Legwork (24 page)

“Who is she?” I interrupted.
I had my money on the mystery girlfriend.

He told me.
His version was precise and well thought out.
Either he was telling the truth or he had anticipated this moment.
The only time he showed any surprise was when I asked about Dr.
Robert Dahler.

“You know about that?” he asked.

“I know,” I said.

He talked some more and I listened some more.
Then I tucked the gun away in my purse and started the car.

“Where are we going?” he asked in alarm.

“Relax,” I said.
“We’re going to see a friend of mine.”

“I have to go with Stoney,” he protested. “We have a dinner in Winston-Salem tonight.”

“That part of your life is over,” I told him.
“Get used to it now.”

He gave me no trouble during the drive.
I parked illegally and we took the stairs instead of the elevator.
I didn’t even have to use my gun as an incentive.
Adam Stoltz marched stiffly up the steps, head back, as if he were already a dead man walking.

I found Bill Butler in front of an automatic coffee machine staring morosely into his cup.
His eyes locked with mine when he saw me.

“Brought you a present,” I said.
“We need some place private.”

He looked at Adam Stoltz and then at the gleam in my eye.
“In here,” he said, pushing open a conference room door with a foot.
“Right this way.”

We sat at a table and Adam told his story.
I drank my victory beer and listened to it again.
Bill Butler didn’t say a word.
When it was over, he looked at me in astonishment.

“The mother?” he asked incredulously. “Stoney’s mother?”

“The mother of all mothers,” I said.

It turned into a late night, though, compared to Adam Stoltz, I had little to complain about.
When I left him around ten, at the conclusion of the initial interview, he was huddled with the two lawyers he had called as soon as he realized that he should never have opened his mouth in the first place.
Bill Butler had dangled the word “deal” in front of that northern boy like a hungry man dangling rotten meat in front of a crab.
Adam was ready to bite—he just wanted to make sure he cut the very best deal he could.
In the meantime, he was in custody and under orders to speak to no one in the Maloney campaign.
He’d had no problem sounding sick as a dog when he phoned campaign headquarters and informed them he had taken ill.
Just to be safe, Bill hovered over him during the call, his hand above the disconnect button.
The two lawyers sat mute, their minds silently calculating exactly what they might demand for their client.

After the call, Bill and I retired to the hall while Adam and his lawyers figured out their poker hand.
For someone who had just been bested, Bill was quite the gentleman.

“I apologize, Casey,” he told me and I had to give the man credit—he looked me right in the eye when he said it.
“I misjudged you.
You didn’t have to bring this to me and I want to thank you.”

“No problem,” I told him.
“Better you than the SBI.”

He held my gaze and I felt those butterflies nibbling at my stomach again.
Never had hard work and exhaustion looked so good on one man.
I wanted to run my fingers through his gray-flecked hair but managed some restraint.
One day, I promised myself, one day.

“How about a drink?” he said.
“A real one? After we wrap the deal?”

“Deal,” I said.
“On the drink, I mean.
But what’s the deal on the deal?”

He told me what he wanted to do.
He couldn’t do it without me.
That was the part I liked the best.
I thought it over and agreed on two conditions: no SBI and I had to remain anonymous.

“I’ll risk moving ahead without the SBI,” he agreed.
“They haven’t returned my phone calls in two days anyway.
I can come up with a cover, say we were just going out there to talk to her.
But keeping you anonymous is going to be hard if this works out.
The press will be all over it.”

“Tell them I work undercover for you and you can’t blow my identity.
What’s a little lie between friends?”

He agreed and returned to the conference room to outline his conditions to Adam’s lawyers.
I waited for him downstairs in my car, happy for the fresh air and time alone.
I was starting to feel anxious and miserable, no doubt having caught it from Adam Stoltz.
That always happens to me.
I can’t be around lowlifes without feeling like a lowlife.
I can’t tolerate unhappiness without taking it on.
It’s a good thing I didn’t grow up to be a shrink.

