Last Chance for Glory (29 page)

Gurp Patel stroked his beard. “Not even a Buddhist,” he admitted. “Too many ‘Kung Fu’ episodes.” He rolled his eyes up into his head. ‘Ah, so, Grasshopper. As the bud becomes a rose, the boy becomes a man.’”

Blake countered with Jack Webb: “Just the facts, Gurp.”

“The facts, the facts.
Always
the facts. That is the main problem with you Americans. Substance without style. Facts are so … so damned blatant.”

“Yeah? Well, they pay for
your
style.” Blake glanced at the mural, the painted ceiling. “They support you in the insanity to which you’ve become accustomed.”

“True,” Gurp Patel countered, “and that is bringing us directly to the point. Money. You will be very sad to know that I am charging you eight thousand dollars for doing what you could have easily done by your own self.”

“Is that eight thousand over and above the three thousand I already gave you?” Blake ignored the last part. His reasons for not doing the preliminary groundwork himself were none of Patel’s business.

“Your teeth should rot from asking this question.”

“I take that to be an affirmative.”

“Quite.”

“And you’re not going to give me the information until I pay you?”

“Also quite.”

“It’s too much for what ‘you could have done by your own self.’”

“You should be seeing it as a lesson. Also, while you could have done it by your own self, it would have been most difficult, most time consuming. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. I had to become a true detective.”

“As opposed to a
false
detective?”

“Quite.”

“How do I know you have anything worthwhile?”

“This is not in question, because you are paying for effort, not result.”

“Paying for style and not substance?”

“Quite.”

Blake haggled for a few minutes, found he had no taste for the game. His thoughts drifted to Rebecca Webber in his apartment, of the two of them drowning in lust while the tape recorder turned. The images excited him, especially the very end of the scenario when he told Rebecca that someone was listening. Would she become angry and storm out of the apartment? Or would she laugh, become excited, demand video cameras?

“Look here, Gurp. You originally asked for seven thousand and that’s what I’m willing to pay. You shouldn’t have told me that I could have done it without your help. Me and you, our lives are about information and that’s just the kind of information that encourages haggling.”

Patel straightened in his chair, pushed his enormous belly in Blake’s direction. “I have been a good friend to you, Marty Blake. Perhaps too good. You should remember that I can also be an enemy.”

“The way I feel, it doesn’t matter.” Blake folded his arms, held his ground. “I’m not worried about what’s gonna happen after I do what I have to do, because one way or another, I’m not gonna be running the show. I’m going down and that’s all there is to it.”

“In that case you will have no need for money. In that case you should be giving me
all
your money.” Despite a bantering tone, Patel’s expression softened. “Why are you doing this, Marty Blake? Is it for the justice? I have thought I knew you well, but this cannot be the case. You are not a wonderfully cynical American as I believed. Justice? No, I revise my opinion and now say you are a wonderful American
romantic.
It does not bother you that your victim is dead. You do it for the principle.”

Blake told himself to let it go at that, but he found himself responding anyway. Maybe, he told himself, it’s because I’ve been asked the damn question so often by so many people. Maybe I have to find an answer that’ll shut them up.

“It’s not about justice,” he said evenly. “It’s about the arrogance of Samuel Harrah. It’s about me being even more arrogant. Call it the Mount Everest Syndrome. I want Samuel Harrah because he’s there.”

Patel took a moment to think it over. Finally, he shook his head and smiled. “Then you will be very disappointed to know that I have found no direct connection between Samuel Harrah and either John McGuire or Johan Tillson.”

“Does this mean you’ve settled for the extra four grand?”

“I do it out of the goodness of my heart.” Patel head-bowed modestly before accepting, then counting his money. “All very good. Now, I am beginning with Johan Tillson’s bank records, thinking there must be a very significant bribe because Johan Tillson is a wealthy man who would not be leaving his wife’s killer to walk on the street for a few pennies. Nothing there, Marty Blake, no large deposits, no series of small deposits. Also for his credit cards—everything is normal; he pays each month with an ordinary check. His stock portfolio is extensive, but inactive for the period in question.

“Well, I am naturally thinking that maybe Samuel Harrah applied the stick and not the carrot. Very depressing because threats do not leave paper trails. Still, I persist. Perhaps the bribe went through the Tillson business. If so, it is very fortunate that his business records are computerized. If I had to search through file cabinets …”

Blake sat up in his chair, half-smiled. “Gurp, are you telling me you burglarized Tillson’s business office?” The image of Gurp Patel hoisting his bowling ball of a gut through a second-story window was too good to resist.

