Front Page Fatality (13 page)

9.

Interview

“Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?” I started to step forward and thought better of it, trying to remember if I had anything handy to use as a weapon. Save for a tennis racquet in the back of my little SUV, I didn’t think I did. I made a mental note to remedy that situation immediately.

I trained my eyes on the dog, swallowing a wave of nausea and trying to control my breathing. Darcy wasn’t barking. She wasn’t even whimpering. She was licking his hands. Darcy didn’t lick anyone. Ever. Either he had cheddar-flavored fingers, or he wasn’t a terrible threat—my dog was an excellent judge of character.

I raised my eyes slowly to his face.

Mr. Breaking and Entering smiled at me and held his hands up, letting go of Darcy. She flopped over on his knee. I shot her a you-little-traitor look. Throwing a sad glance back at her new friend, she hopped down, scurried to my feet, and laid across the right one. Her belly  was smooth and warm on my toes, which peeked out of the Manolos I hadn’t had time to kick off.

“Please, sit down,” Mystery Man said, gesturing to my tufted red chaise as though I were the guest. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to help you, as a matter of fact.”

“I’m good.” I folded my arms over my chest, hoping I looked braver than I felt. “Easier to get back to the door from here.”

Knowing my Blackberry was in the car, I slid a hand into my pocket anyway. No dice. Damn. I scooted the foot Darcy hadn’t occupied back into a punching stance slowly, trying to make it look like I was getting comfortable in the doorway.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” he repeated.

Because large men break into the homes of single women with benign intentions so often. I was scared. In my own house. And that pissed me off.

“Then why don’t we get to why you are here.” My hands clenched at my sides and my breathing sped again, from anger instead of fear. “And why the hell are you sitting on my couch when the house was empty and the doors were locked?”

He stared for a long minute.

“You’re not afraid of me.” It was more a statement than a question. A statement that was a hundred and eighty degrees wrong, but maybe my bravado was working. A glint of what looked like appreciation shone in his amused brown eyes. “You got some guts, Miss Clarke. I respect that. And I like people I respect. That spirit of yours will come in handy.”

I bit my tongue to keep from telling him it was about to come in handy kicking his ass out of my house, returning his silent stare instead. I wondered just how afraid I should be.

He met my gaze head-on, and I could read nothing menacing in his eyes or on his face. In another setting, I’d call that face attractive, all dark eyes and strong jaw, and the cut of the suit showed off a nice physique. But there was definitely something about him that put my asshole radar—perfected by years of regular exposure to murderers, rapists, and assorted other lowlifes—on a low hum. His body language was relaxed and open, though. He didn’t appear to be an immediate threat. My pulse slowed to near-normal and I relaxed into the doorjamb.

He flashed a sardonic little grin. “We okay?”

“Look, I’ve had one hell of a day, so could we just get on with this, Mr.…?”

“Call me Joey.” Again with the grin. He cleared his throat and continued. “I know something. A few things, really, that I think you’d like to know, but I need your help finding out more.”

I cocked my head to one side. Come again, Captain Cryptic?

“Let me lay it out for you,” he said. “You’ve had quite a weekend, even for someone in your line of work. First, a second drug dealer complicates an open-and-shut murder case, then a boat blows up and kills a handful of people, two of them cops. Now you have a conspicuous vacancy in the police department’s evidence room and a missing attorney. What I came to tell you is that all of those things are related. The evidence was on the boat. And the lawyer is in on it, but I’m not sure which side.”

Well, then. While I wasn’t sure of much of anything right then, that was pretty far down the list of things I’d suspected Mr. Hair Gel might want with me. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and waited for me to answer him.

“I guess it’s possible,” I said slowly. “The last time anyone knew the evidence was in the locker was Friday afternoon. So if someone took it after that, and before the boat went out…”

I trailed off, shaking my head. “I saw the logs from the evidence room. Roberts and Freeman were nowhere on the list. Patrolmen have to sign in. So they couldn’t have taken it.”

“Unless someone else loaded the boat and sent them out on it.”

Well, hell. I opened my mouth to ask him another question when it dawned on me we were talking about the missing evidence. Shit.

