by Reason of Sanity (20 page)

The sheriffs look at m e for some signal, but I let them know to stay cool and let the guys with the guns go by. And then it happens. I’m standing near a large glass window and I see a reflection of what’s happening. Both robbers take off their sunglasses and along with the bank loot, toss them into a large garbage receptacle near the door. They then continue through the lobby, separating into two directions, each toward a different street exit.

I’ve already pre-programmed Snell’s number on my cell-phone’s speed dial, so I call his office with an urgent message and get right through to him. “Agent Snell, this is attorney Peter Sharp. I thought you might like to know that a bank has just been robbed down the street from your office.” He gulps.

“What bank? We haven’t gotten any silent alarms from anywhere.”
Finally I get my chance to play the hero. I give him the bank location, the license plate and description of the van and the address where he can pick them up. I don’t even get a thank you. He probably thinks I’m part of the gang. The Feds are all paranoid – it’s part of their training.
The bank robbery is complete. In accordance with our instructions, everyone stays in position. We’ve got another couple of minutes before the whole gang is in the van. Just then, to my great surprise, here comes a maintenance man, complete with gray striped jumpsuit and some large embroidered patch on his back. He’s carrying a large empty plastic garbage bag and just like every other maintenance man in the world, he walks over to the receptacle where the gang dumped their sunglasses and money, pulls out the trash liner and replaces it with a new one. He then starts towards the other side of the lobby. I signal everyone to stay in place.
The maintenance man goes all the way to the rear exit and walks out of the lobby towards the parking lot. He’s probably the last one that the doglady picks up after she’s gone around the block several times and picked up the other gang members.
Agent Snell and his gang run into the building. He sees me and comes over. I look at him and in true old-style western movie drawl, point and tell him “they went that-a-way.” By the look on his face, I can tell that he’s making his mind up whether to shoot me or thank me. Fortunately for me, he signals his men to go outside after the van.
Also according to plan, the press has been contacted and I’m ready to make my announcement on the steps outside the bank. This wasn’t arranged just to satisfy my ego, it’s sort of an insurance policy so the Feds don’t take all the credit and cut my gang out of the reward.
Many years ago I learned the hard way that you get more bees with honey than with vinegar, and now is a good time to use that knowledge. There will be numerous press conferences and interviews with Special Agent Snell and I don’t want to put him into a position where he’s forced to give me all the credit. I’m not looking for credit – all I want is the reward money, so I think that the best way to go is to make it easy for the authorities to appreciate what I’ve done. I’ve also learned that if you want someone in the public eye to be on your side, all you have to do is praise them – and that’s exactly what I intend to do. Once you’ve publicly said how great someone is, you make it very difficult for him to then try to destroy your credibility. It’s showtime. Here goes… the cameras are on me.
“Ladies and gentlemen, before we get into any details of the robbery and how the gang was caught, I’d like everyone to know the great respect I have for the Bureau’s Special Agent Robert Snell and his task force. When I called them for help, they came out in full force and did their jobs professionally. The bank robbery gang is now in custody and I have every hope that much of their loot from the last few robberies will also be recovered at their hideout.”
The feeding frenzy starts. Most of the questions they shout out ask why I’m here at all making a statement.
“The reason that I’m here today is that the FBI, because of regulatory and budget restrictions, can’t do all the things that a private citizen can do. And they shouldn’t. In this case, my law firm happens to be representing a bank against a slip-andfall victim. The bank was robbed later that day. I’m also representing a person who is charged with murdering that slip-and-fall victim. Because of the possible links between these two cases and the robberies, and with the cooperation of Agent Snell and the local authorities, I organized a group of my associates and we set a trap for the robbers. Our plan could only go so far because we have no training or authority to arrest people, so Agent Snell had to come in and pull our bacon out of the fire – and we can’t thank him enough for that.”
If I wanted to, I could probably stand there for another couple of hours and the questions would still come in fast and furious. Agent Snell’s trained eye notices the cameras and if there’s anyone that the FBI won’t let escape, it’s a curious news reporter. I see him walking toward us and decide to give him a fanfare. “And here he comes now ladies and gentlemen, the hero of today’s events, FBI Senior Special Agent Robert Snell.” I step back and let him walk into the spotlight of attention. While he’s making his own self-serving statement, I take the opportunity to gather my crew so we can get the hell out of here.

ack at the boat the champagne is flowing. To be thful, it’s not really champagne, but we’re treating our wine coolers like they’re the expensive bubbly stuff. The kid made arrangements for the ‘wrap’ party, but she had difficulty convincing the guy at the liquor store that she was twenty-one, probably because she couldn’t see over the counter. So, we’re drinking coolers, from Laverne’s boxed wine collection. I’m sure she’ll be looking for her pound of flesh as repayment later tonight… and I always pay my debts.

