One False Move: A Myron Bolitar Novel (22 page)

Wickner mustered up a smile. “You’re old enough to call me Eli now, Myron.”

Myron tried it. “How are you, Eli?”

“Not bad, Myron. Retirement’s treating me good. I fish a lot. How about yourself? Saw you try that comeback. Sorry it didn’t work out.”

“Thanks,” Myron said.

“You still living at your folks’?”

“No, I’m in the city now.”

“So what brings you out this way? Visiting the family?”

Myron shook his head. “I wanted to talk to you.”

They drifted about ten feet from the entourage. No one followed, their body language working as a force field.

“What about?” Wickner asked.

“An old case.”

“A police case?”

Myron looked at him steadily. “Yes.”

“And what case would that be?”

“The death of Elizabeth Bradford.”

To Wickner’s credit, he skipped the surprise act. He took the baseball cap off his head and smoothed down the gray flyaways. Then he put the cap back on. “What do you want to know?”

“The bribe,” Myron said. “Did the Bradfords pay you off in a lump sum, or did they set up a more long-term payout with interest and stuff?”

Wickner took the blow but stayed upright. There was a quiver on the right side of his mouth like he was fighting back tears. “I don’t much like your attitude, son.”

“Tough.” Myron knew that his only chance here was a direct, no-barred frontal assault; dancing around
or subtle interrogation would get him squat. “You’ve got two choices, Eli. Choice one, you tell me what really happened to Elizabeth Bradford and I try to keep your name out of it. Choice two, I start screaming to the papers about a police cover-up and destroy your reputation.” Myron gestured to the field. “By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be lucky to hang out in the Eli Wickner Urinal.”

Wickner turned away. Myron could see his shoulders rising and falling with the labored breaths. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Myron hesitated a beat. Then he kept his voice soft. “What happened to you, Eli?”

“What?”

“I used to look up to you,” Myron said. “I used to care what you thought.”

The words struck home. Wickner’s shoulders began to hitch a bit. He kept his face low. Myron waited. Wickner finally turned to face him. The rawhide skin looked drier now, sapped, more brittle. He was working up to saying something. Myron gave him space and waited.

From behind him Myron felt a large hand squeeze his shoulder.

“There a problem here?”

Myron spun around. The hand belonged to Chief of Detectives Roy Pomeranz, the musclehead who used to be Wickner’s partner. Pomeranz wore a white T-shirt and white shorts that rode so high it looked like someone was giving him a power wedgie. He still had the he-man physique, but he was totally bald now, his head completely smooth as though waxed.

“Get your hand off my shoulder,” Myron said.

Pomeranz ignored the request. “Everything okay here?”

Wickner spoke up. “We were just talking, Roy.”

“Talking about what?”

Myron handled that one. “About you.”

Big smile. “Oh?”

Myron pointed. “We were just saying that if you got a hoop earring, you’d be the spitting image of Mr. Clean.”

Pomeranz’s smile vanished.

Myron lowered his voice. “I’ll tell you one more time. Move your hand, or I’ll break it in three places.” Note the three-places reference. Specific threats were always the best. He’d learned that from Win.

Pomeranz kept the hand there a second or two longer—to keep face—and then he slid it off.

“You’re still on the force, Roy,” Myron said. “So you got the most to lose. But I’ll make you the same offer. Tell me what you know about the Bradford case, and I’ll try to keep your name out of it.”

Pomeranz smirked at him. “Funny thing, Bolitar.”

“What?”

“You digging into all this in an election year.”

“Your point being?”

“You’re working for Davison,” he said. “You’re just trying to drag down a good man like Arthur Bradford for that scum sucker.”

Davison was Bradford’s opponent for governor. “Sorry, Roy, that’s incorrect.”

“Yeah? Well, either way, Elizabeth Bradford died from a fall.”

“Who pushed her?”

“It was an accident.”

“Someone accidentally pushed her?”

“Nobody pushed her, wise guy. It was late at night. The terrace was slippery. She fell. It was an accident. Happens all the time.”

