Boldt And Matthews: No Witnesses Part 24

"Kill the fatted calf," Berenson said, admitting his friend and locking the door behind him. Whenever he heard a lock turn, Boldt felt he was somehow failing in his job.

"Liz is pregnant."

"Do I congratulate you or offer my sympathies?"

"Miles gets a sibling," Boldt said, elated.

"Congratulations."

"Thank you."

As usual, the place was a mess. Berenson lived the quintessential bachelor's existence: He termed it magical realism, because lately he was reading Latin American writers. Boldt called it hedonism, enhanced by a generous consumption of marijuana-hence the magic.

Bear stood just under six feet. He was stocky, with dark Arabic features and intense brown eyes-often bloodshot. He owned the Big Joke, the bar, restaurant, and comedy club immediately below them where Boldt often performed during happy hour.

"I thought I'd find you downstairs."

"The stand-up is awful. I booked the wrong act."

"Place is pretty full."

"No accounting for the taste of the public."

Berenson punched the remote, killing the television. "Went channel surfing instead. You know what I think? All this information superhighway s.h.i.t? Bunch of c.r.a.p. Even with thirty channels, there's nothing on. I mean I have a hard time believing that, but it's true. c.r.a.p to the right of me. c.r.a.p to the left of me. Five hundred channels? Give me a f.u.c.king break. Five hundred times zero is still zero."

They sat down. Bear rolled a joint. The policeman in Boldt felt tempted to ask him not to, but not tonight.

"I'm kind of at wit's end," Boldt said seriously.

Bear nodded.

They were the kind of friends where Boldt felt no need for apologies or approval. They had been-and continued to be-there for each other through, as Bear called it, "the good, the bad, and the ugly."

"I'm right back into it: solid work. Leaving Liz and Miles and you and others in the lurch. In to the point I can't get out. Buried in it, along with a few victims."

"Do you want out?"

"I need out-there's a difference."

"For me? It's this d.a.m.n club." The IRS had shut down the club and seized much of its property about a year earlier, and Bear had stood up and fought them and had won. Now he had the place back, though at times he complained about it. "Are we talking about freedom or escape?"

"Breathing room. To be away from death more than my three weeks a year. Three weeks I never take. I love this work-that's the thing."

He lit the joint. "So do you hate it, or do you love it?"

"I'm exhausted. I say stupid things when I'm exhausted."

"You say stupid things all the time." He grinned, pleased with himself, and smoked more of the joint. He stubbed it out gently in the ashtray, holding his breath for an interminable amount of time. When he exhaled, surprisingly little smoke escaped.

Boldt said, "I think I've got a bad apple."

"One of your own squad?"

Boldt nodded.

"That hurts."

Another nod. "A guy I like."

"And what do you do about it?"

"I hide the truth from him. I sit back and watch." Boldt informed him, "Someone broke into Daffy's. Maybe following her."

"This guy of yours?"

"He's moved to the top of my list."

"He's got good taste if he's after Daffy." Then Berenson added, "Just kidding."

"What do you do if you suspect a bartender is robbing your till?" Boldt asked.

"I watch him. I lay a trap for him."

"And does it work?"

"Sometimes. Sure. It's a funny thing with the people who cheat. They get numb to it, you know? They talk themselves into things. If it's petty stuff, if I just want to stop it, I confront the person. If it's the bigger s.h.i.t, I lay a f.u.c.king minefield and blow a leg off. Like this," he said. He turned the television back on and switched channels. The screen showed a black-and-white image of inside the club-an area immediately behind the bar, including a close look at the cash register and several of the stools. He said, "No one knows it's there."

"Are you so sure?"

"It's funny you should say that. Some people obviously feel the thing, you know? Look right at it. They can't see it-it's behind a beer mirror-but they feel it. That third-eye thing. Yet after a while they stop looking. Numb, just like the thieving bartenders." He said, "Maybe you're just numb, Lou. Maybe you're looking into the mirror a little too hard."

"Maybe you're stoned."

"No maybe about it. I'm roasted." He waited a minute and asked, "What's your excuse?"

"I'm thinking."

"So that's what that is. I always wondered what that looked like."

Shoswitz had ordered Boldt to take the weekend off. The city and department had rules about consecutive hours on the job-rules constantly broken, but easily enforced if someone like Shoswitz felt the necessity to do so. Nevertheless, Boldt spent the early morning at the kitchen table doing paperwork.

"There's a Mercedes out front, and I think it's for you," Elizabeth Boldt announced from where she stood, parting the front curtains. "Who is coming by unannounced at eight-thirty on a Sat.u.r.day morning? And me, looking like this!"

