Forty Thieves Read online

  “Go on.”

  “This is about a murder. It’s been just over a year since it happened. The police investigated immediately and for a long time afterward. But now they’ve frankly admitted that their progress has stalled. They haven’t found a new lead in several months. They have no open avenues left to pursue.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Millikan. “I’m not the one to help you. I’ve been retired from the police force for years. I teach now, and my academic responsibilities keep me very busy.”

  “I understand,” said Hemphill. “I’ve been warned that you wouldn’t consider getting involved in a case. But I wonder if you could do me the favor of giving me the name of someone else.”

  Millikan didn’t permit his face to reveal anything, but he felt the urge to know more. “Was the victim a friend of yours?”

  “No,” Hemphill said. “I never met him. We both worked for the same company, Intercelleron, but in different capacities. His name was James Ballantine. This is not personal. I’m acting on the orders of the board of directors. Because he was one of our own, they’ve taken an interest from the beginning. Now they’d like to continue the investigation.”

  “Ballantine. The name is familiar, but I can’t quite place—”

  “He was the man who was found in a storm drain during the big rainstorm last spring.”

  “Of course,” said Millikan. He remembered the case from the newspaper accounts. “I read about it at the time.” He paused, but asked the question anyway. “Where does the victim’s family stand?”

  “The board decided that it should act on the wife’s behalf, but confidentially and without involving her at this stage. She has two children, whom she’s raising alone. The company didn’t think it was fair to involve her in this.”

  Millikan nodded. “You’re doing the right thing, sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “In not getting her involved in an expensive investigation or giving her false hopes.”

  “I don’t know if they are false. Are they?”

  “The Los Angeles Police Department has more than its share of murders, which is why it also has some of the best homicide detectives in the world. An independent murder investigation is fine. But ultimately, the case belongs to LAPD homicide. They’re the only ones who can compel witnesses, or make an arrest. They have sole possession of any physical evidence that exists, any crime scene photographs and notes, and so on. To be honest, they’re good at everything except sharing.”

  “I can see why you feel a private investigation is an unlikely solution.”

  “And I can see you’re still intending to try it,” said Millikan.

  “It’s not my choice,” said Hemphill. “The board has decided, and set aside the funding, and so on.”

  “What am I missing? You said it’s not personal. Are they expecting a lawsuit? Is there something he was responsible for that’s disappeared?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” Hemphill said. “And I wouldn’t be too surprised if they didn’t know either. I think they’re trying to do the right thing, but none of them really knows how. I think that the only thing they’re sure of is that they shouldn’t just let it go.” Millikan was silent for a moment.

  Hemphill said, “I know I’ve used up more of your time than I should have. If you could just give me a recommendation—a name will do—I promise not to bother you further.”

  “All right,” said Millikan. “I’ll tell you what the other people you consulted should have. There are about a dozen honest agencies with competent staffs, experienced and well trained. They’ll do the footwork, and so on. For your money you’ll get a very slick, attractively printed report that proves they’ve done their job and looked under all the rocks. Or you can skip that and go to the final step.”

  “The final step?”

  “Hire the agency where cases like this sometimes get solved—the cases where the trail is cold and time has passed and none of the evidence has ever added up to anything. Those cases are their specialty. They’re a last chance—sometimes to find out what happened to a victim, and sometimes to set somebody free. They’re a couple of old cops like me.”

  “What’s this agency called?”

  “Abels. If you’re going to do this, that’s the kind of help you want.”

  Hemphill took a small black notebook out of his coat pocket, and a silver pen. He wrote “Abel’s.”

  Millikan saw it. “Without the apostrophe. The name means more than one Abel.”

  2

  The prime moment of a night at the Galaxy Club was a sweet stretch that began after 1:00 a.m., but before the bartender started taking last-call orders. This bartender was an attractive woman about fifty years old, with sharp, alert blue eyes, and hair that looked as though it might be something lighter and wilder than platinum blond. It was actually natural gray. She was wearing a pullover top and jeans that made her look much younger from a distance. She had a strong, athletic body but graceful hands with manicured nails. Her gray hair hung behind her in a long, low ponytail, so it swung a little when she moved.

  At one o’clock people were still arriving from late suppers, shows, and other bars where they shouldn’t have wasted their time. As they arrived, the bartender glided along the bar listening to orders, taking money, bestowing garnished glasses, wiping the mirror-shiny wooden surface, and focusing her piercing blue eyes on the next customer. “What can I get for you?”

  The wise customer would reply quickly, knowing from the energy of the place that there would be a brief chance to order, and a long wait before the next chance. The bartender would listen and then nod and begin to make the drink, or she would wait then say, “I’ll be back.” As she stepped away along the bar, the customer would have to resign himself to waiting for her next circuit.

  At the far end of the bar was a broad-shouldered man wearing a gray sport coat and a crisp white shirt. He seemed to be in his fifties, out alone, watching the stream of people coming and going at the Galaxy, but without a great deal of interest in any one of them. He drank steadily from a narrow chilled glass with a slice of lime and clear bubbly liquid.

