Muzzled

by David Rosenfelt

  This is clearly beyond suspicious; she had quit her job and then all of a sudden had this influx of cash. Carla’s sister, Linda, had mentioned that she seemed to have come into money. Linda also described something else that now seems suspect: Carla’s claim that she was moving out of the house she shared with Linda because she wanted to have some space, to be alone.

  Carla was rarely alone. It seems more likely that she wanted to do whatever she was doing away from the potentially watchful eye of Linda.

  Something else doesn’t jibe. “Sam, do you know if Carla was living alone?”

  “I can’t be sure, but it seems like it. There’s nobody else listed at that address, and the place was quickly re-rented once Carla was reported dead.”

  Vogel had told me that Carla always wanted them to go to his house to spend the night because she said her roommate was annoying. That seems to have been a lie. There certainly could be nonsinister explanations for it, but considering what else we are learning about Carla, I wouldn’t bet on it.

  Sam goes back to his office to dig a little more, and I try to think through what I’ve just learned. It’s a little tough to concentrate because Edna keeps screaming at Hike in the other room. I’m better off thinking at home, and discussing the developments with Laurie.

  Just before I leave, Sam comes back, an obvious look of excitement on his face.

  “Andy, the night that Carla D’Antoni died, when she was pushed off that warehouse roof…”

  “What about it?”

  “She didn’t have her phone with her.”

  “So what?”

  “That’s why I didn’t notice the duplication before.”

  “What are you talking about, Sam?

  “Andy, Bledsoe, and Phillips were both there that night. They were at the warehouse where Carla D’Antoni died.”

  “Pharmacon had their IPO today.”

  The caller reporting this news is Edna’s cousin Freddie, who is my stockbroker. I had asked him to let me know when it happened.

  “How did it do?”

  “Well, it was all presold. They went out at ten dollars a share, which brought them a little over six hundred million. The stock has since gone down a bit, but not much. It’s trading now at nine eighty. Surprisingly there’s been very little volume.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That the people who bought it are holding on. Usually when an IPO hits the market, the trading volume on the stock is heavy.”

  “So would the Pharmacon people be happy today?”

  “They’re not tossing confetti, but it has to be what they expected. They’ve brought in money to allow them to go forward, but this is not a ringing endorsement.”

  “Thanks, Freddie.”

  As I hang up, I get a text from Robby Divine. It simply says, “I told you so.”

  He did tell me it would not do well, and Alex Vogel said the same thing. Robby was saying it as an outside potential investor; Alex was an insider, so he was reluctant to get into specifics as to why he felt that way.

  It doesn’t matter to me much, unless Vogel was planning to use it as a windfall to pay his legal bills. Either way, I have more important issues to focus on.

  I believe that Bledsoe and Phillips murdered Carla D’Antoni. It is beyond any conception of coincidence that they just happened to be in the neighborhood, walking past the warehouse, when Carla fell to her death. One of them pushed her; it doesn’t matter which one.

  We’re not going to get them charged and convicted for doing what they did; their own deaths provided them with an unwanted get-out-of-jail-free card. So we have to focus on why. I don’t think that there is any doubt they were hired to do it; the fact that they were murdered proves conclusively that someone was above them, someone who sent them on their missions. One of those missions was to kill Alex Vogel.

  Whatever organization it is that is running all this, the job security is not all that great. Phillips and Bledsoe were employees who were terminated in the literal sense. I also think Carla fits that definition.

  That she was with Bledsoe in that bar for two hours would seem to show that they had a relationship, probably a working one, that only went sour later.

  I also believe that part of her employment was to develop a relationship with Alex Vogel, though I don’t yet know why. The list of things that I don’t yet know is long.

  There is a list of things that are essential. We need to find out who Phillips and Bledsoe were working for, and why they were directed to commit those killings. We also need to rattle someone’s cage; we can’t sit back and talk theory anymore. The trial is approaching.

  Laurie and I discuss this, and I say, “Sam told us that Phillips and Bledsoe hung out most nights at the Masters Bar, so that’s where we have to start.”

  “Who are you referring to when you say ‘we’?”

  “I am referring to me.”

  “And me, and Corey, and most definitely Marcus.”

  “We can’t walk in there like the Rose Bowl Parade.”

  “True. But our float has to be at least somewhat impressive” is her counter.

  Laurie and I both know where this is going to end up, so my choice is either to continue to jockey for unnecessary position or go right to the endgame.

  I’m not in a jockeying mood, so I simply say, “Marcus.”

  She nods. “Deal. Now let’s talk about what you want to accomplish. Then we can work on the ‘how.’”

  Laurie calls Marcus and Corey to come over, and I go out to get pizza. Corey brings Simon Garfunkel with him, which is not a news event. He brings Simon pretty much everywhere; Simon is clearly his best friend, as well as a valuable member of the K Team.

  We don’t invite Hike to the meeting. It has nothing to do with the legal side of things, and none of us would enjoy Hike telling us that our approach is not going to work, and that we’re all going to die in a hail of bullets.

  I do have Sam Willis join us because I have a specific plan for him.

