“But Elise Brechtmann claimed you did.”
“Well, of course!” Eyebrows rocketing onto his forehead. “What else would one expect from a bitch of her magnitude?”
“Claimed you stole huge sums of money from her, isn’t that what you said?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“The malt.”
“I’m sorry, what…?”
“The crux of the matter. It was her claim, you see, that I was eating the company’s malt — so to speak.”
“I still don’t know what malt is.”
“Brewer’s malt. Or barley malt, take your choice, they’re both the same thing. Essential to the brewing process. Steeped from raw barley, I won’t go into the details because they’re too tiresome, really. Suffice it to say that without barley malt, there ain’t no beer, Mr. Hope. So now we get to the basis of La Cerveza Grande’s charge.”
“Which was?”
“Patience, Mr. Hope,” Holden said, and sighed. He sipped at his beer. He looked at the can. “There was a time,” he said, “when I detested the aroma of malt. Ah, well.” He took another sip of beer. “When I was working for Brechtmann,” he said, “we owned malthouses that supplied thirty percent of our malt needs. But thirty percent wasn’t a hundred percent, and so I had to go to outside maltsters to buy the other seventy percent we needed. You have to understand how much malt we used, Mr. Hope, and how-much it cost us.”
“How much did you use?”
“To brew the two million barrels of beer we shipped each year, we needed sixty-three million pounds of malt.”
“That is a lot of malt,” Matthew said.
“Indeed,” Holden said.
“And what did all that malt cost you?”
“Prices per bushel change all the time,” Holden said. “But back in 1981 I’d say we were spending something like five million dollars annually for the malt we were getting from outside sources.”
“Five million,” Matthew said.
“Give or take.” Holden smiled. “According to Elise, it was mostly take.”
“How? She claimed you were stealing, but how?”
“Kickbacks.”
“From whom?”
“The various maltsters I dealt with.”
“How large a kickback?”
“Fifty cents a bushel.”
“Is that a lot?”
“There are thirty-four pounds of malt in a bushel. You figure it out, Mr. Hope.”
“No, you figure it out.”
“We used sixty-three million pounds of malt a year. Divide that by thirty-four pounds per bushel, and you get one million, eight hundred and fifty thousand bushels, something close to that.”
“At a fifty-cent kickback per bushel.”
“So Elise claimed.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“I wish I had it.” Holden said.
“What proof did she have for this claim?”
“None. Not a shred.”
“Yet she fired you, and told the newspaper…”
“A crazy woman,” Holden said, shaking his head.
“Why’d she fire you, Mr. Holden? You said there was a good reason and a real reason. What was the real reason?”
“You mean you didn’t notice?” Holden said, and smiled. “I’m gay.”
“She fired you because…?”
“Because my lover happened to be a very good friend of hers.”
“And who was that?”
“Jonathan Parrish.”
“According to this, you’ve been a very bad boy,” Bloom said.
He was sitting behind the desk in his office, tapping a copy of Arthur Hurley’s rap sheet. Bloom’s partner. Cooper Rawles, was sitting on the edge of the desk. Rawles was at least six feet two inches tall, and he weighed a possible two-forty. He had wide shoulders, a barrel chest, and massive hands. He did not look like a person to mess with. The man Arthur Hurley had attacked with a broken beer bottle eight years ago had been black. Cooper Rawles was black, too.
“That was then, and this is now,” Hurley said.
“You’re a good boy now, is that it?” Rawles said.
Hurley looked at him as if a cockroach had spoken.
“Answer me, Artie,” Rawles said. “Are you a good boy now?”
“What am I doing here?” Hurley asked Bloom. “Are you charging me with something?”
“You want us to charge you with something?” Bloom asked.
“I want to know…”
“Give me something to charge him with. Coop,” Bloom said.
“How about using obscenity to the police officer who…?”
“He had no right arresting me in the…”
“Who says you were arrested?” Bloom asked. “All the officer did was ask you politely to come down here for some questioning.”
“And that’s not arresting me, huh!’ What do you call it? A field investigation?”
“No, it’s not a…”
“I’m in custody is what I am. In which case, you better read me Miranda, and you better get a lawyer for me.”
“You’re not in custody,” Bloom said.
“Good,” Hurley said, and stood up. “In which case. I’ll just run a…”
“Sit down,” Rawles said.
“Why? Your friend here said I’m not…”
“Sit the fuck down!” Rawles said.
Hurley glared at him.
“I think you’d better sit down,” Bloom said softly.
“What comes next?” Hurley said, sitting. “The rubber hose?”
“For a man who didn’t do anything,” Bloom said, “you certainly are defensive.”
“Maybe I spent too much time in jail for things I didn’t do,” Hurley said.
“That’s right,” Rawles said. “Everybody in jail is innocent.”
“Not everybody.”
“Just you.”
“A couple of times, that’s right. A couple of times, I really was innocent. I didn’t do a fucking thing, and there I was in jail.”
“What a shame,” Rawles said.
“Sure, it’s supposed to be justice,” Hurley said. “And I didn’t do anything now, either.”
“Nobody said you did anything,” Bloom said. “We just want to talk to you.”
“I guess you want to talk to Billy, too, huh? You dragged him in, too, I guess you want to talk to him. Where you got him? In the other room? Asking him the same questions you’re asking me, checkin’ our stories?”
“Have we asked you any questions yet?” Rawles said.
“No, but…”
“Then shut the fuck up.”
“Why? Your partner just said I didn’t do anything, hi which case…”
“In which case, shut the fuck up,” Rawles said.
“If I didn’t do anything, what is it I’m supposed not to have done?”
“You’re supposed not to have murdered a police officer,” Bloom said.
“Oh, shit,” Hurley said, “is that what you’re trying to hang on me? Jesus, let me out of here.”
“Sit down,” Rawles said.
“Nossir, you better read me my rights right this fucking minute. This is a cop got killed, you better read me my rights and get me a lawyer. You better tell Billy, too. You better tell him a cop got boxed. Man, this is serious. This is very serious here.”
“Sit down,” Rawles said.
“Sit down,” Bloom said.
“I didn’t kill any fucking cop,” Hurley said. “You think I’m an amateur?”
“Who said you killed a cop?”
“Am I hearing things then? I thought somebody said a police officer…”
“I said you didn’t kill a police officer,” Bloom said.
“Sure, bullshit,” Hurley said.
“Why were you watching the Parrish house?” Rawles said.