Victims (8 page)

As Marie Kramer closed the few feet between them and stooped to put her arms around her son, the image of a stage play returned: the hesitant actress, unsure of herself, acting out lines from a half-learned script. The boy didn’t return her embrace. He waited calmly until she’d dropped her arms and stepped back. Then he announced, “We rode in a police car, all the way across the bridge, from the airport. I sat in front. Right by the radio and the shotgun.”

“Do you want something to eat?” Marie Kramer asked.

“It’s Saturday, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Did I miss the cartoons?”

“I—” She blinked. “I’m not sure, John. Do you want to—?” She moved her head toward a flight of stairs that led up to the house’s third level. The meaning: he could go to his room and watch TV.

“I want some chocolate milk and cookies while I’m watching.”

“Yes. All right. Here—” She put a hand on his shoulder, turning him away from us. “Here, I’ll get it for you.”

But he shook off her hand, turning to stare at me with his large, dark eyes. Irrationally, his eyes reminded me of the CARE posters that asked for food contributions to underprivileged children in foreign lands.

“This is Lieutenant Hastings, John,” the woman said, still standing awkwardly beside her son, still weaving unsteadily on her feet. Still unable to touch him with a mother’s caress. “He’s a policeman, too. Like the—” She broke off, frowning. She’d forgotten what she’d meant to say.

I smiled down at the boy, saying, “One of the reasons I’ve come, John, is that I’d like to talk to you—if your mother’s willing.”

Before either the woman or the boy could speak, the well dressed man stepped forward quickly. He produced an alligator card case, handing over a business card with a smoothly practiced gesture.

“I’m Michael Carmody, Lieutenant. I’m an associate of Alexander Guest’s.” He waited for me to glance at the card, then turned to Marie Kramer. “If you and John are going to be busy for a few minutes, Mrs. Kramer, I’d like to speak to the lieutenant.”

She looked at the lawyer, looked at me, then looked down at her son, who was still staring impassively at me. Finally she nodded. She did it tentatively, uncertainly—as if she were accustomed to taking orders that she didn’t understand.

“I don’t want any milk or cookies now,” the boy said, planting his feet firmly on the white wool carpet. He didn’t intend to move. “I want to talk to him.” He raised his arm full length, pointing at me with an imperious forefinger.

“John. Please. Michael—Mr. Carmody—wants to talk to the lieutenant.” Tentatively, she put her hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go. Let’s—”

“No.”
Vehemently, he shook his head. “He said he wanted to talk to me. He just said it.”

“John—” I stooped, lowered my voice. “You go with your mother. Later, we’ll talk. I promise. Before I leave, we’ll talk.”

“Will you show me your gun?”

I looked at the woman, searching her face for a reaction to the boy’s request. When she made no visible protest, I nodded. “Yes.”

“And your handcuffs, too?”

“Yes.”

Dark eyes slightly narrowed now, face puckered with suspicion, he stood his ground for a moment, making up his mind. Then he nodded: a decisive, businesslike bobbing of his small head. “Good.” He turned abruptly and led the way to the stairs. Marie Kramer smiled at me, grateful for my help. It was our first moment of full, person-to-person contact. Then she turned and followed the boy upstairs to the third floor.

Carmody walked quickly to one of the huge windows, the furthermost point in the living room from both staircases. Lowering his voice, he said, “You realize, of course, that you can’t interrogate John—not without parental permission.”

“Or a court order.”

“Yes. Well, I’ll check with Mr. Guest. But I doubt very much if he’ll approve of your interrogating John. Not now. Not so soon after—last night.”

“Mr. Guest is John’s grandfather. Not his father. Legally, there’s a big difference.”

“Where the boy is concerned—” The lawyer glanced over his shoulder toward the upstairs staircase. “Where John is concerned, Mr. Guest and Mrs. Kramer see eye to eye. Always.”

I let a long, heavy moment of silence pass while I stared at him—and while I made up my mind how to handle his objections. Finally I decided to say, “I promised to talk to him, promised to show him my gun. I’ll do that—now. Right now. But I won’t interrogate him about what happened last night. Not without checking with the D.A. And, certainly, Mrs. Kramer will be present during the interrogation.”

“I’d like to witness the conversation you’re going to have with him now.” He made it sound like a command, not a request.

