The Good Guy

In the kitchen, he found two dirty coffee mugs in the sink. He stood for a while, considering them.

As neat as she was, Linda would not have left this mess unless she had an urgent reason to get out of the house. A companion had joined her for coffee. Perhaps the companion had convinced her that she dared not delay long enough to wash the mugs.

In addition to what the mugs suggested, Krait was interested in the one with the parrot handle. He found it charming. He washed it, dried it, and wrapped it in a dishtowel to take it with him.

A knife was missing from the rack of fine cutlery, and that was interesting, too.

From the refrigerator, he withdrew the remaining half of a cinnamon-dusted homemade egg-custard pie. He cut a generous slice for himself and put it on a plate. He put the plate on the kitchen table, with a fork.

He poured a cup of coffee from the pot that stood on the warming plate. The brew had not yet turned bitter. He laced it with milk.

Sitting at the table, he studied the ’39 Ford while he ate the pie and drank the coffee. The egg custard was excellent. He would have to remember to compliment her on it.

As he finished the coffee, his cell phone vibrated. When he checked, he had received a text message.

Earlier, when Krait had returned to the Lamplighter Tavern, seeking the name of the big man on the end stool, the bartender had pleaded ignorance.

Five minutes after Krait left the joint, however, Liam Rooney had phoned someone. In this text message were the number that had been called and the name of the person to whom that telephone was registered—TIMOTHY CARRIER.

On screen appeared an address for Carrier, too, although Krait doubted that it would be of immediate use to him. If Carrier was the barfly and if he had hurried to Laguna Beach to warn the woman, he would not be witless enough to return home.

In addition to a name and address, Krait had wanted to know the occupation of this guy. Carrier was a licensed masonry contractor.

Krait stored the data, and the phone vibrated again. A photo of the mason appeared with megapixel clarity, and he was without doubt the man in the tavern.

In the wet of business, Krait worked alone, but he had awesome data and technical support.

He pocketed the phone without saving the photo. He might need to know more about Carrier, but not yet.

A final cup of coffee remained in the pot, and he sweetened the brew with a generous slug of milk. He drank it at the table.

In spite of the boldness with which the kitchen and garage had been combined, the space was cozy.

He liked the entire bungalow, the clean simplicity of it. Anyone could live here, and you wouldn’t know who he really was.

Sooner or later, it would come on the market. Acquiring the property of a person he had murdered would be too risky, but the thought pleased him.

Krait washed his cup, his plate, his fork, the coffeepot, and the FDR mug that had been used by either Linda or her guest. He dried them and put them away. He rinsed the stainless-steel sink, then wiped it dry with paper towels.

Just before he left, he went to the Ford, opened the driver’s door, stepped back just far enough to avoid being splashed, unzipped his pants and urinated in the vehicle. This didn’t please him, but it was necessary.

Eight

Pete Santo lived in a modest stucco house with a shy dog named Zoey and a dead fish named Lucille.

Handsomely stuffed and mounted, Lucille, a marlin, hung above the desk in the study.

Pete wasn’t a fisherman. The marlin had come with the house when he bought it.

He had named it after his ex-wife, who had divorced him when, after two years of marriage, she realized that she couldn’t change him. She wanted him to leave the police department, to become a real-estate agent, to dress with more style, and to have his scar fixed.

The marriage collapsed when she bought him a pair of tasseled loafers. He wouldn’t wear them. She wouldn’t return them to the store. He wouldn’t allow them in his closet. She tried to put one of them down the garbage disposal. The Roto-Rooter bill was huge.

Now, as sharp-toothed Lucille peered down at him with one glaring gimlet eye, Pete Santo stood at his desk, watching as the Department of Motor Vehicles home page appeared on the computer screen. “If you can’t tell me what it’s about, who could you tell?”

Tim said, “Nobody. Not yet. Maybe in a day, two days, when things … clarify.”

“What things?”

“The unclarified things.”

“Oh. That’s clear now. When the unclarified things clarify, then you can tell me.”

“Maybe. Look, I know this might get your ass in a sling.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters,” Tim said.

“Don’t insult me. It doesn’t matter.” Pete sat at the computer. “If they bust me out of the department, I’ll be a real-estate agent.”

