Long Knives (37 page)

CHAPTER 82

Week 3—Wednesday Afternoon

I
thanked Aldous for the picnic, gave him a peck on the cheek—it’s amazing how a relationship can cool as quickly as thin-crust pizza—and went back to my condo. I had come up with a plan, but if I was going to implement it, I needed to do it quickly.

Oscar had given me a copy of the receipt for the sodium azide that had supposedly been found in the pocket of my jacket. The name of the company from which it was bought was at the top of the page—Angin Chemical. It was located near downtown LA. The salesperson’s name wasn’t on the receipt, but the salesperson’s number was.

I called the company and when someone answered, I said, “Hi, this is January Bigelow.” (January Bigelow was the name of my long-ago freshman college roommate.)

“I bought some chemicals the other day from one of your salespeople. I came in personally to pick up the order. I can’t recall the name, but the number is 2385. Can you tell me who that is so I can talk directly to them again? I have a couple of questions.”

I listened. “No, no, it’s not a complaint, just a question.”

After a moment the person came back on the line and said, “That would be Sylvia Menendez. Let me connect you.”

I hung up.

Next I went back to the website and tried to find the most benign thing the company sold over the counter. Then I ordered up my car from the valet, got in and drove to my bank, where I took out four hundred dollars from the ATM. Then I drove downtown to Angin Chemical. When I got there, I parked in one of the three spaces labeled
CUSTOMERS ONLY
, got out of my car and walked in through the double glass doors at the front. As I expected, there was a service counter in the back, and I made a beeline for it.

Luck was with me. The woman standing behind the counter had a nametag that said Sylvia Menendez. She looked to be in her early twenties. She was shorter than me, maybe five foot three, with dark hair cut short and green eyes. She was wearing the kind of button-up blue smock you often see on employees of places where there can be a lot of dust around.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Annej Semaj.” (I had been amusing myself since childhood pronouncing my name backward. I thought it sounded vaguely East Indian. I always pronounce the
j
in both words like the
g
in Geronimo.) “I saw on your website that you sell Decon AquaPur ST Sterile Purified USP-Grade Water. Is it in stock?”

“I’m pretty sure it is,” she said, looking down at her computer screen as she typed in a query. She glanced again at the screen display and said, “Yes, we do have it in. What size would you like?”

“What are the available sizes?”

“It comes in one-gallon containers, four containers to a case.”

“I’ll take one case.”

“Okay, let me get it from the stockroom.” She turned and disappeared into the back.

I had ordered the four-container case because I knew that a gallon of water weighs almost eight-and-a-half pounds, and I wanted the entire thing to be heavy enough that it would be reasonable for me to ask for help carrying it out to my car.

Sylvia emerged from the back, pushing the case of USP-grade water on a dolly.

“Will you be paying by cash, credit card or check?” she asked. “Oh, I should add that we only accept checks if your company has an account with us. Do you?”

“No. I’ll pay with cash. How much is it?”

“It’s $180 plus sales tax. You can pay here or at the front.”

“Here is fine.”

With tax the bill came to $196.20. She took the two hundred dollars I proffered her and gave me change. “For your receipt,” she asked, “what name should I use? Yours or a company name?”

“Oh, just my name, Annej Semaj.” I spelled it for her and then pronounced it again, slowly.

She handed me a receipt that looked just like the one found in my pocket.

“Will you need some help,” she asked, “getting this to your truck?”

“Oh, I don’t have a truck. Just an old Land Cruiser, but yes, I could use some help. I’m parked right out front.”

“I’ll push it out for you,” she said.

I headed for the front door and she followed. When we got to my Land Cruiser, I popped open the back, lifted the hatch and together we lifted up the heavy box and slid it in.

I was trying to think of some small talk to engage in that would make my visit memorable when she saved me the trouble. “It’s unusual,” she said, “for individuals to buy this much highly purified water. If you don’t mind my asking, what do you do with it?”

