Текст книги "The Last Thing I Saw "
Автор книги: Richard Stevenson
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CHAPTER SEVEN
Gummer didn’t want to go back into Bryan Kim’s apartment and he wasn’t sure the police would approve of my doing so, but reluctantly he lent me the key. Yellow crime-scene tape had been stretched across the door, but I unlocked it and shoved it open with my foot and ducked under the tape. Gummer’s mention of a certain type of Mexican meat market had been apt; Kim’s living room smelled like a slaughterhouse in a tropical country that made do without a lot of meddlesome government sanitary regulations. A throw rug was missing from the hardwood floor, apparently having been carried off by the forensics team. The stained floor next to where the rug had lain had been cleaned but only perfunctorily. I noted blood spatters on the nearby leather couch and even as far away as an end table with a lamp whose pretty silk shade was spotted. The scene suggested a great deal of violence.
Across the room were a good-sized plasma TV and an elaborate sound setup. The CDs next to it were current pop with some dance-club house music. On a shelf were framed photos of Kim in the company of what appeared to be a sober Korean-American family of five. Alongside the pictures was Kim’s local Emmy for “distinguished Boston news coverage.”
Among the books on a nearby shelf was Wenske’s Notes from the Bush. I checked the inscription, which read: “To Bryan—good reporter, hot number, beloved pal—Eddie.” I also noted that the book’s printed dedication was to My parents, Susan and Herb Wenske. There was also a copy of Weed Wars.
It was neither inscribed nor autographed. Its printed dedication was To Paul Delaney. Who was Paul Delaney? He had to be someone important in Wenske’s life, but his name hadn’t come up.
Kim’s bedroom had a king-sized bed, neatly made, with a handsome Japanese cotton coverlet. The bookmarked book on the bedside table was Mary Ann in Autumn, the final Tales of the City volume. Kim had made it to page 73. The closet was stuffed with what looked like a small fortune in well-crafted dark suits, a supposed occupational necessity—though an Albany news anchor had once confessed to me that for him it was the other way around: he needed to be on television so he’d have an excuse to own all those suits.
It looked as if somebody had already been through Kim’s desk. The police? The killer? The drawers were empty and their contents had been arranged in neat piles on top. It was basically just entertainment brochures and advertising. Anything more personal or potentially revealing—letters, bills, bank and credit card statements—had been taken away, I guessed. There was no computer, just—as with Wenske’s desk—a space where one must have sat. So who took that? The police or the killer?
Kim’s tidy bathroom contained a lot of toiletries but nothing that told me anything noteworthy about who Kim was. The only pharmaceuticals in his medicine cabinet were Tylenol, over-the-counter cold remedies and some prescription Cialis, a 30-tablet box of 5mg each, the daily dose.
I checked the kitchen to see if maybe a large knife was missing, suggesting that the killer had not planned on attacking Kim and had simply grabbed a knife in a rage. But I had no idea how many knives Kim owned to begin with, so I learned nothing. Anyway, the nearly empty fridge and the Thai and Korean boxed entrees in the freezer suggested that not a lot of cooking had gotten done in this kitchen. And not a lot of cheesecakes baked. I looked around for a recipe collection but found none.
§ § §
Marilyn Fogle had said she was in the midst of a fund drive at the NPR station where she was vice president for development, and would I mind if she picked up some salad and panini at Panera and we ate them in her kitchen? Her ex-husband had their two teenaged daughters for the weekend, so we would be able to talk without any distractions. I offered to pick up the food, but she said not to bother, she had to pass Panera anyway on the way home from the station.
The house didn’t look like the abode of the vice president of anything, just a cozy clapboard ranch with soon-to-burst-into-bloom tulips along the walk up to the front door. The car in the driveway was a Subaru wagon of non-recent vintage with carefully nonpartisan good-cause bumper stickers plastered across the hatch.
At her kitchen table, Fogle produced a Karlsberg for me and poured herself a glass of Chablis. “I do apologize for the store-bought fare, but it’s that time of year, as I hope you will have noticed.”
“I have indeed. I admit I changed to another station on the car radio.”
“But not before you made your pledge, I hope.”
“Sorry, but I’m one of those people who steal it.”
She looked as if she wasn’t sure if I was kidding, so I told her I was. “My partner Timothy Callahan takes care of that. He tithes for both of us.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t you get tired of saying thank you to each of your gazillion contributors?”
“No, never. We’d go out and wash their feet if that’s what it took to keep public radio going.”
