Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (13 page)

“Two hours, Detective,” he snarled at Green, glancing at his watch. “Two hours you left me sitting in this dump. I know my rights. You’ve got to book me and let me see my lawyer, or you’ve got to let me go.”

“Paperwork, Mr. Difalco,” Green mimicked, swinging a chair into place beside the table. It was a barren room, small, airless and painted institutional beige. “It takes us ages sometimes. And you’re quite right. I have to caution you— you don’t have to say anything, you have a right to speak to a lawyer, and a right to free legal advice. But if you really weren’t doing anything wrong, you can save both of us all the trouble and paperwork if you tell me what you were doing in Jonathan Blair’s office tonight.”

“I told you. Getting some data of his that fit with my own study.”

“He was working with cats. You’re working with humans.”

“It’s called comparative psychology, Officer,” Difalco sneered. “You’ve probably never heard of it, but much of our knowledge about human learning comes from animals. A brain is a brain—although some less so than others.” Difalco had sprawled back in his chair again, arms folded, head propped against the wall. His dark eyes simmered with disdain.

Green held his gaze and leaned forward intently. “Don’t be too glib. Myles Halton is going over those files right now, and he’ll be able to tell me exactly what relevance they have to your work.”
Very briefly, Green detected a flare of alarm in the dark eyes before the smile widened. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Officer. You think just because I’m a rich Italian brat I’m automatically more guilty than that fumbling limpdick, Miller.”

“You’re the one who skipped out on my interview this morning. And you’re the one I found stealing files from Blair’s private office. Miller’s done bugger-all.”

“Still waters run deep, Mr. Detective,” Difalco replied darkly. “And you never know what’s hidden in their depths.”

His equanimity was maddening. He was far too complacent for someone who had spent two hours awaiting interrogation in a murder investigation. Difalco was fencing with him, switching images and styles faster than Green could keep up. One minute a street tough, the next a petulant child, still the next a serious scientist. He was probably used to running circles around everyone else, and he had made the mistake of assuming Green was just another dumb cop. Perhaps that vanity could be used.

Green abandoned the bullying approach and sat back with a sigh. “Then why don’t you enlighten me?”

Difalco sat forward with a smile and pulled his chair up to the table. “I’m not fooled by that righteous ‘research-is-my-life’ routine of his. He’s got as many desires as the rest of us, but he’s just no good at getting them fulfilled, so he pretends they’re not there. But don’t believe it for a moment! I’ve seen how he looks at Rosalind Simmons—she’s the cheap piece with the peroxide hair you met this morning—and he’d fling her down on the office floor and rape her in a second if he thought he could get away with it. But he can’t, so he’s sneaky and secretive. He makes out like he’s interested in her work, in her mind.” Difalco threw his head back with a laugh. “Oldest line in the book. God, some women are dumb!”

“Including Rosalind Simmons?”

“When it comes to men, yeah. They believe what they want to believe, and who am I to disillusion them? Rosalind bought Miller’s act, she might even have let him between her legs, although I can’t imagine what he’d do there, but it’s Halton she really wants. And poor old Miller hasn’t a hope in hell against the big man.”

“What makes you think Rosalind wants Halton?”

“Because every chick in the place wants Halton! You got to see how she looks at him in our research seminars. Her tongue hangs out, she lives for his every word. Miller doesn’t exist any more.”

“Does Halton respond?”

Difalco’s handsome face grimaced in disgust. “Rosalind’s not his type. Too old and tough. He likes them young, tender and adoring.”

“Like Raquel Haddad?”

A shadow flitted across his face, marring the studied smile. “Where’d you hear about her?”

“She was your research assistant. I heard she kind of hung around the floor, and I wondered if Halton had noticed her.”

Difalco flicked a piece of lint off his black Polo shirt as he worked to repair the smile. “He noticed her, sure. We’re talking a ten here, Officer, and there’s no way she could parade around the place unnoticed even if she wanted to, which she didn’t. But you don’t mess with Raquel. Lebanese women are worse than Italians. You get their whole goddamn family on your back.”

“Is that what happened to you?”

“No, but that’s what happened to Jonathan Blair, I’ll bet you any money. And isn’t that why we’re here? I mean, you want to learn who killed him, right? Not why I was poking around in Blair’s office or what lurks beneath Miller’s choir boy smile.”

