Suicide King (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series) (18 page)

“Yes. I would. If it was the right candidate.”

“And you, Jake?” His pale blue eyes studied me.

“I’d really have to think about it, Carney. I’d hate like hell to see some asshole elected because the rational people were split.”

“Which is another consideration,” he said, nodding.

We were all silent for a while, eating, thinking.

“At the same time,” I said. “I always thought that was a bullshit reason not to support a third party or an independent.”

“There’s that as well.” He was grinning again.

“Fact is, I hate politics. I don’t talk politics. I don’t commit myself to politics. I’m investigating Joe Richmond’s death at the request of his people, and I don’t believe he killed himself. Do you?”

He laughed at me, shaking his head. We finished eating. The place was crowded, all the tables and booths full, and there were people waiting. Carney grabbed the check.

“About Joe,” he said. “I don’t know. I wasn’t there. How long are you two in town for?”

“As long as it takes. We can go back any time today.”

“I got an hour, hour and a half to spare. Want to go have some beers somewhere? If you insist, we can talk about Joe Richmond. But we could do something else at the same time.”

Rosie said she thought that sounded good. He paid for the lunch, Rosie left the tip, and we went outside, where he led us to a new red Supra. Sunroof. Elaborate stereo with four speakers. White leather interior. He slid behind the wheel. He grinned like a kid.

“Great car,” I said. “Did it really come with a white leather interior?”

“Hell no. Came with black, of all the stupid colors for a warm climate. I had this done. You got a car?” I nodded. “Great. Go get it and follow me. Then I won’t have to bring you back here and you’ll be closer to the airport. You know Venice?”

Both of us admitted we’d been there a couple of times.

We followed the red flash west to about a block from the beach. He pulled up into the front yard of a two-story redwood-and-glass beauty that looked newly renovated. I could hear someone hammering inside. The second story had to have a view of the ocean. He waved at us to pull our car in with his. There was no place to park on the street.

“My house,” he said proudly. “I love it as much as I love this car.”

“How do you reconcile a love of cars with protection of the environment?” Rosie wanted to know.

“Not easily,” he said. “I also eat meat sometimes. I’m not perfect. I’m not a saint.” He began walking toward the beach. “I’d ask you in, but they’re Sheet-rocking. It’s a mess.”

“Nice piece of real estate,” I said.

He laughed. “Well, real estate’s my business.”

“You like living in L.A.?” Rosie asked. Rosie is a true provincial Northern Californian. It’s the only place on earth. I think it’s one of the few places on earth, but I like Los Angeles, too, and anywhere on the West Coast is fine with me.

“Yeah,” Carney said. “I do. It’s a three-ring circus and everything’s too far from everything else and the air is bad sometimes. But the air’s bad everywhere else now, too, and I like all the ways you can live here. My life’s here. My wife has a life here. My kids. I’ve even got a granddaughter, newborn.”

Carney took us to a cafe with some tables out in front so we could watch the show on the beach and along the wide walk. A guy was standing ankle-deep in soft sand working out with barbells. He was huge, muscles bulging and writhing all over his body. I wondered how fast he could move, wondered what he was like in a fight. Decided his boyfriend probably didn’t want him fighting. Our drinks came. Crowds of people were strolling past, rolling past, running past, masses of beautiful and not-so-beautiful bodies played in the sand.

“I guess you like living in a busy neighborhood, too, huh?” Rosie said. She was laughing at a human pyramid forming out near the water.

“Actually, I do,” Carney said, smiling. “We used to live up in the hills. Pretty. But I got an itch for, I don’t know. City?” He shook his head. “I guess I like walking around here.”

“So you really don’t have any ideas about Richmond’s death?” I got back to business.

“I didn’t know him very well.”

“You must have some ideas, though,” Rosie said.

“Must I now? Well, maybe I must. Did you ever meet the man?”

We told him about the times we’d been around Joe Richmond.

“And what did you think of him?”

“I thought he was a star.” I said. “Amazing charisma. Kennedy-like. And I liked him. He was too good-looking, maybe, and he came across like some kind of superman or demigod, but I liked him.”

“He wasn’t my favorite candidate,” Rosie added. “But I thought he was a good one.”

