Cafe Underground Presents
River Of Lawyers
Book 1 -- Chapters 12
The Detective Andi Wicksham Series, by RL Bell
Copyright © 1997 RL BELL
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....author RL Bell
Andi Wicksham's INVESTIGATORY SERVICES
Chapter 12
Returning to the office Andi flipped back though the pages in her notebook and tried Samuel Lee's number again.
"Hello?" answered a careful voice.
"Hello, Mr. Lee? This is Andi Wicksham, I've been hired by Robert Bryant's business partner to look into his whereabouts and came across your name as a friend. I was wondering if you had any idea of where he was?"
"Canada probably, he only comes down every month or so...the police said the same thing, sorry..."
"The police said the same thing?"
"That I was Mr. Bryant's friend. I suppose I was, but I didn't think of him that way. They asked about family, but I didn't know about that."
"No? How did you know Mr. Bryant." Andi puzzled on the question and doodled a question mark in her notes.
"I met him at an AA meeting two years ago...we talked and went for coffee." The voice was soft spoken and a bit distracted.
"That was the extent of your contact?" Andi asked incredulously.
"Well, no...I'd see him every month to give him his mail and we'd drink a coffee."
"Mail?" Andi asked, surprised. "You received mail for him?"
"Yes, but he hasn't been here for over a month now...he never got but a bill or two."
"Bills?" Andi interest was perked.
"Telephone bills...I have two now. But you say he's missing?" Mr. Lee seemed a tad confused.
"Yes, do you have those letters now? The police didn't take them."
"Of course...there right here. The police never asked."
"Could I come pick them up for Mr. Bryant? They might help me locate him." Andi crossed her fingers and prayed for a yes.
"I suppose so, but I'm going out soon..." The voice trailed away.
"I could be there in fifteen minutes, Mr. Lee."
"OK, I'll wait...number 4...just ring the bell."
"Thank you...I'll be right there." Andi could have crowed right then and there.
3715 NE Boyington was a sleazy, wooden, alleyway tenement inhabited through most of the last hundred years by one wave after another of people just barely scraping by. It hadn't been painted in decades--a smelly dumpster stood by the stairs. She peered through the smudged glass of the door as she rang the bell marked #4.
Down the dark hallway a door opened, an elderly man looked out, coughed and waved Andi in. She picked her way through the unlit, musty-smelling hall. He appeared Chinese-American, was wrapped in two layers of sweaters and looked pale and sickly-thin. He didn't invite her in, but she could see past him, to the plain linoleum on the floor, a bookcase lined neatly with paperbacks and, a fraying day-bed against a wall. There was one chair and small table beside an open door.
"I can't remember your name..." He began.
"Andi Wicksham, here about Mr. Bryant. Is this the Mr. Bryant you know?"
She held out a photo which he examined without taking from her hand.
"Yes...of course it is..." He held out two envelopes. "I really rarely saw him. He'd give me twenty dollars each month to hold his mail. He seemed nice and I needed the money."
Mr. Lee's rooms were clean, but from the apartments around them Andi could feel quiet desperation clinging to the walls like nicotine stains--decades of hard times that seeped into the air like the dusky, faintly-uric odor of moldy rug.
The slight figure before her was seized by a bout of coughing, touched the door jamb to steady himself and continued. "Mr. Bryant was always very polite, he'd call and meet me at the cafe on the corner."
"He met you at a meeting and asked you to hold his mail?" Andi asked incredulously. Bryant attending a meeting of filled with the marginal poor? He must have chosen it because it was unlikely.
"Yes...a bit strange, isn't it? I suppose he only came to town every now and then...lived somewhere in Canada. He dressed very well, I think." A faint sheen of sweat had appeared on Mr. Lee's face and cheeks.
Andi fished in her pocket for three twenty dollar bills and folded them in the old man's hand. "Thank you Mr. Lee. If I find Mr. Bryant I'll tell him that you helped."
Mr. Lee gave a wan smile, nodded and closed the door, leaving Andi alone with her thoughts. The letters were both from Cellular Gold--bills for a cellular phone by the look of them. The name in the envelope's window was Marigold Inc. She could hear Samuel Lee coughing beyond the door.
