The Emerald Cat Killer (7 page)

She stood up and walked to the side of the room.

“He had a partner, Paul Morse. In time, Paul Morse had a son, Paul Junior. Delbert Marston stayed in touch with Paige Publications, and eventually … well, stranger things have happened. I wound up married to Paul Junior. Both Paul Senior and Delbert Marston are deceased now but we kept the name.”

“But this
Emerald Cat
situation—”

“Yes, I'm sorry. Marston and Morse finally absorbed Paige Publications. We've kept a few of their old titles in print. It's a sentimental gesture, I suppose. Only a small part of our business. And we do issue an occasional pulp paperback. It's a guilty pleasure of the publishing business, I suppose.”

She removed a handful of paperbacks from a bookshelf and spread them on the table between herself and Lindsey. “Oh,” she said, “how discourteous of me! Would you like a cup of tea, Mr. Lindsey? Or coffee?”

Lindsey declined the offer. The books looked oddly familiar. “This may surprise you, Mrs. Morse, but I was once involved in a life insurance settlement in Chicago, and I met a Patricia Paige.”

“My aunt Patti!”

“As I recall, she didn't like her name. People kept confusing her with a popular vocalist of the 1950s.”

“Oh, I know, I know.” Suddenly Paula Paige Morse looked like a college girl. “I remember how much she hated that song. ‘How Much is that Doggie in the Window?'” She had a lovely laugh.

Lindsey scanned the old paperbacks.
Buccaneer Blades
by Violet de la Yema.
Cry Ruffian!
by Salvatore Pescara.
Teen Gangs of Chicago
by Anonymous.
Death in the Ditch
by Del Marston.

“And lately we've published a series of detective novels by a local author, Gordon Simmons. He wrote as Wallace Thompson. Quite good books, of their sort. He wrote about a private detective called Tony Clydesdale and his girlfriend, Selena Thebes. I can give you copies of the books if you'd like. We'd published eight of them and Gordon was working on the ninth. He'd been in the office and told us that he'd finished a draft and just had to polish it up before turning it in—when he died.”

“Was murdered.”

“Yes. We never got that book. Angela Simmons, Gordon's wife, told us that the book existed only as a computer file. You know how they keep saying,
back up your work, back up your work,
but Gordon didn't remember to back up that last book. When his killer made off with Gordon's laptop computer, he took the only copy of the book with him.
The Ruby Red Pup.
That was the name of the book. There's a sleazy bar on San Pablo Avenue in El Cerrito with that name.”

Paula Paige Morse slipped back into her chair. She drew a deep breath. “This is where the story gets ugly. Uglier, I should say.” She said it sadly. “Apparently Tony Clydesdale had a following of loyal readers. One of them called the office. I spoke with him myself. He sounded very upset.”

Lindsey asked the fan's name. Apparently Paula Paige Morse had a memory for names. “Jemmy Ruhlman. Jemmy, short for Jeremy. He's a student at UC. Said that he and friends had read all the Tony Clydesdale novels and had trivia contests about them.”

She gathered up the old Paige Publications paperbacks and restored them to their place on the bookshelf.

“Jemmy was very upset. He'd been in a little bookstore up on Claremont Avenue, an odd place called Dark Carnival, browsing through their mystery section, and he came across a book called
The Emerald Cat.
The cover caught his eye, he told me, and he wound up reading the book. He said it was a Tony Clydesdale novel in every way. The setting, the narrative structure, the author's style. And Jemmy said this was absolutely a Wallace Thompson book.”

She drew a deep breath. She was the picture of
I'm-sorry-to-tell-you-this-but …
“Only instead of the Ruby Red Pup on Solano, the setting was a sleazy bar on San Pablo Avenue called the Emerald Cat. Tony Clydesdale had become Troy Percheron. Selena Thebes had become Helena Cairo. You see, the author of
The Emerald Cat
must not have had much imagination. Either that or he was awfully lazy. Turning Tony Clydesdale into Troy Percheron, Selena Thebes into Helena Cairo … well, really.”

“And you think this Steve Damon, the author of
The Emerald Cat,
killed Simmons? Mrs. Morse, that's a matter for the police, don't you see?”

