Empty Places, page 22
"Wha—" I tried to say. "Why?"
"'Cause your friend Banyon's house is in county territory, right?"
"Uh huh."
"Yeah, and people keep dying in county territory and nobody's doing nothing about it. I can put a police guard on you at your old lady's."
I turned to Shorty. Resignation had taken the place of the anger and irritation. "I think that's a good idea, Brandt," he said. "Whoever killed Matt was probably trying to get you both, and he could try again. I can't promise you a police guard if you stay at Matt's."
"I might be safer without one," I mumbled. Bull Dog demanded I repeat it louder, but I just shook my head, painfully. "All my stuff's at Matt's."
"I'll stop at Matt's and bring your stuff to you," Shorty volunteered. "He still keep the key in the same place?"
"He did."
"Yeah," Shorty said. "Yeah." He dipped his head and wiped some of the rivulets from his face with his hand. New tributaries replaced the old ones. The new streams seemed to come from his eyes, not his damp hair, but I wasn't sure and I wasn't going to mention it. My own eyes felt like rivers ready to burst their dams.
✽ ✽ ✽
Robin's apartment was pitch black when we arrived. Jefferson asked me where the light switch was, flipped it on, and entered first, his gun drawn. He made a good display of searching the rooms before leaving me there with a grunt as his goodbye. Outside the door, he posted a uniformed cop in a rain slicker. I wasn't certain whether the patrolman's job was keeping someone out or keeping me in.
On the way from the hospital, Jefferson detoured long enough to let me pick up a bottle of Scotch. I needed a drink—a few of them really—and Robin's supply of vodka and Southern Comfort wasn't going to suit my black mood. I was well into my second stiff one when Shorty arrived with my gear and another bottle of whiskey. We had a couple of drinks together, remembering Matt, mourning him, our voices choked by grief and straight liquor. The ringing in my ears finally subsided to the distant peal of a single belfry. Then Shorty left, and I was alone, really alone, in a room full of ghosts and bad memories.
I lowered the lights and opened the curtains and sat on the sofa staring out into the rain. My mind swirled with a thousand thoughts, the way it does when you're too afraid to grab onto one and examine it closely. I had added three new ghosts to my inventory—Robin's, Tex's, now Matt's—and I had to deal with each in my own way. I was glad Shorty hadn't stayed longer than he had. I felt the need to be alone. Even the cop outside the door seemed intrusive.
I got up from the couch and paced the darkened living room. I walked down the hall and looked into the study, then the bedroom. Without really meaning to, I straightened the mattress between its brass railings, then found the linen and made the bed. I picked up the things tossed from Robin's drawers and put them back, pausing now and then to rub the cloth of her clothing between my fingers, remembering other times, the gentler times, long ago.
I wandered back into the hallway, into the study, and flipped through the photo album. There was a picture of the three of us—Robin, Matt and me—at Ric's, drinks raised in our hands, smiles etched on our faces. It was taken the night we returned from Nevada, after our wedding. I closed the photo book and went back down the hall into the kitchen and poured another drink. Armed with that, I wandered back into the living room and stood in front of the picture window watching the rain. My eyes grew tired and fell onto the photo of Robin. I picked it up and stared at it in the dim light.
What was my void? Laurie had asked. I didn't answer her then. I didn't want to answer her. I asked myself the same question countless times and could never come up with a satisfying answer.
The only thing I remember feeling before meeting Robin was an overwhelming loneliness. A dull pain ached deep inside me where nothing seemed to exist or could exist. Robin almost filled it. But even in our happiest times, I couldn't believe it was truly gone. I agonized each day with the fear the emptiness would return, as if I knew Robin and I wouldn't last, no matter what I did.
I recorded each moment with photographs, pasting the photographs into a cheap album, hoping somehow to capture what we had and prevent its escape. The less Robin needed me, the more I needed her. That only widened the chasm that grew between us. In the end, the emptiness did return and nothing since has filled it. If I learned one thing from my marriage, it was you could be lonely at any time, even in a crowd of people, and that being lonely alone was much better.
