Steve Martini - Double Tap

Harold Klepp has one hand cupped to his ear trying to pick it all up. Unable to stand, squeezed into the back corner of the booth, he leans over the table as far as he can and shakes my hand.

Herman quickly sits down, blocking one end of the booth. I sit across from him, blocking the other.

I figured that if Herman or anyone else showed up at Klepp’s house identifying themselves as an investigator in the case, they would get the door slammed in their face.

“How you been? How’s tricks?” Herman looks at me and smiles.

“Good. And you?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” he says. “Have to order you a drink so’s you can catch up with us. Harold, how about you? Why don’t you have another one?” Herman pushes the drink menu toward me in its clear plastic stand-up display.

“Not for me,” he says.

As I read the menu I can feel Klepp’s eyes beginning to bore into me from the side. He’s checking me out, assessing, trying not to be obvious. “What’d you say your name was?”

“Paul.” I say it without looking at him and try to swallow the word. I change the subject. “What’s good here?” The specialty drinks all have high-tech themes: The Memory Leak, The Data Bomb, The Meltdown, The Code Grinder, and The Infinite Loop.

“They’re all good,” says Herman. “Try the Loop. It’s my favorite.”

“Loop it is,” I tell him.

Herman almost reaches out to tackle a waitress as she cruises by. “Loops all around,” he says.

She holds up three fingers and he nods.

“No, no,” says Klepp. “I’ve gotta get home.”

“Oh, you have to have one more,” says Herman.

The waitress waits for an answer.

“Bring three,” says Herman.

“Oh, what the hell,” says Klepp. He has one empty glass in front of him. I’m hoping that the waitress policed up at least one more dead soldier before I arrived. If I waited another half hour, Herman might have been able to put Klepp under the table and I could have crawled underneath to question him.

As it is, he is beginning to take a keener interest in me. “One more time on the name,” he says. He leans over and shouts it into my ear.

“Paul.”

“You know, I think we met once before. Are you a lawyer?”

Bingo. I snap my head toward him like I’m surprised. “Don’t tell me I represented your wife in a divorce?”

“What’s your last name?”

“Madriani.”

If he is going to run, it’s going to be now. Instead he looks at Herman. “Do you two work together?”

“Do I look like a lawyer?” Herman laughs without answering the question.

Klepp isn’t sure whether to believe him or not, so he comes back to me. “You’re representing Ruiz.”

“You know Mr. Ruiz?”

“I work at Isotenics. We met at the office, at the meeting upstairs. Victor Havlitz, Jim Beckworth. In the conference room.”

“You were there?”

He nods.

“What is it you do again?” I ask.

“Acting director, R amp;D. Research and Development.”

“Oh, yeah. I remember. We didn’t have a chance to talk. You were down at the other end of the table.”

He nods. He’s wary.

“As I remember. . what was his name? Your boss?”

“Victor Havlitz.”

“Yeah, Havlitz. He kept getting his shorts in a wedgie. Very uptight,” I tell him.

This draws a smile. “ Uptight isn’t the word for it,” says Klepp.

It was clear from the meeting that among the executives at Isotenics, Klepp was feeling like the odd man out. While he may not be at the center of power, I am guessing that if anybody is going to talk openly about what was going on inside the company at the time Chapman was killed, Klepp is the most likely candidate.

I’m moving to the music again as if I have only a passing interest in conversation. A few anxious seconds pass as Klepp sits there, trapped in the middle, looking at the two of us. He’s not sure if it would be impolite to leave. The waitress arrives and deposits our drinks on the table.

Herman puts them on the open tab and slides one of the full glasses over to Klepp. Then Herman gets rid of the straw from his own glass as if to say, “Only sissies use straws.” “Drink up,” he says.

I’m afraid Klepp is going to get lockjaw. If he gets up to go to the restroom, I can tell he won’t be coming back.

From the look on Herman’s face, he knows one of us is going to have to jump into the void.

“You know”-Herman leans across the table toward me and shouts so that Klepp can hear it-“I got tickets to the Lakers game Tuesday night. Harold and I are goin’. Why don’t you come with us?”

I figured this would probably come later, after we broke the ice. But since we are walking on a glacier. . “Gee, I don’t know.”

“You don’t mind, do you, Harold?” Herman looks at him.

“Sure.” Klepp’s expression is something less than certain, but what can he say? “Why not?”

“Sounds like fun,” I say.

I had my secretary buy three tickets online the minute Herman told me he’d connected with Klepp. It wouldn’t do to yank on the man’s arms and twist for too much information on the first date. A long drive to L.A., the three of us in the car talking, drinks over dinner, basketball, followed by a long drive home. If we’re lucky, we’ll catch Klepp talking in his sleep.

I try to take the edge off with some small talk. I have to repeat myself every once in a while to be heard over the music. It takes me ten minutes, but I learn that Klepp is a graduate of Ohio State, a degree in business, with a master’s in software engineering from Pennsylvania. He has a wife and two sons, one in high school, the other in middle school. Once he starts to talk, the anxiety takes over and I learn everything I ever wanted to know about high school soccer. In between I’m taking sips from my drink.

Challenged by Herman, I have to down The Infinite Loop without the straw. He has done his homework. I’m betting it’s the most potent thing on the menu. Based on the blast of alcohol that hits me when I first lift the glass, I’m guessing that if you lit a match it would blow the hair off my head like a torch.

The fact that Klepp is working on his second and possibly third, not slurring and still sitting upright, gives me a new sense of respect for the man. As for Herman, I have watched him drink enough tequila in Mexico to know that his insides are clad with copper.

Klepp and I cover the personal points. Then we sit in silence for about a minute with just the music filling the void. Finally he feels compelled to say something. “How’s your case going?” The only thing he can think of that we have in common.

“It’s coming along.” What’s one more lie?

“I, ah, I didn’t know Ruiz very well,” he says. “Ran into him a few times in the building. He came up and sat with me one day in the lunchroom. We talked for a while. He seemed like a nice enough guy. You know how you get a feeling for somebody?”

“Yes.”

“I just don’t think he did it.”

“Is that an opinion? Intuition?”

“If you mean do I know something, the answer is no. Like I say, just a. . It’s probably not worth anything.”

We sit without talking for a few seconds, Klepp looking down at his drink. Then he leans toward me so we don’t have to yell. “Let me ask you a question. You came here tonight to talk to me, didn’t you?” He’s no fool.

“Yes.”

“And Herman?”

“My investigator.”

“You’re thinking I’m the weak link?” he says.

“I’m thinking you wanted to say some things that day we met at the conference room.”

“You picked the wrong person. I can’t help you. I don’t know anything. The fact is I’m outside the loop. If you come back to Isotenics in a month, I probably won’t be there.”