A Farewell to Legs

by JEFFREY COHEN

  “I resent that,” Friedman said, draining an amber with a Hungarian label. “I don’t deny it, but I resent it.”

  “You are here,” I told Mahoney, “for a number of reasons. First of all, you organized the evening, so it’s only fair you should have to suffer through it like the rest of us. Also, you are my closest and largest friend, and therefore are necessary in case a fist-fight breaks out over the last French fry. And last, but certainly not least, you are here because I have a question about the operations of Newark International Airport, which as I recall is your base of operations, professionally speaking.”

  He took on a smile which could only be described as beatific. “So it is,” Mahoney said.

  “How often does a shuttle run from Newark to Washington, D.C., and vice versa?” I asked.

  “About every fifteen or twenty minutes, if you factor in all the airlines running them,” he said. “It’s a short flight, only a little over an hour, and lots of business guys go back and forth all the time, so that’s where the airlines make their money.”

  “How about on Saturdays?” I asked.

  “It’s not all that different,” Mahoney answered. “Some business guys are coming home from the Friday meetings that run late. Some tourists go down for a weekend. Some other business guys go down there to get ready for the Big Meeting that’s coming up Monday morning. The weekend schedule isn’t very different from the weekly one.”

  “How long does it take to rent a car at the airport?” I said. There were groans all around the table, and Mahoney’s eyes narrowed.

  “Not that long,” he said with too much emphasis, defending his chosen profession with authentic zeal. “If you have one of those club cards, where you can do everything over the Internet or on the phone, you can literally take a shuttle to the gate, pick up the car they told you to take from the lot, and leave. With the shuttle or the monorail at the airport, maybe twenty minutes, tops. More if you’re waiting for baggage.”

  “You spend a lot of time on the roads in our beloved state,” I said. “How long from Newark Airport to Scotch Plains on a Saturday late afternoon/early evening?”

  “Maybe half an hour,” Mahoney estimated.

  “So if I were in D.C. at five, I could conceivably be in Scotch Plains by seven-thirty without breaking a sweat?”

  “It’d be close,” Mahoney said, “but if you planned ahead, it’s possible. There’s one problem with your theory, Inspector,” he added.

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, if you’re assuming that Stephanie killed Crazy Legs, then got right on an airplane at Reagan, flew to Newark, hopped in a rental car and drove to the reunion, you’re forgetting that she had her own car when she pulled into the lot in Scotch Plains.”

  “You noticed that?” I asked incredulously.

  “Sure,” Mahoney said. “It’s second nature now. I see a car, I check the plates, and I look for a sticker or a number that would indicate it’s from a rental company. Got to keep up with the competition. And Stephanie’s car was definitely private.”

  I thought for a while about that. “That leaves a few possibilities,” I said. “But one thing’s for sure.”

  “What’s that?” asked Mahoney, always dependable to deliver a straight line when you need one.

  “Well, you gentlemen—and I use the term loosely—have answered your questions very well, so Snapdragon is definitely picking up the tab for dinner,” I said, reaching for my American Express card.

  There was a good deal of cheering while I calculated the tip, and how to convince the people at surrounding tables that I’d never met these men before in my life.

  I got home after Leah was in bed, but Ethan was still up, wreaking havoc with my computer by playing Internet games on the Nickelodeon site. Abby, with a Sphinx-like look on her face, told me he had been on the Internet pretty much all evening.

  We sat in the kitchen, she having a cup of decaf and me having a couple of tablespoons of Maalox. And the idiot grin that kept trying to conceal itself on my wife’s face finally got the better of me.

  “Okay,” I said, “tell me about the dog.”

  “It’s so cute!” she gushed. “We found it on the site for this shelter in Hackettstown. . .”

  “Hackettstown!” I groaned. “That’s an hour and a half drive easy.”

  “You only have to do it once,” Abby said. “He’s so adorable, Aaron. Part beagle, part basset hound.”

  “A bagel. Very appropriate.”

