City Of Lies (18 page)

Harper was stuck for words.

The three of them – himself, Walt Freiberg and Cathy Hollander – had exited the car, crossed the sidewalk, and walked through a shopfront doorway. Beyond the doorway Harper found an empty room – empty but for the odd item of dusty furniture – and without a word Walt had led him and Cathy to the right and through another doorway into a corridor beyond. At the end of the corridor a second entrance. Here Walt knocked twice, the door was inched open, and then – almost with a flourish, something from vaudeville – the man behind had opened the door wide and welcomed them effusively. They had arrived with Mr Benedict.

Referring to Walt as ‘Mister Walt’, to Cathy as ‘Miss Cathy’, he seemed completely at ease. And then he turned to Harper, and Harper saw it once again, that momentary flash of awkwardness as yet someone else recognized a younger version of Edward Bernstein.

‘Good Lord almighty,’ Mr Benedict had whispered, and then he’d stepped forward and taken Harper’s hand, introduced himself, and told Harper what a pleasure it was to meet Mr Bernstein’s son.

‘A great pleasure, a great pleasure indeed. I heard about your father—’ Benedict paused, looked towards Walt. Walt smiled, nodded understandingly. ‘My very best wishes for his swift recovery, Mr Bernstein.’

Harper smiled. ‘My name is Harper,’ he said. ‘John Harper.’

‘But—’

‘Edward’s son,’ Walt interjected. ‘You are right, Mr Benedict, this
is
Edward’s son.’

Benedict smiled. ‘Another story for another day, and none of my business I’m sure.’

‘It’s not important,’ Walt said. ‘We’re here for some things for John. He’ll be staying a little while, we’ll be going out you know? Dinner, visiting some people, and he has little more than he stands up in. I need you to take care of him, three or four suits, some shirts, shoes, ties . . . the usual, Mr Benedict.’

‘Of course, Mr Walt.’

‘I have some calls to make, some things to finalize. I can use your office?’

‘Of course, yes indeed. Let me—’

‘It’s alright, I know the way.’ Walt turned and smiled at Harper. ‘I’ll leave you in Mr Benedict’s very capable hands . . . and Cathy can tell you how good you look, right Cathy?’

Cathy nodded, raised her hand.

‘Wait a minute,’ Harper said. ‘What’s happening here?’

Benedict stepped forward. He smiled enthusiastically. ‘It’s quite alright, Mr Bernstein—’

‘Harper. My name is
John Harper
, not Bernstein or anything else.’ He looked at Cathy, then at Walt Freiberg. ‘What the hell’s happening here, Walt? What am I doing here?’

Benedict seemed a little awkward. He stepped back as Walt Freiberg approached.

‘It’s nothing, John, nothing at all. Me and Cathy . . . hell, John, we just want you to stay a little while, that’s all. Call it nostalgia, call it something like guilt for all the years I never did anything to help you. Don’t make something out of nothing, John. Mr Benedict here . . . he’s your father’s tailor. You don’t have any clothes with you. You came for one night, maybe two. Least we can do is get you some things to wear, right?’

Harper looked at Mr Benedict. Benedict nodded, raised his hands as if demonstrating he had nothing to hide.

‘Some clothes,’ Harper said matter-of-factly.

‘Not just some clothes,’ Mr Benedict said. ‘Some
real
clothes, Mr Harper.’

‘Some clothes, John,’ Freiberg echoed. ‘A suit or two, something you can wear if you and Cathy go out for a meal, if we
have lunch together tomorrow. That’s all there is to it, nothing else.’

Harper looked at Cathy. She smiled, and her smile was so warm, her expression so guileless and sincere that he couldn’t help but smile back. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘
Really
.’

Harper nodded.

‘We’re all okay here,’ Walt said. ‘We’re all just fine now.’

Harper looked at Cathy once more. Her expression told him nothing.
Go with the flow
, he thought, and wondered if there was anything he could lose by playing their game. Hell, maybe if he played it right there might be something in it for him.

‘Okay,’ he said quietly, and let his defences down.

Walt smiled, nodded at Mr Benedict, and then turned to leave the room. He backed up and passed through another door behind them.

‘So Mr Harper . . . is the English or European cut to your preference?’

Harper frowned.

‘In a suit?’

Harper shrugged.

‘Aha,’ Mr Benedict pronounced. ‘We have a newcomer to the joys of tailoring. Come, come . . . step forward, stand straight, let me see what we have here.’

