Samson's Deal: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series) (25 page)

“Yes,” I agreed, “I think I should talk to Frank.” I looked thoughtful. There was one more item to clear up. “Say, I know Rebecca had a friend. Someone who might know. Let’s see. Maybe you met him. His name was Eddie… um…” I pretended to think some more. “If I could remember his last name.” I screwed my face into a painful caricature of tortured memory.

She was no longer smiling. “I didn’t know they were friends,” she said. “Poor Eddie. He seemed like such a nice boy. I can’t understand what happened. Mr. Shane was terribly shocked.”

I managed to look inquiring.

“You know, that fire on the campus? The police think Eddie did it, of all things. Surely, you’ve seen it in the papers? Eddie Cutter?”

“That’s right,” I gurgled triumphantly. “Cutter. That was his name.” Then I pulled a solemn face. “Rebecca’s friend was that Eddie?”

“Well, as I said, I don’t know whether they were friends.”

“But they did know each other?”

“Oh, certainly. Eddie used to stop by every so often to see Frank. Some kind of family connection, I believe. Of course she knew him.” She brightened again. “Perhaps if the police would let you talk to him, he could tell you where Rebecca is.”

I nodded eagerly, boyishly, feeling a bit guilty for the lies. She was such a nice woman.

Then I heard the door open behind me. “Oh,” she said, “here’s Mr. Shane. He can probably help you.”

I turned to face him. Sure enough, it was my buddy from the Greek Theater. He didn’t look happy to see me either.

“Help him what?” he asked, keeping reasonably cool. But he held up his hand to keep me from speaking. “Let’s go into my office and talk about it, okay, friend?”

“Sure, pal,” I agreed, and slapped him heartily on the back. Very heartily. He lurched forward, caught himself, chuckled like it was all a big joke, and showed me into his office. He closed the door firmly.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Doesn’t your staff know you spend your free time beating up people?”

“You were special.”

“No. The drawings were special. The one of Jared maybe? Not to mention the one of you. Here I am, an innocent reporter, trying to write a little something about the life of an artist, and all of a sudden I find myself in the middle of—what am I in the middle of anyway, Frank?”

“You’re not in the middle of anything,” he said coldly. “And you don’t have to be.” It was a threat. A warning that I’d better stay clear.

“Jared thinks I am. Didn’t you know he came to see me?”

“Sure. And all you have to do to stay out of the middle is do what he says. Keep it out of your story. The fire,
CORPS
, just keep it out of the story.”

“Look, fucker,” I told him, “I made a deal with Jared and I’ll stand by it. But you and me, that’s a different matter altogether. I owe you. I could go to the police right now and charge you with assault and battery. How would that look?”

He was worried but only for a second. “Pretty damned funny, after all this time. You can’t do it without explaining the circumstances,” he said smugly. “And if you explain the circumstances, you’ll be going back on your deal with Jared.”

“I only agreed not to write about it.”

He sneered at me. “Public is public. Stop playing stupid games.”

I raised my hands. “Okay. You’re too smart for me. And I must admit I believe you people deliver what you promise. If Cutter could kill Margaret Bursky, just to get those drawings, I’m sure—”

“Hey, hold it right there. That’s just not so. Nobody had to kill her for a thing like that. We’re an army embarked on a crusade, but we don’t kill our own soldiers.”
More soldiers
, I thought.
More crusades
. From what I’d heard about the original crusades, they weren’t exactly exercises in Christian charity. I knew the police would have to be digging into
CORPS
in their investigation of Cutter, but I was beginning to worry that maybe they weren’t working fast enough, that it would take them too long to catch up with Frank Shane.

“Not even for money?”

“Certainly not.”

“And Margaret was loyal?”

“Of course.” He smiled tolerantly. “But, you understand, she was a woman.”

I kept my face blank, while Rosie in a fit of righteous rage marched across my mind. “I’d heard that, yes,” I said.

“And sometimes, you know, women don’t understand political issues very well. If she had, she never would have done those drawings in the first place, and”—he chuckled affectionately—“she wasn’t anxious to give them up, but Eddie convinced her.”

“How’d he do that?” I asked.

