Lucy stares out the kitchen window, her hands in the pockets of her jeans, obviously put off by Marino and embarrassed by him. He is sweating and profane, and unsteady on his feet, and filled with hate and spite one minute, sullen the next.
"You know what I can't stand?" Marino keeps at it. "1 can't stand bad cops who get away with it because everybody's too damn chicken to go after them. And nobody wants to touch Talley or even try because he speaks all these languages and went to Harvard and is a big shot golden boy…"
"You really don't know what you're talking about," Lucy says to Marino, and by now, McGovern has wandered into the kitchen. "You're wrong. Jay's not off limits and you're not the only person on this planet who has doubts about him."
"Serious doubts," McGovern echoes.
Marino shuts up and leans against the counter.
"I can tell you what we know so far," Lucy says to me. She is reluctant and soft-spoken because nobody, really, is quite sure how I feel about Jay. "I kind of hate to, because there's nothing definitive. But it's not looking good so far." She looks at me as if in search of a cue.
"Good," I tell her. "Let's hear it."
"Yeah. I'm all ears," Marino responds.
"I've run him through quite a number of databases. No criminal or civil court records, no liens or judgments, et cetera. Not that we expected him to be a registered sex offender or deadbeat parent or missing or wanted or whatever, and there's no evidence that the FBI, CIA or even ATF has a file on him in their systems of records. But doing a simple search of real estate records raised a red flag. First of all, he has a condo in New York where he's let certain select friends stay_including high-ranking people in law enforcement," she says to Marino and me. "A three-million-plus place full of antiques, on Central Park. Jay has bragged that the condo is his. Well, it's not. Comes back to a corporate name."
"It's not uncommon for wealthy people to have property in separate corporate names, for privacy reasons and also to protect various assets from litigation," I point out.
"I know. But this corporation isn't Jay's," Lucy replies. "Not unless he owns an air freight company."
"Kind of eerie, right?" McGovern adds. "Considering how much shipping the Chandonne family is involved in. So maybe there's a connection. It's way too soon to say."
"No big surprise," Marino mutters, but his eyes light up. "Yeah, how well I remember him playing the big rich Harvard act, right, Doc? Remember, I wondered why we was suddenly on a Learjet, and next thing we're on the Concorde going to France. I knew Interpol didn't pay for all that shit."
"He never should have bragged about that condo," Lucy remarks. "Obviously he's got the same Achilles' heel other assholes do: ego." She looks at me. "He wanted to impress you, so he flies you out supersonic_says he got the tickets comped because they were for law enforcement. And sure, we know the airlines do that sort of thing on occasion. But we're tracking that, too, to see who made those reservations and what the story was."
"My big question," McGovern goes on, "is obviously whether or not that condo might be owned by the Chandonne family. And you can only imagine how many layers you'd have to go through to get to them."
"Hell, they probably own the whole fucking building," Marino says. "And half of Manhattan to go along with it."
"What about corporate officers?" I ask. "Any interesting names come up?"
"We've got names but they don't mean anything significant yet," Lucy replies. "These paper cases take a lot of time. We run them and then everything and everybody they connect with, on and on it goes,"
"And where do Mitch Barbosa and Rosso Matos fit in?" I ask. "Or do they? Because somebody took a key out of my house and put it in Barbosa's pocket. Do you think Jay did?"
Marino snorts and takes a swallow of bourbon. "Gets my vote," he retorts. "That and swiping your chipping hammer.
Can't think of anybody else who'd do it. I know every guy who went in there, in your house. Unless Righter did it, and he's too chicken and I really don't think he's dirty."
It isn't that Jay's shadow hasn't crossed our thoughts numerous times before. We know he was in my house. We know he is bitter toward me. We all have considerable questions about his character, but if he did plant the key or steal it from my house and pass it off to someone else, then this directly implicates him in Barbosa's torture-homicide and most likely in Matos's as well. "Where's Jay right now? Anybody know?" I search their faces.
"Well, he was in New York. That was Wednesday. Then we saw him yesterday afternoon in James City County. Got no idea right this very minute," Marino answers.
"There are a couple other things you might want to know." Lucy addresses this to me. "One in particular is real odd but I can't make heads or tails of it yet. On the credit search, I got hits on two Jay Talleys with different addresses and different social security numbers. One Jay Talley was issued his social security number in Phoenix between 1960 and 1961. Which couldn't be Jay unless he's in his forties, and he's what? Not much older than me? Early thirties at the most? A second Jay Talley I got a hit on was issued his social security number between 1936 and '37. No D-O-B, but he'd have to be one of the early timers who got a number shortly after the Social Security Act of 1935, so God knows how old this particular Jay Talley already was when he got his number. He'd have to be at least in his seventies and he sure moves around a lot and uses post office boxes instead of physical addresses. He's also bought a lot of cars, sometimes changing vehicles a couple times a year."
"Did Talley ever tell you where he was born?" Marino asks me.
"He said he spent most of his childhood in Paris and then his family moved to L.A.," I reply. "You were sitting in the cafeteria when he said that. At Interpol."
"No record of either Jay Talley ever living in L.A.," Lucy says.
"And speaking of Interpol," Marino says. "Wouldn't they check him out before letting him work there?"
"Obviously, they might have checked into him, but not extensively," Lucy replies. "He's an ATF agent. You assume he's clean."
"What about a middle name?" Marino asks. "We know his?"
"He doesn't have one. Nothing in his ATF personnel records." McGovern smiles wryly. "And neither does the Jay Talley who got his social security number back before the Great Flood. That alone is unusual. Most people have middle names. In his file at headquarters it does say he was born in Paris and lived there until he was six. But after that he supposedly moved to New York with his French father and American mother and there's no mention of Los Angeles. On his ATF application he claims to have gone to Harvard, but having looked into that we discovered there's no record of any Jay Talley having ever attended Harvard."
"Jesus," Marino exclaims. "Don't people check out nothing when they go through these applications? They just take your word for it that you went to Harvard or were a Rhodes scholar or pole-vaulted in the Olympics? And they hire you and give you a badge and a gun?"
"Well, I'm not going to give Internal Affairs a heads-up that they may want to check him out a little more closely," McGovern offers. "We've got to be careful someone doesn't tip him off, and it's hard to say who his friends are at headquarters."