FrostLine

by Justin Scott

  “We’re really reaching, here,” Ira said gloomily.

  “Then why pursue it?” asked Tim. “I thought the plan was to make the state’s attorney cave before he goes to the grand jury.”

  “Because,” Ira said, “the state’s attorney gave me bad news, this morning, very bad news, while suggesting I cop a plea.”

  “Cop a plea!” Tim blurted, shocked into feistiness. “He’s got some nerve.”

  “He’s also got a very strong case against our client.”

  “What happened?”

  “Seems Ben wasn’t the only person Butler ‘confided’ in. Seems that a week before the event, he and King got into a shouting match in Mike’s Hardware and he told King to his face he’d blow his dam.”

  No wonder Ira was so willing to listen to my “lame” theory.

  “But that’s just King’s word against his,” Tim protested.

  “Overheard by Mike, who was cutting keys.”

  “Why the hell didn’t Mike say this earlier?”

  “Mike happens to be a Vietnam vet who sides one hundred percent with Mr. Butler.”

  I asked, “Who got Mike to talk?”

  “State Police Major Case Detective-Sergeant Marian Boyce. You know her, Ben.”

  “I’ve run into her.”

  “Quite a comer, I’m told,” said Ira.

  “That’s my experience.”

  The lawyer’s smile was brief and grim. “Understand, both of you. Our client’s liberty is at stake. They’ve got that it was his dynamite. They’ve got the feud. They’ve got his son at the site. Now they’ve got an angry threat. And I’ll bet before this goes to trial, the comely sergeant will round up additional witnesses to our client’s emotional outbursts.”

  “Are you considering an insanity defense?”

  Ira shook his head emphatically. “You’ve seen him sitting there like a trapped animal. Institutionalize a man as unstable as he is and he’ll never get out. It would be worse than prison. Therefore, Tim will continue to concentrate on bail and on quashing the conspiracy charge. Find a legal precedent, new evidence, a friendly prosecutor, or some judge still beholden to your old man, I don’t care which. But do it fast. He’s not getting any more stable rotting in there.

  “Meanwhile, Ben will check out his cockamamie suspects.”

  ***

  The Long Island Sound sprawled pale blue in the muggy haze, dotted with sailboats and bordered by an indistinct coast.

  Like most of the workers hired at Fox Trot—Albert and Dennis Chevalley being the exceptions who proved the rule, and had probably inspired the policy—King’s caterers had come from far away. New York City, in the case of Party Box, although when I finally ran them down they were prepping a party on the back lawn of an estate down the beach from the Larchmont Yacht Club. The parking attendant gave the Olds a dubious look.

  “I’m with the caterer.”

  I was told next time use the service entrance and directed frostily to the kitchens. The cooks had coffee brewing and a radio on and were arranging flowers on serving trays. I asked for the boss.

  “Out at the tent.”

  Extremely attractive young men and women in white shirts and black pants were humping boxes across the lawn to a striped marquee. Under the tent, they were setting tables for a sit-down dinner for two hundred. I carried out a crate of flatware, and asked the prettiest woman I could find, “Where’s the boss?”

  “I am. Who are you?” She was short, feisty, and English.

  “Ben Abbott. I thought you did a beautiful job at the King party up in Newbury.”

  “The client from hell….Why are you carrying my lugs?”

  “I wanted to ask you about the party.”

  “Are you looking for work?”

  “No. Not this party. I mean, I’ll give you a hand if you’re short, but—”

  “Who are you?”

  “Ben Abbott. From Newbury. Do you have time for a quick question?”

  “Are you a cop?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “I talked to a lot of cops.”

  “So did I.”

  That got her attention, and jogged pleasant memories. “I can’t begin to describe,” she said, “the fantastic pleasure—the absolute joy—when his lake exploded. I felt sorry for the fish, of course, and then later that poor guy who did it. But it was fantastic. I mean I have had clients. And I have had clients.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Bossing everyone around, yelling at us. Do this. Do that. Make sure you don’t forget. Why isn’t that man wearing a bow tie—Because he’s still setting up the bar, you nincompoop, which of course I couldn’t say, but had to take time out to explain and promise that his party would be much better than the one we did for his close personal friend the maharajah….On and on and on.”

