Silicon Beach Page 14

  “Who’s Wheezy, Barbara?”

  “Carl’s pit bull. Someone must have taken him to the kennel. He’s not here.”

  Just as well, thought the Judge.

  He stepped into a small entry hall with a guest half bath to the left. There was a fair-sized living room, blond wood floor, light beige walls, two expensive oriental carpets dividing the space. A seating area around a fireplace in the back wall and a second seating area to the Judge’s right directed toward windows that looked out on the beach. Across the living room a small hall led to what looked to be two bedrooms on one side, and a master bedroom and bath on the other. A small dining area to the left was adjoined to a small kitchen, divided by a bar and bar stools.

  It would have been a nice place to settle into if it hadn’t been completely tossed. A professional had gone through. In the living room the furniture was all overturned so the underneath and bottoms could be examined. Firewood had been dragged out of the fireplace and scattered. Pictures had been removed from the walls, inspected and then dumped on the floor. The two carpets were upside down in two large lumps. The kitchen cabinets had been ransacked, their contents strewn on counters and the floor.

  Barbara gasped as she came in behind the Judge. Then she sank onto one of the bar stools and began cry.

  The Judge wanted to console her. But experience whispered not to get too close. Barbara was emotional. But she was also tricky, territorial and very sticky. You got too close, you could get stuck. It was then hard to get unstuck. She’d love to restart their old affair. Any weakness on his part would be interpreted as encouragement.

  He carefully walked around the dishes strewn across the floor of the kitchen and peered into the open cabinets. They were mostly empty. He moved to the refrigerator, which was closed. Things inside were re-arranged, some things on their side. The ice cube trays were all upside down in the freezer, and frozen waffles and cookie dough had been pushed together to one corner along with ice cream and frozen hamburger.

  The Judge walked down the hall and peeked into the master bedroom and then the bath. It was the same story.

  Carl was an engineer. If he’d hidden something important here, where would he hide it? He walked into a second bedroom. It had been converted to an office. A table desk lay tipped over on its side, a desktop computer, smashed and dumped on the floor beside a now broken desk lamp. An upside down office chair, its upholstery ripped open from the bottom. Miscellaneous papers were strewn here and there, apparently from the desk top, its two small drawers, and the overturned file cabinet in the middle of the room.

  The Judge turned to Barbara, who had come into the bedroom behind him, eyes wide.

  “Did Carl have any secret hiding place in the condo? A place the people searching here might not have found.”

  Barbara thought a minute.

  “In the living room.” She said. “I saw him once sliding a brick underneath the fireplace mantel. He got quite agitated when I caught him. Snapped at me to stop sneaking up on him.”

  “Show me.”

  Barbara took him back to the living room. The fireplace was built atop a platform of brick which was perhaps six inches off the floor. The brick served as a low seat in front. The brick top had a lip extending over the brick wall beneath that supported it. Barbara pointed underneath the lip, at the left corner.

  The Judge got down on all fours with his head on the floor and had a peek. Then he reached in and tried to dislodge any loose bricks.

  “Get me a knife or something from the kitchen, would you Barbs?”

  Barbara came back with a steak knife and handed it down. The Judge shoved it under and pried out the corner brick. The brick was hollowed out, as was the one behind it, leaving a small pocket. The Judge reached in and came out with a jump drive, pleased at his success.

  “Is it something important?” asked Barbara.

  “Perhaps, Barbara. We’ll have to see. Where are your things?”

  Barbara led the way back down the hall to the third bedroom. The closet here was where Barbara kept her stuff. Like many women, Barbara had a shoe fetish. There were over 20 pairs. The shoes no doubt had been neatly stacked in built-in shoe shelves made for them, but someone had yanked them all out, dumping them in a pile on the carpet.

  Barbara made a small animal noise and slumped to her knees on to the carpet, reaching out with her arms to sweep the shoes in close, as though they were small pets that had been violated. The Judge saw tears of anger as she carefully examined each one, matched it with its partner, and stood the pairs up in a semi-circle around her.

