And 47 Miles of Rope (Trace 2) (14 page)

“All right, Trace. You know I’m your friend. You know I’d like not to have to file charges against you.”

“I know that, Dan. Your friendship is one of the few constants in my life. I just wish you’d stop yelling at me.”

“I’m trying not to yell. I’m really trying. But it’s difficult sometimes when someone you’ve come to know and trust and regard almost as a brother is so obviously lying to you.”

“Come on, Dan. You know I didn’t kill anybody.”

“I know it and you know. Probably everybody who knows you knows it. But will the district attorney know it? Will the grand jury know it? See, there are a lot of imponderables in this kind of business. So why did Roberts write you a three-thousand-dollar check?”

“Because he owed me the money,” Trace said. “I told you that.”

“And you went to see him at what time?”

“At one A.M. I lent him the money in cash on Monday. He said that he wanted it just for the day, something about possibly buying information in the Jarvis case. He said he would have it back for me Monday night. But he didn’t call Monday night, so I called him yesterday and caught him in the office and I went down there at one o’clock. He said he didn’t have the money in cash and I told him I’d take a check, so I took it and left.”

“You don’t know what he used the money for?”

“No,” Trace said.

“Wouldn’t that have been a question you’d ask him? Here you are, you’re both working on the same case and he’s going to buy three thousand dollars’ worth of information. Doesn’t it seem logical that you’d at least ask him, ‘What’d you get with the three thousand dollars I lent you?’” Rosado asked.

“It probably would have been logical,” Trace said, “but I wasn’t into logic last night. I was fighting with Chico. I was not at my emotional best. I think my biorhythms must be at a critical point. You don’t have a biorhythm calculator, do you? We could check.”

“Dammit, Trace, I’m not interested in your biorhythms.”

“I bet yours are bad too. I wouldn’t be surprised if we have the same chart. This is definitely not one of your emotional up days.”

“So he wrote you a check and you left?”

“That’s right.”

“Where’s the check?”

“I deposited it this morning.”

“Before or after you knew he was dead?” Rosado asked.

“After. Sarge told me and I stopped at the bank on my way downtown. Then I went to Roberts’ office and called you immediately. I didn’t even waste a single second lifting up that telephone to call you, as all good citizens should.”

“That is the single dumbest stupid story I ever heard in my life,” Rosado said.

“That’s because you didn’t give me much of a chance to prepare. I mean, I could really have given you a good story if I had a lot of time to think about it. I could have given you dark hints from Roberts to me, chuckles over the telephone in late-night conversations. Meaningful chuckles, naturally. Suggestions that maybe people were lurking in hallways when I walked toward his office. I don’t know. I could have given you a lot of things. Instead, I’ve just given you the simple unadorned truth.”

Rosado turned off the tape recorder on the desk. They were in his office, facing each other across the desk, each drinking coffee.

“Okay. You don’t know what Roberts was working on with the Jarvis case?” Rosado said.

“Technically, Dan, the murder wasn’t any of his business. He was working for the insurance company on the jewel theft. Basically, he was trying to trace the stones if they came on the market. He told me that they hadn’t yet.”

“You believed him?”

“He didn’t have any reason to lie. I told him I wasn’t trying to cut him out of his fee,” Trace said.

Rosado pushed a manila file folder across his desk and Trace opened it.

“That’s Roberts’ file on the Jarvis case,” Rosado said. Trace nodded and looked at the familiar pieces of paper.

“The yellow sheets are just facts, dates, places, et cetera. What did he mean by that little white slip? It reads ‘Records,’”

Trace shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“He never mentioned that to you? Never told you what kind of records that meant? Nothing like that?”

“No,” Trace said honestly.

“All right,” the policeman said with a sigh. “I’m going to try to keep your ass out of a sling, Trace. I’m going to try. There’s no reason to slap you with murder and I’m going to try to convince the district attorney that you didn’t mean anything wrong by not telling your father to report the murder right away. Just a lapse of judgment.”

“He’ll buy it,” Trace said. “Lawyers are always having lapses of judgment.”

“But I hope we get the killer quick anyway. It’ll take off a lot of heat. You know how attorneys are. You get somebody putting heat on them and they’ll indict anything that moves. I don’t want you to get caught up in that kind of mess.”