  “You have to see. As soon as Ethan’s done playing, I’ll show you the picture.”

  “Don’t show me anything,” I said. “I don’t want to be infected with cute dog disease like the rest of you.”

  “You are a very difficult man,” my wife said. “Believe me, once you see the picture, you’ll fall in love.”

  “I might fall in love tonight, but in February, when the wind is blowing and it’s twelve degrees outside and Mr. Adorable wants to be walked, I’m not going to be so in love.”

  Ethan called in from the den. “I’ll do it, Dad,” he said. “You don’t have to walk the dog.”

  Abby and I looked at each other, but our looks were saying two different things: hers was all about “see?” while mine was very clearly stating, “famous last words.”

  Chapter

  Eighteen

  After the Y the next morning, I decided to let bygones be bygones and go get a water bottle at the Kwik N’ EZ. In my stinky sweats, I didn’t want to inflict myself upon anyone at a real store, and besides, I thought with a certain malevolent glee, they were used to things that didn’t smell especially good around there.

  Not paying attention to the staff, I just walked over, picked up the bottle of Poland Spring, and headed for the counter. The owner, Mr. Rebinow, was eyeing me warily the whole time, but he wasn’t working the register. I noticed that he had taken the box of stink bombs off the counter as soon as he saw me walk in.

  I paid for the sports bottle, took the top off, and raised the bottle in his direction, which I considered a conciliatory gesture, and left. But he made no sign, no movement, no nod in my direction. Some people—you mess up their store for two stinking days (literally), and they never forgive you.

  When I got back to the house, Preston Burke was there, admiring his work. He had finished painting the window frame, and it looked better than at any time we’d lived in the house. The man lacked social skills, but he could certainly fix a window, which was more than I could say for myself.

  “Oh, Pres, I forgot to take the money out of the bank. Do you mind if I give you a check?” I could do an online transfer of the money from our savings account later.

  “It doesn’t matter, Aaron. You ever think about painting that front door? It really doesn’t match the window anymore.” Burke looked sideways at me, trying to convince me this was a spur-of-the-moment idea.

  “Come on, Preston. You’re becoming the Contractor Who Came To Dinner. Besides, painting the door is something I can do myself, and I’ve blown my annual home repair budget on you already.”

  He thought about that. “No charge,” he said. “I’d hate to leave the house looking like that. I could take pictures, and use it for promotion to get more work.” I hesitated, and he knew he had me. “Just take a couple hours, maybe half a day.”

  Before I knew it, he was scraping the front door in preparation for painting. As we’ve established, I’m damn easy.

  The phone was ringing as I walked in the front door. Abby sounded as excited as she’s been since the first pregnancy test came back positive thirteen years ago. You’d think she’d have learned.

  “I called the shelter, and they’re holding Warren for us,” she exhaled.

  “Warren?” Who the hell was Warren? I pictured Warren Beatty in a homeless shelter, and that seemed wrong.

  “The bagel.” Beat, two, three, four. . .

  “Oh, the dog!” Give me enough clues, and I’ll still generally fail to solve your mystery for you.<
br />
  “Can you get up there?” To Hackettstown? Now? When I had such an enticing assignment, like parents to harass?

  “I can, but. . .”

  “Oh, Aaron, go ahead. We’ll talk about it later. Once you see that face. . .”

  I put on my Serious Husband voice. “Abigail, you listen to me. I need you to understand that I am not in favor of us getting a dog.”

  “Aaron. . .”

  “No. If this is going to happen—and I’m getting the awful sense that it is—you have to understand that this is not my dog. I take no responsibility for it, I don’t want it, I won’t walk it, and the first time it takes a leak on the rug in my office when I’m the only one who’s home, I’m going to kick its little canine butt out into the street. Do you understand that?”

  “Sure. Now. . .”

  “Abby, do you understand that?”

  There was an appalled pause. “Yes. I understand it.”

  “You know it to be true? You acknowledge it?”

