Gloria placed two long-distance phone calls on the day she died, the first one at around three in the afternoon to a Kansas number. The police didn’t investigate that call other than to report that it had been made to a friend. The second one about an hour later had been routed to the Sacramento Inn. It turned out to be a dead end. The hotel had no way to trace the call to any particular room.
“Didn’t we figure her Sacramento call was to Welch?” Sol asked as he opened the trunk of his Lincoln Continental Mark IV. He tossed in the rod and pulled out his golf bag. Leaning against the side of his car, he said, “It’d be good to know what they talked about on that last phone call.”
“What about the earlier call to her high school friend in Kansas? Wasn’t she the girl who told you Gloria and Welch were having an affair?”
“Yeah, Bonnie Munson. Lives in Manhattan, Kansas. She went to high school with Graham. That’s how we found her. We called the school and talked to a teacher. The teacher remembered Gloria, told us Bonnie had been her best friend.”
“Do you think Bonnie would talk to me if I called her?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think so. My investigators called her several times. She clammed up when they tried to get her to talk in depth about Gloria’s relationship with Welch. I felt there was more troubling Bonnie about Gloria than just the affair, but that’s just my thinking. I even called her myself, but could get nothing more out of her. She hung up on me.” Sol shook his head. “Nah, she won’t talk to you, Jimmy.”
“I think you’re right. She knows more than she’s telling. Might not even know it’s related to the murder.” I glanced off into the distance. Was that Big Jake’s Caddie about a quarter mile away, moving slowly along Old River School Road? I blinked, and didn’t see it again.
“Jimmy, I know what you’re thinking. You’re going to Kansas to see her, aren’t you?”
I turned back to Sol. “Yeah, I’ve gotta leave right away.
Today is Tuesday. It’ll be an overnight flight. I have to be back for the preliminary hearing Thursday morning.”
“Hold on, buddy boy. Even if she knows something, I doubt that she’ll see you, and if she does, she won’t talk.
Sounds like a long shot.”
“Sol, it’s the only shot I’ve got.”
“Maybe not the only shot.”
“You got something else?”
“You wanna talk to Welch, don’t you?”
“Hell, yes!”
“I’ve arranged for a sit-down, one on one. You’ll get ten minutes with Welch. Next Friday night at his fundraiser. It’s going to be held at Chasen’s restaurant in Beverly Hills.”
“Jesus, how’d you arrange that?”
“Remember I told you I was having lunch with a heavyweight when you called yesterday? By the way, did you call her yet?”
“Bobbi?”
“No, the Queen of Sheba, you schmuck.”
“She doesn’t want me to call. We’re on opposite sides- but anyway, who were you having lunch with?”
“Chuck Manatt.”
“The political guy.”
“Yeah, I complained about the way Rhodes took off after we went to all the trouble to show him a good time at Del Mar.”
“I treated him nice. I smiled when I called his client a crook.”
Sol laughed. “Anyway, I told Manatt the only way to square it would be to set up a face-to-face meeting between Welch and you.”
“What did Manatt say?” I asked.
“Done. It’s arranged.”
“He did? That’s what he said, just like that?”
“Well, just about. I had to buy ten tickets to the dinner.”
“How much?”
“Five hundred.”
“Christ Almighty, you gave that asshole, Welch, five hundred bucks?”
“Each.”
“Whaddya mean-each?”
“Ten minutes, ten tickets, five thousand.”
“Holy Christ!” I gasped. “Sol, that’s a lot of money. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Jimmy, you’ll get food. Chasen’s makes great chili. And don’t forget, you get to have your picture taken with the Senator.”
“Yeah, I’ll hang it on the wall.”
“Look good if he’s the governor someday,” Sol said.
“Look better if he’s in jail,” I said.
C H A P T E R 26
From Los Angeles, I’d flown to the Kansas City Airport and stayed overnight at a Howard Johnson’s. I caught the early morning air taxi to Manhattan.
The six-passenger Beechcraft King Air made a sweeping turn and lined up for a straight-in approach to the Manhattan Regional Airport. This part of Kansas was wheat country, the breadbasket of the world. When I looked out the airplane window, I expected to see “amber waves of grain.” I didn’t. It was August and the farmers cut the wheat in June. From the airplane, I saw a sea of dirt and stubble that stretched to the horizon under a beautiful, spacious sky.
I’d stopped at the jail the day before on my way to LAX and explained to Rodriguez the purpose of Thursday’s hearing. His spirits seemed to be holding up, and I was relieved to find out he’d been removed from the psychopath section and placed in a normal cell, but at the same time I was nervous that he was now in the general population where someone could get to him. I told him to be careful and watch his back. I didn’t tell him what I’d discovered about Welch and Karadimos, though. I didn’t want to get his hopes up. I’d wait until after my meeting on Friday with the Senator.
At ten thirty-five Wednesday morning, the King Air finally touched down. Walking into the single airline passenger terminal, I noticed a sign welcoming visitors to the “Little Apple.” It said that Manhattan, Kansas was the birthplace of the writer Damon Runyon. I remembered a line immortalized by one of Runyon’s outrageous characters that roamed Broadway in the big Manhattan. “I long ago came to the conclusion that all of life is six to five against.”
At this point, I would be happy with those odds.
After I signed the forms and got the keys to the Ford Falcon that Rita had reserved for me, I found a pay phone.
With the time difference, it was early in L.A. I hoped I might be able to catch Bobbi in her office before she went to court. I charged the call to my home phone. The switchboard put me through.
“Allen speaking,” she said in a soft and pleasant voice.
“Hi, this is O’Brien. I’m calling from Manhattan.”
“Jimmy, what are you doing in New York?”
“Manhattan, Kansas. It’s just like New York only smaller,” I said.
“Great shows and all that?”
“Yeah, they’re terrific, the Quilting Bee was sold out, but I got a ticket to Maude Pricket’s recital on the pleasures of pea picking. Wish you were here.”
After a brief moment of silence, she said, “Me too.”
I became more serious. “You’d like to be in Kansas with me?”
“Well, perhaps not Kansas on our first date, but maybe dinner and a movie somewhere.” Her voice sounded light and slightly flirtatious.
“You’d go out with me? Dinner and a movie?” The thought of being on a date with Bobbi had my mind reeling.
“I think you’re a nice guy. I’d enjoy going out with you occasionally-provided we could separate our professional lives from our personal. Erect a Chinese wall, so to speak.”
“We could do that.”
“It might not be that easy. I’ve been promoted. I’m now a member of the Serious Crimes Sector. The SCS handles capital murders and other major crimes. That means I’ll be the lead prosecutor on the Rodriguez case. We’d have to wait until the case is closed, of course.”
“Congratulations on the promotion. You deserve it. But hey, the case could go on for a long time, months, maybe.”
“Let me explain something. You have time?”
“Sure.”
“Being a woman and having a career in what some asinine people believe is solely a man’s profession, has had its difficulties. My new supervisor is also a woman and by promoting me, she’s going out on a limb.”
“I can imagine that it hasn’t been easy, and I think your boss has made an intelligent decision.” I didn’t want to be the cause of any setbacks in Bobbi’s career, but I wanted to see more of her. “We could build that Chinese wall, as you call it. We could keep work out of our social life.”