The Crasher (56 page)

Johnny flushed. He couldn’t remember such a demonstration of affection from his father in years. In fact, he couldn’t ever
remember his father showing so clearly how he felt. Was it a sign of old age? There was no physical sign of aging. Quentin
Peet looked as lean, fit and elegantly handsome as ever, his hair thick and dark with only a trace of silver at the hairline.
If only his own hair were as thick. He looked with open admiration at his father, all the old feelings of wanting his love
and approbation surging back, stronger than ever before.

“I don’t know what you heard, Dad, but yes, I have been following up a few leads. Is that what you wanted to discuss?”

His father nodded somberly. “Yes, that and something else about my own future.” He leaned back and shut his eyes; it was an
effective and simple way, Johnny remembered from
years back, of getting a person’s total attention, particularly at home, whenever QP wanted something from his mother.

He shook the thought away and after a minute or so, his father opened his eyes and stared intently at him. “You learn anything
from the Art Loss Register?”

Johnny laughed. How could he ever have thought he could tell his father anything! He never missed a trick. “I have to tell
you, Dad, not that long ago I came back from Washington pretty pleased with myself, thinking I might actually be able to tell
you something you didn’t know about the Svank case. How on earth did you know I’ve been working with the Art Loss guys?”

“I know everything, son. Leave it alone. Svank set up this worldwide network, first to locate and then to steal major works
of art and precious stones to use as collateral for massive amounts of currency for drugs and to set up new areas of drug
distribution. I’ve been working with the DEA and the FBI for a long, long time. I tell you it involves some of the most bestial
members of the human race. I wouldn’t want to see you become the object of their attention. I don’t need to tell you what
happened to Delchetto, do I?”

Flushed with pride that his father was sharing stories with him and talking to him as an equal, Johnny said excitedly, “I
couldn’t believe it, that before he got hit, Delchetto had gone over to the other side. It didn’t do him any good.”

Peet shrugged. “Few lived trying to get the better of Svank.”

“Somebody did-the guy who managed to give him the big push. I always knew it couldn’t be Stern.” Johnny thought about Ginny
and made up his mind. “Dad, there’s someone I do want to tell you about, someone who could even turn out to be a prime suspect.”

“Who?”

Johnny leaned forward. “The girl I mentioned, the one I’m working with on the book, you might as well know now, it’s Ginny
Walker, the girl described as the crasher, who came forward to back up Stern’s alibi and got him off the hook.”

“Well, well, well:”

Johnny couldn’t read his father’s expression, but he didn’t care. He plunged on.

“I want you to meet her one day. She’s a talented dress designer-and that’s part of the story behind her crashing. I’m just
finishing up a piece for the magazine which explains all that”

“So it was your girlfriend with Stern, who witnessed the murder?”

“Yes, just as it said in the papers. Stern was trying to make out… she ran away, left her cloak behind…”

“What else did she see?”

Johnny hesitated. “I don’t know. I think she’s covering up something. Or someone. You’re not going to believe this, but it
turns out her cousin is Alex Rossiter.”

His father raised his eyebrows. “Rossiter?”

“Yep, I thought you might have heard his name. Well, listen to this…” Johnny related the whole story that Ginny had told him
earlier, about the Villeneva jewels and the probability that Alex had stashed them away in Ginny’s loft until the heat was
off. “Petersh, on Svank’s case from homicide, is looking for Rossiter… everyone’s looking for him, but he’s as slippery as
an eel…” He paused, his old shyness creeping over him. “I promised Ginny I’d ask if you could help find him.” He never thought
he’d ever hear himself asking his father for a favor, but he added, “Not surprisingly, she thinks you can do anything, including
walk on water.”

A heavy silence settled between the two men. Johnny hoped he hadn’t blown their newfound camaraderie, but no, to his flushed
delight, his father finally said carefully, “I may be able to do just that for your lady friend, Johnny. What did you say
her name was? Ginny Walker?”

Johnny nodded proudly.

“An old pal of mine, Patrick O’Neill, may know something he isn’t telling me.”

“Isn’t he the new C.O. of the Major Case Squad?”

