Wallflower (20 page)

"It was their own word 'weeds' that threw them off," Janek said. "They locked themselves in with that. If they'd started out calling them flowers, degraded, ragged flowers, they probably would have figured it out."

But still, he knew, it was the placement near Jess that really was the clincher. And perhaps, too, before one could read the message, one would need to have a certain sort of woman in mind—a woman who could be considered a wallflower at the dance of life.

J
anek met Fran Dunning at a coffeehouse around the corner from her dorm. It was one of those sixties-type places, with little marble tables, uncomfortable European café chairs, and a lone, slow, and very spacey waitress.

Fran had had three sessions with Beverly Archer. She found her a highly professional and compassionate shrink.

"She's really nice," Fran said, "the way she makes you feel so comfortable and all. It was kind of intimidating to walk in there, not knowing what to expect. But then I started talking about Jess, and I could see she was moved." Fran paused. "There were tears in her eyes, Lieutenant. She cared for Jess; I know she did."

Fine,
thought Janek.
It works better if Fran likes her.

Fran hadn't seen much of the house. The lavatory was on the first floor, off the therapy room. On her way to it she'd passed through a small office containing a couple of locked filing cabinets and a framed poster for a Botero exhibition. She'd also noticed a burglar alarm system, keypad and siren, inside the coat closet off the front hall.

"Did you mention the knife show?" Janek asked.

"Not yet." Fran paused. "Want me to?"

Janek shook his head. "You've done enough, Fran. No need to see her again. Thanks for all your help."

Fran stared at him, concerned. "I wish you'd tell me what this is about, Lieutenant. I just can't believe Dr. Archer had anything to do with, you know . . ."

Janek nodded. He knew he had to give her a reason. "It's not a question of whether she had anything to do with it. It's more a matter of whether she knows something and is holding back. Whenever I ask her about Jess, she talks about patient-therapist confidentiality and how it applies even after death. I find that strange, don't you?"

"I guess so. I never thought about it actually." Suddenly the robust girl athlete seemed terribly fragile. Her smile was weak; her eyes were confused. Janek patted her reassuringly on the hand.

A
aron wanted to bust into Archer's house.

Just for a look-see, Frank. Me, alone, on a Tuesday night, when she's teaching her class downtown. I'll slip in and out. She'll never know I was there. You won't either, 'cause I won't tell you about it."

"What good will that do?"

"If I see something, I'll say I'm strongly convinced there's evidence in her house. Then we'll figure out a way to get at it legally. That way at least we'll
know."

Janek was familiar with the technique and its rationale: the illegal break-in or wiretap to assure yourself that you weren't wasting your time, that there was a real case to be made. He had never employed it and was contemptuous of detectives who did. It wasn't just the illegality, though that was bad enough. It was the chain of deceit that followed, that led inevitably to perjury in court. It would be one thing to acquiesce if Aaron wanted to go in for a look, another to state later under oath that he hadn't known anything about it.

Aaron understood. "That's what I thought you'd say. But if there was a way, Frank—a way that was, say, a little less direct, what would you think about that?"

Sounds like shading.
But he felt he ought to hear Aaron out. Then, as he listened and began to feel seduced, he understood why Kit Kopta didn't like to assign detectives to cases in which they were emotionally involved.

T
hey were in Aaron's car driving up Third Avenue. It was past midnight. They had long since passed Ninety-sixth Street, the infamous DMZ, and were now deep into the huge Hispanic neighborhood of upper Manhattan, where the store signs were in Spanish, the streets were crowded, bodegas sold live chickens, and pharmacists' wives told fortunes.

"In all my years with Safes and Lofts," Aaron was saying, "Leo Titus was the slickest burglar I ever met. Charming guy. I know you'll like him."

"I thought I wasn't going to meet him."

"Yeah. Sorry. I forgot. Anyway, if you did meet him, you'd like him. How's that?"

"Irrelevant," Janek said.

