The Baker Street Letters (10 page)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reggie returned to downtown Los Angeles and booked into the Bonaventure.

It was less than a mile from the Roosevelt Arms, where Nigel had stayed, but it was a world of difference.

A desk clerk in the spacious lobby looked askance at Reggie's bruised forehead and mentioned, with more suspicion than concern, that the hotel had a licensed nurse on staff.

“I'm fine,” said Reggie, “if you have aspirins and ice.”

They did have these things, the clerk said. And with a little effort, they could set him up on an American cell phone as well.

Reggie took the glass lift up more than twenty floors.

Then he sat in a deep chair with a bag of ice and a glass of dark port.

With the uncomfortably long flight and layover, he had not slept in any meaningful way in more than thirty-six hours. Jet
lag and the wine were stronger than the pain in his head, and though he did not intend to, he faded.

Then he woke with a start. The hotel phone was ringing.

He picked up.

It was Wembley.

“What time is it?” said Reggie.

“Just past eight in the morning here,” Heath said cheerily. “Not sure what it is in your zone. Hope I didn't wake you.”

“No,” said Reggie. He knew Wembley bloody well knew it was after midnight.

“On holiday, are you, Heath?”

“Yes,” Reggie said tightly.

“Might have let me know. If I hadn't managed to pry your number out of Ms. Brinks, I wouldn't be able to inform you now that we're going for a warrant on your brother.”

“On what evidence?” said Reggie.

“Seems there was a dispute between the two of them—Ocher and your brother—in your brother's office, the Friday before the murder.”

“What about?”

“I was rather hoping you'd fill that in for me, Heath.”

Reggie presumed this was the conversation Ocher had related in the lift. It was hardly a motive for murder, and for a moment he considered trying to explain that tiff away for Wembley: Ocher trying to get Nigel to concentrate on his primary work, but Nigel being obsessed with these bloody letters that a girl had written to Sherlock Holmes.

That was all there was to it.

Well, perhaps “obsessed” would not be the best word to use.

“Still there, Heath?” said Wembley.

“Can't help you there,” said Reggie. “And if that's all you've got, I'd say a warrant is premature.”

“We know voices were raised; they were overheard. We've got
the dispute, whatever the specifics turn out to be, and we've got his fingerprints on the murder weapon.”

“Nigel's fingerprints on a sculpture in Nigel's office? You've got nothing.”

“I've got enough,” said Wembley, and the cheerfulness was gone. “You'd be doing your brother a favor if you put us in touch with him.”

“I've no idea where he is,” said Reggie.

“I'm sure you'll hear from him. Do let us know.”

“I'll keep it in mind,” said Reggie.

“Enjoy your holiday,” said Wembley. “I'll be in touch.” And he hung up.

Reggie remained seated in his chair, and now he took the remaining gulp of the port.

He had no choice but to try a look at it from Wembley's point of view—or the point of view Wembley would likely take once he knew all that Reggie already knew—and the picture was this: Nigel continuing to play around with those bloody letters. Ocher coming in Monday morning and once again berating Nigel over a requisition form or some other such nonsense (sounding, in Reggie's imagination, uncomfortably like Reggie himself); Nigel finally deciding in a violent impulse that he would take no more of it and rising, bronze Remington of Indians hunting buffalo in hand, to bash Ocher's head in.

Utter nonsense. Nigel was not capable of it. He was not impulsive.

Well, perhaps occasionally impulsive. But he'd never done a violent act in his life. Reggie could not recall Nigel ever being in so much as a schoolyard fight.

Of course, there would not have been the time or the energy, it occurred to him now. Growing up, he and his brother had always been too busy fighting each other.

But that didn't count. Between brothers, fighting was a means
of conversation. There was a familiarity that erased barriers and made some low level of violence possible between siblings that did not apply to outsiders.

Massaging a bump still present on the top of his head from the time his eight-year-old brother had knocked him with a cricket bat, Reggie insisted on his original hypothesis: Nigel was not capable of it.

Remaining certain of that would make things simpler. Instead of worrying about the possibility of Nigel being guilty, he would worry only about proving that he was not.

Now the hotel phone rang again.

Reggie picked up. It was the desk clerk. There was a fax for Reggie in the lobby.

“A fax?”

“Yes, sir. Marked ‘Urgent.' ”

“Who—”

“You did say that if someone named Nigel Heath tried to contact you—”

“Send it up.”

The desk clerk did so. Five minutes later, Reggie stood in his room staring at the message from his brother.

“Meet me at foot of 2nd Street. 2:00 AM. Nigel.”

Bloody damn. A street meeting in the middle of the night.

Why couldn't Nigel learn to carry a mobile?

Reggie got his coat, went downstairs, and was lucky enough to find a taxi in front of the hotel.

It was little more than a mile, and just five minutes of the hour, when the cab approached the foot of 2nd Street.

The street ended on the same frontage road Reggie had been on when he first arrived. Farther south was the fence that bordered the concrete riverbed, and to the east was the block of flats where Reggie had tumbled down the stairs.

The taxi stopped beneath the last weak yellow streetlamp. The cabbie apparently did not care for the area and drove away immediately.

Reggie stood for several moments at the corner. There was no other traffic on the street: no cars, no pedestrians, and no lights of any establishment.

In London, this would have been the place to go to purchase something illegal.

And as if to confirm that opinion, Reggie saw the black-and-white panels of a Los Angles police car cruise through the intersection at the next block down.

