A Tax in Blood Read online

  In the kitchen were two small children, a boy and a girl. They looked about eight and six. Behind them was the brown expanse of their babysitter, an older woman with the broad facial planes of an Indian. Ms. Vasquez returned with a short coat, beret and gloves. She knelt before the children and spoke to them in Spanish. A kiss and hug for each child, some last-minute instructions for the sitter and we walked out.

  “Excuse me, did you check your husband’s car?”

  “Yes. I didn’t find anything.”

  “Mind if I look at it? There are some other places I thought to check.” Not that I don’t trust you.

  “Of course. That’s it over there.” She pointed to a Toyota sedan. I took the keys she handed to me and checked under the hood, the bottom of the chassis and all the places I’d mentioned to her. They were clean. I gave her back the keys.

  I opened my car door for her and admired her legs as she slid into place. Driving to the bank she tapped out a Winston and lit it with a slim gold lighter. Blowing the smoke out her partly opened window, she said, “You don’t like me much, do you?”

  “That’s not what you hired me for.”

  Another long pull. “No, not really, I guess. I just want you to understand that I’m not just out for the money. Of course I’m sorry he’s dead. But I didn’t love the man at the end and I couldn’t live with him any longer. The gonorrhea was the last straw.”

  “Where were you when your husband died?” In your face as we used to say on the playgrounds of Riggs Park.

  “What?” She recoiled.

  “Look, Ms. Vasquez, you’ve raised the possibility of a robbery and maybe even murder. As far as I can see you’ve got a two-hundred-thousand-dollar profit margin on his death and no special fondness to see him avoid that end. As a suspect you glow in the dark. Let’s skip over motive and go to opportunity. You are my client. Tell me you were delivering a televised press conference at the time of death. I’ll sleep easier.”

  Her lips were white from pressure and her eyes a shade blacker. “Okay. Fine. I left Mr. Grossbart’s office about three o’clock. He said I shouldn’t let Malcom have the children. So I drove straight home and picked the kids up from school. You can check on that. I had to sign in at the school office. They played next door until about five-thirty. I finished cleaning up and cooked dinner. We ate about six. I gave them baths. Duncan had some homework. I read to the children and put them to bed at eight-thirty.” She stared at me. “Do you want me to go on?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. I made myself a drink and called my sister Christina—no, it was a local call, and told her what was going on. I watched a little television, tried to read, had another drink and fell asleep about ten-thirty. I woke up about three-thirty, I just couldn’t sleep. So I went in and took a shower, and cried some. The kids couldn’t hear me over the water. I got dressed and sat waiting for the paper to come. I had coffee and read the paper. At seven-thirty the kids were up. I made them a nice breakfast—eggs, sausage, toast. They sat down to cartoons around nine. I went back to bed. I guess I was depressed by what Malcolm had said he’d do. Around lunch the police at the door woke me up. That’s when I found out about Malcolm. Believe me, everything about that day is engraved on my mind.”

  Perhaps, I thought, but my mother taught me not to believe anything I heard and only half of what I saw, and she was hell on my alibis.

  “Did the paperboy see you?”

  “No. I waited until he was out of sight to step out and pick up the paper.”

  Not bad for an impromptu alibi. I’d test it later on.

  “I know it’s not great, but I wasn’t planning to have to need an alibi.”

  I glanced over at her. She still had her arms across her lap and the cigarette dangled sullenly from her red lips. “Nate said your husband was charging that you were an unfit mother. What did he mean by that?”

  “I have no idea. The man was insane. He was raving. I was—what am I saying—I am an excellent mother. After all, that’s what he wanted. A mother for his children, a cook and maid and cheering section, all rolled into one.”

  “What about you? What did you want?”

  “I wanted a way out. I wanted to leave Argentina. I wanted to be free, to be safe. No more disappeared ones. A handsome military attaché was as good a way out as any. I was not unattractive and I made myself available. It was a good deal all around.”

  “What happened?”

