I certainly know what she’s saying. Koosman was a terrific left-handed pitcher for the Mets. Gooden was a right-hander destined for greatness, but he destroyed his career and almost his life by getting involved with drugs.
“What did Jake do for a living?”
“For the last ten years of his life, nothing,” she says. “Before that, he created software for computers. Medical stuff. Then he went into real estate.”
“What kind of real estate?”
“Land. He owns a lot of it.” She corrects herself. “Now I own a lot of it.”
She starts coughing, so I wait for her to finish. Either she’s coughing more lately or I’m just noticing it more because of my knowledge of her disease. “So he left you with a lot of money?”
She frowns. “Yeah, I can pay your fee.”
I hadn’t even brought up payment for my services; I just assumed Pups had very little money, while I am loaded. “You don’t even know what my fee is,” I say.
“Doesn’t matter; I can pay it. You should talk to Walter Tillman. He knows more about the estate than I do; he handles the money.”
Walter Tillman is a prominent local attorney whose firm does mostly estate planning, real estate, wills, and some corporate stuff. I’ve met him a few times at charity dinners but certainly don’t know him well.
“Walter was Jake’s lawyer?” I ask.
She nods. “And mine.”
“Have you been managing Jake’s real estate?”
She shrugs. “Nothing to manage.”
“Why not?”
“Talk to Walter.”
“I will, but I’ll need you to call him and authorize him to discuss your affairs with me. And I’ll also need you to think more about Jake and who might have wanted to hurt him. Also keep thinking about whether there could be any connection that he might have to Hennessey.”
She frowns. “I’ve been thinking about it. No chance. How are the dogs?”
“I saw them; they’re all fine. As soon as they’re big enough, we’ll adopt them out.”
“To good homes,” she says, making it sound like a warning.
“Of course; that’s what we do.”
“And Puddles?” she asks.
“Doing great. When I saw her, she was in the lap of a ten-year-old girl getting her stomach scratched.”
That gets the first smile out of Pups. “She loves that.” Then, “Get me the hell out of here; I want to see her again.”
I love walking Ricky to school.
I’m not sure why. It’s not as if it reconnects me to a time with my father, since he worked and wasn’t around in the mornings when I left. It’s just a really peaceful experience, and it seems right.
Usually I take Tara and Sebastian with us. I hold Tara’s leash, and Ricky holds Sebastian’s. Sebastian is rather easy to handle; he moves so ponderously that it’s like he is constantly making decisions as to whether he should take another step.
But today I’ve got some work responsibilities, so I take Tara and Sebastian on their walk early, and it’s just Ricky and me on the way to school. Laurie had told me that she broached the subject of Ricky’s last name with him briefly, but she didn’t really get anywhere.
She wants me to try, so that’s what I do. “Mom said you mentioned that we all have different last names,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Nah.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Nah.”
“You wouldn’t want us to all have the same name?” I ask.
“Sure. That would be cool.”
I feel like I’m sinking into parental quicksand. “If we could all have the same last name, what would you want it to be?”
He thinks for a few moments. “My friend Will has a cool last name. Let’s do that one.”
“Rubenstein?” I ask, sinking deeper.
He nods his approval. “Yeah. Ricky Rubenstein. I like that.”
“It doesn’t really work like that, Rick. We would need to use a name we already have. We already have plenty of them.”
“OK, so let’s all be Diaz.”
“I’ve got an idea,” I say. “Why don’t we talk about this with your mother?”
“Cool.”
After I drop Ricky off, I walk back home to get my car. I go into the house to get the keys, and Laurie asks me, “Did you talk to him?”
“I did.”
“How did it go?”
“How does Mrs. Laurie Collins Diaz Rubenstein sound?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You should not ask me to talk to a ten-year-old. If it’s about anything other than sports, I’m in over my head.”
My first stop this morning is Walter Tillman’s office. Walter was relieved when I called him yesterday to tell him that I wanted to talk about Pups. She had already notified him that he was free to discuss her situation with me, but he was more anxious to find out what the hell was going on with her case.
Walter has a four-attorney firm with offices in Fort Lee and Newark, and it’s at the Fort Lee office that I go to meet him. The office itself is decorated in “old money expensive”; everything except the receptionist is made out of dark-paneled wood. I’m not sure where they found enough dark trees.
Walter, probably in his midfifties, is good-looking and on his third wife. I saw the current Mrs. Tillman at a charity dinner not long ago; it’s a pretty good bet that she was born just in time to celebrate his admission to the bar.
We start by chatting about old times and shared experiences, which takes a very short time, since we really don’t have any of either. I let him take the lead, and he asks about the situation with Pups’s arrest and what jeopardy she might be facing.
“I’m really just getting into it,” I say, truthfully. “But clearly someone was out to set her up for this.”
“Why the hell would anyone want to do that?” he asks.
“When we know that, we’ll know everything.”
