Dead Man's Thoughts (28 page)

Dave nodded, but he was looking too weak to come up with any more objections. “Just so we do it quickly,” he said. “I gotta see a doctor, Al. Soon.”

“Soon,” Di Anci agreed. But there was something in his eye, an unholy gleam, that told me the truth. The cops weren't going to find one dead body in Parma's office. They were going to find two. The mythical robbers were going to kill Dave as well as me.

Di Anci moved toward the spot on the floor where Dave's gun lay. He had to lean down to pick it up, so he would use it to shoot me. And Dave? Or was he just going to pull the knife out, thanks to my helpful hint, and let Dave bleed to death? Anyway, that moment when Di Anci concentrated on picking up the gun was my only chance for escape.

As soon as I saw him bend, I ran. I ran as fast as I could through the Special Prosecutor's office. Past the cubicles where the assistants worked, into the reception area where the decorative girl usually sat. Through the door and out into the corridor. Toward the elevators. I could hear Di Anci puffing after me. But he couldn't shoot. He couldn't run the risk. There might be a guard.

When I got to the elevators, I pushed the button and prayed. I stood, pouring sweat and gasping with fear, until one came. I jumped inside and pushed the button for the forty-fourth floor. Just as the doors closed, I saw Di Anci, red-faced and panting, run up and push an elevator button.

I was retracing the steps I'd taken with Dave earlier that afternoon. When I'd thought I was coming to gather evidence against a murderer, not meet him personally. Because the offices weren't open on weekends, there would only be one elevator running from the forty-fourth floor—a kind of transfer point known in World Trade Center parlance as a skylobby—to the first. So that while I was safe from Di Anci on this elevator, which was taking me from the fifty-seventh to the forty-fourth floor, once on forty-four Di Anci and I would be racing to the same—the only—down elevator.

As soon as the elevator opened on forty-four, I flew out of it, running like hell down the corridor, past the sign that said New York State Hearing Room, turning the corner and pushing the down button. Behind me, I could hear the door of Di Anci's elevator, and his footsteps following me. Somehow, the absurdity of the situation chose that moment to hit me. Suppose I saw a guard, I asked myself. What would I tell him? “Help, I'm being chased by an armed judge?”

The elevator door opened. Shaky with panic, I nearly fell inside, pushing the lobby button with fingers slippery with sweat. Then I leaned against the wall and sighed with relief. The doors were closing.

Not for long. An arm thrust itself between the padded doors. An arm with a gun in its hand. The doors flew apart, and Di Anci stepped into the elevator. Despite his panting and sweating, there was a smile of deep satisfaction on his face. This time when the doors shut, we were on the same side.

My eyes clouded over. I saw black spots, just as I had the time I nearly fainted on the subway. It was all over. Di Anci would shoot me in the elevator and come up with a story to cover it later. And why shouldn't he be believed? He was a judge. If he said something, the cops would buy it. I just stood there, exhausted and despairing, waiting for the blow to fall.

Yet Di Anci didn't shoot. Maybe his imagination hadn't yet come up with a scenario to explain the situation. Or maybe it had, but the story didn't call for my dying in the elevator. Anyway, the elevator stopped at the lobby with my live body still on it. Di Anci pushed the button to go back up, but not before I ran for it. The lobby, with its tourists riding the escalator to the special elevators that went to the Observation Deck, was a far safer place for me than a lonely elevator.

My breaking away brought things to a head for Di Anci. If he let me get away, it was all over. If he shot me, he had a chance, however slim, of explaining it away. He shot me.

I felt the bullet rip through my shoulder. It spun me to the side, and I fell onto the carpeted floor of the lobby. The last thing I remember is the acrid dust of the carpet in my mouth. Then I lost consciousness.

I came to only partially, for a few seconds. Through a woozy haze, I looked up to see a familiar face. A neat brown face with bright black eyes. Detective Button.

T
HIRTY
-
TWO

F
or the rest of Saturday I alternated between sleeping and throwing up. By Sunday, I'd stopped throwing up, but I still fell asleep every five minutes. Mostly because staying awake involved pain. My head throbbed, my shoulder hurt, every muscle in my body ached. I couldn't figure out why until I thought about the tension I'd felt in that office with Di Anci holding a gun on me. My whole body must have been clenched like a giant fist.

