Dark Angel (Lassiter/Martinez Case Files #2) Page 4

  “Let me check. Please hold.”

  Race listened to sappy elevator music for half-a-minute, then a man said, “Mr. Reidy, this is Sam Jacobson. I understand you want to meet with me this evening. Can you give me a bit more information?”

  “Of course, Mr. Jacobson. I represent an investor group that has just begun negotiations with the owner of a casino group. It is our policy to retain local counsel whenever we prospectively acquire property in a new community. I understand you are an experienced litigator. We would like to bring you on board our team in case litigation should become necessary.”

  “I see,” Jacobson said. “I would require a retainer agreement.”

  “That would be no problem. If you could prepare an agreement today and meet with me tonight, I can execute the agreement and write a check then.”

  “That sounds acceptable, Mr. Reidy. Do you have my office address?”

  “Yes. I’ll see you at 6:30.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Jimmy Frankel was an artist. He was the best paper hanger in Los Angeles. So, when Frank Armbruster met with him, it was initially just another day at the office for Frankel.

  “Tommy Malatesta says you’re the best there is,” Armbruster told Frankel.

  “The diamond merchant?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you know Tommy?”

  “Is that really important?”

  Frankel shrugged. “What can I do for you?”

  “I want passports, international drivers’ licenses, and credit cards that will pass muster for travel abroad. For two people.”

  “When do you need them?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “You gotta be shittin’ me.”

  “Nope.”

  “That’ll cost you extra. Twenty grand. Half now; half on delivery.”

  Armbruster handed over a stack of hundred dollar bills, passport photos of himself and of his girlfriend, and the aliases they planned to use. “Remember, I need everything by tomorrow.”

  Frankel nodded. “They’ll be ready.”

  After the call, an itch started at the back of Frankel’s brain. Something about Armbruster rang a bell in his memory. The man’s name was unusual and Frankel thought he’d heard it before. He shook his head as though that might jar his memory, but he couldn’t come up with anything.

  Frankel went to work on Armbruster’s documents and had completed everything but the passports by the time the sun had set. He picked up the passport photos and stared at them. The woman was a real looker. Armbruster was obviously hitting way out of his ballpark with her. Guy must have a lot of money, he thought.

  Then it hit him. Money. He looked at Armbruster’s passport photo again and concentrated on the warts on his cheeks and forehead. The guy had a veritable wart farm on his face. He remembered what Stan Bukowski had told him months before. Bukowski was a money launderer to whom Frankel had sold fabricated IDs for the day when Bukowski might have to jump the border to avoid American authorities. He had told Jimmy that some guy he called Wartface managed some of his money. Seven figures, he’d said.

  Frankel laughed. Looks like old Stanley Bukowski is about to get screwed, he thought. His investment guy apparently planned to skip town. Then Frankel thought how grateful Bukowski might be if he gave him a heads-up about Armbruster. He picked up his cell phone and dialed Bukowski.

  “Hey, Jimmy,” Bukowski said.

  “Hey, Stan. How they hangin’?”

  “What’s on your mind, Jimmy? I got no time to shoot the shit.”

  Frankel had a sudden urge to just tell Bukowski to go to hell. Arrogant bastard. But then he considered that he might need a favor from the man down the road.

  “ ‘Member that guy you mentioned to me? Called him Wartface?”

  “Yeah, what about him?”

  “Is his name Armbruster?”

  “What’s this about, Jimmy?”

  “Is that the guy?” Frankel asked.

  “Yeah. So what?”

  “I think you got a problem.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “Detective Lassiter, it’s Martin Wulfe.”

  “Hey, Wulfie, you got anything for us?”

  “Hmmpf,” Wulfe blurted, as he always did when someone addressed him by the hated nickname. “Yeah, I got something for you. The lab report came back on O’Neil. We also received the final results of the autopsy. O’Neil died of severe hypoxia.”

  Barbara put her phone on speaker and waggled a finger at Susan to come over to her desk. “It’s Wulfie,” she whispered.