Anger suddenly swelled inside me, deep, red hot and seething. I was sick and tired of remembering days long past, days I could never touch again. I was tired of seeing everything and everyone I once loved closed down, boxed into a coffin, or ripped apart in the street. I was fed up with this rotting desert and all its ghosts, both old and new. More than anything, I was disgusted with my own self-absorbed self-pity.
Without thinking, I threw Robin's photograph against the kitchen wall. Glass cracked and shattered, and the frame clattered to the floor.
The living room door burst open. A cop in a rain slicker stepped through, his gun drawn. His revolver took a bead on me, then rose to the ceiling momentarily as it swept past and scanned the rest of the living room like a radar antenna. That done, the officer relaxed his stance and holstered his weapon. "I'm sorry, sir," he said. "I heard a noise. Are you all right?"
I nodded dumbly. "Just throwing a tantrum," I told him, my voice thick.
"That's very understandable, sir," the cop said. He was as young as he was polite. Probably a former Marine from the base at Twenty-Nine Palms. "By the way, you have a visitor, sir. A Miss Hall. Should I let her in?"
"Sure."
Laurie Hall didn't wait to be summoned. The instant I spoke my answer, she dashed through the door and wrapped me in her arms. She spoke my name not once, but several times, and kissed me each time. The young officer quietly closed the door and resumed his post in the rain.
"Matt's—"
"I know, Peter."
"—dead."
"I know, my darling," Laurie said, kissing my face. She held me close to her, not as much as a lover than a mother, stroking the back of my head, and cooing comfort. "I know. I know." I held her tighter against me, suddenly desperate for something to cling to. "The night editor heard about it on the police scanner and called me. I'm so, so sorry, Peter."
Laurie led me to the couch and sat me down, stroking my hair and kissing me gently. She started to rise, but I held her back. "It's okay, darling. It's okay," she cooed, and I let her go. She closed the curtains, turned on the light, and took off the rain jacket she was wearing. She wore only pair of jeans and a white T-shirt, and no makeup at all save some lipstick. Her short, black hair was dampened by the rain and clung to her forehead in small, tight curls. She went into the kitchen, made herself a drink, and brought it to the couch.
I took the drink offered me, then Laurie leaned down and gently removed my sunglasses. I hadn't realized I was still wearing them. She kissed my forehead softly and sat beside me, crossing one leg under the other. "The hospital said you were all right except for a slight concussion, whatever that means," she said.
"It means I keep hearing the end of the 1812 Overture in my head," I said. "You know, the part where they ring all the bells."
"Poor sweetheart," Laurie cooed. She gently cupped my ear in her hand, then brushed back my hair with her fingers. "Peter, what in the world happened?"
I told her, going through it again as I had for Shorty and Jefferson at the hospital. Then I told her about the car bomb, the mercury switch, and how Matt had died. Her reaction was much the same as the two detectives.
"I can't believe Carlos would do this to you," she said.
"Why? Because he's rich?" My voice was harsher than it needed to be, the sarcasm too thick.
Laurie's dark eyes narrowed like a laser beam and cut a slice of my soul right out of my chest. I apologized. "It's the booze talking," I said. "It's being back in this desert, back in this damn apartment, with all the memories, things I'd work so hard to forget, and now Matt. Matt's dead, and—"
Suddenly I was crying.
Laurie moved back to the couch, laid my head on her shoulder and cooed to me some more. It had been a short eternity since anyone had comforted me like that. It seemed to draw all of my life's anguish and sorrow to the surface, the way a magnet draws iron slivers from the ground. I bore my face deeper into her shoulder and sobbed harder. When I finished, Laurie rose quietly, gently, and left me alone on the couch, embarrassed and emotionally barren.
