Authors: Richard Hawke
“Doesn’t matter. We had the receipt. We got the positive ID from the clerk at Liana who sold it to her. Nikki’s neighbor saw her leaving the building wearing it, a green-and-black plaid skirt. Fragments of the same skirt end up in Fox’s bedside scissors? Plus the blood on the scissors?”
“But the defense leaked the story that it was all just sex play. A game of dress-up. They said Nikki got nicked by the scissors when Fox was hacking her out of the skirt.”
“Of course they leaked the story. We got the DNA match on blood that was on the scissors as well as the semen the M.E. recovered from Nikki’s body. No question she had sex with Fox just before she was killed. Or possibly it was even
while
they were having sex. A man who likes to pretend he’s in bed with a schoolgirl and he’s attacking her with a pair of scissors? I wouldn’t put anything past him. If the defense was so confident about their version of things, they could have put Fox on the stand and had him tell the tale. Uh-uh. He’s our man, Fritz. And ladle in the case for Cynthia Blair. Fox was desperate to keep a lid on that affair. And I mean
desperate
. When she told him she was going ahead with the pregnancy, that was pretty much her death warrant. You heard the testimony. Fox’s attitude toward fathering children was lethal.”
The sketch artist showed up, and we got to work. The good ones employ a relaxing technique of mild hypnosis. This was a good one. We moved into Joe Gallo’s office so we could have some privacy. Megan took the sketcher out into the corridor, where she briefed him on what we were looking for. The two came back in, and Megan pulled the blinds. I was instructed to close my eyes and think about the ocean. It took me a moment to clear the beach and to locate the big open expanse the sketcher was looking for, but I eventually got it. The sketcher moved me into a trancelike place. He had a voice like one of those classical DJs. I expected him to introduce Rachmaninoff any minute. I heard my disembodied voice talking with him, and I heard myself describing the man who had thrown me into the East River. An image of his face floated in my head crystal-clear, and I calmly ran down his features. When the blinds were opened and I opened my eyes, I was handed a sketch that looked 70 percent like Ratface. I worked with the sketcher until we got to about 85 percent, then I had to beg off. My head was really doing a number. I didn’t want pieces of my skull breaking off and littering Joe Gallo’s desk. The sketcher told me I was a good subject and took off. Megan told me to drink a cup of water—it had appeared miraculously on her desk—and she left the room and came back a minute later with a large brown envelope. Several copies of the sketch were in the envelope.
“I’m not giving these to you.”
“No, ma’am.”
She handed me the envelope. “You’re not to distribute these.”
“No, ma’am.”
“I don’t generally find ‘ma’am’ to my liking.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Megan walked me to the front door and followed me outside. Megan wasn’t dressed for outside, and she hugged herself tightly. She looked like a woman in a straitjacket.
“That conversation we had. About the job. The part about it being toxic.”
“What about it?”
“I’d like that not to go anywhere.”
“I wasn’t planning on hopping on the phone.”
“You know what I mean. I’ve been back to work since the fall, but I’ve still got a lot of eyes on me. There are some people who think I lost it with Albert Stenborg, that I got spooked and that I’m still spooked.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with admitting you’re spooked. It’s human.”
“Being spooked and admitting you’re spooked are two different things.”
“You don’t seem to have a problem admitting it to me.”
“You’re not a cop. I don’t work with you. Besides, I don’t know. I remember that time you pretended to run into me at Mumbles.”
“That was the name of it. I’d forgotten.”
“What the hell was a guy like you doing in a place like that?”
“A guy like me what?”
“A guy.”
“I do recall I seemed to be in the minority.”
“The point is, it was a nice gesture.”
“That’s not how you reacted at the time. As I recall, you told me to mind my own goddamn business.”
“So original.”
I shrugged. “I’d heard you weren’t treating yourself so good. It’s not unexpected, given all you were in the middle of. I’ve had some pretty sour points in my time. Sometimes you welcome a person nosing in, and sometimes you tell them to mind their own goddamn business.”
Megan released her grip on herself and blew into her hands. Her lips were going blue. “Let me ask you something. Something that’s none of my own goddamn business.”
“Shoot.”