  “Go ahead, Wulfie. Susan’s on the line, too.”

  “As I was saying, Sylvester O’Neil died from severe hypoxia that brought on a myocardial infarction. He ingested a significant amount of liquid heroin, which suppressed his breathing to the point of coma and then stopped his heart. If he had survived, he would probably have had massive brain damage.”

  “What about the tent peg?” Susan asked.

  “Inserted post-mortem. It was probably symbolic.”

  “So,” Barbara said, “someone forced O’Neil to swallow liquid heroin.”

  “Probably. It’s unlikely the deceased would have drunk the stuff voluntarily. It would have been possible, however. But the tent peg indicates something else entirely.”

  “You find any other forensic evidence?” Susan asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Barbara drove the Crown Vic from downtown to Albuquerque’s Jefferson Corridor. Victor Graves’s office was on the top floor of a sprawling three-story building located in an industrial park. The marquee on the front of the building announced New Mexico Herald-Tribune.

  “Nice digs,” Susan muttered as they entered the newspaper’s executive office area. The basketball court-sized space was all leather, oriental carpets, and expensive oil paintings. Even the receptionist—black dress, pearls, chignon hair style, black heels—looked expensive.

  Barbara flashed her ID. “I’m Detective Barbara Lassiter. This is Detective Susan Martinez. We would like to speak with Mr. Graves.”

  “Do you have an appointment, Detectives?”

  Barbara moved against the reception desk and glared at the woman. “No,” she said in an icy voice. “Why don’t you play nice and tell Mr. Graves two Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department detectives want to see him.”

  The receptionist broke off eye contact, picked up the telephone receiver on her desk, and punched in numbers. “Two detectives would like to see you, Mr. Graves,” she said. She listened for a few seconds, put down the phone, and said to Barbara, “Please follow me.” She led them to a small conference room off the reception area, pointed at the chairs at a small table, and said, “Mr. Graves will be right with you.” Then she turned around and left.

  “No…‘would you like a cup of coffee, ladies’?” Susan said. “Maybe if you’d been more pleasant.”

  “That was me being pleasant,” Barbara said.

  “You’re getting grumpy, partner.”

  “Dead bodies do that to me.”

  The door opened and a man entered. He was of medium height, trim, tanned, and well-dressed in a tailor-made navy-blue suit, brilliant-white dress shirt, and red power tie. Gold-framed glasses were perched on the end of his nose. He removed the glasses after he closed the conference room door and turned to look at Barbara and Susan, who stood and introduced themselves.

  “Victor Graves,” he said and shook their hands.

  Barbara focused on Graves’s eyes. Although he smiled as he took her hand, there was a deep sadness there.

  Graves sat and Barbara and Susan reclaimed their chairs. He said, “I assume this is about the murder of that bastard, Sylvester O’Neil.”

  “That’s right, sir,” Barbara said.

  “My reporter who wrote the story said O’Neil died of a drug overdose. Is that correct?”

  Barbara nodded. “There were drugs involved in his death.”

  “I hope he suffered,” Graves said.

  “We can under
stand how you feel, Mr. Graves,” Susan said. “But—”

  “You ever lose a child, Detective?” Graves asked.

  Susan shook her head.

  “With all due respect then, there is no way on earth you can understand how I feel.”

  “Mr. Graves,” Barbara interjected, “we have a murder on our hands and a job to do. O’Neil was a bad guy, but that doesn’t justify vigilantism.”

  “Vigilantism? Why do you think that? O’Neil was a low-life. Maybe he was involved in a drug deal that went bad.”

  “There was evidence that the murder could have been payback for something O’Neil had done.”

  Graves just glared at Barbara. The sadness in his eyes had hardened to a steely aspect.

  Susan said, “We hoped that you might be able to shed some light on who might have wanted to kill O’Neil.”

  “You mean besides me?”

  Barbara coughed. “You obviously had motive.”