“Oh, I work in a medical research lab at UCLA. We use purified water to dilute sterile disinfectants. We ran out of it this afternoon, and my boss was bitching about how long it would take to reorder it through normal channels.”

“So you just said you’d go and get some?”

“Exactly.”

“Medical research. Wow, maybe I should try to get a job like that. One day I’d like to go to med school.”

“What do you do now?”

“I’ll be graduating from LACC next spring and I’m hoping to transfer to UCLA.”

“Well, give me your card, if you have one, and I’ll send you a link to the UCLA job postings board.”

“That would be great. Let me run back in and get you one.”

She was gone a couple of minutes and then came back with a card. She handed it to me and said, “This is actually the company’s card, but I’ve written my name and e-mail address on the back.”

“Great.”

“Do you have a card?”

“Not with me. But now that I’ve got your e-mail address, I can send you my contact info.”

“Thanks.”

As I drove away, I thought to myself that I had taken a risk. Sylvia might have recognized me if the police had already shown her my photo. Oscar had told me that the police used to show photos but now tried to avoid it because it could screw up the credibility of later identification. But it had still been a risk. Or the clerk could have seen a picture of me in the paper or online, although I thought that the only picture connecting me with Primo’s death had been in a brief article in the
Bruin
on an inside page. Anyway, it had worked. She thought my name was Annej Semaj, and she had shown no hint of knowing who I really was.

CHAPTER 83

T
ess had asked me to meet her at the Bel-Air at five. I hadn’t been there since Marbury Marfan had taken me to a recruiting dinner at the hotel almost fifteen years earlier. I arrived a few minutes before five, gave my car to the valet and walked across the bridge toward the main building. The place was still beautiful. The hotel had been remodeled a few years before, but its essential character had been preserved. Even the ducks and swans remained.

Tess was waiting for me in the wood-paneled bar. She was sitting at a table for two in a corner, sipping a drink and picking at a plate of olives.

“Please sit,” she said.

I did, and said to her, “I feel as if I really ought to reintroduce myself, since we met so briefly at Craft.”

“Yes, it was rapid,” she said. “So let us do it properly. I am Tess Devrais.” She put out her hand to shake mine.

“And I’m Jenna James.” I took her hand and shook it. “Pleased to meet you, Tess.”

We both laughed out loud. So loud that the bartender turned and looked at us.

“When I saw you that night,” Tess said, “I had a small jealousy. Because you have a necklace with the same design as the bracelet which I have. A gift to you, I think by the same man, yes? Is that not stupid?”

“Yes, it was the same man, and it is stupid. In fact, I would be happy to give you the necklace if you’d like. Maybe the necklace and the bracelet need to live together again, as they must once have done.”

“Ah, this is a nice thing you think to do, but it is not necessary. Not at all.”

Just then the waiter appeared and asked me for my order. I ordered a vodka martini with a twist.

“How long have you known Robert?” I asked

“I think it is sixteen years. Maybe more years. I will have to count. And you?”

I thought about it. “Well, I met him when I was in my second year of law school, so let’s see, that’s maybe thirteen years ago? I, too, would need to count to make it exact.”

“Jenna, were you in a romance with Robert?”

I tried to look as horrified as possible. “Oh no, never. Nothing like that. We were professional colleagues. He was my mentor. He taught me a lot, but there was not an ounce of romance.”

“I believe you,” she said.

I wondered briefly to myself what possible difference it would have made if I had had a romance with Robert. After all, she was in France. But I put it out of my mind.

“Tess,” I said, “before I called Robert that night in Paris, had he ever mentioned me to you?”

“Never. I wonder why he did not?”

“It’s because he was angry at me for leaving the firm to go to UCLA to teach. I thought at the time that it was stupid for him to be angry about that. But I can see now that Robert thought of the firm as his family, and he thought of me as one of his favorite children. So it’s like I was breaking up his family. He wanted to grow old with his family.”

