Chapter Thirteen

“Mr. Markopoulos will see you now,” recited the receptionist at Markopoulos Investigations. I tossed aside the copy of SC Magazine I’d been browsing, and she buzzed me into the hallway leading to the inner offices.

It wasn’t Pinkerton’s, but Markopoulos Investigations -- or MI as they now called themselves -- was more than a grubby guy in an office with a bimbo secretary and a bottle of rye in the right-hand drawer. In fact, the receptionist didn’t look old enough to drink. Come to think of it, I’m not sure she looked old enough to work. Maybe it was the Elly May pigtails. Or the Tootsie Pop. Were there intern positions for receptionists?

She led me down a starkly lit hallway past three other empty offices. The nameplate beside each door bore the last name Markopoulos. Roscoe had the corner office overlooking Wilshire Boulevard.

He rose from behind his desk, a small, energetic man with an enormous mustache. He bore a disconcerting resemblance to the Luigi character of the phone book ad.

We shook hands and sat down. I declined an offer of coffee.

“I’ve been out of town,” Markopoulos told me. “That’s how come I hadn’t heard about Mr. Jones. You say you’re working with the police?”

I sidestepped that one. “Not on Jones’s murder, no.”

“The cops!” He shook his head like, what could you do with pesky law enforcement underfoot all the time? “So what are you working on?”

I’d been giving this some thought on the drive over, and I said, “There are some questions regarding Jones’s will. You know the kind of thing: what his mental and emotional state might have been in at the time of his death.” I shrugged. “I think the fact that he had considered divorcing his wife --”

“He wasn’t just considering it,” Markopoulos interrupted. “He was just getting his ducks in a row.”

“And were his ducks in a row?”

Markopoulos grinned toothily. “His ducks were lined up like they were in a shooting gallery.”

I said, “So the wife was having an affair?”

He nodded his head up and down like one of those oil derricks along Santa Barbara. “Oh yeah.”

“And you handed that proof over to Jones?”

“Yep. Every last photograph.”

“Can I ask --?”

He contemplated me with his dark, alert eyes. “Well, let me ask you this, Mr. English. What’s it worth to your client?”

I had to think about that one. “The going rate?” I suggested.

He startled me by laughing. “It’s the first wife, isn’t it? Your client is Marla Vicenza?”

I smiled and spread my hands.

He pointed at me and laughed harder. I laughed too -- a little giddily.

He considered. “Okay,” he said. “Professional courtesy. Five hundred bucks and you get it all.”

I decided Paul Kane could afford it. “Done.”

He swiveled his chair around, did some typing at the computer, and then buzzed his secretary and requested the file for JON398.

I wrote out a check while we waited for the secretary to bring the file in. She bounced in. Markopoulos handed her the check and me the file.

There were photos -- lots of photos -- of Ally with a stocky, good-looking man I recognized as her funeral escort.

“Does he have a name?” I inquired, flipping through the photos.

“Duncan Roe,” Markopoulos said with satisfaction. “He’s her personal trainer.”

“What’s he training her to do?”

He laughed.

I shuffled through the log of times and dates and locations. I tried to think of innocent reasons why Ally and Duncan Roe needed to meet at the Luxe Hotel once a week for two and three hours at a time. Ally already had her own tennis courts, pool, and exercise room. True, I’d heard nice things about the Zen-inspired spa at the Luxe.

“Kelly will make you copies of anything you need.”

“Thanks.” I held up a picture of Ally and Duncan lunching on the bougainvillea-covered terrace of Hotel Bel-Air. They sure as hell didn’t appear to be concerned with covering their tracks. “You followed her for six weeks. Any idea of how long it was going on?” I asked.

“Three or four months, as far as I could make out.”

I thanked him and asked for copies of everything in the file. Roscoe left while Kelly was still Xeroxing.

“You like the PI business?” I asked her.

She shifted her Tootsie Pop to reply. “It’s a living.”

