The Deadhouse (33 page)

"What happened to Jennings?"

"Kennelly and some other tough started roughing him about. They knew
he had been assigned a couple of laborers to do his dirty work, but if
he had actually trusted one of them to go out and bury his gems, my
friend wasn't talking." He shook his head from side to side. "Might
even have been smug about it because he was confident I'd be coming
along.

"Whatever it was, Jennings was up against men who didn't know how to
play by the rules. When they threatened him with a meat cleaver from
Reggio's private kitchen, so the story goes, he picked up a sharpened
knife he kept next to his bed. Beside the Bible, actually. He tried to
use it to repel Kennelly, but he was no match for that animal. The two
of them overpowered poor Jennings and one of them shoved the knife
right between his ribs. Killed him instantly."

"And the diamonds?"

"My detectives were on these two fellows pretty quickly. Mind you,
at the time, no one knew the men were in Jennings's room to find
jewels. That's the story that other prisoners began to tell long after
the dust settled. They both were examined quite thoroughly since we
were all looking for contraband and drugs, small things that could be
concealed. No jewels, my dear."

"Was the island searched?"

"By the time these stories surfaced, the penitentiary had long been
abandoned and the quarries on the island had been mined of their
riches. People have scoured it and fools will continue to do so well
after I'm gone, if you ask me.

"Course, if I didn't have this tale to tell, probably wouldn't get a
single visitor anymore. That's why Lola comes." He lifted his left arm
and squinted to see the time. "She's late."

"Was Lola looking for Jennings's diamonds?"

"She may guess that I'm stupid and senile, but if Lola thinks I
believe there's any other reason she's been here to visit me, she's
mistaken. She's been all through my diaries, too. I suspect she's
looking for clues that she thinks I've forgotten by now. Probably knows
more about all my lady friends and some of the crooks I represented in
my practice than she does about any buried treasure"—he smiled broadly
now—"but if it keeps her coming back here to chat with me, she's
welcome to them. Hell, I've answered to more important people than Lola
about that."

"What do you mean?"

"Old MacCormick himself called me on the carpet many years after the
raid. Thought I was living mighty high on the hog and had heard all the
rumors by then. Looked me straight in the eye and asked whether
Jennings had paid me off before the raid, or had I known where his
stash was hidden. Even the mayor bought me a drink one night. Fiorello
La Guardia. Over at the 21 Club it was. Had to know about the diamonds,
he said, and whether I thought they were really there."

"What did—?"

"And Jennings's son. He was going off to Europe to fight. Middle of
the Second World War. I call him Jennings's son, but all I know for
sure is that his mother was Ariana. Hard to figure whether Freeland had
been cuckolded by that tart before the kid was born. The boy had run
through most of his old man's money and felt the diamonds were his due.
He wasn't just curious. He accused me of stealing the damn things out
from under my dead friend. Angry with me, he was. But it didn't make
any difference. Never saw him again after that."

"Did you ever look for the diamonds yourself?"

"I only set foot on the island once, the day of the raid. No reason
to go back, in my book."

"Did Lola talk to you about the deadhouse?"

He snapped his head to look at me. "You damn well must be her
friend. What is it? Where is it? Damned if I ever heard that word
before she sat at my feet going at me. Doesn't mean a thing to me,
young lady."

"May we come back and visit you sometime, Mr. Lockhart?" Mike was on
his feet, hand on the shoulder of the old guy so he didn't feel the
need to stand up with us.

"Certainly, certainly you must. Come to the party next week. Skip's
having a little holiday party at the house." His eyes brightened and he
looked up at me. "You'll bring me some licorice, will you? And you,
miss, you'll send my best to Mr. Hogan?"

Frank Hogan had been one of America's great prosecutors, before Bob
Morgenthau and Paul Battaglia. He had died in 1974 after twenty-eight
years as Manhattan's district attorney. I wondered anew how much of
what Orlyn Lockhart had been telling us was fact, and how much was lost
in the confusion of time past. Perhaps I could get some articles from
the microfiche newspaper files at the New York Public Library and
research the story of Freeland Jennings and the penitentiary raid.

