Fletch Won (28 page)

Still Fletch said nothing.

“What do you know of my brother’s death?”

“I know you were drunk when you confessed to the police. I know Habeck kept you drugged during the trial.”

“Yes. Tranquilizers. Habeck said he always gave them to his clients during a trial. I had no idea how strong they were. The trial went by in a blur, like a fast-moving railroad train.” Childers’s teeth worried his lips. “I murdered my brother.”

Fletch said, “I expect you did.”

“How is that forgivable?” Again, he seemed to be asking Fletch a real question. “Richard said he was going to blackmail me, for money to keep up his whacky, careless life. Even if I was paying him, he couldn’t be trusted to keep his mouth shut. His need to hurt me, and my parents, was too great. My mistake was that I was horrified at the threat of the college, the world, my parents learning that I had cheated, hired an instructor to write my honors thesis. I went to Richard’s apartment. I didn’t intend to kill him. We fought like a couple of shouting, screaming, crying, angry kids. Suddenly we were on his little balcony. Suddenly the expression on his face changed. He fell backwards. Fell.”

“You confess very convincingly.”

“I woke up on the other side of the trial. I was back living in my apartment, coming to work here every day. Everybody was telling me the incident was over, closed, that I had to get on with my life. How could I get on with my life? The so-called incident wasn’t over. My parents knew I had cheated on my honors thesis. One son was dead. The other son had murdered him. And my parents knew it. I had destroyed my parents’ every dream, every reality. I might as well have killed them, too.” From the way he was looking at him, Fletch knew another unanswerable question was coming. “My parents did what they thought was best in hiring Habeck, in getting me off. But wouldn’t they feel better in their hearts if their sole remaining son took responsibility for what he had done?”

Fletch said nothing.

“You asked for a story,” Childers said.

“So you took to confessing.”

“Yeah. I’d read enough about a crime to be able to go into the police and say I committed it. They had to listen, at first. I’d make up evidence against myself. That was my mistake. The evidence wouldn’t check out. So they wouldn’t believe me at all.”

“You’re sure you just didn’t want to play a starring
role in court again?” Childers gave him the look of a starlet accused of being attractive. “Some people get a kick out of that.”

Childers sighed and looked at the gun.

“Stuart, you can’t be tried again for murdering your brother.”

“I know that. So I murdered Habeck.”

“Now the story gets a little hard to swallow.”

“Why?”

“Murdering your brother was a crime of passion. Two brothers, very angry with each other, probably never having been able to talk well with each other, finding each other tussling, hitting each other, all kinds of angers at each other since you were in diapers welling up out of your eyes. And one of you got killed. That’s very different from the fairly intellectualized crime of killing the person who had prevented your receiving punishment for the first crime.”

“Is it? I suppose it is.” He looked sharply at Fletch. “Frustration is frustration though, isn’t it? Once you’ve taken a life, it becomes easier to take another life.”

“That’s a cliché. People who commit crimes of passion seldom do so again. The object of your rage was dead.”

“Couldn’t I have transferred my rage from my brother to Habeck?”

“Keep trying, Stuart. You’ll work it out.”

“Who says a person who commits a crime of passion, as you call it, isn’t capable of committing an entirely different, rational murder?”

“What’s rational about your murdering Habeck? The son of a bitch got you off!”

“Yes, he got me off!” Leaning forward on his desk, Childers spoke forcefully. “And the son of a bitch knew I was guilty! He obstructed justice!”

“In your behalf! You’re the one who is walking around free!”

Childers sat back. “I don’t know that much about the
law, but I’d call Donald Habeck an accessory to murder, after the fact. Wouldn’t that be about right? Think about it.”

Fletch thought about it.

“How many times was Donald Habeck an accessory to a crime, after the fact?”

Fletch said, “Before the fact, too, I suspect.”

“What?”

Fletch remembered saying to Louise Habeck, about her son, Robert,
“Shooting his father would accomplish two goals, wouldn’t it?”
And her answering,
“Spendidly!”

“Okay, Stuart. If you shot Habeck because you wanted to be punished so much, how come you didn’t stay there? How come you weren’t found standing over him with the gun?”

Childers smiled. “Would you believe I had to pee?”

“No.”

“Go shoot someone, and see what happens to your bladder.” Sitting behind his desk, Stuart Childers was then speaking as evenly as someone might discussing a homeowner’s fire-and-theft policy. “I did wait there. I had thought someone would hear the gun. I shot Habeck sort of far back in the lot, where he parked. I shot him as he was getting out of the car. No one was around. The guard at the gate was talking to someone entering the parking lot. I could see him. I waited. I had to pee in the worst way. I mean, really bad. I didn’t want to have to go through the whole arrest process, you know, having shit my pants. So I went into the lobby of the
News-Tribune
and asked the guard there if I could use the men’s room.”

“Why didn’t you come out again? There were police, reporters, photographers who would have been interested to actually see you at a scene of one of your crimes.”

“I felt sick. Jittery.”

“That would have been understood.”

Stuart Childers said something Fletch didn’t hear.

“What?”

“I wanted a drink. A few drinks before I gave myself up.”

“You wanted to get drunk before you confessed again, is that it? What did you supposedly want, Stuart?”

“I wanted to get control of myself. I went home, had a few drinks, a bath, a night’s sleep. In the morning, I had breakfast. Then I went to the police station to confess.” Childers shrugged. “A gentlemanly routine, I suppose. I was brought up that way.”

Fletch shook his head. Then he asked, “How did you know Habeck was going to be in the parking lot at the
News-Tribune
a few minutes before ten on Monday morning?”

