Matters of Doubt (20 page)

“But it also comes out my friend and business partner was a lowly blackmailer. That, too. Right?”

I shrugged. “Small price to pay from where I sit.”

She smiled, and I was reminded of an arctic winter. “I'm going to talk this over with Seth. I'll get back to you,
after
I hear from Bambi.”

Chapter Thirty-three

As I walked by the bar, I nodded to Nando, who'd come in twenty minutes earlier. He laid a bill on the counter and followed me out.

“How did it go?” he asked when we reached the street.

“I definitely got her attention, but I don't think she knew exactly who Conyers was blackmailing. She's going to talk to Seth Foster. I have a feeling Foster might know, or that between them they can connect the dots. I told her more than I wanted to, but I decided to risk it.”

“Then this is good, yes?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe they'd just as well have Picasso take the fall, so it doesn't come out that Conyers was a low life blackmailer.”

“Or maybe
they
killed Conyers. I'm sure you've thought of that possibility.”

“Yeah, I thought of that. But I like Vincent for it better. I'll take the chance.” Then I laughed. “Armandy's dying to get Bambi back. They're planning to expand the escort service, and apparently Bambi has management potential.”

Nando chuckled. “Will you talk to her?”

“I guess I'll have to. Otherwise, I won't get anything back from Armandy. But I don't know what I'm going to say to her.”

When I got back to Caffeine Central that night, I leashed up Archie and headed for the river. I left the Glock behind since I no longer had a beef with Semyon. The moon was a dull silver coin behind a gauze of thin clouds. Not a breath of wind stirred. The lights on the piers of the Morrison Bridge—a rainbow of primary colors—shimmered on the river in perfect reflection. I'd heard somewhere that you could select a color scheme and have it displayed on the bridge for a hundred bucks a night. The city was always looking for new sources of revenue. I sat on a bench next to the river imagining what colors I'd choose. Archie sat on the ground next to me, sniffing the cool air as I absently stroked his fur.

I wondered how Picasso was feeling and whether my thrashing about was going to do him any good. I knew one thing. The moment he was well enough, he would be hauled in front of a judge and arraigned for first degree murder. I could already hear the crowing from Larry Vincent and see the smug look on Detective Jones' face. Was I right to seek Jessica Armandy's help, or had I made a big mistake? I was feeling less and less sure about that. What if Nando was right? What if the murder had been an inside job?

My thoughts turned to Anna. I could walk over to her place right now and tell her I needed more “close observation.” The thought stirred me, but I decided against it. She was an amazing woman, and I felt the pull of her, but at the same time was wary of becoming too involved. I worried about where I would eventually fall in the pecking order of her life, which seemed to be built around the guilt of her brother's death more than anything else. That guilt, I knew all too well, could act like an addictive drug. Of course, I wanted to believe that I could show her a better way, but the call of martyrdom is strong.

Take it slow, I told myself. Feet on the ground, hopes well in check.

The next day I met Cynthia Duncan for a quick lunch. We picked up Thai at the food carts on Ninth and went across the street to the park to eat. Sherrill Blanchard, she told me, lived in Seattle with her mother and was
not
returning her phone calls. “I'm driving up there to see her. Don't worry, Cal, I'll get her to talk.”

I stopped by the clinic that afternoon, and Anna put a fresh bandage on my head wound. She invited me over for dinner, and I offered to cook, which pleased her no end. But the evening didn't go so well. Anna had just found out that Caitlin had been dropped from the program that was to provide her with a ticket off the street. And, as I had observed, Caitlin was spending more time with her so called family. There was no light in Anna's eyes that night, and when I mentioned something about trying to keep perspective, she got angry. I cooked, we ate in silence, and I went home early.

I awoke the next morning and groaned when I realized I was out of coffee beans. I got dressed, leashed up Archie, and walked down the street to the Starbucks. Armed with a double cappuccino, I grabbed a paper and took a seat out on the sidewalk. Before I could open the paper, a thin, graying woman in baggy sweatpants and a flannel shirt stopped her overloaded grocery cart in front of me and said, “Can you spare some change? I'm hungry.” Her eyes were a bright blue, like the sky that morning, and the grime on her face only accentuated their beauty.

