The Shadow Man (14 page)

Robinson traveled through the minutiae of Sophie Millstein’s final seconds of life with a practiced, routine tone. Espy Martinez listened, trying to attach the words of the clipped, official reports to the real-life terror that engendered them, but found, after a few moments, that she could not.

‘Actually, that sort of bothers me,’ Robinson said quietly.

‘What?’

‘Well, guy breaks in, murders a sleeping woman, then ransacks the place as fast as he can and splits. You see the glitch?’

‘No.’

‘Why kill a sleeping woman? Why not just take what you

want real quiet-like and get the hell out?’

‘She woke up.’

‘Yeah, Probably. But wouldn’t she have really screamed? Or fought hard?’

‘The neighbors said they heard a noise.’

‘Yeah, but not a real scream. More like a shout. And what about the cat? Mr Boots? Why kill the damn cat?’

‘Maybe the cat was making noise?’

‘A cat? Maybe Fluffy or Fido or some silly little barking toy poodle or something, but a cat? Come on. The stupid thing would just hightail it right out the patio door and never be seen again.’

‘So, what are you saying?’ she asked impatiently.

‘Nothing. It just bothered me.’

Espy Martinez remembered the stiff body of the cat, its eyes bulged out, teeth bared, frozen in death. She shuddered. It bothered me too, she thought, but what does it have to do with anything? She ignored this and spoke out with a false bravado:

‘Okay. So?’

‘So, nothing,’ the detective said.

‘Keep going, then.’

Robinson sighed, and turned his attention back to the sheaf of reports on his desk. He thought sometimes that he was spending the majority of his adult life either reading reports or preparing them.

‘Okay, let’s see. Oh, there was one postmortem cut on the victim’s neck.’

‘Yes. And?’

‘Well, there have been a number of breakins throughout Sophie’s neighborhood in the past coupla weeks. Robbery is sending over case summaries. Maybe I can tie the perp into them.’

‘Makes sense. What else?’

‘What else?’

Espy Martinez glanced at the clock, and knew that the chief assistant would be looking for her. ‘Detective …’

‘Actually, you can call me Walter. Most of the prosecutors in your office do.’

‘I’ve got to talk to Lasser.’

‘You want to know if I’m optimistic. Well, the answer is no. I’m never optimistic about this sort of case, Miss Martinez. Statistically, well, nationally we solve maybe one in three. Locally, we might be a bit worse. But I’m trying. Lasser knows the score. Don’t let him muscle you.’

‘Okay, Walter, I’ll try…’ She laughed, just a small amount.’… but it’s the blood dripping from his fangs that gets me disconcerted. So, please tell me something that’s gonna help put the guy who killed Sophie Millstein on Death Row.’

‘You want to know how we’re going to convict her killer, huh?’

‘Yes.’ Espy Martinez couldn’t hide the remaining nervousness in her voice.

‘Well, more bad news is this: no gun to trace. That makes things more difficult. Guns are great. They make noise, leave a mess, they’re easy to match up in a laboratory, and people aren’t generally smart enough to dispose of them where we can’t find them. No knife either. Did you know that strangulation is a remarkably efficient way of murdering someone? It generally leaves little connective tissue between killer and victim. But on the plus side, forensics came up with two prints from her dresser, and a third from the jewelry box we found down the alleyway. They also managed to lift a partial thumbprint - just a small fragment, can’t really tell if it’s usable or not - from the victim’s neck. That’s a rarity, Miss Martinez. But if we can get a match, well, even the most

incompetent prosecutor will nail the son of a bitch.’

‘I’m not incompetent, Detective.’

‘That’s not what I meant…’

There was a momentary silence between the two. Walter Robinson thought it would have been hard for him to say something stupider to Espy Martinez.

‘Okay, Detective. So, now I see how we get a conviction. Great. One problem, though: How are you going to go about catching the killer?’

‘Well, first we’re going to check the best of the prints we’ve got against those obtained at the other breakins and robberies around the Beach in the last few months, see if we can’t pick up the bastard’s pattern. Then I’m gonna work some of the pawnshops and fences, see if we can’t find some of that jewelry. Sophie’s son gave me a pretty good description of some of the pieces stolen. I’ve already sent out a flyer to some places. Gonna look hard for that necklace with Sophie’s name on it.’

