I pushed away from the computer and paced around the room, trying to make sense of it. 

Assumption: the Davis family was heavily into pot farming. Pot makes a lot of money and the state spends a lot of time and effort trying to stamp it out. But it isn’t a high priority item; not like cocaine. The President of the United States declares war on Colombian cocaine cartels, not on hayseed, backwoods pot farmers. State law enforcement makes an ongoing effort to control the business, and sporadic mass raids, but it is just enough to keep prices up. Almost a partnership. If the state tried harder, it could cut into profits. If the state stopped trying, supply would go up and prices would go down.

Daniel Cabral’s arguments were starting to make more sense to me, but they still ran up against the usual counter-argument. Most would-be conspirators aren’t smart enough to run a conspiracy.

So there was a connection, but it was a tenuous one. If I were into pot farming, I might want to infiltrate the local sheriff’s office, but why Cabral’s organization?

Cabral did have a staff dedicated to finding out all there was to know about drug enforcement, in order to discredit it. If I were a big pot farmer, and I wanted a pipeline to the agenda of the state law enforcement people, I might give a lot to tap into Daniel Cabral’s database. It would be safer to let Cabral’s people collect the information, and then steal it from him. The only other obvious possibility was that they wanted to derail Cabral’s attempts at legalization, and Susyn was too smart to believe that Cabral was going to succeed in this decade.

So, Cabral had useful information, and Susyn had infiltrated his organization to get it. It made sense, and nothing else did. Then one night Raven found Susyn where she should not be and blew the whistle. But no one listened, so Raven hired Harvey Jacks to pursue the matter further.

Harvey Jacks, whose cover was as a private detective, but whose real profession was blackmail.

Much of what I “knew” had come from Susyn. She had named Adrian Brock, and it was beginning to look like he was not part of the game. Suppose the story was true, with only the names changed. Susyn had said that Jacks did the investigation, found the connection, then sold his information to Brock. Change the name Brock to “whoever runs the Davis family”.

Then, according to Susyn, Jacks had tried to extort another payment and had been stepped on. To save his life, Jacks had claimed that he had copies of his report sent to Raven. It had not saved his life, but it had put Raven’s in danger.

When Jim and Alan Davis tossed Raven overboard, the Davis family must have breathed a sigh of relief – until Raven called home from Marseilles. And Susyn had been there to find out about the call. Then they had all their old problems back along with a witness who could identify Alan and James Davis for attempted murder, and implicate Susyn as an accessory. more tomorrow

Marriage records confirmed that Susyn’s maiden name was Davis. Birth records gave me Susyn’s place of birth, a small town in northern California, and her parents’ names. That led me to siblings, including one named James and one named Alan. Interesting. DMV told me what kind of car she drove and gave her Sacramento address. Checking back through previous addresses, I found the same one her ex-husband still maintained. James Davis drove a BMW and also had an address in Garberville. I checked a map. It was five blocks from Susyn’s ex-husband’s house. Alan Davis drove a Jeep Cherokee and lived in Redway, a little town just outside Garberville.

I put in a call to Ed Wilkes. He was staying in a guest room at the Cabral house with its own phone extension. I caught him getting ready for bed.

“Ed, did Interpol run a check of fingerprints on Jim Davis with the FBI?”

“Yeah, didn’t I tell you?”

“No.”

“There was nothing special in his criminal record. A DUI, a couple of arrests for possession of marijuana, and a number of unsuccessful tries at catching him for pot growing. Just your typical back woods cowboy growing a little weed in his back yard.”

“Address?”

He gave me the same address in Garberville, and I told him about my findings.

“Now isn’t that interesting? A family business of some sort? I wonder what?”

“I’m beginning to get a picture.”

“Me, too. I’ll run Alan Davis by the bureau tomorrow. Call me if you get anything else, but wait till morning, OK?”

How does the old song go? You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind – and you don’t go hiking in Mendicino county in October. Not if you value your life. You just might stumble into someone’s pot plantation at harvest time and get your head blown off. Marijuana is California’s biggest cash crop, and most of the back-to-the-land hippies of the seventies that got the ball rolling have been run out by others who have no aversion to violence.

Maybe. And maybe the Davis clan all live in Garberville for the scenery. But that wasn’t likely. It would be good to see if they had any land there, outside the town. It might be rented under informal agreements or they might be squatting on government land, but if they owned land it would be in the records.

