Body Guard Page 3

  “When we find out who the joker is,” said Bunch, “we’ll pick him up and talk with him.” He cracked his knuckles for punctuation.

  “We can keep this unobtrusive, can’t we? I mean, if Schmidt or Stratford discover that I’ve mentioned their names … Well, we run in the same social circles. It would be extremely awkward.”

  “We’ll be circumspect, Mr. Humphries.” Kirk drew a standard contract from the drawer and filled in the blanks, adapting a paragraph or two to include the costs of installing security devices. “If what we’ve said makes sense and you want to proceed with it, I’ll need your signature after you read over the contract. If you have any questions, please ask.”

  He didn’t. When the pen stopped scratching, Devlin gave him a copy and nodded at Bunch. “Mr. Bunchcroft here can start right now.”

  That was what Bunch wanted to hear. This kind of job beat hell out of surveillance in that Subaru. Standing, he wiped his face. “Just call me Bunch, Mr. Humphries. We’ll swing by my place and I’ll clean up and then we’ll be on our way.”

  Humphries nodded as Kirk folded his check and said goodbye. Going down the stairs, he eyed the wide back and shoulders of the sweaty man and hoped that Mitsuko was right. Kirk had bought the story. Now Humphries hoped the plan would give them the safety they sought.

  CHAPTER 3

  WHEN THE DOOR closed behind them, Devlin read Humphries’ check over one more time. Then he filed the contract in the “Active” drawer in its new manila folder labeled “Humphries.” Opening a companion file on the computer, he typed in a code and brief synopsis of current information. On the time sheet, he noted the hour and day that Bunch started work. After running off a backup file, he turned to the telephone answerer for the messages that had come in while the office was empty.

  The only one of interest was a report from Houston with the address and telephone number of a James Fackler. It cited the McQuiller Agency’s costs of discovering the information: two hundred dollars. Right—it took McQuiller four hours and expenses to look through a telephone directory and then drive by to verify the suspect and address. Nevertheless, Kirk wrote out a check and put it in an envelope, noted the expense on the Fackler time sheet, and, in the World Association of Detectives directory, put a mark by McQuiller’s name to remind him not to use that agency again. Most of the names in the directory were honest in their fees. But every now and then you ran across one that padded expenses.

  Fackler was one of those insurance cases that had dragged on because the principal had a tendency to move quickly and without a forwarding address, usually just ahead of angry creditors. But for some reason, the man never changed his name. Vanity perhaps, or an unconscious will to be caught. It happened that way occasionally. Kirk had chased the man from Colorado to Oklahoma, then out to California and back to Louisiana, wherever the oil companies set up operations. The last rumor led to Houston, and sure enough, he’d popped up there like a beer drinker’s belch. Kirk faxed the information back to Security Underwriters in New York and flagged the computer file with the code number that meant Wait for instructions. Paperwork was a hassle, and most of it fell to Kirk because Bunch didn’t like to do it. Besides, it was his agency and his responsibility. And making quick and careful records was the only way to keep facts and fees straight when working a number of cases. He didn’t know any P.I.. firms that had the luxury of working only one job the way they did on TV. Recording and filing taken care of, he scurried across town to meet with Reznick at the Advantage Corporation plant.

  The regional manager was less than enthusiastic about bringing the police into the investigation. “No. Absolutely not! We deal in high-quality products—products whose name means reliability. And we ship that name all over the world. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let a shitbird like Porter give our corporation a public black eye.”

  Kirk was hearing what he expected. Late-morning light filtered in through a wall of glass sliced by narrow vertical blinds and interrupted here and there by silhouetted sprouts of potted plants. Beyond the glass lay the parking lot and delivery bays where trucks from other corners of the far-flung Advantage empire brought in what they brought in, or carried away what they carried away for distribution to the company sales outlets. The Denver plant was the assembly hub because it was a convenient location between manufactories on the West Coast and in Florida. The same geography suited it for market distribution as well. “It’s possible that Porter’s working alone on a small scale,” said Kirk. “If so, he can be handled quietly and easily.”

