Falling Down (11 page)

M
y cell rang, an insistence, a startling intrusion.

“Hello?” I said. Answered too quickly, voice too eager. “Hello?”

“Laura. Bob Gates.”

“Oh,” I said. Sad that it wasn't Nathan.

“Magellan's Steak House. Six. You're meeting me and Jordan Kligerman. For a drink. Just to meet him.” He waited. I could hear myself breathing into the cell, held it against my neck for a moment and quickly took it away, afraid my furious pulse rate would vibrate the cell. “He's got your PI license reinstated,” Bob said.

“Tell him to put it in the mail.”

“He wants to tell you himself. That he's reinstated the license. C'mon, Laura, it's just a quick meeting, okay?”

“Okay. Six.”

 

I stood against the worn oak bar, one hand on a wine glass. Waiting.

Magellan's Steak House. Very elite, very expensive, everything in addition to the steak cost money. And since it was on the north side of River Road, smoking was allowed, the restaurant always plumy with cigarette and cigar smoke. Magellan's, where Tucson power people ate, drank, smoked, and worked out whatever deals, public or private, kept a lot of Tucson running.

Built in the thirties, when few properties existed any
where near River Road, Magellan's stood on a half acre lot amid a grove of Arizona sycamores. Bricked pathways rambled between these trees and elaborate gardens for those who wanted to eat and drink outside.

Tourists ate outside, seating at the inside tables requiring a lot of connections since the restaurant was always jammed. Realtors mixed with TPD captains and lieutenants, B-list actors and rock stars and big league baseball players during spring training. When stars or ballplayers from the bigs show at Magellan's, all kinds of Barbie babes come dressed to kill, well, actually, dressed to be undressed by somebody famous. Groupies aren't just for rock stars.

On the other hand, few places in Tucson had better food, and nobody had better steaks. Magellan's got beef from the smallest of the Japanese cattle markets, brand names you'd never hear of, where cattle ripened in individual stalls, fed a mathematically and nutritious meal, stoked with beer, given massages, which somehow was supposed to make the meat even tenderer. An eight-ounce steak cost ninety dollars, and that was just the steak.

Waiting for Bob Gates, I catalogued everywhere I'd eaten in Tucson, remembering my early years when I ate at fast-food or inexpensive chains, often getting just takeout because I'd never have to talk to anybody while picking up or eating. Eegees, Fuddruckers, how can there actually be a restaurant with that name, or any of those places in the world like Chuck E. Cheese and Jreck, or “dreck,” subs. No name sounds ridiculous anymore.

I must have drifted off somewhere until a waiter clanked clean silverware onto a nearby table. I watched another waiter set places for three around a table in a nook, obviously a special table. The hostess carried over a centerpiece, three different-size crystal flutes bonded together, each flute holding a rose. Three pink roses, each a different pastel hue, all of them perfect.

Four thirtyish women laughed their way past my stool, their arms around each other's power suits, one of them brushing against me and her automatic
I'm sorry
smile quickly beamed at me, but she really wasn't sorry at all, I couldn't have been less significant to her. I felt like one of those crumpled airline magazines stuffed in the seatback, the crossword crudely attempted, shreds of peanuts in the pages and some of the ads ripped out. I caught the bartender's eye on the group of women, his smile blossoming as one looked at him, but once she looked away his face changed, as though he'd seen things in her smile he didn't like. He saw I'd caught his look, my smile small but genuine and he half-cocked his head in thanks and poured me an extra glass of wine, no charge.

Those beautiful young women so, so confident in their youth and beauty, confident in
us
ing their beauty. I once saw three of these women in the dining room of the Arizona Inn. One needed more water. Instead of looking for a waiter, she just held out her glass to the side, kept on talking to her friends until a waiter appeared and filled the glass, and she just kept on talking without acknowledging the waiter's presence.

A wait captain checked the table, straightened a napkin, aligned a knife and fork, and turned to me with a snap of his wine towel and said, “Madame?”

