Walter Phillips was bald, in his fifties, trim and tanned; he wore a black suit subtly pinstriped, a white shirt with a gray tie. As Kate and Taylor made their way across an expanse of oriental carpeting he stood behind his desk, a hand extended; he had instructed his gray-haired secretary to show the detectives right in.
After the ritual of introduction and identification, Kate and Taylor sat down in armchairs in front of a boomerang-shaped teak desk barren except for a sheaf of papers and a computer terminal. Phillips lowered himself into his leather desk chair and looked at the detectives with cordial expectancy.
From a gray City of Los Angeles interoffice envelope Taylor slid a photo of Dory Quillin, a head shot cropped from one of Shapiro’s photos. He said politely, “We have information that you know this person, Mr. Phillips.”
The polished planes of the tanned face froze into immobility as Phillips stared at the glossy of Dory Quillin’s face in death. “What’s…all this about?” He looked up at Kate; his dark stare pierced her.
“What can you tell us about this person?” Kate repeated coolly, reinforcing Taylor’s confrontational approach. To further unsettle him she tapped a finger on the photo Taylor had placed on the desk, to direct his attention back to it.
But he did not look down at the photo; he fixed his stare on Taylor. “I have a right to know exactly what all this is about.” The voice was firm, authoritative.
Too confident, Kate decided. Well beyond a surprise attack, their best tactic given this man’s probable role in Dory Quillin’s life.
Phillips was addressing Taylor in crisp tones: “I have a right to know exactly what kind of trouble brings the police into my business office under the erroneous supposition that I might be associated with that trouble.”
“You do assume there’s trouble,” Kate temporized, watching him, uninterested in the trappings of this spacious corner office high in the Bank of America tower.
Phillips inclined his head toward the photo lying on the expanse of desk, his eyes flicking toward it, then away. “It doesn’t take much imagination to see when that was taken.”
“Yes sir,” Taylor replied. “And we’d still like you to tell us what you know about her.”
“Not a goddam thing. And certainly nothing at all about her death.”
It was enough; however indirectly, he had admitted knowing Dory Quillin, and Kate pursued him. “Where did you meet her?”
“I know my rights, Detective. I don’t have to answer your questions, I have a right to an attorney.”
“With all respect, sir, we’re conducting an inquiry, not making an accusation.”
His eyes met and held Kate’s; she matched the strong dark stare with difficulty. But she sensed lessening intensity and then concession in the stare before she heard the words: “At the Hyatt, in the bar.” He exhaled audibly, then asked, “What happened?”
“She was killed last night,” Kate answered, still holding his gaze. “A blow to the head.”
He blinked, looked away from her to the photo, then closed his eyes for a moment. “Did she…suffer?”
At this first sign of humanity in Walter Phillips, Kate felt in herself an involuntary softening. The same question had come from Flora Quillin—but this man had let down a carefully controlled façade to ask it, and the question from him was oddly moving.
“It didn’t appear so,” Kate answered gently. “How did you arrange meetings with her, Mr. Phillips?” She added, “We’re quite aware of her…activities.”
He placed his hands on the desk and looked down at them, small hands with tapered fingers, the nails with the buffed gloss of professional manicuring. “An answering service. She’d call me back.”
“Where did you meet?”
He continued his inspection of his hands. “At the Hyatt, in the bar. Sometimes she’d wait—” Phillips broke off as if regretting the information he had volunteered, then continued unhappily, “—just around the corner from here.”
“Who told you about her?” Taylor asked.
Phillips’ eyes jerked up to him. “I told you how I met her.”
Kate leaned forward. “Mr. Phillips, major hotels tend to be very careful about unattached women who frequent their bars. We have a list of her male customers, we’ll be talking to them all. At this point we’re asking only routine questions, it’s in your own self-interest to cooperate. Unless you don’t mind the problem of more visible—”
“Darryl Smith,” Phillips said. “Nine floors down.”
Kate remembered the name among those they had developed from Dory Quillin’s list of phone numbers.
“Look,” Phillips said, “she was…there were some good times, that’s all.”
Taylor asked, “How often did you see her?”