Harper did as he was told, stood tall, shoulders back, and Mr Benedict fussed around him with a tape measure.

The room was well-furnished, almost as Harper felt a gentleman’s dressing room would be, but it did not explain why the entrance from the street had appeared as if no business operated from there at all. He glanced at Cathy. She sat in a chair to the left, in her hand an unlit cigarette, a knowing smile playing across her lips like a child caught somewhere she shouldn’t be. He felt as if he was being silently teased, that she was flirting with him, but in considering such a thing he wondered if it was his imagination. He hoped it was not.

And then Mr Benedict started speaking a language Harper barely understood, a language exclusive to tailors and outfitters it seemed.

‘So the English prefer a broader cut, a sense of strength if you like. Think Sean Connery in the early Bond films. The Europeans go for something a little slimmer, a narrower leg, a cut in at the
waist. With your build I suggest we stay with the English, except perhaps the Victor/Victoria which is Italian, and quite different from, say . . . say a Lubiam or an Armani. I think we should go with Aquascutum, Daks perhaps, the Signature line . . . and shirts, shirts from Gieves & Hawkes, T.M. Lewin I think. We have some Canali shirts, a very good cotton. French cuffs, Prince of Wales collars . . . say with white, pale blue, perhaps an ivory. Ties, cuff-links . . . and shoes?’

Mr Benedict smiled a lot. He walked around in circles. Harper felt dizzy watching him.

‘Miss Cathy?’

‘You are the master, Mr Benedict. English suits perhaps deserve English shoes?’

Mr Benedict smiled. ‘A girl after my own heart, yes. English shoes . . . Church’s, and I think we have some from Lob. Two pairs of Oxfords, a pair of brogues, a burgundy derby. And your watch, sir?’

Harper looked at Benedict.

‘Your watch?’

Harper shook his head. ‘I have one somewhere, tend not to wear it.’

Mr Benedict nodded understandingly, an expression perhaps suited to someone recovering from a serious illness.

‘Something understated I think. Breitling and Rolex . . . no, too showy. Cartier?’ Mr Benedict shook his head. ‘Omega,’ he said. ‘I think a simple black-face Seamaster.’

He stood back. ‘What do you say, Miss Cathy?’

‘I say you’re a genius, Mr Benedict, no-one like you in the world. I think when you’re done he’s going to look like—’

‘Yes,’ Benedict interjected. ‘He’s going to look just like him.’

‘Sonny Bernstein,’ Walt Freiberg said. He stood at the desk in the office behind Benedict’s fitting room. He held the telephone receiver tight, cigarette in his hand which had burned down to nothing at all. ‘You’re gonna make some calls. Call everyone you know down there. Start something going, whatever the hell you like. Make him a player.’

Freiberg paused, raised the cigarette to his lips. Saw it had burned down to the filter, dropped it in the ashtray and reached into his jacket pocket for the pack.

‘Yes . . . Lenny Bernstein’s son. Marcus’s people—’

Freiberg paused.

‘Not a fucking hope. This is where it stops. Anyone calls, anyone says a thing, you either know nothing or you heard something and it wasn’t good. Tell them Sonny Bernstein is a name, that’s all. He’s a name, has people, his own crew, okay?’

Takes a cigarette from the pack.

‘No-one’s gonna come down there, believe me. This is what I need. This is a thing I need you to do for me. You got to pay some people then I’ll take care of it. Need enough people to be onto this to make it hold up for a week or so, that’s all.’

A moment’s silence.

‘Good enough. Call me if there’s anything you need.’

Freiberg hung up, stood motionless, and then reached for his lighter and lit the cigarette.

‘An overdose?’

Evelyn Sawyer leaned back and smiled; it was the smile of someone viewing something with the measured slant of hindsight. ‘You believe Marilyn committed suicide? That she took all those Nembutal and chloral hydrate tablets herself?’

Duchaunak shook his head. ‘No, I don’t believe she did Mrs Sawyer.’

‘Right,’ Evelyn said drily, matter-of-factly. ‘I think you could possibly consider Anne Harper’s suicide in a similar light.’

‘She was murdered?’

Evelyn leaned forward, took another cigarette from the packet. ‘I wouldn’t say she was murdered, Detective.’

‘Then what? What
would
you say?’

There was silence for a moment. The tension between them was hair-trigger sensitive.