“Men, they are bizarre,” she said.

The waiter put my martini in front of me at that very moment. I lifted it up and said, “Let’s drink to that.”

We clinked our glasses.

“We can talk about Robert more later perhaps,” Tess said.

I smiled. “Or we can talk about something more important.”

“Yes. I will drink to that, too.”

We clinked glasses again.

“Now,” Tess said, “I will tell you something I think you will like to know.”

“I’m listening,” I said.

“Before he left for Spain, Robert told me of your troubles. And he explained some of the things—strange things—that have happened.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I told him that I wanted to help you. And I thought to myself there was one thing I could solve.”

“Which is?”

“The answer to who is wishing secretly to buy your apartment.”

“Oh. I have been curious about that. Did you figure it out?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I am rich, you know. I got from Robert the name of the real-estate agent who came to see you so often. I rented a Rolls-Royce and went to see him. I told him I liked your building. I let him take me to lunch. I let him think I was
très intéressé
in him.”

“Were you?”

“
Mais non
! Or how do you say?”

“No way.”

“
Exactement
. But I let him think this. I asked him again and again about your building. Who owned each apartment. Who would buy. Who would sell. Finally, he told me that the person who wants your apartment is someone named Greta Broontz.”

“Oh my God.”

“Is she a bad person?”

“Maybe. But she’s one of my law-school faculty colleagues.”

“
Mon dieu
.”

“Why does she want my apartment, Tess? I mean, she already lives in the building, and I think her view is almost as good as mine. It’s only one floor below me.”

“She wishes to have an apartment of two floors. She will, I am not sure of the right verb…”

“Break through from her apartment to mine?”

“Yes.”

I thought to myself that I had now identified a motive for Greta Broontz to poison me. But would she really be willing to kill me for my apartment? I decided not to utter the thought aloud because it was too absurd.

“Do you think,” Tess asked, “that this woman wishes to kill you for your apartment?”

“No one is that crazy, Tess.”

CHAPTER 84

Week 3—Wednesday Evening

A
round 6:00
P.M.
I got a text message from Robert. It said, “Hi, I’m back and back on the grid.”

I texted back:

“u r ahol 4 leaving. we needed u.”

He texted back:

“Let’s meet at Oscar’s at 8.”

I texted:

“Okay.”

Then I called Oscar and arranged it.

When I got to Oscar’s promptly at eight, Robert was already there. He and Robert were both sitting at the big table. Robert’s briefcase was on the table in front of him, unopened.

“Hi,” Robert said. “I gather you’re mad at me.”

“Yes,” I said, marshaling the iciest voice I was capable of.

“Well, Jenna, I come bearing gifts, so perhaps you’ll end up forgiving me.”

“What gifts?”

“Information about what’s really going on with Quinto and Primo. You’ll be pleased, I’m sure.”

“Primo’s dead is what’s going on with him.”

Oscar interceded. “Hey, my friends, you both need to cool it. Jenna, Robert has some good information, so muffle your ire. And Robert, it wasn’t cool to disappear for three days in the middle of a case. It would help if you admitted that.”

“I admit it,” Robert said. “But I thought the criminal case was over, and I had no idea there’d be a UCLA hearing.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Please tell me what you found out.”

“I found out that there really is a survivor account—by the navigator of the
Ayuda.
Apparently it’s been misfiled for centuries.” He unsnapped the briefcase on the table, pulled out a document and handed it to me.

I looked at it and saw that it was written in archaic seventeenth-
century Spanish. With effort I’d be able to decrypt it, but not while sitting at Oscar’s large table.

I handed the document back to Robert. “What does it say?”

“My researcher says it is indeed an account written by the navigator. It gives a very approximate latitude of the
Ayuda
when it sank, and it says the number of days he drifted before reaching land.”

“How many?”

“Twenty, if you believe the X-ray of the document.”

