The Man in the White Linen Suit

by David Handler

“How did he react to that?” I asked.

  “He said, ‘Good, at least he knows it’s not a hoax. I busted my butt on that damned book.’ I said, ‘Tommy, what’s going to happen?’ And he said, ‘Don’t worry, Hoagy will make everything right.’ Except you didn’t, did you?”

  I sighed inwardly. “No, I didn’t. I’m truly sorry I let him down, Kathleen, but the lieutenant will figure out who killed him and why. And I will clear Tommy’s name. You have my word.”

  “He was a good guy,” Richie put in. “I always liked him.”

  “Shut up, Richie,” Very snapped.

  Richie reddened. “I’ve had just about all I’m going to take from you, Romaine. How about we step outside and settle this like men?”

  “Happy to,” Very said calmly. “Only I should warn you that it means you’ll end up with a rearranged face and a half-dozen fewer teeth.”

  “Guys, come on,” Kathleen said pleadingly.

  “Sorry, hon,” Richie said. “But I don’t care for this punk’s attitude.”

  “And I feel just sick about it, Richie.” Very glowered across the table at him. “Where were you at the time of Tommy’s death?”

  “This would have been when?”

  “Maybe five o’clock.”

  “Right here,” he said as Kathleen’s eyes widened in surprise. “Kathleen was watching that Oprah Winfrey on the tube. I was dozing on the sofa. Warm, rainy days like that I can barely keep my eyes open.”

  “You can back that up?” Very asked her.

  Kathleen lowered her eyes, swallowing. “Uh-huh,” she murmured in a barely audible voice. Unlike Richie, she was not a practiced liar. And Richie was clearly lying. That look on her face had said so.

  “And how about at seven-thirty, eight o’clock? Where were you then?”

  “Still right here, except for when I strolled over to First Avenue and got us some Chinese. The owner will remember me. I’m a regular. Beef with broccoli and moo shu pork. My Trans Am never left the garage.”

  “Oh, hey, are you still in contact with Jocko Conlon?”

  Richie blinked at him. “Jocko? Nah, not for years. Last I heard he was peeping through keyholes on the South Shore. Why you asking?”

  “There’s really no need for you to know why I’m asking, Richie. And it’s not too late. Not yet, anyhow.”

  “Not too late for what?”

  “For you to change your story.”

  Richie shook his head at him disgustedly. “I was a good cop. Do you honestly think I’d have anything to do with what went down yesterday?”

  “You and I both know that more than half of the professional hits in this city are performed by retired cops,” Very responded. “If someone’s looking to take out a no-good spouse or business partner, who do they come looking for? An ex-cop with money problems. How’s your bank account these days, Richie?”

  “I’m scraping by. That lawyer of mine ain’t cheap.”

  “Whoever took out Sylvia James in Willoughby was no amateur. It was planned and executed by a careful professional.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me,” Richie insisted. “Neither was what happened to Tommy. I’m telling you the god’s honest truth, I swear.”

  “Is that right?” Very leaned over the table toward him. “Then help me out here, Richie, because I’ve got a problem. Why am I having so much trouble believing you?”

  “DO YOU BELIEVE him?”

  “He’s a lying schmuck,” Very responded as I worked the Jag through the traffic on the Sunrise Highway, gateway to Long Island’s South Shore.

  I’d insisted upon fetching the Jag from its garage on Columbus Avenue because my sacroiliac, kidneys and possibly spleen refused to make another long trip in Very’s cruiser. The lieutenant hadn’t resisted. It was a hot late-summer day and we were heading for the shore. Who wouldn’t want to drive there in a vintage red XK150 roadster with its top down? I love that car. Whenever I’m behind the wheel, I’m me again. Lulu loves it, too. She sat up happily in Very’s lap with her head stuck out the open window, ears flapping.

  “I don’t like him hanging around that woman either,” Very added.

  “Nor do I, but that’s none of our business. Kathleen told me they have a good time together. Take art classes at the Y, go to the movies . . .”

  “Big whoop.”

  Once the Sunrise Highway made its way from Queens out to Long Island, it began to pass through the dreary, sunbaked South Shore suburbs that snooty Hamptonites long ago dubbed Queens by the Sea. We sped our way past Valley Stream, Freeport and then Massapequa, which had become famous a year earlier when a teenaged girl named Amy Fisher rang her married boyfriend Joey’s front doorbell. When Joey’s wife opened the door, Amy shot her in the face. The wife survived. The tabloids quickly dubbed Amy the “Long Island Lolita,” and Joey, who ran an auto body shop, achieved third-tier celebrity status judging wet T-shirt contests on MTV. Me, I still say the story would have gotten zero traction if Joey’s last name hadn’t been Buttafuoco.

