Lost Light

29

My dance with the federales was not totally for naught as I had led Peoples to believe. Yes, my chasing down of the tiny terrorist may have been a false lead but in any case there are always false leads. It is part of the mission. At the end of the day what I had was the full record of the investigation and I was happy with that. I was playing with a full deck-the murder book-and it allowed me to write off in my mind all that had occurred in the two days leading up to the point I got it, including my hours in lockdown. For I knew that if I was to find Angella Benton’s killer, the answer, or at least the key that would turn the case, would likely be sitting somewhere in the middle of that black plastic binder.

I got home from the federal building and came into the house like a man who thinks he may have won the lottery but needs to check the numbers in the newspaper to be sure. I went directly to the dining room table with my cardboard box and spread out everything I carried in it. Front and center was the murder book. The Holy Grail. I sat down and started reading from page one. I didn’t get up for coffee, water or beer. I didn’t turn on music. I concentrated fully on the pages I was turning. On occasion I jotted notes down on my notepad. But for the most part I just read and absorbed. I got in the car with Lawton Cross and Jack Dorsey and I rode through their investigation.

Four hours later I turned the last page in the binder. I had carefully read and studied every document. Nothing struck me as the key, the obvious strand to pursue, but I wasn’t discouraged. I still believed it was in there. It always was. I would just have to sift it from a different angle.

The one thing that struck me from the intense immersion into the documented part of the case was the difference in personalities of Cross and Dorsey. Dorsey was a good ten years older than Cross and had been the mentor in the relationship. But in their writing and handling of reports I sensed strong differences in their personalities. Cross was more descriptive and interpretive in his reports. Dorsey was the opposite. If three words summed up an interview or a lab report, then he went with the three words. Cross was more likely to put down the three words and then add another ten sentences of interpretation of what the lab report or the witness’s demeanor meant. I preferred Cross’s method. It had always been my philosophy to put everything in the book. Because sometimes cases go months and even years long and nuances can be lost in time if not set down as part of the record.

It also made me conclude that maybe the two partners had not been close. They were close now, inextricably linked in department mythology as keepers of the ultimate bad luck. But maybe if they had been close that moment in the bar, things would have been different.

Thinking about what could have been made me remember Danny Cross singing to her husband. I finally got up and went to the CD player and put in a disc of the collected works of Louis Armstrong. It had been put out in unison with the Ken Burns documentary on jazz. Most of it was the very early stuff but I knew it ended with “What a Wonderful World,” his last hit.

Back at the table I looked at my notepad. I had written down only three things during my first read-through.

$100K

Sandor Szatmari

The money, stupid

The company that had insured the money on the movie set, Global Underwriters, had put up a $100,000 reward for an arrest and conviction in the case. I hadn’t known about the reward and was surprised that Lawton Cross hadn’t told me. I guessed that it was just another detail that had escaped from his mind due to trauma and the passage of time.

The fact that there was a reward was of little personal consequence to me. I assumed that since I was a former cop who at one time was involved in the case, albeit before the heist that spawned the reward, I would not be eligible for it if my efforts resulted in an arrest and conviction. I also knew that it was likely that the small print on the reward proclamation said that full recovery of the $2 million was required for collection of the hundred thousand, with the amount prorated according to the amount of recovery. And four years after the crime the chances of there being anything left to recover were small. Still, the reward was good to know about. It might be useful as a tool of leverage or coercion. I might not be eligible but I might encounter someone useful who would be. I was glad I found out about it.

Next on the notepad was the name Sandor Szatmari. He or she-I didn’t know which-was listed as the case investigator for Global Underwriters. He or she was someone I needed to talk to. I opened the murder book to the first page, where investigators usually kept a page of most often called phone numbers. There was no listing for Szatmari but there was for Global. I went into the kitchen to get the phone, turned down Louis Armstrong on the CD player and made the call. I was transferred twice before I finally got a woman who answered with “Investigations.”

I had trouble with Szatmari’s name and she corrected me and then told me to hold. In less than a minute Szatmari picked up. The name belonged to a he. I explained my situation and asked if we could meet. He seemed skeptical, but that might have just been because he had an accent from Eastern Europe that made him hard to read. He declined to discuss the case over the phone with a stranger but ultimately agreed to meet me in person at ten o’clock the next morning at his office in Santa Monica. I told him I’d be there and hung up.

I looked at the last line I had written on the notepad. It was just a reminder of an old adage good for almost any investigation. Follow the money, stupid. It always leads to the truth. In this case the money was gone and the trail-other than blips on the radar in Phoenix and involving Mousouwa Aziz and Martha Gessler-had gone cold. I knew that left me one alternative. To go backwards. Trace the money backwards and see what came up.

To do that I needed to start at the bank. I checked the phone number page in the murder book again and called Gordon Scaggs, the vice president at BankLA who had arranged the one-day loan of $2 million to Alexander Taylor’s film company.

Scaggs was a busy man, he told me. He wanted to put off meeting with me until the following week. But I was persistent and got him to squeeze me in for fifteen minutes the next afternoon at three. He asked me for a callback number so his secretary could confirm in the morning. I made up a number and gave it to him. I wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to have the secretary call me back and tell me the meeting had been canceled.

I hung up and weighed my options. It was late afternoon and at the moment I was clear until ten the following morning. I wanted to take another run at the murder book but knew I didn’t need to be sitting in the house to do that. I could just as easily be sitting on a plane.

I called Southwest Airlines and reserved a flight from Burbank to Las Vegas, arriving at 7:15, and a return flight leaving early the next morning and arriving at 8:30 back at Burbank.

Eleanor answered her cell phone on the second ring and seemed to be whispering.

“It’s Harry. Is something wrong?”

“No.”

“Why are you whispering?”

She spoke up.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize I was. What’s going on?”

“I’m thinking about coming over there tonight to get my bag and my credit cards.”

When she did not respond right away, I asked, “Are you going to be around?”

“Well, I was going to play tonight. Later.”

“My plane gets in at seven-fifteen. I could come by around eight. Maybe we could have dinner before you go to play.”

I waited and again it seemed like she was taking too long to respond.

“Dinner would be nice. Are you staying overnight?”

“Yeah, I’ve got an early flight out. I have some things to do over here in the morning.”

“Where are you going to stay?”

There was as clear a signal as any.

“I don’t know. I didn’t reserve anything yet.”

“Harry, I don’t think it would be good for you to stay here.”

“Right.”

The line was as silent as the three hundred miles of desert between us.

“I know, I can get you comped at the Bellagio. They’ll do it for me.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks, Eleanor. You want me to come to your place after I get in?”

“No, I’ll come pick you up. Are you checking luggage?”

“No. You already have my bag.”

“Then I’ll be parked out in front of the terminal at seven-fifteen. I’ll see you then.”

I noticed she was whispering again but I didn’t say anything about it this time.

“Thanks, Eleanor.”

“Okay, Harry, I need to juggle some things to get free tonight. So I’m going to go. I’ll see you at the airport. Seven-fifteen. Bye.”

I said good-bye but she had already hung up. It sounded as though there was another voice in the background just as she disconnected the call.

As I thought about this, Louis Armstrong started singing “What a Wonderful World” and I turned it up.