“This sounds like Wenske family-style missionary zeal. Where have I heard this before?”
She laughed. In her mid-forties, Fogle was rangy and a little bit stooped in a black pants suit and lemon yellow blouse. She had the beginnings of a wrinkled neck, a lot of sandy hair like her brother, and the same sly smile.
She said, “Yes, we’re all fanatics, I guess. Dad going after the Wall Street crooks, Eddie exposing the ethically challenged and socially misguided. And me keeping the world safe for All Things Considered. Mom used to take the world more or less as it was until she opened The Party’s on Us and became a mushrooms-and-cheese-in-puff-pastry zealot. Now she’s crazed and over-scheduled just like my brother and me.”
I almost asked her if she had a second brother, then realized who she meant. “I take it you agreed with your mother’s decision to hire me to search for Eddie.”
“You bet I did. I almost looked into hiring a private investigator myself. I got as far as the Yellow Pages. But to tell you the truth, my savings are not what I’d planned on at my age, this house is underwater and can’t be re-mortgaged until late in the century, and Bond, my ex, is out of work and almost no help at all. So for financial reasons I never made the call. Thank God, Mom has a little money from her mother, and you are what she’s spending it on.”
I felt a twinge of guilt, but only briefly, for I planned on earning my fee, even if it meant delivering bad news to the Wenskes. I said, “Bond. Did he trade in…you know?”
“No. If only. Bond re-strings tennis rackets. And he’s working on his novel.”
“I was an English major, and that could have been me.”
“He’s great with Becca and Lisa though. You might meet them. Bond will be dropping them off in about an hour. I know they’re pleased that you’re in the picture. They’re very fond of Eddie, and I know they’d be even more upset about his being missing if they didn’t have so much else on their minds. Though they couldn’t possibly be any more of a mess than I am. I wake up at night thinking about Eddie, and if I think about him long enough, I come down with a perfect bitch of a migraine.”
Fogle had laid out plates and flatware on the kitchen table and spread out the Panera good eats, and we helped ourselves.
“I know you’ve been in touch with the police,” I said.
“Oh, I’ve been more than in touch. I’ve been a total pain in the ass.”
“That’s necessary sometimes. Police detectives are busy people.”
“At first, I just thought Eddie wasn’t reachable because he was up to here in something he was working on. He could be like that, focused to the point of driving everybody else crazy who wasn’t in on his current mania. But when Bryan got worried, he called me and then I began to worry too. And now…with what’s happened to Bryan…I can’t…” Her voice broke and she shook her head. “I know I should be really upset about poor Bryan, but all I can think about is: What if the same thing happened to Eddie? And his body is…somewhere. Oh Jesus. Oh crap.”
“I know. It’s worrisome,” was my lame response.
“Donald, what do the police know about Bryan’s death? Anything at all? You said you were in touch with them.”
“They have no leads, as far as I know. The detective in charge is aware of Bryan’s connection with Eddie, and I expect you’ll hear from him, a guy named Marsden Davis who seems competent.”
“Good.”
“Does your mother know about Bryan? I’ll call her tonight.”
“I spoke to her. She reacted the same way I did. All she can think about is Eddie. She feels a little guilty—just like I do—because we were never that crazy about Bryan in the first place.”
“He sounded like a lot of work.”
“Yes, but Eddie said the one thing you could count on with Bryan was his professional integrity, and that meant a lot to Eddie. If Bryan had been as faithful to Eddie as he had been to Channel Six News, everything would have gone a lot more smoothly.”
“Faithful?”
“I don’t mean sexually. I have no idea what their arrangements were in that regard. Gay men have their mysterious ways. I know that. I mean emotionally faithful. And of course physically present. Bryan just seemed incapable of committing, and he had a history of jumping into relationships with guys and then panicking and jumping out again. But the two of them just seemed to hit it off in so many ways, and I know there was a strong physical attraction. In fact, I got a little tired of hearing about Bryan’s satiny muscular butt. I do know they were trying to make a go of it the second time around.”
The prosciutto and chevre panini were excellent, as was the big fresh green salad with walnuts and cranberries. The beer was helpful, too, though I thought better of asking for a second bottle.
I said, “I’m guessing there’s a connection between Bryan’s murder and your brother’s disappearance, though of course they could be coincidental. I understand that Bryan was helping Eddie with the gay media book he was researching. Your mother said Bryan knew people at Hey Look TV, and they were turning out to be good sources for the critical story he was writing about the network and its bad labor practices and general sleaziness. Do you happen to know who any of those people at the network are?”
