The Little Death (21 page)

“Let’s
not call names,” he said nudging the nozzle of the gun into the small of my
back.

At
that moment the elevator stopped. A dozen people crowded on. The gun pressed
harder against my back.

I
clenched my hands into fists. “This man’s got a gun,” I shouted and jerked away
from Barron.

A
woman screamed.

“Get
him,” someone shouted.

The
elevator stopped again. The doors flew open. Barron pushed his way to the front
as hands reached out trying to stop him. He broke clean and ran down the
corridor. Perhaps aware that he was still armed, no one followed. The elevator
door closed.

“Who
was he?” a man asked me.

“A
nut with a gun,” I replied.

Three
hours later I was sitting on the floor in Grant Hancock’s apartment drinking a
glass of wine while he went to the door to pay for a delivery of Chinese food.
He took the small white cartons from a brown bag and set them on a tea tray
between us. We opened them up and ate from them with wooden chopsticks.

I
had just told him that after getting the names of the other people on the
elevator I’d gone to the police.

“What
did they do?”

“What
cops always do, they took a report and promised to look into it. By the time
that report reaches the appropriate desk, Peter Barron could be in Tierra del
Fuego.”

Grant
chewed a bit of shrimp.

“I
don’t understand why Barron pulled a gun on you. He works for Smith. Smith is
supposed to be on our side.”

“Does
he work for Smith? I mean, he does, ostensibly, but in actuality I think he was
working for Robert Paris.”

“That
sounds complicated.”

“But
it fits the evidence. What I think happened is that Hugh contacted Smith to let
Smith know he was back in town. Maybe he even enlisted Smith’s help in exposing
Robert Paris as the murderer of Christina and Nicholas. Smith leased the house
for him, probably gave him money. Peter Barron works for the security section
of Pegasus — I think Smith might have entrusted him to keep an eye on Hugh and
make sure he stayed out of trouble. In fact, I remember that it was Smith who
bailed Hugh out of jail when he was arrested in July.”

“Are
you positive?”

“Yes,
I called the jail and had them check.” I finished my wine and poured another
glass. “At the time I thought John Smith was an alias used to avoid notoriety
by whoever bailed Hugh out.”

“Well,
it is hard to believe there are men in the world actually named John Smith.”

I
poked at the carton of rice.

“Anyway,”
I continued, “Barron was supposed to protect Hugh but instead he betrayed him
to Robert Paris.”

“How
would Barron have known about the bad blood between Hugh and Robert Paris?”

“I’m
sure Hugh told him,” I said. “It was a subject to which he often returned.”

Grant
nodded.

“So
Barron went to Robert Paris with the information that Hugh was in the city and
that he, Barron, knew where Hugh was. Paris then paid Barron to murder Hugh.
And that’s how it was done.”

“And
Smith? Don’t you think he was a little suspicious about the circumstances of
Hugh’s death?”

“I’m
sure he was. He probably had Barron conduct an investigation. You can imagine
Barron’s conclusion.”

Grant
put down the carton from which he’d been eating. “And Aaron? Why kill Aaron?”

“Aaron
worked for the firm that handled Paris’s legal work. He must’ve learned
something very damaging that implicated Barron with Hugh’s murder.”

“Such
as?”

“Pay-offs,
maybe. Reports. I don’t know. Aaron never had a chance to tell me.”

“How
much of this do you think Smith knows?” Grant asked, pouring me the last of the
wine.

“My
impression of Smith from reading the newspapers,” I said, “is that information
reaches him through about three dozen intermediaries. Everything is sanitized
by the time it touches his desk. He probably knows next to nothing about what
really went on.”

“And
you’re going to tell him.”

“Yes.”
I picked up a bit of chicken with my chopsticks. “It’s strange that Hugh never
talked to me about Smith.”

“From
everything you’ve said, it doesn’t sound like Hugh told you much about his
family.”

“That’s
true.”

“He
wanted to protect you. Knowing how potentially dangerous the situation was, he
wanted to keep you out of it.” After a pause he added, “He loved you.”

Instead
of protecting me, Hugh left me ignorant — and vulnerable.”

Grant
sighed. When do we ever do the right thing by the people we love?”

When,
indeed, I wondered, looking at him from across the room.

* * *

The
next day I went back to Pegasus, this time to see Smith but I got no closer
than his secretary. She, unlike the gullible receptionist, was not inclined to
let strange men without appointments loiter in her office, She threatened to
have me elected. Taking the hint, I went out into the corridor to ponder my
next move. There didn’t seem to be any. Two middle-aged men in dark suits came
out of Smith s office and passed. Their jowls quivered with self-importance, I
watched them walk to a door at the end of the corridor — what I’d assumed was a
freight elevator.

One
of the two withdrew a key from his pocket and fit it into a lock on the wall.
The door slid open, revealing a small plushly appointed elevator.

The
executive elevator. Of course.

It
would hardly do for Smith and his retinue to waste expensive time waiting for
the public elevator or to endure the indignities of making small talk with
file clerks. Smith would have to leave at some point, and, if I couldn’t wait
for him in his office, I’d wait here.