We made our way back through the kitchen, where the professor was
working on his laptop computer. He looked up as we entered the room.
"Thanks for listening to my grandfather. You've just spelled me for an
hour and I've gotten some work done."

Chapman was annoyed. "When I asked you about whether you'd ever
called Ms. Dakota a gold digger, you jerked me around. Seems pretty
obvious to me that you know she's been nagging the old man about buried
treasure. You gonna tell me you haven't been party to her diamond
excavations?"

Skip Lockhart stood up to face Mike. "Look, half of the stuff the
guy's talking about is just nonsense he makes up, I'm sure of it. He
likes to have an audience, and quite frankly, it's worn most of the
family pretty thin over the years."

"But it's his story that interested you in the Blackwells project in
the first place."

"Sure it is. But that's on an intellectual level. The raid really
happened. The prison conditions that he probably described to you are
quite accurate. I've researched all that. But my grandfather doesn't
know any more about missing diamonds than you do."

"Except that he actually eyeballed two gemstones the very day of the
raid. That gives some credence to the whole story, doesn't it? When
will you be back in your office in the city?"

"Next Thursday, January second."

"Expect me. Early and often. And I'll want to see the reports of all
your trips over to the island with Lola Dakota—and anything else that
might relate to the project. Have them ready. And a list of the
students who've worked on the dig with both of you."

My beeper began to vibrate as I buttoned my coat and walked out the
door. I shuddered once against the cold and then a second time when I
recognized Pat McKinney's home number. I opened the car door and dialed
my cell phone.

"So what do you do for excitement when you and Chapman aren't making
people's lives miserable?"

"That does seem to account for an inordinate amount of our time,
Pat." It was clear he was about to unload some kind of bad news on me.
"Want me to think about it and get back to you?"

"I figured if you had nothing better to do today you could get
yourself back over to New Jersey, to the medical center near
Hackensack. Bart Frankel's car was rear-ended early this morning by a
Mack truck. The truck won."

23

"If we got three choices, the only one I can rule out is suicide.
Pretty hard to count on killing yourself by letting the car behind you
run you off the road. Ain't always a sure thing."

It was early Saturday afternoon and the detective from Sinnelesi's
office, Tony Parisi, was talking to us in the visitors' lounge at the
hospital.

"Between an accident and a homicide attempt, what's your guess?"

"Tough to prove it's anything but an accident. Old shitcan of a car
moving along on Route Seventeen, and a trucker comes barreling down
behind it at one of those treacherous curves in the road. The driver
gets distracted, hits a patch of ice, and slams on the brakes too late.
Schmuck behind him just whacks him off the road into a row of trees.
Splinter pie, man.

"And let me tell you, Bart was really distracted. When the news got
out after that bail application yesterday and Kralovic was released,
Bart was ready to crawl into a hole. If the old will to live has
anything to do with getting him off the life-support machine, he ain't
gonna make it. He's toast."

"What do you know about the truck?"

"Not even sure that's what it was. Hit-and-run is all we know.
Somebody wanted him out of that lane real bad and then didn't even stop
to see what happened. Shit, if Vinny Sinnelesi was in town, I'd put my
money on him. He'll be royally pissed if Bart blew the Kralovic case
for him."

"Don't you think he'll live?" I asked tentatively.

"Not a prayer. Just hooked him up so his kids could say goodbye to a
warm body. They're in with him now. His lawyer claims he did one of
those living wills. 'Don't crank me up again once the pump shuts off.'
I'd say, you want to make sure it's curtains for Bart? You two grim
reapers walk in the room and hand him one of your bona fide New York
County subpoenas.
Finito."

At least I didn't have to be paranoid that Pat McKinney was the only
person who blamed me for Bart Frankel's condition. Mike ran his fingers
through his dark hair, clearly troubled. He started to speak. "What—?"

"Don't even ask what you think you can do for him, Chapman. We'll be
taking care of this one all on our own. You know we got real cops here
in Jersey, too?"

"Yeah, but you haven't solved a friggin' case since the Lindbergh
baby was kidnapped."

