Ah, Treachery!

Chapter 27

The next morning at 5:23 A.M., as if on schedule, Edd Partain heard the faint clink from the kitchen of cup against saucer. He again rose silently from the sleeping Jessica Carver’s bed, pulled on his pants and plaid robe and went barefoot into the kitchen where the Braun coffeemaker was at work and General Winfield already had set out two cups and saucers.

They muttered their good mornings and silently watched the machine dribble coffee into the glass pot. When there was enough for two cups, the General filled one, handed it to Partain, then filled his own. They took seats at the old scarred breakfast table and neither spoke until after their first few sips.

The General said, “Patrokis called me around midnight at the hospital. Three A.M. his time. Henry Viar is dead. The Washington police think it was suicide. Patrokis disagrees — privately. He thinks someone shot Viar through the heart, using Henry’s own weapon. A thirty-two semi-automatic.”

“I’m sorry,” Partain said, surprised that he really was. “Who found him?”

“His daughter. Shawnee.”

“When?”

“Around four-thirty P.M. East Coast time. One-thirty Pacific time. She must’ve discovered him while we were at lunch with Mr. Kite.”

“The daughter called you at VOMIT and got Nick instead?”

The General nodded.

“Well, Nick’s certainly the expert on suicide.”

The General nodded again, sipped more coffee and said, “Henry left a brief unsigned note in his typewriter. It read, ‘Had enough? Try suicide. I did.’ ”

Partain shook his head. “Sounds like somebody trying to sound like Viar.”

“So it does,” the General said, rose, went to the coffeemaker, poured himself a fresh cup, warmed up Partain’s, resumed his seat at the table and said, “There’s more. It involves Shawnee Viar and Colonel Millwed.”

Partain started to say something, decided not to and listened silently for four minutes to the General’s report, which was a concise, dispassionate tale of motel sex in the afternoon, including an account of how Shawnee Viar obtained a copy of the tape.

When he finished, Partain asked, “She went straight home from the motel?”

“Yes.”

“Then Millwed couldn’t’ve—”

“No,” the General said, interrupting, “he couldn’t’ve. Patrokis suspects that whoever was operating the camera in the next motel room gave Millwed a ride back to his car. The Colonel had left it at the Last Call, according to Shawnee. That’s a bar almost in Bethesda. Know it?”

Partain shook his head. “I don’t know Washington that well.”

“Patrokis says the distance would’ve made it impossible for Mill-wed to have killed Viar.”

“Why the hell would Millwed want to kill him? Hank was probably their errand boy, their gofer, their on-call dissembler. If Millwed’d wanted to kill somebody, it’d be Shawnee Viar so he could get his tape back.”

“Patrokis thinks it may have been whoever stole the photograph.”

“What photograph?”

“Of Viar, Millwed, Colonel Walker Hudson and you. In El Salvador.”

“What does a photograph prove?”

Winfield sighed. “That’s what I asked Patrokis.”

At 8 A.M. the telephone in Millicent Altford’s living room rang. General Winfield, Jessica Carver and Partain were all in the room, sharing various sections of the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. Because Partain was closest, he answered the phone with a hello.

“This is Emory Kite,” the deep growling voice said. “I got a report on Jack, the dead doorman. You want it by phone or in person?”

“How do we pay you over the phone?”

Kite chuckled. “You’ll pay me. That’s my business. Making people pay up.”

“We’d like it in person.”

“Okay,” Kite said. “How ’bout right away?”

“Right away’s fine,” Partain said.

Kite sat in an easy chair with the glass of orange juice he’d accepted after turning down an offer of coffee. Seated on a couch were Partain and Jessica Carver. General Winfield occupied an easy chair opposite Emory Kite.

The short detective drank half of his orange juice, put the glass down on a table and addressed General Winfield. “I don’t know if the lady’s supposed to hear all this.”

“She is,” the General said.

“Okay, then. Here we go: John Byford Thomson with no ‘p.’ Born January thirty-first, nineteen-sixty, Boulder, Colorado. Son of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Clark Thomson; he, insurance salesman; she, housewife. One younger brother, one older sister, both married. Jack had two years at the University of Colorado, majored in speech, whatever that is, and minored in Spanish. Quit college to take a staff radio announcer’s job at KOA in Denver. That was in nineteen. Fired, nineteen-eighty-three, NRG.”

“What’s NRG?” Jessica Carver said.

