A Long Line of Dead Men (12 page)

"What did he do, resist a mugger?"

"Sounds like it, doesn't it? Guy I talked to said it doesn't really add up that way. Incidentally, he had more questions than answers for me. Watson was an affluent commodities broker, two kids in college, owned a nice home in a solid neighborhood. They want to solve this one, and the case is only four months old so they're not ready to give up on it. So why was I taking an interest, and what did I know that he didn't?"

"What did you tell him?"

"I don't remember, something about we had a case with a similar MO. According to him, forensic evidence suggests Watson's killer surprised him from behind and got him in a choke hold."

"Muggers will do that."

"And then he promptly stabbed the poor bastard. Blade about four-and-a-half inches long, or anyway that's as far as he stuck it in. Stabbed him once, got the heart first shot, and death would have been instantaneous or close to it. Watson's wallet was gone, so either it was robbery or it was supposed to look like it."

"I don't suppose anybody saw it happen."

He shook his head. "He wasn't down long, though. Rent-a-cop from a private security patrol found him, called it in right away."

"Why do you stab a guy if you've already got him in a choke hold?"

"They've been asking themselves the same question in Forest Hills. That's why my guy got very interested when I talked about a similar MO, and I had to let him down easy, say our perp was a slasher, not a stabber, no choke hold, di dah di dah di dah. Incidentally, why are people surprised when occasionally a cop lies in court? We lie all day long, it's part of the fucking job description. You didn't lie, you'd never get any work done."

"I know. It's the same thing working private. In fact it's worse, you've got no power to threaten or intimidate because you've got no legal authorization. So you have to con everybody."

"All in the name of truth and justice."

"And in the service of a higher good. Don't forget that."

"Never."

"What's their thinking, Joe? Ordinary street crime?"

"That's their best guess," he said, "but they're not married to it. It's hard to find anybody with a reason to kill Watson. He was married to the same woman for twenty-five years, and if either of them had anything going on the side nobody knows anything about it. Both of them well-liked, both of them active in the community. About a year ago he got phone threats from a client who blamed Watson for a beating he took. That's a financial beating, not two mutts holding you up in an alley while their buddy works on your rib cage."

"The client checked out?"

"The client moved to fucking Denver. Anyway, what kind of a grudge killing is that, a quick knife in the heart and make it look like robbery for profit? You want to get even with somebody, either you whip out a gun and make a little noise or you tear into him with a baseball bat, break his bones, and beat his fucking brains out. Something wrong?"

"Remind me never to get you mad at me."

"Why, did I sound like I was really getting into it there?" He grinned. "I'm ten days off cigarettes."

"I noticed the ashtray was gone."

"That snitch of Bellamy's, I wanted to tell him to blow some of that smoke in my direction. Not this time, though. This time I'm not sneaking drags on other people's cigarettes, or checking ashtrays for a butt long enough to relight. This time I get it right."

"Good for you."

"But there's moments when I could kill the whole world."

"Well, I'd better stay on your good side," I said, and drew an unsealed envelope from my hip pocket and slipped it among the papers on his desk. He glanced around, lifted the flap, and counted the contents without removing the bills from the envelope.

There were two bills, hundreds.

"Couple of suits," he said.

"If that's low-"

"No, it's fine," he said. "What did I do, use the phone on the city's time? I'm happy. But it's not enough, Matt."

"What do you mean?"

"What do I mean? I want to know what it's about. You're looking for information on four homicides over a twelve-year stretch, all of them unsolved-"

"Cloonan was solved."

He gave me a look. "I stuck my neck out," he said, "and I can use the suits, but I want to know what's going on. If you've got something that can break these cases, you can't just sit on it."

"I don't have anything, Joe."

"What case are you working? Who's your client?"

"You know," I said, "one reason a person goes to somebody like me is to keep things confidential."

"What I figure," he said, watching me carefully, "is AA."

"Huh?"

