The Emerald Cat Killer, page 18
part #10 of Lindsey and Plum Series
Then his expression changed to one of recognition. “Carolyn?”
“I’m here, Joseph. How are you feeling?”
He took some time before answering the question. When he’d made up his mind he said, “Lousy. My back hurts, and my head hurts, and I just feel totally lousy. And what’s this?” He looked up at the IV bottle that was feeding a steady drip into his arm.
“How’s—” He paused and drew a deep breath. When he’d exhaled he started again. “How’s Rebi?”
“I don’t know, Joseph. I don’t know where she is.”
“I thought … oh, I forgot. I was thinking.… They’ve got me on morphine, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know that. I saw Dr. Chen. She says you’re on antibiotics. I forget their names. Antibiotics. Everything sounds like science fiction. She didn’t mention morphine.”
“Miserable stuff. It makes my mind … I can’t think straight. What did you say, how’s Rebi doing?”
“Joseph, you were the last one to see her. Don’t you remember? You went looking for her and you claim that you saw her on MacArthur Boulevard before someone hit you from behind.”
For several minutes Joseph Horton didn’t move. Carolyn wasn’t sure whether he was processing what she’d just told him, or was simply in a morphine-induced fugue. She decided to push him a little.
“You took the Prius and you said you were going to look for her. You came down here to Oakland and you wound up in Kaiser.”
More silence, but then, “I remember. Yes. There was a police officer here and a district attorney. They threatened to arrest me as a child molester.”
“Thank heaven that didn’t happen!”
“Is she safe?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Joseph, but she’s alive. At least I think she’s alive. But that’s what I want to talk to you about.”
The door swung open and a broad-shouldered individual limped into the room. “Mrs. Horton. Mr. Horton.” He offered a tentative smile.
“Mr. Jamison.”
“I came as soon as I could. I was on a stakeout. There was … well, never mind the details, it was sordid but it’s a living. Anyway, I got a man in to take over. What can I do to help?”
Carolyn Horton nodded toward her husband. “He says he saw her.”
“Rebi? Really! Mr. Horton, what about that?”
Joseph Horton muttered something unintelligible.
Carolyn Horton said, “They’ve got him on morphine. I don’t think he knows if he’s awake or asleep.”
Kellen Jamison pursed his lips. “Maybe you could tell me, then.”
“He says he was looking for her on MacArthur. Over there somewhere.” She gestured vaguely toward the freeway.
“Hot-sheet row. All right. And then?”
“He claims he saw her. He parked the Prius and ran after her. She was with this … man, and—”
“Either a pimp or a john. Possibly an undercover cop. Did your husband get a good look at him?”
“Not much. He was concentrating on Rebi.”
“Not surprising. Perfectly understandable. And then?”
She told him the story.
Jamison rubbed his jaw with a callused hand. “What do you think, Mrs. Horton?”
“About his story? I don’t know. He might be hallucinating. It might have been some other child who bore a resemblance to Rebi. Or it might have been her. What do you think, Mr. Jamison?”
He shook his head. “No way of telling. But it’s a definite possibility. No question, it bears following up.”
“You think she might actually be staying in one of those horrible places?”
Jamison repeated his gesture. “She might have been but she certainly isn’t now. After a violent incident and police involvement, that’s the last place she’d be. It’s possible that her pimp got her out of town. Or, more likely, he’s got her hidden away in some safe place. Someplace that’s as safe as he can get her.”
Carolyn Horton pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I don’t know what to do now.”
“Mrs. Horton, that’s what you’ve got me for. Now’s the time to turn up the heat.”
SIXTEEN
Kellen Jamison stepped closer to Joseph Horton’s bed.
“Don’t touch him,” Carolyn Horton commanded.
“Is he conscious?”
“Never mind. We need to talk.”
They headed for a lounge. They sat on ugly plastic armchairs. Carolyn Horton said, “If he really saw Rebi, we may be able to find her.”
