When I arrived back at my place after seeing Jeffcoat, I found a note from Carter under the door, one of those little old school forms that come in a tablet. He’d checked the “stopped by” box and the one that said “please call back.” On principle I didn’t return messages from the police. No cop ever stopped by my house with good news.
Carter had also left two messages on my machine. On the second one he said if I didn’t phone him by the end of the day, he’d have me “down at the station for questioning.” I drank a shot of Wild Turkey. I’d think about calling him the next morning. I had to get my papers in order and rush off to visit Newman. First things first.
As it turned out, the muscle-bound Newman operated on a different level from Jeffcoat. He ran a trucking company out of the converted garage of his five-bedroom house in North Berkeley. A gold Jaguar sat in the driveway, late seventies, with tinted windows in mint condition. Almost as cherry as my Volvo.
He’d tiled the garage floor and added a couple of windows and a skylight but it was no Oaks Building. The man himself projected a youthful, sporty image—state of the art hi-top basketball shoes and Levi 501s. His shaved head held a high gloss. Looked like he touched up that thin moustache to hide the gray.
He’d loaded his office with Oakland Raider souvenirs and memorabilia, including a four-by-six-foot silver and black “Raider Nation” flag on one wall. The Raiders were a little rough around the edges for Jeffcoat. Probably a 49er fan if he followed football at all. Golf was more his speed, Freddy Couples or Bernhard Langer.
A picture on the wall behind Newman’s desk showed him smiling in front of a fleet of thirty cabs with the logo “serving all of the West Coast” written on the doors. Not that catchy but those trucks were more than enough capital to finance a nice little blackmail payment to a desperate African girl.
Before I got the papers out of my briefcase he insisted I have a look at what he called his “gadgets,” that it was part of the tour of his headquarters.
“I’m sort of an amateur spy,” he boasted. He had some device rigged up to a computer that recorded all the police calls and transferred them to a map on the screen.
“You see,” he said pointing to a moving white dot on the map, “that car’s heading for E. Seventy-Eighth, probably a drug bust.” He bought most of his stuff online from a site called AmateurSpy.com. He had some little gizmo hanging off his left ear, said he could listen in on “whatever” I didn’t ask him what that “whatever” of his included but I had some not-so-nice ideas. We went back and sat down and I read him the will.
Once I finished the document, his chatty show-and-tell mood evaporated.
“I can’t quite believe this,” he told me. “She’s gone and then she left me this money. I really don’t understand.”
He asked me to read the will a second time and to “go slow.” When I reached the part about the lottery ticket, he shook his head, then went silent. I waited. I’d read a lot of interrogation manuals, always trying to stay one step ahead. Most of them advised that when a suspect goes quiet, you either pounce or wait them out. Never help them fill in the blanks.
I got pretty tired of watching Newman stare at that Raider flag while he tried to sort all this out. He tapped his finger gently against his upper lip and looked more and more uncomfortable.
He attempted a power pose—adjusting himself in the chair so he was leaning over the desk, looking me right in the eye.
“Let me be honest with you, Mr. Winter,” he said in a subdued but deadly serious voice. “This situation presents me with a helluva problem. A helluva problem.”
He rubbed his hands along his forehead as if he was slicking down some hair.
“Only a fool can refuse a million dollars, and I’m not a fool. Not when it comes to money. Prudence and I got together a few times, Mr. Winter. I’m not proud of it. The only time I’ve ever messed around on my wife.”
He perched his hands on top of his head and looked up through the skylight. I thought he might cry. Life’s so goddamned hard for the rich in America.
“I shouldn’t have, but the flesh is weak,” he said. “That girl was so fine. How do I explain $1.5 million to my wife? My kids? I’m sorry the girl died. Very sorry. What do I do next?”
He was Raider Nation. I should have had more sympathy, but my heartstrings had gone limp.
“I can’t advise you how to handle this, Mr. Newman. I’m only here to inform and facilitate the execution of the will. If you want to donate the money to charity anonymously, you can do so. I could probably find someone to assist you in this regard.”
The sweat made the shine on his head even brighter. He asked me to hand him the will so he could read it to himself, as if he could find a way out of his mess between the lines.
“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t do that,” I told him. “You will receive a copy when the formal reading takes place. I’m only here because of the unusual circumstances in this case. It’s preventative medicine. Sometimes inheritances can spark ugly events among families and friends.”
“I need some time to think,” he said.
“Mr. Newman, did the deceased ever speak to you about her family? We’ve been unable to locate them.”
“She told me the family had a lot of financial problems, that she tried to help them out as best she could.”
“Did she ever ask you for money?”
“That’s a little personal.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to locate the family. Sometimes families want to find out about assets, beneficiaries, etc.”
“I gave her some money to help out. Three or four times. Not a lot of money. A few hundred or so.”
“Apparently enough to make her remember you in her will.”
“I like to think she remembered me for other reasons.”
I smiled, amazed that one of Red Eye’s schemes was actually working. For once, he had it right. This scam brought out all the vanities of Jeffcoat and Newman. If I wasn’t Prudence’s husband I would have admired how she had these two men drooling all over themselves to get at her. But at least they’d gotten to touch her. She’d given them some grounds to think they were the world’s greatest lovers. I had nothing but doubts and unfulfilled desires.
“Please don’t repeat the things I’ve told you about my relationship with Prudence,” he said. “My family means the world to me. Everyone makes a mistake now and then.”
“Not every mistake makes you a millionaire,” I said. “It could be worse, Mr. Newman, way worse.”
I stood up to go. His whining was starting to get to me.
“What about the money?” he asked.
“I’ll call you when I’ve spoken to the other beneficiaries. We’ll have a meeting.”
“When?”
“Soon, very soon.”
I spared him the warning about publicity. He was already scared enough. The problem was, he didn’t look any more like a killer than Jeffcoat. But it had to be one of the two.
As I left him in his office with his hands once again atop his shiny head, I wondered what I’d gotten myself into. There is a famous section in the Oakland Coliseum known as the “black hole.” During games the diehard members of the Raider Nation gather there. Anything goes. People come dressed as pirates, wild bulls, gorillas, their faces painted in the wildest combinations an artist can create with silver and black. The citizens of Raider Nation drink in the black hole, they smoke weed, shoot crank, fight, probably even make love every now and then when the Raiders score a spectacular TD. To outsiders the black hole is entertaining, yet enticing. And a little scary. Who knows what a crazed pirate can do when defeat looms?
This investigation was becoming my personal black hole, filled with sexual predators dressed up as investment bankers, trucking magnates, maybe even cops. Where were their boundaries? Like the citizens of the Raider Nation, Jeffcoat and Newman might be capable of desperate things if all of a sudden the tide turned against them. Yet the danger of my black hole was alluring. I delighted in watching these deep-pocketed men fret like a Bronco defense facing Kenny Stabler and Clifford Branch.
We were entering the exciting part of the game. Crunch time. We’d had the marching band and the baton twirlers at half time. My opponents were heading into the locker room to recalculate their strategy. I was definitely the underdog, even with my muscle-bound Red Eye defense. If I wasn’t careful I could get swallowed up like a lonesome, drunken Charger fan who staggered into the black hole wearing the blue, gold, and white of San Diego. Common sense told me to rush for the exit. But once a Raider Nation diehard enters the black hole, common sense never prevails.