Treasure Hunt (10 page)

“Connections,” Mickey said.

She nodded. “I know it might sound crass and self-serving, and then, of course, it maybe looks like I’m using the relationship with Dominic to get a leg up on a career. But I’d already done a lot of volunteer time at Sunset when Ian was there, just to be near my brother. So it wasn’t like I just glommed on to this opportunity to get ahead. And then this driving job came up, and I was kind of next in line, and I truly didn’t know how I was going to feel about Dominic once I got to know him.”

 

 

On the way back, by now chilled to the bone, they found themselves on either end of the back couch at the Little Shamrock, drinking Irish coffees. The place, late on a Sunday afternoon, had only two other customers playing a nearly silent and intense game of darts.

Alicia came back from the bar and put their second round down on the small table in front of them. Sitting back, she crossed one leg over the other and flashed a quick glance in Mickey’s direction. “Here we’ve been doing all this talking,” she said, “and I haven’t really been completely straight with you.”

“About Dominic?”

Shaking her head, she said, “No, not about Dominic. I’ve told you everything about Dominic.” Hesitating, she drew a breath. “You know how I said I must have blocked out everything around what happened with my mom and dad? That’s not really true.”

“I didn’t think it was,” Mickey said. “I don’t think anybody does that, not at nine years old. I was going to let it slide.”

She nodded. “I noticed. And I thank you for that. But maybe I shouldn’t be so defensive about it. Especially with somebody who’s doing all this work for me and who’s been through something so similar.”

“I don’t know how similar it really was, Alicia. Me and Tamara got a home out of it. I gather you and Ian didn’t.”

“No,” she said. “They split us up. Not that they tried to, but Ian was, I guess, kind of gangly and sullen and all bad attitude. So it turned out not too many people were willing to take a chance on him.”

“But they were with you?”

A shrug. “I was quieter, maybe more pliable. Just as angry as Ian was, I think. Maybe I still am, I don’t know. But nobody saw it at first, although none of my homes really stuck either. Anyway, the bottom line is we got separated pretty quick, and he got into most of the drugs in the universe and some pretty bad behavior.”

Mickey remembered. “He told me he spent some time at the work farm.”

“Not really
some
time,” she said. “Just about all the time from thirteen to eighteen.”

“But you kept up with him?”

“Not so hard, really. His address didn’t change.” She reached for her Irish coffee and took a sip. “Anyway, I guess my point is that I was on my own and wasn’t really too much of an angel myself. I don’t like to think about how I was back then, but I don’t want to pretend to you that I didn’t have any reaction to what my dad did, and that I didn’t act out because of it. Because I did. I was pretty rage-driven.”

“Okay.”

“No, not really okay. I was as bad as Ian was, not with all the drugs, maybe, but getting myself in trouble. And I kind of focused on older men, if you see where I’m going with this.”

“Dominic.”

She nodded. “If the cops look, they’re going to think they see a pattern,” she said. “But I wanted you to know that stopped a long time ago, and it was all long over by the time I started working with Dominic. And it didn’t start up again with him.”

“I believed you the first time,” Mickey said.

“Still,” she said. She reached over and rested her hand for a second or two on his thigh, looked into his eyes. “I wanted you to know.”

Mickey, his leg nearly burning where she’d rested her hand, reached out and grabbed his own Irish coffee, brought it to his mouth. “Well, while we’re on this type of stuff,” he said, “Ian mentioned something else I was a little curious about.”

“What’s that?”

“Jail.” He put his glass down.

“What about jail?” Suddenly her voice became querulous, frightened. In her eyes he picked up a sense of the dark rage she’d alluded to earlier. “I’m not going to jail,” she whispered at him. “You said you were going to keep me out of jail.”

“And that’s still our intention.”

“I didn’t do anything to Dominic. I really didn’t.”

“Easy, Alicia. I didn’t say you did. I said we’d be trying to keep you out of jail. And just to try to prepare you for possible eventualities, maybe keeping you out of jail won’t be possible after all. That’s a major part of the job, but it’s not the only part.”

