Mean Streak (27 page)

“Of course not. I'm a United States attorney, not a hit man, Ms. Jameson. It's clear you've spent too much time with a certain type of criminal lawyer; you've forgotten the essential distinction between representing criminals and behaving like one.”

“You could have done it, though,” I persisted. The drone of the Chinese funeral music had subsided. “You could have walked right up the courthouse steps, met Eddie at the top, shot him in the head, and walked to the subway without anyone—”

The prosecutor's face lit up with a singularly repulsive smile. “Ah, but I didn't walk to the subway,” he cut in. “At least not directly. Not that night. I had an appointment, you see,” he went on. He was enjoying this. “An appointment with Warren Zebart. I walked to his office; the guard at the reception desk has a record of me signing in at precisely eleven-twenty-nine
P.M.
And I'm told Eddie was seen alive at eleven-forty by one of the guards from the courthouse. So you see, it would have been physically impossible for me to have shot my own witness.”

I opened my mouth to argue that the sighting of Eddie at 11:45 wasn't written in stone; the cop's watch could have been off by a couple of minutes. And who was to say Warren Zebart and the FBI were above fudging Lazarus's sign-in time to give him an alibi?

But I had no chance to make my case; Lazarus turned and walked away, leaving me in the cul-de-sac. Lost.

I pretended I was in a maze. I kept turning right. No matter what, I took the right fork every time I had a choice. And finally, I was rewarded by the sight of an elevator. I stepped on and hit the button for Lani's floor deciding I could always phone the judge later.

She was in her characteristic pose, stockinged feet propped up on an open drawer, reading glasses on her nose as she perused a transcript. Her shapeless suit was khaki-color and her blouse was a button-down Oxford in a bright white that sucked all the color from her olive skin.

She greeted me with a wry smile, put down the transcript, and waved at the coffee pot on a side table by way of invitation. I stepped over and poured out a cup of what looked like battery acid, then creamed it with powdered stuff and opened a sweetener packet.

I was vamping till ready. I didn't look forward to sitting face to face with my old buddy and conceding that she'd been right from the start, that representing Matt Riordan could only lead to big trouble. But even Lani couldn't have realized that the trouble would include three dead witnesses—two murders, one suicide. She couldn't have known that Matt would have as good a motive as anyone else for those murders.

Or could she? I looked into her hazel eyes and saw a level of amused comprehension that made my heart sink.

“Okay,” I said crossly. “You were right. I've said it once and that's the only time you're going to hear it.”

“For what it's worth,” she replied, “I don't think Riordan killed Eddie Fitz.”

All the frustration I'd been feeling welled up. “Then who the hell did?” I snapped. “I just came from talking to Lazarus, who threw his alibi in my face with the most insufferable smugness. I talked to Singer, who still thinks she's going to survive this whole mess, so she didn't have a real reason to kill Eddie. I like Stan Krieger for the murder, but he won't talk to me, so I can't be sure what's going on with him.”

“But you're really worried they'll arrest Matt, aren't you?” my friend asked.

“Zebart's got a hard-on for him,” I replied, lapsing into the phallic metaphors that amused me when men used them. “He'd have Matt in custody right now if he had the evidence. And the ballistics report worries me. Zebart said the gun that killed Eddie was definitely the same gun that killed TJ. I can't buy Matt killing TJ himself, but what if one of his Mob clients did it for him and then iced Eddie?”

“If that's what happened,” Lani replied with a matter-of-fact air that helped cut through the miasma of despair surrounding me, “then no one will ever prove it. So why not set that possibility aside and concentrate on the others,” she suggested.

“The plaza was filled with suspects,” I recited. “Lazarus and Singer because they worked there; Krieger and Riordan because they were lured there by the killer.”

“You don't know the killer brought them there,” Lani pointed out. “It could be a coincidence that Riordan and that cop were promised—”

“Oh, come on,” I interrupted. “If there's one thing that's clear, it's that someone wanted Krieger and Riordan in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone knew exactly how to bait the hook to get Riordan there; I assume they did the same to Krieger. Someone told them precisely where to stand in the plaza so they'd be on the scene. Someone set them up to be—”

“What about Singer and Lazarus? Do you think they were manipulated too?”