Oscar broke in. “Which means, Jenna, that the
Ayuda
really did sink somewhere far out in the Pacific, not near Catalina. Hard to figure out exactly where, though.”

“How,” I asked, “does that fit in with Primo bringing me a map with the location?”

Robert’s face lit up in a big grin. “Here’s my theory: there’s no real map, or at least no map with a true location of the
Ayuda
on it. That’s what Cabano said. And I’m guessing they just picked a place far out in the Pacific along the same line of latitude, took a nautical chart and drew an
X
on that spot.”

“So you suspect the whole thing was a fraud?”

“Yes. I think they were trying to persuade investors that they had located the ship on the bottom—with precision—and needed a couple of million dollars to go down and get what was in it. Then they were going to pretend to launch a salvage operation, tell people they failed, take most of the money and go to Mexico.”

“Why would they try to defraud me? I have no money to invest.”

“I don’t think they wanted your money. They were getting rebuffed by investors, and it makes sense that they would want to associate a prominent admiralty lawyer with their venture in order to beef up their credibility, the better to try again with new investors.”

“So you think I was a mark.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m not sure,” I said, “even if it’s true, where that will get us in this stupid Charges Committee hearing.”

“Well,” Oscar said, “if it’s true, it seems to me it eliminates one possible suspect. Quinto would have had no reason to kill you. In fact, if Robert’s right, he and Primo would have very much wanted you alive to help them with their scam.”

“Maybe,” I said, “Quinto himself had some other reason to kill Primo. Primo’s diary says Quinto threatened him.”

“Yes,” Oscar said. “But as you and I discussed, Jenna, I think Quinto just didn’t want you involved at all because of your connection to Aldous, who knew at least some of the truth. So if Quinto wanted to prevent your involvement, he would have needed to kill Primo
before
he met with you.”

“I have something to add to that,” Robert said. “The guy I spoke with in Spain says they threatened each other all the time, but that it meant nothing.”

“Well, how much time,” Oscar asked, “did you spend with that guy?”

“Maybe an hour,” Robert said, “but I think he was very credible. Even if he was himself something of a crook.”

I sat there for a moment and thought about it. Did I want to eliminate Quinto as a suspect in Primo’s murder on just the say-so of someone I’d never met, with whom Robert had spent an hour, who he thought was a crook but credible on this one point? Quinto was testifying tomorrow, and I wanted him to be friendly, and help me nail the other suspect—Julie.

“I guess that leaves Julie,” I said. “After all, we know she had the opportunity because she rode up to the campus with Primo and Quinto, so she was around, waiting, or so she says, for Primo to finish talking to me. And I’ve learned—never mind how—that she looked up something to do with the poison on her computer.”

Oscar just looked at me. “That’s a key piece of evidence, and you’re not going to tell us how you got it?”

“Well, Oscar,” I said, “this hearing is just an informal chat among friends, remember? Surely where evidence came from can’t be important, can it?”

Oscar got up and went into the kitchen. “I think,” he said, “that this whole thing has descended to such a level of absurdity that we might as well just drink martinis while we plot tomorrow. And I think Plan B is the way we should go.”

“What’s Plan B?” Robert asked.

“It is,” Oscar said, “a criminal-defense ploy. When your client looks guilty, blame it on someone else. Anyone, really, who is even remotely plausible. It tends to distract the jury and sometimes gets the guilty client off the hook.”

“Are you saying, Oscar,” I asked, “that I look guilty?”

“No, not at all, Jenna. But you’re the person in the dock, so to speak. So we need to distract the panel to someone else in order to be sure that they don’t find you did it.”

“So who is it going to be?” I asked.

Robert spoke up. “From everything I know, we should target Julie.”

“Can’t we target Quinto, too?” I asked.

“No,” Oscar said. “Plan B doesn’t work with more than one target.”

So while we drank martinis, we all agreed the name of the game would be pin the crime on Julie.

I, of course, had my own little plan on that. I kept it to myself.