“No reason given,” said Kite and went on with his no-notes report. “Hired by Golden Assets, Inc., a boiler room outfit that peddled penny stocks by phone. Jack apparently gave good phone because he stayed with Golden Assets till the state closed ’em down eighteen months later. Thomson must’ve saved a few bucks because he went to Mexico, lived mostly in Guadalajara and claimed to be an independent travel consultant, whatever that is, until the Mexicans kicked him out in nineteen-eighty-nine. By nineteen-ninety he’s here in L.A., where he hooks up with a woman agent who gets him a little acting work, mostly two- and three-line stuff in TV pilots that never went anywhere.

“She also gets him some radio commercials and TV voice-overs, but never enough to live on. But Jack joins the Screen Actors Guild and then, in nineteen-ninety, a little over two years ago, goes to work here as night doorman. He never had any bank accounts or credit cards, but he did join the SAG credit union. His salary here at the Eden was fourteen hundred a month, plus tips.

“Well, he starts depositing one hundred, two hundred, and once or twice even three hundred in his credit union account every month. I figure it’s his tips or maybe radio money. All this time he’s living in this crummy studio apartment just off Pico in west L.A. Drives an ’81 Honda Civic. But on November fifth last year he deposits five thousand cash in his credit union account.

“Jack’s got no steady girlfriends, no boyfriends, no priors, but he still gets shot dead two nights ago just outside here down by the front entrance. Thirty-caliber round. Cops think it’s some kind of sporting rifle. His folks in Boulder want him cremated and his ashes shipped home to them. I guess the only thing really interesting about Jack was his time in Guadalajara, but that’ll cost you an extra two-fifty because that’s what I hadda wire a private cop down there that speaks English. The interesting stuff is that our friend Jack wasn’t just running a travel consultant business. He was also running a stud service and blackmail game on his mostly middle-aged women clients. After the Mexican cops listen to a few of the girls’ complaints, they tell Jack to take the next flight out. He catches the bus instead.”

Emory Kite stopped talking, looked around the room and said, “Any questions?”

“What do the L.A. cops think?” Partain asked.

“Well, they don’t exactly confide in me, but a guy they do talk to told me, for two hundred bucks, that they’ve almost decided to write it off as another random drive-by shooting. But an upscale drive-by, what with that limo and all.”

“Just another homicide, then,” the General said.

“Doesn’t mean the homicide guys aren’t gonna work on it,” Kite said. “But it’s not way up on their must-solve list.”

“What do you think, Mr. Kite?” Jessica Carver said.

He looked at her thoughtfully. “Well, if it was me looking into it, I’d try and find out where that five thousand cash money came from. Your friend Jack lived sorta like a hermit — except for his making the rounds looking for acting work. He seemed to do his job here okay. No complaints from management. He saved his money. Drove an old clunker. Didn’t do dope. Didn’t drink a lot. Went to the pictures in the afternoon when they’re cheap. Didn’t spend a lot on clothes, but out here you don’t have to. Pair of jeans and a nice clean T-shirt out here and you’re all dressed up. So where does the five thousand cash money come from? About the only thing I could think of is maybe he made a porn picture.”

“That wouldn’t have done his career any good,” she said.

“What career?” Kite said, finished his orange juice, stood up, looked at the General and said, “Anything else?”

Winfield rose, produced a plain white envelope from his breast pocket, added a $50 and four $100 bills to it, walked over and handed it to the detective. “Thank you, Mr. Kite. You were very efficient. We appreciate it.”

“Glad to be of help.”

The General asked, “Are you going back to Washington now?”

“Haven’t decided yet. All depends on how things work out.” He nodded goodbye to Carver and Partain, turned, left the room and, from the foyer, called, “See you back in Washington, General.”

There was a silence after Kite’s departure that lasted until Jessica Carver said, “Four years in Guadalajara?”

“How long’d your friend Dave Laney been going down there?” Partain said.

“Five or six years.”

General Winfield sighed. “Guadalajara is a very, very large city with an extraordinarily large North American population. There is no evidence whatever that the doorman and your friend ever met there.”

“But it sure makes things neat, doesn’t it?” she said. “First Dave is dumped out dead on the driveway here. Then a day later, somebody waits in a limo across the street and takes out Jack. Drive-by shooting — like hell. A witness removal program is what it looks like.”

“Witnesses to what, Jessica?” the General said.

“To whatever the fuck’s going on here,” she said, then turned to Partain. “To whatever the fuck it is Ma hired you to find out.”

“She hired me to provide her with security.”

“From what? I mean, who’re the danger guys?”

“I don’t know,” Partain said.

They stared at each other for a long moment, then Partain turned and left the room, heading for the kitchen.

Jessica Carver turned back to the General. “Is he really as good as you and Millie seem to think he is?”

“He may even be better than that,” the General said.