“Not anymore,” I conceded. “At least not Lazarus. I believe him when he says he went to see Zebart. Which means he changed his usual pattern, and the chessmaster didn't expect that, hadn't done anything to prevent it. As for Singer,” I went on, thinking aloud, “it seems to me the chessmaster knew she was in the habit of meeting Eddie at the sculpture, and just took advantage of that. The killer knew she'd wait at least fifteen minutes. So he dangled some kind of bait in front of Eddie, told Eddie to meet him at the top of the courthouse steps, then blew his head off while the others waited in their appointed places.”

“This killer is someone who really knew the area,” Lani remarked.

“Yeah, I've thought of that,” I said. “But that applies to all of them. With the possible exception of Krieger, I suppose. He's a Brooklyn cop, but it wouldn't be hard for him to survey the area, figure out how to position people. As for Riordan, he knows that plaza like—”

“Let's make a list,” Lani cut in. “The killer is a person who knew the area well,” she began. She grabbed a legal pad and a pen and began to write. “The killer also has a strong motive for getting rid of Eddie.”

“So far, so obvious,” I commented. Lani stuck her tongue out at me and continued her list.

“And the killer knew Lazarus walked to the subway the back way, not going through the plaza. He also knew Singer would be waiting for Eddie beside the sculpture.”

“I know all this,” I pleaded. “Tell me something I don't know.”

“How do I know what you know or don't know?” Lani replied equably. “Do try for a little patience, dear,” she went on. “I am coming to the more arcane pieces of knowledge this killer had to have.”

“Pray continue,” I invited, echoing Lani's Victorian-novel manner of speaking.

“The chessmaster, as you call him, dangled exactly the right bait in front of Riordan,” she pointed out. “The chessmaster knew Riordan would believe Eddie taped his conversations with Lazarus, and the chessmaster knew Riordan wanted those tapes so he could nail Lazarus. Which argues a pretty good knowledge of your client's character, it seems to me.”

“Which the chessmaster could have gotten from a cursory reading of Jesse Winthrop's column,” I reminded her.

“Yes, but how did the chessmaster know Eddie made those tapes?”

I opened my mouth and then shut it. She had a good point. Riordan and I had speculated about the tapes, particularly after Stan Krieger had told us of Eddie's boast that he'd taped his interview with Psych Services. But how did the chessmaster know Eddie had a reputation for surreptitiously recording interviews?

Unless the chessmaster was Stan Krieger.

What was Stan Krieger doing in the plaza at the time Eddie Fitz was killed? Who was he meeting and why? Had he been lured to the scene of the crime in the same way Riordan was lured—and, if so, what was the bait?

Or had he lurked in the plaza, waiting for Eddie? Had he grabbed his pal's shoulder and walked him up the steps to the federal courthouse? Had he stepped behind a pillar, pulled a gun, and blown away half of Eddie Fitz's head?

“You think Eddie put the gun in Dwight's mouth, is that it? You think he pulled the trigger, that this is some kind of dumb murder mystery?” Stan Krieger looked at me with a contempt he made no effort to conceal. I didn't blame him. I'd given up trying to get past the desk sergeant and had shown up on his apartment doorstep. He'd let me in with ill-concealed resentment, but he'd let me in. That was the important thing.

“No, Stan,” I replied, echoing his tone of barely controlled exasperation, “I do not. Any more than you do. But I do think Dwight Straub would be alive today if he'd been assigned to a precinct that didn't have Eddie Fitz in it.”

The light of combat died in Stan Krieger's eyes. The muscles of his face sagged a little as he let my words sink in. Ten years jumped onto his face; he looked ready for retirement, ready to pack it in and start hanging around in cop bars telling war stories.

“Ah, shit,” he said at last. “Fucking kid couldn't handle it. Anybody could see that. Anybody but Eddie would have let the kid alone, work whatever he was doing around Dwight, make sure he didn't know what was going down.”

“But Eddie didn't do that,” I volunteered.

“Hell, no. He made sure Dwight was in it all the way. He teased Dwight a lot, gave him that stupid nickname.”