“Thanks, Dan. I know you wish only the best for me,” Trace said. “Can I go now?”

“Yes. If you figure this one out, you let me know right away.”

“You got it, Dan,” Trace said. Slowly. With feeling.

Trace wondered where Sarge might be, but his father was waiting for him outside police headquarters in his rented car. The August heat wave was still boiling, and when Trace got into the car, he winced and said, “Ouch.”

“Don’t complain about hot seats,” Sarge said. “You’re the one who wants to live here.”

“It’s not the weather,” Trace said. “The car company took you. They always give you out-of-towners the cars with black upholstery. It absorbs all the heat. Next time, get white seats.”

“Those dirty dogs,” Sarge said. “How’d it go inside?”

“Well, let’s just say I want a drink,” Trace said.

“The three thousand?”

“That’s what was on his mind.”

“What’d you tell him?” Sarge asked.

“That I lent it to Roberts and he paid me back by check. I couldn’t hand up Swenson, could I?” Trace said.

“Guess not. I told those other detectives that I didn’t know anything about any three thousand. That I just came to see Roberts ’cause you wanted me to work with him on the robbery case. Then, when I found the body, I got confused because I’m scared of the sight of blood. Everybody knows I’m senile almost and I called you by mistake instead of them. I told them that probably you didn’t call the cops right away because you thought I might have been dreaming and you wanted to be sure I was telling you the truth about the body.”

“Pretty good lies,” Trace said. “They should do.”

“I was a cop for twenty-five years. I spent most of my time being lied to. I learned something from it.”

Trace noticed that Sarge had a grin on his face as he pulled the car away from the curb and into downtown’s afternoon traffic.

“You look very happy, considering that your only son has just escaped booking by the skin of his teeth. Why the smirk?”

“Do you really think I’m senile?” his father asked.

“Sure. You. Me and Chico too. All of us. We’ll all be ready to go to Happydale and make pot holders out of cigarette butts. Why are you smirking?”

“Because I think I got the killer,” Sarge said.

“Who is?”

“I think it’s the baron, whatever his name is.”

“Hubbaker?”

“Yeah. Him,” Sarge said.

They were sitting in Boggle’s. Sarge was giving a good workout to a giant cheeseburger and a bottle of beer, and Trace was sipping from a double vodka and eyeing the pickles on Sarge’s plate.

“This is a sick town,” Sarge said. “Unhand that pickle.”

“Sorry. Of course it is. It was created by criminals for degenerates. What’d you expect, a choir on the corner singing the Hallelujah chorus?”

“You’ve got hookers on the street all the time. Like most places have hookers only at night. Reasonable hours. Here, you’ve got them marching around even in the morning. You know how they must sweat?”

“People gamble twenty-four hours a day. When they’re finished gambling, they get horny. Particularly if they win,” Trace said. “It must have something to do with power. Now you’ve stalled long enough. Tell me about the baron.”

“There’s that all-night restaurant across the street from Roberts’ place,” Sarge said.

“Don’t eat there. They have a special recipe for making coffee. A spoon of coffee and a pound of lard.”

“Eat there? I didn’t even want to breathe there. Anyway, I got the name of the night people from the manager. Boiling Widentsky. You know him?”

“No.”

“He’s the night cashier. You know, the cashier just sits by the window there and he can look right out at Roberts’ building. So, anyway, this Widentsky. I got a whole bunch of names but I didn’t need them, because this Widentsky lives right nearby the place and I went and talked to him.”

“Yeah?”

“So we talked awhile and he finally remembered that he saw a guy coming into Roberts’ building at around four A.M. He described him and it was that Hubbaker. Tall, skinny as a pencil. Beard. Does he drive a Jeep?”

“I don’t know,” Trace said. “Wait. There’s a Jeep out at the countess’s place. Why?”

“Okay. Widentsky remembered this guy because he saw him pull up and park out in front in this white Jeep, he said it was.”

“Felicia’s Jeep is white.”

“Good. So he parked out in front and went inside. Widentsky said he was inside just a couple of minutes and then he came out. He said he wasn’t running, but he was hurrying, kind of, and he got into the Jeep and rode away fast.”

“Around four o’clock, you say?”

“That’s what he says,” Sarge said.

“Didn’t the cops talk to Widentsky? Are Rosado’s cops so bad that they wouldn’t check that out?”