“I agree. Nothing else has worked very well. I’ve talked with the Berkeley police and I’m pretty sure that she has a male partner. If your husband really saw her on MacArthur, and I’m inclined to think that he did, then she’s engaged in prostitution.”
Carolyn Horton clutched her purse tightly, her fingers whitening with stress. She bit her lip but did not interrupt Jamison.
“Her partner works as her procurer. That’s what was going on the night your husband was attacked. But I’ve been doing some surveillance at the schools in Berkeley. There’s a major trade in drugs there. Everything from the old standbys to the latest invention. But the biggest items are prescription drugs. Kids steal them from their parents, or they get prescriptions for themselves, and they peddle them to their classmates.”
“Rebi wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“Mrs. Horton, you know the old saying, ‘Never say never.’ Of course your little flower would do that. Given the right motivation, anybody will do anything. That’s the way of the world. I was a San Francisco cop for twenty-two years, and believe me, I saw things that would curl your hair. Things I would never have imagined until I saw them with my own eyes.”
She opened her Versace purse and found a handkerchief. Kellen Jamison waited until she’d finished crying. She wiped her eyes and nose, and closed the purse on the handkerchief. “I should go and fix myself up,” she said.
“That can wait.”
“Mr. Jamison, for all the money my husband pays you, you haven’t done much. You haven’t found my daughter.”
“There are no guarantees in this business, Mrs. Horton. If you want me to stop I’ll submit a final report and invoice. Just say the word.”
He got to his feet.
She clung to her Versace purse with one hand, clutched his wrist with the other. She noticed that he was wearing a cheap drugstore wristwatch and his white shirt-cuff was beginning to fray.
“No. No. We have to keep trying. You must tell me what to do. I want to help you find her.”
“All right. Here’s the good news. If your husband really saw her in that hookers’ parade, we know that she’s alive and in the area. Or at least that she was within the past few days.”
Carolyn Horton managed a feeble smile.
“The bad news is that she’s spooked now. She and her boyfriend, or partner, or pimp, or whatever you want to call him. So they’ve probably gone to ground. That’s going to make it harder than ever to locate her.”
“But then, what can we do?”
“We go back to basics. She’s probably not in a crack house. Not if she mixes pill-peddling with whoring.”
Carolyn Horton shuddered. “Do you have to use that ugly word?” Her breathing was rapid and shallow.
Kellen Jamison said, “I call it what it is. Now take a deep breath. We don’t want you in a hospital bed, too!”
She forced herself to obey. “Thank you.”
“I have a couple of operatives looking for her. But you and I can start a little surveillance of our own. We start at the school where she’d most likely try to mingle with the kids and move her merchandise. A little foot patrol. If that doesn’t work, we start moving in circles. We’ll drive together, passenger and navigator. We’ll be ripples in a pond, Mrs. Horton. Ripples in a pond.”
“All right, I want to see Joseph once more. Then we’ll get the Lexus and start.”
But Joseph was gone from his room. The first medical worker Carolyn could stop directed her to the nearest nurses’ station and the duty nurse told her that he was back in Intensive Care.
Kellen Jamison told her to go home when she’d finished her visit with her husband. He’d do the day’s work, the foot patrol, alone. She was to rest. He would come by the house in the morning if nothing developed today, and they would perform what he called ripple surveillance.
* * *
“Rich and poor at the same time,” Bobby muttered.
Red couldn’t make out what he was saying but she didn’t want to ask him to repeat it. He got mad when she did that and she didn’t want to make him mad.
She knew she’d feel better if she had a jolt, and she knew that the corrugated box that Bobby was holding was full of what she needed, full of enough jelly beans to keep her high and happy for a very long time. She wanted to ask Bobby to let her have a jolt right then. What would he say? She’d helped him at the Ruby Red Pup, she’d distracted Morty and helped Bobby make Morty give them what they wanted.
At least that was what she thought had happened in the storeroom at the Pup. It had all happened so fast, she’d been so confused, and she really needed a jolt. Something else had happened, she thought. She held up her hands and looked at them. Her parents would have approved, they were so clean. But how had she got so clean? Her clothes were damp, drying out in the sunlight. How had they got wet?
