Slow Burn (30 page)

Having now
dumped the neck brothers twice, I had to operate from the assumption that
they'd wired my car so it could be tracked from outer space. Since whatever
advantage I hoped to gain from cooperation would be lost if the tails pinched
us before we could surrender, I needed to lose them one more time. I felt sure
they'd understand.

The best I
could manage in the way of a disguise was a pair of gray jeans, a black
Harley-Davidson T-shirt and a "matching baseball cap that read "Smoke
'Em Till the Wheels -Fall Off." I put on a- pair of aviator shades and
checked myself in the mirror - Sleazy Rider. It wasn't much, but I'd spent the
past few days in a suit and was hoping the change in style would be sufficient
cover.

It worked like
a charm. I walked right past one of the indoor dicks pretending to read the
paper, slithered out the Seneca Street door and hailed a cab. I handed the
Somali cabdriver a twenty and told him to drive north and then east and then
back to the south. Ten blocks and four turns later, I was satisfied that we
didn't have any company and started giving him real directions.

In the deep
shade of the overpass, he pulled the cab half up onto the sidewalk. I waved
another twenty at him.

"You can
keep this one and another if you'll wait here until I get back. It's going to
be a few minutes. Okay?"

He seemed to
like that idea. I decided to risk it.

Ten minutes
later, when George, Norman and I emerged from the thicket, he was still there,
bopping around in the seat to the percussive beat of a Don Pullen piano solo.
We piled into the back.

"King County jail," I said to the driver.

Ten minutes in,
I knew for sure. The cops didn't have shit. They didn't know any more than I
did. Maybe less. It could have been my imagination, but a sense of urgency
seemed to have been added to the mix since the last time I'd been with these
two. It wasn't just that they were running the good cop-bad cop routine on me
again, or that Lobdell was ranging around the front of the room like the
Tasmanian devil. I was betting he regularly practiced this routine in front of
the mirror. No, these two were under serious pressure.

Martha Lawrence
stood with her back leaning into the comer. She held her chin as she watched
Detective Lobdell prowl the area in front of the door. Apparently, it was her
day to be the good cop.

"You asked
me to be a responsible citizen," I said. "And that's what I did. I
got a line on Mr. Paris's whereabouts, found him and immediately delivered him
right to your door."

"Responsible
citizens have no need to repeatedly evade police surveillance," Lobdell snapped.
I opted for full-scale obnoxious. A la Spaulding Meyerson.

"Decently
trained officers couldn't be dumped."

Lobdell began
to sputter and come my way. Lawrence bounced herself off the wall, blocking his
path. She moved toward me and spoke.

"I'm still
unclear, Mr. Waterman, as to precisely what it is you think you have to trade
and what it is you expect in return. I assure you, your participation is not
prerequisite to the successful outcome of this investigation."

"I'm
offering you my twenty years of expertise." I held up both hands. "I
know this is going to come as quite a shock to you, Lawrence, but in spite of
my appalling lack of credentials, I just might have a notion or two about this
case that would be of use to you."

Lobdell jumped
in. "If you have information pertinent to this investigation—"

"All the
information I have, you have, Lobdell. It's not information I'm peddling. It's
questions. If s surmises. Inconsistencies I've noticed." I shrugged and
folded my arms across my chest.

"And what
is it you expect in return for these rare and invaluable insights?"

"SPD's got
eight members of my team. I want them released."

Lobdell hacked
out a dry laugh. "You sure you don't want a blow job while you're at
it?"

"Why,
Rob," I said in mock surprise, "is it Friday night already?"

He came
barreling around the table, his hands clenched into tight red fists.

I stood up.
"Come on," I egged him. "I'll kick your scrawny ass all over
this room, you little piece of shit."

If Lawrence hadn't been there, I do believe he would have gone for it. Too bad. She
hip-checked him and again got in between us.

"Why don't
you let me handle this, Rob?"

"Yeah,
Rob," I said. "Why don't you let her handle it?"

Bug-eyed, he
yelled over her shoulder, "You smart-ass son of a . . ."

It took her
another full minute to get him out the door. I sat down and tried to listen
through the door, but they took it down the hall.

On
my way over
to the D.A.'s office, I'd left Normal at the jail. He hadn't liked it
one bit,
but eventually I talked him into it. "Nobody else can do it, Norman.
They've got everybody except Harold and Ralph, and I don't know where
those two
are. Ifs all up to you, buddy."

He shook his
big head from side to side. "The whitecoats are waiting for me in
there," he said. "They'll pin me to a corkboard."

"No, no,
no," I said. "You've got a get-out-of-jail card." "What
card?"

I produced his
bail ticket. "This one right here."

George
jumped
in and tipped the .balance. "You'd want us to do it for you, Normal, if
it was you in there. Just go in and visit as many of them as they'll
let ya.
Tell 'em we ain't forgot about 'em. Tell 'em to tell the cops anything
they
want to know. that’s it. Then you walk out."

George and I
stood on the sidewalk and watched Norman force himself to step through the
front doors of the Corrections Building.

"I'm
givin' eight to five they keep his big ass," said George with a smirk.

"He's the
only one of them without an outstanding warrant of some sort. As long as he
doesn't go bananas, he ought to be okay." I didn't really believe it,
though.

I threw an arm
around the old man's shoulders. "Question," I said.

He squirmed to
escape, but I held him fast.

"The other
day down with Piggy and Roscoe . . ."

