A Dead Man Speaks

by Lisa Jones Johnson

  “Sit down, Greene.” The captain was chewing on an unlit cigar, the spit was rolling off the tip as he twirled it in his mouth. “I hear that you been harassing club owners…”

  “You mean criminals that I shoulda brought in on pandering charges?”

  “Since when did you join vice, Greene?”

  I was silent. I knew better than to say anything.

  “Greene, you were going off half-cocked, as usual. Whether the club was running girls or not, isn’t your jurisdiction. You’re supposed to be investigating a murder case! God damn, you’re a hard headed SOB I told you from the beginning that this case was very sensitive, and you weren’t to go snooping around in things that weren’t relevant to finding out who killed Clive January!”

  “But, Captain, it was relevant. He’d been seen there. He mighta consummated a business deal there with whoever is behind the place. I think that that deal is what ultimately led to him being killed.”

  The captain shook his head in frustration. “Just because somebody had a drink there, doesn’t mean that it had a damn thing to do with who killed him. Shit, Greene, we’d be shutting down half the bars in Manhattan if that was the way we operated.”

  “Yeah well I also don’t think that it was any coincidence that the club was closed down by vice the day after I was there and in time for the owner to conveniently skip town.”

  “So now I suppose somebody here at the precinct is trying to cover something up? You’re gettin’ in real dangerous territory, Greene. It’s not enough that every cop in the place hates your guts ’cause they think you squealed on one of them, but now you have the nerve to accuse me, ’cause let’s face it that’s what you’re doing. You’re accusing my precinct of trying to cover something up!”

  “Yeah, well, Captain, who are these mysterious ‘people’ that you told me are so determined to get this case closed quickly? What am I supposed to think?”

  The captain didn’t answer me. He just leaned forward and stared at me, real hard. “Greene, I don’t want to hear any more of your grand conspiracy theory. I just want you to answer one question. Do you have a suspect? Did you get that woman Laurel Davenport that you been chasing all around the country for, pissing away taxpayers’ dollars?” What could I say, he already knew the answer.

  “That’s what I thought, you’re off the case.”

  “You said I had a month. I got a week more!”

  “Well, I changed my mind. You’re off the fuckin’ case now!”

  I was about to say something when the door swung open, Scoffo stuck his head in the door. “Sorry, Captain, but I thought you’d want me to interrupt you. That woman Greene’s been looking for…Laurel Davenport…”

  “Yeah…what about her?”

  “She’s here, at the station, said she wants to see Greene.”

  The captain looked as stunned as I was, but he recovered quickly, yanking the cigar out of his mouth and turning to me coldly, “Book her…and no bullshit. She’s our shooter.”

  I was finally looking into the eyes of the woman that I’d been chasing since Clive’s funeral. Face to face with her, I realized that she was the woman in black, the woman who didn’t fit in. The only person who cried at his funeral. Laurel Davenport, maybe the woman who murdered him for love. But for some reason I didn’t think so anymore.

  “You’ve been looking for me, Detective.” Her voice was rich and silky, soft and sexier than I’d imagined it would be and almost too much for such a tiny woman. Her dark hair framed her face like a soft curly halo. I couldn’t pull myself away from her eyes, light green, digging into me. I was being dragged into her soul. I saw what Clive musta felt, and why he could never leave her. She had some power that grabbed you and held you and wouldn’t let you go.

  Remembering the captain’s words, I said, “You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed for you by the court…”

  “I didn’t do it, Detective.”

  “I expected you to say as much.”

  She looked unmoved, crossing her legs and saying softly, “But I think I know who did.”

  We were alone in the interrogation room. I didn’t want any of the other cops to be around, because I knew what I had to ask her. “Who were the clients that Clive didn’t want anybody to know about?”

  “Are you still going to book me if I tell you everything I know?”

  “It depends on what you know…and what you tell me.”

  She looked into my eyes, and I thought of all the things that I knew about her: Clive’s wedding night, the obsessive love, the things that no one else should know. But I did.

  She cleared her throat and started speaking. “Have you ever heard of the Yakuzi?”

  “Yeah, the Japanese mob. They’re all over the place in Japan. They run a lot of the so called ‘legitimate businesses,’ and I hear that in some cases they operate pretty much openly without anybody bothering them.”

  “Well they’re not just in Japan. They wanted to establish a presence in some key American companies by buying up large blocks of stock. But they had to do it discreetly through shell corporations and by having smaller firms execute the trades. Firms that the SEC were less likely to monitor. Firms like Clive’s.”

  She looked away from me. “I didn’t want Clive to get involved in it. Jack Simmons convinced him to do it. He knew Clive needed the money. The last year had been tough on his firm. They’d lost some big accounts. People on the street talk, so Jack knew that Clive was vulnerable.

  “At first it was going well. Clive would do the trades, make the commissions, kick back Jack Simmons his part, and it was fine…Then the Japanese started wanting more trades and more and more of Clive’s time, so he brought Andy Haven in on it. I told him he couldn’t trust him. I didn’t want Haven knowing about it, but Clive always thought that he could control him.”

