A Farewell to Legs (30 page)

“You didn’t know him,” Louis Gibson said. “He was
the most self-satisfied, egotistical, ill-tempered,
pompous. . .”

“In your gene pool? Who would have thought it?”
Mahoney chimed in.

“He wasn’t the kind of brother you think twice
about,” Legs continued, his face a little redder.

“So you stab your brother in your girlfriend’s
apartment after sex, and you dump his body on the bed, put on his
clothes, pull the extremely unconvincing toupee off his head and
put it on your own, and assume his identity so you can be dead and
still have more than thirteen million dollars. Now,
that’s
family values,” I said.

“I guess you
can
take it with you,” Mahoney
added. He looked at me. “But wouldn’t the cops do fingerprints,
that sort of thing, and find out it wasn’t Legs?”

“No,” I said. “The medical examiner wouldn’t have a
reason to take prints if Cherie Braxton—who didn’t know him very
long, and couldn’t tell the difference—and later, Stephanie, both
identified the body as Louis Gibson. Lester looked enough like you
to pull it off, right Legs? And once you took his shoes, the ones
without the three-inch lifts in them, you were walking around at
your real height, instead of the one everybody was used to. So you
looked more like him.”

“DNA?” Mahoney asked. Legs was looking at whomever
was speaking, as if he were a spectator, enjoying the show. After
all, we were talking about how clever he was—what’s not to
like?

“All they got was a hair from the piece of cabbage
Legs has on his head,” I said. Legs involuntarily touched himself
on the head to make sure it was still there. “That actually worked
to his advantage, since the cops got a DNA match on a guy who was
executed in the state of Texas seven years ago, and that totally
confused them. It always pays to get a real human hair wig,
does-n’t it, Legs?”

“I said, stop calling me that!” he bellowed.

“Did you know that you were wearing a murderer’s
hair, Legs?” I asked. “That’s kind of, I don’t know, symmetrical,
isn’t it?”

“So, where did the money go?” Mahoney asked. “The
cops didn’t find it in any of his accounts.”

“They won’t find it in my accounts,” said Legs,
pleased to pat himself on the back for his own ingenuity. “My
mother is laundering it for me.”

“Forty-four years old and still doing his laundry at
Mom’s,” Mahoney said, clucking his tongue and shaking his head.
“Pathetic.”

“Clearly, Stephanie knows about all this, or she
wouldn’t have led us to this room for you to shoot us, right
Leggsy?” If I could get him angry enough to make a large movement
before he taped us to the chair, Mahoney or I (better Mahoney)
could rush him.

Legs laughed. “Yeah, Stephanie knows,” he said.

“How’d you get her to go along with it?” I
asked.

The voice from the doorway was one laced with
nostalgia and sex. “Go along with it?” Stephanie asked. “Do you
really think he was smart enough to think this all up
himself?”

She stood in the doorway in a matching trenchcoat,
although hers was more of the tan-colored Humphrey Bogart type. Of
course, it flattered her. I thought in that moment that the old
hotel keys were better. These “slide-the-card-through-the-machine”
things just didn’t make enough noise, and someone could sneak in on
you like this.

“I knew Mr. Mahoney would be here,” she said. “You
have a habit of hiding him in the closet, don’t you, Aaron? Sorry
Louis got here so early.”

Stephanie’s face was hard and emotionless, and I had
never seen her look like that before. She walked in and took the
gun from Legs without so much as a blink. He gave it to her, and
actually seemed to flinch a little as she reached for it.

“Tie them up,” she said. “I’ll hold the gun.”

“So it was your idea, huh Steph?” I asked.

“Naturally,” she said. “Louis couldn’t come up with
a decent plan to get himself from one room to another. You have to
blame yourself for this, Aaron. If you hadn’t found out more than
you were supposed to, and then told me what you knew, we would-n’t
have to shut you up on our way to the airport. But we have to buy a
few hours before the flight leaves.”

“I’m disappointed,” I admitted. “I thought better of
you than this.”

“Why?” she asked. “Because I was the girl from high
school with the big tits that everybody wanted to go to bed with?
We never really knew each other all that well, Aaron, so that’s the
only image you could be clinging to.”