Moments later, I heard her voice calling me. "Peter?" She said it so softly, it was almost whispered. She stood in the hallway door naked, her arms crossed over her breasts. The small dark curls of damp hair were brushed off her forehead and lay slicked back as if she had just stepped from the pool. Tears glistened in her dark eyes, making them look like depthless black pools. Her lips were wet and slightly parted, but she wasn't smiling. She looked almost frightened.
"Peter," she whispered, "come to bed."
CHAPTER 25
MORNING CAME WITH A grayness that matched dusk's. The rain had fallen throughout the night with an uneven tempo, crashing against the roof one minute then withdrawing to a steady patter the next. Outside, the polite young policeman had been replaced by another, also wearing a slicker. He leaned against the railing watching the pool overflow and cascade into the parking lot. The apartment manager, Little John, dressed in oversized shorts and wading boots, sloshed frantically through the rain trying to stop the waterfall.
I made coffee, took a cup out to the cop, turned on the TV with the volume low, and settled onto the couch. My body ached, my head throbbed, and I was feeling older than my years. My night with Laurie Hall had flowed and ebbed like the rain, but all I could feel now was the pain in my head and a stiff, bruising ache through my body.
The morning news started with reports on the damage from the storm. The rain had worked loose a portion of hillside in Rancho Mirage, sending tons of mud cascading through homes built on the alluvium plain. The Whitewater was gushing torrents, flooding roads that lay across the river bed. None of the bridges were damaged or closed, the report said, but the river's banks were quickly eroding, sending portions of riverside parking lots, complete with automobiles, tumbling into the surging current.
"White men who live in wash," I muttered as I rose to refill my cup.
Matt's death made the second news lineup. A video picture of the crumpled white sedan flashed on the screen, followed by a picture of Robin, the same one I had thrown against the wall the night before. The news anchor explained that "private detective" Matt Banyon had reportedly been hired by Robin Anderson's husband to investigate her murder. Anderson's husband, the anchor said, was in seclusion, and could not be reached for comment. But it was believed the explosion that killed Banyon was related to the murder investigation, the anchor said.
"Ex-husband," I murmured. I swallowed one of my pain pills and switched off the tube.
"Good morning."
I turned and found Laurie standing at the edge of the hallway as she had the night before. She wore only her T-shirt, leaving her long tanned legs exposed. She smiled her famous smile. Without makeup, though, she looked too young and the smile lacked its normal sensuality. She looked like a pretty child, and I began feeling older than I already felt.
"Hi." I walked to her and kissed her. "Coffee?"
"Please."
I kissed her again, then walked into the kitchen and quickly poured a cup of coffee. When I turned around, Laurie was bending over the fragments of Robin's photograph, picking up the shards I had been ignoring. The tail of her T-shirt rose teasingly over her haunches, exposing the sharp line between tanned and untanned skin. I began to feel stirrings I thought had been exhausted in the night.
"Peter?" Laurie's voice betrayed puzzlement.
"Let it be," I said. "I'll clean it up later."
"No, look."
Laurie held up Robin's broken picture frame. Where the frame and the photograph separated were two pieces of cardboard, the thin backing and the stiffer corrugated inner sheet. Between the two peeked the black plastic cover of a computer disk.
Laurie handed me the wrecked frame, and I pulled the floppy disk from its concealment. Neatly typewritten on a white label were the words: CARLOS TINNERMAN. I uttered a mild oath, grabbed my coffee mug, and told Laurie to follow me.
In the study, I booted up the computer and a word processing program. I fumbled with the unfamiliar word processor for a few minutes before getting it to do what I wanted. Finally, a phosphorus green listing of the disk's contents crawled across the screen. There were a dozen files, some very short, some long. The longest was a series of news scripts about the Desert Air crash. Several were transcripts of interviews with FAA officials and investigators. One contained notations from some kind of flight log. Another contained a series of identification numbers. Yet another contained the names of several companies, their parent companies, and their subsidiaries.
Laurie went out to buy us a fast-food breakfast while I ran all the files out on the printer. By the time she returned, I had Robin's notes figured out.
