Prudence Couldn't Swim (11 page)

He had the body of a marathon runner, topped by a micromanaged wave of brown hair with dignified streaks of gray. His charcoal suit no doubt came from some tailor in an exotic land. He'd have preferred
jumping out of an airplane at thirty thousand feet without a parachute to being caught in an off-the-rack.

“Mr. Winter,” he said after a chilly handshake across his desk. “This is a highly unusual situation. Can you please fill me in on the details? As briefly as possible please. I've got clients waiting.” At least he didn't seem to recognize me. He straightened a pile of papers on his massive desk, then straightened them again while I made him wait for my reply. The guy was straight OCD. All the edges of those papers had to be perfectly even or the sky would fall.

I'd already explained Prudence's death over the phone, providing the exact amount of detail I wanted him to have. I could hear his voice tense when I said the sum he stood to inherit was likely to go “well into seven figures.”

“Apparently you were a friend or associate of one Deirdre Lewis,” I told him to kick off the interview. “She also seems to have gone by the name Prudence.”

“That's correct.”

“In what capacity were you acquainted with the deceased?”

“To expedite matters, let's say we had a business relationship. She was a client, albeit on an informal basis.”

“So there's no official record of your transactions?”

“I do everything above board, Mr. Winter, though I fail to see how that's relevant here.”

“I'm not in any way trying to impugn your character, Mr. Jeffcoat. It's just unusual for a somewhat distant associate to be named a beneficiary. We have to be careful.” I had his attention for the moment. I'd always wanted to use the word “impugn” in a sentence. Jeffcoat looked impressed. The bait was bouncing against his lips. He'd be opening wide in a minute.

“I assisted her with some financial matters,” he replied. “Investment advice. I assume she's returning the favor. Her investments did well.”

“Perhaps she didn't expect to be leaving you such a substantial sum. No one calls buying a lottery ticket an investment strategy.”

“A lottery ticket?”

“That's right,” I said as I reached down to get my briefcase. The will was at the bottom of a pile of papers bearing forged letterheads.

“According to the figures here,” I said, “the payout is $4,523,000 and some change. You will receive about one third of this, a little over $1.5 million.”

“We are all saddened by the death of this woman of great potential,” he replied sounding as if he was talking to a press conference. “I'm deeply touched by this gesture she has made of remembering me and our time together. In this day and age, gratitude is a rare commodity.”

“Yes, it is” I said. “It's remarkable. You must have made quite an impression on the young woman.”

Jeffcoat fiddled with his tie for a moment before he let loose with his next words of wisdom: “In the course life one never knows who is touched by your actions. It's what makes it all worthwhile.”

“I couldn't agree more,” I said. I should have brought a mirror to give Jeffcoat a better chance to admire himself. As it was, his reflection in that thirty-foot window would just have to do. Running this con was a new test of my power to endure the arrogance of the mucky-mucks. I was nearing the vomit threshold, but knowing I'd have the last laugh helped settle my stomach.

“I have only one more question for you, sir,” I said. “Do you know anything about her family? We haven't been able to contact them.”

“She never spoke about that to me,” he said.

“Didn't she even tell you where they lived?”

“I assumed they were in London, where Miss Lewis grew up.”

“I see. Thank you, sir. I don't want to take up any more of your time. Once I've spoken to all the beneficiaries, we will have to meet again.”

“If it's necessary” he said. “I'm a busy man.” He stood up to facilitate my departure.

“Surely the amount of money involved would make it worth your while.”

“Of course, but I loathe unnecessary meetings, they consume our most precious resource—human capital. Where possible I prefer electronic communication. Clean and quick, with a clear trail. Superfluous meetings are a hallmark of ineffective business practice.”

“I can appreciate that,” I said, standing up to shake his hand. I suspected he had a series of prepared speeches on ineffective business practice ready to unleash at any time. Lecture one was enough for me.

As I neared the door, I stopped to look at a picture on the wall. Jeffcoat's high school football team. There he was in the back row, number fourteen.

