Free Fall, Page 4

  I sat in my car for a long time after they disappeared, smelling the McDonald's and tasting the beer and watching the neon cowgirl blink. My head hurt and I was tired from all the sitting, but I wasn't anxious to get home. Getting home meant going to bed and sleep wouldn't come easy tonight. Tomorrow I would have to speak with Jennifer Sheridan and tell her what I had found.

  Sleep never comes easy when you're going to break someone's heart.

  CHAPTER 5

  I woke the next morning with a dull ache behind my right eye and the sound of finches on my deck. I have a little A-frame off Woodrow Wilson Drive in Laurel Canyon, in the hills above Hollywood. I don't have a yard because the A-frame is perched on a hillside, but I've got a deck, and a nice view of the canyon. A woman I know gave me a build-it-yourself bird-feeder kit for Christmas, so I built it, and hung it from the eve of my roof high enough to keep the birds safe from my cat. But the birds scratch the seed out of the feeder, then fly down to the deck to eat the seed. They know there's a cat, but still they go down to pick at the seed. When you think about it, people are often like this, too.

  I rolled out of bed, pulled on a pair of shorts, then went downstairs and out onto the deck. The finches flew away in a gray, fluttery cloud.

  I did twelve sun salutes from the hatha-yoga to loosen my muscles, then moved to the tai chi, and then to the tae kwon do, first the Tiger and Crane katas, and then the Dragon and Eagle. As I worked, the finches returned to eat and watch as if I were now elemental to their world and no longer a threat. I worked for the better part of an hour, driving through the katas faster and faster, breathing deep to well my energy, then unloading that energy with long explosive moves until my muscles burned and the sweat spotted the deck as if there had been a passing rain shower. I finished with another twelve sun salutes, and then I went in. Penance for the Falstaff. Or maybe just client avoidance.

  My cat was staring at the finches. He's large and he's black and he carries his head sort of cocked to the side from when he was head-shot by a .22. He said, "Naow?"

  I shook my head. "Not now. Got a call to make."

  He followed me into the kitchen and watched while I called my friend at B of A. You know you're serious when you call after an hour's worth of katas before you shower. Good thing we don't have smell-o-phones.

  I said, "You get anything out of the ordinary on Mark Thurman?" The detective makes a desperate last-ditch attempt at linking Mark Thurman to Criminal Activity.

  "Doesn't look like it. Thurman's outstanding credit charges on both Visa and MasterCard appear typical. Also, he has not applied for higher credit limits nor additional credit cards through any facility in the state of California." The desperate attempt fails.

  "That's it, huh?"

  "You sound disappointed."

  "What's disappointment to a hard guy like me?"

  "Tell me about it. Are these good seats for Sting, or are we going to camp in the back of the house like last time?"

  "Did I mention that you're not aging well?"

  She hung up. So did I. These dames.

  I took a deep breath, let it out, and then I called Jennifer Sheridan at Marty Beale's office. She answered on the second ring. "Watkins, Okum, & Beale. Mr. Beale's office."

  "This is Elvis Cole. I have uncovered some things, and we should speak." The cat came over and head-bumped me.

  "Well. All right." She didn't sound happy about it, like maybe she could hear something in my voice. "Can you tell me now?"

  "It's better if we meet for lunch. Kate Mantilini's is very nice."

  More of the pause. "Is it expensive?"

  "I'll pay, Ms. Sheridan."

  "Well, I only have the hour." Nervous.

  "I could pick up a couple of cheeseburgers and we could sit on the curb."

  "Maybe the restaurant would be all right. It's only a few blocks from here, isn't it?"

  "Three blocks. I'll make a reservation. I will pick you up in front of your building or we can meet at the restaurant."

  "Oh, I don't mind walking."

  "Fine."

  I put the receiver down and the cat looked up at me. He said it again. "Naow?"