  “But he couldn’t?”

  “Not once Haven found out that Clive was going to shut the business down.”

  “So how did Haven know about that?

  “I honestly don’t know, but he always had his nose in something. He might’ve found out from Clive’s lawyers. I don’t know, but I know he did because he confronted Clive. Clive denied it, but Haven’s no fool. I think he tipped off Simmons and the Japanese, and they realized that their front was about to be taken from them, so they had him killed. Knowing that Haven would end up running the firm because he was next in line. And with him there they could continue with business as usual.”

  “What was the name of this Japanese client?”

  “I don’t know the real name. Clive wouldn’t tell me. They used a code to refer to it.”

  “What was the code name?”

  “Samurai.”

  I was quiet for a moment. It all fit together. All of the clues that I’d had…but it was still all theory, still no concrete proof. I turned to her. “Tell me one thing, Clive had this business, making from what you tell me and from everything I can see a shitload of money, so why was he gonna close the whole thing down? It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “It was all getting to be too much, the pressure. These Japanese clients always wanting more and more. All his money was tied up in the business, and the only way he could get it out was to liquidate his stock and take the money. He wanted to get away from New York and start over somewhere else.”

  “And what about you? Were you going with him?”

  She looked as if I’d stuck a knife in her as she struggled to get the words out. “Yes, that was what we’d planned.”

  “And his wife, did she know about your plans?”

  “She knew he was getting out of the business.”

  “Did she know about you? That is about you and her husband leaving together?”

  “He was supposed to have told her that night, before we…saw each other…We were celebrating starting a new life together…when he …died…” She stopped, swallowing hard, reaching for the compos
ure that she’d had earlier. “I’m sorry, Detective…”

  I let her get herself together before I asked, “And if for some reason Clive had changed his mind and decided not to go away with you and to stay with his wife what would you have done?”

  She was quiet for a moment, then she looked directly at me with this incredible calm saying, “I still would have loved him. I could never have killed him.”

  “So then why did you run after he was killed? Why didn’t you just go about your business and get on with your life?”

  “You really don’t get it, Detective, do you? Clive was my life. He’s the reason I came to New York. There was nothing else. “

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  She folded her hands in her lap, avoiding my eyes. “I ran because I just didn’t know what else to do. When I realized that the police were after me, it was too late to stop running. So I didn’t.”

  “Then why did you come here to turn yourself in?”

  “I didn’t come to turn myself in. I came to help you find out who really did it.”

  I knew without asking her that Clive had brought her to me. He had told her to come. So she did. Getting up and walking away from the desk, tapping a pen against the wall, I said, “You were there when he was killed…right?”

  “Yes…but I’d gone in the kitchen. When I heard the gun shot…I ran back in the living room but no one was there.”

  “So do you have any proof of your theory? I mean any indication that Haven talked to Simmons and these clients and that they presumably I guess, sent some kind of hit man or whatever out there to knock off Clive? Why didn’t they kill you, too? People like that don’t like to leave witnesses.”

  She stammered, “I…I don’t know, but I’m telling you the truth. That’s all I know.”

  For a moment, I looked hard at her, trying to see what was really behind her, but then I looked away, opening the door and shouting out, “Hey, I need a female officer in here. I got a suspect to be booked.”

  Laurel’s eyes filled with horror as she realized what was happening. “Detective…you can’t. I didn’t do it. Are you listening to me? I told you everything I know. I didn’t kill him!” But I turned away. The captain had his shooter.

  * * *

  Laurel

  Why would I have thought that he would believe me? Why would I have ever thought that by giving myself up to the cop who’d been looking for me for months that I wouldn’t have been booked? Because he told me to come here. Clive, why? Why did you tell me to come here? Do you think that I killed you? I didn’t. Don’t you know that? I didn’t!

  Maybe because it had all seemed too easy. Ralph helping me get away, posing as Mrs. Ralph Warner, dressed in his dead wife’s clothes, wearing her tangled wig and glasses, buying a ticket with her credit card. Boarding the plane. Nobody noticing, and then walking into the station. It had all been too easy. Why would I have thought that the rest would be as easy? Bob Greene, the bastard. After I tell him everything he needs to know to find the real killers—Andy Haven, Jack Simmons—he turns on me and throws me in here. A smelly, dark holding cell filled with prostitutes and junkies and me. Laurel Davenport, wanted for the murder of the only man that she ever loved.

  Thinking about Clive made me feel what I felt the last time, when Ralph Warner melted away and Clive stepped in. Remembering that calmed me, the thoughts forming a protective barrier around me, like he’d done before, and I knew that this wasn’t it. Something else was happening beyond these walls. Something else that would free Clive and me forever.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Detective Bob

  Laurel Davenport’s pitiful voice kept playing back in my head. I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. I knew she didn’t; I’d known for a while. I had to lock her up, hopefully it wouldn’t be for long. It was the only way to get the captain off my ass so I could find out who really did it.

  I was thinking all this when the door opened and a short guy in a rumpled blue suit walked in the office. Actually, in his own office. I’d been waiting for him to get out of a meeting and in the meantime turning the details of the case over in my mind. Things were beginning to add up, and if I could verify what Laurel had told me, I might stand a chance of blowing this one wide open.

