Wolfs clothing, p.7
Wolf's Clothing, page 7
I may never touch a dollar again. Maybe a five-hundred-dollar bill. They probably don’t get much handling.
Portia said that what was once an urban legend had proven true. The U. S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that in Los Angeles, three of every four banknotes were tainted with cocaine or some other drug. She added that paper money was a vector of disease, although that was in dispute.
I said to Portia, the anti-germ queen, “I’ve seen you handle money.”
She pointed to a blue bottle on her desk. “You’ve also seen me use a hand sanitizer.”
“I’m surprised your hands aren’t raw.”
Unless she had to, Portia would not shake hands, and when she did, she put her hands in her ubiquitous pockets where paper hand sanitizers lay hidden.
“So,” I said, “you said you knew something about smells.”
“I have a good friend in the UGA Department of Biological Sciences who is an expert on smells. We’ve had a discussion on the sense of olfaction, the proper word for sense of smell. For sense of taste, it’s gustation.”
“I know better than to put money in my mouth,” I said.
“I see kids at the store with money. It’s all I can do—Never mind. My friend and I were speaking of the legalities of currency-sniffing dogs. Every traveler is going to have bills. Therein lies the problem. Unlike drugs, having money isn’t illegal as long as it’s less than ten grand when leaving the U. S. There has to be a target first and then there has to be corroborating evidence on his person or in his suitcase. Legal challenges about warrantless searches pop up. Other legal challenges come with the dog itself. Many people are afraid of them. Apparently, Labs are better suited for cash sniffing because they’re calmer and more meticulous than the German Shepherds that are used to detect drugs. People are more comfortable being sniffed by a Lab than a German Shepherd. Lawsuits have arisen. Distress, wrongful invasion of privacy—all these are legal issues involved in dog sniffing. The moral of the story: money is not only evil, it’s dirty and it leads to trouble for our four-legged cops.”
She paused to drink from a bottle of fancy French water, then went on, “The levels of contamination and crudiness of bills led Australia to print polymer currency. Plastic is less prone to hold crystalline structures than fabric. We could do that here, if only we could teach people to wipe after using the toilet and blowing their noses.”
I asked, “Did you know that many dog handlers let their dogs sleep in the same bed with them?”
I left her mumbling about where and what in hell the dogs had walked on.
6
I sat at an empty desk in the squad room that reeked of testosterone, black coffee and ambition. Today, there wasn’t a woman around to temper the air with the soft scents of lotions and colognes. I knew there were four female lead detectives on the homicide desk. One, Tennessee Thomas, a black woman, was one of Lake’s hand-picks. She was a pistol and as able as a dog with a hyper nose. It was in 1948 that the APD first hired male African-Americans—though they weren’t termed that then—to begin patrolling Auburn Avenue, the avenue where Martin Luther King, Jr. preached to his congregation and where his memorial was today. It was in 1957 that white women were assigned to regular beats, but not until 1971 that the APD hired an African-American woman. Times changed, but slowly.
Since police records, especially of closed cases, were public information, Lake had the casebooks on his desk. The log books typically were blue or black binders that compiled hand-written notes, summaries, reports and observations of major crime investigators. Expandable red and white file folders held the videos and audios. These case books documented a sequential history of the murder, from the call-in to the solution, if there was one. If not, the cases remained open and could be added to over the months, years, and decades. These books were the paper trail and got packed in storage boxes and labeled with names and dates. Eventually the case logs were turned into computer reports and stored in a database, but I liked to see the crime scene photos and sketches, first responders reactions, who are/were the detectives assigned to the crime, the autopsy photos and forensic notes and surmises, the suspect’s interrogation transcripts and the videos thereof, the witnesses recollections which were often erratic—the entire drama surrounding the facts as known through the arrest of the suspect. Once the reports were computerized, they’d lost their personality, their impact; they’d become sanitized in a way that bored me to look at them.
