New York Dead (23 page)
“I don’t know them.”
“The three partners left Young & Rubicam fifteen years ago and set up on their own. Now they’re a medium-sized agency well known for good creative work. Warren Weld represents the agency, and I represent Bob personally. Bob Keene is as nice a guy as you’d want to meet.”
“And the boy?”
“That’s why I want you to meet him. I want your opinion. Bobby Junior is a senior at Brown, and there’s a daterape accusation against him by a girl student. She turned him in to the administration, and, when she wasn’t happy with
the level of support she got, she added his name to a list of alleged date rapists on the ladies’ room wall in her dormitory. Bobby denies everything, and he seems credible. No criminal charges have been filed, yet, but if they are, and, if we feel he’s innocent, I want to go on the offensive—sue the girl for defamation, sue the university for allowing his name to remain painted on a bathroom wall, really blast them. And we’ll call in a top gun to defend him.
“On the other hand, if he’s really guilty, I’ll insist that he abjectly apologize to the girl and the administration, and try to avoid criminal proceedings and keep him in school. That would certainly be cheaper for his father, but Bob Senior is willing to do what it takes to defend the boy if he’s innocent.”
“What does the father think about the boy’s guilt or innocence?”
“Oddly, he doesn’t seem to have an opinion. I think that, what with the work it’s taken to build his business, he hasn’t spent a hell of a lot of time with the boy, and they’ve grown apart. We can’t solve that problem for them, but I hope we can give Bob Senior good advice on how to proceed.”
“I’ll be glad to meet the boy.”
“As a cop, you must have gained some insight over the years as to whether an accused man is guilty or not—I don’t mean reading the evidence, I mean reading the man.”
“I think I have. It doesn’t always work, of course. I’ve been fooled before; so has every cop.”
“I want you to question the boy, pull out all the stops, see if you can shake his story.”
“You want him cross-examined, as if I were representing the girl?”
“I want him questioned, as if he were a suspect.”
The phone on Eggers’s desk rang. “Yes? Send him in.” He hung up and turned to Stone. “Ready?”
“You be the good cop,” Stone said.
“Right.”
Bobby Keene was a large young man, whose neck was wider than the top of his head. Stone thought there had been a handsome face in that head once, before the boy had discovered weight training.
“Bobby, how are you?” Eggers said, sticking out a hand.
“I’m very well, Mr. Eggers,” Bobby said earnestly.
“Bobby, I want you to meet another lawyer who’s helping us out with your case. This is Stone Barrington; Stone’s had a lot of experience in this sort of thing, and I think he’ll be able to help us a lot.”
“Gosh, I hope so.” Bobby stuck out a ham-sized hand. “How do you do, Mr. Barrington?”
Stone kept a poker face, shook the hand limply, but did not return the greeting. “Sit down,” he said, and it was an order.
Bobby sat, looking worried.
“Tell me about it,” Stone said, sounding bored.
“Sir?”
Stone turned to Eggers. “Jesus Christ, Bill, is the kid stupid, or what?”
“Bobby,” Eggers said gently, “tell Mr. Barrington what happened on the evening you went out with”—he glanced at a pad on his desk—“Janie Byron.”
“Oh, of course, sir. I’m sorry, I didn’t know what Mr. Barrington meant.”
“Just tell me,” Stone said.
“Well, there isn’t much to tell. We went to a movie—”
“What kind of a movie?”
“An old one; a John Ford western.”
“Downtown, shopping mall, drive-in?”
“Oh, a drive-in, right outside town.”
“Then what happened?”
“Well, we got some popcorn, we ate it, we watched the movie, we made out a little.”
“Define ‘made out.’ Exactly.”
Bobby retained his earnest tone. “We kissed a few times.”
“Did you touch her breasts?”
“Well, yeah, she seemed to want that.”
“Oh, she said to you, ‘Bobby, please, please grab my tits,’ is that how it happened?”
“Well, not exactly.”
“Just how did she show you that she wanted you to touch her breasts?”
“Well, when I did, she didn’t object much.”
“But she did object.”
“Well, she played hard to get a little, I guess.”
“Then what happened?”
“We started to get heated up a little, and I—”
“Go on, boy, be graphic. We’re all grown up here.”