  Simon opts not to sit in on our planning session; he and Tara have become fast friends, and they go off to play with Tara’s toys and sniff each other. Sebastian also likes Simon, so much so that he actually wakes up for a few minutes when Simon arrives.

  Once we clear away the pizza plates, I set the strategic table. “I’m not going into this bar to learn about these two guys. People who know them are not going to break into a spontaneous version of ‘Bledsoe and Phillips … this is your life.’ If anyone cares about me, the prevailing attitude will be distrust and dislike.”

  “You keep saying ‘I’ and ‘me,’” Laurie points out. “You’re not going in there alone. We’ve had this conversation.”

  “Right. Marcus will be there, but I don’t think they should know we’re together. Okay, Marcus?”

  “Yunnhh.” Marcus is a man of few words, and the ones he does say are completely impossible to understand by anybody other than Laurie. But more than possibly anyone else I know, he manages to get his meaning across.

  I lay out the plan and we kick it around for a while. Corey has a couple of suggestions, which everyone agrees make it better. The whole discussion takes less than twenty minutes.

  We’re ready to go.

  I’m not sure how I would characterize Masters Bar and Grill.

  For one thing, it’s much more bar than grill. They serve food, though the menu is limited to the basics, but patrons basically go there to drink. Certainly nothing about it is fancy or genteel; definitely not the kind of place you would go in and order a piña colada or a cosmopolitan.

  It’s not a welcoming place for nonregulars, although there is no overt intimidation. Newcomers can come in and have a quiet drink without being bothered, and no brawl or gunfight is likely to break out.

  There’s a pool table near the back and an old-fashioned jukebox. I wouldn’t describe it as a particularly tough place, although it is not in what would be considered a safe neighborhood. Most of the patrons are men, and most l
ook like they can handle themselves if they needed to.

  The bartender is maybe fifty years old and seems like he is coming up on his fiftieth anniversary of working here. It has probably been years since he smiled, and one does not seem imminent.

  I time my arrival at Masters for nine fifteen. No particular reason; it just doesn’t feel too early or too late. As always, I would describe myself as more than nervous but less than petrified. I would much rather describe myself as retired.

  Nobody turns to look at me as I walk in. Two of the patrons who don’t look are Sam Willis and Marcus Clark. They are not sitting together; Sam is at a table not far from the bar, and Marcus is across the room, near the window.

  Sam has his elbows resting on the table, a signal that he has accomplished what I sent him in there to do. He’s not smiling, but I’ll bet he’s having a tough time avoiding it. Sam has long wanted to be in on the action, and this must be scratching that itch.

  I walk up to the bar and say to the bartender, “Hey, how ya doin’?” That is my version of Andy Carpenter street talk.

  The bartender is apparently disinclined to tell me how he’s doing, so all he says is “You drinking?”

  “My name is Andy Carpenter. I’m a lawyer.”

  “You drinking or not?”

  “What do you have on tap?”

  “Beer.”

  “That’ll work. I’m looking for information about Orlando Bledsoe and Charlie Phillips.”

  He reacts slightly, but then masks it. “Try Google.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m trying you.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Really? Because they came in here all the time. And one of the times they were joined by Carla D’Antoni. That wasn’t too long before they killed her.”

  “Get lost.”

  “If I get lost, within an hour you’ll be hosting a cop convention in here. So you may just be an asshole who doesn’t know anything, but I’ll bet you know people who do know something.” I’m trying to sound tough, but it’s a stretch for me. I’m considered closer to Mr. Rogers than Mr. T.

  He walks over to a landline phone behind the bar and picks it up. He dials a number, then has a conversation that I can’t hear that lasts about a minute.

  He hangs up and comes back to me. “Tomorrow night … ten o’clock. Come here and go around the back. There’s a door that leads to an office; go in there.”

  “Who am I meeting?”

  “Tomorrow night … ten o’clock. Come here and go around the back. There’s a door that leads to an office; go in there.”

  “You’re quite a conversationalist, you know?”

  “Now get lost.”

  That sounds like a reasonably good idea, so that’s what I do.

  Technically, we have probably already gotten what we are after.

  Sam had gotten to the bar well before I did and performed his task brilliantly.

  We expected that the bartender would make a phone call to get instructions on how he should handle the pain-in-the-ass lawyer. We thought the call would probably be made after I left, but it took place while I was there.

  When Sam sat down, he called the listed number for the place, to confirm that the phone behind the bar was the one with that number. He watched as the bartender answered the ringing phone. That identified the phone number that the bartender would, we hoped, later use to make the call.

  Sam also struck up a conversation with the bartender and got his name. That way, Sam could also get his cell number, if that was the phone he used to make the call. It turned out not to be necessary.

  Now Sam can access the bar phone records and know who received the call. That will bring us at least one step further up the ladder to the people behind Phillips and Bledsoe. We should get a report from Sam with the name later today or tomorrow morning.

  Mission accomplished.

  And yet …

  The offer of a meeting tonight is a potential opportunity to learn more and to possibly get a firsthand look at one or more people in the conspiracy. It’s entirely possible, maybe even probable, that nothing positive would come out of it, but there’s always that chance.

