Diagnosis Murder 6 - The Dead Letter (12 page)

While the physical condition of the bills played a large part in determining value, Mark knew there were other important factors that collectors considered, including the denomination, the color and type of the U.S. Treasury seal, the signatures on the note, and the actual size of the bill itself.

Mark shared his limited numismatic background with Betsy, who admitted that her knowledge of the field wasn't much better than his. She was, however, able to describe to him some of the highlights of Jimmy Cale's multimillion dollar collection.

"The least valuable notes in Jimmy's collection were worth from thirty-five thousand to one hundred thousand dollars," she said. "But his most prized possessions were crisp, uncirculated currency worth nearly three hundred thousand dollars each."

Those bills included a hundred-dollar gold certificate from 1882 with a portrait of Senator Thomas Hart Benton on the face, a five-hundred-dollar legal tender note from 1880 with a red seal and a portrait of Major General Joseph King Mansfield on the face, and an 1882 fifty-dollar gold certificate with a brown seal and a portrait of New York governor Silas Wright on the face.

"Not that I really know what any of that means," she said. "I couldn't tell you why a red seal was any more valuable than a brown one, or vice versa. It seems strange to me that a bill worth fifty dollars at the time it was printed could be worth six thousand times as much now."

She told Mark that it took her ex-husband years to accumulate his remarkable collection through brokers, dealers, auctions, and private transactions between other well-heeled numismatists. But it took her only a single day to auction it all off to keep the slavering lawyers, accountants, and creditors at bay.

"All that was left were the crumbs that Bert wisely set aside for me and Serena years ago," Betsy said. "It turned out to be enough for us to buy this place and support ourselves. It gave me the freedom to be a stay-at-home mom and look after Serena instead of having to apply for a job at Wal-Mart. I shop there, though. It's about all we can afford."

That was when Serena walked through the door, her towel and textbook under her arm, her feet covered with sand. The breeze from the beach carried the scent of her coconut suntan lotion across the room.

"Serena, how many times do I have to tell you to wash your feet before coming in the house?" Betsy said.

"We live at the beach, Mom," Serena said. "There's sand everywhere. That's life."

"Wash your feet," Betsy said firmly.

Serena groaned at the unendurable oppression, tossed her stuff on the wicker couch, and held her foot under the water faucet next to the front stoop. She looked up at Mark as she washed her feet.

"Who's our guest?" she asked. "Another private eye?"

"Have there been more than one." Mark asked Betsy.

"No, just your friend," Betsy replied, then turned to her daughter. "This is Dr. Sloan. He's helping Mr. Stryker out."

"Nick showed me his ride," Serena said. "A tricked-out Escalade with a DVD entertainment system and chrome spinners on the rims."

"I've seen it," Mark said.

"Do you have a cool car, too." Serena asked.

"I drive a new Mini Cooper," Mark said.

Serena frowned. "Cool, but not private eye cool. More like community college, aspiring actress cool."

"You mean it's more suited to someone like you," Mark said.

"Clever deduction," Serena said mischievously. "Are you sure you're not a detective?"

"I'm not, but my son is a police officer."

"What does he drive?" She dried off her feet by wiping them on the doormat, which made her mother scowl. Mark was sure that was why Serena did it.

"A Ford pickup," Mark said.

"If you don't want him living at home until he's thirty, get him a sports car for his birthday."

It was a little late for that. "What makes you think he still lives at home?" Mark asked.

"He drives a Ford pickup. Unless he's a cop in Mayberry, it doesn't make him much of a babe magnet." She gathered up her things and headed towards the bedroom. "I've got to change for class. Nice meeting you."

"You too," Mark said.

CHAPTER TEN

At the exact moment Lieutenant Steve Sloan walked into the squad room of the West Valley Police Station to address the members of the Major Crime Unit, carefully coordinated simultaneous raids were occurring all across the Southland.