  I picked him up and held him close. He was warm against me and his fur was soft and I could feel his heart beat. It was good to hold him. He often doesn't like it, but sometimes he does, and I have found, over the years, that when I most need to hold him, he most often allows it. I like him for that. I think it's mutual.

  I scrambled two eggs, put them in his bowl, then went upstairs to shower and dress. At seven minutes after twelve, I walked into Kate Mantilini's and found Jennifer Sheridan already seated. The waiters were smiling at her and an older woman at the next table was talking to her and all the lights of the restaurant seemed focused on her. Some people just have lives like that, I guess. She was wearing a bright blue pant suit with a large ruffled tie and black pumps with little bows on them, and she looked even younger than the first time I'd seen her. Maybe she wasn't twenty-three. Maybe she was seventeen and the people around us would think I was her father. If she looked seventeen and I looked thirty-eight, that would work out. Bummer.

  She said, "I hope this won't take long."

  "It won't."

  I motioned to the waiter and told him that we were in a hurry and would like to order. He said fine and produced a little pad. I ordered the niçoise salad with sesame dressing and an Evian water. Jennifer Sheridan had a hamburger and french fries and a diet Coke. The waiter smiled at me when she ordered. Probably thought I was a lecher. When the waiter had gone, Jennifer Sheridan said, "What have you found out, Mr. Cole?" The mister.

  "What I have to tell you will not be pleasant, and I want you to prepare yourself for it. If you'd rather leave the restaurant so that we might go someplace private, we can do that."

  She shook her head.

  I said, "Typically, when an officer is profiting from crime, it shows up in his lifestyle. He'll buy a boat or a time-share or maybe a high-end sound system. Something like that."

  She nodded.

  "Mark hasn't. In fact, I checked his bank balances and his credit card expenses and there is no indication that he has received any undue or inordinate sums of money."

  She looked confused. "What does that mean?"

  "It means that he has not been acting strangely because he's involved in crime. There's a different reason. He's seeing another woman."

  Jennifer Sheridan made a little smile and shook her head as if I'd said three plus one is five and she was going to correct me. "No. That's not possible."

  "I'm afraid that it is."

  "Where's your proof?" Angry now. The older woman at the next table looked over. She frowned when she did. She had a lot of hair and the frown made her look like one of those lizards with the big frill.

  I said, "Five minutes after you left my office yesterday, Mark came to see me. He had been following you. He explained to me that he was seeing someone else, and that he had not been able to bring himself to tell you. He asked me not to tell you this, but my obligation and my loyalty are to you. I'm sorry." The detective delivers the death blow.

  Jennifer Sheridan didn't look particularly devastated, but maybe that was just me.

  The waiter brought our food and asked Jennifer Sheridan if she'd like catsup for her french fries. She said yes and we waited as he went to the counter, found a bottle, and brought it back. Neither of us said anything and Jennifer Sheridan didn't look at me until he had gone away. He seemed to know that something was wrong and frowned at me, too. The woman with the big hair was keeping a careful eye on our table.

  When the waiter was gone, Jennifer Sheridan ate two french fries, then said, "For Mark to come to you and make up a story like this, he must be in bigger trouble than I thought."

  I stared at her. "You think he's making it up?"

  "Of course."

  I put down my fork and I looked at the niçoise. It was a good-looking salad with freshly grilled ahi tuna, and I think I would'v
e enjoyed eating it. Jennifer Sheridan had asked me for proof and I told her about my visit from Mark Thurman, but I hadn't told her the rest of it and I hadn't wanted to. I said, "He's not making this up."

  "Yes, he is. If you knew Mark, you'd know that, too." Confident.

  I nodded, and then I looked at the salad again. Then I said, "What size bra do you wear?"

  She turned a deep shade of crimson. "Now you're being ugly."

  "I put you at a thirty-four B. I went into Mark's apartment to look through his bank papers and I found a thirty-six C-cup brassiere."

  She looked shocked. "You broke into his apartment? You went through his things?"

  "That's what private detectives do, Ms. Sheridan."

  She put her hands in her lap. "It isn't real."

