Binding Ties (5 page)

Was it Sherlock Holmes or maybe Poe's Dupin who said the best place to hide is in plain sight? That maxim made the Strip the perfect place for Brass and Grissom to hold their meeting with Perry Bell and David Paquette of the
Banner
. The detective and the CSI had little chance of running into anyone who would know all four of them, and at this point, Brass figured a low profile wasn't a bad thing.

But it did trouble him that he had to start his investigation by talking to members of the media, as the goal of keeping this a by-the-book inquiry included staying off the public radar as long as possible.

Walking down the stairs from the parking building connected to the Sphere, Brass said to the CSI, “I don't mean to keep you away from valuable time at the lab.”

Grissom shrugged. “I got the feeling you wanted Catherine and me to spot you on this.”

“Spot me how?”

“Keep you from prematurely throwing harpoons, Captain.”

“Gimme a goddamn break, Gil. I been on this case, what? An hour, and already you're thinking I'm—”

“An hour on this case?” Grissom's smile was gentle and not at all mocking. “Isn't that more like, going on a decade or more?”

Brass felt a surge of warmth for his friend and colleague—something that wasn't a common emotion
between the two, at least not one that either man allowed to enter in very often.

Still, the detective couldn't keep the real feeling out of it, when he said to Grissom, pretending to kid, “So—you're really there for me, huh, Gil?”

Without a beat, but not allowing his eyes to meet Brass's, Grissom said, “Always.”

The Raw Shanks Diner huddled in a far corner of the casino, near the back. A fifties motif ran rampant through the place—everything from the Fiestaware plates to the menus to singing waiters and waitresses who served up Elvis, Little Richard, and Fats Domino tunes to the luncheon crowd.

A tiny waitress with corn rows and a big voice was belting out the Etta James classic “At Last” as Brass and Grissom took seats on opposite sides of a corner booth, getting as far away from the karaoke waitress as possible. A waiter with a pompadour haircut a sixteen-year-old Frankie Avalon would have envied brought them coffee while they waited for the newspaper men to show.

A place this relentlessly entertaining, no sane local would ever frequent.

Grissom said, “A suggestion?”

“Sure.”

“Let's not pose the copycat theory.”

Brass nodded. “Yeah. Good idea. Be interesting to gauge their reactions.”

The detective was less than halfway through his coffee when the crime beat writer, Perry Bell, waved
at him from the hostess stand. Two other men huddled behind him—David Paquette, the
Banner
's Metro editor, and Bell's research assistant, Mark Brower.

The captain had known Bell and Paquette for the better part of eleven years, and Brower he'd met not long after the man took the job as Bell's assistant, maybe seven years ago. Or was that eight? Brass sighed to himself, struck by how the years were slipping away, and yet how immediate the old CASt case still felt.

Brower had, no doubt, heard all of the stories about CASt, but hadn't been part of the original coverage. The guy was in his early thirties now, and would have still been in journalism school somewhere or even high school, when the crimes occurred.

The hostess, the diner's idea of Sandra Dee (ironically, a waiter was doing Bobby Darin's “Splish Splash” right now), spoke to Bell, who pointed at Brass, then moved past Gidget to waddle toward the table, Paquette and Brower trailing.

Bell was all smiles, but Brass wasn't: He was wondering just why the hell Brower was even along on this trip. Damn it, he had
told
Bell that he wanted to meet the two of them, Bell and Paquette,
alone
….

A roly-poly man with a thick brown toupee parted on the left, Perry Bell looked like he'd been trapped in a time warp in the disco era—witness the wide-lapeled brown suit with yellow shirt, its top three
buttons open to show a gold Star of David medallion on a gold, chest-hair-nestling chain. The huge open collar of the shirt extended like giant wings outside the jacket.

Bell had a concrete block of a head with a large glob of loose mortar serving as a nose. His deep-set dark eyes peeked out from under broad, heavy brows and as he approached, his wide mouth broke into an easy, if uneven and tobacco-discolored, smile.

