Red Light (32 page)

Her eleventh step
brought her to the study: huge fireplace with a raging fire, a leather recliner
and couch arranged in front of the fire but too close, an immense mahogany desk
to her right, an entire wall of oak file cabinets. It was all illuminated by
recessed lights and storm glow from a large skylight cut in the vaulted ceiling
above. The fire roared quietly like a river, and the rain slammed down on the
skylight glass.

Meeks padded back in
with a couple mugs of hot something, handed her one.

"Nice aroma,
isn't it? It's orange wood, only kind I burn. Gotta get it from Riverside
County now."

Merci
nodded, looking at the little man.

"Like
my house?"

"Looks
fine to me."

"Nixon's place
was just a hundred yards north of here. We used party with him there, if you
could call it partying. He was a crook, no doubt, but he didn't know how to
have fun. Kind of the worst of both worlds."

"Did
you help him get elected?"

"We
threw some votes his way. Wasn't hard in Orange County."

"I
thought the Birchers were after you."

"Sergeant,
there's conservative Republicans, then there's Birchers. I was a registered
democrat
when I came here after the war, but changed my colors by the
election of fifty-two."

"How come?"

"Used to be the
only game in town, the republicans. Hell, the local Republican Party chairman
started out as a democrat. Switched when he realized there was only one real
side here. Now we got that Mexican democrat woman in the Congress, so it's all
changed. Politics are boring. Let's talk about hookers and murder and pretty
ladies getting shot in the back. Sit—take the sofa over here. If it gets too
hot you can take off your clothes." Meeks cackled again. "Come on,
show some humor."

"You're
not quite disgusting, Mr. Meeks. But you're close."

"I'm
harmless."

She sat down and got
out her blue notebook and her tape recorder. She turned it on, set it on the
sofa toward him. "Get within a five-foot radius of me, Mr. Meeks, and I'll
bash you over the head with my pistol."

He
looked at her. "I'd
love
that."

Merci thought: The
same way you loved it when Patti Bailey took out Big Ralphie?

"Look, Mr.
Meeks, I've got some business to take care of here. You said you'd help me with
it. I'm going to tape this conversation and make some notes if you don't
mind."

"Wait, lady—I
party with Richard Nixon and you think I'm gonna let you tape me? I don't talk
to tapes. You want a tape, you can arrest me."

Meeks hovered next to
the leather recliner. Merci saw that he was bent and stiff. He looked at his
cigar, then at her. "Come on, lady. Can that thing and I'll help you. I'm
good to my word."

Merci clicked off the
tape recorder. But she already had part of what she wanted. Part of the bravado
had already blown out of him. So she decided to hit him hard, see if he'd let
her get right to the heart of things.

"How'd
you meet Bailey?"

Meeks was still
standing in front of the recliner. He seemed to consider her question as he
sat. She watched him do it the old man way: position feet, turn, brace with
free hand, bend legs and lower butt, stiffen as the weight shifts, keep the
back straight, there. When he was finished he looked at her. His face was sharp
and beveled by the firelight. His eyes were orange dots. He took an ashtray
from the stand beside the chair and brought it to his lap.

"I
met her at a party."

"Who
introduced you?"

"We introduced
ourselves, you know, like regular people. In the kitchen. I was makin' a
bourbon; she was looking for a light. She had a marijuana cigarette, so I gave
her my matches. I told her to go outside and smoke that shit. It was a felony
back then, possession. I went out there with my drink and we got to
talking."

"Make
a date?"

"Naw.
I didn't do that kinda thing. I was married."

"You
never made a date with her?"

"I
just said I didn't."

"See
her again after that?"

"Other parties.
I wouldn't even remember her, if she didn't get murdered. You know how it
is."

"That's
the first lie you've told me, Mr. Meeks."

Merci stood and
walked over to the fire. She could only get six feet away before the heat
stopped her. She looked back at Meeks. He looked small in the big recliner,
reindeer dancing across his sweater like it was Christmas morning or something.
He blew a big plume of smoke.

"What
do you want, lady?"

"Listen."

She went back to the
recorder, pulled out the blank tape and put her dub of Patti Bailey's.

She played the
section with Meeks on it. He listened without moving, just cigar smoke rising
around him.

"I've got her
date book, too. Interesting listening, interesting reading. You were seeing her
once a week or so. You'd drink. She'd smoked dope. You'd do your thing."

"I'm
still listenin'."

"Good. This is
the score here. I can take you downtown right now and book you on suspicion of
assault with intent to kill Jesse Acun. I can add conspiracy and probably make
it stick. If the court won't convict you, the media will. I can make copies of
that tape and hand them out to the press people, along with your home phone
number. I can make the last few years of your life miserable,
Meeksie.
Or you can help me.”

A silence while the
fire roared, then he said: "I don't know who killed her. I had nothing to
do with that. The papers said bikers were suspect and I believed it. She had
all kinds of rotten friends, guys you wouldn’t mop vomit with. You gotta
understand, lady, I was a supervisor, a politician. I liked the girls, yeah, I
admit that. I mistreated my wife, and she never mistreated me that way. I even
might have caused somebody to beat up that old guy, because I hated what he was
doing to this country. I thought it was wrong. So I bad-mouthed him and maybe
some young guys got wrong ideas. I'm not saying either way. But I
never
raised a finger against that Bailey whore,
ever.
Even when she
threatened me with that tape, the same way you're threatening me with it
now."

"What
did you do?"