“Not personally, of course.” He leaned forward, tapped his nose with a forefinger. “You know, in my day, I was dubbed the Asian James Bond. Quite the dashing and daring fellow, I assure you.”

“But now … ?”

“Now, I pursue … my pursuits. But we were speaking of Tillson Enterprises. Initially, I am looking for a large business transaction with no deletion from inventory. A purchase order, perhaps, from a fictitious corporation. But the accounts are depressingly normal, except for one item. Five months after the murder of Sondra Tillson, Johan Tillson purchased the Long Island City warehouse he’d been leasing. The total amount of the transaction: two hundred thousand dollars. The seller: Landsman Properties.

“Now, I am admitting not to be an expert on New York real estate, but this seems quite cheap for a four-story, forty-thousand-square-foot building. Especially because Mister Tillson had been paying six thousand dollars each month for the use of only two floors. So, I am further researching the deed and finding the property last changed hands two months before Johan Tillson bought it. The price: eight hundred thousand dollars.

“Well, there it is. The bribe on one of your silver platters. All a matter of public record and something you might easily have attained for yourself without my help. Tell me, please, Marty Blake, how you will be justifying this expense to your client?”

Blake looked down at his watch, tapped it, held it up to his ear. “Time marches on, Gurp. Unless I’m running fast, I’ve got an hour to wrap this up and get out to Manhasset with my associate. As for the client, well … as far as you’re concerned,
I’m
the client. Now, tell me about Landsman Properties.”

“Landsman Properties was a Delaware corporation. It …”

“Did you say ‘was’?”

“Yes, I did. Now please to listen. It was formed exactly one month before the purchase of the warehouse. It went out of business one month after the property was transferred to Johan Tillson. The sole stockholder of the now defunct Landsman Properties is a man named Alan Green, father of Edward Green.”

“The Borough President of Manhattan?
That
Edward Green?” Even though the information fit neatly into the puzzle, Blake was taken off guard. Figuring the last thing he needed was another powerful enemy.

“Yes, they are being one and the same people. This, of course, is not meaning that Edward Green is the killer and lover of Sondra Tillson. Perhaps the father did it all by himself. True, Alan Green is seventy-eight years old and paralyzed on one side by a stroke, but …” Patel stopped in midsentence, waited for and received a smile from Blake. “As Borough President, Edward Green cannot be making the payoff by himself. Each year, he is forced by the law to make financial disclosure; any questionable transaction would be surely examined. But his father is under no such an obligation, Marty Blake. Plus you must also be considering that the father has been one of your … your American wheeler-dealers for nearly fifty years.”

Blake nodded, thinking credit where credit is due. The old man had wrapped it up nicely. “I assume you have a printout with the dates and figures.”

“You assume correctly. Now, as for the Honorable John McGuire, his finances are absolutely in order. He is a man with few assets except for his home which is valued at five hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but which he purchased in 1971. I tell you, Marty Blake, no money was changing hands.”

“Maybe I was wrong about McGuire,” Blake conceded. “Maybe he was up for reelection and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. After all, Billy Sowell was charged with murdering a white woman. Letting him off on a technicality wouldn’t have gotten McGuire any votes.”

“No, you were right, but the answers were not being found in John McGuire’s financial records. They were in the newspapers where you could easily be finding them had you taken the trouble to look. According to
The New York Times,
John McGuire’s son, Bradford, was arrested for selling four ounces of cocaine to an undercover cop three months before Billy Sowell was appearing in the judge’s courtroom. This is Bradford’s third arrest, the first being a misdemeanor, the second a C felony. For these indiscretions he was receiving both times probation. Now he faces mandatory imprisonment, but two days after John McGuire’s ruling against Billy Sowell, the charges against his son are dropped for lacking evidence. The cocaine has somehow disappeared from the laboratory.”

There was nothing more to say. Blake started to rise, paying the necessary compliment as he did. “It’s perfect, Gurp. But now it’s time to stampede the cattle. Past time.”

“Before you are going, please to tell me how you figure this case.”

“Simple, Gurp. Edward Green killed Sondra Tillson and Samuel Harrah covered it up. I … Gurp, are you curious enough to spend fifteen minutes checking Billy Sowell’s birth certificate?

