A Farewell to Legs (28 page)

“I’m sure I don’t want to move my desk, the
computer, my file cabinets, the bookshelves, and everything else in
the room to move the rug,” I said.

“Well, it looks like I need to call Mark Friedman
and ask him what takes the smell out of an old, old carpet,” said
Abby.

“I’ll call him. He’s seen a picture of you, and may
actually pant on the phone.”

“That hasn’t happened to me in weeks,” my wife
teased.

“Well, I can’t call your office
every
day,” I
said.

Friedman was home, luckily, so I didn’t have to
spend much time talking to his wife Marsha, who doesn’t like me. I
don’t know why she doesn’t like me, but she snarls whenever I call,
even when she’s saying things like “so, how’s life treatin’ ya?”
It’s hard to snarl through a phrase like that, but Marsha
manages.

This time, she didn’t even answer the phone, so I
could avoid all that and get right to the point. “I have another
carpet question for you,” I said.

“More blood?”

“Not this time. It’s not related to a crime, unless
you consider rescuing a dog from the shelter to be cruel and
unusual punishment.”

“Uh-oh. Dog urine.” Friedman was completely in his
professional mode.

“Among other things.”

“The other things you can clean up and forget
about,” he said. “The urine is a problem. What kind of carpet?”

I was prepared this time. “Wall-to-wall, shallow
pile, looks to have been installed sometime during the Vietnam War.
And now it doesn’t smell so good.”

“You’re screwed.”

I waited. “That’s it? I call the carpet maven and I
get, ‘you’re screwed?’ What about some magic compound I can cook up
in the basement that will take out the smell and make the rug look
like I just bought it last week?”

“It doesn’t exist. You’re screwed. Face it. Dog
urine on a rug like that isn’t going to come out. It’s powerful
stuff. Pull up the carpet and get the floors sanded, if the stain
doesn’t go down too far.” Friedman doesn’t pull punches. I could
have used a few pulled punches right around then.

“You’re not helping, Mark.”

“Superman couldn’t help you. Face it, the carpet’s a
goner. Come on in, Tucker, and I’ll give you a deal.”

“It’s cruel to try and drum up business among
friends,” I pointed out.

“Don’t blame me. I didn’t make you go get a dog.” I
glared at Abby, who was pretending not to be looking at me. She
walked into the living room and started reading my script, which I
had left on the coffee table. She must be feeling really guilty if
she’s willing to do that, I thought. Wonder what else I can get out
of it. . .

“Well, thanks anyway, Friedman,” I said. “I’ll call
you if I decide to get another rug.”

“Whatever. Hey, did the Legs thing ever work out?
Did you find out about the stain on the carpet?”

“Not yet, but it’s close. That bastard didn’t die
the way he was supposed to, writing his killer’s name on the rug in
his own blood. Would have made it so much easier to solve.”

Friedman laughed. “He never did have any redeeming
social value, Legs,” he said. “No qualities to recommend him.”

“Well, he was taller than me.”

“Not really.” Friedman’s voice had a tease in
it.

“What do you mean, ‘not really?’ Legs was at least
three inches taller than I am.”

“No, he wasn’t,” said Friedman. “I played basketball
with him once, and we changed in the same locker room.”

“So?”

“Didn’t you know?” Friedman asked incredulously.
“Legs Gibson always wore lifts. That’s why his legs always looked
longer than they should be. It’s the reason we called him ‘Crazy
Legs.’”

E
than actually got up at
six-thirty the next morning to walk Warren, who had miraculously
made it through the night without fouling any more of our
furnishings, although he did show a preference for our living room
sofa over his dog bed. We solved this problem by completely giving
in to the dog, and throwing a blanket over the couch in case he
shed. So much for my being the alpha dog in his pack.

Now, given three days to come up with five thousand
words for ten thousand dollars, I decided to forego the Y Friday
morning and concentrate on work. Writing is always the least of the
job—it’s gathering the information that takes all the time. And I
had gathered information, all right. It just fit together like a
jigsaw puzzle put together by a klutzy moose.