I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

With the confidence of someone who was familiar with his surroundings, Carmody led the way up to the third floor and down a short hallway to John’s room, where the TV was blaring. While the mother and the lawyer looked on, I sat beside John on the boy’s bed and unholstered my revolver while Carmody turned the TV down.

“The first thing you always do,” I said, “is unload the weapon.” I swung out the cylinder and showed him how to eject the cartridges. I put the cartridges in my jacket pocket, swung the cylinder back into place and held the revolver in the palm of my hand. “Now it’s safe. You can
see
it’s safe. And that’s why policemen carry revolvers, instead of automatics.” I looked at him. “Do you know the difference between a revolver and an automatic?”

Promptly, he nodded. “Sure. An automatic has the bullets in the handle. And you don’t have to cock it. You just keep pulling the trigger.”

Surprised, I nodded. “That’s right. Where’d you learn about guns, John?”

As if the question disturbed him, he looked quickly away, refusing to answer. I looked at him thoughtfully for a moment as I gripped the pistol for firing, pulling back the hammer and aiming at a cartoon figure on the silent TV screen. When I pulled the trigger and the hammer fell, the boy’s whole body responded, reacting to the loud metallic
click.

“Let me try.”

I handed over the gun, cautioning: “Don’t point it at anyone. Don’t ever do that. You always treat a gun as if it’s loaded.”

Nodding, he used both thumbs to draw back the hammer, used both hands to aim the gun at another cartoon figure. Concentrating fiercely on steadying the gun, his finger tightened on the trigger as his tongue came through his lips, moving to one side. It was the classic picture of total childhood concentration. As the hammer fell, his whole body reacted again, electrically.

“Wow!” His eyes glowed. “I could’ve blown it up. The whole TV. If it’d been loaded, I could’ve killed it. Can I try again?”

“One more time.” I smiled, cautioning him again not to point the gun at anyone. Rapturously, he dry-fired the weapon again, then carefully gave it back to me.

“You handle it like a pro,” I said. “Is this the first time you’ve ever held a revolver?” As I asked the question, I reloaded the gun and slipped it into its holster.

Once more he looked quickly away. “Can I see the handcuffs now?”

I’d already decided how I’d answer the inevitable question, turning his intense interest to my advantage. “I’ll tell you what, John—why don’t we do that when I come back again? Maybe tomorrow, or the next day. Okay?” I glanced at my watch. “I’ve got to get back to police headquarters now.” It was a lie, calculated for its effect.

“Police headquarters,” he breathed, taking the bait. “No fooling?”

I got to my feet, smiling down at him. “No fooling. I’ll see you soon. We’ll have longer to talk, the next time. Okay?”

He was plainly disappointed—and plainly not accustomed to having his expectations unsatisfied. But, doubtless having made his own calculations, his answering nod was grudgingly polite. “Yeah—okay. Tomorrow?”

“I hope so. Soon, anyhow.” Pretending that I had to leave quickly, I thanked Marie Kramer, nodded to Michael Carmody and left the room. I went down the first flight of stairs to the living room level, down the second flight of stairs to the front door, and let myself out. Bruce Durkin, the bodyguard, was standing on a small landing halfway down the steep flight of flagstone steps that led to the street, and my car. Both the steps and the landing were protected by a sturdy iron hand railing. Looking down, I could see why. The rocky hillside fell sharply away from the steps.

“You’re Bruce Durkin,” I said.

He’d been looking off across the bright blue waters of San Francisco Bay, picturesquely dotted with hundreds of sails, most of them clustered south of the vicious riptides that sometimes ran between the Golden Gate and Susuin Bay to the northeast. When I spoke to him he turned to face me. With his muscular arms crossed over his muscular chest, and his muscular buttocks pressed on display against the guardrail, Durkin looked like he was posing for a second-rate body building magazine. “Yes,” he answered, “that’s right.”

“How long have you been here, working for Mrs. Kramer?”

“About four months.”

Which confirmed what Guest had told me about when he had learned Gordon Kramer intended to take his son.

“You’re a bodyguard.”

“Right.”