Boldt had been up for the last hour tending to Miles and working at the kitchen table with a baby spoon in one hand and a pencil in the other. He had had four hours' sleep, and felt it.

Liz wore a white satin robe tied tightly around her waist, open in a long V of bare skin at the chest, stretching from her neck to her navel, and black Chinese flats for slippers that lent a further touch of elegance. Her dark hair was pulled tightly off her sleepy face, held back by a turquoise rubber band, and she had silver studs in her ears. "I think you look fantastic," he told her, handing her her first cup of coffee and stealing a look for himself. "Oh s.h.i.t."

Boldt seldom cursed, and this caught his wife's attention.

"Lou?"

"It's Adler." Hurrying toward the front door to open it, Boldt defensively apologized, "I did not schedule this."

"I'm gone," his wife said, beating a hasty retreat.

Miles caught a glimpse of his mother and complained for her attention as she dashed into the bedroom, all satin and skin. "Not now, sweetie," she told the child, although this communication only added to the child's longing.

Boldt yanked open the door, said, "Inside," and closed it just as quickly so that Adler never broke his stride. "What are you doing here?"

His eyes bloodshot, his skin an unhealthy gray, Adler wore a wrinkled aquamarine polo shirt, stone-washed blue jeans, and leather deck shoes with leather ties. His arms were hairy. His watch was gold. He needed a shave. "I'm folding the company," he declared. "I thought that you should be told before the press conference."

Boldt felt like throttling the man on the spot, but maintained his composure.

Boldt offered him coffee and Adler accepted. Too nervous to sit down, Adler faked a smile at Miles and paced the small kitchen, toying with whatever he found on the counter. Mumbling, he said, "It's all over the news-this family dying-although they're claiming it's believed to be E. coli. It's not E. coli, right?"

"The first thing you have to do is settle down," Boldt advised sternly. "I know that's easier said than done."

"I thought you wanted us to pull our product."

"Have you eaten anything?"

"Eaten? Are you kidding? What would you recommend-some soup maybe?"

"Have you slept?"

Adler's eyes flashed anger. "This isn't about me. This is about that poor family. It's about Tap and I trying to stay in the market, because once you leave-especially in a situation like this-it's d.a.m.n near impossible to get back market shares. It's about greed, Sergeant. And ego-trying to hold on to something we fought hard for. And it's over."

"And are you going to kill yourself?"

That stopped Adler from fiddling. He looked over at Boldt, who said, "Because that's the second half of the demands."

"I don't know what I'm going to do."

"h.e.l.lo?" It was Liz. She who had apparently dived into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Barefoot. A hint of lipstick, nothing more. She introduced herself to Adler-reintroduced, as it turned out, for he recognized her immediately as being connected to the bank. Liz's bank had partially financed Adler's move into the European marketplace, something she had never told her husband because she took client confidentiality at face value. Wisely, having taken one look at the man, she made no attempt at small talk. She said, "Why don't I take over duties here?" pointing to her son, whose arms were begging for her.

Boldt led Adler back into the front room. Liz stopped Adler on his way by and gently took the serrated bread knife from him. He seemed embarra.s.sed to be holding it, as if he did not know how it had gotten there. Boldt guided him onto the couch and placed his coffee down for him.

Sounding on the edge of tears, Adler said, "No more deaths."

Boldt had no intention of babying a man like Owen Adler. Adopting a business-as-usual tone of voice, he said, "If you intend on shutting down your business, there's little I can do to stop you. But I would caution you against it. And although I strongly objected to keeping product on the shelves during the initial contaminations, I don't see any way around it right now."

Boldt understood then that he had no choice but to take Adler into his confidence, and though he would have rather checked with Daphne before doing so, he could not allow Adler to risk the lives of hundreds by panicking. "We know who the killer is."

Adler, too stunned to get a word out, c.o.c.ked his head at an unusual angle and glared at him.

"His name is Harold Caulfield. He worked for Mark Meriweather at Longview Farms."

"But why wasn't I-?"

Boldt interrupted, "We think he blames you for the Longview salmonella contamination. He wants to see you bankrupt and dead, just like Mark Meriweather. Daphne is the one running with this, but I have to tell you that it was my decision not to inform you or your company. We have evidence that the State Health department altered at least one lab report crucial to the placement of responsibility for the New Leaf salmonella contamination. It seemed to me unlikely that a state government employee would take such an action without an incentive. The who, when, and what of that incentive remains in question."