  “Sounds like a miracle it was such a good party.”

  “Thank God he didn’t get there until right before it started.”

  “What? What do you mean, right before it started?”

  “That bloody helicopter brought him in. You’d think the president of the United States was landing. The whole house staff had to line up to greet him. Like ‘Masterpiece Theater’? They told me to line up too. I said, ‘Your party starts in two hours. You can have Gosford Park, or you can have food and drink for your guests. You choose.’”

  “What time did King arrive?”

  “Late. One o’clock.”

  “One?”

  “He cut it really close. There was some problem with the plane.”

  So much for former construction worker Henry King personally stuffing his dam with dynamite to bury a dead Dicky Butler.

  “From where?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I think they said London. He looked like he’d been flying all night. All sweaty and disgusting and not exactly spiffed for a party. He was yelling at that ‘personal’ assistant that the client’s chairman had taken the good plane and stuck him in one with broken air conditioning, and why the hell couldn’t he buy his own plane. Bitch, bitch, bitch.”

  “Who told you to line up? Ms. Devlin?”

  “The ‘personal’ assistant? No, she was on the helicopter. It was that drunk talking out of the side of his mouth. I gathered he was a houseguest. He’d been my main annoyance until Horrible Henry arrived.”

  She and I bounced “Horrible Henry” stories for another minute or two. Then I asked her what I had driven two hours to ask: “Did you lose any gear in the explosion?”

  “That was the best part of all. The silly showoff insisted we use his own silver champagne buckets.”

  “Even down at the dam?”

  “That’s where we really were lucky, thank God. I was going to put my best bartender at the dam, refilling glasses when the guests walked around the lake. But they just wanted a fancy bucket. Two-thousand-dollar silver antique—ka plooy.”

  “Lucky bartender.”

  “Lucky Party Box. You know what it’s like to find a decent bartender?”

  “So he wasn’t near it at all?”

  “He was on top of it—replacing the magnum—two minutes before it exploded.”

  I looked over at their service bar. A guy in a tee shirt was slicing limes. His white dress shirt hung from a nearby tent rope, protected by a clear plastic bag. “Is that him?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, they’ve gone and arrested the old farmer who lived next door. The father of the man who was killed. They’re blaming him, too.”

  “The old man on the tractor?”

  “Mr. Butler. He and King were feuding. Hated each other.”

  “Oh really? Mitchell!” she called to the guy slicing limes. “Mitchell. Come over here and talk to this man.” Mitchell looked like he was in between jobs modeling Armani suits. Darkly handsome, almost sinister—until he smiled.

  “Mitchell, Ben,” said his boss. “Ben, Mitchell.”

  W
e shook hands and Mitchell asked, “What’s up?”

  “Basically, I guess I’d be happiest if you could tell me you saw somebody put dynamite in Henry King’s dam and light the fuse. Failing that, did you see anyone approach it who wasn’t part of the party?”

  “No, they asked me that. No. I only saw us and the guests.”

  “Could you see the face of the dam when you brought fresh bottles?”

  “No. I was above it. The bucket was set back a ways so nobody would fall over.”

  “How far did the water drop?”

  “How high was the dam? I don’t know. About ten feet.”

  “Didn’t you lean over for a look? I’m usually drawn to the edge and I’ve got to look. Especially when there’s water.”

  “Oh, I looked. When I first went out there.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Nothing. It was kind of bushy and swampy. It looked like snake and mosquito heaven.”

  “And the champagne bucket was next to the spillway?”

  “Not next. A ways back.”

  “How far?”

  “Far. ’Cause first I set it up by that cute little bridge across the spillway. The contractor had blocked it off with saw horses.”

  I’d last seen the replica of an Olmstead Central Park bow bridge washed downstream in the mud.

  “But they came out yelling ‘Move it. Couldn’t I read?’”

  “Read?”