“No, but I know who might know. Luke Pearlman was a classmate of Bryan’s at NYU, and he’s in TV news in New York, a producer at Channel Four. He got the girls in to meet Lady Gaga at NBC one time. I know Luke is part of that gay Tisch Broadcasting School-NYU crowd, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he was one of Eddie’s sources.”
I made a note of this. “Who,” I asked, “is Paul Delaney? Weed Wars is dedicated to him.”
“Oh, Paul is one of Eddie’s heroes. He was his first editor at the Globe, and Eddie says he learned nearly everything he knows about journalism from Paul. It’s sad about Paul, though. He got a top job at The L.A. Times, and then the paper was sold to a no-news-background idiot—an all too common story in journalism today—and Paul got canned. He’s working at some small weekly out there now, and I think he’s struggling. He called when he heard Eddie was missing, and he was very concerned.”
“I’ll look him up if I get to L.A.”
“You might go there? Looking for Eddie?”
“Los Angeles is the headquarters for Hey Look Media. So, who knows.”
“The police seem to think a drug cartel did something to Eddie. You don’t think so?”
“It’s a possibility, I’m sorry to say. But the police are only guessing. Their own sources say they know of no revenge killing of a journalist.”
“But you’ll do your own digging? I assumed you would. Mother assumes that too.”
The Wenskes were probably wondering if they might not be taken for a ride by me, business class to L.A., a suite at the Beverly Hilton. Despite my pretty good professional reputation around Albany they had no way of knowing I had over the years absorbed the parsimonious ways of Timothy Callahan, who had learned expense-account budgeting during his vow-of-poverty two years in the Peace Corps.
I told Fogle I would follow every possible path, including the Weed Wars connection, to finding out what had become of her brother. Then I said, “Your mother told me that you were concerned about some—not to be too melodramatic about it, I hope—secret life you thought Eddie might be living. She even used the term dark side. What made you think this?”
She poured herself another quarter of a glass of wine. “I know it sounds…what? Exaggerated?”
“More than that, the way your mother expressed it.”
“I know. She picked that up from me. The dark side talk.”
“Uh huh.”
“But, you know, I think it’s true.”
“When you say dark side, I take it you’re not talking about the occult.”
“Hardly. The Wenskes are all laughably literal-minded. The spirit world is not for us, nor are we mentally wobbly or criminally inclined.”
“Then, what?”
“I don’t know. But Mom probably told you. Eddie used to disappear late at night and then lie to me about where he was. This was after I moved out of here for a while last year and stayed with Eddie. Bond and I had been driving each other up the wall—believe me, you don’t need to hear about that—and he couldn’t afford to move out, so I left until he found a job. He got into an Arby’s management training program, thinking it would be strictly a shift kind of thing, and the rest of the time he could work on his novel. The Arby’s thing didn’t last, of course, but we don’t need to go into that either. Anyway, I ended up at Eddie’s for three weeks. He insisted that I get his bed, and he slept on the couch. I was embarrassed and ashamed, but I was such a wreck at the time that I gratefully took him up on it. I’d drive here after work and fix the girls’ dinner, and then I’d drive back into Boston and sleep at Eddie’s.”
“It sounds dreadful.”
“It was. The first few nights he was so sweet and attentive to me, and he listened to all my woes, and it really helped. And he kept being nice and supportive, except often after I fell asleep, he’d go out and not come back until early in the morning, three or even four. I’d sometimes get up to take something for my headaches or go to the bathroom, and the light would be on in the living room and I’d look in and he wouldn’t be there. I asked him one time where he was and he said at the Globe. But he wasn’t even working there anymore, and I have friends there, and I asked if they had run into him, and they said no. I wasn’t spying on him, really, I was just puzzled. And when I asked him about it, he got really defensive. I joked about him maybe having a new boyfriend—this was when he and Bryan were on the outs—but he said, oh no, if he had one he’d tell me and introduce him. Which I believed. Anyway, this kept happening, and if I asked where he’d been, Eddie looked really uncomfortable and changed the subject. Once he actually snapped at me and told me to just drop it, and I could see he meant it, and I never asked him about it again. But it was all so out of character for Eddie that I worried, and then when he disappeared I was afraid that maybe he went out one night to wherever it was he needed to go after midnight, and that last time he just…he just never came back.”
