The Poison Sky (16 page)

“I'd like to say no. I really would.”

“Maybe he was caught up with some really bad boys, muling or selling to the high school kids, or maybe turning them in. I can't think of anything else that would merit this.” He glanced at her, but she seemed as puzzled as he was.

He waited in a funk, trying to work out the complexities of dealing with the city of L.A. without a car and without money. One thing he had to do soon was get Michael Chen to give him a read on the telephone number stored on his kitchen phone.

T
HEY
left the beat-up Concord outside a repair shop in Fillmore and they all squeezed into the bench seat of the tow truck to ride into a car-rental place in Santa Clarita that was still open. The only vehicle the impatient manager had left was an exorbitant Lincoln Town Car the size of Oregon, and Jack Liffey put it on the credit card he kept for emergencies and took Maeve and Faye home in style.

He was just kneeling down to scratch Loco behind the ears, despite the dog's usual air of barely tolerating affection, when the doorbell rang. Nobody could enter the complex without calling first, so it had to be a neighbor or someone the guard knew. For the first time in years he actually used the peephole and found himself staring straight into the face of a well-groomed man in a stylish beige suit, a man he'd never seen before. He opened up.

“Jack Liffey?”

“Uh-huh.”

The man held out a business card that said he was Lieutenant Kevin Anderson of the Special Investigations Unit, Culver City Police Department.

“I think I'd like to see a badge, too.”

The man plucked a brown wallet from his coat pocket and flipped it open to show a silver badge and an identity card.

“I'd like to talk to you for a few minutes, sir.”

He had the usual trimmed mustache and a handsome chiseled face that made him look remarkably like Kris Kristofferson. Jack Liffey waited a bit before answering.

“Could you tell me what it's about?”

“I'm not a threat to you, Mr. Liffey. I'm here to help you, if anything.”

“I'm not sure why I don't believe that. But come in.”

The man smiled as he came in, and Jack Liffey shut the door and gestured to the sofa, where the officer sat down decorously. “When you're a police officer you learn a lot about paranoia just by following people around.”

“Well, I learn about paranoia when people follow
me
around.”

Loco growled softly but the policeman ignored it. He was also ignoring Jack Liffey's bald dome and that was suspicious by itself. “You know, when I go to a party, everybody else is Jimmy or Bob or Douglas, but I'm always introduced like, ‘This is Kevin, he's a cop.' ”

“Probably so nobody'll offer you dope or underage sex.”

“And somebody always throws up his arms and goes, ‘I didn't do it!' Could you sit down, too?”

“Sure. What's Special Investigations?”

“A little of everything. Culver City is a small town.”

That was certainly edifying, Jack Liffey thought.

“I haven't seen a Lava lamp in years,” the policeman said. “I used to have one right under my blacklight poster of Jimi Hendrix.”

“I used to keep mine under all the Maoist literature and the bombs.”

The policeman laughed warmly. “Okay, okay. I know a bit about you, Mr. Liffey, and I think we could be acquaintances in another world, but, you're right, that's probably another world. The reason I know a bit about you is I had to do some research to find out … Well, it's basically a question of your integrity. It's the
sine qua non
of this discussion.”

“Better stick with the small words.”

“I also know you've got a master's degree. Let's not be disingenuous.”

“No, let's all
be forthcoming.
”

“I'm getting to the heart of the matter, and I think you'll like it. One of the duties of Special Investigations is what other departments call Internal Affairs.”

“So you're the yellow pad in this here town,” Jack Liffey said, after a long pause. He knew it was what the police called IA.

The policeman raised his eyebrows. “I'm the yellow pad. I'm it. This town isn't big enough for me and corruption both. I mean that. You've had a run-in with a Culver City officer named Mike Quinn, haven't you?”

“Hasn't everyone?”

“Point well taken. I believe a woman friend of yours was battered by Quinn, but she didn't complain, so there's nothing we can do about that. What's got us worried is the possibility that he's been planting evidence, particularly in dope cases. If even one of them comes out in court, it could compromise years of convictions.”

“We've had words a few times, but I've never personally seen Quinn do anything illegal. I hate to disappoint you.”

“That's about what I expected. He would remember you, though, wouldn't he?”

“I don't know. I doubt his universe revolves around me. I'm just another civilian who wouldn't drop down and kiss his ass. There must have been others.”

“Don't kid yourself. You're a private investigator, which makes you stand out already, and you got in his face at least once in front of witnesses. If that's not enough, we could do other things to make sure he remembers you.”

“Oh, great, that's what I want. Let's get him angry and then send him around to roust me.”

Kevin Anderson laughed again. “We think you're just the sort of person he'd be tempted to try to plant evidence on. There's nothing to worry about. We'd have you covered and videotaped.”

“And after he shoots me, my heirs would get a fortune.”

“I promise you'll be safe. And you'd be helping rid this town of a bad cop. I happen to know he's a bully and a bigot. I hate having men like that on the force, they give us all a bad name.”

Loco had been standing across the room, looking from one to the other with a little quizzical expression as if trying to decipher the conversation on too little information, which was probably exactly what the dog was doing. Then he made his decision and came across the room diffidently and did something he'd never done before: he pressed his flank against Jack Liffey's leg, almost as if offering his support and affection.

“You know, there's no question I don't like Quinn very much,” Jack Liffey said. “If he were out on the ledge of city hall, I wouldn't budge to keep him from falling off. But I don't snitch people out.”

“I don't consider it snitching if you're not his colleague.”

“I do.”

“I don't think I understand your philosophical position. Are you saying it's wrong to track down a rogue cop?”

“It's not my job.”

“All I'm asking you to do is offer Quinn the opportunity to plant evidence on you. I'm asking you to be one hundred percent
clean
and let us videotape the encounter and see if he tries to dirty you. Doesn't that give your sense of justice a little thrill?”

