5 A Sporting Murder (19 page)

"I know that look,” Jill said as I turned toward Hillsboro Road. “You wanted to go after him, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but it looks like we need to
re-evaluate.”

“We know for certain that Fred
Ricketts drives a Cadillac Escalade.”

“Yes,” I said, “but I’m not so sure
what we saw originally was an Escalade. It could easily have been a Navigator.”

“What do you suggest we do now?”

“If we were on a football field,
we’d punt and hope the other team would fumble or make some equally stupid
mistake.”

“And since we aren’t?”

“We go home and try to come up with
a better idea.”

Neither of us spoke much on the
way. I ran over all the possibilities in my mind, and I suspect Jill did the
same. I was no closer to an answer when we arrived home.

Jill suggested we eat supper and
follow it with a brainstorming session. Since my brain appeared to have taken a
holiday, I had nothing better to propose. We weren’t in the mood for turkey and
dressing and all the usual Yuletide trappings. She baked chicken breasts in a
mixture of wine and spices and served it with peas, carrots, and a green salad.
It was simple fare but delicious. I volunteered to clean off the table and
waited while she loaded the dishwasher.

“How about a little cappuccino to
get our gray matter stirring?” Jill asked.

“My old brain needs something to
get it working,” I said.

Jill got a ruled pad and brought
our travel cups filled with the steaming French Vanilla-flavored brew. “Where
do we start?”

“Turn your pad sideways and write five
names across the top: Arnold Wechsel, Gordon Franklin, Louie Aregis, Fred
Ricketts, and Nick Zicarelli. Then we’ll list what we know that might tie them
together.”

While we were in the midst of that
exercise, the phone rang. I strode to the counter and answered it.

“This is Gordon Franklin, Mr.
McKenzie,” he said in his usual unexpressive voice.

Startled, I looked across at Jill,
frowning. “Well, hello, Mr. Franklin. How are you?”

“Fine, thanks. I’ve come across
something you need to know about. Could you folks meet me at my office in half
an hour?”

“Certainly.” Recalling the problem
I’d had with a similar request from Arnold Wechsel, I added, “What does it
concern.”

“It’s sort of complicated,” he
said. “I really need to explain it in person.”

I didn’t like being left in the
dark, and I had serious reservations about how far to trust the man. There was
no way to find out except to go along with him.

“We’ll be there,” I said.

“Good. I’ll leave the front door
unlocked. Just come on in to my office.”

“Be where?” Jill asked when I put
the phone down.

I repeated what Franklin had said.

“What do you suppose he has?” she
asked.

“I can’t imagine. I’m not sure what
to make of it.”

She picked up our cups and carried
them to the sink. She turned, a wary look on her face. “Do you think there’s
still a chance he’s the one who tried to blow us up?”

“It’s a definite possibility. I
don’t want to put you in any jeopardy. Why don’t you stay here?”

“Forget it, Greg. If you’re going,
I’m going.”

I knew there was no use arguing.
“We need to be prepared for anything,” I said. “Be sure your .38 is loaded.
I’ll carry my Sig and put the micro voice recorder in my pocket.”

We bundled up against the cold and
headed out to the garage. It had been cloudy all day, and the night was
moonless. Virtually deserted, the streets looked dark and ominous. It took barely
twenty minutes to reach the offices of Franklin, Gretchen and Silverman. I
parked beside the Navigator. In the dark, I decided it could easily have been
the vehicle we saw Sunday night. As we entered the building, I switched on the
recorder.

Franklin met us when we walked into
the office suite. His subtle smile seemed about as natural as a platinum blonde.

“You can put your jackets here,” he
said, indicating a coat rack in the reception area.

“Thanks,” I said. “We’re okay.” I
didn’t want to show my holster.

He shrugged. “As you wish.”

He led us back to his office, where
two chairs sat in front of the desk. He moved around to his leather chair and
we took our seats.

“You have us quite intrigued, Mr.
Franklin,” I said. “What have you found?”

He sat back in the chair, elbows on
the arms, and steepled his fingers. Although his body was on the stocky side, his
fingers looked more like those of a pianist. He wore an open-collar white dress
shirt and a yellow cardigan, giving him something of a professorial air. An
expensive gold pen lay on the desk in front of him.