As promised, whatever reward comes in will be split up between everyone. Being the brains of our coalition forces, our firm will take the usual lawyer’s thirty percent and the rest will be divided evenly between everyone else. According to the newspapers, the robbery gang averaged almost three hundred thousand from each of the five jobs, making the total somewhere in the neighborhood of a million and a half. If the reward is ten percent, our group will be cutting up one hundred fifty thousand, and my third should get me the yellow Hummer that Budget Renta-Car is now trying to get rid of.

We turn on the evening news and see ourselves on camera. The story is not only on the local news, it makes the network broadcasts too. The wonderful saga about a group of civilians helping the FBI break up a bank robbery gang is just too juicy an item for them to ignore. And we see that my strategy paid off. Whenever Agent Snell is interviewed, he’s always asked about the contribution that the concerned citizens made to help him break the case and true to my plan, he answers “Yes, they did a fine job of surveillance and putting things together for us
– things that our budget wouldn’t allow us to do. We owe them a debt of gratitude for giving us the information that led to the arrest of this gang.” Those remarks of his are also probably intended to help the FBI’s next budget request.

The party starts to wind down after an hour or so, and before going to Laverne’s houseboat to pay my debt, I can’t help but ask myself what we really accomplished today. Sure, the bank robbery gang was caught and we’ve got some reward money coming, but does it really help me out with my questions about the Drago and Blitzstien cases? Not by a long shot. I still think that everything’s tied together and solving the robberies is just the first step in completing the whole puzzle.

There’s nothing like the brig ht southern California sunshine to clear your head and let you face the new day with a new outlook. As usual, Laverne left early in the morning and I’m now finishing the greasy French toast she left out for me. Today I plan on looking at the security tapes from the hospital again. Maybe there’s something I missed. I intend to view all the tapes - not just the one cassette with the murder on it.

After hours and hours of viewing the tapes, I finally see something that probably is just a defect on the tape, but just to make sure, I call the lab and tell them the frame I’d like an enlargement of.

Modern technology is great. In the old days, which in technospeak is about three years ago, to get the enlargement I want would take up to a week, taking the process and mails into consideration. Now, the picture is waiting for me in my incoming email folder and the kid’s photo-quality printer will have it ready for me in about fifteen seconds.

Looking at the picture, I see something I absolutely cannot figure out. The shot depicts Harold with his back to the camera standing next to Drago’s bed, which has a privacy curtain blocking any view from the room’s open door. This point in time is before Harold used the pillow to smother Drago. What catches my attention is something in the hallway, low down near the floor. It’s slightly blurred but I’m amazed at what I think it is. It looks like the white tip of something furry – like a tail.

I have to sit down for a minute. This can’t be what I think it is because they don’t allow animals in the hospital… or do they? Just to satisfy my curiosity, I press the button on our electric can opener
– the one that’s used every day to open the large can of dog food that my associate eats. Hearing the whirr of the can opener brings the Saint Bernard running from the forward stateroom and I have a chance to see his tail. The rear portion of it is white.

Not wanting to see a look of disappoint on that huge face of his, I toss him a dog biscuit. He’s been paid for his trip, so he retreats. I sit down with my head in my hands. I know that the kid does her dog act at the hospital, and I also know that the children’s ward is on the same floor that Drago got killed. Does this mean that the kid and the dog walked by Drago’s room while the murderer was in there? It’s possible, if that’s the dog’s tail. And anywhere that the dog was, the kid was too.

I have to get some facts in order, so I call Jack Bibberman and tell him to check with the hospital for the exact days and hours that Suzi was at the hospital doing her volunteer turn at the various wards there. I know that if I try to speak to her, the conversation on her part will probably be extremely brief, so I want to know what I’m talking about before trying to ask her any questions.

It took Jack B. only two hours to get the requested info together and just as I suspected, the timeline fits. The dog was on Drago’s floor at the time of the murder. Does this do me any good? I really don’t want to get the kid involved in this case, especially because she’s not a truly independent witness – counsel for the defense is her legal guardian.

Putting Suzi on the witness stand would also be a terrible situation for Myra, who would then be forced to aggressively cross-examine her and try to destroy the credibility of a little girl she’s really fond of.

Even if she did walk by the room while Harold was in there, I can’t imagine anything she could have seen that could possibly help me with this case. Even though the door to Drago’s room was open, Harold did his smothering work behind a privacy curtain so that whatever he was doing wouldn’t be visible to someone walking by out in the hall. There was no window next to Drago’s bed, so Harold’s actions didn’t form any visible silhouette on the curtain.