  He found trash bags in the kitchen and helped Barbara pack up her clothes, shoes and jewelry, carting it out to his car, filling up first the trunk and then the backseat. It took several trips. Particularly for the shoes. Barbara’s ancestors couldn’t have been camp followers. They’d never have found enough bodies to move their stuff from their first camp.

  Barbara was morose and silent on the ride back to her house. Not at all her bubbly self. She finally muttered as they hefted the last two loads of stuff into her living room, “You get ’em Judge. You find out who killed poor Carl and you fry their ass.”

  CHAPTER 21

  2:30 PM Monday

  The Judge headed to his office, perplexed. There seemed to be several people upset with Carl, and plenty who’d benefit from his death. Over fifty percent of homicides in the United States were committed by someone the victim knew. Those odds would suggest Carl knew his killer. But the Judge believed the person who stuck the knife in Carl’s neck was someone Carl didn’t know.

  The Judge didn’t know the gang member who attacked him on the beach. That could have been a one-off attack of opportunity on a solitary beach walker at night. Or the gang was out to get the Judge and it was a contract job. The Judge believed the latter. And that the two events were tied together. The Judge’s assailants were going to use knives. Carl was killed with a knife. Both attacks happened about the same time and in the same geographical area. The same gang that attacked the Judge had killed Carl in the ally. He was certain of it.

  The question became who hired the gang? Who put out the contract on Carl? And maybe the Judge? And why?

  There was Carl’s ex-wife, Yana, aligned with her paramour, Allan Clark. She, and perhaps Clark if he wasn’t merely being used, stood to gain big time if Carl’s new technology ended up in Yana’s lap.

  There were the mysterious ‘powerful’ interests that wanted to buy the technology. Frustrated by Carl’s refusal to sell. Perhaps they engineered his demise in the hope the technology would settle into more reasonable hands. Hands willing to deal.

  There was Cindy Kwan from The Grotto, with whom Carl had had some sort of altercation.

  There was the mysterious gay man who Carl may have jilted, perhaps throwing him into a jealous rage. Allan Clark had said Carl might have had a silent partner in the technology and perhaps there’d been a falling out.

  There was Shadow, who seemed likable enough. But who knew what went on in her head. She claimed she never played S & M games with Carl. The Judge wondered if that were true.

  Even Barbara might have a motive if she thought Carl had no intention of becoming engaged, particularly after stringing her along for months. But the Judge couldn’t picture it. It took quickness to get close enough to kill someone with a knife. Unless of course you already knew them. Barbara was a lover and often a whiner, but not a killer.

  If strangers were killing under a contract, it was unlikely a crime of passion.

  More likely a motive relating to business. And money. This was Silicon Beach. People would do lots of things for money here. Money was security. It was power. It was self-esteem. It was everything to the denizens of the Southern California Plain.

  The money and business motive made more sense. The Judge and Carl were tied together by the patent case. And the patent case was all about money, as most civil suits were. Since the attack on the Judge and the murder of Carl were connected, the mo
tive would relate to Carl’s current patent, or Carl’s new technology, or something similar.

  Carl’s existing patented technology was interesting. The ability to convert flare off gas at the wellheads around the country back into oil. Many wells were primarily oil wells. They had no gathering or distribution system to capture the gas, which was just burned off at the wellhead. Carl’s patented invention solved that. It might increase the output of such an oil well anywhere from five to ten percent. It was very valuable technology no doubt. But it wasn’t disruptive technology. Hardly worth a murder in the Judge’s opinion. He wished he’d read the missing report on Carl’s new technology. That report could bring clarity to this mess.

  As he stepped out of the garage elevator and into the building lobby, still lost in thought, a solid hand was laid on his shoulder from behind, bringing him up short. He swung around to protest and came face to face with Kaminsky. The Lieutenant released his hand but still stood close, his face in the Judge’s.

  “We need to go over to my office and talk. Now, Judge. There’ve been more developments in the Greene case.”

  There was a certain satisfaction in Kaminsky’s voice that the Judge didn’t like.

