Play It Again (7 page)

He saw their reaction. They didn’t believe he could live in the same galaxy as a mother like Belle Fontaine and never see her.

“Well, where were you the night she was killed, and who can verify it?” Bertelli asked. “We don’t need to know the identity of your client right away.”

R.J. thought about the prospect of using Burkette’s bodyguard as an alibi witness. He laughed. Kates’s face pulsed like an angry boil.

“This ain’t getting us nowhere,” he said. “Take him downstairs and reason with him. You don’t get his cooperation we’ll go to the nearest judge and get a warrant.”

R.J. looked at Kates. “A warrant for what?”

“For your apartment, your office, and your rectal cavity before I’m through with you. Now get him outta here!”

CHAPTER 8

“So you see how it is,” said Bertelli, fanning his mouth as he moved a chunk of hot pizza from one cheek to the other. They had been discussing the case and the pressure on the investigators. “
Gesu!
Almost burned the tongue outta my mouth, that fuckin’ cheese. Careful how you bite into that thing.”

R.J. said, “You’re different when you’re on your own
time.”

“Sure, who isn’t? You know. I use that college talk around Kates and his bunch of asshole-suckers. Keeps ’em off balance, makes ’em listen to me. I even red-pencil the Looie’s grammar in his memos—drives him up the fuckin’ wall.”

They laughed, and R.J. began to relax. He looked around the crowded neighborhood tavern. Ippolito’s. It looked like a place where a hit man walks in the back door and whacks a godfather all over his linguine and clam sauce. The rain had stopped, and the Bronx sidewalk swarmed with a late-lunch crowd.

“I been coming here since I was a kid,” Bertelli said. “My uncle used to wait tables in the main dining room.”

“Made a fortune on the ponies and retired to Miami Beach?” suggested R.J.

Bertelli shrugged. “Drowned when he was forty.”

“Couldn’t swim?”

“Not with a grand piano tied to his neck.”

R.J. laughed. “You’re a cop, and a wop, and a dandy, but you’re okay. What do you want to hear from me? I didn’t kill her.”

The detective wiped his mouth with a linen napkin. “I didn’t think you did.”

Bertelli’s nails were manicured, hair immaculately styled. Eyes and mouth a romance novelist would call sensual. Not handsome, but there was a kinetic aura about him.

“Kates and Boggs do,” R.J. said, wondering how far he could be trusted.

“Boggs is an asshole,” said Bertelli. “Wants people to think he’s the strong silent type. You know, Dirty Harry. He’s not, he’s just stupid.”

R.J. grinned sourly. “The lieutenant’s not stupid.”

“No, Fred’s smart. And he’s mean.”

“And dirty?”

Bertelli’s eyebrows shot up. “Whoa.”

“Okay, let that go. But if you want me to cooperate, it’s gotta work both ways. What’ve you guys come up with besides what’s in the news?”

Bertelli sighed. “Not a hell of a lot, and that’s a fact.”

“Witnesses?”

“An old couple in the next room, deaf and dumb.”

“Prints?”

“Plenty. Good ones too. Palms, feet, tits ’n’ ass. Sorry, I don’t mean to make light of this. But they all match up with the
victims—and a couple of our schmucks working the crime scene. Nothing on a possible perp.”

“Physical evidence?”

Bertelli shook his head. “That’s the funny thing about the crime scene. Too neat, too tidy for a murder. It looked”—He gestured with his hands—“I don’t know. Like it was staged. Bodies arranged just so.” He shuddered. “Creepy. Anyway, no hairs, no fibers, no shell casings. Nothing.”

“No shell casings?”

Bertelli nodded. “What kind of guns you own?” he asked. “We knew about that goddamn cannon you carry. Got any other pieces around the office?”

“Old army .45, couple .22s, and a .38 Smith & Wesson. All legal and accounted for. What’d the shooter use?”

“I shouldn’t be talking so much. A .38.”

“Guess that does make me a suspect.”

“Aw, you know. Not really, but it’s neater if we can check out your piece.”

“Well, I don’t know. No offense, but I don’t think I want your co-workers parading through my office and fooling with my guns. They might shoot my secretary.”

“We can get a warrant.”

“Sure, Kates would love to have an excuse to open up my files.”

“I’m not Lieutenant Kates, R.J. And I don’t wanna open your files. I just want to catch a killer.”

R.J. started to speak, but Bertelli raised a finger and smiled, gave his head a half shake to show he wasn’t done talking yet. “Now, I’m a cop, R.J. I gotta play by the rules, least as long as the Looie is breathin’ down my neck. I know you didn’t kill anybody, and it’s a waste of time chasing after you like you did.

“So what I gotta do is cross you off the lieutenant’s list as quick as possible,
capish
? And that way I can knock off alla this
stronzo
and get down to catching whoever did this thing. We on the same level here?”

R.J. almost had to laugh. The guy was so smooth and sincere, with those deep brown eyes. He’d go far in the Department, if R.J. was any judge.

“All right, Jesus. You should sell time-share condos, Angelo. Just say when, I’ll tell my girl at the office to turn it over.”

Bertelli smiled. “Thanks, man. I mean that.”

“That’s what good citizens are for.”

They finished their pizza and Bertelli ordered another beer. R.J. was drinking coffee. When the waitress left, she smiled at Bertelli and smoothed her uniform over her hips as if it were a sequined gown.

“Jesus Christ,” said R.J. “How do you
do
that?”

Bertelli shrugged it off with one of those Italian vowel sounds that mean so much. “Ehh,” he said. “You know, your mother was really something. I seen every picture she ever made. And I saw her on Broadway three years ago in that musical. Man… She was really…” He trickled to a stop, his olive complexion flushing with embarrassment.

“It was the legs,” R.J. said.

