All or Nothing (7 page)

Her golden–blond hair was piled up and anchored with a black comb, her earrings were gray pearls and her lipstick dark and glossy. Driving her silver Mercedes, she looked, she thought triumphantly, the epitome of the successful P.I. A pity that Giraud, with his plaid and jeans, his scuffed boots and Olympics 95 Swatch watch and in his ancient red Corvette, did not convey the same impression. She hated that car, she knew only too well how many hours he spent working on it, tuning it to a high performance that really came through for him when he needed it. But she had to admit there were times when he had needed it. Dangerous times.

Marla preferred not to think about that. She knew Giraud’s life was not a piece of cake. Her own work with him would be more cerebral, working out the convoluted stories his client told. Finding out the truth from the feminine angle. She worked on logic. Giraud worked on gut. That was the difference between them, right there.

The Mallard residence was in a new development of pretty three– and four–bedroom homes on small lots. Each had its neatly tended patch of garden with a new baby tree planted in the middle of the rectangle of front lawn, and each had tall double doors and a Cal–Mediterranean façade. The Mallards’ was no different from the others. Except for the pack of newshounds and paparazzi lounging around outside.

Marla parked the car down the street and walked to the house. She felt their faces swing her way, heard the click and whir of cameras as she walked up the path to the front door and rang the bell.

“Who is it?” Vickie Mallard’s voice was muffled.

“Marla Cwitowitz, Mrs. Mallard. Giraud’s partner.”

“Come through the side gate, please, around to the kitchen entrance. I don’t want to open the front door.”

Marla glanced at the windows. All the shades were drawn, like a house in mourning. She took a shortcut across the sliver of lawn and through the gate at the side, feeling the camera lenses breathing down her neck as she slammed it behind her. “The poor woman,” she muttered. “What the hell has she done to deserve all this?”

Vickie Mallard was wearing white pants and a red shirt that emphasized her pallor. She wore no makeup and her eyes were shadowed, lids pink and swollen.

“I’m sorry.” The peace offering came out of Marla’s mouth involuntarily. Vickie just looked so bad, so beaten. A woman on the brink.

“Thank you.” Vickie glanced vaguely around the pretty living room. Marla saw she didn’t even notice the long–dead flowers in the crystal vase.

“Please, sit down,” Vickie said. “Can I offer you a cold drink? Or maybe some coffee?”

“Don’t trouble yourself. I won’t keep you long, I can see you’re tired.”

“Tired?” Vickie laughed, if that short, sharp bark could be called laughter. “I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again.”

She slumped onto a sofa opposite Marla, who sat, legs crossed demurely at the ankle. A puzzled look crossed Vickie’s face as she took her in. “You and Al Giraud––you’re partners?”

Marla smiled at her astonishment. “Opposites work well together,” she explained smoothly. “I fill in the spaces where Al is reluctant to go. We’re a good team.”

Vickie nodded. “What do you mean, where he is reluctant to go?”

“Believe it or not, Al is a gentleman.” Marla took the yellow legal pad from the black tote and a Uniball Deluxe Micro pen––the only kind that never let her down. “He would never ask how things were between you and Steve––sexually.”

The hot blush stole up Vickie’s face, making her look suddenly like an embarrassed teenager. “And why should he want to know that?” she asked stiffly.

“Because it’s something the police have already asked Steve. It’s something a prosecutor would ask him. It’s something we need to know, Vickie. Was he a good fuck? Did he chase girls? Did he hang out with guys at bars? What exactly was your private life like?” Marla sat, pen poised over the legal pad. “The truth now, Vickie. It’s important for
you,
as well as Steve.”

Vickie thought she was going into meltdown she was so hot with embarrassment. It wasn’t like she was talking to a shrink or her gynecologist . . . she hardly knew this woman who, anyway, looked like a Hollywood B–movie version of a Raymond Chandler private eye.

“I resent these questions, Miss Citovitz.”

“Cwitowitz,”
Marla corrected her. “
Svitovitz
in plain English.”

“Miss Svitovitz.”

“
Ms. . . . 
if you don’t mind.”

Vickie swept her short dark hair fiercely back from her forehead. “What the hell have I gotten into now?” she demanded, getting up and pacing the floor. “Who the hell are you? I thought I’d hired a private detective and all I get is a pair of meshuggah exiles from
L.A. Confidential.
This isn’t a private eye novel––
Ms.
Cwitowitz––this is
my life
you’re dealing with.”

