The Enemy Inside

THIRTEEN

When the knock on the door finally comes, I sputter and end up answering with a voice that sounds like Minnie Mouse. I cough and come down two octaves before I say, “Who is it?”

“Come on now, who do you think it is?” she says.

For a moment I consider sliding the security chain onto the door until I can find out who her friend is. But it probably wouldn’t do any good. The door looks like it’s made of cardboard. Besides, the chain might put her off, cause her to simply walk away. So I take a deep breath and open it, just a crack. “Hello.”

She gives me a studied eye. “You’re awful nervous.” She is nearly lost in the shadow of the man Herman spied from the window. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s about six foot five, sporting an upper body like a bull only with more hair on his chest. This seems to sprout up into a beard on a brooding face that would rival Neptune’s. The only thing missing from this picture is the trident. “Aren’t you going to invite us in?” she asks.

“Who’s your friend?”

“He’s my brother,” she says.

“Yeah, I can see the family resemblance.”

“He just wants to make sure I’m OK. Nothing to worry about,” she says. “As soon as he’s satisfied that I’m safe he’ll wait outside.”

“That shouldn’t have too much effect on my performance,” I tell her.

“Are you going to open up or not?” she says.

I ease the door open.

She smiles and slides around me through the opening and into the room while the guy’s eyes scan me up and down like an imaging machine. When he’s done with this, the big brown eyeballs do a quick roll around the inside of the room.

“Is he going to do a blood test?” I ask.

“That’s not a bad idea.” The guy says it with no humor in his voice. He just pushes past me, no ceremony, and heads toward the bathroom, the closed door with Herman on the other side.

“Hold on a second,” I say.

He turns and looks at me. “You got a problem?”

“We’re all going to have a problem if you open that door,” I tell him.

“Is that right?”

“Yes. Just listen to me for a second. My name is Paul Madriani. I’m an attorney. I’m working a case.” I reach into the inside pocket of my jacket.

“Keep your hands where I can see ’em,” he says.

When my fingers come out they are holding a business card. I hand it to him. He looks at it and then hands it to her.

“Are you with the police?” she asks.

“No. I’m a private defense attorney, criminal cases, but on the other side,” I tell her. “The man inside the bathroom is my investigator. We didn’t want to scare you off.”

“Yeah, right!” says her man.

Herman opens the door and steps out.

As soon as the guy sees him, the big black face staring back at him, he starts to bristle, spitting expletives, racial epithets about people hiding in woodpiles, while he flashes mean looks at Herman and me.

He squares up against Herman, tenses his body and widens his stance over the tactical boots on his feet, neck bowed as if he’s readying for combat.

“Calm down! Relax,” I tell him. “There is nothing bad going down here.”

“Are you packin’?” he asks Herman.

“No.”

“Lift your coat. I wanna see.”

Herman does it.

The man looks down around Herman’s ankles. “Lift ’em.”

Herman pulls up his pant legs to show that he has no weapon strapped to his ankles. First one, then the other.

The man turns to me. “You?”

I shake my head. “That’s not my gig,” I tell him.

He doesn’t bother to frisk me.

“What’s this about?” she asks.

“We are prepared to pay you,” I tell her. “For information.”

“Is this about the club?” she asks.

“No.”

“What then?”

“Can we close the door?” I look out through the open portal into the parking lot. “I’d rather not have the world looking in.”

The guy looks at her. She nods. “Go ahead,” he says.

I do it, walk over and close the door. “I admit it’s not much of a room. Not a lot of places to make ourselves comfortable,” I say, “but take a seat if you can find one.”

She settles onto the edge of the bed. The guy remains standing, as does Herman. Contest of the bulls.

I grab a chair, pull it toward the bed, and sit. “About three weeks ago there was an auto accident on a highway out in the desert. A woman was killed. A young man was arrested. He’s our client. You don’t know his name but you have met him,” I tell her.

She doesn’t say a thing. She just looks at me, steely eyed, chewing gum.

“You invited him to a party. You gave him a note telling him where this party was to take place and you told him you’d meet him there. But you never showed.”

The eyes start to shift and the chewing stops.

“Our client was drugged at this party and he was transported unconscious to the site of the accident.” I don’t couch it as belief, but fact, leading her to believe that we have more than we do. “The accident itself was staged.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Finally, a denial.

“Our client has identified you by photograph as the person who invited him to the party and who gave him the note with the location. He has said nothing to the police as yet. But if you refuse to cooperate, he’ll have no choice.”

“I. .”

“Don’t say anything, not yet. Just listen,” I tell her. “Our client has also described in particular detail that tattoo on your leg.” She looks down over the hem on the bottom of her micro-mini, one hand absently touching her naked thigh. “If you like, we can take the cops and have them talk to the artist who put it there. The man has a photograph of the tattoo with your name on file.”

“So what?” she says.

Two bullets and she is still holding up. I am running out of ammunition. “Now if you like, we can take the fingerprints we lifted off the note, the one with the directions to the party, and give those to the police as well.” I lie. It’s a whopper, but it stops her in her tracks like a dumdum round.

“You know what the cops are going to think?”

She shakes her head rather nervously.

“That you were part of this from the beginning. If the evidence we have is accurate, the victim in this case was murdered.”

The M word pushes her over the edge. “I don’t know anything about any murder. I didn’t drug anybody,” she says.

I turn and look at Herman. “I told you so. Herman here believed you were part of it. I told him I didn’t think so, that they probably used you just like they used our client. Hired you and didn’t tell you a thing. Didn’t I, Herman?”

“Got me there,” says Herman. “Owe you ten bucks,” he says.