"Okay," I said, waving her to the kitchen counter and grabbing the bag of food. I took a bite of an egg sandwich and chewed it quickly while picking up one of the stacks of printouts I had piled on the counter.
"These interview transcripts don't contain much of interest, just details of the Desert Air crash a few months back." I tossed the transcripts on the floor and lifted a second set of printouts. "The same is true for these old news scripts." I let them join the transcripts on the floor and picked up another stack of printouts. "But these," I said, conscious of the smile spreading across my face, "these are very interesting."
Laurie took the pages I offered her and read them silently, then shrugged. "It's just a list of companies and their officers. Oh, there's Desert Air, Carlos's company."
"And Caribbean Air and Gulf Air, they're Tinnerman's, too," I said. "In fact, they're all Tinnerman's."
I showed Laurie a sheet of paper on which I had drawn a corporate ownership tree. At the very top of the tree was Tinnerman's name. "See these companies just under Tinnerman's name?"
She nodded.
"These are companies the Cuban owns in the open. The airlines. Morgan Security. This is Gulf Services—it services other airlines. Refuels and cleans their planes, caters their food. Tinnerman told me about all these when I talked to him yesterday."
I pointed to the next level of companies.
"These are where the corporate lineage becomes hazy. These are all owned by one or more of the original companies. I have no idea what they do. Maybe just holding companies, maybe just post box numbers. But their holdings cross again as we go down another level, and their relationship becomes even more clouded. They all own interest in this one company. Trato Doble Holdings."
I started laughing, and Laurie looked at me as if all the damage to my head was beginning to have an effect.
"Trato Doble," I explained, "is Spanish for double cross. A little Tinnerman humor, I think."
I moved down to the next level of holdings. "These are interesting," I said. "This is where the real Carlos Tinnerman comes out. Phoenix Pharmaceuticals and Lab Works."
"A drug company?" Laurie asked.
"I don't think you'll find them making aspirin there," I said. "I got their number from information and called them. They're a laboratory supply company. A good front if you're supplying chemicals and equipment to illegal meth labs. One of the biggest centers of methamphetamine production is just to the south of us. San Diego. Just where this company is located."
"Peter, really, I—"
"I know, it's just speculation. But—" I moved to the next company, "—this one I don't have to speculate about. Sunburst Productions." Laurie's lips puckered, but she said nothing. "You've heard of them?" She nodded. "I have, too. Matt and I had a nice talk about them with Steve Casey the other day. Casey moonlights for them. They make porn films."
Laurie's eyes had lost all their sparkle. She looked horror struck. "Peter, no. You must be wrong."
I shook my head. "And Robin was asking about them just a couple of weeks before she died."
"There must be a mistake," Laurie said
"No, there's not," I said. I unfolded another printout. "This lists a couple of dozen political action committees, all belonging to Tinnerman's companies. These—" I pointed to a list of names next to each PAC "—are politicians they've contributed to. There must be a hundred. Prominent among them are Robin's dear Assemblyman Manchester and Senator Borman. Even that asshole Miles Hampton is listed."
"Is that illegal?" Robin asked.
"There are limits as to how much a business or a person can give a candidate," I explained. "Some companies set up several different PACs and funnel more than their allowable amount of money to candidates that way. Manchester told Matt and me that Tinnerman was doing just that, and Robin was asking questions about it. I don't know if it's strictly illegal, but it's certainly unethical as hell."
"I don't see Tom Wilson's name there."
"A lot of city campaigns don't allow PAC or business contributions, just personal donations. Usually what a company does is to collect donations from employees, bundle them together and present the candidate in one tidy little sum. The employees usually get the donations paid back to them in the form of cash bonuses. Robin's got a file of personal donations to Tom Wilson's campaign, too."
I flipped through the stack of printouts until I found the right one. "This shows a rather sizable portion of Wilson's donations came from employees of Desert Air, Morgan Security, and Sunburst Productions."
I pulled another printout from the stack. "Unethical as all that is, it's really just SOP. Just about what you'd expect from a corrupt business. This, however, is really unusual."