Espy Martinez was going to remark on the offhand way the detective referred to the victim by her first name, but stopped herself. ‘And then what?’

‘And then hope we get lucky. We’ll run the print through the county’s Gotcha Computer, but I don’t know—’

‘The what?’

‘The Gotcha Computer. The fancy one they got last year with all that federal money. Supposed to be able to match crime scene prints with prints stored in the computer’s memory.’

‘Will it work?’

‘It has before. But only if our bad guy has been arrested and printed in the last year or so. We’ll see.’

Espy Martinez stood up at the side of her desk. ‘Is there anything else you can tell me, before I talk to Lasser?’

‘How about, I’ve got six other open cases.’

‘How about, this one stays at the top of the list,’ she replied before hanging up.

Walter Robinson cradled the telephone against his ear, listening to the dial tone. He wondered what Espy Martinez was like when she wasn’t frightened, and then he wondered whether she was ever not frightened.

Abraham Lasser was a thickset man with a drooping mustache and a wiry mane of gray-streaked black hair that seemed to explode from his scalp in an uncontrolled wildness. This was contradicted by his penchant for wearing sleek, Italian double-breasted suits and shoes always polished to a reflective sheen. Stalking through the maze of offices on the sixth floor of the Metropolitan Justice Building, he seemed like some fashion designer’s nightmare. When he made an appearance in one of the fourth-floor courtrooms, he showed a snarling, sarcastic side that was routinely mocked and just as routinely feared by criminal defense attorneys. He was a man who placed great value on intimidation, both of his opponents and the people who worked for him.

Espy Martinez had been assigned to his felony division for eight weeks. In that time she had met with him only a half-dozen or so times, and on each occasion it was merely to get his authorization for a plea bargain. This was standard procedure in the office, and had been since one unfortunate assistant had agreed to an unauthorized plea in a weak case of spouse against spouse assault, and the accused had walked directly from the courtroom to the automatic rifle he kept in his car, which he turned on himself, after gunning down his ex-wife and her two sisters outside the Justice Building. The wags in the office suggested it would have been better for the assistant who offered the plea bargain if he’d been assassinated as well,

death preferable to facing Abe Lasser’s volcanic anger.

She took a deep breath outside his office and knocked and entered.

Lasser’s secretary looked up at her and smiled. ‘Go on in. He’s been waiting for you.’

Then she pointedly glanced at her wristwatch.

‘I needed to speak with a homicide detective,’ Espy Martinez said.

‘Go right on in, dear,’ the secretary said.

Espy Martinez marched into the office. Lasser was behind his desk, on the telephone. He waved her into a seat and continued talking. She let her eyes wander about the room. There were several framed diplomas and Bar Association memberships. There were also the obligatory photographs of Lasser and various county and state politicians, including an enlarged color snapshot of the chief assistant and the governor, tanned, grinning, in T-shirts and shorts, standing on the edge of a dock, each holding up a large dead fish.

Separated a short distance from these photos were seven other pictures, each carefully matted and framed in glossy black steel. No politicians in these photos, they were full-face and right and left profile mug shots taken at the county jail. Espy Martinez stared at the faces that looked sullenly out at her. Four of the seven were of black men, two apparently Hispanic, one with a tear-drop tattoo beneath one eye and the other sporting a scar running through the hair of his eyebrow. There was one white man, who stared out with an unsettling malevolent insouciance. She looked at this face, then over at one of the black men. He had a sleepy, almost nonchalant appearance, eyes partly closed, as if being photographed in jail were the stuff of daily routine for him.

Abe Lasser suddenly started speaking loudly:

‘Look! Goddammit! If you print that before I get into court, the bastards will walk. Walk, understand? You want that on your conscience?’

He cupped a hand over the receiver, smiled at Espy Martinez and whispered:’… The fucking Herald got hold of the grand jury testimony in the Abella beating.’

Espy Martinez nodded. Enrique Abella was a drunken motorist who took a half-dozen policemen on a high-speed chase and then, when finally cornered, surrendered loudly and abusively and arrived at the county lockup some forty-five minutes later with three fractured ribs, multiple contusions, a broken jaw and six missing teeth, a second-degree concussion, and an eye that might not regain its sight.