I was in one of my rare moments of consciousness—wishing I weren't—when Button came in to my hospital room. There was a broad grin on his face and a bunch of daffodils in his hand.

“Hi, Counselor,” he said cheerfully. “How you feeling?”

“Rotten. Thanks for the flowers. Sit down and tell me what happened. I sort of lost interest in the proceedings. How did you manage to turn up in the nick of time, like the cavalry?”

“Well, to start with, I got the message you left at the precinct. I didn't much like the idea of you snooping around the World Trade Center on your own, so I came to see what you'd find.”

“You didn't know?” I was pleased by the admission. But my triumph didn't last long.

“As a matter of fact, I did,” he admitted. “You see, we found that spiral notebook you were telling us about.”

“What!” I sat up in bed. Bad move. A sharp pain shot through my shoulder, and the blood drained from my head. I sat back gingerly, still eager for the news. “Did Nathan write notes about Charlie in it like I said?”

“Better. Under the notes of his interview with Blackwell, there was a notation for an appointment. ‘Thurs. 9:00 Di Anci. Apt.' So we can put Di Anci in your friend's apartment at the time of the murder.”

“But where has the notebook been all this time? How come it wasn't found before?”

Button looked abashed. “To tell you the truth, Miss Jameson, my men have been too busy to really search the place. In fact, we didn't find it. Mrs. Wasserstein did, when she went over there to pack up a few of her ex-husband's things for her children. 'Course, we did ask her to be on the lookout for it.”

“What else have you got on Di Anci?”

“His blood matches the blood on the towel. But so does a lot of other people's. Your kid's, by the way, doesn't.”

“Has he made a statement? Has Chessler?”

“Counselor,” Button gave me the look he reserved for when I was being exceptionally stupid, “the man's a lawyer. Both of them are. They haven't admitted to anything beyond the basic pedigree. Name, rank, and serial number. That's all I'm ever gonna get out of those two shysters.”

“Button.” I was suddenly suspicious. “You will be able to prove a case against them, won't you?”

He nodded, but his heart wasn't in it. “I think so,” he said. “But it's all circumstantial. We'll never get him on Blackwell unless one of the people he used cracks, and I don't see why they should. As for Chessler, we're setting up a lineup on the Parma pushing, but after the half-assed descriptions those witnesses gave us, I don't hold out too much hope. It's going to be an uphill fight. Of course,” he added, “we've got Di Anci for shooting you.”

“And me for stabbing Chessler?” I asked, only half-joking.

Button threw back his head and laughed his rich laugh. “Hell, no, Counselor. Chessler's afraid to talk about it. He musta fell on that damn knife!”

The nurses came in with lunch. If you could call it that. It was gray and mushy, and I found myself thinking of the gruel I'd read about as a kid in
Oliver Twist
. It was a measure of my improved health that I could hardly wait for Button to leave so I could wolf it down.

That night I called my parents in Chagrin Falls. I thought they ought to know their only daughter was in Beekman Downtown Hospital with a broken collarbone and a cut head. I think I left them with the impression that I'd been mugged. I assured them the shoulder would be all right after some physical therapy. As I hung up the phone, I could hear my mother starting to say, “Doug, I knew we shouldn't have let—”

I could finish it. “I knew we shouldn't have let her go to New York.” As though nothing bad ever happened in Cleveland. I could also appreciate Dad answering, “Betty, New York's a city same as any other. It's just bigger, that's all.” But my reminiscent smile turned sour as I recalled Di Anci's original plan. If it had worked, my mother might be saying those words to a zealous reporter, and they'd be used as a kind of epitaph.

The next morning, Monday, I called everyone I knew on the phone. It was time for company. I needed to hear a human voice that wasn't telling me it was time for my medicine.

The upshot was that by visiting time my room was packed. Jackie Bohan, Mario, Bill Pomerantz, the whole gang from Legal Aid. Even Milt Jacobs dropped in for a minute, carrying a potted plant. Soon the room was full of flowers and paperback mysteries, and Legal Aid shoptalk.

