by Reason of Sanity (24 page)

Lawyer :
Thanks for your help. I was in the gang too. If
there’s any more reward money, send it to my wife
and kids.

So that’s what it was. He was part of the robbery gang. Now I know why he was so interested in whether or not there would be some extra reward money, but I still can’t figure out why he tried to kill Drago. He told me that it was ‘for the money,’ but who would pay him for a job like this? Our background information didn’t come up with any prior criminal record. I can understand how a previously honest person might get tempted to join a gang to rob banks. Ever since that crime was glamorized in the Warren Beatty film ‘Bonnie and Clyde,’ I’m sure a lot of unsuccessful people have fantasized about it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it could lead to a cold-blooded murder for hire. There’s more to it that I don’t know about yet.

Now that Harold’s murder trial is over, there’s no danger of little Suzi getting dragged in to testify, so I feel a little better about trying to find out if she actually saw anything in Drago’s room that day. Knocking on her stateroom door and asking her straight out is not my style with this kid, so I send an inter-office email addressed to any member of our staff who may have been in the hospital that day. I’m hoping this may get a slight rise out of her. If she takes the bait, I might even get some information out of her.

As usual, she proves that she’s much smarter than I am. A message is delivered by dog-mail. It only asks one question. “What took you so long to recognize the tail?”

She did it aga in. She’s so many steps ahead of me, I’m probably not even in the race any more. If she decides to practice law some day she’ll be dangerous in a courtroom. I’d hate to be on the other side of any case she’s on.

To my amazement, the door to her stateroom opens and she actually comes out to speak to me.
“Thank you for not getting me involved in the case. I really didn’t want to go against Myra. I didn’t see anything in the hospital that day. As I walked past the room, all I saw was that man hanging his coat up in the closet.”
That having been said, she promptly turns around and they both exit. The Saint Bernard had no comment.
Did I hear her right? She said that Harold was hanging up his coat in the hospital room closet. Something in my brain doesn’t compute. I must have watched that hospital footage more than fifty times, but I don’t remember seeing Harold in a coat. It’s back to the VCR. I get the videos out and start watching them again.
After the pillow incident, Harold appears on the hallway camera wearing a trench coat. I go over the earlier tapes. He wasn’t wearing a coat when he came into the hospital room. She was partly correct. He went to the closet all right, but not to hang up his coat – to take Drago’s coat. But why? Why would he want to steal Drago’s coat?
I call Jack Bibberman and tell him that his job is to find out the names of the paramedics who picked Drago up at the bank after his slip-and-fall. I want to interview them. Now I’ll take a look at the bank’s videos, to see what Drago was wearing that day.
Sure enough, the bank’s cameras show Drago wearing that same trench coat. Nothing more to do now until Jack B. gets me those paramedics to talk to.

The phone rings. It’s Stuart.
“Yeah Stu, what’s up?”
“Vinnie put in a workman’s comp claim

against me .”
“You must be kidding – why would he do a
thing like that?”
“Because I told him to. He was so upset about
that incident with Harold and Olive, he hasn’t been
sleeping very well and he’s really been acting edgy. I
think the corpse thing really got to him, so I told him
that if he puts in a claim the insurance company will
pay for some therapy.”
“Okay, I’ll go along with that. Is it helping
any? Have you noticed any change in his behavior?” “Yeah, he’s calmed down a bit… and he got
back together with Olive, so he’s a lot happier now.
But he still won’t go to a funeral unless he’s driving
the truck. He never did like them, you know. His
uncle died last year and Vinnie wouldn’t even go to
his funeral – he was afraid he’d see the guy in an
open casket and he just wasn’t ready for that.” I never realized how much Vinnie disliked
dead bodies. I can’t help but laugh every time I think
about it, but I also feel bad he was traumatized like
that. I guess if you’re a person who doesn’t care to be
around stiffs, an experience like that can really shake
you up. It’s nice to know that he sought out some
professional help – it takes guts for someone to do
that. Maybe it’ll stop him from peeing on trees, too.

Jack B. comes through for me again. He got the names of the paramedics who brought Drago to the hospital. They both work out of a fire station not far from the Marina, so I go over there to ask them a few questions. When I ask them about Drago’s clothing, they tell me that they remember he was wearing a dark trench coat.

