52
He wore his electrician's uniform under a windbreaker and carried a small black backpack. His expression was one I hadn't seen before. Guarded. Tense. “How was the party?”
Before I could answer, Milo motioned him to a chair. “What's with Sanger?”
“He never went to the party. I followed him from the hotel, downtown, to a building on Seventh Street near Flower, where he met with a psychologist.”
“Roone Lehmann,” I said. The guarded look dropped off. I told him about Nolan and Baker, my meeting with Lehmann. My suspicion about Lehmann.
He sat there, eyes half-closed, both hands on his knees.
“Lehmann is confirmed,” he finally said. “I got into his building, used a parabolic mike to listen to his conversation with Sanger. My station was a service closet. The mike's a small one, reception wasn't great. If I'd had a surveillance post in a neighboring building, I'd have chosen something more powerful. But I did manage to get most of it.”
“On tape?” said Milo.
Daniel took a microcassette out of the backpack. Milo held out his hand and Daniel gave it to him.
“As I said, the quality's poor, sometimes words are hard to understand, but the general meaning's clear. Want me to summarize?”
“Yeah.”
“Sanger and Lehmann are related- cousins. First they talked about aunts and uncles, children, a family party last Christmas in Connecticut. Lehmann's a bachelor and Sanger asked if he was getting laid. Lehmann said wouldn't you like to know and laughed. Then Sanger laughed, too.”
“There's a family resemblance,” I said. “Both are big, thick, have flat features and baggy eyes. Both are probably related to the Loomis family- you said cousins ran the company now.”
“The names we got weren't Lehmann or Sanger but you may be right… Yes, there is a resemblance, now that you point it out.”
“Something else,” I said. “The Loomises pride themselves on links to colonial England. When I was in Lehmann's office he made a big deal about a piece of silver on his desk that had sat in British Parliament.”
“Noble blood,” said Milo. “These two jokers do anything besides reminisce?”
Daniel said, “There was nothing about Meta or the murders or DVLL, I'm afraid, though there was plenty of racism. Lehmann said, “How's the hotel?' Sanger said, “Not bad, considering it's owned by a towel-head.' “Does that mean no hundred-thousand-dollar bar mitzvahs?' That kind of thing. Then they left the office and went down to a private club on the floor below. I couldn't figure out a way to get in there. Even if I had, all the cross-conversation would have made the mike useless. So instead, I entered Lehmann's office, because Sanger had brought a briefcase but didn't take it with him. I found it on a chair in Lehmann's inner office. We were guessing Sanger was a bagman for Meta, so I expected to find it full of money, but just the opposite: completely empty. In Lehmann's desk, however, I did come across a bag of cash. Two hundred thousand dollars.”
“Right process, wrong route,” said Milo. “The funds flow from west to east. Lehmann's the bagman.”
“Looks that way,” said Daniel. “They stayed in the club for an hour, came back smoking cigars and looking happy. They talked some more in the office, still no mention of Meta by name but Lehmann did say he was disappointed in “the group.' It had deteriorated into a social club, he hoped New developed into something.”
“ “New'?” said Milo. “Not “something new'?”
“No, New, one word. The name of something.” Daniel pointed to the cassette. “Would you like to hear it?”
“Later- New- so there's your subgroup.”
“Maybe it's spelled N-U,” I said. “As in New Utopia. In his article, Sanger called for that.”
They looked at each other.
“What else did they talk about?” Milo asked Daniel.
“Lehmann said, “Here's a little something from the family, it should tide you over for a while,' and they laughed some more. I heard a latch being closed- the briefcase- and a few minutes later, Sanger came out with it and left the building. I don't know what Lehmann did because I figured staying with Sanger made more sense. He drove straight back to the hotel and retired for the evening. I tried to call his room and the switchboard said he'd left instructions not to be disturbed. Just to be careful, I stuck around for another hour and figured he really had gone to sleep. Then I called again, impersonating his rental-car agent, and verified he'd be checking out tomorrow. I'll be watching him to make sure and then we'll have our New York people pick up his trail. We'll stay on him tighter, now. Helga Cranepool, too.”
“One big happy family,” said Milo. “So how'd Baker get connected?”
“Probably through LAPD,” I said. “Lehmann consults to the department. That also could explain Zena's involvement. She was a police scout in Lancaster. Maybe she applied to LAPD, too, somehow ran into Baker and he gave her a private training course. Maybe Nolan Dahl wasn't the only one into young girls.”
Milo shot up and circled the room and lit up a cigarillo.
“What bothered me,” said Daniel, “was that Lehmann's name never came up in our investigations. We were concentrating on New York and the South, because of the Loomises' origins in Louisiana and Professor Eustace's sudden death in Mississippi. But I couldn't stop thinking that I'd heard the name before. As it turns out, I had.”
He turned to me. “Do you have your copy of Twisted Science here?”
I nodded, retrieved the book from under the bed.
Turning pages, he said, “Right in Professor Eustace's article. One of the papers he cites as Loomis-funded nonsense was written by Lehmann ten years ago in a journal called Biogenics and Culture.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Neither has the Library of Congress. Here's Eustace's summary.”
I read. “Intelligence, crime, and weather?”
“To me it's crazy stuff, Alex. Lehmann's main point is people from hot climates are inherently stupider and more “dissolute' than those from Nordic regions because they have less need to build shelters from harsh weather, don't develop a sophisticated culture. In cold-weather regions, only smart and creative people are able to cope and propagate.”
“Survival of the fittest,” I said.
“Lehmann also claims that hot weather creates ill temper that leads to violence. Thus the expression hot blood.”
He flexed the fingers of his good hand.
“Eustace uncovers this,” said Milo, “and a few months later his car goes off the road.”
“Something else about Lehmann,” I said. “His degree's from a place called New Dominion University. That's one of the Loomis diploma mills, isn't it?”
“Yes,” said Daniel.
“And his clinical training was at the Pathfinder Foundation. The same name as the Meta newsletter that carried Sanger's article. Lehmann told me he'd had a career in business before switching to psychology. Most of the books in his office were on management, not clinical psych. He even recited a business motto-“It's not enough that I succeed. You have to fail.' The guy's a Loomis put-up and he's wangled himself a position as a police consultant.”
Milo stopped pacing but kept smoking.
“Not a banner day for gendarmes,” he said. “Speaking of which, Daniel, what does Carmeli have against the department?”
“What do you mean?”
Milo came closer and stood over him. “This is not the time to be coy, friend. Your boss made it clear there's no love lost between him and LAPD. Did he have a run-in with someone? The parade? Something else?”
Daniel rubbed his eyes, removed his windbreaker. The black plastic gun sat in the mesh holster. “It was related to the parade. A security briefing at the consulate, run by Zev for LAPD and our people. Setting up perimeters, crowd control, security, both groups had agreed to share any information about terrorist threats, maintain full communication. Zev had been working overtime, hadn't seen his family much, so he decided to have Liora and the children over to the consulate. That day they were waiting out in the hallway for him to take the family to lunch. Zev ran overtime and as they waited, one of the LAPD officers came over to Liora and Irit- Oded was down the hall playing with a toy car- and sat down next to them. At first he was friendly, trying to talk to Irit, then he realized she was deaf and he concentrated on Liora. Asking her about Israel, Tel Aviv, telling her he'd traveled all over the world.”