“Bobby,” she said. “Bobby, I need a jolt. Don’t we have any in that box? A jelly bean, that’s all they really are. They’re just candy. Just a couple of them to make me feel better.”
Before he could reply a car pulled to the curb. Bobby looked at it. The same Beamer ragtop that they’d ridden in once before. It was really designed for two people, but Red was so skinny she hardly took up any room and Bobby wasn’t much bigger around than she was. They could share a seat and click the shoulder belt over both of them.
There was the same dude who’d given them the ride. And there was that funny vanity plate, BMRMEUP. “Hey, kids, need another lift?”
They piled into the car. Bobby asked the dude how his visit to Santy had gone and they all had a laugh.
The guy was really nice. He asked where they were going and when Bobby told him Acton Street in Berkeley, he swung down University, cut over to Acton, and dropped them off. Bobby thanked him, Red wasn’t talking, and they climbed the stairs from the musty lobby of the Van Buren to their room.
* * *
Getting Jack Burnside to agree to meet with Lindsey and Eric Coffman was like getting North Korea to sit down at a conference table. First, Burnside wouldn’t take Lindsey’s phone call, then he was too busy to have a sit-down, then he was paying International Surety through the nose to cover his risks, and he expected them to do their job and not bust his chops over every little uncrossed T and undotted I in his contracts. He was a publisher, not a lawyer—didn’t anybody wearing a fancy suit understand that?
But finally Lindsey managed to convince him.
Lindsey arrived early for the meeting and waited on the sidewalk for Eric Coffman. When Coffman showed up he was leaning on a cane and he looked more like Raymond Burr than ever. He had his associate, Kelly McGee, at his side. She was carrying the briefcase.
They rode up to Jack Burnside’s Gordian House office. He greeted them grudgingly. Suddenly Lindsey flashed again on who Burnside reminded him of. Lee J. Cobb. No question about that. Except for the fact that Cobb had always exuded a kind of gruff integrity behind his screen persona, no matter how abrasive he managed to make himself. And Burnside didn’t do that. Didn’t do it at all.
Coffman laid out the case that Marston and Morse and Angela Simmons had against Gordian. “I know their attorney, Jenny Caswell. And her principal, Paula Morse. I’m sure that Mrs. Simmons will go along with whatever arrangement Mrs. Morse recommends. They’re being very reasonable, Mr. Burnside.”
“They’re just a bunch of arrogant intellectuals trying to put me out of business.”
“They’re not trying to put you out of business at all,” Kelly McGee put in. Lindsey suspected that a signal had passed between Coffman and McGee.
Burnside said, “If they don’t want to put me out of business why the hell don’t they just leave me alone? Let ’em go ahead and publish their books about meditation or growing your own organic endives. Leave the shoot-’em-ups to me. I know how to do those things; what the hell are Marston and Morse doing with private-eye books?”
“They have every right to publish them,” Coffman came back. “Just as you would have the right to publish books about—what did you say?—meditation and organic endive cultivation.” He leaned forward on his cane and tapped his finger on Burnside’s desk. “The point, Jack, is that you published a book that belonged to them.”
“I know, The Emerald Cat. I wish I’d never heard of that thing. I bought it in good faith. Not my fault if the author was a crook. Or his agent. Another one of those airy-fairy new-age weirdos. I should have thrown her out on her cute little tooshy the first day she showed up here with a manuscript.”
“Nevertheless—”
“Nevertheless nothing. I bought the thing in good faith and it isn’t my fault if Steve Damon was a plagiarist. Or whatever his name was.”
Burnside turned angrily to Lindsey. “You’ve been awfully quiet this morning. What the hell does International Surety have to say for itself?”
Lindsey blinked. Lee J. Cobb with that unshaven cleft chin jutting out. “Our attorney, Mr. Coffman here, recommends that we settle with Marston and Morse. International Surety agrees. I’m sure we can negotiate a very reasonable settlement and there will be no lawsuit.”