An hour later, Bill and I were sitting in the darkest corner of a transvestite bar on Morgan Street.
It was the only place downtown that we could find open without going where we would be recognized.

“You’re not going to pull off a wig and announce you’re a woman, are you?” I asked him.
“Because that would kill a lot of my fantasies.”

He smiled.
The wrinkles around his mouth crinkled slowly as if he were unused to wearing a grin.
“Your fantasies are safe with me,” he said, touching my hand.
Just then the willowy black waitress arrived with our drinks.
I wanted to rip off her falsies and stuff them down her throat for interrupting at such a delicate moment, but I admired her sequined getup too much to mar her illusion.

He didn’t touch my hand again, but he did relax.
I could have stayed in that dark corner with Bill Butler all night long but we had too much to go over—and too much at stake—to begin the next day slowed down by hangovers.
Instead, we reviewed the game plan several times for flaws and discussed the best place to hide a wire.

“Between my breasts,” I insisted.
“Where else?
That woman is not going fishing between these babies, believe me.”

Bill stared at my chest.
“It might muffle the sound,” he said dubiously.

“I’ll let you personally place the mike and check it out.
Okay?”

He nodded.
“I’m something of an expert.”

“I’ll bet.”

We agreed I would avoid the office the next day and wait at home until he called.
It would be a long day, I knew, but I was too superstitious to hurry the process.
It wouldn’t work if Sandy Jackson suspected anything—or if Adam Stoltz got cold feet.
He was trouble enough as it was.

“Do I have to bring him along?” I asked.

“Yes, you do,” Bill replied.
“You’ll need him to convince her you’re on the level.
Don’t worry.
If she’s the kind of person you say she is, she’ll have no trouble believing your motives and she’ll just think he’s nervous because he’s scared.”

“What about me?” I asked.
“How do I explain away my own knocking knees?”

“You have knees?” He peeked under the table at them.
“Why do I have a feeling that you’re going to be the least nervous one of us all?”

He smiled.
I smiled.
My thoughts turned from business.
I brought them back and bid him adieu.

By morning, I was ready and rested.
I called Bobby D.
and let him know where I was, cautioning him to stave off everyone but a few select callers.
But I didn’t tell him what was going on.
Bobby likes to trade information as much as he likes to buy it and this was too important to risk.

The morning passed as if it were a week.
I knew Bill was meeting with the department’s attorneys to deal with the legalities and hand-picking a backup team he could trust.
When the phone rang around noon, I was sure he was calling with a repeat of his explicit instructions about what I could and could not say without endangering the case.
I picked up the telephone without screening the call first.

“Casey,” a breathless voice announced. “What’s going on?
I called you at the office and that fat guy said to try you here.
Why are you home?” A faint wheeze lurked beneath the voice.
I could hear traffic whizzing by in the background. Frank Waters—calling from the interstate.

“I can’t tell you everything right now,” I said.
“But get back here by tonight and I’ll give you the story of your life plus the footage you need to start a whole new career.”

“You’re kidding?
What’s it about?”

I told him enough to extract a promise that he would be waiting by his phone at his station office all evening for my instructions.
“I’m in Virginia near Petersburg,” he said. “I’ll be back by four.”

“Stay low,” I warned him.
“And remember—just you and a cameraman.
You have to stay hidden until we come out the front door.
You’ll know when to approach because backup will start swarming all over the lawn.
Don’t let the cops see you until then. And when you’re filming, I don’t want any zooming in on me.
I have a lot of personal reasons for staying out of the limelight.”

“Got it,” he said quickly, as well he should.
For the career boost I was about to give him, he owed me at least his firstborn child.

“Make a big deal about the arresting officer,” I told him.
I explained who Bill Butler was, gave him some background, and said he had been a maverick during the investigation, always questioning the official lines of inquiry and refusing to be swayed by false evidence.
It was a big fat lie but it sounded good and it would make Bill look good.
I’d have a friend for life.
One right in the middle of the Raleigh Police Department. And Shrimpboat Shorty could just kiss my refrigerator butt when all was said and done.