“You’ve killed someone,” she said. “That’s not a question. I happen to know it.”
“Okay.”
“You can tell me to shut up if you want.”
“Go ahead.”
“I hate this word, it’s gotten so self-helpy, but did you get closure on it?”
“It?”
She could read my tone of voice. “Jesus. You’ve killed more than one person? I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“That’s okay. All part of the résumé. As for your question, I can’t answer it. Or if I can, I think the answer is no. Closure isn’t a concept that makes sense to me. Not in this context. That kind of closure is too cold for my tastes. Plus, I don’t really buy it. I think it’s denial, to use another self-helpy word.”
“Then you understand what I’m talking about.” She indicated the precinct house behind us. “There’s no one in there I can talk to about any of this. Joe, I guess. But only so much. Pope is too green. I don’t want to spook him. But what you just said, that’s the problem. There’s this idea that I’m supposed to shake off what I did. But what I did was I failed to save my girlfriend and I failed to save my partner. Both of them went down on my account. That’s not something a person just shakes off. And believe me, killing Stenborg didn’t do it for me. Not by a long shot. The time to kill him was before he did his damage. I could unload pistols into that bastard all day long and it wouldn’t make any difference.
That’s
what I’m carrying around. It’s this feeling that I owe Helen. I owe Chris Madden, too, but if I’m brutally honest, that’s not where the trouble is. It’s Helen. I feel like I still owe her. And the thing is, I owe her what I can’t give her.”
“Thinking like that is only going to drive you nuts.”
“You rest my case.”
“You said you’re not getting much sleep. Is that it?”
“Let’s just say I find it’s a lot easier the less I close my eyes.”
I headed for the subway. The station was like a deep freeze. People stood on the platform stomping their feet and beating their arms up and down. Deep freeze or a nuthouse. The 1 train came in, rocking slightly as it hurtled forward. I caught a glimpse of a rat scurrying to get out of its path. I’d moved closer to the edge of the platform than I’d realized; I could practically smell the train. The sight of the scurrying rat brought to mind a memory I wasn’t particularly fond of.
Yeah. I knew what she meant.
ALAN ROSS CAME OUT from behind his desk and clamped a solid two-hander on me. “It’s good of you to come, Mr. Malone. What can Linda get you? Coffee? Sparkling water? Tea?”
The office was just shy of an airplane hangar, a festival of teak and glass and polished metal. The walls were choked with photographs of Ross in the company of celebrities. Through the large window behind his desk, sunlight danced off the stainless-steel spire of the Chrysler Building. Visible in the distance, beyond the steel and concrete, was a thin ribbon of my old friend the East River.
I let Linda off the hook. “I’m fine,” I said. The secretary flashed an unnecessarily large smile. I was made a midget by the large plushy leather chair Ross directed me into as he returned to the ergonomic throne behind the desk.
I asked, “How many people say ‘nice place’ when they come in here the first time?”
Ross laughed, giving the huge room an approving glance. “Nearly all. It’s an absurd amount of space for just one person, no question. But you have to remember, I deal with some pretty colossal egos. You’d be surprised how quickly this room fills up.”
It was a canned response, but for that, not so bad a one. Ross poured himself a glass of water from a moist pewter pitcher on his desk, then set the glass down without taking a sip. He fixed me with a direct gaze. “Marshall Fox is an innocent man.”
I thought he was going to elaborate, but he didn’t. I squirmed in the leather valley, working my way forward. “Okay. Fox is an innocent man.”
He frowned. “You don’t sound convinced.”
“I didn’t try to sound convinced. I have no idea if he’s innocent or not.”
“I’m telling you, he is. Marshall is many things, and unfortunately, not a few of them are far from attractive. But being a vainglorious egotist is not the same as being a murderer.”
“I’m sure the dictionary would back you up on that. But what does any of this have to do with me?”
Ross paused before answering. On the wall just off his right shoulder, Bette Midler eyed me mischievously as she landed a big wet kiss on Alan Ross’s cheek.
“I don’t believe the police are doing all they can to find out who murdered Zack Riddick and the Burrell woman.”
He paused for me to respond. I didn’t give him much. A slow nod. “Okay.”
