Penzler, Otto Ed v2

  “Careful,” he mouthed to me during a break late in the gruelling rehearsals. “This man is a maximum boor, but he has the power to ruin you.” Ross, a quick study if ever there was one, had already seen just how small and incestuous the world of classical music was. I appreciated his candour—and his concern, which was about 180 degrees from what Willie’s reaction would have been. My late husband no doubt would have belted the maestro in the face, if he’d bothered to show up at all.

  “I’ll remember to love him as if he were my own brother.” I looked up at the tiers of seats. “They don’t look like holes, do they?” I drank from a bottle of Evian water Ross handed me. “The first time I came here, I couldn’t help thinking of the Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life.’ I wonder if Lennon was tripping when he wrote the lyrics.”

  “’I’d love to turn you ooon,’” Ross sang softly in a surprisingly good tenor voice.

  I laughed and, draining the water, kissed him warmly on the cheek. “I’m so glad you’re in my life.”

  I watched him climb down from the high stage and disappear into the darkness of the theatre, where he took his seat beside Caro. The rehearsal carried on. But, gradually, I found that I was playing by memory alone. My mind seemed to be oddly detached from my body, elastic as gum, as distorted as if I was in a house of mirrors. Tripping like Lennon in the seventies.

  My stomach turned abruptly queasy, and I stopped playing. My hands, arched and ready, hung suspended above the keyboard. They looked like spiders spinning a web, and I wanted to scream. I missed my cue and, feeling like I was about to vomit, I lurched drunkenly to my feet.

  The bench upended behind me with a great clatter, and the orchestra ceased to play.

  “I... I ...”

  Somehow I became aware of Ross running down the centre aisle toward me while everyone on the stage was transfixed, unable or unwilling to make a move or sound.

  “I ... I ...”

  Ross mounted the steep steps three at a time, and I tottered toward him on legs I could no longer feel. He seemed to be standing at the edge, waiting for me. I was almost to his strong, welcoming arms when I lost all control of my body. I knew I was going over the edge, and my arms began to flail. I made a desperate lunge for Ross’s powerful shoulder, but it was too late. My fingers grasped only air.

  I fell, past all the thousand holes in Albert Hall.

  I saw a quick flash of the maestro’s face, distorted by shock. Then I struck the floor with a numbing blow. A great roaring filled my ears, drowning out even the thunder of the screams and shouts of those all around me. It was the first chord of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. It was the rush of my own blood.

  I remembered that toccata came from the feminine past participle of the Italian toccare, which meant “to touch.” Bach’s majestic chord touched me in the stunned release of my own breath.

  In an instant, even that was gone.

  “Welcome back.” Ross, smiling faintly, stood over my hospital bed. “We thought we’d lost you.”

  “Mom!” On his left I could see Caro, her face a sea of worry. “You’re tougher than anyone believed. You came through.”

  I had a sudden urge to grab her and hold her tight, but I couldn’t move.

  “You’re paralyzed, Perse.” Ross took a deep breath. “You broke your neck and your spine in four places.”

  Terror gripped me and, looking into Caro’s sorrowful face, I was overcome by a desire to tell her how much I loved her. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

  “I’m afraid your speech was affected too,” Ross said. “Temporarily or permanently, the doctors don’t know.”

  Ross must have seen all the blood drain from my face, because he asked Caro to fetch a doctor. Properly terrified, she fled. Then he did something really weird. He leaned over the bed, but instead of kissing me, he put his lips against my ear.

  “You know what I thought about on those night-time walks with Caroline?” he whispered. “Why settle for the mother when I can have it all? That’s what I want. And, for once in my life, I’m going to get it. The way I see it, you’re yesterday’s news, someone else’s history. VanDam made you over. Now I’ll do the same with Caro. Face it, Perse. You’re dangerous. I mean, you pulled the trigger on your own husband. How many women could do that, hmm? Not many, I imagine. It takes a cold, calculating mind; a certain cruelty. Lying next to you, who could sleep? I figure if you did it to him, one day, you could do it to me.”

