Finley picked up a phone, punched a few keys, and said, “We’re ready.” He did this once more, and a minute later the guy who’d been manning the video monitors came in. Then the door in the back opened and two more men accompanied Johnson into the conference room. Johnson sat in the one remaining chair and the two men stood behind him.
Johnson looked around the table like he was measuring each person. When his eyes rested on me, his lips curled into a slightly amused smile.
TWENTY-NINE
FINLEY LEANED BACK, LOOKED at Lucinda, then me and Monroe, and said, “Okay, Bob, tell us what you’ve got.”
Monroe said, “Do you have the reports and bank receipts?”
Finley reached down to the carpet and brought up a leather case. He took out a stack of stapled packets. “Copies for everyone.” He passed the packets around the table.
I figured everyone had seen what was in them already but Monroe waited until the shuffling of pages stopped. He said, “Two days ago, Joe brought me some bank receipts. He got them before he joined us, when he was investigating us for a group of clients that included the developers of Southshore Village. The receipts worried me,” he said and looked at Johnson. “They angered me. Earl handpicked most of us, me included. And when we agreed to join him, we had a clear understanding. We’d work together. No freelancing. No cutting each other out of a good thing.” He looked from face to face at the rest of the crew. “We’ve all been cops long enough to know that’s what the stupid guys do, the ones we catch after one or two robberies because they turn on each other and fuck each other up.”
Some of the other guys nodded.
Monroe looked at Johnson again. “But that’s what he’s been doing. He’s been fucking us up, every one of us. So I did a little digging. I got the reports for the robberies we didn’t do but that looked like what we were doing. As you can see, the dates match the receipts.”
The guys in the crew paged through the packets and murmured. Except Johnson. He sat stone-faced and silent.
Monroe moved in for the kill. “I also remember what Earl told me when he asked me to join him. He said he’d stand by me no matter how bad the heat got, unless I crossed him by going solo and pocketing money for myself. If I did that, he said there’d be no forgiveness. I didn’t have to ask him what he meant. I understood. I’m guessing he said the same thing to each one of us here, and I’m guessing you understood too.”
More guys nodded.
Finley turned to me. “How did you get the bank receipts?”
Part of me wanted to admit that Bill Gubman had fabricated the receipts and handed the stack of them to me. I felt like the building would fall down under us if I told the truth and maybe that would be good. I said, “A woman who hired me to locate her missing son has access to credit, banking, and mortgage records. Her son was dead when I found him but she was grateful anyway. I call her from time to time when I need information.”
“What’s her name and where does she work?” Finley said.
I shook my head. “Sorry.”
He looked angry but spoke calmly. “I didn’t ask if you want to tell me. I asked what her name is.”
Again I shook my head. “When Southshore Corporation hired me, I started off by staking out the construction sites I figured you would hit. I always got it wrong. If I went to a place on the Northside, you would hit the Westside. If I went to the Westside, you would hit downtown. But one night I got lucky. I was half asleep outside a depot near the airport when a white van pulled up and a man got out and cut the lock off the gate. He was alone, and, when he turned to get back into the van and drive inside, I couldn’t believe what I saw. The man was Earl Johnson, and I’d known Earl since we went through the academy together.” Like a shark that keeps swimming, I figured if I kept talking I would stay alive. I said, “After that night, my job got easy. Instead of staking out construction sites and hoping to get lucky, I just followed Earl. Sometimes he went out with the crew, and sometimes he went out alone. I figured he was ripping off the rest of you guys. But that wasn’t my worry. Not then. Not yet.”
The room was quiet. Then Finley asked again, “What’s the name of the woman who gave you the receipts?”
I showed him my palms. “Sorry.”
He nodded to the two men who were guarding Johnson. One of them walked around the table and came up behind me.
I braced for what would come next.
“She’s my aunt,” Lucinda said. “Her name is Marta Navarro and she works for a credit company. I sent her to Joe when my cousin disappeared. I can give you her number.”
“What is it?” he said.
“It’s in my cell phone-which you took away from me.”
The man behind me said, “Want me to get it?”
“Later,” Finley said. He nodded at Lucinda and asked me, “How does your partner fit in?”
“She doesn’t,” I said. “She came as backup last night in case anything went wrong when Bob and I showed you guys what we’d found. I wouldn’t have asked her to come if I’d known how bad things would turn out.”
He turned to Lucinda. “Is that right?”
She said, “Joe’s my partner. I’m involved in what he’s involved in. I know what he knows.”
I said to her, “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
“Too late,” she said.
Finley turned to Monroe. “What else do you have?”
“What else do you need? Earl ripped you off. He ripped me off. The receipts and the reports tell you that. I can’t tell you anything different.”
Finley nodded and set his eyes on Johnson. “Earl?”
Johnson spoke softly. “That was very impressive. Total bullshit, but impressive.”
“You can prove that?” Finley asked.
“Why should I? Like Bob said, I handpicked you guys. You trusted me when you joined me. You should trust me now when I tell you it’s bullshit.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that, Earl,” Finley said.
“And if I do? What happens if I show you that everything Bob and Joe and Joe’s little friend have told you is shit?”
Finley shrugged. “Like Bob said, we all understood what would happen if any of us crossed the others. That applies to Bob and it applies to you.”
Johnson turned to Monroe and said, “Are you good with that, Bob?”
Monroe didn’t hesitate. He said, “I’m good.”
Johnson turned back to Finley. “Go into my office. Look in the file cabinet-second drawer from the bottom. You’ll find a folder of credit card receipts. Bring it to me.”
Finley nodded to the man who stood behind me and he left the room.
For two or three minutes, we sat quiet. I felt calm, mostly. The records that Bill Gubman had given me would line up with times and dates when Johnson would have no alibi. Bill had made sure of that. Still, I wondered what Johnson was up to.
The man came into the room and handed a file folder to Johnson.
Johnson said, “Let’s work from the present backward. Give me the dates of the reports and bank receipts in October.”
Finley read the dates, then said, “If I remember, you weren’t around that weekend. You said you were going out of town.”
“And so I did,” Johnson said. He dug through the folder until he found a receipt, which he passed to the man next to him. The man said, “Fuck,” and handed it on. When Lucinda got it, her face flushed. When Monroe got it, his fell a little. He handed it to me. It was a Visa receipt for the Golden Crown Paradise Resort in Puerta Vallarta. The dates extended a day on either side of the records we’d given to the group. Johnson’s signature was at the bottom.
When the receipt reached Finley, he asked Monroe, “How do you explain this?”
Monroe looked at me, and I said, “It’s phony.”
Johnson smiled and said, “These too?” He passed around a small stack of credit card receipts for Puerta Vallarta restaurants and a dive shop.