“Oh, really?” Burnside leaned away from the others. For the moment he didn’t say anything else. His body language spoke clearly enough. But then he went on. “I’m not a quitter. I don’t fold under pressure. That’s the way I operate. It’s brought me this far and I’m not changing now.”
Lindsey looked at the ceiling. Now was the time to play bad cop. It wasn’t his style and he didn’t like to do it. But he would if he had to. “If you force their hand, Marston and Morse will sue Gordian House. And if that happens, I’m sure that Mr. Coffman will mount the best possible defense, but from what I have learned, you’ll probably lose. And if that happens, I can tell you right now, you will file a claim with International Surety, and International Surety will deny the claim.”
Burnside looked as if he was ready to explode. “Then I’ll sue International Surety. The shysters will have a field day but I’ll squeeze it out of I.S.!”
Lindsey looked at Coffman and said, “Eric, remember what you explained to me?”
Coffman looked at Kelly McGee and said, “Miss McGee, I know you’re up to speed on the concepts of due diligence and full disclosure. Would you please explain those to Mr. Burnside?”
She was, and she did.
It went on for a while. Finally it looked as if Burnside had got the message. Coffman nodded to McGee. McGee pulled a folder out of her briefcase and removed a form. It was a memorandum covering the events of the meeting. Obviously, either she had been a Girl Scout or her employer had been a Boy Scout; in either case, they were definitely prepared.
McGee handed the memorandum to Burnside and asked him to read it carefully and sign it.
“I don’t want to sign anything.”
“We really do need it.”
He muttered and lowered his face so he could read the memorandum without actually touching it. He looked up and announced, “I’m hungry.”
Coffman said, “Mister—”
“I never sign anything on an empty stomach. Never.” Burnside shoved the memorandum away from himself. It slid off the edge of his desk and was caught in a stray air current. Kelly McGee captured it and returned it to her briefcase.
Coffman said, “Will you excuse us for a moment, Mr. Burnside?” They moved to the outer office and the receptionist retreated to the editorial room that Lindsey had seen on his first visit to Gordian.
Lindsey said, “What do you think?”
Coffman tilted his head toward Kelly McGee.
McGee said, “Candidly? Candidly, this guy is either a moron, or an overgrown brat, or a shrewd operator.”
“And what do we do? What’s your recommendation, counselor?” Coffman had brought his cane with him from Burnside’s office and stood leaning on it. Lindsey was impressed by his recovery from his mugging, but still Coffman winced with pain when he moved.
Kelly McGee said, “We have to stick to our guns. Mr. Lindsey, you’re not going to change your position, are you? I mean, International Surety’s position?”
Lindsey shook his head. “He bought tainted goods. He published a book that belonged to somebody else. He’s in a hole and we have to make him stop digging before he hits the water table.”
They trooped back into Burnside’s office. He greeted them with, “I’m hungry.” He picked up his phone and hit a couple of buttons. “Sandwiches. Here, everybody write down your order, my girl will call out for sandwiches.”
Kelly McGee didn’t even bristle at “my girl.” No one but Burnside placed an order.
Waiting for his meal to arrive, Burnside left his own office. “I’ve got a business to run. I’ll be in Editorial. Don’t anybody touch anything. I’ll know if you do.”
Lindsey and Coffman and McGee exchanged shrugs until they heard a crash that shook the light fixtures in Burnside’s office. Then Jack Burnside’s roaring voice, indistinct but filled with rage, resounded from Editorial.
He slammed the door open and launched himself back into his swivel chair like a wrestler landing on a helpless opponent. “Where the hell is my lunch? I want my lunch!”
Burnside’s receptionist entered the room with a covered tray. She placed it on Burnside’s desk and removed the cover. Burnside tore into an overstuffed sandwich, dripping juice on the tray, on the papers on his desk, on his rumpled shirt and already-spotted tie. When he’d finished the sandwich he tugged the lid from a cardboard container. Wisps of steam and the odor of coffee emerged. Burnside lifted the container to his lips and slugged down its contents like a college boy chugging a can of beer.
