Who Murdered Garson Talmadge (19 page)

Chapter 29

“Oh, Matt,” Clarice said, “you scared me. What are you doing in my place? How did you get in?”

I had surprised Clarice. That’s what I wanted to do. “Your coffeemaker comes on automatically, so I helped myself to a cup. Did you sleep well?”

“Matt. What’s wrong? You seem different. Distant.”

“Tell me about the video tapes?”

“What video tapes?”

“The ones you’ve been taking of yourself with your lovers. This one for example,” I tossed one in the middle of the table. “This one features you and me although you are clearly the star with me in a supporting role. It’s from when you were in my apartment before you and Garson moved in. Apparently, the camera set up is in that big purse you often carry.”

“I’m sorry, Matt. I never meant for you to know.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t. Sit down. We’re going to be here awhile. I want to hear it all.”

“I don’t know if I want to talk about it. Take the one with you and leave.”

“No dice, darling. Filming this stuff without consent can be a crime. Some of these fellows are married, most of them. Perhaps they’ve all been blackmailed.”

“Oh. No. I would never do that. You know me better than that.”

“Like I knew you couldn’t have killed Garson. Like that, you mean?”

“You don’t think that, do you? That I killed Tally?”

“Sit down, drink your coffee and tell me all of it. You only get one pass at it. Get it right or your collection goes to the cops. They can’t get you on murder, but setting up and maybe implementing a blackmail scheme is serious in its own right.”

She sat down. “Garson taught me to do it. He set up the camera for me.”

“Why?”

“He enjoyed watching. It was how he could get hard. Well, how … sometimes.”

“He liked watching you?” I asked while watching her reaction.

“Yes. He got off watching me with other men. … Look, I’m going to need something stronger than this damn coffee.” She got up and went to the refrigerator. When she came back, she had a bottle of red wine and a stemmed glass. “You want some, Matt?”

I held up my cup, “This is fine. Go ahead.”

“That’s it. Tally liked watching and truth be told, it was a turn on knowing I was being filmed. There is no more to the story.”

“What did you do with the films?”

“Like I said, Garson watched them. We both did.”

“Oh, come on. Most of these guys were married. You can’t tell me you didn’t use those films to gain some advantage. Or maybe Garson did.”

“No. He wanted them for his private viewing pleasure. Hey, this isn’t so way out there, you know. People do this. It’s not that uncommon.”

I refilled my coffee and squirmed to rearrange the way I was sitting. “Sure. Folks do it, generally however, they’re filming only themselves. What you’re doing isn’t commonplace.”

“What do you think I would do with them?” She stood up and crossed her arms.

“Oh, you could have blackmailed Lou Johnson who lives above you, no pun intended. He’s loaded and totally intimidated by his wife. He’d pay to keep her from knowing.”

“That’s ridiculous. Tally picked Johnson. Tally wanted to see me with a guy around his own age. He wanted me to do for Johnson what I did for him.”

“Why did you keep them in storage? If Garson enjoyed watching them, why not keep them handy in his bedroom?”

“We did that at first. He watched them constantly. He became obsessed with watching them. Then he would get frustrated and so angry at himself that he would get ill.”

“Angry?”

“He couldn’t perform nearly as frequently as he watched the films. So, they were not accomplishing what I had agreed to do them for. I told him I would not continue doing the films if he didn’t turn them over to me so I could control how often we used them.”

“All right, let’s get back to where we were. You’ve explained Johnson. What about Blackton? He’s married and works real hard at being respectable, and he could afford to pay.”

“Why would I do that, Matt? What was in it for me? Money? I’m smart enough to know that Tally would not live all that much longer.” She took a drink, sat down, then stood up again. “Holy shit, you think I killed my husband. That I faked the letter and gave it to Blackton to discover in his file to get me out from under the charge of murder.” Her voice had risen as she said it. She was angry.

“You have to admit that could be the way it went down.”

“And pretty smart of me, only thing is, I didn’t murder him.”