  “So handle him.”

  “But it’s also possible he may not be working alone. His supply could be coming from outside the plant or inside it. We don’t know yet.”

  “Kirk. It’s been—what?—two, three weeks already. You’ve had a man looking at this guy Porter for three weeks now, and you’re not sure if he’s working alone?”

  “He’s been looking for Porter for three weeks. He found him only a couple days ago.”

  The telephone on Reznick’s desk buzzed softly. Irritably, he jabbed the talk button without giving his secretary a chance to speak. “I’m in conference!” He switched the telephone off and leaned across the desk toward Devlin. “You know there was a guy last week, Montoya, caught his arm in a scissor lift? Was so goddamned stoned he didn’t even know it—goddamn doctor said he didn’t have to give him any anesthetic, he was so stoned. Was afraid to give him any, as a matter of fact, because it might have blown his goddamn heart away. And now you’re telling me we got to let this Porter go about his business while we just keep an eye on him?”

  “If he’s part of a network, you won’t get rid of the problem by firing one man. You’ll just chase it somewhere else in the plant.”

  Reznick shoved his fingers through stiff, curly hair that had a touch of gray at the temples. With all the headaches that had come up in the past month, the last thing he needed was a goddamn dope problem in the factory. Not that it wasn’t expected. Despite Stewart’s high-sounding rhetoric at each monthly executive conference, Reznick and everybody else knew that a good percent of the labor force wasn’t Just Saying No to drugs. They snorted, smoked, dropped, or shot up assorted chemicals whenever they had the chance. It was one of the givens of running a factory in the late twentieth century and of the goddamn commie-liberal erosion of American virtues so the goddamn Japs could take over American industry. What wasn’t a given—and what lay behind Stewart’s rhetoric—was letting the habits affect the bottom line. And now this tall son of a bitch was sitting across his desk calmly telling him that the problem in his plant—his goddamn plant—could be far more extensive than he’d at first believed. Reznick could understand why bearers of ill tidings tended to be executed. “All right. But no cops. I want this investigation to be kept absolutely confidential. All reports come to me—my eyes only—and you don’t make a move without my authorization. Understand?”

  To Kirk, Reznick seemed a little too young to have those gray patches at his temples. He wondered if it was a touch of dye to give a bit more weight to the man’s office. “Of course. Speaking of moves, I’d like to search these lockers.” He handed Reznick a slip with 105, 112, and 207 penciled on it. “I’ll need your authorization to make the search legal.”

  “Are they involved with Porter?”

  “It’s possible. We’re not sure.”

  “Well, I don’t see why my own security people can’t make the search. They have the right to do that kind of thing.”

  “They can. If you want everyone in the plant to know about it.”

  It took him a minute. “Oh. You mean leaks. I see.” Then, “Well, all right. When you want to do this?”

  “Soon. Perhaps this evening.”

  “All right.” He made a cryptic note on the paper and pushed it back to Kirk. “Do what you have to. But I want this plant cleaned up and I want it done fast. Understand me?”

  Kirk understood. He understood too that Reznick was reaching the point where he was be
ginning to worry about the cost of the investigation in relation to what it was accomplishing. And how that ratio would look on his section’s profit and loss sheet. You had to balance the ideal investigation against the willingness of a customer to keep paying. And when Chris called in after work for his daily report, Kirk asked him if they could go through the lockers that night.

  “I guess so—sure. Where should we meet?”

  “I’ll pick you up in front of your apartment in half an hour.”

  Chris waited in the shadows of the deep porch that ran across the entire front of the old-fashioned house, half listening to someone’s music thump through the open window of one of the first-floor apartments. Having expected to feel excitement about going on his first search, he was a bit surprised at its absence. Maybe it was because the locker room was so familiar to him that it would be like searching his own closet. Or maybe he was finally getting used to this business of snooping and saw it as a job. Then again, he thought as Devlin’s Austin-Healey throbbed to the curb, maybe there wasn’t any reason to feel all that excited. Shaking down an empty locker room wasn’t the most thrilling chore in the world.