“All right, what do you think happened to him?”

Difalco seemed to sense the sarcasm in his voice, because he pouted theatrically. “Oh, but you’ve got to take me seriously, man. Don’t play me along like some dumb Eyetalian from the street.”

“I don’t think you’re dumb, believe me, Mr. Difalco. I’m just getting tired of the fancy footwork.”

Difalco sighed like a child deprived of his game. “Everyone else thinks Blair is another dickless wonder like Miller, but I know Raquel had the same effect on him as she had on every other red-blooded male in the place. He got her into his lab, then he fucked her, and before he knew it, he had the entire Canadian contingent of the Lebanese Christian Militia on his ass. They’re not subtle, those guys. The honour of their women is a sacred thing.”

“Do you have any evidence to support your theory?

“Oh sure. I’m sitting here with a signed confession which I forgot to give you because I’m enjoying this so much.”

Green grinned at him patiently. He had learned the art of silence from Sharon, who used it as a therapy tool to get people to open up. Green had found it equally effective with suspects. Most people couldn’t stand silence, and Difalco was no exception.

“No, I don’t have any proof,” he snapped peevishly. “Raquel never said to me ‘my uncle is going to kill Jonathan Blair’ or anything. But she talked about her uncle always interfering in her life, trying to fix her up with nice Lebanese men, screening her phone calls, threatening to send her back to Beirut if she didn’t shape up. Not that I blame the guy, actually! Raquel was wild. If my sister did half of what she did, I’d be packing her off to a convent so fast her head would spin.”

“Did Raquel seem afraid of him?”

“Afraid, but defiant—that was the way she was. She wasn’t going to let that fat old blow-bag push her around.”

“Do you have any proof Raquel was sexually involved with Blair?”

“Sexually involved?” Difalco repeated the phrase as if it were in a foreign tongue. “God, you cops. How about the sated look in Raquel’s eye, does that qualify? She draped herself all over him, whispered in his ear, stuck her tits in his face. It didn’t take an Einstein to figure out what was up.”

“But did you ever see Blair reciprocate?”

“Blair was one of those Upper Canada College types, smooth and unreadable. Not like me. I like a girl, I let her know. But I can tell you this: he never pushed her hand away. Once, I surprised them in the elevator, and their tongues were halfway down each other’s throats. When he saw me he broke away, and that’s the only time I ever saw him unglued. He was all red in the face and breathing like he’d climbed Mount Everest.”

“When was this?”

“About two weeks ago.”

“Did they say anything to you?”

He laughed at the memory. “Blair looked like he wanted the earth to swallow him up. Raquel winked at me.”

“Did she seem serious about him?”

A faraway light glinted in Difalco’s eyes. “For that week, yeah, maybe. Raquel’s like a summer storm. She blows into your life all wild and full of passion, turns it upside down, and then—” He broke off, casting Green a startled glance that revealed yet another of his personae, one that was almost wistful. Then he restored his languid smile. “But you should be asking her all these questions, Officer, not me. See for yourself. It’ll make your day, and your night too, I bet.”

“Joe,” Green began, deliberately choosing a more intimate
address, “there is something that doesn’t add up here, and I wonder if you can help me out…”

Difalco frowned at him warily.

“I’ve been a criminal investigator for over fourteen years, and I’ve seen a lot of street toughs in my day. I’ve seen Native Indian stoic, Irish and French Canadian bully, English boor, Italian macho…you’re trying to fit, but it just doesn’t sit right. I get your message loud and clear—you think you’re hot stuff, you like sex, you like women—their bodies, anyway. But I also see someone else sitting in front of me. We’re all alone here, Joe.” He gestured around the room expressively. “Just you, me and the constable taking notes, and he’s heard it all, believe me. So drop the macho stuff for me. You can put it back on when you leave here if it makes you feel better.”

Difalco came alive. “Are you trying to psychoanalyze me, Detective? You implying deep down I’m afraid my dick’s not big enough—”

“This has nothing to do with your dick. Your dick is fine. It’s just not all you’ve got.”

Difalco laughed, but a faint dull red spread up his neck. A lock of curly black hair fell over his brow, giving him the vulnerable look Green had glimpsed earlier. “I hope not. Sex is fine, but even I can’t do it twenty-four hours a day.”

