Blood Flag: A Paul Madriani Novel (29 page)

“At the moment her principal concern is the potential of a long stretch in the state penitentiary. Where did you get your information connecting Robert Brauer’s death with the Blood Flag and who told you that Sofia Leon’s murder was in any way connected?”

There’s a long silence at the other end, followed by Ivan clearing his throat. “I’m afraid those are confidences I can’t disclose,” he says.

“I’m afraid you’re not going to have a lot of choice when the police come visiting.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m sure that homicide detectives Owen and Noland are going to want to question you, to find out exactly how much you know and where you got your information. The same reason I’m going to have to hit you with a summons to appear at trial as a witness.”

“You don’t want to do that. It would be a waste of time. And expense,” he says. “I don’t know anything. Really.”

“It certainly doesn’t sound that way based on the news article.”

“I didn’t write it. All I did was answer a few of the man’s questions.”

“What man?”

“The reporter,” he says. “The one from the wire service.”

I look at the byline on the wire services piece and run the name by him, to which Rosch says, “Yeah, that’s him. That’s the man. It’s been rumored for months that the Blood Flag was coming on the market. All of the dealers have been getting calls. Wealthy collectors from Asia and Europe. The word is out. Apparently from what I gather, the reporter heard about it as well. Trust me, I don’t deal in this stuff on a regular basis.”

“What stuff?”

“Nazi memorabilia. It’s a narrow-niche market, creepy people, low end, and no real profit. Ordinarily our house wouldn’t touch it. But this is different. It’s unique. It’s a part of history. It has provenance. If you’ve done your research you know that. Like it or not, there are collectors who will pay huge amounts for something like this. Mostly over the phone. That’s where the big money will come from. The buyer and the people bidding against him in the final round will be long-distance over the phone. They will want to remain anonymous. That’s what the reporter wanted to know. How much was it worth? What was it likely to go for on the auction block? He asked me to give him a range of values, so I did.”

“And of course it helps to flog a sale,” I tell him. “All that publicity.”

“Yes. If we can get it. It’s part of the marketing.”

“So that’s why you went to the reporter?” says Harry.

“I didn’t go to him,” says Rosch. “He came to me.”

“What?”

“I didn’t search the man out. He showed up here. He already knew everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“He knew about the flag and all of the details. He had the soldiers’ names. He knew about the Brauer murder, about Brauer’s daughter, and about the other woman.”

“You mean Ms. Leon,” I say.

“Yes. And he had my name,” says Rosch. “He was told to come here. That I could help him out as to a valuation.”

“Where did he get the information?” I ask.

“A source he said he talked to over the phone. This person gave him all the details. The reporter said he didn’t believe the man at first. He thought he was crazy until they started checking it out. That’s when everything squared, the history of the flag, the soldiers’ names, where they were stationed during the war, the fact that two people had been murdered and one of them was associated directly with the flag. All of it checked out.”

“What about the woman? Ms. Leon, the one who was killed?”

“The reporter said there was specific information connecting her, tying her in, but he didn’t say what it was. He said they checked it out and confirmed that the information was accurate. It’s why they ran with the story. Every detail he gave them was confirmed.”

“Who was the man on the phone?” I ask.

“It was an anonymous call. According to the reporter, the man didn’t give his name.”

THIRTY-NINE

T
ony has told me so much about the two of you that I feel I know you.” Lillian Pack is a petite brunette with short pixie hair, full of energy and smiles. The mother of two teenage daughters, she dashes about between the kitchen and dining room of the Packs’ stately old brick home with the enthusiastic electricity of Tinker Bell. “Do the two of you have children?”

“Paul has a daughter by a prior marriage. She’s grown,” says Joselyn. “Sarah lives up near Los Angeles at present, but . . .” She looks at me. “We are both hoping that in time she’ll move south again to be closer.”

“Yes, family is everything.” Lillian smiles at her. She finally sits, takes a deep breath, looks over the bounty spread out on the table in the spacious dining room, and says, “I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything.” Then she looks at us. “Well,” she says, “don’t stand on ceremony, dig in. Help yourselves.”