He sighs. “I thought I’d seen it all, but this…” He doesn’t finish the thought; he doesn’t have to. “So what can I do for you?”
“I’m trying to learn more about why anyone would have wanted to kill Jake Boyer.”
He just about does a double take in surprise. “Kill Jake Boyer? That case is being reopened?”
I don’t want to mention the gun evidence, but I say, “They’re looking at Pups for that shooting as well. I’m trying to head it off.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Agreed. Now as to my question.”
He shakes his head. “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that. I don’t have the slightest idea; he was one of the finest, most decent men I’ve ever met.”
“Tell me about his career.”
“Well, I only met him when he moved here, so I didn’t know him when he was in the software business. And he had already accumulated most of his real estate.”
“Where is it located?”
“All over. Jake had a great deal of money and modest needs. So he would buy up a lot of land, mostly at cheap prices, and just hold on to it.”
“Hold on to it for what?” I ask.
“Really just for preservation. Jake was what I would call a quiet environmentalist; he didn’t broadcast it. But he wanted his land preserved. There were frequent offers to buy various parcels, but he never considered selling; he said he had more than enough money for him and his wife to live on. The only time he ever got rid of land was when he donated some to become part of a national park in Idaho. But the government had to promise that they would leave it untouched.”
“Is there a lot of land?”
“In size, yes. Hell, you could just about fit New Jersey in some of those places he owns. But they’re mostly in the middle of nowhere.”
“So what has happened to all the land since Pups took over?”
He smiles. “Nothing. She’s honored his wishes and would never consider selling any of
it. She’s had some offers, but she instructs me to say no.”
“How much is it all worth?” I ask.
“I’m not really sure; there was never any reason to appraise it. But if I had to guess … maybe ten or fifteen million for all of it? There’s a lot of acreage, but none of it is in Manhattan, that’s for sure.”
“What happens to the land and the rest of Jake’s estate if she’s convicted of murdering Jake?”
He nods. “I’ve been researching that. She would no longer be entitled to the proceeds of the will. My guess is the son would be in line, if anyone could find him, and if he’s still alive. Otherwise, the state would step in and sell everything off for the benefit of the state treasury.”
“Do you know where the son is?”
“I don’t, but it’s possible I have some information in the files. I could have my assistant go through it.”
“Might be a good idea, more for you than me,” I say.
He nods. “Will do. How is Pups feeling? I’ve known about her illness for a while.”
“Seems OK. Coughing some, but not too bad.”
“Some position to be in. Her life is on the line, but it’s basically over even if she wins. Makes you wonder why she’s bothering to fight.”
“Fighters fight,” I say.
They’ve charged her with her husband’s murder,” Hike says, when I walk into the office.
“And the murder of the gang kid as well. We just got the notice from the court.”
“I’m not surprised,” I say, because I’m not. Tressel was holding on to those two additional charges to use in case Pups somehow got acquitted of the Hennessey murder. Now there is nothing to be gained by holding them, since Pups will likely have died before a second trial could take place.
The additional charges and the gun evidence linking the two killings will prejudice the jury against Pups. That’s why Tressel wants to use it now. It makes sense for the prosecution, but it makes her case that much tougher for us.
“Any other good news for me?” I ask.
“Actually, yes,” he says, surprising me. Not only does Hike never deliver good news, but he usually puts a spin on anything positive to make it seem negative. “We’ve gotten a good amount of the discovery for both killings.”
This is good news on two fronts. Most important, it will give us insight into the prosecution’s case, and obviously we need that to prepare an effective defense. The other positive is that reading it will give me something to do. That’s one of the first things you learn in law school: doing something is better than doing nothing, as long as you’re doing it right.
I focus on the Jake Boyer / Little Tiny Parker killings. There is far more information on that case than the Hennessey murder, because months were spent investigating it. On Hennessey, it’s an ongoing investigation in its early stages, so the material is limited.
Once I’ve brought myself up to date on the actual event itself, I call Laurie. “How’d you like to go to another murder scene?” I ask.
“You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”
I drive over and pick her up, and we head to the Bonfire Restaurant, on Market Street. It’s an easy place to get to, right near the entrances for Routes 20 and 80. It’s also the perfect place for this type of drive-by assassination, since the shooter’s car could easily slip onto one of the highways and be far away from the scene in minutes.
The Bonfire is the place where we would go on Friday and Saturday nights when we were in high school. If we didn’t have a date, we’d go there to hang out with friends. If we did have a date, we’d go there to show her off to our friends. I was most often in no-date mode.
It’s not at all crowded when we get there now, since the lunch crowd has mostly left. That doesn’t matter to us either way; we have no intention of going in. All the action took place outside.
I point to the entrance. “Boyer and Barnett came out of there about nine thirty. It was a Saturday night, so the place was crowded, and the parking lot must have been filled when they got here. They parked around the corner that way.”