Caught me still partly in that daydream, I must have stood there for another half a minute before I realized he was talking to me. Patient, not moving, saw me snap out of the daydream and with perfect grace said again, “Madame?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes. Yes.”

“I'll bring the gentlemen from the cigar rack. May I seat you?”

“Yes.”

And a moment later, he returned with Bob Gates.

“You, uh, you a bit nervous about the interview?” Gates said.

“Some,” I said. Wanting to be honest because I looked nervous, although it had nothing to do with the interview.

“Bound to be.” Smiled at me. “I've read your job history over and over. You've got just what we want.”

I'd like to see that job history, I'd like to know what was on it. That's also part of the honesty with a policeman, even one who's somewhat of a friend. You know my past. Lots of things I don't want on a job résumé.

“It's like…” I said, “it's like the day before.”

“Before what.”

“You did sports? Football, baseball, like that?”

“Third base. U of A, starter in my senior year. Thought I had a shot in the bigs, but I didn't have the arm or the bat.”

“Had a tryout?”

“Yeah, I…ah, I see. Yeah. The day before, right?”

“You wish it was over,” I said.

“You wish it was the next evening, everything's over. Well. I wouldn't get too nervous, Laura. You're the person we want. But just a word. This meeting is strictly about drug smuggling. It's a cover, for you. There are half a dozen TPD offers in here, they're already checking you out. Word will spread, quietly, that you're being considered to help investigate computerized financial records of drug money laundering. Don't say anything about your real job.”

“The dirty cop.”

“And here we are,” he said, turning to shepherd me to another man.

“Hi. I'm Jordan Kligerman,” he said. “Laura Winslow. Glad to meet you.”

A tall handsome guy, with just enough of a tan to let you know he cared about being tanned without seeming over the edge about it. He wore a pale gray Brioni suit with a faint herringbone pattern, easily a fifteen-hundred-dollar suit over a kettle-black mock-turtle sweater. No dress shirt, no tie.

The wait captain sat us at the table. Gates and I plumped down comfortably in the cushion chairs. When Kligerman sat, he carefully adjusted the creases of his Brioni pants as he crossed one leg over the other. Not wearing any socks, just those tasseled loafers that good-looking men consider really cool. With my mock-turtle sweater and these loafers, oh, they're handmade for me in Arezzo. No wedding ring on his left hand, and I caught his casual glance while he put his briefcase on his lap, popped the latches, and swept his eyes over my left hand and then across my waist, quickly but efficiently over my breasts and neck, lingering with a smile on my arms, veins showing because I still did hand weights an hour every day, I had the muscles to show for it, and when meeting men like Jordan, without knowing what I was yet getting into, wearing a sleeveless blouse, tight around my arm so nobody could catch the right angle and look underneath the blouse.

So, while he's checking me out, I'm doing the same with him. Except our motives are different. He wants to know if I'll come out and play. I just want to know if he's good at what he does.

A florid-nosed, heavy-joweled man stopped by the table.

“Jordan,” the man said. “The women you hire get better and better looking. Or is this somebody private?”

“Laura Winslow,” Kligerman said. “Assistant Chief Django Manouche.”

“Pleasure,” Manouche said, his eyes all over my body until I realized he really had no interest in who I was at all, he just wanted to appraise my body.

“Django approved my talking to you,” Kligerman said.

“Computers aren't my thing, God knows.” Manouche laced his fingers together palms outward, cracking his fingers. “Pleasure, Miss Winslow.”

He moved away. Kligerman opened his briefcase, took out a sheet of paper. “Your PI license,” he said. “Or,
sorry, it's just a fax copy. But I had Sacramento take care of your reinstatement this afternoon.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I really do appreciate this. But I'm not sure what else I can do for you.”

“I understand. Bob tells me you may have a link to the
maras
?”

