Who Murdered Garson Talmadge (20 page)
Read Who Murdered Garson Talmadge Online
Authors: David Bishop
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Cozy, #Hard-Boiled, #Crime Fiction, #Murder, #Private Investigators, #Series
I figured Garson had, and so my saying it this way was turning the knife.
Charles stood there. His arms limp at his sides. The air drained from his bravado.
“Oh, you think not. He called me every vile thing he could think of.” His spoke in a low voice, barely a whisper. “He told me I was soft, that I was of no use to him, that I was a failure as an enforcer. That I couldn’t handle a really tough man … Well, he thought he was a really tough man, and I showed him.”
“Charlie? You didn’t—?” Susan couldn’t even finish her question, but she didn’t need to. She knew the answer. Her brother had killed papa.
“He had it coming.” Charles was talking now, looking for that validation that all guilty people one day look for. “You always loved him,” he said, again facing his sister. “He treated you with respect. He listened to you. He sought your advice. Since we came to America, he made few decisions without consulting you.”
Charles had lived through a hard upbringing, but I had no good feelings for the guy. He had wallowed in the mistreatment, letting it rot him from the inside. Maybe I felt a little pity, but damn little. Life is choices and Charles had chosen to stay where he shouldn’t. When his hopes for future riches were yanked away, he boiled over for lack of more precise description.
We had picked the scab off Charles’s hurt, and he wasn’t through letting it bleed. I switched to sounding understanding. “But you were still there for him, helping him with his weapons deals,” I said. “That should have counted.”
“It should have counted, but it didn’t. While I was helping, Susan kept trying to get him to stop. Telling him he had plenty of money. And eventually he did stop.”
“Only after America invaded Iraq,” I said.
“After that,” Charles said, “Susan kept pushing Papa to keep give me money to go to college and get a profession. Make your way without Papa, she kept saying.”
“Did you?”
“I didn’t need a profession. Papa would die eventually, and then we’d be set, Susan and me.”
“But your sister went to law school.”
“That’s what I wanted you to do too, Charlie. Not necessarily law school. Whatever you wanted, but have something of your own, so you could be self-reliant.”
“So you graduated. Big deal. You did nothing with it, so what good did it do you? Right, Kile? What good did her damn law degree do for her anyway?”
“She got a good job and started a worthwhile career.”
“Oh?” Charles said in a mocking tone. “I didn’t know you needed a law degree to give lap dances.”
“That was part of her front. I was speaking of her career with the FBI.” It was a guess somewhat based on Clarice having followed Susan until she lost track of her up near the FBI office in Los Angeles. Not far from where Susan had gone to law school. It takes years to get through law school, and only those who really want it make it through. I had checked Susan had graduated with honors.
Susan came close and put her hand on my arm. “How did you know about the FBI, Matt?”
“It’s a long story. For now, let’s just say it was a guess.”
I didn’t want to go into it with Charles standing there, but it was all part of the best explanations of a few points. Why was the FBI so interested in Garson Talmadge? He was still doing an occasional weapons deal. Why did Charles make various trips to Europe? He was the liaison between Garson and his cohorts in Europe. How did the FBI learn I was going to France? I told Susan, she likely told Charles, but he wouldn’t have contact with the FBI. The only others that knew were Brad Fisher and Clarice, and it would not have been in their interest to report my going. No other peg fit that hole. Susan had to have told the FBI.
“Well, sis,” Charlie said accusatorially, “so you, too, struck back at Papa.”
“But you killed him,” she screamed. Then after standing still for a minute with her eyes closed, she tried to explain it to her brother. “I read about the American FBI when I was a girl and knew that’s what I wanted to be. When Papa decided to bring us to America, I started believing it might be possible. It’s why I went to law school. I hated the weapons deals, the corruption and violence. I wanted it all stopped, not just Papa’s deals, although by then Papa had cut way back. The FBI was working with the French authorities. I made the Bureau realize, given my role in those deals, what I knew was rather limited. I didn’t know enough about the violent part of it and the inner workings, the higher ups. I just about had the Bureau convinced they should put you and Papa in the witness protection program. Papa could identify the ones at the top of it all. After that, you and Papa could both leave it all behind you. You could live like a law-abiding citizen, and Papa would have a clean finish for his life. But you ruined all that, for yourself as well as for Papa. Alone, you didn’t know enough to warrant the Bureau offering you the program, but I was still trying to make it happen.”
Charles seemed unaffected by what he had just heard. “I had that money coming, sis. We both did. We earned it. And we would have gotten it. Everything would have worked just fine if it hadn’t been for this bastard.”
Charles lunged at me with his arms out, his hands against my chest. In reaction, I spun fast to one side and brought my arm up strongly into his armpit. Unsteady from drinking, his unspent forward motion along with my leverage under his arm carried him over the balcony rail.
Susan rushed to the edge. We looked down. Charles had hit the decking just short of the pool. He lay still. From the eighth floor, he would lay still. I held Susan. Her face pressed against my shirt, her tears blotting on the fabric.