“Wait, how do you know about the evidence and the lawyer? That’s in tomorrow’s newspaper.” Suddenly way more interested in whether or not someone else had my story than in the man who’d broken into my house, I stood up straight. “Did one of the TV stations have that at six?” I had checked Charlie’s stuff, but what if someone else had gotten wind of it somehow?

He shook his head and smiled. “Your scoop is safe, Miss Clarke. And it’s a good one, too. But I’m offering you a chance at something so much better. I have friends everywhere. They tell me things. I came here to ask you for a favor, in return for this information.”

I raised one eyebrow and waited for him to get on with it.

“I know what’s going on, or most of it, anyway. What I don’t know is who’s doing it. I’m working on finding out, but I’ve been following your stories closely, and you can help me. You have access to people I might not be comfortable talking with. Interested?”

“I’m interested in everything. It’s an occupational hazard.” Holy shit.

His gaze was level, his expression unguarded. I’d interviewed so many criminals I could spot a lie at twenty paces. And this guy was not lying. The puzzles in my head shifted and melded together as I studied my uninvited guest. Who the hell was he?

The suit was Italian. And expensive. I was pretty sure it was authentic Armani. The men’s department at Saks was adjacent to women’s shoes, where I tried on things I couldn’t afford, making a list for eBay. He had big rings on three of the long fingers of each hand, and a chunky gold watch on his wrist. His nails were neat and shiny, probably recently manicured; his black hair slicked back from his oval face. The features and accent smacked of an Italian heritage. He wasn’t much older than me, and exuded a throwback debonair quality that belonged in a black and white movie. Sort of like DeNiro’s portrayal of Monroe Stahr from Fitzgerald’s
The Last Tycoon
. But taller, with a better smile.

“Are you a cop?” He was too well dressed, really, but I wouldn’t know most of the internal affairs or undercover guys if I tripped over them, and I couldn’t figure out how he’d come by his information.

He shook his head and laughed, a deep, rich sound I found pleasant in spite of myself.

“I think that’s the first time I’ve ever been asked that.” He winked.

Bob’s comments about Washington popped into my head and I tried to match his face with one from C-SPAN. I had a nagging feeling I’d seen him somewhere. “A politician?”

“Not the kind you mean.”

“There’s more than one kind?” 

“Politics is making people think what you think,” he said and leaned back, casually draping one arm over the sofa cushion. “It wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that’s one of the things I do.”

“But you’re not going to tell me who you are, or what it is you actually do?”

“It’s not important.”

The hell it wasn’t.

“Why should I believe anything you say if you won’t tell me how you know it?”

He sat up and adjusted his suit jacket, holding my gaze without blinking. “Because I’m right,” he said. “And when you have time to think about it, you’ll know it. Tell me something, what happens to evidence after a trial ends?”

I shrugged. “They destroy most of it. Once they’re pretty sure the case won’t go to appeal.”

He nodded. “Anything noteworthy they should have destroyed recently?”

Noteworthy? There was a ridiculous variety of stuff in the police evidence lock up on any given day. People could turn some crazy things into weapons when they were mad enough or drunk enough or any combination of the two.

Evidence was destroyed depending on the court calendar. The drugs and the money from the two dealer murders shouldn’t have gone anywhere for at least a year. There hadn’t even been an arrest made in the case.

So what had cleared the courtrooms by enough to be trashed lately? If he was right and everything was connected, Neal’s cases made the most sense. I ran mentally through the list DonnaJo sent me, trying to tie the missing lawyer to whatever Joey was talking about.

“Oh, shit.” I clapped a hand over my mouth. “The guns. That trucker from New York.” I could picture it, Gavin Neal waving a gun over his head during his closing argument and dropping it back into a sizable trough of semi-automatic and automatic weapons seized off of a truck on its way from New York to North Carolina over a year before.

Neal got the truck driver convicted of transporting the stolen weapons across state lines with intent to sell. There had been a lot of guns in that box in the courtroom that day, and I’d watched the bailiffs carry them out to a police van after the verdict came back.

I shoved the pesky lock of hair that wouldn’t stay in my clip behind my ear again. I didn’t know a lot about guns, but I’d bet a whole shitload of them with unregistered serial numbers would be worth a pretty penny on the black market.