“You guys must see almost a hundred people a month. How can you remember what a guy was wearing a couple of months ago?”

“Simple Mister Sharp, other than Peter Falk playing Lieutenant Columbo, not too many people wear a trench coat on a warm day when the sun is shining.”

They’re right. This trench coat is becoming more interesting every day. Just another question and I’m through. “Did you guys take him to the hospital with the trench coat on?”

“No, we usually remo ve outer garments, so that we can loosen up shirts, ties, and belts. But I’ll tell you one thing.”

“What’s that?”
“The trench coat was heavy. When we took it off and tossed it into the back of our vehicle, it made a clunk when it landed.”
“Did you check to see what made the noise?” They both answered, almost in unison “No way. If he had a ton of coins or something on him from the bank, we didn’t want any part of it. Better to let the FBI go through his pockets… we don’t get paid to investigate, all we do is resuscitate.”
I remember going through the police reports. They specifically mentioned that Drago didn’t have anything on him that indicated he was a bank customer. No deposit or withdrawal stuff, no nothing. If they found out what he didn’t have, why didn’t they find what he did have? Maybe it’s because they didn’t do their investigation until after Harold took the coat.
The police report is somewhere in the file, so I hunt for it and drag it out. All they mention going through are his suit and pants pockets. No mention of a coat. Harold must have beat them to it.
I call Victor at his autopsy lab. “Victor, let me ask you a question. Do you ever take fingerprints off of the bodies you examine?”
“Sure, Mister Sharp. Any time it’s a case where the deceased was involved in a crime.”
“Drago wasn’t involved in a crime. Did you happen to take his?”
“Sure he was involved in a crime. At the time he was brought in here, everyone still thought that he was a murder victim. Nobody asked me to, but after working in crime labs for so long, I sort of do it out of force of habit. Let’s see… I’ve got the fingerprint card laying around here somewhere. Do you want it?”
This is great news. I tell Victor to scan it into the computer and email it over here. I then call Lieutenant Evans in Van Nuys and tell him that I need a favor and if anything pans out from it, he’ll get the credit.
He jumps at the chance to join in with Captain Crime Crusader. The fingerprint card is sent to him electronically and he runs it through the system for me.
Two days later, I get a call from the lieutenant. ”Mister Sharp, we have something very interesting for you. Your guy Vlad has been a very bad boy.”
“Did you say Vlad? My guy’s name isn’t Vlad… it’s Mike Drago.
“That’s what you think. The fingerprints you sent me match up with a guy named Vlad Drago, who is wanted by Interpol for crimes of violence in several countries. He came here from Croatia and has a rap sheet a mile long. Do you want me to round him up for you?”
“Sorry to disappoint you Lieutenant, but we’ve already got this one. Those prints were lifted off of a dead guy.”
“You mean there’s no one to go out and arrest?”
“Not today Lieutenant, but stay tuned… we’re still working on the case.”
If the victim wasn’t Mike Drago, then who the hell was he? That last name isn’t a really common one, so they’re no doubt related. If I have to make an educated guess, I’d say that Vlad is Mike’s brother. I tell Jack B. to check the immigration records to get their family’s history in this country. There are very few reasons to assume someone else’s identity, and if you aren’t doing it to get some new credit cards on someone else’s dime, then you really must be up to no good.
I check out Interpol’s website and learn that they’re the largest international police organization in the world, set up in 1923 to facilitate cross-border criminal police cooperation. They now have 181 member countries spread over five continents. They support and assist all organizations, authorities and services whose mission is to prevent or combat international crime, and now that I’m an official Crimefighter, I suppose that Interpol will help me out on future investigations.

Jack B. is a pretty smart guy. He contacted Special Agent Snell at the FBI. Snell knows we’re probably working on getting more members of the gang and wants to get on television again. Jack convinced him that it would be in everyone’s best interest if the feds would check with immigration. It would be much easier for them to do it than someone outside the government.

Bin go. The immigration check comes back with some information for us. Vlad and Mike were just two of five Drago brothers who were brought to the U.S. when they were children, because their parents wanted to get out of Serbia. Vlad had a string of brushes with the law, but his brother had a clean record with only one minor problem He was killed by a stray bullet during some gang shoot-out that no doubt involved his big brother Vlad.