“I always knew Di Anci was a crook—” Mario said.

“But you didn't know he was a marksman?” Bill asked coolly.

“I gotta admit,” I said thoughtfully, “when my mother warned me against the kind of people I'd get mixed up with as a criminal lawyer, I didn't think she was talking about the judges.”

“Your mother's never seen you before the bench,” Mario retorted. “Face it, Cass, every judge in Brooklyn is secretly envious of Di Anci.”

Finally, I turned to Bill and asked quietly, “How's Flaherty? Still mad?”

Bill nodded. “He didn't say so, but I got that impression.”

“Guilt, I suppose. He feels bad that he didn't agree with me about Nathan. And now that I've been proved right.…”

Bill didn't say anything, but there was an odd look on his face. I got the feeling there was something he wanted to say, but not here and now. Not with everyone around, and not with me in a hospital bed.

After they left, Emily came in, bearing a huge bouquet of lilacs. I unashamedly buried my nose in them. “Spring!” I said in rapture. “Just what I need—a roomful of spring. Thank you.”

Emily sat by the bed. I brought her up to date on what had happened. “But you know what's funny,” I said at the end, “I feel sort of let down. I mean, I did it. I found out who killed Nathan and why and I proved the whole homosexual story was a lie, and yet I feel kind of empty. Why?”

Emily smiled. “How do you usually feel at the end of a trial?” she asked. “Even if you did a bang-up job? Even if you won?”

“Same way, I guess,” I agreed. “Elated, if I won, but underneath a little hollow. My nights are my own again, I can sleep again. No more last-minute investigations, no more surprise witnesses. My life isn't filled with The Trial—but it's not filled with anything else either. It's kind of hard to go back to watching television.”

“You were involved with this thing, Cass. As much as with a trial.” She looked at me appraisingly. “Maybe more so. You held nothing back, gave it all you had. Like you did in law school with all those causes you used to get involved with. I haven't seen you like that for a long time.” She smiled. “It looks good on you.”

Later that evening, Paul Trentino came in. More flowers, anemones this time, purple and red. He had news about Paco.

“Pete talked to Judge Tolliver. As Acting Administrative Judge, he gets whatever headache cases are going around. And, boy, is this one a headache.”

“Please don't use the word headache,” I smiled, pointing to my stitches. He grinned.

“Can you imagine the affidavit we could write?” he chortled. “‘The defendant is entitled to be resentenced before a different judge in that the original sentencing judge had framed him for a murder he did not commit.' The last thing Rosy Tolliver needs is that affidavit in his court. He's agreed to vacate the sentence and release the kid pending a new probation report. Of course, Paco may still have to do jail time on the old case, if the report isn't good, but at least he'll be out for now.”

“When's it on?”

“Friday. In Jury Four. I'll have some very discreet papers drawn up, and Tolliver will go along regardless of what the D.A. says.”

“Good,” I said with satisfaction. “I'll try to be there.”

After Paul left, I found myself thinking over what Emily had said. It was also what Ron, my brother, had written me. Involvement. But that had been for Nathan. Could I keep it up, transfer it to other cases, other causes. I wasn't sure, but I knew the feeling I'd had in the past few weeks, of being taken out of myself, was a good one. One I wanted to prolong.

Dorinda couldn't come until the next day. Working. She brought a strawberry jar, planted with herbs—curly parsley, trailing rosemary, spiky chives, blue-gray sage, and on top, fragrant lavender. She told me proudly how practical it was—I could take it home and use the plants for cooking. I refrained from telling her how few people sprinkle fresh herbs on TV dinners.

Dorinda was bursting with excitement. “Cassie, wait till I tell you,” she began, out of breath and rosy with the cold. “Suzanne had this fabulous idea—”

“Suzanne? The woman who runs Goldberry's? I thought you didn't get along.”

“That doesn't matter now,” she said impatiently. “She wants to display local artists' work in the restaurant. Sell it. So I said I had this friend who takes really great photographs—”

“Dorinda! You didn't!” I was torn between two equally strong, equally neurotic, reactions. One was that my pictures were no good and would never sell in a million years. The other was that they were too good to waste on a dinky little neighborhood restaurant.