  Now and then customers might speculate about him as they waited for a turn at the bar. He was only about six feet tall, but he gave the impression that there was much more to him than that—something solid and heavy. Some professional football players had that quality, but a person could stare at this man all evening without recognizing his face. He couldn’t be working at the Galaxy, because he was drinking continually, and that meant he couldn’t be a cop either. He was about the age and description of the sort of man who came to the Galaxy to look for much younger women who liked money. But there were plenty of those women here tonight, and he barely glanced at any of them. He wasn’t friendly or hostile or shy or drunk. He was just there, not a permanent fixture but in no hurry.

  At one thirty, his eyes flicked to the bartender and stayed there until she happened to see him in the mirror behind the bar when she turned to reach for a vodka bottle.

  She didn’t hesitate or change her expression, but as she pivoted toward the bar to get the glass and pour, she let her eyes pass across the man at the end of the bar. After a half second she looked in the direction of the person he was looking at and then gave her customer his drink and took his money.

  The man who had just entered the bar was about thirty-five to forty years old. He wore a pair of yellow-brown glasses with lenses just dark enough to keep his eyes half-hidden from view, and a black sport coat and jeans. When he had come three steps inside, two younger men came in after him and remained behind his shoulders, scanning the crowd intently. He looked across a stretch of floor at a table where there were four young women. These four could be seen at the Galaxy most nights waiting to find somebody who could do something for their careers.

  They had seen him, probably, before he had pushed open the door. They all stood and hurried over to him, impersonating four naïve girls who were honestly smitten by his for
tuitous arrival, because it let them strike poses and utter noises that would make people notice them. He gave them each a quick hug and walked with them to their table. Their smiles were sincere, because he was Alex Rinosa, the music producer. He had money, drugs, and the ability to walk up to doors that were closed to most people, enter, and bring anyone in with him.

  The two bodyguards took extra chairs from a couple of nearby tables, and the group launched into an overlapping stream of banter, forced laughter, and nervous chatter. After a minute, Rinosa turned toward the bar wondering why the waiter hadn’t come, but he didn’t see one. He told his two bodyguards to go up and get three bottles of Cristal and some glasses.

  The pair walked to the bar, stood there, and pulled from their pockets some hundred-dollar bills to make it clear that they should receive prompt attention. They had to wait their turn while the bartender worked her way to them.

  When she reached their section of the bar, one of them said, “Bring us three bottles of Cristal and seven glasses. Open a tab.”

  “Can’t open a tab after one thirty, Cristal is seven hundred a bottle here, and there’s no waiter right now. You’ll have to carry it yourselves.”

  “For twenty-one hundred? Are you a—”

  “Careful,” she said. Her eyes were metallic and steady. “If I think you’re drunk I can’t serve you.”

  The other man smiled. “Yes, ma’am.” He counted the hundred-dollar bills out on the bar. She took them to the cash register, set up a tray of seven champagne flutes, and knelt to take three bottles out of a small refrigerator under the bar.

  The two men walked off with their drinks, and she resumed her rounds, starting with the man at the end of the bar.

  “Sounded good,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she replied. “I like to set a mood.” She put a new glass of ice on the bar in front of him, held it under a spigot to fill it with tonic, quickly lifted a gin bottle over it, but kept the nail of her thin, graceful finger over the end of the pour spout.

  He said, “Just keep your eye on which glass belongs to Rinosa, and we’ll be out of here for good.”

  “I’m on it,” she said, pushed a fresh slice of lime onto his glass, set it before him, and moved on.

  At ten minutes to two, the bartender hit a kill switch by the register to silence the music, and said into a microphone, “Last call. Last call for drink orders.” She let the music start again.

  There was a last group of customers who made their way to the bar for a final drink, and among them was one of the bodyguards. He counted out seven more hundred-dollar bills, got another bottle, and walked back to the table with it.

  At two o’clock, the manager of the Galaxy, a tall thin man with gray hair, appeared from his office at the back of the building with two burly men in black Windbreakers with the white letters SECURITY printed on them.

  The security men stood flanking him while he hit the kill switch again and announced, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It is now closing time. The Galaxy is closed. I’ll have to ask everyone to finish up now and head toward the front doors. If any of our patrons needs a taxi tonight, we will be happy to call one for you. Otherwise, thank you for coming, and we hope you’ll be back soon. Good night.”

  The bartender removed the cash drawer from her register and the manager and one security guard took it with them. The other security guard stayed to help oversee the stream of people leaving the building. Two others, one inside the door and a second outside it, looked on.

  The bartender took a large tray and made her way among the tables, clearing glasses. When she reached the table where Rinosa, the girls, and the bodyguards were, they were just standing up to leave. She took a couple of glasses, and then reached for the one Rinosa had used.

  A hand shot out and snatched her wrist. It was Rinosa.

  The bartender said, “You’re going to want to let go of me.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “But I’m taking my glass with me.”

  “What?” She looked at him as though he were insane, and she had no sympathy for the insane.

  “My glass. I want it. For twenty-eight hundred, I deserve a souvenir, don’t I?”

  “No. I get charged for those. And by the way, thanks for the tip.”

