“I did not hear
you say what you just said.” Katz shot me a warning glance, a reminder that our
conversation was probably being taped. “Brenner was taken to a local hospital,
suffering from a concussion and other injuries. During the night, members of
his staff had him airlifted to Washington. Senatorial privilege. From there he
was flown to St. Andrew’s in the Caribbean.”
“Don’t tell me.
The place has no extradition.” I kicked the plastic coffee table, sending it
shooting across the floor. Katz eyed me warily, probably worried that I was
going to start throwing things.
I made myself
calm down. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to the next question, but
I felt compelled to ask. “What about Vanessa Vonnerjohn?”
“She hired a
shrink, got herself declared mentally unstable, and was committed to a private
mental health facility. For the time being at least, she’s immune from
prosecution.”
Bear was on a
Caribbean island and Vanessa was cozily nestled in a facility where the
straitjackets were probably designed by Ralph Lauren.
Where’s the justice,
Atticus?
“Okay, that’s the
bad news,” Katz said. “Now here’s the good. We’ve got Hemmings and Lor in
custody.”
“Who?”
“Brenner’s
heavies. They’ve been talking.”
I
listened while Katz shared what he’d learned from the thugs. Labeck and I
already had figured out some of it, but Katz, with his Justice Department
creds, had been able to dredge up every last detail. Brenner had been producing
rohypnol in the Mexican lab twelve years ago. Luis had covertly photographed
the operation, perhaps with an eye toward blackmailing his employer. But when
Brenner gave Miguel Ruiz the overdose of rohypnol that killed him, Luis had
sworn revenge. He’d stolen the disk containing Bear’s records, then had melted
away into the streets, vowing to someday find Bear, kill him, and reveal his
criminal activities. Five years ago, Luis had managed to slip into the United
States, blending into Milwaukee’s Mexican community. Bear had proved difficult
to get at, and months had passed before one of Luis’s friends had tipped him
off that the senator planned to attend a wedding at a suburban club. Wearing a
borrowed waiter’s jacket that night, carrying the cheap revolver he’d bought,
Luis had bided his time, waiting for his chance to blow Brenner’s brains into
the chopped liver.
But Luis was not
at heart a killer. All night long he’d sneaked drinks from the free bar, trying
to work up the courage required for
venganza
. Finally he’d snatched his
gun from its hiding place and staggered out shouting about killing the
gabancho
Brenner.
“Why didn’t the
security goons rush over and nab Luis?” I asked.
“They were up
front in the dining area, keeping an eye on all the big shots. None of the
wedding guests realized there’d been a disturbance. A couple of the other
waiters wrestled Luis’s gun away. He collapsed and started crying, babbling
about his brother. That’s when your husband came out of the staff restroom.”
“Kip was using
the waiters’ toilet?”
“He wasn’t alone.
He and one of the bridesmaids were . . . uhh . . .” Katz cleared his throat,
looking embarrassed.
“I get the
picture.”
Kip Vonnerjohn, what a prince. Cheating on the woman he was
cheating on me with.
That concept couldn’t even be expressed in a simple
sentence.
“The bridesmaid
left first and rejoined the guests, while Kip stayed in the toilet, smoking a
cigarette. When he came out, he heard Luis’s drunken rant about Brenner, the
pederasto
de niño,
the
pruductor de la droga
. So he volunteered to drive Luis
home.”
“Mr. Nice Guy.”
“Yeah. We learned
most of this over the last couple of days, tracking down the waiters who worked
that wedding, getting them to talk, but the rest of this is surmise. Probably
Luis, in his drunken state, showed Kip his photos and told him about Brenner’s
illegal activities back in Mexico. Kip would have immediately seen the
possibilities for blackmail. Even the slightest breath of scandal can torpedo a
politician’s career, and the Luis stuff was huge—I mean go-to-prison
huge.”
“So Kip proceeded
to blackmail Bear.”
Katz nodded. “For
big bucks. We’ve been following a paper trail on this. Kip set up an offshore
account and made the senator wire money into it, but he was playing a dangerous
game. Brenner is not a person to mess with.”