“This young fellow whose body you
found last week,” he said, his eyes fixed on me, “I think I encountered him
recently.”

“Arnold Wechsel?”

“Yes.” He picked up the pen and
began twisting it slowly between his fingers. “I was looking for something in a
stack of newspapers and came across a picture of him. I recognized it as the
man who came by here recently.”

“Wechsel was here?”

“Our building is owned by Zicarelli
Properties. He came by to pick up the rent. They must have been having problems
with the mail.”

I glanced at Jill, whose puzzled
look was no different than my own. “Did you talk to him?”

“No. I just happened to be out in
the reception area when he came in.”

“I’m a little curious as to why you
thought we would be interested in knowing this?”

He leaned forward, opened the desk
drawer and dropped the pen inside. That disinterested look he had displayed at
our first interview was replaced by the expression of a man on a mission. “You
had asked if I knew the man. I wanted to set the record straight. Brad
Smotherman told me you thought Wechsel might be collecting gambling debts for
Mr. Zicarelli. I thought you’d like to know it was rent he collected.”

“Uh, Greg,” Jill said, “we didn’t
tell Brad Smotherman we suspected Arnold was collecting gambling debts.”

I met Franklin’s gaze. His eyes had
turned as cold as the night outside. “She’s right, Mr. Franklin. The only
person who had any inkling that we suspected Arnold Wechsel of collecting
gambling money was Nick Zicarelli. What we told Brad about was our suspicions
regarding Zicarelli’s funding Louie Aregis’s part of the NBA franchise deal.”

The pieces all suddenly fell
together. Arnold had collected bets from Franklin. Somehow Arnold found out
about our investigation from the CPA, and Franklin learned the young man
planned to meet me Saturday night at the repair shop.

“I think you’re mistaken,” Franklin said.

His right hand rested on the open
drawer. I suspected the worst as he started to lift it. I pushed my jacket
aside and reached for my Sig. Before I could get it out, he had a 9mm Glock
pointed at my head.

“Hold it right there,” he said in
as menacing a voice as I’d heard lately.

I should have been ready for this.
I sat there as angry at myself as at him.

“You talked to Arnold and found out
he planned to meet me,” I said. “You got there before I did and killed him.
Why?”

Franklin’s expression never
changed. “He intended to tell you that Nick provided the money for Aregis to
buy into the basketball franchise. If they’d have dug into Nick’s gambling operation,
they’d no doubt have turned up all the bets I’ve placed with him. That would’ve
ruined my business. I couldn’t take a chance on that.”

I recalled Smotherman’s comment
that it would kill Franklin if anything happened to his accounting practice.

“Zicarelli had fired Arnold,” I said. “How did you happen to tell him about me?”

“Nick is super-cautious. He doesn’t
depend on the mail or telephones. He uses people like Wechsel to take bets and
handle payoffs. When I called the young man to meet me for a large bet I wanted
to place, he told me he’d been fired. He was mad as hell and wanted to get even.
He’d overheard Nick talking about funding Coastal Capital’s efforts toward an
NBA team. I told him a private investigator was looking for ways to botch the
deal. I suggested he set up a meeting with you at seven-thirty, when Pete
Lara’s place would be dark and deserted. That’s where we always met.”

“You took his cell phone, didn’t
you?”

He nodded with a look of
satisfaction. “I was afraid my phone number would be on his call list.”

“And you hoped I would be accused
of the murder, didn’t you?”

“That was the idea, but you’re
apparently too clever for that. My little IED didn’t work either. I don’t know
how you escaped the doctored Scotch, but I got my share of Charlies with an
M-16 in Nam, and this Glock is capable of doing just as good a job in the U.S. of
A.”

A shot suddenly rang out beside me.
A bullet tore through the front of Franklin’s desk, missing him. A quick glance
told me Jill had shoved her hand inside her purse and fired her small revolver.
Realizing what had happened, a startled look on his face, Franklin turned the
semiautomatic toward her.

My law enforcement training kicked in and I reacted. The
moment Franklin shifted his attention to Jill, I pulled my Sig. I swung it up
in one swift motion and clamped my left hand against it as I squeezed off two
rounds. He pulled the trigger on the Glock as the first bullet hit him. His
shot went wild, striking the wall behind us. Two holes appeared in his sweater.

