He went to a closet and opened it. One of two lightbulbs hanging from the same overhead fixture automatically lit. The other did not. The closet was a cedar-lined walk-in, loaded with clothes and shoes. The unlit remaining bulb had a pull chain. Carlton slowly shuffled to the pull chain, his hands still over his head, and pulled it. That bulb lit. The back wall of the closet slid up to the ceiling like a garage door. It exposed a room the size of the first closet. An overhead light was on in that room. Its other walls were sheets of stainless steel. It had no windows, no door, and, at one time, must have been part of the closet. The room contained five three-drawer letter-size stainless-steel file cabinets, each drawer with a three-by-five label on it. The cabinets dominated the room. We walked in, Carlton first and me poking the gun into his kidneys.
“How do we shut this wall down behind us?” I asked.
“We can’t. It only works from the closet bulb. I lock the closet door behind me when I come in here,” he said over his shoulder.
“Lie down,” I ordered, “with your hands tucked under your belly.” He did so in the floor space that was left in the room.
There were seven rifles, each with a telescopic sight, in a rack on the wall opposite the files. One of them was a .22 rifle with a silencer attached to the muzzle. Not something you see every day.
I tried all the file drawers. They were good and locked.
On top of the fifth file cabinet was a shortwave radio. I smashed it four times with the butt of the .45. The antenna wire came in through a small round hole in the wall, and I yanked it out. I stepped over Carlton to the rifles and picked the .22 off the rack. I cocked it. It was unloaded and had recently been cleaned.
“This room must have seemed impregnable for you to bring the murder weapon back home. Did you kill the carpenter who built this place so no one but you would know it was here, and will you kill me, too, the first chance you get?”
“Trust me. Join me. Work with me. We could accomplish miraculous things together.”
“Carlton, where are the keys for these files?”
Carlton opened his mouth as if to speak, hesitated, and closed his mouth defiantly. I put the .22 rifle back in the rack, turned to Carlton, and kicked him in the ribs. “Come on, Carlton.”
He reflexively slid his right arm up so his hand could touch his bruised ribs and still stay tucked under his body, and then I stepped on his elbow.
“As you can tell, Carlton, I am blue in the face,” I said, raising my voice. “Not just with you. With everybody. From now on, whenever I ask you a question you answer it, or it’s the last polite question I ask. Do you understand?”
“Implicitly.”
“Solid. Cough up the keys.” I spit the words at him.
“In a pair of red socks that are rolled up in the top drawer of my dresser.”
“Super. Now what is in these files? Target One through Target Eight. Data on your other kills? Start with this one, the first, start with the file labeled Target One.”
“Aren’t you going to get the key and read them?”
“Perhaps you don’t understand. You’re supposed to make this easy for me. Now start with Target One.”
“It’s the Judge Sampley file.”
“Well?”
“My confederates and I followed him for eighteen days and nights until he was positively rip-roaring DUI. We simply called in his location, description, and license plate. We called it in anonymously, claiming he had run us off the road. The state police had no choice but to arrest him. Someone also happened to call the media. Oh, he was drunk most of those other eighteen nights, but not rip-roaring the way we wanted him. It forced his resignation.”
“A liberal?”
“Positively red. Blood red. Abortion red. You’ve heard of Husband vs. Wife.”
“Target Two.”
“Nothing special. A fire of unknown origin at a methamphetamine lab that the police suspected but couldn’t get enough probable cause to search. The fire department did the searching for them. All legal. Eight busts and each one stuck.”
“Three.”
“An attempted rape of a coed. The suspect wore a stocking mask. They had picked him up within minutes right nearby. The girl in the dormitory couldn’t be positive it was him. When they brought him back to her, all she could identify was his clothing. It was him all right. He had a terrible record of sex crimes.”
“You kill him?”
