Prior Bad Acts

33

KOVAC FLICKED ON the dash strobe as he drove through the streets, trying to catch up to David Moore. He was betting Moore would go straight to the apartment he had been paying for. Even money said Ginnie Bird lived there.

He caught a look at the big Mercedes sedan sitting at the next stoplight and killed the strobe.

Moore went through the intersection and turned onto the ramp to the freeway. Kovac followed him, then stepped on the gas and blew past him, two lanes over. Moore didn’t know his car and wouldn’t be looking for him anyway. His head would still be in the scene that had just played out between himself and his wife, and on what he was going to do next.

Kovac exited the freeway and drove straight to the apartment building. It was a nice place in a pricey neighborhood. Fairly new building, landscaping, a gated underground garage. No doorman, though, no concierge.

He parked across the street, got out, and walked over to the entrance.

The tenant list was on a brass buzzer pad beside the door to the small lobby. Kovac went down the names.

Bird, V. Apartment 309.

As he debated whether or not to ring the buzzer, a white Lexus turned in at the drive. The garage gate groaned and rattled as it began to rise.

Kovac moved away from the building entrance, went back down the sidewalk, nonchalant, going for a stroll. The Lexus rolled down into the garage. He waited until the car had turned to the right in search of a parking spot, then walked down into the garage, ducking under the descending gate.

It was as simple as that to get into a building where residents believed they were secure. He checked the ceiling for cameras, but there were none.

He didn’t bother to hide, but walked over to the elevator as if he lived there, and pushed the button to go up. Ten seconds later he was joined by the driver of the Lexus, a tired-looking guy with a red, runny nose and a plastic bag from Snyder Drug.

“You got that bug that’s going around?” Kovac said.

The guy rolled his eyes. “I wish I was dead.”

“Drink whisky.”

“That helps?”

The elevator arrived and they got on. Kovac pushed the button for the third floor and glanced up at the ceiling of the car. No security camera.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “After you’ve had a couple, you won’t give a shit.”

“Good point.”

“Where you going?”

“Four. Thanks.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence and nodded to each other when Kovac got off on the third floor.

He didn’t go down the hall to Ginnie Bird’s apartment but stood there outside the elevator, waiting for the car to go back down and come back up, and the doors to open on David Moore. The hall was empty. Someone had taped a bright orange sign on the wall beside the elevator, inviting all residents to the October meeting of the renters’ association.

VOTING ON THE ISSUE OF CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS ON THE BUILDING EXTERIOR.

WE NEED A QUORUM! PLEASE COME!

Kovac considered writing his neighbor’s name and phone number on the poster as a source of expertise on the subject.

Maybe five minutes passed before the elevator rumbled as it descended, then rose out of the parking garage. Kovac stood in front of the doors so that when they opened, David Moore stepped right into him.

“Hey!” Moore barked, annoyed at the obstacle, then realizing the obstacle was Kovac. The look in his eyes went from annoyance to confusion to suspicion in a split second.

Kovac hit him hard in the chest with the heels of both hands, knocked him back into the elevator car, into the back wall, and followed him in.

“What the hell?” Moore said, trying to get his feet back under him.

Kovac grabbed him by the front of his shirt and shoved him into the corner.

“Listen, you sorry piece of shit. I know all about you and your girlfriend,” Kovac said. “I know all about your little tête-à-têtes at the Marquette every other week.

“What are you? One of those pervs that gets off on taking the chance of being caught?

“That’d be you, all right,” Kovac sneered. “You don’t have the balls to stand up to your wife. You want somebody else to tell her you’re out on the town with some fifty-bucks-a-blowjob skirt. You fucking coward.”

Moore pressed himself back into the corner, raised up on his toes like that would somehow make him a bigger man than the worm that he was.

“You can’t treat me this way!” he blustered, red faced, more afraid than aggressive. “This is harassment and-and brutality.”

Kovac curled his lip in disgust. “Call a cop, limp-dick. I’ve got twelve witnesses who’ll swear I was playing Parcheesi at the Moose Lodge in New Hope.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Yeah, I’m crazy,” Kovac said sarcastically. “I’m not the one meeting in a public bar to pay off the guy I hired to whack my wife.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You make me sick.” Kovac all but turned and spat on the floor. “What’d you think, David? That everyone would just assume your wife was mugged, or that some nutjob did her because of Karl Dahl?”

“I didn’t do anything to Carey!”

“And you figured you were playing it smart to be seen in public at the time of her attack, that you were extra clever, using your motive as your alibi.”

“What motive?”

“Your little plaything you got this apartment for. A junkie whore too stupid to think you’re exactly what you appear to be-a loser with a big mouth and delusions of grandeur. You’re pathetic.”

The look on Moore ’s face was priceless. Kovac smiled like a tiger. He had opened both barrels of bullshit and actually hit some nerves. A little knowledge and a lot of attitude went a long way toward rattling people with something to hide. All the years of wading hip-deep in the excrement of criminal minds had taught him more about human nature than any Ph.D. in psychology could have.

