The Green Trap Read online

  “Elena,” he said as brightly as he could manage, “I know a cool little Mexican joint on the other side of town. Great food and the margaritas are terrific. I’ll pick you up at the inn at six-thirty unless I hear otherwise from you.”

  Then he headed for the bathroom to shave, thought better of it, went to the refrigerator instead, and started pulling out cold cuts and a stale loaf of seven-grain bread.

  After lunch he returned to the gym. Half a dozen men and women were there in fencing uniforms, lunging and parrying. The gym rang to the click of blades clashing and shouts of “Eh-lab!”

  Cochrane started to work out with the fencers and found a fury boiling out of him that he hadn’t known was there. Rage. Murderous rage. There! he thought as he slashed at his surprised partner. They killed my brother. There, you bastards. Damn cops. Damn Tulius, what’s he hiding? Arashi, smug little sonofabitch. Sandoval. Elena.

  “Hey, Paul.” The assistant professor he was fencing against backed away from him and pulled off his mesh mask, a pained frown on his lean face. “Take it easy. You’re gonna whack my arm off.”

  Cochrane muttered, “Sorry,” but once they faced off again he couldn’t control his wild, hacking attack. Despite the guy’s attempts at ripostes Cochrane forced him completely off the fencing strip and still flailed away at him.

  “Stop!” The wild-haired Latvian fencing coach stuck his saber between Cochrane and his frantic opponent. Cochrane dropped his arm, puffing and sweating, and yanked off his mesh helmet.

  “Who you theenk you are, Conan de Barbarian?” the Latvian demanded in his heavily accented English. “Thees ees fencing, not brawl in alley.”

  “I’m sorry, maestro,” Cochrane said mechanically. He didn’t feel sorry. He wanted to kill somebody.

  “Don’t apologize to me,” said the coach, gesturing to the sullen-faced opponent, who was rubbing his arm.

  “Sorry, pal,” Cochrane muttered, trying to make it sound real.

  “Jeez, I can hardly lift my fuckin’ arm,” the young man said. “It’s numb.”

  “Sorry,” Cochrane repeated. “Too much adrenaline, I guess.”

  “Too much testosterone,” the coach said, unsmiling.

  TUCSON:

  LAS CASITA DE MOLINA

  Cochrane whistled happily to himself as he dressed for his dinner date, but his buoyant mood vanished the instant he saw Sandoval walk down the steps of the Arizona Inn’s front entrance. Arashi was with her.

  She ducked into the front seat of his dusty blue Volvo S60 beside Cochrane, while Arashi slid into the rear.

  “Neat wheels, for a four-door,” he said as he clicked his seat belt.

  “So where’s this great restaurant?” Sandoval asked, all smiles.

  “On the other side of town,” Cochrane said tightly, pulling the sedan away from the curb.

  He drove in sullen silence along Speedway to the I-10 entrance, then down the freeway to the Valencia Road exit. Sandoval made several attempts at conversation, but Cochrane cut her off each time with a brusque word. Arashi remained quiet in the back seat, but Cochrane could see him in the rearview mirror, grinning as if he understood exactly what was going through Cochrane’s mind.

  “Is this restaurant in Arizona?” Sandoval asked facetiously as they drove along Valencia.

  “Not far now,” Cochrane muttered.

  The sun had set by the time he pulled up into the unpaved parking lot beside Las Casita de Molina, but the twilight was still bright. The restaurant was an unimposing single-story building with twinkling Christmas-type lights strung along its roof edge and neon beer company logos in its windows.

  Inside, it was filled with workingmen and their families, Hispanics and Native Americans mostly, sitting at sturdy polished wooden tables heavily laden with dishes of tacos, tamales, enchiladas, and bowls of salsa and guacamole. The bar displayed a long row of beer bottles, most of the brands from Mexico. The children sat in their places quietly, no crying or whining. Very little conversation. Everybody was busy eating. Country music bleated from the speakers set up in the ceiling.

  Cochrane spotted an empty table near the bar and weaved through the busy diners to it, Sandoval and Arashi trailing behind him.