  After six, the traffic was a bit lighter and they made it across town quickly. The wind around the cockpit and the rap of the twin exhausts blended with the noise of surrounding cars to make it hard to talk, so they rode mostly in silence. There wasn’t, Chris reflected, much to say anyway. And Devlin seemed to have things on his mind that he didn’t want to share. Chris directed Kirk around the company’s perimeter fence to a locked rear entry. Gate 6 was at the end of the wire where it was anchored by rusty bolts to the concrete block of warehouse 3.

  “Any rent-a-cops on this side?” Kirk asked.

  The guards hadn’t been told about the investigation, of course. Sad but true, a lot of private security agents—underpaid, ill- trained, and quickly recruited—are easy targets for the extra cash they can pick up by turning their eyes away from a dealer’s operation or the activities of a theft ring. Besides, not many of them put their responsibility to a company above their responsibility to their skins. They aren’t paid enough to take that kind of risk. That’s where Kirk and Associates came in.

  “Shouldn’t be,” said Chris. He held up a jingling key ring. “I’ve got a key for this gate. The trash hauler comes in this way. So no problem.”

  He pointed them across the almost empty parking lot. Kirk drove toward a scarred concrete loading dock banded by a yellow and black steel lip. Sections of old tires made a series of vertical bumpers on the steel. He parked the Healey on a patch of gravel that held enough delivery trucks and private cars to make it look as if it belonged there. Then Chris unlocked a steel-faced door in the blank wall and relocked it behind them.

  “Down this way.” He led Kirk along a narrow alley between palleted crates stacked almost as high as the unlit bulbs nesting behind metal grilles. Devlin smelled the oily-chemical odor of new electrical components. From somewhere in the echoing gloom came the tinny, distant sound of television voices.

  “Where’s the inside man?”

  “He’s over going through the administration wing. I checked out his routine: Starts over there because people work late sometimes. Then he makes a round of the assembly and warehouse areas after that.” Chris paused to listen. “That’s his office television. Turns it up when he’s gone so a burglar might think somebody’s around.” He laughed quietly. “Sitcoms—the first line of defense.”

  They pushed through a pair of swinging doors. The locker room was lined with narrow gray metal doors and anchored benches like the dressing room of a high school gym. Some had penciled slips of paper in the name slots, as company policy called for. Most were blank.

  Kirk started with 105, closest to the door. Chris stood guard. He breathed shallowly and lightly, listening for the sound of footsteps echoing across the concrete floors. A ripple of excitement started along the back of his neck. There shouldn’t be any footsteps, he knew. The guard’s routine should be the same. But there was always that chance, and in the silence and vastness of the warehouse with its alleys between towering stacks of canisters, he could imagine someone’s shape. If not the security guard, maybe another of the janitorial crew. Or a worker who’d forgotten something and talked his way past the gate to return to the locker room. Suddenly the locker room wasn’t as familiar anymore, and the silence that should have been comforting held a vague threat.

  Devlin eased a pick into the tumbler of the cheap lock. Using a filed-down Allen wrench for torsion, he nudged the lock’s pistons up into their seats with the rippled blade. Then he swung the handle down to open the door. A flash of something tiny dropped to the floor. It was the stub of a paper match knocked loose when the door moved. “This guy’s worried about something.”

  Newman stared at him. “Why?”

  Devlin held up the stem. “The old paper-match-on-the-door trick.”

  “So he’s got something to hide?”

  “We’ll find out.”