“Ike,” I repeated. “So tell me about Ike,” I invited.

“Don't call him that!” Stan's voice was harsh; his left eyelid twitched uncontrollably.

“Someone made sure you were in the plaza the night Eddie was killed,” I pointed out. I sat in a sagging armchair; Stan perched on the edge of his couch like a bird about to take flight. “Were you meeting someone?”

“Why should I tell you?” Stan shot back. He shifted back in his seat, as if trying to add to his bulk and solidity. Sending me a message that he was not to be moved.

“Why not? Somebody made damned sure you were in a position to be suspected of killing Eddie. Someone set you up. Doesn't that make you mad?”

“Lady, I've been mad since the day Eddie Fitz first walked into my precinct.”

“So why did you let him get away with it? Why did you let him call the shots?”

His mouth twisted into a sneer. “In the first place,” he replied, “the money was good.”

“You knew there were investigations pending,” I guessed. “I suppose whoever lured you to the plaza promised inside information.”

“One of the guys who used to be in this precinct works at Headquarters now,” Stan explained. “I had a message from him, said to meet him in front of One Police Plaza. Said he'd be working late, and he could tell me when charges were going to be filed.”

“Which means whoever set you up knew the name of someone in Headquarters who might help you,” I mused aloud.

“Lazarus would know,” I pointed out. “And Singer. I imagine the U.S. attorney's office would keep close tabs on an internal police investigation of cops who worked with their undercover.”

And Riordan wouldn't know
, I thought, but didn't add. Or would he? How hard would it be for a man with his connections to find a detective now working at Headquarters who'd once shared a desk at Stan's old precinct?

“I suppose your old friend at Headquarters says he never sent you a message,” I remarked.

“Hell, yes,” Stan replied. “He cursed me out when I called him, said I was jamming him up by even making a phone call. He said he sure as hell wouldn't have put his career on the line to help me out. I believed him.”

“How did Eddie talk you into registering TJ as a confidential informant?” I asked, shifting back to the heart of the matter.

“Hey, that was a good idea,” Stan replied, stung into defending the man he'd hated. “If anyone started nosing around, they'd find out TJ was on our side, that any dealing he was doing was for the sake of making cases. It was a perfect cover.”

“At first,” I agreed. “But that meant that when TJ became a liability instead of an asset, your name was on the paperwork. You were the one who stood to lose when the Department found out what TJ was all about. So when it came time for TJ to die, you took him out and—”

He'd started shaking his head in the middle of my recitation, and now he broke in. “No,” he said in a hard, decisive tone. “No, that's not how it was. I didn't want it to come out, but now everything in the fucking world is going to come out, and, besides, the poor schmuck's dead, so—”

I caught on at last. “Dwight,” I said. I sat back in my chair. “Eddie conned Dwight into killing TJ with him.”

“Not
with
him,” Stan objected. “It was worse than that. He had Dwight kill TJ
for
him. Eddie had an alibi all set up; he talked Dwight into taking out TJ all by himself.”

“And the alibi was …” I let my voice trail off, trusting Stan to finish the sentence for me.

“A poker game with half the guys in the squad. Good guys,” Stan explained. “Guys whose word would be believed. I was the only one there who knew what was going on. I was the only one who knew that when Dwight got there late, it was because he'd just come from killing TJ.”

He shook his head at the memory. “Fucking kid looked sick as a dog,” he recalled. “His face was pasty-white, and I thought he was gonna heave. In fact,” he went on, “I think he did heave. Said he was coming down with stomach flu and left the game early. But it wasn't the flu, it was the fact that he'd just killed a guy in cold blood.”

“Sounds like Eddie, all right,” I said, feeling a little sick myself. It was all too easy to visualize Dwight Straub trying to macho his way through his first murder—and failing miserably. “Conning someone else into doing his dirty work for him.”

“Ah, shit,” Stan said through a long, exhaled breath that should have been blue with cigarette smoke but wasn't. He had the raspy voice of an ex-smoker; I wondered how long it had been since he'd put out his last butt. “The trouble was, Dwight married a ball-busting bitch,” Stan pronounced. “That was the whole fucking trouble in a nutshell. You know who he should have married?”