the Prostitutes' Ball (2010) (25 page)

I could feel my resolve weakening. It reminded me of those sand castles I used to build when Pop Dix took us to the beach on Saturdays way back when I was six. I'd spend half the morning building one only to stand there in horror as the tide came in and washed it away.

Back then I would curse myself because I hadn't taken the extra effort to build my castle farther from the water. As each wave got closer and stronger, I would watch with growing self-disgust as the foundation crumbled, leaving me to wonder why I didn't carry my plastic water buckets farther up the beach.

That's the way I felt now. How far up the beach should I go to protect the things that were truly important to me?

I took off my shirt and washed my face. There was a can of spray deodorant in the cabinet so I borrowed some and spritzed under my arms. Then I redressed, knotting my tie in a Windsor knot. I plastered on a jaunty, no-worries grin and looked at myself in the mirror.

Hidey-ho, ready to go.

I descended from my temporary sleeping quarters on Mount Olympus and joined Hitch in the kitchen. He was cooking.

"Good, you're up," he said as I entered. "I was just about to come get you."

Hitch had placed cubes of bread with the crust cut off in a greased nine-by-thirteen-inch pan with some sauteed sausage slices layered on top. He was sprinkling grated cheddar over the sausage.

"What is that?" I said. "It smells great."

"What you smell is the sausage I just browned. What you're about to taste is a culinary miracle known as the Hitchmeister's amazing eggs Portugal. Good at any time of day including dinner."

He went to the refrigerator and took out a concoction in a plastic blender. "Our eggs, milk, and mustard," he explained. "My secret sauce is a couple of jiggers of vermouth." He poured it on top of the bread, cheese, and sausage then popped the pan into the oven.

"We've got to wait an hour for it to cook, but I thought we could use the time to go over the case."

"Sounds good."

"I just got off the phone with NHMC. CSI did a test on the residue in those two thermoses we found in the truck. Both had strong traces of ketamine, so the two dead guards were drugged first. Coroner said both skeletons had bullet chips in their bones, making the probable cause of death gunshot."

"So the GIB drugged his two buddies then once they were asleep he executed them."

"That's what it looks like," he said.

"What about Del Cristo?"

"He just called over there and wants to talk to us. I was waiting until you got up to call him back because I know how much you, as senior partner, like to push the big red buttons."

"You da man," I said, and we slapped palms.

He handed me a cup of Brazilian coffee and we walked into the den to call Jose Del Cristo. As soon as he was on the line Hitch put him on speaker.

"What'd you find?" I asked.

"I ran an X-ray fluoroscopic and your gold bar checked out. I could do a few more tests if you want but in my opinion, the brick is good. Twenty-four-karat perfect."

I looked at Hitch to see if he wanted to add anything. When he shook his head, I said, "Okay, Jose. Thanks again. Don't do any more. We'll send somebody over to pick up the bar."

"I'm just getting set to leave now. I'll put it in our safe. You can pick it up first thing in the morning. I get in at eight and we close at five."

After he hung up I looked at Hitch.

"Makes no sense," he said.

"It makes perfect sense. The only problem is we just aren't looking at it in the right way yet."

We sat on the bar stools thinking. After a while I could smell the great aroma of eggs Portugal wafting in from the kitchen.

"Okay, look," I finally said. "The gold is real and we know that nobody in their right mind is gonna park that much loot in a sealed garage and just leave it. If it was hot, maybe, but then it would only be for a year or two to cool it off before moving it. But nobody's gonna leave it there for over a quarter century. That defies reason."

"Exactly." Hitch nodded.

"Unless whoever stole the money and hid it in that well house got killed himself. Maybe he was tortured by someone trying to find it, and when he didn't talk, they went too far and he ended up dead. Or less dramatically, it could be as simple as he got hit by a bus or killed in a freeway accident. If it happened that way, then it could sit there unopened for a quarter century with nobody finding it."

Tin liking this. It ties Dunbar to Vulcuna."

"Not necessarily, because if the Dunbar family knew about it, wouldn't they pull the gold out of there and use it?"

"Then who planted out the well house with those holly bushes?" he asked.

"Maybe that was an independent event. Maybe it's just what you said. The well house was ugly, so they hid it."

"That means our great gold bullion heist with all these dead bodies ends back in eighty-three with our master villain going tits up in Act One." He was scowling.

"Kinda fucks up the movie, doesn't it?"

"What about Stender Sheedy and Thayer Dunbar and their crazy
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need to keep that house empty and unsold?"

"Rich people are often eccentric," I countered. "Too much money bends the mind. I offer young Brooks as Exhibit A. As you get richer it's something you might also need to keep your eye on going forward."

He looked at me or through me. Not sure which.

Then he said, "So your big idea is the GIB kills all three Vulcunas for some still completely unknown reason, then two years later he steals the truck, whacks the other two guards, and hides the truck with the gold inside at Vulcunas' well house, again for unknown reasons. Then the GIB goes out and gets picked up by a person or persons unknown who torture him to death without him talking or, better still, he gets hit by a bus, and the gold is lost, parked for decades in a well house owned by the estate of a pudgy twit whose father is a fucking multibillionaire. Now J'm gagging." He chewed a cuticle. It was a nervous twitch I'd not seen before. "We're running out of moves," he said.

"We still have two obvious ones," I countered. "Go out and brace Stender Sheedy is one. Lean hard on that asshole and see if he cracks. The other is we check with Axeis Cargo Insurance. If they examined the gold, see if we can get ACI's old assay tests. Then we find out who collected that insurance dough."

"Let's do Sheedy first," Hitch said. "I'd like to grind on that asshole a little just for fun."

