John Lescroart - A Plague of Secrets

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

“And yet here you are.”

“I just thought I’d take a day off and think about things.”

“This is thinking about things?”

“No. I felt bad about Tam and was trying to cheer myself up about it.”

“Yeah, you’re just the picture of good cheer.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“There’s nothing you can say, Craig. You know the rules. You want a day off, call in and ask for a day off. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve done that before and it’s never been a problem. But you don’t call in sick when you’re not sick.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well…” Hunt hated this, hated Craig at this moment. “You want to get back with Tamara, it’s not rocket science. She wants you to stop with this dope shit.”

“She send you here?”

“Nope. I wanted to see how bad it was.”

Chiurco blew into the air between them. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“That’s great. I’m glad to hear it. Because to tell you the truth, it doesn’t look too good right now.”

“You going to fire me?”

“I’m thinking about it. I feel a little betrayed, if you want to know.”

“Not by me?”

“Yep, by you.”

“Wyatt, come on. This is the first time for anything like this in like-what?-five years. We’re not exactly in the busiest time we’ve ever had. I just made a bad decision.”

“Couple of ’em. Notice any connection between the dope and the bad decisions?”

“Maybe. A little.”

“Maybe a little, yeah. And in the meanwhile Dismas Hardy comes by my place last night and gives us a shitload of work and I’m thinking you and me are going to be humping round the clock on this Townshend case for at least the next few days, maybe a week. Except you call in sick when you’re not actually sick at all, and Tam’s all messed up back at the office, can barely answer the phone, and I’ve got no goddamn backup.”

“I didn’t know that. I couldn’t have known that.”

“No, I know. Which is why one of the rules is you show up at work when somebody’s paying you, so that if there’s work to do, you’re there to do it.”

Chiurco hung his head; his shoulders rose and fell. “Again, I’m sorry.”

Hunt waited until Craig’s head came back up, then looked him square in the eyes. “Shit,” he said. “This is no way to run an airline. Didn’t we already have a discussion about this once? How am I supposed to write a reference letter if this is going on? How about, if this is your chosen field, maybe you want to avoid things that threaten it?”

“I don’t usually smoke during the day.”

“You shouldn’t be usually smoking at all, Craig. You might lose your job over it-hell, your whole profession. Worse, you’re losing Tam, and you already know that.”

“I know. You think I don’t know that? That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out all day.”

“What’s to figure out?”

No answer.

“And beyond that, Craig, while we’re on the topic, being high isn’t going to help you figure anything out. Especially this. Isn’t that pretty goddamn obvious?”

“It should be, yes.”

“So?”

“So”-a sigh-“so I’m gonna stop. I mean it. Starting now, Wyatt. I swear to God.”

Hunt just stared at him, this discussion already far beyond his tolerance level. “So what do you think I ought to do about this now? About you?”

“You could fire me if you want.”

“I know I could. Maybe I should. If this wasn’t the first time you screwed up like this, I sure as hell would.”

A trace of hope showed itself on Chiurco’s face. “I swear to God, Wyatt, it’s over. You can tell Tam it’s over.”

“You can tell Tam it’s over, Craig. I’ve got other work to do.”

“I could-”

“No, you can’t.” He pointed a finger at Craig’s chest. “Tomorrow you can if you’re straight by then. And this is the one and only warning. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, fuck you. Clear?”

“It is. I hear you.”

“I hope so,” Wyatt said. Then, “Get some sleep and be on time tomorrow.” He turned on his heel and stalked off down the hallway.

Bay Beans West was open again, business at least back to slow but steady.

Wyatt Hunt, the embers of his anger still smoldering in his gut, stood across Haight Street on this cool and overcast Tuesday lunch hour and watched people come and go for about twenty minutes. The clientele couldn’t be more diverse, and Hunt reflected that if we were what we eat and drink, then we human beings were really mostly the same; nothing should really separate us at all, since apparently every ethnic group in the world, both sexes, and people at every economic level drank coffee and lots of it.

Hunt entered at last and got his place, fifth in the ordering line. Getting up to the counter, he ordered a regular with a couple of shots of espresso. Leaning over, he then quickly showed his business card and mentioned that he was an investigator-he specifically did not say police investigator. Although quite often that’s what people heard, and he usually didn’t correct them. Could he please, he inquired, have a few words with the manager? It was about the Maya Townshend case.

Before he’d had his order filled, a flamboyantly dressed, pony-tailed young man with a diamond in his ear appeared at Hunt’s side and introduced himself as the manager, Eugenio Ruiz. Thanking him for coming over, Hunt again flashed his business card and this time identified himself as a private investigator working with the defense on the Townshend case.

“Okay, what can I do for you?”

“We’re trying to get a little specific,” Hunt said, “about the way Dylan Vogler ran the marijuana out of here. Did you know anything about that?”

Ruiz had quick, dark brown eyes, and they flashed over to the register and then back to Hunt. “Dylan pretty much handled all of that himself, I think.”

“Really?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

At the counter they called Hunt’s coffee, and he turned and smiled. “That’s me, be right back. You mind we go sit someplace for just a minute?”

“A minute. Sure.”

Hunt got his coffee, turned, and found Ruiz again at his elbow. “There’s some chairs in my office,” he said. “After me.” And led the way.

The room was small and narrow, maybe six or seven by ten feet. A cluttered desk sat along the left-hand wall, and Hunt took one of the two chairs at the far end of it. The walls were papered with posters of coffee-growing locations-Costa Rica, Hawaii, Kenya, Indonesia. Ruiz closed the door behind them, then pulled over a small wooden barrel and sat on it. “I’ve only got a couple of minutes,” he began. “We’re getting into a rush out there.”

“Seems like you’ve always got a rush.”

“That’s pretty much true.” A hopeful smile came and just as quickly disappeared.

Hunt took a small sip of his hot coffee. “Really delicious,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Well,” Hunt said, “I guess the big question is how Dylan distributed the money to the workers here. Was it only the assistant managers, or did everybody get a slice?”

Ruiz, to Hunt’s gratification caught completely off-guard, opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. “Um, no.”

“No, everybody got a slice?”

The quick eyes triangulated the little room, finally came to settle on Hunt. “No, neither. This was all Dylan’s thing.”

“No,” Hunt said. “No, we know that’s not true.”

“It is true.”

“No, it’s not.” Hunt shook his head in commiseration. “Good try, Eugenio, but Maya’s told us in general terms how it all worked. And frankly we’re to the point of getting a little desperate to find somebody else who had a motive to kill Dylan. Or the jury’s going to decide Maya did it. So she-Maya-wants us to go to the police and start bringing you guys downtown to talk. And really, who can blame her? But my boss thinks we don’t have to shake things up that much to get what we need.”