I pulled the last of the meal vouchers I'd bought at the Sisters of the Road Café from my wallet and extended them to her. “My name's Cal. What's yours?”

She took the vouchers and dropped her eyes. “Evelyn, but everyone calls me Evie.”

“How long have you been pushing that cart, Evie?”

“Too long.”

“What happened?”

She brought her eyes back up and appraised me, wondering, no doubt, what my angle was. “Oh, it was real simple. My husband died and left me with a mountain of medical bills. I got a job but still lost the house. Got tired of being harassed by collection agencies, so I changed my address.” She giggled. “Can't find me now. Don't have an address.”

She needed a bath, and all her worldly possessions were piled in that shopping cart, but I heard a faint note of liberation in her words. She answered to no one, had zero expectations placed on her, and the possessions she had to maintain were circumscribed within a three foot radius. I felt a twinge of envy along with the guilt I always felt when I encountered a homeless person.

She thanked me and started off before I got the next question out. She was probably thinking about a warm breakfast and a hot cup of coffee now. I pulled a ten out of my wallet, got up, and handed it to her. What a pushover.

That morning I finally got around to finishing a brief that argued for dismissal of a lawsuit against a client of mine. Feeling productive, I set up an afternoon meeting with Picasso's lawyer, Alicia Cole. I had begun to trust her, so I laid out the blackmail theory and what Cynthia Duncan and I were doing to flush out Larry Vincent. For the first time, I allowed myself a speck of hope that we could extricate Picasso from this mess. She told me Picasso's arraignment was set for Friday of that week.

While checking my office voicemail that evening, a message came up that brought me out of my chair—“This is Larry Vincent. I hear you and some little bitch reporter have been nosing around in my personal business. Call me, or you're going to be looking down the barrel of a very nasty lawsuit…”

I called the number he left on the recording. “This is Larry.”

“Cal Claxton. I had a message to call you.”

“Well, well, Calvin Claxton, bleeding heart defender of the homeless.”

“What can I do for you, Vincent?”

“We need to talk.”

“We do?”

“Unless you prefer my lawyers in the morning. It's up to you.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Well, I'm tied up for the next hour or so. Meet me here at my place at, say, nine. I live on Hayden Island…”

I agreed to the meeting. The first thing I did when I hung up was call Nando. I didn't want to go to Vincent's place without backup. He didn't answer, so I left him a message. I fetched the Glock he'd given me and checked the clip, putting the loaded revolver in my belt at the small of my back. I put on my leather jacket and checked myself out in the full length mirror on the closet door. The gun wasn't visible.

Hayden Island's a narrow spit of land running for six miles in the Columbia River directly north of Portland. I'd be looking for the houseboat in slip twenty-three at the Columbia River Marina, he told me—the houseboat flying the big American flag.

I arrived at 8:50 and parked in the marina lot, well away from the dock area.

Nando still wasn't picking up.

I got out of the car and, staying in the shadows, worked my way over to the river, down from slip twenty-three. The river was high, and I had a clear view of his place, two stories of burnished teak, steel, and glass floating on a massive barge. An expansive deck surrounded brightly lit bay windows on the second story. I saw no movement inside or on the deck except for the promised American flag, which fluttered gently from a high mast. Some of the windows on the first floor were lighted as well, but they were all curtained, and the first floor deck was bathed in shadow. I stared into the darkness a long time and saw no movement, but it did look like the door facing the gang plank was partially open. That struck me as odd.

I called Nando one more time. Still no answer. I adjusted the Glock tucked at the small of my back and started toward the houseboat, trying hard to shake an inexplicable feeling of
déjà vu
.

The front door
was
open, about half way. I rang the bell and waited. There was no sound except the slosh of river water against the hull of the houseboat. I knocked loudly on the door and hollered, “Vincent? It's Cal Claxton.” I pushed the door gently, and it swung into a hallway lit only by the light spilling from a room down and to the right. I saw something move and tensed up. A small dog with a fox-like face and poufy tail came out of the room and trotted up to me. It rolled on its back, exposing a fuzzy belly. His ears were down, and he was shaking and whimpering. “What's the matter fella?” I asked before calling out to Vincent again.