“Got a hot lead for me, Jimbo?” Bell said, extending his hand.

Yes,
Brass thought,
a real wordsmith
….

“We'll get to that,” Brass said, shook the moist hand, and gave it back to its owner.

“Must
be big,” Bell said, turning to shake Grissom's hand as well, “if you're bringin' 'round the Crime Scene Investigator's Crime Scene Investigator—great to see you, Gil.”

The big build-up got a curt nod out of Grissom.

“You all know my boss and buddy, Dave, here.”

Nods were granted to the editor.

Paquette had mischievous blue eyes and a ready smile; his blond hair had long ago flown south for the winter and showed no signs of coming back north. But Brass thought both the editor and his columnist seemed forced in their bonhomie, with each other as well as Brass and Grissom.

Though Paquette and Bell had been peers at the
time their book
CASt Fear
came out, their careers had taken significantly different routes. Easy-going with a ready-smile, happy in his fate, editor Paquette now supervised his old pal, whose career had hit a groove more than a decade ago only to have the needle get stuck: A crime column that had gone briefly national had flamed out in syndication, making a bumpy local landing.

Perhaps out of the grace of his old friend, Bell and his column were hanging on.

Brass and Grissom both shook hands with Paquette and Brower also. Grissom moved around to Brass's side of the booth, while Bell and Paquette sat on the opposite side, Brower pulling up a chair from a nearby table.

Solidly muscular—hardly the norm for the sedentary newspaper breed—Brower wore his dark brown hair short; his dark eyes and the thought-carved groove between his thick brows conveyed seriousness, and a narrow, nearly lipless mouth gave him a vaguely feral look, especially when he smiled. He'd been with Bell for quite a while now, and had earned from Brass the same trust as his boss.

Still, Brower remained, in Brass's mind, an uninvited guest, which was the first topic of conversation….

Brass said, “Don't take this personally, Mark,” he said, then turned to Bell and asked, “but what's he doing here?”

The reporter's smile faded. “Well, hell, Jim. He … he's my assistant. Mark goes where I go, you know that.”

“Did you think this was a social call?”

Bell glanced at both Paquette and Brower. “Isn't it?”

Brass studied the crime writer for a long moment. “Your scanner broken?”

“No, why?”

“You didn't hear the 420 in North Las Vegas this morning?”

The newspapermen would all know the radio code for homicide.

Bell shrugged. “Yeah, so? There was the original radio call, then nothing. I figured there'd be more later, if it was anything worth covering. Is that what you got for me?”

“It's not like you to miss a residential murder call, Perry …” Brass tried to keep his voice neutral, even nonchalant. “So where were you off to, this morning?”

The reporter seemed not to notice that he was being questioned. “In the office, mostly.”

“All morning?”

For the first time, Bell seemed to understand he was being interrogated.

Alarm was morphing into anger, and he was about to speak when their Teen Idol waiter came over and put a cup of coffee in front of Bell and the others, then freshened Brass's and Grissom's.

“Any food for you guys?” the waiter asked.

“No,” Brass said, waving the waiter away.

Steam rose off the coffee—but the reporter was steaming, too.

“What in the hell kind of crap
is
this, Brass?” Bell caught himself—he'd almost been shouting—and looked around, but none of the other diners seemed to notice over the din of the restaurant and the singing staff. “I mean, really, Jim … am I some kind of suspect in something? What the hell kind of murder went down this morning, anyway?”

Brass said nothing.

Paquette leaned forward, his features intense. “Look, Captain Brass, if you're accusing one of my employees of something, you do it through proper channels, not call us out to a restaurant on some flimsy damn—”

Eyes taut, Grissom said, “There's nothing flimsy about murder. Captain Brass is making this informal, as a courtesy to you people.”

Brass held up a hand and said, “No, Gil—Perry and Dave have a point.”

The editor and columnist exhaled air, like twin punctured tires, and settled into a placated limbo, waiting for Brass to continue. From the sidelines Brower watched quietly but intently.

The detective gathered himself, took a long pull on his coffee and then studied Bell, considering exactly how much he wanted to tell the reporter.

