Foul Play: Malone Mystery Novels, #6

FOUL PLAY

A Malone Private Investigator Novel (Book 6)

by

LARRY DARTER

Fedora Press

Copyright © 2019 by Larry Darter

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Larry Darter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

About the Author

From the Author

Also by Larry Darter

Bonus Reading Material

Chapter 1

It was one of those clear, sunny afternoons we get in Los Angeles in the early spring after a rain. There was still snow on the peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains, but the Hollywood Hills were green, and the jacaranda trees were blooming in Beverly Hills. I was sitting in my office with my jacket off and my feet up on the corner of the desk, reading a book called T. S. Eliot’s Collected Poems 1909-1962. Bridgette Carpenter, my unofficial foster daughter you might say, had given me for my birthday.

I was reading the poem Portrait of a Lady when the phone rang. My secretary Rhonda answered the phone most of the time, but she was off on another cruise in the Caribbean somewhere. I reached for the phone, lifted the receiver, and said in my best Bogart imitation voice, Sam Spade, here.

At the other end a voice I knew sighed and then said, Ben Malone, please.

I said in my Bogart’s voice, Hold the line a moment, sweetheart. Then in my normal voice, Hello.

The voice on the phone said, Malone, did you really expect to fool anyone with that nonsense?

I said, You want to hear me do Bill Clinton?

No, I do not. I don’t have the time, Malone. This is Liz Harper. I assume you recall me.

All the time, I said. Liz Harper was an attractive attorney with very nice legs I worked for from time to time.

Liz laughed a little and said, I have work for you.

Who do you need killed? I said.

It’s nothing that exciting I’m afraid, Liz said. I want you to find a man for me.

You’ve needed no help in that department before.

Hilarious, Liz said. You’re a laugh a minute, Malone. Care to be serious for thirty seconds so I might offer you gainful employment?

If you insist, I said. What is it you want done?

The man I want found, Liz went on, is Keaton Douglas, formerly of Boston. He is thirty-five years old, five feet ten inches tall, well built, and fair-skinned, with light brown hair and brown eyes. Four years ago, he was a typical clean-cut Bostonian man. He may not look it now because the last four years have been hard ones for him, I’ve been told.

What has he done? I asked.

Keaton Douglas isn’t a criminal, as far as I know, Liz said. I want you to find him for Mrs. Cara Douglas, his wife. Four years ago, the Douglases were living together in Boston. Cara Douglas it seems was of a very jealous disposition, and was rather temperamental. Cara Douglas also had a great deal of money she inherited from her parents while her husband had only the income from his employment. Keaton had always been sensitive about being married to a wealthy woman and inclined to go out of his way to show he wasn’t dependent on his wife for his living. One evening, she accused him of paying too much attention to another woman at a party they had attended. They quarreled, and Keaton Douglas packed up and left the marital home.

Did they divorce? I said.

No, Liz said. Within a week of the incident, Cara Douglas learned that her suspicions had been unwarranted and only the product of her own jealousy. She was repentant over having accused her husband of infidelity. She tried to find him, but he had disappeared. When it became clear Douglas had left Boston, she hired a Boston firm to mount a nationwide search. They traced him from Boston to Seattle, and then to San Francisco. An operative with the agency found Douglas living in a sleazy hotel on the western side of the Haight-Ashbury District across the street from Golden Gate Park. The operative informed Douglas his wife had been searching for him and gave Douglas a copy of a handwritten letter from her asking him to call or email her to discuss a possible reconciliation.

Did she get any response?

Not right away. After the contact from the agency operative, Douglas dropped out of sight again until he appeared in Los Angeles six months later. On February 11, 2018, he shot and killed a burglar in his hotel room on South Grand Avenue. The Los Angeles police found the shooting suspicious, but it appeared the man he killed was a burglar. They had nothing to hold Douglas on. After the police released him, Douglas disappeared again, and nothing was heard of him until three months ago.

What happened then? I said.

Cara Douglas received a rather formal email from her husband. He asked her to stop looking for him and indicated a reconciliation was impossible because he had become addicted to heroin and was no longer the man she had known.

But she didn’t give up?

No, she replied to the email asking him to come home and to allow her to help him get the help he needed to beat the addiction. He replied to the email, refusing to come home although he seemed less bitter toward her. Douglas wrote that the little pride he had remaining would not allow him to return to her unless he beat the heroin addiction. They exchanged several more emails, and she persuaded him to accept enough money from her to get the treatment he needed to get clean. Cara sent him money each month thereafter in the form of a bank draft mailed to an address on South Figueroa Street which it turns out is a private mailbox at a commercial mail and shipping service.

So, he is taking her money but has given no indication he intends to reconcile with her? I said.

