When One Man Dies (5 page)

“No kidding.”

“Stay out of it.” Russell opened his briefcase, closed it again, as if his hands needed to be doing something. “If Martin’s involved, stay out of the whole damn thing.”

I didn’t say anything. If Russell didn’t know any more about it than I had already told him, and I got myself into trouble, he could plan a defense better. Not that I was planning on getting into trouble. One night in an interrogation room was plenty for me.

Russell could tell my answer anyway. “You play him wrong, he’ll put you away. My professional suggestion is let the police do their job.”

I didn’t get a chance to respond. The door opened, Blanchett and Daniels came through. Blanchett had now taken his tie off, and his sleeves were rolled up. The
missing tie said a lot about him. With all the swearing, the frustration he let show through, I respected him more than Daniels. He cared about the job.

Daniels’s suit was neatly pressed, nothing out of place. She cared more about appearances, to me. She was great to look at, long legs, great hips, breasts pushing against her shirt and the jacket, but there was something about her. She put up a professional front; something came between her and me. Blanchett, the frayed tie, the out-of-place hair, he put it all in the job. All in the solution. He let it get to him; Daniels didn’t.

They looked at me expectantly. “I want to talk,” I said.

“You’re going to confess?” Blanchett asked.

“I’m going to tell you who did it and what’s on my camera.”

Daniels looked at Blanchett. He looked like he wanted to high-five her.

“Are you cold, Mr. Donne? I am. Mind if I turn up the heat?” She moved toward a thermostat on the wall near the door.

“You want to tape-record me, go ahead. Just don’t play games.” She smiled, reached out, and turned the thermostat.

“So what’s on your camera, Mr. Donne?” Blanchett asked. “There’s a photo of a man named Rex Hanover. He’s dragging the carpet, the one that has the body in it, across the street to the university steps. He came from one of the apartments opposite.”

“Rex Hanover? Gimme a break.” Daniels this time. “As far as I was told.”

“Why were you there?” she asked.

“My client thought he was cheating on her. She wanted me to find out how Hanover was spending his nights.”

“Who’s your client?”

I hesitated. It was a natural instinct of mine to protect my client, to use discretion, even though it was inevitable the police would find out now.

“If your client wanted to find out if Hanover was cheating on her, we can narrow it down quickly. You know that,” Blanchett said. “So save us the trouble. It’s either a wife or a girlfriend. Just give us the name.”

“Jen. His wife.”

Daniels was writing in a small notebook. “How did you find Rex?” she asked.

“I went to his job. Someone was covering for him. The guy told me Rex was sleeping around and was spending the night with his girlfriend.”

“Where’d Hanover work?” Blanchett asked. “Billy’s. The bar?”

“I know it well. What did Hanover do? Bartend?”

“He was a bouncer. When you see the pictures, you’ll see the size of this guy. He was huge.”

“Gotta be to carry a body across the street,” Daniels said.

“He dragged it,” I said. I wanted to be consistent. I wanted to keep my story straight and not give them a chance to say I was contradicting myself.

Daniels smiled like she did when I told her it was okay to record me. “Okay,” she said, “we’re almost done here. But we’re going to have to keep your camera as evidence.”

I’d figured as much. I was giving them Hanover on a platter. They asked me a few more questions—where Hanover lived, what I knew about the victim, things of that nature. They then found variations of the same questions to ask. I was consistent.

All in all I got out pretty early. Lester Russell offered to give me a ride to my car. The clock on his dashboard said it was just after three in the morning.

Chapter 8

Bill Martin expected Gerry Figuroa’s house to smell worse than Donne’s office. Old men who lived on their own were rarely clean, and, he suspected, their ability to smell probably went even before hearing did.

Climbing the stairs to the top floor of the two-family, he was surprised. The fresh scent of lemon wafted in the air, and everything was pretty much in place. As if Figuroa was rarely even here. He’d shown the landlord his badge to get in. Now, he could hear the landlord’s TV playing an old episode of Sanford and Son. Three-thirty in the morning and he was watching reruns. Go to bed, Martin thought. Get a real job.

It wasn’t necessary to make the old man’s floor a crime scene. It was a hit-and-run, but Martin liked the idea of coming up here and getting a feel for the victim. To see how he lived. He liked knowing who he was investigating.

And making it a crime scene would keep Donne from getting up here. And the idea of that little pissant being completely frustrated at the front door made Martin chuckle a bit to himself.

He checked the kitchen first, wanting to know what the man ate, if anything. The fridge was bare; only a bottle of milk, some eggs, and a half-eaten leftover sandwich. He looked at the oven. It was spotless and looked like it had just been delivered from Fortunoff. He went through the drawers one by one: plates, glasses, paper towels, silverware, trays. Underneath the kitchen sink he saw a ton of coffee filters and even more boxes of matches.

At that moment, the feeling from the old days returned. He knew what he’d find elsewhere in the house.

He did a quick sweep, looking for specific items. They wouldn’t be hidden. Unless you had a trained eye, they wouldn’t strike you as odd. Good thing Martin had a trained eye.

In the closet near the bathroom, he found twenty bottles of Sudafed. Above that, tons of batteries. There was more to Gerry Figuroa than met the eye.

He called the station and told them to send some crime-scene guys down here. They’d have to tape it off, collect evidence, and take fingerprints. He hated to wake the crime scene guys up in the middle of the night, but hell, this was important. When he hung up the phone, he allowed himself another chuckle.

This case was going to put him back on the map.

Chapter 9

I didn’t have time to go home. I wanted to talk to Jen Hanover before the police did. She was my client, and she deserved to hear the news from me, not two detectives who were thinking about arresting her husband. I found her address and tried to navigate the streets of Madison, following street signs toward Morristown. At nearly four in the morning, with few gas stations open, few streetlights on, it was hard to read the signs.

