“Which was what?”
“That he wanted to be the one to take care of Tommy, not me. He saw me serving strictly as backup.”
“What kind of backup?”
“He needed me to drive him into the city. He was afraid to drive in the city. The traffic terrified him. Too many crazies.”
Very looked at Jocko in disbelief. “Are you trying to tell us that it was little Mel Klein, attorney at law, who brained Tommy O’Brien and shoved him off of Hoagy’s roof?”
“It’s the truth,” Jocko insisted, gazing over at Yvette. “You’ve got eyes, haven’t you? Look at her.”
I looked at her. Yvette continued to sit there at the desk, perfectly calm and composed, the very portrait of innocence.
“I’ve never, ever seen a guy go so nuts over a woman. That poor little schnook was so desperate to prove his manhood to her that he would do anything. ‘Don’t you understand, Jocko?’ he says to me. ‘She’s the one I’ve been waiting for my whole life.’ He actually thought he had a shot at her. He had no clue that she was only interested in the dough, not him. She’s damned good at working a guy, I have to give her that. Mel would have jumped off that roof himself if she’d asked him to. The little guy was a goner. Totally pussy mad.”
“Would you kindly choose a different expression?” Norma Fives said with chilly disapproval. “Something less repulsive?”
“Excuse me, miss,” Jocko said apologetically. “Mel was madly in love with Yvette, is what I’m trying to say. He couldn’t stop talking about her. Kept telling me about how she’d promised him they were going to run off together to her house in Maui when this was all over. He said that she liked to swim nude in the pool there. That they’d swim nude in the pool together. He must have mentioned swimming nude in that damned pool to me twenty times.”
“It seems to me I’ve heard about that particular pool myself,” I said.
“Tell us your version of how it went down, Jocko,” Very ordered him.
“Sure, okay. Except it’s not my version. It’s the only version. The God’s honest truth.” Jocko had started to sweat like crazy in the warm office. He swiped at the beads of perspiration on his forehead with a damp, meaty forearm before he said, “It was Mel who set things in motion. He called Tommy at Hoag’s apartment and made an appointment to meet him there that same day at around five o’clock to discuss his contract situation with Mr. James. I drove Mel to the meeting in my Coupe de Ville. The little guy was afraid to drive in city traffic, like I said. When we got to your place, Tommy buzzed him in. I waited outside in my car. They went up onto the roof because it’s like a furnace in that apartment of yours. I couldn’t believe how hot it was in there when I installed the tap on your phone last week. I swear, I felt like a boiled lobster by the time I got out of there.”
“I’ll have you know I pay extra for that,” I pointed out.
“When they got up onto the roof, Mel brained Tommy with a foot-long length of cast-iron pipe that he had tucked in his waistband, gave him a good shove, and over he went.”
“I’m not buying one word of this,” Very said to Jocko. “You’re spinning a yarn.”
“It’s no yarn,” Jocko insisted. “It was Yvette. She’d convinced Mel that if he took care of things, it would really happen. That they would really run off to Maui together. Swim nude in that pool. She’s a cruel person, if you ask me, not that you did. It was just plain nasty the way she jerked that decent little guy around.”
Yvette let out a mocking laugh. “Like you’d know from decent.”
“You turned him into a crazy person,” Jocko said to her accusingly.
“You’re wasting your breath, Jocko,” she responded coolly. “Not one person in this room believes a word you’re saying.”
Addison said nothing. Just sipped his champagne in sullen silence.
“And now I’m guessing you’re going to tell us that Yvette talked Mel into killing Sylvia, too,” Very said to Jocko.
“Absolutely. Let me tell you, just because a guy’s got a law degree don’t mean he can’t turn out to be a complete yutz.”
“I’ve often thought that the two go together, actually,” I said.
“Mr. Hoag, I happen to resent that remark,” Mark Kaplan said sharply.
“Go right ahead. I don’t mind.”
Yvette let out a weary sigh. “Am I allowed to speak, Lieutenant?”
“Of course,” Very replied.
“Just exactly how long do I have to sit here and listen to this grossly fat boor tell one lie after another about me?”
