The Man Who Risked His Partner, Page 2

  I thought she might express her appreciation by ramming her elbow into my stomach. Hell, I wanted her to do it. I wanted her to at least try to act like the Ginny Fistoulari I used to know. But she didn’t. She just walked out of the elevator and went to her car.

  I had the keys. I opened the passenger side for her and held the door while she slid into the seat. Then I walked around the car, let myself in, and fitted my bulk behind the wheel. I ground the starter until the engine caught. Then I asked, “So where are we going?”

  She stared out at the gloom of the garage. “First Puerta del Sol National Bank,” she said distantly. “He works at the Heights branch. Corner of Acequia and Glover.”

  More to keep her going than because I was surprised, I said, “He thinks someone’s trying to kill him—and he went in to work?”

  But she’d already figured that part out. “Makes sense. He’s a whole lot safer in his office in a bank than he would be at home.”

  I chewed the situation over for a few minutes while I swung the Olds out of the garage and headed up Paseo Grande toward the beltway. She was right, it made sense. But sense isn’t generally a dominant characteristic of people who think other people are trying to kill them. Most people don’t get themselves into that kind of trouble. And when they do, they tend to panic.

  Maybe Haskell wasn’t surprised by what was happening to him? Or was he just that much more levelheaded than the rest of the human race?

  The beltway wasn’t direct, but it was quicker than plodding through umpteen dozen stoplights. Except during rush hour—and this was already the middle of the morning. In a few minutes we were pulling up the long grade out of the Flat Valley.

  Puerta del Sol sprawls. This is the Great American Southwest, and us rugged frontier-stock types don’t like to live piled on top of each other. So the city spreads out. Mostly it spreads up and down the Flat Valley, where water is a little easier to come by. But it goes east, too, toward the mountains.

  In that direction it falls into roughly three sections, the Valley, the Heights—this long eight-mile grade where the city expanded when there wasn’t any more room along the river—and the solid-gold real estate in the foothills of the mountains.

  Overall the Heights is the newest part of the city. It’s full of people like doctors and plumbers working for the day when they can move up into the foothills—or down into the old-money regions of the North Valley. I took the Olds off the beltway on Hacienda, steered my way past a strip of hamburger joints, pizza parlors, and stereo warehouses on both sides of the street, then finally got out into easier driving among the residential developments. The pale sunlight made the houses look like places where people never dreamed of trying to kill each other.

  During the whole drive, Ginny didn’t say a word. She didn’t even comment, never mind open her mouth to give me directions, when I missed the turn onto Glover and had to go the long way around a golf course to reach Acequia. She just kept staring through the windshield with a small frown nailed between her eyebrows.

  It wasn’t like her to pass up a chance to give me directions. I’d been worried about her for a long time, but now something in the way I worried about her started to crystallize.

  I was going to have to do something about it.

  For a minute there, I considered getting drunk. I was in that kind of mood. If I got drunk, she’d be forced to dig her way out of the pit she was in—or pull the top in after her. I felt positively noble. Axbrewder bravely sacrifices his soul to booze in order to save his partner. But there wasn’t anything noble about the way every cell in my body jumped up and danced at the bare suggestion of alcohol. I pushed the idea away.

  When I wheeled the Olds into the parking lot, I saw that the Heights branch of the First Puerta del Sol National Bank embodied one of the new concepts in modern banking. It tried to look like a place where nothing intimidating happens—a place where your money is safe and the people are your buddies and nobody ever says no and it’s all just as wholesome and American as motherhood—by disguising itself as an ice cream parlor. It had a red pitched roof, actual peppermint stripes on the walls, frilly white curtains in the windows, wrought-iron railings for the porch, and candy cane lights on either side of the front door.

  A risky way for a bank to do business. I didn’t think it was going to succeed. Me, I’d rather bury my money in the ground. I could picture people walking up to the tellers and ordering a dish of tutti-frutti—right after they made their deposits and cashed their checks somewhere else. But Puerta del Sol has a bank for about every eight people, and I suppose they have to do something to compete with each other.