  Exactly what the match stem was guarding was unclear. A pair of grimy overalls hung on a hook to breathe the odor of stale sweat and grease. The embroidered red thread over the pocket spelled Eddie. Heavy work shoes worn at the heels filled the bottom shelf. On the top shelf was a construction hat apparently issued by the company but never worn. The stenciled name Visser was still shiny across the back. There were several pairs of worn cotton work gloves, a couple of tightly rolled black plastic garbage bags, unused, and a well-thumbed copy of Hustler magazine that showed a blonde smiling with as many orifices as the camera could find. Both shelves were coated with a film of dust that had scrape tracks from a lunch pail and the boots. Kirk ran his finger across it and felt its smooth, talc-like glide. Using a cotton swab, he picked up a sample and corked it into a plastic container. Then he relocked the door and placed the match stem back on guard, hoping it was near the place it fell from.

  Chris had been watching closely. “You find anything?”

  “I’m not sure.” He moved to the next two lockers, discovering just about the same things, including the balanced match stem and the dust. Number 112 belonged to a Johnny Atencio, number 207 to Scott Martin. Labeling the containers by locker number, he stowed the dust samples in his jacket pocket and worked on Porter’s locker, number 223. There was no dust in this one and it didn’t have any tricks outside. But it did have one inside. “Look at this, Chris.”

  He gazed over Devlin’s shoulder. “Look at what?”

  Kirk nudged the locker’s back panel with a knuckle; the thin metal sheet bent easily. “Hidden passages and secret compartments. A veritable Otranto of lockerdom.”

  “A what?”

  “He’s hiding something.”

  In a one-inch space behind the false back rested a tier of baggies carefully sealed and stacked. Lifting one out, Devlin untied it and sniffed a pinch of the dark tangle. “Quarter-ounce package. Pretty good stuff.” He held it for Newman to get a whiff.

  “Whew—makes me want to sneeze. We going to take them?”

  Kirk was already retying the baggie. He set it back in place and half closed the door so the number was visible. Then he took a couple of flash photographs with a small camera. “Not yet.” He replaced the panel and closed the locker. “I’d like to find out if he’s working alone or not.”

  Chris thought about that. “Yeah. If Porter’s busted, Eddie Visser and those other two will climb the walls.”

  “If they have a reason, they will.” Devlin was pleased to see that Newman was thinking like a detective.

  “Well, we know they’re already nervous about something.”

  “And we want to find out what. Can you get close to them at all?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure. I’ve tried a little. But like I say, they don’t want anything to do with me or anybody else.” He reminded Kirk, “And you told me not to push.”

  “That’s right. Just keep an eye on them, and I’ll have the lab check out these powder traces. Then we’ll s
ee what Reznick wants us to do.”

  He hadn’t changed his mind. “I don’t care how much pot you found. I don’t want the police called in.” He tossed the photographs back to Kirk. “Keep Porter under surveillance, and when you find out if he’s working with anybody, we’ll can the lot of them.”

  “The trouble is, we ran a check on the lockers of some other people my agent has suspicions about. The lab tests on the dust samples came back positive. It’s cocaine dust.” Kirk handed him the slips from ProLabs, the private laboratories they used.

  Reznick stared at the pink report forms. “Jesus.” The question was in his eyes before he asked it. “Do we have a legal obligation to tell the police?”

  “A trace isn’t enough evidence for a charge. And we haven’t seen them actually dealing. But if the case develops, we’ll have to tell them.” Kirk added, “And if we stop the investigation now, you’ll have no idea how extensive their infiltration is or who else may be involved.”

  “How many goddamn suspects do you have?”

  “Three, plus Porter.”

  “Jesus.”

  “The best way we can convict—the way the police will want it handed to them—is with a possession charge.”

  “Jesus. Jesus.” Reznick shoved back from the expanse of gleaming desk and wandered over to the window to look down at the roof of a slowly moving semi. Now this. Just what the fuck he needed. What a can of worms he’d opened up, and he knew what Stewart would ask: Why did Reznick let it get out of hand? Well, by God, he had an answer for that. The answer was that he acted as soon as he had suspicions. And he acted decisively and with circumspection. Stewart couldn’t fault him on that, by God. Nobody could. He acted with the best interests of the company in mind. Besides, despite what this know-it-all son of a bitch was telling him, Reznick himself would be the one to decide whether the cops were brought in. “You say if the case develops.”