“No, that won’t work. It’s got to be the major part, Mickey. Don’t you understand? I didn’t do anything.” Again, she emphasized her point by reaching over and putting a hand on his leg. “I can’t go to jail.”

“That’s what Ian said too. He said he thought it would kill you.” He looked over at her as now she pulled her hand away from him, came forward, and hunched over, her hands clasped in her lap. “I was hoping to reassure you that even if it came to that, you could get through it.”

“How can you say that? How can you know? Have you ever been in jail?”

“No, but I know—”

She cut him off, her voice loud, and harsh. “I don’t care what you know! You can’t know until you’ve been there. It’s not what you think, okay? They’ve got complete control over you. I can’t go there again.”

Suddenly the bartender was back with them. “Everything okay here?”

Alicia threw a look at Mickey, then up. “Fine. We’re fine,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Just try to keep it down a little back here, then, huh?”

When he went back to the bar, they sat in silence for a long minute. Finally Mickey said, “Again?”

She was back to being hunched over, her breathing heavy.

“Alicia?”

At last, with a deep sigh, she straightened up. “The cops shouldn’t have it. It shouldn’t be on my record. I wasn’t even eighteen. It’s supposed to be erased. It was just a joyride and a stupid accident.”

“Was anybody hurt?”

“No. Just me, a little. But the car belonged to the house I was staying in, the guy there’s a fucking pervert, and I stole his fucking car, which ended that particular shot at my domestic bliss with stepparents. But the jail part was . . .” She stopped, looked pleadingly at him. “Nobody knows this except Ian.”

“You don’t have to say,” Mickey said. “I’ve got a good imagination.”

“I thought because there were only women on that side of the jail ...”

Mickey moved over next to her, put his arm around her, and brought her in next to him. “Nobody’s going to let you go to jail,” he said. “That’s not going to happen. I promise.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Mickey regretted them. You didn’t promise when you couldn’t absolutely deliver; it was one of the mantras he and Tamara had lived by—a promise is a promise, they used to say.

But this particular horse was already out of the barn, and there was nothing he could do about it now.

 

 

 

 

When Wyatt Hunt opened his office door
in Chinatown the next morning at eight forty-three, Tamara was at her old desk. She’d told him on Saturday night that if he’d take her back, she would be there, but actually seeing her in the flesh gave him a hopeful jolt of adrenaline. Maybe the firm would get back on its feet again and this was the first sign that things were turning around.

She glanced at her wristwatch, then up to her boss, her face alight. “I didn’t realize that you’d changed your hours.”

At a glance, she looked good, lightly made up with lipstick, mascara, and eye shadow. A black silk blouse under a multicolored scarf around her neck camouflaged her protruding collarbones. The overall effect was nothing like anorexia. She’d obviously lost some weight, of course, but Hunt might not have noticed anything amiss if he hadn’t seen her and had his arms around her two nights before.

Still, reluctant to embarrass her on the one hand, or to scare her off with overeffusiveness on the other, he kept his greeting low-key. “So the cat actually did drag you in. For the record, I can’t tell you how good it is to see you sitting there again.”

“I can’t tell you how good it feels to
be
sitting here again.” She hesitated, then added, “I really want to thank you for letting this happen, Wyatt. I don’t know too many other people who would be okay with taking me back.”

“Anybody who’d had you working for them once would take you back in a New York minute, Tam. I’m the one who should be thanking you. And I do.”

“Okay.” She lowered her eyes, then raised them back up to him, a trace of her old impish smile playing around her mouth. “Do you think we can be through with all of this yucky stuff pretty soon?”

“Absolutely. No more yuck, starting now.”

“Good. Mickey’s already out on that Len Turner list you gave him. He’ll check in when he’s done or a little before lunch, whichever comes first. And Devin Juhle called. No message, just please call him back when you get in.”

“Got it. And, Tam”—he stopped on his way to the back office and stood by the side of her desk—“one last bit of yuck.”

