“You had a fight?”
“I guess you always think that someone you like shares your values. I keep getting this wrong.”
“Are you two going to be all right?”
He shrugged, chewing his crackers, and with his mouth full he asked what was new with me.
I found myself telling him that Cindy had come over to my house for dinner last night. I held back that she had wanted to play with the baby.
Conklin said, “How is Cindy? She didn’t look good at the wedding. She’s lost weight. She hardly spoke to me. Is she all right?”
I said, “Men are so clueless.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Anyway. A few days ago, I stupidly mentioned to her what Brady told us—that Morales might have been seen in Wisconsin. Cindy decided to follow up in person.”
Conklin choked on his coffee, and when he’d stopped sputtering, he stared at me and said, “You’re saying she went to Wisconsin to find Mackie Morales? By herself? Then what was she going to do?”
I filled my partner in on Cindy’s search for our former summer intern with a taste for murder—that she was working on a career move. “What she is calling a once-in-a-lifetime story.”
Conklin’s face bent through several gradations of shocked disbelief as I told him what Cindy had uncovered in the past few days, a trail of incidents that spelled Mackie Morales had resurfaced.
“Cindy wasn’t telling me everything,” I said to Rich. “When I prodded her, she said, and I quote, ‘I’ll tell you if and when I know more.’”
Conklin crumpled his empty cup and tossed it into the trash. He said, “You tried to talk her out of this? Never mind. I know what she’s like. I hope to God Mackie doesn’t find out that Cindy is dogging her.”
My desk phone rang too many times before I finally punched the button.
A man’s voice said, “Sergeant, this is Lou Frye. From Chuck’s Prime.”
I signaled to Richie to pick up on line four, and I told Frye that Conklin was on the line.
Frye coughed and wheezed, then got enough wind to say, “Jansing got a text from the extortionist saying he’s going to call today with a demand. I guess you want to be here.”
After Cindy and Conklin broke up, my partner lived in his car for a couple of weeks and used the office facilities until he found a new place to live. Now he opened his desk drawer and took out his toiletry kit, which still lived in his desk. He rooted around and pulled out a razor, then headed toward the men’s room.
“We’re on our way,” I said to Louis Frye.
CHAPTER 39
I COULD MAKE the drive to Chuck’s HQ in Emeryville while handcuffed, blindfolded, and in my sleep, but still, there was no getting there fast. We were handicapped by morning rush from the west end of the Bay Bridge, and after we cleared the tunnel at Treasure Island, a panicky driver up ahead braked into a turn and fishtailed across all lanes, forcing me to skin a guard rail. I regained the road on two wheels.
Conklin, to his credit, didn’t puke. When we got to the straightaway of 580 East, I shut down the sound and fury in case the bomber had eyes on the Emery Tech Building.
It was almost 10:30 when I nosed our car into a spot in Chuck’s executive lot. Therese Stanford, a pretty, bespectacled young woman from our crime lab’s electronic trace division, was waiting for us in a souped-up red Mustang, probably a recent confiscation by Narcotics. She got out of the car with a laptop case slung over her shoulder.
Lou Frye, Chuck’s Prime’s attorney, was smoking a cigarette just outside the back door. He stubbed his butt out against the brick wall, and once Conklin and I had feet on the ground, we introduced him to CSI Stanford and he let us into the building by the back way.
“No phone call, yet,” Frye said, pressing the elevator button. “Jansing is a wreck. I’ve never seen him this way before, but he’s got a big conflict. He wants to do the right thing, but he has to protect the company. He loves Chuck’s. He is Chuck’s.”
Michael Jansing was in his office, rocking his desk chair, staring out the window. He dropped the chair into its upright position when we walked in. He stood up, said hello to the three of us, shook our hands with his sweaty one, and offered us coffee.
As his assistant brought in a coffee tray, Stanford set up her laptop on Jansing’s desk.
“What if the bastard doesn’t call?” Jansing asked Stanford.
“If he wants his money, he will.”
“And what do I do?”
“Try to buy us some time to get a bead on him. Ask his name. Ask, ‘What’s your beef?’—no, no,” Stanford said, laughing nervously. “I didn’t mean that.”