The Up and Comer (30 page)

"Correct."

"Nor did you receive a message from him?"

"Correct."

Benoit was done setting the table. He reached into his folder and took them out. Dinner was served.

"Have you ever seen these photographs before, Mr. Randall?" he said. As he asked the question he spread them out neatly in two rows. They were the same pictures Tyler had taken of Jessica and me walking in and out of the hotel. The same pictures that Tyler had promised he didn't keep a set of. Not that I ever believed him.

I sat there and looked them over as nonrattled as possible.

"No, I've never seen these before," I said.

"That is in fact you, isn't it?" said Benoit, pointing his finger at the shots that were clearly of me.

Jack interceded. "Gentlemen, before we go on, I think you need to clarify where you got these pictures from. Without that knowledge, I'll advise Mr. Randall to cease answering any more of your questions."

"Fair enough," said Benoit, taking a sip of coffee from his mug. "One of the items we found in examining Tyler Mills's apartment after his death was a safe-deposit box key. When we identified the bank, we found these photos inside the box."

"So you don't know that Mr. Mills actually took these photos," said Jack.

"That's correct. We don't know that the former photo editor of the Deerfield yearbook actually took these," said Benoit.

Jack backed off. Another attorney, more prone to caviling, might have desperately claimed "fruit of a poison tree" at that point, meaning that the photos were illegally obtained, having not been first placed in the possession of Tyler's estate. Jack knew better. I had no standing in Tyler's reasonable expectation of privacy, and any judge would admit the photos into evidence no matter how they were obtained. To pretend otherwise would be bush-league.

Benoit resumed. "As I was saying, Mr. Randall, this is you in these pictures, is it not?"

"It certainly looks like me."

"Do you have any recollection of having been to the Doral Court hotel before?"

"Yes, I've been there."

"Do you recognize the woman next to you in this photo, and alone here in these others?"

"Yes, I do."

"Is she a friend of yours?"

"She is," I answered.

"Is she maybe more than a friend of yours, Mr. Randall?"

"Jesus fucking Christ," said Jack. "Don't tell me you guys roped one of my attorneys to accuse him of having an affair!"

"We're just trying to figure out why Tyler Mills would possibly have these photos," said Benoit. "That Mr. Randall was, or is, having an affair is not only plausible, but it raises some interesting questions. Perhaps in the area of motive. Throw in the fact that Mr. Randall was the last call Tyler Mills made before being killed, and it makes it that much more interesting."

"No," countered Jack, "what's interesting is that you guys actually think you're starting to piece something together, when in reality everyone and your mother would tell you that you ain't got shit."

"My mother's dead," came the voice of Hicks. He must have thought he'd been silent for too long. Perhaps he saw his comment as a clever way to derail Jack. Silly detective.

Jack looked at Hicks, momentarily befuddled.
"What?"

"I said, my mother's dead."

Replied Jack, "Oh, and I suppose you want to interrogate Mr. Randall about that death as well?"

Hicks went back to being silent.

Benoit: "Listen, Mr. Devine—"

Jack cut him off. "No, you listen. You've asked your questions; now it's my turn. Let's start with that last phone call, shall we? I presume the call was made from Mr. Mills's apartment?"

"Actually, it was made from a cell phone. It was routed through the tower that covers his apartment, so we think he called from home, though we can't know for sure."

Jack scratched his head. "A cell phone, huh?" He placed both his hands on the table and leaned in toward the detectives. "I'll bet you any amount of money that when you checked the records for it you saw that the call lasted a minute, two tops. You know how I know that? Because you never would've asked whether or not Mr. Mills left a message if the call had lasted any longer."

"That's very quick thinking," said Benoit. "However, that the call itself may have lasted only a minute doesn't rule out Mr. Randall's having talked to Tyler Mills or gotten a message from him."

"No, but what it does do is allow for the possibility that Mr. Mills called and got my client's voice mail, listened to the outgoing message, and hung up before leaving one. Thus giving substantial credibility to Mr. Randall's claim that he never got any message."

Point taken, apparently, as Benoit said, next, "Let's move on, shall we? You told us that you were at your office that evening, Mr. Randall, is that right?"

"Yes, I was working late."

"Could any of your co-workers substantiate that?"

"Offhand I can't remember."

"As for the pictures, do you have any idea what they're for, or why Tyler Mills might have had them in his possession?"

"Honestly, I don't," I said.

Benoit stood up and walked a few steps away from the table. He had his back to me. "Do you think your wife might know?" he asked into the air.

With that, Jack's patience ran out. "That's it, guys, this little Q and A session is over. I don't know what the story is with those pictures, but here's what I do know for damn sure. If you expose them outside of this room and it costs this young man his marriage, you better pray a hell of a lot more turns up in your case against him. A
hell of a lot more.
Because his case against you will be the likes of which this city hasn't seen for quite some time. And if you think I won't fucking make that happen, try me. Because when you do, it won't be my ass and pension on the line, I assure you."

At the very least I expected Hicks to pull some Johnny Bravado routine in return. He didn't. As for Benoit, he watched as Jack picked up his recorder and motioned for me to get up.

"This isn't over," said Benoit.

"It sure looks over to me," said Jack.

The two of us walked out of the room without so much as a nod good-bye. When we got onto the elevator we were alone.

The doors closed.

"So they can't fall in," said Jack, staring ahead.

I looked at him. "What?" I asked.

"Why manhole covers are round… it's so they can't fall in."

THIRTY

The phone call to Jack came three days later. It was from a "friend" of his who was familiar with the comings and goings at the precinct that Detectives Hicks and Benoit worked out of. Don't ask how, said Jack to me in my office while lighting up a cigar, just listen.