David Moore was the kind of guy who needed to feel important, needed people to think he was smart. That he had to lower himself to the standard of prostitutes to accomplish that wouldn’t matter.

“You’re thinking, ‘How do you know all that, Kovac, you dumb son of a bitch?’” Kovac said, still smiling. “I know all kinds of things about you, Sport. I know about your taste for hookers. The flowers, the gifts, the expensive dinners, paying for it all out of the family funds. I know about your biweekly habit at the Marquette, Mr. Greer. You go there to pretend you’re a big shot, don’t you? Mr. Hollywood, the film executive.

“By the way, that’s lower than low, using your wife’s maiden name. Freud would have a field day with you and your issues with women, huh? What’s that all about, David? Your mother screwed up your potty training?”

Moore was silent, seeming to be holding himself very still, as if one wrong move and his whole alternate universe would implode on him.

“What I can’t figure is where Edmund Ivors fits into this sordid little puzzle. What’s a guy like him have to gain acting as your beard, helping you out with your alibi?”

“I don’t need an alibi,” Moore said. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Kovac just looked at him, stunned to silence for a moment.

“You haven’t done anything wrong? Jesus Christ, you cheat on your wife with whores, spend her money to finance your secret life. What part of that isn’t wrong?”

The elevator gave a little jerk and groan and began to descend.

Kovac hit the key for the second floor and pulled Moore out into the hall with him when the doors opened. The door to the stairs was just to the right. He gave Moore a shove in the back.

“Step into my office here for a minute, Ace.”

“Fuck you, Kovac,” Moore said, turning around.

“Are you resisting?” Kovac asked, incredulous. “Are you resisting me? ’Cause if you’re resisting, all bets are off, pal.”

“Are you arresting me?”

“You want to have this conversation downtown? ’Cause I’ll be happy to take you there and put you in the box for a formal questioning. Is that what you want?” Kovac asked. “You want to up the ante? You want to call my bluff? Go ahead. Then you can call a lawyer, and I can call Chris Logan, and he’ll have you arraigned and toss your ass in the can. And if you think a judge is going to give you bail for trying to kill one of their own, you’re even dumber than you look. Is that what you want?”

“I didn’t try to kill my wife!”

The door to apartment 214 opened and a woman stuck her head out, glaring at them. “Take your fight somewhere else, or I’ll call the cops.”

Kovac pulled his badge out of his coat pocket and showed it to her. “This is already police business, ma’am. Go back into your apartment and lock the door.”

The woman disappeared.

Kovac turned back to David Moore.

“Why didn’t you tell me a man joined your little party at the bar last night?”

Moore looked away, looked confused, shrugged, spread his hands. Only the first thing was significant.

“I-I don’t know,” he stammered. “I didn’t know the guy. Why would I mention it?”

“Because you don’t leave things out when you talk to the cops, Einstein. It tends to make us suspicious when we find out after the fact. Who was he?”

“Ivors knew him. He’s-uh-in the business. He’s a-a director of photography. He stopped by. We talked about my project.”

“What’s his name?”

“Don something. I don’t remember his last name.”

“He drops by to talk about your project. Maybe ’cause he’s interested in doing whatever he does for you, right? And you don’t remember him. He didn’t give you a business card?”

“It was a casual conversation. Ivors wanted me to meet him. That’s all.”

“So why did Ivors and your little Bird friend not say something about him to me either?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t think it was important. He was only there for a few minutes.”

“I’m supposed to swallow this load of horseshit?” Kovac asked.

“I don’t care what you believe.”

“That’s a very poor attitude you’ve got, Sport. You damn well ought to care what I think. Because I have the power to take your putrid little life apart turd by turd and poke at every slimy thing crawling under your lies.

“And now I’m gonna go upstairs and talk to the little chickadee without you being there. Did you all get your lies lined up beak to tail earlier today? ’Cause I’ll be a lying son of a bitch and tell her that you talked and told me all about your plan, so she might as well too. And Edmund Ivors won’t be there to put words in her mouth this time.”

Moore ’s cell phone rang, tucked somewhere in a pocket.

“Why don’t you answer that, Dave?” Kovac suggested. “That’s probably her right now, wanting to know where the hell you are.”

Moore didn’t move.

Kovac pushed past him, took the stairs back up to the third floor, and knocked on the door of apartment 309.

Ginnie Bird opened the door immediately, her face falling as she was greeted with the unpleasant surprise of Kovac.

“Can I come in?” he asked even as he stepped inside the apartment and past her.

Moore came in behind him. “You don’t have to talk to him, Ginnie. Not without a lawyer.”

Kovac arched a brow. “Ms. Bird isn’t under arrest. Why would she want a lawyer present?”

Ginnie Bird looked like a deer in the headlights. Dumb as a sack of hair, this girl. Her assets lay elsewhere-in plain sight. Deep purple silk and lace were artfully arranged over her unnaturally round breasts and slender frame in the form of a camisole and a thong. She wore a sheer purple robe over the ensemble for her version of modesty. It barely came to the top of her thighs. She balanced on a pair of silver stilettos. All ready to offer comfort and white-hot sex to poor beleaguered David Moore.