“I don’t guess that’s any of your business. I’ve got work to do. Why don’t you run along?”

I stood up and shot out my left hand, grabbing the front of his shirt and pulling him halfway across his desk. With my right hand I slapped him hard, forehand, backhand, and forehand again. His pale skin turned red. He clutched at my hand, and I dropped his soft belly on the desk.

“Did you help him to convince her, Frank? Like you convinced me?” He was straightening his disarranged clothing, looking death at me. I didn’t add anything about what had been done to Debbi.

“It wasn’t necessary,” he snarled, clenching and unclenching his fists, glancing at the door that connected with his outer office. He wanted no trouble in his place of business.

“Now get out of here while you can still write anything at all.” He was coming around the desk, presumably to show me the door. I turned slightly, shifting my leg as though I meant to start walking, brought my foot up fast, and kicked him hard in one of the places where he’d kicked me. I let myself out. The woman in the outer office nodded and smiled when I threw her a kiss.

I found a pay phone and spent a few dimes canceling out on the Tuesday night poker game. I had too much to do. Then I dialed Rebecca’s number at work. She was still there.

“I want to see you, Rebecca.”

“What about? And didn’t I ask you not to call me at work?”

“I’d rather discuss it face to face.”

“Oh, all right,” she barked at me, “pick me up outside the office and take me for a drink.”

“You can pay for your own damned drink.”

“Well, what’s gotten into you? All right, I’ll pay for yours, too, if you want me to.” The contempt was heavy-handed, but Rebecca never had been a very subtle woman.

I drove to her office. She was waiting about twenty feet down the street from her office door. She studied my face carefully when she got in my car.

“You look terrible,” I told her. I was in no mood for being polite. For some reason, my saying that relaxed her.

“Thanks. So do you. I’m just tired. Having business problems.”

“Ever close that sale you were worried about?”

“No. I told you about the contingency, and finding a buyer for the first place so he can get the duplex—”

“Yeah,” I stopped her. “You told me.”

“I thought for sure I had a buyer this time, but it’s just not working out. It’s driving me up a wall. So if I seem nervous…”

“You in trouble for money or something?”

“No. Not yet. It’s just getting hard to pull together enough business. Everyone’s worried.”

“Harley’s going to be coming into some money. That ought to help.”

She closed her eyes and leaned back against the headrest. “Is he? Yes, I suppose he is.”

She wasn’t showing much interest in the subject of Harley’s money.

“Don’t you know why I wanted to see you?”

“All right,” she said, “why did you want to see me?”

I found a parking place and led her into the dim interior of the Corner. “Been here before?” I asked her.

“Yes. Harley and I came here once.” She said it very softly.

“Still won’t see you, huh?”

She just sighed. We took a booth, and as I was turning to head for the bar with our order, she gripped my forearm hard.

“This has got to be over soon, doesn’t it?”

I didn’t answer. She dropped her hand.

When I was back in the booth with her, sipping a tolerable bloody Mary, I let her have it.

“Why did you lie to me?” I demanded.

She kept her eyes on her drink. “About what?”

“About knowing Cutter. You said you didn’t know him, but you did. Not to mention Frank Shane. And they both know you. They could hardly help knowing you, since you worked for Shane, and Cutter’s like one of the family over there.” It was at that moment that I remembered a mention of
R
in Cutter’s diary. Something about
R
pretending not to know him. Rebecca was shaking her head back and forth, staring at me with that peculiar deadness that can mean either stunned surprise or horror. But I wasn’t finished. “Why couldn’t you tell me the truth?”

Her words were as empty of expression as her face. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, Jake.”

“Frank Shane,” I growled. “Eddie Cutter. Your friends.”

“My friends?” she repeated. “What does Frank Shane have to do with this anyway?”

I told her.

“You’re really something, you know that?” she said, her eyes glittering with anger. “How was I supposed to know Frank Shane was involved with this?”

She had a point, but I persisted. “You worked for the man. You must have known his politics.”

“I worked for him for a few months, sure. I had some idea of his politics. But I left because a woman doesn’t have a chance in that office. And I certainly didn’t remember meeting Eddie Cutter. Why would I, if he was just one of Frank’s visitors? I thought he looked familiar.” She gestured around the bar. “But so do half the people in the East Bay.”