“Then she said she wanted to leave, she got all huffy and all, and so I took her back to her dorm.”
“Immediately?”
“As soon as I was sure she meant it.”
“How long did that take?”
“A few minutes, I guess.”
“How many minutes? Exactly.”
“Five, I guess.”
“Did you lie down on the seat of the car?”
“For a minute or two.”
“Did you get your hand in her pants?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you get your finger inside her?”
“Yes, sir, for a minute.”
“Did you get her pants off?”
“No, sir. I didn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Sir?”
“Well, it sounds to me like you were doing real well,
there, Bobby; you got at her tits, you got your finger in her crotch, why stop?”
“I guess she didn’t want to.”
“If she didn’t want to, how’d you get your hand in her crotch?”
“Well, I—”
Stone leaned across to Eggers’s desk and picked up a legal pad. “It says here you forced her to have sex with you.”
“That’s a lie!”
“It says here, you ripped off her underwear, pinned her down with your weight, and fucked her against her will.”
“It wasn’t against her will!”
“So you fucked her, didn’t you?”
“No, I…you’re getting me confused.”
“It says here that when she got back to her dorm, her roommate took a cotton swab and collected a semen sample from her pubic hair and saved it on a glass slide. Her roommate is a biology major. That’s your misfortune.”
Bobby’s eyes widened, and his jaw worked, but nothing came out.
“Do you know what a DNA matching is, Bobby?”
“I…well, I read something in the paper about it.”
“Give me that lab report,” Stone said to Eggers.
Eggers promptly found a sheet of paper on his desk and handed it across to Stone.
Stone looked at the paper, an interoffice memo, and shook his head.
“Listen, I can give you the names of three guys who’ve screwed Janie Byron,” Bobby said. His face was red. “I—”
“I see,” Stone said. “So the guys at the frat house are going to back you, huh? They’re stand-up guys, so they’re all going to go into court and perjure themselves for you and risk going to prison.”
Bobby put his face in his hands for a moment.
Stone turned to Eggers. “You can’t go into court with
this guy, Bill. He can’t even convince his own lawyers, how the hell is he going to convince a jury?”
“Bobby,” Eggers said gently, “you see what we’re up against, don’t you? I mean, Mr. Barrington is on
your
side, and he can’t bring himself to believe you. Now listen, if you’ll just tell us the truth, all of the truth, then we may be able to get you out of this.”
“He’ll never tell you the truth,” Stone said harshly. “He’s a lying little piece of shit.”
Bobby came half off the sofa, but, when Stone stood up, he sank back. “Can I talk to you alone, Mr. Eggers?” he said plaintively.
“Sure you can, kid,” Stone said, heading for the door. “I wouldn’t waste any more of my time.” At the door, he turned back to Eggers. “I’ll tell you one thing, I wish I was prosecuting this one, instead of defending.” He walked out, slamming the door behind him.
In the hall, Stone leaned against the door and took a deep breath. Jesus, it had been awhile. Dino usually played the bad cop.
Chapter
Bill Eggers leaned back in his chair and rested his feet on his desk. “That was good work, Stone. The boy has told me everything, I think; I don’t believe he actually screwed the girl, though God knows he meant to. He’s down the hall in an associate’s office right now, writing letters to the girl and the university administration. I think I can negotiate him out of this. The girl wasn’t entirely blameless, and she does have a reputation for sleeping around.”
“I’m glad it worked out,” Stone said.
“Well, you saved his father seventy-five or a hundred thousand in legal fees. Bob Keene will always be grateful to us for that.”
“Frank said you had something else for me.”
“I do, and this one’s sticky. Or, at least, it could be.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I’m going to have to be a little circumspect in talking even to you about this,” Eggers said. “There’s a lot at stake, and I’m going to have to proceed strictly on a need-to-know basis, all right?”
“All right.”
“I have a client I’ve known since I was in high school, whose wife is a prominent businesswoman. They’ve never had much of a marriage, but there were a couple of kids, and they stuck it out. Trouble is, the wife has had a couple of affairs. In fact, there’ve been other men all along, I think, but he’s finally run out of patience, and, even against my best advice, he’s determined to proceed his own way on this.”