"Wouldn't be the first time you got a client who knew you from your AA meetings. There's things you have to do when you get sober, right?"

"All you have to do is not drink."

"Yeah, but isn't there a whole program? Almost like going to confession, but instead of a couple of Hail Marys you make restitution, set things straight."

" 'Cleaning up the wreckage of the past,' " I said, quoting one of the immortal phrases from the literature. "Say, Joe, if you think you're interested, I'll be happy to take you to a meeting sometime."

"Fuck you, okay?"

"Well, if you just wanted to see what it was like."

"I repeat, fuck you. And quit changing the subject."

"You're the one who brought up AA. I never realized you had a problem, but-"

"Jesus, why do I tolerate you? What I was starting to say, I figure you know somebody from AA who's got guilty knowledge of some crimes, including the four homicides we've been talking about. I wouldn't want to think you're gonna sit on something that ought to be brought out and looked at. Whoever did the gay fellow, Uhl, is probably dead himself by now, and Cloonan's file's closed for the time being, but the boys in the One-oh would love to catch a break in the Shipton case, and Watson, Jesus, the body's barely cold, that's still an active investigation. If you know anything, it should get channeled to the right people."

"I don't."

"There's probably a way to keep your client out of it, at least in the early stages."

"I realize that."

He looked at me. "Your client didn't do all four guys himself, did he?"

"No."

"You answered that one awfully quickly."

"Well, I knew you were going to ask it. And the answer didn't require a whole lot of thought."

"I guess not. Matt-"

I had to give him something. Without planning to, I said, "They knew each other."

"They? Meaning your client and who? Wait a minute. The vics knew each other?"

"That's right."

"What did they all do, wipe out some Vietnamese village together and some slope's looking to get even?"

"They were part of a group."

"A group? What kind of a group?"

"Like a fraternity," I said. "They got together once in a while to have dinner and compare notes."

" 'Bet my note's bigger than your note.' Let's see, you got a commodities broker, a famous artist, a cabdriver, and a faggot. That's a hell of a fraternity. Wait a minute, was this a gay thing?"

"No."

"You sure of that? Shipton and his wife ran in a kind of a kinky crowd. Wouldn't surprise me to hear he swung from both sides of the plate."

"It wouldn't surprise me to hear it about anybody," I said, "but this wasn't about sex. I can't go into details without clearing it with my client, but there's nothing out of the ordinary about the group. The only thing unusual is that four of them have been murdered."

"How big's the group?"

"Around thirty."

"Thirty men and four of 'em murdered, Jesus, that's high even for New York." His eyes narrowed. "Same killer?"

"No reason to think that."

"Yeah, but you think it yourself, don't you? You asked if a single killer could've done the Shiptons."

"Never forget a thing, do you?"

"Not if I can help it. You got a suspect? A motive? Anything?"

"Nothing."

"I won't say level with me, Matt, but don't hold out the moon and the stars on me, will you?"

"I'm not holding out anything concrete."

"Yeah, and what the hell does that mean? What's the opposite of concrete?"

"Asphalt," I suggested. "Plaster of Paris."

"Twelve years between Uhl and Watson," he said, "you're talking about a killer who likes to take his time. The other twenty-six guys, time he gets around to them they'll be too old to care. You know what he's like, this guy? He's prostate cancer. By the time he kills you you're already dead of something else."

There was a message from Wally Donn at the hotel desk. "I'll be here for the next hour," he said when I called. "I've got those credit reports for you, and something else you'll like."

First I called TJ on his beeper. He must have been close to a phone; he called me back in well under five minutes. "Who wants TJ?" he demanded.

"No one with any sense," I said. "How come you have to ask? If you don't recognize my voice, you still ought to know the number by now."

" 'Course I do, Boo. 'Who wants TJ' just be a trademark. Part of my rap, like."

"Well, I can see where a fellow like you would need a trademark," I said. "Something to set you apart from the faceless masses."

"If we was on one of them video phones," he said, "you could see me rollin' my eyes."

