Chapter 7
Benny Bernasconi looked the part. He was now in his 30's, but he still carried himself like a punk kid. They looked at him through the glass of the interrogation room, watching his nervous habits as he waited for the officers to come in.
He drummed his hands on the table, then he paced the room a few times. For fun, he flipped them off through the 2-way glass. He ran his hands through his hair, then sat down again.
Bobby coughed. He looked and felt much better today, but the cough was worse.
"Ready?" Alex asked him. He nodded and followed her in.
Alex spoke. "Hello, Mr. Bernasconi, sorry to keep you waiting." She sat down across from him. Bobby moved to the side of the table and stood. "When was the last time you saw Marty Frakes?" She asked, getting right to business.
He looked surprised. "Marty? Oh, uh, maybe a month ago?"
Goren stood beside Benny, raised the arm next to him, and sneezed into the crook of his elbow. It unnerved the man, and he scooted his chair on the floor to move away from the detective. Goren noticed. He moved to the empty chair on the other side of Benny and sat down.
"Sorry about dat. I hab a cold." He said.
"Uh, no worries…" Benny said.
"What did you and Marty talk about?" Bobby asked.
"Oh, I see him every once in a while at the…" Goren raised a finger and leaned back, anticipating another sneeze. "Bar," Benny finished hurriedly, cowering from the ill man sitting beside him.
Bobby sneezed, again into the arm closest to Benny. "Sorry," he said.
Eames had to work to maintain her poker face. "Which bar?" she asked, and wrote the name down on a ledger in front of her.
"What do you know about Masco Foods?" Eames asked. Bobby made a show of wiping his hands on the table in front of him.
"It's Marty's job. He runs a good business at that factory." He perked up, thinking saying something positive might help end the ordeal. "I hear he gives food to charities around town, too."
Goren coughed into his hand, causing Benny to lean back away from him. "You ever meet Marina Ehrlanger?" he asked, his articulation still impeded by his stuffy nose.
"Marty had a girl with him last time, but I never got her name."
Eames slid a picture in front of him. It was a snapshot of Marina and her son at a ball game.
"Yeah, that could be her, I don't really remember." Goren sneezed again, this time without warning, and Benny almost jumped out of his chair.
"You sure it was a month ago?"
"Hell, I don't know…" he got out his cell phone, and Goren all but touched it with his germ-ridden hands. "I'm just gonna look at my calendar," Benny explained, waving the phone in the air to get it away from Goren. "No, here, it was Monday a week ago. I know 'cause I had to have a drink after I had to renegotiate child support with my ex." He turned the phone so Bobby could read it. "See? Monday last week."
Bobby coughed hard, then offered Benny his hand to shake. The man declined.
After Bernasconi left the room, Eames laughed aloud. "You are hilarious," she said to Bobby.
He coughed a little less blatantly and gave her a shy smile.
They decided to go out and eat at the restaurant where Ehrlanger was seen with Marsh. They needed to eat, and Bobby didn't feel like cooking. It was a fine dining place, complete with white-coated staff and an ice sculpture in the middle of the room. They declined the coat check and settled at a table near the kitchen.
Bobby dug the bottle of cough syrup out of the inside pocket of his coat and took a quick swig when no one was looking. "I feel like I should have a flask," he croaked.
They ordered wine, and afterwards, their meals. They showed pictures to the wait staff and asked about Ehrlanger and Marsh.
One waiter, a young college age kid, offered his opinion. "They were really deep in discussion. She got pretty mad at him, and I heard her say something like 'you're gonna do something about it.'" He looked around warily. "I'll get in trouble if I stay at one table too long." They waved him off.
"Gonna do something about what?" Alex whispered. Bobby shrugged, but wrote a note in his binder.
He used his credit card to pay the hefty bill, but he hadn't enjoyed it. His cold had dulled his taste buds. Alex seemed pleased with her meal, though.
In the car, Bobby huddled up inside his coat, again with the heater on full blast. "Let's bring Marsh in tomorrow. Maybe a change of scenery will loosen his tongue."
She nodded, and turned the wipers on. "Get him out of his comfort zone." She put both hands on the wheel to make a turn.
Bobby coughed into his hand and fished another cough drop out of his pocket.
"How you doing?" she asked quietly.
He rubbed his chest. "Burns." He coughed painfully as if to illustrate his point.
"Maybe you should get checked out."
"I'll give it a week," he said.
Marsh sat uncertainly in the interrogation room. He fiddled with his tie.
Eames came in, carrying two coffees. "Sorry to have you in here, all the other rooms were taken," she lied.
"Oh, okay." He seemed relieved. "I was starting to wonder if I needed a lawyer or something."
She smiled at him and handed him a coffee. "Mr. Marsh, when we spoke to you out at Denison, you didn't indicate that you knew Ms. Ehrlanger. We now know that you went out to dinner with her."
"Oh, uh, well, you didn't really ask about that."
Eames sat and waited, sipping her coffee. Bobby watched from the observation room, thinking how smart she was to just wait for him to talk.
"Okay, well, yes, I took her out. She was pretty," he said. "That's not against the law, is it?"
Eames set her coffee down and moved forward in her seat. Her voice was stern. "Mr. Marsh, Marina Ehrlanger was murdered. I'd think twice about being sarcastic if I were you."
"Murdered? Jeez, I didn't know! Am I a suspect?"
Eames kept her poker face and said very quietly, "not yet."
"I took her out to the Golden Eagle. I really did think she was pretty. She had just finished that report for GEO, and I thought I wouldn't see her again."
Eames sipped her coffee. "What'd you talk about? Over dinner?"
"Oh, Denison, really. She was all worked up about how I had to lose the contract with Masco."
"Why?" She wrote in her ledger.
"Well, like that other detective said, she wanted a job. I guess she figured if I broke off the agreement with Masco, there would be a job opening for her." There was a knock on the window, and Eames excused herself.
She went back to the observation room with Bobby. "Let's just let him sit and fidget a while," he said.
Eames gave Bobby a once-over. He looked a little paler than usual, and his nose was a little redder. "You take some medicine?" she asked him.
"Oh, uh…" he retrieved the bottle from a chair nearby and took a swig. "Yeah."
She patted his arm. "I got a feeling about this guy," she said.
He looked at her and nodded. Her gut feelings were typically right on. "He's not lying, but he's not telling us the whole truth, either," Bobby observed.
Marsh sat back and drank his coffee. He bounced his leg nervously under the table. Then he began playing with his watchband.
Eames stood up and went back in. "Sorry," she said politely. "So, Mr. Marsh, what did Ms. Ehrlanger mean when she said…" she referred to a note in her ledger in front of her, "you're gonna do it."
Marsh cleared his throat. "It's Marty." He sighed. "She found out he's been skimming some of the product, marking it as a loss for us and then selling it himself. She insisted I needed to end the contract, get rid of him."
"But you didn't want to?"
His eyes darted around the room nervously, as if there was someone there with him. "He's been with us a long time. One time, a couple years back, I was working late, and I saw some guy come visit Marty in the back of the Canteen. The guy had a gun, and wasn't even trying to hide it." He cleared his throat again. "I don't know who his friends are, but what he was taking wasn't really hurting us. That gun… well that woulda hurt."
Eames frowned. Bobby opened his binder and fished out a picture of Bernasconi. He marched into the interrogation room and laid it in front of Marsh.
"Yeah… that's him," Marsh almost whispered.