“Right. So the other twenty-three hours or so, you spend closeted with computer blips and pages of numbers trying to understand how people speak. That’s the part that doesn’t fit, Joe. Where’s the glory in that, where’s the power and the big bucks that a real macho guy would need to keep going? Studs aren’t interested in brain theory.”

“Something wrong with brain theory? You saying I’m a wimp?”

“Cut the bluster, Joe. You know exactly what I’m saying.
Will the real Joe Difalco please talk to me?”

Difalco studied him, his eyes narrowed and the lazy smile quite gone. “Did you really think I was that shallow? That to me being a man just means fucking all day and riding around in a white Cadillac with gold chains around my neck? I want to be somebody. Those gold-chained Romeos, they’re a dime a dozen on the street, but a doctor or a professor, they have respect. I was going into med school, you know. I was going to be ‘il Dottore’, but I couldn’t hack the bullshit. In med school they tell you where to piss and when. That’s not my style. Then I took Halton’s undergraduate physiology course and I met ‘il Professore’, and I said to myself ‘This is it!’ Nobody pushes you around, you call your own shots. Halton goes to conferences all over the world and rubs shoulders with the best. In August he’s presenting our work in Stockholm, and if I play my cards right, I get to go.” Difalco rolled his eyes knowingly. “Stockholm. You know, in Europe they have great respect for university professors. Much more than they have here. There, learning and wisdom count more than money. That’s my kind of power and glory, Officer. Hell, I already have all the money I need anyway. My old man swims in it. There’s no mystery to me, no deep dark secrets. Sorry to fuck up your amateur analysis.”

“Respect,” Green remarked, undaunted. “Respect is important to you?”

“Isn’t it to you? Would you be doing this job if you weren’t good at it and other people didn’t think you were good at it?”

“I do this job because I enjoy it and because I like the feeling of solving a case.”

Difalco snorted, flashing his white teeth. “Another dickless wonder. A ‘research-is-my-life’ type like Miller and Blair. Bullshit. Human nature isn’t like that. I’m just more honest
about it than the rest of you.”

Green let the silence hang as he collected his impressions. He still felt he was grappling with illusions and contradictions that bore little resemblance to the real Joseph Difalco. Halton had said Difalco was bright and intuitive, and the last hour spent dodging each other had certainly proved that. Green had made very little headway in shaking Difalco’s story or breaking down his façade, but a few chinks had shown through. The young man had feigned disdain for women and for the gentler subtleties of romance, yet Raquel Haddad had certainly shaken him. Like a summer storm, he had said—a curiously poetic phrase for a macho stud. And more importantly, Difalco was a man who craved recognition, for whom belittlement or failure would be tantamount to emasculation. Such a man might do anything to ensure his success. Falsifying his research would be as natural as breathing…

But two minutes later, when Myles Halton called his office and a constable came down to tap on the interrogation room door, he found himself back at square one. The analysis Jonathan Blair had conducted unequivocally supported Difalco’s claim, Halton said. There had been no fraud, no attempt to mislead.

Except, perhaps, by David Miller.

Pointing his Corolla gratefully towards home, Green slipped a Sting CD into the player. Mellow rock to soothe the frazzled spirit. He was just beginning to unwind when his cell phone rang. It was Superintendent Jules himself, reminding him that he was over two hours late for his appointment with Jonathan Blair’s father, who by this time probably had a blister on his right index finger from phoning.

Swearing, Green glanced at his watch. His son would be asleep by now anyway, and any chance for a goodnight tuck-in was long gone. It didn’t matter what time he got home now, as long as he retrieved the baby from the sitter’s before Sharon got home at seven in the morning. Promising himself he’d read two bedtime stories tomorrow, he turned the car around and headed up Elgin Street towards the Château Laurier Hotel, which presided like a Disneyland castle over the downtown core. The neo-gothic stone spires gave way inside to carved oak, marble, and muted oriental carpeting. Henry Blair’s suite was on the fourth floor, and when Green knocked, the door was flung back immediately as if Blair had been pacing just inside.

In the doorway stood a handsome, well-preserved man in his late fifties, his silver hair on end and his tie askew. He seized Green’s hand and literally pulled him into the room.