“They talked to him. They got there before me, but he didn’t tell them that.”

“Why not?”

“He didn’t remember it.”

“How come he remembered it for you?” Trace asked.

“He didn’t really want to.”

“No? Hold on, Sarge. You didn’t—What did you do?”

“Don’t worry. I didn’t hit him or anything like that. God, you’re getting squeamish.”

“What did you do?”

“I told him I was Roberts’ uncle. And if he didn’t talk to me, I was going to blow his brains out. It’s a wonder how that’ll often improve somebody’s memory right away. Go ahead, eat the pickle. I don’t want it.”

“I’ve changed my mind. Hubbaker. I don’t understand it.”

“Don’t you read English detective stories?” Sarge said. “Those barons are always phoneys. They’re always the killer. Usually they don’t use knives, though.”

“He’s a detective,” Trace said. “Why the hell would he be killing another detective who was working on the same case?”

“Nobody ever told you this work was going to be easy, son. If it was easy, anybody could do it. That’s one of the questions we’ve got to answer.”

“I don’t know any better way to do it,” Trace said. “Let’s go talk to the baron.”

“Good,” Sarge said. “I’ve never been to a countess’s palace. Don’t tell your mother.”

“This is it?” Sarge said. They were driving up the long road to the countess’s house and he sounded disgusted. “This is her palace?”

“Afraid so.”

“This ain’t no palace. It looks like Long Island, except with more sand. I’ve seen bigger houses in Queens.”

“It’s pretty big for around here,” Trace said. “Now listen, Sarge. These people are a little strange.”

“How strange?”

“They’re druggies, kind of. They keep parrots. Don’t get upset if they’re sniffing, snorting, smoking, or swallowing.”

“You think I live in a hothouse? If they’re into Better Living Through Chemistry, that’s their business.”

They parked the car and walked through the ever-open front door, passing back toward the pool section where they heard voices.

Sarge whispered, “You didn’t tell me they weren’t going to have any clothes on.”

“Try to ignore it,” Trace said.

“Oh, to be sixty again.”

“Please. I’m going to be forty tomorrow. No talk about age.”

National Anthem was doing her exercises naked on the far side of the pool, and as usual, Willie Parmenter was sitting on a lounge chair near her.

The Neddlemans were in their accustomed spot, side by side, silent and unmoving, on a chaise longue, and the countess and Ferrara were sitting at a small umbrella-shielded table at the far end of the pool. Felicia, bare-breasted, saw Trace and waved. Ferrara was wearing a long-sleeved white shirt and trousers, and his face clouded over when he saw Trace.

They walked toward Felicia, and Trace saw that Ferrara was mashing between his fingers an inch-and-a-half-square lump of something that looked like black tar.

“Felicia, this is my father. You probably bumped into each other the other night,” Trace said.

She nodded and Sarge leaned forward and kissed her hand.

“Good manners will get you everywhere,” Felicia said with a warm smile.

“Hopefully out of that family,” Ferrara mumbled, then looked at Sarge and extended the black lump toward him. “Want some hash?”

“No, thanks. We just ate lunch,” Sarge said.

“Very funny.”

“He wasn’t being funny,” Trace said.

“It’s funny turning down Afghan hash. I mean, look at this stuff. Have you ever seen anything like it?” Ferrara said.

“I used to have a dog who couldn’t be house-broken,” Sarge said. “He’d leave me presents like that all over.”

“Not like this. Do you know they use opium for a binder to hold this stuff together?” Ferrara said. “Raw opium. Processed opium gets too crystalline, but the raw stuff holds this like gum.”

“I thought they used lamb’s fat,” Sarge said.

Ferrara raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Very good,” he said. “Knowledge is everywhere around us.”

“Oh, get off it, Paolo, will you?” Felicia said. “You’re being obnoxious.”

“Sarge, what do you know about this?” Trace asked.

“I know what I know. The Afghans use lamb’s fat to bind their hash.”

“That’s why this is special,” Ferrara said. “Even the binder’s a kick. Oh, beauty, thy name is cannabis.”

“Ferrara, thy name is bullshit,” Trace said. “Felicia, we have to talk to the baron. Is he around?”

“I just heard him inside taking a shower. He should be out any minute. Want a drink?”