It appears so, Liz said. They continue to exchange emails, and she remains hopeful he will come back to her even though he has repeatedly refused to see her or speak to her by telephone. His emails are evasive and contradictory─filled with accounts of his struggle with the addiction, making progress one month, but slipping back the next. Yet she felt so hopeful since he was staying in contact. She sold her home and wound up her affairs in Boston and came here to Los Angeles, to be close by when her husband was ready to return to her.

Sounds like he is using her as a steady supply of cash to pay for his heroin habit, I said.

Yes, she suspects as much by now, and believes he has no intention of giving up the heroine and coming back to her. I advised her to stop sending him money for a while to see if that motivated him to meet with her so she could learn his intentions with certainty. But she refuses to do that. She blames herself for the breakup, and his circumstances because of her petty jealousy four years ago. She wants her husband back, and off the heroin. But, even if there is to be no reconciliation, she intends to continue sending him money. She fears that stopping the payments might hurt him or induce him to hurt himself.

If she has faced reality at long last, why does she want him found? I said.

She wants closure, Liz said. She wants to end the cloud of uncertainty she has been living under for the past four years. She wants to see him one last time to hear from his own lips he is never coming back to her.

She’s a friend?

More of an acquaintance. We met at a charity gala last week and since have met for lunch. That’s when she told me of the situation with her estranged husband. I told her about you, and that you might help her with this.

What would you like done?

What we want is for you to find Douglas. We want to know whether there is any likelihood of his ever beating the drug addiction, or whether he is beyond redemption. Your job is to find him, learn whatever you can about him, and then Cara will decide whether it seems wise to force a face-to-face meeting between them where she might persuade him to return to her. Will you do it?

I’ll try, but I need more details, I said. When does Mrs. Douglas send her husband his monthly allowance?

It’s set up with her bank to arrive on the first of each month.

Today is the thirtieth, I said. That gives me two days to come up with a plan to intercept him and have a chat when he goes to collect the check from his mailbox. Got a photograph of him?

I’m afraid not, Liz said. During the jealous rage after their quarrel, Cara destroyed all the photographs of him. She didn’t want them to remind her of him. A photograph wouldn’t likely be of much help, anyway. Because of the heroin addiction I expect his appearance has undergone a dramatic change by now. Before speaking with me about her situation, Cara had staked out the mail and shipping service on the first of the past two months to watch for her husband but did not see him.

Could be someone else picks up his mail, I said.

That’s a possibility I hadn’t thought of.

The job sounds easy enough, I said. I should be able to wrap it up in a day. See you on the first or second of the month, and I’ll let you know what I find out.

I’ll see that you’re paid your regular fee and reimbursed for any expenses. Perhaps you would like to meet me for a drink at Tom Delaney’s with your report in person. By the way, are you still seeing what’s-her-name, the mousy little psychiatrist?

If you’re referring to Sara Bernstein, the girl of my dreams, then yes we’re still an item, I said. And, were I you I wouldn’t call her mousy to her face. Though she be but little, she is fierce.

Liz laughed a little. Too bad, handsome. I was thinking after we met for drinks maybe I could show you my appreciation for taking on the job in a more substantial and intimate way we would both enjoy.

No doubt it would indeed be enjoyable, but I fear we will have to settle for drinks, I said. But, as someone wise once said, we must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

You’re so full of it, Malone, Liz chuckled. Call me big boy.

All right, big boy, I said. But the line had already gone dead.

I hung up the phone, stood, and looked out the window. Below, at the corner of North Cahuenga and Hollywood Boulevard, good-looking women in short dresses and skirts crossed at the light. I loved springtime. It was April, seventy-five degrees, with clear blue skies. A lot of men wore suits. I looked at my watch. Four-thirty. Sara was attending another psychiatric seminar in Chicago. Bridgette was at school for the week. It was time to lock up and head home to check on Trixie, the Terrier mix Sara and I shared custody of.

Sara had left strict instructions not to leave the dog at home alone, but I figured what Sara didn’t know couldn’t hurt me much.

Chapter 2

It was just after eight and I was sitting in Jaime Reyes’ little cubicle off the division squad room inside the Los Angeles Police Administration Building.

Reyes looked like he had already been at work for hours. There was a half empty coffee cup on the desk. The sleeves of his gleaming white starched shirt were rolled up at the cuffs, his tie loose. His coarse black hair was cut in the same style I guessed he had worn since the Marines, no longer than an inch in length on top with plenty of skin fade on the sides. Even with the rolled shirt cuffs and loosened tie, Reyes looked the way he always did, shiny as a new quarter. His gray pinstripe slacks were creased. The matching suit jacket that hung from the back of the chair he was sitting in didn’t have a wrinkle.