“I didn’t. Murdering Habeck was something I decided over the weekend. So Monday morning, I drove to his house. Got there about seven-thirty. Waited for him. He drove out of his garage in a blue Cadillac Seville. I followed him. He drove to the
News-Tribune
. While he talked to the guard at the gate, I parked outside and walked in. It was the first stop he made. When he opened his car door, I shot him.”

“Then you had the irresistible need to pee.”

“I had been sitting in my car since before seven o’clock! Then, after I peed, I felt really sick in the stomach. My legs were shaking. I had a terrible neck ache.” Childers rubbed the back of his neck. “I wanted time! Isn’t that understandable?”

“I don’t know. You say you wanted to get caught, but you ran away. There is no evidence at all that you were at the scene of the crime. Everything you’ve told me so far, that Habeck drove a blue Cadillac Seville, that he was shot at the back of the lot getting out of his car, all that was reported in the press.”

“Sorry if my story conforms to the truth.”

“You didn’t confess until after you’d been able to read the details of the crime in the newspaper.”

Childers stared at the gun on his desk.

“Okay, Stuart. What did you do with the murder weapon?”

“You know what?”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what you did with the gun?”

“I don’t know. When I got home, I didn’t have the gun. I’ve tried to remember. I was upset….”

“You had to pee.”

“… Tried to reconstruct.”

“I bet.”

“I couldn’t have had the gun in my hand when I walked into the lobby of the
News-Tribune
. I must have thrown it into the bushes.”

Fletch watched him carefully. “You threw it into the bushes in front of the building?”

“I must have.”

“What kind of a gun was it?”

“A twenty-two-caliber target pistol.”

“Stuart, your twenty-two-caliber target pistol is on your desk in front of you.”

“I bought that last night. The one I used on Habeck I’ve had for years. My father gave it to me on my sixteenth birthday.” Childers grinned. “He never gave Richard a gun.”

“Oh, my God!”

“What?”

Fletch stood up.

Childers said, “Why didn’t the police find the gun?”

Fletch said, “Why didn’t you find the gun?”

“I tried to. I went back to look for it. It wasn’t there.”

Fletch nodded to the gun on the desk. “May I take that?”

Childers put his hand over it. “Not unless you want to get shot trying.”

“Oh, no,” said Fletch. “That would just put you to the bother of confessing again!’

“Hello, hello?” Fletch heard his car phone buzzing while he was unlocking the door.

“This is the
News-Tribune
resource desk. Name and code, please.”

“Oh, hi, Mary.”

“This is Pilar. Code, please.”

“Seventeen ninety dash nine.”

“Mr. Fletcher, you’re wanted at a meeting in Frank Jaffe’s office with Biff Wilson at three o’clock.”

“Oh. That’s what’s happening.”

“That’s what’s happening.”

The dashboard clock said two-twenty. “Doubt I can make it.”

Pilar said, “The rest of the message from Mr. Jaffe is, ‘Either be in my office at three o’clock for this meeting, or don’t bother coming back to the
News-Tribune
, period.’ ”

“Life does offer its choices.”

“So does the
News-Tribune
. Any last words?”

“Yeah,” Fletch said. “ ‘And that was all he wrote.’ ”

Glancing time and again at the clock on his dashboard, Fletch sat in the parked car and thought, for as much time as he had.

When it became too late to make the
News-Tribune
reasonably by three o’clock, he started the car.

Slowly, he pulled into traffic and headed toward his apartment.

“Alston? I know you haven’t had the time…”

“Sure, I’ve had the time, ol’ buddy.” Fletch’s car was slouching down the boulevard’s slow lane toward home. “As soon as I announced my resignation from Habeck, Harrison and Haller this morning, a woman came by and took all the folders from my desk. Even the case I was working on! What do you think of that?”

“Oh, yeah. You resigned. Tell me about that.”

“I didn’t become a lawyer to become a crook. I don’t think they’d mind right now if I went home and only came in Friday to pick up my final paycheck. Maybe I will. Want to meet at Manolo’s for a beer?”

“Alston, I don’t think there’s going to be anyone at my wedding on Saturday who is employed.”

“Don’t tell the caterer. By the way, ol’ buddy, wedding present from your best man will be forthcoming, never fear, but, obviously, a bit late.”

“Aren’t I supposed to give you a present, for being best man, or something?”

“Are you?”

“That will be late, too.”

“As long as the wedding comes off on time, and it’s a rollicking affair.”

“Yeah.” Fletch stopped the car to let a pigeon investigate a cigar butt in the road. “Rollicking.”

“So, for the last hour or so, using the considerable resources of Habeck, Harrison and Haller, I’ve been working for you. Don’t worry: you can’t afford it.”

“That’s the truth.”

“About those companies you asked me to look into… Are you ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Lingman Toys and Cungwell Screw seem to exist for the sole purpose of each owning half of Wood Nymph, Incorporated. In turn, Lingman Toys and Cungwell Screw are owned by one corporate body called Paraska Steamship Company. All this is a typical structuring of corporations designed to discourage curiosity and conceal interests. The purpose of all these corporations seems to be none other than owning a single business called the Ben Franklyn Friend Service, essentially a whorehouse, situated at…”A woman in chartreuse shorts, halter, and high-heeled shoes was walking a poodle on a leash along the sidewalk. The gray of the woman’s hair matched the poodle’s. The woman’s shorts were cut halfway up her ass cheeks. Alston was reciting the names of the officers of the various corporations. Names kept being repeated, Jay Demarest, Yvonne Heller, Marta Holsome, Marietta Ramsin. The woman and the dog turned into a passport-photo shop.