"Bart's one of ours, whether you liked him or not. Poor slob was
thinking with his penis instead of his brain. Gettin' in bed with that
Dakota dame was a stupid thing to do, but you got a long way to go to
convince me he'd whack a broad or throw a case."

"Tony, I appreciate your feelings for Bart. And I understand why
you're unhappy with us. But there was information he had that we
needed." I was trying to dance around the fact that the prosecutor had
not told us the truth. This detective had no cause to know it, and I
did not want to broadcast the fact, given Bart's medical condition.

While it was possible to believe he had dropped Lola off at her
building's entrance as he had claimed, it seemed hard to deny that he
had then gone on to her office at King's College. He may even have
taken something of significance from her desk. Something, I had hoped,
that would lead us to the reason for her murder.

"Look, you got no jurisdiction here, Miss Cooper. And besides that,
I don't think nobody that knew Bart even wants you on this end of the
tunnel."

"Alex is being polite, pal. She isn't telling you the half of it.
Executive Assistant District Attorney Bart Frankel looked the two of us
in the eye and lied to us."

Parisi was unmoved.

"He fibbed about things that happened the very afternoon that Lola
was killed. Not just the fact that he was sleeping with her. Where he
was at the moment she died, what he was doing. He even held back for an
entire week the name of the guy she walked into the building with."

Parisi bit his lip, not wanting to trust Chapman. "What do you want
from me?"

"I want the chance to go to
his
office, the way he went
through Lo—"

"Are you nuts or what? Don't even finish that sentence. I'm gonna
take you two over to Sinnelesi's office while his main man is sucking
on an air tube in a hospital bed, sneak you inside, maybe get my balls
cut off in the process if anybody catches me, just 'cause you think
you're gonna find something you can use to sink Bart in this even
worse? Not happening, baby."

"We'll be fast. You can stay with us the whole time."

"And who's gonna hire a gone-to-seed former investigator for Vinny
Sinnelesi when I get thrown out on my ass? Chapman, you've pulled a lot
of crap in your day, but you ain't calling the shots on this one."

"Just for once, why don't you do something useful for society?"

"Screw you. I recycle."

"Tony, when we were up at Lily's house—Lola's sister—she told us
that she had signed a power of attorney so that Vinny could go into
Lola's office and remove her belongings. All of them. Who actually went
and did that? Was it Bart?"

Parisi fidgeted.

"You're looking at this with blinders on. Buy into my facts for a
minute. Bart went to the campus the day Lola was killed, maybe already
knowing she was dead. He was searching for something. Alex and I can
prove that. If he found what he wanted that day, or if he went back for
it with legal authority to do so a few days later, maybe he got what he
was after.

"And just suppose, for one minute, that what he discovered in Lola's
office is what got him followed this morning. Got him killed."

"Suppose
you
start thinking that if there's any truth to
what you're saying, I'm gonna be able to figure it out myself. It's
what they pay me the big bucks to do." Parisi had given us all the time
he was going to waste, so he turned on his heel and headed for the door.

"Tony, you know what to look for, right? You'll recognize all the
players? Charlotte Voight, Skip Lockhart, Sylvia Foote, Free-land
Jennings, the Blackwells project..."

Chapman was calling up every name he had heard in the past eight
days, aware that none of them would ring a bell with the New Jersey
detective. There was no reason for Parisi to have known them, but it
worked perfectly to nag at his insecurity. His footsteps slowed.

"Twenty minutes, Tony. Just you and me. Blondie waits in the car."

My opportunity to participate in the search had just been sacrificed
to the greater cause: male bonding.

"I must have a death wish. I'll meet you over at the office. Park a
block away and leave her there." Parisi dismissed me with a heaving
sigh and a look back over his shoulder. "Give me a ten-minute lead and
I'll let you in the back door. Deal's off if any of the lawyers are in
there working."

Mike checked his watch. "Saturday afternoon at three o'clock when
it's eighteen degrees outside and we're in the middle of the holiday
weekend? In Battaglia's office, even the cockroaches wouldn't be behind
their desks."