Free Fall (5 page)

“I’ll see you around, Rusty. Thanks.”

One hour and forty minutes later I parked in a McDonald’s lot about three-quarters of a mile from LAX and walked across the street to Cody’s Saloon. Mid-afternoon was late for lunch and early for quitting time, but a dozen men were lining the bar and sipping cold beer out of plain glasses. There weren’t any female real estate agents and none of the guys at the bar looked like architects, but you never know. Maybe they were politically incorrect and wanted to keep it a secret. There was a big sign on the roof of a neon cowgirl riding a bucking horse. The cowgirl looked sort of like a cheerleader from Dallas. Maybe she was politically incorrect, too.

A young guy with a lot of muscles was behind the bar, talking with a couple of women in skimpy cheerleader outfits who were hanging around at the waitress station. A red-haired woman in an even skimpier outfit danced without enthusiasm in a chicken-wire cage behind the bar. Neither the bartender nor the waitresses
were looking at the dancer, and neither were most of the guys lining the bar. Guess it’s tough to get motivated with the chicken wire. They were playing Dwight Yoakam.

I went to a little table across from the dancer’s cage and one of the waitresses came over with her little pad. I ordered another Falstaff. When you’ve got a forty-dollar retainer, the sky’s the limit.

When she came back with it, I said, “What time do things pick up?” I gave her the nice smile. The Kevin Costner.

She smiled back and I saw her eyes flick to my hands. Nope. No wedding ring. I made the smile wider. She said, “Mostly after dinner. We get a lot of cops in here and they don’t get off until later.”

I nodded. “You know an officer named Mark Thurman?”

She tried to remember. “What’s he look like?”

“Big. Like a jock. He probably comes around with a guy named Floyd Riggens. They work together.”

Now she remembered and her face grew hard. “I know Floyd.” Floyd must be a real pip all the way around.

I grinned like it was an old joke. “That Floyd is something, isn’t he?”

“Uh-huh.” She wasn’t seeing much humor in it.

“What time do they usually get here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe eight. Something like that.” Like she was getting tired of talking about it. Maybe even pissed. Floyd must be something, all right. “Look, I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Sure.”

She went back to the bar and I sipped the beer and pretty soon I ordered another. There didn’t seem to be a lot to do until eight o’clock, so sipping Falstaff seemed like a good way to pass the time.

Dwight Yoakam stopped and Hank Williams, Jr., came on and pretty soon the day-shift waitresses left and the night shift cranked up the Garth Brooks and the Kentucky Headhunters. The night-shift dancers were younger and moved better in the cage, but maybe that was because of the music. Or maybe it just seemed that way because of the Falstaff. Maybe if you drank enough Falstaff your personal time scale would grind to a stop and everyone around you would move faster and faster until they looked like a Chip ’n Dale cartoon running at fast forward and you looked like a still picture frozen in time. Maybe they would continue to age but you would stay young and pretty soon they’d be dead and you’d have the last laugh. That Falstaff is something, isn’t it? Maybe I was just drunk. Occupational hazard.

By seven o’clock the crowd had grown and I didn’t want to be there if Riggens or Thurman walked in early, so I paid for the beer, went back to the McDonald’s, and bought a couple of cheeseburgers to eat in the car.

At fourteen minutes after eight, Mark Thurman’s blue Ford Mustang turned into Cody’s parking lot. There were three other people in the car. A brown-haired woman was sitting in the front passenger seat beside Thurman. Riggens and an overweight blonde were shoehorned into the back. The overweight blonde was loud and laughing and pulling at Riggens’s pants as they got out of the car. The brown-haired woman was tall and slender and looked like a thirty-six C. They walked across the parking lot, Riggens and the blonde together, Thurman and the brunette together, and then the four of them went into the bar.

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.

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 dose. 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’ve 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.