The Confessors' Club

SEVEN

News of Arthur Lamm’s disappearance had not yet hit the Internet, so I searched for more information on Grant Carson’s hit-and-run, the most recent of the deaths in the heavy cream. There was plenty of speculation over the impact his passing would have on his international conglomerate, but there were very few facts surrounding the hit-and-run, and no suspicion that his death had been premeditated murder.

On a day in early February, just after midnight, Grant Carson had pulled his Lincoln Town Car sharply to a curb, got out and was struck by a passing car. He was thrown twenty feet and died instantly. The police noted that by all appearances it had been an accident: Carson had stepped out of his car without checking for oncoming traffic; a car had struck him. Panicked, the driver sped away. The police were seeking anyone who might have witnessed the accident.

I phoned a dozen of my insurance company contacts to learn who’d carried policies on Carson’s life. I wasn’t interested in beneficiary information; I was hoping an insurance company’s private investigation had yielded more than the few facts the cops had released. It was the kind of work I used to do often, before I got tangled up in scandal. I struck gold nowhere, but got promises that others would ask around.

By now it was eight o’clock in the morning in California. I called Jenny. ‘I’ve got a job,’ I said.

‘A trip-canceling job?’

‘More like a trip-rescheduling job.’

‘It’s life or death, this case?’

‘I’m fearing that.’

‘What aren’t you telling me?’ Her newswoman’s antennae had picked up words I’d not used.

‘Amanda’s father is the client.’

‘And Amanda – she’s involved, too?’

‘Only to have steered me to her father. I’m working for him.’

‘We were going to have such an amazing four days,’ she said, dropping her voice.

‘I know.’

‘An amazingly lustful four days,’ she said, whispering now.

‘Oh, how I’d hoped…’ I said.

‘Oh, how I hope you’d hoped,’ she whispered one last time, and hung up.

Mercifully, in the next instant I got a call to change the direction of my thwarted naughty thoughts. It was from Gaylord Rikk. He worked for one of Carson’s insurers.

‘What’s your interest?’ he asked.

‘One of Carson’s rich friends asked me to follow up to see if anything new has been uncovered,’ I said, trying for casual.

‘Ask the cops.’

‘I will. What’s the status of your investigation?’

‘There is none. We’ve closed our file.’

‘So soon?’

‘It’s been over a month. The police have no leads.’

‘The area where Carson got hit is upscale, full of nightlife. It was only midnight. Surely someone saw something.’

‘Only midnight,’ Rikk agreed, ‘in a late-night district that’s full of Starbucks, young bucks and sweet girls.’

‘Nobody was headed home after a late last purple cocktail or out walking a designer dog?’

He gave me the sort of long sigh one gives an idiot. ‘Remember a few years ago, some young woman hit a homeless guy with her car, knocked him up over her hood and half through the windshield?’

‘Everyone remembers that.’

‘She drove all the way home with the guy stuck, head first, through her windshield. That was at midnight, too, when there were other cars on the road and people out walking. She pulled into her garage with the poor bastard still alive, his head and upper body leaking fluids into her car. He pleaded with her to get him help. Nope. She left him as he was and went into the house – though at the trial she assured the judge she did come out several times to apologize profusely to the guy for ruining his day, or whatever.’

It was the kind of thing I thought about, up on the roof in the middle of the night. ‘The guy finally bled out.’

‘The point is that she drove through town with the guy’s ass sticking out of her windshield, and nobody reported anything. She got caught only when she asked a few friends over to help remove the body. It was one of them who called the cops.’

‘Was is mechanical difficulty that forced Carson to the curb, or was he drunk?’

‘Neither. No mechanical problems, other than a right front wheel bent from hitting the curb. His blood alcohol was under the limit. He wasn’t drunk.’

‘You think he was forced over?’

‘And got out mad to confront another driver who’d stopped, or just to inspect his car for damage? Possible scenarios, both of them.’

‘Why get out at all? If his car was not drivable, why not call AAA or someone else for help?’

‘We don’t know. He had a cell phone. He didn’t use it.’

‘What about paint from the car that hit Carson?’

‘No sample was recovered from his body or the smashed-back driver’s door. Don’t trust what you see on TV. Paint doesn’t always transfer. Plus, the point of impact could have been glass or stainless or chrome-plated steel, or the car could have had one of those front-end bra things.’

‘One of those vinyl covers yuppies used to put on the fronts of their BMWs to protect against stone dings?’

‘You still see one, now and again,’ he said, ‘though most everybody knows they do their own damage, flapping against the paint. All I’m saying is there are all sorts of reasons why paint doesn’t transfer.’

‘The cops played it by the book, sent out alerts to body shops?’

‘Ideally, but there again, those bulletins work mostly on television. Hit-and-run drivers are ordinary people who freak out. They panic, stick the car in the garage and don’t open the door for anything. After a day or two of dry puking and no sleep, they get the idea to dump the car in a bad neighborhood with its keys in the ignition and report it stolen. It almost always works; the car gets boosted and stripped. Hit-and-run cars never get brought to legitimate body shops.’

‘Where did Carson have dinner?’

‘Somewhere north, I suppose, near where he was killed. He lives up that way, in Lincoln Park. The payout’s being processed, Elstrom. The case is dead.’

I called the Bohemian. ‘Any news on Arthur Lamm?’

‘Perhaps there’s been much ado about nothing. He has a camp somewhere up in the piney woods of Wisconsin. He does the real outdoors stuff: small boat, small tent, eating what he catches swimming in the water or crawling on the ground.’ The Bohemian’s tone of disgust made it sound like Lamm dined on roadkill. ‘Anyway, Arthur has some guy who stops in from time to time to check on the place. He said one of Arthur’s boats is missing.’

‘Meaning Lamm is off somewhere camping.’

He offered up a chuckle that sounded forced. ‘I might be imagining evil everywhere, in my old age.’

I asked if he could put me close to people who knew Barberi and Whitman.

‘I’m not just imagining, Vlodek?’

‘I like to be thorough.’

‘I’ll call you back.’

He did, in fifteen minutes. ‘Anne Barberi is at home. You can go right over.’

‘You told her what I’m looking into?’

‘Here’s the odd part: I didn’t have time. She interrupted, saying she’d receive you immediately. She’s anxious to talk.’