So
I waited. I waited from ten in the morning to nearly six at night, fending off
the occasional security guard with my business card and an explanation that I
was meeting a friend from

Pegasus’s
legal staff. I thought that Smith might emerge for lunch until I saw a
food-laden trolley wheeled off the executive elevator by a red jacketed waiter.
About an hour later the waiter reappeared with the now empty trolley and
boarded the elevator. Just as the doors closed I saw him finish off the
contents of a wine glass.

At
about four a few lucky employees began to leave, singly, or in groups of two or
three. By five, the corridor was packed. By five-forty-five when it seemed that
everyone who could possibly work at Pegasus had left for the day, the doors
were pushed open and two beefy bodyguard-types strode out flanking a third man.
The third man was tall, thin and old. The blue pinstriped suit he wore fell
loosely on his frame and was shabby with many wearings, but he wore it as if it
were a prince’s ermine. They walked rapidly past me to the executive elevator.
The key went into the lock. I rushed over to where they were standing.

“Mr.
Smith.’’

The
tall old gentleman turned toward me slowly, examining me without particular
interest.

“My
name is Henry Rios. I have to talk to you about Hugh Paris.”

At
the mention of my name, the old man raised his eyebrows a fraction of an inch,
indicating, I thought, either recognition or surprise. However, he said
nothing. The two men closed ranks in front of him.

“Don’t
come any closer,” one of them said, allowing his jacket to fall open, revealing
a shoulder holster.

John
Smith’s employees, it seemed, were issued sidearms along with their Brooks
Brothers charge plates. I stepped back.

“All
I want is ten minutes of your time,” I said to Smith.

The
elevator door opened and he stepped into it. The bodyguards followed him in. I
lunged forward trying to keep the doors open. “Ten minutes,” I shouted.

The
same man who’d just spoken to me now lifted a heavy leg and booted me in the
chest, throwing me backwards to the floor.

I
lifted myself up.

John
Smith was staring at me. He opened his mouth to speak just as the doors shut.

The
wine was cold and bitter. A white-jacketed busboy moved through the darkness of
the restaurant like a ghost. Outside, a freakish spell of blisteringly hot
weather had emptied the streets but here it was cool and dark and the only
noise was the murmur of conversation and the silvery clink of flatware against
china, ice against glass. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. Aaron Gold had
been buried that morning in Los Angeles.

Grant
asked, “Should we have sent flowers?”

“I’ve
never understood that custom,” I replied. “Are the flowers intended as a symbol
of resurrection or are they just there to divert attention from the corpse?”

But
Grant wasn’t listening. His glance had fallen to the front page of the
Chronicle
laid
out on the table between us. The contents of Robert Paris’s will had been made
public. His entire estate, five hundred million dollars, was bequeathed to the
Linden Trust of which John Smith was chairman. Would it matter to Smith now
that Robert Paris was a murderer or was half a billion dollars sufficient
reparation?

As
if he read my thoughts, Grant looked up at me unhappily and said, “There’s no
justice in this. You must do something.”

“I’ve
tried everything,” I said to Grant, “everything I could think of doing.”

A
waiter set down shallow bowls of steaming pasta before us. The fragrance of
basil rose from the dish reminding me of summer. I picked up my fork.

“You
haven’t tried what you’re trained to do,” Grant said.

I
lifted an interrogatory eyebrow.

“I’ve
been thinking about this,” Grant said. “The first thing you have to do is ask
yourself what it is you want. You don’t want the identity of the killer, you
already know who that is, but what you do want is to bring the killer to
justice. And I’m not talking about Barron — he was just the instrument — I’m
talking about Robert Paris. You want there to be a public record of his guilt.”

I
nodded.

“Who
is better able to make that record than a lawyer in a court of law?”

“Unfortunately,”
I said, “Judge Paris is no longer within any court’s jurisdiction.”

“Wrong,”
Grant said. “You’re thinking of the criminal side.”

I
put my fork down. “What are you thinking of?”

“Well,
I’m not a litigator, of course, but it occurred to me that you should sue him.”

Grant
picked up his fork and speared a clam. I watched him chew and swallow. My brain
was buzzing. Why hadn’t I thought of this before?

“Of
course,” I said. “Wrongful death. I’ll sue Robert Paris’s estate for the
wrongful death of Hugh Paris.”

“And
Aaron too.”

I
shook my head. “The judge was already dead when that happened. We’d never be
able to prove it.”

Grant
buttered a bit of bread. “You think we could prove it as to Hugh’s death?”

“I
don’t know but we’ll do a hell of a lot of damage to Robert Paris’s reputation
in the attempt.”

I
thought some more.

“In
fact,” I continued, “we can do some damage to John Smith while we’re at it, or
at least get his attention.”

“How?”

“Well,
if a suit is pending against Paris’s estate which involves money damages, there
should be enough money set aside from the estate to cover those damages in the
event the suit succeeds.”

Grant
dabbed his mouth with a napkin and smiled.

“You
mean we can obtain some kind of injunction to prevent the judge’s executors
from disbursing the estate.”

“Exactly.
The Linden Trust won’t get a penny until the suit’s resolved. And as for the
executor,” I continued, “which happens to be Aaron’s law firm, we’ll plaster
them with discovery motions and compel them to produce every scrap of paper
they have that involves Hugh or Peter Barron or Robert Paris. We’ll depose
everyone from the senior partner to the receptionist.”