  Why did his words fill me with so much dread? Because they expressed precisely the same pity and contempt I had harboured for Willie.

  “By the way, if you haven’t guessed by now, that was acid in your Evian.” He meant LSD, of course. One of the drugs of my lost youth. “I thought maybe you’d kill yourself in the fall, but, no, like Caro said, you’re too damn tough. So here you are.” He pulled away for a moment to check my horrified expression. Then, to my dismay, he put his lips back against my ear and continued his horrific whispering.

  “So I seduced her, and, hey, what d’you know, she was ripe for it. Like mother, like daughter.” A little laugh, evil as sin. Sick with shock, I tried to turn my head away, but his hand held me fast. The smell of him, which only yesterday was intoxicating, now made me want to gag. “My God, what a juicy morsel she is!”

  The doctor burst into the room and Ross stepped quickly back. The doctor, working on me, had his hands full. He couldn’t see what I saw, and if he had, it would hardly mean a thing to him: Ross taking Caro’s hand as she came back through the door. Ross kissing her shining hair, her red, curving lips, making me shiver so hard that the doctor became concerned all over again.

  “I think you’d better leave now,” he told them curtly. “She needs to rest.”

  No! I screamed in my mind. Caro, don’t leave me! But, of course, what I meant was: Don’t leave with him’. Don’t believe his lies! But it was too late. And now I realised that it had always been too late.

  Tears in my eyes, I looked for Caro and Ross. But they were gone.

  Phillip Margolin

  Phillip Margolin has been compared by admiring reviewers to both Scott Turow and John Grisham—in other words, he is a writer capable of adding that chill edge of darkness to the hot legal thriller. Among his best-selling novels are ‘The Burning Man’, ‘Gone but Not Forgotten’, and ‘After Dark’. As a criminal defence attorney himself, he’s had more than his share of headline-grabbing murder cases and has argued before the Supreme Court. It is difficult to understand how he can keep topping himself—whether before a jury or his growing legion of fans—but so far he has managed never to disappoint.

  In this exquisite little tale, a relieved career criminal knows he has an alibi to die for—one that puts him far from the scene of the murder of which he is accused. There is no meticulously thought-out courtroom scene here, as the protagonist has figured out a better way to handle the situation.

  Angie’s Delight

  Larry Hoffman was so nervous that he actually bounced in place while the guard unlocked the door that led from the jail into the contact visiting room. His future depended on the person who was waiting on the other side of the thick metal door. Would he see some wet-behind-the-ears, recent law-school grad, who would use his case for practice, or would he meet a wily old veteran who knew what it would take to save his ass? When you were down on your luck, the gods decided whether you lived or died. In Larry’s case, the particular god in question was the clerk who assigned lawyers from the court-appointment list.

  Larry heard a metallic snap, and the guard stepped back so his prisoner could enter the concrete-block room. Larry froze in the doorway for a moment. Then, a shudder passed through his undernourished five-nine frame, as he exhaled with relief. Seated at the circular table that took up most of the narrow room was a man in his forties attired in a gray three-piece suit that looked expensive. The man smiled confidently. His hair was sandy blond and a thick, well-groomed moustache covered his upper lip. When he stood, Larry co
uld see that he was well over six feet tall and he was impressed by the lawyer’s trim, athletic physique. The man in whose hands Larry’s life rested looked relaxed, like someone who had been around the block, like someone who knew the ropes, like someone who would not be buffaloed by a belligerent DA or a prosecution-prone, defendant-eating judge.

  “Mr. Hoffman,” the lawyer said in a pleasant baritone, “I’m Noah Levine and I’ve been appointed to represent you.”

  Larry grasped the lawyer’s hand, the way he would have gripped a log had he been cast into the sea without a life jacket. Levine’s handshake was solid.