“No. No need to. He was blind in one eye. We simply cut one eyehole in a nylon stocking and left it in the weeds behind the dorm. D-WOC publicized a large reward for the whereabouts of a stocking mask or any other information about the rape. A librarian walking her dog found it two days after the rape. The single eyehole in the stocking mask made the difference. Your Honey Gold prosecuted that case. She called him the Man in the One-Eyed Mask in her summation. I would have made some reference to Homer’s Cyclops.”
“What’s Target Eight? Your most recent?”
“Gandry,” he exhaled.
“Seven”
“Harrison Lloyd.”
“The surprise witness?”
“Yes. He’s one of us.”
“What about the rest? Any more shootings?”
“No. No. The others are similar to the Lloyd case. We provided witnesses and evidence. Gandry was a special and irregular decision I felt constrained to make.”
“How can you ever be sure you’ve got the right guy to bear false witness against?”
“We look before we leap. We purchase classified information from the inside and we study it carefully. There is never any doubt.”
“The other file drawers have no labels. How come?”
“Not done. Not even selected. Let me up. Surely, you must trust me now. I have told you things that no one outside our group knows. Come on, man, our trust must begin somewhere.”
“I’m afraid not tonight.”
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t level with me at once, Carlton. That was the only deal I offered and you lost it. You lost it when you lied and said you threw the rifle into the Brandywine. You only get one strike in this league. I threw you a curve and you bailed out of the box. I knew you wouldn’t be truthful in your first time at bat. Subjects always hold something back in the beginning.”
He looked directly into my eyes for the first time and saw only compassion in them. It scared him. He began to tremble and then whimper, and tears rolled down his long cheekbones and across his nose and dropped to the floor.
“Professor Cruset,” I said gently, “I will do all I can to help you.”
“ ‘This country,’ ” he said, looking up at me from the floor, “ ‘with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.’ Do you know who said that?”
“Don’t feed me a straight line,” I said. “I’m deadly serious about what I have to do.”
“Abraham Lincoln,” he said. “The United States Supreme Court must be dismembered before it runs our ship of state aground. Impeachment is a…impeachment…”
“Professor, wait here in the box. If it gets stuffy, put your lips to the hole where I ripped out the antenna. Don’t torture yourself. The torturing will be over for you soon. Believe me, you’ll feel a sense of relief now that the craziness has stopped. Maybe you’ll get some peace in your life from now on.”
I left with the collection of rifles, threw them on the bed, and went back into the closet and fooled with the switches until the sliding door came down and sealed him in.
“You’re not going to leave me to die.” I heard his muffled shout, barely audible through the wall.
“Professor,” I shouted back, “I’m going down to make a
phone call, and then I’ll be right back with policemen to arrest you for Gandry’s shooting and the Target plots and to search this house. Breaking you the way I did has been no pleasure, but I promise to help you. I won’t be gone long.”
I went to his dresser and found the rolled-up red socks and unrolled them. I took out the key to the Target files and put it in my pocket. At the bottom of the drawer was bond paper. I pulled it out. The original “Target Manifesto.” I put that in my pocket too. I grabbed the .22 rifle from the bed and walked down the stairs. Marian was waiting in a chair at the foot of the marble steps. She must have had confidence in me.
“What did you do to him?” she asked without getting up. “Did you arrest him?”
“Not exactly.” I walked past her to the phone and dialed Honey.
“It’s Lou. Did I wake you?”
“I haven’t been sleeping, Lou, I’ve been worrying about you. They’re livid at you for slipping their tail. I tried to reach you. I’ve got good news. The New York PD can’t locate the mugger. He went to a clinic, and after they set his arm and stitched him up, he snuck out. He probably gave a phony name.”
“I guess I left him with a lasting impression,” I said. “Even if they do find him I’ve got something to bargain with. I have Gandry’s shooter, Professor Carlton Cruset, locked in a stainless-steel box, and I’ve got eight other things that he did.”
“Holy shmoley. I just knew that’s where you went, but I didn’t tell them, Lou. I didn’t tell them.”
