Death on a High Floor (12 page)

“A few times.”

“When?”

“You’re uncomfortable just seeing me in flannel pajamas.”

“Oh. That kind of use,” I said.

“Well, yes.”

“You aren’t really much of a nun, are you?”

“If you only knew.”

“I don’t think I want to,” I said. “But now that I know all this, aren’t you really the prime suspect? You had a key to Simon’s condo. So you had access to the coin. You could have taken the real
Ides denarius
, swapped it out with a cheap if effective fake, and then used the real one to launder drug money. Yourself. In Hilo. With your Uncle Freddie.”

“Trust me,” Jenna said. “I didn’t kill him and I don’t launder drug money. And Uncle Freddie never personally ran a laundry.”

“Huh,” I said.

“You’re talking like Detective Spritz again. Are you bonding with him?”

I realized that my head was in my hands. In what you might call morning despair.

“Listen, Jenna,” I said. “I say, ‘I didn’t do it.
Trust me.’
You say, ‘I didn’t do it.
Trust me
.’ And every other possible suspect will no doubt say, ‘I didn’t do it.
Trust me
.’ Including Stewart. He’s already said that, in effect. So how will we find out who to trust for real? By drawing straws? By taking lie detector tests? By examining the entrails of chickens?”

“The entrails of chickens aren’t admissible in evidence.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“Why don’t we just go and see Harry?” Jenna asked.

“Why do we want to see him?”

“To confront him about being there that night.”

“Okay, let’s go see him. But Oscar won’t approve,” I said.

“Screw him,” she said. “Call Harry and tell him we’re coming.”

“He doesn’t have a phone.”

“Well, that nails it, then,” she said. “He must be a drug dealer, too. Drug dealers never have personal phones.”

“Come off it.”

“I’m deadly serious. Dealers only use cell phones these days. And they use disposables, which they change every couple of days.”

“But,” I said, “Harry doesn’t even have a cell phone.”

“So he claims,” Jenna said. “Let’s go right now.”

At Jenna’s insistence, we drove down to see Harry, still another person who claimed not to own a cell phone.

Jenna insisted on driving. As I climbed into her Land Cruiser once again, which now had a seemingly permanent slot in my garage, I thought about the fact that when Jenna bought the thing, maybe three years ago, I had thought it an odd choice for her. L.A. is the kind of town in which you are your car, and Jenna seemed like the kind of girl who’d want to be a sports car. Or at least a convertible. But glancing in the back seat as I got in—something I’d not bothered to do the day she drove through the howling Blob to take me to the office—I began to understand why she bought it.

The front of the car, with bucket seats of black leather and red trim—custom made she told me—was pristine, except for the tiny white rabbit on the dashboard. The back seat was filled with the debris of daily living. Clothes, file boxes, a couple dozen scattered CDs, and two or three old copies of
The
New York Times
, still unopened in their blue home-delivery wrappers. So the thing was clearly like a second home for Jenna. No tiny sports car could have filled the role.

We drove slowly down my driveway, and the Blob parted for us once again. It seemed thicker and somehow more restless than usual. I felt like shouting out, “Why are you so damned interested in me?" But I didn’t.

We drove down the canyon and then took Sunset Boulevard to the San Diego Freeway and headed south. The traffic on the freeway was heavy, but moving. Jenna moved into the left-hand lane and took the car up to about 70 m.p.h. Usually in L.A., the cops won’t ticket you at that speed.

I started in on Jenna not long after we got into the left-hand lane.

“Is it true that Simon tried to dump you?”

“Who told you that?”

“Harry.”

“That’s bullshit,” she said.

“Then why did he think that?”

“How should I know.”

We drove on for a while in a thickening silence.

“Harry had no reason to just make it up, Jenna.”

She twisted the steering wheel sharply to the right, careened the car across two lanes of traffic, and braked to an abrupt stop on the narrow shoulder.

“Jenna, what the hell are you doing?”

“If you’re going to take my deposition, Robert, I don’t want to be driving while you do it. Go ahead, ask what you fucking want.”

