Final Jeopardy

by Linda Fairstein

  “World geography.”

  “You’re on.” n I knew I had a winner. I gave Mike the final answer, but before I could sit up straight, he came back at me with s Bayeux.

  “What’d you do, call your mother?” Mike’s widowed mother was glued to the television most of the day and night in her little condo in Bay Ridge, and she was his shill when he couldn’t count on seeing the show.

  “No. I swear to God, that was an easy one.” “Bullshit. How’d you know?” I couldn’t believe it. And Luther’s worried that Mike’s too unsophisticated to interview a cokehead producer, an illiterate stunt man and a cheating businessman.

  He laughed.

  “I was there in ‘94 fiftieth anniversary of D-Day. Bayeux was the first French city liberated by the Allies. June 8, 1944.” Mike and his military history.

  “Went with my uncle Brendan, who landed with the invasion force, remember? The only other thing in town is the tapestry museum. Had to take Aunt Eunice through it twice. Relax, blondie, you can pay up tomorrow.”

  Vie came back behind the bar, shook my hand, told me he was sorry he couldn’t remember my name but he was dead straight on the drink order. Maureen and I pretended to become acquainted while I waited for my host to show up. She complimented my outfit and thanked me, under her breath, for getting her out of the fleabag hotel where we stashed our recalcitrant witnesses during trials.

  We three chatted about the music, the changing weather, and what the prospects were for the Knicks this season.

  About ten minutes later the door pushed open and Johnny Garelli stood in the frame, striking a pose and waiting to be fussed over by Joey. He was big and solid, as good-looking as the magazine photos, but with the most awful hair plugs dotting the front half of his head.

  “ Jesus, Mo, would you take a look at those implants?

  How’d she ever get in bed with that guy?“

  “Now, now, now, Alex. You know better than that. A man’s hair is like his penis they get very sensitive about comments like that. I’ve had at least three domestics’ men who killed their wives ‘caused by fighting over that kind of insult about hair. Be nice to the man.”

  Joey and Johnny finished embracing each other, and I walked toward Garelli as Joey pointed in my direction. He had put us in the second booth Woody had the best table, of course and Johnny gave me the once-over as we made our way to our seats. I didn’t think I was exactly his type, but at least my hair was my own.

  “Nice of you to call. How’d you know I was in town?”

  “Actually, one of the cops told me, when he was talking to me this morning. I’ve been interviewed by them a lot, too.”

  “I forgot what you do. Are you in soaps? Acting?”

  “No, I’m a lawyer.”

  “Like a defense attorney, that kind?”

  “Sort of.” Not exactly that kind, but then, he’s not really an actor either, if you want to be truthful.

  “D’you know Isabella for a long time?”

  Longer than you, I thought to myself.

  “About three years.

  I gave her some help back then, when she was starring in Probable Cause. We became friendly after that.“

  Johnny and I reminisced for a while over our drinks, and by the time Vie brought him his second Ketel One martini, Joey was ready to take our dinner order.

  “No menus here. You gotta tell Joey what you want.”

  “Yes, I know.” Rao’s had the best roasted peppers I had ever eaten, so I chose them for an appetizer, while Johnny got both Ls the baked clams and the seafood salad for himself. Joey Ier suggested the shells with cabbage and sausage, and the lemon chicken. Johnny added another pasta and some salad, as if he had been pumping iron without eating for five days.

  “So did Iz talk about me a lot?”

  “She told me a lot about you, yes.”

  “Good things, mostly?” he said jokingly.

  “We had some good times together, her and me.”

  The English major in me winced. He may have been great in bed, but his syntax was as atrocious as his manners. He was shoving the bread in his mouth each time he came up for air, rinsing it down with the vodka.

  “Did Isabella tell you how we met and everything? We was a hot ticket for a while.”

  Enough about me, now let’s talk about what Iz thought about me. This was going to be a long evening.

  Garelli wanted to make sure I knew all about his career.