  A little growl in the voice this time. “Yes.”

  “Okay, give me the address of this shelter.”

  She did, and before I could have a rational thought, I visited MapQuest on the Internet and gotten semi-reasonable directions to the current home of Warren the Bagel. MapQuest estimated it would take me one hour and twenty-three minutes to reach my destination, and it’s rarely wrong.

  I bounced the calls from the land line to the cell phone in case school called, and got out the minivan. If I was going to bring home something whose toilet habits were unknown to me, I’d rather have the van.

  There are no good tapes in the van, and I’d forgotten to transfer one from the Saturn, so I kept the cassette player turned off, rather than have to suffer through the Backstreet Boys, Smash-mouth, and whatever other bands my daughter had picked up from the radio station her friends told her she liked. I remember when the kids were big Beatles fans, because I told them they were. Times change.

  I had enough time during the drive to bounce around a few ideas. If there was in fact a bloodstain at the foot of Cherie Braxton’s bed, that probably meant Legs wasn’t killed while he was lying down. If that were true, why would the killer bother to arrange him on the bed? Why not just let him fall where he stood?

  That was the problem with this story—every answer led to another question. I couldn’t think of a reason to move Legs after he was stabbed. Maybe he lay down by himself, just to get comfortable when he died. Uh-huh. Maybe he did a quick fox trot while he was bleeding, too.

  And if the stain on the rug was Legs’ blood, why didn’t the police get DNA on it? Abrams had told me the only blood found was on the bed, and that it had soaked through the mattress to the box spring, which Cherie Braxton had told me forced her to get a new bed, which she expected the government to pay for. Fax McCloskey, on the other hand, had already put out a release stating that Ms. Braxton was not entitled to relief from the government. It was the only useful information he’d ever sent to me, or anyone else.

  Did the fact that the carpet might have been cleaned with club soda really implicate Stephanie? After all, she wasn’t the only one who used that stuff to clean stains—Friedman had known about it. It was just the swiftness with which she had wiped up Leah’s ketchup that had impressed me—that and being able to think on her feet so rapidly. That didn’t make her a murderer. Necessarily.

  The big question, though, was where was the thirteen million, and who had taken it? Stephanie was living well, but not well enough for that. Legs was probably not using the money, what with being dead and all, and that left. . .

  Branford T. Purell, killer, bon vivant, corpse. There was absolutely no explanation for a hair of his to be in Braxton’s apartment, and yet, there it was. Could it have ridden in on the killer’s pants or something? Was the killer carrying it around for seven years, waiting for the right moment to drop it and confound the living hell out of law enforcement officials and freelance reporters? Maybe the killer was the Texas state executioner, a man who never had his clothes cleaned. But now, I was just grasping at hairs.

  Just then, the cell phone rang, and the number was not recognized by the caller ID service Verizon gives you whether you ask for it or not. So I picked up. And there was The Voice.

  “Stop what you’re doing. It’s none of your business.”

  “You know,” I said, “this is getting tiresome. Who are you, and what is it you want?” I thought I was starting to recognize The Voice, and I wanted to keep him talking.

  “Stop,” said The Voice, and the phone went dead.

  Driving up to pick up the dog I didn’t want, I thought: All in all, I wasn’t really getting much out of this day.

  Chapter

  Nineteen

  The Hackettstown No-Kill Shelter (HNKS) turned out to be someone’s house, with a huge L-shaped wing built onto its side and extending back into the property for about a hundred yards. That, I assumed as I drove up, was where the animals were being kept. I looked at the digital clock in the van: it had taken me an hour and twenty-one minutes to drive this distance. Two minutes less than MapQuest had allowed. I must have been speeding.

  The front door was locked, but there was a bell, which I pushed. A little window in the door opened. A pair of eyes filled it from the other side, and they had to look down to find me.

  “Yeah?” the voice, of indeterminate gender, growled at me. It’s nice to deal with humanitarians.