"Don't
remind me," he muttered. "Let me—"

"Remember
how you told me about when you got in the elevator to go upstairs to empty the
rest of the mini-bar . . ."

His eyes rolled
in his head like those of a spooked horse.

"That
story about Rickey Ray and Miss Atherton . . ." He pulled himself free of
my grasp and backed away. "You sayin' I lied?"

George did a
world-class righteous indignation. Unfortunately, he generally did it only when
he was stone-guilty. My hopes dropped a notch and a half, but I continued
anyway.

"I don't
give a shit about the booze, George. Ifs the other part, the part about Rickey
Ray and Miss Atherton, and the elevator and all that."

"Screw
you, Leo. You leave me to rot down there with Piggy and Roscoe . . . and then
what . . . you call me a har? You must . . ."

I let him
ramble. He'd had a rough couple of days, and besides, Dr. Lorna said it was
good for folks to vent. When he finished, I said, "You sure it was
two-thirty?"

"There's a
goddamn clock in the elevator, Sherlock."

He began
smoothing his battered suit around his body.

"Why'd
they get off on eight and then jump back on?"

"How in
hell am I supposed to know? Why don't you ask them, for Chrissake? Must be they
pushed the wrong friggin' button."

"After you
got off on nine, which way did they go, up or down?"

"Up."

"You
sure?"

"No,
Sherlock, I'm making this shit up," he said disgustedly. "They had
one of them fancy keys for the private floors. Like the one you got. I seen 'em
stick it in the box."

I started up
the hill toward Fifth Avenue.

"Come
on," I said to George.

"Where we
going?"

"I'm going
to turn you in to the D.A."

Needless to
say, George was thrilled.

The click of
the door pulled me back to the present.

Lawrence
stepped into the room and closed the
door softly behind her.

"Not that
it matters, Mr. Waterman, but just for the record, the release of your friends
is not within my power." "It could be arranged."

"Not with
that collection of warrants. I'm told there are upward of twenty charges
pending on that group of—"

"It's all
crap. Take a look at the stuff they're charged with. Failure to disperse.
Blocking a public thoroughfare. Public urination. Public drunkenness. And then
they don't appear, so the city charges them with Failure to Appear and when
they fail to appear for that, they get charged with Failure to Appear on a
Failure to Appear. That stuff's just the price of being poor and homeless.
Don't kid yourself. In America, it's illegal to be poor and homeless; somebody
just made a rule that we're not allowed to talk about it, is all."

When she failed
to speak, I decided to take the initiative.

"You know,
Lawrence," I began, "a major theme with you seems to be this thing
about earning one's way as opposed to working the system. I think I can give
you a way to earn a little redemption for yourself. What do you say?"

She forced a
brittle laugh up from her chest. "What makes you think for a minute that I
require any redemption?"

"Just a
rumor I heard."

I let it go at
that and checked my cuticles.

"Let/s
have it," she said.

"Do we
have a deal?"

"It will
depend on what you have."

"I need to
know a few things first."

She looked me
over.

"If you're
just fishing, Waterman, I'll put you in jail and keep you there for the
weekend, I swear to God. Jed James or no Jed James, I'll keep you locked up
until ten o'clock Monday morning."

"Did you
guys find a murder weapon?"

"No."

"Did you
find Reese's gun?"

"Assuming
Reese had a gun," she said. "Your account is all we have regarding
Mr. Reese and a firearm."

"Did
you?" "No."

"Are the
fourteenth-floor comings and goings confirmed by the security tape?"
"Yes."

"Did you
get independent confirmation that Tolliver and company were actually at a
movie?"

"A mere
nineteen people in the Broadway market and the ticket vendor who sold Mr.
Tolliver the tickets. Even by Broadway's rather Gothic standards, Mr. Tolliver
is quite memorable."

"What
about the women?"

"Mr.
Tolliver tends to hold the eye."

She had a
point.

"What
about in the theater itself?"

"Perhaps
you haven't been in a while, Mr. Waterman, but ifs rather dark at the movies
these days." "I need to see the tape." "What tape?"

"The hotel
surveillance tape."

"I just
told you, the tape conforms to the deposed departure and arrival times. We made
a copy and spliced together a sequential record of the comings and goings. The
times are right there on the videotape. I have a copy in my office if you'd
like—"

"No. I
want to see the other part of the tape."

"What
other part of the tape?"

"The part
where nobody is coming and going."

"You want
to look at film of an empty hallway?"

"I'm
easily amused."

"Not
possible."

"Why
not?"

"Because
we returned the original film canister to the hotel." She read my
expression. "It was enormous." She held her arms in a giant hoop over
her head.

"I sure
hope they haven't recorded over it yet."

"Why would
that matter?"

I told her what
I thought. Halfway through, she reached over on the table in front of her and
began to leaf through a document.

"Did
George remember to tell you that?"

She pointed at
the papers in her hand. "Yes, right here."

"Don't you
see, Lawrence? It's like the Sherlock Holmes thing when he figures it out because
the dog didn't bark, only here the dog is an elevator button."

"Assuming
that Mr. Paris has his facts straight."

"I'm
betting he does."

"And this
entire elevator button theory of yours hangs on Mr. Paris's word."
"So far," I admitted.

She was shaking
her head. "I'm a lawyer, Waterman. I look at things like a lawyer. You
tell me that this whole scenario hinges on Mr. Paris, and I begin to picture
Mr. Paris on the witness stand, and I can tell you right now, it's not a pretty
sight."