A Farewell to Legs (14 page)

“I’m right in the middle of something right
now. . .”

“I just got a call from Barry Dutton,” Abby went on.
“He says you were talking about going to see Preston Burke.”

Burke’s eyes flashed at the mention of his name. He
must have heard it clearly enough.

“I’ll call you back later,” I tried.

“Oh my god, you’re
there
, aren’t you? Oh,
Aaron, I could just. . .”

“Good talking to you,” I said, and hung up.

Burke looked at me. “Who are you?” he said.

“I told you, Mr. Burke, I’m Aaron Tucker of
the. . .”

“Oh yeah? Let me see your business card again, Mr.
Tucker.”

Oops. I hadn’t printed any up before I left the
house. Funny how you forget those little details when you’re trying
to misrepresent yourself. I made a show of reaching around in my
jacket pockets.

“I seem to have run out,” I said. “I’ll make sure to
send you one when I get back to my office.”

Burke stood, and suddenly he didn’t seem so skinny
and unassuming anymore. “Who
are
you?” he said again,
advancing on me. I stood up.

“Mr. Burke, I can see you’re getting agitated, and I
think perhaps it’s time to conclude this interview.” I started
backing toward the stairs.

“Yeah, you go ahead,” said Burke. “I’ll watch you
leave. And with my binoculars, I’ll be able to see your license
plate nice and clear. And once I find out who you
really
are, Mr. Tucker, I’m sure our paths will cross again.” The very
words he’d used in Abby’s letter.

I backed down the stairs, cursing myself for parking
within sight of Burke’s front window. And once outside, I ripped
off the tie (how do other men make it through the day in those
things?) and jumped into my car, driving away as fast as I
could.

Damn. This kind of thing used to work all the time
for Humphrey Bogart. I guess he had better writers working for
him.

O
n the long drive home, I
took stock. I turned off the tape I had in the cassette deck
(
Invisible Band
by Travis), so I could think more
clearly.

First, talking to Preston Burke had been a huge
mistake. I couldn’t understand why Barry Dutton had been so in
favor of the move. It had just gotten Burke mad at me, Dutton mad
at me, and worst of all, Abby
really
mad at me. So I was
driving away from a man who had probably thrown a rock at my
window, and toward a wife and a police chief who might very well
throw rocks at my head.

Meanwhile, back in the detective business, the “Case
of the Mysterious Stink Bomber(s)” was far from solved. Here, a
problem that would have taken Encyclopedia Brown maybe a page and a
half to solve, and I was no closer to a solution than I had been a
week and a half before. I didn’t so much as have a plan of
action.

And then there was the investigative reporter
business, where I was seriously stumped in my examination of the
Crazy Legs Gibson murder. The cops were probably staking out
Stephanie’s house, other reporters were down in D.C. interviewing
actual witnesses and players in the case, and I was in New Jersey,
having spoken to a grand total of one person who had been involved
at all. Luckily, she was the one who everybody else wanted to talk
to, and who wouldn’t talk to anyone but me. That, and that alone,
was the edge I held in this story. And so far, it had gotten me
almost as far as I had gotten in the stink bomb case.

This wasn’t turning out to be my October.

My cell phone hadn’t rung since Burke’s house. This
was not a good sign, as it indicated that my wife didn’t actually
care whether I was in the clutches of a possible serial killer.

I had to concentrate on just one problem at a time,
and since $10,000 was riding on only one, I chose Crazy Legs. If
there were DNA evidence, it would have to place Stephanie at the
scene of the crime to get the cops moving on her so quickly. If it
wasn’t DNA, but a witness who was actually there, it would be
weird. The only people who could be in a place like that would be
the killer, the victim, who in all likelihood wasn’t talking, and
the girlfriend, who had already been interviewed and insisted she’d
been in the shower and hadn’t heard anything. Maybe she’d recanted
her previous testimony. (You freely use words like “recanted” when
your nightly bedmate is a lawyer. And when you have impersonated
one unsuccessfully in the recent past.)

