Shark and Octopus Page 13

  “Nice ‘stache,” Griffin told him. “You going to keep it?”

  “My wife hasn’t decided yet,” Sergeant Ahearn replied.

  “Your wife makes the decisions on your facial hair?”

  “You married, Mr. Gilmore?”

  “Not yet.”

  “When you are married, remember this conversation.”

  They both looked through a window into the interrogation room. Timothy Dean was looking away, struggling to appear unconcerned, as the policewoman approached.

  Sergeant Ahearn said, “You never know how these things’ll turn out.” Take that kid in there,” the cop said of Timothy Dean. “Spoiled rich kid, right? You think guys like that will fold with the first nasty glance, and some do. Others turn out to be as hard as the hardest gangbanger. You just don’t know.”

  Griffin turned to watch the interrogation through the one way window into the room next door.

  “Mr. Dean,” Officer Fernandez began.

  “I’m not answering any questions until my lawyer gets here,” Timothy Dean informed Officer Fernandez. He flashed a smile of sarcastic superiority. “I don’t want the public defender you offered. My mother called a law firm downtown she deals with. A lawyer named Cam MacManus will be here soon. Until then, I don’t have to answer any of your questions.”

  “You understand your rights. That’s good. You don’t have to say anything at all. Still, I think you should answer my questions.”

  “Why is that?” he challenged.

  Timothy Dean leaned back in his chair, his legs crossed casually at the ankles. In his shirt pocket rested sunglasses Griffin assumed were Cartier. He seemed so young to Griffin he might have been in his prep school, chatting with his buddies in the cafeteria about this weekend’s party. His khaki slacks and blue button down shirt contributed to the private high school air.

  “I have it within my power to make recommendations to the prosecutor, a woman named Jennifer Fletcher. If you cooperate here, I will speak to her about the charges to be filed against you. I will not at this time ask you about the gun or the cocaine, the crimes you have been charged with.”

  “I told you, the gun isn’t mine,” he replied in a borderline whine. “I never saw it before. I had no idea it was in the glove compartment. That’s why I took off.” He descended into full whining mode. “As for the cocaine-”

  “I’m telling you I’m not asking about the gun or the cocaine.”

  Timothy Dean flicked a lock of dirty blond hair from his forehead. It was a gesture Griffin suspected went over well with the private school girls. Officer Fernandez was duly unimpressed.

  “What do you want to ask me about?”

  Officer Hernandez got right to the meat of it. She lifted her hands, revealing the Future-Ride business card beneath. “We wanted to ask you about this.”

  EIGHTEEN

  June 15

  12:34 pm

  “We found this business card in the glove compartment of the car you were driving.”

  “Never seen it before.”

  “Mr. Dean, if you want me to talk to the prosecutor on your–“

  “But I’ve never seen that card before,” he insisted shrilly. All the confidence had bled from his voice. “I never looked in the glove compartment. All I did was drive the car.”

  Officer Fernandez pushed the business card across the table.

  Timothy Dean wrinkled his nose at the smell. He tried but failed to pick up the card, which fluttered back to the table. Griffin at first assumed that was due to the handcuffs. Then he realized the prisoner’s hands were shaking. He was coming down from whatever drug high he’d been on.

  Officer Fernandez slid the card between two of the fingers of his right hand. He raised his hands to his nose.

  “That’s him. Mr. Whisky and Aqua Velva.”

  “That’s who?”

  “I don’t know his name.” The prisoner raised his manacled hands to his face, as if warding off the verbal explosion he expected to follow. “I swear I don’t know his name.”

  She told him, “Why don’t we start with where you met this guy whose name you don’t know.”

  “Substance advice counseling. Court-ordered group therapy sessions. Those things are a total waste of time and he was a total blowhard.”

  “Blowhard?”

  “He couldn’t shut up about all the women he’d scored, all the drugs he did. How he could slug back a pint of whisky faster than any man alive. I had sixty days of the court-ordered counseling. Don’t know how long he was there for or why exactly, but he stopped while I was still going. Nobody missed him.”

