“Right. And now all we have to do is figure out who the hell Docker is and where the hell he fits into all this.”
“You do,” corrected Neil Fargo. “Docker’s your problem, not mine. Mine is telling old man Stayton he just lost an heir.”
“You sound all broken up for him,” said Tekawa precisely, like a sparrow eating sunflower seeds.
“He’s a tough old bastard, played for the Bears in the thirties. He’ll stand up to it. See you at the gym tonight, Hank?”
“Sure.” Tekawa went into a karate stance of his own. “I’ll set you on your ass.”
“Ten bucks says you don’t.” He paused deliberately. “On that other thing I talked to you about...”
“All set to go,” said Tekawa smoothly.
When the big detective had departed, the redhead began, “Hank, don’t you think maybe we ought to hold—”
Tekawa cut him off with a headshake. “I don’t think anything,” he said. “Not yet.”
Maley nodded judiciously. He said, “You and him are pretty good friends, I hear. Belong to the same karate studio, trade off phone numbers...”
He was very carefully not looking at his partner, but his voice trailed off under Tekawa’s grave, unblinking regard. Maley finally met that gaze and his face began to grow pink as if trying to match his hair.
Tekawa said, in a disgusted voice, “Fargo won the Rose Bowl for Stanford his senior year. Played two years with the Forty-Niners and then quit to enlist in the Special Forces. Battlefield promotion to an officer, two tours of duty in Vietnam, resigned from the Army after his enlistment and extension were up. Came back here to go to work as a private investigator with Lipset while going to Hastings Law, nights...”
“Look, Henry—”
“Passed the bar after only three years, but never practiced. Set himself up as a p.i. instead, specializing in investigations for attorneys until Maxwell Stayton sort of put him on watchdog duty over the daughter.”
“All right, Henry, you’ve made your point. I just—”
“Fargo’s bigger than we are, tougher than we are, he’s smarter than at least you are, and he has better connections at City Hall than either of us — as long as Stayton’s his client.”
“Henry, you don’t have to rub it in.”
“On top of that, he knows his rights better than we know ours. Now, if you can figure out a way to pry anything — anything at all — out of Neil Fargo that he doesn’t want to have pried, you let me know. Will you do that, Jerry?”
“Well, sure, I—”
“Otherwise, would you just kindly shut to fuck up?”
The big red-headed cop stared at him hotly. Then both men suddenly began to laugh.
Sixteen
Harsh calipers of pain that had not been there when he had talked with Neil Fargo that morning creased Maxwell Stayton’s face. The cold room’s glacial light gleamed off his grey hair.
“Yes,” he said formally. “That is my daughter. That is Roberta Stayton.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Inspector Vince Wylie.
The two men turned away. Stayton, though he was at least fifteen years older than the policeman, looked the harder, better-conditioned of the two. Wylie held the door for him. If Stayton heard the rattle of the runners behind them as the attendant slid the body back into its refrigerator drawer, he gave no indication. In the hallway outside the viewing room, he stopped. One way led to the entrance off Ahern Alley where the morgue wagons delivered their goods; the other led back to the Coroner’s business office through which they’d come.
“You are a Homicide inspector, is that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“In charge of the investigation of my daughter’s murder?”
“Her death. Yes, sir.”
Stayton frowned at the change of emphasis Wylie had made, but did not comment on it. Instead, he remarked, “I understood that personnel from the Coroner’s office, not from the police department, displayed bodies for identification purposes.”
Wylie was suddenly uncomfortable.
“Well, you see, sir, I... ah...”
“You wanted to see if I’m as cold a son of a bitch as I’m supposed to be. I am, Inspector. You’d do well to remember that.”
Wylie was no longer abashed. “I’m conducting an investigation into an alleged murder, Mr Stayton. You were apprised of your daughter’s demise by a civilian instead of authorized police personnel. This—”
“Neil Fargo,” agreed Stayton. “And this robbed you of a chance to study my reactions, to judge whether my surprise at news of her death was genuine or not. A daughter who was a — what is the term, a hype? — could be a great embarrassment for a man in my position, and the man who murdered her is an ex-employee. So you decided to retrieve what you could of the situation by studying my reactions to seeing her dead body. Is that so?”
“Something like that, yes, sir.”
Stayton nodded. “I’ve seen dead bodies before. What is happening with Alex Kolinski?”
Wylie moved up the hall, the industrialist falling in beside him. A greedy light had entered the cop’s eyes.
“I believe he is going through the booking process, Mr Stayton. But I can arrange for you to speak privately with him if you—”
“I don’t want to see the bastard. I just want to make sure he gets strung up by the nuts.”
Without waiting for a reply, Stayton opened the door which led into the narrow room, desk-crowded, which was behind the Coroner’s office reception counter. Wylie held back.
“I understand there was friction between you and Kolinski while he was in your employ.”
“I found him screwing my daughter while he was my chauffeur, and kicked his ass out of my house. I suppose you could call that friction.”
They went through the narrow office, past the civil service stenos typing like aged arthritics, and out to the broad concrete ramp from the Hall of Justice to the Harrison Street municipal parking lot. Beyond the lot and above it, the Skyway moaned and shook with the beginnings of the rush-hour traffic.
“One other little thing has bothered me, sir,” said Wylie.
Stayton, who had been starting down the ramp toward the lot, turned resignedly back. The air was chilly, for the sun was low above the soft, maimed breasts of Twin Peaks; but it was not nearly as chilly as the air in the room they had just quit. Stayton, in a suit but without a topcoat, seemed impervious to both sorts of cold.
“What is that?” he asked impatiently.
“This thing of Neil Fargo calling you about your daughter’s death.”
“He is in my employ. I expect loyalty of my employees.”
“If that loyalty should conflict with the police in their authorized investigations—”
“Then the police have legal remedies. Meanwhile, you’ve been a policeman long enough to know the power realities of this city. I am one of those realities, and my daughter is dead. The man who made her dead will pay the full penalty of the law.”
“And if he didn’t make her dead?” demanded Wylie stubbornly.
“If you have doubts as to Kolinski’s guilt, dismiss them. They are puerile. Get in the way of his conviction for murder in the first degree, and I will crush you, utterly.”
The planes of Wylie’s rather ugly face tightened and flattened. Unconsciously, he set his feet as if to take or deliver a blow. He said thinly, “Are you threatening a police officer, Mr Stayton?”
“It is not a threat.” He laid a finger against the middle button of Wylie’s honest, off-the-rack suit. “It is a statement of objective fact. Utterly, if you interfere.”