“You’ll sit here and listen just like the rest of us,” Addison snarled at her.
Yvette recoiled in shock, her huge blue eyes widening.
“What was your role in Sylvia’s murder?” Very asked Jocko.
“Strictly logistical. I’d been casing Sylvia’s street.”
“Lane,” Sensenbrenner corrected him.
“Huh?”
“In Willoughby they’re called lanes,” I explained.
“Yeah, whatever. I tailed her home from the office on the Metro-North train. Worked out her schedule. Staked out the vicinity surrounding her house for regular dog walkers, joggers and such.”
“How many days did that take?” Very asked him.
“Three.”
“That’s a lot of legwork. Plus it’s a long drive into the city from Babylon and then out to Willoughby. Did you recruit some backup?” I asked him, glancing Richie’s way. “Maybe an old running buddy who needed a few bucks?”
Kathleen glared at Richie.
“You trying to pull him into this?” Jocko wondered. “No way. Richie had squat to do with any of it. I worked it alone and fed my info to Mel. And it was his idea to head straight out there once he’d pushed Tommy off your roof. He was such a meek-looking guy no one gave him a second look when he came walking out of your building right past Tommy lying there dead on the sidewalk. But when he jumped into my car, Mel was like a man possessed. There was this, I dunno, crazed gleam in his eyes. He told me he wanted to drive right out to Willoughby and take care of Sylvia right now. And that he wanted to be the one to do it, just like with Tommy.”
“And you went along with the idea,” Very said disgustedly.
“You don’t understand, I had to. He was my boss. I did what he told me to do. And you have no idea how crazed he was. If I’d tried heading back home to Babylon he would have blown a gasket, I’m telling you. Besides, it wasn’t such a bad idea, to get it over with in one fell swoop, the more I thought about it. If we’d waited another day, Sylvia might have gotten spooked and asked the Willoughby PD to keep a car staked out in front of her house, which would have messed up the whole plan.”
Very stared at him for a long moment before he said, “And you’re sticking with the story that it was Mel who ran Sylvia down while she was out getting her mail.”
Jocko nodded his head of graying red curls. “It’s no story. It’s the truth.”
“Did you use a stolen car?”
He nodded again. “I jacked it from a ShopRite parking lot in Scarsdale on the way. It was a Ford Explorer. Green. Left my own car parked in a shopping center across the street. Mel drove the Explorer from Scarsdale to Willoughby. We idled down the street—”
“Lane,” I interjected.
“Lane from her house, waiting for her to pull into her driveway in that big Mercedes of hers. By then the little guy was shaking like a leaf. To calm himself down he lit up one of those dumb-ass Tiparillos of his.”
“We know all about that,” Sensenbrenner said. “Mr. Hoag’s sidekick found the plastic tip in the gutter not far from the body.”
Lulu let out a whoop of satisfaction, her tail thumping. I reached down and patted her.
“Sylvia arrived home on schedule, pulled into the driveway and opened her garage door. Got out of her car and started walking toward the mailbox. That’s when he floored it. Slammed right into her and sent her flying. The mailbox, too. But he wasn’t done.
He ran over her body while she was lying there in the street, hit the brakes, put it in reverse, floored it and ran over her again. Then he hit the brakes, put it in drive and ran over her yet again. I said to him, ‘Mel, we’re done here. She’s dead, for crissakes. Let’s split.’ But he went totally nuts, I swear. Sat there panting like he’d just run the New York Marathon. Finally he tossed his Tiparillo out the window and floored it out of there. After a few blocks I told him to pull over and let me drive. We retrieved my car in the parking lot in Scarsdale and headed on home. The little guy didn’t say a single word the whole way back to Babylon. All he did was stare out the window. He’d just killed two people in the span of, what, three or four hours, and all he did was sit there. When we got back to the office I poured him a stiff bourbon from my office bottle. He drank it down, said, ‘Good night, Jocko. Thank you for your help. See you in the morning.’ His voice sounded weird. Kind of wooden. Then he got in his Volvo and drove home.”