“I played quarterback,” he said, “all-conference for three years.” Next to him was number seventy-four, a towering kid with a tomato nose and an old school harelip like mine. Tore halfway up to his nose. You don't see ‘em like that any more. Modern surgery has made us into dinosaurs.

“Oh, there's one more thing,” I said, “just so you can be forewarned. This case may attract a little publicity. There's a lot of human interest here: dying woman wins lottery, leaves millions to relative stranger. It will prick the paparazzi.”

“I hope we can avoid that, Mr. Winter,” he replied. “I cherish my privacy and that of my family. The less said to anyone, the better. No rational man advertises when he's won a million dollars. The parasites come out of the woodwork. I hope we agree on that.”

“I'll do what I can,” I replied, “but I can't give you any guarantees. There's always someone willing to come forward with a story if there's a little money on offer.”

As he sat back down in his chair, for the first time I felt some nervousness from this eminent creature of the fourteenth floor. I don't think he wanted me to leave just yet but he couldn't figure out how to get me to stay and extract the information he wanted. I paused for a moment to enjoy watching his butt fidget in that big leather chair of his before I left the office. He'd spend the next twenty minutes straightening those papers trying to figure out what this little harelip dude pretending to be Santa Claus was actually up to. There was always the chance that he was onto my scam but I didn't think so. I can read a mark. I grew up playing the monte, moving the red card and the black card faster than the eye could see. I've done my share of pool hustling as well. Never lost much, only got beat up once. That was all before I learned how to convince immigration cops that I didn't have anything in the trunk of my car or the back of the mobile home. I can read people. That was what made the con so much fun. Marks always know something is a little bit off, but when they smell that money and power they can't help themselves. When Jeffcoat got done straightening those
papers, he'd probably start patting his dick and praising its powers. I bet that useless pecker of his couldn't last thirty seconds.

I almost wished he had committed this crime. I enjoy watching the well-oiled take a fall. A young woman left him a million dollars and he was worrying about wasting twenty minutes of his precious human capital in a meeting. What bigger problems did the world face than the “ineffective business practice” that seemingly tormented this undeserving heir to a million bucks?

Despite finding him a despicable character, I wasn't sure Jeffcoat had the balls to kill Prudence or even order the hit. I hadn't encountered many inhabitants of fourteenth-floor offices so maybe I misjudged his character. I just didn't think he could pull it all off that smoothly. They say the wealthy are capable of almost anything when it comes to protecting their money, so maybe I underestimated his capacity for deceit. All I could do was hope that Newman seemed like more of a killer.

W
hen I arrived back at my place after seeing Jeffcoat, I found a note from Carter under the door, one of those little old school forms that come in a tablet. He'd checked the “stopped by” box and the one that said “please call back.” On principle I didn't return messages from the police. No cop ever stopped by my house with good news.

Carter had also left two messages on my machine. On the second one he said if I didn't phone him by the end of the day, he'd have me “down at the station for questioning.” I drank a shot of Wild Turkey. I'd think about calling him the next morning. I had to get my papers in order and rush off to visit Newman. First things first.

As it turned out, the muscle-bound Newman operated on a different level from Jeffcoat. He ran a trucking company out of the converted garage of his five-bedroom house in North Berkeley. A gold Jaguar sat in the driveway, late seventies, with tinted windows in mint condition. Almost as cherry as my Volvo.

He'd tiled the garage floor and added a couple of windows and a skylight but it was no Oaks Building. The man himself projected a youthful, sporty image—state of the art hi-top basketball shoes and Levi 501s. His shaved head held a high gloss. Looked like he touched up that thin moustache to hide the gray.

He'd loaded his office with Oakland Raider souvenirs and memorabilia, including a four-by-six-foot silver and black “Raider Nation” flag on one wall. The Raiders were a little rough around the edges for Jeffcoat. Probably a 49er fan if he followed football at all. Golf was more his speed, Freddy Couples or Bernhard Langer.

