The Man Who Came Uptown
- Автор: Пелеканос Джордж
- Год: 2018
- Язык: английский
- Год: Mulholland Books / Little, Brown and Company
- ISBN: 978-0-316-47982-0
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Man Who Came Uptown». Краткое содержание книги:
“Tell me how the party got noticed,” said Ornazian.
“Lisa announced it on Facebook,” said Weitzman. “It could have spread there or it could have been a situation where, you know, people hear about it and start calling their friends. In my day, a party got around by word of mouth.”
“Is Lisa still on social media?”
“She’s using her laptop. She’s smart enough to know not to do anything like that ever again.”
“And she still has her phone.”
“I’m not going to take her phone away from her. We wouldn’t be able to reach her.”
Ornazian picked up his pen. “I’m going to need the names of some of Lisa’s close friends. People who were at the party who you know wouldn’t have participated in the destruction or the theft.”
Weitzman made eye contact with his wife and then looked back at Ornazian. “That’s going to be tricky,” he said.
“Why?”
“I described the events of that night in detail to the attorney you work for. I assume Mr. Mirapaul relayed all of it to you.”
“He told me what he knew.”
“Then you know that Lisa was assaulted that night. You must also know how delicate the situation is. Do you have children, Mr. Ornazian?”
“I do. The complexity of this isn’t lost on me. But I’m also wondering why you didn’t call the police.”
“Lisa insisted we keep this quiet. She didn’t want this to blow up any more than it already has. She’s only a sophomore. She has to deal with the kids in her high school for two and a half more years.”
“So you didn’t notify the police about the robbery either.”
“No.”
“Weren’t you concerned about Lisa’s health?”
“We took her to our family gynecologist. There was some bruising but no permanent damage.”
“You mean no physical damage.”
“That’s right.” A touch of indignation had flared up in Weitzman’s voice. “Can we move on?”
Ornazian nodded. He was pushing Weitzman’s buttons for no good reason, and he told himself to stop. He suspected that Weitzman’s desire to sweep his daughter’s assault under the rug was as much about his own reputation as it was about hers. With regard to the matter at hand, that was neither here nor there. Ornazian needed the job.
“Do you have a list of the stolen items?” said Ornazian.
Weitzman pushed a manila folder across the table. Ornazian opened the file. The top sheet was a printed list itemizing the goods taken from the house the night of the party, along with their estimated worth. Naturally, Ornazian wondered if the figures were inflated.
“Are these goods insured?” said Ornazian, keeping his eyes on the paper.
“Why are you asking?”
“Insurance companies send out investigators in cases involving high-dollar losses. I’d like to know if someone else is out there trying to do the same thing I am.”
“That’s not pertinent,” said Weitzman. The lawyer in him was coming out.
Again, Ornazian made no rebuttal. He studied the list. The big ticket was the Tiffany bracelet. Its value was declared at fifty thousand dollars.
“Do you have photographs of the items?” said Ornazian.
“They’re also in the folder.”
Ornazian slid the list back into the folder and put it beside his notebook. “So you have no idea who did this. And none of the kids who were here have come forward?”
“We haven’t asked them,” said Weitzman. “That would involve the parents and, frankly, it’s a bridge I didn’t want to cross. There’s something else too.”
“Go ahead.”
“Whoever did this to my house, to my daughter... these were very violent people. They cracked the granite countertop in the kitchen. They carved up my dining-room table with what had to be a very formidable knife. I don’t want any of this coming back on my family.”
“Understood.”
“I told Mr. Mirapaul about the purple drink that was all over the house, in those bottles...”
“Promethazine and codeine. It’s typically mixed with Sprite or Mountain Dew. Cranked-up cough syrup, basically. Gets you all kinds of twisted. Lisa might have had some, but it’s not what knocked her out.”
“I know. The doctors detected benzos in her blood.”
Diane sighed audibly, shook her head, and went to the Sub-Zero for a refill on her chardonnay. She told them she was going upstairs, and they waited for her to do so.
“Mr. Mirapaul said you could help me,” said Weitzman after his wife had left the room.
“I work my cases hard if I take them,” said Ornazian.
“What’s your fee?”
“I’ll require a one-thousand-dollar nonrefundable retainer. Cash. On a job like this one, I take fifty percent of the value of any items recovered. If nothing is recovered, I get nothing.”
“Why cash?”
“I might have to break some eggs. This way, the trail won’t lead back to you.”
“Your recovery percentage is steep.”
“It is.”
“The Tiffany bracelet was a twenty-fifth-anniversary present to Diane. It has a great deal of meaning for both of us.”
“I’ll do my best to get it back. Do we have an agreement?”
“Yes.”
Ornazian picked up his notebook and the folder and got up out of his seat. “Do you mind if I look around?”
“There’s not much to see. We cleaned up the house pretty well. The chairs they broke have gone out for repair. But let me show you something.”
Ornazian followed Weitzman into the open kitchen. Weitzman pointed to an island with a cracked granite top. “I don’t even know how you could do this.” He made a head motion. “Come with me.”
They walked into a dining room with walls painted a deep red. A table dominated the room. Several chairs were missing from the set. Weitzman pulled back the tablecloth to reveal a rich mahogany top badly damaged by deep carvings made with a heavy knife blade. Aside from random plow lines and the usual, unimaginative Fuck You, the number 14 was carved into the table. Ornazian was familiar with the number’s significance but made no comment. He used his phone to take photographs of the table.
“May I speak with Lisa now?” said Ornazian.
“She said she’d talk to you. I’m going to ask that you not discuss the assault with her.”
“Agreed,” said Ornazian.
Weitzman produced his cell and speed-dialed his daughter.
Nine
Lisa Weitzman, a thin girl with shoulder-length, expertly dyed blond hair, sat in a big cushioned chair on the family’s back deck, which was tricked out with an array of comfortable outdoor furniture and the requisite freestanding fire pit. Ornazian sat on a bench beside her, taking notes.
Lisa wore jeans and a Canada Goose coat over a loose-fitting shirt. It was almost sixty degrees out and the down coat was not necessary today or often in Washington’s mostly moderate climate, but it was the current must-own label for status-conscious people, whether they needed the warmth it provided or not. Ornazian had once been in Bloomingdale’s in Chevy Chase and seen multiple customers wearing the jackets on a warm late-winter day.
Lisa was smoking an American Spirit blue-label in full view of her father, who was still in the kitchen, pretending that he was not watching them. Smoking was probably now low on the list of parental concerns with regard to his daughter.
“Tell me about the crowd that night,” said Ornazian. “Who you knew, who you didn’t know.”
“It was a bunch of people from Churchill, originally,” said Lisa, naming her public high school. “Not all of them were my best friends, but they were people I knew.”