information.”
“And how about you? Would you share with me? How much of the reward do you give to me?”
I nodded. Now I got it. The reward.
“Mr. Szatmari, you have it wrong. You have me wrong.”
“Sure. Have reward, will travel. I see your kind all the time. Come in here, wanting information, maybe make some big bucks.”
His accent became more pronounced as he got worked up. I flipped open the murder book and found the black-and-white photocopies of the murder scene photos. I tore the page with Angella Benton’s hands on it out of the book and slapped it down on his desk.
“That’s why I’m doing this. Not the money. Her. I was there that day. I was a cop. I’m retired now but I was on this case until they took me off it. That probably cuts me out of any reward, okay?”
Szatmari studied the grainy copy of the photo. He then looked at the binder on my lap. He then finally looked at me.
“I remember you now. Your name. You were the one who hit one of the robbers with a round.”
I nodded.
“I was there that day, but since we never found the robbers it’s not known for sure who hit who.”
“Come on, eight rent-a-cops and an LAPD veteran. It was you.”
“I think so.”
“You know, I tried to talk to you back then. Interview you. But the department stonewalled me.”
“How come?”
“They’d do anything they could to keep other investigations and investigators out of the picture. They’re like that over there.”
“I know. I remember.”
He smiled and leaned back in his seat.
“And now here you are, wanting cooperation from me. Ironic, eh?”
“Very.”
“Is that the investigative file? Let me see it, please.”
I handed the heavy binder across his desk. He put it down and flipped back to the front section and started leafing through the reports until he came to the original offense report. The homicide. He worked a finger down the page until he came to my name in the block marked “I/O” for investigating officer. He then closed the murder book but didn’t hand it back.
“Why now? Why do you investigate this?”
“Because I just retired and it’s one of the ones that won’t let go.”
He nodded that he understood.
“Our investigation, you understand, was in regard to the money, not the woman.”
“It’s all the same thing, you ask me.”
“Our investigation is no longer active. The money is gone by now. Split up, spent. Without the possibility of recovery. There are other cases.”
“The money’s been written off,” I said, “but she hasn’t been. Not by me, not by those who knew her.”
“Did you know her?”
“I met her that day.”
He nodded again, seeming to understand what that meant. He straightened the corners on a stack of files on his desk.
“Did it ever go anywhere?” I asked. “Did you get close to anything?”
He took a long time answering.
“No, not really. Only dead ends on this one.”
“When did you put it aside?”
“I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.”
“Where’s your file on it?”
“I cannot give you my file. It is against company policy.”
“Because of the reward thing, right? The company doesn’t allow you to cooperate with unofficial investigations if there’s a reward.”
“It can lead to collusion,” he said, nodding. “Also, there is the legal jeopardy. I don’t have the luxury of the protections the police have. If my investigative notes and summaries were to become public, I’d be left open to possible lawsuits.”
I tried to think for a minute about how to play this. Szatmari seemed to be holding something back and whatever it was might be in the file. I think he wanted to give it to me but wasn’t sure how.
“Take a look at the photocopy again,” I said. “Look at her hands. Are you a religious man, Mr. Szatmari?”
Szatmari looked at the photo of Angella Benton’s hands again.
“Sometimes I am religious,” he said. “Are you?”
“Not really. I mean, what is religion? I don’t go to church, if that’s what it is. But I think about religion and I think I have something like it inside. A code is like religion. You have to believe it. You have to practice it. The thing is, look at her hands, Mr. Szatmari. I remember when I saw her down on the tile and saw how her hands were… I sort of took it as a sign.”
“A sign of what?”
“I don’t know. A sign of something. Like religion. That’s why this is one of the cases that didn’t go away.”
“I understand.”
“Then pull out the file and put it on your desk,” I said as if giving instruction to someone in a hypnotic trance. “Then go get a cup of coffee or have a smoke. And take your time. I’ll wait for you right here.”
Szatmari looked at me for a long moment and then reached down to what I guess was a file drawer in the desk. He finally took his eyes off me so he could pull the right file. He brought it up-it was a thick one-and put it down on the desk. He then pushed back his chair and got up.
“I’m going to grab a cup of coffee,” he said. “You want something?”
“I think I’ll be fine. But thanks.”
He nodded and went out, closing the door behind him. The moment it clicked I was up out of my seat and moving behind the desk. I sat down and dove into the file.
For the most part, Szatmari’s file was filled with documents I had already seen before. There were also copies of contracts and directives between Global and its client BankLA that were new, as well as summaries of interviews with several bank and film company employees. Szatmari had conducted interviews with every one of the security transport men who had been on the scene the day of the shoot-out and heist.
But there was no interview with me. As usual the LAPD had put up a wall. Szatmari’s request to interview me never even got to me. Not that I would have accepted the request if I had seen it. I had an arrogance then that I hoped I had now lost.
I scanned the interviews and summaries as fast as I could, paying particular attention to the reports pertaining to the three bank employees I hoped to talk to later in the day, Gordon Scaggs, Linus Simonson and Jocelyn Jones. The subjects did not give Szatmari much. Scaggs was the one who handled everything and he was very specific as to the steps he had taken and the planning of the one-day loan of $2 million in cash. The interviews with Simonson and Jones depicted them as worker bees who did what they were told. They could have just as easily been putting labels on cans as counting twenty thousand hundred-dollar bills and writing down eight hundred serial numbers while they were at it.
My curiosity meter jumped when I came across documents pertaining to the financial backgrounds of Jack Dorsey, Lawton Cross and myself. Szatmari had pulled TRW reports on all of us. He had apparently called our banks and credit-card companies. He wrote short summaries on each of us, my record coming out cleanest, while Cross and Dorsey did not fare as well. According to Szatmari, both men carried huge credit-card debt, with Dorsey in the most difficult financial position because he was divorced but still supporting four children, two of whom were in college.
The door to the office opened and the secretary looked in, just about to say something to Szatmari when she saw it was me behind his desk.
“What are you doing?”