It took a while, but when the printout came through I had a list of seventeen properties owned by Alice Johnson, Susyn Johnson, Alice Davis, Susyn Davis, Jim Davis, Alan Davis, and William Johnson. There were no Fletchers. Apparently that was just an alias. None were owned by Adrian Brock or any reasonably close variation on that name. I got out a map of Mendicino county.The properties were all small. The largest was ten acres. They were scattered all over the county and all were well away from centers of populations, and well away from main roads.

Interesting, indeed. more tomorrow

Back at the car, I had worked up a sweat even in the chilly ocean wind, but it had barely taken the edge off my energies. Adrenaline and testosterone; the macho cocktail. I had had a powerful infusion of each today, and it would be a while before I was calm again.

The sun had dropped behind the evening fog bank as I ran, and now an early dusk fell across the city. I drove through the park as fog tendrils wove tapestries among the trees, watching joggers bundled against the chill and the last rollerbladers of the day, all heading somewhere for a warm haven against the damp and cold. 

I found a pay telephone and a fast food joint. Ed Wilkes was not in, but would be back in an hour.

While I was running, it had occurred to me that the strangest thing that had happened all day had slipped past my notice in a testosterone haze. Laura Jacks had simply assumed that I would accept her actions and her husband’s “profession” as normal. She had led me to incriminating evidence with childish (and that was the word) innocence. No wonder old Harvey had taken her out of the business and kept her at home where she could do him no harm.

Chapter Thirty-one

When I got back to Dias Investigations, everyone had gone home. I let myself in and called Ed again. He was still out, but he called back before I had time to brew a pot of coffee. There was no way I could sleep in my condition, so I planned to spend the night at the computer.

Our conversation was brief. He had searched Raven’s room at the Cabral’s Sacramento house and had found the report Jacks had sent her. He also had a dozen pages of data on the various actors in our play. He faxed it all to me, and I skimmed it sheet by sheet as it came out of the machine, then sat down for a closer reading, though I had seen some of it in Paris.

Alice Susyn Johnson had worked for Cabral for three years.  Her personnel record gave her salary, social security number, residence, and next of kin.  The name Fletcher did not appear anywhere in the file.  The next of kin was William Johnson, listed as an ex-husband, with a residence in Garberville. A visit to her apartment would be worth doing, but I could leave that to Ed since he was in Sacramento anyway.

There were four James Davises in the Sacramento phonebook. According to Ed’s notes, none of them was likely to be our James Davis. A fax of the Allens showed dozens, but none of them jumped off the page.

There was a great deal on Adrian Brock. He was an investor, contractor and real estate developer. He cultivated contacts at the capital and there were hints of a shady doings on the side. Ed was investigating further, but I had his name from Susyn. There was no reason to believe that she would give me the name of her real employer. It was probably a false lead.

I would have to do it the hard way. Computers were new on the scene; I had helped set up Joe’s system, and now it was time to put it to use. I wasn’t the internet, of course. That was years in the future. But I knew how to use the crude beginnings of what it would become. more tomorrow

Good old Harvey!

She was breathing heavily now and I could smell her readiness. “I used to come down here,” she said, “when Harvey was at work and look through these old files. I’d get myself so worked up I was like a steam engine. Then I’d ambush Harvey when he came in the door.”

Lucky Harvey!

“Look,” she said, and pulled out a file. The folder was dark from much handling. She spread half a dozen pictures out for my inspection. In the background was an open window with curtains blowing inward, with makeup on a bureau and a couple of stuffed animals on the floor beside the bed. A bedroom in somebody’s home, not a motel room. The woman on the bed was small, slim, and dark. The man was young and muscular. He had taken her in various positions. Some were imaginative, and some looked painful. One involved tying her hand and foot to the bed, spread eagled. Laura Jacks moved that picture to the top of the stack. The photography was good. I could clearly see the expression on the woman’s face. She was fighting the ropes, but she was having a wonderful time.

“When Harvey first got started, I used to help him with his business.”

“I can see that.” The woman in the picture was younger, but she was clearly Laura Jacks.

“I miss it, but Harvey made me quit. Funny, for a man who did what he did, and screwed around on me besides, he was really jealous. Possessive, I guess you’d say.”