I shuddered,
recalling how Bear had drugged me, buried me, and sent his thugs to murder me.
“So Bear had to have Kip eliminated, right? Did you find out how he faked the
nanny cam tape?”
Katz started
pacing the room, hands jammed in pockets. “Lor told us what happened. He helped
Brenner with the whole operation. They picked a night when your house was
empty. Kip had once given Brenner a house key. Brenner also knew about the
nanny cam because your mother-in-law had mentioned it to him. He took out the
old tape and put in a new one. Lor played
you,
Mazie. The guy is short,
skinny, and narrow-shouldered. Wearing a wig and your nightgown, he could pass
for you from the back.”
Jeez, thanks,
I
thought.
“Brenner sat at
the desk, pretending to be Kip, while Lor shot a blank at him—
bang-bang
you’re dead
! Brenner knocked over the lamp as he fell. In the dark, he
removed the tape—”
“Wait—why
did he need to remove the tape?”
“Because it would
look funny if Kip is dead one minute, then bounces into the room ten minutes
later.”
“Oh, right.”
“Three nights
later, he and Lor returned and hid in your garage. Kip pulled in around two in
the morning. Brenner shot him with his own gun, which he’d stolen earlier. He
and Lor wrapped Kip’s body in a tarp, dragged it into his office and set up the
murder scene there. They smeared Kip’s blood on your nightgown, then hid it and
the gun in your basement.”
“But weren’t Lor’s
prints on the gun?”
“He wore gloves.
Remember, in the fake video, the woman is wearing plastic gloves, so naturally
no prints would be on the gun. After that, Brenner reinserted the fake murder
tape into the camera and turned it back on.”
“I can’t believe
I slept through all that.”
Katz gazed out
the window. He looked as though he was sitting on a smile. “According to Ben
Labeck, you’re quite a heavy sleeper.”
I could feel a
flush working its way across my face. “You’ve talked to Labeck, then.”
“We had a long,
off-the-record chat. He agreed to turn over the disk containing the records of
Brenner’s drug activities in exchange for immunity from prosecution for himself
and the rest of your crew.”
I nodded. That
had all been part of our Operation Payback
plan.
“Once he’d killed
your husband, Brenner only had to get rid of Luis. Oh, and cancel the car and
the other items purchased with the extortion money. The senator used an
insulating layer of lawyers and accountants, of course, but he eventually
recovered most of the money Kip blackmailed from him. Brenner is nothing if not
thorough. Unfortunately for him, it only took a little pressure to get his
accountant to blab everything.”
I sat there in
silence, trying to make sense of what Katz had told me. Finally I asked, “Why
go through all that trouble? Why not kill Kip in a dark alley, make it look like
a random shooting?”
Katz shook his
head. “Brenner couldn’t risk having some enterprising cop looking up his own
drawers. You had to be implicated, Mazie. Spouses are always the primary
suspect in a murder, and you were straight out of central casting—young,
pretty, a woman scorned. It didn’t help that your mother-in-law was denouncing
you as Satan’s spawn or that Brenner got you the world’s most incompetent lawyer.”
My spirits were
rapidly rising. “So my name has been cleared? I’m going to be set free?”
“There’ll be a hearing. A Superior Court
judge was scheduled to review your case next month.” Katz got to his feet,
looking pleased with himself. “But I managed to get it moved up to next week.”
“Next
week
?
How did you—”
“I pulled
strings. It’s the least I could do. There are now three separate government
agencies investigating the former senator’s activities. More bodies are turning
up in Mexico, arrests are being made, and I’m coming out of this smelling like
a rose. My boss is recalling me to New York.”
He shook his
head. “Too bad. I was just starting to like cheese that squeaks.”
Escape tip #34:
If you must surrender,
then surrender to the right person.
“Mazie
Maguire Vonnerjohn,” intoned the Superior Court judge, a gray-haired woman so
short she probably had to sit on law books to see over her own desk. “In light
of evidence that has recently come to light, it is the judgment of this court
that you did not commit the crime for which you were convicted and imprisoned.