* * * * *

Checking my messages when I climbed in the Forester, I saw that Jake had called.

I clicked on the message and listened to him politely ask me to call him back, and I thought again how odd it was to be on formal terms with someone you had once permitted to lick your ears.

I called him back -- prepared for another round of phone tag -- but he picked up, catching me off guard.

“Uh, hey,” I said. “It’s Adrien. English.”

There was a pause and he said, “I haven’t forgotten your voice. Let alone your last name.”

A funny little tingle rippled down my spine -- infuriating, considering everything that I knew.

“Right. Well, I tried to get you earlier but -- anyway, Kane came up with the name of the PI Jones hired.”

Silence. But I thought I knew that silence. Knew that undertone of anger. And I assumed Paul Kane knew it as well, but apparently he was immune to it. That must have been some inoculation period.

“Which is what?”

His tone was neutral -- his beef was with Kane, not me -- but I knew he was wondering why Kane had handed me that information instead of giving it to him. Or maybe he knew Kane well enough to know how his brain worked. It wasn’t my problem.

I gave up Markopoulos’s name and address, and then steeled myself to tell him the rest of it. Not like I didn’t know how this went, but I also knew there was a good chance he would kick me off the case. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure if I minded or not. In a way I didn’t want to examine too carefully, it would be a relief.

“Look, Jake,” I said. “You’re not going to be happy. Markopoulos agreed to see me. He was on his way out of town and there wasn’t time to talk to you first.”

There was an astonished pause. “Are you telling me you went to see Markopoulos after I asked you not to?”

I took a deep breath. “Pretty much. Yeah.”

I closed my eyes and waited for the sky to fall.

His tone was flat. “Why would you do that after I asked you not to? After you told me you wouldn’t.”

“He was going out of town. I thought --”

“No, you didn’t think,” he cut in. “There was no good reason for you to bypass me. I don’t give a shit if he was going out of town. I don’t give a shit if he was going to Mars. We have recourse --”

He bit off the rest of it. There was a sharp silence. I wondered if he heard the same echo I did. Remembered the last time we’d argued a similar situation -- remembered the way it had ended.

He said into that resounding silence, “I’m disappointed in you, Adrien.”

He was in the right all the way -- no question, really. I’d wanted to hear firsthand what Markopoulos had to say. I didn’t want to wait for Jake to filter it for me -- assuming he bothered -- but that particular choice of word was…unfortunate.

“Really?” I said. “I disappointed you? I can’t imagine what that feels like -- to be disappointed in someone you trusted. How’s it feel?”

He said tightly, “All right --”

“Does it? Feel all right? Terrific! Then I have something to look forward to --”

“God damn it!” he said, and that quiet fury shut me up like no amount of yelling could have.

I could hear him breathing hard. He said, “Listen, I know you think I’m an asshole -- I am an asshole -- but this is for your protection. I don’t --” He broke off whatever he was about to say.

I snarled, “This isn’t for my protection. Who are you kidding? You’re worried about me screwing up your case. Same thing you’ve always been worried about. So don’t feed me some line of bullshit about giving a fuck about what happens to me.” Acid reflux disease -- it was becoming chronic with me.

“You don’t have a clue what I think,” he shot back. “And you don’t have a clue what I feel. I’m not going to waste time with empty threats. We both know I’m not going to throw you in jail. But I can -- and I will -- make it impossible for you to be involved in this goddamned mess. I don’t want to go that route, and believe me, you don’t want me to go that route --”

I waited for him to finish it.

He inhaled and exhaled. I had driven him to deep breathing exercises. With an obvious attempt at control, he said, “So will you just, for once in your bullheaded life, do the reasonable thing and touch base with me -- like you gave me your word you would -- before you interview anyone else?”

In the pause that followed his words I realized that he wasn’t kicking me off the case. It took me a bewildered moment to register it.

“Yes,” I bit out. “I can do that.”

“Thank you,” he bit back. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“I can’t wait.”

He disconnected.