Finally, he said, “I'm sorry, Perry … Dave. We caught one that's put me on edge, and if I've been
out of line with you guys … I do value our relationship … please blame it on tension.”

The two journalists shrugged, in accidental rhythm with a waiter doing Elvis singing, “All Shook Up.”

“But,” Brass said, “when this case goes public, there's going to be hell to pay.”

Reaching into his inside pocket for a pen and pad, his anger all but forgotten, Bell said, “Well, then, let's get started….”

Brass held up his hands, as if being robbed. “That's just it—I don't
want
it to go public, just yet.”

The reporter froze for a moment, then, slowly, his hand came out of his coat—empty. “Well, Jim, why are we here, then, if we can't talk about it?”

For the first time in a long time, Brass wished he hadn't quit smoking. “I needed to talk to you, off the record.”

“Captain Brass,” Paquette said irritably, “we're all for cooperation with the authorities, but just like you have a job to do, so do we. We have a responsibility to the public.”

“You have a responsibility to me,” Brass said, “that overrides that, in this instance.”

The editor shook his head. “You don't have that kind of pull.”

“I don't?” Brass asked. “My cooperation on a certain case gave you two a bestselling book. Which you both made careers out of.”

“What,” Bell said, “you're calling in
that
marker?”

“Yes,” Brass said.

After a moment's consideration, Paquette asked, “If the story's that big … and you need our help, including putting the public's right-to-know on hold … we'll want something in return. Something more than the old news of what you did for us a long time ago.”

Brass and Grissom both just looked at him.

“When the time comes,” Paquette said, his hands flat on the edge of the table, “we want an exclusive.”

Brass started to say something, his temper rising, but Grissom put a hand on his arm.

“Not possible,” Grissom said. “Not even legal.”

Everyone at the table knew that the two county employees could never consent to an exclusive on a big case; but by asking for the whole pie, Paquette clearly expected to come away with the biggest slice.

Brass relented a little. “Twenty-four-hour lead.”

Paquette considered that, then nodded.

“What have you got?” Bell asked, sitting forward, the hunger in his voice obvious. Other than an exposé on crime in the rap world, when Tupac Shakur got shot, Bell hadn't had a story go national since the CASt book; and the columnist could easily see, from Brass's behavior, that this was something very big….

“You gotta promise, Perry,” Brass said. “Not even a hint until I give you the okay. That means all three of you. You can cover the story in a modest way, just straightforward news … but the key aspect, we have to downplay, even sit on.”

Bell studied him, questions all over his face, even though the reporter never uttered a word, simply nodded his agreement.

“Cross me,” Brass said, with a smile that wasn't friendly, “and the cooperation you've known in the past … will be past.”

The reporter snapped, “Hey, Jim, when was the last time any of us screwed you over?”

Brass wiped a hand across his forehead. Christ, he'd been on the job forever and here he was sweating like a rookie. He'd been needlessly antagonizing these people, who had always been allies.

“You're right,” Brass said. “You've always been straight-up. So let me ask a question—how long ago was it? The CASt case.”

The reporter, apparently thinking this was another reference to Brass helping him and Paquette out on their book, raised a single eyebrow, then shrugged. “I don't know, ten, eleven years?”

Bell looked to Paquette for confirmation.

The editor nodded. “Eleven. When it started.”

“Qualifies as ancient history in this town,” Bell said. “Is that a point of reference, or … what?”

Three waitresses were singing, “My Boyfriend's Back (and You're Gonna Be in Trouble).”

Brass sipped his coffee, eyes travelling from Bell to Paquette and making the return trip. “We always wondered why he stopped—had he died in an automobile accident? Was he committed somewhere? Did he move, and pick up somewhere else?”

Bell said, “You know the latter isn't true—even now, I keep an eye on the national scene, looking for that M.O. to turn up again. I mean, as M.O.'s come, they don't come much more specific.”

“Not hard to recognize,” Brass admitted. “What would you say if that M.O. had turned up again?”