You are hereby released from state custody and are granted your full and
unequivocal freedom.”
Freedom.
Is there a sweeter word?
I stood in front
of the courtroom, my hands icy, my ears roaring, certain I was about to pass
out. Bonaparte Labeck, who’d held my hand throughout the whole two-hour ordeal,
pulled me against him. I clung to him gratefully, feeling his own radiating
warmth soak into my cold, shaking body. But I didn’t cling too hard, because he
had two very tender healing ribs, battle scars from Operation Payback.
“Congratulations,”
he whispered, and although I was pressed against his chest and couldn’t see his
face, I could hear the smile in his voice.
I shook my head. “You’re
the one who deserves the congratulations.”
Labeck stroked
circles on my back. “Nah, you would have come through anyway, Mazie. Life gave
you lemons, you made lemonade.”
This was the man
who’d believed in my innocence from day one, who’d kicked open lockers,
hot-wired cars, wrestled the bad guys to the floor, and adopted my kidnapped
dog. If he wanted to spout the occasional cliché, he was entitled.
Someone cleared
his throat behind us. I looked up to see U.S. Deputy Marshal Irving Katz
standing there. A jolt of terror shot through me. There’d been a screw-up. I
was going to be sent back to prison!
“Relax, Mazie,”
Katz said, and he smiled. “I’m not here to drag you back to the slammer.”
“I though you’d
gone back to New York.”
“I flew back for
your hearing. To make sure everything went all right.”
I returned Katz’s
smile. “More than all right. I was given an unconditional release.”
Katz nodded. “Any
other decision and the judge would have heard from me.”
“I owe you. For
speeding things up.”
“My pleasure.”
There was
something—a gleam in the dark eyes—that made me think that Katz
felt a rather personal interest in my well-being.
“How about if I
do you one last good turn?” Katz tilted his head toward the courthouse
entrance, where the noise of the waiting media mob was audible even through a
double set of doors. “How do you feel about trying to push your way through
that pack of piranhas?”
“I’d sooner face
Vanessa’s homemade electrocution kit.”
“Thought so. The
guy in charge of courtroom security tells me there’s a tunnel beneath this
building. So I could go out front and let the piranhas chew on me while you and
Mr. Labeck sneak out below.”
“Deal.”
Labeck and Katz
shook hands. Then Katz turned to me. “Stay out of trouble, Mazie.”
“I’ll try.”
Impulsively I gave Katz a hug, chasing it with a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you.
For everything.”
Looking pleased,
Katz strode off to offer himself up as a human sacrifice while Labeck and I
descended into the tunnel beneath the courthouse. We hurried along damp corridors
for what felt like miles before climbing a flight of steps and exiting through
the back door of the municipal garage, finding ourselves only a half block from
where Labeck’s Volkswagen was parked.
“So what do you
want to do first?” Labeck asked, unlocking the Volks’s passenger door, which
had been fitted out with a brand-new window. “Shopping? Beauty parlor?
Miniature golf?”
Yes!
Everything! Later.
But r
ight
now— I told him what I wanted.
The dark eyebrows
winged upward. He’d probably been hoping I’d want to celebrate at a bar, but if
he was disappointed he didn’t show it.
We got caught up
in heavy weekend traffic, but twenty minutes later we were zipping onto Port
Washington Road. There it was, just up ahead on the left. Garish and gleaming,
pink and turquoise neon, winking and blinking like a 1947 Rock-ola jukebox,
Kopps Drive-in stood, unaltered by so much as single toe-stop on a carhop’s
skate since I’d been away. Probably nothing had changed in forty years. Any
second now Richie and Potsie were going to pull up in a big-ass Chevy and punch
in “Barbara Ann” on the curbside music players.
This morning I’d
been too nervous to eat, but now my stomach was banging against my backbone.
There was no question in my mind what to order. It was the food I’d fantasized
about for four chocolate-deprived years.