“You also had Two Dicks in your pocket.”

“Who?”

“Oh, excuse me. Chief of Detectives, Captain Dickson.”

“He’s single. I had no leverage over him.”

“Not unless he had gone all gaga over you.”

“Gaga? Gaga? Now there’s a mature, intelligent word for a writer.”

“Dickson ran from even the idea of knowing you. He’s ambitious. If the department knew he was playing hide the weasel with a murder suspect, his career would have suffered some damage.”

“If you were in Dickson’s shoes, you would have wanted your involvement with a suspect to be known? Of course you wouldn’t. You would have done the same. I went along with him when you brought me to have lunch with him. You set me up for that didn’t you?”

“Yes. And I’m not going to stop until I find out who murdered Garson.”

“And you’ve decided I’m guilty. Is that it?”

“No. But you’re back in the race.”

“But the charges against me were dismissed with prejudice. Brad Fisher tells me that phrase means I can’t be recharged.”

“As to the law, generally speaking, that’s true. However, the D.A. could charge you again if he can get an appeals court to approve it. But, if not, I’m sure the media would love the story.”

“And that’s your plan, Matt?”

“If you did it, and the D.A. doesn’t take it to the higher court, you bet I’ll give it to the media, with the proof. It’s not much, but at least the world would know you as a murderer.”

“And if I didn’t do it?”

“Then I’ll be happy, and I promise you, whoever killed Garson will be sad.”

“How did you know about these tapes?”

“I had you followed.”

“Why?”

“After watching you and Dickson do your little dog and pony show for my benefit, it was obvious you two knew each other well.”

“Will you tell me how you knew?”

“At the restaurant, he pushed the artificial sweetener to you.”

“That’s it? He pushed me sugar?”

“No. Not sugar, the artificial stuff. To do that he had to first move the sugar, he knew you used the artificial. He even knew which of the phony ones you preferred.”

“He could have guessed.”

“No. It was one of those things we do under our conscious level. Seconds later, we aren’t even aware we’ve done it. It was enough to follow you. That led to the storage unit where I found the tapes.”

“I’ll be getting over five million dollars. We could enjoy a grand life together.”

“That’s tempting, my love. You can really pedal a bicycle, but no. I’d tire of sleeping with one eye open.”

“So where do we go from here? What’s next, Matt?”

I got up to refill my coffee, stretch my leg and extend my back, both still sore from stopping a baseball bat. “I need to find out if any of the men in these tapes have been blackmailed. If they have, the court, realizing you had cheated them on murder, will throw the book at you for blackmail. Now, tell me about the audio tapes. What’s the story on those?”

Over the next hour she told me about how she would get Garson liquored up and talking about his weapons deals. I found this pretty easy to accept, for I knew from my own experience this woman had a knack for getting men to talk.

From the few tapes I listened to, I knew she had it all: names, dates, payoffs, government officials, weapons. Whatever Tally had said, she had on those audio tapes.

“In the beginning,” she said, “I just found it interesting, spooky almost. But the more I listened, the more I thought I might need them someday. If Tally ever tried to toss me aside like he did Chantal after she raised his kids, I’d use the audio tapes to threaten him back in line. I was keeping our deal, and I would see to it that Tally was going to hold up his end.

“Over time,” she said, “I realized how amazing his mind was. Even at his advanced age, he remembered such detail without having kept any written records. He had it all. He even remembered the names of the ships that were used to transport the arms. I decided that after he died, I’d use the tapes to get a big time book deal exposing the illegal weapons trade. That’d stop that disgusting business, for a while anyway.”

“And you’d make some good money.”

“What’s wrong with making some dough? I’d like the audio tapes back, Matt. I don’t care about the sex tapes. I want the audio tapes on Tally’s deals.”

“Not yet.”

“When?”

“When we know you didn’t kill Garson, even then, I’m not sure.”

“Hey, here’s a deal. You’re a writer. You write the exposé. It’d be a whole new thing for you. Fiction writer tells all. Sales would be greater. We could split the money.”