When Andi got back to the office there were more letters waiting, but Andi couldn't get excited about them now--she let Lena open them and log-in the checks while she reread files and jotted notes. She set the bills from Samuel Lee on her desk--unopened. Nobody but Samuel Lee and herself knew they existed and he probably didn't remember her name. It was probably a felony to open them--even with good intentions.
Dinner at Ramirez's house was comfortable and filling--Tanya laid out food as if feeding twice the number that ever came.
Ramirez once quipped it was a cheaper hobby than golf--Andi wondered about leftovers; Tanya was someone who would drop them at the No Hunger Zone on Hawthorne--warmed up and ready to serve.
While idling in the kitchen they killed a bottle of zinfandel and a plate of tomato and feta things on crackers and Tanya broke out her water pipe. Andi took a hit to be social--she seldom smoked except for romantic evenings of sex. Ramirez never indulged, claiming asthma--Andi suspected it had more to do with his job, but he never brought it up and she never asked. Tanya however, was an unredeemed hippie earth mother and loved the fragrant herb.
They gossiped through their chicken stew with dumplings and set out after the world's problems over apple cobbler. Little glasses of port were served with a block of dry cheese you were expected to cut little pieces off of every now and then as you sorted out errors in other people's politics.
Somewhere in the midst of the cheese course she asked Ramirez if they'd found the luggage.
"No..." he smiled. "...no luggage."
"I found two letters of his that were sent to Samuel Lee...they look like cellular phone bills."
"What?" Ramirez sat up straight and demanded. "Phone bills? Where?"
"I've got them at the office. I can hand them over."
"In the morning, Wicksham..." The demand reverberated like thunder.
"OK, OK...chill out. It was your boy that dropped the ball and didn't ask the old man decent questions...I'm just picking up your slack."
Ramirez gave an embarrassed grin and waved the issue away. "Sorry. The morning will be fine..."
The unopened bills lurked in Andi's mind and her third of the conversation lagged. Soon she just sat back and gave up trying to keep up with the banter.
She exchanged front door goodbyes a half-hour later, driving to her office sober-feeling and anxious. The bills still lay on her desk. She didn't even need to turn on the light; she just grabbed them and scooted home.
Turning on the kitchen tap a bare-dribble she carefully dabbed the glued flaps with water and lay them in the microwave under a piece of plastic bag. Eighteen seconds on high and she pulled them out, opened them and lay their contents on the table.
There were calls to twenty or more places with Caribbean names.
Andi took a pad of paper from her desk, sat down at the kitchen table, listing the numbers and tallying calls and dates. The Grand Caymans and Jamaica and Beliez and assorted others more obscure. Tomorrow she'd sic Lena on the phone company to find out.
The phone company would tell who those numbers belonged to, but numbers outside the country were liable to take a while. Morse's expense account should pick up her long distance, she'd worry about it tomorrow--she needed to think before ringing them up.
Finding an obscure person like Mr. Lee from an out of the way, AA meeting to befriend and act as mail drop was pretty slick. Morse was such a snob, if he hadn't slipped up and entered Lee's name on the bank card no one would ever made the connection. That slip itself was inexplicable--maybe Morse pulled the name from his wallet when he had to fill out the form.
If Bryant set up the accident he would have needed blood taken ahead of time or face cutting himself in the boat house. She tried to recall the police sketch; the puddle was maybe a foot across if the thing was drawn to scale...smears off toward the doorway...maybe a half or three quarter's of a cup; a significant amount--more than a usual band-aid cut.
Slicing a vein was a desperate act. If Bryant set it up he wasn't desperate. Unless it was an accident, he must have had blood drawn and kept on ice. Andi tried to remember if blood had to be doped with an anti-coagulant to keep from clotting?
She wrote "Check with lab--heparin?" in her notebook. She didn't look forward to trying to get a lay-person's explanation of what was tested for.
The prescription glasses found at the boat house had bothered her from the beginning--sun glasses. On rainy Portland night in January who would carry dark glasses, much less wear them? Unlikely. Add Bryant's mail and newspaper and there was a scenario.
All the blackmail stuff and what Lively and Bodega said of Morse's files could still be true. What did Morse say? "People have reasons beyond felonies to be devious..." Blackmail could have been the least of their dealings.
If Morse knew Bryant was alive it would explain not caring if Andi saw Drexler and Ibbe and why he and Chang-Turner stonewalled Bryant's personal life.