  The appetizers came and he inhaled his clams without missing a beat, taking me through his days in the Marine Corps. Stallone was his role model; he’d discovered Garelli when he got out of the service and cast him as a soldier of fortune in one of those blockbuster summer movies that I would have paid dearly never to have to see in my life.

  “He was good to me, man, still is. Semper Fi.”

  “Did you have to learn all that technical business about guns for the movie?” I asked, realizing as soon as I did that it was not the most subtle approach for the nature of the investigation.

  His head was apparently thicker than his deltoids ‘cause he didn’t seem to get the connection at all.

  “Are you kidding?

  Didn’t Isabella tell you how I taught her to shoot when we were in Central America making that Clancy movie? Man, I grew up on that stuff, from G.I. Joe right to the Marines.“

  “No, she just talked about your romance.” That had been nearly enough to make me question her sanity. I suppose I hadn’t asked too many more details.

  “We used to sit around at night, drinking and making love. There wasn’t much else to do down there. I tried to teach her how to shoot. We’d set up the empty vodka bottles on a tree stump in the jungle and blast them to pieces.

  Some day what do you call those guys archaeologists?

  Someday, one of ‘em will come along and do a dig right on that movie set. Iz used to say they’d think the Aztecs had invented Absolut, there’d be nothing but fragments of glass buried there.

  “Then I could really make her laugh when I could nail one of them snakes, you know, like when they were moving?

  Man, she hated those snakes. Green mambos. Those jungles were full of ‘em. She used to say she never wanted to see another snakeskin shoe or pocketbook in her life. I could spot those suckers as soon as they came out in the daylight to sun themselves and I could blast ’em in half while they tried to slither back into their holes. It used to be quite a game. Iz had a nice reward for me every time I killed her a green mambo.“ He winked at me, so I was sure to know that Isabella was taking good care of Johnny’s snake whenever he played sharpshooter.

  To me it seemed like quite a skill. Not one that I wanted to master, much as I hated snakes. But Garelli had to be pretty good with a gun to hit that kind of skinny moving target. ey Plates were exchanged for other plates, Maureen continued to ply the jukebox with dollar bills so that fine music constantly flowed out of it, and Johnny sluggedvodka as if it were the last time he would ever have rer anything to drink. he “Why do you think the police want to talk to you?” I asked naively.

  “Do you know anything about Isabella’s murderer ”Clueless, Alice, I am really clueless.“

  I didn’t correct him on my name. He was pretty drunk, and I guess his mind was on the dancer he was due to meet in another hour.

  “They ran me through every conversation I had with her lately, wanted to know about the man she was with all week, wanted to know which of her lovers she’d fought with. I guess they’ll do the same with you,” I suggested to him.

  “Well, they’ll get shit from me excuse my language, sweetheart. She and me didn’t see each other for weeks.

  We talked on the phone, she was some kinda tease, but if these motherfuckers think they’re gonna dredge up my past and try to knock me outta the box, they got another thought coming.“

  “You got a lawyer?”

  “No way, man. I mean I got a lawyer back home, I got plenty of lawyers. But you walk into a police station with a la
wyer, those cops know you did something wrong. I can go in by myself, tell ‘em what they wanna know, and take the Fifth when I feel like it. I’m not payin’ some sleazebag to tell me, ”You don’t have to answer that, Johnny.“ I been around the block a few times. No problem.”

  Garelli was working the tortoni now, for dessert, and Rick had brought over a bottle of anisette to place on the table.

  The espresso was thick as mud and delicious, but Johnny cut his with the syrupy liquor, as though he needed more fuel. He lit a cheap cigar, leaned forward and eyeballed me.

  “They ask you anything about me and Iz?”

  “Yeah. They asked me some things, and I know they’ve been talking to a lot of other people about you, too.”

  “They tell you what they know about me, I mean, besides me being like in the movies?”