“He is indeed, and very anxious to get this Svank case
neatly tied up. What Pat doesn’t know is, I saved one of his boys’ hides a few years back. You know my old pal, Freddy Forrester.”

It wasn’t a question, and Johnny nodded, embarrassed, sure his father was going to take him to task for contacting Forrester,
but leaning forward in a confiding way, Quentin Peet said, “What you don’t know, because nobody knows, is Freddy was getting
hooked on the fancy little white stuff he was supposed to be reporting to the DEA. When he was supposed to be recovering from
a successful prostate cancer operation, I got him admitted into a first-class rehab place. He’s never forgotten and because
of that I happen to know he’s been assigned to help on the Svank case and all its ugly tentacles. I’ll make a call to Freddy
and we’ll go from there.”

Should he tell his father now he’d once called on Freddy for help on the Long Island robberies? There was no need.

“Next time you want to check on something, Johnny, call me before you call Freddy.” His father’s tone was still light, nonthreatening;
and as if to show there were no hard feelings, he patted Johnny’s knee as he added, “It’s embarrassing for Freddy. Can’t say
‘no’ to my son, but it’s more ethical if he hears it from me first, okay?”

“Sorry, Dad, you’re right. Thanks, Dad.” He looked at his father with new confidence. “Once Rossiter is found, I’m sure we’ll
have a lot of the answers. Right now I’m trying to contact Poppy Gan. Ginny thinks, and so do I, that she may know where Rossiter
is.”

“I’ll pass that on to Freddy. I’ve no doubt it will soon all come together, including where the Villeneva jewels have ended
up.” Peet looked Johnny directly in the eyes. “I meant what I said, Johnny. Lay off this case as soon as you can. Concentrate
on your book, your column, your girl-and you’d better look after her, too. Somebody in Svank’s pay got rid of him, I’m sure
of it, and Rossiter could be the one. Cousin or no cousin, Ms. Walker could be in danger. Why don’t you take her away somewhere,
away from the cesspool.”

“Don’t worry, Dad. I’m-”

His father interrupted him. “Blood isn’t thicker than water in this game, Johnny.” He paused as if making up his mind about
something. “I read your Delchetto piece; it was good as far as it went,” he said slowly. “You can read a sequel by me which,
I think, will interest you, in this Sunday’s magazine. Delchetto got his hands dirty by accident; he wasn’t such a bad guy,
just not as brilliant as he thought he was-”

“What d’you mean?”

“Read the piece,” his father said in the acerbic tone Johnny was more used to, then his voice softened again. “Delchetto thought
he was playing double agent, reporting on some of the bad guys that the drug lords really wanted to get rid of painlessly.
There’s a lot of intermarriage down there and it was easier to get some deadwood relations put away by the authorities than
execute them and have their wives and women give them a hard time over brothers, cousins, sons, whatever. Delchetto got a
little payoff-little by Cali standards, not so little for him-and he thinks this is a nice way to earn prizes and start stashing
something away for his old age. Then along comes a really bad guy-in the DEA-who regularly comes on shopping trips to Colombia-”
Peet gave a short hard laugh, seeing Johnny’s startled expression.

“Happens all the time, son, however hard the good guys try to stop it. Delchetto had learned a lot about marijuana; that it’s
the THC chemical content that determines the potency, only present in the flower and resin of the female plant. He got suspicious
when, soon after these shopping trips, the same agent carried out big drug raids, where shipments consisting of stems and
male plants, both useless, were seized, while the good stuff arrived untouched later at prearranged destinations, scams involving
thousands of tons of pot.”

“Is that why he got taken out?”

“Yep,” said his father. “It was too good a story for Delchetto to give up on. It’s only just coming together, because the
bad guy’s wife, a heroine in the DEA, suspected her DEA husband was squirreling away millions in a Swiss bank account, but
she died-”

“Died in a fire?” Johnny asked woodenly.

“Oh, so you know. Yes, and Mr. Abbott, as my piece on Sunday will relate, is presently in custody, accused of her murder.”
His father leaned forward anxiously. “Hey, son, you all right? Did you know the wife?”