No, that didn't make sense. If Bryant flew to greener pastures, his habits and personal tastes might be the key to tracking him down. Andi drew a big question mark beside that question. Morse might have the other team doing that.
The way Bryant's office and house were sanitized was more plausible. Instead of needing somebody coming in after the murder, Bryant would have had all the time in the world to clean. The call to Noris-SDI could have been innocent or simply icing on the cake. That would fit the style if Bryant were like Morse. She doubted that Ramirez's partners found Bryant's new luggage in his house.
What about the notes Chang-Turner said she found? Could they could have been Bryant's? A final thumbing of his nose at those left behind? Andi made a face as she paged through her copies. No, he would have left something truly incendiary, not pandering pulp. Too ragged a play for Morse. Most likely Chang-Turner trying to turn some obscure advantage.
It was a murky glass she gazed into; a blender full of worms. She took a quick shower, turned down the heat and gratefully called it a night.
The next morning at the office, Andi had just slid out of her coat when Lena sauntered in.
Lena puttered with coffee while Andi made two copies of the long distance phone call list, sealed the originals back in their proper envelopes after wiping off fingerprints, settled in her chair and laid the pages carefully before her.
The coffee burbled, filling the room with coffee smell. Andi held a copy of the phone bills to Lena. "Call the phone company to find where they came from, countries and cities at least...names and if you can."
"...tote that barge, lift that bale..." Lena snatched the pages and reached for her phone.
Andi glared, dispensing the full brunt of the evil eye; but she restrained herself from rising to the bait.
If Bryant called hotels it could be the key to tracing him. A brief fantasy of Morse's expense account flying her to Jamaica danced through--then grim reality set in. Morse would hire his other team to do anything like looking up an absconding partner--she wouldn't even be considered.
With Lena checking the phone numbers, she could address the puddle of blood. Andi pulled the lab report and phoned Ramirez to get the number of the crime lab. She promised to bring the phone bills by when she got out. And then on a whim she told him Morse thought Bryant might still be alive.
"Is he going on some new information or is this intuition?" Ramirez asked sarcastically.
"I don't know..." Andi answered impatiently. "He's looked into Bryant's books and is upset..."
"Seems like a motive for your client to do his partner in, Wicksham. What you think? Should we re-question him?"
Andi bit her lip to keep from sniping back. Ramirez was trying to lead her into saying something stupid.
Andi iced her voice. "Please...if you question him don't start out about Bryant's books...he'd know it was me who told." She wished she'd had sense to keep her mouth shut.
"Let me know if you learn anything...and Tanya sends her love. We enjoyed your company..."
"Yeah...thanks for the dinner. Next time at my place..." Andi exchanged "Goodbyes" and hung up.
She copied the lab number into her notebook and punched it in.
"Crime lab."
"I have a question about blood testing...what's tested for?"
"You know we're a crime lab...part of the police department." An insufferably-rude woman.
"Yes ma'am. If you could forward me to one of your chemists please." Andi stared into the wall across the room, willing the woman to put her through,
"Hello..." A chatty young man answered and told her more than she could follow about the vagaries of testing blood. Bottom line--they didn't look for anti-coagulants. Andi thanked him and turned the page in her notebook.
That information didn't change things, it was just another detail checked off her list--report filler. The idea of collecting blood and then pouring it out on the floor gave her the willies. Maybe she was way off base. Bryant as victim of foul play made sense. There was a cough.
"I got the names of the cities...they're promising to send the subscriber's names by next week." Lena stretched to hand back the pages with neat notes written in margins.
Andi debated calling Morse...it would be embarrassing if he refused to pay. She called.
"I've gotten hold of a two month list of Mr. Bryant's long distance phone calls--from a cellular phone billed to a pseudonyme."
"Yes?" Morse sounded interested.
"Over that period of time he made a great number of calls to a variety of Caribbean numbers. Sometimes three or four times a week."
"To whom?" A breath of tension touched his voice.
"Phone company is researching that--might take a week or more...I thought I might burn a bunch of long distance and phone each number cold--I'd ask for Robert Bryant or ask if I could leave a message."
"No...call but don't use his name, wouldn't want to tip him off." Morse played a cautious game. "Anything else?"
"No...thanks."
Andi swiveled her chair, what to ask the other end of the line...reservations? If private residences maybe ask for Pablo?
Lena reached for another folder and typed away.