Carney nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. I felt the same way. I liked him. But I don’t know if I really trusted him as a candidate for high office. I don’t know how much of him was real. I don’t know if maybe he wasn’t a little too rarefied, a little too perfect. When I was a kid I had a political hero for a while. Adlai Stevenson. But the man really wasn’t suited for the rough and tumble, the down and dirty of real-life politics. Stevenson, I mean. Too rarefied. Only difference between him and Richmond, Stevenson showed it. I met him once, at a neighborhood rally. I pushed my way up to the front and grabbed his hand to shake. The guy looked horrified.”

“You think Richmond was too delicate? You think maybe he wasn’t too stable under all that star shine?” “Could be.”

“Are you saying you think he could have killed himself?” Rosie was ready and waiting. Now we were going to start getting down to it.

“I don’t know. I guess I’m saying a guy like that could have a— well, an episode of some kind, maybe over something personal. You’re the investigator, you tell me. You got anything that makes it look like murder?”

Rosie shrugged. “Nothing we’re ready to talk about.”

He nodded slowly at her. “I understand. I guess I could be a suspect. I was an opponent, after all. Interesting idea. Because I wanted to win or because— what, I didn’t want us to field an actual candidate and I’m a fanatic? Well, why not?”

“That’s right,” Rosie said, smiling to soften her words. “Why not?”

A man and woman, both dressed in bikinis covered by thin overshirts, roller-skated by and skidded to a stop just past us, looking at the human pyramid.

“You didn’t go to his funeral. Why was that?”

“I was busy, and I’m not a hypocrite.”

Rosie again: “You didn’t think there should be an investigation.”

“I was actually kind of neutral. Unenthusiastic, maybe.”

“So, you were busy the day of his funeral?” I tried to mix just the right amount of disapproval with the suspicion. “Doing what?”

“Visiting my new granddaughter in the hospital.” He smiled a leprechaun smile.

“And that night?”

“Having a party celebrating my granddaughter, what else?”

“What about the day he died?” Rosie shot back at him.

“That would have been on the Sunday… sorry, I guess you’ve got me. I was out walking. Alone.”

“I got a phone tip that someone in the party is planning an ecological disaster right before the election,” I said. “To get votes for Vivo.”

He turned gray. “Are you shitting me?”

“No.”

“Who was it? Who called you?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did they say?”

I told him.

He shook his head. “Someone’s playing games with you.”

“Isn’t it possible?” Rosie asked. “Possible that there’s someone in the party who would do that?”

“Oh, I suppose it’s possible,” he admitted. “But not for just any madman. You’d have to have money, you’d have to be able to get to people. And you’d have to be getting something out of it.”

“And who does that describe?” Rosie asked.

“It used to describe Joe Richmond.”

“Would it describe someone who was now going to get the backing Richmond had?”

He rubbed his eyes and looked at her. “It could.”

The bikini-clad man squatted. His girlfriend climbed onto his back, skates and all. They were laughing hysterically. He skated off, wobbling, carrying her on his shoulders.

“Could it describe Philip Werner?” I asked.

“Really? That’s what’s going on now? That son of a bitch. Sure, it could describe him.”

“I guess you don’t like him.”

“Not much, no.”

“Because he was planning to defect if he got Vivo’s backing? Sell his support base to a major party? His status? Isn’t that what you told Noel Chandler?”

“That’s right. He figured the governorship was unreachable in any case— he might as well get a place in a real power structure.” He sighed, drank, shook his head. “If he’s got enough of Richmond’s people, he’ll get the endorsement.”

“Well, he could still follow up on his original plan,” Rosie said.

Carney looked baleful. “Sure, unless he thinks he’s come up with a way to actually win the election.”

That did sum things up in a nutshell, I had to admit. We all sat there looking at each other for a while, drinking our cold drinks, thinking cold thoughts.

“Where did you hear that Werner was going to bolt the party?” Rosie asked.