By the look of relief on her face she would gladly front him the money for the wager right now. “That’s right,” she says. “He didn’t tell me anything.”

“Who?” I ask.

“The man with the cane.”

“What was his name?”

“I don’t know. He never gave me a name. If he did, I don’t remember. Besides, everybody lies about that.” She would be an expert on this.

“But he did hire you to deliver the note?”

If I listen closely I can hear the tinkle of crystal as she shatters.

“Yes, but that’s all,” she says. “He gave me the note and told me who to give it to. He said it was a joke. .”

“Tell me about him, the man with the cane.”

“I don’t know. He was maybe sixty, sixty-five, older guy,” she says. “Well dressed. Gray hair. He carried this cane, looked silver, you know, on the handle. Some kind of a bird. I don’t know. He gave me the note and a picture of this young guy, your client, I guess. I mean, if anything happened, I’m really sorry,” she says.

“Go on.”

“Well, that’s it,” she says.

“How much did he pay you?”

She swallows hard enough that I wonder if the gum went down. “I don’t remember,” she says.

“Maybe if the police ask it might jog your memory.”

“All right,” she says. “Two thousand. . twa. . twenty-five hundred dollars.”

Herman whistles. “FedEx is gettin’ screwed,” he says. “You think maybe their delivery people need shorter skirts?”

“We’ll put it in the suggestion box,” I tell him. “Where did you meet this guy, the older one with the cane? At the club?”

She nods, quick vertical head movements like the spring-bound head of one of those plastic puppies mounted on a dash.

“How many times did you meet him?”

“Once. Only the one time.”

“Upstairs or down?”

She knows what I mean. “We went up into one of the private rooms. He bought some champagne. You have to do that if you’re gonna go there.”

“Mm-hmm, go on.”

“We talked, that’s all.”

“He gave you the note, the picture of our client, and told you that you could find him where?”

“In front of the building where he worked.”

“He gave you that address as well. Did he write it down?”

“No. I knew the place. Big plaza downtown. I shop there sometimes.” She stops abruptly, glances toward the ceiling like a lightbulb just exploded and says, “You know, maybe you can get his fingerprints?”

“Whose?”

“The man with the cane,” she says. “You know, off the note.”

“I’ll work on that,” I tell her. “Did he say anything else?”

She thought for a moment. “Let’s see. He told me to give him the note. Invite him to the party. Tell him I would meet him there.” She ticks them off with her fingers counting them off like it’s a checklist, your five basic steps on how to hook the horny male. “And, oh, yeah, I forgot,” she says. “He told me that I was supposed to tell him that if anyone tried to stop him at the door, you know, the party. .”

“Yes.”

“That he was supposed to be seated at Mr. . ” Her voice trails off. She freezes up for a second like she can’t remember, then suddenly she smiles and says, “Mr. Becket. That’s it. That was the name. That he was supposed to say that he was to be seated at Mr. Becket’s table.”

“That was the name he gave you? Mr. Becket?”

“Yes. That was it.”

“Do you think he was Becket? The man with the cane?”

“I don’t know.” She says it with a lilt as if answering this is beyond her pay grade.

“You didn’t know anything about this party?”

“No.”

“Twenty-five hundred bucks seems like a lot of money,” I tell her.

“Listen. He told me it was a joke, on a friend. I had no idea,” she says.

“We’re going to need a written statement for the police.”

“The police?” she says. “I don’t want to get involved with the police.” She starts to get up from the bed.

I’ve said the P word-plague, police, it’s all the same thing to her.

“It’s the only way you can clear yourself,” I tell her. If I couch it in self-interest maybe she’ll sit down again. “Tell them what you know. That you had no idea what was going on. Otherwise they may think you’re involved.”

“I’m not talking to any cops,” she says. “I do that, I’ll lose my job.”

“OK. All right. But you can give us a written statement.”

She thinks about this. “I suppose. On condition that I don’t have to talk to the police.”

“Fine,” I tell her, as if a signed affidavit under penalty of perjury won’t have them knocking on her door.

“You said you were willing to pay.” Brutus standing at the end of the bed inserts himself as her business manager.

“Only if we have to,” I tell him. “It would be best if we didn’t. For our client as well as for Ben.”

She shoots me a startled look, surprised that I know her name.

“For legal reasons it would be better if no money changed hands on this.”

“No. That ain’t gonna work,” he says. “You’re gonna have to pay. Don’t tell them anything more and don’t sign anything. Not ’til we see the color of their money.”

“Who am I talking to, you or her?” I look up at him.

“Right now you’re talking to me,” he says.

“And what is it exactly that you can tell us that might be helpful?”

“I can tell you to jam it up your ass,” he says.

“Hey, hey. None of that,” says Herman.

“Tell your monkey man here to put a cork in it.” He looks at Herman and rolls the bow in his neck until it looks like a python crawled under his jacket.

“You know, we can go outside and monkey man here can get a hammer and fix that for ya,” says Herman. “What you need’s a good spinal adjustment and a colonic.”

“Who’s gonna do it? You?”

“Jeff, that’s enough!”

He looks at her. The muscles in his jaw relax just a hair so that he is no longer crushing his molars.

“I know what he wants. How much are you willing to pay?” she asks.

We’re back to this.

“What we talked about earlier.”

“Twelve-fifty?”

I nod.

She looks at him.

He gives her an expression as if to say, “it ain’t much” even though he was willing to sell her body for it ten minutes earlier. “Where’s the money?” he asks.

“At my bank,” I tell him. “The ATM.”

“See? They don’t even have the cash,” he tells her. “How were you gonna pay her for her services?” He turns this on me.

“I wasn’t.” He still doesn’t get it.