  Graves nodded, closed his eyes, and compressed his lips. After a few seconds, he opened his eyes, and said, “Let me tell you ladies something. If I didn’t have a wife and two other children, I would have killed Sylvester O’Neil with my bare hands. I would have made him suffer the way he made Adam suffer.” He paused, looked down at his hands, and cracked his knuckles. When he looked up, his eyes were moist. “I hope you’ll never feel the way I do. I hope you’ll never experience the pain, the anger, the hatred I feel.” He paused again. “I swear I didn’t touch Sylvester O’Neil. I did not murder that sick bastard.” He looked from Barbara to Susan, then back to Barbara again. “Now, if you’re through here, I have work to do.”

  Barbara and Susan stood as Graves moved from his chair and half-opened the door. He stopped and turned back to them. “The next time you want to talk with me, call to make an appointment, so I can alert my attorney. I wouldn’t want to say something, whatever it could possibly be, that would assist you in identifying the person who killed O’Neil.” He added, “I consider the person who killed that monster a saint. I will be grateful to him or her for the rest of my life.”

  “Mr. Graves, I don’t—”

  He raised a finger to stop Barbara. “I’ve said enough. Have a good day.”

  Graves left the room. His “Ice Queen” receptionist then appeared in the doorway, and said, “May I show you . . . ladies out?”

  Back in the Crown Vic, Susan said, “You notice that Graves said he didn’t touch or murder O’Neil?”

  “Yeah. He also said he wouldn’t want to say anything that might help us ID O’Neil’s killer. How could he possibly say anything that might help us ID the killer if he didn’t hire the killer?”

  Susan shrugged. “And he never said that he had nothing to do with O’Neil’s death.”

  “You thinking that Graves had something to do with sending a killer after that scumbag O’Neil?”

  “No doubt in my mind. But we’ve got two problems. First, how to prove it.”

  “And second?” Barbara asked.

  “Do we want to?”

  CHAPTER 7

  Race spent part of the afternoon working on his disguise. He touched up his hair with black dye and used theatrical makeup to make his broken nose appear straighter, to cover the perpetual dark circles under his eyes, and to conceal the scars on his cheek and forehead. He put on a pony-tail extension, blue contact lenses, and tinted wire-rimmed glasses, and wrapped a padded waistband around his torso. Race Thornton no longer looked rugged. He now presented the appearance of a sloppy, out-of-shape college professor.

  Race arrived at Samuel Jacobson’s office at 6:30 with a briefcase in one hand and an overnight bag in the other. He bent over slightly to conceal his six foot, two inch height.

  “Mr. Reidy?” Jacobson asked when he greeted Race in the office reception area.

  “Please call me Walt,” Race said.

  “Thanks, Walt. My name is Sam.”

  “Thanks for staying late to meet with me. Looks as though everyone else left for the day.”

  Jacobson grinned. “The employees tend to abandon ship at 5 p.m., sharp. I’m usually here later than this.”

  Race smiled. “That’s the price of having your name on the door.”

  “How true. Let’s go to my office.”

  Race followed the lawyer to a well-appointed office that was large enough to accommodate a Volkswagen-sized desk that faced two straight-backed leather chairs. There was also a large bookcase crammed with law books, a separate seating area with a three-seater leather couch, two plush leather chairs, and a glass and brass coffee table. A bar was situated in a corner of the room near a door that Race guessed led to a private bathroom.

  “So, tell me which casino/hotel you’re targeting.”

  Race pressed back in his chair and crossed his legs. “I haven’t been honest with you, Sam. I’m not here to talk about casinos. It’s your clients, the three college football player-rapists, who bring me here.”

  Jacobson leaned forward and frowned. He pointed a finger at Race. “What the hell is this?”

  “It’s really quite simple, Sam. You did a bad thing when you helped set three rapists free. Your clients are loathsome people, and you’re just as vile for having worked with them. Now you’ve got the opportunity to make amends by doing the right thing.”

  “Get out of my—”

  The pistol that Race pulled from a shoulder rig under his jacket stopped the lawyer in mid-sentence.