“Really? How many deaths has Livingston had in the past twenty years where a woman accidentally fell to her death from her own balcony?”

Pomeranz crossed his arms over his chest. His biceps bulged like baseballs. The guy was doing one of those subtle flexes, where you’re trying to look like you’re not flexing. “Accidents in the home. You know how many people die in home accidents every year?”

“No, Roy, how many?”

Pomeranz didn’t answer. Big surprise. He met Wickner’s eye. Wickner remained silent. He looked vaguely ashamed.

Myron decided to go for the whammy. “And what about the assault on Anita Slaughter? Was that an accident too?”

Stunned silence. Wickner involuntarily groaned a little. Pomeranz’s thigh-thick arms dropped back to his sides.

Pomeranz said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do, Roy. Eli even alluded to it in the police file.”

Angry smirk. “You mean the file that Francine Neagly stole from the records room?”

“She didn’t steal it, Roy. She looked at it.”

Pomeranz smiled slowly. “Well, it’s missing now.
She had it last. We firmly believe that Officer Neagly stole it.”

Myron shook his head. “Not that easy, Roy. You can hide that file. You can even hide the file on the Anita Slaughter assault. But I already got my hand on the hospital file. From St. Barnabas. They keep records, Roy.”

More stunned looks. It was a bluff. But it was a good one. And it drew blood.

Pomeranz leaned very close to Myron, his breath reeking of a poorly digested meal. He kept his voice low. “You’re poking your nose where it don’t belong.”

Myron nodded. “And you’re not brushing after every meal.”

“I’m not going to let you drag down a good man with false innuendos.”

“Innuendos,” Myron repeated. “You been listening to vocabulary tapes in the squad car, Roy? Do the taxpayers know about this?”

“You’re playing a dangerous game, funny man.”

“Oooo, I’m so scared.” When short a comeback, fall back on the classics.

“I don’t have to start with you,” Pomeranz said. He leaned back a bit, the smile returning. “I got Francine Neagly.”

“What about her?”

“She had no business with that file. We believe that someone in Davison’s campaign—probably you, Bolitar—paid her to steal it. To gather any information that can be used in a distorted fashion to hurt Arthur Bradford.”

Myron frowned. “Distorted fashion?”

“You think I won’t do it?”

“I don’t even know what that means. Distorted fashion? Was that on one of your tapes?”

Pomeranz stuck a finger in Myron’s face. “You think I won’t suspend her sorry ass and ruin her career?”

“Pomeranz, not even you can be that dumb. You ever heard of Jessica Culver?”

The finger came down. “She’s your girlfriend, right?” Pomeranz said. “She’s a writer or something.”

“A big writer,” Myron said. “Very well respected. And you know what she would love to do? A big expose on sexism in police departments. You do anything to Francine Neagly, you so much as demote her or give her one shit detail or breathe on her between meals, and I promise you that when Jessica gets done, you’ll make Bob Packwood look like Betty Friedan.”

Pomeranz looked confused. Probably didn’t know who Betty Friedan was. Maybe he should have said Gloria Steinem. To his credit, Pomeranz took his time. He fought for recovery, offering up an almost sweet smile.

“Okay,” he said, “so it’s the cold war all over again. I can nuke you, you can nuke me. It’s a stalemate.”

“Wrong, Roy. You’re the one with the job, the family, the rep, and maybe a looming jail term. Me, I got nothing to lose.”

“You can’t be serious. You’re dealing with the most powerful family in New Jersey. Do you really think you’ve got nothing to lose?”

Myron shrugged. “I’m also crazy,” he said. “Or to put it another way, my mind works in a distorted fashion.”

Pomeranz looked over at Wickner. Wickner looked back. There was a crack of the bat. The crowd got to its feet. The ball hit the fence. “Go, Billy!” Billy rounded second and slid into third.

Pomeranz walked away without another word.

Myron looked at Wickner for a long time. “Are you a total sham, Detective?”

Wickner said nothing.