I smiled. She didn’t tell them.
Marian got up suddenly and walked over to the phone. “Jesus Christ, Lou,” she said loudly. “To whom are you talking?”
“Where are you now?” asked Honey. “Who’s with you?”
I cupped the receiver and said firmly to Marian: “Sit down in the Chippendale chair and listen to what I tell Deputy Attorney General Honey Gold and then you’ll know what’s going on around your house. I’m afraid you’re in for some scandal, my dear. You’re about to have another husband go to jail, or at least to the booby hatch.”
I uncupped the receiver and said to Honey: “When the morons came to the hotel to question me, I resigned from the department. With my brand-new wings on, I flew to Cruset’s house and gained entrance into his private room by burning coat hangers under his bedroom door.”
“Huh?” said Honey. “Coat hangers?”
“That’s right, but it doesn’t matter. I busted in, and I busted him on the jaw. He confessed to shooting Gandry. I have that on video tape. I have the rifle, too. I also recovered files on some new-style vigilante activity. It was in a secret room that I have him locked in now. The man’s definitely ahead of his time. I’m still at his house, and the voice you heard is that of his legal heir, Marian Kenney Razzi Cruset.”
“You are incredible,” Honey said. “And the best part is I think it may all be legal.”
“I’m getting the hang of it. Do you make house calls?”
“What do you mean?”
“Get the donkeys together and come on over to Cruset’s. Bring cuffs and bring a search party. This house needs a good toss from top to bottom. These files are —”
“Don’t tell me any more. I’m not sure we ought to know everything right now. Let me call Dershon.”
We hung up. I waited twenty minutes in silence as Marian relaxed. She seemed to be contemplating the upside of her brand-new wings.
The phone rang and I answered it.
“This is Dershon. No arguments. No discussions. Before we set one foot in Carlton Cruset’s room and open his files without a search warrant, you had better meet us in Chief Covaletzki’s office. Can Professor Cruset get out if you leave him alone in the house for an hour?”
“Probably not.”
“That’s a chance we’ll have to take. We can’t go in without a search warrant. Get in here quickly and bring that videotape and the rifle. The sooner we can review it, the sooner we can get a search warrant, and we’ll want your signature on the affidavit as a civilian. He’ll have the best legal talent in the land behind him. He’s not going to be using some kid out of law school. On this one we are going to cross every t and dot every i.”
“You really swing for the fences, don’t you? A regular Babe Ruth. Caution goes right to the wind with you.”
“Frankly, Razzi, with your known mental state and penchant for violence, we may still not have sufficient probable cause for a search and seizure, even after we review your so-called taped confession.”
“Mr. Razzi, Bulldog. I am an American citizen, a civilian, and you are a public servant in need of my cooperation.”
“Fair enough.”
“Fair enough, who?”
“Fair enough, Mr. Razzi.”
“I like your style, kid.”
44
The only video machine they had at the station was a VHS format that wouldn’t handle Carlton’s Betamax tape. At two in the morning, at Marian’s request, Dr. Joe Doney showed up with his personal Betamax player. He left after satisfying himself of Marian’s “condition.” Her help earned Marian the right to watch the tape with the rest of us, but after the viewing she had to leave the chief’s office. On her way out she cast frost at Honey, who ignored her.
“You are right, Mr. Civilian Razzi. We owe you an apology,” said Morris Dershon.
“I accept.”
“I never doubted you, Lou,” said DiGiacomo, clapping his hands loudly. “I just didn’t want you makin’ no dumb mistakes is all. I was being like your lawyer. You know how words get twisted. Let’s get the presses rolling on the search warrant. Hah? What?”
Dixon slid a sheet of paper in the typewriter and began typing the captions.
“Not so fast,” said Covaletzki. “Let’s let the lawyers handle this. Mr. Chief Deputy, is it your opinion that we have enough good probable cause?”