A large truck roared by, only inches away on the left. The car shook from the air blast.

“Jesus, we could be killed here.”

She hit the flasher button. “Ask away, ask what you want to know. We’re not leaving till you’re done.”

“Have you gone nuts?”

“Like I said, ask what you want. Now’s your big chance.”

I seriously wanted to ask her a lot of things. On the other hand, I seriously wanted to live.

“If you’re not gonna ask, why don’t I just tell you what you want to know, huh? The volunteering witness. What could be better?”

“Could we get back in the lanes, please?”

“First of all,” she said, “Simon and I had an arrangement, not a love affair. Second of all, if anyone was unhappy it was me. I was the one who threatened to end it, not him.”

It had become clear we weren’t going anywhere until we got done with this, so I followed up.

“Why?”

“Maybe I wanted a love affair. I don’t know. We had been screwing around for quite a while, and it wasn’t going anywhere. But the last time I brought up leaving was at least a month ago. So it wasn’t a current issue between us.” She paused. “And I certainly didn’t need to kill him to leave him. Girls don’t have to do that anymore. Happy now? Anything else you want to know?”

Another passing truck rocked the car. “Not right now,” I said. “Can we get back on the road, please?”

Jenna glanced at the outside mirror, then gunned the car back onto the road. She found the left-hand lane and quickly brought the speed back up to 70. I relaxed. We drove along without talking.

“It’s a pretty day, isn’t it, Robert?”

“I guess.”

She reached over and switched on the radio. “Just a Girl,” sung by the group
No Doubt,
came on. I knew it well. My daughter had played it incessantly when she was home from college one summer. I listened for a while, then turned it off, right after the line, “I’m just a girl in the world,” began.

“I love that song, Robert. It reminds me of myself sometimes. Why did you turn it off before it ended?”

“It’s a very good song, but I’m not really into music right now. I have another question, though. If I ask it, do you promise to stay on the road?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that back there. Hit me with it.”

“I’m wondering why the police haven’t been around to question you
.
Your fingerprints had to be all over Simon’s condo. The police could easily match them. Your fingerprints are on file from when you became a member of the State Bar.”

“I wiped them off. It only took a couple of minutes. And I don’t think there were all that many. They would mainly have been in the bedroom and the bathroom. Anyway, that’s not where Simon and I spent most of our time together.”

“You wiped the place down for your prints?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d be surprised if you got them all.”

“As long as I got the ones in the bedroom, the police will just think they’ve found the prints of one more lawyer from the firm who was visiting Simon. Lots of lawyers from the firm went over there, and you can’t date fingerprints.”

“If you say so. But it brings up another question, Jenna. The question of why the police weren’t there before you.”

“Simon’s apartment is like two minutes from the office. The cops had plenty to do at the crime scene first, and I had a secret way in. So I took a risk and it worked out, okay?”

“Secret way in?”

“You don’t really need to know about that.”

“You know, as I think about it, I think I need to know pretty much everything there is to know about your relationship with Simon.”

“Look, I’ve already said too much, okay? The less you know at this point, the better. You’re the client, not the lawyer. I’ll tell it all to Oscar.”

“I can’t agree with that logic.”

“Then fire me. And find Oscar another second chair. Seriously.”

I sat there for a few seconds and considered doing just that. It was the rational thing to do. But I was having trouble hanging on to the rationality that had, until two days before, been my pole star. I didn’t want Jenna gone from my life. She seemed like my one link back to my real life. I could press for more later. Sometimes later
is
more.

“I don’t want to fire you.”

“Okay.”

The silence resumed. Jenna reached over and turned the CD player back on, but lowered the volume.

We were by then well past the airport, with maybe twenty minutes still to go. I didn’t feel like sitting there, alone in my own head. And I didn’t feel like making small talk. I turned to my cell phone for solace and companionship. Sure, Oscar had warned me not to use it, but I was oblivious or foolhardy or stupid or all of those things, and so I used it anyway. The first call I made was to Peter Penosco. Peter was one of those rare entertainment executives who still answered his own phone. Maybe only because no assistant ever lasted with him more than about two weeks. I reached him on the first ring.