  “It was an oversight.” He smiled.

  As he spoke, the quiet man from the end of the bar seemed to be passing the table on his way to the men’s room. Unexpectedly, he bumped one of the two bodyguards, his foot somehow getting between the bodyguard and Rinosa.

  The man fell against Rinosa just as the bartender swung her arm in a circle to free her wrist. When it broke free, it completed the arc to deliver a chop to Rinosa’s throat.

  The two bodyguards didn’t notice because they were preoccupied with the man who had bumped into them. They launched themselves at him from both sides. The man clutched the head of the one in front of him and pushed it downward as he brought his knee up, then propelled him facedown onto the floor. Instantly he brought his elbow back into the face of the second attacker, rocking him backward, and then completed his turn and punched the man twice as he fell.

  He turned to Rinosa, who was holding his throat with both hands, shocked by the bartender’s blow. The man delivered a single left jab to Rinosa’s nose, and it began to stream with blood. He said, “Oh, sorry. I thought you were with those guys.” He produced a clean white handkerchief and roughly dabbed at the blood streaming from Rinosa’s nose while Rinosa tried to turn away, shouting hoarsely, “Get away from me! Get away!”

  The bartender shouted, “Security!” She pointed at the two men on the floor and Rinosa. “These three!”

  The security men in black jackets rumbled in across the floor like a storm front, and dragged the three battered men out the front door. The victims had revived enough to begin struggling and shouting, but made no headway at all against the broad, heavy shapes of the security men.

  Three minutes later, the bartender stepped out past the steel door at the rear of the building and got into a waiting car. The car pulled away from the building and accelerated.

  The bartender turned in her seat and looked down the street behind the rear window. “Looks all clear back there,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  The man at the wheel said, “Me? Nobody grabbed me by the wrist. I just figured if I had to distract them while you got the glass with Rinosa’s DNA, we might as well get a blood sample too.”

  “I hope you didn’t get it all over yourself, Sid,” she said. “I love that sport coat. It took me hours to pick that out.”

  “I didn’t get any on me. I put the handkerchief in the plastic bag right away, and cleaned my hands with antibacterial wipes.”

  She opened her purse and lifted her own plastic bag where she had put the champagne glass. “Here’s my trophy. Tomorrow morning the lab will be open and we can get the DNA tested. Before long Manny Escobar will be declared innocent and let out of jail. Maybe the end of next week.”

  “Maybe the end of next month,” he said. “Even with the rush on the lab work.”

  “Anyway, we did it,” she said. “And Rinosa’s DNA, legally obtained when he attacked two private detectives in a bar, will be a match for the DNA the police found on the body.” She edged closer and kissed his cheek. “You really are a tough old bastard, aren’t you?”

  “Why thank you, Veronica,” he said. “I didn’t think you noticed.”

  “Of course I did. If I hadn’t been so busy collecting evidence, I’d have shouted, ‘Don’t shoot him. He’s got some life in him yet.’”

  “I was proud of you too,” said Sid. “That’s no lie. I do have to say the drinks were a little weak.”

  “When we get home you can make us both a real one while I’m soaking my feet.” She sighed. “God, I love winning. We won’t make any actual money after the lab costs, but victory is sweet.”

  “Victory is sweet,” he agreed.

  The morning sun was streaming in the windows as Sid Abel drank hi
s coffee. The phone across the room rang. It rang again. Sid looked up over the top of his newspaper at it, and then over at Ronnie, who was at her desk staring at her computer.

  “Whose turn is it?” she said.

  “I guess that means it’s mine,” he said as he stood up and walked to the work desk to pick up the phone.

  “You should be a detective.”

  He said, “Abels Detective Agency, this is Sid Abel.”

  The man on the other end said, “Mr. Abel, my name is David Hemphill.”

  “What can we do for you, Mr. Hemphill?” he said as he wrote the name on the pad beside the phone.

  “I work for Intercelleron Corporation in Woodland Hills. One of our employees was murdered just over a year ago. I’d like to discuss the possibility of hiring your agency to look into it.”

  “All right,” said Sid. “Are you free for an hour or so today?”

  “I can make time for this. If you’d like to come to Intercelleron—”

  “Not just yet,” said Sid. “If we need to look around there later, it would be better if we aren’t familiar faces. Can you meet us today for lunch at Merinal restaurant on Grand Avenue at twelve thirty?”

  “Yes,” said Hemphill. “I’ll be there.”

  “How do I recognize you?”

  “I’m wearing a navy blue suit and red tie. I’m six foot three.”

  “See you at twelve thirty.”

  “Eyes open,” Sid said. “Keep your eyes open. Don’t blink when you punch.”

  “They’re open when I hit you,” Ronnie said. “I blink when you hit me. Ow.”

  “Don’t wince, either.” He walked in on her, throwing a combination of punches that were fast, but had little force behind them. “Think about your next chance to get me. This is not about me hitting you.”

  “It is when you hit me.”

  She sidestepped a punch, jabbed her left hard to his chest, and brought the right toward his face, but he deflected the blow with his forearm.

  “Good,” he said. “That was about you hitting me.”