Walter Phillips’ gaze drifted to a spot between Kate and Taylor. “Maybe…once a month. Whenever she took a notion to return my calls. Sometimes it might be two weeks or more before she’d call back. She was independent as hell, she was—” Phillips blinked and broke off.
“How much did you pay her?” Taylor inquired.
The dark eyes narrowed, sharpened. “We had dinner dates. I bought drinks for her, dinner.”
“Your relationship was platonic?” Taylor inquired sarcastically. “Or are you telling us she was satisfied with drinks and dinner in exchange for her professional services?”
“I have no idea what she did with anyone else and don’t care,” Phillips said, his voice again authoritative. “We had dinner dates. That’s all.”
“Maybe share a little cocaine along with the drinks and dinner, Mr. Phillips?”
“I won’t dignify that with an answer.”
Kate listened to this exchange impatiently; Phillips was much too acute to admit the unlawful act of drug possession, much less solicitation of a prostitute. She broke in, “When did you last see her?”
“More than a month ago. She never did return my last call—” He broke off and his eyes became distant, as if he was examining the finality of those words.
“What kind of person was she?” Kate asked softly, into his reverie.
“She was sweet and funny…she laughed at all my jokes. She was unusually pretty, she—” He shrugged. “What do you expect me to say?”
Something else, she thought. Something better. She asked harshly, “Where were you Sunday night, Mr. Phillips?”
His stare focused on her again. “At home,” he said resentfully. He added in a low, grudging tone, “With my wife. And children. Jesus,” he expelled, “you won’t have to check that out, will you? Jesus Christ—”
“That remains to be seen,” Kate said pitilessly. She closed her notebook, dropped one of her cards onto Phillips’ vast desk, and stood. “We may have further questions,” she said.
Shaking his head, Phillips swiveled in his chair to look out over the towers of the city.
* * *
Darryl Smith sent word that he was in a meeting but would be free momentarily; five minutes later he somberly greeted the detectives in the glass-partitioned cubicle which was his office in the auditing department.
A younger, blond version of Phillips but with even less hair, wearing a navy blue suit, Smith sat stiffly upright, glanced expressionlessly at the photo of Dory Quillin, acknowledged acquaintance with her, issued polite but terse answers identical to Walter Phillips’, and volunteered nothing further.
At Wells Fargo they received immediate and polite reception and the illusion of cooperation from Thomas Wilson. Also from Robert Stone at AT&T, John Moore at Alcoa, Donald Lee at Arco; and they were given identical answers to each question posed and no substantive detail to provide either fresh information or leads of any kind.
“Christ,” Taylor muttered as he and Kate sat in the Plymouth completing their notes. “Everybody on this executive shit list knows we’re coming, they’re all primed and ready. All these other names to check out, we’re gonna end up with worn-out shoe leather, period. Business execs, shit. They’re worse than politicians.”
“They passed Dory Quillin from hand to hand like a bag of potato chips,” Kate said bitterly, tiredly, feeling her tiredness like a leaden weight. “This is a whole new version of the old boy network.”
Taylor tossed his notebook onto the seat between them. “I bet they’ll even alibi whoever’s not covered.”
She took a deep breath, expelled it. “My fault, I should never have told Phillips we had a list. I blew it, Ed.”
“You’re kidding, right? The minute we walked out of anybody’s office, he’d have been on the horn to his buddies. Too bad we started out with a smart bird like Phillips. But shit, all these birds are smart. It’s the dumb crooks we catch, not the smart ones.”
Kate glanced at her watch. “Let’s divide the rest of the names on the list, Ed, and split up. I’ll drop you at the station, you might see if anything interesting’s come up from the vehicle license numbers at the crime scene. Maybe you could get started on the search warrant we’ll need to look at the file on Dory in her psychiatrist’s office. Do what you can, then go on home and have a nice dinner at a decent hour with Marie.”
Taylor nodded. “You go home too, Kate. You look tired. The Nightwood Bar can wait till tomorrow.”
“I want to stay on this. If there’s a trail somewhere, don’t want it getting cold.”
Taylor started the Plymouth, then grinned at her. “Give my regards to Patton.”
Kate smiled at him, thinking instead of Andrea Ross, wondering if she would be at the Nightwood Bar.