“One of his own campaign people. He was feeling me out— I’m a bit of a wild card in this game, after all. I didn’t want us to have a candidate, see. And, as it turned out, Werner wasn’t going to be a candidate if he won, anymore than I was. So his people were sort of interested to know what I was ‘really planning.’ If I could see my way clear to support him and promise the support of my people if he got the endorsement. They wanted a deal. They didn’t exactly admit he was going to take his supporters and go somewhere else, but that was the implication. The clear implication. They thought maybe I could go along with that, if I got a piece of what they thought they’d get. I couldn’t. Dishonest piece of shit.”

“But why would you tell that to Noel Chandler, of all people?” Rosie asked.

“Because he was sleazing around me in the same kind of way. Trying to get me to throw my support to Richmond. I laughed at him. Told him I’d gotten a better offer.”

Again, we were all quiet for a moment.

“Maybe,” he continued, “I’d better get a little more serious about this governor thing. I’ve been thinking about it anyway, since Joe died. I could have lived with him as a candidate. But not Werner. It didn’t matter so much when I thought he wouldn’t run anyway. But if what you say is actually true, and he’s got some idea he can actually win, he has to be stopped. If it’s true. Hell, even if it isn’t. Dishonest piece of shit. Maybe I need to drop out of the thing, turn my support over to Rebecca. Before they get a chance to blow up Bakersfield or merge with the Democrats or whatever they plan to do. They. Werner. What a mess.”

“Why the hell don’t you just run for real?” I wanted to know. “Go after the endorsement? I mean aside from all those terrific political reasons you gave us a while ago.”

“Because I don’t want the damned thing, that’s why.”

I believed him. He didn’t want the damned thing.

“Tell me this,” I said. “Did Rebecca know you might swing over to her if Joe was out of it?”

He nodded. “As a matter of fact she did. It’s something we discussed once. And she brought it up again, after he died.”

When Carney said good-bye to us at our car, I took his arm, made him look me in the eye.

“James X.,” I said. “Don’t go off half-cocked on any of this. Give us a few more days. Bakersfield isn’t going to get blown up yet. Not for months. Sit on it until you hear from us, okay?”

“You’ve got a week,” he said. “No more.”

MOSTLY, Sacramento is a place I pass through on my way to the Sierra, a not-quite-halfway mark in the trek to Tahoe. Close enough to the Bay Area so some people actually commute, and so government people with nothing better to do can take their nightlife where no one’s paying attention.

Werner knew we were coming. The night before, I’d called Pam to confirm what she’d learned earlier in the week. He was spending the weekend at his home base. Then I’d called him at home to make an appointment. I didn’t say anything about his skip in Minneapolis; neither did he.

Rosie and I spent the night in L.A. and flew to Sacramento first thing Sunday morning.

I had thought about not calling first, about sneaking up on him. But that would have given him an excuse to disappear. If he walked out on me again, with an actual commitment to meet, I swore I’d find some way to skewer the bastard.

We were supposed to meet him at his law office at 10:00 a.m. It was easy to find. A five-story red brick office building downtown, within sight of the waffle dome of the capitol building. When we got to his office building, it was closed, but the guard checked us off his list, alerted Werner, and sent us upstairs.

Werner, true to my first impression of him, was dressed in those dumb-looking clothes people wear for hiking. Shorts, camouflage shirt, clunky boots, clunky socks. He looked ten years younger than he’d looked in a suit at the funeral. He was already standing when we walked in, smiled pleasantly, shook hands, and asked us to sit down.

“I came in for an hour just to talk to you. Then I have to take off.” He gestured vaguely at his hiking gear. “Coffee?” We accepted. He poured us some from a machine near the window and got our orders for milk and sugar. Real milk, from a tiny refrigerator. He sat back down.

“I’m surprised you’re actually here,” I said, smiling.

He smiled back. “Look, Samson, I’m sorry if you think I was trying to avoid you in Minneapolis. I wasn’t. It just worked out that way. I got an urgent message from one of the groups I’m working with— a problem we thought we had another month to work on was moving along too fast. I had to catch the next plane back and, to be honest, I forgot about you.” He continued to smile, which did not succeed in making the words friendly.

“And what problem was that, the important one that came up?”

He smiled and shook his head. “A new pesticide. Supposed to solve the selenium runoff problems. We think it may be even more dangerous. There’s some big money behind the company, of course.” Selenium. That was the stuff that was poisoning a wildlife refuge somewhere in the state and killing the ducks.