Lake was as big on recordings as I, along with hand-written reports. There were many video and audio recordings packed into the accordion files of the Erskine case. It would take until retirement to review them all. Bart Lawson and Raymond Kent were the primaries on the investigation after the first responders. Bart was the writer; his neat small printing was easy to make out; Ray, not so much, but he made recordings. Raymond Kent had retired right after the trial. Bart Lawson had run into some political trouble and was on the Pawn Desk, not a desk actually but such demotions are so-called. I liked Bart, but Lake and I agreed I wouldn’t be talking to him. He was a sour guy, doing his utmost to get back into Homicide.
Ray Kent could be found at cop bars any night of the week. Not exactly a drunk, but his wife had left him and he relished the company of his former colleagues and they him. If we needed a verbal from a former lead detective, he couldn’t be better.
I looked up to see Liam come into the squad room. I raised a hand and Lake raised his head. “Liam,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Jed’s nervy. I had to pull him from a search this afternoon. He’s off his feed. The vet’s coming to the kennel.” The Atlanta K-9 Unit was located off Cherokee Avenue near the Atlanta Zoo in Grant Park.
Lake kicked out a chair and motioned for Liam to sit. Then he waved his hand over the murder logs. “You say you’ve gone through these many times. I’d appreciate your going through the books. Pull and copy the pertinents for Dru to look over.”
I said, “I’d like to decide what’s pertinent, so there—”
Liam interrupted with a sour smile. “Be happy to help.” He looked at me. “The whole caboodle for you, Dru.” He turned to Lake, “If you would, Lieutenant, get with my sergeant and let her know you’re borrowing me.”
“No problem since it pertains to Buddy. His is now an official case,” Lake said, picking up the phone.
After permission was given, I said, “I’m going to need current addresses of the people at that holiday party the night Daniel was killed–before and after. I want the maid’s, Nita’s, addy and the Dempseys—”
“Warner told me that the Dempseys still live in Ansley Park,” Liam said. “Carletta got my name from Warner. She calls every once in a while to see if we’ve made progress on getting Mitchell a new trial. I tell her, it’s not the police who get new trials. It’s the lawyers and judges, but she doesn’t seem to get it.”
“A dunderhead or what?”
“I wouldn’t call Carletta a dunderhead. Scheming’s more like it. She asks if we’ve found the money yet.”
“And you say?” Lake asked.
“Nothing. I know nothing about the money,” Liam said with vigor. “It’s the feds patch. She once said, ‘I bet your Black Lab could find it.’ She’d obviously been talking to Warner.”
Lake said, “So you have Warner and Carletta Dempsey talking about Jed finding the money?”
“Sounds like Jed they were after. I wonder—?”
Lake said, “Hold on. Don’t think so. They’d set up Parker’s Blazer to open with a code-grabber or did a key fob reprogramming technique. They wanted Buddy. If Warner or the Dempseys are involved, they’d steer clear of Jed.”
Liam’s face sparked relief. “Jesus. I hope so. I’m not saying I’m glad it’s Buddy and not Jed, but it can’t be coincidence, can it?
Lake shook his head, stood and looked at me. “You ready to go talk to the Dempseys?”
I got up. “Sure am.”
Liam walked across the squad room with us. Lake said to him. “So the Dempseys are interested in finding the money, too. Interesting. They had skin in the investment racket.”
“But not fifty mil,” Liam said.
“Once the money was found, they’d ask for interest. Let’s see the SEC and the state caught up with The Wolves of Atlanta ten years ago. Mitchell’s served eight now. They were at it for ten years before being caught. That could add up to a hefty return.”
“I don’t know that it works that way,” Liam said. “Depends on what’s recovered. They’d be lucky to get their original investment back. There were over five hundred clients on the books, according to the files, with more off the books. This according to Mitchell’s statements.”
“What was the Dempsey’s investment?”
“Not sure. Mitchell told police that Garian always squared with Colin.”
Haskell had came out of his office, where, seconds before, I’d seen him lingering at the door listening. “That visit got to do with Buddy?” he asked.
Lake assured his commander that it was the Buddy case he was working, not revisiting the Erskine case. “But the cases could be colliding,” he said.