SWAT team members and police officers working under the auspices of the DA's special task force served search warrants at Detective Harley Brule's Chatsworth warehouse, where they arrested Brule's wife, Natalie, and several off-duty MCU detectives and ValTec security officers. Task force officers were also searching their homes, offices, and private vehicles for evidence related to the fencing of stolen goods.

But Harley Brule didn't know that. Nor did the five other members of his unit who were sitting in chairs facing the watch commander's podium, where Steve now stood.

Brule certainly wasn't Jack Webb's vision of an LAPD detective. He'd shaved his head down to the shiny skin on his knobby skull and wore a skintight black T-shirt to show off his prison yard pecs—not that he'd ever been anywhere near a prison yard.

That was going to change, Steve thought. He was surprised nobody had noticed Brule was a crook before. The cop was practically advertising it with his attitude. He slouched in his seat, looking bored, so his crew of MCU cops affected the same disaffected pose.

It was going to be a pleasure taking these arrogant jerks down, Steve thought.

"I'm Lieutenant Steve Sloan. I've moved over from robbery-homicide to lead a joint agency task force working out of the district attorney's office. I'm here because we've uncovered a major crime ring in the West Valley trafficking in stolen goods."

Brule muttered an expletive.

"Did you have something to say, Detective?" Steve asked.

"It's crap, Lieutenant. Nothing happens in the Valley that we don't know about," Brule said. "Usually before it happens."

"I'm sure that's true," Steve said.

"Then why are you here?"

"To clear up the confusion."

"I'm not confused." Brule turned to another member of his team. "Are you confused, Rob?"

"No, sir," Rollo said.

"See?" Brule looked back at Steve. "No confusion here."

"Then maybe you can tell me why you're clearing thirty thousand dollars a month selling stolen goods online through auction sites," Steve said.

Brule sat up slowly in his seat. He looked over his shoulder at his men, and that was when he noticed the uniformed police officers filing into the room.

"We thought you understood that the Major Crime Unit was supposed to prevent major crimes, not commit them," Steve said. "That's the confusion."

"You're making a big mistake' Brule said.

"There's something else I don't want you or your crew to be confused about," Steve said. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law..."

As he read the men their rights from the podium, the uniformed officers moved in, handcuffed the detectives, and took their weapons.

Brule glared at Steve the whole time. Suddenly the room was alive with the sound of beepers chirping and cell phones trilling.

"You can ignore those pages and calls. I can tell you who's calling," Steve said. "It's your frantic wives and children warning you that cops are tearing your homes and cars and boats apart, that your Chatsworth warehouse has been taken down, and you should ditch anything incriminating that's on you. I'm afraid it's too late for that."

Steve stepped out from behind the podium, walked up close to Brule, and got right in his face.

"We have Stryker's flies, Harley," Steve whispered.

Brule flinched as if slapped.

"Your wife is in a cell. Your son is being picked up at school by child protective services. Think about that," Steve said. "Think about your wife in prison and your son in the foster care system. Think about what you can tell me to make life easier for them."

Before Brule could reply, Steve walked away to let the dirty cop marinate in his guilt, torture himself with the horrible fates that would await his loved ones if he did nothing.

After Serena went off to attend her afternoon classes at Cabrillo College, Betsy invited Mark to take a stroll with her on the beach. Mark rolled up his pants legs and went barefoot, letting the surf wash around his ankles as they walked.

"What sorts of things did Stryker want to know about?" Mark asked.

"You never call him Nick," she said. "The way you talk about him, he doesn't sound like much of a friend."

"He wasn't," Mark said. "To be honest, I don't even like him much."

He doubted she would either if she knew that Stryker made his living as a blackmailer.

"You're going to a lot of effort for someone you don't like."

"If I don't look for him," Mark said, "I'm not sure any body else will."

"There's probably a good reason nobody wants to bother," she said. "But I guess you already know what that is. And you're looking anyway."

"You think I'm a fool?"

She smiled at him warmly. "It's better to be a man who cares too much than one who doesn't care at all."

"You ever know anybody like that?"