This news clearly struck a blow to Adler. Looking ill again, he sank back into the couch, too dumbfounded to speak. Boldt continued: "In the short amount of time I've known you, you've struck me as being straightforward. So that's what I'm being with you. Whether you're an honest man ... I can't say. But whatever you or your people may have done to Mark Meriweather, it's insignificant when compared with the lives of Slater Lowry and the Mishnovs. If you or one of your people was behind that altered State Health report," Boldt said, "I need to know right now."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

People could lie, and Boldt, in his role as a homicide cop, had sat across from some of the best of them and could often spot them. But to his knowledge, a person could not intentionally make himself pale, much less pale to the point that the skin seemed green and the lips looked like those of a cadaver. He believed Adler.

"I won't pretend we're close to apprehending this man, but we are closer, and if you shut down your company now, there's no predicting his response. We believe that the ATM surveillance offers us the fastest, most predictable way to apprehend Caulfield. Even if he is using a runner, which remains a strong possibility, that ransom money is our way back to Caulfield. Shutting down your company, pulling your product, is likely to have an adverse effect on him. Change his agenda-take his attention off the money and put it back on the ma.s.s poisoning. At the moment, he seems reluctant to deliver on his larger threat, and I for one have no intention of testing his resolve, of pushing him over the top."

"I want to know everything there is to know about this Longview Farms incident," Adler said too calmly. He appeared to be in shock. "What exactly do you know, Sergeant?"

"We believe the contamination was not salmonella, but staphylococcus. Staph is most commonly transmitted by physical contact, which suggests maybe one of your workers forgot to wear his gloves. Your product went out on the shelves and people got sick."

"Good G.o.d!" he gasped.

"We believe there was a cover-up to keep New Leaf in the clear, and that it involved altering doc.u.ments to place the responsibility on bad poultry at Longview Farms."

"This is why Daphne wanted access to our files."

"Yes it is." Boldt added, "Your cooperation, your confidence is crucial to the success of this investigation. As difficult as it may be, you need to continue on as if you knew none of this. At the same time, your cooperation in proceeding with the investigation-helping Daphne get what she needs-would be a welcome a.s.set."

The man nodded slowly, his eyes in a fixed stare at someplace over Boldt's shoulder. "Are you telling me that these killings ... all of this suffering, is the result of some misconceived attempt six years ago to keep us out of trouble?"

Boldt nodded. They saw it often enough in Homicide. "The biggest crimes are often committed trying to hide the smaller ones."

On Sunday morning he and Liz and Miles drove up to the lake because Liz asked him to, and he had no desire to fight her as well. Another member of their family was on the way, and yet the very family this child would soon join seemed fragmented and in a fragile condition. The lake cabin always helped: No phone; no radio. A game of Scrabble maybe, some ch.o.r.es, some reading. A fire if the evening was cool enough. A swim if he was brave enough to endure the coldness of the lake water.

But Boldt did not sleep, and somewhere in the night he strayed out into the darkness in a plaid bathrobe with worn elbows. After a commune with the flat blackness of the lake's starlit surface, he migrated toward the car, where he had left his briefcase and his papers. When Liz rose to a cold bed at four in the morning and found him by a small fire going through his papers, she said nothing-though he knew he had ruined their stay. At dawn he did swim and it chilled him to his bones, and Liz was there with a towel when he came out.

She was quiet on the drive back; Miles was noisy. They had to leave by six in order to make work on time, and they beat most of the bad traffic. After forty minutes of following license plates and sitting tall so that his visor blocked the morning sun, Boldt reached for the radio k.n.o.b in order to catch the start of "Morning Edition." Liz reached out and stopped him.

"I try not to involve myself in your cases," she said quietly, not looking at him. "Even cases like this-the ones that seem to kill you-because there is so little I can do, so little I know that might help, and I believe it important that at least one of us be rooted in some kind of reality to help the other find ground."

He could think of nothing to say to that. An eighteen-wheeler pa.s.sed them. He noticed that it was a poultry truck and this serendipity did not elude him. The chickens were stacked in ventilated, crowded cages; some feathers escaped and, caught in the slip-stream, were carried along behind the trailer like a bridal train.

"I think I may be able to help," she offered, "but I'm afraid to, because in a way it violates the parameters of this relationship-and that frightens me. When I am crazy at the bank, you are my anchor, and I would like to think that the same is true for you, and I fear that if I become involved, even in the smallest, most insignificant way, that in effect that sets us adrift, that joins the two of us but separates us from any tie back to reality. Does this make any sense?"

"Sure." But he knew he did not sound convinced.

"I am a banker, love. As in ATM machines, accounts, withdrawals, loans. Now does it make sense?"

He did not answer.

"You have explained this case to me-at least some of it, the ATM part-and yet you never asked my advice. The one area I know something about, and you didn't ask."

"I didn't think-"

"No, you didn't," she interrupted, in order to make her own point. "And I didn't know if it was because you didn't want my input, didn't want to cross that line we keep so delicately stretched between us, or because it never occurred to you to ask."