  “Here’s how this will go, Sam. You’ll make phone calls to all three of your clients. You’ll tell them you need to see them right away, that you have some final papers they have to sign that you must take to the courthouse first thing in the morning.”

  “That’s bullshit. They know there are no other papers that need their signatures. I—”

  Race waggled the gun at Jacobson. “Then tell them the court misplaced the original documents and you want new papers filed to prevent a problem for them down the road.”

  “And what if I don’t do what you ask?”

  “First, I’m not asking. Second, if you don’t do what I want, I’ll shoot you and find another way to get to your clients.”

  “What do you . . . plan to do . . . with the boys?”

  “Boys, my ass. They’re two-hundred-fifty-pound men. What I plan to do with them is kill them for what they did to Rosa Puccini. They brutalized her and left her so traumatized that she will more than likely be institutionalized for the rest of her life.”

  “That doesn’t justify murder. You’ll be breaking the law.” Jacobson paused and then added, “You’re making me an accessory to murder.”

  “Gee, Sam, you were already an accessory to rape when you helped turn your clients loose. What’s a little murder?” Race stood and moved the gun to within a foot of the lawyer’s forehead. “Now, pick up your phone and call your clients.”

  “You’re working for the Puccini family, aren’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t know the Puccinis if they walked in here right now. I don’t work for anyone but myself. Ridding the world of assholes is what I do.”

  “You’ll kill me anyway.”

  “Actually, Sam, I should kill you for helping to set those animals free, but I won’t. You have my word on that.”

  “Your word?”

  “Yeah. Believe it or not.” Race took a long breath and then exhaled loudly. “Your time’s up.” He stretched his arm forward so that the muzzle was just inches from Jacobson’s nose.

  “Wait. Wait.” He vented a loud breath. “I need to get the file.”

  Race pulled a card from his shirt pocket and tossed it in front of Jacobson. “The numbers are on there.”

  Jacobson picked up the receiver of his desk phone and dialed the first number.

  CHAPTER 8

  Frank Armbruster used a small plastic scoop to pour his hoard of diamonds into a replica of a shaving cream canister. He bounced the can in one hand and marveled at how much wealth the stones represented. Then he placed the can into a
large shaving kit.

  Twelve years of work had yielded over one hundred twenty million dollars. The conversion of most of that cash into cut diamonds had cost him twenty million. And the sale of the stones in Amsterdam would reduce the proceeds by about another twenty million. By this time next week, he’d have eighty million dollars in cash to go along with the three million in bearer bonds in his briefcase. The numbers didn’t come close to Bernie Madoff figures, but Madoff was in prison. A warm rush ran through him when he thought how wonderful his life would be.

  “Frank, are you about ready to go?”

  Armbruster shuddered at the sound of his wife’s voice. He’d come to hate everything about the woman, even the cadence of her speech, the hoarseness of her voice, and absolutely everything about the way she looked. They’d been married twenty-five years. They were each forty-nine years old. But she looked sixty. Worse, she acted as though she were seventy.

  He picked up his suitcase and briefcase and walked down the stairs to where Betty waited.

  “All set?”

  “Yep.”

  She looked at her wrist watch. “We’d better hurry. You know what traffic is like this late in the afternoon.”

  “We’ve got plenty of time,” Armbruster said.

  The ride to Burbank Airport was uneventful. His wife dropped him at the terminal.

  “Call me when you arrive in Denver,” she said. “Hope the trip goes well.”

  “I’m sure everything will go fine. Always does.”

  She smiled at him as she closed the car trunk and he mounted the sidewalk outside the terminal. “Love you.”

  He smiled back. “Bye, Betty.”

  Armbruster waited ten minutes until his wife merged her car into traffic and disappeared. Then he walked to the curb. Two minutes later, Astrid pulled up in the Audi A8 he’d bought her and shot him a smile that warmed him all over. He felt a stirring in his groin and wondered why he’d waited so long to dump Betty.

  “Where to?” Astrid asked after he stored his bags in the trunk and dropped into the passenger seat.