‘I would say that there was perhaps something that could have been done to prevent such an outcome, and that the
something
wasn’t done.’

‘There was someone there when she took—’

‘Seconal I believe,’ Evelyn Sawyer said. ‘Something like that.’

‘But why?’ Duchaunak asked. ‘How old was she?’

‘When she died she was all of thirty-two,’ Evelyn said. ‘Twelfth October 1975, a Sunday.’

Duchaunak shook his head, somewhat disbelieving. ‘I don’t get why she would want to end her life. I don’t get—’

‘Get what, Detective? How there can be two suicides in the same family so close together?’

Duchaunak didn’t reply. He was struggling to focus his thoughts.

‘Garrett, my husband . . . he died nearly five years later in August of 1980. He died upstairs, right above where you’re
sitting now. There was no great similarity between their deaths, Detective, my sister and my husband, but nevertheless there was one specific common denominator—’

‘Edward Bernstein,’ Duchaunak said.

Evelyn didn’t reply.

Duchaunak leaned forward, an expression of concern on his face. ‘Does John know how his mother died?’

Evelyn looked back at Duchaunak with a distant and unemotional expression.

‘Mrs Sawyer?’

Evelyn Sawyer closed her eyes. Duchaunak believed for a moment she was suppressing tears, but when she opened her eyes once more there was nothing to indicate any real reaction to his question.

‘You ever do something, and only years later realize that what you thought you’d done for the best is now going to cause all manner of difficulty?’

Duchaunak nodded. ‘Sure I have.’

Evelyn lowered her head, then turned and looked towards the hallway. ‘That was one of those, Detective . . . that was definitely one of those.’

‘What does he think?’ Duchaunak asked.

‘I don’t know what he thinks now, we haven’t spoken of it for years. He was seven years old, and I don’t know that he has any real memory of what she was like. He doesn’t ask about her, and I haven’t offered any information.’

‘But originally, when it happened, what did you tell him?’

‘I told him she had died, simply that. When he was a little older, when he understood enough to realize that people died in different ways, he asked
how
she’d died. I told him it was pneumonia. There was an outbreak in New York at the time and a half dozen cases were fatal. That’s what I told him, and as far as I know that’s what he’s believed to this day.’

Duchaunak leaned back in the chair. ‘He may find out now,’ he said quietly.

Evelyn nodded. ‘He may.’

‘And then you become the person who didn’t tell him about his father, and then lied to him about the death of his mother.’

Evelyn looked at Duchaunak. Her expression was both challenging and defiant.

Duchaunak raised his hand. ‘You don’t get an opinion out of me, Mrs Sawyer,’ he said. ‘I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve decided something and then realized in hindsight that there could have been a better way. This isn’t a matter of me coming here to make an issue out of this or even to judge the situation . . . I’m here because I’m concerned about who John Harper is associating with.’

‘Does it upset you?’

‘What?’

‘The fact that Edward Bernstein might die . . . that he might in fact be dead even as we sit here?’

‘Does it upset me? Why would you think it would upset me?’

‘That his death appears to be the result of a random shooting in a liquor store?’

‘As opposed to?’

Evelyn smiled. ‘We’re not children, Detective. I know why you’re here, and I can tell from the way you ask these questions that there is an awful lot more going on than you’re saying.’ She paused. She looked right through Duchaunak. He felt hollow and insincere. ‘How long have you been after him?’ she asked.

‘Is it that obvious?’

Evelyn Sawyer nodded.

Duchaunak shrugged. ‘Seven years, a little more perhaps.’

Evelyn looked away, thoughtful for a moment. ‘End of ’97,’ she said.

‘November.’

‘A specific incident?’

Duchaunak didn’t reply.

‘Did someone die? Is that what happened?’

Duchaunak smiled and shook his head. ‘No, Mrs Sawyer, noone died.’

‘That you know about?’

‘That I know about, yes.’

‘You have some persistence, eh?’

‘I do.’

‘And you have the full backing and support of your department?’

Duchaunak paused. ‘I have as much backing and support as I need.’

‘Which means that this is more than official duty, perhaps something of a personal crusade, Detective?’

‘Edward Bernstein is—’

Evelyn Sawyer smiled. ‘My turn to interrupt you,’ she said. ‘We both know all too well who Edward Bernstein is. I don’t need an explanation of either the man or his past. Disassociating myself from him and his business colleagues was not the easiest thing in the world—’

‘I can imagine,’ Duchaunak interjected.