  Still, I couldn’t imagine anyone who worked in an ice cream parlor being in danger for his life.

  “Quite a place,” I commented, hoping Ginny would respond.

  She got out of the Olds without saying anything and slammed the door. But when I sighed and followed her, she gave me a vaguely apologetic look. “Whoever thought that up,” she said, pretending more sarcasm than she felt, “ought to have his brains overhauled.”

  “Shame on you,” I said. “Didn’t your mommie teach you not to say anything at all if you can’t say something nice?”

  She wasn’t amused. But I guess she didn’t like it, either, when we weren’t talking to each other. Glaring at the bank, she said, “My mommie taught me not to trust people who don’t have better sense than this.”

  Well, at least she made an effort. I happened to know that her mother died when she was four. Feeling a little better, I took a couple of quick steps to get ahead of her, then held the door open for her and ushered her into the bank.

  Inside, the chairs where people had to wait for their loans to be approved or their mortgages to be foreclosed were upholstered with candy stripes, and the wallpaper had a peppermint stick pattern. Other than that, the place looked like an ordinary bank. Ginny spotted a desk with an “Information” sign, and we headed in that direction. She had her left forearm stuffed into the pocket of her coat so that no one would know about her hand.

  The woman at the information desk wore a name tag that read “Eunice Wint.” She was young and pretty in a soft, imprecise way, the kind of pretty that goes with baby fat. But the only thing really wrong with her was her hair. It had an indecisive style and color that made her look like she didn’t know how to make up her mind. I couldn’t help noticing her engagement ring. If she’d tried to go swimming with that rock, it would’ve dragged her to the bottom.

  She welcomed us to the Heights branch of the First Puerta del Sol National Bank and started into a bright spiel about how much she wanted to help us with our banking needs. Without actually being rude, Ginny cut in firmly, “Thank you, Ms. Wint. We have an appointment with Mr. Haskell.”

  “Oh.” Ms. Wint blushed—which made her look about twelve years old. “I’m sorry. How silly of me.” New at her job, I said to myself. To reassure her, I put on my kindly Uncle Axbrewder smile. She gestured toward the offices at one end of the lobby. “Won’t you come this way?”

  “Thank you,” Ginny said again.

  We were both as solemn as brokers as we followed Ms. Wint between the desks.

  All the offices along that wall had large windows aimed at the lobby, either so that the customers could see the executives hard at work or to let the executives keep an eye on the tellers and receptionists. The door in the corner had a neat, brass plaque:

  REG HASKELL

  CHIEF ACCOUNTANT

  Ms. Wint didn’t need to knock. The man in the office saw us coming, jumped up from behind his desk, and waved us in. But she opened the door and held it for us, anyway. She was blushing again. Or stilt—I couldn’t tell which.

  “Thank you, Eunice,” he said in an easy, naturally rich voice you might expect from an actor or a preacher. As he came around the desk, he extended his hand to Ginny. “You must be Ms. Fistoulari.” Then he looked at me. “And you?”

  “Axbrewder.” I took my turn shaking his hand. He had a
good grip, and his hand was dry and steady. He wore a light blue Southwest-casual banker’s double-knit. “I work for Fistoulari Investigations.” In a fit of perversity—directed at Ginny, not at him—I added, “I do the fetch-and-carry stuff.”

  Ginny gave me a glare that would’ve withered chickweed, but Haskell didn’t seem to notice. “Thanks for coming so promptly,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here.” Then he turned his smile on Ms. Wint. “If we need anything, Eunice, I’ll let you know.”

  She smiled back as if he’d made her day. But he was already on his way to the business side of his desk. Pointing out chairs for us, he said, “Please sit down.”

  He sounded perfectly natural and comfortable. In fact, he appeared perfectly natural and comfortable. He had a healthy tan and a solid, medium frame that looked like he took good care of it. Smile lines creased his cheeks. His reddish-brown hair ran back from his forehead in waves molded to his skull. There wasn’t any gray in his hair, but he was still probably about my age—around forty. His eyes were younger, however. They sparkled like a kid’s. At a guess, I would’ve said that he wasn’t in any danger at all. He was just excited about something.

