Samson's Deal: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series) (18 page)

“So the case is solved? Why isn’t he in jail?”

“It’s not solved.”

“If they put Cutter in jail, the case is solved,” he said mulishly. It occurred to me that he was probably right. They might be able to whip together a pretty good case against Cutter if, for example, Debbi talked. “And,” Harley added, “you didn’t solve it.” From his viewpoint, that was true. He didn’t know I’d sent the diary pages that could help get Cutter. He wouldn’t be able to see past the fact that the same pages hinted at his own trouble with his dead wife.

“I’ll tell you what, Samson. I think you’re stalling. I think you should have come up with something concrete by now. I’ve already given you five thousand for your work. I consider that money spent. But maybe you’re just not the right man for the job.”

He was giving me a tempting opening. I could back off, not get killed, not get turned into sandwiches by a smart cop, leave Harley and Rebecca and Debbi and Cutter to the police. I thought about it. For a minute.

“Listen, Harley, you can consider yourself bound by our original deal. I find the killer and you pay me a total of ten thousand dollars.”

“Why don’t you think it’s Cutter?”

“I don’t know that it isn’t Cutter. I also don’t know that it isn’t one of several other people. I’m still investigating. So are the police.”

He sputtered something at me.

“Another thing,” I added for good measure, “you can damned well stop getting hysterical every time somebody pokes you with a dull stick. If you don’t let me handle this and stick to our deal, I’ll get out, all right. And I’ll give the cops everything I know about you and Rebecca.”

“That’s extortion.” He actually sounded shocked.

“No, it’s not, Harley. It’s a promise. You have to trust me, so don’t give me any more reason not to trust you.”

He puffed and grumbled a little, but he did back off. This was not the first time in my life I’d been forced to reflect on the advantages of legitimacy. If you operate legally, you can also claim the protection of the law. Like taking recalcitrant debtors to court and waving nice, tight, lawyer-made contracts at the judge. But when you’ve lived on the edge of things for years and like the objectivity of the position, you get a little funny about your independence. I just can’t get comfortable about working under the eye of the state. Maybe my mother was bitten by a cossack.

I told Harley I’d keep him informed. He said he’d be in his office working that afternoon. I hung up.

There was nothing I could do
_:
until three o’clock, and I decided to give my rib a rest. Tigris strolled in from her bird watching, said hello, and followed me to bed.

Half an hour later I was roused by a persistent, medium-loud knock on the door.

There was a peephole, and I used it. Cutter was on my front porch, looking over his shoulder, peering into neighboring yards, doing an impatient little dance. No one else that I could see, just Cutter. I opened the door, pulled him in, and locked the door again.

He stumbled, caught himself, glared at me, and dropped down on the couch, half-reclining.

“Who invited you?” I wanted to know.

He didn’t move. “It wasn’t my idea to beat you up.” He blinked and rubbed his eyes. “I didn’t go home last night. I came here looking for you and waited around out in the street.” He yawned, showing lots of fillings. “I tried to go home this morning, once, but the police were there. I called you and left a message on your machine. I left my car on the street, walked around. I called you again a while ago and the line was busy. Then I came by and saw this car out front. Looked like an unmarked car, so I took off again…”

I was impressed. I’d had no idea he could string so many words together. Nevertheless, I interrupted his monologue by grabbing his shoulders and hauling him into a sitting position. He pulled back but stayed sitting.

His look was sullen. About as close to emotion as he ever got, I figured.

“Samson, why are the cops after me again? Did you give them my diary?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, shit. That’s really gonna be it then. Everybody’s gonna want my ass now, boy. All those names—”

“Just initials. Tell me, Cutter, that
J
in the book. Was that someone named Jared?”

“Fuck you.”

“Pretty important man, right?”

He repeated his instructions.

“Sure, Cutter. I’ll give it a try. But first I’m going to let the cops know where they can pick you up.” I turned toward the telephone.

“Hey, man!” He jumped up, all renewed energy. “Whattaya want to do that for? What did I do to you anyway?”

“You mean besides standing around and watching me get kicked in the balls? You mean what besides that?”