Andi looked out the window another minute, then turned and reached for the phone.
"Genoise-Marcuse." the pleasant lilting voice answered in an accent that seemed British and French together.
"Excuse me," Andi said, "...I'm phoning from Portland Oregon, is this a hotel?"
"Oh, no madam..." the voice laughed. "This is a law firm, not a hotel. I'm so sorry..."
"A law firm?" Andi replied in surprise. "Can you spell your firm's name for me..."
The pleasant voice spelled the names. Andi imagined the weather was warm, it would be early afternoon--beaches, sun, palm trees--beautiful brown skin.
"Thank you very much. Sorry to have bothered..." She set down the phone and turned a page.
The next number had a metallic-sounding recording that said "Please enter your security code now..." Andi punched in a random four digits--there was a pause and it returned with "that is an incorrect number, please re-enter your security code." Andi hung up, puzzled and punched the phone number again. "Please enter your security code now." She didn't try another code--better not to raise a red flag betting on the near impossible, no doubt Morse had contacts who could get him answers.
The following call got Saint John's Trust of Antiglia and Barbuda, a bank--the next two another bank and a lawyer in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. There were two others with machine messages asking security codes and banks in Curacao, Nasseau, Marineque, Paramaribao, Port au Prince, and Beliez.
This didn't take a rocket scientist--she had a good idea of what Bryant was doing--kiting money between confidential offshore banks, bouncing cash in and out of numbered accounts until it would be impossible to trace.
Whose money?
She'd bet the farm Morse felt some of it was his.
It explained Bryant's bank balances and lack of investments. He'd liquidated assets and moved them out of the country systematically over the past year or two--probably in amounts under the ten thousand dollar threshold that brought regulatory attention.
Embezzlement alone or with Morse? Absconding with illicit profits? Either way explained Morse's leeriness of the police and making it public.
Andi rubbed her temples--what difference would it make which was the answer? Who cared?
Embezzlement fit Bryant working alone to set up his faux murder. With Morse everything got more complicated. Either way, Bryant was gone. Certainly her limited resources would be useless in finding him. If he was alive he was a rich man in a warm country with a new name and passport.
Andi put her pencil down on her notebook and shut her eyes.
She was coming to the end of her patience. It wasn't important whether Chang-Turner or Bryant got away--their victims weren't screaming. Who cared whether Morse was digging out from under a crooked partner or was a sleazeball pawing dust over his spoor--she'd probably never find the truth anyway.
Drexler's repainted boat in BC meant nothing without the person who delivered it. If Bryant was dead he was part of the off-shore food web and if not, he was long gone. Did he set up the boat to be stolen that night--warning the well chosen thief to sprint to British Columbia and scour it?
She shuffled through her files to her first interview with Chang-Turner. She'd reported that Bryant made two trips to Seattle and one to Vancouver the month before. That gave him opportunity, but it would take a trip up there to see if he'd visited marina's. It wasn't worth the trouble.
Andi put down her pencil and rubbed her eyes. Burnout had set in--she knew the symptoms. She didn't care. For her the case was over. Loose ends? Who gave a flying fig? Life, while it scratched, was a was a long chain of fraying, unfinished business. Surfing the flat-line was the only real closure--hanging ten on the bottom edge of the stone tied things up. Call this bailing-out, practice at living without all the answers. She shut the folders and repiled her files.
She didn't want to call Morse--like he said, there were worse criminals than murderers and it wasn't the end of the world that they weren't caught. If he was really such a pragmatist that he didn't long for justice, then let him stew another day or two. She would finish her report and bill Morse until the end of the week. He might even be good for more business later. Loose ends? This was real-life after all, things wouldn't tie up like a crime novel.
Over lunch Lena could tell her "great" marketing ideas.
Some sort of partnership might work. Lena was competent and was working cheap--and Andi still had titular control of the reins.
Let Lena try to build it--this weekend Andi was escaping to the coastal bed and breakfast of friends of friends for some R & R--alone.
Andi picked up the phone bills she promised to deliver to Ramirez. "Lunch, Lena...let's take it early...I'm buying." She had to get out of the office; there'd be checks this afternoon and she'd run to the bank. She still had one last report.
Lena jumped up, pulled her coat of the back of her chair and said, "Let's do the Baghdad for pizza and beer."
THE END
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