Hard Rain

Seven

The sightseeing tour over, we left Karli and Iyaz in the courtyard. On the way out, we said thanks to the uniform at the front door. I slipped twenty bucks into the guy’s jacket pocket without him knowing. I figured he’d earned it. He’d probably caught himself a night shift or two by being so helpful to us.

Just then, a cab pulled up out in the street. The rear doors opened and out stepped the two Army CID agents we’d met earlier that morning, Goddard and Mallet.

‘What the hell are they doing here?’ Masters enquired under her breath.

‘Beats me. Let’s ask them.’

‘Hey,’ Masters said as Mallet ambled towards her.

‘Hey,’ he replied. ‘How you doin’?’

‘Oh, you know, taking in the sights,’ she said. ‘How are you doin’?’

‘What she means is what the fuck are you doing here?’ I translated, keeping it light.

Mallet blinked, those little watermelon-pit eyes of his all but disappearing, the cogs in his brain jammed momentarily. ‘Well, y’all know how it is…’ he drawled when things started to turn again. ‘For all we know, there could be a dead body in a cupboard you haven’t thought to look in. I’ve heard you Air Force types have difficulty finding your own assholes on the toilet.’

‘Yeah, no need to be unfriendly, Special Agent Cooper,’ said Goddard. ‘We’re just familiarising ourselves with the case. Taking a look around, is all.’

‘This is me being friendly, Special Agent Goddard,’ I replied. ‘It’s just your partner reminds me of something I once saw in a museum formaldehyde bottle. Disturbing to see it walking around, is all.’

‘Any time, Cooper…’ Mallet added, pushing out his chin.

Goddard put a staying hand on his partner’s shoulder before turning back to face me. ‘Well, that’s okay, then. I wouldn’t want there to be any friction here.’ The smile stitched on his face strained at the sutures.

‘Me, either. Just so long as we understand each other,’ I said, stepping past him. ‘Oh, one thing…?’

Mallet paused on the steps leading up to the late Attaché’s house.

‘You didn’t ask any questions at the briefing this morning. Why not? You and Doctor Watson here got the answers figured already?’

‘Had none to ask, Cooper. None that weren’t plain dumb, like the ones you and Masters wasted everyone’s time with.’

‘Oh, so it was white noise, then,’ I said.

‘What?’

I left him to ponder. Masters and I walked half a block in silence to a main road that looked like it might spring a cab. One came along pretty much immediately. Masters asked the driver to drop us back at the Charisma, passing him one of the hotel’s cards as we climbed in.

‘You handled that well back there,’ she said.

‘You think?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘Maybe you didn’t notice it, but those guys aren’t exactly in the diplomatic corps.’

‘And I’m not sure you noticed it, but you started it.’

‘Well, you know what they say — first in, best dressed.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘Don’t know, but they say it.’

Masters shook her head and took to staring out the window.

‘Goddard and Mallet kicked it off just by hanging around,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what CID is doing here looking over our shoulders. I just let those guys know in the politest way possible that we can handle this. I don’t want them trampling over this case, getting in our way.’

She gave me a listless nod that lacked conviction. We sat in silence for a few blocks.

‘So, we’re heading back to the hotel,’ I said, implying we had a lot of work to do and all of it was in another direction.

‘After that drain, I need a shower,’ she replied. ‘And trust me, so do you.’

‘Surely you’re not suggesting we have one together?’ I asked, as I examined the palm of my hand. It was brown. It smelt brown too.

‘No, I’m surely not. And don’t try your anti-charm bullshit on me, Vin. I’m impervious to it.’

‘Anti-charm?’

‘Making non-PC propositions of a sexual nature — which could be considered harassment, by the way — in the mistaken belief that I might somehow become attracted to your caveman-like persona.’

‘Sounds like you’re coming down with something nasty,’ I said. ‘Lawyeritis, maybe. I didn’t know it was contagious.’

Masters sighed, the sort of sigh you might give a child who won’t stop asking you to do something you’ve said no to at least a dozen times already. ‘Take me through your two-killer theory. What makes you so sure?’

‘The wall safe,’ I said. ‘The damage to its door says some pretty powerful explosives were used to blow it. That means a lot of noise in a nice quiet neighbourhood populated by rich, helpful, community-minded, law-abiding citizens. And yet no one heard a damn thing. Forget cushions. Something far more effective was used to eat up the noise, something designed for the purpose. I’m thinking blast protection blankets — three, maybe. Those things weigh thirty to forty pounds apiece, so that’s a hundred-plus pounds right there. Add them to the weight of the hardware store used to dismantle Portman, getting up and out of the pipe with that heavy manhole cover… it says two assailants — one to pass the chisels, one to do the deed.’

‘Not three?’

‘Overkill. You could do it with two, and three’s a crowd, unless two of them are wearing negligées.’

Masters ignored the wisecrack. ‘Why wasn’t the other safe blown? And why weren’t any fibres from the blankets picked up by forensics on the cushions?’

‘Forget the cushions. They went nowhere near the safe or the blast blankets. And perhaps the blankets themselves weren’t fibrous. As for the floor safe, I still think maybe the killers just didn’t know it was there.’

She nodded, coming along for the ride. ‘Everything else was meticulous… the planning, the execution. Is it likely they’d have made such a blunder — missed that floor safe entirely?’ She chewed on her bottom lip and turned to face me. ‘Unless… what if Portman had had it installed recently? If he had, the safe wouldn’t have appeared on any plans or drawings of the property.’

Good point. No, it wouldn’t have.

‘And what if the killers had gotten hold of these plans from somewhere so they could case the place before they broke in?’ she continued. ‘Given the meticulous nature of the crime, that’s something I think they might have done.’ Masters sat back in her seat and watched the traffic flash by. ‘Might be an idea to find out who the leasing agent was,’ she added.

Yep, it might at that. ‘Any thoughts on why the killers might have left the murder weapons behind?’ I asked.

‘Perhaps they plain didn’t think the local cops would find them.’

Hmm… Karli and Iyaz weren’t NYPD, but they weren’t Keystone Kops either. The killers had to be working on the cache getting discovered. ‘I think the killers wanted their tools found,’ I said.

‘What purpose would that possibly serve?’

‘I asked you first.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Maybe they wanted us to find their gear so we’d think they weren’t as proficient as they obviously were,’ I suggested. ‘And I don’t think they left all their gear, just selective bits of it.’

‘Okay…’ Masters said, letting the thought sink in.

Our hotel lay across the water — not the Bosphorus, some other strait. I leaned forward in the seat and pulled from my back pocket a map supplied by the concierge. The Charisma was in the area called the Sultanahmet, the quarter occupied by the old kings of this joint, the sultans. According to the map, this stretch of water was called ‘the Golden Horn’. Sounded like a euphemism if ever I’d heard one.

We crossed the bridge, lined with fishermen trying to pull their dinner from the soup churned up by the incessant ferry traffic, turned right at a mosque and climbed the hill. The cab did a few lefts and rights and pulled up outside the hotel. I gave the driver a handful of notes and asked for a receipt as Masters got out. She leaned on the roof and put her head back in the door. ‘And just a suggestion, Vin. After you’ve had a shower, you might think about a change of clothes.’

‘What have you got in mind? Something tight?’ I asked.

‘No, more like something without holes in it.’

She gestured at my midriff, which I suddenly noticed was showing. The miracle stuff the cleaners had used had removed the stain on my T-shirt along with half the T-shirt.