The Blackmail Club (21 page)

A little later they entered Harkin’s office. He shut the door and turned toward them. “If you believe it will help recover the paintings, I’ll continue my charade.” He sighed faintly. “Every time one of my staff speaks to me, I expect they’ve come to tell me the forgeries have been discovered. In a strange way, now that someone else knows, I feel some relief.”

Jack shook the curator’s hand. “If you carry out the role we’ve agreed to, we’ll testify as to the help you gave us and the nation should we recover the portraits.”

“Thank you, Mr. McCall. Ms. Burke.”

“Mr. Harkin,” Nora said, “we need you to spend tonight making an exhaustive list of every portrait painter and every copyist who, in your opinion, has the skill to duplicate those four originals. Do not differentiate between the ones you think might be guilty and those you feel could not be. Just as you were, other honest men can be corrupted.”

“And give us whatever you can on their whereabouts,” Jack added.

“I’ll call you as soon as it’s finished.” He seemed energized by the task.

“If we are to recover the portraits, we need to find the blackmailer. Our best bet to find his trail is through identifying the copyist or forger.” Jack poked his finger against Harkin’s chest with each of his last three words. “That’s your job.”

As Jack and Nora walked out, they heard Harkin’s quivering voice behind them. “If you recover the portraits, can we just exchange them back into the gallery so no one will ever know?”

Chapter 31

Jack and Nora walked into their office to see Mary Lou sitting at her desk. Her clothes were disheveled; she held an ice bag against her face.

“What happened?” Nora asked, rushing to their young receptionist.

“Some guy from a motorcycle gang beat me up.” Then Mary Lou told them about Max being “unbelievably heroic,” as she put it.

“He has such a relaxing way about him. He got me laughing and I forgot the hurt.” Her eyes sparkled from within her darkening cheeks. “I just love him.”

Nora headed for her office.

“What did Max say to get you laughing?” Jack asked.

“He asked me if I knew the difference between a Harley and a Hoover. When I said, I didn’t, he said, ‘The position of the dirt bag.’” Mary Lou winced when her laugh spread her fat lip.

When Nora returned, Jack said, “I’m gonna go see Donny. That biker is one of his gang.”

“Cool your jets.” Nora put her hand on Jack’s shoulder. “I just called Max. He had a nice chat with the biker. Donny had no part in it. The biker has left town and will not be back. His name is Rockton. Max kept his gun and his knife with his prints. So, before you go off half-cocked, talk to Max.”

“I’ll call him right now.”

“I left him on hold. I figured you might want to talk with him.”

Jack went into his office and poked the lit button on his phone.

“How’s she doing?” Max asked.

“She’s more shook up than hurt. Thanks to you.”

“Should I have called it in? Had Metro come get the guy?”

“Why didn’t you?”

“The cops would learn Rockton came to get Donny’s confession. Suggs would then get in your face about your not telling him you knew it was Donny and his goons who worked you over. There could only be one end of that road: We’d have to put our case aside because Suggs would reopen his investigation into the death of Chris Andujar.”

“You did right, Max. Metro had the case and let go of it. It’s ours now and we’re not about to give it back.”

Jack rejoined Nora and Mary Lou.

“After I talked with Max, I called the chief to tell him what happened and that you were all right. I told him the best the biker could be charged with is simple assault, and that Max ran the guy out of town. You cannot tell your Uncle Harry about the biker demanding Donny’s confession, that’s confidential to our case. Tell him you don’t know anything about why the biker had come here. That all you know is he roughed you up, maybe to deliver a message to me. You understand? I know this won’t be easy for you to do, but we told you when you started with us that you would on occasion be privy to information you must keep confidential. This is important.” Mary Lou nodded. “Now, would you like to go home?”

“I’m fine, Jack. Really. I want you guys to solve this case. Stop worrying about me.”

“We’ll be in the back if you need us.” He motioned for Nora to follow him.

“Troy Engels finally returned my call, right after I hung up with Chief Mandrake.” Jack scooted his backside onto the tabletop, leaving his feet dangling just above the floor. “I asked him why he’d faked being nervous enough to stutter at our open house while asking me to keep Tyson away from him.”

