Wendy Hornsby - The Hanging

“Only the kid can answer that.”

“Max, all the way home, I kept flashing on Sly’s anger last Friday when Holloway told him that his sculpture would come down after a year. Something magnificent had been yanked out from under him, and he did not know how to handle his grief and his rage over it.”

“Sure he did,” Max said. “He went to you. And once again, you got everything made right.”

“When you say it that way, it sounds like a reproach.”

“That wasn’t my intention,” he said.

After a quick glance to check on me, he said, “I still owe you a dinner at the Pacific Dining Car. The one on Wilshire. I’m ready for a steak. You hungry?”

Food was the last thing on my mind, but I wanted to be out for a while longer, surrounded by people, so I said, “Good idea.”

“You were saying?” he said.

“When Sly won that competition,” I said, “everything turned to shit for Frankie. As a consolation prize, Holloway-his father-promised him that he would win in the end. Sly’s work would come down, and Frankie’s would come in. Forever.

“To make that happen, Holloway went out and raised a ton of cash from the college’s donor pool. He actually bought the kid’s big sculpture.”

“The bronze bowling pin?”

“The same,” I said. “On Friday, we blocked Holloway from making good on that promise. How do you imagine Frankie reacted to that ultimate disappointment when he was told? Could he have felt any less grief and rage than Sly had? But who could Frankie turn to? His father? Friends? The man whose name he carries referred to him as a ‘dumb fuck.’ Poor kid.”

“What are you thinking, Maggot?”

“I need a favor from my beloved uncle,” I said.

“I’m shaking in my boots already.”

“Will you defend Frankie?”

“For taking a shot at you?” He laughed. “No judge would allow that.”

“No,” I said. “For killing his own father.”

Max and I were lingering over decaf when Thornbury joined us at the Pacific Dining Car. After our conversation in the car, Max had called him.

“Do I need my Kevlar to sit near you, Maggie?” Thornbury said, sliding into the leather-upholstered booth next to me.

“Not a bad idea,” I said, making room for him.

The detective looked around the posh room appreciatively.

“I’ve been to the Dining Car downtown a couple of times,” he said. “The LAPD Robbery-Homicide guys go there for breakfast on Fridays, but twenty-dollar eggs are a bit rich for my pocket.”

“Have you eaten, Detective?” Max asked.

“I almost got breakfast this morning.” He gave me a sarcastic grin. “But I got called out before I could eat it. Looked pretty good, too.”

“Order whatever looks good to you,” Max said. “My treat.”

“In that case…” Thornbury picked up his menu. After he gave his order to the waiter, he turned to me.

“I spoke with that woman you’ve been worried about, Joan Givens,” he said. “She’s okay. You spooked her when you told her she needed to talk to the police for her own protection, so she borrowed Bobbie Cusato’s place up in Cambria for a few days to hide out, think things over. Mrs. Cusato told her about what Chin did this morning, and that scared her enough to finally call me.”

“Did she tell you anything you hadn’t already heard?” I asked.

“Not really.” The waiter set a martini in front of him. After a grateful sip, he continued. “The real news came from the FBI. They went into Holloway and Chin’s bank accounts, including accounts in the offshore bank you alerted us to.”

“Thanks to Joan Givens.”

“Okay. The thing is, Holloway washed a lot of money through his account. Six figures to that Santa Barbara gallery, six figures to a rehab facility up in Sacramento, more to a trust fund in the name of Harlan Holloway.”

“His disabled son,” I said.

“Makes sense, sort of,” he said. “It was a lot of money, but it was chump change compared to the swag Chin was hauling in. Your academic VP got regular payments from the construction company that’s putting up the new buildings at the college. He was also getting payments from some of the major suppliers. Do you have any idea how much building material is coming out of China?”

“No idea at all,” I said. “But why am I not surprised? If you dig further, I’ll bet you find that Chin has some interest in the supplies that are going to a hospital construction project in Las Vegas, too.”

“Thanks, but I’ll leave that to the FBI.” He drained his martini and sighed; Max signaled the waiter to bring a second. “I just wish I could make Chin for the Holloway killing, but he had a decent alibi.”

The waiter replaced Thornbury’s empty glass with a full one. The detective gripped the stem as if it were a lifeline.

“The thing I don’t get,” he said, “and I don’t know much about who does what in a college administration, but I wouldn’t expect some guy with the word ‘academic’ in his title to have much say over construction contracts.”

“Therein lies the genius of Hiram Chin,” I said. “You’re right, the academic vice president wouldn’t have much input, except for talking with planners about classroom requirements. However, the college president would be involved at every level. I’m sure Hiram guided every decision Holloway made, using his old pal as the front for his own nefarious activities, a layer of protection.”

“Nefarious, huh?” Thornbury chuckled softly.

“And once again,” I said, “it looks like Holloway had no clue what Hiram was up to. Otherwise, when he needed money, wouldn’t he have tapped his old friend instead of groveling for chump change, as you called it, from college donors?”

Thornbury looked at me through narrowed eyes, skepticism written on his expression.

“After that other deal with Chin bit him on the ass big-time,” he said, “why would Holloway go back and work with him again?”

“I asked Francis Weidermeyer a version of that question. The collapse of that first deal left these folks without a lot of options other than the gigs Hiram came up with. Besides, as Weidermeyer said, they’d had some pretty good times together. I think he was a bit nostalgic for the good old days.”

“Jesus.” He sipped his drink. “The more I know about people, the less I understand them. And what I really can’t understand is why Chin took himself out like that.”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “He said something interesting this morning. He called Holloway his veneer. When you strip off the veneer, what you find underneath isn’t very attractive. Or marketable. Maybe he needed Holloway every bit as much as Holloway needed him.”

“What do you call that, a symbiotic relationship?”

“By God, Detective, you have hidden depths,” Max said.

Thornbury only rolled his eyes.

He said, “I’ve seen suicides after the fact plenty of times. But I’ve never seen anyone take himself out. And to do it with you standing so close, I don’t get it.”

“I have a feeling he wanted me to be there,” I said. “Payback, maybe.”

“Why on earth?”

“He seemed to think I set his downfall in motion.”

He sipped his drink, thinking.

“Did you get a chance to talk to Frankie?” Max asked him, interrupting his reverie.

“We tried to talk to him last night,” Thornbury said. “But he’s smart enough to keep his mouth shut.”

“I saw you with his P.D. after the arraignment this afternoon. What do you think of the lawyer he drew?”

“Pretty green,” Thornbury said. “He only passed the bar six months ago.”

I caught Max’s eye and he gave me a nod.