I nodded, letting a long, deliberate moment of silence pass as I looked him over. Unlike Alexander Guest and Marie Kramer, Bruce Durkin was a familiar type to me: not very smart, not very cooperative—and probably not very law-abiding. The sullen, half hostile answers, the closed face, the suspicious eyes—these were part of the policeman’s daily experience, his stock in trade. People like Durkin and people like me were natural antagonists. Yet, perversely, we depended on each other, Durkin and I. Without people like him, people like me wouldn’t be necessary, wouldn’t be needed.

“You know what happened last night,” I said. “A man—an ex-policeman—was killed, guarding John.”

“Yeah—I know.” He puffed out his lips and shook his head, as if I’d recounted some obscenity that he found contemptuous.

“You were in the same business,” I said, “you and Charlie Quade. Did that ever occur to you? Both of you were hired to guard John.”

“Was that his name? Charlie Quade?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah. Well—” His shoulders lifted in a muscle-rippling shrug. “From what I hear, this Charlie Quade was maybe asking for it.”

“How do you mean, asking for it?”

“I mean, he had a gun. You have a gun, people start shooting at you.”

“You don’t have a gun, then.”

Once more, he puffed his lips, this time flatulently, contemptuous of people stupid enough to carry guns. “Not me.”

“As I understand Kramer’s story,” I said, “he followed John all day yesterday. Which meant that, at one point, he was here—” I gestured to the street, where Kramer had probably parked.

“What kind of a car was he driving?” Durkin asked.

I had to admit that I didn’t know; I hadn’t asked.

“Do you know Kramer by sight?” I asked.

He hesitated a moment, then shook his head. “No.”

“You’ve never seen him, then.”

“No.”

“What did you do yesterday? Give me a rundown on your day.”

“That’s easy. My days don’t change much, you know.”

I waited while he smirked humorlessly at his own remark. “I took John to his school at eight o’clock in the morning,” he said. “He has to be there at 8:30. Then I did some errands. I drove out to the beach for an hour or so, and did some running. Then I came back here and washed the car and had some lunch. At 1:30, I picked John up at school. We got back here about two, I guess. He watched TV until about four, I guess it was, when Mr. Guest came for him.”

“Was Mr. Guest alone when he arrived?”

“No. He has a driver.”

“What kind of a car does he have?”

“It’s a Cadillac.”

“A limousine?”

“No. Just a Cadillac. Dark blue.”

“What time did John and Mr. Guest leave here?”

“Maybe fifteen minutes after Mr. Guest got here. Maybe twenty minutes. No more.”

“What’d you do then, after they left?”

“I took off. I locked up the house, and set the alarms. And then I took off. See, after John leaves with his grandfather, until he comes back Sunday afternoons, usually, I’m off duty. So I split. As soon as I can, I’m gone. Long gone.”

Listening to the surly inflections of his voice, watching him, it seemed obvious that Bruce Durkin wasn’t happy in his work.

“You don’t like bodyguarding,” I said.

He shrugged, staring off toward the view with his dull, resentful eyes. “I guess bodyguarding’s all right. But bodyguarding a kid.
That
kid—” Angrily, he shook his head.

“You don’t like John.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” he answered heavily. He glowered at me, then added, “You could even say I hate that kid. He’s about the most miserable kid I’ve ever seen.
Ever
.”

“Was Mrs. Kramer on the premises when Mr. Guest came for John?”

He smirked. “No, she left about noon. Maybe a little before.”

I debated exploring the smirk, but finally decided against it. There would be other chances to interrogate Durkin, after I had more information.

“What’d you do last night?” I asked.

“I went out and had dinner and went to a movie. I got home about midnight, maybe a little after. I watched a late movie, and drank a little wine. Then I went to sleep.”

“Was Mrs. Kramer here last night when you got home?”

He rippled his muscles again in another sullen shrug. “I don’t know. I didn’t hear her. But she could’ve been sleeping—or something.”

This time, there was no question what the smirk meant. I decided to change the subject.

“You say you’ve been guarding John for four months.”

“Right.”

“In that time, did anyone try to take him?”

“No. No one.”

“Do you know Lester Bennett?”

“No.”

“Have you ever heard of Lester Bennett?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been arrested?”

“Arrested?” Brow elaborately furrowed, he looked at me as if I’d asked the question in a foreign language.

“You don’t have to answer. But we’ve got computers, you know. It’ll only take a couple of minutes to find out.”