Haskell turned on a very tight heel and returned to his office.
Lake took a few steps on his toes. “See me tip-toeing toward that closed case?”
Liam looked at Lake. “Carletta—be sure you tiptoe around her.’
The way he said that—hmmm.
***
When Atlanta drivers are not at war with each other, it’s a twenty minute drive from the cop shop on Peachtree Street to Ansley Park in Zone 5. Lake was silent for a while, and then said, “The money. It’s always about the money.”
From Peachtree, we scooted off Seventeenth Street and entered Ansley Park. Half a mile in, on the twisting and turning streets of the community, Lake had slowed to a stop. “We are now looking at Daniel Garian’s house.”
I adore Art Deco architecture. The three-story white house had classic rounded corners. And eyebrows that were cantilevered to look like shelves above the windows. They had a purpose though, and that was to shade direct sunlight. The Garian house was a harmonious ziggurat with glass block and porthole windows and a multi-level flat roof. It was simply cool. In the 1920s and 1930s, the machine age technology was perfected enough that it opened the way for a new look—fast and sleek—in the design of airplanes, ships, trains, streetcars, autos and buildings. World War I was over; time to get a new life, a new outlook, out with the moldy Victorians and in with aerodynamic Moderns.
I said, “I hate that murder came to that house.”
“You like it?”
“Very much. When I see old Agatha Christie movies, I glory in the period architecture. So elegant.”
“If you say so.”
“Says the man who lives in a cotton warehouse from the eighteen-sixties.”
“And happy about it.”
He drove on. I asked, “You know who owns the Garian house now?” I asked.
“If it’s not in the binders, we’ll find out. Liam probably knows.”
“Looked deserted.”
“Yard’s kept up. I know about it and that it has had a succession of renters.”
“Neighbors gleefully impart murder info.”
Two blocks around a bend in the street, and Lake pulled up to the gates guarding the Dempsey manse.
The sprawl of one of Atlanta’s first and finest upscale communities was not gated, but many homes, particularly new mansions that replaced old staid homes, had gates. The Dempsey’s house looked to be fairly news, at least within ten years.
Lake got out of the squad car and pushed a button inlaid in stone. Above it a sign said, “No soliciting. No reporters, please. Others ring and wait.”
It seemed like a half an hour elapsed before the gate slowly opened. Lake got in the car. “Cameras. They checked out the car and me before deciding that it was prudent to let the cops come calling.” He pulled up the drive to the circular brick path that encompassed a riot of early spring azaleas in whites and purples. The house was gigantic, like some of those built by overpaid, ostentatious athletes. Stone, brick, stucco, cedar, glass—all in one façade. I said to Lake, “Classic—”
He finished, “It ain’t.”
Despite his rugged loft on Castleberry Hill, he knows and appreciates style. He’d married socialite Linda Lake and got used to living in a white Gone-with-the-Wind mansion as depicted in the movie—a mansion three times the size of an actual Georgia antebellum house in the 1850s.
The doorbell was a hymn—How Great Thou Art—one that instills a rush in my veins.
A butler—really, in proper livery—came to the door. He held a salver. “May I have your names, and calling cards, if you possess them?”
Lake reached for his back pocket. “I am Lieutenant Richard Lake, and I am accompanied by Miss Moriah Dru.”
I dug in my purse, which doubles for a holster, and came up with a calling card. We placed them on his proffered small tray.
“Miss Arenas will see you,” he said, and walked away, while we followed him. Lake whispered, “I read somewhere in the file she is officially Carletta Arenas.”
“It’s more musical than Carletta Dempsey. Dempsey sounds like a prize fighter’s name.”
“It was. It’s also the name of an actor and an Army general.”
“You got the Dempseys covered.”
At the back of the house, the butler opened a sliding door. We walked onto a covered lanai and, for God’s sake, a woman lay naked on a raft. Except for a wide-brimmed aqua hat.
“Hola,” she called, and then slipped off the raft into the water.
As she ascended the tile steps, I said to Lake, “Real boobs, and a true blond, unless she dyes her bikini hair.”