“I would have helped if I could. After all, you didn’t tell him about the diary. But I couldn’t stop him. He had a gun. I couldn’t stop a gun. And you told the cops.” His lower lip was actually sticking out. “Look, let me stay here for a couple hours, catch my breath. I can pay for it.” He switched from the pout to a more familiar look, the look that, I supposed, made Debbi think of him as a soldier. “You’re looking for information. I got information.”

“Why should you tell me anything?”

“Got anything to eat?”

I went to the refrigerator, took out two slices of bologna, shoved them between two slices of bread, and stuck the sandwich in his hand. He looked at it distastefully but took a big bite anyway.

“I repeat, Cutter, what is it you want to tell me?”

“The police already questioned me about the fire. Now maybe they want me for the killing, too. I got a feeling. And Frank said if they found out I was close to her, you know.”

“You said you had information for me.”

“Got another sandwich? And some milk?” I went to the kitchen to get him the food. While I was pouring the milk, I heard the front door open and close. I shot back through the door fast, but there he sat.

“That cat,” he said, “the one that bothers you. It was in the house. I shoved it out.”

“Thanks,” I said, and went back into the kitchen for his sandwich and milk.

He drank half the milk down. “Okay,” he said. “I didn’t kill her. Here’s the truth. Her husband. He did it.”

“How do you know that?” I practically yawned in his face.

“He was having an affair.” The phrase sounded strange coming from his barely literate lips. So he was a bit of a prude, too.

“So?”

“So he wanted to get rid of his wife. It’s always the husband anyway, right? Well, he was betraying her with another woman.” The more he talked about sex the less he sounded like himself. “He’s totally corrupt. He killed her. You can bet he did. Because of his woman.”

“You know who the woman is?”

“I sure do. Margaret knew, too.”

“How?”

“It happened like this. Margaret wasn’t telling anybody she was Harley’s wife, right? She was ashamed, probably. And I didn’t know yet either. We were having coffee together and talking about things, and I mentioned that I’d been down at the Marina and I’d seen Harley and this Rebecca walking around down there. She didn’t cry or anything, but I could see that she was holding something in. Then she told me. That she was Harley’s wife and that she thought he was betraying her, and now she was sure of it. He wanted someone else. He killed her.”

“Jesus, Cutter, haven’t you ever heard of divorce?”

He shrugged. “That’s got to be what happened.”

“Terrific. That’s very helpful, really,” I sneered. “Now you answer some questions.”

He gave me a wary look and swallowed the last of his second sandwich.

“Did you tell the police about Harley’s girl friend?”

“They just asked me about the fire. I didn’t volunteer nothing.”

“Who’s Jared?”

“Forget it, man.”

“How did you know Rebecca’s name?”

He shifted a little and glanced toward the door like he wanted to use it. “I don’t know. You hear stuff. Everybody hears stuff.”

“Okay,” I said, feigning patience, “then tell me how you got Margaret Bursky’s drawings. She sure didn’t give them to you.”

“Yes she did.”

“How did Frank know the portraits existed? Did all those people sit for them?”

“No. She did them all from memory. She told me she had them.”

“And you told Frank?”

“Not until after she was dead. After you took them.”

“When did she give the sketchbooks to you?”

His eyes were shifting. His fingers were drumming. He was crossing and uncrossing his legs. “Couple days before she died.”

“You’re lying. I’m going to turn you in.” I grabbed the front of his shirt. His breath smelled of bologna. I didn’t see him reach into his jacket pocket, but I felt the gun pressed against my side a second later.

“Okay, Samson. I don’t like doing this, but you don’t give me any choices. And I need help. I got to get away. I’d just take your car, but you’d call the cops so I’m taking you, too.”

“Gee,” I said, “this is just like television. Do you think it’s the American thing to do, coming to visit a man, eating his food, all with the idea of stealing his car? Not to mention his person—”

“Shut up. I’m not stealing your car. You’re gonna drive it.” He poked the gun into my side, hard, just missing the cracked rib. “Walk in front of me. I’ll have the gun on you, in my pocket. Don’t try nothing.”

I half-expected him to rasp “or I’ll waste you,” but he didn’t. We had started down the path when I heard a familiar-sounding engine. Rosie’s pickup. She parked in front and came through the gate, Alice at her heels. She was carrying a couple of six-foot-long two-by-fours, probably for her latest home project.