“Of course. I've spoken with a Sergeant Strombeck about it. The trouble is, nobody can find Steve Damon. It's probably a pseudonym. Steve Damon could be anybody. But under the name Steve Damon—why, apparently there's no such person.”

Lindsey rubbed his eyes. He knew that. At least, according to Rachael Gottlieb, Steve Damon was Rigoberto Chocron. If there was such a person as Rigoberto Chocron. Masks behind masks, deception behind deception.

And if Olaf Strombeck had got this far with the case—had followed the trail, possibly from Angela Simmons to Paula Paige Morse—he would almost certainly know about Steve Damon. Would he have traced Damon back to Rachael Gottlieb? If so he would surely have learned that Damon was really Chocron. Why hadn't he mentioned that to Lindsey? Maybe the straight-as-a-string perfect cop had something to hide, too.

“We've tried to work things out with Gordian House,” Paula Paige Morse was saying, “but I'm afraid Mr. Burnside is not an easy man to deal with.”

Focus, Lindsey! Focus!

He needed to bring the conversation back to the issue at hand. He was an insurance investigator, not a homicide detective. International Surety's client was Gordian House. His job was to determine whether it made more sense for Gordian to settle with Marston and Morse or to fight them in court. Finding Gordon Simmons's killer was the police department's job, not his.

He thanked Paula Paige Morse for her hospitality. She told him that she hoped the dispute could be settled without going to court. He agreed. She saw him to the door, asked her receptionist to get him a selection of Tony Clydesdale mysteries, and turned back toward her own office.

*   *   *

He stood on the sidewalk, watching traffic whiz by on University Avenue.

He found a café, ordered a cappuccino and a croissant, opened his pocket organizer and turned on his cell phone. He punched in the number Rachael Gottlieb had given him for Rigoberto Chocron's favorite restaurant.

The person who answered apparently spoke only Spanish. Lindsey knew a few words of that language and hoped that he got his message across. He left his cell-phone number and nursed his cappuccino.

He used the time to skim a couple of the books he'd received from Paula Paige Morse's receptionist.
The Orange Owl. The Turquoise Tortoise.
The covers were less lurid than the one on Gordian House's
Emerald Cat,
and the production quality was substantially better. He read the opening scene of
The Orange Owl,
then skipped ahead a few chapters, sampled a few pages, skipped and sampled, switched to
The Turquoise Turtle,
and repeated.

There was no question in his mind. Troy Percheron and Helena Cairo were copied from Tony Clydesdale and Selena Thebes. No, they weren't just copies. They
were
the characters from Gordon Simmons's—“Wallace Thompson's”—hard-boiled novels. This was not good news for Gordian House and it was not good news for International Surety, but it was the truth.

After a while he punched in the number Marvia Plum had given him for her own cell phone. The phone rang a few times—at least Lindsey inferred as much—and then he was switched to voice mail. For a moment he considered calling Strombeck at BPD but instead left a brief message for Marvia and went back to waiting.

The phone rang.

A heavily accented voice said, “Mr. Lindsey?”

“Is this Rigoberto Chocron?”

“Rachael says you want to talk to me.”

“Yes, please.”

“Why?”

Rigoberto Chocron didn't mince words.

“It's about your book,” Lindsey said. “It's about
The Emerald Cat.
”

“What about it?”

“It's an insurance matter, Mr. Chocron.”

There was a pause. Lindsey could hear the clatter of silverware and dishes in the background. Then Chocron said, “Look, what's in it for me?”

“That depends on what you can give me,” Lindsey said.

“I didn't do nothing wrong,” Chocron said. “I just wrote a book. Why you coming after me?”

“Just for some information. There's a dispute between two publishing houses. One of them has an insurance policy with my company and I need to file a report.”

“Yeah, sure. I believe you.”

Fat chance of that!

Chocron said, “You want to talk to me, you gotta pay for my time.”

“And how much would that be worth?”

“I don't know. How does five hundred an hour sound?”

