Where Nobody Dies (23 page)

18

I sleepwalked through Lessek's office, feeling its unreality closing in on me as we proceeded toward the elevator. I was wading, my leg muscles straining against the pull of powerful waves. The gun in Lessek's pocket loomed on the edge of my consciousness like a hawk circling a rabbit.

We stepped out of the building into a blast of January cold. The sun was lower in the sky; the lights on the bridge cut through the late-afternoon gloom. The excitement was over, the crowd gone. I flinched as I felt the gun in my ribs, then walked mechanically in the direction indicated by Lessek's empty hand.

We came to the pedestrian stairway under the bridge. In summer, it was filled with walkers, lovers holding hands, photographers, and people deftly hoisting ten-speed bikes up and down the steps. Now, not even the muggers braved the strong wind that sliced across the bridge from the silver river below.

We started up the stairs. I needed no further prodding from the gun; I simply walked.

When we reached the first stairs lifting us from the approach ramp to the actual bridge, Lessek halted, ordering me to do the same. I did, facing him with a stance of bravery I hardly felt. My knees were having trouble holding me up, and the cruel wind brought tears to my eyes.

“This is it,” Lessek said in a tight voice that strained against the wind. “Now we can talk.”

“Talk?” my voice was harsh with fear, a seagull's cry. “Is that all you want to do?”

He nodded impatiently. “Of course,” he replied, “I just didn't want to have this conversation where it could be overheard. My fucking office is a nest of wiretaps and bugging devices. Up here”—he gestured with his gun at the sweep of bridge, the famous Gothic arches, the luminous webbing of cables, the sunset glow of the Manhattan skyline behind us—“up here, nobody can hear what we've got to say.” Given the whistling wind and the steady hum of traffic on either side of us, I had to agree with him.

“I see your point,” I shouted over the din. “So what is it you want to say?”

“Let's talk price,” he began, his voice cracking as he tried to lift it over a particularly vicious gust.

I threw up my hands, disgusted at being unable to hear. “Let's go up the stairs,” I called. “We'll be away from the traffic and we can get out of the wind.”

Lessek nodded his agreement and we walked, stiff-legged, up the stairs and along the windy wooden ramp that led to the Brooklyn pylon of the Great Bridge. By the time we reached the massive pillars, my forehead was clamped in a vise of cold, my nose was numb, and my eyes were teary. The calm of the windbreak caused by the pillars was a startling and welcome relief. So was the absence of the pistol Lessek had held on me; he must have pocketed it as we trudged along.

“That's better,” I said, meaning both wind and weapon. It was far from warm, but the stone pillars, reaching up into their majestic Gothic arches, provided a refuge from the nasty wind-chill. What was more important, we could talk without shouting over the roar of traffic.

Now that we had our silent oasis, Lessek seemed curiously reluctant to talk. He looked into the distance, appearing to study the huge Jehovah's Witnesses clock that dominated the Brooklyn side of the river. Behind us, an opalescent winter sunset was beginning to turn the gray clouds into mother-of-pearl.

“How much?” he asked abruptly.

I took my chance. “We'll save the details for later. Let's talk about Linda Ritchie.”

He made an impatient movement. “What about her?”

I measured him with my eyes. Gun or not, the only way to get what I wanted from him was direct challenge. Todd Lessek had no time for wimps.

“Who killed her, you or Bellfield?”

“What makes you think—”

I cut through the bluster. “You had the most to lose if Linda went public,” I pointed out. “The others had prestige on the line, maybe even liberty. You had money, and lots of it riding on Linda's discretion. And knowing her, she'd never let you forget it.”

“Ira could have done something impulsive.” Lessek was only running it up the flagpole; his eyes clearly showed he didn't believe a word of what he was saying.

“That's what I thought at first,” I agreed. “But Ira's only got two personalities—he's a wife-beater and he's your back-street boy. So if he killed Linda, it was either a momentary impulse, or he was acting on your orders, which makes you an accessory.”

“What's this ‘back-street boy' stuff?” Lessek protested. “Ira understood the business. He knew there's always a Mr. Inside and a Mr. Outside. I've got the personality and the head for finance. Ira doesn't, it's that simple. Could you really see him at Lutèce or La Grenouille winding up a billion-dollar mortgage?” Lessek laughed at the incongruous image he'd conjured up. “Ira knows what side his bread was buttered on,” he finished. “Even if his bitch wife doesn't.”