  “Sit down, Mr. Hoffman,” Levine said with an easy smile.

  “Thanks for comin’ over so fast. They told me I wouldn’t see no one until this afternoon.”

  “You are charged with murder, Mr. Hoffman. There is no time to waste.”

  All right!! Larry thought gleefully, I have me a tiger.

  “Larry... May I call you Larry?”

  “Yeah. That’s cool.”

  “Larry, before I talk to you about the facts of your case, I want to explain the attorney-client relationship. Have you ever been in jail before?”

  “Oh, yeah. This is my, uh, let’s see... the third time.”

  “And you’ve had a lawyer before?”

  “Twice. They were both jerks. All they wanted me to do was plead guilty.”

  “Well, Larry, we aren’t pleading to anything,” Levine told him confidently. He wore steel-rimmed glasses. Behind the lenses were steely blue eyes. “We are going to take names and kick ass.”

  Larry grinned broadly. This guy was all right!

  “Now, Larry, I don’t know what your other lawyers told you, but with me, anything you say is confidential. If you tell me you killed fifty people and they’re buried in your backyard, that stays between us.”

  “Hey, I didn’t kill nobody.”

  “What I’m saying is, if you did, I couldn’t give a shit, because I’m your attorney, Larry, and my mission in life is to clear you of this accusation of murder.”

  “That accusation is false. I did not off the dude.”

  “I don’t have any of the police reports, yet, but didn’t the papers say that there were witnesses?”

  “That was from the day before when I kicked O’Malley’s ass.”

  “Yes. There was a fight.”

  “There wasn’t no fight. I smacked the motherfucker around with a lead pipe to let him know I meant business. He never even threw a punch.”

  “And this was in front of witnesses?”

  “Damn straight. It was a lesson. I wanted those other little shits to know what would happen if they tried to keep my money.”

  “What money was this?” Levine asked.

  Larry paused. He looked a little nervous.

  “This stays between us?”

  “It would be unethical for me to tell anyone anything you tell me in confidence. If I were to tell even my wife, I could face disbarment.”

  Larry’s head bobbed up and down. “Okay, then. The, uh, money... It was from selling my dope. Those motherfuckers are my dealers. Tyrone, Kaufman, and that fucker O’Malley. He was holding back. Tyrone, he told me. So, when they came over to pay me, I knew O’Malley would be short and I smacked him around to make my point.”

  “What exactly did you say would happen if he held back any more money?” Levine asked.

  “I said I would kill his ass.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “But I didn’t do it. Someone else wasted him.”

  “Do you have any idea who it was?”

  “Nah. O’Malley was askin’ for it. I’m not the only guy he pissed off.”

  “Unfortunately, you’re the only person who threatened to kill him in front of witnesses. And it doesn’t help that O’Malley was beaten to death by a blunt instrument.”

  Larry shrugged. “It wasn’t me. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Well, Larry, we’ll need to give the jury something more than your word. Do you have an alibi for the time of the murder?”

  “When was it?”

  “Saturday, between two and three in the morning.”

  “Saturday! Between two and three!” Larry repeated excitedly.

  Levine nodded.

  “Oh, man, I must be livin’ right. I have a great alibi...”

  Suddenly, Larry paused. He ran his tongue across his lips.

  “Uh, there might be a little problem.”

  “Yes?”

  “What if my alibi involves something illegal?”

  “That could present difficulties, but remember, you’re charged with murder and you’re feeing a possible death sentence.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Besides, the bitch will never testify against me.”

  Levine looked interested. “Who are you talking about?”

  “The bitch who was in the movie. Angie something. I don’t remember her last name. She’s some runaway I picked up at the bus station.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Okay. Look, selling dope ain’t all I do. It’s tough to make ends meet, so I got this other deal goin’ with a couple of the independent video stores. Like, for special customers, I make these movies.”

  “What kind of movies?”