“What does he want to do?”
“He wants custody of one of the two kids, the boy, and that means he has to nail her with the other guy—photographs, the works. Actually, he wants a videotape of her in bed with him.”
“Do you often proceed this way in divorce cases?”
“No, and I’ve advised him against this, but he’s absolutely determined. He wants a quick, clean divorce with no haggling about money, and, I have to admit, if he gets his little video, there won’t be any haggling. The wife has too much to lose to allow a Rob Lowe-type tape to be circulated. If her board of directors so much as got wind of such a thing, she’d be finished. Nobody would ever take her seriously again.”
“Well, even in an era of no-fault divorce, I suppose there are still certain advantages to having that sort of evidence. What exactly is it you want me to do? Kick down the bedroom door and film them in living color?”
“I definitely do not want you to do that. The firm can’t afford to have anybody as closely associated with us as you are be directly involved in such a distasteful affair.”
“You mean you want me to find someone else who’ll do it”
Eggers grinned. “Right. Someone who can be trusted to be discreet, even if he’s caught in the act of doing it. Do you know somebody like that?”
Stone did. The man’s face popped immediately into his mind. “Possibly,” he said. “But this could get expensive. He’s going to have to stalk the lady until he can catch her in the act, and that may not be easy.”
“I think it’s going to be easier than you think,” Eggers said, smiling.
“Oh?”
“My client has been very helpful. His wife’s company maintains two apartments in a rather elegant building that specializes in company flats—you know the sort of thing—the out-of-town executive stays in the company apartment instead of at the Plaza. It’s supposed to save money for the company, but, mostly, it’s regarded as just a perk for the upper-level executive. Anyway, my client has been tipped that his wife has been using one of the company apartments on a rather regular basis for her assignations with her male bimbo—a soap-opera actor no less, and he has thoughtfully supplied us with a key to the apartment.” He held up a key.
“Your client has been very helpful indeed,” Stone agreed.
“As I said, there are two apartments. My client, as a spouse, also has access to them, and what he is prepared to do, next time he thinks his wife is dallying, is to book your man into the other flat for the night. That gets him access to the building.” He tossed the key to Stone. “And this gets him access to the other apartment.”
“That’s very neat,” Stone admitted. “Your client is a very cunning fellow.”
“I hope I never have the misfortune to be married to somebody as smart,” Eggers said. “Can you think of any reason why this wouldn’t work?”
Stone laughed. “There are only a few dozen things that
could go wrong,” he said, “but it’ll be up to our man to handle those. Actually, your client has made it look pretty straightforward. When does he want this done?”
“Within the next few days. Next time the lady says she’s working late, he’ll call, and it’s on. Can you find your man in a hurry?”
“I’ll make some calls.”
“Let me know what he wants for a fee. I’m authorized to go to ten grand.” Eggers reached behind his desk and pulled out a fat aluminum briefcase. “My client has even supplied us with some very neat, lightweight video equipment.” He began to laugh. “It belongs to the wife.”
Stone had to laugh with him.
Teddy O’Bannion was a thick-set, gray-haired man of, maybe, fifty-five, who had been unfortunate enough to be chosen to take the heat for his precinct a few years back, when one of the periodically instituted crime commissions was going about its work of rooting out corruption in the police department. The evidence allowed against him had been slim, and he had simply been dismissed from the force without prejudice, which allowed him to collect a twenty-year pension, in addition to the very nice monthly stipend his old companions on the pad still paid him.
Teddy could easily pass for your typical out-of-town businessman, in the city for meetings. He looked around the house carefully, obviously trying to figure out how Stone could afford it. “Jesus, Stone, the pad must be bigger than ever,” he said, wonderingly.
“I inherited it, Teddy, from a great-aunt, and now I have to spend the rest of my life scrambling to keep it.”
“Whatever you say, lad.”
Stone handed Teddy a stiff scotch. “I’ve got a night’s work for you. There’s five grand in it.”
“How many children and dogs do I have to murder?”
“It’s a straightforward bedroom job, that’s all.”
Teddy laughed aloud. “Straightforward? Shit, the last bedroom job I did, the woman flew out of the bed and nearly bit my ear off!”