found out it went back a ways. Like maybe Pittsburgh.

There was only a single Mercedes wagon in the driveway, but even Little Jimmy could tell me that Whitlock's two-door sports Mercedes coupe was still parked in his marked space in the Tri-State lot downtown. I put on my glasses, which I normally use only for reading, and was just going to the door when I saw our two-tone Chevy come up and pull around to the side and Brandy get out and walk on back. I rang the bell and stood there awhile, wondering whether it was that nobody was home or only that with the housekeeper occupied, it was beneath the dignity of a Whitlock to open her own door.

It wasn't. I guess even blue bloods get caught in the John.

She was tall and very slender, with a conservative hairdo, with makeup even in the late afternoon with no place to go. "Yes?"

"Mrs. Whitlock? I'm Sam Horowitz, with the Department of the Treasury. Is your husband at home?"

"You know he isn't. Your people were here earlier today."

I harrumphed apologetically. "Well, there are two separate agencies involved in this, and I guess you understand the bureaucracy." She finally invited me in, and we had a pleasant if inconsequential talk. I did finally get to see a photo of him; a distinguished-looking man, much younger in appearance than his years would indicate, with short, peppery hair, light complexion, blue or gray eyes, clean shaven, no moustache, beard, or even sideburns, which look a bit out of date these days. I have bushy sideburns myself, but that was overcompensation for what was missing on top. I know what I look like with a beard, though, and forget it.

I didn't expect to ever get back here—or be able to, once the feds found out I was here at all—so I decided to play a chance card or two and see if I passed Go.

"Mrs. Whitlock, I know how hard this must be for you, but we have some evidence that your husband was involved with organized crime. Laundering drug money, to be precise. That's what this is all about, and why we think he left. We think he stole some mob money and skipped."

She was not completely surprised by this, but some of it was new. "Oh, my. They said something about the Mafia or something, but I find that hard to accept.
Drug
money, you say! He—he was on the Mayor's Council for Stamping Out Drug Abuse. He always
hated
drugs. Wouldn't permit a smoker in the house, and had to be ready for the hospital before he'd even take an aspirin."

"If that's true, then it makes even less sense," I told her honestly. "I mean, he had a nice family, money, position. . . . Why do it? He wasn't a thrill seeker, was he? Somebody who might do it just out of boredom?"

"Oh, my, no! He never even drove the speed limit in spite of his sports car!"

"Then they had something on him. Some kind of blackmail. Do you have any idea what they had that they could blackmail him with?"

"Certainly not! His life was an open book!" But I could tell by her eyes that she was hiding something.

There wasn't much more I could press, and I kept seeing the real feds coming back any minute now, so I made my apologies and my sympathies, palmed a cameo portrait of him from an end table, and bid her good-bye. Our car was still in the driveway, but I wasn't going to wait for Brandy.

The tail wasn't hard to spot; they
wanted
to be noticed, and on the winding little road leading back down to the expressway at Conshohocken, there wasn't much chance of shaking or evading them if I wanted to. I knew who it was, and when we got to the bottom just before the entrance to the Schuylkill, the flashing light went up on top and he pulled me over into the parking lot of a rustic-looking restaurant or catering joint.

I got out and leaned easily against the car, waiting for them. There were two there, but one was on the radio while the other glared at me, then finally got out and came up. "Can I see your driver's license and registration, please?"

"Can I see your ID first?" I responded. "I want to know who I'm dealing with and I got a right."

He reached into a breast pocket and did a quick flip of a case too fast for me to read, so I reached in and did the same damned thing. He reached for it and I said, "Uh uh. You show me yours open and I'll show you mine."

He took it back out, looking pissed, and held it open. Marshall Kennedy. Neat first name. I wondered if it had influenced his eventual line of work. He wasn't a marshal, though; it was Drug Enforcement Administration.

I nodded. "Sam Horowitz, and I'm private, licensed in New Jersey," I told him truthfully.

He frowned. "So what was that shield you flashed?"

"My old ID with a regular shield. I use it like you do, to get into places easily. It's part of the job."

"You're looking for Whitlock." It wasn't a question, it was a statement. "Why?"

"I was hired to."

"By who?"

"You know I can't tell you that. I suspect, though, that it was by somebody who wanted to bring the whole weight of the feds and local cops down on me so they could free their own people to look for him."

