Caper (20 page)

She turned her eyes on me. I felt the way a mouse must just before being devoured by a snake.

“He thinks the congressman's wife is having an affair with the father of one of her son's playmates, and that the two of them conspired to do hubby in.”

“Has he been drinking?”

“Not that I know of.”

She digested that bit of information. “How does he gather this information?”

“You wouldn't believe.”

The attractive ADA didn't believe. As ADA Reynolds explained the situation, she looked at me as if I were from another planet. “You know much more than you should.”

“I wish you'd tell my wife. She thinks I'm clueless.”

“You're clearly not clueless. You're just not very bright. Constantly throwing yourself at the ADAs in charge.” She considered. “Is there anything you might be afraid of?”

“I'm afraid the cops might screw around and never solve the case.”

She grimaced. “See, that's the problem. The only way that makes sense is if you knew the contractor wasn't guilty.”

“Oh, bullshit,” I said. “Sorry, but I'm tired of being used as a punching bag. The cops made a knee-jerk reaction, arrested the guy at the scene of the crime. No one has taken the time to see if he might have been there legitimately.”

“Kind of hard to have a legitimate meeting with a dead man,” she said. “You're awfully concerned with this. How come?”

“You know how come. I got duped into setting the congressman up. From where I sit, it looks like when they couldn't frame him, they killed him.”

“What makes you think the two things are related?”

I shrugged. “It seems like a lot of bad luck for one guy.”

She gave me a pitying look.

I put up my hand. “Okay, forget it. I just thought I should pass along the information. In the future, I'll keep my ideas to myself.”

I turned and walked out the door. Wondered if they'd let me. Not that they could stop me. They weren't cops, they were lawyers. But they could at least ask me to come back.

They didn't. I made it down the hallway, turned the corner, exhaled, and leaned against the wall to let my heart stop racing. Talk about bad ideas! Dealing with one ADA was risky enough. Dealing with two was suicidal. I was lucky to walk out a free man. How long I remained that way was another matter. I wondered if they'd have me stopped in the lobby. Paranoid thinking, yes, but I had a lot to be paranoid about.

The problem was, the ADAs' assessments were right on the money. If my story was true, if I wasn't holding out on them, if I was telling what I knew, then there was absolutely no reason for me to be there. Which there wasn't. Aside from knowing the man they were prosecuting wasn't guilty. And the most likely way to know he's not guilty would be if I was. All and all, it was a miracle they let me go.

I had just had that thought when they came around the corner.

I nearly jumped a mile. Damn, here I was marveling at my escape, and they got me anyhow.

Only they didn't. They swept right on by and rang for the elevator. She looked up at him with sparkling eyes. Then I noticed his arm was around her waist.

Son of a bitch.

She was his date.

42

I
HAD RUN INTO AMOROUS
ADA
S TOO CAUGHT UP IN THE
throes of their own passion to realize I was delivering myself to them on a plate. And one of them had been out with my attorney the night before. What was the etiquette? What was the protocol? I'd been a married man so long I don't even know.

I was reminded of the old Everly Brothers song “Should We Tell Him?” To let him go on trusting wasn't fair, but, on the other hand, it was none of my business. Unless the bitch was playing him for a reason. Which made no sense, because the reason would be me, and I'd just presented myself to her, signed, sealed, delivered, and she hadn't seemed to give a damn. Perhaps she was just a working girl who liked to eat. I wondered what young ADAs made these days. Probably more than I did. Of course, they'd have years of student loans to pay off. Maybe she just liked dinner. Maybe she just liked Richard. Whatever the reason, I was getting nowhere fast, and no one seemed to want to help me.

So what should I do now? Piss in a bottle, call it gay perfume, and go bluff the congressman's wife? That seemed like a high-risk, low-yield plan.

I called Hanson's lawyer. “I see you took my advice.”

“Huh?”

“Your client's out walking around. I guess that tip on the doorman paid off.”

“My client's out walking around because he's innocent.”

“Save it for the press. You know and I know your client's out walking around because you made a stink about the doorman's story and the ADA backed down. So don't give me that my-client's-innocent shit. I'm more responsible for getting him out than you are.”

“Now, look here—”

“Want some help? You still need it. There's a big difference between being out on jail and being found not guilty.”

“I'll get him off.”

“Oh. Bad quote. Sounds like a shyster. What you meant to say is, ‘My client is innocent and a jury will surely agree.'”

The lawyer's voice was cold. “What do you want?”

“I want to help you. If you don't want my help, that's fine. But it's free. At that price, it's hard to beat.”

I could hear him take a breath. Then he said calmly, in measured tones, “And how can you help?”

“Got another tip. Take it or leave it. What you do with it is your business.”

“What's the tip?”

“The congressman's wife may have been a little too friendly with one of the family friends.”

“Who?”

“Guy who tackled your client at the memorial service.”

“Him? He's just a dumb jock.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And women never fall for those.”

43

I
WAITED FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS FOR THE LAWYER TO
stir the pot. It didn't get stirred. No arrests, no threats, no splashes in the news. I was beginning to lose faith in my powers as an investigator. I'd done a few cases for Richard, each one drearier than the last. I threw myself into them eagerly, hoping the money I earned would go toward the rent and not the potential and ever increasingly more likely necessary Stanley Hastings defense fund.

Finally, I could stand it no longer. I called Hanson's attorney. “What happened with the jock?”

“Nothing happened with the jock. I called, said I wanted to take his deposition. He said sure, he's coming in tomorrow.”

“What about your client?”

“He's innocent.”

“Aside from that.”

“Haven't heard from him.”

“Since when?”

“Yesterday. Why?”

“You tell him about the anonymous tip?”

“That's funny.”

“What's funny?”

“Calling it an anonymous tip. You made it. It's not anonymous to you.”