I drove around in circles for nearly half an hour before finding the street. I drove down Washington Street slowly eyeing the cross streets. That turned out to be unnecessary, and I found the house by watching Blanchett and Daniels make their way to a small house, ranch style, and ring the doorbell.

Jen Hanover answered the door after a few minutes. She was wearing a long New York Giants T-shirt that I assumed she used as a nightgown. She yawned as she opened the door.

I put the car in park and watched the detectives go inside. I decided to wait until they left before talking to Jen. A second encounter with the cops in one night was too much. Plus, I wanted to know what the police told her without me around. It was possible they’d give the wife more information than they gave me, a lowly witness. And if Rex was there I didn’t want to be involved in an arrest anyway.

Though, if I’d committed a murder, left the body out in the open, the last place I’d go was directly home.

I sat in the car, engine and battery off, leaning my head against the headrest. My body was tense, not tired as I expected it to be. Adrenaline rushed through me, and there was no threat of my falling asleep. But sitting alone, on the dark street, my mind wandered a bit. After five minutes, neither Daniels nor Blanchett was dragging Rex Hanover out of the house in cuffs. I assumed my guess that he wasn’t at the house was correct and they were now questioning my client.

I thought about Daniels, her ass swaying out of the interrogation room in perfect rhythm with her steps. She was confident, almost arrogant, as if she were better than the job. Every time Blanchett forced a question or a joke, she shot him a look like he was an idiot, not worth being in the same room as her.

But the frayed tie, the disheveled look told me otherwise. I only owned one suit. I didn’t wear it much. I only wore a suit to impress the clients who held the kind of cash that could pay my rent two months in advance. One of the few times I did wear it, I ended up being attacked by a jealous husband.

A few years ago, I had stopped by the Olde Towne Tavern for a drink before meeting a client at his mansion in Old Bridge. Artie served my drink with a message. There was a man who had been raving about beating the shit out of me. He’d come in an hour earlier, downed four shots of Jack, and started to talk.

“This Jackson Donne asshole has ruined my life. Fucker took pictures of me coming out of the fucking Rahway Motel on Route One with a broad I’d met just three hours before I took her back to the hotel. What kind of world is this where a man can’t bring some chick to a hotel room?” Artie assured me he was completely drunk. But, he warned, I should probably stay away.

I ignored Artie and ordered a beer, seeing the guy across the bar, head in his hand, about to pass out. Sipping my beer, I chatted with Gerry about the Yankees. They didn’t have enough pitching, he offered. I thought their offense could overcome that. As Gerry was about to respond, the drunk, all dressed in leather like a biker, popped his head up and saw me across the room. One beer was all I was going to stay for.

The guy, I don’t even remember his name, came at me in a drunken rage, pulling a switchblade. I tried to sidestep his first stab and did so, but the second one caught me in the sports jacket, tearing a hole right through it. As he withdrew the knife, I hit him with a right cross. It sent him sprawling toward the floor. Two of the other regulars grabbed him and held him, taking his knife. The cops showed up a few minutes later and took him away, Artie told me. By then I’d already gone to see my client, jacket on.

I never had the jacket fixed. In fact, if a client asks about the hole, I tell them the story.

***

It was nearly five in the morning when both detectives stepped through the screen door. Blanchett headed back to the car, while Daniels turned to shake Jen’s hand. Probably thanking her for her help. That surprised me, the smile on Daniels’s face. Did she care what Jen thought, about the information she’d given? She didn’t act that way with me, didn’t seem to care. She only wanted answers to the questions, and didn’t get flustered when I didn’t give them.

I was getting caught up in appearances, thinking about visual clues that I couldn’t be sure about. Lack of sleep was getting to me. I was thinking too much. When the detectives pulled away, their brake lights disappearing two blocks down the street, I finally stepped out of my car and approached the front door. I rang the bell, hoping that Jen hadn’t gone back to bed.

She answered, tears in her eyes and a tissue clutched in her hand. Her cheeks were red, and she was breathing deeply. We stood in silence, the screen door a barrier between us. A bird was singing somewhere, starting to wake up, and the realization that I wouldn’t get home until after sunup hit me. I tried to fight exhaustion but yawned. “I thought you’d wait until later this morning,” she said, finally.

I said, “I wanted to get here before the police did.”

“Too late.”

“I saw.”

Through the door I could hear music playing. Something soft, a piano background, violins, sweeping music. It was a song I didn’t recognize, and it was too soft for me to hear who was singing. Jen didn’t offer to open the door.

“What are you listening to?” I asked.

“Lou Reed. It’s called ‘Perfect Day.’ ” She wiped her eyes with the crumpled tissue. “Rex played it in his car our first date. We played it again our wedding night. It’s our song.”

“He’s not here, is he?”

“No.” Jen started to cry again. Between the tears, she said, “What happened tonight? What happened?”

“Can I come in? Let’s talk. Please, I want to help.” Help with what, I didn’t know.

She pushed the door open, allowing me to step inside. The house smelled like steam. I couldn’t exactly explain it, but it was something out of my childhood, the way my home always smelled when my mother made tea or soup. The house looked nothing like my home when I was a kid, but for a moment I was transported. Definitely needed to get some sleep.

Shaking my head, I looked around. The room Jen led me to was spare, with two chairs, a TV, a coffee table with tabloid magazines spread out over it, and a small love seat. In one corner was a bookcase filled with CDs. A small lamp stood between that and an end table with a CD player on it. The Lou Reed song ended, and Etta James came on.

“It’s the CD we gave out as a table gift at our wedding,” Jen said, before I could ask. “Sit. Do you want a drink?”

I shook my head.

“Please. I need one, and I don’t want to drink alone.”

“What are you drinking?”