He went on, “Frankly, I think they’ve got major egg on their face and they don’t dare admit it. They took a high-stakes risk when they arrested Marshall for those murders. You’ve seen the circus. Marshall’s career is tanked, regardless of the trial’s outcome. A lot of ugly testimony flashed coast to coast. The whole thing has been a complete abysmal mess. You had better believe the police are invested in making those charges stick. Can you imagine the fallout if Marshall were to walk?”
I glanced off to my left. Alan Ross and Sylvester Stallone were arm wrestling. Rocky was losing, if you can believe it. Ross followed my gaze, his expression relaxing.
“Sly. He’s a good man. Beautiful Act One. No Act Two. A real waste.”
“I thought he was good in
Cop Land
.”
“Too little too late.”
Ross brought his fingers together and touched them to his lips. “Mr. Malone, perhaps you’re not aware how invested I am in all this. Zack Riddick was a friend of mine. Admittedly, not super close, but even so, I liked the man. Zack had his obnoxious side, I’m not pretending he didn’t. But at heart he was a decent person. He definitely didn’t deserve to have his throat slashed.”
“Few do.”
“And Cynthia. To a degree, she was a protégée of mine. I personally chose her to work with Marshall when I brought him in from the sticks. She was as sharp as they come. Very driven. Her entire life in front of her, poor girl.” He paused for a sip of water. “I’m going to tell you something I try not to think about. I feel responsible for these people, for what happened to them. Less so the Burrell and Rossman women, although that’s only because I didn’t know them personally. But Cynthia most of all. I delivered her to Marshall like a gift.”
“But you’re saying Fox didn’t have anything to do with her murder.”
“Directly, no. That’s right. He didn’t. You’re missing the point. Whoever killed these people did it
because
of Marshall. I can’t explain the killer’s motivation, but it’s clearly something to do with these people’s association with Marshall. That’s obvious. So do you understand what I’m saying?
I’m
the one who brought Marshall into the public eye. My wife and I. We’re the ones who took a nobody and made him famous beyond belief. You see how it works? If I don’t make a superstar of Marshall Fox, four people aren’t murdered in cold blood. Two of them friends of mine. That’s what I’m trying to say. Whoever did this did it because of Marshall, and I created Marshall. He’s my Frankenstein. I don’t know if you can understand what I’m saying, but it is a horrible, horrible burden. For the sake of providing what I’m quite willing to admit is essentially silly entertainment five nights a week, four people are dead. It doesn’t make me happy, Mr. Malone.”
As he sat back in his chair and folded his fingers into a ball, a thought occurred to me. Possibly it was the same thought that had led Ross to call me up to his sanctum.
“You,” I said.
“Me? What about me?”
“Your safety. If Fox really is innocent, and the same person who killed Cynthia Blair and Nikki Rossman is at it again—”
Ross was waving his hands. “No, no. This isn’t about me.”
“But it could be. If someone really has a problem with Marshall Fox and they’re taking it out on all these people who are associated with him, what about the actual person who created him?”
Ross shook his head. “That’s not why I asked you here. Though, believe me, I’ve been looking over my shoulder ever since last Friday night. But I’m not looking for protection. What I want is someone who isn’t invested in this whole thing the way the police are. I’m not saying they’re sitting on their hands; they’re trying to find out who killed Zack and Robin Burrell. But I happen to know that they prefer the copycat theory. The fact that the killer might be the same person who performed the murders they’ve already arrested Marshall for? They don’t want that.”
“No offense, but how is it you know what the police are thinking?”
“I’m putting myself in their shoes. I’m reading between the lines.”
“You’re guessing.”
He let out a sigh. “Yes. I’m guessing.”
“And what do you want from me?”
“You’re a private investigator. Let me emphasize.
Private
investigator. I thought of you the day after Robin Burrell was killed. Running into you in the courtroom. And then I saw reports the other day about your, um, incident. You’re looking for the killer as well, aren’t you?”
I tried to keep a neutral expression. “And if I am?”
“You are. Your sweetheart lives directly across the street from where Robin Burrell lived. I’m a stickler for research. I find things out.”
“You know, people don’t like other people nosing about in their business.”