  "It was a red Lily of France brassiere. I held it. It was real."

  She shook her head. "That's not what I mean. They knew you would look so they planted it there to make you think he was seeing another woman. What do they call it? A false lead?"

  "Later that evening, I staked out a country-and-western bar called Cody's. It's a place where the police officers who work with Mark tend to gather. At a little bit after eight last night, Mark and his partner Floyd Riggens arrived. Mark was with a tall woman with dark brown hair." I felt bad telling her and the bad feeling was oily and close, but there didn't seem to be any other way.

  "And?"

  "I wish I had better news, but there it is. I have looked into the matter and this is what I have found. I think my work here is done."

  "You mean you're quitting?"

  "The case is solved. There's nothing left to do."

  Jennifer Sheridan's eyes welled and her mouth opened and she let out a long loud wail and began to cry. The woman with the big hair gasped and looked our way and so did most of the other people in the restaurant.

  I said, "Maybe we should leave."

  "I'm all right." She made loud whooping sounds like she couldn't catch her breath and the tears rolled down her cheeks, making dark tracks from the mascara. The waiter stormed over to the maitre d' and made an angry gesture. The woman with the big hair said something to an elderly man at an adjoining table and the elderly man glared at me. I felt two inches tall.

  "Try to see it this way, Jennifer. Mark being involved with another woman is better than Mark being involved in crime. Crime gets you in jail. Another woman is a problem you can work out together."

  Jennifer Sheridan wailed louder. "I'm not crying because of that."

  "You're not?"

  "I'm crying because Mark's in trouble and he needs our help and you're quitting. What kind of crummy detective are you?"

  I spread my hands. The maitre d' said something to the waiter and the waiter came over.

  "Is everything all right, sir?"

  "Everything is fine, thank you."

  He looked at Jennifer Sheridan.

  She shook her head. "He's a quitter."

  The waiter frowned and went away. The woman with the big hair made a tsking sound like she thought they should've done something.

  Jennifer said, "I want to be sure, that's all. If he's seeing this other woman, then who is she? Do they work together? Does he love her? Did you follow them home?"

  "No."

  "Then you don't know, do you? You don't know if they slept together. You don't know if he kissed her good night. You don't even know if they left the bar together."

  I rubbed my brow. "No."

  The woman with the big hair whispered again to the elderly man, then stood and went to three women sitting in a window booth. One of the women stood to meet her.

  Jennifer Sheridan was crying freely and her voice was choking. "He needs us, Mr. Cole. We can't leave him like this, we can't. You've got to help me."

  The woman with the big hair shouted, "Help her, for God's sake."

  The three women at the window booth shouted, "Yeah!"

  I looked at them and then I looked back at Jennifer Sheridan. She didn't look seventeen anymore. She looked fifteen. And homeless. I dropped my napkin into the niçoise. I'd had maybe three bites. "You win."

  Jennifer Sheridan brightened. "You'll stay with it?"

  I nodded.

  "You see how it's possible, don't you? You see that I'm right about this?"

  I spread my hands. The Defeated Detective.

  She said, "Oh, thank you, Mr. Cole. Thank you. I knew I could depend on you." She was bubbling now, just like Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. She used her napkin to dry her eyes, but all she did was smear the mascara. It made her look like a raccoon.

  The woman with the big hair smiled and the elderly man looked relieved. The waiter and the maitre d' nodded at each other. The three women in the window booth resumed their meal. The restaurant returned to its normal course of lunchtime events, and Jennifer Sheridan finished her hamburger. Everybody was happy.

  "Jesus Christ," I said.

  The waiter appeared at my elbow. "Is something wrong with the niçoise, sir?"

  I looked at him carefully. "Get away from me before I shoot you."

  He said, "Very good, sir," and he got.