  “What indeed. It was not that cold-blooded a thing at the beginning. We were in love or at least mutually inflamed. Malcolm was a dashing figure. We married and I left Argentina. Malcolm was rotated back to the state department here. For a while I guess things were okay. I loved being in this country. It was all so new. I loved Malcolm. I was grateful. I got pregnant. I took care of the children. But slowly I started to realize Malcolm wasn’t really here very much anymore. He was quite ambitious, you know, and he was always working, always hustling. I was supposed to raise perfect children, throw perfect parties, look perfect on his arm at receptions and never complain. After all, he had liberated me. It wasn’t enough after a while. He didn’t get promoted fast enough and then not at all. He was frustrated. Anything that I did or the children did that he didn’t like, he blew up, screamed and yelled. Duncan began to wet his pants again. Heather started sucking her thumb. I began to hate him. It just went downhill. He drank more and more. We stopped sleeping together. I wanted to get into therapy, but he said never, it would mess up his security clearance. That told me where I stood.”

  She put her hand to her forehead and rested her elbow on the window edge. “I must have loved him somewhere, sometime, because it hurt so bad being shut out of his life. I really did want all of him, the good and the bad, like you vow. But I just couldn’t go on getting so little. His last little present was the end. I told him to leave. He refused. I called some friends who were divorced. I admit I wanted to hurt Malcolm every way I could. Nathan Grossbart came well recommended. He told me not to move out, that it would look like desertion. He said I should try to force Malcolm to leave. He wouldn’t. He said he’d get into therapy. I told him it was too late. I don’t think he wanted to change anything but my mind. A messy divorce can’t be good for your security clearance, can it?”

  “In Nate’s office you mentioned debts.”

  “Oh yes. Malcolm had complete control of our money. I mean he was the one who earned it, right? All I got was money to run the house. The only way I could get some decent clothes was to complain that I wouldn’t look nice at some embassy party. He kept telling me he was putting money away in savings for the children, for us to retire on. Ha! He spent every penny he made and had huge credit card bills. He charged all kinds of things. He was entertaining god knows who on his own, trying to move up the ladder. We had bills due to all kinds of clubs he’d joined. I looked at the bills last night. I owe almost fifty thousand dollars. And we have almost nothing in the bank—no savings, no investments. He even took out the equity in the house and spent that. So there I am with the kids, what, a secretary maybe, in an apartment and owing that money for Malcolm and whatever he was pursuing. No, there’s two-hundred-thousand dollars due me, thank you. I don’t intend to let it pass me by without a fight.” She exhaled slowly and turned to face me. “And I’ve hired you to fight for me.”

  “That you have.”

  “How well do you fight for people you don’t like?” She leaned back against the door frame. I could imagine Malcolm Donnelly on a Buenos Aires balcony with her. Looking into those dreamy eyes, tasting that full-lipped mouth and being in deep water real fast. A riptide in the blood.

  “Ms. Vasquez, I don’t like your attorney and some of that spilled over to you. I figured you for one of those women that hires Nate to take no prisoners. Now I’m not so sure. You made your husband sound like a real viper but you also threw some mud at yourself. I like that. You’ll get my best effort, just like any other client, because I do a job right or I don’t do it at all.�
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  The bank was coming up on our left. I parked the car and followed her into the bank. I’d heard it said that banks had drive-in windows installed so that cars could get to meet their owners. The manager, an anorectic plank of a woman as hard and severe as a two-by-four, checked Marta’s signature card and other identification. After she signed some papers the manager slid her a copy of her husband’s last act of betrayal. She looked at it for a moment and slid it over to me. Malcolm Donnelly had opened an account in his name only. Then he wrote a check for thirteen hundred dollars from their joint account and deposited eight hundred into his new one. The remaining five hundred he took with him.

  “Do you know who handled this transaction?” I asked.

  “I did,” the manager said. She folded her hands in front of her, banished her smile and became a fortress of rectitude.

  “Did he take the money in cash or did he get a bank check?”