“I didn’t notice.”
“That’s right, you’re an ass man.”
I am slim, and have little breast tissue to boast, but I have a nice bum.
On the chaise lay a robe. She walked her firm ass over to it and slipped it on. Then she came toward us. “I am Carletta Arenas, and you are?”
“Richard Lake, with the Atlanta Police Department.”
“You have a rank?” she said with a sly smile and nudging closer to him.
“Lieutenant.”
She reached out and with a long nailed index finger, ran it down his cheek. I half expected him to fling back, but he didn’t. She said, “I had despaired, truly, of the Atlanta police having in their ranks a fabulously handsome policeman.”
Lake got that look he gets when he closes down. Blank-faced, he backed off. He seemed to have lost his voice.
I said, “I am Moriah Dru. I am a private investigator licensed in the state of Georgia.”
She did not care. She did not look at me but kept her stare on Lake. “And why have you come to my abode?”
Before Lake could answer, she called to the butler to bring a tray of drinks.
Lake had cleared whatever lodged in his throat, but kept whatever emotions he had in check. “We have come here to speak about the Daniel Garian murder case.” He sounded like a robot.
“Ah, so.” She turned. Having let the robe fall open, she clutched it to her body as if she had no control over what it revealed. She waved a hand toward the lanai. “Please, let us sit and we can discuss whatever you wish while we have refreshments. For me, I have said all I know about our former neighbor.”
We sat. She crossed her legs and bunched the robe onto her lap. The top of it gapped enough for her nipples to peek out. Tossing back her head, she lifted her hands and ran them through wet blond hair. She was beautiful, no doubt. She was almost as tall as I and her eyes just as blue. I, however, am not blond, but black-haired and slimmer than the full bodied woman across from me. She was neither a runner nor a swimmer.
The obsequious butler came out with a tray of drinks. Beer, several types of vodkas, a golden liquor in an unmarked fancy bottle, tequila, I presumed, sparkling waters, Cokes. “What would you like to drink?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Lake croaked out.
“Same here,” I said, starting to steam.
We are taught early in our police training to remain calm when questioning subjects who wear crazy things or nothing at all. Such happens.
The butler was busy preparing a tequila shooter for Carletta. “It’s almost five,” she said. “As if I cared one way or the other. Please, it will do your blood good to have a shot of my tequila. You see I make it myself.”
“You testified to that at Daniel Garian’s trial,” I said.
“That is true, I did. And what may I ask has a private investigator got to do with Daniel?”
Without pause for thought or to issue a growl, I said, “A new case has arisen that may have its roots in the Garian murder case.”
I looked at Lake. His eyes were focused on something only he could see. His jaw was set as if constructed of wood.
Carletta smirked at Lake. “You work with the amateurs now?”
He shook himself. “No. Er, Miss Dru was a policewoman once.”
How lame.
After an awkward moment, Lake sat forward. “How much did you lose to Garian’s and Erskine’s investment management firm?”
“I did not lose any money. I do not give my money to outsiders to lose. My husband, Mr. Dempsey, lost a million dollars to their schemes. I told him he was foolish to give that much money to two men, even if one was our neighbor.” She threw up her hands dramatically. “Neighbors are the worst!”
Lake sat back as if he had no more questions, so I said, “Mrs. Dempsey—”
She hit her fist on the chair arm. “I am not Mrs. Dempsey.”
“Excuse me. Then you are not married to Colin Dempsey?”
“I am, but I have kept my birth name. I like it better. Now did you want to ask me something about Colin? Because Colin can speak for himself. He should be coming here from his golf soon.”
“I understand he is the music director for the Atlas the Global Religion on the True Nature of God. I trust I’ve gotten the name correct?”
“Who knows; who cares? He is a pastor. The music pastor.” She drank off the tequila in one swallow then rose. She was on the move. “Lieutenant, do you have questions for me. It is you that I will answer to. A real policeman.” Once she reached him, she made to sit on his lap. Somehow Lake managed to rise before she planted her butt on his knees.
