Lawrence Block - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, No. 6. Whole No. 790, June 2007

It started with Malone on his desk phone saying, “If there’s anything I can do...”

He frowned and motioned me to sit down.

“Mr. Pincus, I’m going to put you on speaker.” He pressed the button and put the handset down.

“Mr. Ferrari is with me now, Mr. Pincus.”

“Hello,” Pincus said brusquely.

“This is Carmine Ferrari,” I said. Not knowing what else to say, I continued, “I’m so sorry about Buddy.”

“He was a good boy. Helene is shattered. Nothing will bring him back, but I want to know if you found the money.”

Malone’s eyebrows went up. He looked at me, a quizzical smile on his lips. “I’m sorry, Mr. Pincus, but Mr. Ferrari and I don’t know what money you’re talking about.”

“Buddy died intestate. I don’t know how a son of mine could be so stupid, especially after coming into some money, but there it is. He wasn’t married, no kids, and so Helene and I are his heirs. Now, according to the shyster nafkeleh at Pleiades, Buddy was flat broke. Everything belongs to the company except the house. What, I just fell off the turnip truck? I tell you, Malone, Buddy was worth millions. I want to know where that money went.”

Malone looked at me with a grave expression. “Excuse me a minute, Mr. Pincus.” He pressed the mute button on the phone.

“Well? What do you think, Red?”

“Maybe one of us better have a chat with Darryl Tarkauskas,” I said.

“I agree. And there’s something else been bothering me, too.”

“What’s that?”

“Didn’t Buddy always go off on these mini-vacations with some old amigo? What was he doing all alone like that when he slipped out of the saddle?”

“I don’t know. But if we’re going to continue, I think we’d better think twice about giving Barry Pincus a free ride.”

“Right.” He pushed the speaker button. “Mr. Pincus, we think that’s a very good question. Let us look into it for you.”

“You bet your sweet ass,” Pincus said, and that ended the consultation.

The next day I went to go see Tarkauskas.

I should have figured that the Senator only used me to get a rise out of Tarkauskas. Figuratively speaking, I was the bird dog flushing out the game, while Jessica Zavala sat in the blind with the shotgun.

In this case, the “shotgun” was a radio receiver mounted in Jessica’s silver Honda Accord (actually her company car). Private investigators are not allowed to apply for wiretaps, and California law prohibits recording telephone conversations without a court-issued warrant or the consent of all parties. But if you have a conversation over a publicly assigned radio frequency, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy, and anybody can legally listen in. Difficult with cell phones, but easy with wireless handsets on landlines, such as Tarkauskas had in his office.

Malone had no sooner shared his wisdom about playing poker when Zavala reported in. Malone put her on speaker.

“He just made a call to a fitness center in the Valley and asked for some girl named Amber, like she’s a personal trainer or something,” she said. “He’s too smart to say much over the phone, but he did tell her Mr. Ferrari had been here, and that they needed to talk. She sounds like a total bimbo.”

“Did they schedule a rendezvous?” Malone asked.

“She went, like, pick her up after work?” Zavala said, sarcastically affecting a Valley Girl accent, “—And they’d, like, talk in the car?”

“No good. Keep on him when he leaves, and let me think about how I can get them to have their powwow somewhere we can overhear them.”

“Right, boss.” She hung up.

“Johnny did a righteous job on Tarkauskas’s background,” Malone observed. John Jett had been a detective with the L.A. Sheriff’s Department before joining us, and his local connections were golden. “Did you know the boy’s got property in Palm Springs? Now I think that’s mighty interesting.”

He looked me in the eye. “How’s about you look into Buddy’s friends, the ones he didn’t take with him to the Grand Canyon? I only ask you because you get on so well with Helene, and I reckon that’s where we should start.”

“Grazie, paesan,” I said, deadpan. “But this time I’m taking a gun.”

Theodore Morganstern had known Buddy since fourth grade, and the two had remained best friends all through high school. When Buddy left for Stanford, Ted had gone to SC and gotten a degree in film. He now worked as a computer animator for a local independent production company. He was as gangly as Buddy had been plump. He affected a sandy moustacheless goatee, loose jeans, and a Von Dutch T-shirt. The only thing missing was a skateboard.

“You know he offered me a job at Pleiades,” he told me, trying to keep his fried eggplant focaccia sandwich from falling apart. We were at a chichi bistro on Washington Boulevard in Culver City, the kind of place where the young turks of The Business show up to prove they’re beyond cool. “I turned him down, man. I didn’t want any job to get in the way of our friendship, know what I’m sayin’?”

“Very noble of you,” I said. “Still, I’ll bet you let him pay for the trips you guys took together.”

“It’s like this bond we had,” Ted replied. “Whichever one of us got rich first, he’d, like, help out the other. Dude didn’t pay for everything, you know, just the ride and the hotel. I like my work and they pay me pretty well.” He took a bite from his sandwich and eggplant snot dripped wholesale onto the Formica tabletop.

“Did he use a travel agent?” That’s where I’d find records of his trips.

Ted shrugged. “Usually he booked the hotel on-line, but we didn’t bother with airline tickets because of the Hawker.”

“The Hawker?”

“Company jet, man. A Raytheon Hawker 1000. Sweet.”

“Ah. Why didn’t you go with him to the Grand Canyon?”

He shook his head, all the while chewing like a goat, and swallowed. “Never asked me.”

“Wasn’t that unusual?”

He laughed. “Man, how stupid are you?”

I kept my temper. “Not very.”

“Why do you think he didn’t ask me? Because he met a chick. A very hot chick, like, Buffy in a bikini or whatever, you know, definitely not the kind you’d take home to meet Mom. Hell, I wouldn’t have asked me, either.”

“Are you sure she went with him?”

“Like he’s going to tell me, Hi, Ted, hey, I’m going to take a few days off and go to Arizona to get lucky. No, I can’t be sure. But it stands to reason.” He snagged another huge bite.

“This girl have a name?”

He smiled again, nodded, swallowed. “Too bad he didn’t tell me what it was, though. Our bond wasn’t that close, capisce?”

“How about ‘Amber’?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Thanks, anyway,” I said, getting up. “Oh, and — ciao.”

My caustic farewell was lost on him. He just smiled and cheerily said, “Later, dude!”

When I got back to the office, Stan Stowicz was minding the store. “Where you been?”

“Interviewing a possible wit on the Pincus case,” I said. “Where is everybody?”

Stowicz pursed his lips and shook his head. “Don’t know. Malone took a call from Jessica and took off.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“Was I supposed to?”

“Tarkauskas must be on the move.” I reached for my cell and speed-dialed Zavala.

She picked up on the first ring. “Hello.”

“Ferrari. What’s the situation?”

“Subject left early, and I trailed him to Victory Fitness in Van Nuys, where he met this Amber. Cute little blonde, but dresses like some puta. So I called Malone, and he met me there, then we split up after subject took the girl home, and he followed subject. We didn’t get to hear what they talked about. Anyway, now I’m on surveillance outside the girl’s apartment in Sherman Oaks. By the way, her last name, at least according to the apartment directory, is Gerhardt.”