“We will do it in ten.”

Twelve minutes later, they had the document on the monitor. Sowell had been born in Columbia Memorial Hospital on March 16, 1973. He’d weighed six pounds, four ounces at birth. His mother was listed as Barbara Sowell. His father as Edward Green.

“That’s the connection,” Blake said. “That’s how Barbara Sowell got the money to keep Billy locked up in that apartment. That’s why there was no money when she died. The info on the birth certificate comes from the mother. Green could have denied it, but he wanted—still wants—to be mayor, so he decided to pay off. Shit, I’ll bet my left testicle that he was paying off Samuel Harrah as well as Barbara Sowell. See, the thing that kept bothering me was how Billy Sowell got set up. How’d they find this homeless retarded patsy? Now I have the answer: Edward Green killed his lover, then sacrificed his son, so he could become mayor of all the people in New York instead of doing fifteen-to-life in a New York State correctional facility.” Blake stopped abruptly. “You know the best part, Gurp? The best part is that Green and Harrah think they’re safe. Green’s counting votes and Harrah’s counting his money. But, as LBJ said of Hubert Humphrey, I’ve got their balls in my pocket.”

“S
O THAT’S THE LAST
piece,” Blake said to his partner. “Edward Green slices up his lover, then asks Samuel Harrah to get him off the hook. Green’s a big-time politician, so maybe he knows Harrah well enough to ask a favor. Or maybe Harrah’s been blackmailing Green all along and the frame-up just adds to the premium. Either way, the incorruptible Bela Kosinski is on the case and they know Tillson’s gonna fold if they don’t find somebody in a big hurry. But who? It’s not like there’s a hundred candidates waiting for the chance. If they pick the wrong guy and he comes up with a lawyer and an alibi, they’re worse off than when they started. Well, it turns out that Edward Green, fearless killer, has the perfect patsy in his own family. He’s got drunken, retarded, homeless Billy Sowell living in a packing crate by the East River. His illegitimate son.”

“It works, Marty.” Kosinski touched the butt of his .38, his personal version of knocking on wood. “And I have no doubt whatsoever that we’re gonna be able to prove it. But lemme ask you a question. Whatta ya think Samuel Harrah does with the money? I mean all the blackmail over all the years. He’s gotta put it
somewhere,
right?”

“Right.”

“And finding a big stack of money Harrah can’t explain would be the ultimate proof, the proof that’d send him to prison.”

Blake drummed on the steering wheel for a moment, then turned to his partner. “I thought of that, Bell. And I could probably find Harrah’s stash by myself if that was all I had to do. But I’ve spent seven thousand dollars getting the information we already have and the money’s running a little tight. Plus I’ve gotta handle retrieving the hardware, getting the tapes out to the right people. Face it, there’s only the two of us here. We can’t do everything. If we strike out with McGuire and Tillson, or if they find the equipment, then we may have to go after Harrah directly, but for now I think we should stay with what we’ve got.”

They were sitting in a rented U-Haul van outside a liquor store on Northern Boulevard in Manhasset. Kosinski was sipping contentedly at a pint of Smirnoff, seeming, to himself, like an overfed infant clinging to a bottle of cold formula. It wasn’t the worst feeling he’d ever had. “If that’s the case, why am I sorry for Goliath?”

Answering by starting the car, Blake drove east, taking his time, enjoying the red lights, the anticipation. Kosinski stared straight ahead. In his own way, without showing anything on the outside, he was working himself up. Getting ready for the Honorable John McGuire, the former ACLU liberal who’d substituted Billy Sowell’s life for a few years in the life of his son. The life of an innocent for the life of a dope-dealing mutt.

“We never talked about it,” he said without preamble. “In Homicide. We never talked about what made it different. I guess it must’ve been the same in Sex Crimes, but I never worked the unit. What I’m sayin’ is that in Homicide you always had a victim lying on a slab. It wasn’t like bustin’ out whores and junkies. I know everybody says you’re not supposed to feel sorry for them, but when you put the cuffs on some street whore with tracks runnin’ up and down both arms it’s not the same as reading a killer his rights. Anybody who ever worked in Homicide will tell you that. I mean most cops hate the job, the job and all the bullshit that goes with it. In Homicide, the only thing I hated was not closing a case.”