A picture on the wall behind Newman's desk showed him smiling
in front of a fleet of thirty cabs with the logo “serving all of the West Coast” written on the doors. Not that catchy but those trucks were more than enough capital to finance a nice little blackmail payment to a desperate African girl.

Before I got the papers out of my briefcase he insisted I have a look at what he called his “gadgets,” that it was part of the tour of his headquarters.

“I'm sort of an amateur spy,” he boasted. He had some device rigged up to a computer that recorded all the police calls and transferred them to a map on the screen.

“You see,” he said pointing to a moving white dot on the map, “that car's heading for E. Seventy-Eighth, probably a drug bust.” He bought most of his stuff online from a site called AmateurSpy.com. He had some little gizmo hanging off his left ear, said he could listen in on “whatever” I didn't ask him what that “whatever” of his included but I had some not-so-nice ideas. We went back and sat down and I read him the will.

Once I finished the document, his chatty show-and-tell mood evaporated.

“I can't quite believe this,” he told me. “She's gone and then she left me this money. I really don't understand.”

He asked me to read the will a second time and to “go slow.” When I reached the part about the lottery ticket, he shook his head, then went silent. I waited. I'd read a lot of interrogation manuals, always trying to stay one step ahead. Most of them advised that when a suspect goes quiet, you either pounce or wait them out. Never help them fill in the blanks.

I got pretty tired of watching Newman stare at that Raider flag while he tried to sort all this out. He tapped his finger gently against his upper lip and looked more and more uncomfortable.

He attempted a power pose—adjusting himself in the chair so he was leaning over the desk, looking me right in the eye.

“Let me be honest with you, Mr. Winter,” he said in a subdued but deadly serious voice. “This situation presents me with a helluva problem. A helluva problem.”

He rubbed his hands along his forehead as if he was slicking down some hair.

“Only a fool can refuse a million dollars, and I'm not a fool. Not when it comes to money. Prudence and I got together a few times, Mr. Winter. I'm not proud of it. The only time I've ever messed around on my wife.”

He perched his hands on top of his head and looked up through the skylight. I thought he might cry. Life's so goddamned hard for the rich in America.

“I shouldn't have, but the flesh is weak,” he said. “That girl was so fine. How do I explain $1.5 million to my wife? My kids? I'm sorry the girl died. Very sorry. What do I do next?”

He was Raider Nation. I should have had more sympathy, but my heartstrings had gone limp.

“I can't advise you how to handle this, Mr. Newman. I'm only here to inform and facilitate the execution of the will. If you want to donate the money to charity anonymously, you can do so. I could probably find someone to assist you in this regard.”

The sweat made the shine on his head even brighter. He asked me to hand him the will so he could read it to himself, as if he could find a way out of his mess between the lines.

“I'm sorry, sir, I can't do that,” I told him. “You will receive a copy when the formal reading takes place. I'm only here because of the unusual circumstances in this case. It's preventative medicine. Sometimes inheritances can spark ugly events among families and friends.”

“I need some time to think,” he said.

“Mr. Newman, did the deceased ever speak to you about her family? We've been unable to locate them.”

“She told me the family had a lot of financial problems, that she tried to help them out as best she could.”

“Did she ever ask you for money?”

“That's a little personal.”

“I'm sorry. I'm just trying to locate the family. Sometimes families want to find out about assets, beneficiaries, etc.”

“I gave her some money to help out. Three or four times. Not a lot of money. A few hundred or so.”

“Apparently enough to make her remember you in her will.”

“I like to think she remembered me for other reasons.”

I smiled, amazed that one of Red Eye's schemes was actually working. For once, he had it right. This scam brought out all the vanities of Jeffcoat and Newman. If I wasn't Prudence's husband I would have admired how she had these two men drooling all over themselves to get at her. But at least they'd gotten to touch her. She'd given them some grounds to think they were the world's greatest lovers. I had nothing but doubts and unfulfilled desires.