Chapter 30

 

 

After waiting an hour or so for Bemis to cool down, Derrick cautiously approaches his office, sticks his head around the door jam and asks, “Do I need my vest or is it safe for me to enter as is?”

 

“Don’t be a smartass. What do you want? Can’t you see I’m busy fuming?” He said this last with a hint of a smile, so Derrick chances entering, but is ready to duck if the need arises.

 

“I just want to give you a briefing on the Arlinghaus visit and get any input you might have regarding where I should go from here.

 

“So give.”

 

Derrick unloads and then says, “Bill, if you can think of anything I’ve overlooked I’m all ears. If not, I’m in a holding pattern waiting for something new to happen.”

 

“I know you’re frustrated, Derrick. Join the club, but sometimes the only option we have is to do what you’re doing, wait for something to happen so you can pounce on it. Now get out of here. I still have some more fuming to do.”

 

When he gets back to his desk Julie walks over and says, “I just got off a call with the tails on the Paganelli brothers and they’ve had an interesting morning.”

 

“It couldn’t have been more interesting than ours was.”

 

“They followed the twins to San Francisco where they met with a Benjamin Cordell who’s the owner of a trucking company, Acme Transport. They didn’t conduct their business in the company’s office, but in a park down the street a couple of blocks. They appeared to have a very serious conversation for the better part of an hour. There was something odd about the encounter. The three of them walked together from the trucking company’s office to the park, but they didn’t walk back to the office together. Cordell left first and walked back to his office and then about ten minutes later the twins walked back to their car in the company parking lot and drove back to their offices.

 

“Other than that road trip, the twins haven’t gone anywhere out of the ordinary. According to the tails, these guys lead pretty boring lives.”

 

“Let’s see what we can learn about this Cordell fellow. Run him through our data base and see if he has a record. I hope you have better luck than I did with Nick Petrillo. I came up with zip on him. While you’re doing that, I’ll ask Maury Hoagland to run both these names through his system and network to see if he can come up with anything. I’ve held off asking him to check out Petrillo for me because I’ve been bugging him a lot lately and I don’t want to wear out my welcome. Now that I have two names to work with, I feel I can at least show him I’ve been doing some legwork on my own and am not taking advantage of a good thing by asking him to do my work for me.”

 

While Julie’s running the record check, Derrick calls Maury and enlists his assistance once again and then busies himself with doodling and linking and unlinking the loose paperclips on his desk while racking his brain for something else to do that will lead him to the folks he’s after. His brain gets a rest when his phone rings. It’s one of his informants, Richie Delaney, whose Irish brogue is so thick he sounds like he’s choking on something whenever he speaks. He has some scuttlebutt for him if he’ll stop by O’Shaughnessy’s Dinner Club at around eight tonight. The guy doesn’t want to talk on the phone.

 

“Okay, Richie, I’ll be there, but this better be good and not an underhanded way to get a nice dinner on me.”

 

“Hey, garda, why would you have such unkind thoughts about me? Haven’t I always played fair?”

 

“Okay, I’ll grant you that. Now, are you going to leave me hanging here thinking you just called me a bad name, which I wouldn’t put past you, or are you going to tell me what a garda is?”

 

Laughing he answers with, “It’s what a policeman, constable, flat foot, pig, copper, etc. is called in Ireland. No insult was intended.”

 

“Okay, you got yourself a dinner, but forget about ordering any Bushmills 21 year old single malt.”

 

Laughing he says, “You English have numbed your taste buds with all of that tea you drink and your purses have shrunk to the size of a chicklet from lack of use. Get a life.” and then hangs up.

 

When Julie finishes running a check on Cordell and comes up with a goose egg, she dejectedly passes the bad news on to Derrick who smiles and says, “Cheer up. I think we’re finally going to get on the scoreboard.” He tells her about Richie’s call and asks, “If your free tonight, how about joining me for dinner with Richie. It will be good experience for you in interacting with informants and we might even get Bill to let us expense the evening if we get something helpful to the investigation. Besides, we can look out for one another and give the dogs a rest.”

 

“I’d like that. I’ve got nothing going and I’ve never been to O’ Shaughnessy’s which I hear is quite nice. How do I dress?”

 

“Dressed up in a casual kind of way, I guess.”

 

“Oh, that’s a big help.”

 

“Hey, the few times I’ve been there were on my parents’ anniversary and my sister’s birthday and I didn’t think it would be very suave and debonair to be checking out the other women diners while these lovely ladies were at my table. My dad would have been fine with it, but my mom and sister would have thought it quite rude and rather chauvinistic. Besides, those two are masters at giving tongue lashings.”

 

Chuckling Julie says, “Wow! Both suave and debonair. How gallant of you.”

 

Laughing he comes back with, “I have my moments. I’ll pick you up at your place at seven-thirty. I’ll be driving my Lexus. Richie is paranoid about being seen with anyone that remotely resembles a cop and our unmarked cars are a dead giveaway to anybody with any street smarts.”

 

“Well, from what I hear about O’Shaughnessy’s Dinner Club your Lexus will be in good company.”