  Alan Burns coughed nervously. A typical lawyer: kinda pale, anal, more concerned with saying it right than what it really meant. I leaned forward in my chair. I had to play this one real easy. “Mr. Burns, I just have to ask you a coupla questions. It won’t take long, but it could really help clear up some things about Mr. January’s death.”

  He squinted and played with a paper clip on his desk. “Of course, Detective. I’m happy to help out in any away.”

  “Good.” I flipped open my notebook. “You were Mr. January’s lawyer?”

  “Yes that’s right…for about five years now. Since I came to the firm.”

  “I see. So did Mr. January ever have you draw up any papers to uh…close down his business?”

  “You mean liquidate the concern?”

  “Yeah, close down his business.”

  “Yes, he did. In fact, the liquidation would have been completed the day after his death.”

  “Uh huh…so what does that really mean, in non-legalese? I mean this liquidation?”

  “Well, it was a complicated transaction because of the way Mr. January’s firm was capitalized. Essentially, what it would have meant if Mr. January had lived and the transaction had been completed as planned, is that Mr. January would have cashed out his stock in the corporation. Since he was the only shareholder, the business would have ceased to exist.”

  “So what did that mean for all the employees, people like Mr. Haven, for instance?”

  “Mr. Haven had a standard employee contract that was automatically terminated if the business was liquidated.”

  “So in other words, he would’ve been out.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was there anything that Mr. Haven could have done…legally that is, to stop the liquidation.”

  The lawyer shook his head. “Not a thing. He didn’t own any stock, and he wasn’t a director of the corporation. Mr. January was the sole shareholder and the only director. Nobody else had any interest in his business.”

  “So how much would Mr. January have gotten by liquidating?”

  “Roughly ten million dollars. All of the assets of the corporation would have been sold to buy back Mr. January’s stock. Once those assets were sold, the corporation would have been essentially bankrupt. Mr. January would have walked away with about ten million dollars.”

  So Clive was going to pull a fast one on all of them, cash out his stock, close the business, and get out with ten million dollars. My guess was that once Haven told Simmons what was up, Simmons hit the roof. He wasn’t about to let his cash cow to the tune of fifty percent of everything that Clive was taking in from the Japanese, go down the drain. I bet that those clients wouldn’tve been too happy with Simmons if all of a sudden they had to find a new front to deal with.

  “Tell me, Mr. Burns, who owns the business now that Mr. January is dead?”

  “I don’t know all of the details of his will. I don’t handle T&E matters…but it’s my understanding that he left everything to his daughter.”

  “The three-year-old?”

  “Yes.”

  “So how does that work?”

  “Well, I would assume that her mother is the guardian, but with something like this a bank is also involved as a co-trustee of the estate, so it would be very difficult to sell or liquidate the business without a sound business reason…and right now, there really isn’t one.”

  “So Haven is in to stay.”

  “At least until his contract is up.”

  “And when is that?”

  “I believe he has five more years to go.”

  Five more years to rape the business, get rich, and then move on. I closed my notebook. “Thank you, Mr. Burns. You’ve been a big help.”
Well, everything that Laurel had said, checked out. But I had to find a link, a paper trail connecting Haven and Simmons to the Japanese clients, and then connect the clients to Clive’s death. And in a week, there was no way. I had to get more time.

  * * *

  “So she said she didn’t do it!” The captain leaned back in his chair, which squeaked under his weight. “Since when did somebody cooling their heels in jail ever admit that they did do it!”

  “Look, Captain, I know you think that I’m outta my mind, but I need more time. I’ve got some other leads that…”

  “Like what, more of your conspiracy theory that somebody here is trying to cover up the case? ’cause if that’s it, forget it, Greene. I don’t have time for that kinda mess.” The captain got up from his chair and circled around his desk. “You chased half way around the damn country looking for this woman, and then she walks right in and gives herself up, and now you say you don’t think she did it. You’re right, I do think that you’re outta your fuckin’ mind!”

  He sat on the edge of his desk, pressing his fingers against the side in frustration. “Look, Greene, do yourself a favor. Let it go. Okay. It’s over. You got the shooter. The DA’s already drawing up the papers. You solved the case. She was there the night of the murder. Her prints were everywhere. She had a motive, jealous mistress, tired of not having him all to herself, so she figured if she couldn’t have him, then nobody would. She was on the run from the day he was killed, so if you ask me…she looks pretty guilty. So why don’t you just go on home, fix yourself a drink, and congratulate yourself on a job well done?”

  He turned his back on me saying coldly, “Now I got work to do, so if you don’t mind.”

  I started to say something, to beg the captain one more time to reconsider, but I knew it was a waste of breath

  Back at my desk, my head was spinning. I was about to send an innocent woman away for a crime that I was even more convinced than ever that she didn’t do. All because I didn’t have time to get the real killers. Shit. I was starting to get one of those mean headaches, the kind that would be with me for half the night. Clive where are you, you know she didn’t do it. Lead me to what I need to find.