“What about your stepfather? What was their relationship after the divorce?”

“They were only together a couple of years. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

“Not since you went off to college.”

R.J. gave him a look. “You know a lot about me.”

Bertelli shrugged. “I been boning up. Truth is, I’ve been looking forward to meeting you since Kates put me on the case. You got quite a reputation.”

“Don’t believe everything the cops tell you.”

“You went to law school,” Bertelli said.

“No degree. I was expelled for cheating.”

“I know. Cheating with the dean’s wife.”

They laughed together.

“Hey, why are you doing this marital proctology. You know people, you could do a lot of business with the Hollywood crowd. Even right here on Broadway.”

“Not my cup of hemlock.”

“What about TV? Ever met a producer named Casey Wingate?”

R.J. hesitated. “Wingate?” He shrugged. “I never heard of him.”

He could tell Bertelli wasn’t convinced, but the detective didn’t push it. Which left R.J. wondering just what he had in mind and how Casey Wingate figured into it. When he got back to his office he’d have Wanda run a quick backgrounder on the producer.

“He the sporting type, your stepfather? You know, guns, shooting?”

R.J. was jostled by the quick shift in focus; he frowned over long-abandoned memories. “He hunts birds down south somewhere, bigger game out west. That’s all I know. More than I want to know.”

Bertelli pondered his next question. “Think he could have killed your mother?”

R.J. was ready for it. “Sure. Anybody can kill, given the right circumstances. Or the wrong ones.”

“You think he did it?”

“No.”

“Neither do I.”

“You go at your work by elimination. Ever catch anybody?”

The detective smiled. “Helps to know who didn’t do it.”

R.J. sipped some coffee. “Okay, Angelo. Now tell me, why is Kates so determined to pin my mother’s death on me?”

Bertelli shook his head. “I don’t think he much likes you, R.J.”

R.J. laughed. “No shit.”

“Besides, you got the best motive. A few million smackeroos ain’t small antipasto.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Bertelli looked at him like he was stupid. He was starting to feel like maybe he was.

“You really don’t know? How close were you to your mother?”

The question stung, and it showed. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“She left everything to you, bucko. At least that’s the way I see it. No brothers or sisters, your father’s long dead, she was divorced from your stepfather. No companions we know about. I haven’t seen the will, of course. Haven’t you talked to Jackson Yates?”

“How do you know about him?”

“Called us the morning after your mother was murdered. She’d been working on a TV piece about her career with that producer, Casey Wingate. Yates was handling the legal aspects.”

R.J. remembered the letter from the lawyer and fished it out of his pocket.

“Read it,” said Bertelli. “I’ll get us some more coffee.”

CHAPTER 9

Bertelli dropped him off at an address on West 33d Street. “I’ll send somebody for your piece, R.J.,” he said as R.J. opened the door. Then Bertelli winked. “Or do I gotta call you ‘Mr. Brooks,’ now you’re rich?”

“Knock it off, Angelo,” R.J. said. He was in no mood for that sort of kidding. “Talk to you later,” he said, and he slid out of the car.

Bertelli chuckled as he pulled away into traffic.

The building was a massive turn-of-the century thing with gingerbread all over the outside. Large gold letters on the door
said INDEPENDENT PRODUCTIONS, INC.

The lobby was deserted except for a uniformed guard with a bank of telephones and a closed-circuit TV monitor behind his desk. He gave R.J.’s bruised face a suspicious look but called upstairs on the strength of his business card.

R.J. rode up in the elevator alone, pondering the contents of the letter from Jackson Yates. His mother had named R.J. the executor of her estate. And Bertelli had guessed right: He
was also the primary beneficiary. According to Yates it was up to R.J. to settle all probate matters as expeditiously as possible. R.J. had phoned him from the restaurant and made an appointment for the following afternoon.

Upstairs, R.J. stepped out into a floorplan that resembled the shell of an uncompleted warehouse. The shooting studio was in the center, bound by corridors on three sides that serviced a warren of cluttered cubbyholes. The dress code favored jeans and sweaters, loafers and desert boots. The on-camera people were the only ones who dressed for the public.

A girl wearing an oversized sweater and glasses led him to an office with a hand-lettered sign on the door: CASEY WINGATE
.

An attractive young woman stood in the middle of the room flipping through a file, a pencil clamped between her teeth. Her auburn hair framed a face that was both sensual and hard-edged, a face that said Private School, Smart and Ambitious. She looked up at him and raised a perfect eyebrow.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m looking for Casey Wingate.”

“I’m Wingate.”

“Say what?”

She slid the pencil out of her mouth and into a mass of hair, notching it behind her ear. “I’m Casey Wingate.” She looked him over, taking in the bruised face and battered trench coat with a slight smile. “And I know who you are, Mr. Brooks.”

“Well,” he said, sliding the business card back into his coat pocket, “I’ll be damned.”

“You may well be.”

He had the feeling she didn’t like him much. “You called my office this morning,” he said.

“And yesterday, and the day before.”

“I’ve been out.”

She gave him a scornful half-smile and closed the file. R.J. watched as she went to her desk. Probably taller than him in
high heels. But today she wore sensible flats with a knee-length wool skirt. She was, he suspected, routinely looked at by men in restaurants, whistled at by hardhats on the sidewalk. A woman used to male attention and not bothered by it.

No wedding or engagement ring, but that didn’t mean much these days. Nails long and tapered, painted with clear polish. He liked that.

“Take off your coat. Sit down,” she said, and then her manner softened. “I’m sorry about your mother. I didn’t know her well, but I liked her. I think we might have become friends.”

“I didn’t even know she was in town.”

“There’s a lot you didn’t know about her.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She ignored the question. “I know why you’re here. The tapes. I’ve been looking for you because you play a role in the piece I’ve been working on. We need to understand each other.”