“I’ve been curious about that ever since we learned that Tyson and Engels were poker buddies,” Nora said. “What did he tell you?”

“I quote: ‘Jack, you know I’m just a frustrated old spook who misses field ops; all us guys marooned on a desk are the same way. Every now and then I get in a playful mood and act out a practice scenario. I figured if I could fool a top op like you, I still had it. I apologize if my little playacting caused you any difficulty.’”

“That’s a crock. What about his affair with Chris Andujar? Did you confront him about that?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Over his years with the CIA Engels has been a top covert operative. He wrote several of the Agency’s training manuals. He still runs their mock interrogation classes. He heads up deep operations that never see the light of day, including several for which I led field operations. My asking that would have told Engels we know he had a gay relationship with Chris and he would not have given me anything in return. Advantage, Engels.”

“You’ve said you doubt the intelligence community knows that Engels is gay. Instead of Andujar being blackmailed and committing suicide, he might have told Engels he was coming out of the closet? If so, Engels may have bumped off Andujar to keep him quiet.”

“Possibly, but not likely. Engels could have leveraged Chris into silence without killing him, and I can’t see Chris wanting to come out of the closet. It would have crushed his wife and ruined whatever modicum of a relationship he had with his son. No. Both Engels and Chris would want that kept a secret. That scenario also doesn’t explain Andujar’s missing quarter mil. Besides, if Engels had killed Chris he could have arranged for him to simply disappear—like Jimmy Hoffa.”

Nora’s body language told him she knew Jack had it right.

Jack then suggested a more likely set up: Haviland got the blackmailer into Chris’s office to get the goods on some of his patients, and later into Donny’s Club to tape Harkin with Jena Moves.

“But Chris’s files were only coded,” Nora retorted. “The blackmailer would have the goods on people without knowing who they were.”

Jack nodded, and then said, “The blackmailer had film taken in Donny’s club for leverage over Harkin. Maybe they used surveillance equipment in Chris’s office.”

Jack dialed his phone and called Clarence Drummond, the former CIA surveillance expert who had a few days earlier took countersurveillance measures in the home of Chris’s former receptionist, Agnes Fuller. Drummy agreed to join Jack tonight to perform a sweep of Chris’s office, and while they were at it, the office of Chris’s pal, Dr. Radnor. Access courtesy of Clark’s janitorial service.

Chapter 32

Alan Clark was clearly skittish when Jack and Drummy approached the back door of the office building in which Chris Andujar had rented space for his practice. Clark’s cleaning crew had left, leaving the building empty except for the three of them.

Jack did not introduce Drummy to Carl Anson, alias Alan Clark who kept looking at Drummy, clearly wondering who he was and why he was with Jack.

After beseeching Jack to be as quick as possible, Clark gave Jack a master key and waited in the lobby.

Andujar’s office had already been picked clean by Goodwill Industries. Nothing remained but an unreliable florescent ceiling light with a periodic flicker and a constant hum from its defective ballast.

Drummy gave Chris’s office a fast sweep using equipment capable of detecting virtually any radio-frequency eavesdropping device made, including those used by government intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

“Ain’t nothing here, Jack. If anything ever was, it’d be long gone by now anyway. No installer wants his equipment found in the office of a dead doc the cops booked as a suicide.”

Jack began repacking the equipment while Drummy used a handheld xenon lamp in combination with infrared and ultraviolet filtration to search for an indication that bugs had been hidden in the baseboards, drapery cornices, walls, or ceiling panels.

Suddenly, Drummy snapped his fingers and pointed to a faint image of a forearm print on the wall just below the acoustical drop ceiling. He climbed the ladder and slid a two-by-four foot ceiling panel to the side.

“I got scratches here on the support grid. The recorder was likely right here.”

Drummy lowered the acoustical panel. Jack took it and examined the pinhole in the white side of the panel. Drummy then pointed at a small channel bored into its soft unpainted surface.

“See that? A tiny camera was used to provide pictures as well as sound. The guy’s equipment was crap, very dated, but it’d do the job.”

“Would the filming be constant?”

“I doubt it. More likely it all started with a voice activated recorder, after that the camera would take pictures at preset intervals. The audio is the more significant part of the surveillance. The periodic pictures did the job of eliminating any doubt as to the identity of the person speaking.”