“Norma,” I remembered, “the one who landed up in the Safe Haven with a broken arm.”

Lessek nodded. “Ira's a fool where that woman's concerned,” he said. “She nags him and nags him until finally, he can't stand it anymore. He'd go crazy and hit her, she'd cry and sob until he'd beg forgiveness, and then they'd both jump back on the same old merry-go-round.”

I wasn't about to play marriage counselor. “Norma met Linda Ritchie at the shelter,” I prompted.

“Christ, yes,” Lessek agreed. “God, I had to laugh when poor old Ira comes running in to see me, all bent out of shape because some broad is putting the squeeze on him over hitting Norma a few times. I can hear him now,” Lessek laughed, imitating Bellfield's nasal whine, “‘Todd, she wants a
job
,' he whines at me, ‘what shall I do? She says she'll tell everybody about Norma if I don't put her on the payroll.'” Lessek's face registered genuine amusement. “Here's a guy,” he explained, “who Jack Newfield's calling the scum of the earth, who's got angry tenants picketing him around the clock, whose name is a curse word in every ghetto in the five boroughs, and he's worried about a little bitch who's four-feet-eight in her stocking feet. ‘Ira,' I told him, ‘let her talk. What can she do you?'”

It was a good question. I waited for the answer.

“‘It's the temple,' he says. The temple, for Christ's sake!” Lessek laughed again. “Here he is, slumlord of the year, and he wants to be big man at the temple. He knows damned well the rabbi and all the big shots could care less that he rent-gouges the
schwartzes
, but let them hear one word about him lifting a finger to big-mouth Norma and he's out. So”—Lessek shrugged, contempt on his face—“he puts Linda on the payroll. Biggest mistake he ever made in his fucking life and all for the temple.”

“She does seem to have learned the business pretty fast,” I remarked.

“She was one smart little cookie, I'll give her that.” There was a note of grudging admiration in Lessek's tone. “She got right onto Duncan Pitt. And of course, she still liked to tweak Ira every so often. Just to keep in practice. In fact”—Lessek laughed without humor—“she finally did what Norma always managed to do—get him so bad he punched her face. God, was he scared! I thought he'd shit a brick, he was so worried she'd blow his ass out of the water.”

“Knowing Linda,” I commented wryly, “I'm sure she got her revenge.”

“In spades. All-expense-paid trip to the Bahamas for three weeks, plus a little extra in the weekly pay envelope. She was the highest-paid real-estate broker in Brooklyn, our Linda.”

“How did she catch on to you?” I asked.

“I always
told
Ira not to leave too much around the office,” Lessek complained. “Trouble was, he couldn't hide things at home either, Norma being as big a snoop as she is a bitch.”

“So Linda got the goods and you killed her to save your deal,” I said flatly.

“Why should I kill her?” Lessek countered. “I was giving her what she wanted, wasn't I?”

“Were you?” I asked. “Maybe the money you gave her wasn't enough. Maybe she wanted more.”

“I gave her more,” he said simply. “And not just money, either,” he added with a sly little wink.

“Presents?” I asked, thinking of the expensive trinkets Linda had flashed before her sister.

Lessek's head snapped back and he let out a crack of laughter. “I gave her a present all right,” he chuckled. “I gave her Art Lucenti.”

The wooden platform beneath my feet began to sway a little. I was out of my depth; the betrayals these people were capable of were beyond me. What I'd thought were realistic conclusions based on a firm foundation of logic were turning out to be naïve schoolgirl fantasies. I'd conjured up a Todd Lessek who hated Linda, who sought revenge at all costs, when what he'd done in reality was make her a silent partner.

Which explained the separate envelope. Lessek wasn't in the same category as Pitt, Pilcher, and the others. Where they paid her with money and jewelry, Lessek gave her new secrets to play with, new blood to suck.

I must have looked as disgusted as I felt. Todd Lessek immediately began to defend himself. “Hey, what could I do?” he protested, with a hint of swagger in his tone. “I mean, it was him or me, you know what I mean?” The strutting masculinity with the hint of viciousness were pure Al Pacino. Todd Lessek must have gone to a lot of movies, I decided.