  Babylon, best known by Manhattanites as the last stop on the Long Island Rail Road before Bay Shore, gateway to the Fire Island ferries, had some very nice sections down near the water. There were yacht clubs and lavish beach houses. But if you found yourself a few miles inland you encountered that same flat, cheap, sunbaked suburban sprawl that was true of most of the South Shore.

  The law offices of Klein, Walker and Pignatano were located in a cinder-block building in an unglamorous strip mall next to a beauty salon and a video rental store. This was no fancy Park Avenue law firm filled with elegantly tailored Yale and Harvard Law School types like Mark Kaplan. It was a regular-Joe law firm with regular-Joe lawyers out of schools like St. John’s and Fordham.

  “So what’s Klein’s deal?” Very asked me as I pulled the Jag into the parking lot.

  “He’s been giving Yvette legal advice on how to get a more favorable prenup out of Addison. She told me he’s working strictly on a contingency basis.”

  “Meaning she’s giving him a taste?”

  “Yvette insists she’s not, though I have no doubt she’s convinced him that she will.”

  “She’s married to a multimillionaire. Why didn’t she hire herself a big-leaguer?”

  “I wondered about that myself. Yvette’s no dummy. She could have driven a harder bargain when she signed that prenup. Yet she chose not to, meaning she had a bigger scheme in mind—something truly down and dirty—in which case a low-rent shyster like Mel Klein might be exactly who she needs.”

  It was bright and hot in the parking lot. I put the Jag’s top up so the biscuit-colored leather seats wouldn’t fry and in we went. The lobby of Klein, Walker and Pignatano, Attorneys at Law, was small, unadorned and chilled to about 55 degrees. It was also empty. No one sat in the waiting area waiting to see anyone. A trim gray-haired woman sat at a reception desk. She had a blue IBM Selectric typewriter on a typing table next to her. Behind her, on a credenza, there was an office computer, as well as a fax machine that was busy churning, churning. She did not look up when we came in. She was too busy chatting with the guy who stood next to the fax machine that was churning, churning. He was a huge, fleshy guy in his fifties with curly red hair that was starting to gray. He wore a pair of tan permanent press slacks and a loose-fitting aqua Ban-Lon shirt that did nothing to hide the horror that Mr. Gravity was doing to his sagging man boobs.

  He looked up at us, his face freckled and sunburned, and tilted his head mockingly. “Wait, don’t tell me, it’s Romaine Very, Dante Feldman’s wonder boy. Am I right?”

  Very nodded. “And you’re none other than the famous Jocko Conlon, king of the shakedown artists. Am I right?”

  Jocko’s eyes narrowed. “You should watch your mouth, kid.”

  “Yeah, I’ll have to do that some time. Richie Filosi sends his regards.”

  Jocko’s face gave away nothing. “Richie? He’s a good guy. Sure does love his Ballantine ale. How’s he doing?”

  “Scraping by. See
much of him lately?”

  “Nah. Haven’t bumped into him in years.”

  “You sure about that, Jocko?”

  “Plenty sure,” he said with a distinct cooling in his voice. “What are you doing out here in Babyland?” Which was what some people derisively called Babylon. “Bit out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you?”

  “Need to talk to one of the partners.”

  “Which one?”

  Very turned to the receptionist. “Mel Klein, please.”

  “I’m not sure Mr. Klein is available right now,” she said hesitantly.

  Very flashed his shield and his smile. “Tell him that Detective Lieutenant Romaine Very of the NYPD would appreciate a few minutes of his time in connection with a multiple homicide investigation.”

  “Of course, Lieutenant.” She swiveled in her chair and buzzed Klein. When he answered, she spoke to him in a low, discreet voice.

  Jocko was busy eyeballing me. “Who’s Beau Brummell here?”

  “He’s with me,” Very said curtly.

  “And what do you want with Mel?”

  “To talk to him, like I said.”

  “What about?”

  “That would fall under the category of none of your damned business.”

  “Don’t get your panties in a twist. Just curious.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  Jocko tilted his head at him again. “How so?”

  “What exactly do you do around here?”