The rest of the afternoon passed by more quickly.
I took my .380 out of my pocketbook and practiced drawing it from the back of my waistband.
Reach around, quick tug, half turn, extend, and squeeze.
I felt like Emma Peel by the time Bill Butler called.

“It’s on,” he said.
“Adam’s going to make the call in an hour.
She’s on her way back from some fundraiser in New Bern.
He says she has a dinner in Raleigh tonight and he’ll try for after that.”

“I want to be there when he calls her,” I told him.
“The more I can find out about her and what she’s thinking, the better.”

“Better hurry,” he said, hanging up.

I made it to Raleigh in twenty minutes, fast enough that Bill checked his watch twice.
“I guess the highway patrol was at lunch.”

“No sense taking chances,” I said.

Adam Stoltz was dressed in a bright orange jumpsuit that hung from his body like loose skin.
His face was a parchment white, as if a vampire had sucked out all his blood overnight.
And he looked about twenty years less confident.

“I guess you got your deal,” I said to him. His lawyers stared at me like I just flashed the guy.
Adam said nothing.

The table had been cleared of old coffee cups and was now dominated by a Star Trek-like circular phone system and recording device.
Bill and a technician fiddled with the controls so long I wanted to scream, but at last Adam made the call.

“Maloney Headquarters,” a perky voice chirped.
“Vote for a better Carolina.”

“Molly?” Adam said, his voice quavering. “It’s Adam.”

“Adam?
How are you feeling?
I heard you had the flu or something.
Do you want me to get you anything from the store?” Her genuine concern permeated the cold steel atmosphere of the tense conference room.
Ah, for simpler times.

“It’s pretty bad,” he said.
“But I’m okay. Don’t worry.” He sounded like a bullfrog about to collapse from the heat.
The boy may have had nerves of steel about politics, but he sure didn’t have the temperament for crime.
“Is Sandy there?
I need to talk to her.”

The girl’s voice dropped.
“Sure you’re feeling well enough?
She’s in some kind of a temper.
She had a fight with Stoney and she’s mad enough to spit.
She threw a stack of bumper stickers at Roger.”

“Yeah, put me through,” he said hoarsely. “It’s important.”

“It’s your funeral,” she replied and transferred him.

“I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed.” Sandy Jackson’s tightly controlled twang snaked out of the telephone wire and coiled on the table.

“Sandy,” Adam said.
“It’s me.”

“Where the hell are you?” she demanded.
“We don’t pay you six figures to get the flu.
There will be no sick days until this election is over, do you understand?
Do you think I can do this all myself?”

“She knows,” Adam interrupted.
He shut his eyes and waited.

There was a short silence.
“Who knows?” Her voice was steady.
Sandy Jackson was either mighty cool or mighty heartless.
Possibly both.

“The detective.
The one Mary Lee Masters hired.”

“What?” she demanded.
“The trashy one?”

I winced but no one else seemed to notice.

“Well…” Adam said, his voice trailing off as he nervously eyed me.

“How did she find out anything?” she demanded.
“What did you tell her?”

“Nothing!” he protested, real fear in his voice.
“I didn’t say anything at all.
You have to believe me.
She found out somehow, though, and she wants to cut a deal.” His voice cracked and he choked on what sounded like a sob.
That was when I realized that Adam Stoltz wasn’t afraid of the police or of what his family might think.
He was afraid of Sandy Jackson.

“She would try to cut a deal,” Stoney’s mother said nastily.
“She’s the type.
First chance she gets to make a buck, she’d throw all her scruples out the window.
I’m not surprised.
I pegged her for a cheap tramp the minute I set eyes on her.”

Well, how do you like that?
The bitch had blown away an old friend in cold blood and she was calling me names?

“But she wants a lot of money,” Adam added, glancing at me with contempt as if he were telling the truth.