“Don’t stop to talk,” Cutter whispered. “Say you got to rush. Or I’ll take her, too.”

Rosie and Alice were just a few feet away from us now.

“Can’t stop to talk, Ellery,’’ I told her. “I’ll be back soon.” Cutter, the dummy, was still behind me. I bared my teeth at Rosie and rolled my eyes in a silent, if grotesque, plea. Her eyelids barely flickered. She’d seen the drawing of Cutter. Would she know him?

“Sure, darling,” she said, by way of letting me know she wasn’t playing herself. “See you later.”

I had gone about three paces beyond her when I heard a crack, a grunt, and a thud. I turned to find Cutter on his face in the driveway and Rosie finishing her follow-through with one of the two-by-fours. The other one was lying across the back of his neck. The gun he’d been holding was on the ground.

Rosie picked up the gun. “I hope,” she said, “that he is who I think he is.”

At the very least, Cutter was an arsonist, and even if he wasn’t a killer, I was a little put out by his attempt to kidnap me, as well as by his refusal to answer the questions I’d wanted him to answer. In the space of a couple of minutes, I went over all the reasons for and against turning him in.

If he told the cops I’d stolen the drawings, he’d have to admit he had had them. He might not want to do that. But there was a very good chance he’d be eager to tell them about Harley and Rebecca, if they started pushing at him about Bursky’s death. Did that matter? How did I know the police didn’t already have that information? If they’d taken Cutter’s diary pages at all seriously, they were already looking for the woman Harley was seeing.

Then there was Hawkins. If he caught up with Cutter and found out I’d had the kid and let him go, I’d probably wind up in jail myself. All in all, I didn’t have a choice. Not morally and not in practical terms either.

Cutter groaned and rolled over, focusing his eyes first on me and then on Rosie, who was holding the gun on him. I left the two of them that way and called the police.

Hawkins got there in about ten minutes with two uniformed cops. While the uniforms cuffed Cutter and tucked him into the back of their squad car, Hawkins chewed his lip and thought about what kind of trouble he could give us.

I forestalled him by introducing him to Rosie. She transferred the gun from her right hand to her left and shook his hand.

He grunted. “You got a permit for that gun, Miss?”

She looked at it, startled. “It’s not mine. It’s Cutter’s.”

He nodded and took it from her. “I’d like you two to come down and make a statement. You can take your own car.” He turned and began to walk toward the street. We followed. Before he got into his car, he turned and called out to us.

“Who hit him with the two-by-four?”

“I did,” Rosie said, a little defiantly.

He looked at her and smiled.

We didn’t finish until just after three. Rosie and I had taken separate vehicles so I could go straight to my appointment with Jared.

I’d gotten all the way to the door of the bar before I remembered that I didn’t know what Jared looked like. Apparently, though, someone had described me to him. The minute I walked in, a large man got off his barstool and came to meet me. He didn’t shake hands; he just said, “Samson?” I nodded. “Jared,” he barked, and herded me to a booth in the far corner.

His face was familiar, as Frank’s had been. Jared, too, had been immortalized by Margaret Bursky in her sketchbook.

He was a little taller than me and a whole lot heavier. Where Frank was soft-looking, this man was big and fat and solid. He was wearing, of all things, a cheap brown business suit and a plaid tie, and the suit was older than his paunch. The jacket was buttoned, and it stretched across his belly.

Even with that terrible example of obesity right there in front of me, I ordered beer. He ordered bourbon and water, no ice, like he’d spent his life in cheap motels with no ice machines.

A couple of minutes after we sat down, another man got up from the bar and joined us. He was even bigger than Jared. There were no introductions.

I gazed into Jared’s muddy hazel eyes. The pouches under them and the deep lines that ran from his nose to the sides of his mouth put his age at somewhere around forty-five. The pouches weren’t dark and came from time, not dissipation. He had very little gray in his mousy brown hair. His face was red, shiny, and round, like a nasty Santa Claus.

He was taking a good look at me, too.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why I called you, Samson? What kind of a name is that, anyway? Samson? Your first name’s Jake, isn’t it? Jewish?”