ER - A Murder Too Personal (5 page)

I grinned at him. “Your concern about me
touches me deeply in my private parts,” I said. “But I came here to
talk about Alicia.”

He nodded and put his fingertips together in
a little steeple. “Please proceed.”

Chisolm looked every day of his fifty-five
years. His skin was taut but you could still see where the wrinkles
were before the face lift. His features were angular, but his lips
were full—too full for a man’s lips. It was his eyes that gave him
away. They were pale gray and sharp. Hungry eyes.

“Tell me about your relationship with
Alicia,” I said.

“There isn’t much I can tell you that I
haven’t told the police. They were here yesterday and questioned me
up one side and down the other.”

“That’s fine. Just tell me what you told
them.”

He leaned forward, separated his fingertips
and put them on the edge of the coffee table, wiping away an
imaginary speck of dust.

“We met for the first time about a year and a
half ago. It was at a presentation for securities analysts. As you
know, she makes a striking first appearance.”

He didn’t correct himself when he used the
present tense.

“The presentation was given by a real estate
investment trust of which I’m a director. She was working for
Morgan Stanley at the time. Our initial contact was simply some
brief chit-chat at the meeting and then a couple of drinks at the
Plaza afterwards.”

He paused and took a sip of coffee. He was
the kind of guy who stuck out his pinky when he drank from the
cup.

“The next time I saw her was about a year
ago. I went to a party given by my ex-partner, Joel Edelstein. It
was to celebrate his endowment of a chair at Princeton. Alicia and
I recalled our first meeting and thought it would be fun to see
each other again.”

I knew Edelstein. We’d been undergraduate
drinking and whoring buddies at Princeton. And I knew about
Edelstein’s relationship with Chisolm. According to the information
I had, Chisolm was worth some seven million. The seed money had
come from his wife. He’d made the rest of it from paired REITs when
the market for them was hot. He started the genetic engineering
company four years ago. Chisolm was the money, the contacts, the
business acumen. Edelstein was the scientist, the man with the
ideas and the patents.

Two years ago, Chisolm had bought out
Edelstein with a cash and stock package worth three million.
Edelstein had taken the stock, sold it when the SEC rules allowed
him to, and invested the after-tax proceeds in half a dozen
Internet start-ups.

When I met Edelstein at an alumni reunion, he
was a guy who had his heart’s desire—a teaching career, a research
lab and a plush and comfortable cushion on the side. “That way I
can tell them to fuck off whenever I feel like it,” he’d told me. I
wondered if Edelstein had ever regretted leaving Insignia
Biotech.

Chisolm cleared his throat. “I’m a married
man, so our relationship had to be discreet. We’d meet once or
twice a week, usually in the city.”

“Was she seeing anyone else?” I asked.

He seemed genuinely surprised by the
question. “Why? Was she in the habit of doing that?”

I didn’t answer. Let him ponder that
possibility.

He smoothed his hair back as if he were
looking into a mirror. “I don’t think so,” he said. “At least, I
didn’t think so at the time.”

I could see he was thinking about it.

“What did she do in her spare time?”

“She didn’t have much spare time. She was a
real work horse—put in long hours. And when she wasn’t working at
the office, she was working at home. You probably remember that
about her.”

I nodded. “Yeah.” At least that much about
her hadn’t changed. She was always a hard worker and a hard
player.

“You have any thoughts on who’d want to kill
her?” I asked him.

He shook his head slowly and I had the sense
he was trying to find the right words. “I’ve been giving it a lot
of thought the last few days. Trying to find the who or the what.
The problem was that she never spoke much about herself and her
inner feelings. In a way, that was one of the masculine traits
about her. That and her competitiveness.”

He stopped and stared out the window at a
bird that had landed on one of the hedges. “Do you mind if I
smoke?” he asked.

I shook my head.

He went over to his large polished mahogany
desk and took out a pack of Benson & Hedges. He lit one, held
in the smoke for a long minute and blew it out slowly. “Most women
can’t stop talking about themselves, you know. Their emotions,
their hang-ups, their desires. Alicia was different. She very
seldom would let you know what she was thinking. She kept it
hidden—almost like a poker hand.”