He entered his name, badge number, and access code, whereupon the Department of Motor Vehicles records surrendered to him as a nubile maiden to a lover.

Bashful Zoey, a black Lab, watched from behind an armchair, while Linda dropped to one knee and, with cooing sounds and declarations of adoration, tried to coax the dog into the open.

Pete typed the license number that Tim had given him, and the DMV database revealed that the plates had been issued for a white Chevrolet registered not to any law-enforcement agency but to one Richard Lee Kravet.

“You know him?” Pete asked.

Tim shook his head. “Never heard of him. I thought the car would turn out to be a plainwrap department sedan.”

Surprised, Pete said, “This guy you want to know about—he’s a cop? I’m scoping out a cop for you?”

“If he’s a cop, he’s a bad cop.”

“Look at me here, what I’m doing for you, using police power for a private inquiry. I’m a bad cop.”

“This guy, if he’s a cop, he’s seriously bad. At worst, Petey, by comparison, you’re a naughty cop.”

“Richard Lee Kravet. Don’t know him. If he has a shield, I don’t think it’s one of ours.”

Pete worked for the Newport Beach Police Department, but he lived in an unincorporated part of the county, nearer to Irvine than to Newport Beach, because even pre-divorce, he couldn’t afford a house in the city that he served.

“Can you get me this guy’s driver’s license?” Tim asked.

“Yeah, why not, but when I’m a real-estate agent, I’m going to wear whatever shoes I want.”

On her belly, Zoey had crawled halfway around the armchair. Her tail thumped the floor in response to Linda’s coaxing.

The one small lamp left most of the room dusted with shadows, and the alchemic light from the monitor gave Pete a tin man’s face, his smooth scar shining like a bad weld.

He was handsome enough that a half-inch-wide slash of pale tissue, curving from ear to chin, did not make him ugly. Plastic surgery would reduce or even eliminate his disfigurement, but he chose not to submit to the healing scalpel.

A scar is not always a flaw. Sometimes a scar may be redemption inscribed in the flesh, a memorial to something endured, to something lost.

The driver’s license appeared on the screen. The photo was of the killer with the Mona Lisa smile.

When the printer produced a copy, Pete handed it to Tim.

According to the license, Kravet was thirty-six years old. His street address was in Anaheim.

Having rolled onto her back and put all four paws in the air, Zoey purred like a cat as she received a gentle tummy rub.

Tim still had no evidence of a murder-for-hire plot. Richard Kravet would deny every detail of their meeting in the tavern.

“Now what?” Pete asked.

As she charmed the dog, Linda looked up at Tim. Her green eyes, though remaining wells of mystery, floated to him the clear desire to keep the nature of their dilemma strictly between them, at least for the time being.

He had known Pete for more than eleven years, this woman for less than two hours, yet he chose the discretion for which she wordlessly pleaded.

“Thanks, Pete. You didn’t need to climb out on this limb.”

“That’s where I’m most comfortable.”

This was true. Pete Santo had always been a risk-taker, though never reckless.

As Linda rose from the dog, Pete said to her, “You and Tim known each other long?”

“Not long,” she said.

“How’d you meet?”

“Over coffee.”

“Like at Starbucks?”

“No, not there,” she said.

“Paquette. That’s an unusual name.”

“Not in my family.”

“It’s lovely. P-a-c-k-e-t-t-e?”

She didn’t confirm the spelling.

“So you’re the strong silent type.”

She smiled. “And you’re always a detective.”

Shy Zoey stayed close to Linda all the way to the front door.

From various points in the night yard, a hidden choir of toads harmonized.

Linda rubbed the dog gently behind the ears, kissed it on the head, and walked across the lawn to the Explorer in the driveway.

“She doesn’t like me,” Pete said.

“She likes you. She just doesn’t like cops.”

“If you marry her, do I have to change jobs?”

“I’m not going to marry her.”

“I think she’s the kind, you don’t get a thing without a ring.”

“I don’t want a thing. There’s nothing between us.”

“There will be,” Pete predicted. “She’s got something.”

“Something what?”

“I don’t know. But it sure is something.”