  “Order me a beer, will you?” Arashi said as Cochrane pulled out a heavy, carved chair. “I’ve gotta wash my hands.”

  Sandoval sat opposite Cochrane, her back to the bar. He stared into her green eyes and heard himself ask, “Are you sleeping with him?”

  Her eyes went wide. Then she broke into a girlish laughter. “Is that why you’ve been so grouchy all the way here?”

  “Are you?”

  “Mitsuo? Of course not! Don’t be absurd.”

  “What’s he doing here, then?”

  Her face went serious. “Business. About your brother.”

  “Still on that.”

  “Yes.”

  Arashi returned and sat beside her. Sandoval suggested that Cochrane order for all of them. Arashi put on a pout, but glumly nodded his agreement.

  Each of them had a beer: Negra Modelo for Cochrane, Corona for the other two. The waitress brought lime wedges for each of them.

  “So what are you doing in Tucson?” Cochrane asked her after his first sip. He kept his voice down, just loud enough to be heard over the buzz from the other tables.

  “We’ve come to see you,” Sandoval replied.

  “What about?”

  Arashi was holding his wedge of lime in two fingers, as though trying to decide whether to squeeze it into his glass or drop it in whole.

  “I told you,” said Sandoval. “About your brother.”

  Arashi suddenly let the lime wedge drop to the table. His grin disappeared and he quickly looked down at his empty glass.

  “Did you see him?” he hissed to Sandoval.

  She looked past Cochrane’s shoulder and scanned the crowded dining room. “Who?”

  “Kensington!” Arashi answered in a frightened whisper. “He was there, at the door. He went back outside to the parking lot. He’s waiting out there for us!”

  “Are you certain?”

  “It was him! He must have followed you from the San Jose airport!”

  “I didn’t see him….”

  Cochrane asked, “Who’s Kensington?”

  “Hired muscle,” said Sandoval.

  From the terrified look on Arashi’s face, Cochrane guessed that Kensington must be really bad trouble.

  “We’ve gotta get out of here!” Arashi said.

  “While he’s waiting for us in the parking lot?” Sandoval replied coolly.

  “But—”

  The waitress brought their tray, loaded with three different dinners.

  “Let’s enjoy our food,” Sandoval said, “and worry about Kensington later.”

  “Is this guy some sort of goon?” Cochrane asked.

  Arashi didn’t answer; he kept staring at the front door.

  “He can be dangerous,” said Sandoval.

  Pointing to the police cruiser parked outside the window, Cochrane said, “This restaurant is a favorite hangout for the local cops. State highway patrol, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t a couple of them in here having dinner.”

  He turned in his chair and spotted two uniformed police officers a few tables away, guns on their hips, radios clipped to their epaulets. They looked Hispanic, brown skin and straight dark hair.

  Sandoval smiled at him. “That’s why Kensington didn’t come into the restaurant.”

  Cochrane said, “He probably doesn’t want to tangle with the local law.”

  Arashi looked unconvinced, but Sandoval said, “We should be all right—as long as we finish our dinner before the policemen do.”

  They ate hurriedly, Arashi hardly touching his enchiladas. His eyes kept flicking from the policemen at the nearby table to the front door, where he had seen Kensington. Hardly a word of conversation. Despite her cool demeanor, it seemed to Cochrane that Sandoval was just as worried about the g
oon as Arashi was.

  “They’re finishing their coffee,” he whispered urgently.

  Cochrane got up and went to the cashier’s counter, off to one side of the busy kitchen. He saw the two cops get up from their table; Arashi and Sandoval got up, too, and followed them to the front door. Cochrane signed his credit card tab and hurried after them.

  It was cool outside, now that the sun had set. Clouds of insects flittered in the lights around the parking lot like miniature blizzards. As the two police officers got into their car, a highway patrol cruiser pulled up and parked next to Cochrane’s Volvo.

  “Safe as in church,” he muttered to his companions.

  Driving back north on the freeway, Cochrane asked, “Are you both staying at the inn?”

  “I’ve got a room at the Hyatt,” Arashi said from the shadows of the back seat, “but I think I’ll check out and find another hotel.”

