The Man Who Risked His Partner

  Faced with that glare of hers, I crossed my hands over my stomach. “Maybe it’s the Divine Sisters of the Paraclete. What do you care? This guy’s in trouble.”

  “Bastard,” she lashed at me. “It’s el Señor.”

  Which was why nobody else wanted Haskell’s business.

  Well, I remembered. But I remembered other things, too. I remembered that when Ginny was in the hospital with her hand blown off, I’d gone to el Senor because my niece was missing and I needed to know who was responsible. Instead of telling me, he had some of his muscle force-feed me a bottle of tequila. Then he let his main bodyguard, Muy Estobal, give me one of the best beatings I’d ever had. By the time he was done, I was in such terrific shape that I almost got both me and Ginny killed.

  Slowly and carefully, I said, “That’s exactly why I want this case.”

  She understood. She knew me well enough. But the fierceness in her face didn’t change. “Brew.” She took her stump out of the pocket of her coat and scowled hate at it. “It’s too dangerous. I’m not equipped to handle it.”

  If this went on much longer, I was going to be sick. I wanted to shout at her, but I didn’t. Instead, I said, “Is that a fact? Poor little Ginny Fistoulari. Why don’t you retire? Then you can spend all day every day feeling sorry for yourself.”

  She was going to hit me. I knew it. Sure as hell, she was going to haul off and beat my skull open. And I was almost looking forward to it. I deserved it. Some days I was such a nice man I wanted to puke all over myself.

  But she didn’t hit me. She didn’t even call me names. While I waited for her to tell me to get out of her life, her anger slowly changed from hot to hard, like melted iron cooling. In a voice I could’ve shaved with, she said, “Mick Axbrewder, I’m going to get even with you for this.” Then she put her stump back in her coat pocket and stood up. Through the window, she signaled for Haskell.

  Nobody calls me Mick. Not since my brother died. But this time I decided I’d better let it pass.

  Haskell rejoined us with just the wrong hint of eagerness. Maybe he was still a kid at heart. Maybe being threatened by the bad guys was his idea of a game. That would make him hard to protect. But I didn’t comment. I knew better than to interrupt Ginny now.

  As soon as Haskell closed the door and sat down again, she said to him sharply, “First things first, Mr. Haskell. Are you married? Do you have a family?”

  His mouth twitched, trying to grin and stay serious at the same time. “Does that mean you’re going to take the job? I didn’t know whether Mr. Axbrewder spoke for you or not.”

  Well, he wasn’t stupid, even if he did make stupid mistakes. But Ginny didn’t blink. “Are you married?” she repeated. “Do you have children? Do you live with a girlfriend”—she must’ve noticed that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring—“or your parents?”

  People usually answer her when she uses that tone.

  “Actually,” he said, “I thought of that.” He was proud enough of himself to show it. “I’m married. No children. After that phone call last night, the first thing I did was to send Sara away, out of danger. She shouldn’t be hurt for my mistakes. I told her to go to a hotel. Any hotel, I didn’t want to know which one. If I knew where she was, I might give her away accidentally. Maybe those thugs are listening to my phone. Or I might go to see her and be followed. I told her to call me every morning at work, and not to come home until I said so. She should be safe.”

  I was mildly impressed. Sara Haskell was an obedient woman. Or Reg Haskell had more iron in him than I could see. For no particular reason, I suddenly wanted to talk to Mrs. Haskell about her husband.

  But Ginny just nodded and didn’t pursue the question. “Good enough,” she said. “We’ll do what we can for you. As Mr. Axbrewder said, there are no guarantees. For one thing, we’re human. We might screw up.” At the moment she didn’t especially look like a woman who screwed up. I was feeling better all the time. “For another, the people you cheated don’t like interference. They might try to bury us, just as a matter of principle.”

  He shrugged. “If it’s too dangerous—”

  She cut him off. “For this kind of work, we get seven hundred fifty dollars a day plus expenses. Fifteen hundred dollars in advance.”