“So what did you give Linda on Art?” I asked conversationally, trying to play down my personal distaste.

“He was involved in a little conflict-of-interest thing,” Lessek replied. “No big deal, but you lawyers like to make mountains out of molehills when it comes to shit like that. But,” he shrugged, “it was enough to get her a job on his staff. She was getting bored with Ira the henpecked, wanted new horizons. She liked working for a city councilman.”

“That wasn't all she had on Art in her envelope,” I pointed out.

“No,” he agreed thoughtfully, “she picked up some other goodies along the way. What I'd like to know is how she got her hands on my list of limited partners. That I never gave her.”

“I believe it,” I said, then added, “That's how she found out about Elliott Pilcher, I suppose.” He nodded.

“And Aida? Art's wife? How did she get that stuff from that drug program?” I was half thinking aloud, but some part of me must have suspected the answer, because I wasn't really surprised when Lessek said, “She didn't. I dug that up.”

“Why would you—”

“Art got out of line,” Lessek interrupted, his tone hard. “He's no good to me in Washington; I wanted him on the City Council, where his vote was an asset. But he goes and gets himself on the ballot without my okay. So I owed him one; I wanted to let him know he and I weren't finished, that he couldn't just walk away from me.”

“Maybe he was getting sick of running your errands,” I said. I still had a hard time dealing with the fact that Art Lucenti, who'd started out as a decent lawyer working on the side of poor people, had become so completely the creature of Todd Lessek. “He used to be such a good lawyer till you got hold of him.”

To my surprise, Lessek smiled reminiscently. “The guy was hell on wheels. It was really something to watch him in court. I decided if he could do the job he did for peanuts, to help a bunch of welfare cheats, how much more could he do for me if I got him on the payroll? I went after him like some guys go after women. It was pure seduction.”

“You offered him money,” I said disgustedly.

“You think I'm stupid, don't you?” Lessek frowned as he continued. “I know you don't start with a guy like that by offering money. That comes later. What I did was, I put some of his welfare clients into one of my new gut-rehab buildings. Next thing I know, he's telling all the community groups how good I am for the neighborhood. Then I find out how ambitious he is to go into politics, and I know I've got him.”

“But you like to remind him, to keep him in line. So you gave Linda Aida's criminal record.”

Lessek was talking to me for only one reason—to sell me the idea that he hadn't killed Linda.

“She came to me,” he shrugged. “She wanted something on Art's wife. I figured she had the hots for Art and wanted the competition out of the way.”

I nodded; that fit my impression of Linda. A woman who'd insure her affair with a married man by blackmailing his wife. But how did her blackmail of Art himself fit into the picture?

“So you gave her what you had,” I concluded. “Wasn't that dangerous? What if she used it when you didn't want her to?”

“Hell,” Lessek replied. “Linda wants to play cat-and-mouse, better Aida than me for the mouse. Besides, I got no vested interest in Art as a congressman, remember. I don't care if he's elected or not, and it doesn't bother me at all that he gets a little pressure put on him. Matter of fact”—Lessek's capped teeth gleamed in the dull orange glow of sunset—“I let him know I had his balls in the palm of my hand.” Lessek spread out a leather-gloved palm as if to show me Art Lucenti's private parts. Then, a smile crossing his face, he began to squeeze. “All you have to do,” he explained, a teacher lecturing a bright pupil, “is know where to squeeze, and anything is possible.”

“And you always know.”

“I always know,” he agreed. His subtle emphasis on the word
always
had me shivering in my coat. I was beginning to think it was me he was about to squeeze. Because I didn't kid myself; I had my weak spot, and her name was Dawn. One hint of danger to her, and I'd be off this bridge, out of Lessek's life, and off the case, forever.

He knew it. Grinning broadly, Lessek said, “Cold, Counselor? Pretty stiff breeze up here? Or are you thinking how cold you'd be if anything happened to that house of yours?”

I started: For once, my first thought hadn't been my brownstone. I should have known Lessek would be aware of all the details of my financial life. He probably knew to the penny how much my mortgage payments were—and what a struggle it was to keep up with them.