Dead Ringer (36 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Maggie flipped the burgers on the grill, added some barbecue sauce. Jasmine had told time and again that she had always liked her meat well done, but Maggie persisted in eating it medium-rare. She laughed every time Jasmine said it. She took hers off the grill.

“
You might as well eat it raw,” Gordon said.

“
Not you too.” Maggie laughed.

“
Me too.” Gordon was stretched out in a lounge chair, eyes shielded from the sun with a new pair of reflective sunglasses. Jasmine and Sonya said they made him look like an old highway patrolman and they constantly teased him about not having a motorcycle. The kids loved him, probably because at heart he was a kid himself. It was as if he’d been a part of their lives forever instead of just six months.

“
Such a nice day,” Gay said from the lounge chair next to Gordon.

The sun was hanging low, an orange ball over the ocean. Jasmine and Sonya were laughing and dancing in and out of the surf, but their parents had them in sight from where they relaxed in front of Maggie’s Condo.

“
Oh shit!” Maggie staggered back from the grill.

“
What?”

“
It’s time!”

“
Now?” Gordon went white.

“
Get the girls,” Gay told him as she jumped from her chair. She was at Maggie’s side in an instant. “Just take it easy. We’ll get your bag, then we’re off to the hospital.”

“
Yeah, the bag,” Gordon said.

“
Get the girls!” Gay said.

“
Yeah, yeah.” Gordon took off for the beach gate.

Maggie barely remembered the ride to the hospital. The labor pains were like a mule kicking her in the gut. She thought she was going to die. At the hospital, a young man and woman in white helped her from the back seat of Gordon’s clunky looking Ford into a wheelchair. In no time, she was in the delivery room looking up at Gordon’s masked face.

“
I’m glad you’re here.” She squeezed his hand, then yelled as a monster pain ripped through her.

“
Push,” Gordon said.

“
I am.”

“
Again.”

“
I am!”

“
Harder.”

“
I am, God dammit!”

“
I see the head,” someone said.

“
Push. One more time. A big one.”

“
I’m pushing!”

“
It’s a girl!”

“
A girl.” Maggie sighed, then drifted off.

She woke in a cool hospital room. Gordon’s smiling eyes were the last thing she’d seen in the in the delivery room and they were the first thing she saw when she woke up. He was always there for her.

“
Where’s the girls?”

“
Down the hall with Grandma Debra, looking at the baby.” Gay was next to Gordon, wearing the biggest smile Maggie had ever seen.

“
I’m cold.”

“
I’ll get a blanket.” Gordon pulled one off the bed next to hers, draped it over her. “Do you have a name yet?”

“
Yeah, I do,” Maggie said. It seemed they’d talked about nothing else for the last month. A million ideas, a million rejections. Maggie wanted something original, but not something corny. She wanted the baby to have a name that stood for something. A name she could live up to.

“
Well?” Gordon said.

“
Darley Theo Kenyon.”

“
After the men under the pier,” Gordon said. “I like it.”

“
Yeah, after them.” She sighed, closed her eyes for a few seconds and cast her mind back to that night.

* * *

“
Are you alright?” Theo had asked her after she’d shot Horace Nighthyde.

“
Yeah.” But she thought she was going to be sick. Maybe she’d never really be alright again.

“
You get up now and go back to your life.” Rain cascaded through Darley’s dark hair, sluiced around his black face. “Me and Theo will take care of things here.”

“
What?”

“
He means we’ll take care of the bodies,” Theo said. “No need for you to be concerned. So let me help you up.” He rose, took her arm, helped her to her feet.

“
We’ll walk you to your car.” Darley took her other arm.

Halfway they ran into Gay coming toward them out of the rain.

“
She’s with me,” Maggie mumbled.

“
She can see that you’re safe from here.” Darley let go of her arm.

“
Can you stand by yourself? You okay?” Theo was still holding on to her.

“
Yeah. I’ll be alright.”

“
Then we’ll leave you now.” Theo let go and the two men backed away into the rain. And the bodies of Horace Nighthyde and Scarface the Yakuza thug turned up the next morning in a parking lot across from the police station.

Also that morning, Gordon called Larry Striker and made the deal. If Striker left them alone, forgot they existed, then they’d forget about him, Nighthyde, Congressman Nishikawa and what had happened to Norton’s mother and Wolfe’s wife and son.

Striker agreed and more than lived up to his end of the bargain. Somehow he’d assisted the Long Beach Police Department and the Lakewood Sheriff’s in connecting the bodies in the parking lot with the ones in Lakewood. With his help, the police concluded that Horace Nighthyde had walked in on two Yakuza thugs right after they’d murdered his mother, and chased them as they ran out the back door and went over the fence where one of them killed the neighbor’s dog. Nighthyde caught one and killed him. Then he tracked the other one to the parking lot, killed him, then put the gun to his own head.

How Darley and Theo got the bodies all the way downtown, Maggie never knew. But she owed them a debt, thanks at least. She’d gone back to the pier several times after dark, but they were never there. They’d disappeared, leaving her with nothing but the memory of the rough men who lived a rough life. Two great bears she’d never forget.

* * *

“
Mrs. Kenyon.”

Maggie opened her eyes, looked up.

“
Detective Norton,” she said. “Believe it or not, I was just thinking about you.” Norton was wearing khaki Docker’s and a pink Hawaiian shirt with hula girls on it. He looked as if he were on vacation. But the expression on the albino’s face said he wasn’t. He looked serious, dead serious. No wonder the girls called him the Ghost.

“
And lately I’ve been thinking about you.”

“
Me too.” The man with Norton was wearing a Dodgers sweatshirt and faded Levi’s. His head was shaved. He looked serious, too.

“
Detective Wolfe,” Maggie said. “Gordon’s told me about you.”