  I was beginning to think that nothing ever flustered Mr. Reg Haskell, Chief Accountant. He glanced up at the ceiling like he was doing math in his head, then met Ginny’s gaze. “I can afford that. For a while, anyway.”

  “Good. This may take a while.”

  As understatements go, that was no slouch. I thought about it while Haskell wrote out a check and handed it to Ginny. Actually there was only one way to protect someone like Reg Haskell from someone like el Senor. El Senor couldn’t afford to let welshers get away without being punished. Most of his power depended on fear, so he didn’t give up easy. You had to make the punishment more trouble than it was worth. In practice, that meant you had to silence his guns, dispose of the muscle he sent out to do the job. Get the thugs arrested. Shoot one or two of them in self-defense. And even then you had to hope that el Senor kept a sense of perspective. Otherwise he might send out men indefinitely over a relatively minor bet.

  I had exactly one idea about how to get started on the problem.

  Ginny had the same idea. But she took a minute to get to it. She was busy covering all the bases. “You’ll be safe enough here,” she said. “Plenty of witnesses. We’ll pick you up after work. What time do you get off?”

  “Four-thirty,” he said.

  “In the meantime we’ll try to figure out how they found you. That might give us something to go on.” Almost casually, she said, “You went to El Machismo with a friend. What was his name?”

  At that, the lines of Haskell’s face shifted, and his eyes narrowed. For the first time he looked his age. Slowly he said, “This doesn’t have anything to do with him. It isn’t his fault. I’d rather not involve him.”

  I sat up straighter in my chair.

  “I appreciate that,” Ginny said acidly. “You want to be loyal to your friends. But you’ll just have to trust us to be discreet. Right now, this friend looks like the only link between you and El Machismo. If he’s any kind of regular there, they might have some hold on him. He might’ve told them how to find you. We have to check him out.”

  Haskell studied her hard for a minute, then dropped his gaze. “The fact is,” he said, “he’s in an even more vulnerable position than I am. If just a hint of this gets out”—he glanced toward the window and the lobby—“it would ruin me. People who work for banks aren’t allowed to be in this kind of trouble. But for him it’s worse. He wouldn’t be that dumb.”

  Ginny snorted. She smelled the same rat I did. “He’s already been that dumb. He talked you into going down there in the first place. We have to check him out.”

  Haskell didn’t like her tone. “I don’t want you to do that.”

  “In that case”—she rose smoothly to her feet—“hire somebody else.” His check dropped from her hand and fluttered to the desk.

  Right on cue, I followed her example. I wanted this case so bad it made my back teeth hurt, but it wasn’t important enough to keep me from backing her up.

  He surprised me by not getting angry. His eyes gleamed again. “All right,” he said with a stagy sigh. “All right. His name is Reston Cole. He’s an executive vice president of the bank. He works downtown in the main office.” Frowning, he muttered, “If he gets in trouble for this, I’ll shoot myself.”

  Ginny didn’t try to reassure him. While she had him where she wanted him, she took advantage of it. “One more question,” she said. “Who referred you to us?”

  I was glad she asked that. Somehow I didn’t think he was going to say that he got Fistoulari Investigations out of the phone book.

  “I told you you weren’t the first people I called,” he said candidly. He looked like he had a secret bit of spite hidden away somewhere. “One of them gave me your name. An outfit
called Lawrence Smithsonian and Associates.”

  I almost whistled out loud. Lawrence Smithsonian—Ginny calls him “fat-ass Smithsonian”—ran one of the few agencies in Puerta del Sol that was too successful for its own good. He was what you might call a laundry analyst. He specialized in money. How dirty money gets changed into clean money. Who does it and why. And in his spare time he hobnobbed with half the bank presidents in town.

  He and Ginny hated each other. Natural antipathy—she didn’t like people who got successful without keeping their hands clean, he didn’t like people who were more honest than he was.

  Upon mature reflection, as they say, it made sense that Haskell had called Smithsonian. A few polite questions anywhere in Puerta del Sol banking would turn up Smithsonian’s name. But for Smithsonian to refer Haskell to us made no sense at all.

  It wasn’t for love, I was sure of that.