Reggie waited a moment, but the squad car did not turn again and come back in his direction.

He looked at his watch. Now it was five minutes after. And there was no sign of Nigel.

Somewhere on the next street over, a dog was barking.

He looked at the street signs over his head. Yes, this was the foot of 2nd Street.

Reggie looked southwest, toward the fence. Well, he wasn't quite standing at the foot of 2nd Street. The actual foot of 2nd Street was at the fence, another fifty yards or so, under the dark of the bridge overpass. Surely this was putting too fine a point on it, but Reggie began to walk in that direction.

As he approached, he could make out details that hadn't been visible from a distance—shards of broken bottles, newspaper that stirred in the slight wind, a couple of flattened, refrigerator-size cardboard boxes, a discarded automobile bench seat propped against one of the concrete supports.

At the end of the street, a sizable hole was visible at the bottom of the wire fence. The wind carried a stale, dank odor of old food and urine.

Odd choice of a meeting place, even for Nigel.

Reggie began to turn back toward the corner, but then he stopped—at the edge of the concrete support, next to the car seat, something appeared to move.

It was the wind, probably, but he stepped toward it.

He saw now that it was just the torn corner of a green garbage bag, covering the rubbishy contents of a banged-up shopping cart. One edge of the garbage bag had been hooked over a bent orange-and-white sign for the grocery from which it had been taken. There was a slight breeze, and the corner edge of the bag flapped slightly.

Something was odd—the sound of the flapping vinyl, perhaps.

Reggie reached down to the edge of the garbage bag—but then his fingertips touched a texture that caused him to pull back immediately.

In the dark beneath the slick black-green bag was a pale human face.

This time it was not like finding Ocher in the brightly lit office. This time it was different.

Reggie steadied himself with one arm against the concrete wall. He managed to draw a breath, and he looked again.

No, it was not Nigel. It was not.

This realization had barely taken hold when, from just yards away, brakes screeched, and the moan of an American police siren reverberated off the concrete walls.

Reggie looked up directly into the squad car's spotlight. For a blinking moment he could see nothing but that light, and his first instinct was to put up an arm to shield it.

“Freeze!”

Reggie did so. He heard car doors slam; one of the officers approached.

Reggie expected there was going to be a further reaction when the officer got a few steps closer, and there was.

“Freeze, freeze, freeze!” shouted the officer, who must have now seen the body. “Don't move! Put your hands on the wall!”

Reggie did not move at all. He could hear the adrenaline in the officer's voice, and through the glare of the spotlight he could see that the very young officer had his revolver drawn.

Reggie thought it wise to ask, as loudly as he could, which of the two contrary instructions they preferred he should obey first. “Put your hands on the wall,” said the voice again. He carefully raised his right hand in full view of the squad car and placed it on the wall next to his left.

As he did so, something on the ground caught his eye. He had, in fact, almost stepped on them, and there was no question what they were.

Someone had spilled Smarties. Green-, blue-, yellow-, and red-shelled chocolate disks—and half a dozen or so were scattered exactly where Reggie was standing and within just a few feet of the body in the cart.

In the spotlight reflecting off the walls, they actually glistened.

Reggie shuffled his feet, trying to push them out of sight.

“Freeze!” shouted the officer again, and his voice had now climbed at least half an octave. Reggie hoped they would get on with it before the officer with the drawn gun could make a mistake.

Finally, someone came and pulled Reggie's arms down and cuffed them.

As the police hustled him toward the squad car, Reggie managed to turn his head and look back.

They had pulled the trash bag back from the body, and now Reggie caught a glimpse of what the man was wearing.

Now he knew. He hadn't recognized the facial features, but there was no mistaking the two-tone jacket: It was the man from Mara's stairs.

“I was just about to ring you,” said Reggie as an officer pushed on his head to guide him into the back of the car.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Los Angeles Central Police Station, Reggie stared stonily at the camera for the face-front shot and then squared his shoulders and turned right for the profile.

When he had seen photos of wanted felons before on news reports, it had always seemed curious that they could manage to look so sullenly guilty. Now he knew that guilty or not, looking sullen was unavoidable.

The clerkish, uniformed man giving the photography instructions was as matter-of-fact as if Reggie had simply come in for his driving license. That was irritating. Reggie's own adrenaline was flowing now, more so than when weapons had been drawn at the overpass.

Now he was ushered into a narrow room with darkened glass in one wall and told to stand with his toes to a yellow line. Along with four other individuals in the room, Reggie stood and faced the glass, and then on instruction he did the profile maneuver again.

If the young woman with the dog was on the other side of the glass, she would surely have no difficulty picking him out. Of the four other men standing in the lineup, none resembled him in the slightest; one was wearing a policeman's shoes, and only one stood within two inches of Reggie's height. And the bruise inflicted by the bloody dog was still visible on Reggie's forehead.

After a moment, an instruction came from the other side of the glass:

“Number one, say something.”

None of the men said anything. The voice came again:

“Number one, say, ‘Do you have any Earl Grey tea?' ”

This did not sound promising. Reggie had not uttered any such words since arriving in Los Angeles—or at any time that he could immediately recall—but Nigel might well have.

He looked to the man at the far left, who looked back and shrugged. Reggie looked at the man wearing the policeman's shoes, at the far right, who displayed a look of intense frustration but stared straight ahead and said nothing.

The voice again: