The Little Death (19 page)

I
sat up. Sonny Patterson was watching me from just outside the cell.

“You
all right?”

“Yeah,
I must have fallen asleep.”

“You
look bad, pal.”

“I’ve
had better days.” I rose from the bunk and walked to where he was standing. “Well?”

“It
didn’t look so good at first. Two shots fired from the gun, and your
fingerprints all over the place. Fortunately for you, the same neighbor who
called the cops also saw the guy going into the yard, and it wasn’t you.”

“Saw
the guy?”

“Well,
saw a guy. Blond, about your height. Good build. Good looking. Couldn’t be you.”

“I
do what I can.”

He
lit a cigarette and offered me one. I hesitated and then accepted it. The last
time I smoked I was eighteen.

“Incidentally,
does that description sound like anyone you know?”

I
shook my head.

“What
about the guy you saw on the side of the house?”

I
took a puff. It went down pretty smoothly. “It happened too fast. All I really
saw was the gun.”

“You’re
sounding like a witness for the prosecution. How come your defense witnesses
always had such better memories?”

“Clean
living, Sonny,” I said, dropping the cigarette to the floor and crushing it
with my heel. The second drag had made me want to vomit.

“Well,
that’s something I’ll never be accused of.” He smiled. “Hey, Wilson,” he yelled
to one of the jailers, “release the gentleman. He owes me a couple of drinks.”

“I
owe you a case.”

“No,”
he said, suddenly serious. “You owe me an explanation.”

“Did
you call Terry Ormes?”

“Yeah,
she’s up in my office. That’s where we’re going.”

*
* * * *

It
was only around ten but if felt like midnight. Sonny brewed a pot of coffee and
brought out a fifth of Irish whiskey from the deep recesses of his desk. Terry
yawned, accepted coffee but laid her hand across the cup when he started to
pour the whiskey in. He shrugged and poured me a half-cup of coffee, a half-cup
of whiskey. For himself, he dispensed with the coffee.

“Now
that we’re all comfortable,” he began, settling into his armchair and his
affected Southern drawl, “why don’t you begin at the beginning?”

Between
the two of us, Terry and I told Patterson the history of the Linden-Smith-Paris
clan from the end of the nineteen twenties to the burial of Robert Paris that
very afternoon. Patterson listened without comment, moving only to lower the
level of fluid in the whiskey bottle now and then. There wasn’t a lot left when
we finished.

He
looked back and forth between us and shrugged. “So,” he said, “what crime has
been committed that I can prove?”

Terry
looked at him. “How about four murders, a burglary, and conspiracy to obstruct
justice?”

“A
crime that I can prove,” he repeated. “In the murders of

Christina
and Jeremy Paris, the eyewitness is dead, the coroner is dead, and the deaths
have the appearance of being an accident. The remaining evidence — the will —
is grist for speculation but not nearly enough to make out a murder. And the
trail is twenty years old. The officers who wrote these reports might be dead
themselves, and you know as well as I do that their reports are inadmissible
hearsay. The death of Hugh Paris—” he glanced over at me. I’d told him that
Hugh and I were lovers. “Put out of your head how much you liked the guy. Let
me put it as crudely as I can — a hype O.D.’s and drowns. No one sees the
death, no traces of murder survive except in Ormes’ recollection. So maybe we
can impute a motive to the judge, after a lot of circumstantial fandangos, but
so what? The judge is dead. Even assuming he arranged Hugh’s murder, I doubt
very seriously that he jotted it down in his appointment book.” He looked at
us.

“Aaron,”
I said.

“Yes,
Aaron Gold. After I persuade the cops that you didn’t do it — and you didn’t,
did you — ?” I shook my head, “what do you think they’re gonna conclude?”

“A
break-in,” Terry said wearily, “that got out of hand.” Contemptuously, she
added, “All the pieces fit.”

“Detective,”
Patterson said, “cops are like prosecutors in this respect: we have to play the
facts we’re dealt. We can’t engage in cosmic theories, because we’re bound by
the evidence we gather and the inferences we can draw from it. You can’t expect
me to put Robert Paris on trial for a murder that was committed four days after
he died. All that the evidence will support in the case of Aaron Gold is a
bungled burglary.”

“The
perfect crimes,” Terry muttered.

“Exactly,”
Patterson said, shaking the last drops of liquor out of the bottle, “the
perfect crimes. No witnesses, no evidence. Plenty of motive — if the murders
could be connected, but nothing connects them except a few bits of
circumstantial evidence and one hell of a lot of conjecture.” He looked at us
again and sighed. “Drink up.”

“Drink
up? Is that the D.A.’s position on these murders?” “Jesus Christ, Henry, think
of this case as a defense lawyer. Wouldn’t you love to be defending Robert
Paris? With the case I have against him?”

“Paris
didn’t physically kill Hugh, and he didn’t pull the trigger on Aaron,’’ I
said. “The murderer is still alive.’’

“Then
bring him to me,’’ Patterson said, “and we’ll talk.”

I
said, “This is a police matter.’’

Patterson
shook his head. “You know as well as I do that the police don’t have the time
or interest to pursue this investigation. They’ve got their hands full. And as
for you,” he said, turning to Terry, “my advice is that if you place any value
on your career on the force, you’ll discontinue your interest in closed cases.”