What I had was a theory that fit the facts I’d
discovered, but no evidence whatsoever that the theory was correct.
In fact, the proven information on this story would indicate to any
sane person that the theory was ridiculously improbable. Luckily,
there were no sane people in my office, only a freelance writer.
Our usual motto is: “When the facts don’t fit, make sure you get
your money in advance.” Of course, I hadn’t done that, so the facts
had to fit.

Preston Burke came by that morning for his check,
which I wrote out to “Cash,” and handed to him. Then, somehow Burke
managed to convince me that the cast iron railing on my front steps
needed to be sanded and painted, and before I knew it, he was back
at work, happy as a clam, assuming that clams enjoy physical labor
in the presence of the husband of the woman you think you’re in
love with. You never can tell with clams.

It occurred to me that the best way to put off
worrying about who killed Legs Gibson was to worry about who threw
a rock into my since-repaired front window. This would be the same
person who called my house periodically to make extremely general
threats that were sounding increasingly weak these days. If a
threatening phone caller can’t even muster up a good scare in a
short Jewish freelance writer, he really should give up the pursuit
and take up botany, or something.

I called Barry Dutton to see if the rock-throwing
incident was still his Number One crime priority, and amazingly, it
had dropped down the list. Barry said a couple of bicycles had been
stolen from people’s garages, and there were numerous reports of
motorists exceeding the twenty-five mile-per-hour speed limit that
infests Midland Heights, so the whole rock thing had faded as
quickly as Jean-Claude Van Damme’s fame. Muscles from Brussels,
indeed.

After Barry, I called my other law enforcement
buddy, but Mason Abrams had chosen a very inconvenient Friday to
begin a long weekend. Since we in New Jersey often go to Washington
for three-day excursions, I assumed Abrams would be on his way to
beautiful downtown Newark, whose reputation is not entirely
deserved, but whose reality ain’t exactly Venice, either.

All this, and
still
no additional producers
had called to express interest in buying the script. It was enough
to discourage a normal man.

There was only one person left to call for business
purposes, and I had admittedly been putting it off until it could
no longer be avoided. But that calendar on the wall was showing
Monday coming up rather quickly, and there was no avoiding
Stephanie Jacobs Gibson any longer.

I hate having to call people when I don’t have good
news for them. I especially hate it when they are people who loom
large in my past, even if the reason they loom so large is driven
less by deep feeling and more by hormones.

Actually, that was no longer true. When I was
eighteen years old, Stephanie could easily have held me enthralled
simply by showing up in the right T-shirt. But now, she represented
less a legitimate erotic fantasy and more a symbol of an era that
I, to be honest, have remarkably little affection for. I’d much
rather be the person I am today than the one I was then. And while
Steph could still wear a T-shirt with the best of them, I was
married to the best of them, and didn’t have the same empty longing
I’d had in high school. But as symbols go, Stephanie was a pretty
strong one, and I hated disappointing her. Giving Steph bad news—
which in this case could be characterized as no news at all—wasn’t
my favorite thing to do that morning. So, I avoided it.

Instead, I called Mahoney on his cell phone. He was,
it turned out, halfway between Atlantic City and Newark, traveling
between emergency calls for his rental car bosses. He had the phone
on speaker, which was evident from the level of noise on my end of
the line. But his hands were free. I imagine one of them was
probably even being used for steering.

“There’s going to be trouble tomorrow,” I told him.
“You want to come?”

“What kind of trouble? Minor household repairs, or
foundation work?” Mahoney is, to me, what Bob Vila is to everybody
else. Except he’s not on television.

“Neither. Remember the night you spent in my
closet?” Of course he remembered. I’d almost gotten shot, and he’d
managed to beat up a kid almost thirty years younger than himself.
It was quite an evening.

“I believe I do recall a night like that,” Mahoney
said.

“It’ll be more like that,” I said.

“Legs Gibson?”

“One and the same,” I told him.

“What the hell. I haven’t faced death in close to
six months. What kind of snacks should I bring?” We discussed the
menu, he said he’d drive, and we decided to firm up the rest of the
details for our brush with mortality later on.