“The guns.” Joey nodded. “Along with the drugs and cash from your murder cases, were on the boat. That baseball player and his buddies cost someone a lot of money Friday night.”

“And you really don’t know who? Or you just don’t want to tell me?”

He smiled again. “I don’t know. Truly. I do think this could work out well for us both if you handle it right, and I’ll help you as much as I can, but I’m not what you would call a quotable source.” He rose smoothly and walked toward me. “So you’ll have to find some things out for yourself. See what you can dig up, and if I come across anything I think might help, I’ll be in touch. I hear you’re a very determined lady, and I have a hunch you’ll get to the bottom of this. You’ll have the story of the decade when you do, I promise you.”

I held my ground and kept my eyes on his face. His movements were easy. His lips turned up slightly as he slid sideways through the door, brushing closer to me than he needed to. I caught my breath at the unwanted shiver that skated up my spine. He smelled good, too.

“What if you’re wrong?” I turned and walked with him to the front door, noting it wasn’t damaged. Just like the evidence lock up. “Why would anyone steal evidence from the police and put it on their own boat?”

“I suggest you think about that, because I am not wrong.” He turned his head so his face was inches from mine, then stepped out onto the porch. “I like you. You’re smart. You’re determined. I’m going to be your friend, Miss Clarke—and I’m a very good friend to have.”

I waited while he walked to the end of the sidewalk, where a black Town Car idled at the curb. What a day. I couldn’t even come home and go to bed like a normal person. No, I had to have James Bond’s better-looking Italian cousin giving the dog Stockholm Syndrome. I closed the door and turned the deadbolt, slid the chain home, then tugged on the knob to make sure it was secure.

Moving through the house with Darcy on my heels, I checked every door and window and closet; even peering under my bed. When I was sure I was alone, and likely to stay that way for the rest of the night, I freshened the dog’s water and filled her bowl with kibble before I went to the cafe-style kitchen table with a legal pad and a pen, recording every detail of what was very possibly the strangest conversation of my life. The mental puzzles I’d been juggling all weekend suddenly melted neatly together, a chunk of the picture clear, if I believed Joey. And I did.

Still mulling it over, I stirred the contents of a can of chicken noodle soup around in a pan on my aging GE stove and then took the pad with me to the couch. I pulled my legs up onto the cushion beneath me while I ate, picking my notes back up when I put the bowl down.

“What’d you think?” I asked Darcy, who had retreated to her pink bed in the corner after her own dinner, curled up so she resembled a furry russet pom-pom. “He’s telling the truth, or at least, he thinks he is. But before I get in too deep, I need to find out who our visitor was and why he doesn’t want me to know.”

Remembering Joey’s comment about not being a quotable source, I flipped back through my notes. An undercover cop couldn’t be quoted or it would blow his case. But he’d thought it was funny when I’d asked about him being a cop.

He said he was like a politician, but “not the kind you mean.”

“Oh, shit, Darcy,” I whispered. “What if he’s more Vito Corleone than Monroe Stahr?”

I flipped faster between the pages, my eyes lighting on certain words. “I have lots of friends. They tell me things… Politics is making people think what you think.” He expected me to be afraid of him. He wore an expensive suit, he left in a chauffeured sedan, the accent…“I’m a good friend to have.”

Of course. The cherry on top of my crazy Monday sundae. The first sexy guy I’d met in months, and he was probably an honest-to-God mobster. Why the hell not?

I leaned my head back against the damask-covered sofa cushion. “Stolen evidence. Missing lawyers. And the fucking Mafia in my living room,” I laughed, mostly because it was better than screaming. The dog whimpered. “Well, Tuesday, you have a heck of a lot to live up to. Monday set the bar high this week.”

Darcy looked downright indignant when I ordered her through the runt-sized doggie door on my way to bed, but I didn’t want to unlock the door to let her go pee, never mind step out for her customary game of fetch. She took less than a minute to do her business and bounce back in, turning her head away from me as she trotted to the bedroom. I double-checked the locks and turned off the lights, peering out the window into the still darkness, not even really sure what I was looking for.