Lindsey thought fast. It was International Surety's money, not his. He might get a bonus if he cracked this case, save I.S. a fat settlement with Marston and Morse. But if Chocron had killed Gordon Simmons, he was a dangerous man. Damn it, why didn't Marvia Plum return his call? Again, he considered calling Olaf Strombeck. Maybe …

“Come on, man.” Rigoberto Chocron was getting impatient. “I can't hang around all day. What do you say?”

“I was thinking more of a hundred.”

“A hundred?” Chocron sounded angry. “Forget about it. You think you can get me cheap like some poor illegal? I was born here. I got rights.”

Lindsey said, “All right. What about three? Three hundred. When and where do we meet?”

“Not so fast, amigo. Three is better than one but it's still not enough.”

Lindsey said, “All right. Let's say, I guarantee three. If the information is good enough, it can be more than that. Maybe even five.”

There was a long silence. Now Lindsey started doubting himself. Why hadn't he just agreed to five? What if he'd blown off a valuable lead, a source who could provide information worth thousands, might even crack the whole case, to save International Surety a few hundred dollars?

Now Rigoberto Chocron's voice came from the cell phone. “You come here. Tell you what, you come up with the five, I'll even buy you a good meal.” He gave Lindsey an address in Fruitvale, Oakland's thriving Latino district.

“How will I know you?” Lindsey asked.

“Don't you worry. I'll know you. Don't stand me up. You owe me five.”

The drive from downtown Berkeley to Fruitvale took half an hour. Lindsey found the street Chocron had named, parked his rented Dodge Avenger, and walked toward the number. The street was bustling with pedestrians, school kids, mothers pushing strollers. The dominant language was Spanish. He passed bodegas, taquerias,
panaderías
,
carnicerías
,
tiendas de ropas y zapatos
. Young men operated open-air sidewalk shops selling what were obviously bootleg DVDs of first-run movies. Walnut Creek was nothing like this. Lindsey felt as if he'd traveled to a foreign country.

He walked into the restaurant and looked around. It was called Los Arcos de Oro and it had a familiar logo. He wondered if McDonald's knew about it. It was clearly a family business. Most of the tables were occupied. There was a steady buzz of conversation. The only words Lindsey understood were the remnants of lessons that he'd learned in high school forty years before.

He found a vacant table, one of the few in the establishment. He sat down, opened his cell phone, laid it on the table, picked up a menu. Of course, it was entirely in Spanish.

A waitress approached, pad in one hand and pencil in the other.
“Está listo?”

Lindsey racked his brain, wishing he'd stopped to buy a Spanish-English dictionary.

A young Latino man appeared behind the waitress and whispered a few words in her ear. She nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. The man looked to be in his late twenties, slim, dark-haired, with a thin mustache. A young Cesar Romero? Gilbert Roland? Ricardo Montalban with facial hair? He wore blue jeans and an Oakland Raiders T-shirt that showed off tanned, muscular arms.

“You're Hobart Lindsey.” It was the same voice he'd heard on his cell phone, the English fluent but accented.

“Mr. Damon? Or is it Chocron?” Lindsey clicked his cell phone shut, hitting one extra button as he did so. If he got a usable picture of Damon-or-Chocron that might come in handy.

“Take your pick. You're paying. How does the joke go? ‘You can call me anything you want, just don't call me late for dinner.'”

“Mr. Chocron, then. Did you write
The Emerald Cat
?”

“I did.”

“That seems very strange to me. I've been—”

Chocron cut him off. “You have the five hundred?”

Lindsey frowned. “We already discussed that. I'll pay you what the information is worth. Don't worry about that. International Surety is a big company. I'll put in a voucher and you'll receive a check. Normally it takes a month but I can attach an expedite order to it and get it in two weeks.”

Chocron threw his head back and emitted a raucous laugh. Conversation stopped at tables around them and customers turned to stare.

It took Chocron half a minute to catch his breath. “You're joking, aren't you?”

Lindsey shook his head.

“Well, that won't do.”

The waitress approached again. Chocron nodded to her, and shot out a stream of Spanish. Her pencil danced across her order pad and she scurried away.

“I assure you, International Surety is a reliable company. Their check will be good.”

Chocron shook his head like a schoolteacher who was struggling to communicate a simple concept to a very slow student.