I’d been thinking quite a bit about it, so I was
ready. “That wasn’t it at all, Steph,” I said. “You’re right that
the image I had from twenty-five years ago was the one I was using,
but it wasn’t just about sex. I never seriously considered sex with
you, because I thought I was out of your league. That was before
Abby taught me about leagues. I was a skinny little kid who didn’t
fit into any group, and you used to talk to me sometimes. You, the
coolest girl in the class. So that was what I wanted. If I could
impress the cool girl, then maybe I could be cool, too.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” she said as Legs finished
taping Mahoney to his chair. “But you’re never going to be
cool.”

“Big news,” said Mahoney.

I cut him off. “Why me, Steph? Why’d you insist that
I write about the murder, instead of just taking off with the dork
and the money?” I pointed at Legs.

“There were some financial details that hadn’t been
completed yet, and we needed to stay in the country for a few weeks
to make sure no one suspected Louis was still alive,” Stephanie
said. “Louis, get the legs.” Gibson almost reacted at the word
“legs,” then started in on Mahoney’s with the tape.

“But you didn’t answer why you needed me,” I
reminded her.

“You were insurance, Aaron. I could get information
on what the police knew through you, and I could control which way
the press was going by controlling you. You got just enough
information to keep you going.”

Damn it! I wasn’t just going to get shot. Now I had
to tell my wife she was right, too. Boy was I was having a day!

“But you didn’t control me,” I said. Got to get some
of your own back.

“I did for a while. Long enough,” said Steph. Her
eyes were devoid of emotion. “Besides, you were a great witness.
You’d seen me at the reunion, and you could testify I was in New
Jersey only a few hours after poor Louis had been killed.”

“Should I put tape on his mouth?” Legs asked
Stephanie, pointing to Mahoney.

“Hopefully, it won’t be necessary,” she said. “Start
taping Aaron.” Legs obediently walked over and started wrapping
duct tape around my arms and the armchair.

“I get the better chair,” I teased Mahoney.

“Could you please tape
his
mouth?” Mahoney
asked.

Once Legs had me securely fastened to the chair,
Stephanie put the gun into her coat pocket. “You’re not going to
shoot us?” I asked her.

“Not unless we have to,” she said. “We’re not
cold-blooded murderers.”

“I think Lester might disagree,” I said. “How did
you get him to show up at Cheri’s that day?”

“The way I get any man to do anything,” she
answered. “I told him I was going to have sex with him, told him I
was getting revenge on Louis for all his affairs. Then we got in
with a key Louis had made. Lester showed up with his tail wagging
and his tongue hanging out of his mouth.”

“I have a dog like that,” I said. “Did Lester pee on
the rug, too?”

“That’s very funny, Aaron,” she said, and a shiver
ran down my back.

“Must have been a shock to you, Legs, when they show
up and you’re already naked on the bed. Talk about your
interruptus
.”

“I knew they were coming,” said Legs. “I was just
expecting them later.”

“It wasn’t anything I hadn’t already seen,”
Stephanie said. “And believe me, it isn’t really worth looking
at.”

“Ouch,” said Mahoney. Legs actually winced a little.
I was glad Abby never talked about me like that. At least not in
front of me.

“So you drove up to New Jersey, immediately parked
near, but not at, the airport, flew back down to D.C., killed
Lester, and then flew back up to Jersey, so it could be established
you were up here when the cops figured Legs had been killed?”
Mahoney had the itinerary all worked out.

“Very good,” said Stephanie. “I thought that part
would be enough to throw everyone off, but you’ve become a real
problem, Aaron. You didn’t even respond when I tried to seduce you,
and that always works.”

“I’m seduce-proof. Except for my wife, who can
seduce me pretty much by breathing.” Competition brings out the
best in women.

“That was the moment when we first started thinking
that you might not be totally controllable,” said Stephanie. Of
course, it doesn’t bring out the best in
all
women. That
didn’t bode well. Best to distract her.

“So you couldn’t get Lester to lie down,” I
continued, “and you stabbed him right there, next to the bed. You
had to work fast to mop up the blood, didn’t you, Steph?”

“Good thing I had my club soda nearby,” Legs chimed
in, proud of himself for having gotten something right. Stephanie
rolled her eyes a little.