Vlad probably figured that assuming Mike’s identity would give him a clean slate, so that if he got arrested again no priors would show up on his record. I guess he forgot about fingerprints, but there aren’t many career criminals who are members of MENSA, so it’s understandable he’d make one or two mistakes along the way.

Now that we know who he is, I think my hunch about the heavy thing in his coat is probably right on the money. Drago was carrying a gun when he slipped and fell in the bank. I have another phone call to make.

“Victor, it’s Peter Sharp. I have a question to ask you about Drago and those ribs he broke when he fell in the bank.”

“Ask away Mister Sharp, I’ve seen the video footage of his fall, and I’ve got some questions of my own about those broken ribs.”

“Okay Victor, here goes. Is it possible that his ribs were broken by something big and hard that was inside his suit coat?”

“That’s what I was thinking, but the police didn’t find anything. I still say that broken ribs like that shouldn’t have happened. I saw his fall on videotape and it looked like he landed on his ass. Our autopsy confirmed a bruised coccyx, so there must have been something else that put pressure on the ribs when he fell.”

“Same thing I was thinking. What if he had a big handgun in the inside pocket of his suit jacket… could that have done the rib damage?”

Victor confirms my hunch. Drago was armed when he was in the bank. Now I ask myself, if a person goes into a bank where he has no account, no money to deposit, no checks to cash, and no loan to apply for, why does he go in there armed with a big gun?

Even the dog should be able to figure this one out. Drago was there to rob the bank. He’s part of the gang, along with Harold – and what looked like him writhing in pain on the floor of the bank after his fall was actually a struggle to get the gun out of his suit coat pocket and into his trench coat pocket, where it would be less likely to be discovered later.

The pieces of the puzzle are slowly starting to come together. They were going to take the bank down that morning until Drago slipped and fell. That threw them off of their plan for a while but they didn’t want to give up the score, so they went back later and finished the job. An hour after I got the case assigned to me and visited the bank.

I’ve got to hand it to Blitzstien. He confessed to being a member of the gang but wouldn’t rat out Drago. That’s loyalty, but of a strange kind. I guess in the twisted minds of those criminals it’s okay to try and kill someone, but snitching on them is a nono. Now I can understand why Harold wouldn’t talk directly to the feds. He told me he didn’t want to have a reputation of being a snitch.

More questions have been answered, but I still don’t know how to put it all together. All I know for sure is that Drago’s status has just dropped from invitee to trespasser.

With respect to land occupiers’ responsibility and liability to people who come onto their property, the lowest classification of visitor is the Unknown Trespasser. Now that I can probably establish that Drago is in that bottom category, there’s a possibility that the bank’s exposure can be minimized to practically nothing.

But what the hell am I even thinking about this for? Indovine’s fired me from the case. Nevertheless, I feel duty-bound to at least call and let him know this new information. Maybe this will rehabilitate me in his mind and he’ll hire me back. The odds are slim, but I’ve got to try. I call his private line. He answers the phone and it sounds like he’s in the men’s room of the Titanic, so he’s obviously on the speakerphone.

“Hello, Indovine here.”
“Mister Indovine, this is Peter Sharp and I’ve got some new information on the Drago case that may help your client.”
“Well, well, of it isn’t the crime-fighting lawyer. Too bad you didn’t study law as hard as you read detective stories. As a matter of fact, our client is here in the room with me right now and we’re really not interested in anything you have to say about the Drago case. Thanks to you we’re in the process of making a seven-figure settlement with his family’s lawyer, so please don’t call this number anymore.”
“Wait Charles, don’t hang up, I’m begging you not to settle. If the information I have is correct, your client may not have to pay out any money at all on this case.”
“That’s enough, Sharp. Neither my client nor I are interested in your desperate attempts to be reassigned to this case. The grown-ups are handling it now, so I’ll bid you a good day.”
With that bit of humiliation, he hangs up the phone and all I’m left with on my end is a dial tone. He shouldn’t have done that because now I’m really going to make an effort to show how wrong he was. Ignorance alone is a bad enough trait, but when combined with arrogance the result is really terrible – and Indovine did one of the best jobs of combining the two that I’ve seen in quite a while. Well, what goes around comes around.
The only small tasks I’m left with now are getting Myra elected as the new District Attorney, proving that Drago and Harold were part of the gang, earning some extra reward money, and getting that million-plus back for the insurance company. No problem.