He paused, then asked, “Did you find her to
be that way?”

He wanted to compare notes, but I wasn’t
playing that game. He was astute—I had to give him that much.

“Go on,” I said.

“There was one other thing. Her feminism. She
was an ardent feminist. She’d talk at length about it—almost as if
it were an obsession. She’d go on and on with this drivel, and I’d
listen to her and nod, yes…yes, just because I wanted to hump
her.”

“What did you think was the point of her
feminism?”

“Well, she said she was never going to be
dependent on a man again, and I had the impression she really meant
it.”

“What about her friends?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I didn’t know any of
them. She never mentioned any friends and we never went out with
any of them.”

“How well did you know her sister,
Laura?”

“Yes, we had a few conversations. Nothing
more than that. But I liked her. She was quite warm—very different
from Alicia.”

He studied a painting on the wall. There was
no mistaking the artist. It was by Francis Bacon. Two
indistinguishable bodies twisted in an embrace to the death. A
gaping shrieking mouth. A bloody slab of beef. An odd painting to
be in a business office. “Alicia was like a thoroughbred. She was
frisky and high-spirited. A lot of fun to ride. But..,” he paused,
“in the last few months she turned skittish. She didn’t seem to be
as much fun anymore. She seemed preoccupied about something. I had
actually…”

He stopped and fell silent.

I didn’t say anything. He was doing the
talking, not me.

Finally, he said, “I was going to terminate
our relationship. I told her so. I wasn’t enjoying it any longer.
It was becoming a chore. You know, a Frenchman once said the only
value a woman has is in her novelty. I subscribe to that theory. We
had sex exactly seventy-nine times. I always keep meticulous
records. Sixty-five times straight intercourse, eleven times oral
sex, three times anal sex. So you can imagine how tedious it
was.”

That was a new one on me. I would’ve liked to
see his baseball scorecards.

“How did Alicia take it when you told her you
wanted to break up?”

“Quite composed, as a matter of fact. I
thought she would have taken it harder, but she didn’t reveal any
emotion at all. She sort of shrugged her shoulders and said, well,
let’s carry on. I had the sense she was tiring of me also.”

I nodded. “What about her work as an
securities analyst? Which industries did she cover?”

He took another drag on his cigarette and
stubbed it out in an ashtray. “Well, as far as I know, she followed
companies in the real estate industry. She used to cover defense
and technology areas. That was unusual for a woman. I kept on
trying to interest her in genetic engineering but she was reluctant
to change. I told her that this was a hot industry—this was where
man played God.”

He stared at me. “And that brings me to the
reason why I wanted to talk with you.” He leaned forward in his
chair. “Now that the human genome has been sequenced, we’re going
to be a very successful company. We have several genetic
engineering projects going on at the present time—one of which is
particularly exciting.”

His hungry eyes grew positively rapacious as
he spoke. This guy made the big bad wolf look bush league. “We’ve
produced hemoglobin from genetically-altered bacteria. We use
recombinant hemoglobin that’s been engineered to mimic natural
hemoglobin. This means we can mass-produce cheap synthetic human
blood that would be free of HIV and hepatitis viruses. You could
give a transfusion to any recipient without worrying about
blood-type matching and the product would have a much longer shelf
life than human blood.”

His eyes flashed. “Do you see how this blood
could be useful for accident victims or wounded soldiers on the
battlefield?”

I nodded. “And why are you imparting all this
valuable insider information to me, free of charge?”

“Because…” And his eyes gleamed brighter than
the Eddystone lighthouse, “we are about to make an initial public
offering of our stock. We’re a closely-held company. This is going
to be an exceptional opportunity. I know you have top-drawer
contacts. I’d suggest you purchase some stock at the offering and
inform your associates about this opportunity to make a large
profit very quickly and very easily.”

I looked at him. This clown was violating
just about every SEC regulation in the book and some they hadn’t
even thought of yet. “And you’re going to make me a rich man
because you like the cut of my jib?”