He swiveled rapidly in his seat.

‘No, damn it, you listen. You hold off until after the indictments are handed down - they’re gonna be sealed, I promise. I’ll make sure you - and only you - know when those bastards are gonna turn themselves in for prints and mugs. You’ll have the only camera there, got it? That’s the deal.’

He paused, listening, before shouting a response:

‘No, you fucking don’t have to talk to any goddamn editor! We’ve known each other for ten years! And if after all that you can’t make a deal where you end up getting two fucking exclusives just by holding off

Abe Lasser started to nod. He was smiling. His voice instantly went smooth.

‘Of course I trust you. And you trust me. Everyone trusts each other. And you get something and I get something and everyone’s happy, right?’

He suddenly leaned forward and spoke quietly, without bombast, but cool and menacing.

‘But screw me on this and you won’t see another story

out of this office for the next hundred years. And neither will the new asshole the Herald replaces you with. Or his replacement. And you’ll all end up in Opa-Locka covering all-night meetings at the zoning board of adjustment.’

There was a momentary pause, then Abe Lasser leaned back abruptly, bursting into laughter.

‘Well, hell, you’re probably right about that. Point well taken.’

He cupped his hand over the phone again and said: ‘The sonofabitch says I’ll be lucky if I end up prosecuting jaywalking and litterbug cases in what’s left of Homestead.’

He turned back to his conversation.

‘So we have a deal? Good. Wanna have lunch sometime? My treat? Hell, maybe it ought to be your treat. Call my secretary.’

He hung up the telephone.

‘Can you do that?’ Espy Martinez asked. ‘I mean, promise him that he’ll be the only reporter around when those cops turn themselves in …’

‘Of course not,’ Abe Lasser replied.

Lasser smiled and shifted some papers about on his desk. For a moment he swiveled away from her, looking out his window, which had a view of Miami’s inner city, stretching out beyond the stolid, squat architecture of the county jail.

‘So, Espy, do you know where I live?’

The question took her by surprise. ‘No, sir. I don’t believe I do….”

, ‘We’ve got a real nice house right on the La Gorce Country Club golf course right in the middle of Miami Beach. Old, built in the Twenties. You know the type: high ceilings, Cuban tile floors, art deco window frames. My

wife spends most of her time fixing it up because something breaks every damn week. Plumbing. Roof leaks. Air-conditioning. The A.C. went out yesterday morning. You know how fucking hot it was last night?’

‘Yes. But—’

‘So, I’m sitting there Espy, worrying mainly about how I’m gonna put the slam to these four cops and thinking how lucky I am that Enrique fucking Abella isn’t black so we’re not having a riot, but also thinking that maybe because he’s Cuban those bastards are gonna make all sorts of political trouble over the case, and it’s ten million degrees in the house and it’s gonna cost me three grand to fix the damn central air unit and there’s sweat dripping off my forehead onto the sports section I’m trying to read and guess who calls me on the telephone?’

Espy Martinez didn’t reply. She didn’t think she was supposed to interrupt her boss’s soliloquy with anything so mundane as a question.

Abe Lasser leaned forward, smiling, but without pleasure. ‘My fucking rabbi calls me.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘My rabbi. Rabbi Lev Samuelson, Temple Beth-El. This guy that I don’t talk to except once a year when he’s raising money for State of Israel bonds. But last night he’s not selling bonds. You know what he wants to know?’

‘When we’re going to arrest Sophie Millstein’s killer.’

‘Precisely. Apparently his fellow rabbi, from some other temple, one down in South Beach, called him, because somehow he’s figured out that Rabbi Samuelson knows me, and guess what?’

Abe Lasser slammed a hand down on the desk.

‘And I couldn’t tell him. So you tell me: When are we going to make an arrest? Who’s the detective on this anyhow?’

‘Walter Robinson.’

Abe Lasser smiled. ‘Good. At least he has some idea about what he’s doing and he’s not a complete and total fuck-up. And he says?’

‘He’s working on it.’

Lasser shook his head.

‘Do better than that.’

‘The forensic and autopsy reports suggest that—’

‘I don’t care. You just find me her killer. Then I can go to my rabbi and tell him that the Dade State Attorney’s Office follows the same principle established in Exodus, 21:12. You know that passage, Espy?’