Death on a High Floor (10 page)

“Yeah, well, that
makes
sense. Listen, I know who
did
it.”

“You do?” A lead. The first one maybe. Of course, one had to consider the source. “Well, tell me.” I could feel my heart racing.

“I don’t want to do it in the
office
.”

“Call me at home, then?”

“Not on the
phone
, either.”

“Okay. Just name a place.”

“Meet me at the
DownUnder
at 7:30 tomorrow
morning
.”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

“They’ve got that great breakfast with
beer,
you know
.
”

I refrained from saying yuck. “I remember, Stewart. I’ll see you there.”

After I hung up, I thought about whether I should actually go. What the hell. I’d go, but I wouldn’t put too much stock in it. I also realized that I had become way too tired to return Peter Penosco’s call. Tomorrow morning would have to do.

Then I remembered the e-mail I’d shoved in my pocket earlier. I took it out and read it. It was from Stewart, confirming our meeting at the
DownUnder
. Which was odd, because he had sent it before we talked. But then Stewart was an odd fellow.

I had almost forgotten that Jenna was still there, until she spoke up.

“Who was that?” she asked. “On the phone.”

“Stewart Broder.”

“There’s a weird man. What did he want?”

“He says he knows who did it.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You never know. Maybe he does. I’m going to see him tomorrow morning and find out.”

“Well, good luck,” she said. “Maybe when your meeting is over you can go out to his house and visit his talking parrot—the one who quotes Macbeth. Anyway, I’m feeling better. But I’m not up to driving. Will you take me home?”

“Sure. Where are you . . .” Then I remembered.

“I’m living at your house, remember?”

“Right. Do you think it’s a good idea for the Blob to see us together as we leave?”

“They’ve already seen us together. I just want to get out of here. But I’m in no shape to drive.”

“You could always take the bus.”

“Oh, Robert.” She smiled that very nice smile of hers. The smile and the “Oh Robert” seemed somehow to sum it up. We were going to be in this together. For better or for worse.

On the way down to B-Level in the elevator, I again thought about confronting Jenna with what Harry had told me about Simon wanting to dump her, but decided it wasn’t a good time. After all, she was sick. And, perhaps even more importantly, I didn’t think I could take any more news right then, good or bad.

When we drove out of the garage, the Blob was still there, hovering by the exit. But we varied our routine. This time
Jenna
gave them the thumbs up sign. We both laughed uproariously. Odd what tension will make funny.

When I went to bed that night, I set my alarm for 6:00 a.m. I needn’t have bothered. I was wide awake by 5:30 a.m. When I drove out of my garage an hour later, the sun had not yet risen. During the night the Blob had shrunk to a boom mike lying on the ground, a camera, its attendant camera guy, and a reporter in a red parka. I think the two humans were asleep until the sound of the garage door woke them. I waved as I went by. I don’t think they managed to get any footage.

The
DownUnder
has a sign that says
SINCE 1975
. In other words, since the year
after
I got to M&M. I recall going to the Grand Opening on New Year’s Eve that year. Even then it had seemed grotty. The place is down a rather dank set of steps, set below ground in what must once have been a basement. The decor is a grain-mismatched knotty pine, of the type found in suburban rec rooms built in the fifties. The booths are emerald green leather of a particularly bright hue. The bar looks rescued from the set of an old gangster movie.

Stewart was sitting in one of the booths. He didn’t look good, even for Stewart. He looked fatter than ever, and his skin seemed to have a sickly pallor, or at least the patches of facial skin I could see through his ever-present hide-the-acne makeup. I thought to myself that I ought to stop disliking Stewart. After all, he was trying to help me. Maybe when this was all over, I’d see if I could find him a better dermatologist.