  “He took it in cash.”

  “Do you remember how?”

  “Five hundreds as I recall.” Big bills. Hard to break. Don’t spend it all in one place, my mother used to say.

  “Do you remember when he came in to do this?”

  “It was right at two. He was the last person in the bank. I had to unlock the doors to let him out. He left at about two-fifteen.”

  “Do you remember anything unusual about him?”

  “He was in quite a hurry. He ran to get inside before we locked up. He looked very impatient while I checked the account balance since he was closing it out. He didn’t even bother to order checks. He just got up when I finished counting out his money and went to the doors. I had to hurry to open them for him. He didn’t take his deposit slip or depositor’s contract. We would have mailed the copies to him, of course.”

  “May I see the contract, please?” I asked.

  She turned her gaze to Marta who said, “It’s all right.” The manager swiveled behind her desk, pulled open a drawer, found it and slapped it on the desk. I looked at it and asked if we could keep the depositor’s copy. She shrugged yes, and I peeled it free. After refiling the document she looked up and said, “Is there anything else?”

  “No, thank you. You’ve been quite helpful.”

  I steered Marta Vasquez to the door and then into the car. As I turned the engine over I handed her the contract. “By the way, I believe you. Your husband didn’t intend to die that afternoon.”

  She let out a sigh and began to rummage in her purse for another cigarette. “What made you decide to believe me?”

  “That.” I flicked the corner of the contract. “Read it.”

  Her eyes scanned the page. She flipped it over and read the back. “But there’s nothing there.”

  “Exactly. It’s what isn’t there that interests me. There’s no beneficiary named in the death clause. Not you, not the kids whom he swore he’d never let you keep, not a secret girlfriend, nobody. Malcolm Donnelly was in a hurry but not to die.”

  “What do we do next?” She was smiling at me. It was a magnetic smile, generating quite a pull. I thanked my stars she was a client and I had Samantha.

  “What I do next is drive from here to Nate’s office and time it, then time it from Nate’s office to the hotel. I want to know if he had time to lose or give away that five hundred before he got to the hotel. I’ll drop you back at your place first though.”

  “Fine.”

  We drove in silence back to the house. When she let herself out, she turned back and looked at me. “You know I loved him once, but it died somewhere along the way. I wanted out but I didn’t want him dead. More than that, my kids didn’t need him dead. Money or not, I want to find out how and why he died.”

  She turned to the house and walked away. A lady in black, in mourning for her own dead dreams. She’d been going through the mansion of her love, turning off a light in each room for each hurt she’d endured. One day she’d turned off the last light in the last room and everything was dark.

  Chapter 10

  After I dropped Marta off at her house, I drove back to the bank and timed the drive from there to Nate Grossbart’s office. It was fifteen minutes from the bank lot to Nate’s front door. When I walked in his secretary was pouring over some chicken scratchings she had to decipher and type. She looked up when she heard the door close.

  “Hello, Mr. Haggerty. Can I help you?”

  “Last Friday, when Mr. Grossbart had his meeting with Marta Vasquez, what time did her husband come in here?”

  “The meeting began at 2:30, I think.” She flipped back to that date on Nate’s daily log to check her memory. “Yes, here it is: 2:30—Vasquez. Mr. Donnelly was here right after they started. He stormed past me, pushed open the office door and started yelling. I went to the door to see what Mr. Grossbart wanted me to do. He waved me back to my desk. He’d hit the intercom button on his phone, so I could take down everything he said. Mr. Donnelly was only here a couple of minutes, then he came back out. He slammed the doors hard enough to rattle the walls.”

  “Could I see your notes? I’m trying to pin down exactly what Mr. Donnelly’s frame of mind was on that day.”

  “I guess so—you are working for Mr. Grossbart.”

  Don’t remind me. She went to a records room down the hall and returned with the file. She slipped out a copy of the notes she’d made and handed them to me. They matched Nate’s version of what Donnelly had said. Now I half believed him. I handed them back to her and said, “Thanks. I’ll be back a little after five to pick up my contract.”