“I don’t see why not,” said Dershon.
“You don’t? I’m no lawyer, but I’m just wondering here,” said Covaletzki as he clasped his hands on his walnut-veneer desk and leaned forward in his chair. “We can’t run a comparison on any slug that we test-fire from the .22 because the pieces taken out of Gandry are down in Washington at the FBI lab and, besides, it fragmented pretty good inside of him. I think it might have been carved out, like a dumdum. I’m not sure about that, but I think Augrine said something about that. So I don’t know that there’s ever gonna be any way to scientifically tie this .22 down as the murder weapon. Now the way I see it, that means the whole search warrant depends on this here videotape, and I’ve got some problems with the tape. Like I say, I’m no lawyer, but it just seems to me maybe we ought to take another look at the tape again.”
“Kindly be specific,” said Dershon. “This is one case none of us can afford to make a mistake on. I don’t mind being thorough, but I don’t want to waste time on any fishing expeditions.”
“Like I say, I’m no lawyer, but I mean first of all the man is buck-ass naked, and we know from our own personal knowledge and indications that he was struck about the face at least one time. Hell, you can see it on the tape. See, what I’m getting at is voluntariness. Are these words on this tape Professor Cruset’s own voluntary words?”
“I see,” said Dershon.
“You see?” said Honey furiously. “For Christ’s sake, we’re discussing probable cause for a search. We’re not discussing whether we can win a jury trial. We’ve got more than enough for a search warrant.”
“I’d be careful.” Covaletzki shook his head. “The whole thing could be read wrong, like maybe Cruset’s getting set up by Razzi and his ex-wife, what with Marian Cruset being right along there with Razzi every step of the way, wearing that low-cut dress.”
“Look,” Honey said to Dershon, ignoring Covaletzki, “Cruset said on tape that the shot was fired from the Shelton High School roof and that his rifl
e had a silencer, and Mr. Razzi, who just solved your shooting for you, in case you forgot, didn’t know either of those facts.”
“Unless he did the shooting,” said Covaletzki.
I grabbed the bottom of Covaletzki’s cheap desk and tipped the whole thing onto him in a thunderous crash caused mostly by the glass top sliding off and shattering. Covaletzki’s chair flew back with him in it, and he was instantly on his feet with his butt against the wall, reaching for his gun. Dixon grabbed me before the desk landed. DiGiacomo grabbed Covaletzki’s elbow before his hand could touch his .38.
Covaletzki pointed at me with his free hand and shouted, “See what I mean. He’s dangerous. Everything he seized is illegal. The tape. The search. The rifle. Everything.”
“No, it is not,” said Dershon soothingly. “Let’s everybody calm down. Let’s everybody have a mentholated cigarette and get ourselves together.”
“Lock him up, Dixon,” Covaletzki yelled, still pointing. “I want him locked up for offensive touching and criminal mischief, and menacing, and terroristic threatening. Cuff him. The fuckin’ lunatic. Cuff him.”
“Wait a minute,” said Dershon. “I said calm down. Let’s calm down, shall we? Here, have a Newport. I don’t care what you two do to each other after tonight, but tonight we are assembling probable cause for warrants on Carlton Cruset, and Civilian Razzi is going to sign the affidavit for the warrant application.”
“It’s a waste of time,” said Covaletzki. “The whole thing is illegal.”
“No, it is definitively not illegal,” said Dershon. “I agree with Ms. Gold.”
“Oh yes, it is illegal. The man is still a police officer. He can’t do anything he done tonight.”
“Make sense, Covaletzki. Razzi resigned. I saw his resignation papers myself. I handed them to you in the elevator.”
“That resignation was void. Nix. Snuffo. You’re a lawyer, you ought to know that.”
Everything got quiet. All eyes on Covaletzki. I laughed.
“Void?” asked Dershon softly. “Snuffo?”
The Right to Remain Silent Page 24