“This one’s not about money, Clarice. I just haven’t decided what I’ll do with the audios.”

“What are you going to do with the films?”

“Return them probably. Depends on whether or not Blackton or Dickson helped you rub out Garson.”

“Come on, Matt. This is a sweetheart deal for both of us.”

“No thanks. If you didn’t kill Garson, you’re entitled to your inheritance. And I’m entitled to my fees for the investigation. And if you did murder your husband, somehow I’ll see you get whatever punishment is possible in light of the court’s ruling.”

Chapter 30

I watched from my balcony as the sun slid away to bring morning to those who lived on the other side of the earth. Only those who have done this, realize just how short a time it is between when the bright round globe appears to be sitting on the horizon, and when the sun completely disappears. I’ve never timed it, but it can’t be more than three minutes.

After that, I went down and walked the hard sand near the edge of the water. I love the gradations of the dying light, the pastels rather than one color or another. It causes me to think of good and evil, it was all so easy when we were children. The clarity of issues seen as black or white in our youth blur into so much gray as the years and the lessons from living pile on to confuse us.

It was time to chase away more of the gray around the death of Garson Talmadge, and drill down to find the black and white of it.

* * *

“Matthew Kile,” I said to the same desk sergeant who had been up front when I had come to the department to see Fidge at the start of this case. “I’m here to see Captain Dickson.”

The desk sergeant picked up the phone. Turned his back for a minute, and then came back to me. “He’s in his office, Mr. Kile. He said you knew the way.” I nodded and turned toward the stairs.

“Hello, Matt,” Dickson said from his doorway, the knob in his hand.

“Captain,” I said, trying to hide the confusion I felt over his treating me like an earthling. I didn’t know what had brought about this change in him. My latest book had made one of the top ten lists after my earlier books had languished among the top twenty-five. Maybe this new stature meant he’d want a picture of us to add to his wall of fame. Or, Clarice might have called to tell him about him starring in one of her homemaker porno specials. And that I had the film.

“Come in. Sit down.” I did. “What can I do for you? Are you still poking around trying to find who murdered Garson Talmadge?”

“Did Clarice Talmadge call you yesterday or this morning?”

“No.” He said it straightaway. Like an easy, honest answer, or like a man knowledgeable about how to say it that way. “Why would she?”

“Look. I’m not here to pick a fight about anything, but, well, I know about the two of you. About your affair.”

“What makes you think I’m involved with this woman?”

I threw a group of video tapes of him and Clarice onto his desk, bound together by one of those industrial strength, super fat rubber bands. “These.”

He picked it up and looked at me. Then it registered. “Are these what I think they are?”

His manner, well, you can’t fake it. Well, you could, but you’d have to be better at it than I figured Two Dicks could be.

“You betcha,” I said. “There are no copies. I had thought they meant you helped Clarice do in Garson. But it doesn’t figure so I’m returning them.”

“Why did she do this? I mean, yeah, we did the deed a few times, but it has been quite a few months since the last time.”

“Garson liked to watch them. Let’s call it medicinal. And, you weren’t the only leading man in her film career.” I got up.

Two Dicks got up. “Do you think she really did kill her husband? Wouldn’t that beat all, I mean with the D.A. dropping and the court setting her free.”

“No. I still don’t think she was the shooter, but with less conviction than I felt when she was arrested.”

“Why are you giving these to me? I mean thank you, but why?”

“Think of it as a gift from a fellow single man who understands just how confusing the world of romance has become. By the way, it’s a mess for the ladies, too.”

I walked out and headed for the stairway. Just so you won’t think I’m totally foolish, I kept the tape on which Captain Two Dicks gave his most inspired performance. If it turned out he did help Clarice murder Garson, I’ll turn that one over to the chief of police. Right after I make enough copies to pass around the department, anonymously of course.

* * *

After I had driven a few blocks, Susan called. “Have you made any more progress on finding out who murdered Papa?”