“Not well.” Tears were behind his eyes, in his throat. There had been tears in Ben Abbott’s eyes that day after the memorial
service. He’d thought they were tears of grief. Had they been tears of regret, or anxiety that his cover was on the way to
being blown?

“I’m only telling you all this, son, because with the kind of money involved, more than you could ever dream of, nothing stands
in the way of business for these people, cousin or no cousin, wife or no wife, so I repeat, stay away from the cesspool, for
your sake, for the girl’s sake.”

Johnny drank down his glass of port before he could trust himself to speak. When he did his voice was still shaky. “I’m just
going to finish up this piece for
Next!
And that will be it, finito, ending with Svank’s death-”

“Which could be the beginning, but not for you and”— again Peet summoned the waiter for more port—“not for me either. That
brings me to the other thing I want to share with you.”

Johnny sat on the edge of the chair, anxious, tense, hoping his sense of building a new relationship with his father wasn’t
going to change.

“I’m stepping down from the paper, son. I’m getting on, you know. I’ve been offered a lucrative partnership, not too much
work, some travel, an apartment in Europe. Less stress, more freedom.” Peet seemed to be talking to himself, staring into
space. “I’ve been thinking about getting away for some time now.”

Johnny wasn’t that surprised, reminding himself he’d contemplated such a day happening on the plane coming back from Washington.
If this was how his father was going to treat him, now that he’d made such a momentous decision, then he would be the happiest,
most supportive son in the world.

Johnny jumped up and did something that would have been unthinkable before this evening. He put his arm around his father
and kissed him. “Go for it, Dad.”

To his surprise he saw tears in the old man’s eyes. What an evening. He’d never forget it for as long as he lived.

“Murder, the top homicide count, usually implies that the defendant intended to kill a victim or acted in such a wildly reckless
manner that death was predictable.

“Manslaughter, the second category, also has an intentional component, but the defendant is held less responsible, either
because he killed in the heat of passion or intended to cause serious injury, but not death. The distinction between the less
severe charge of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide, the fourth and final homicide category, is
so fine that sometimes prosecutors bring both charges for the same crime.

“In criminally negligent homicide the defendant does not even know a risk existed, but the law says he should have known and
therefore should have been more cautious.”

No one had yet been arrested in connection with Svank’s death; but because of all the sensationalism surrounding the “victim,”
still more conjecture than fact, there continued to be an unusually high number of pieces about the unsolved case. This article
in the
New York Times
particularly interested Ginny, because it concentrated on what the charge could finally be, if and when someone was apprehended.

She carefully cut the article out with her pinking shears and put it with all the rest in a folder marked “pending.” It was
a word that well described her life for the last few months, which she felt she’d literally had to put on hold, despite a
vacancy coming up at Calvin Klein, with a job description that fitted her experience and ethos like a glove.

Lee, who’d called to tell her about the job, couldn’t understand why she hadn’t gone after it immediately.

It was ironic-and heartbreaking-but Ginny knew she wouldn’t be able to put what Lee described as her “twenty-first century
energy” into the interview, let alone the job. Some mornings she couldn’t muster up enough energy to do her hair. like everything
else, her energy was on hold until the mystery of Svank’s death was solved and Alex’s part in it revealed--or not, as the
case might be.

She’d received some consolation from Johnny, who’d recently been able to enlist his father’s help in finding Alex. Apparently,
the great QP had been in the most wonderful mood, euphoric over a fancy new job offer, and Johnny had told him everything.
She was relieved. It was what she’d hoped for since that first night in Johnny’s apartment. With the great Quentin Peet on
the case, surely Alex would turn up soon.

Until then, she couldn’t shake off the feeling that at any minute her world could come tumbling down, that at any time of
day or night she might lift up the lid of her toilet and find the Hope Diamond beaming up at her.

Pending or not, her life still had to go on, and there were some things she could do to get prepared for what she referred
to in her mind as “the finale.” Today’s clipping from the
Times,
for instance.

When she wasn’t busy reminding herself that Alex had denied having anything to do with Svank’s death, she was agonizing over
what the consequences would be if Alex had indeed pushed Svank over the balustrade. Could it technically be described as an
accident?