“You’re in trouble, Joe. You hired Bruce Harmon to find Mercante, and when he did you funneled him cash, a car, and an airline ticket to Mexico to kill my father. Know about all that, don’t you?”
Datilla touched his toes with a grunt, then began a series of knee-dips. “Might need a lawyer here, Tom, if you want to continue along those lines. Joking, aren’t you?”
Shephard watched Joe’s silver hair fall over his tanned forehead as he dipped. The fog made his face damp. “No joke, Joe. One of the things that Helene left me before she checked out was something from your safe. Plates to the Cadillac Mercante was driving, so we wouldn’t spot them. I ran them past Sacramento, twice, and they’re yours. A terrified man who works at Valentine’s told me about Harmon’s easy money and little favors. You gave Mink the day off so Harmon could borrow the car without a fuss. A few hours after your jet took my father to Mexico, Harmon delivered a ticket and a suitcase to Mercante. The only people who knew he was going to Isla Arenillas were you and the pilot, and of course Harmon, who’s been handling your account exclusively for a week and a half. So go ahead, Joe. Get your lawyers out here if you want to. Personally, I’d be a tad embarrassed at what they’d have to hear.”
Shephard stood up and faced Datilla, who had stopped the knee-bends and was now midway through a jumping-jack routine. Shephard lit a cigarette and looked out through the fog. When Datilla spoke again, his voice had an edge.
“Do you know what you’re getting into, Shephard?”
“What am I getting into, Joe?”
“Let me tell you something as a friend, Tommy.” He continued his jumping jacks and still hadn’t lost his breath. “Azul Mercante is dead. He killed Tim and Hope and almost got Frank Rubio. He killed your mother. The guy’s a badass, and he got what he deserved. But it’s over. You’re a bit of a hero, and your father’s church gets a hundred grand out of me for that fucking hospital. If you can clear it with Hannover, I’ll just sign the rest of the reward money over to you. Hell, I’ll do it anyway. Be happy to. Anything beyond that is going to hurt us all. And I mean you, too, Tom, in a bad way.” Datilla went from jumping jacks to running in place. “Some things you just have to leave alone.”
Shephard considered Datilla’s words: he could remember speaking ones just like them to Dr. Zahara, hardly a week ago. Something about deserving to have secrets, like everybody else. The dark notes, he thought. Playing them with a vengeance now, the whole orchestra. He knew that there was no turning back from what he was about to do.
“Nice proposition. But unless you tell me a little more, I’m going to arrest you for conspiracy. Right here in your little club.”
“I don’t want that.”
“Then spill. The cuffs are in my pocket,” he lied.
“Stubborn little prick, aren’t you? Stubborn like your old man, same righteous cant. It makes me sick. Okay, Shephard, listen up and take your notes carefully.” Datilla was breathing quickly now. A thin stream of sweat broke over his face. “I helped Mercante get to Hope Creeley. And I helped him try for your old man, too. Why? Let’s just say they both knew things I’d rather they didn’t. And Mercante was an easy and convenient way to get that taken care of.”
“How did you know he was out of prison?”
“I saw him hitchhiking, of all the damned things. Right down Coast Highway toward Laguna. Couldn’t believe my eyes, so I turned around and passed him again. Third time clinched it, Tom. Azul Mercante. Alive and well in his old town. It took Bruce two days to find him, but he still beat you.”
Shephard struggled to piece together Helene Lang’s account of the death of Burton Creeley. Her story seemed to have been told a century ago; only the heavy smell of her lilac perfume came into his mind.
“You wanted Hope Creeley dead because she knew you had her husband drowned.”
“Wrong, detective. The bitch never even suspected it.”
“Then why?”
“Same reason I wasn’t too sad to read about Tim Algernon.”
“Just what was it they knew, Joe?”
Datilla’s legs stopped pumping. He put his hands on his hips, breathing deeply, still looking straight at Shephard. “I nudged Hope in a certain direction once, with some pressure, some cash, and a steady stream of phenobarbitol. Tim? He needed some money because his wife was sick, and I gave it to him — a lot of it. What they did for me in return was use a little... imagination. I paid for some imagination to protect a good friend of mine. And I simply didn’t want any of that story to get public, Tom. That’s what I mean by covering bets.”
“What kind of imagination are you talking about?” Shephard felt his mind struggling to calibrate what he was hearing against what he thought was true.
“It’s called perjury, Tom.” Datilla picked up his racquet and slashed it through the air in front of Shephard’s face. “One last chance to leave, detective. Take it while you can.”
“If I leave now, it’s with you, Joe. All the way to the station.”
Datilla slammed the racquet to the ground. “All right boy, you’ve made yourself a deal. I bought them off to try to help your father. Just like I kicked in another twenty thousand dollars. Those were 1951 dollars.” Shephard remembered the check that Helene had given him, Datilla to Wade, 1951. “That money made sure that a lab technician would find gunpowder on Mercante’s skin, when in reality there wasn’t any, Tim took the stand and said Azul made passes at his wife. Imagination. Hope told the court he tried to rape her, and God knows Mercante did make a pass at her one night. But in her state of mind she didn’t know how to take it, so I told her it was an open and shut case of attempted rape. Tim and Hope were insurance against Mercante, even though we already had his ass framed to the wall. You stupid prick, Mercante didn’t shoot Colleen. Wade did.”
For a moment Shephard felt as if his insides were scrambling to get out.
“That’s right, Shephard. Wade barged in on Colleen and Mercante, going at it in the living room. They were having quite a torrid little thing, you know. So Wade, drunk as usual back then, draws his gun and fires, and she jumps in the way. Mercante stands there like a dope while Wade falls on his wife — he couldn’t believe he’d missed, the dumb shit — then he picks up Wade’s gun. For a minute he held it to your dad’s head — Wade told me this — then he lost his nerve and ran for it. Too bad. Azul’s prints were on the gun, and a little money was all it took to make the lab tech report berium and antimony from the wax test.”
Like a man deep in the woods just realizing he is lost, Shephard felt panic. He stumbled ahead with the most obvious question of all. “So what you say is true. So it’s not. Why did you want him dead? What’s he got on you?”
Datilla paced the courtside. He stopped a few yards away, looking through the fog toward the Surfside A Dock. “Wade earned that money,” he said finally. Shephard could scarcely hear the words. But when Datilla turned back to him they came loud, bitter, and clear: “He did me a favor once, a business favor. He gave Burton Creeley a chilly ride from the waters of Laguna to the Newport Channel. He was a cop then. It was easy. Used a 195 °Chevy to do it.”
Shephard watched Datilla return to his racket, sweat dripping from his face, and heard the wicked swish of the graphite cutting the air again. The sound was somehow far away. “That’s what he’s got on me. Burton and me. So I wanted rid of him, too. I hate his hypocrisy; I hate his righteous generosity. I hate any man who’d shoot a woman like Colleen, accident or not. But more important, like I told you, I don’t take chances. I cover my bets. I didn’t want Wade to get confessional about things. He’s got that in him. To spill it all in the name of Cod. To purify himself, or some vague notion like that. Go ahead, Tommy Shephard, take me downtown if you want. But you’ll be taking Wade, too, because when I start talking I won’t quit until his name is so foul he’d be laughed off any pulpit on earth.