No answer.

I noticed two objects lying in the hallway in the half shadows. They didn't look like they belonged there. I flipped a couple of switches just inside the door and both the hall light and an outside light came on. In the hall, the broken base of a large, ornate lamp lay next to a half crushed lampshade in a spray of broken glass.

The little fox got up, trotted down the hall, and looked back at me before disappearing into the room on the right. I followed and found him licking the face of someone sprawled on the floor. The weak chin, the receding hairline—it was Larry Vincent, no question about it. His face was bloated and purple, his neck visibly bruised. He'd lost a considerable amount of blood from a gash in his forehead. I checked for a pulse, but knew he was dead.

“Not again!” I groaned as I got back up. Judging from the condition of the room, Vincent had put up a hell of a fight. A glass coffee table was overturned, a chair lay on its side below a shattered flat-screen TV, and a mahogany bookcase rested on a jumble of bestselling hardbacks and broken china.

I retraced my steps out of the room and down the hallway, trying not to disturb or touch anything. I looked back and saw I was leaving a trail of bloody footprints. “Wonderful.” Having no ear for sarcasm, the little fox glanced up and seemed to smile as he trotted next to me like a pony.

When we cleared the front door, a tall young man in dark slacks and a crisply pressed shirt with a badge on it stood at the top of the gangplank. He pointed a revolver at me and said, “This is Columbia River Marina security. Put your hands up and don't move.”

Chapter Thirty-four

The little fox started yapping at the security guard. I shushed the dog and raised my hands.

The guard said, “What were you doing in Mr. Vincent's houseboat?”

“I had an appointment with him at nine o'clock.”

“Is he in there now?”

“Uh, yes he is. But there's a problem. He's dead. It looks like someone strangled him.”

The guard's eyes widened, and his body stiffened. He came down the gangplank and joined me on the deck of the houseboat. The little fox had replaced his yapping with a surprisingly menacing growl. The barrel of the guard's gun was shaking noticeably. Before he spoke again, I said, “What's your name, son?”

“Jim, Jim Stanfield.”

“Listen, Jim. I've got a Glock 19 tucked in my belt. I'm going to raise my coat and show it to you. I want you to remove it, but for God's sake, don't shoot me. Okay?”

I turned around, lowered my hands and pulled my coat up very slowly. Stanfield took the Glock and tucked it into his belt. I breathed a sigh of relief. He swallowed hard and motioned with his head. “Show me Mr. Vincent.”

Twenty minutes later I sat in my stocking feet in the hallway of Larry Vincent's houseboat with handcuffs on. I was being questioned by two detectives dispatched from the North Portland Precinct. My shoes were already in plastic evidence bags. Needless to say, I was a little annoyed.

The detectives were acting like it was Christmas morning and I was their present. Apparently, it had been a while since they'd cleared a murder case, and I looked like a slam dunk. The one with the pinched features and stained teeth was the most aggressive. He said, “So, let's go over this one more time, Mr. Claxton.”

“I told you, detective, I had an appointment with Vincent at nine. When I arrived, his front door was open, and I could see the broken lamp and glass in the hallway. Then the little mutt came up to me, whimpering and carrying on. He was obviously upset about something, so—”

“So you read the dog's mind?” pinched face interrupted, glancing at his partner, then back at me.

“No, but when the mutt trotted off my instincts said to follow.”

The quiet partner grunted a laugh. “Dog whisperer, huh?”

I rolled my eyes and spread my arms out in front of the detectives. “Look. Do you see any bruises or defensive wounds on me? There was obviously a ferocious fight in there, and I don't have a scratch on me. And you won't find my fingerprints in there either.”

“But we have your shoe prints. In blood,” pinched face shot back.

“I told you, I walked into the goddamn room and out again.”

Quiet one said, “Maybe you trashed the place
after
you strangled him, to make it look like a fight.”

Before I could respond, pinched face added, “And you were carrying a concealed weapon to this meeting. How do you explain that?”

