“Tell me about Miss Terrado.”
“I have not as yet been formally terminated as her advisor, which is her true goal, so I can’t tell you everything, but since the woman is ruining me, I feel I am entitled to certain liberties. She has been liquidating her inheritance to the tune of a million a year, most of which goes for powder for her and her friends to put up their noses. The last asset she’s got is the trust account her late parents set up for her with me, with me as administrator. She left that for last because she knew I’d fight her wasting it away, but now she has no choice. She needs the money for her addictions, so she’s gotto get me off the trust. So she accused me of pilfering. When I’m removed from overseeing her account, the trust reverts to her control, and she can sniff herself into oblivion.”
“But you say your records will exonerate you.”
He waved at the boxes of files stacked around his office. “That will be in a year or two, in pretrial, when the government is forced to examine my evidence. Unfortunately, the news of my being cleared will be buried in the back section of the paper. By then, I will have long since been ruined.” He managed a smile. “I guess I don’t need to tell you how this feels.”
If it was performance, it was masterful, especially the part that played on my own dissolution. But I liked the idea better that he was telling the truth.
His eyes locked on mine. “They must be convinced I have no potential as a suspect at Crystal Waters. How was California, Vlodek?”
I told him about Lucy Vesuvius, the long-ago police car explosion, and the most recent twenty-dollar bill in the envelope.
“You say Michael Jaynes calls every once in a while?”
“The woman at the store said whoever calls leaves just a first name, and that it is Michael.”
The Bohemian’s face had regained some of its old healthy color. “That’s good. He’s taking big chances, keeping up with those calls, now that the bombings have resumed. If we could just get Till to set up a trace on that store phone.”
“What’s Michael Jaynes been hiding from? Blowing up the back wall of the guardhouse in 1970? You told me it was never reported to the police. Why would he hide?”
The Bohemian shrugged. “Jaynes doesn’t know we didn’t report it. Or maybe he did something else that caused him to hide all these years.”
“I don’t buy it.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m not sure Michael Jaynes is involved anymore.”
His face flushed suddenly. “Why the hell would you think that?”
“As I told Stanley and Till, a guy who’s just scored a half million dollars doesn’t keep sending a twenty to an old girlfriend after he’s hit pay dirt. He sends more.”
“I need Michael Jaynes, Vlodek.” He leaned across his big desk. “He disappeared right after the guardhouse in 1970. He didn’t pick up his last paycheck. Both actions are consistent with him grabbing ten thousand dollars in extortion money and then taking off.”
“Maybe he wrote the notes, planted the D.X.12, and blew up the guardhouse, but he’s been gone for too long. I think he collected the money in 1970 and disappeared for good. Changed his name, kept his nose clean, the works.”
“Then who is sending the notes and setting off the D.X.12?”
“Someone who wants us to think he’s Michael Jaynes.”
“Someone else picked up the ball and is running with it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Who?”
“Could be you.”
“Shit.” He spun his chair to look out the window. The back of his neck was red. After a minute, he spun around. “You find Michael Jaynes.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Learn.”
“A.T.F. is involved. They can do more than I can.”
“Not for me, they won’t.”
“They will, if it gets them the truth.”
“Find Michael Jaynes, Vlodek.”
His phone rang, loud, like an alarm inside a drum. He picked up the receiver, spoke into it, and started shuffling through the folders on his desk. I told him I’d get back to him and went out.
Griselda Buffy sat typing at the reception station, perhaps trying to make the place sound less like a tomb. It wasn’t working.
I went down the elevator and crossed the street to the lot. Just as I started the Jeep my cell phone rang.
“How’s Chernek?” Till said.
I switched off the engine and looked around the parking lot.
“Crown Victoria, last aisle by the bushes, closest to the street.” I picked out the dark green car parked in the shade. “Stick your hand out the window and wave.”
I did. A hand waved back. Till was in voice contact with the driver of the green sedan.
“I have a unit by the door on the other side of the building, too,” Till said.
“Was that your young man in the ill-fitting suit in the lobby when I went in?”
“Cheap suits are all we can afford on government pay.”
“I thought you were too short-handed for Crystal Waters.”
“The lads in the two units are rookies on stakeout training. Sitting in hot cars watching doors is the real work of the A.T.F.”
“You really think you’ll get something that way? He’ll spot you.”
“He already has. We made sure of it.”
“You want him to know you’re watching?”
“We like to intimidate. If he’s our man, it might prevent him from setting off another bomb. Of course, we’ve got two other suspects.”
“Two others?” I was surprised. “Jaynes and Chernek. You’ve only got two suspects, total.”
“There’s you. That’s three.”
My throat went too dry to fake a laugh. “Me?”
“You work for Chernek.”
“Damn it, Till.”
“You’ve got motive, too.”
A nerve tingled behind my eyes. He wasn’t kidding.
“What motive, Till?”
“You hate rich folks. You married one of them, moved into herfancy house at Crystal Waters, nobody made you feel welcome. Almost right after, you got your face plastered all over the papers for manufacturing evidence, you lost your little business, and now you’d not only shamed your wife, her important father, and your new neighborhood, but you’d bankrupted yourself as well. You were broke. Your wife dumped you, took off for Europe, but let you stay in her house for a month. You sat and drank and plotted revenge. Somehow you’d heard about the bombing of the guardhouse. You got hold of some D.X.12 and a few sheets of old tablet paper. You got creative. You wrote notes, planted a few bombs, before they threw you out, drunk, last Halloween.”
“What about the wiring that connects everything together? When did I do that-at night, wandering around drunk?”
“I don’t need to put it all together, Elstrom, not yet. It’s enough that you interest me.”
“Like Jaynes and Chernek?”
“They interest me. But you I really like.”
“You’ve got two suspects.”
“Three, Elstrom, and one of the primes hasn’t been heard from in thirty-five years. That leaves Chernek, the man with the goldplated motive, and he’s real smart. And you. Not so smart, but still with motive and means.”
“I can’t believe your gut is telling you it could be me.”
“My gut, Elstrom? You know how on T.V., after the second commercial, the wise cop sits on the edge of a desk in some gray squad room, rubbing his belly, shaking his head, and saying, ‘My gut tells me…,’ and then he names the bad guy?”
“The famed lawman’s intuition.”
“It’s bullshit. My gut’s like my ex-wife, been lying to me for years. The times my gut told me I know something, it turns out it’s wrong. The only time my gut is right is when it tells me it’s hungry, and then I dump chili in it and it shuts up. The rest of the time I ignore my gut and plod.”
“Sounds like real law work, Till, pursuing me because you need to plod.”
“It’s what I can do, Elstrom. It’s what I can do.”