After the media blast, Tony and I were on and off the phone so much we decided it was time for another meeting. Joselyn and I caught a Saturday flight from San Diego to Dallas and on to Oklahoma City. By seven this evening we are seated here with our feet under their table. Tony picked us up at the airport. They want us to stay at the house. We reminded him that he wouldn’t stay at our house when he was out to the coast, and he promised that next time he would.

“Lill is famous for her roast beef,” says Tony. “Try some of her gravy.”

“Au jus,” she corrects him.

“Call it what you want,” he says. “It’s delicious.” Tony is already loading up his plate.

“It’s probably the only reason he married me,” she says. “Tony likes to eat.”

“I can see that.” Joselyn smiles. “The way to a man’s heart.”

“Listen to them,” says Tony to me. “I don’t know about you, but I’d be living somewhere in a ditch under cardboard if I didn’t have Lill. Don’t know what I’d do.” He puts his plate on the table, leans over, scrunches himself down a little so he can reach, and kisses her on the cheek.

She smiles.

“Hear! Hear!” I say, and raise my glass. The four of us salute our good fortune with a sip of wine, a fine Merlot that Tony poured.

Tony’s size is subtle. You don’t realize how big he is until you see him sitting as he is here, next to his tiny, diminutive thimble of a wife. He is a big man, tall and rangy with hands like an NFL receiver.

“Girls, don’t wait,” Lillian tells the teenagers. “Hailey, where are your manners? Pass Mr. Madriani the rolls.”

The youngest of the two daughters lifts the checkered red and white cloth, takes one of the steaming rolls, and hands the basket to me. Hailey is the image of her mother, tiny with an infectious smile. She flashes it at me and says, “Would you like some butter?”

“Sure.”

The older girl is more like her dad, tall, with a more devious look. She studies Joselyn and me from the other side of the table with occasional stolen glances. She is in the grip of those teenage years of insecurity. I recognize this. As difficult as they sometimes were, it was one of the happiest times of my life. Sarah and I were together.

“You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble,” says Joss. “It’s too much. Especially on such short notice.”

“Nonsense,” says Tony.

“And there’s no need to stay in a hotel,” says Lillian. “Not with the empty rooms we have upstairs.”

“They already agreed to stay,” says Tony. “Let’s not belabor it.”

Tony and his family are living in his father’s old house, one of the stately brick mansions in an area known as Heritage Hills. By the time we pulled into their driveway Joselyn was getting whiplash trying to take in all the elegant homes and gardens along the way. Tony said he’d take us on a tour in the morning, walking the neighborhood. But he warned us not to become too impressed. According to Tony, the real estate dollar goes a lot farther here than it does in California.

By the time we’re finished with dinner the two women have bonded. They take their coffees and retreat to the kitchen. The kids have gone upstairs. Tony and I are alone at the dining room table talking in half whispers.

“If you had to just take a stab in the dark,” he says, “where do you think the information came from? The voice on the phone, the source the dealer told you about?” Tony is talking about the revelations in the wire service story, all the details that played out in the media about the Blood Flag and the three soldiers.

“I’ve been asking myself the same question for the last two days,” I tell him. “And I still don’t have an answer.”

“The only ones who had that kind of information are you, me, and some of the people in your office?” He looks at me with eyes like a question mark.

“No. You can forget that,” I tell him. “Harry and I have been together forever. At the moment we both have more money than God. As for Herman, I’d trust him with my life. In fact I have on more than one occasion. When it comes to confidential information he’s tighter than a drum.”

“What about the people he hired?” says Tony.

“The other investigators?”

“Yeah.”

I shake my head. “I checked with Herman just to be sure, before I left. He assured me they don’t know anything. If they do, it didn’t come out of our office. He’s told none of them any details. According to Herman, they work on the clock, doing whatever they’re told, and that’s it.”