Everyone in the office fell into stunned silence for a moment.
“Why?” I spoke up.
“Why what, dude?” Very asked me.
“Why did Sylvia have to die?”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that messing with Sylvia’s head by stealing Tulsa wasn’t nearly enough for Yvette. I’m thinking she wanted Sylvia gone.”
“I don’t have to sit here and listen to another word of this,” Yvette fumed, getting up out of her chair.
“Yes you do,” Addison said to her in a low voice. “Sit back down.”
“Not a chance, Addy. I’m outta here.”
Lulu let out a menacing growl to convince Yvette that she did in fact need to sit back down. Lulu has a mighty menacing growl for someone who was once beaten to a pulp in Riverside Park by a Pomeranian named Mr. Puff Ball.
“Why did Yvette want Sylvia gone?” Very asked Jocko.
Jocko let out a harsh laugh. “Why do you think? So she’d inherit everything, duh. She’s one nasty little piece of work. I tried to tell Mel that. I ran a criminal background check on her. I knew all about her scuffles with the law before she married Mr. James here. She’s bad to the bone and wants it all when he kicks off. No offense, Mr. James.”
“None taken, sir,” Addison assured him.
“But Mel was so crazy about her he wouldn’t listen to me, the poor slob. See, he’d never had a shot at someone like Yvette. Not that he did have a shot at her. All she cares about are the crown jewels.”
Mark Kaplan frowned at him. “The crown jewels?”
“Mr. James’s bank accounts and stock portfolios. His royalties. Look around you at all of these books, will you? And you want my personal opinion? Being the poor white trash that she is, it’s his houses that she really, really wants. She’ll come into that waterfront mansion in East Hampton plus his multimillion-dollar country estates in Aspen, Jackson Hole, Montecito, Maui, and a bunch in Europe. He’s got one in Tuscany, one in Provence, one in-in . . .”
“Geneva,” Kaplan said crisply.
“And she wouldn’t have gotten any of those if Sylvia was still around,” Jocko explained.
Addison glowered across the partners desk at Yvette for a long moment with his one not-so-good eye before he let out a chuckle followed by another chuckle that exploded into a huge, roaring laugh that went on and on as he slapped the desk with the palm of his hand, tears streaming from his eye.
Everyone stared at him in disbelief. Almost everyone, that is.
“What’s so damned funny?” Yvette demanded furiously.
“I believe I can answer that question for you, Mrs. James,” said Kaplan, whose own face remained impassive as Addison continued to roar with laughter.
She scowled at him. “Well . . . ?”
“Mr. James instructed me to alter his will quite some time ago so that upon his death none of those properties would have passed to Sylvia. He’d made other plans for them.”
Yvette gaped at Kaplan in shock. “What other plans?”
“He’s donating all of them to the Veterans Administration to serve as rehabilitation facilities for wounded Gulf War and Vietnam veterans.”
“And don’t forget Korea,” Addison interjected, wiping the tears of laughter from his eye. “Everyone else has, except for the poor bastards who were there.”
“The funds to staff and maintain the facilities,” Kaplan went on, “will come from his personal fortune as well as the continuing royalties from the sale of his books. He intends to give it all back, every penny he’s earned, because it was the VA that saved him at a facility in Asheville, North Carolina, after he was wounded during the Second World War.”
Yvette whirled and glared at Addison. “How could you do something like that and not tell me?”
“Because it’s my money, not yours. And because . . . because . . .” Addison tried to continue but couldn’t get another word out. He’d started roaring with laughter again.
“Would you stop that laughing, you crazy old bastard!” she screamed at him. “This isn’t funny!”
“Oh, but it is!” he assured her. “That look on your face right now is . . . it’s priceless. You did all of this for nothing!”
“Now that you mention it,” I said, “this is what book critics mean when they label something as ‘richly ironic.’”
“It’s fucking hilarious, is what it is!” Addison roared, slapping the desk with the palm of his hand again.
“You evil bastard!” Yvette spat at him, her face blazing with fury. “You sick, evil fucking bastard!”