  The Judge shook himself to full alert, clamped his mouth shut, and vowed to say little. Only listen. Perhaps he’d need his own attorney soon. Maybe now.

  They walked out to Kaminsky’s car, parked illegally in front of the building, and climbed in. Kaminsky drove them over to the Santa Monica police station. A 15-minute trip. At least he was allowed to ride in front instead of shackled in the rear. But instinct told him things weren’t good.

  “Are you a native Angeleno, Judge?” Kaminisky asked conversationally. Switching gears into his nice cop mode.

  “I am, Kaminsky. Grew up on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.”

  “How’d you get in the law business, Judge?”

  What Kaminsky wanted to ask was how he knew the DA so well, the Judge thought. He was just working up to it.

  “Was your father an attorney?”

  “No, an accountant,” said the Judge, deciding he would play this game back. “He worked all his life for a large accounting firm down on Spring Street back in the day. Lybrand, Ross Brothers and Montgomery. Through a succession of mergers they got bigger and bigger. Now they’re Price Waterhouse Cooper. How about you, Kaminsky? Is that a Boston accent?”

  “Yes. Grew up there, started in the Boston Police Department.”

  “Was your dad a union man?” asked the Judge.

  Startled, Kaminsky looked at the Judge.

  “How'd you know that?”

  “A guess.”

  “Blue collar meets ivy league, huh Judge? My dad drove a small pickup truck all his life. Raised three kids and put me through school on a nothing salary. Then when he wanted to retire, his trucking union tried to ax his pension. Cut it by two thirds. Said ‘cause he only drove a pickup, he wasn’t really full time. Wasn't entitled to all the credits he’d earned under their pension plan.”

  “Did you help fix it?”

  “I did. Sometimes people and organizations aren’t so fair. Like that union and its plan administrator. They weren’t so fair with my dad. They needed a little help to see the right thing to do.”

  “So what’d you do, Kaminsky?”

  “I was already out here then. Working for the Santa Monica Department. But I called a couple of my old buddies from the Boston Police. A pair of them went down and talked to the union’s pension plan administrator. Explained how it was going to be. It got all worked out for my dad. Real quick. Bastards!”

  Kaminsky turned to the Judge again. “So growing up in Palos Verdes must have been pretty pleasant, Judge. Don’t some people call it the PV Bubble on account of the air’s so rarefied?”

  “They call it that because there’s only four main roads on to The Hill. At the best of times it’s a minimum twenty minutes from any freeway. People from the greater L.A. area don’t wander into Palos Verdes much. Except for the bike clubs, mostly it’s only the residents that come and go. Growing up there you’re not much exposed to the people who co-exist on the flats.”

  “You mean the poor,” Kaminsky said. A touch of bitterness at the back of his voice.

  “Yes,” said the Judge. “We’re all products of the place we grow up. Can’t help it. How about you, Kaminsky? Where’d you grow up in Boston? Codman Square? Perhaps Four Corners?”

  “Guess it shows doesn’t it?” said Kaminsky. “Yeah. Four Corners. Irish neighborhood. Bunch of pricks. Gangs, violence, shootings, stabbings, muggings, depression, despair. We had it all. Wasn’t no bubble there. As a Polish boy I learned how to take care of myself early.” His eyes narrowed, old memories flashing through his mind.

  “So are you jealous I grew up in a bubble and you grew up in a tough neighborhood in Boston?” asked the Judge. “You don’t seem to like me very much, Kaminsky.”

  Kaminsky turned full in the driver’s seat then. Leveling his cold blue eyes at the Judge. The Judge could almost taste the venom there. Could see the angry color spreading up Kaminski’s cheek.

  “I’m not jealous, Judge. I just don't like silver spoon assholes who receive special privilege. Use high powered friends to get around police procedure. Call up the chicken-shit DA and suddenly I have to wait twenty-four hours to get your statement. That gave you time to figure out what your story was. You probably talked to your lawyer. Accumulated all the verifiable facts and moved your story around to match. Even rehearse the story a little ‘til you got it down pat.”