“No. For now I’m just letting it marinate in my mind. Like in my writing, sometimes when I’m at a point where it just isn’t coming together, if I leave it alone for a few hours or days, when I go back the pieces tend to fall into place. How are you?”

“Not good. I haven’t heard from Charlie in two days. I’ve gone by his place several times. Actually, I drove through his parking lot. His car’s never there and he doesn’t answer his cell phone. I’m worried. I have a key to his place. I want to go in and wait, and I don’t want to be alone to do it.” We agreed we’d meet there. It would be quicker.

* * *

Susan and I found Charles at home. He opened the door and stepped back, his stride unsteady. He could have been on drugs, but when we got closer it was clear he had been drinking heavily. He didn’t look good, and the bad involved more than just the booze.

Susan offered to scramble him some eggs and make toast, but he said no. “Let me make some coffee,” she said. “You could use a cup couldn’t you, Matt?”

“That would be nice.” I said, feeling Susan was the best person to carry the conversation, at least for now.

“None for me, sis.” Charles walked over to the end table and picked up a partially filled glass sitting next to a bottle of tequila. The bottle had less in it than the amount he had poured into his glass.

“What are you doing here, Kile? You were employed to help Papa’s ex. She’s free now. Thanks to you, she got away with murder. Your job is done.”

“Clarice didn’t kill Papa,” Susan said. “Give her a break. She’s really not such a bad sort. And lighten up on Matt.”

“She wasn’t our mother, not even close. The only mother we really ever knew, Papa left in France. She’s dead now. I’m sure Kile has told you that. Papa left her behind like she had been a one-night stand, a twenty-year-long one-night stand. Once she took care of raising us so he wouldn’t have to, he left her high and dry. Abandoned is more like it. He was a real prick, you know? No two ways about it, a real prick. I’m glad he’s dead.”

“Now, Charlie. We’ve talked about this before. Papa wasn’t the best man ever, nobody’s saying he was, but he loved us. In his own way he did. Really, he did.”

While they talked family stuff, I eased my way out onto the balcony. I’ve always found it fascinating how different people sound when you hear them without seeing them. How the emotions and inflections in their voices stand out when there are no visual distractions.

“If you believe that, sis, you’re a bigger fool than I think you are. He took us in and kept us only as a favor to one of his buddies. Then, being stuck with us, he used Mother Chantal to raise us. Later, as we grew, he used us as hired help. Oh, sure, he paid us well, but that’s all we were, hired help. He was scum.”

“He loved you, Charlie. And I love you. You and I are the only real family either of us has, that we know about.”

Charles huffed before mumbling something indecipherable.

I stepped into the door, but stayed on the balcony. “Sure you got a bad turn, but don’t forget that without that arrangement, you and Susan would have been killed as infants.”

“Papa didn’t step in to save us. For all he cared, Hussein could have smashed our heads against a rock and thrown us in an unmarked grave. Everyone knows there were plenty of those in Iraq. It was the Frenchman who didn’t want us killed. He paid Papa to protect his own conscience. And Papa took us for money and raised us to make the Frenchman beholding to him. It was about business, not family.”

“We all have some kind of baggage,” I said. “Life is not about whether we have it, or what it is, but how we carry it. This stuff is all your father’s shortcomings, not Susan’s and not yours. It’s time to get on with your life.” I then faded back into the darker balcony.

“That’s right, Charlie,” Susan said, “Matt’s right about that. I love you, Bro.”

“Oh, sis, if you only knew. What if I told you that when Papa called me that night he said he was dumping us from his will, leaving all the money to his bimbo wife? What if I told you that?”

“Are you telling me that?”

Listening to them from beyond the doorway, I realized the voice from the parking garage, the one that left early, had been Charles. He had set up the beating. He had deepened his voice, but listening now without seeing him, I could tell. The proof came when I inadvertently slid my hand into my jacket pocket. I felt a piece of paper and opened it from curiosity to find the cell phone statement I had taken from Charles the first time I visited him in his apartment. There it was, right in front of me. I had been carrying the answer around in my pocket. The statement showed his cell phone number to be the one I had found in the list of recent calls in the biker’s cell phone. The number the biker had called twice the day I was beaten. The phone number assigned to Charles Talmadge.