He said, You want coffee?

I said yes, and he went away for a few moments and brought me coffee in a white Styrofoam cup with his mug refilled.

How’s Sara? he said.

She’s away in Chicago at another psych seminar, I said.

He nodded.

I said, I’d like a little information from the files on a guy named Keaton Douglas, white male, five feet ten, age thirty-five.

What’s it about?

Liz Harper hired me to find him for his wife?

Reyes said, What makes you think we have anything on him?

He shot and killed a burglary suspect in his room at a hotel over on South Grand back on February 11.

As I’m sure you know, Central would have handled that not robbery-homicide, Reyes said. Why didn’t you go see them? He drank more coffee.

I know, I said. But I have no friends over at Central.

Reyes laughed. And you think you have friends over here, bro?

Everything is relative, I suppose, I said. At least you gave me coffee. Now are you going to stop busting my balls and help me out a little?

Reyes grinned. Everyone else busts your balls, he said. Why shouldn’t I?

I said, I want a little information, that’s all.

Don’t we all. Explain the circumstances. If it sounds good, I’ll pull up the file and let you see it.

I leaned back in the chair, put one foot on the edge of Reyes’ desk, and told him why Liz Harper wanted me to find Douglas. He listened without interrupting, leaning back in his chair with his big hands locked behind his head. I finished the story with what she had told me about the shooting.

Liz Harper said the cops thought there was something hinky about the shooting but didn’t have enough to hold Douglas and cut him loose. I want to know about the hinky part of the story.

Okay, bro, Reyes said. He leaned forward and typed on the keyboard in front of his computer. I took my foot off his desk, sat up, and scooted the chair over so I could see the computer screen over his shoulder.

Reyes read the screen for a moment then said, The shooting occurred at the Stowell Hotel, the preferred luxury accommodations of druggies and whores all over central Los Angeles. This Douglas character claimed he had returned to his room and found a guy inside going through his stuff. When the suspect pulled a revolver, Douglas claimed he jumped him, they struggled, and the weapon discharged. The bullet struck the suspect in the chest. He was already deceased when the responding boys in blue arrived at the scene. He paged through the report screen and read more.

What caused the Central detectives to buy Douglas’ story that the stiff was a burglar? I said.

They found a lock pick set and a flashlight in the stiff’s pockets, a dude named Lee Finley.

I said, So, what was the hinky part?

Reyes read a little more. The totality of the circumstances. Someone had filed off the serial number of the revolver that Douglas claimed belonged to Finley. And, when the medical examiner printed Finley for identification, his prints weren’t on file suggesting he had never been arrested. Seems a little strange to have a dead burglar with an untraceable handgun in his possession that has never been popped for anything much less burglary.

Maybe it was his maiden voyage, and he got unlucky, I said.

Reyes looked back at me. Also, neither party had solid identification. Douglas claimed someone had stolen his wallet before the incident. The only identification he had on him was a hotel receipt made out to him from when he paid for the room. The deceased had a wallet on him, but the closest thing to identification in it was a receipt from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles from the last time he had applied for a driver’s license and registered to vote. Later, the detectives confirmed the driver’s license information through CLETS.

That’s funny, I said. Douglas came out here from Boston. Where was Finley from in Massachusetts?

Reyes looked back at the screen and scrolled the page. According to the driver’s license information he was from Providence, Massachusetts.

I seem to recall Providence is about forty miles from Boston, I said. What are the chances two strangers both from Massachusetts would run into each other in a fleabag Los Angeles hotel room where one of them ended up dead after trying to burglarize the room of the other one.

Yeah, that does seem a little sketchy to those of us who don’t much believe in coincidences, Reyes said. Says here Douglas told the detectives he came to Los Angeles from San Francisco.

I said, According to Liz, that part was true only he isn't a Californiano. He came to Los Angeles from Boston via Seattle and then San Francisco.

Reyes nodded still reading from the computer screen. Anyway, bro, the Central detectives took him down to the station for a gunshot residue test, and a formal statement. Then they kicked him loose after running him through CLETS and finding a record for an expired Massachusetts driver’s license. Douglas told them he didn’t own a car, so he hadn’t bothered to get a new license when his expired.

With the questionable identification all around, I can’t believe they didn’t hold on to him or at least book him, I said.

There wasn’t any evidence or witnesses to disprove his story, Reyes said. The clerk at the Stowell confirmed he had rented the room and claimed he had never laid eyes on the deceased. So, the Central dicks kicked him loose after they told Douglas not to leave town until the DA talked to him.

Which of course he didn’t do, I said.

He didn’t, Reyes said. "When the DA was ready to talk to Douglas, a couple of uniformed cops went to the Stowell to pick