As Dog Is My Witness (16 page)

“I know,” I said. I wasn’t interested in giving her
any autobiographical details.

“Well,” and I heard a major sniffle in her voice, “I
can’t let him suffer for something he didn’t do. I think it was
much more complicated than that. I think I know who
. . .  who shot Michael.”

Never let it be said I didn’t deliver the straight
line when necessary. “Who?” I asked.

“I can’t be sure,” she said, “but I think Michael was
involved with the Mob.”

You hear
that
, Mr. Shapiro?

A
fter I caught my breath, I
managed, “What makes you think
that
, Karen?”

Her voice took on an eerie quality, as if it weren’t
emanating from a human being, but coming from somewhere other than
her body. It sounded far away and slightly pained. I’m not sure
Karen was thinking about what she was saying. Might she be on
tranquilizers to deal with Michael’s death? Was her judgment
impaired?

“He was never secretive about his work. He had always
told me everything, even when it was clear I wasn’t interested.
Michael was a financial planner and a good one, but I never really
understood what he was talking about when he told me about his day.
I have more of an artistic mindset. But Michael was thrilled with
the numbers game, and he played it very well. I’m sure that if he’d
. . .  lived, we’d have moved into a much bigger,
more expensive house within a year or two.

“But lately,” Karen continued, “he was coming home
and not telling me about his day. At first, I’m ashamed to say it,
I didn’t mind very much, because I didn’t have to pretend to be
fascinated by interest rates and brilliant financial strategies.
But after a while, I became concerned. It wasn’t like Michael to
shut me out from such an important area of his life, and he was
truly proud of the work he did. He wouldn’t keep it from me unless
there was something wrong.”

“
Was
there something wrong?” Okay, so it’s not
a brilliant question, but it gave me something to say. How does a
guy not telling his wife about a day at the office lead to
involvement with the Kosher Consigliore?

“He never said anything, but he started getting phone
calls. At home. Calls that made him nervous. Calls he wouldn’t tell
me about. And Michael said he thought someone followed him when he
walked Dalma at night.” Karen Huston’s voice had almost no affect
at all—it was like the tone you hear when you talk to someone more
severely autistic than Ethan or the other Asperger kids.

I thought, naturally, of Big, Bigger, and Biggest,
otherwise known as the Hyman Shapiro Trio.

“There was something else,” Karen added suddenly.
“Michael didn’t leave a will.”

“Well,” I said, thinking I really ought to get around
to writing one myself one of these days, “he was such a young
man.”

“Aaron,” she interrupted with an urgent tone, “you’re
not listening. Michael was a brilliant financial planner. He spent
his days consumed with the idea of being ready for contingencies
and emergencies, and he helped his clients consider every
possibility in their financial lives. He is . . . 
was . . .  the last man on earth who wouldn’t have
been prepared.”

“So you think . . .  what?” Respect,
reschmect.
I wasn’t following.

“I think someone stole the will because of what he
might have included in it,” Karen said. “I mean, I don’t think
Michael left a fortune to gangsters, but it’s possible he fell into
debt with them by gambling, or . . .  something, and
couldn’t pay it off. And maybe no one wants me to know how little
is left.”

“Has your lawyer looked into this?” I asked.

“Yes, but he hasn’t found anything yet. Michael
didn’t use the same lawyer as I did. I know it sounds odd, but we
both had reasons to be loyal to the attorneys we each had before we
met, and we just never thought it would be an issue. Michael used
to joke that we were all set for the divorce.” She put a laugh on
the end of the sentence for me, but it wasn’t real.

“Who was his lawyer?”

“John Markowitz,” she said without hesitation. “He’s
in Metuchen.” She gave me the phone number, and I promised to give
him a call.

It wasn’t the most convincing argument I’d ever
heard: a man doesn’t leave a will and clams up about his job, and
thus is involved with organized crime. If I hadn’t had the visit
from the Three Tenors, I’d have dismissed the whole notion as the
thoughts of a recent widow obviously still in mourning and not
necessarily thinking as clearly as she normally would.

But I had been visited by Shapiro’s men, and that,
added to Karen’s suspicions, had to mean
something.

I put in a call to Abby, to see if she knew anything
about either Rezenbach or Markowitz. Sleeping with a lawyer is a
great way to find out about other lawyers. But she was in a client
meeting. So I weighed my options. They weighed 156 pounds, and
thanks for asking.

My intention this afternoon was to completely
distance myself from the Michael Huston story—an effort that had
been, let’s say, less than one hundred percent successful thus far,
inasmuch as I was now more involved than I had been, with sources
actually calling me on the phone to offer their somewhat bizarre
theories on the subject. But the strong possibility existed that
people with guns that shot more than one bullet before reloading
were interested in my not asking any more questions, and since my
first responsibility is to my family, I felt I had an obligation
not to be dead.

On the other hand, there was Lori Shery, who was
threatening to let
herself
become dead if I quit the
investigation. It wasn’t Lori’s intention to keep me involved, but
I couldn’t let her be the most visible target. And then there was
the
Snapdragon
assignment, which was only my second from the
magazine. It’s bad for business to back out of a commissioned
story.