Stewart already had the house breakfast special in front of him—
Huevos Pancho Villa
. Eggs under huge dollops of salsa, topped off with red and green peppers shaped to resemble a sombrero. All accompanied by a large stein of beer. I have never known whether the special had been given that name because Pancho liked an overabundance of salsa, because he wore a sombrero or because he drank a lot early in the morning. Whatever the answer, it has become a local culinary classic and there are lawyers and judges in town who make almost a cult of ordering it. I am not among them.

I sat down across from him. I restrained myself from making a snide comment about the beer. He was already half done with his salsa and eggs and the beer was well below the mid-line on the stein, which was marked by the barrel of a six-shooter engraved into the glass. He didn’t look up. “Drugs were involved,” was all he said.

“What kind of drugs?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe heroin.”

Stewart was still looking down, still eating.

“And Harry Marfan did it,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

“Yeah, sure.”

“I’m pretty sure it was him.” He hadn’t yet looked up.

“Why would he do it? He loved Simon like a son.”

He looked up. “It had to do with drugs. I heard them talking about drugs.”

“Who? When?”

“I came into the
office
on Sunday afternoon. To work on a year-end
tax
deal. I stayed till around 2:00 a.m. that night. My office is right
next
to reception on eighty-five. But you
already
know that. Just before I got up to leave, the two of them walked through. Simon and Harry.”

“Saying?”

“I couldn’t hear it all. Something about a drug deal and something about ‘Hello.’”

“Hello like on the telephone?”

“Yeah. What you say on the telephone when you answer,” he said. “Except it sounded like they were talking about the name of a place.”

“What else did they say?”

“I couldn’t hear most of it. But Harry sounded really angry. Almost screaming. He kept telling Simon the drugs were late.”

“So all that was when, exactly?” I asked.

“Like I said, about 2:00. I left just a couple minutes later.”

“Down the elevator?”

“Yes.”

“Did they see you?” I asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“So what’s your theory?”

“Simon was involved in a drug deal, he got into an argument with Harry about it, and Harry killed him. Later that night.”

The whole story was so absurd that I seriously considered getting up and leaving. But then I thought to myself that if I was going to be my own detective, I needed to pursue all leads, both the landish and the outlandish.

It still didn’t make any sense, though.

“Why would Simon and Harry be involved in drugs?” I asked. “Neither one of them needs the money. Simon was pulling down well over a million bucks from the firm and was independently wealthy to boot. Harry has more money than Croesus.”

Stewart shrugged. “Simon actually made one million eight
last
year. And as for why, Harry told me you
talked
to him and he
told
you about Simon’s gambling problem.”

“He did, but I find it hard to believe.”

“Well, believe it. Simon told several of his friends about it.”

“Including you?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” I said, “I hadn’t been on his friends list for quite a while.”

“Yeah, he pretty
much
hated you,” Stewart said. “I
couldn’t
understand why you sold him the
Ides
.”

“He outbid everyone else. So fair was fair. Friend or no friend.”

Stewart made no response to that. He just went on eating his eggs.

I needed to move the conversation away from firm politics and back to what happened the morning of the murder.

“Stewart, just because Simon and Harry were there together doesn’t mean that Harry killed him.”

He put down his fork and looked at me. “You remember Professor
Neery
?”

“Dreary Neery? Crim Law?”

“Yeah.”

“Remember he was always
talking
about Occam’s razor? Pick the
simplest
explanation?”

“That’s not exactly the way Occam put it,” I said. “But in any case, Neery taught about it at Harvard, not Yale.”

“Visited
at
Yale.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway,” Stewart went on, “Neery would have analyzed it this way: if Harry was screaming at Simon at 2:00 a.m. in the office, and Simon was found dead in the office maybe four hours later, the simplest explanation would be that Harry killed him. Instead of a complicated explanation? Like, you know, someone we don’t know about was kicking around the office late at night and killed Harry for some reason we don’t know?”

I noticed that Stewart’s odd inflection had come and gone during our conversation. It was hard to figure out what drove it. I was thinking about that, trying to puzzle it out, when I realized Stewart was waiting for a response from me.