“Lastly, there’s the matter of Mel’s murder this afternoon,” I said. “He wasn’t done in by any amateur. Whoever shot him was swift, professional and armed with a .357 Magnum equipped with a silencer.”
“I got nothing more to say.” Jocko crossed his arms in front of his saggy chest. “Not one word. Not without a lawyer.”
“Fine, then I’ll say it for you. Mel panicked after the lieutenant and I visited him at his office today, didn’t he? Told you that he was convinced we were onto him. You knew he’d start blabbing his head off just as soon as the men with handcuffs showed up there, isn’t that right, Jocko? And that once Mel started blabbing, he’d take you down with him. So you followed him home from work, pulled into his garage after him and tapped on the window of his Volvo. As soon as he lowered it, you let him have it. You were in and out of there in thirty seconds. No one heard you. No one saw you.”
Jocko continued to stand there with his arms crossed. “I told you, I got nothing more to say.”
“Not a problem,” I assured him. “You’ll get your lawyer and stand trial for his murder. Justice will be served—in a manner of speaking.”
Very frowned at me. “Meaning what, dude?”
“Meaning Jocko may have pulled the trigger on Mel, but he’s not the real killer. Nor was Mel the real killer when he pushed Tommy off my roof or ran that Ford Explorer over Sylvia, again and again. No, the real killer is the person who manipulated this sorry series of events by taking advantage of that weak, lonely little guy in his dreary little office in Babylon. The real killer is you, Yvette.”
She glared at me with those big blue eyes of hers. It was an icy, hate-filled glare. And it was my first glimpse of the real Yvette—a hardened, amoral hustler named Phyllis Yvette Rittenaur. Phyllis, whose father ran off before she was born and whose mother deserted her when she was four. Phyllis, who’d been raised by an aunt who was a hooker. “You can’t prove a damned thing,” she said to me dismissively. “And if it comes down to my word against Jocko’s, who do you think a jury will believe—a loathsome, corrupt slob who’s been kicked off two different police forces or sweet, darling little me? Wait until you see my lower lip start to quiver. I can make grown men cry.”
“I have no doubt that you can. I also have no doubt that you’ll get away with what you did. It’s Jocko who will take the fall. But you won’t get Addison’s houses or his fortune. And his lawyer over there, Mark Kaplan, will make
sure that your prenup is voided.”
“Count on it,” Kaplan said with total assurance.
“You failed, Yvette. It’s like Addison said—you did all of this for nothing. Not one cent.”
“Not one cent,” echoed Addison, who started laughing again, roaring and roaring with laughter.
“Will you stop that damned laughing?” Yvette shrieked at him. “This isn’t funny!”
The old man stopped laughing and inhaled several times, slowly and deeply, before he said, “You’re absolutely right, it’s not.” Slid open his top desk drawer, swiftly removed his loaded Ruger and shot Yvette right between the eyes as she sat there across the desk from him. The shot rocked her back in her chair before she crumpled over to one side, her dead eyes open, a stunned expression on her face. Some blood trickled down her face. Not a lot. Her heart had stopped pumping blood the instant that the bullet penetrated her brain.
Norma Fives let out a horrified scream. Everyone else in the office froze.
Until Very rushed toward Addison with his own piece drawn. “Drop it, Mr. James. Put the gun down.”
“Not a problem, Lieutenant Very.” Addison calmly set the revolver down on the desk and sat back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his hairless pink head. “I was simply doing what Wild Bill always told us to do.”
“Which was what, sir?”
“Leave no loose ends behind. They’ll bite you in the ass every time.”
At the sound of the gunshot, the uniformed cop out in the hall had hurried in with his own gun drawn. Very told him to send for an EMT van and more men. Then Detective Lieutenant Romaine Very of the NYPD read America’s wealthiest, most famous living author his Miranda rights.
While he was doing that, I overheard Kathleen O’Brien say, “Richie, I swear to god, if you had anything to do with this we’re through.”
“I didn’t, I swear,” he insisted.
“Then where were you yesterday afternoon while I was watching Oprah? And why’d you ditch me in that movie today?”
The Man in the White Linen Suit Page 21