“Bullshit,” I said.
“’Fraid not. I spoke to his landlord, his boss in Atlanta, his neighbors.”
“His neighbors,” I said.
“Yeah. You know what neighbors are, don’t you? The people who live beside you. See you every day, nod hello. Well there’s a whole bunch of these neighbor types in Buckhead, who swear they saw Mr. Clifton just about every day for the last ten years in Atlanta.”
“And Mr. Cushing?” I said as the majorettes in my head started banging their cymbals together.
“Also employed by Bullock Industries. Also lived in Atlanta. Hence the Georgia license plates on the Lexus. Now your Mr. Stone, he was mighty confused when I called him. Seems he’s a retired businessman, dying of cancer, who hired you to find his daughter. He has no idea what the hell you’re doing down in Florida. Says the last time he talked with you was five days ago. He thought, frankly, that you’d skipped town with the money he paid you. As for Mr. Clifton, or Mr. Cushing, Mr. Stone says he never heard of them.”
“Inspector Jefferson,” I said, “did you check out the owner of record of Bullock Industries?”
“What do you think, Mr. Kenzie?”
“Of course you did.”
He nodded and looked down at his folder. “Of course I did. The owner of Bullock Industries is Moore and Wessner Limited, a British holding company.”
“And the owner of the holding company?”
He looked at his notes. “Sir Alfred Llewyn, a British earl, supposedly hangs out with the Windsor family, shoots pool with Prince Charles, plays poker with the queen, what have you.”
“Not Trevor Stone,” I said.
He shook his head. “Unless he’s also a British earl. He’s not, is he? To the best of your knowledge?”
“And Jay Becker,” I said. “What did Mr. Stone have to say about him?”
“Same thing he said about you. Mr. Becker skipped town with Mr. Stone’s money.”
I closed my eyes against the burning white fluorescent overhead, tried to quell the banging in my head with sheer willpower. It didn’t work.
“Inspector,” I said.
“Hmm?”
“What do you think happened on that bridge last night?”
He leaned back in his chair. “Glad you asked me, Mr. Kenzie. Glad you asked me.” He pulled a pack of gum from his shirt pocket, proffered it to me. When I shook my head, he shrugged and unwrapped a piece, popped it in his mouth, and chewed for about thirty seconds.
“You and your partner found Jay Becker somehow and didn’t tell anyone. You decided to steal Trevor Stone’s money and skip town, but the two hundred thousand he gave you wasn’t enough.”
“The two hundred thousand,” I said. “That’s what he told you he paid us?”
He nodded. “So you find Jay Becker, but he gets suspicious and tries to get away from you. You chase him on the Skyway, and you’re both jockeying back and forth when this innocent pair of businessmen get in your way. It’s raining, it’s dark, the plan goes awry. All three of you crash. Becker’s car goes off the bridge. No problem there, but now you’ve got the matter of two bystanders to take care of. So you shoot them, plant guns on them, shoot out their back window so it looks like they fired from the car, and that’s it. You’re done.”
“You don’t believe that theory,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s the stupidest theory I ever heard. And you’re not stupid.”
“Oh, flatter me some more, Mr. Kenzie. Please.”
“We want Jay Becker’s money, right?”
“The hundred grand we found in the trunk of the Celica with his fingerprints all over it, yeah, that’s the money I’m talking about.”
“But the hundred grand we used to bail him out of jail,” I said. “Why’d we do that? So we could trade one stack of hundred thousand dollar bills for another?”
He watched me with his shark’s eyes, didn’t say anything.
“If we planted the guns on Cushing and Clifton, why did Clifton have powder burns on his hands? I mean, he did, didn’t he?”
No response. He watched me, waiting.
“If we drove Jay Becker off the bridge, how come all the collision damage to his car was done by the Lexus?”
“Go on,” he said.
“You know what I charge for a missing persons case?”
He shook his head.
I told him. “Now that’s dramatically less than two hundred grand, wouldn’t you say?”
“I would.”
“Why would Trevor Stone shell out a combined four hundred thousand dollars, at least, to two separate private investigators to find his daughter?”
“Man’s desperate. He’s dying. He wants his daughter home.”
“Almost half a million dollars, though? That’s a lot.”
He turned his right hand, palm up, in my direction. “Please,” he said, “continue.”
“Fuck that,” I said.
His front chair legs came back to the floor. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Fuck that, and fuck you. Your theory’s a crock a shit. We both know it. And we both know it’ll never stand up in court. A grand jury would laugh it out.”
“That so?”
“That’s so.” I looked at him, then back at the two-way mirror over his shoulder, let his superiors or whoever was back there see my eyes, too. “You have three dead bodies and a wounded bridge and front-page headlines, I’m assuming. And the only story that makes sense is the one me and my partner have been telling you for the last twelve hours. But you can’t corroborate it.” I locked his eyes with mine. “Or so you say.”
“So I say? What’s that mean, Mr. Kenzie? Now, don’t be coy.”
“There was a guy on the other side of the bridge. Looked like a surfer dude. I saw cops interviewing him after you got there. He saw what happened. At least some of it.”
He smiled. A broad one. Full of teeth.
“The gentleman in question,” he said, looking at his notes, “has seven priors for, among other things, driving under the influence, possession of marijuana, possession of cocaine, possession of pharmaceutical Ecstasy, possession—”
“What you’re telling me is he’s a possessor of things, Inspector. I get it. What does that have to do with what he saw on the bridge?”
“Your mama ever tell you it’s impolite to interrupt?” He wagged his finger at me. “The gentleman in question was driving with a suspended license, failed a Breathalyzer, and was found with cannabis on his person. Your ‘witness,’ if that’s what you think he was, Mr. Kenzie, was under the influence of at least two mind-altering substances. He was arrested a few minutes after we left the bridge.” He leaned forward. “So, tell me what happened on that bridge.”