"Yesterday morning," he began, "a drifter type was arrested for a robbery committed in your friend Tyler's building two weeks before his death. It would seem the hapless fellow had tried to sell some of his booty to a local pawnshop, not realizing that thanks to our good mayor's vigorous crackdown on passing hot property, it was akin to turning himself in." Jack pushed a slender puff of smoke out the side of his mouth. "I must say, that's the problem with life on the lam. It's hard to stay current on every city's new crime initiatives.

"Now here's where it gets interesting. When the detectives ran a check on the drifter, it turned out that he was wanted in Miami for killing a man after, of all things, breaking in to his apartment. With the obvious similarities, it wasn't long before the drifter was asked where he was the night Tyler died. Lo and behold, he had no plausible alibi."

I started to smile. Jack stopped me.

"Wait, it gets better," he said. "Are you ready for this?"

Like a kid at Christmas. "What?"

Jack took the cigar out of his mouth. "The guy's dead."

I looked at him. "You're kidding me."

"No, he hung himself last night in his holding cell."

Again with that irony thing.
He hung himself.

"Sounds too good to be true," I said, amazed.

"That they had their man? You're probably right," said Jack. "Take the evidence they have, or rather, don't have, and he no more did it than you did. Thing is, though, with him dead and buried, no charge against you will ever stick."

"How do you figure?"

"Easy. We, of course, would never claim to have heard anything about what I just told you. Instead, if need be, we would trace the crime history of Tyler's building and claim to stumble upon this drifter. The extenuating circumstances of his file alone would amount to oodles of reasonable doubt. The dumbest D.A. in the world could see that, especially when he gets wind that the drifter had been questioned about Tyler's murder before he killed himself.
Easy.
See what I mean?"

I did.

Said Jack, "It all adds up to one thing."

"What's that?"

Jack reached over, picked up my phone receiver, and placed it down on my desk. I stared at him funny, wondering what he was up to.

With a sly grin he explained, "You're off the hook."

There were no questions from him about the pictures or the prospect of my having an affair. No wondering if there was any connection to be made from my being Tyler's last phone call. Jack simply turned and walked out of my office without saying another word.

The truth was irrelevant. It was only what people believed that ultimately mattered.

That night, I removed the bandages from my hand and chest. The wounds had finally healed.

THIRTY-ONE

"Excuse me, you're standing on my penis," Dwight said to the girl in the tight T-shirt with spectacular Venetian. She didn't find it amusing. She gave him the finger and walked away.

I had ordered the stretch, specifying black and making sure there would be none of that cheesy purple neon running along the interior. One by one, I had the driver pick up Menzi, Connor, and Dwight at their offices. The bar was stocked with Cragganmore twelve-year, Herradura, Evan Williams Single Barrel, Kettle One, and a bottle of Krug Brut '85. For music? Sinatra, what else? The whole shebang was my treat to the boys, for reasons that only I would ever know, and as their self-appointed doyen for the evening, I was definitely going to do it
my way.

"Gentlemen, the night is young and so are we," I told them.

Our first stop was the Shark Bar on the Upper West Side, and after Dwight returned to the huddle after his failed penis pickup line, Menzi had a story to tell. In his larger-than-life efforts to scope the wild Betty, his latest travels had resulted in an interesting encounter. Whereas mere mortal men sporting plane tickets aimed for such achievement as the Mile-High Club, Menzi had raised the bar considerably. He called it the Admirals Club, so named for the "members only" lounge that American Airlines offered at various airports around the world.

Menzi described how he had recently been in the Admirals Club at JFK one night killing an hour delay before a flight to London. Monique, as he said her name to be, was there waiting for her return trip home to Toulouse. Between her broken English and Menzi's two years of high school French, he managed to strike up a conversation and then literally charm the pants off Monique in a sectioned-off computer area that was under construction.

Admittedly, the four rounds of tequila shots after the initial martini he bought for her had significantly greased the wheels, but all in all, it was a pretty impressive story. Had it been most any other guy telling it — say, Dwight, for instance —
 
I would've been prone to call bullshit. Not with Menzi, though. Having seen his prowess with women firsthand, I was relatively certain of the tale's validity. Especially given the very un-man
as hero
ending. Turns out that when Menzi asked to exchange phone numbers with Monique as she prepared to leave, she popped up the handle to her luggage on wheels and simply noted, "Had I intended to keep in touch, I never would have fucked you."

"Strange," said Menzi, swirling the remaining ice in his vodka rocks. "She delivered the line in perfect English."

Next stop was dinner at the Blue Door, across the park on the Upper East Side. For sure, it wasn't a place you'd find in any restaurant guide. Three reasons. One, the Blue Door wasn't really its name, merely the color of the entrance. Two, it had only one table and there was only one seating a night. Three, it was owned and operated by two high-priced call girls out of their top-floor brownstone apartment. "Fucking and cooking, that's what they're into," said the guy, a foreign currency trader with the Bank of Tokyo, who had given me their number. He also mentioned in some detail that they were exceedingly gifted at both pursuits.
Domo arigato,
I told him. You had to hand it to the Japanese businessmen. If it took place on the island of Manhattan and involved the solicitation of sex, they knew all about it.

Alicia and Stefanie welcomed the four of us into their home at a few minutes past nine. In a word, stunning. Nice too. Model looks without the attitude. Being the polite hostesses that they were, they asked if any of us would like a blow job before dinner. Dwight raised his hand like a schoolboy. That vision alone was worth the four grand I was shelling out for us to be there.