At that moment, all the remaining pieces rushed into place.

“Yeah, I’m telling ya that,” Charles was saying to answer Susan when I again focused on listening to the two of them. “Papa called me to say he was dropping us and leaving our money to her.” Then Charles took a few steps toward me on the balcony. “Even you didn’t know that part, Kile.”

I spoke through the doorway. “That’s not exactly the way it happened, is it Charles?”

“What do you mean by that crack?”

“I meant just what I said. Your father didn’t call to get your advice about dropping Clarice from his will, and he didn’t call to tell you he was dropping you and your sister. Did he?”

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

“Your father never called you for advice or to talk over decisions he was considering. He went to Susan, not you. He would have called Susan to see what she thought about dropping Clarice from the will.”

“He wouldn’t have asked sis. He knew she would tell him that wasn’t the right thing to do. I love you, sis, but you’re soft. Papa wouldn’t have talked to you about that.”

“Charles, Garson wouldn’t have dropped Susan. Garson loved your sister and respected her opinions. Whenever he got around to you, it was only to tell you what decision he had made.”

“So what? Papa mostly liked the way sis talked him through things. But this time he decided on his own. Like I told you, sis would have tried to talk him out of it.”

“You always got left in the corner when the time came to make decisions, didn’t you?”

“Are you trying to make me out to be jealous of my sister’s relationship with Papa?”

“Weren’t you?”

“Maybe a little, but that was Papa’s fault, not sis’s.”

I had the ball now, and I kept running toward the end zone. “So, let’s get back to when Garson called you the night he died. I agree, he called you because he had made a decision. What did he really tell you that night?”

“That he was cutting Clarice down to their prenup. Just like I’ve been saying.”

“That’s not what you just told Susan.”

“I lied to Susan. Remember, I said, ‘what if I told you.’ I said it like that.”

“Okay. Let that go for now. Garson’s letter, found at his attorney’s office, contradicts what you’re saying now.”

“Okay, Kile, you’re the smart guy, at least in your own mind. What do you think happened?”

“I think Garson called to tell you he was cutting you out. Only you! He was leaving it all to Clarice and Susan. I could see him doing that.”

His face went white. Charles Talmadge just stood there. Still, as if I had reached out and slapped him, hard. I had played around with the thought that Garson had decided to leave it all to the women in his life, and nothing to the son he saw as a disappointment. Now I was certain.

Charles’s entire body slumped as if he were an inflatable that had sprung a leak. The truth had been spoken. It was out. And in all his drunken confusion, the look on his face was one of relief.

“Oh, my God,” Susan said. “It’s true, isn’t it, Charlie?” Her brother said nothing. Susan stepped in close to her brother, and she slapped him for real. And she stayed right there. Right in his face and stared. Then she repeated her question. “It’s true, isn’t it, Charlie? You lied to me and lied to the cops. Your lie could have helped convict Clarice. Put her in prison.”

“Yes, it’s true. That son of a bitch was cutting me loose. He was a cold, heartless man to the end. As for Clarice, she wasn’t entitled to his money. We were. I lied for both of us.”

“So, what did you do after that?” I asked, leaning back against the balcony railing. “You stewed a while in your own juices, didn’t you? Then you went over there, didn’t you? You went over to confront him, didn’t you? You were determined not to let him bully you again. You used your key and went in, didn’t you? Clarice was down at my place. You two argued, didn’t you? You both got mad, didn’t you? He told you something like not only was he cutting you out of his will, but that he never wanted to see you again. Your papa was throwing you out like yesterday’s garbage.”

It was a hard message, and I had delivered it as cruelly as I could. You need to get a person real angry if you want them to spill their own beans. Then I added the final blow.

“The only compassionate part being that your papa didn’t call you any names.”