“Possessive,” I repeated.

“I was afraid to screw around on Harvey. He would’ve killed me. So I would come down here and spend hours on a slow burn. Harvey got the benefit of that. He liked having me hot all the time. And I was!”

She paused, rubbing her hands over her thighs. “It’s been months since Harvey died,” she said. Her voice echoed in the basement and in my singing head.

She passed her hand lovingly over the photograph. “I really like this one,” she said. “I still have the same bed, upstairs, and some soft ropes I kept for Harvey to use. He liked it; he hurt me sometimes, but I didn’t mind.”

She pulled the Tee shirt over her head, turning it as she did so that it formed a twisted manacle around her wrists. Her breasts were small and her face shone with need. She extended her bound hands toward me. I shook my head. She stood up and pushed down her shorts, and stepped out of them. Naked, she pushed her bound hands toward me again, and said, “Please!” Again, I shook my head.   

She went to her knees at my feet and leaned forward, placing her bound hands on my feet in a gesture of final submission.

That was the way I left her, and it wasn’t easy.

*       *       *

I drove two miles north and parked overlooking the public beach off the end of Golden Gate Park. I had left my soot stained boots at the warehouse and changed into running shoes. It was a good thing; I needed to run. Badly. I slogged down to the water’s edge where the sand was hard in the retreating tide and ran southward. After a mile, I turned back. I just wouldn’t feel right running all the way back to her house.

Back at the car, I had worked up a sweat even in the chilly ocean wind, but it had barely taken the edge off my energies. more tomorrow

Cyan is now ready for pre-order. Look at todays post on the AWL side of the blog.

_______________________

“Surely it can’t be that hard to find bank accounts.”

“Harvey never put anything in his own name. He always used dummy corporations to hide his earnings from the IRS.”

I said, “Hire an investigator.” But not me.

“Bill Bristol was going to help me, but never came through. I asked him for help the day he went through Harvey’s files.”

Now there was a bit of news. I asked, “When was this?”

“About a week after the day Harvey disappeared and the fire broke out in his office.”

“You mean those happened the same day?”

“Sure. Didn’t you know that? At first, we all thought they were going to find Harvey burned up in his office. And then they found him floating in the bay three days later.”

She shrugged and made a comic grimace. And she looked at me with slow, smiling eyes. Like she was a furnace, and she thought I was a sack of coal.

“So you asked Bristol to come over and help you sort things out?”

“No! I told you, those were old, dead files. He came by on his own. Said he had new information on something he and Harvey had been working on a couple of years ago. I took him down to the basement and he went through Harvey’s old files, but he didn’t find anything.” She shook her head in amusement. “Not anything he was looking for, anyway. Harvey’s files are always interesting.”

I said, “Would you take me down to the basement?” And I kept a straight face when I said it.

She said, “I thought you’d never ask.”

She was wearing a long Tee shirt and short shorts. Her legs were long and brown as she swivel hipped down the stairway. I was thinking that ten years older wasn’t that much older. There was something distasteful and much that was cliché about the situation, but hormones are hormones.

Harvey Jacks’ files consisted of a single cardboard box jammed with manilla file folders. Each one was labeled with a name or series of names. I pulled out Debra Tomlyn/Richard Deberg and flipped it open. It held a half dozen grainy black and white blowups of a chubby young blonde woman and a bald, middle aged man having sex. In the first shot, he was in the saddle. In the second, she was on top, head back, eyes closed, nipples erect, while he held her waist and drove his hips up to meet her. The other three shots were close variations on the same theme. The angle of the shots never changed, and the participants were not well centered. Obviously a hidden camera; probably near the ceiling.

I tried another file. Same story, new actors. A skinny black man and a pale Asian woman. Then two models of suburban ordinariness. Two young men. Two paunchy men in their forties and a girl-child who was probably fifteen but looked twelve.

I said, “Did your husband own a motel?” My voice came out hoarse.

Jacks’ wife was squatting beside me with her arm around my waist. She said, “Probably. I never knew, but most of these were shot in the same two or three rooms. Harvey was a whiz at his game. That one,” she pointed at the girl-child, “is one of my cousins. Several of the ones you see over and over in these shots were on salary to Harvey. He was a real businessman.”

Good old Harvey! more tomorrow