Finally, I couldn’t put off the call to Stephanie
any longer. She was at home, and sounded tired and more subdued
than usual.

“What have you found out, Aaron?” No small talk, and
the tone was less inviting than it had been since this whole thing
began. I was starting to feel like an employee.

“Not a huge amount, Steph. But I do know that Lester
was in the room when Louis was killed. I can’t tie him to the crime
yet, but. . .”

“Lester? Are you sure?” She sounded truly shocked,
which surprised me. Ten minutes with Lester in the most casual
circumstances could convince you he was capable of violence. Just
the way he smiled when he was trying to look friendly was enough to
wake me up in the middle of the night for weeks afterward.

“I’m sure, all right. There’s DNA evidence that
can’t be explained any other way. Now, where the connection is, I
don’t know, but Lester was definitely there. Also, there’s some
evidence that Louis may have been illegally funneling money from
his foundation into his private accounts. Did you notice any
extravagant spending, any financial things that you couldn’t
explain, in the past few months?”

Stephanie thought for some time, and answered, “no.”
I waited, but there was no elaboration. Just, “no.”

“There’s more,” I told her finally. “I have evidence
that Louis might have been killed standing up, and then laid out on
the bed to make it look like he’d been there all along. Can you
think of a reason someone would do that?”

Again, “no,” this time sounding smaller and more
meek.

“We need to meet, Steph. Are you coming up to Jersey
for the weekend?”

I got the impression she had her hand over the
mouthpiece, but Stephanie came back very quickly. “I hadn’t been
planning on it,” she said, “but it sounds like it’s important we
see each other.”

“I have to finish the story by Monday for
Snapdragon
to print it on time,” I said. “That’s why there’s
some urgency in the timing.”

“Okay,” Steph said, starting to sound more normal.
“I’ll come up. Do you know the Hyatt Hotel in New Brunswick?”

“Sure. I can practically see it from my bedroom
window.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow. I’ll call when I have a
room number. We can meet there.”

Stephanie Jacobs in a hotel room—there was a time
when that would have answered every prayer I’d ever care to offer
up, if I was the prayer-offering-up type. Now, it was not quite as
exciting as I would have hoped. It was, in fact, just a little bit
scary. After all, the woman had come within inches of being
arrested for killing her husband, and for all I knew, she
had
killed him.

But I didn’t think so.

T
he dog continued his
assault on the rug in my office, completely ignoring every other
carpeted area in the house. I began to think he had a particular
grudge against me, since I was the only one who hadn’t taken him
for a walk yet. Warren loved a walk more than most other males like
staying at home and watching the game on a plasma TV with the
remote in their hands and a beer close by on the table. It’s the
advantage of being a dog, I guess, that one’s pleasures are so
simple.

Leah, at least, had fallen so completely in love
with Warren that she was pleased to take him out when she arrived
home from school on Friday. She said “hi” to Preston on the way in,
having totally accepted him as a fixture in the house, and he
tipped his painter’s cap at her and smiled as she walked by with
Warren, making sure the dog’s tail didn’t brush against the black
paint on the railing. Burke was nothing if not thorough.

Friday night my mother came to have dinner with her
grandchildren, and in the process, to see Abby and me. She laughed
at virtually everything the kids did, whether it was funny or not,
chuckled when they were being especially obnoxious, and told the
adults tales of incompetent internists and unscrupulous produce
managers at the Foodtown. That is, the produce managers were at the
Foodtown. I’m not clear on where the dopey doctors were, since I
was only listening with one ear.

My mind was on Stephanie and Legs and Lester.
Clearly, Lester had been in the room when the stabbing took place.
He had been scheduled to visit the Gibsons that weekend, and his
DNA, or that of the man whose hair he was borrowing, was found in
the room. Someone had cleaned up some stains on the floor, which
may or may not have been blood.

“. . . two for ninety-nine, when clearly
it should have been labeled two for fifty-nine,” my mother was
saying. Abby was doing a much better job of looking fascinated than
I was, but Abby, generally speaking, is a nicer person than I am.
And she wasn’t going to confront a murderer in a hotel room the
next day. Or a non-murderer.