"I'm sorry to miss that. You want to meet me? I might have some work."

"Say where and when." I named a coffee shop on Twenty-third Street half a block from the Flatiron Building. "Let's shoot for a quarter to twelve," I said, "but I might be a few minutes late."

"Not me," he said. "We meetin' in a restaurant, I'm gonna be there on time."

"The client," Wally said, "turned out to be a cheap fuck."

"Not unheard of."

"Christ, no. The world is full of cheap fucks. How it went, I told him what a job you did, how you ought to be down for a bonus. I said we as an agency didn't expect anything over and above our standard fees, which we don't, but that when a guy working per diem comes through like you did he ought to see something extra for his troubles.

"So he asked me what was reasonable. You know what went through my mind? The old expression, a picture is worth a thousand words. So okay, figure a buck a word, and I said a thousand dollars struck me as a reasonable amount. Which it did."

"Thanks, Wally."

"Well, it wasn't coming out of my pocket, so I could afford the gesture. And what's a thousand dollars to this fuck anyway, five hours of his lawyer's time? If that. So here's his check. Five hundred dollars."

"Did he say he thought a thousand was too high?"

"He didn't say shit. He just went and cut a check for half of the recommended figure. Oh, and here's the letter of commendation, thanks for your efforts on our behalf, et cetera, et cetera. Look it over, see if it's all right."

I scanned a glowing testimonial on the client's letterhead. "This is great," I said.

"He's got a pretty nice prose style, wouldn't you say?"

"You wrote it?"

"Dictated it," he said. "How else are you going to get this sort of thing the way you want it? At least the son of a bitch wrote it down word for word. He could have figured words are money and kept half of them for himself." He shook his head. "You know, I think he was just going to give me half of whatever I said. If I asked for two grand I'd have got one, and if I'd asked for five hundred I'd have got two and a half. I thought about sending this back to him, telling him to pay the whole shot or forget it. I'll still do that if you say so."

I shook my head. "The five's fine. Let it go."

"Anyway," he said, "it evens out. I got those credit reports for you, fourteen of them, and our company rate as Class B subscribers is thirty-five bucks a pop. Which totals out at four-ninety."

"Suppose I give you the check back," I said, "and we call it a wash."

He shook his head. "You don't want to do that, kiddo. Keep the check and take the reports and sustain yourself with the knowledge that being a cheap fuck never pays. The reports aren't costing you a cent, Matt. I billed them to the client."

"How did you manage that?"

"We did a ton of shit on his behalf, and five hundred dollars' worth of credit reports won't seem out of line to anybody. Hey, fuck him, you know? What's he ask me my advice for if he's gonna take my figure and cut it in fucking half? You see what cheapness does, Matt? It's costing him the same thousand dollars and he's got us hating his guts."

"Not me," I said. "I love everybody."

I was a couple of minutes early for my lunch with TJ, but he was already seated at a window table, working on a pair of cheeseburgers and a plate of onion rings. I told him about Eldoniah Mims, doing twenty-to-life upstate.

He said, "Sounds like he be in the right place, Ace. Killin' folks for chump change, dude like that got no cause to be walkin' around." I explained that they might have hung one more killing on Mims than he had in fact committed.

"He carrying any extra weight for it?"

"No."

"So what's it matter?"

The waitress came over and I ordered the spinach pie and a small Greek salad. When she moved off he said, "You spy the way she was scopin' us out? Like she wondering what fool put you and me at the same table. Then she realize we together, so she got to figure out why. Runs all the numbers through her mind, like you're a john and I'm a hustler, you're a cop and I'm some lowlife you're 'bout to bust."

I was wearing pleated gray slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the collar unbuttoned. TJ wore a shiny rayon vest striped vertically in black and scarlet, and nothing but brown skin under it. His pants were knee-length baggy black shorts. "I'm a cop on the take," I offered, "and you're a millionaire drug trafficker prepared to pay me off."