He snorted. “I do like your style, Mr. Rogan.
And I know you’re not stupid enough to turn down an opportunity
like this. Aren’t you interested in making a killing?”

“Not this way,” I said.

“Don’t you understand what we’re doing? We’re
creating new strains of human gene cells that will enable us to
pass on better traits from one generation to the next—actually
improving the human species. We’ll theoretically be able to create
a race of superbeings—far superior to the diseased and disabled
wrecks you see around you. Something Nietzsche would envy and be
proud of. Something he could only hope for in his writings. And
think of the fortunes we’ll be making in the process. These new
people will be smarter, tougher, more disease-resistant. In short,
they’ll be far above and beyond your pathetic human beings of
today.”

This insufferable son of a bitch was starting
to get on my nerves. I gave him a sour grin. “You better go back
and reread your Cliff Notes on Nietzsche. His Superman was a man of
integrity, considerate to his inferiors—not some money-grubbing
stock jobber.”

His mouth opened but he didn’t make a
sound.

I stood and said, “Don’t trouble yourself to
show me out. I’ll find my way.”

I dropped the paper bag on Gene Black’s desk
in his office next to the squadroom. “Here’s a six-pack for you,” I
said.

He squinted up at me. “You gotta be out of
your fuckin’ mind. They’re tighter than a nun’s asshole around
here,” he rasped. “You want me to lose my pension? Me with five
years till retirement?”

“Calm down, officer. Don’t get your balls in
an uproar.” I took out a bottle of Perrier, opened it and put it in
front of him.

He grunted. “Perrier water?” He pronounced
the final R. “What’re you? Some kind of faggot?”

“Drink it,” I said. “Good for your beer
belly. No calories.”

He took a swig and grimaced.

“Wadda ya want?” he asked.

“About my ex. What did you find?”

He nodded and rolled his swivel chair over to
a file cabinet without getting up. He took out a file and rolled
back to where I was sitting on the edge of his desk. Without
looking at me, he thumbed through the contents and said, “You’re
not looking through this. You can’t see it, so don’t even ask
me.”

“What happened to Mr. Personality?”

“Who?”

“Your partner, Forgash.”

“Shit.” He shook his head. “I’m trying my
damnedest to get him transferred to Tremont Avenue. That sombitch
is driving me up the wall. You know what they say about oil and
water.”

“I thought you two got along like ham and
eggs.”

He wrinkled his brow. His face was one of
those that always had a dark shadow, even when he’d just
shaved.

“More like a cobra and a mongoose,” he said
as he leafed through the file.

I surveyed the squadroom. The nineteenth was
pretty quiet today. The place was mostly empty except for a couple
of cops talking on the phone or typing reports. One cop with his
feet up on his desk was tossing wadded-up balls of paper into a
wastepaper basket.

“Did you see the story on Channel five? About
your wife.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I didn’t feel like
watching.” The local TV news shows had pounced on the story and
were featuring its most gruesome aspects with unalloyed
delight.

The Post had carried the story on page four.
“Wall Street Beauty Shot Dead.” I guess the headline had an element
of human interest in monosyllables.

Black looked up from the file. “We don’t have
anything good yet, Rogan. Apartment ransacked, valuables missing,
no forced entry. It was a nine-millimeter slug caught her in the
back of the head.”

“Anybody hear the shot?”

He shook his head. “No one we can find. You
figure it. I personally searched her place for two hours—couldn’t
find as damn thing. No footprints, tracked in dirt, hair…” He
rubbed his chin. “There were fingerprints, but nothing unusual.
Michael Chisolm, he was her boyfriend…her sister…”

“What about Chisolm?” I asked.

“What about him?”

“He shoot her?”

Black shrugged. “Find me a motive. He was her
boyfriend. He was entitled to be in her apartment.”

He took a long look at me and shook his head.
“Sorry, but that’s the way it is. Way I figure it, push-in job.
Some punk stops her outside on the street, pulls a gun, makes her
open the door and let him in, kills her, takes the loot and
splits.”