  Laurie, Marcus, Corey, Sam, and I meet to discuss the pros and cons. We sit in the kitchen eating blueberry muffins and drinking coffee. “What do you think they have in mind?” I ask of no one in particular.

  Corey provides the answer. “It depends what they are going to do. If they’re planning to kill you, then you might meet someone significant. They’re meeting because they want information, and that would require someone smart enough and high up enough to ask the right questions. But if you are going to get a look at someone like that, then the plan would be to kill you before you could reveal it.

  “If they’re just going to smack you around and intimidate you, then you won’t meet anyone important.”

  I nod. “Then I hope they kill me. This might be a meeting I shouldn’t attend.”

  “Or you could meet and we could prevent them from killing you,” Laurie says. “Or even smacking you around. Hopefully.”

  “We go in, in force. They won’t know what hit them,” Sam says. No one responds or even looks at him. It’s as if he didn’t say it. If an accountant says words in a kitchen and no one listens, did he make a sound?

  Instead, everyone turns to Marcus. “Marcus, can we do this?” Laurie asks. “Keeping Andy alive is sort of important to me.”

  “And me,” I say. “Are we confident about this?”

  Marcus gives a slight nod. “Ynnhh.”

  “Okay. Good,” Laurie says, which must mean that Marcus said he was on board. Then she turns to me. “But it’s ultimately your call, Andy. You’re the only one that can do this.”

  I have been through this kind of thing a number of times before. Lawyers shouldn’t be in physical danger, which is one of the reasons I became a lawyer. But I am frequently in a hell of a lot of danger, which is one of the reasons I want to become an ex-lawyer.

  In these situations, I think of Marcus as an airplane. When I fly, I don’t stop to worry that I am sitting in a chair thirty-five thousand feet in the air with nothing under me. I don’t know how it stays up there, but I don’t ask questions. I trust the airplane to prevent me from plummeting to my death.

  It’s the same with Marcus. I don’t fully know how he does what he does, but I completely trust him to do it. I put myself in his hands, and even though I usually approach piss-in-my-pants terror, I never question that decision.

  And he always comes through.

  So far.

  “Let’s do it,” I say. “But, Marcus, if I get killed, I’m going to be really pissed off. And you don’t want to have to deal with a pissed-off Andy Carpenter.”

  So once again we plan an operation that I wish I was not a part of. I would much rather not be indispensable.

  One of my long-term, retirement goals is dispensability.

  The calendar being what it is, I can’t afford to waste a day.

  So while my preference would be to spend today curled in the fetal position dreading the meeting at the bar tonight, I need to get some things done.

  Sam and Marcus are off checking to make sure our plan has a chance of working, while I am about to set a record for the most consecutive unproductive meetings in one building. I’m back at Pharmacon to interview Jordan Tucker.

  Tucker was Robert Giarrusso’s boss at Pharmacon. By all accounts Giarrusso was a biochemistry genius, so his boss must be on another mental planet.

  Not so much.

  “I’m more of an executive running the department,” Tucker tells me early on in our conversation. “My background is in biochemistry, sure, but I am not in Giarrusso’s class. That is a very small class.”

  “There seems to be a general feeling here that he was going to leave.” I don’t mention that I know that to be the case, since Vogel confirmed it.

  “Doesn’t surprise me. On the one hand, I’m surprised he stayed as long as he did. He wa
nted the autonomy of running his own show. And the truth is, he deserved it.”

  “What’s the other hand?”

  “We were able to provide him with state-of-the-art facilities, the capital to do his work, and enough capable people around to assist him.”

  “And you aren’t surprised he would walk away from that?”

  Tucker shakes his head. “My guess is that Robert was onto something that he wasn’t anxious to share.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “Robert had a lab in his home; he referred to himself as the mad doctor with the laboratory in the basement. We helped him set it up. Business hours weren’t terribly important to him; he worked whenever he had the inspiration, which was often. I wouldn’t be shocked if he came up with some promising idea for a drug that he didn’t want to become a product of this company.”

  “But you don’t know the details?”

  Another shake of the head. “I don’t even know that I’m right. It’s just my best guess. If I am right, it makes his death that much more of a tragedy, because if Robert thought that highly of the drug, then it’s a shame it died with him.”

  “Nobody knows what it was or had his notes?”

  Tucker shrugs. “I don’t.”

  “You know of any enemies he had?”

  Tucker shakes his head. “Hard to imagine he had any. He really didn’t hang around with people much at all. So I don’t know what anyone could have had against him.”

  “Have you replaced him?”

  “We’re in the process of hiring two people. They’re good, but combined they won’t be able to replace him.”

  * * *

  Fresh off that unenlightening interview, I head down to the jail. I think Vogel could clear up a couple of things I’m curious about.

  When he’s brought in, he seems even more stressed than the previous times I’ve seen him. “Are you okay?”

  “I guess so. I’m just real tired of being here. And they’re treating me like I’m in danger; I’m not allowed to interact with the other prisoners very much, and when I do, they watch me like a hawk.”