“Your birthday?”
“Who remembers Mama’s birthday?”
“Then Dave could’ve accidentally run across it.”
“It wouldn’t have been an accident.”
“Probably not,” Partain said, paused, then asked, “You discovered the money was missing the day after the election.”
She nodded. “November fourth.”
“Where were you the evening and night of the election?”
“After wandering for twelve years in the political wilderness? Out celebrating.”
“Had a drink or two, I imagine.”
“Five or six.”
“Get home late?”
“Very late. About three A.M.”
“Fall into bed?”
“Managed to get my clothes off first.”
“Then Dave could’ve flown in that afternoon or evening, opened the safe anytime after one A.M. when Jack, the night man, got off, then been back in Guadalajara by midmorning, noon at the latest, before anyone knew he was gone.”
“Then where’s my one-point-two million?”
“What’s five percent of that?” Partain said.
The number came first, followed instantly by rage. “Sixty thousand dollars — just about what he dumped on Jessie’s bed. The son of a bitch stole my money on commission, then mooched off my daughter. What a piece of shit.”
Partain merely nodded and said, “You ever give Jessie a key card to the building and your place here?”
“When I first moved in. Sometimes she’d stay a weekend or even a month, if she was between jobs. But three or four months ago she wrote she’d lost it and told me to get the locks changed or whatever they do when a key card’s lost. I just never got around to it.”
Partain reached into his pocket and brought out the key card he’d removed from the dead Dave Laney’s mouth. Altford stared at it for a moment, then asked, “Where’d you get that?”
“Somebody stuck it in Dave’s mouth.”
“What’s it supposed to be — a threat? A warning? A curse?”
“It’s supposed to make you worry about what it is.”
“What I need to know is who the fuck put Dave up to it? Who talked him into stealing one million two hundred thousand dollars for a lousy five percent commission?”
“Someone who wanted the money, knew about it and had a total lock on Dave.”
“Okay. You’re my security wizard. What do I do now?”
“Call in reinforcements.”
“Aw, hell, Partain. Who?”
“Your old flame, General Winfield.”
“Why? I mean, why him?”
“Because he’s a preeminent authority on Major General Walker Hudson.”
“What’s a serving Army general got to do with me and my money?”
“For one thing, he’s Dave’s uncle. For another, he’s the guy I beat the shit out of down in El Salvador.”
Chapter 17
The century-old red brick house was a tiny two-story affair in the 400 block of Fourth Street, Southeast, and a pleasant stroll from the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Capitol building and the birthplace of J. Edgar Hoover.
It was owned free and clear by Emory Kite, the private investigator, who sat on a red plush couch as old as the house itself, counting $50,000 in $100 bills onto a marble-top table with carved griffin legs that clutched glass balls in their claws.
It was 7:14 A.M. and Kite was still wearing a much too long green velvet bathrobe or dressing gown that Colonel Ralph Millwed thought made him look like one of the more unsavory Disney dwarfs. Grumpy, the Colonel decided, running through the seven names as he watched Kite count the money quickly, even expertly, licking his right forefinger after every tenth bill.
Once he reached the five hundredth bill, Kite replaced the ten banded packets in the big brown paper Safeway bag they had arrived in and folded the sack’s top over three times, securing it with an enormous blue plastic paper clip.
Now cradling the bag, he wriggled backward on the couch until his short legs almost stuck straight out beneath the green robe. Kite gave the money a pat that was almost a caress and said, “When?”
“You have seventy-two hours,” the Colonel said.
“Not enough. Not near enough.”
“Make do,” the Colonel said.
“L.A.’s one big town, Ralphie. I gotta get situated, do some tracking, run the routes, figure the percentages. It all takes time.”
“Do it within three days and you get another fifty thousand. If it takes more time than that, you get just what’s in the sack.”
“How about expenses?”
“You get expenses no matter what.”
Kite turned the corners of his wide mouth down, forming the twin hooks that Millwed had come to despise because they often meant the little shit had just thought up something elaborate, expensive and probably too good to turn down.
“How’d you like the way my Mexican friends out there handled that rush-rush order?” Kite said.
“I didn’t know they were Mexicans.”
“Yeah, well, they’re actually Mexican-Americans, but how d’you think they handled it — the nephew thing?”
“They did what they were paid to do,” the Colonel said, smiled slightly, then asked, “Do they need a letter of reference?”
“No, but while I’m there, I thought I might use ’em as backup out of my own pocket.”
“Emory,” the Colonel said, his voice nearly toneless but full of warning.
Kite widened his eyes until they were brimming with feigned innocence. “What?”
“You will not under any circumstances subcontract this thing. Understood?”
“Never crossed my mind. I’m talking backup — contingency stuff. The General wants a custom job and I’ll do it just the way he likes. Set your objective, he used to tell me, then ram straight toward it. That’s the way he likes a job done and the Captain and Mrs. Central America are a good example of it. So’s the General’s nephew. And you gotta admire the General for that because I can’t even imagine what it must’ve cost him. I don’t mean money. I mean the way it must’ve made him feel.”
“He felt nothing,” the Colonel said.
“I can’t believe that, Ralphie,” Kite said, obviously believing every word. “His own nephew.”
“General Hudson long ago decided that remorse and regret are counterproductive emotions. Once he decided that, he had his removed.”
Kite chuckled. “That’s a good one. But you know what I hear? I hear that before he went to Vietnam, way back when he was a lieutenant or captain, he had his appendix out even though it wasn’t bothering him. He must’ve figured coming down with appendicitis way out in the boonies would’ve been sort of, like you say, counterproductive. So maybe while they were taking out his appendix, they also cut out his remorse and regret glands. What d’you think?”
“I think you’d better get to the point, if there is one.”
“The point is Twodees.”
“He bothers you?”
“Him? Nah. But after he’s fixed, I figure he’ll be the last one — the last you guys’ll have to worry about anyway. Then it’ll only be me, you and the General who know what happened to those two kids from El Salvador, the nephew and Twodees.”
“Get to it, Emory.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking — and I’d like your advice on this — but what I’ve been thinking is maybe I oughta take out some insurance.”
“What kind?” the Colonel said.
“The usual kind. Find myself a lawyer and hand him one of those to-be-opened-only-if-something-nasty-happens-to-me letters.”
Colonel Millwed leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands together and studied Kite with icy gray eyes that never seemed to thaw.
“Do what you please, Emory. But should something bad ever happen to me, something equally bad will happen to you and General Hudson. I can only assume that General Hudson has made similar arrangements.”