Actually, Bob hadn't told me any such thing. I'd avoided all phone calls since leaving the park earlier. I'd left clear instructions with Alex that our office would not respond to requests. Mary Emich called twice, but I had nothing to tell her yet. Nor had I worked out what I wanted to do.

“There's a third party, yes.” I left it at that. “If something develops, you'll know. Otherwise, I'll be leaving tomorrow.”

That wasn't what Kligerman wanted to hear. “I thought…” he said, “I thought at least you'd visit my department, meet my people, get a briefing on the tools and technology and money we want to throw at this problem.”

“Laura,” Bob said. “Are you firm about leaving tomorrow? Can't you at least spend an hour or two with us? In the morning?”

“Early is no problem,” Kligerman said. “I can assemble the team at six.”

Neither Gates or Kligerman pressed me, no urgency in their words, or in their eyes or bodies. They both sat relaxed, open to my not working with them. Trouble was, I really didn't know what to do. The murdered family at the crime scene kept popping into my head at weird moments all afternoon. And I'd promised Mary Emich that I'd follow up on the gambling website, although Alex could easily handle that.

“With all respect,” I said to Kligerman, “I'll have to think about it.”

“Good. Can't ask for more, at least right now. I'll have the team on standby, ready anytime you say. I'll show you your equipment, your office.”

“I'd expect to continue working from home.”

“Our networks are internally secure,” he said. “Outside access is severely limited. Even I've got to go through five passwords to get through our firewalls.”

He knew of me, he knew of my work ethic. I wanted privacy, I wanted my own computers, I guarded my security, I wasn't going to let any data traveler get to my computers.

“With all respect,” I said, “the only secure computer is one that's not connected to anything. You want my expertise? Fine. But I don't want your five passwords and your firewall. I trust only what I myself set up and control.”

“Surely,” Kligerman said, “computer security isn't that much of a problem.”

“You're a fool,” I said. He clearly didn't like people saying that to him. “Name me
any
institutional database used by
anybody
in this city and I guarantee you I will get inside that database and suck out all the information I want. I will change whatever information I want, I will create fictitious identities and alter real ones.”

“Well.” Kligerman laughed, nudged Gates. “Bob, you sure picked the right girl for us.”

“You're a
double
fool,” I said. Being called a girl always pumps up my sarcasm. “If
I
can do all of that, so can somebody else. You want me to locate
records
? Sure. I'll locate records. But what
ever
are you listening to when I talk about what I can do? How the
hell
would I ever know if the records I found were genuine? Jesus Christ, Bob.
He doesn't even know what he's talking about
. This is a waste of time.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Kligerman said.
Oh shit,
I thought.
He's going to take back my PI license
. I smiled, okay, it was a half-hearted smile, but I tried.

“As a minimum,” I said. “I've got to work at this from outside your office.”

“We might be able to work something out,” Gates said.

Kligerman's jaw tensed, muscle plates shifted at his
temples. He said nothing. Not even aware of the transparency of his thought process, you could see Gates's comment work its way from his head down to his gut and then back up to reason and his back straightened.

“You make computers sound so mysterious,” Kligerman said.

“Not so much computers. Data. Looking at somebody
else's
data, being unaware that somebody else is looking at
yours
.”

“I don't see why it's not controllable. Why you make it so…so mysterious.”

I cut my eyes to Bob, he
knew
my frustration, he held out both hands, palms down, the cool-it signal.

“You're right about one thing,” I said. “All of this
is
a mystery to me.”

“How so?” Kligerman said.

“Life is a mystery,” I said. “What you're asking me to do,
that's
a mystery.
Why
you're asking me to do this, that's a mystery?”

“Gee. You sound so cosmic. But fascinating. All right, Laura. I'll honor your paranoia about security. How would you work from outside my office?”

“A VPN,” I said. “A virtual private network. I'll set up.”

“Now you
are
sounding mysterious.”

“You're okay with that, Jordan?” Gates said. “Her working off site?”

“Of course.” Kligerman smiled. “Laura. A pleasure. Tomorrow.”