“When I was eleven, you spoke to my fifth-grade class and we all thought you were the coolest guy we’d ever seen. I used to look for you at games. I used to want your approval. But you’re just a lie.”

Wickner kept his eyes on the field. “Let it go, Myron.”

“I can’t.”

“Davison is a scum. He’s not worth it.”

“I’m not working for Davison. I’m working for Anita Slaughter’s daughter.”

Wickner kept his eyes on the field. His mouth was set, but Myron could see the tremor starting back up in the corner of his mouth. “All you’re going to do is hurt a lot of people.”

“What happened to Elizabeth Bradford?”

“She fell,” he said. “That’s all.”

“I’m not going to stop digging,” Myron said.

Wickner adjusted his cap again and began to walk away. “Then more people are going to die.”

There was no threat in his tone, just the stilted, pained timber of inevitability.

When Myron headed back to his car, the two goons from Bradford Farms were waiting for him. The big one and the skinny, older guy. The skinny guy wore long sleeves so Myron could not see if there was a snake tattoo, but the two looked right from Mabel Edwards’s description.

Myron felt something inside him start to simmer.

The big guy was show. Probably a wrestler in high school. Maybe a bouncer at a local bar. He thought he was tough; Myron knew that he would be no problem. The skinny, older guy was hardly a formidable physical specimen. He looked like an aged version of the puny guy who gets the sand kicked on him in the old Charles Atlas cartoon. But the face was so ferretlike, the eyes so beady that he made you pause. Myron knew better than to judge on appearance, but this guy’s face was simply too thin and too pointed and too cruel.

Myron spoke to the Skinny Ferret. “Can I see your tattoo?” Direct approach.

The big guy looked confused, but Skinny Ferret took it all in stride.

“I’m not used to guys using that line on me,” Skinny said.

“Guys,” Myron repeated. “But with your looks, the chicks must be asking all the time.”

If Skinny was offended by the crack, he was laughing his way through it. “So you really want to see the snake?”

Myron shook his head. The snake. The question had been answered. These were the right guys. The big one had punched Mabel Edwards in the eye.

The simmer flicked up a notch.

“So what can I do for you fellas?” Myron said. “You collecting donations for the Kiwanis Club?”

“Yeah,” the big guy said. “Blood donations.”

Myron looked at him. “I’m not a grandmother, tough guy.”

Big said, “Huh?”

Skinny cleared his throat. “Governor-to-be Bradford would like to see you.”

“Governor-to-be?”

The Skinny Ferret shrugged. “Confidence.”

“Nice to see. So why doesn’t he call me?”

“The next governor thought it would be best if we accompanied you.”

“I think I can manage to drive the mile by myself.” Myron looked at the big guy again and spoke slowly. “After all, I’m not a grandmother.”

The big guy sniffed and rolled his neck. “I can still beat you like one.”

“Beat me as you would a grandmother,” Myron said. “Gee, what a guy.”

Myron had read recently about self-help gurus who taught their students to picture themselves successful. Visualize it, and it will happen or some such credo. Myron was not sure, but he knew that it worked in combat. If the chance presents itself, picture how you will attack. Imagine what countermoves your opponent might make and prepare yourself for them. That was what Myron had been doing since Skinny had admitted to the tattoo. Now that he saw that no one was in sight, he struck.

Myron’s knee landed squarely in the big guy’s groin. The big guy made a noise like he was sucking through a straw that still had drops of liquid in it. He folded like an old wallet. Myron pulled out his gun and pointed it at the Skinny Ferret. The big guy’s body melted to the pavement and formed a puddle.

The Skinny Ferret had not moved. He looked slightly amused.

“Wasteful,” Skinny said.

“Yeah,” Myron agreed. “But I feel much better.” He looked at the big guy. “That was for Mabel Edwards.”

Skinny shrugged. Not a care in the world. “So now what?”

“Where’s your car?” Myron asked.

“We were dropped off. We’re supposed to go back to the house with you.”

“I don’t think so.”

The big guy writhed and tried to suck in a breath. Neither standing man cared. Myron put away his gun.