  I probably had a blank, stupid look on my face. I’ve never been good at poker. But Ginny didn’t skip a beat. She thanked Haskell unnecessarily, reminded him that we’d pick him up at four thirty, retrieved his check, and pulled open the office door without offering to shake his hand. Not to ruin the effect of her exit, I followed as well as I could.

  As we left the lobby, I glanced at Eunice Wint and waved. Sweet old Axbrewder feels sorry for everyone whose feelings get hurt. But she wasn’t looking at me. She was watching Haskell’s office like a woman who knew that she shouldn’t hope and couldn’t help it.

  Ginny and I walked back to the Olds without saying anything. I unlocked the passenger door for her and went around to the driver’s side. But she didn’t get in. Her face was aimed in my direction, but she wasn’t looking at me.

  I thought it wouldn’t be very good for our image if we just stood there with our brains in neutral, and in any case the sun wasn’t putting out a whole lot of heat, so I asked, “What’re you thinking?”

  Like her eyes, her voice was aimed somewhere else. “He doesn’t wear a wedding ring.”

  “So what? A lot of men don’t. You know the old line—‘My wife’s married. I’m not.’ Or maybe he just doesn’t like rings.”

  So much for my wit and wisdom. In the same tone, she said, “Did you notice anything else?”

  I leaned my elbows on the roof of the car and studied her hard. “You mean besides the fact that he’s just terrified in his little booties? You tell me.”

  She made an effort to pull herself into focus. “He’s got that gleam. It’s bound to be trouble. He’s the kind of man women have trouble resisting.”

  In my usual clever way, I listened to what she said instead of what she meant. “Is that how you’re going to get even with me?” I asked nicely. “You’re going to hop in the sack with him while his wife’s safely hidden away in some hotel?”

  “Oh, shut up.” She wasn’t paying enough attention to me to get mad. “That’s not the point.”

  Well, I knew that. And I probably should’ve said so. But right then something small and maybe insignificant clicked into place in the back of my head. Pushing my weight off the car, I said, “I’ll be right back,” and headed into the bank again.

  Eunice Wint sat behind the information desk again. There was no one near her. I didn’t see Haskell anywhere. As unobtrusively as I could, I went and sat down in the chair beside her desk.

  She’d locked most of her unhappiness away somewhere, but she still looked a little lost. “Why, hello again, Mr.—” she began with the brightness demanded by her job, then fumbled slightly because she’d forgotten my name.

  “Axbrewder,” I supplied helpfully. I concentrated on looking like an inordinately large teddy bear—kind and warm, no threat to anybody.

  “Mr. Axbrewder. What can I do for you?”

  “It’s none of my business, of course,” I began—it’s never any of my business—“but who was that you were talking to outside Mr. Haskell’s office? When you were bringing us coffee?”

  Somehow the question hit too close to home. She didn’t do anything loud or messy, she just lost whatever capacity she may have had to tell someone as big as me to drop dead. No matter how old she was, she was too young for her circumstances.

  “You mean Mr. Canthorpe?” she asked. “Jordan Canthorpe?”

  I nodded. “I couldn’t help overhearing the way he snapped at you. What was he so upset about?”

  “He doesn’t like me to do things for Mr. Haskell,” she said simply. She was too unhappy to look me in the eye. “He says it isn’t part of my job.”

  “Is he your boss?” Axbrewder the teddy bear, kindly and treacherous.

  She shook her head. “He’s Mr. Haskell’s boss. I’m in a different department.”

  I acted appropriately huffy. “Then what business is it of his who you bring coffee for?”

  She was so helpless to keep her mouth shut, it made me ashamed of myself. In a soft demure miserable voice, she said, “He’s my fiancé.”

  Click. And double click. Maybe it wasn’t so insignificant after all. And maybe I should’ve paid better attention to what Ginny was trying to tell me.

  “Thank you, Ms. Wint,” I said. “Don’t worry, it’ll all work out.” Before she could think to ask me what I thought I was doing, I heaved myself off the chair and strode away.