As a peace offering, I lifted Darcy out of her bed and onto mine when I crawled under the covers. Drifting off to sleep with
Goodfellas
and
Donnie Brasco
playing in my head, I felt her snuggle behind the crook of my knees and knew I’d been forgiven.

By the time I got out of the shower the next morning, I had convinced myself the Mafia was the only logical explanation for “call me Joey,” altogether dismissing the idea that the guy was a cop. My inner Lois was sure of it, and going with my gut had never failed me. I also couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d seen him somewhere before.

I brushed my teeth and tried to place Joey’s angular features in a courtroom, focusing on the handful of times I had heard rumors of Mafia activity along the Atlantic coast and trying to remember things I’d once made a concerted effort to forget.

My initiation into the courthouse fraternity had been a formidable one, and among the first trials I’d covered was a particularly grisly murder case that sanity and sound sleep had demanded I repress in the nearly two years since. I tried to call up the details. The guy was an accountant, and he had been beheaded. His girlfriend found his head on his desk atop a stack of files that detailed a little side action. He’d been skimming cash from several local business owners who trusted him with their books, and he’d built an offshore nest egg that would’ve supported a family of four comfortably for at least a decade. The crime scene photos fueled my nightmares for weeks.

The prosecutor walked into the trial almost cocky. He had a gruesome murder that was pulling huge ratings for the TV news, and consequently getting him a lot of face time with the cameras, and he had a confession from the defendant. The accountant had stolen money from the guy’s construction company. A slam dunk. The prosecutor didn’t mind that he didn’t have a murder weapon or DNA or any witnesses putting the accused at the scene of the crime. He had it sewn up, he’d told us at his self-organized ego-fest of a pretrial press conference on the courthouse steps. I hadn’t seen that lawyer in court since, but it wouldn’t occur to me to miss him.

Ultimately, the New York legal celebrity who’d argued for the defense got the charges dismissed. It had been quite a show. No fancy loopholes or backroom deals, just outright dismissal by the judge on the most ridiculous of technicalities. The defense attorney, in his shiny wingtips and Hugo Boss, reminded me of a hunter stalking his prey as he’d led the arresting cop  into admitting on the stand that he hadn’t read the guy his rights when he picked him up. Simple as that: no Miranda rights, no conviction. But thanks for playing.

Before that little revelation swept the courtroom into chaos, however, I’d been eavesdropping on two prosecutors who were sitting in the cheap seats with the rest of us between court appointments of their own.

“You don’t tend to live long when the Mafia catches you skimming money off the top,” one of them had said, chuckling. The other lawyer had agreed, and I’d rolled my eyes, tuning out their conversation and thinking they had seen too many movies.

Suddenly sure I’d been mistaken, I shook off the memory of Joey’s eyes moving over me on his way out. It didn’t matter if he liked what he’d seen, because I didn’t find organized crime attractive, shivers or no. I gave myself a stern glare in the mirror to punctuate that thought.

“I’m going to be your friend, Miss Clarke, and I am a very good friend to have.”

I spit out the toothpaste and grabbed my hair dryer.

So I just had to figure out if he was the kind of friend I wanted. I threw on a five-minute face and decided to skip body combat in favor of learning exactly what I was dealing with. Filling a travel mug with Green Mountain Colombian Fair Trade, I added a shot of white chocolate syrup and headed out.

Halfway to the office, I thought about Bob.

The worry of Monday afternoon eclipsed the evening’s interview with the young Godfather, and I laughed at the absurdity of such a convergence of drama.

“Was there some kind of planetary alignment?” I asked out loud, raising my face to the heavens. “Have I angered somebody up there? How the hell does that much happen to one person on one day?”

Somehow, ranting—even if it was just at my sunroof—made me feel better. When I noticed I was parked in the garage at the office, I shut off the engine and crossed the space between the car and the elevator quickly, looking over my shoulder twice in no more than two dozen steps. I figured I’d be paranoid for life because of that one interview.

It was quiet in the newsroom in the early morning. I didn’t usually arrive before eight a.m. It was eerie for it to be so still with light outside the windows.

I reached for my headphones and turned on a pulsing dance number before I opened my browser and clicked the Google tab on my favorites bar. I stared at the screen for a long moment before I typed “Mafia” into the box and hit the search button. I got more than forty-seven-million results.