What they found would fit the known blackmailing of Chris’s patient, the newspaper magnate, Dorothy Wingate, and her beau, Philippe Frenet. It could also support Jack’s theory that another of Chris’s patients, Allison Trowbridge, had been blackmailed, but they had not yet established that extortion had actually occurred.

Alan Clark was pacing in the lobby when they came out of the elevator. Jack offered to let Clark look through Drummy’s equipment case.

“Let’s just get out of here,” Clark said excitedly. “The other building should be clear by the time we get there. I just want this night to end.”

Twenty-five minutes later Alan Clark locked the three of them inside the building where Jack and Nora had been a few days before to interview Dr. Radnor. Clark collapsed into one of the lobby chair.

Jack and Drummy got off the elevator on the floor below Dr. Radnor’s office and walked up one flight of stairs. Radnor’s office was close to the size of Chris’s, only Radnor was still in practice so his office had furnishings, phones, and cable television service.

Drummy used the same equipment and process he had used in Andujar’s office. He also used a Time Domain Reflectometer on Radnor’s telephone and data cable. He found no signs of bugs in position, but found similar markings above one of the acoustical panels in the ceiling. From the top of the ladder, he shined a bore scope into a hole he had found behind the smoke detector.

“There’s a scrap of wire left inside. The kind commonly used for RF recorders, not smoke detectors.”

With Chris Andujar dead, removing the surveillance equipment from his office made sense. But why remove the equipment from Radnor’s active practice? Is the blackmailer being cautious enough to limit the number of marks he obtains from a single source? It would seem he got the goods on Dorothy Wingate and her lover, along with whatever he had held over Allison Trowbridge from the bug in Chris’s office. But, at least so far, they had no knowledge of any patient of Dr. Radnor being extorted. When they confirmed Trowbridge had been blackmailed, they would know the
how
.

Jack and Drummy took the stairs down to the floor below, and were nearing the elevator when Jack paused at a door with small white block letters: The Office of Dr. John Karros. Medical doctors often put their specialty under their name. Dr. Karros had not.

“Drummy?” Jack raised his eyebrows.

“Why not?” Drummy said. “Could be another shrink?”

“Our blackmailer may be limiting how many marks he’ll take from one source, and it looks like his specialty may be using psychiatrists to find his targets. If Karros is a shrink, with him being in the same building,” Jack shrugged, “I would, wouldn’t you?”

Drummy nodded, and said, “The convenience of a double hitter might have been too good to pass up. Only take us a minute to find out.”

Doctor Karros’s lobby materials indicated he was, in fact, a psychiatrist. Drummy unpacked his equipment to sweep Karros’s office.

“I should go touch base with Clark,” Jack said, “he’s probably jumping out of skin.”

When Jack came out of the elevator, Clark rushed up waiving his hands frantically. “Where’s the other fella?” He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped the top of his partly bald head.

“Relax, Alan. You and your people are in this building for hours every night. Keep your lunch bag open as if you’re taking a break. I entered my number into your cell phone. If anyone comes in the building, they’ll need a key. If that happens, hit redial and my phone’ll ring. Then hang up. We’ll be ready to play the role of two of your janitors.”

“If what I’m doing gets out—you should be done by now. This is taking too long.” Clark ran the blue hankie over his head again, then across the back of his neck.

“We’ll be another twenty minutes. Should anything happen, just call my cell number and we’ll adjust. Relax. Finish your sandwich. The sooner I get back up there, the sooner we’ll be back down.”

Jack stepped into the elevator, giving Alan the peace sign from the hippie era.

“Man. I haven’t seen that in a long time.”

“That’s the attitude. Be cool.” The elevator door closed on Jack’s reassuring smile. He got off the elevator two floors below Karros’s office and walked up the stairwell. If Clark had watched the lobby elevator panel, he wanted him to remember the wrong floor.

When Jack entered Karros’s office, Drummy held his finger to his lips. “I hit a hot one,” he whispered. “A voice-activated recorder set up to take a single picture on activation and again every few minutes. My equipment picked up the infrared bloom from the optical device. I erased our visit.”