She
lifted her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“I
mean Hugh Paris,” Patterson said. “I’ve been known to bend elbows with Sam
Torres. He knows that you’ve been assisting Rios, and he doesn’t like it. In
fact, he considers it a personal affront that his subordinate would use police
resources on a case that he closed and on behalf of a civilian.”

“Christ,”
I muttered. Terry looked stricken and I knew why. A woman detective, even a
good one — no, especially a good one

—
    
would
always be walking the line. A misstep could have disastrous consequences on
her career. I couldn’t ask her to risk it for me.

“You’re
on your own, Henry,” Patterson said. “Take my advice and forget it. Go away
until things cool down. You’re not safe.”

“Then
you believe the murders are all connected?”

“Of
course I do. I believe every word of it. The rich are malignant.” He held out
his empty coffee cup to me. “Now what about those drinks?”

*
* * * *

I
woke late the next day, having closed a bar with Patterson the night before.
Terry had begged off early. Sonny and I remained, getting drunk, swapping
trial stories and he complaining about his marriage. Boys’ night out, except
that Aaron Gold was dead.

I
went out for the papers. The San Francisco
Chronicle
made no
mention of the murder, but the local daily put it on page one. I read it while
the coffee brewed — burglary suspect, unidentified man detained and then
released, no other suspects, would anyone having any information kindly notify
the police.

As
I drank my coffee, I wondered who there was to mourn Aaron. His law firm
associates? A few ex-girlfriends? He had family in L.A. that he had spoken of
maybe twenty times in all the years I’d known him. After all those years and
all the people he’d known, I probably was still his closest friend. It disturbed
me to think that he’d gone through life so alone. That image of opulent
self-worth that he projected to the world was shadow play. My grief was real.

I
needed to think, but the effort was painful; all the easy connections between
Hugh’s death and Aaron’s led to a dead man, the judge. But there it was. Aaron
had information he wanted to share with me about Hugh’s death. The man who
broke into my house was also interested in that information — not gaining access
to it — but suppressing it. He also had taken the only proof I had linking
Robert Paris to his grandson’s death, so I’d assumed that Aaron’s information
further implicated the judge. But the judge was dead. What difference would it
make to anyone whether his reputation was ruined?

And
then it came to me. No one cared about the judge at this point. The break-in
and Aaron’s murder were the acts of someone with something left to lose should
it become public knowledge that the judge had arranged his grandson’s death.
And who was that someone? Hugh’s actual killer — the man or men hired by the
judge to carry out the murder. Robert Paris’s death hadn’t really solved the
crime. Hugh’s murderer was still at large and I believed that that person was
more than a goon employed for the occasion but someone upon whom the judge had
relied pretty often. Who would know about the inner workings of Paris’ staff?
Only a peer who had frequent dealings with that staff. John Smith.

And
who was John Smith?

I
had done a little research on Smith, gleaning the few facts I knew about him
from the back issues of the
Chronicle
and my conversations with Grant. He was eighty-one years old, unmarried, a
banker by profession, and something of a philanthropist. Four months out of the
year he lived in Geneva where he was associated with various banks
headquartered there. He was also chairman of the Linden Trust and, by virtue of
his control of the disbursements of that fund, was more responsible for the
development and course of nuclear research than any other private citizen. He
gave money to Catholic charities, had had a rose named in his honor, had never
graduated from college. In virtually every respect his life was opposite that
of his brother-in- law, Robert Paris. Yet Smith, who lived in relative
anonymity, was by birth something that Robert Paris never became, a member of
the American aristocracy.

Nor,
apparently, did the two men like each other. There was never anything as
obvious as a public falling out. As stewards of the Linden fortune, their
economic interests frequently converged and were too important to allow
personal feelings to stand in the way of greater enrichment. Nonetheless, Grant
had spoken as if the enmity between the two ancient tycoons was public
knowledge.

All
this made Smith a potential ally. Someone in Robert Paris’s retinue had killed
Hugh and Aaron. I could not interest the police in pursuing the investigation
but Smith, with his money and influence, could. What remained was to make an appeal
to him. I needed entree into his world. Once again I would have to rely on
Grant Hancock whose family, though perhaps poorer, was as distinguished as
Smith’s.

I
picked up the phone and dialed Grant’s number.

Grant
was at work. I reached his secretary who made it clear to me that unless I was
a paying client I could leave a message. Finally, after lengthy negotiation,
she agreed to give Mr. Hancock my name. He was on the phone a moment later.

“Henry,
I was going to call you. I just heard a very disturbing rumor about Aaron from
one of our classmates who was working on a case with him.”

“It’s
true, Grant. Aaron’s been murdered.”

“Jesus.”

“And
I was arrested for his murder and spent half the night in jail.”

“What?”

“And
the same day he was murdered, someone broke into my apartment and stole the
letters that Hugh had written to his grandfather. Aaron called my apartment
while the break-in was in progress. He said he had information about Hugh’s
death. Whoever was in my apartment — and I think it was Hugh’s killer — heard
the phone message and tried to erase it. Then the killer went to Aaron’s. When
I got to Aaron’s house, he was dead.”

“Wait
— Hugh’s killer killed Aaron? The judge killed Hugh.”

“No,
the judge had Hugh killed. An important distinction, Grant. The man who did the
actual killing is still at large and probably in a panic since the death of his
employer.”