She sighed with some theatricality—one of her mannerisms from the old days which he loved. “Okay, one. What?”

Striking fast, he leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Welcome back.”

 

 

On his way to the Sunset Youth Project administrative offices at Ortega Street and Sunset Boulevard, Mickey couldn’t get Como’s $650,000 salary out of his brain. Or Sunset’s $50 million- per-year operating budget. These dollar figures shifted his initial take on Como’s murder. This much money around, it was likely in play.

And as far as this went, it was good news for Alicia. If she was of any interest at all to the police, it was not because of money, but because of her relationship to Como.

As Alicia had told him, information on nonprofits was a matter of public record, and hence easily accessible. With Len Turner’s list to guide him, Mickey had done some computer research last night and verified that the three largest nonprofits where Como had a seat on the board—the Mission Street Coalition, Sanctuary House, and Halfway Home—each operated with a budget of over $30 million per year. Since none of these quite matched the size and scope of the Sunset Youth Project, Mickey’s first call was on Como’s home turf.

The two-story building wasn’t much of a scenic destination. The low, overcast skies didn’t help much either.

Standing across the street, Mickey was struck by how sad and nondescript the place looked. The grounds took up an entire city block. Off to his left side, behind a twelve-foot cyclone fence with razor wire threaded around the top, were a deserted asphalt playground, four basketball hoops with no nets, a metallic climbing structure, and parking for half a dozen cars, including a Lincoln Town Car limousine.

Over the front doorway, a flag hung at half-mast.

Inside now, Mickey walked through the wide, low lobby—again, echoes of public schools he’d attended. A dozen or more young people loitered by the stairway on his right. He was headed toward a directory mounted on the wall in front of him, but noticed that the large office next to it, venetian blinds behind the glass, was lit up and obviously occupied, its door wide open. Stenciled on the glass were the words: Sunset Youth Project, Office of the Executive Director. Inside the large room, more loiterers stood around between the desks behind the counter. Mickey slapped on a smile and knocked. “Excuse me,” he said, “I’m looking for Lorraine Hess.”

 

 

The associate director stood behind the desk in her office and reached out a hand to shake Mickey’s.

Dominic Como, Mickey was quickly learning, had an eye for lovely women. First the truly beautiful Alicia Thorpe, and now his assistant director. Solidly built, more than slightly overweight, and even in rimless eyeglasses, Lorraine Hess clearly at one time had been a babe and, except for the weight, wasn’t so far from still being one. She wore a rust-colored woolen suit over a plain white blouse, the ensemble a few years out of style. Her hair, shoulder-length and mostly gray, was a riot of mismanagement, but not unattractive, and of a piece with the sultry, sunken bedroom eyes. Once, not so long ago, she might have been distractingly prettier, and might even be now if she’d give more thought to her appearance. But this clearly wasn’t much of a concern to her. And especially not today, the first business day after the discovery of Como’s body.

“As you can imagine,” she was telling him, “we’re in a state of complete numbness and disbelief around here. To say nothing of the personal devastation. None of us can understand how this could have happened, the random killing of such a wonderful man. Nobody who knew him could have wanted to do anything to harm Dominic. It’s just such a loss.”

“That’s what I’m hearing from everybody,” Mickey said.

“I’m not surprised. That’s what I told the police when they came by. It must have been a random thing, a mugging maybe. It couldn’t have been someone he knew, who knew him.”

“Do you know who he was going to meet?”

“No. He never told Al. Mr. Carter. His driver.”

“I thought Alicia Thorpe was his driver.”

Hess made a little moue. “Ms. Thorpe was one of several daytime drivers. That shift ends at three. Al Carter drove the rest of the time. In any event, you were asking if I knew who Dominic was going to meet, and the answer is no. Al just let him off early near his house and that was”—she swallowed against her emotion—“that was the last time anyone saw him.” She removed her glasses, rubbed her eyes, then replaced them, now looking at Mickey as though she were seeing him for the first time. “I’m sorry. You said you were with a private investigating firm? Is there something you came here to tell me, or any way I can help you?”