  “The sign. ‘Danger! You’ll fall off and die.’ You know. On the sawhorses.”

  “Did you see a red-headed guy about my size? Short stubby hair, tattoos on his arms.”

  Mitchell turned to his boss. “That state trooper asked me that. Remember?”

  The boss explained, “She crashed a cocktail party we did at the Fortune Society. Arrested one of the guests.”

  “Sounds like Detective-Sergeant Boyce.”

  “Right. She recognized a fugitive, handcuffed him, and took him away.”

  Seemed a funny coincidence. “You mean she followed him to the cocktail party?”

  “No. She came to ask us about what happened at Fox Trot. The fugitive just happened to be there.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her I didn’t see the red-headed guy.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “Of course not. No way I’d lie to her, even if I had a reason to. No. No red-headed guy with tattoos. Sorry.”

  “And no other party crashers?”

  “No,” said Mitchell. “King had heavy security.”

  “They demanded a final staff roster a week ahead,” the English woman added. “No changes allowed. I said, ‘Give me a break. We’ve got actors working. Someone gets a job, someone else fills in.’ I guaranteed we’d have enough people. We always do. Can you believe they said, ‘Anyone not on the list won’t get past the gate?’ And you know the funny thing. Such tight security? Give me a break: someone stole two crates of champagne from our van.”

  The entire time she was talking to me, her eyes were everywhere, checking the setup. Suddenly they gleamed with a smile. “Would it be possible to make a small contribution to that farmer’s defense fund?”

  ***

  I drove back to Newbury with a generous check for Tim to deposit in his escrow account. I told him I’d learned that King had arrived barely in time for his party. Tim said Ira said that the word at the courthouse confirmed my impression that J.J. Topkis had indeed cut a deal with the state’s attorney, but no one knew what. “Greg’s playing it real close to the vest.”

  “How the hell can Topkis afford to pay Greg Riggs?”

  “You can never tell with the bikers,” said Tim. “Ira defended one last year who owned his own bodyshop. And sometimes they’re doing drug deals. Or selling guns.”

  I agreed that bikers sometimes scored big. But it was rare they banked the profits for a rainy day. “Can you find out how Riggs happens to be defending him?”

  “Never.”

  “Come on.”

  “I wouldn’t tell anybody how I happened to be defending a client. Why would he?”

  “I gotta check Topkis out, anyway. Maybe he’ll tell me.”

  “Lotsa luck.”

  ***

  I drove downriver to Derby, an old working town where the falls of the Housatonic used to power the factories and here and there the old races could still be seen to trap the water in stagnant pools.

  J.J. Topkis was not hard to sneak up on. The sharp, hollow thunder of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle engine sounded like he had stolen his muffler from a lawn mower. His neighbors on the street of two-story frame houses and battered old trees must have been counting the hours to his trial.

  With others of his ilk, who had been caught earlier, he had formed a loosely knit gang of riders who called themselves the Derby Death. The Derby Death maintained a clubhouse in an abandoned factory, a place I had no desire to visit.

  Much preferring to meet him home alone, and entertaining the vague hope that he lived with doting sisters and a mother anxious to protect her bail investment, I eased the Olds around potholes and past houses buttoned up against the heat and noise, checking for an address provided by a biker who had let me buy him a dozen Rolling Rocks at the White Birch Inn.

  Number Forty-eight, which someone had dressed up with asphalt shingles after World War Two and aluminum storm windows during Vietnam, had a narrow driveway that squeezed between it and the house next door. At the end, in front of a sagging garage, I saw Topkis sitting cross-legged on the cracked cement revving a chopped Harley. His ear was cocked to subtleties I could only imagine as each twist of the handlebar produced noise reminiscent of the Enterprise launching F-18 Tomcats.

  Two guys in cutoff workshirts were seated on garbage cans watching the operation with vacant gazes that grew sharper as they tracked my passage down their street. Exactly the clubhouse crowd I was trying to avoid. Well, maybe Mom was watching from the kitchen window. I drove past, turned around in a neighbor’s driveway, and parked the Olds facing a getaway.