It was futile to argue, and besides, I wasn't sure how much to tell them about Larry Vincent's potential involvement in the Conyers murder, so I shut up. I was transported to Central Precinct later that night and held on suspicion of murder. At least I rated a solitary cell. Murder suspects are afforded that luxury.

I called Nando that first night. “
Madre de Dios! No me digas eso. Este caso es una maldicion, Calvin,”
he responded when I broke the news.

“My sentiments exactly.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“First off, call Anna Eriksen for me. Tell her Archie's at Caffeine Central. Give her a key and ask her to take care of him for me. And tell her not to worry, I'll be okay.” I gave him Anna's cell number.

“What else?”

“Vincent told me he'd be tied up for an hour or so before he was to meet me at nine. See if you can find out anything about what he was doing. Maybe he was meeting someone.”

“Like Jessica Armandy or Seth Foster?”

“
Exactly
. Start there. The coincidence sticks out like a sore thumb. But this was no planned hit. It looks like a crime of passion. When you strangle someone, it's very personal.”

“True, but we cannot rule out a burglary gone to the south, either.”

“Yeah, anything's possible, I suppose. In any case, I walked in at exactly the wrong time. This seems to be a newly acquired trait of mine.”

I didn't get much sleep that night. A sporadic chorus of groans, profanity, and laughter from my jail mates echoed up and down the hall, even after the lights went out. I lay staring up at the ceiling on a rock hard mattress, vacillating between planning to sue the city of Portland for false arrest and breaking out in a cold sweat over how screwed I was. Vincent had said nasty things about me over the radio, giving me good reason to want to wring his scrawny neck. But then again, they didn't have anything but motive, opportunity, and means, did they?

The next day went by in a blur of frustration and boredom. My car was impounded and searched, and when informed they had a warrant to search Caffeine Central I was allowed to call Nando so he could meet them there and let them in. I was informed my arraignment was scheduled for 3:30 the next afternoon. I told the police I would act as my own lawyer at the hearing.

Even if the food in the city jail had been good, which it wasn't, I still would have passed on breakfast after I read
The Oregonian
the next morning. The headline screamed “Radio celebrity Larry Vincent brutally slain.” When the article got around to me, I broke out in another cold sweat.

Attorney Calvin Claxton III from Dundee was arrested at the scene on suspicion of murder. Police spokesperson Andrea Clark pointed out there was apparently bad blood between Claxton and Vincent, who had criticized Claxton on his radio program for his defense of Daniel Baxter, the accused killer of restaurateur Mitchell Conyers. Claxton is a material witness in that murder case. Clark said Claxton was also a witness in the death of lobbyist Hugo Weiman, which had been declared a suicide. She said the police were investigating a possible connection between these incidents and the murder of Vincent. Claxton is being held at the Multnomah County Jail and could not be reached for comment.

Well, I told myself, the Portland police had done their homework on me, I'll give them that.
There was a connection all right, I said to myself, but it wasn't
me
. I felt a sense of utter despair. How could I ever untangle this mess and clear my name if I was taken off the street? And what about Picasso? What would happen to him? Larry Vincent was our ace in the hole for blowing up the case against him. And now Vincent was dead.

It was a dark night of the soul, and it was first thing in the damn morning.

After lunch two guards came to escort me to an interview room. I was a little surprised when they didn't place me in manacles. I sat alone in the room for ten minutes or so, and then in walked pinched face—his name was Handras—followed by my old buddy, Lieutenant Scott. We exchanged greetings and after clearing his throat, Scott said, “There have been some developments in the Vincent murder case.”

There was something about the look on Handras' face—like his best friend just died—that caused my pulse to tick up a beat.

Scott went on, “We received an anonymous tip this morning. The caller said he knew who had killed Larry Vincent, and it wasn't you. Said it was a guy named Seth Foster. Foster's Mitch Conyers' stepbrother, it turns out.”

I stiffened involuntarily and nodded. “Right. I met him once at the Happy Angus.”