“Looked familiar?” I said. “When did he look familiar?”

“His picture,” she shot back. “In the paper.” She looked at me, waiting for me to fold under her superior argument. I lied and told her Cutter’s photo had never been in the paper. “Wasn’t it?” She looked puzzled, as well she might, since it certainly had been published. Then she laughed. “Well, I thought it was. I guess maybe I half-recognized him around the campus or something, and I’m making the connection now.”

“When did you half-recognize him?” I felt the whole argument slipping away from me, and I didn’t think it should.

She glared at me. “What is this, Samson?” I glared back at her. “Oh, all right,” she said, in a resigned voice. “I’ll try to remember if I ever saw him on the campus. Or whatever.” She sipped and made “Isn’t this silly?” faces, but I turned away, watching the other patrons in the bar. That was when I noticed the skittish one from the night before, the one who had burst into tears and walked out. She was talking to some guy. I turned back to Rebecca.

“You know,” she began, “that was a good idea, pushing my memory. I think I did see him once, and it rang some vague kind of bell but only partly registered. It was at the fire. He was right up in front watching when I got there.”

So what?
I was thinking. He’d already confessed to the fire.

“So you didn’t know Shane was involved and you didn’t quite remember Cutter. Is that what you’re saying?” I summarized offhandedly.

She nodded, then reached across the table and laid her hand over mine. “That’s exactly right, Jake. And I’m going to be honest with you.” I could hardly wait. “Even if I had connected Frank with this thing, even if I had remembered Eddie Cutter, I wouldn’t have made the connection and I wouldn’t have remembered.”

I realized that I was cocking my head to one side like a bemused beagle and straightened up.

“What I mean is this: I don’t see much point in Harley knowing I actually knew these people, actually worked among them for several months. You can see that might upset him.” I shrugged. Anything might upset Harley. And she wasn’t making much sense. She saw my doubtful look and chilled again, leaning back in her seat and looking somewhere over my head. “Besides,” she said, “the whole point of hiring you was to find out who did it and keep me and Harley out of it.”

I leaned forward. “Are you saying you did know or you didn’t? This is all getting a little coy for me, Rebecca.”

She sighed. “I suppose it is. I told you I didn’t remember Cutter. That’s the truth.”

“What about Frank?”

“I told you the truth. I want another drink. Why are you harassing me this way? My life is messed up enough without you harassing me. Just buy me another drink.”

I went and got her drink and another one for me and brought them back to the table.

She began talking as though there had been no interruption.

“I don’t understand you, Jake. I got you this job. Why are you trying to confuse me, attack me? There’s nothing in my life that’s any good right now. Harley is free and he won’t see me. Business has been rough, and if it keeps on going this way, I will need to start worrying about money. And now you, my friend, the man I recommended to Harley, accusing me of God-only-knows-what.”

“Of lying,” I snapped. “Of hiding something. Not from the police. Not from Harley. From me, your friend, the man you recommended to Harley.” She looked at me as though she would have liked to throw her drink in my face. “And the weird part of it is that it doesn’t make any difference that I can see whether you knew these guys before. What difference does it make whether you recognized Cutter?”

“That’s exactly right,” she said. “What difference would it make anyway? So what would be the point in my lying?”

I was beginning to feel as though one of us was about to burst out in some Lewis Carroll rhyme.
The time has come, the
walrus said…
. I held up my hands, palms out, in surrender. “Okay, let’s just drop it. You’re telling the truth and I’m a nasty beast.”

“Yes,” she said, tossing off the rest of her drink.

I took her home.

I did not have an easy night. Asleep, I dreamed about an army of Franks and Jareds roving the streets burning buildings and killing people. Awake, my thoughts skipped and stumbled, and my conscience babbled accusations.

Late Wednesday morning I went to see Sergeant Hawkins.

He was sitting at a desk drinking coffee. He didn’t offer me any. And he wanted to play with me before he’d let me tell him why I was there.

“I guess you don’t work much, right, Samson?”