  When I got out to the parking lot, Ginny still stood by the Olds, waiting for me. I felt like I owed her an apology—after what I’d just done, I wanted to apologize to someone—but she didn’t give me a chance. Her gray gaze was fixed straight at me.

  “What the hell was that all about?”

  I did the best I could. “You called it,” I said. “He’s irresistible. I’m willing to bet he’s having an affair with Eunice Wint. Even though she’s engaged to his boss.”

  That made her raise her eyebrows. “Axbrewder,” she said while she thought about it, “you do have your uses.”

  Then she changed gears. “You weren’t paying much attention back in the office this morning.” She was only being a little sarcastic. “There were two calls with the answering service. The second was from Haskell.” She paused to set me up. “The first was from Mrs. Haskell.”

  I stared at her. All I could remember about that call was hearing her turn somebody down.

  “She wanted us to find out if her husband’s unfaithful to her.”

  My, my, I thought. What a coincidence. “Do you suppose,” I asked, “Mrs. Haskell—or someone like her—hired a couple of goons to lean on good old Reg for sleeping around?”

  Ginny got into the Olds. I fitted myself behind the steering wheel. She said, “I think we’d better find out.”

  On a whim, I commented, “It does sound like our client likes to live dangerously.”

  4

  But when I rolled the Olds onto the beltway again and pointed it in the direction of the new downtown, where nothing but concrete grows and all the banks have their main offices, Ginny told me that we weren’t going to see Haskell’s partner in crime, Reston Cole. Not yet. First she wanted to have a talk with Lawrence Smithsonian.

  That suited me. It would’ve suited me in any case. I was as curious and maybe even as worried as she was about Smithsonian’s motives. But now I had a particular reason for liking the idea. It would take time. What with Reston Cole and Mrs. Haskell and some of our basic homework—like finding out whether our client had a criminal record—we had a lot to do before 4:30. We’d have to split up.

  I had things I wanted to get done on my own.

  So instead of driving all the way downtown I took the Olds off the beltway on Archuleta and started up into the North Valley.

  By rights Puerta del Sol ought to be easy to get around in. For one thing, you can’t get lost. The mountains are right over there, and it’s just a question of wandering in the right direction until you hit something familiar. For another, too much of the city is new, which means it was laid out by city planners and developers. But in practice the city is more complicated.

  The North Valley is complica
ted because the new developments and roads grew up around enclaves of old money—orchards where you least expect them, stud farms surrounded by riding trails and irrigation ditches, clusters of adobe houses and haciendas which the Spanish built any way they liked three hundred years ago. The result is a city planner’s nightmare. I knew where I was going, but it still took me more than half an hour to reach the neighborhood where Lawrence Smithsonian and Associates lived.

  The place resembled a bank. Smithsonian had his own building, for God’s sake, and it looked a whole lot more like a place to deposit checks than the ice cream parlor where Haskell worked. Naturally—at least I thought it was natural, knowing Smithsonian—the structure contrasted with the rest of the area. The neighborhood was huge old cottonwoods, stark in the pale sunlight without their leaves, and flat-roofed houses that looked like dumps outside and mansions inside, and dogs that chased happily after everything they were sure they couldn’t catch. Even the gas stations tried to fit in. But Smithsonian’s building looked mostly like a cinder block with a thyroid condition.

  Still, it was a fancy cinder block. And Smithsonian knew his business well enough to put his parking lot, his entrance, and even his name around back, so people felt less exposed going to see him. Even when their hearts are pure vanilla, most people don’t want it known that they’re talking to a private investigator.

  After I parked the Olds, Ginny looked at me and asked, “What do you suppose he’s going to tell us?”

  Whatever it was, I felt sure I wasn’t going to like it. “Probably not the truth.”

  She considered the building morosely. “Or he may tell us the exact truth. That’s what worries me.” More vehemently than necessary, she unlatched the door and shoved it open. “I trust him more when he lies.”

  Like I say, she didn’t much care for Lawrence Smithsonian.

  But now she was at least thinking about our case instead of trying to come up with reasons why we couldn’t handle it. That sufficed for me. I was feeling feisty enough to deal with Smithsonian as we left the car and went into his domain.