  “Swordfish,” I said, but there was no response as the eyes looked me up and down, which, alas, didn’t take long. “I’m here to see Warren,” I added. The door opened, and in I went.

  Inside, there was the usual office with dog food, dog toys, dog accessories, and a huge donation box, which bore a sign that said, “Help us keep these animals alive!” But hey, no pressure.

  The voice turned out to belong to a woman of about five-feet-and-eleven inches, which, with help from her Jersey hair, made her just a fraction shorter than Michael Jordan. She examined me again and said, “You the one who called about Warren before?”

  “My wife,” I said in the deepest voice I could muster. I’m a manly man, dammit. I would have spat, but there was no receptacle in sight.

  “He’s in the back, number thirty-six,” she said, handing me a key and pointing to a door. I used the key on the door, and miraculously, it worked. I walked into the animal shelter.

  It was dark, and I hit a light switch on my left side. As soon as the lights came on, about two million dogs began barking their brains out all around me. The room was a long, long hallway, with what amounted to cells on either side going all the way back. From the look, the sound, and the smell of the place, it was full up.

  Luckily, the stalls were numbered, and it didn’t take long to find thirty-six, on the right side and about halfway back. There, sitting and looking hopeful, was the only dog not barking to beat the band.

  He was, as advertised, an attractive animal. Big, basset eyes, long basset ears, but otherwise beagle-like, Warren was the poster puppy for dogs. “Take me home,” his gaze, from a head tilted to one side, said. “I’m a good dog. See, I’m not barking like those other demented animals. I’ll be a fine companion for your children.”

  The woman in the office had given me a short green leash, and I opened Warren’s stall and attached it to his collar. He promptly stood up and walked out just at my left heel. He probably would have shined my shoes for me, too, but I was wearing sneakers.

  “How gentle is this dog in real life?” I asked the woman.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I have a twelve-year-old son and an eight-year-old daughter, and they have to be able to walk him,” I said. I wanted a clear picture for me and for the dog.

  “Well, my son has been walking him every morning for the past two months,” she said.

  “How old is he?”

  “He’s five.”

  “Okay, the dog’s gentle. But do I have to call him Warren?”

  S
he scratched her head. “Nah, that’s just the name we gave him here. He was a stray from the Bronx, and they were going to euthanize him, so we brought him here. You can change his name to anything you like.”

  “How much to adopt him?” I sighed. If you’re going to have a dog, you might as well have one a five-year-old can walk, I always say.

  It cost about $120 to adopt Warren, what with the fee from the shelter (“it keeps us going,” said the woman), the leash, the collar, the food bowl, the water bowl, the bag of dog food, the dog treats, the dog toy, the dog pillow, and the dog tag. So I’d go a week without eating—Lord knows, it would probably do me good.

  The dog and I got into the van and started home. He didn’t want to get into the van, as he was quite happy walking around the parking lot and sniffing every blade of grass individually. But I managed to force Warren into the back seat (I’d had practice with two toddlers at various stages of my parental career) and close the door behind him. He didn’t relieve himself as he climbed up onto the seat, which I took to be a positive sign.

  On the way home, since Warren was not an especially talkative dog, I made a mental list of phone calls to make as soon as we arrived. They included one to Lucille Purell Watkins, one to Mason Abrams, one to Alan McGregor, and one to Barry Dutton about my latest vaguely threatening phone call.

  It took slightly less time to navigate the distance this time, because I knew the way from highway to highway now. New Jersey is the kind of state where you can do really well if you never have to drive on a local street.

  Two blocks from our house, Warren lost his lunch on the back seat. Luckily, I had put a blanket out to cover the seat under him, so cleanup was somewhat easier, but I was already noticing how much caring for this dog (for which I took no responsibility) was eating into my day.

  Warren trotted out of the van as if he hadn’t just made a deposit on its back seat, and set out exploring his new neighborhood. It was a good thing I had the leash to hold him, or he’d have explored all of New Jersey and I’d have been out $120.