Could there have been someone else there? Stephanie
had definitely been in New Jersey a couple of hours after the
killing— I could personally attest to that. If she’d been in D.C.
in time for the murder and New Jersey in time for the reunion,
she’d have had to fly. But she’d had her car—the D.C. plates were
evident on the BMW she was driving at my house that night. For that
matter, on my block, the BMW was pretty evident all by itself. And
a BMW is not the kind of thing you can place in the overhead bin as
a carry-on item.

DNA evidence would rule out Stephanie hiring someone
to kill Legs, unless she hired someone who could be directly tied
to her, like a member of her family. So it became that much more
important that I get some solid information from Abrams as soon as
possible.

I’d have to talk to Legs’ mother, too. I couldn’t
imagine she’d have vital information. But you never know where the
good stuff is going to come from, so you talk to everybody and rule
out most of them.

I was off the Garden State Parkway by then and onto
Rt. 27, driving into Midland Heights, when the phone rang. It
wasn’t a number I recognized, so it was entirely possible it was
someone who wasn’t furious with me at the moment. I picked up.

“Hello?” I said tentatively.

“Hi, Aaron, it’s Stephanie.”

“Hi, Steph. Are you in jail?”

She laughed, as if I hadn’t meant it. “No,” she
teased. “I’m at my mother-in-law’s house.” Ah. So she was putting
on a cheery exterior to deal with the old lady. “We were wondering
if you might be able to do the interview now. Lester has a business
appointment later.”

“Now?” I checked the dashboard clock—it was still
three hours before the kids would come charging through the
door.

“Is this a bad time?”

“No, I can do it now. But you’ll have to give me
directions. The ones I wrote down last night are still in my
office.”

She gave me the directions as I made a U-turn on
Edison Avenue and risked the wrath of the Midland Heights Police
Department, whose chief, already on the warpath, probably had added
my scalp to his Ten Most Wanted list. “There’s just one thing,” she
said when she was done.

“What’s that?” I always serve up the straight
line.

“Lester is here, and he’s going to sit in with you
two.”

“We’d already discussed that. What about talking to
Lester?”

There was a hesitation in her voice. “Lester is not
willing to talk to the press right now,” she said. “I’m sure you
understand.”

“Sure I understand,” I replied. “You tell Lester
that I’m not willing to have him sit in on his mother’s interview
unless he agrees to do one himself. I’m sure he’ll understand.”
Stephanie stuttered, which was extremely unusual for her.
“B-b-b-but Aaron, you said. . .”

“I never said he could sit in, listen to everything
I’m going to ask, then prepare his answers ahead of time and be
ready for any possibility. I never said he could gain the advantage
before I even enter the room. I never said I’d agree to any of
this. All I said was that I’d write a story for
Snapdragon
,
and I can do that with or without Lester and his mother. Their
participation is entirely up to them. But my participation with
them is entirely up to me. I don’t exist to act as their public
relations manager.”

There was a long pause, and I got the impression
Stephanie, hand over the mouthpiece, was talking to Lester and/or
his mother. When she came back, her voice was different, small and
obedient.

“Lester says okay,” she said.

“He’ll talk to me?”

“That’s what I said,” and she hung up.

L
ouise Gibson lived in a
very nice little Victorian with a wraparound porch on a quiet,
tree-lined street in Scotch Plains, a Union County town where the
people who have money have real money, and the ones who don’t
probably also have more than me. It was exactly the kind of place
you’d expect a mother to live in, with real wood shutters and
perfect clapboard siding, nothing plastic (or even aluminum) about
it. Flowers were evident in the front garden. It lacked a porch
swing, but you almost saw one there, anyway. A real Family Values
house, straight out of
Leave It to Beaver
.

Inside was more of a scene from
The
Godfather
. Louise sat in a chair with her back to me, looking
out a window through the tiny crack of light between drawn
room-darkening curtains. I resisted the impulse to kiss her ring,
since I couldn’t actually see if she had a ring. She did move every
once in a while, though, so I was assured it wasn’t Norman Bates’
mom sitting there with Stephanie throwing her voice from the next
room. When you’re in the criminal investigation business, you have
to watch out for ventriloquism, you know.