“Robert, it took you two fucking days to return my call.”

I tried humor. “Being suspected of murder is time consuming.”

“Tell me about it,” he said.

This was, I knew, a not-so-subtle reference to the time five years before, when Peter had himself been investigated for allegedly bribing the key development guy at a network. To get Bright Bulb a production deal for a TV movie about Joan of Arc. One that painted her as a schizophrenic with overtones of manic depressive disorder. It bombed. Peter claimed it was because people didn’t want to know the truth about their saints. In the end, he wasn’t indicted. Perhaps the DA just took pity on him. Or had a script he wanted Peter to look at.

“Peter, I’m really sorry. My life has been totally screwed over the last few days. But I’m back in the saddle now.” What a lie. I tried to get the call back on a business track. “What can I do for you?”

“I called to volunteer to do whatever I could for
you
, pal,” he said.

“That’s very kind of you, Peter. It really is. At the moment, I don’t know what you can do. Unless you can tell me who killed Simon.” I laughed. Rather inappropriately maybe.

“Well, I don’t know who did it or I would tell you for sure. But, listen, you need to watch your back.”

“Why?”

“Because Caroline Thorpe called me yesterday to tell me you were taking a leave of absence. Until, as she put it, ‘This all blows over for poor Bobby.’”

“She actually called me Bobby?”

“Yeah. But I didn’t think it was in a spirit of cuddly friendship, you know? Then she called back later and said that, well, you weren’t taking that leave of absence. But that you might not be able to devote full attention to Bright Bulb’s matters. And . . . get this. She invited me to come in and meet with another partner who’d be ‘helping you out.’”

So the second strike was already under way. “Did she say who it would be?”

“She never got a chance. I told her that if it wasn’t you, I was taking my business to the competition.”

“To
Phineas & Crouch
?”
P&C
was our archenemy in the entertainment space.

“Yeah. That shut her totally up,” he said.

“Peter, I genuinely appreciate your doing that. I really do.”

“It’s nothing, Robert. You’ve been a hell of a good lawyer for us all these years. Even if you sometimes do have a too-conservative stick up your ass about some of the things we need to do. I’m not throwing that kind of good advice away just because some dick-head cops have got it all wrong and because your cunt-head tax partner is worried your high-and-mighty firm will be sullied.” He paused. “Which reminds me that there’s something else you should know.”

“What?”

“A couple weeks ago, Simon Rafer called me and tried to set up a lunch. Without you. Very specifically without you. I had the impression he was interested in taking our business away from you.”

“And?”

“I told him no way.”

“Well, again, I need to thank you.”

“Well, you’re welcome. Again. But do watch your back, man. This is serious shit.”

“I will.”

“I mean it. If there is anything at all that we can do for you, just pick up the phone.”

“Okay, Peter, I will. And thank you.” After he hung up, I thought about what Caroline was trying to do. Bright Bulb brought in about a million and a half a year in fees. Although a lot of other lawyers in the firm worked on their deals, they were still my client, and I got the origination on the billings plus all of my own hours on their stuff, which were still substantial, albeit not huge. Without Bright Bulb, my days at M&M, at least as a full partner, would be numbered. I wondered what Caroline and her friends were going to try next. I also wondered what Simon had been up to. Had he really been trying to get rid of
me
? Stewart, sure. That made sense. But, like Stewart, I had thought I was immune. Naively, apparently.

Jenna had not said a word during the conversation. She just held on to the wheel with both hands and looked straight ahead. But she had clearly heard both sides of the conversation. Cell phones can be like that in small spaces, even with music going.

“Peter has a foul mouth,” she said.

“You were listening?”

“Hard not to. He’s started using the c-word a lot, I’ve noticed. Probably because the f-word no longer shocks anyone.”

“Could be. Why do you think Simon was trying to have lunch with Peter?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He never wanted to talk to me about firm business. In fact, he actively hid it from me. When he had to talk business on the phone from home, he always went into a little private office he had and shut the door. When he went out, he always locked it.”