“
Yeah. But Mr. Takoda is Maggie Nesbitt’s friend. He’s not supposed to know you.”

Maggie looked beyond Wolfe to Gordon, who was standing next to Gay, behind the two policemen. His expression was blank. She’d always been able to read him. Not now. The open book of his face was closed to her. She was afraid.

“
Just say what you have to say and get it over with.” She balled her hands into fists to keep them from shaking.

“
The Lakewood Sheriff’s had a homicide a few months back,” Detective Wolfe said. “A blind woman, Helen Nighthyde. Gunshot in her own house.”

“
I don’t see what that has to do with me.” Maggie struggled to stay calm. How could they come here now, on this, her happiest of days?

“
Because of the quick way it was closed, the Sheriffs didn’t follow up on the prints they took in the Nighthyde house, but we did, Abel and me. Yours were all over the place, Mrs. Sullivan’s, too.”

“
Of course, that wasn’t possible,” Norton said. “You’re dead.” He smiled. “You can relax. We’re not here to cause you any trouble. We just wanted to see the baby.”

“
I don’t understand.”

“
If you’d ignored the little girl you inherited and started throwing the money around like rice at a wedding, well, we’d have stepped in,” Norton said. “You’d be in jail now and Jasmine would be with her father. But you didn’t, you’ve become what every child needs, a parent who gives a shit.”

“
So, I’ve been on probation?” Maggie was angry now.

“
But not anymore,” Wolfe said. “It’s over. The prints and any other evidence taken from the Nighthyde house that might have pointed a finger at you or Mrs. Sullivan have been destroyed.”

“
Why’d you do this?”

“
We’ve both lost loved ones recently,” Norton said. “I guess it made us compassionate. Plus, you have a strong advocate in Gordon Takoda. He can be very persuasive.”

“
So, you knew about this?” Maggie said to Gordon.

“
Don’t be mad,” Gordon said.

“
I’m not.”

“
Now we’re your advocates, too,” Wolfe said. “Gordon has enlisted us as godparents for you, Jasmine and your baby?”

“
How?” The short lived anger had melted away.

“
It’s best you don’t know. Just know this, we’re in his debt and through him yours. If you’re ever in trouble, call us and we’ll come.”

“
Gordon?” She met his eyes.

“
I have to leave with them for a bit,” Gordon said. “But I’ll be back.”

* * *

In the hospital parking lot, Gordon said, “We’ll take my car.”

“
You got the stuff?” Wolfe said.

“
In the trunk.”

“
That kind of dangerous, driving around with it like that?” Norton said.

“
No more than what we’re about to do.”

“
Guess you’re right about that.” Norton went to the shotgun door. Wolfe got in back.

As Gordon made the right onto Pacific Coast Highway, Norton said. “Sorry it had to be today, the baby and all.”

“
Don’t be. I said I’d be ready. Besides, you didn’t have to let me come along. I appreciate it.”

“
If you hadn’t told us, we never would’ve known,” Wolfe said.

They rode in silence, like paratroopers flying above a combat zone, waiting for the drop. Gordon glanced over at the albino, sneaked a look at Wolfe in the rearview. If he added both men’s ages, they probably couldn’t match him in years, but they were old in a way he’d never be.

Gordon had fought in Vietnam, spent twenty years with the FBI, lost loved ones to war, cancer, heart attacks, old age and AIDS. He’d killed when he’d had to and even when he didn’t have to. He’d experienced more life than most. Seen more than most. Lost more than most. But a child’s smile still delighted him and not a day went by when something didn’t surprise him. These two policemen riding with him, Gordon didn’t think anything surprised them. For them, life had lost its wonder and that was too bad.

It was 6:15 when they pulled up in front of the steel and glass building where Congressman Nishikawa had his district office. The setting sun, catching all the pollutants in the Southern California air, gave the sky a hue of oranges, pinks and purples.

“
Nothing prettier than an L.A. sunset,” Gordon said when he shut off the engine.

“
Yeah.” Norton got out of the car and went to the trunk.

Gordon and Wolfe met him there. Gordon opened it. He took out a Glock, handed it to Norton, gave another to Wolfe, kept a third for himself.

“
These are new,” Wolfe said.

“
Virgins,” Gordon said.

“
We could have used throw downs,” Norton said. “Saved you a bunch.”

“
For some things you just don’t count the cost.” Gordon closed the trunk.

“
You’re right about that,” Wolfe said.

Gordon walked to the entrance of the glass office building, the bald detective on his left, the long haired albino on his right. He opened the door with a key.

“
Where’d you get it?” Norton said.

“
Followed the watchman to a bar and waited for him to get drunk. Then I picked his pocket, made an impression and put it back. He never missed it.”

“
You learn that in the FBI?” Wolfe said.

“
I picked it up somewhere, maybe there.” Gordon pushed the call button for the elevator. The congressman’s office was on the fifth floor, but Gordon didn’t feel like walking up the five flights. Now he just wanted to get it over with.

Gordon was first off the elevator.

“
You got a key for his office, too?” Wolfe said. “Or are we gonna knock?”

“
It’s a pass key, opens ’em all.” Gordon put it in the lock, turned it. Gun first, he entered the plush office. Light and dark furniture, teak and oak, from one of those places that sold furniture from Denmark or Sweden, not American looking at all.

Wolfe whistled. “Classy fuck.”

“
Who’s there?” The shouted question came from a room behind the Danish modern reception desk.

“
Company.” Gordon went through the door to the inner office, Glock still in front of himself. Norton and Wolfe were right there with him.

“
Get out.” Congressman Nishikawa was wearing a white suit, with a cream colored tie. Three shots rang out as one, turning the suit crimson red.

“
What the fuck?” Striker said as the three men trained their weapons on him.