Mister Jinnah Mysteries 3-Book Bundle. Donald J. Hauka
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The lion does not lie down with the asshole, he thought. What on earth was going on here? Grant returned Jinnah’s stony gaze and there was a long silence. It took Permafrost to break the ice.
“Chief,” he began, clearing his throat.
“Conway,” Blacklock insisted, wretchedly.
“Conway,” Frost fought hard to stop the corners of his mouth from rising. “Maybe it would help if we recap what we know first. Then we can decide where we’re going.”
“Excellent, Peter, excellent!” Blacklock beamed. “Now then, Gerry —”
“I hate being called Gerry!” snapped Grant.
“Gerald then. Give us your version of events: what happened to Sam Schuster?”
Grant took a sip of coffee and composed his thoughts. Jinnah braced himself for the inevitable swipe at his own theory.
“It’s straight-forward,” said Grant. “Schuster’s putting the IIP deal together and for once, he looks like he’s scoring big time. So somebody — Cosmo Lavirtue is my bet — leans on him a little, trying to get back some of the cash he’d lost in a previous deal. Schuster sends him the ten million. Maybe Lavirtue has dirt on him, maybe he threatens to squeal to the securities guys. Schuster probably figures he can raise more cash, but just as the deadline looms, he comes up empty. He panics. He takes out this massive insurance policy and toasts himself, hoping his wife can use the money to save the deal. Full stop.”
Blacklock, who had been taking notes, nodded appreciatively.
“And you, Hakeem? Do you have anything to add to Gerald’s analysis?”
A dose of reality, thought Jinnah, but did not say.
“Listen, Mister Blacklock —”
“Conway, Hakeem.”
“Whatever. Gerry over there isn’t taking into account the fact that Cosmo Lavirtue is shagging Schuster’s wife.”
“What has that got to do with it?” demanded Grant.
“Motive,” said Jinnah. “It makes Lavirtue a suspect. It also makes Thompson a suspect. Suspects are these characters we have in a murder, hmm?”
“Why them?” asked Frost.
“Simple, my friend. Cosmo Lavirtue and Neil Thompson were the two partners closest to Schuster in his previous incarnations and they were the ones who got burned the worst. No, I see things very differently. Might I have a drop more coffee?”
Junior immediately reached over, took Jinnah’s cup from his outstretched hand and poured him another cup. Jinnah stirred the thick, viscous combination of cream, sugar, and a drop of coffee with a look of extreme concentration in his face, as if his entire being was wrapped up in this simple act. Frost had seen that expression before. It was a sure sign that Jinnah was getting wound up to spin one of his fantastic tales. What he couldn’t see was the conflict in Jinnah’s mind. He wasn’t convinced that Schuster had been murdered, but he was damned if he was going to ride the suicide band-wagon along with Grant. He sucked the liquid sugar off the end of his plastic stir stick.
“You see, my friends, it’s like this,” he said. “Lavirtue or Thompson hear about Schuster’s IIP deal. They want a cut of the action. One of them hires a couple of thugs to terrorize Sam the Sham into giving them the cash. He refuses. Fearing for his life, he takes out his large insurance policy. Then, Sunday night, they set up a meeting with him at the abandoned mill site. There, instead of working out a deal, they tie Schuster up and threaten to burn him alive. Now, whether they actually meant to kill him or they were just trying to scare him and there was an accident of some kind is immaterial — the end result is all that counts. Poof! Schuster goes up in flames, his lungs burned out by super-heated gases, the pure, pink tissue shriveled black in the blink of an eye —”
Blacklock held up a hand.
“Hakeem please! I don’t think we need to get into the finer, sordid details.”
“My apologies, Conway,” said Jinnah, who was starting to enjoy the situation immensely. “You don’t mind if I call you Connie?”
Blacklock made a sort of strangulating sound in his throat and for a moment, Jinnah thought he’d at last succeeded in making Blacklock swallow his tongue. Certainly when the editor-in-chief finally managed to answer, it sounded as if there was a ten-tonne weight on the tip of it.
“Why, of course not,” he grated. “After all, Phil calls me Connie.”
Jinnah’s mouth became a tight, compressed circle of brown tissue battling against the very natural urge to smile.
“Well, Connie, it’s like this: Schuster’s toasted. The deal collapses. Lavirtue has Paula Schuster, ten million bucks insurance money, and whatever they can salvage of the business empire. Or Thompson has his revenge and his cash. That’s how I see it.”
Jinnah sat back and finished his coffee. Blacklock was nodding and smiling in a wretched sort of manner suggesting he’d just eaten a live toad. Jinnah braced himself. Surely Grant would have something to add. In the event, it was Permafrost who spotted the hole in Jinnah’s theory.
“That doesn’t take into account the fact that Schuster was found beside his own car,” he said calmly. “If he’d been abducted and tied up, surely he would have been inside the vehicle.”
“Not necessarily,” said Jinnah. “As I said, perhaps they were only trying to scare him and things went wrong.”
“Sure, Hakeem,” said Grant. “Not that I doubt you believe all that,” he added quickly. “I just have one small question.”
“Shoot,” said Jinnah.
“I want you to stand up.”
Jinnah gazed at Grant with a grasshopper’s eye.
“I don’t get up unless absolutely necessary, Gerry.”
“Please, Hakeem — for the sake of our joint investigation.”
“Surely,” said Jinnah, feeling the ant-like eyes of the rest of his colleagues on him.
He stood up. So did Grant. The business reporter approached him carefully.
“Now, look: you pretend to be Sam Schuster, okay?”
“There’s a limit to what I’m willing to perform in a role-playing exercise, Grant,” warned Jinnah. “I forbid you to throw gasoline on me.”
“That won’t be necessary,” grinned Grant. “Now, with your permission …”
Grant grabbed Jinnah’s shoulders and positioned him in front of Blacklock and Junior, arms outstretched.
“I believe this is how Mister Schuster would have been postured by the side of his car just before the explosion, right?” he said.
“A reasonable assumption,” said Jinnah suspiciously.
“Good,” said Grant. “Now, Conway, I want you to observe something — Hakeem, you quote this pathologist as saying the explosion hit Schuster like a blowtorch? With enough force to throw his body to the ground?”
“Yes?” said Jinnah, annoyed — what did the son of a bitch want?
Grant had positioned himself in front of Jinnah, perhaps six feet away.
“Presumably, to accept your version of events, he was also struggling with one or two captors while bound hand and foot, right?”
“At least that many,” agreed Jinnah.
Grant bent down in a footballer’s stance, like a linebacker taking a bead on a quarterback with two bum knees.
“Then observe and learn,” he said.
Grant lowered his head and launched himself forward, piling into Jinnah’s midriff as if he