Tim watched Linda get into the Explorer. As she pulled the door shut behind her, he said, “She makes good coffee.”

“I’ll bet she does.”

Although the secreted toads had continued singing when Linda had walked among them, they fell silent when Tim set foot on the grass.

“Class,” Pete said. “That’s part of the something.” And when Tim had taken two further steps, Pete added, “Sangfroid.”

Tim stopped, looked back at the detective. “Sang what?”

“Sangfroid. It’s French. Self-possession, poise, steadiness.”

“Since when do you know French?”

“This college professor, taught French literature, killed a girl with a chisel. Dismembered her with a stone-cutter.”

“Stone-cutter?”

“He was also a sculptor. He almost got away with it ’cause he had such sangfroid. But I nailed him.”

“I’m pretty sure Linda hasn’t dismembered anyone.”

“I’m just saying she’s self-possessed. But if she ever wants to dismember me, I’m okay with that.”

“Compadre, you disappoint me.”

Pete grinned. “I knew there was something between you.”

“There’s nothing,” Tim assured him, and went to the Explorer in a silence of toads.

Nine

As Tim reversed out of the driveway, Linda said, “He seems all right for a cop. He has a sweet pooch.”

“He’s also got a dead fish named for his ex-wife.”

“Well, maybe she was a cold fish.”

“He says he won’t mind if you want to dismember him.”

“What does that mean?”

Shifting into drive, Tim said, “It’s sand-dog humor.”

“Sand dog?”

Surprised that he had opened this door, he at once closed it. “Never mind.”

“What’s a sand dog?”

His cell phone rang, sparing him the need to respond to her. Thinking this might be Rooney with some additional news, Tim had it on the third ring. The screen didn’t reveal the caller’s ID.

“Hello?”

“Tim?”

“Yeah?”

“Is she there with you?”

Tim said nothing.

“Tell her she makes an excellent egg-custard pie.”

Conjured by the voice, into memory rose those impossibly dilated eyes, greedy for light.

“Her coffee isn’t bad, either,” said Richard Lee Kravet. “And I liked the mug with the parrot handle so much that I took it with me.”

This residential neighborhood had little traffic; at the moment, none. Tim came to a stop in the middle of the street, half a block from Pete Santo’s house.

The killer had gotten Tim’s name from someone other than Rooney. How he had obtained the unlisted cell-phone number was a mystery.

Although she couldn’t hear the killer, Linda clearly knew who had called.

“I’m back on track, Tim, no thanks to you. I’ve been given another picture of her, to replace the one you kept.”

Linda picked up the printout of Kravet’s driver’s license and held it to the window, studying his face in the glow of a nearby streetlamp.

“Before the coup de grâce,” said Kravet, “I’m supposed to rape her. She looks sweet. Is that why you sent me away with half my money? Did you see this skank’s picture, want to rape her yourself?”

“This is over,” Tim said. “You can’t put it together again.”

“What—you’ll never go home, she’ll never go home, you’ll both run forever?”

“We’re going to the police.”

“I have no problem with that, Tim. You should go to the police at once. It’s the responsible thing to do.”

Tim considered saying I know you’re a cop, I saw you drive away from the tavern, now I know your name, but revealing this knowledge to Kravet would diminish its value.

“Why are you doing this, Tim? What is she to you?”

“I admire her sangfroid.”

“Don’t be silly now.”

“It’s a French word.”

“Spend the night with her if you want. Do her a couple of times. Enjoy yourself. Then drop her off at her place in the morning. I’ll take it from there, and I’ll forget you ever interfered.”

“I’ll consider your suggestion.”

“You better do more than that, Tim. You better make a deal with me, and convince me you mean it. Because I’m still coming, you know.”

“Have fun combing through the haystack.”

“The haystack isn’t as large as you think, Tim. And you’re a lot bigger than a needle. I’ll find you soon. Sooner than you can imagine—and then no deal is possible.”

Kravet terminated the call.

At once, Tim pressed *69, but Kravet’s cell was shielded against a call-back.

Ahead, a car ran the stop sign, roared through the intersection. As it bounced through a drainage swale, its headlights swept up across the Explorer’s windshield, then down.