  “This Kensington must be a scary dude,” Cochrane said, glancing at Arashi in his rearview mirror.

  “He’s probably the guy who killed your brother,” Arashi replied.

  Cochrane felt a jolt of anger flash through him. “Then why don’t we turn him over to the police?”

  Sandoval said, “We don’t have any proof. It’s better to avoid him.”

  “We never got to whatever it is you wanted to talk to me about,” Cochrane said. “There’s a nice little bar at the inn. We can talk there.”

  She shook her head. “Not the inn. We shouldn’t be seen together.”

  “We already have.”

  “Not the inn,” she repeated.

  Shrugging behind the wheel, Cochrane said, “The only other place is my apartment.”

  “Fine,” said Arashi, turning to peer out the rear window.

  TUCSON:

  SUNRISE APARTMENTS

  It was still early evening, but most of the parking spaces at the Sunrise Apartments building were occupied. Six stories tall, square and stolid as the cinder blocks beneath its fake adobe exterior, the Sunrise Apartments were rented mainly by elderly couples or students—the very young whose idea of a night on the town was take-home from the local pizza parlor, and the very old who couldn’t afford to go out for dinner on their Social Security incomes.

  Cochrane parked in his assigned space and guided them to the building’s lobby, Arashi swiveling his head constantly, searching for danger.

  Once inside the brightly lit lobby, Cochrane went to the dual elevators. But Sandoval stopped him.

  “What floor do you live on?”

  “Third.”

  “It’s better if we walk up.”

  She is scared, he realized. She just handles it better than Arashi. With another shrug, he went to the steel door that opened onto the bare-walled staircase.

  Cochrane found himself slightly nervous as he unlocked his apartment door and turned on the lights. He half expected to see some menacing thug waiting inside with a gun in his hand. No one was there, though.

  “Welcome to my humble abode,” he said, with as much irony as he could muster.

  It was lost on them. Sandoval clicked the door’s lock and hooked the safety chain into place. Arashi went to the window and peered down into the almost-full parking lot.

  “I don’t think he followed us,” he said, staring out the window.

  “That’s good,” Sandoval said, going across to the sofa.

  Cochrane thought about offering them something to drink, but put that aside. Instead, he said, “All right, we’re here and we weren’t followed. Now what the hell’s going on? What did you want to see me about?”

  “Dr. Tulius’s computer files,” said Sandoval as she sat on one end of the sofa.

  “Tulius? What about his computer files?”

  Arashi pulled three slim CD jewel cases from his jacket pocket. “We need you to look at them.”

  “How the hell did you get his files?”

  Arashi’s sly grin returned and he waved his hand vaguely. “Oh, I have ways of my own.”

  “You hacked into his computer?” Cochrane asked.

  “It’s one of my many talents,” said Arashi, his grin growing even wider.

  Sandoval said, “He’s good at it.”

  “This is illegal, you know,” Cochrane said.

  “So is murder,” said Sandoval.

  Suppressing a grimace, Cochrane took the jewel cases from Arashi’s hand and went to his desk, in the corner of the living room. As he clicked the desktop computer into life he told them, “There’s beer in the fridge and a couple of bottles of hard stuff in the cabinet over the stove.”

  “Can I make a fresh pot of coffee?” Sandoval asked.

  Cochrane didn’t like having people mess with his coffee-brewing machine. “I’ll do it,” he said, getting up from the desk chair. “It’ll take a couple minutes for my old clunker to boot up, anyway.”

  Ten minutes later the living room was filled with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and Cochrane was staring at a long, scrolling list of Tulius’s electronic correspondence.

  “Anything interesting?” Sandoval asked, leaning over his shoulder with a mug of hot coffee in her hands.

  “E-mail,” said Cochrane.

  “Look for reports from your brother,” Arashi called from the sofa.

  “Thanks for the advice,” Cochrane shot back.

  He went through Tulius’s main menu, searching for Mike’s name. Tulius was a neatness freak, he saw. And a worrier. Everything filed in perfect order, but everything protected by access codes. Everything, even his personal correspondence. Reports from his scientific staffers, of course, were blocked from view.