  “So you think I need a defense lawyer, Kaminsky?”

  Kaminsky let the question lay there unanswered, allowing the tension to build, as he escorted the Judge from the car into the station and back to the mean little interrogation room where they’d talked before. This time the lieutenant didn’t offer coffee or water. Kaminsky was trying to be more intimidating.

  But settling into the chair on his side of the table, Kaminsky switched again to his conversational voice.

  “Look at it this way, Judge. I got a murder victim. He didn’t jab that knife into his own neck. I have your wallet with your license and your social security card and your insurance card, and even your California Bar card. Found next to the victim in that alley. You were clearly there with Carl Greene.

  There was $800 in cash in your wallet. That tells me this was no robbery.

  I’ve got your pants beside the victim. This is no OJ case where the shrunken glove doesn’t fit. You’ve admitted they’re your pants. Suggests to me this was maybe a crime of passion. People don’t usually take their pants off for just anyone.

  I’ve got you wandering around the Santa Monica Beach, disheveled, booze on your breath, wearing no pants. And you’ve got a knife wound on your arm, suggesting you were in a struggle.

  I got you admitting to walking along the street parallel to the alley where the murder occurred, about the time of the murder.

  So what do you think, Judge? Do you need a lawyer?”

  The Judge stayed silent.

  “The only thing I’m missing is a motive. Why would a fancy Judge like you want to kill old Carl Greene? Were you lovers perhaps? Was this a tryst between two mature guys gone wrong? I couldn’t figure the motive out.”

  “Carl did have a gay lover,” said the Judge.

  “How do you know that?”

  The Judge related what Shadow had said about Greene’s gay affair.

  “Do you know who it was?” asked Kaminsky.

  “Not yet.”

  “Well I do. We know how to do our job here too, Judge. We talked to Greene’s gay friend at length. He checks out. Has an iron clad alibi for the time the murder was committed.”

  “Who is he?” asked the Judge.

  “That information’s part of this investigation. It’s not for public consumption. If we need him to testify for some reason then it’ll all come out. Otherwise, we have no need to embarrass the guy.”

  “But you have no prob
lem embarrassing me. Picking me up in my own lobby and dragging me down here for this little chat,” said the Judge. “This feels almost like a vendetta, Kaminsky.”

  “I admit I don’t like you much, Judge. I don't like your fancy yacht and your fancy house high on the hill in Palos Verdes. I don’t like your arrogant smarter than everybody attitude that comes with your bullshit law degree. I don't like you've got a wife that's young enough to be your daughter. I don't like you had rich parents, raised you in the PV bubble, sent you to finishing schools and set you up as a lawyer. I don't like you got enough money so you really don't have to work.

  I don't like you get 550 an hour or more, and I hobble along on 80 an hour and try to make do with my family in this expensive town. You swan around and play this debutante detective. Meanwhile, the rest of us have to do the work.

  Oh, yes, and I don’t like you as a judge. I was in your court once. I was on the stand as a witness. We had this two-bit drug dealer dead to rights, sitting on his drug stash in his garage. You let the defense attorney bury me. No due process, no reasonable cause to search, no warrant, no hot pursuit. All this crap.

  You threw the evidence out. Just like that. Poof! No case. The creep walked. Two months later two little girls, 15, died in his garage from an overdose. That was your doing, Judge. You're responsible for their deaths. So yeah, you could say I don’t like you.”

  “That feel better? Get that all off your chest?” asked the Judge.

  “Not really. But you asked me. I'm telling you how it is. You want to repeat it to anybody up the line, I'll deny it. I just thought us girls should have a frank discussion. So here are the rules, Judge. I'm going to be in your face. You make a mistake with your little games, you lie to me again, I'm going right up your ass.” Kaminsky smiled, displaying white teeth firmly clenched.

  The Judge smiled back.

  It was the final straw.

  “I think I’m going to have your ass for this Carl Greene killing,” Kaminsky snarled. “All I need to find is one little mistake. I’m going to nail you solid.”