The look of surprise he had showed
moments ago seemed frozen in place. He dropped the gun and slumped onto the
desk.

I leaped up and swept the weapon out
of his reach, just in case.

Jill moved in behind me. “Is he…?”

I felt for a pulse. It was weak. “He’s
alive for now.”

I took out my cell phone, punched
in 911, and reported a man shot at Franklin, Gretchen, and Silverman. Then I
called Phil Adamson.

“You’d better get over to Gordon
Franklin’s office,” I said, breathing hard, the adrenaline still surging.

“What for?”

“I just shot him.”

“You what?”

“He’s our man. I have him on tape admitting
to Arnold Wechsel’s murder. He threatened us and pointed a Glock at Jill.”

“Is he dead?”

“Not yet. I called for the medics.”

“Sit tight. I’m on the way.”

The ambulance arrived shortly, as
did a couple of cops. Franklin was in shock and bleeding internally. The
paramedics rushed him off to the hospital.

“Who shot him?” asked a burly cop
with short brown hair and alert blue eyes.

“I did,” I said. “He threatened to
kill us and fired that Glock on the desk at my wife. We’re private
investigators.”

He looked around at Jill, who had
returned to her chair. “You his wife?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Greg has it
all on his digital recorder.”

He turned back to me. “Where’s your
weapon?”

I pulled my jacked aside to show
the Sig in its holster. “I planned to give it to Homicide Detective Phil
Adamson. He’s on the way.”

The big cop grinned. “Just for my
comfort, how about laying it on the desk there?”

I lifted my gun gingerly from the
holster and placed it beside Franklin’s Glock.

The other cop, a shorter man with a
boyish face that made him look like a new recruit, had been examining the front
of the desk. “What happened here?” he asked, pointing to the splintered hole.

“That was my attempt to distract
him so Greg could get to his gun,” Jill said. She took out the snub-nosed .38
and showed the hole in the end of her bag. “He was concentrating so closely on
Greg that he didn’t notice when I stuck my hand in here.”

I was proud of her. She displayed the
coolness of a veteran cop. Before I could say anything else, my cell phone
rang.

“You got company?” Phil asked.

“Two officers,” I said. “The
ambulance took Franklin to the hospital. Vanderbilt, I think.”

“Let me talk to one of the
officers.”

I handed the phone to the big cop.
“Detective Adamson wants to talk to you.”

He listened a minute, then handed
the phone back. “Get back to the entrance,” he told the younger officer. “Don’t
let anybody in till Adamson gets here.”

It was another ten minutes before
Phil arrived. He was talking on his cell phone when he walked in. Jill and I
and the big cop, who we now knew as Officer Bruce Vogel, sat chatting about a
similar case he had been involved in. Phil snapped the phone shut and gave me a
look I took as a precursor to bad news.

“It’s definitely my case now. Franklin didn’t make it. Bled out from internal hemorrhage.”

I shook my head. Better him than
Jill, but it wasn’t what I had hoped for. “There’s my Sig on the desk. Two
shots fired.”

“And you got him on tape?”

“Digital,” I said.

I took out the mini-recorder and
pressed the play button. Since the recorder was voice-activated, there were no
sound gaps. It quickly reached the point where Franklin claimed we had told
Brad Smotherman we suspected Nick Zicarelli was using Arnold Wechsel to collect
gambling debts.

“Who is Brad Smotherman?”

The sharp tone in Phil’s voice prompted
me to press the STOP button. “He runs Hatrick Brake Company,” I said. “Terry
Tremont hired us to look into this NBA deal on behalf of an organization
bankrolled by Smotherman, Gordon Franklin, and Mack Nelson, the country music
star. They’re super-fans of the Predators.”

“How come you didn’t tell me you
suspected Wechsel was collecting gambling debts for Nick?”

“We didn’t tell that to anybody,” I
said. “Listen to the recording.”

When it ended with the sound of guns
firing, Phil looked across at me. “I counted four shots.”

“Jill fired first,” I said,
pointing to the hole in the desk. “I fired twice, and Franklin’s shot hit the
wall over there.”