  On the other hand, his desk seemed too tidy for a man with a kid’s excitement in his eyes. He kept all the papers in front of him as straight as numbers. Over to the left sat this morning’s Herald, with its headlines displayed at the ceiling.

  GANGSTER SLAIN

  BODY FOUND IN RIVER

  As we all sat down, I gestured toward the lobby and said, “So, Mr. Haskell, you’re responsible for all this.” Trying the oblique approach.

  “Reg,” he said. “Call me Reg.” He pronounced it like regular instead of regiment. “I wish you were right. But I’m just the chief accountant.” He was doing wry diffidence, and he was good at it. “Accountants don’t run banks until they stop being accountants. We’re like computers. We just churn out numbers. Other people make the decisions.”

  “Mr. Haskell,” Ginny put in with all the subtlety of a ball peen, “over the phone you said somebody’s trying to kill you.”

  This was our Mutt-and-Jeff routine. I come on all soft and friendly, Ginny goes for the bone. It’s supposed to make people more honest by keeping them off balance. But Haskell didn’t look particularly disconcerted.

  Nevertheless he acted disconcerted. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is embarrassing. I don’t know why I did it.” He avoided Ginny’s stare like a boy caught raiding the cookie jar. “I guess I was just trying to make sure you would take me seriously.”

  “I don’t like being lied to,” she snapped. “What made you think we wouldn’t take you seriously?”

  Haskell spread his hands in a rather theatrical shrug. After a quick glance at both of us, he admitted, “You aren’t the first private investigators I’ve called about this.”

  That surprised me. There weren’t that many private investigators in this town who could afford to turn down work. But I wanted a different answer first, and Ginny looked like she was about to say, Why did they turn you down? Did you lie to them, too? So I asked, “Mr. Haskell—Reg—what makes you think you need a private investigator?”

  He gave me an encouraging smile. “I’m sure they don’t want to kill me. That would be an overreaction. But they would be very happy to break my legs.”

  Ginny scowled formaldehyde and thumbtacks at him. “This is fun,” she said. “Just to keep us entertained, why don’t you tell us why anybody would want to break your legs?”

  He grimaced and tried to look miserable, but I got the impression that he was glowing inside. In fact, I would’ve taken my oath on a brand-new case of tequila that he somehow got handsomer every time Ginny poked at him.

  “I was stupid,” he said. “More stupid than usual. A week or so ago, a friend talked me into going down to El Machismo. Have you ever been there?”

  I had, Ginny hadn’t. We both stared at him. I didn’t know what she was thinking, but my heart suddenly jumped like I’d been hit with a cattle prod.

  “It’s a nightclub down near the old part of town,” he explained. “They converted an old movie theater. But being a nightclub is just a front.” He was watching us closely now—probably looking for signs that we wanted to walk out on him. “It’s really a casino.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Ginny said dryly. “It’s also illegal in this state.”

  “I know. That’s why I can’t go to the police.” For a minute he seemed to lose the thread of what he was saying. Then he went on, “But after adding numbers all day, I sometimes want a little excitement. And this friend twisted my arm.

  “God, I was stupid!” His eyes were wide with amazement, like he still couldn’t believe it. “I’m not usually like that. But somehow I got”—he fumbled for the right words—“caught up in it. You know?” He made an unabashed appeal for our sympathy. “It was like magic. It was new and exciting and dangerous, and if you got lucky, or if you understood the odds well enough—if you were good enough—you could win.” He didn’t look much like he regretted his folly. “I lost my head.

  “Also my money.” He grinned sheepishly. “I wasn’t as good as I thought. Before I realized what I was doing, I lost more money than I had with me. A lot more than I could afford.”

  “Then what?” I asked. But I wasn’t listening very hard. My heart still thudded around inside my chest, and I was remembering the one time I’d been to El Machismo.

  “They were polite about it,” he said, “which surprised me.” It didn’t surprise me. That’s how they hooked Anglo suckers. “They gave me a loan to cover my losses, and forty-eight hours to pay it back.”