"I paid up, kept
my mouth shut and hoped to Hell she'd keep hers that way. Then she was dead. I
didn't cry any tears, either. I felt like I'd just been let out of death
row."

"How
much did you pay her?"

"Five grand.
Nothing. She wanted fifteen, and I was good for that, but I wanted to buy some
time."

"For
what?"

"What do you
think? Time is what she was selling me, silent time, so I wanted to finance it
over as many months as I could. Like a car you can't really afford."

Merci tried to
establish the timeline leading up to Bailey's murder in August. "That was
when?"

"June.
July."

"But in
December, you stepped down from the Board of Supervisors. Resigned your
elected office."

He shrugged.
"That's two different things—the girl and the job. Not related. I quit
because the Grand Jury was throwing rocks at me, the press was all over my ass,
my own district was talking recall. The last thing I needed was some whore
kicking dirt in my face, but she never did that, you know. In that way, I was
clean. Bailey had been dead for four months when I quit. It wasn't her, it was
all the other stuff."

"Kickbacks
from Orange Coast Capital."

"People can call
anything a kickback. I had friends. I helped them, yeah. They helped me, yeah.
I'd get the board to approve a parcel for development. Because I believe in
development, I believe in people, I believe we got a right to be here so why
not be comfortable? Why not have a house and a supermarket and a filling
station and a fuckin' fast-food place on every corner? What's wrong with that?
What are you going to do instead—just leave it to the ground squirrels and
cactus? So, something would get developed. The guys who made all the dough
would take me skiing for a week, or we'd go down to Mexico for some marlin fishing.
Now you tell me—that a kickback or just the way the world works?"

"It's
a kickback."

Meeks
blew a cloud of smoke, coughed. "Then I should have stepped down. I did
the right thing."

"How
did you meet Bailey? Skip the bourbon story."

He
looked at her, then toward the fire. "Owen. They were friends.'

"Where'd
you meet with her?"

"Hotels.
Different ones mostly."

"De
Anza?"

"Too
hot. Too lowlife. Naw, the old Grand in Anaheim, the Hot Laguna. One up in
Newport Beach, I forget the name."

"Who
was 'KQ'?"

He
looked at her, thought, shrugged. "Got no idea."

"Who
else was she servicing?"

"About
a thousand guys. Like I'd know?"

"Try."

Meeks
puffed, tapped the cigar in the ashtray. "Some of the cops. Don't know
names."

"Police
or sheriff?"

"Deputies.
Owen's guys. She talked a lot. She talked way too much

"What
did Owen do when she threatened him with the tape?"

"Same
thing I did, far as I know. We didn't spend a lot of time comparing blackmail
notes."

"Why
not? Two powerful men. One little prostitute with big ideas

Meeks
was shaking his head. "The whole thing with blackmail and a whore is, you
want to get away. Away from her and anybody associated with her. Me and Owen,
we had to stand on our own feet. I didn't want to be around him if he fell. He
didn't want to be around me if I did. That kind of thing puts a wall between
you and everybody else. You just cover your own ass and hope your friends can,
too."

"A
month after you resigned, Owen did the same thing. You' going to tell me that
wasn't connected to Bailey."

"The
girl had been dead five months by then—what could it have do with her? Owen had
his own problems in the department. He wasn’t young. The county was growing and
he was running things the old way. The right-wingers wanted him out. Those guys
had some sway back then. You look into that, you want to find out why Bill
quit."

Merci looked up at
the skylight. The rain was softer now, but it was still coming down.

Meeks coughed softly.
"What are you going to do with that tape, that date book?"

"Leave
them in Property, where they belong."

"That's good.
You can hurt people with those things. Same way Bailey was trying to hurt
people. I hope just because you're a cop and she was a whore you don't think
it's any different."

"It's
all the difference in the world."

"Explain
that."

"Bailey fucked
you for money because that was her job. But I'll fuck you for free, because
that's mine."

Meeks
laughed quietly. "Why do that? What do you want outta me?"

"I want to know
who killed her. You know. I know that. So, if your memory gets any better, be
sure to call. Until then, I'll do some legwork, put together assault and
conspiracy charges based on that tape. Of course, how the tape got made is
going to cause more trouble for you than what you say on it. That's your
problem, not mine. You've got all my numbers on this card, and I'm putting this
card into your hand in about five seconds."

She scrawled in her
cell number on the back of a business card, walked over to Meeks and stood in
his cloud of smoke. She gave it to him.

"I don't know
who killed her, lady. How come you have to show up in the twilight of my old
age, and make my life miserable all over again?"

"You screwed a
girl for money, you had an old farmer beaten so bad he was left half blind and
toothless. That's wrong. It's illegal. And you have to pay for it."

"You simpleton.
If I knew who killed the girl, don't you think I'd have told you by now?"

"You'll tell me,
when the facts sink in. County lockup's a miserable place. We got three
thousand beds for five thousand crooks. You might have to sleep on the floor.
No smoking. You might even have to give your beach mansion here to your
lawyers. Even if you got off, it would cost you. You'd have to burn scrap wood
instead of the last orange trees in the state."

S
he got a window booth at the Fisherman's Restaurant,
out on the pier in San Clemente. It was less than five miles from Meeks's house
and she wanted somewhere warm and private to read Colin Byrne’s "crooked
cops" clips. See if they tracked with what Meeks had said.

She sat down and watched the Pacific surging just
below her—black water, gray sky, white spume whipping off the swells and the
damned rain pounding down again.