They passed a battered-looking storefront gym. It wasn't like a yuppie health club in midtown. Up here a gym was a real, sweaty, sour-smelling place where slick-haired Latino boys with names like Pedro and Paco slugged hard at leather bags and skipped rope with exquisite poise deep into the night.

Aaron was still talking about his favorite burglar: "Leo's got this corny MO, but it always seems to work. First he makes a point of going into the house legally in daylight. Comes on as a telephone or Con Ed repairman: 'Hey, lady, gas leak around the corner, gotta get into your basement,' or 'Line trouble, lady—gotta inspect.' He's got nice company credentials, and he's got his girlfriend working as backup. If anyone asks questions, he gives them her number. She's waiting on the other end to verify."

"Yeah, slick," Janek agreed.

"On the first go-around he sees if there's anything worth taking, figures out how he's going to get in, and neutralizes the alarms."

"What's he looking for?"

"Not the crap the addicts take. No computers or VCRs. Leo goes for the good stuff: money; gold; jewels; bearer bonds. He likes stamp and coin collections but won't bother much with art. Too cumbersome, he says, hard to sell. He likes stuff he can stick into
his pockets.''

"I
doubt Archer's got anything he'd be interested in."

"You may be surprised, Frank. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Leo'll find something, and we'll take it from there."

It was a complicated scheme, devious and tempting, which was why Janek had agreed to go uptown and take a look at Leo Titus. But he didn't think he'd end up going for it.
I'm much too true blue
a
cop for this,
he thought.

Aaron pulled into a space on the east side of Third, center of the block between 112th and 113th streets. He cut the engine and pointed toward a bar. A narrow red neon sign flashed
BAD BOY
. "We're meeting in there," he said.

"Gay bar, isn't it?"

Aaron nodded. "One of the esoteric ones. Whites cruising Latinos and blacks."

"I thought you said this guy had a girlfriend."

"Yeah, he does. But he's kind of a swish sometimes, too. Goes home occasionally with guys. He's gotten into some nice Park Avenue apartments that way."

"Shit!"

"Hey, Frank! This isn't about sexual preference."

"You know I don't care about that. But you make him sound, I don't know—undependable."

Aaron clamped his jaws. "Leo's highly dependable." He glanced at his watch. "Time I went in. I'll talk with him a few minutes, then bring him out and parade him up and down the block. He'll know someone's looking him over but won't know who. All I want is for you to get a feel for the guy. Watch his moves, see what you think."

Janek nodded. "Yeah."

As he waited, he asked himself what the hell he thought he was doing sitting low in a car in this none-too-elegant neighborhood, implicating himself in this thoroughly illegal maneuver. And the answer, he knew, was that he was at a point where he didn't care about legalities one way or the other. All he cared about was finding Jess's killer.

When Aaron walked out the door of Bad Boy Bar with Leo Titus in tow, Janek strained forward to peer. Aaron slouched in his usual manner, but Leo, a small, suave, coffee-colored man with neatly cropped hair and a debonair mustache, stepped forward with a stylish gait. And then, as they made their promenade down to the corner and back, Janek had to smile. It was impossible to dislike Leo. The lithe cat burglar moved with the bold grace of Fred Astaire. He almost seemed to prance.

"W
hat do you have on the guy?" Janek asked as Aaron drove them back downtown. It was past 2:00 A.M. The street life of Spanish Harlem gave way to the cold, silent, empty residential cross streets of Manhattan's Upper East Side.

Aaron glanced at him quizzically. "Huh?"

"He's not going to do this for charity, is he?"

"Charity?" Aaron shook his head. "Not Leo."

"So?"

"He owes me a favor, Frank. Let's just leave it at that."

Janek nodded. He knew better than to pry into the intricacies of a detective's relationship with an informant. Such alliances could be built upon almost anything from real affection and respect to manipulation and fear. This time, Janek suspected, it wasn't Leo who owed Aaron a favor; rather, it was Aaron who was about to incur an enormous debt.