Charles Talmadge hadn’t been a strong man, not in any way that mattered. His papa had handed him more baggage than he was able to carry.
Garson Talmadge could be summed up as a cruel man in a disgusting business. He had no friends, no true family, and the romantics would say no heart. The only woman who ever really loved him lived in an urn on a mantel in her sister’s modest Paris apartment. The sister who wanted more than anything to one day spit on the grave of that worthless man.
I decided right then I would fly Camille over here so she could do just that. She had never seen America and her spitting on Garson’s grave seemed the most fitting way to say: the end.
Camille did spit on Garson’s grave, twice actually. She also rekindled her relationship with Susan Talmadge, her niece in a way. The two of them felt that bond, and that was all that mattered.
Susan and Clarice continued to get along, although they never really were at odds except when Charles’ skullduggery caused Susan to think Clarice had murdered her papa.
Two weeks later, the FBI reassigned Susan to their New York office where she would work in a major unit formed to combat illegal weapons deals. She took along the audio tapes Clarice had made of Garson telling the details of his long and inglorious career in that illicit trade. When Clarice learned of Susan’s FBI career and why she had gone to law school, Clarice agreed to turn the audio tapes over to Susan and the FBI. Clarice would make no money in a splashy book deal. Instead, the information on those tapes would be secretly used by Susan’s task force to build a case against those in French industry and government who had conspired to sell the weapons.
The assignment to New York was just what Susan needed. She welcomed the change of scenery. She was strong and a solid thinker, but in the short run, a new locale would ease her emotional healing. We promised to stay in touch, and she invited me to visit her there whenever I wanted. I could do a lot of book signings in the New York area. From the time we spent together the last two weeks before she left, I knew I wanted to go and that I would be treated well while visiting.
Susan was quite a woman given what she had been through. My lust for her was equaled by my admiration for her.
Clarice was an enigma. It’s so hard sometimes to figure out which people are wearing the good-guy white hats and which are wearing the black, bad-guy hats. Clarice, for one, clearly wore a gray hat. I, for one, still liked her.
As for me, I went back to writing about such things rather than trying to live through them. Before she left for New York, Susan said, “We’ll be a couple thousand miles apart so we need to be practical. I’ll be seeing other men in New York, so why shouldn’t you see other women here? Besides, Clarice and I are not blood relatives.” I decided if they saw no problem with it, why should I.
I also hoped to see a bit more of my ex-wife. The few hours I occasionally spent with my ex and our daughters were still my whipped cream and cherry.
I also went before the parole board and made a formal offer of employment for my ex-cellmate, Axel. The parole board implied that he could be out soon. I was looking forward to helping Axel adjust to life on the outside.
THE END
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An excerpt from the next Matt Kile Mystery,
The Original Alibi
begins on the following page. For a list of David’s other novels, please see the front of this book.
“ I believe that’s your phone, dear,” the woman’s husband said. She stopped walking and fished her cell from the pocket of her windbreaker.
“Hello, Mrs. Yarbrough,” said a voice into her ear. “I see you are enjoying your first early evening walk on the beach with your new puppy. How lovely. Have you and Mr. Yarbrough named the pooch?”
“Who is this?”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you stay on the line after what is about to happen.”
“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Yarbrough demands, “Who are you?”
Right then the leash Mrs. Yarbrough held went limp, her white poodle falling to the sand. “Robbie, what happened? Snookie is, I don’t know, she’s just … down.” Mrs. Yarbrough held her cell phone as if she no longer knew she had it in her hand.
Robert, her husband, bent down. His knees displaced the sand next to Snookie. “She’s dead, Mel. I think Snookie’s been shot.”
Melanie Yarbrough began bouncing on her toes, frantically waving her hands. She dropped her phone onto the beach, bent down to Snookie and began to cry. She went to her husband; he held her.
Several minutes later, Robert Yarbrough picked up his wife’s cell phone, shook off the sand, and started to close the top when he heard a loud voice. He held the phone to his ear. “Hello?”
“I’ve been waiting. Sorry about Snookie. It was necessary. You should know I took no pleasure in it.”
“Did you do this?” Mr. Yarbrough asked. “Who the hell are you?”
“To your left, near the partially burnt log, I’ve left a box for you to use to take Snookie home. It’s the right size. The inside has a soft new towel. It should do nicely.”
“You shot Snookie? Why?”
“Take Snookie home and bury her in your yard. You will hear from me. In the meantime, be glad you were not walking your newest grandson, Bobby, named after you, I presume. Your wife sometimes walks the little tike on a leash just as she walked Snookie today. I will know if you say anything about this, to anyone. If you do, Bobby Junior will be my next target.”
“But what do you want? Why us?”
“All that will be made clear. Do not fret needlessly. There will be no more violence if you do as you’re told. What will be required of you will not be difficult. It will not cost you any money. And it will be painless, if you follow orders. We’ll talk soon.”
The phone went dead.