“I've got enough thrills, thanks.”

The policeman settled back for a moment and looked around him, as if he'd find the answer printed on one of the walls. “You know, Quinn turned your name in to our surveillance unit as a guy to watch. You're lucky his partner at the time scotched it.”

He remembered the partner, a black cop who'd seemed a decent guy. “Give him my thanks.”

“Somebody told me you had balls. You were the sort of man who stood up for the weak even against people with the power to hurt you.”

Jack Liffey smiled. He
had
said something like that once or twice, and it sounded preposterous read back to him, like something an actor in a colored jumpsuit on TV would say. “That was probably just me getting my ego all worked up.”

“Maybe, but I believe in what I'm doing. I care about getting bad guys off the street and bad cops out of the squad room. It's a simple philosophy, but it's the best I can do.” His eye drifted to the wall of books, and he thought about something for a long time. “You know, American cops are the first warrior class in history provided with weapons but no real belief system.”

It was an intriguing thought, but he wasn't about to let himself get hooked by an intriguing thought. “We've all got our problems.”

The cop argued for a while longer in a desultory way. Jack Liffey liked the man, his earnestness and the willingness to risk himself, but there was no way in hell he was going to get drawn into cop-verus-cop stuff in his hometown.

“Keep my card and think it over.”

When he was gone, Jack Liffey started absentmindedly scratching the dog's haunches, and something strange happened. Loco's ears went back, the neck arched, and the head started swinging very slowly to one side and then back the other way. The eyes seemed glazed over and the rhythmic swing went on and on.

“Should I have done it, pal? What do you think?”

It was easy to imagine that slow sway back and forth was a glacial
no
issuing from the wild coyote unconscious.

11

CHANGING ONE TIRE AT A TIME

“H
EY
, M
R.
L
IFFEY, HOW CAN YOU TELL AN
IBM
FIELD
service engineer who's got a flat tire?”

Jack Liffey recognized the bubbly voice on the phone. It was Michael Chen and he was really pleased with himself about something.

“I don't know, how can you?”

“He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat.”

“I think I get it.”

“And how can you tell an IBM field service engineer who's out of gas?”

“I don't know.”

“He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat.”

Jack Liffey chuckled dutifully as Michael Chen reduced himself to hysterics at the other end.

“Did you practice your violin today?” Jack Liffey said in his best nag, and the other end of the line went dead silent.

“I'm nailed to the wall, dude,” he said finally. “How did you know about my mom?”

“I know everything.” Loco was at his feet, looking up winsomely like a real pet, and Jack Liffey wondered if the dog was sick. In two years he had never done more than snarl at him and demand food. Jack Liffey didn't quite trust this new affection, though, and he looked around the living room idly for some obvious catch, a gnawed pillow the dog had to suck up for or a big pile of dog shit.

“Every afternoon, the moment I got home from school. All I wanted to do was get back to my computer—I had an Altair back in the elder days that I built from a kit—but Mother wanted me to be the next Yo-Yo Ma.”

“That's the cello.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Uh-huh. I played the trombone, but nobody wanted me to be the next Bix Beiderbecke, least of all me.”

“That guy, you know, you wanted me to check out his Internet activity.”

“Milo Mardesich.”

“Well, I checked him out.”

A bit of sun streamed in the top corner of his patio window, throwing one lozenge of brightness on an old pair of boots against the wall like a clue in a bad movie. The architect had cleverly arranged his window in relation to the balcony on the condo upstairs so the sun could only get into his place about four days a year.

“Leaving the computer on didn't help, by the way. His service provider logged him off when it'd been idle awhile, they all do, but I broke his password and took care of that.” He paused again, apparently a bid for congratulation.

“You broke his password just like that? Good work.”

“It was pretty easy. Amazing how many people use some form of their birth date. Anyway, film at eleven. His bookmarks show he was mostly surfing around in places like Critical Theory and French Philosophy and someplace at Carnegie Mellon with a lot of essays, I've got a list.”

“You said
mostly.”
Loco lay at his feet and bellied up subserviently for a rub, the first hint ever that the dog might not insist on being the alpha dog. Jack Liffey squatted to rub him lightly, feeling the coarse thick fur.

“Recently he's not into Baudrillard anymore, he's looking up chemistry handbooks and reading syllabi of college courses in organic chemistry. But the really strange part was day before yesterday. I tried to go into his machine for another look. Didn't you say he was in the hospital?”

“Yup.”

“Well, about nine I couldn't get into his site because he was logged on.”

Jack Liffey stopped petting Loco and stood straight up. “Can you be sure it was him?”

“No, but it was his ID and password. Hold your horses. I tried about ten and he was still on. Then at eleven I got in after he'd quit and I found out what he was after. He was pulling up everything he could find on Bhopal, you know, that place in India where they had the gas leak that killed a whole bunch of people.”

“Uh-huh, I have heard of it.”

“He was also downloading information on methyl isocyanate, and the design and engineering of gas storage tanks, and anything he could get on a chemical called sodium thiosulphate.”

A penny was starting to drop. “How long ago did he first start pulling up chemistry files?”

“Just about three weeks.”

“And the first Bhopal files?”

“That was all the day before yesterday.”

The first time he could have logged on after his accident, assuming he had a way to do it at the hospital. The penny hit and went right on through to the bottom. The bounty hunters weren't worried about anything to do with
Jimmy
Mardesich and the Theodelphian Elect. They were worried about
Milo
Mardesich, the dangerous whistle-blower, and his pal and accomplice Jack Liffey. The dog righted himself all at once and trotted away.

He stared at the disappearing rump of the dog as Loco shouldered his way through the partially open door into the bedroom like a lazy drunk.