  “Did you catch his name?”

  “Never asked him for it. Trust me, no one did.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “My height. Skinny, but a pot belly. Dark hair, ponytail. Faded blue eyes. Said ‘crappola’ a lot. I’d never heard the word before.”

  Griffin had and recently, from Kit, by way of the Oakecrest security guard. It was the guard who’d heard the car thief at Oakecrest say ‘crappola.’ No question: the man Timothy Dean was describing had stolen the car from the deceased Andrea Platts; the man Timothy Dean was describing had been the driver for the man in white at the museum fundraiser.

  The prisoner went on, “He had tattoos everywhere you could see.”

  “Where was this?”

  “Where were the tattoos?”

  “No, Mr. Dean. Where was the court-appointed therapist?”

  “The therapist was in Perry Hall. Belair Road.”

  “When?”

  “September.”

  Griffin saw that Timothy Dean was blinking with unnatural frequency. Beneath the table his legs were pumping as if sprinting. That, Griffin supposed, was some sort of drug withdrawal symptom.

  “September was nine months ago, Mr. Dean. You’ve seen him since then, haven’t you?”

  “Last night. Bar in Essex, Eastern Avenue. No, I don’t know the name. Biker bar, mostly. I was into the second day of my binge by then.”

  “That what took you to Essex, Mr. Dean? Scoring drugs?”

  He did not bother to reply. Griffin understood the subtext of the exchange. What else would take the Worthington Valley son of a surgeon and a banker to a biker bar in Essex? Otherwise, it was like a Fortune 500 CEO dining at a soup kitchen.

  “I’ve got a monkey on my back. You know the origin of that phrase? Learning it was the only thing of value I got out of that therapy.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about that.”

  *

  “As the therapist explained it, monkeys run wild in different parts of the world. Some tourists – not knowing any better – let the monkeys climb on their backs. The monkeys seem so entertaining and playful, right? Once they’re on your back, though, it’s close to impossible to get them off. Try, and they start choking you. That’s where I am right now. I can feel the hands of a monkey, and they’re tightening round my throat.”

  Timothy Dean fell silent. He stared straight ahead. For the first time Griffin saw the man’s pupils. They were enormous. You could have driven a garbage truck through those pupils. Griffin watched tears welling up.

  Eventually, gently, Officer Fernandez prompted, “You were in a biker bar in Essex last night.”

  “Yes. I was. That’s where I see this guy I know from counseling. The one I described before. This wasn’t someone I normally would look at twice. Lord knows I wouldn’t approach him. But he was always boasting about all the drugs he scored, so maybe he can help me out here. When I see him in the bar I act like he’s my oldest, best bud. I knew it was pathetic, playing at being his friend for the drugs. My God, when we heard a police siren he actually called it a si-reen. It was all so pathetic. Even at the time, I knew.

  “I buy him some shots. Whiskey. We go outside to his car, parked behind the bar. Do some coke and other pharmaceuticals. I was blasted out of my mind, but even then I could tell this guy smelled awful. He was not overusing a shower. And whiskey and
Aqua Velva do not mix.”

  “What was his name?”

  “If I knew it then, I don’t know it now. Sorry. I probably called him ‘Dude.’ He was the kind of guy who actually liked getting called Dude.”

  “Can you describe Dude’s car?”

  “I don’t have to describe it. You have it.”

  “What’s that?”

  Griffin understood what Timothy Dean was telling Officer Fernandez, though she did not yet.

  The prisoner explained: “That’s the car I was driving this morning when you stopped me.”

  “How did you get-”

  For the first time Timothy Dean talked across Officer Fernandez.

  “My Dad used to get a new car every year. About this time of year. Still does, but now without me.” Timothy Dean was crying. “It was such a big deal for me. I’d bug him for weeks to take me to the car dealership. Finally, the day would arrive. My Dad would say, ‘Which color should it be, Timmy?’”