Leave it to a lawyer to split hairs. “Fine. The tip. You tell him about the tip?”

“What do you think? I'm taking a deposition and billing him for the time. I'm not going to let him know?”

“That was yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“You haven't heard from him since?”

“No.”

“You try to call him?”

“I called him, he wasn't in.”

“You leave a message?”

“Yeah, but he didn't call back. It wasn't urgent.”

I hung up on the attorney, gave the client a call. Got the answering machine. I didn't leave a message.

I hung up and called Alice. “Wanna look up Leslie Hanson's address?”

“Why?”

“He's not answering his phone.”

“Maybe he's not home.”

“It's a cell phone.”

“So what?”

“Guy's lawyer can't reach him. You don't hide from your lawyer.”

“You do if you owe him money.”

“You trying to kid me out of it?”

“Well, let's see. The guy's been charged with a murder you know he didn't commit. Telling him would make you the prime suspect instead. Yeah, I'm trying to kid you out of it.”

“It isn't working. What's the address?”

Leslie Hanson lived on Third Avenue in a fourth-floor walk-up over a pizza parlor. I rang the bell, got no answer. Considered ringing other apartments, see if anyone buzzed me in. Considered loiding the lock with a credit card, had visions of it snapping off with the part that said Stanley Hastings imbedded in the door. Considered taking a step back and kicking the damn thing down.

While I was thinking all that, a young man on his way out actually held the door open for me.

I went in, took the stairs up to Hanson's apartment. On the last flight I realized the phrase
fourth-floor walk-up
should have been a deal breaker.

As I reached the top, it occurred to me I now had to get into the apartment. I was running through my list of choices again when I noticed something funny about the door. The shadow being cast on the frame seemed to indicate it was ajar.

I walked down the hallway, pushed on the door.

It swung open.

I stuck my head in, called, “Leslie.”

I don't know what I expected. Him tied up in bed perhaps, unable to reach the phone. If so, he was also gagged, because there was no answer.

The apartment was dark. I groped for a switch, found one on the wall just inside the door. Flicked it on. I was in a small, haphazardly furnished living room. Leslie might be a contractor, but he wasn't an interior designer. His furniture might have been gathered off the street. None of it matched in period, style, or color. I have no taste in apartment furnishings, as Alice often reminds me, but even I could tell everything clashed. It made me hesitate a moment. Was it really worth sticking one's neck out to save a man with so little taste?

The bedroom had all the charm of the living room, enhanced by an unmade bed. Dirty socks and jockey shorts adorned the floor.

On the far wall, the door to the bathroom beckoned. I wondered what atrocities it held.

Just one.

The body of Leslie Hanson hung from the shower rod.

44

H
E WAS FULLY CLOTHED IN A GRAY SUIT, WHITE SHIRT, THIN
tie, black leather shoes. The rope around his neck was ordinary clothesline. It was a wonder that it held. Evidently he had tied it around one of the faucets in the tub, run the rope up over the shower rod, then stood on the edge of the tub, pulled the rope as tight as he could, and then tied it around his neck. It was tied in a single knot, which on first glance appeared to be a square knot but on closer inspection proved to be a weak granny knot, a square knot's poor relation, looped the wrong way. Hanson had apparently tied the knot and stepped off the side of the tub. The tension in the rope was just sufficient to keep his toes from touching the floor. A gagging man touching solid ground would have instinctively stopped himself from choking, no matter what his intentions. But his feet hadn't reached the floor, which would have left him, had he had second thoughts, with only the hope of grabbing the rope to pull himself up to take the tension off his neck, a ploy which, had he attempted it, clearly hadn't worked.

On the bathroom mat, directly below the body, was a sheet of paper.

I leaned in to take a look.

Written on the paper were two words: I'm sorry.

My sentiments exactly.

It was, in my opinion, the clumsiest attempt to make a murder look like a suicide imaginable.

I took a quick look around the bathroom, didn't see anything else significant. I went out though the living room, trying to remember what I'd touched. As far as I could tell, it was only the doorknob. I hated to wipe it off. I might be eliminating the murderer's fingerprints. On the other hand, if the murderer was stupid enough to leave fingerprints, they'd probably catch him anyway. I took out a Kleenex, wiped the doorknob. Wondered if they could get DNA from mucous. Snot possible, I told myself. That was enough to tell me I was losing it again.

I slipped out, left the door in the position I'd found it, and got the hell out of there.

I hurried down the street, trying to remember what the guy who'd let me in looked like. Another in a growing list of people I had to avoid. I found a pay phone, dropped in a quarter, and called nine-one-one.

The operator who answered sounded bored. Even the report of a dead man didn't perk her up.

I hung up the phone, got in the car, and drove home.

On the way, I promised myself for the umpteenth time never to second-guess Alice again.

45

I
FELT TERRIBLE.
I'
D TRIED TO HELP AND ONLY MADE THINGS
worse. What an understatement. I'd gotten a guy killed, that's what I'd done. By sticking my nose in where it didn't belong, I'd basically murdered the contractor. The guy hadn't hung himself. Not unless he was a suicidal acrobat. No one teeters on the edge of the tub trying to knot a noose, no matter how attractive the alliteration. He'd been killed for following up the lead I gave him through his attorney.

Which more or less solved the case. The jock killed the contractor. Which meant the jock killed the congressman, bang, over, finished. I was right, but it was small consolation. I was also a killer.

Alice knew something was wrong the minute I came in the door. “You look terrible. What is it?”

I told her what happened.

She was predictably sympathetic. “It's not your fault.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“No, it isn't. You had vital information in a murder case. It was your civic duty to pass it along. It would have been obstruction of justice if you hadn't.”

“How can you say that? You told me not to.”

“Because you didn't know if you were right. Turns out you were. So your information was important.”