"I married one," she said. "Jimmy was all about Jimmy. For a while, he was the center of my universe, too, so it worked out. But then Serena was born, and that changed my priorities. It didn't change his."

"What were his?"

"That's basically what Nick Stryker wanted to know, what was Jimmy into? He liked to party, smoke fine cigars, and gamble. He'd go to Las Vegas every chance he got. That's where we got married, that's where we had our honeymoon, and that's where he wanted us to go on vacation," Betsy said. "I begged him to go to Europe, but he wouldn't go anywhere he couldn't speak the language. Not understanding what people were saying made him feel horribly paranoid and insecure. The one time we went down to Cabo, we had to come back alter only two days because he couldn't sleep. He worked himself up into a panic, convinced that everyone speaking Spanish was ridiculing him, laughing about how they'd ripped him off."

"Kind of ironic, considering he was busy ripping off his unknowing clients."

"I'd say it was his own guilt bubbling up to the surface, but Jimmy didn't have any guilt," Betsy said. "He never even tried to hide his sleeping around."

"When did the womanizing start?"

"After Serena was born," she said. "I think he wanted to make me leave him. I wouldn't do it. Part of it was out of spite. I didn't want to give him what he wanted. Mostly I stayed with him for Serena. I felt she needed her father in her life. But he never was. I finally realized that divorcing him wouldn't change her life that much after all."

They continued walking for a while in silence, crossing the river to the other side of the beach, where his car was parked along the promenade. When they got to his car, he opened the hatchback and retrieved his research notes from his suitcase.

"Very cute," she said from behind him.

"What is?" he asked.

She grinned. "If I I said your fanny, would it make your day?"

"My decade," Mark said.

"I was talking about your car," she said.

"Maybe I'll put spinners on the rims to give it some gangsta edge," Mark said.

"That's fine," Betsy said, "but what are you going to do about the driver?"

Mark reached into the front seat; grabbed a pair of sleek Ray-Ban sunglasses, and slipped them on.

"It's a start," she said.

He handed her the list of names and addresses he'd gleaned from researching Stryker's phone bill. "Do any of these names or addresses mean anything to you?"

"Sure," she said. "A lot of these are currency collectors and dealers who sold him bank notes. And I know Jimmy shopped at some of these cigar stores."

"Was Jimmy a big cigar smoker?"

"He had a private humidor at Hampshire's, a Beverly Hills tobacconist, as well as a four-thousand-dollar rosewood humidor at his office. At home, he had a humidified room kept a constant temperature of sixty-five degrees just for his cigars. Jimmy treated his cigars like bottles of wine. He said they only got better with age. He smoked one every night. God knows how many he went through at the office or the blackjack table. Some of my clothes still smell like his damn cigars."

She handed the notes back to Mark.

"Thank you so much, Betsy," Mark said. "You've been an enormous help."

"Let me know how things turn out, okay?"

"Absolutely." Mark shook her hand. She turned and started walking back towards the beach.

Mark got into his car, sat on the edge of the seat, and wiped the sand off his feet.

"Hey, Doc," Betsy called out. Mark looked up.

"Your fanny is pretty cute, too."

He felt himself blush. He couldn't remember the last time that had happened.

She smiled, amused with herself, and continued on her way. Mark did the same.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Harley Brule didn't look too comfortable sitting in the lop sided chair reserved for suspects in the interrogation room. The hard-assed arrogance was still there, but now the effort that went into sustaining it was showing.

Steve sat across from Brule and didn't have to put any effort into looking relaxed. He was. He didn't feel any tension at all.

"You know how the game is played," Steve said. "So I'm not going to waste any time. Here's where things stand. We've got you. We've got your wife. We've got your entire crew. We've got all the evidence we need. This will be the easiest case the DA has ever prosecuted."

"Then why the hell are you here?" Brule said.

"I'm thinking about your wife and kid," Steve said. "We're going to come down hard on you no matter what you tell us. We have to make an example out of you. But maybe we can get your wife probation so she can take care of your kid. All depends on whether you talk."