I picked up another receipt and report and saw the same pattern-an August 29 account of a sixteen-thousand-dollar burglary on the night of the 28th, and an August 29 bank receipt for four thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars.
A third receipt and report showed the same, except the deposit occurred the day after the report.
“Wow,” I said. “Where did you get the reports?”
Monroe looked at me sideways. “I’m a cop,” he said. “Where do you think I got them?”
I looked over the papers on the desk. Monroe had done impressive work in lining up the information that could bring down Johnson. Bill Gubman had done impressive work in rigging the bank receipts so they would line up with the reports. “You think this will be enough to convince everyone?”
“I think so. Figuring that a couple of the construction sites overreported their losses, the bank total comes to about thirty percent of the value of the thefts. That’s roughly the same percentage we get when we deal with our buyer.”
I nodded, impressed again.
“I also checked the dates of the burglaries against the nights when our crew was working. No overlap. And I checked the dates against the work log. Johnson was off duty. He was on his own. I remember two of the dates in August. He said he was going out of town.”
“Looks like you’ve got him.”
He allowed himself a small smile. Then he said, “You should present the evidence tonight.”
I shook my head. “Why me?”
He numbered the reasons on the thumb and first three fingers of his left hand. “You found the bank receipts. You’re an outsider. No one thinks you’ve got anything against Johnson. And the guys all know Johnson and I have gone at it before and they’ll be suspicious of anything I say.” He touched his pinky. “Common sense. You present the evidence and then I step in.”
If that was common sense, I didn’t want any of it. “What happens to him after we show that he’s been ripping you off?”
Monroe looked down at the desk and arranged the receipts and reports into neat piles. “He disappears.”
I felt the ice in those words. Bill Gubman had told me about Victor Lopez, the kid who’d disappeared when he’d started talking too loud about the trouble Monroe was giving him. Nothing had been found of the kid, Bill had said, not even a bone fragment.
“How does he disappear?” I said.
Monroe looked me in the eyes with the mild smile. “I do a little magic.”
I knew better than to ask more. “You bury him?”
He said nothing.
“Sink him in the lake?”
Monroe said, “If you bury or sink him, he hasn’t disappeared, has he? Someone comes along with a shovel or a storm shakes him off the lake bottom, and you’ve got yourself a big problem.”
“How do you make it happen?”
His smile broadened.
Before he could tell me, there was a knock at the door.
He lifted a finger to tell me to hold on for a moment and said, “Yeah?”
The door opened and Finley stepped in. He held a Glock that looked a lot like mine but bigger. He pointed the gun at Monroe. Three other cops from Johnson’s crew stepped in beside him. One of them was Raj. One of the others held a second gun, which he pointed at me.
“What the fuck is this?” said Monroe.
“Stand up,” said Finley.
I stood.
“No,” said Monroe.
Finley went around the desk and held his gun to Monroe’s head. “Get up,” he said. He couldn’t have been calmer.
Monroe stood.
Finley patted him down, found nothing on him, and then removed a pistol from his desk drawer.
The other guy with the gun took my Ruger out of my over-the-shoulder rig and handed it to Finley.
I tried to catch Raj’s eyes. He wasn’t looking at me.
I said to Monroe, “What’s going on?”
Monroe looked unhappy. “We just got fucked,” he said.
TWENTY-FIVE
THE GUY WHO’D TAKEN my gun stuck his head out of the door and looked toward the hostess desk to make sure no one was watching. Then Finley hurried us into the hallway and down to the conference room. A dark-wood rectangular table stood in the middle with twelve black leather office chairs around it. The yellow carpet had crease marks from a recent vacuuming.
Finley led Monroe and me to a door with a key lock at the back of the room. It opened into a stairway with a single flight of stairs down to the floor under The Spa Club. On the wall just inside the door, a ladder rose to a trapdoor and, I figured, the roof. The ladder and the trapdoor looked original to the building. The stairs down looked like an afterthought, added when The Spa Club or an earlier tenant needed extra space.
We went down the stairs to another hall. Three open doors lined the left side of the hall, and at the end there was a heavy exit door. Finley walked us past the first open door. Unused furniture, a couple of mattresses, and an unplugged refrigerator crowded the room. The second door opened into a windowless space, empty except for an office chair. Finley and Raj pushed Monroe inside. Raj closed the door and locked it.
The third room was a twin of the second.
“In,” Finley said.
I stepped toward the door like there was no place I would rather go, then spun and lifted my knee into Finley’s gut. He made a sound like air blowing from a narrow-necked bag and fell to the floor. The door at the end of the hall was three or four steps away. If it was unlocked, I could be through it before Raj and the others realized what was happening. I spun toward it.
Then my feet were no longer on the floor. Someone had kicked them out from under me. As I fell, I looked and saw Raj. He’d knocked me down.
Finley was lying on the hallway floor, doubled over, moaning and swearing. I looked at him eye to eye.
Raj pulled me into the room and set me down next to the chair. As he stepped back into the hall, he faced me so only I could see him. He mouthed a word or two but I couldn’t read him.
Then the door slammed and a key turned in the lock.
I stayed on the floor for awhile, staring at the ceiling. The paint looked new but a thin line marked an old crack that was starting to show through. I traced the crack from one wall across the ceiling to another, then traced it back. The gray carpet was soft enough. Still, I stood up and looked around the room. There was nothing to see except the chair, metal legged with a vinyl seat cushion. And the walls, the cracked ceiling, and the carpeted floor. And the locked door.
The chair in the middle of the room was strange. Why had they bothered to put it in the room and another one like it in the next room? I kicked the chair leg. It was solid. Someone could be tied to a chair like that, I decided. And then someone else could hurt the person tied to the chair. Or maybe they put the chairs in the rooms so that we wouldn’t have to sit on the floor. Maybe they were being hospitable.
I liked that idea better. I sat on the chair.
I put my hands around the chair back to see how it would feel. Scary. I stood and went to the door. I looked at my watch.
It said 5:41.
In less than an hour and a half, Lucinda would climb through the stairwell to The Spa Club. Maybe in less time than that, Johnson’s crew would come back and tie me to the chair.
I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed Lucinda’s number.
Before it rang, a key sounded in the door lock and I hung up.
Finley stepped in, gun drawn. His face was a shade too pale and he bent like his belly was tender where I’d kneed him. He looked like he wanted to shoot me. He said, “Your phone.”
I handed it to him.
“Thank you,” he said and turned to the door.
“Sorry about the stomach,” I said.
He said nothing to that. He went out and locked the door behind him.
I paced the room. Five steps long, four steps wide. Six steps from corner to corner. I put in a mile or two, back and forth and around.