“Exactly. Now, tell me about him.”

Vickie sank back onto the sofa. She had that beaten look again. “It was good, okay, you know. The sex.” She was blushing again. “He’s nice, gentle, he wouldn’t hurt anyone. . . .”

“What’s he like, Vickie? Really, I mean. Tell me where he’s from, what he was like as a little boy––his family, how you met.”

“He’s from Hoboken, New Jersey. I’ve never met his family, he kind of cut himself off from them, and from what I’ve heard it’s no great loss. He got a scholarship to USC––that’s where we met, but he was working all the time too, trying to make ends meet. We fell in love. And the rest is history.

“That is,” she added, “after the major family battle over the fact that Steve wasn’t Jewish and not good enough for the Saltzmans’ daughter, anyway. Time and patience resolved that, and not only have my parents embraced him as their son–in–law, Steve has embraced their faith and given them a pair of beautiful granddaughters. The only act left to prove his worth is to provide them with a grandson and a bar mitzvah to look forward to.

“I’m a California girl,” she said earnestly. “Born and bred in the San Fernando Valley. My dad’s a dentist. I’ve always been close with my family. When I was pregnant with Taylor, I gave up work and concentrated on being a mother. I didn’t want anybody else bringing up my kids, and nor did Steve. Then Mellie came along. I did all the usual things: carpooled, went to the gym, met my girlfriends after for coffee and gossip. Visited with my mother, arranged birthday parties and sleepovers, Halloween costumes and Hanukkah presents. We vacationed in Hawaii with my parents and my sisters and their husbands and children. We were a happy family.”

“Until the nightmare began,” Marla said softly.

Detective Bulworth was at lunch at Jack’s Deli, around the corner from the precinct house, a place that he favored with his daily presence, eating his way through the weekly specials from meatloaf and mashed to brisket and dumplings without a thought of cholesterol or fat content. He was a big man and he was surely gonna stay that way.

Anyway, because he was at Jack’s Deli, it was Pammie Pow! Powers who took the call. She was up to her eyes in a backlog of paperwork, battling with a balky computer, and was definitely not pleased when the phone rang.

“What?” she demanded, clamping it to her ear and continuing to stare balefully at the computer screen. When were they gonna make these darn things as easy to use as they promised? It couldn’t be just her. Everybody had problems with them. Maybe there was something to be said for good old–fashioned typewriters and fax machines instead of E–mail. . . .

“What?” she said again. Only now she wasn’t looking at the screen anymore. She grabbed the phone as though it might get away from her, ballpoint clamped in one large hand. “Okay, where?” She wrote quickly. “When, what time? . . . Okay, okay, yeah. We’ll be there, sugar. You can bet on it.” She laughed at the reply. “Okay, so you’re not my sugar. At least now I know the truth. Yeah, like if you’re a sex symbol I’m Cleopatra. . . . More like Mark Antony, huh? Well, to tell the truth I always thought he was better–looking than Cleo. . . .”

She was grinning as she put down the phone. “Bingo!” she yelled loud enough to lift heads from desks. “I’m outta here.” She grabbed her hat and swung through the door. “Bulworth and I have business to attend to.”

Bulworth saw her coming. Hat rammed over her red hair, elbows aloft, broad shoulders swinging . . . you couldn’t miss her. He shrank back into his black leatherette booth, hoping she might not see him.

“Sir.”

No such luck. He glanced up from his chicken matzo–ball soup. Darn it, he hadn’t even gotten to the main course yet. “What is it, Powers?”

She slid next to him in the booth without even a by–your–leave. Powers really knew how to piss a guy off . . . she was more one of the gosh–darn guys than he was. . . .

“They found the car,” she said breathlessly. “Abandoned by the side of the road in a remote canyon. Helicopter reconnaissance spotted it a short while ago. I’ll bet my boots it’s hers.”

“So why would anybody want
your
boots, Powers,” Bulworth replied gloomily. “And what car did they find, anyway?”

“A metallic–gold car. And I’ll bet it’s a Lexus.”

Bulworth put down his spoon, looking regretfully at the chicken noodle and matzo–ball as he signaled the waitress. “Cancel the brisket, sweetheart.” He lumbered to his feet. “And put this on my tab, will ya? We’re in a hurry.”