  CHAPTER 6

  At twelve fifty-five, I gave Jennifer Sheridan a lift the three blocks back to her office and then I headed back toward mine, but I wasn't particularly happy about it. I felt the way you feel after you've given money to a panhandler because the panhandler has just dealt you a sob story that both of you knew was a lie but you went for it anyway. I frowned a lot and stared down a guy driving an ice cream truck just so I could feel tough. If a dog had run out in front of me I probably would've swerved to hit it. Well, maybe not. There's only so much sulking you can do.

  The problem was that Jennifer Sheridan wasn't a panhandler and she wasn't running a number on me. She was a young woman in pain and she believed what she believed, only believing something doesn't make it so. Maybe I should spend the rest of the afternoon figuring out a way to convince her. Maybe I could rent one of those high-end, see-in-the-dark video cameras and tape Mark Thurman in the act with the brown-haired woman. Then we could go back to Kate Mantilini's and I could show everyone and what would the woman with the big hair think then? Hmm. Maybe there are no limits to sulking, after all.

  I stopped at a Lucky market, bought two large bottles of Evian water, put one in my trunk, then continued on toward my office. Half a block later two guys in a light blue four-door sedan pulled up behind me and I thought I was being followed. A Hispanic guy in a dark blue Dodgers cap was driving and a younger guy with a light blond butch cut was riding shotgun. His was the kind of blond that was so blond it was almost white. I looked at them, but they weren't looking at me, and a block and a half later they turned into a Midas Muffler shop. So much for being followed.

  When I got up to my office I opened the French doors off the little balcony, then turned on the radio, and lay down on my couch. KLSX on the airwaves. Howard Stern all morning, classic rock all afternoon. We were well into classic rock and I liked it just fine. Lynyrd Skynyrd. What could be better than that?

  It was a cool, clear afternoon and I could be at the beach but instead I was here. Portrait of a detective in a detective's office. When a detective is in a detective's office, shouldn't he be detecting? One of life's imponderables. The problem was that I didn't suspect Mark Thurman of a crime, and crime still didn't look good to me as the answer to Jennifer Sheridan's problems. If you're talking cops and crime, you're talking motive, and I didn't see it. I had been in Thurman's home and I had talked to his fiancée and his neighbors, and the crime part just didn't fit. When you're talking cops and crime, you're talking conspicuous consumption. Cops like to buy cars and they like to buy boats and they like to buy vacation homes and they explain it all by saying that the wife came into a little money. Only Thurman didn't have a wife and, as near as I could tell, he didn't have any of the other things, either. Of course, there could always be something else. Debt and dope are popular motives, but Thurman didn't seem to
fit the profile on those, either. I had witnessed events and gathered evidence, and an examination of same had led to certain conclusions which seemed fair to me but not to the client. Maybe the client was crazy. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe the client was just confused and maybe I should have done more to alleviate her confusion, but I had not. Why? Maybe she should be the detective and I should be the client. We couldn't be any more confused than we were now.

  Sometime later the phone rang. I got up, went to my desk, and answered it. "Elvis Cole Detective Agency. We never lie down on the job."

  "Caught you sleeping, huh?" It was Rusty Swetaggen.

  "Ha. We never sleep."

  Rusty said, "I talked to a guy who knows about REACT."

  "Yeah?" I sat in the chair and leaned back and put my feet up. It was quiet in the office. I looked at the water cooler and the couch and the two chairs opposite my desk and the file cabinet and the Pinocchio clock and the closed door to Joe Pike's office. The water machine hummed and little figures of Jiminy Cricket and Mickey Mouse stared back at me and the coffee machine smelled of old coffee, but something was missing.

  Rusty said, "Maybe I shouldn't even mention this."

  "You've rethought our friendship and you want me to pay for lunch?"

  "Nothing that important. This guy I talked with, he said something that's maybe a little funny about the REACT guys down at Seven-seven."

  "Funny." I have seen these things in my office ten thousand times, and today something was different.

  "Yeah. It's like he wouldn't've even mentioned it if I hadn't pushed him, like it's one of those things that doesn't matter unless you're looking, and it probably doesn't matter even then."