  There he stopped. He didn’t need to explain the rest.

  Ginny said stiffly, “The people who run El Machismo don’t like welshers.” She had a tight grip on her temper. “Why didn’t you pay them back?”

  Now at least he managed to look serious. “I told you,” he said. “I’d lost a lot more money than I could afford.” Then he shrugged again. “And I was stupid. I underestimated them. They didn’t know who I was. I thought they wouldn’t be able to find me. If I never went back there, I thought I’d be safe.

  “But they called me last night. I don’t know how they did it, but they found me. They told me what they were going to do to me.”

  “Two broken legs for one welshed bet,” I commented. “That sounds like the going rate these days.”

  Something in the back of his eyes seemed to share my sense of humor, but the rest of his face went on looking serious. “Since then,” he concluded, “I’ve been trying to hire protection.”

  Sure, I thought. Anyone would feel the same way. Only he was in more trouble than he realized. None of the other private investigators he called would take the job because they didn’t want any part of the trouble he was in.

  Ginny didn’t want any part of it either. I could see that in the way she held her head, the way her eyes seemed to have slipped slightly out of focus. She was looking for the right kind of anger to turn Haskell down. If the man who wanted Haskell’s legs broken didn’t get what he wanted, he’d just raise the ante until he did. Sooner or later, someone was going to end up dead. Why should she risk it? She was a cripple, wasn’t she?

  She sure was. I could remember the Ginny Fistoulari who never would’ve considered refusing a case just because it might get messy. I didn’t exactly trust Haskell. Either he had a screw loose somewhere, or he wasn’t telling us the whole truth. Normal honest folks get a little more upset when you threaten to break their legs. But I had my own ideas about what we needed to do. And why we had to do it.

  Before Ginny could figure out how to dump him, I gave Haskell one of my smiles and said, “You got it. Nothing’s guaranteed in this business, but we’ll give it our best shot.”

  3

  “That’s a relief.” Haskell’s smile made mine look like the grin of a gargoyle. But I wasn’t really watching him. Most of my attention was on Ginny.

  She didn’t react with
any obvious outrage. The muscles at the corners of her eyes were clenched white, that’s all. “Mr. Haskell,” she said, as smooth as a drill bit, “I need a moment alone with Mr. Axbrewder.”

  My guts gave a sympathetic little twist, like she’d already started chewing into them.

  “Of course,” Haskell replied. “I understand.” With that boyish gleam, he seemed more charming than he had any legal right to be. “Use my office.”

  Before he got out of his chair, he reached for the phone. He dialed three digits, listened for a second, then said, “Eunice, Ms. Fistoulari and Mr. Axbrewder are going to conference in my office for a few minutes. Would you bring them some coffee?” He covered the mouthpiece and asked us, “Cream and sugar?” We shook our heads. “Just black,” he said to Eunice Wint. “Thanks.”

  Still smiling, he made his way around the desk and out of the room.

  We didn’t say anything. Through the window, we could see Ms. Wint coming in our direction with a Styrofoam cup in each hand.

  Haskell headed toward one of the tellers, and Ms. Wint seemed to be watching him more than where she was going. She nearly ran into a tall, thin man in a classy gray pinstripe. He talked softly—I couldn’t hear what he was saying. But he sounded angry, and her blush looked hot enough to set her hair on fire. When he let her go and she brought us our coffee, she couldn’t quite swallow all the misery in her face.

  “Thank you, Ms. Wint.” Ginny wasn’t paying any attention. She just wanted to get rid of the girl. As soon as Ms. Wint left, Ginny got up and closed the door.

  I followed the receptionist with my eyes, sidetracked by her unhappiness. Ginny had to say my name to make me look at her. The way she said it, it sounded like she had a mouthful of broken glass.

  I looked at her. If I’d been drowning, I would’ve forgotten everything and looked at her when she said my name like that.

  She didn’t say, I’m Fistoulari Investigations. You’re just the hired help. Don’t try to make my decisions for me. As soft and fierce as whip leather, she said, “Are you out of your mind? Have you forgotten who owns El Machismo?”