“Anyway, the call came into the central precinct, so me and Jones went over to talk to Foster, you know just a routine chat, doing Handras here a favor. But the guy was bruised and scratched up. Claimed his business partner could vouch for his whereabouts the night before. He seemed a little squirrelly, so we took him in for a few more questions and to get a set of prints. We matched his prints to the prints in Vincent's houseboat in a New York minute. They were all over that room, nice bloody ones.”

I tried to maintain professional decorum, but broke into a big, stupid grin instead.

“So we confronted Foster with what we had, and he cracked like an egg. Gave us a full confession. Said it was self-defense, that Vincent attacked him and he fought back.”

“We'll see about that,” Handras chimed in.

“So, you're dropping the charges against me?”

“Yes, and on behalf of the Portland Police Bureau, I'd like to apologize for what we put you through. We hope there're no hard feelings.” Scott stuck out his hand, and I shook it. Handras didn't offer a hand. Taking a lawyer down on a murder rap was probably close to a wet dream for him, and Seth Foster had screwed it all up.

Oh, enjoy this
, I said to myself.
The police just formally apologized to you. This is what they do when they mistakenly arrest a lawyer.
I said, “Does that include the concealed weapon charge?” What the hell, might as well go for a clean sweep. I didn't have a permit to carry the Glock, afterall.

Handras started to say something, but Scott waved him off. “We need to talk about that, but not now.” He turned to Handras. “Will you give us a few moments, detective?”

After Handras left the room Scott took his glasses off and rubbed his temples, before cleaning them on his sleeve and putting them back on. The lines in his forehead looked like crevasses on an ice field in the harsh overhead light, and the only color in his face was from the tiny blood vessels cross-hatching his nose. “So, here you are again, right in the middle of a crime scene. What is it with you?”

I shrugged. “What can I say? I'm having a bad summer.”

“Why do I have the feeling you know more about this case than you told Handras? What was the beef between Vincent and Foster anyway? Foster clammed up after he admitted to killing Vincent.”

I was caught. If I talked, I'd give away the defense that was starting to form around Picasso. On the other hand, I could sow some seeds of doubt in the mind of the lead detective on the case. Scott was a tough bastard, but I sensed he might listen. I said, “Foster confronted Vincent because he suspected that Vincent had killed his stepbrother, Mitch Conyers.”

Scott sat back in his chair like I'd slapped him. He eyed me through thick lenses. “Why would he think that?”

“Because Conyers was blackmailing Vincent, that's why. I think Foster went to confront him, and things got out of hand. Foster's got a nasty temper.”

“How would he know about this blackmail?”

“I'm not sure,” I answered, which wasn't a complete lie. “He was close to Conyers and must have put two and two together.”

“How do
you
know about this?”

“I have reason to believe Conyers had information that would be very damaging to Larry Vincent if it became public.”

“What information?”

I smiled and shook my head. “I can't reveal that. Attorney-client privilege.”

“Why didn't Foster tell any of this to Handras?”

“My guess is he didn't want to sully his stepbrother's reputation, although I think his attorneys will talk him out of such a display of loyalty.”

“Is there any hard evidence to back this up?”

“I have no idea what Foster knows.” I didn't have any idea, and I feared whatever he knew was not enough to directly link Vincent to Conyers' death. More dots needed connecting, and this wouldn't be easy now that Vincent was dead.

“What about
you
? What do you know?”

I shrugged. “Not as much as I'd like. Do you ever listen to Larry Vincent's show on KPOC?”

Scott waived a hand dismissively. “Nah, I don't listen to that right-wing crap.”

“Yeah, but you know Vincent had been on a one man crusade to convict Danny Baxter without a trial. In light of what's just happened, I'd say that's pretty interesting.”

Scott said, “Well, we'll see how this all plays out with Foster. Meantime, your boy Baxter is still looking good for Conyers' murder as far as I'm concerned. It's gonna take a boatload of contrary evidence to turn that case around.”

A hot flower of anger bloomed in my gut and rose to my chest. It wasn't directed at Scott so much. Hell, he was just doing his job. It was directed at this whole, frustrating situation. All I could think to say was, “We'll see about that.”