  Timothy Dean was weeping openly now. His voice wobbled – it reminded Griffin of a car tire with a blowout limping toward the shoulder of the road – but the man pressed on.

  “He knew the car he wanted, usually a Lexus. I’d tell him, ‘Lemon yellow’ or ‘Apple green’ or ‘The color of blueberries.’ Whatever color I wanted, that’s what he’d buy. I don’t know what color he’s driving this year. He won’t see me until I’m straight.”

  “You’ll be placed in a rehab program,” Officer Fernandez promised him. “Of course, that will only work if you take the program seriously. As you are smart enough to understand.”

  Timothy Dean nodded, composing himself.

  “You were talking about the car,” Officer Fernandez said, after a bit.

  “The car I remember very clearly. I’d never been in a car so old and huge. I told him I liked it. Maybe the only truthful thing I said to him all night.

  “We head back into the bar. He picks up a woman. I couldn’t get wasted enough to go anywhere near someone like this. Fat, bleached out blonde hair. Tube top that didn’t cover her rolls of fat. Her tube top says YOU CAN’T TELL ME YOU DON’T WANT THIS. In fact, I could say that. Easily.

  “She’s in shorts she’s got pulled down low so nobody misses her butt crack. A plumber would be embarrassed to have that much butt crack flashing. You have sex with this woman? You’re asking for diseases the doctors haven’t identified yet, let alone found cures for.”

  Griffin would not have predicted it, but he found himself rooting for Timothy Dean in his rehab.

  “All I know is, I’m down in Essex, not certain where. The guy I drove down with has slipped off sometime in the action. How am I going to get back to my apartment in Hunt Valley? Then Dude – can I just call him that? Dude tosses me the car keys. ‘All yours,’ he says.

  “He pulls me against a wall. Leans in close – I stifle a gag – like he’s whispering a great secret. Except, his voice never drops below the decibel level of a jet engine. I doubt there was anyone in the place who did not hear him.”

  *

  Timothy Dean started blinking even more rapidly. His voice was speeding up as well.

  “’The old woman who owned the car doesn’t need it anymore,’ Dude tells me. He giggles, like he’s gotten off the greatest joke ever delivered. I sure don’t get it. I think I’m just staring at him, unsure exactly what is happening here. I’m holding onto the car keys the whole time.

  “’A guy paid me to get the car in April,’ he tells me next. ‘Paid well too. This is a big guy, but not an American. Wears nothing but white. Can’t walk without limping.’ Dude loves to boast, but I’m getting the vibe this part is all true.”

  “What did your associate from the bar think of this guy who hired him?”

  It was, Griffin felt, the exact question to ask. Officer Fernandez really was good at her job.

  Timothy Dean paused, struggling to think, then said, “Didn’t like him. That much I could tell.”

  “What else did Dude tell you about the car and this guy who hired him? What exactly was Dude hired to do?”

  “Dude had to get the car. Then he had to put the car someplace safe for a while. Then he used the car to pick up the big guy in white who limps.”

  “Pick him up where?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  At the Baltimore Museum of Art fundraiser, Griffin was willing to bet.

  “What else did Dude tell you, Mr. Dean?”

  “Dude said, ‘He told me to just leave the car in a parking lot someplace. After I dropped him at the airport one night.”

  Officer Fernandez sought to clarify what Timothy Dean had just said. “The he you’re talking about here? The guy who hired Dude. He’s the guy who’s not an American and who wears only white? Big guy, limps?”

  “That’s what Dude said.”

  “When did Dude take this guy to the airport, did he tell you?”

  “He did. It was a week and a half ago. A Thursday night.”

  The night of the museum fundraiser, Griffin thought. And it was definitely the man in white Dude was driving. Two days later the man in white would be in Arazzo Castle. What Griffin couldn’t work out yet was whether it was the man in white who gave Dude his orders or someone at Future-Ride. Or both, possibly.

  Timothy Dean went on, “’But,’ Dude tells me, ‘I needed the wheels, so instead I got some other license plates and switched the plates. I held onto the car. This guy’s out of the country. He’ll never know I kept the car. What’s it to him?’”