Clearly, this was a conundrum. If I were sports agent
Myron Bolitar, no doubt somebody would drop dead right in front of
my eyes and I’d be implicated, thus necessitating my seeing the
investigation to its conclusion while pining away for one of the
many former loves of my life. This is what I got for not being
Myron Bolitar.

Ethan and Leah would be home within an hour, and only
the deity that governs the severely Yuppified would know when
Howard and his Band of Renown would be back. I had an hour, and
what I clearly should be doing with it was making the changes Glenn
Waterman wanted in my screenplay.

So, naturally, I called Mary Fowler.

“Mary, is Justin at home right now?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure this is a good time to come
see him, Aaron.”

“I don’t want to see him. Put him on the phone,
okay?”

She hesitated, but put down the phone, and I heard
her ask Justin to pick up. Mary told her son who was calling, but
he took the phone anyway.

“Hello, Mr. Tucker. My mom said to pick up.”

“Yes, Justin, I have a question
. . . 

“No, no, no! I’m not saying anything about that.”

I knew that was coming, so I waited for a pause and
jumped in. “Justin, where would someone find ammunition for a
vintage gun like the Booth deringer?”

He showed no sign of surprise at the conversation’s
direction. “The .44 Deringer was a percussion cap and ball type,”
Justin immediately began lecturing. “Several companies still
produce the lead ball type ammunition, as well as the black
gunpowder and percussion caps needed to fire the weapon.”

“But the gun that shot Michael Huston”—and I felt
this was a less threatening way to bring the murder into the
conversation—”wasn’t a vintage gun, was it? It was a replica,
right?”

You could pretty much hear him nod through the phone.
“Yes,” Justin said. “But such replicas are not at all uncommon, and
are actually available through several sources. In fact, many
states do not require a replica weapon like this to be registered,
or for the owner to fill out a permit request, as they would with
modern weapons.”

That made sense. The killer didn’t want the gun to be
traced to its owner, so buying a gun that didn’t need to be
registered, even if it were purchased in another state, would be a
simple way to remain anonymous.

I had read a little about the Lincoln assassination
(in fact, I’d written a screenplay about it, and am more than
willing to discuss the rights, but that’s another story), and knew
something about Booth’s gun. “It wasn’t like a gun today, was it,
Justin?” I asked. “I mean, to fire it.”

“No,” he agreed. “It predated the kind of ammunition
we would use today. There was no cartridge. The shooter would have
to load the weapon separately for each shot fired.”

“And that was a complex process, wasn’t it? I mean,
you practically had to load it up like a musket, didn’t you?” Keep
him talking, and ease into the questions you
really
want to
ask.

“In a way, yes,” Justin said. “The shooter would pour
a measured amount of black powder down the muzzle, and then center
a fabric patch on the muzzle. A lead ball, or the bullet, would be
placed on top of the patch, and then rammed together with the
fabric patch, in a move similar to that of tamping down a musket
shot. Once the ball was tight against the fabric patch, and they
sat next to the powder charge, the friction-fit was tight enough to
prevent it from rolling out of the barrel. The final preparation
would be to press a percussion cap, filled with mercury fulminate,
onto the nipple the hammer rests against.”

“Mel Gibson would have a rough time loading that and
jumping out a window at the same time, huh?”

“Yes,” Justin said without a chuckle, “he would.”

I decided to push just a little bit harder.

“So if someone wanted to shoot a man out in the
street, he’d really have to plan ahead, wouldn’t he?” Just start
moving in the direction you want to go, and see if the subject
follows you.

But there was a tense flavor to Justin’s voice now.
“Yes,” was all he said.

If Mr. Shapiro was on my trail, there wasn’t much
time. I had to get to the real questions. This is a careful
process, one that is less knowledge than a combination of instinct
and practice. I’ve had a lot of practice. “Justin,” I started
slowly, “why did you confess?”

“Goodbye,” he said, and hung up.

D
inner that night was a
relatively calm affair, since Howard thought so much of his sister
that he decided to stay in New York for the evening repast rather
than spend an evening with her and her family. Some people travel
2,000 miles to see family members, and others come to check out
works of modern art and use family members’ homes as hotels. Not
that I minded being without the three non-Abigail Steins for the
night, but I could tell Abby was a little hurt, and that doesn’t
sit well with me.

They walked in, of course, while I was throwing the
softball around with Mahoney. Jeff and I have this routine, which
we started during the purgatory years known as “high school.” When
a problem perplexed us enough, which at the time involved virtually
every female we knew, we hashed it out while throwing a softball
back and forth. More than twenty-five years out of high school now,
our arms are not as accurate as they once were, our breakable
possessions somewhat more expensive—and we’re now the ones paying
for them—and our problems no longer involve getting to a particular
base with a particular girl. We’re both married, and believe we’ve
already reached most of the important bases.

“What I don’t get is why someone from my own company
would be blowing up my work on purpose,” Mahoney said as he whizzed
a throw directly into my hands, necessitating no movement at all on
my part, “What’s the motivation?”