"We have less than seventy-two hours before Chase Beal gets microphone fever and starts messing us up. We already lost five getting the truck open and the gold assayed. We just slept away another five. I think in the interest of time, we should split up."

He looked at his watch. "Business hours are over."

"That's why we got badges. So we can stop by a suspect's house unannounced and hassle him."

"No wonder you're so popular at Internal Affairs," he said.

I made a call to the research center. They gave me the name and address for the current CEO of Axeis Cargo Insurance, a man named Russell Meeks. They also told me where Stender Sheedy Sr. lived.

While I did that Hitch went into the kitchen and pulled the eggs Portugal out of the oven. He got a spatula and cut me a large section, placing it carefully on a china plate. He reached into the fridge and took out some cold mixed fruit squares in a honey sauce for a side dish, then made up a second plate for himself.

We took our food out onto the deck with two German lagers to eat dinner and watch the sun go down.

Hitch handed me a silver fork wrapped inside a green linen napkin and said, "Let me know what you think."

He waited for me to go first, eyeing me carefully as I took my first bite and swallowed.

"Aughhhh," I said. "Dry! You could caulk a boat with this."

"Huh." He seemed perplexed as he forked in a bite of his own.

"Go fuck yourself," he said. "It's great. Melts in your mouth."

"Yeah." I grinned. "It's pretty damn spectacular."

We finished our first helping and both had seconds. Twenty minutes later we were loading up and getting ready to go.

Til take Sheedy," I said. "You take this Russell Meeks character who runs Axeis Cargo Insurance."

"He lives all the way out in Thousand Oaks," Hitch complained. "Your guy is right down the hill in Bel Air."

"That's the problem with being junior man," I explained. "Junior man always gets the shit jobs. You're lucky we haven't been getting any flat tires."

We left his house in separate cars, riding down from Mount Olympus like mythic warriors.

We had no idea what awaited us. But to paraphrase my new partner, Act Three was certainly getting better."

Chapter
43.

Stender Sheedv's house on Oakcrest was nestled up against the Bel Air hillside. It was one of those classic Georgian Colonials that dot these old Westside neighborhoods like flowering magnolias in a verdant southern landscape. There was at least an acre of rye lawn. Stone lion statues that looked appropriately fierce and majestic guarded the drive. It wasn't as nice a spread as Thayer Dunbar's, but it was pretty good for a man who had made his career by flushing the other guy's toilets.

I pulled the MDX up and parked on the street. It was still early, only a little past eight o'clock in the evening. There was a Mercedes S600 sedan parked in the drive with personalized plates that read BAR'STER. The lights on the ground floor were all festively lit.

I got out, walked by some expensive cars parked at the curb, an
d c
ontinued up the drive past Leo and Cleo. Neither of the stone beasts snarled at me, a hopeful sign.

I rang the bell and the door was answered by a slender middle
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aged Chinese woman in a crisply ironed maid's uniform. According to my recent observations, the Chinese seemed to have cornered the Westside domestic services market.

"Yes?" she said hesitantly.

"I'm here to see Mr. Sheedy," I replied.

"He no come right now. Dey eat dinner."

"It's official business."

I showed her my badge and it was like I had just pulled a rattlesnake out of my pocket.

She took a quick step back and said, "Oh . . . oh."

"May I come in?"

She took another step back so I just followed.

"Wa Sun," she called out.

A Chinese man appeared in the entry hall. He was a little older than she, and when he spoke, there was no trace of an accent.

"This man with po-leece."

"How can I help you?" Wa Sun inquired.

"I need to see Stender Sheedy Sr."

"He's not available."

"I'm not looking for a place setting at dinner, but I'm also not going to stand around out here and wait."

I showed my badge. It had little effect on him.

"What's this regarding?" he said.

"At least five dead people, but it may actually be more because I'm keeping the count open."

"I suggest you make an appointment to see Mr. Sheedy at his office during business hours."

He turned and spoke harshly in Chinese to the woman who had let me into the house. I didn't have to understand Mandarin to know he was bitching her out for giving up the family threshold without shedding blood.

Enough of this, I thought. As he continued to berate her, I walked past them toward the dining room, which I assumed was down the hallway to my left. Wa Sun hurried after, calling out for me to stop.

I ignored him.

On my way I passed some magnificent rooms with expensive furnishings. The Sheedys leaned toward upscale European antiques with a sprinkling of early American maple. No dolphins in sight, but they usually reside in ornate marble or nautical settings. The oil paintings that lined the walls were rich and probably very expensive. The carpets thick and inviting.

I entered the dining room a few steps ahead of Wa Sun and found Stender Sheedy in mid-story, entertaining his wife and six dinner guests.

. . the odds were extremely long in the racing form, but since I had all six of that colts morning workouts " He stopped mid
-
sentence and looked up at me, a startled expression on his face.

'Tin sorry, sir. He pushed past me," Wa Sun said by way of explanation.

Everybody at the table was dressed expensively. It appeared I'd blundered into a high-toned dinner party. Sheedy was facing me at the far end of the room. There were three other couples having dinner, plus his wife, all of them seated in high-back Queen Anne chairs around a long mahogany table.

Mrs. Sheedy was at the near end, with her back to the doorway where I was standing. She craned her cosmetically peeled porcelain face around to study me. Silver hair, nice tight nip-and-tuck job, great blue eyes.

The other people varied in age. The youngest couple was midthirties and the husband was instantly hateable. One of those "ain't I cute" kiss-ass political ladder climbers that every business seems to have a few of. You can almost spot them by the way they comb their hair. There were two other older middle-aged couples seated around the table.