He considered that. "I still want the name. PI's don't mean shit to me, and don't give me any shield-law crap. There's no federal law covering you. Besides, might be interesting to find out just who you told the little lady there you worked for. Impersonating an officer's good for a yanked license and maybe a year."

"Better a year than getting my brains blown out," I told him. "Be reasonable. I'll tell you what I know, short of violating my ethics and my right to life, and you see if you're happy. You know I'm the patsy in this. I knew it from the start, only the money was too good and I was flat broke."

"I'm listening."

I told him about Whitlock stealing mob money and putting the squeeze on the middleman. I also told him about what I'd learned so far, and that I hadn't yet figured out how he'd gotten sucked in in the first place.

He wasn't communicative in return, but I got the very distinct feeling that he didn't know, either. They were at the same point we were, in spite of their head start. He did, however, offer one
very
interesting new fact.

"He didn't leave the country. He called his wife this morning. Didn't talk long, so we couldn't get a trace, but it was definitely a local call. You wouldn't by any chance be carrying something he wants or needs, would you? If you are, you're aiding and abetting a federal fugitive and I'll slam you
real
hard if you don't come clean."

"I'm as clean as they come. Search away if you want."

He did, starting with me. "There's still a price tag in this jacket," he noted. "What'd you do? Raid Sears today?"

The car was given a good but not complete going-over, since they'd had me in sight from leaving the front door and I sure hadn't had time to do much more than stuff something between the seats or like that. While they were still searching, night fell, and Brandy drove by in the car. I pretended not to notice, but I sure hoped she had.

The fed finally was as satisfied as he was going to get. "Okay, Horowitz. You're on my list now. You be where I want you when I want you, and you report anything you learn to me even before you tell your client. I'm letting you run only because I think you're what you say you are—
a
stalking horse. I have to say, though, that I don't like you very much. I don't give a damn about P.I.'s one way or the other as long as they stay out of my way, but if you're working for the ones he stiffed you're no better than they are. You're free only so long as you're useful, but to me you smell like an accessory, and that's the way it'll read if your client finds out something from you before I do. Get it?"

"I got it. Now I'm telling you to back off and give me some room. All you'll do is spook everything if you come along with your heavy boots like you did here. I don't care who gets him, but I want a crack."

Kennedy shrugged. "We'll keep a safe distance, don't worry. I'll even give you one lead, if you don't have it already. Not much, but it's a brick wall. He had a second life someplace. He'd be gone sometimes from home for weeks at a stretch, supposedly out of town on business, but the bank has no record of those trips or expenses for them. His marriage has been mostly name only for years."

I raised my eyebrows. "Mistress on the side?"

"If so, we can't find any trace of her. It's weird. He'd be at the bank sometimes but never leave the parking lot to go home. That's why nobody was surprised that his car stayed there overnight. Sometimes he'd take a leave of absence for a while, often up to a week every month, but nobody knows where. He sure didn't use any family funds, or bank funds, either."

"Nice puzzle. Let me see what I can do."

I drove off then, feeling very lucky, but I was now paranoid about every pair of headlights. Now, at least, I knew why we were worth the bucks. We'd trod the well-worn trails with the feds knowing us and breathing hard on us while Little Jimmy's big agency, probably an out-of-towner, poked and probed in anonymity. Was it worth fifty gees—maybe a hundred, the way Brandy was using that card—to somebody to do that? When this much was at stake, maybe it was.

Brandy was waiting at the diner, and I told her about the feds and what I'd learned. Come to think of it, except for the picture, I'd learned more from Kennedy than I had from Mrs. Whitlock. Brandy, however, had far more.

"He's pretty kinky and she knows it," she told me. "There's three closets up there in the master bedroom. His, hers, and hers."

"Two wives? He keeps his mistress's clothing at his
house?"

"Uh uh. The other hers is also a his. He's a transvestite. He likes dressing up in women's clothing and pretending to be one. Minnie says there's an old album "she found once in a closet that shows him in drag back from his teenage days. She says he's better looking than his wife."

"Hmmm. . . . That explains a lot, including how he was able to vanish so completely even in a panic, and maybe why his marriage is a name-only affair. So he is a thrill seeker after all. Probably not gay, though. Few of them are."

"He might swing both ways. That's Minnie's feeling, anyway. But most of the stuff at the house hasn't been touched in months, and the bulk of it was donated to the Goodwill long ago."