  Swiveling in his creaking typist’s chair, Cochrane asked Arashi, “You wouldn’t know his access codes, would you?”

  “Try his birth date,” said Arashi, barely looking up from the newsmagazine he was leafing through.

  Cochrane nodded and opened the Google search engine, then pulled up Tulius’s biography. It was impressive enough, but didn’t include his birth date. He went into the biographical files of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. There it was: December 7, 1941. Huh, thought Cochrane. Helluva day to be born: a date that will live in infamy, he remembered from his history lessons.

  But it wasn’t Tulius’s access code. Cochrane tried 120741 and got nothing. He tried 071241; still nothing. Not even writing out all four numbers of the year helped. With a frustrated huff he leaned back in the stiff little chair and stared at the stubborn screen.

  “Anything yet?” Sandoval asked from across the room.

  Cochrane shook his head. It’s got to be something simple, he told himself. Something that Tulius could easily remember. On a hunch he went back into Google and searched out the birth date for Melvin Calvin.

  “Got it!” he shouted.

  Sandoval and Arashi hurried to him as Cochrane scrolled through a long list of reports from the staff scientists to their chief. He highlighted the reports from his brother and began to pore over them.

  “Hey, I’ve gotta go,” Arashi announced, looking at the clock on the kitchen wall. “Gotta find a new hotel room.”

  Cochrane glanced at the digital clock running in the bottom corner of his screen, surprised to see it was nearly midnight.

  “No sign of Kensington out there?” Sandoval asked.

  Arashi shook his head. “When he doesn’t want to be seen, you don’t see him.”

  Cochrane realized that Arashi’s car must be parked at his hotel. He started to get out of his chair.

  “No, no, you stay put,” Arashi said, yanking a cell phone from his shirt pocket. “I’ll get a taxi.”

  It took more than half an hour, but finally Cochrane’s front door buzzer sounded. Sandoval, peering through the window, said, “It’s a cab, all right.”

  With a grin that Cochrane thought was slightly forced, Arashi bade them good night. “I’ll phone you tomorrow morning,” he said. Looking squarely at Sandoval, he added, “Don’t try to hold anything out on me.
I want a full report on those files.”

  She nodded. “That’s what we agreed on, Mitsuo.”

  The door shut softly behind him; Cochrane clicked the lock in place and hooked the security chain.

  “You’re pretty scared of this Kensington, both of you,” he said.

  She tilted her head slightly to one side. “An ounce of prevention…”

  Cochrane said, “You want me to drive you back to the inn?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “There’s still half a pot of coffee left. Why don’t you see what you can find out about your brother’s work?”

  “You made a deal with Arashi?”

  Nodding, “He got Tulius’s files. I share whatever you find with him.”

  “Whatever I find.”

  “That’s right.”

  Cochrane stared at her for a long moment, then heard himself ask, “Suppose I don’t find anything?”

  “Do you mean you want to cut Arashi out?”

  “He offered me fifty thousand.”

  Now she focused her green eyes on him. “And you want more?”

  “I want to find out who killed my brother. And why.”

  “It must have been Kensington. It’s his sort of thing,” she said.

  “But why?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping you can find in Tulius’s files.” She pointed a lacquered finger at his computer screen.

  “Hmm.” Cochrane returned to his typist’s chair and began sorting through his brother’s reports. Sandoval went to the window, inched the blinds apart, and scanned the parking lot below.

  More than an hour later, Cochrane pushed himself away from the computer and took off his glasses. “I’m going cross-eyed,” he mumbled.

  She came to him, put a hand on his shoulder, leaned down to look at the screen. He could smell the flowery scent of her perfume.

  “Anything?” she asked.

  “Nothing that makes sense. He was measuring the oxygen output of his stromatolites. Some put out more oh-two than others.”

  “There must be something in those reports.”

  “If there is, I’m too punch-drunk to see it.” He got up from the little chair and stretched his arms toward the ceiling, vertebrae popping. “Come on, I’ll drive you back to the inn.”