  “Adult movies. Porno. I film ‘em at my house, then I dupe ‘em and sell ‘em to these few guys. Sometimes, they’re special order. You know, some guy has a fantasy, I do it for him on a video.”

  “What does this have to do with your alibi?”

  “Okay. On Saturday, between one and three, I was doing this rape thing for this guy.”

  “A rape thing?”

  “Yeah. He was real specific. He wanted a video. It had to be a redhead. She gets lured into the bedroom. Then, she gets beat up and tied to the bed. Then she gets raped and beat up some more. So, I go to the bus station. The girl’s perfect. Young, big tits. The hair was a problem. She was brunette. But we dyed her hair.

  “I told her I was a movie scout, which, I guess, was technically true. I laid the thing out. She gets two hundred bucks for doing the movie. She was so fucking stupid. She bought the whole thing. She even believed it would all be acting and that she’d get paid.”

  Larry laughed and shook his head. “The bitch sure looked surprised the first time she got hit.”

  Levine looked upset for a second, but he composed himself.

  “If you beat up this girl and raped her, what makes you think she’ll testify for you?”

  “That’s the good part. We don’t need her. See, I filmed this shit in my bedroom. I worked the camera part of the time and a guy named Rodney beat her up and raped her. Then, Rodney worked the camera.”

  “Well, this Rodney isn’t going to admit he did that.”

  “Oh, I ain’t countin’ on Rodney. He’s outta here, anyway. The guy’s a drifter. I don’t know where he’s gone.

  “No, the thing that’s gonna save my ass is the TV. See, the TV was on all the time. It was next to the bed. You can see it in the video. And I’m in the picture too. This guy wanted two guys rapin’ her, so I took my turn. And I did her second, which was between two and three in the morning. You can tell that by the show that’s on the TV.”

  “Aren’t you worried about being identified if the police see the video?” Levine asked.

  “Nah. First, this bitch is long gone. We dumped her in a vacant lot and told her what we’d do to her if she ever went to the cops. She was so scared, she’s probably hit Alaska by now.

  “Second, you can’t tell from the movie if it’s real or fake. I’d just say she was acting and no one could prove otherwise.”

  “How can I get ahold of the video?” Levine asked.

  “It’s still at my house. I was gonna dupe it and bring it to my people, but I was arrested for wasting O’Malley before I could do it.”

  “Is there only one copy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then I better act fast. Tell me wher
e it is and I’ll have my investigator pick it up. I want to put it in my safe.”

  “Fuckin’ A!” Larry shouted. “I got to say this. I was really scared I’d get another asshole for a lawyer, but you are really good.”

  Levine smiled modestly. “Why don’t you wait to congratulate me until the charges are dropped. Now, where do I find the tape?”

  “It’s in my bedroom in the closet. There’s a lot of tapes, so you’re gonna have to look for it.”

  “How will the investigator know which one to take?”

  “It’s labelled Angle’s Delight. I think it’s up by the front on the top shelf.”

  Levine stood.

  “You’ll let me know if you get it, right?” Larry said.

  “I don’t want an innocent man sitting in jail for one second longer than is necessary. If we can pin down when the shows on the TV were aired and you’re in the picture, you’re home free.”

  Larry sprang to his feet when the guard told him his attorney was waiting to see him. It was four in the afternoon and he was thrilled that Levine was back so quickly. When the guard opened the door, Larry rushed into the room. He stopped dead, just as the door locked behind him.

  “Who are you?” he asked the skinny young man in the ill-fitting brown suit. The man smiled nervously. He had short brown hair and thick tortoiseshell glasses. Larry noticed coffee stains on the frayed cuffs of his cheap white shirt.

  “I’m Marty Long, your court-appointed counsel. I would have been over sooner, but you wouldn’t believe my day,” the young man said with an anxious chuckle. “First, I get stuck in Judge Lourde’s courtroom. Then, just when I thought I could get in to see you, there was this emergency at the office. Anyway, I’m here now. So, let’s get started.”