  Chapter 18

  The Harley shut down. Silence descended.

  Sometimes, certain types who have reason to expect the cops mistake me for the enemy. Maybe it’s my general build, maybe some attitude. Sometimes I don’t disabuse them, though I never come out and say I’m The Law, which would annoy real cops greatly.

  As the three of them tracked me out of the Olds and up J.J.’s driveway, it struck me this might be an excellent occasion to let them form the wrong idea about who the hell I was, what the hell I was doing there, and why the hell I was barking, “J.J. Topkis.”

  The two on the garbage cans looked mildly relieved. Topkis rose from the cement, uncoiling to his feet as effortlessly as a cobra.

  “Yeah?” He looked me over, trying to place me. I was hoping he remembered me talking to Ollie at his arraignment.

  “Drop the screwdriver.”

  He laid it within easy reach on the bike’s saddle.

  If I wasn’t allowed to say I was a cop, nobody said I couldn’t act like one. “On. The. Ground.”

  He shrugged and knocked it off. It landed on its handle, with a dull thunk. I moved to where I could keep an eye on the other two.

  J.J. looked me over, thought he could take me. “What do you want?”

  Had I found him alone I’d have tried the man-to-man approach. Hear about Dicky Butler? Went out in a blaze of glory. That old dynamite’s sure full of surprises. But three-on-one made me a barking cop.

  “Why’d you sucker-punch Dicky Butler at the White Birch?”

  “Huh?”

  “Biker bar in Newbury.”

  J.J. just stared, trying to scope out why a cop was making an effort to embarrass him in front of his friends.

  “June. A night to remember. He threw you through the window.”

  “Oh, yeah,” J.J. answered slowly, stepping closer. “I was shit-faced.”

 
“Did he start it?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Word is, you hit him first.”

  “Yeah, he knocked my uncle’s teeth out.”

  That was news to me. I’d heard it was a simple one-on-one slugfest, over before it started.

  “Coupla years ago in Waterbury. Tried to pick a fight. Uncle didn’t want to fight ’im. Old guy, nearly fifty. Bartender and a mess a guys go, ‘Get outta here. Leave the old guy alone.’ Dicky Butler heads for the door. Going by the pool table he picks up the eight ball and blam! throws it hard as he can, right in the chest. Uncle gets mad. ‘What the fuck you do that for?’ Dicky punches him in the mouth. Teeth go flying across the bar. Guys are going, ‘See that?’ ‘Unbelievable.’ ‘All his teeth.’ ‘Stuck together.’ ‘Flying across the bar.’ You know what?”

  False teeth? A full set of uppers and lowers knocked out of Uncle’s head?

  I had forgotten that J.J. had sucker-punched Dicky. He sure was good at it. No clues, no telegraph hunch of the shoulder, no false smile to throw me off, just an engaging tale and, to use the master’s word, Blam.

  He was a tall man with exceptionally long arms and the punch had started down around his ankles. When it reached my jaw it was traveling like a FedEx truck late to the airport. One minute I was standing listening to his rap, the next I was flat on my back wondering how I got there.

  ***

  Cops and bikers have one thing in common. They pile on. If a cop sees another pummeling a civilian, he doesn’t saunter over wondering, What’s this all about? Perhaps I should inquire whether that citizen is rightfully defending himself. No. It’s, gangway, Brother in Blue, let me hit him, too. Same with bikers.

  The nearest garbage-can sitter aimed his engineer-boot at my face, the other picked up a Stillson wrench.

  I dodged most of the kick. His heel sliced my cheek half an inch from my eye. It probably hurt like hell, but I was too scared of the wrench to notice, trying to roll away from it as it came arcing out of the sky like the leading edge of a wrecking ball.

  The wrench slammed into the drive and sent cement chips flying in my face. By then I was really moving, rolling halfway to my feet before J.J. hit me again.

  His braced-and-ready punch made his sucker punch seem like a pleasant memory. He hit me hard and far and I saw shooting stars. The only good news was he knocked me clear out of range of his buddy’s next kick.