By the time they reached the car he was already on the phone mustering up his “boys”: detectives, forensics, prints, photographer, coroner’s wagon––though as yet they did not know if they had a body. He was willing to bet on it though. And on who had done it.

The police convoy trailed up into the hills winding around deserted roads to the place where the vehicle had been spotted by the helicopter crew. The road was narrow, the terrain steep and unsuitable for a chopper to land, so it had backed off and was waiting a couple of miles away for instructions. They passed it on the way up and Bulworth got out to talk to the two cops. They told him the car was almost impossible to spot, hidden under overhanging trees and scrub. The sun glinting off the windshield had alerted them and they had gone down as close as they could, identified that it was a vehicle.

“Guess we’ve found Laurie Martin,” the chopper pilot said.

“Guess so.” Bulworth grinned as he slapped him on the shoulder. “Good work, guys. I’ll get back to you.”

He got that adrenaline rush up the spine as they swung around the curve. And there it was. Laurie Martin’s metallic–gold Lexus 400. All four doors hung open and in the deep canyon silence he could hear the buzzing of flies. He knew what that meant.

He scanned the dusty blacktop carefully, but even as he looked, the gusty canyon wind lifted the dust, scattering it. Whatever tracks or footprints might have been left were long gone, he knew it. Nevertheless, his boys were already out there, down on their hands and knees, measuring, sifting, taking pictures.

Powers was pacing up and down, but Bulworth waited quietly, leaning his bulk against the police Crown Victoria, puffing on a thin brown cigarillo. “My one vice,” he liked to call it, though his wife said the stink of it made up for just about every other vice she could think of.

He took a look at the car. Not a scratch on it as far as he could see, though the layer of dirt covering it might be hiding anything. Later, wearing gloves, he carefully swung back the driver’s door and looked inside. He did not find what he was expecting and he sighed as he drew his head out again.

“She’s not in here,” he said regretfully. “My bet is she’s been thrown over the edge into the canyon.”

“So why didn’t the killer take the car?” Powers was breathing down his neck and he didn’t like it.

“Probably driving his own car. They came up here together––I’d guess under the guise of a lovers’ rendezvous. He couldn’t very well drive two cars back down the mountain.”

“No, sir.” Powers was halfway in and halfway out of the vehicle and her voice was muffled. “Goddamn flies,” he heard her mutter. Then, “Hah, that’s blood that’s drawing ’em. Look at this, Detective Bulworth. Blood on the backseat.”

He looked. She was right, of course, but she might have waited, he would have found it in due time.
And
he was the senior detective. They sure didn’t call her Pushy Powers for nothin’. . . .

“The keys are still in the ignition,” he said, taking charge. “And get your head out of there, Powers, for God’s sake. Let forensics take a look.”

She backed out, red in the face with triumph. “We’ve surely got the fucker now, sir,” she said jubilantly.

He glanced skeptically at her, brows raised. “Yeah, Detective. Now all we need is Laurie Martin’s body.”

Steve Mallard was expecting Al. Vickie had called, told him he was on his way. “He’s our only hope” had been her words. But when Steve saw Giraud loping up the tree–lined path to the cabin, he hoped not. He thought Giraud looked like a loser. Still he was polite, shook hands, asked him in and if he wanted coffee, he had just brewed a pot.

Al declined. Standing by the picture window overlooking the tree–shadowed lake, he watched Steve pour coffee into a yellow mug with a frog on it, automatically noting that he took it black no sugar. Details, Al had found out the hard way, were what made the difference in catching a criminal. One small thing, just the way he walked or the fact that he was right– or left–handed or the way he took his coffee, might be the very thing that could put a man behind bars for life.

This man looked tired––or perhaps careworn was a better description, as though he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. Or else the burden of guilt.

Still standing by the window, thumbs thrust in his jeans pockets as usual, Al said, “Tell me about yourself, why don’t you?”

Steve looked steadily at him. He took a sip of his coffee. “Not much to tell,” he said with a dismissive lift of the shoulder. “I’m just your regular hardworking suburban guy. One wife, two kids, a mortgage   .   .   .” He laughed bitterly. “Or at least that’s who I used to be.”

“I’m interested in who you were before you became the suburban man. Like where you come from? Your family?”