Tim shifted his foot from brake to accelerator, and swung away from the center line, expecting the oncoming vehicle to angle into his lane and attempt to block him.

The car shot past, taillights dwindling in the rearview mirror.

Having swerved into the parking lane, Tim braked hard to a halt just short of the intersection.

“What was that about?” she asked.

“I thought maybe it was him.”

“That car? How could it be him?”

“I don’t know. It couldn’t be, I guess.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Sure.” A sudden breeze shook the ficus tree that overhung the streetlamp, and leaf shadows swarmed like black butterflies across the windshield. “If they sell sangfroid at 7-Eleven, I should stop and buy a six-pack.”

Ten

The residence in Anaheim proved to be a single-story structure dating to the 1950s. Pierced and scalloped eave boards, rococo carved shutters, and patterned Alpine door surrounds failed to convince that this California ranch house belonged in Switzerland, or anywhere.

Penetrating the branches of two huge stone pines, moonlight painted scattered patches of faux ice on the age-silvered cedar-shingle roof, but not a single lamp brightened any window.

Flanking Kravet’s house were a Spanish casita and a New England cottage. Lights were on in the cottage, but the casita appeared to be uninhabited, the windows dark, the yard in need of mowing.

Tim twice drove past the Kravet house, then parked around the corner, on a side street.

He compared his wristwatch to the SUV’s clock. Both read 9:32.

“I’ll need maybe fifteen minutes,” he said.

“What if he’s in there?”

“Just sitting in the dark? No. If he’s anywhere, he’s staking out my place—or searching it.”

“He might come back. You shouldn’t go in without a gun.”

“I don’t have a gun.”

From her open purse, she withdrew a pistol. “I’ll go with you.”

“Where’d you get that?”

“From my nightstand drawer. It’s a Kahr K9 semi-auto.”

The thing was coming, all right, the thing that was always coming for him, that could never be escaped.

At the tavern, he had been in a place that had always been right for him, where he was just another guy on a bar stool, where from the perspective of the front door, he was the smallest man in the room. But this evening it had been the right place at the wrong time.

He had found a way of living that was like train wheels on a track, turning on a known path, toward a predictable future. The thing pursuing him, however, was not only his past but also his fate, and the rails that led away from it also led inexorably to it.

“I don’t want to kill him,” Tim said.

“Me neither. The gun is just insurance. We’ve got to find something in his place the cops can hang him with.”

Leaning closer to see the weapon, he said, “I’m not familiar with that gun.” She didn’t wear perfume, but she had a faint scent he liked. The scent of clean hair, well-scrubbed skin.

She said, “Eight-shot 9-millimeter. Smooth action.”

“You’ve used it.”

“On targets. A shooting range.”

“There’s nobody you fear, yet you keep a pistol by your bed.”

“I said nobody I know would want me dead,” she corrected. “But I don’t know everybody.”

“You have a concealed-carry permit?”

“No. Do you have a permit to break into his house?”

“I don’t think you should go in there with me.”

“I’m not sitting here alone, with or without the gun.”

He sighed. “You don’t exactly have attitude….”

“What do I have, exactly?”

“Something,” he said, and got out of the Explorer.

He opened the tailgate and retrieved a long-handled flashlight from the shallow well in which the car jack was stored.

Together they walked to Kravet’s house. The neighborhood was quiet. A dog barked, but in the distance.

As iridescent as a snake’s skin, thin ravels of silvery clouds peeled off the face of a molting moon.

A wall defined the property line between the dark casita and the Alpine house. A gate opened onto a passageway alongside the garage.

Suddenly soughing through the stone pines, the inconstant breeze shook dry needles down onto the concrete path.

At the side door to the garage, Tim switched on the flashlight just long enough to determine that there was no deadbolt.

Linda held the extinguished flashlight while he slipped a credit card between the door and frame. He quickly popped the simple latch.

In the two-car garage, with the door closed behind them, Linda switched on the flashlight again. No vehicles were present.

“Masonry’s not your only skill,” she whispered.

“Everybody knows how to do that door thing.”

“I don’t.”

Most likely the front and back entrances featured deadbolts, but the door between the garage and the house had only a cheap lockset. Many people think the appearance of having defenses is good enough.