  Officer Hernandez asked a quick question: “Do you believe that car was stolen?”

  Timothy Dean gave a quicker answer: “Don’t you?”

  He was blinking and speaking more hurriedly.

  “”There’s a box on the floor of the back seat,’ Dude is telling me and the rest of the bar. ‘The address where you got to deliver the box tomorrow is right on the box.’ Even with my brain cells mostly fried, I know why the address is written on the box. Someone knows Dude can’t be relied on to find the place and deliver the box any other way.

  “’Take the box there tomorrow morning,’ he says. ‘And the car is yours.’

  “The address turns out to be on Belvedere Avenue, where it hits Perring Parkway. That’s where I was going when you stopped me.”

  “Do you know what’s in the box?”

  “Never looked.”

  “Could you guess?”

  “That’s why I was making the delivery. Instead of just dumping the box in the trash someplace. I knew the delivery had to be made. I didn’t want someone coming after me.”

  By this point his words were tumbling out like a child running downhill. He was smacking his wrist against the table’s edge. He had closed his eyes, apparently unable to control their blinking.

  “The first few days of rehab will be difficult for you,” Officer Fernandez said. “But you can get rid of the monkey, if you really want to.”

  Timothy Dean did not answer. Griffin got the sense the man was making up his mind about what Officer Fernandez had said.

  “You never looked in the glove compartment, you said.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “So you never saw the business card or know anything about it.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  There was a knock at the door of the interrogation room. It was Timothy Dean’s lawyer, announcing the questioning would have to stop.

  *

  “That’s it,” Griffin said to Sergeant Ahearn, shaking hands. “Thanks.”

  “We’ll do our best to find out who Dude really is, Mr. Gilmore. We’ll track down the Perry Hall therapist,” the Sergeant promised. “Though I’m guessing Dean’s lawyer will fight us, claim doctor-patient privilege. And I’ll ask the lab to do a handwriting analysis of the printing on the back of the card. Though I can predict what I’ll hear.”

  “Which is?”

  Sergeant Ahearn delivered a surprisingly funny imitation of a whiny bureaucrat: “The sample’s too small to ma
ke a judgment. It’s printed and that’s different from handwriting. The 5722 is a number, which is different from writing. Mr. Gilmore, I’ll ask, but don’t get your hopes up on that.”

  “I appreciate it. All of it,” Griffin said.

  His hope was that the handwriting analysis would establish whether someone at Future-Ride or the man in white had written the Gist Avenue address on the back of the business card. Whoever wrote the address gave Dude the assignment. What that someone was after, Griffin could not guess. Certainly it was more than a key.

  “Mr. Gilmore, that rich clown talking to his lawyer in there right now? We both know he got the car he was driving from the man who broke into the house at 5722 Gist Avenue, owned by Mr. Baeder. The break in that took place during Mr. Baeder’s funeral.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think this lowlife who Dean calls Dude is capable of that kind of planning?”

  “Not even remotely capable,” Griffin answered. “Somebody wrote on the business card the address Dude was supposed to break into – since he’s too stupid to remember the address without help. Timothy Dean has got to be right about that. Dude announces what he’s done loudly enough everyone in the bar can hear. Planning does not seem to be in his skill set.”

  Sergeant Ahearn gave Griffin another look. That look could strip paint from a wall, reveal what the wall looked like beneath.

  “That’s why you’re here isn’t it? You want to know why this braindead lowlife with the tattoos and drugs, this ‘Dude,’ broke into 5722 Gist Avenue. He was after something and you’d like to know what that something is.”

  “Yes,” Griffin answered. “And I’d like to know who sent him to get it.”

  NINETEEN

  June 15

  6:06 pm

  A bit after six that evening, Griffin arrived home, lugging a bagful of five Caribbean dinners. The rain had stopped hours earlier. The oppressive heat slammed back in. Except for a few damp patches beneath the trees, there was no sign it had rained at all.