"Here's the plan," Aaron said. "Tuesday night, soon as Archer leaves for her class at Eisenberg, we pull up to her place and wait. We're running a surveillance. After a while we happen to notice a black man with a briefcase enter the house. We sit tight. For all we know Archer gave him the key."

Janek nodded. "Go on."

"After a while the dude comes out. And now we notice instead of a briefcase he's carrying this overstuffed satchel. We look at each other. 'Hey,' we say, 'maybe a robbery was committed in there.' So, having probable cause, we step out of our car and grab the guy. Leo's scared. He's done two tours in Attica, and he doesn't want to go up for a third. He starts to bargain. Is there any way he can get himself out of this mess? We don't take bribes, we're not that kind, but we're very interested in what he may have seen that could tie Doc Archer to the Happy Families crimes. Well, seems with all his snooping around Leo came across some pretty interesting evidence. So he trades what he saw for a walkaway deal on the robbery. And on the basis of that, valid information from an informant, we get a warrant, go in legally, and impound whatever he saw."

"Suppose Leo doesn't see anything?"

"Then he exits with an empty satchel. The satchel's the signal: If it's bulging with stuff, he's seen something, we move in on him and make the deal. Otherwise no harm done. He just walks away." Aaron looked at Janek. "What do you think?"

Janek stared ahead. "We never had this conversation."

Aaron shook his head. "That's right, Frank. We never talked about any of this."

T
uesday, December 1. All day Janek asked himself if he wasn't making an enormous mistake. Twenty-five years in law enforcement and he'd never done a deal like this.
Suppose Leo
does
find something,
he asked himself,
and they go in after it, and then Archer gets a smart lawyer who finds Leo entry just a wee bit coincidental. The lawyer goes to the D.A., who opens Leo up with the threat of a perjury charge. Leo quickly gives
up Aaron, but Aaron hangs tough.
Could he, Janek, live with himself if Aaron got in trouble for helping him out? No way! He'd turn himself in with the result that the doctrine of "poisoned fruit" would prevail, the evidence against Archer would be tainted and quashed, Archer would get away with murder, and he, Janek, could end up doing a year in the penitentiary.

Would it be worth it? Not if it went down that way, it wouldn't be.

But there was another scenario, far more succulent. With one bold stroke he might solve a case that could otherwise require years of orthodox investigation.

That, he was ashamed to admit, was a possibility he could not resist.

A
t seven that evening, fifteen minutes after Archer's last patient left her house, Beverly Archer herself emerged, bundled in a shapeless gray goose down coat.

It was teeth-chattering weather. Janek and Aaron watched shivering from their parking spot as Beverly seemed almost to be swept by the wind down to the corner of Eighty-first and Second, then attempted to flag down a cab.

Several passed her by. Perhaps they didn't like the look of the short, dumpy lady thrashing at the air with her arms. But then a large Checker glided to a halt, Archer hopped in, the cab took off downtown, and, a few seconds later, after Janek stepped out of the car, Aaron waved to him and took off after the cab.

For thirty minutes Janek waited on the corner, collar up, arms clutched to his chest, trying to avert his face from the wintry wind. "Knives-in-the-cheeks" was what he called the relentless, driven icy air that ripped into the sides of his face.

He was shaking when Aaron finally returned. He stumbled back into the car, then immediately began rubbing his hands while Aaron pulled into a fire hydrant zone directly across the street from Archer's house.

"Sorry I took so long. I thought I should follow her all the way just in case she forgot something and came back."

"She could still come back."

"Harder now. Class started at seven-thirty. Which gives us a good hour and a half." He glanced at his watch. "Leo should be turning up. I talked to him this afternoon. Yesterday morning he did his utility man routine. No problems. The alarm system's disarmed." Aaron grinned at Janek. "Don't worry, Frank. No paper trail. I called him from a booth."