  “Take a whole lot of photos of married men shtupping their girlfriends out on their boats.”

  “Do you shake the husbands down for the photos or do you actually bring them back to the office?”

  Jocko’s face tightened. “I got a PI license. I do legit work for a legit law firm.”

  “You wouldn’t know a legit job if it fell on you like an anvil. Spend any time in the city lately, Jocko?”

  “Nah. The city’s a cesspool. I like it out here. Everything’s nice and clean.”

  Very nodded. “True that. Everything except for you.”

  “You’ve got a real mouth on you for such a little punk.”

  “So I’ve been told. Bugs the hell out of me.”

  The receptionist hung up the phone and sat there with her hands folded before her on the desk. “He’ll be happy to see you, Lieutenant. It’s the third door on the right.”

  He thanked her and we started down the hall.

  “Excuse me, sir?” she called after me. “There are no dogs allowed in the office.”

  “We’re going to pretend we didn’t hear that,” I said as we kept on going.

  The office of Mel Klein, attorney at law, wasn’t much of an office. Eight by ten, and I’m being generous. A cheapo wooden veneer desk. A filing cabinet. A window with venetian blinds that enjoyed a splendid view of the parking lot. The only thing noteworthy about it, other than its air of small-time failure, was what sat on the floor behind his desk—a thirty-inch-square solid steel Honeywell safe with a combination lock.

  Mel wasn’t much himself as he got up from behind his desk to greet us. He was fortyish, stood five five tops, was concave-chested, and weighed no more than 140 pounds. His wire-framed glasses were crooked and needed attending to, and his close-cropped black hair had a definite dandruff problem that needed attending to. He wore a shirt in that shade of pale green that doesn’t look good on anyone, not even me, a striped tie and tan suit trousers that rode too low in the seat. The jacket was on a hanger on a coatrack by the door. Loosey-goosey Mel was not. The man was so jittery he trembled like a little Chihuahua. He also had an unhealthy grayish pallor. Looked as if he lived in a subterranean cavern, not a beach town.

  “Lieutenant Very of the NYPD, is it?” he said, his manner hovering somewhere between obsequious and unctuous.

  “Thank you for taking the time to see us, Mr. Klein.”

  “My pleasure, I assure you. And please call me Mel. Everyone does.”

  “Mel, this is my friend Stewart Hoag.”

  Mel raised his eyebrows. “The author?”

  “I’m afraid so,” I said.

  “This is a real honor for me. I thought the world of your first novel.”

  “Thank you. The short-legged one is Lulu.”

  She took a quick exploratory lap around the office before pausing at the wastebasket next to his desk, sniffing at it.

  He watched her curiously before he sat, his hands flat on the desk before him. “Please have a seat and tell me how I can help you.”

  “Hoagy was close friends with Tommy O’Brien,” Very said as we sat.

  Mel’s face fell. “Are we talking about the Tommy O’Brien who was pushed off that brownstone roof on the Upper West Side yesterday?”

  “We are. It was Hoagy’s brownstone, in fact. Tommy was hiding out in his apartment.”

  “Hiding out? Why was he doing that?”

  “He’d gotten himself caught in the middle of something and was frightened. When we searched Hoagy’s apartment, we discovered that someone had placed a tap on his phone. Tommy made several phone calls yesterday. And received one from here on your private office line at 11:33 A.M.”

  Mel looked unhappily at the phone on his desk before he nodded his head, considering his next words carefully. He slid open the top drawer of his desk and removed a Tiparillo from its small, flat box. Stuck it in his mouth and lit it with a Ronson lighter that he also kept in the top drawer. He took a few puffs before he slid the drawer shut. “My pacifier,” he explained with a nervous chuckle. “Hope you don’t mind the smoke.”

  “Not at all,” Very assured him.

  Lulu sat on my foot and nudged my knee with her head, which was her way of telling me she was eligible for an anchovy treat.

  “Why did you call Tommy, Mel?” Very asked.

  “Another client of mine who I was assisting with a contractual matter had asked me if I might be able to help him out.”

  “Had you spoken to him before yesterday?”

  “No, I hadn’t.”

  “Never met him?”

  “Never met him.”

  “This other client you mentioned. Would that be Yvette James?”

  Mel stubbed out his Tiparillo in a glass ashtray. “I’m under no obligation to answer that particular question, but I’ve always tried to cooperate with the police, and since the poor man’s dead, I’ll be candid with you. Yes, it was Mrs. James. She’d spoken to Mr. O’Brien about the disadvantageous prenuptial agreement she’d signed when she married Addison. And Mr. O’Brien had spoken to her about his own contractual issues with the James family.”