“I hadn’t even told Lillian,” says Tony. “She thought I was following up on Dad’s death because somebody at the VA killed him or else they screwed up. She thinks that’s why I’m seeing you. I told her your firm specializes in elder care litigation.”

“Why didn’t you tell her?”

“I was afraid the more she knew, the more danger she’d be in. Lillian is a headstrong woman,” says Tony. “If I told her what was happening she’d he out there on her own, turning over every rock. Especially if she thought there was something happening that was putting her family in jeopardy. You don’t know her,” says Tony. “Don’t let her size fool you.”

“I understand.”

“The problem now is that she’s asking questions ever since the news broke. She’s talking to her friends. They’ve all seen it on TV, Dad’s name being mentioned. Then she got a hold of the local newspaper. They made a big front-page splash out of it because of the connection with Fort Sill, the history of the 45th Infantry. She read it and wanted to know if I knew anything.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I lied. I told her no. I don’t want to worry her. Do you understand?”

I nod.

“You don’t think Joselyn will say anything, do you?”

“I wish I’d known. I think they’re probably talking about other things. The second I get her alone I’ll ask her not to discuss it.”

“Thanks,” he says. “I told Lill the only thing I knew is what I read in the paper and the stories on TV. I downplayed it as much as I could. I told her I was sure it was all nonsense. When the newspaper called me I told them I didn’t know a thing. And I told them they could quote me. But I’m worried,” he says. “I’m thinking about whoever it was, the voice on the phone, the one you say called the reporter. If it’s not you, and it’s not me, and it’s not the people in your office, then there’s only one other possible source. Whoever it is who killed them all.”

Tony has come to the same conclusion I have. “But why would he do it?”

Tony shakes his head. “I don’t know. It would seem to make things worse for him. But then again, not necessarily.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you I had another meeting with the police on my dad’s case?”

“Yes.”

“The publicity, the stories, the fact that the source told the reporter that my dad was murdered didn’t make a dent on the local cops. They’re still insisting that he died of natural causes. They told me that until they find new evidence to the contrary, that’s their official position.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” I tell him. “In fact, if you look at the story there’s nothing there that you and I didn’t already know.”

“And the killer,” says Tony. “Don’t forget the killer.”

“Yes. Maybe he’s trying to turn up the heat.”

“How do you mean?”

“To force the flag out into the open. Maybe he thinks by doing this, whoever has access to the flag will use it, and then he can make his move.”

“That’s possible,” says Tony. “But you’re the only one with a key.”

“So you still haven’t found your dad’s yet?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “Let’s go in my father’s study. We can talk better there.”

FORTY

T
he house is large, rambling, with hardwood floors and old mahogany everywhere. Tony tells me that it was built at the turn of the last century, early 1900s, by one of the oil barons. The area went through a period of decline during and after the Depression in the 1930s, but it came back after the war and experienced a renaissance since. For a while Heritage Hills was known as “Doctor’s Row” because so many of them had moved in. They bought the old homes and fixed them up. Today it’s a gentrified historic area close to downtown. Ed Pack and his wife bought the house in the late fifties. Tony has fond memories not only of growing up in the home but of roaming the neighborhood around it.

We do small talk as we walk toward the study. I ask him how business is going at the bank.

“So-so,” he says. To listen to Tony, small-time banks have become a tough business. He tells me he’s spending increasing amount of his time fending off takeover bids from larger banks.

“That’s good. That means you must be making money.”

“That’s the problem,” he says. “If you don’t generate enough revenue, you go broke. Make too much and you start showing up on the predator’s radar screens. The bigger banks will come in and swallow you whole. They will buy you up, shut you down, and open one of their branches at your location. To survive and remain independent you have to keep your earnings in the Goldilocks zone,” says Tony. “Not too much. Not too little. Banking, whether it’s retail or commercial, has a natural evolution toward monopoly. We’re going to wake up one day and discover that the country has one big bank, and they’re in business with the federal government and the politicians who run it.”

“Sounds like life on a tightrope.”

“It is,” he says.