Kovac looked around what he could see of the apartment. Hardwood on the hall floor, white carpet flowing through a dining/living room to a small gas fireplace with a granite surround. Contemporary furnishings-chrome, glass, leather.

“Nice digs,” Kovac said. “But we’re a long way from Hudson, Wisconsin. You must be very good at what you do to have a place on this side of the river and the other, Ms. Bird.”

“Ginnie is a casting director-” Moore started.

Kovac turned on him. “You’re interfering with a police investigation, asshole. You can sit down and shut up, or I can put you in the hall facedown on the floor, hog-tied.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Moore said.

“Hey, you’re the one who decided I’m crazy. You don’t know what I might do. And you really don’t want to find out the hard way, do you?”

Moore held up his hands and took a couple of steps backward into the dining room area to pace.

Kovac turned back to Ginnie Bird. “Ms. Bird, you were at the Marquette Hotel last night, having drinks with your boyfriend here, Edmund Ivors, and a third man who dropped by. Who was that man?”

Her eyes darted to Moore. Kovac moved into her line of sight.

“Don… something,” she said. “It was loud in the bar. I couldn’t catch his last name.”

“What was he doing there?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.”

She shifted to the left, trying to make eye contact with Moore again.

“What’s the matter, Ms. Bird?” Kovac asked. “Can’t remember your lines?”

“There’s nothing to remember,” she said. “I don’t know anything that might help you.”

“You don’t know about the payoff? The twenty-five thousand dollars?”

He had told David Moore he would bluff a confession out of her, but Kovac knew in truth he had to tread lightly. It didn’t take a very clever defense attorney to get tossed anything a client had said without first being Mirandized. A good lawyer could get a confession tossed even after the client’s rights had been read to them. They would argue the police had violated the client’s rights by denying them counsel, even though one of the first items mentioned in Miranda was the right to an attorney. Or they would argue that their client hadn’t been of a clear mind, or some other lawyer bullshit.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ginnie Bird said.

Her eyes were a little glassy. The end of her nose was red. Kovac glanced around the room, hoping against hope to see drug paraphernalia out in plain sight. Then he could have taken her in, questioned her at the station, put a little scare in her. But he didn’t see anything.

“You don’t know anything about your boyfriend here paying someone to get rid of his wife?”

“David would never do that,” she said adamantly. “Never. Why can’t you just leave us alone? All we want is to be happy.”

“Yeah,” Kovac said. “The problem with that is Mrs. Moore. And somebody tried to eliminate that problem last night. If you know who that somebody was, and you don’t tell me, you become an accessory after the fact. If you knew about what was going to happen before it happened, that’s conspiracy. Either way, you go to jail.”

“I can’t tell you anything, because there’s nothing to tell,” she said. “David is going to divorce her. He told her tonight.”

“Did he?” Kovac said, looking at Moore. “That’s an interesting spin.”

“I think you should leave now, Detective,” Ginnie Bird said. “I know my rights.”

As explained to her by the lawyer the escort agency had sent to bail her out, back when she got paid per sex act, Kovac thought. What an idiot David Moore was, throwing away a woman like Carey, and a beautiful daughter, for this chick.

He turned to Moore, shaking his head. “Man, you have to be one of the all-time fools.”

Moore said nothing.

“I’ll see you around,” Kovac said, ambling toward the door. “And next time I’ll come with warrants. And just let me give you fair warning, Mr. Moore. If I find one shred of solid direct evidence that links you to your wife’s attack, I will unleash hell on you.”

Back on the street, Kovac walked down to the unmarked car assigned to tail David Moore and told the officers to call him if Moore so much as came out of the building to fart.

Back in his own car, he settled behind the wheel and just sat there, willing his blood pressure to calm down. He wanted to take David Moore apart. He wanted the guy to be guilty. He wanted someone to cough up the real name of Don Something, the alleged director of photography, so he could put the guy under a spotlight and get him to sweat out his connection to Moore.

That was what he wanted. The problem with that was that he wasn’t supposed to want anything. A good detective didn’t draw conclusions until he had all the facts. Getting too close to a crime-or to the victim of a crime-was a stop on the way to madness. Or to the civilian review board. If anyone had seen him knock David Moore back into that elevator, Moore would have had a corroborating witness for his brutality charge.

Still… it had sure as hell felt good to do it.

As Kovac savored the moment, his cell phone started to bleat.

“Kovac.”

“Liska.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t sound so happy to hear from me. I’ll get the wrong idea,” Liska said sarcastically. “Who were you expecting to call you? The Queen of Sheba? Catherine Zeta-Jones? Oxsana the Amazing Contortionist?”

“Is there a reason I’m talking to you?” Kovac asked, cranky because he had actually let himself think the call might be from Carey. And if Liska had known that, she would have given him no end of shit. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“Yeah,” she said. “You need to book it over to HCMC.”

“Why?”

“Because Kenny Scott had a visit today from your friend Stan Dempsey.”