Lester, who up close looked even more like Legs, but
smaller and smarmier (if such a thing was possible), was hovering
to one side, smoking a cigarette like a Gestapo interrogator in a
1940s propaganda movie, holding it between his thumb and
forefinger, palm up.

He wore a dark suit and tie, which I thought was a
bit much. Of course, I was wearing a dark suit and no tie, which
was about six steps above normal for me. Louise had opted not to
sit in widow’s weeds, which I appreciated, but was in black. You
got the impression she had been in black since Nixon resigned.

Stephanie introduced me, then left me alone with the
two Gibsons. Her introduction was simple but flattering, as she
called me a “wonderful reporter” who would “understand what you’re
going through.” Personally, I didn’t much care what they were going
through, but I did understand it. Intellectually.

I won’t comment on how wonderful a reporter I am. I
think my record speaks for itself, damn it.

When I took the tape recorder out, Lester looked
like he might faint, but Stephanie apparently had warned Louise,
who nodded, not actually looking in my direction, but aware of
every object in the room by radar, or that
“eyes-in-the-back-of-the-head” thing your mother used to do to
scare you into behaving.

I asked when the last time either of them had spoken
to Le. . . uh, Louis had been.

“I spoke to him the night before he was killed,”
said Lester, without so much as a blink when his mother winced at
the word “killed.” “I was thinking of coming down to visit him and
Stephanie that weekend, and spoke to him about the possibility of a
White House tour.”

“Can’t you just go up and buy tickets the day you
get there?” I asked.

“Not if you want to meet the President,” Lester
sniffed. I made sure I looked properly impressed, and went on.

“How about you, Mrs. Gibson?”

“I spoke to Louis every day,” she said. “He was a
good son, and he’d call me every single day to chat.” She almost
managed not to punch the words “good son” in Lester’s presence, but
she just couldn’t hold back.

“Do either of you know of any enemies who might have
wanted to see Louis dead?”

There was considerable silence for a while, but
since I was-n’t needed anywhere for another two and a half hours,
it didn’t especially bother me. I counted the change in my pocket—a
dollar in quarters, three dimes, four nickels. Pennies were in my
back pocket, but I felt it would be rude to start sticking my hand
back there.

“There are any number of political charlatans and
left-wing extremists who would have wanted to silence Louis
Gibson,” said Lester, his voice rising to a level that, in a normal
man, would indicate he was ordering a cup of mocha java. “His was
an important message that many on the other side didn’t want to
reach the public.”

“Easy on the campaign rhetoric, Lester,” I said.
“Your allegiances are showing.”

“I take it you did not share Louis’ point of view,”
said his mother. “Is that correct, Mr. Tucker?”

“My political views are not relevant to this
investigation, Mrs. Gibson,” I said. I regretted the word
“relevant,” but otherwise felt I was on solid ground.

She actually turned to face me at that point. Louise
Gibson might once have been beautiful, but decades of disapproval
(dished out, not taken) had pointed her mouth downward in a
permanent frown and clenched her eyebrows into a pucker. “I’m
asking if you agreed or disagreed with my son’s work, Mr.
Tucker.”

“And again, I’ll have to say that it has nothing to
do with the investigation,” I tried again, eschewing “relevant.”
Now I had to mentally deal with the word “eschewing,” but I smiled
at her in a friendly, non-threatening way.

“You’re being evasive, Mr. Tucker,” she hissed. “I
can tell what your point of view might be. Your people are famous
for their leftist leanings.”

You don’t often run into such obvious anti-Semitism
in Central New Jersey, and it caught me off-guard. “My
people
?” I asked. “You mean short, overweight freelance
writers?”

“I mean
Jews
,” she spat. “You know that. Like
the Rosenbergs. Remember them?”

“Hitler,” I countered. “Remember
him
?”

Lester, of all people, ended this lovefest by
putting his hand on his mother’s shoulders. “Now Mother,” he said.
“There’s no reason for us to be uncooperative.”

“He’s one of
them
,” Louise said, not to be
silenced. “He’s one of the enemy!”