  “I didn’t realize they were confidantes,” I said. “She certainly didn’t give me that impression.”

  “My own impression? They weren’t close friends. But don’t forget that they shared a common foe in Sylvia James, who I understand was run over by a car right outside her own home last evening. I saw it on the eleven o’clock news. Ugly business.”

  “Yeah, that whole getting murdered thing pretty much always is,” Very said. “What was the gist of your phone conversation with Tommy O’Brien?”

  “He told me that he had a chance to sign a lucrative contract with a different publisher, one that would also offer him royalty participation. Apparently, his contract with Addison James made him nothing more than a salaried employee. I told him I’d have to take a good hard look at his contract, but that if he had a firm offer for higher-paying employment elsewhere, these sorts of situations could usually be worked out to everyone’s satisfaction. Slavery was abolished, after all.” Mel let out a nervous chuckle. “I suggested we try to set up a meeting next week. I could come into the city or he could come out here.”

  “I see,” Very said.

  Me, I was staring at the steel safe behind Mel’s desk.

  Mel’s gaze followed mine. “We keep a safety deposit box at the bank, but we need to store documents, deeds and so forth in there from time to time.”

  “Is it fireproof?”


  “It most certainly is. Waterproof, too. Weighs 295 pounds. It took a pair of burly men with a hand truck to get it in here.”

  “My brownstone on West 93rd is a firetrap. Whenever I go out for more than an hour I always stash whatever I’m working on in the vegetable bin of my refrigerator.”

  Mel frowned at me, puzzled. “You don’t back up your work?”

  “Um, okay, I don’t know what those words just meant.”

  “Store it on a floppy disc that you could take with you when you leave.”

  “I write on a 1958 solid steel Olympia portable.”

  “Oh, I see, a traditionalist.” Mel smiled slightly. His teeth were small, pointy and yellow. “In that case, my advice is that you ought to invest in a good fireproof strongbox. It wouldn’t cost you nearly as much as a safe. And it would do the job for you.”

  “A strongbox. Interesting idea. I hadn’t thought of that. Where would I get one of those?”

  “I imagine a good office supply store in Midtown would carry them. If not, they could certainly point you in the right direction.”

  “I’ll look into that. Thanks.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Do you mind telling us how you met Yvette James?” Very asked him.

  “Not at all, Lieutenant. A few weeks ago I successfully settled a case involving a landlord who was trying to take advantage of a commercial tenant. I decided to treat myself to a vodka martini at the bar at the American Hotel in Sag Harbor.”

  “You live out that way?”

  “Who, me? Heck, no. I live in Amityville in a two-bedroom condo that I got for a song in a foreclosure. But I’d settled a case, like I said, and sometimes I feel like rubbing shoulders with that rich Sag Harbor summer crowd. My God, I sure do love to look at those fancy women with their tanned, toned figures and designer clothes. I always wonder just exactly how tall and rich a guy would have to be to attract a woman like that. So I sat down at the bar, bought myself a vodka martini, had a sip, and suddenly a voice next to me said, ‘Whattaya drinking, hon?’ I turned around and, I am not exaggerating, almost fell off of my stool. You’ve . . . met Mrs. James?”

  “We have,” Very said. “Nice-looking woman.”

  “I would call that a bit of an understatement, Lieutenant. She’s absolutely the most gorgeous creature I’ve ever met in my life. My God, those blue eyes of hers had me mesmerized instantly. She was wearing a halter top, short shorts and high-heeled sandals. Every guy in the bar was checking her out. Rich, good-looking guys. And yet she’d plopped herself down on the stool right next to mine and asked me what I was drinking. I cleared my throat and somehow managed to convey to her that it was a vodka martini. ‘I never had one of those before. Would you buy me one?’ she said to me. I told her I’d be happy to. When it arrived, we toasted each other and she said, ‘I’m Yvette. You’re Mel, right? My friend Shauna said I’d find you here, because you settled her case for her today and you have a ritual about coming here. I adore rituals. I have all kinds myself. Like whenever I get sad, I paint my toenails a new color. Right now they’re Ballet Slipper.’ And with that she proceeded to kick off her sandal and plop her bare foot in my lap right there at the bar, wiggling her succulent toes in the air. Can you imagine?”