“Who drove?” Laurie asks.
“Boyer.”
We walk the path that they walked that last night. Laurie points to a street lamp. “The area was lit well enough, unless they’ve put that in since.” She then touches some rust on the pole and says, “Doesn’t appear that they have.”
“And witnesses said the car almost came to a stop when the shots were fired. With this light, at this distance, it wouldn’t exactly take a crack shot to hit the target.”
She nods. “I wonder if the shooter deliberately hit the gang guy to confuse the police.”
“If he did, it worked.”
She smiles. “You’re sure the shooter was a he?”
I return the smile. “That’s my working theory.”
“I think you’re right,” she says, surprising me.
“Why?”
“Because Pups was his wife; she’d know where he’d be most of the time, and it would usually be in places more vulnerable and less public than this. She didn’t have a history of this kind of shooting.”
“Glad to hear you’ve come over to the side of truth and justice and you believe in our client’s innocence. Besides, she had an ironclad alibi: she was playing bridge with some friends.”
“Obviously, she could have paid to have it done. Especially since you learned he was worth a lot of money.”
“Ye of little faith,” I say.
“I’m going to have Marcus check into Little Tiny Parker and find out what his friends think,” she says. “When a gang member is shot, it’s a good bet that his fellow members have a good idea who did it. And they wouldn’t be likely to share that information with the police; it’s more common that they’d get their own revenge.”
“Good idea,” I say. “And I’ll ask Sam to research online whether there were any follow-up shootings that could have been related. But I think we’re going to come up empty; I think Jake Boyer was the target.”
The local media is in an uproar.
It’s just been made public that Pups is also being charged with the death of her husband and Little Tiny Parker, and it’s all anyone is talking about.
Before, while it was obviously a serious murder case, there was still an element of quaintness to it, probably because of the puppy connection. But now it’s turned Pups into a borderline serial killer, and the importance of the case, at least in the media’s eyes, has exploded.
David Barnett is therefore not at all surprised when I call him and tell him I want to meet. But he’s not happy about it. “I know what’s going on,” he says, “But I really don’t want to go back in time. At least not to that night.”
“One way or another, you’re going to have to, probably more than once. I’ll try to make it as painless as possible.”
He sighs. “OK. Let’s grab a cup of coffee.”
When someone tells you that they want to “grab” coffee or lunch or whatever, it means they aren’t planning to spend a lot of time with you. “Grab” is the verbal equivalent of taking out and holding car keys; it’s a sure sign that they’re looking to make a quick getaway.
I consent to the grabbing, and we agree to meet at a diner on Route 46. It’s late morning but prelunch, so the place is mostly empty. Barnett’s not there when I arrive, although I have no idea what he looks like.
I look around at anyone who might be alone and waiting for me, but unless Barnett is disguised as a sixty-year-old African American woman, then I’ve arrived before him.
It’s twenty minutes and two cups of coffee before he finally arrives. He’s dressed in an expensive suit, which is under an even more expensive overcoat. There’s fur on the collar, but rather than ask, I’m just going to hope it’s not real.
He doesn’t apologize for being late but does offer a handshake and a smile. He pretends to shiver and says, “Cold out there.”
“Are you dreaming of a white Christmas?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I don’t really give a shit; I’m going to be in Hawaii.”
He signals to the waitress for a cup of coffee, and I assume that when she brings it over, he’s going to grab it.
“So you want to talk about that night,” he says. “The worst night of my life, bar none.”
“Let’s start with you telling me what happened from the time you left the restaurant,” I say.
He nods. “Not much to tell. We walked around the corner to his car. He opened it electronically with his key, and I remember that there were some unsavory-looking guys around, gang types, so I wanted him to hurry up. Once he did, I opened the passenger door and started to get in. He wasn’t as quick about it, which is probably why I’m here and he’s not.”
“Did you see the shooter’s car?”
“I think so, but I couldn’t identify it in any way. I also heard it, and then I heard the gunshots and the screaming.”
“What did you do?”
“I got out of the car, which in retrospect wasn’t that smart. I saw some of the gang kids hiding behind cars, so I did the same. When they got up, I did. The police were there in no time.”
“When you heard the report today that the police think Boyer might have been the target, did that surprise you?”
He thinks for a moment. “Definitely. Partly because I had been told for so long that he wasn’t. But also partly because he just wasn’t the type someone would want to kill. It’s hard to explain, but he was like a gentle soul. You just wouldn’t associate him with violence; it doesn’t compute. At least that was my impression of him.”
“Were you and he friends?”
He shakes his head. “Not really friends, but we were business associates of a sort, and we were friendly.”
“Were you having dinner with him about a business matter?”
“Yes. I was making an offer to buy a parcel of land he had in Ohio. A client of mine wanted to build apartment buildings on it.”
The Twelve Dogs of Christmas Page 6