“How’d you make sure he didn’t have any clothes on
already?” I asked Stephanie. “There were no fibers on the
knife.”

“We had our. . . foreplay in the living
room,” she said. “Lester already had his shirt off before we went
in to consummate the relationship. The poor man, he really was
awfully confused.”

“You took a big chance that old Cherie would take a
shower at just the right time,” Mahoney pointed out.

“Not really,” said Legs. “The original plan was to
make it look like she killed me. But she took long showers all the
time after we made love.”

“I can’t imagine why,” said Mahoney.

“Now that we’ve answered all your questions, boys,
I’m afraid we’ll have to leave you.” Stephanie motioned Legs toward
the door, and he obeyed. “We have a plane to catch.” To Legs:
“we’ll take my car.”

“A plane to a place without an extradition treaty
with the United States, I’m sure,” I said. “You’re traveling under
false names with very, very expensive counterfeit passports, right?
And I’ll bet Mom has already funneled the money out of whatever
accounts she was hiding them in and into a numbered Swiss
account.”

“Cayman,” said Legs, and Stephanie flashed him an
angry look.

“Your mother is really a case,” I told Legs. “You
kill her own son, and she actually helps you get away with it.”

“She’s getting a decent cut of the money for her
trouble,” Legs boasted. “She’ll be a wealthy woman for the rest of
her life.”

“You’re lucky she doesn’t have a conscience,” I
said. “Of course, she’s modeling her life on that of Eva Braun,
so. . .”

“Not everyone can be as morally perfect as you,
Aaron,” said Stephanie. “Louis, it’s time.”

He turned and walked out of the room. Stephanie
walked over to the chair where I was restrained. She knelt to make
sure she was making eye contact.

“Don’t think about screaming your way out,” she
said. “I need enough time to get us to the airport. So I requested
a room with no one on either side, and the upper floors here have
better soundproofing. They don’t want to annoy the guests who pay
six hundred dollars a night.”

“I don’t get it, Steph,” I said. “Was this all about
the money? You’re going off to live the rest of your life with a
guy who cheats on you on a daily basis, away from your children,
and you can never come back. Is the money worth it?”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a wad of
cash. “Let’s see what money is worth,” Stephanie said. “Here’s the
ten thousand dollars you were going to get from
Snapdragon
.
I’m willing to bet that you won’t tell them the whole story, and
they won’t print it, so I’m reimbursing you ahead of time. You
won’t want to admit your embarrassing role in this, and you won’t
want to soil the reputation of good old Steph Jacobs, who’s been on
your pedestal since you were sixteen. Here.” She put the money in
my inside jacket pocket.

“You think my taking the money proves that I’m as
bad as you? That I’d kill an innocent man and live my life with a
lizard like Legs Gibson for money?”

She knelt back down next to me, and whispered in my
ear. “It’s not just the money,” she said. “I actually love him.” I
looked at her, and couldn’t stop myself.

“
Why?”
I asked, and she shrugged. Then
Stephanie stood up and started toward the door. She stopped,
turned, and walked to Mahoney, who looked up at her in wonder.
Then, Stephanie leaned down and kissed him hard on the lips for a
long moment. When the kiss was finished, she turned on her heels
and walked briskly out the hotel room door without looking
back.

Mahoney and I stared at each other for a while, then
he broke into a wide grin.

“See?” he said. “I
told
you she liked me
better.”

W
e didn’t bother to scream
for the longest time, although Mahoney did make one spirited
attempt to wiggle his chair over toward the desk and dial the phone
with his tongue. When that didn’t work, we sat and waited. I
screamed once, but that was only because I hadn’t gone to the
bathroom before they taped us to the chairs. When he found out why
I was screaming, Mahoney gave it a try, but neither of our hearts
was in it.

Lucky for us, Barry Dutton checks his voice mail on
Saturdays, and two Midland Heights cops (with two New Brunswick
cops along for the ride) found us in the room about an hour and a
half after Stephanie and Legs had left. I told them what had
happened, but even Mason Abrams (who also checked his messages, and
had called Barry in the interim) couldn’t get the Feds to Newark
Airport before whatever flight they had taken was long gone.