Based on what I knew by then about Eddie Wenske’s personal and professional lives, this description of events was about as plausible as any I’d heard. But of course it explained nothing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Back at the Westin, I phoned Timmy, and he was anxious for my report.
“I was going to call you if you hadn’t called. Good grief, I saw in The Times about Bryan Kim. What happened?”
“If you read the paper, you know about as much as I do. Kim was killed several hours before we were supposed to meet at the hotel and go to dinner. Apparently he was bringing along a third party, identity unknown, and I’m guessing it wasn’t just social. The point of the dinner was to talk about Wenske’s disappearance.”
“So then, does it sound like Kim being killed had something to do with Wenske, and somebody thought he had to shut Kim up?”
“It sounds like that, and it sounds like a lot of other things too. Such as Kim the man of many boyfriends may have once been involved with a psycho who turned up again, this time off his meds. Or Kim the investigative reporter may have been digging into something that made somebody feel threatened enough to want to shut him up and maybe serve as a warning to others. Or Kim had his own secret dark side, so-called, that led to his brutal murder. The list goes on, and I am going to hope that the Boston cops are competent enough to explore all the possibilities. The guy in charge seems capable, so we’ll see.”
“Sure,” Timmy said, “I suppose lots of scenarios are plausible. But don’t you think it’s more than coincidence that Kim was killed just before he was bringing somebody along to meet you to talk about Wenske’s disappearance?”
“Probably.”
“And you haven’t heard from the third diner?”
“No, but he may not have my cell number or email address. I take it there have been no odd messages at the house.”
“None, no.”
“Anyway, with Kim killed, the third diner may have been scared off. I might never know who he is.”
“Is or was. Maybe he was killed too.”
This had not occurred to me—maybe because my need to talk to this mystery man was so great that I had to believe that eventually I would identify him and track him down and learn why Bryan Kim was bringing him along to talk about the missing Eddie Wenske.
“Timothy, that’s an unsettling possibility you have introduced into the equation. Maybe I should be looking into who else in greater Boston was murdered yesterday afternoon.”
“That should be easy, right? Boston is not the murder capital of North America.”
“No, but it’s not Walden Pond in the 1840s either. There’s a lot of drug-related violence. Bad gang stuff, including innocent bystanders dying young and pointlessly. Of course, it’s unlikely Bryan Kim would be bringing any of those people along to dine out in Back Bay on a Saturday night.”
“Really? But there’s the drug connection coming up again. Maybe all that ugly Weed Wars stuff really will end up leading to an explanation for Eddie Wenske’s disappearance.”
Why was it that whenever I discussed anything important with Timothy Callahan, I nearly always ended up thinking, yes, on the one hand this, on the other hand that. Maybe because it was so often true that the way things eventually worked out was awfully complicated.
§ § §
I meant to get in touch with Marsden Davis first thing Monday morning, but I didn’t have to, because he called me.
“What were you doing in Bryan Kim’s apartment, Strachey? That location is a crime scene, as was clearly indicated. You entered the apartment illegally. Please tell me, if it wouldn’t put you out too much, what the fuck am I supposed to think of that?”
“I don’t know. What do you think of it?”
“I think the forensics team did a second sweep of the scene late yesterday afternoon looking for prints, and I already have a couple of hits. Yours was one of them. You didn’t mention to me that you were once in Army Intelligence.”
“I’m sworn to secrecy. I can’t talk about that.”
“Bullshit. I’ve seen your military records. You’ve been an intel analyst, and you are also a good marksman. And I’ll bet you anything that you also received training in hand to hand combat, including how to cut a man with a knife and leave him dead.”
“There was something in basic training on that, but I wasn’t paying attention. So, am I now a suspect in the murder of Bryan Kim? You’re informing me in a casual phone call that I might soon be arrested and charged in the case?”
“Of course not. Your story checks out on visiting the Globe offices, and before that your EZ Pass records have you on the Mass Pike from 11:42 am to 1:58 pm yesterday. So you couldn’t have done it. Bryan Kim was killed, we now know, between two and three o’clock, while you were at the Globe offices. But you were in Kim’s apartment at some point—specifically in the kitchen and the bathroom and touching the books on Kim’s book shelves—and I would like you to please tell me exactly when that was and also what the fuck you thought you were doing in there?”
I was still in my hotel room, with a room service muffin and juice and coffee, and I had just finished reading the Monday Globe story on the Kim murder. The paper had no new information on the murder or any possible suspects or motive, just a lot of sad-making information on Kim’s educational and professional background and his family history. Kim’s prominence in the Boston gay community was also gone over again, though no mention was made of Eddie Wenske.