“What kind of prison time do you get for burglary?” she asked.

“This is housebreaking, not burglary. Maybe ten years?”

The lock disengaged, and she said, “Let’s be quick.”

“First, let’s be sure there’s not a pit bull.”

Taking the flashlight from her, he eased the door open. He played the beam through the narrow gap, but saw no animal eyeshine.

The kitchen was not what he expected. The flashlight found chintz curtains. A canister set painted like teddy bears. The wall clock, in the form of a cat, featured a swinging tail for a pendulum.

In the dining room, the linen tablecloth was trimmed with lace. A bowl of ceramic fruit stood in the center of the table.

Colorful afghans protected the living-room sofa. A pair of well-used recliners faced a big-screen TV. The art was reproductions of paintings of big-eyed children popular about the year Tim was born.

Turning to follow the sweep and probe of the light, Linda said, “Would a hit man live at home with his mom and dad?”

The larger bedroom offered a rose-patterned comforter, silk flowers, and a vanity with mother-of-pearl combs and brushes. In the closet were men’s and women’s clothes.

The second bedroom served as a combination sewing room and home office. In a desk drawer, Tim found a checkbook and several bills—telephone, electrical, TV cable—awaiting payment.

Linda whispered, “Did you hear something?”

He switched off the light. They stood in darkness, listening.

The house wore silence like a coat of armor, with an occasional click or creak of gauntlet and gusset. None of the small noises seemed to be more than the settling pains of an aging structure.

When Tim had convinced himself that nothing in the silence was listening to him, he switched on the flashlight.

In the darkness, Linda had drawn the pistol from her purse.

Examining the checkbook, Tim found that the account was in the name of Doris and Leonard Halberstock. The bills awaiting payment were for the Halberstocks, as well.

“He doesn’t live here,” Tim said.

“Maybe he used to.”

“More likely, he’s never seen this place.”

“So what’re we doing here?”

“Housebreaking.”

Eleven

Linda drove while Tim sat with her open purse on his lap, the gun in the purse. He was on the phone with Pete Santo.

Having gone back into the DMV database as they spoke, Pete said, “Actually, the car that’s registered to Kravet isn’t at the Anaheim address. In that case, it’s Santa Ana.”

Tim repeated the address aloud as he wrote it on the printout of Kravet’s driver’s license. “It’s no more real than the other one.”

“You ready to tell me what this is about?” Pete asked.

“It’s not about anything that happened in your jurisdiction.”

“I think of myself as a detective to the world.”

“Nobody’s been killed,” Tim said, and mentally added yet.

“Remember, I’m in the robbery-homicide division.”

“The only thing that’s been stolen is a coffee mug with a ceramic parrot for a handle.”

Scowling, Linda declared, “I loved that mug.”

“What’d she say?” Pete asked.

“She says she loved that mug.”

Pete said, “You want me to believe this is all about a stolen coffee mug?”

“And an egg-custard pie.”

“There was only half a pie left,” she said.

On the phone, Pete said, “What’d she say?”

“She says it was only half a pie.”

“But it’s still not right,” she said.

“She says,” Tim reported, “even half a pie, it’s not right.”

“It’s not just the cost of the ingredients,” she said.

“It’s not the cost of the ingredients,” Tim repeated to Pete.

“He’s stolen my labor, too, and my sense of security.”

“He’s stolen her labor, too, and her sense of security.”

“So you want me to believe,” Pete said, “this is about nothing more than a stolen coffee mug and half an egg-custard pie?”

“No. It’s about something else entirely. The mug and the pie are just associated crimes.”

“What’s the something else entirely?”

“I’m not at liberty to say. Listen, is there any way to find out if Kravet has another driver’s license under a different name?”

“What name?”

“I don’t know. But if the address in Anaheim was bogus, then maybe the name is, too. Does the DMV have any facial-recognition software that could search its files for a repeat of Kravet’s image?”

“This is California, dude. The DMV can’t keep its public restrooms clean.”

“Sometimes,” Tim said, “I wonder if The Incredible Hulk had been a bigger hit on TV, ran a few more years—maybe Lou Ferrigno would be governor. Wouldn’t that be nice?”