I said, “Maybe it’s a layover for Macao execs when they’re here on business. Or some sort of tax dodge — keeping the ownership overseas where the rates are lower and depreciating the real estate here.”
“How does that work?”
“Above my pay grade,” I said. “I did have a custody case last year, couple was worth six hundred million, most of it in property. They bought, sold, traded up, kept depreciating, and paid no income tax. The wife threatened to expose it but it turned out to be legit.”
“She owned half and wanted to blow everything up?”
“You bet,” I said. “She hated her husband that much.”
“Nose, spite, face — doesn’t that level of ugly get to you?”
“This from you?”
“I live in one nasty world, you occupy two.”
“I’ve got a fulfilling outside life.”
“Feeding the fish?”
I smiled. “That’s part of it.”
He tried a gate on the east side of the house. Bolted. “When Okash brought the painting someone was here to let her in.”
“Definitely. She stayed inside for sixteen minutes.”
“You timed it?”
“Nothing else to do while I watched.”
“So if we keep popping by there’s a chance of catching someone. Let’s get out of here.”
He slouched toward the Seville.
I got behind the wheel. “Back to the gallery again?”
“You’ve got energy for that?”
“Sure.”
“Titanium man. Nah, I’m bushed. Drop me at the station then go feed your finny friends.”
Chapter 36
He dozed as I drove, rasping through his nose. A mile from the station he was roused by a text beep, sat up sharp and speed-dialed.
Marcus Coolidge said, “Hey. A couple of us have been reviewing any closed-circuit footage we can find within a mile of my crime scene. Mostly phony cameras, malfunctions, lousy quality when we get anything. But an hour ago, Albert — my guy, a loaner from Auto-Theft — spotted something a little less than half a mile away. The same car drives toward the dump site at the right time and is spotted going the other way sixteen minutes later. It’s the only vehicle we’ve seen doing that. It’s an industrial area, that hour no traffic to speak of. Disk is too blurry to make out the tags but the make’s clear. Volvo sedan, you know how boxy they are. Leon’s a motorhead, says mid- to late nineties 850.”
I said, “White.”
Coolidge said, “Who’s that?”
Milo said, “Dr. Delaware. Is it white?”
A beat. “You already know this?”
“We didn’t until you called, Marc.” He told Coolidge about the cars at the Clearwater house.
Coolidge said, “That and a Rolls, one for show, one for the dirty work? So who are these people?”
“That, my friend, is unclear. All we’ve got so far is a business,” Milo summed up.
Coolidge said, “Macao. Where’s that, the Caribbean?”
“China. Low taxes and casinos.”
“So we could be dealing with Asian mafia types?”
“Who knows, Marc? The company seems to do art and real estate and Okash does business with them. She was seen coming and going with what looked like a painting.”
“Business and nasty,” said Coolidge, “if that Volvo is theirs.”
“We just stopped by, neither car was there and at least a couple days’ mail was in the box — all junk, no addressee names. Given what you found, you up for a meeting tomorrow morning, my shop? Bring Albert, you’ll meet my team.”
“Team? How many you got?”
“Three D’s, all on loan.”
“Same as here. My boss calls the Auto boss, cashes in a favor, and gets me Albert. Guy knows cars like I know my right hand. Not sure he can make it but I’ll be there. When were you thinking?”
“Ten work for you?”
“No prob.” Coolidge yawned. “ ’Scuse, looking at that video is like a slow drip of vodka, I need to crash.”
Chapter 37
Next morning, same room. I was starting to feel at home.
Clean whiteboard, six chairs assembled in two rows like a classroom. Milo had amped up the catering: two boxes of pastries, another of assorted bagels, lox, cream cheese, paper napkins, a coffee urn, hot water, tea bags, Styrofoam cups. All on his dime.
Enthusiastic consumption all around. Even Reed, succumbing to a whole-wheat bagel.
He sat in the back row with Binchy and me. In front of us were Marc Coolidge, his Inglewood colleague, a six-foot-five Kobe Bryant look-alike named Albert Freeman, and Alicia Bogomil.
Up at the board, his jacket freckled by crumbs, Milo wielded a wooden pointer.
He’d been over the basics: no additional data on any of the four victims, no sightings of Medina Okash. Even with her car behind the gallery, the inactive look of the entire building suggested she’d slipped out and had been picked up by someone.
That combined with the mail pile-up at the blue house caused the room to go quiet.
Milo tapped Geoffrey Dugong’s face. “He’s gone, too, but to my mind, he’s a low-probability suspect. Unless he’s a consummate actor, and I don’t think he’s bright enough. Either way, we had nothing to hold him on so he’s back in Key West, courtesy a flight paid for by Homeland Security.”
Albert Freeman said, “How’d you pull that off?”
“Personal charm. Meanwhile, I’ve kept watch on the gallery and Alicia’s been surveilling Okash’s apartment. A warrant’s out of the question and I still can’t convince the D.A. a welfare check isn’t going to get us in evidentiary trouble. But one thing I did get from Dugong was Okash’s cell number and I’ve issued a subpoena for her records.”
Coolidge said, “So despite what the whack-a-walrus said, she’s high-probability.”
“She’s got a history of violence, the last place Benny Alvarez was seen alive is her gallery, she patronized the market where Solomon Roget posted his ads. And now we’ve got your Volvo lead and her connection to Clearwater. We’ve been figuring this for at least two people.”
“Her and some dude with a Rolls.”
“The reaction we saw to the murders was a one-eighty from what she showed Dugong.”
Milo turned to me.
I said, “Calm to the point of being flat and extremely flirtatious. So she may have been one of Rick Gurnsey’s flock of sexual partners, possibly the woman seen with Gurnsey at the house last January.”
Coolidge said, “So what’s the motive?”
Milo said, “Given Okash’s business, we might have some sort of sick performance art.”
More silence.
I said, “I just thought of something. The burner Gurnsey was talking to before he got killed has a Baltimore number and Okash went to high school in Annapolis.”
“It’s a burner, Doc,” said Binchy. “Random numbers.”
Alicia cleared her throat. “Not exactly. In the early days you could pay for an area code. And sometimes codes actually matched where they were sold. Least I saw that in Alburquerque.”
Milo said, “That so? Okay, maybe another brick in the wall.”
He pointed to a photo of the blue house on Clearwater. “Onward to this place. Still haven’t found any names associated with the property, just a company, AOC — Asian-Occidental Concepts.”
The pointer shifted to the right. Enlargements of a white Volvo and a long, sleek Rolls-Royce the same color. “These aren’t actual cars and in fact none are registered to AOC. But these exact models are registered to one of their subsidiaries, an outfit called Heigur, Limited. Making it even more interesting, another subsidiary, Western Import-Export, owns the building that houses Okash’s place as well as the two other galleries on the ground floor. Neither of which we’ve ever seen actually doing business.”