  It was eighteen minutes to the hotel. The only way Malcolm Donnelly could have disposed of that five hundred bucks before he checked in was to throw it out his car window or eat it. Not very likely. I got a parking chit just like Donnelly’s and walked up to the lobby and asked to see Donnelly’s room. After a short phone conference with the chief of security the deskman gave me the key. He also told me that the security chief wanted to see me in the lounge after I’d left the room.

  I queasily took the glass-walled elevator up to the sixth floor, found the room and let myself in. Like Sproul had said, there were no signs of forced entry. The chair Donnelly was found in was facing me. I walked into the bathroom, stared out the window, walked back out and closed the door behind me. Finally, I slumped down in the chair Malcolm Donnelly died in and looked at his last sights. A double bed covered with a spread the color of beef stew. A copy of the D.C. innkeepers law and a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the back of the door. A low dresser and my own face above it in the mirror. The closed bathroom door was to my right.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. Well, Malcolm, here’s where it all came to a halt. What happened? You checked in here with a pint of gin, five hundred dollars in your wallet, a little bit of poison in your blood and a bellyful of hate. What happened? You didn’t just sit here for a few hours doing nothing, then out of the blue write a suicide note, tuck it under the phone and hope you had enough poison in your system to die from. Malcolm, where’d the drugs come from? Where’d the note come from? Where’d the five hundred bucks go? I sat there wistfully looking into the mirror, waiting for my face to rearrange itself into Malcolm Donnelly’s. Then he’d answer all my questions and tell me to go home to a woman who still had a light on for me.

  I hoisted myself out of the chair and locked the door behind me. The chief of security was waiting for me in the lounge. He got up and held out his hand as I approached. I shook it. “Leo Haggerty,” I said.

  “Brian Rourke.” Trippingly off the tongue. Twenty years a Boston cop I guessed. Here to get away from the cold. I had a feeling he’d been a good one. That pale, lumpy potato of a face would be real easy to underestimate. The bad haircut and jug ears didn’t help any.

  “I’m here investigating the death of Malcolm Donnelly.”

  “Who for?”

  “The widow.”

  “You got some ID?”

  I held out my license.

  “So?” he said.

  “So, could y
ou tell me how the body was discovered?”

  “That’s all in the police report.”

  “Should have been. I’d like to hear it from you.”

  “Two of our girls, Roxanna and Camilla, opened the room because it was after checkout and Donnelly hadn’t requested another day. They were going to get it ready for someone else. When they opened up the door and saw him sitting there dead as a doornail, they started screaming and ran down the hall and called me. I went up, took one look, closed the room up and called the police. That detective Sproul was the first one in the room.”

  “You’re sure of that? The girls didn’t go in the room?”

  “Sure I’m sure. They went batshit, jabbering about zombies. Them Haitians are good workers but what a superstitious lot. Voodoo, hoodoo. The whole time we were standing there waiting for the officers to arrive, they were wailing and crying and crossing themselves. Something about the unblessed dead and it being bad luck to see one. Christ! They never did calm down. I had to send them home. They couldn’t even look at the guy, much less go into the room.”

  “Did Donnelly have any guests?”

  “No one who came to the desk asking for him.”

  “How many girls work this hotel?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Donnelly had five hundred dollars on him when he died. Sounds like he wanted to party.”

  “The hell you say. Sproul counted the money right there in front of me and his partner. The guy had thirty bucks on him.”

  “Okay. Maybe he had a visitor then. So how many girls work this place?” I scratched the maids and Sproul from my list of possible thieves.

  Rourke shrugged. “Hard to say. Vice sends us mugshots. I see a familiar face, I boot her. Anyone obvious we move on. Unattended ladies in the bar have a thirty-minute time limit. Then I go introduce myself. If a girl hasn’t made the books yet and she’s tasteful she could work here six days a week and we’d never know it.”

  “Anybody working permanent nights on this beat?”