He looked around, then leaned
against the desk. “You were determined it was Franklin, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, in the end I guess I was.
Zicarelli and Aregis had good reasons to be the killer, but they had no way of
knowing I was on the case.”

We were interrupted by the arrival
of the crime scene crew. Phil briefed them on the situation, then moved aside
as they began shooting pictures and gathering evidence, including the bullet
lodged in the wall.

Phil turned back to me. “Franklin apparently put your boy Izzy up to sending the bottle of Scotch. How do you
suppose he knew about Isabell?”

I’d wondered about that, too. “My
guess is he got the details from Terry Tremont. I told Terry about Isabell
because he was complicating my efforts.”

“You must have given plenty of
detail for him to be able to locate the guy.”

“I’m sure I mentioned Nat Edge on Sheridan Road. I guess Franklin could’ve gotten a phone number out of the book.”

“Isabell denied everything when we
picked him up. I suspect he’ll change his tune now.” Phil suddenly grinned like
he’d had a wicked vision. “I was ready to send for the shrinks when you called
early this morning about that Cadillac.”

“Turned out we were wrong,” I said.
“He drives a Lincoln Navigator.”

The grin faded. “Not any more, he
doesn’t. I’m sure Wechsel’s mother will think he got what he deserved.”

I was of the same mind. “I promised
to let Jeff Price know what happened so he can tell her. She’s his
sister-in-law.”

Phil looked around at Officer
Vogel. “That about does it for here, Bruce. Don’t know about you, but I’d like
to go home and play with the toys Santa brought me.”

“I guess you want my toys,” I said,
holding out the recorder.

Phil dropped it in an evidence bag
and placed my Sig and Franklin’s Glock in two others. “I’ll get yours back to
you as soon as the DA agrees it was self defense.”

“I can testify to that,” Jill said.

Phil smiled. “I think he’ll take my
word for it.”

I pulled out my cell phone. “I’d
better call my client, see if he wants me to talk to the media.”

As I punched in Terry Tremont’s
number, Phil instructed the policeman to locate someone to come in and lock up
the building. While I was explaining the situation to Terry, Vogel came back
and said there were TV cameras outside.

“Did you talk to your newspaper
friend?” Terry asked.

“We did, and he said he would work
on the story. I need to call and tell him about this.”

“My advice is you say nothing about
working for me or for Protect Our Preds. The earlier story included the fact
that Wechsel was an informant with some information for you. I’d suggest you
say your investigation to find out what Wechsel had for you led to the NBA deal.
The bomb that wrecked your car pointed to Franklin. When you confronted him, he
confessed and threatened to kill you and Jill.”

“That should work. Right now there’re
some TV people outside the building waiting for us to come out, but I don’t
want to upstage Wes Knight.”

“Let the police handle it,” Terry
said. “Find a back door and dodge the cameras.”

I switched off the phone and turned
to Phil. “I guess you heard what I said. I promised the story to Wes Knight,
who helped me out on Nick Zicarelli. Terry said to skip out the back door and
let the police handle the TV guys.”

Phil jammed his hands against his
hips. “You want me to face that crowd of electronic leeches alone? They won’t
let go until they suck you dry.”

“Tell them to talk to the
department’s spokesman,” Jill said.

“I’d have to brief him.”

“Call him now,” I said. Then,
grinning, I added, “You told me you don’t like cops who spend a lot time in
front of cameras. I don’t want you despising yourself. Oh, one more thing.
Terry Tremont asked that I not mention him hiring us on behalf of the Predator
folks. He only wants me to say that our investigation into what Arnold planned to tell me led to the NBA deal, which is basically true.”

Phil shrugged. “I won’t mention
Tremont’s clients unless I’m asked. That’s the best I can do.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

Phil called his PR man, who said he
would brief the media at headquarters. Meanwhile, I got Wes at home and gave
him the details of our confrontation with Franklin. I hated to admit that I had
killed the man, but there was no way around it. The building manager arrived
and turned off the lights inside so we could stay out of sight until it was
safe to leave. Reluctantly, our detective friend went out to face the microphones.
He gave a brief statement and sent them packing to the Criminal Justice Center.