I said, “Aren’t those EZ Pass records supposed to be confidential? It sounds as if all the Big-Brother-is-tracing-your-movements fears some people had about that program have been realized.”
Davis laughed lightly. “Yeah, yeah. So when were you in there? You said you had never met Kim before. So either you lied to me about that—always a bad idea—and you had visited Kim in his nice pad on Tremont Street on some previous occasion. Or—now please listen carefully to this one—you mooched your way in there yesterday morning with Elvis Gummer’s key. So, which is it, Strachey? Think before you answer.”
“How come you didn’t confiscate Gummer’s key when you first interviewed him, anyway?”
“An oversight. I have since taken it away from Gummer, who won’t be needing it. The key is here on my desk.”
“So then I suppose Gummer told you he lent it to me. If you knew that, why are you playing games?”
“Games? Giving you every opportunity to act like the honest man you apparently are not is not playing games. Playing games is conducting your own investigation into a matter the Boston Police Department is handling professionally. Playing games is withholding information relevant to a police investigation. Playing games is fucking me over in a manner that people here in Boston know is a terrible way of trying to get anything done in this city or even of living in it with any degree of safety and comfort. That’s how I define playing games, and my definition is the one you had better consider going with here, if you get my drift.”
I got his drift. “Lieutenant, you said I was withholding information relevant to your investigation. What information are you referring to?”
“Whatever you found in Kim’s apartment of importance. What did you find?”
“Probably nothing you didn’t find. How about the cheesecake recipe?”
“You found it?”
“No. It was the ginger cheesecake recipe that didn’t bark. The killer might have taken it, but I doubt it.”
“I plan on talking to Elvis Gummer about that. He has no fingerprints on record, but he has agreed to be printed. He seems nervous, but I’m not inclined to consider him a suspect.”
“Same here. Not a murder suspect anyway. What other prints have you ID-ed?”
“Just building personnel. And both of them have alibis. I’m sure Eddie Wenske’s prints are among those our techies picked up, but his prints are not on record, him not having served his country in the manner you and I went ahead and did.”
“What about Channel Six? Any leads there? Stories Kim was working on? People he made mad?”
“There’s a slew of people Kim pissed off, but most of them are city councilmen and municipal employees and pizzeria owners with dirty kitchens. Detective Fuller and a couple of other officers are checking them out. Another thing about Kim that interests me is, he’s had a lot of boyfriends, it turns out, and some of them don’t like him anymore. Folks at Channel Nine in Providence, where Kim used to work, say he has a history of breaking up with boyfriends in a kind of nasty way. The station used to get calls sometimes from gay guys calling Bryan an asshole and worse names, and one guy saying, tell Bryan I want my Elton John CDs back and weird crap like that.”
I said, “Did Gummer tell you about the third diner?”
“The what?”
“I guess he didn’t. He mentioned it to me in passing. I was to meet Kim at the Westin at seven, but Gummer said Kim told him that someone else was coming to Kim’s apartment at six to accompany him to the dinner meeting. I knew nothing about this. I don’t know who the diner was or what became of him. Was he scared off, or what? It would be useful to know, I think.”
“Or,” Davis said, “did this person know that Kim was going to be killed and stayed away? Or did he arrive early, and was let in, and stabbed Kim himself?”
“Or was this man also killed? Were there any other murders in Boston yesterday?”
Davis was quiet for a moment. “No. None reported. But maybe the body was disposed of, and so far no one has reported anybody missing. That’s always a possibility.”
“This man, whoever he was,” I said, “may have been going to talk to me about Eddie Wenske’s disappearance. Why else would Kim have invited him to the dinner meeting with me? So maybe he’s somehow knowledgeable of, or involved in, the Wenske situation.”
“We don’t know,” Davis said, “what has become of Wenske, or even if he’s dead or alive. Maybe Wenske is alive, and he was going to be your third dinner companion. Or maybe he’s alive and he came back from wherever he was and he killed Kim.”
“Yeah, well. Not that, I don’t think.”
“They had their ups and downs, everybody says. Is there any violence in Wenske’s history?”
“No. Everybody says he’s a sweetheart of a guy. You’re way off on that one.”
“Probably. Though your line of work, Strachey, is enough like mine for you to know that even the nicest people sometimes have a dark side. Know what I mean?”