“I take your point,” I finally said.

“You gonna
eat
something?” he asked.

“Just a quick cup of coffee.” I looked around for the waitress, but didn’t see her.

Stewart took a big swig from his beer stein, then started in on his eggs again.

“Stewart, wouldn’t Occam’s razor, if it were especially sharp, suggest that you did it?”

He put his fork down, with a bang this time, and looked up. He had egg on his lip. “Because I was there until
2:00?”

“Yes.”

“Well, first, I left at 2:00. And the razor only works, Robert, if there’s
some
other fact to
go
with my being there.
Which
there isn’t.”

“I think there is.” The egg on his lip was driving me crazy. The impulse for primate grooming arises at the oddest times. I picked up my open napkin, reached across the table, and brushed the egg off his lip. He did not protest and waited to respond to my statement until I had finished.

When I was done, he said, “Like
what
?”

“Like the fact that you were about to be fired. By Simon.”

“That’s
not
true.”

“Stewart, you haven’t billed squat since you lost Physical Science Concepts as a client. Four years ago.”

“I didn’t lose
them
. They
went
bankrupt. Because their CEO was a nut
case
.”

“Whatever the reason, you lost them and your billings went to hell. You’ve become a financial drain on the firm. We talked about you in the last executive committee meeting. You were on the list.”

“Simon
would
never have me fired. I
came
here before he did. We were friends.
And
anyway, I wouldn’t care if I were fired. I have plenty of money.”

“I don’t believe you. I think you knew your head was on the chopping block, and you killed him. And now you’re making up the drug thing.”

“I’m not.”

Stewart pushed his plate aside, looked at me rather directly, and said, “If anybody
has
a motive, it’s you, Robert.”

“And what would my motive be?”

“Your argument with Simon about the
Ides
. He wanted you to take it back. And give him his money back. It was a lot of money, even for you.”

The opportunity to lie had presented itself to me once again. It seems that once you tell a lie, the lie has to be nurtured, protected, and repeated or it will rupture and let the truth inside it spill out. I could have withdrawn the lie right then, of course.

“You’ve got it wrong, Stewart. I took the
Ides
back from him the day before he died,” I said. “On Saturday morning. I was about to write him a check. I guess I’ll send it to his estate now.”

Stewart smiled. I could tell that it was not the kind of smile you get when someone thinks you’ve said something amusing that doesn’t quite merit a laugh but needs an acknowledgement of some kind. It was a “gotcha” kind of smile.

“If you picked it up on Saturday,” he asked, “why
was
it still on his kitchen table on Sunday then?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Harry and I were at Simon’s
place
on Sunday for brunch. He had the coin out on the
kitchen
table so we could look at it. We had heard about
the
dispute, and we wanted to see if we could tell if the coin was a
fake
.”

I retreated into the thing people always say when they are caught in a lie. “I can’t explain that, Stewart. I only know what I know. I got it back on Saturday.”

“If you
say
so.”

“Anyway,” I said, “if you’re so sure it was a drug deal gone bad, why don’t
you
tell the cops about it.”

“You can tell the cops if you
want
to. I don’t
want
to be involved.”

“If I tell them you were the one who overheard the argument, they’ll just come talk to you anyway.”

“I know. But I don’t
want
to be the one to call them up right now.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll ask my lawyer to tell them.”

“You know what you should do, Robert, don’t you?”

“No, what?”

“Go see Harry again. Ask
him
if he was there that night.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“Okay, but aren’t you
going
to have some coffee?” he asked. He asked it in a way that made clear that the important part of our conversation was over.

“Sure.”

I ordered the coffee, then sat and talked to Stewart for another fifteen minutes. About nothing at all really. It’s odd how you can share important information with someone and then proceed directly to banal chitchat, as if the first exchange never happened. So Simon was involved in drugs and Harry killed him, and, by the way, how’s your golf game?