  “They haven’t told me everything. I know they talked about your bad temper, your fights with Isabella-‘ ”Shit, that’s nothing to talk about. That is zero, nada. You know these cops. They any good? Or are they complete fuck-ups, like the ones in L.A.?“

  “I don’t really know them. There’s some jerk from the FBI who thinks he’s running the show.”

  “Yeah, Luther Waldo or something like that. Did they find out anything about you they didn’t already know?”

  Boy, am I the wrong one to ask.

  “Yeah, actually, they did.”

  “Something bad?”

  “Very bad.” Put Tina on again, Maureen. Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?

  Now Johnny was puzzled. He had been convinced the meeting with the cops was going to be a complete cake-walk when he agreed to do it.

  “D’you have something to hide?”

  “I didn’t know it at the time, Johnny, but it turns out that I did. Why, is there something you don’t want them to know.”

  I had started to confide in him, and he leaned further into my face to return the favor by trying to trust me with his secrets.

  “I didn’t have anything to do with killing Isabella and, man, you know she coulda driven me to it but I;y got things I don’t want nobody to know about. We all do,, don’t we?” “You bet.”,s “They’re gonna wanna know where I was the day sheer got it, right?” He was well oiled now and getting sloppy.

  “Well, I got nothing to tell them about that. I’m not gonna ruin somebody else’s life that’s got nothing to do with their; business, see?”

  “Hey, Johnny, I’d be careful about lying to them. You know with credit cards and telephone bills and things that leave a trail of dates and records, it’s stup- It’s not too smart to lie about something they can check on as easily as that.”

  He tried to absorb that for a minute.

  “Well, I don’t have to lie to them, I could just take the Fifth, right?”

  “Well, not exactly.” I tried to explain the difference between being questioned by the police and being on the witness stand in a court of law. Forget about it.

  I decided to try the direct approach.

  “Maybe it’s not all that tough, Johnny. Where were you last Wednesday? I mean, as long as you weren’t on Martha’s Vineyard I think you’re absolutely right it’s nobody’s business. Try your story on me see how it flies. Isabella always trusted me.”

  That was a one-way street.

  I smiled sweetly at him, and hoped it looked warm and fuzzy as he stared back at me through his alcohol filled haze.

  He propped one elbow on the table and rested his chin in the palm of his hand.

  “You know The Tempest?”

  “Shakespeare?” The Gorilla and I are gonna talk Shakespeare tonight? The lieutenant won’t believe it.

  “No, not the movie. The boat, the yacht.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure. Sir Robert Ardmore’s yacht. That one?”

  What unlikely shipmates: Johnny Garelli and British department store mogul, recently knighted, Sir Robert Ardmore.

  “Yeah, Alice, that one. It’s like an ocean liner. I don’t know Ardmore, but you could say I’m a good friend of his wife.”

  Garelli smiled.

  “When Iz dumped me, I thought I’d drown my sorrows in the ocean.”

  Ardmore ’s fifth wife, a twenty-six-year-old stripper whose instep was reputed to be higher than her I.Q., had met the elderly billionaire when he was in Vegas, doing a site inspection for a series of shopping malls. He was still married at the time, and his fierce batt leto retain the remarkable yacht which had originally been named for his fourth wife in the divorce proceedings led to its lavish rechristening as The Tempest.

  “So you and Tiki Ardmore were together last week?”

  “Obviously, that goes no further than this table, right?

  Her husband’s got a lousy sense of humor, if you know what I mean. Really straight guy. Jeez, I’ve know Tiki since she was working the door at Motion’s.”

  I think Lord Ardmore and I could do very well together, sailing off into the sunset, faithful and loyal like a pair of cocker spaniels.

  “Where was the boat?”

  “I flew on board by helicopter when Ardmore went back to London last Monday. I was in Easthampton, and the boat was cruising off Montauk, at the end of Long Island.”

  Fifty-five miles from the Vineyard, as the crow flies.

  “Well, at least you’ve got witnesses, Johnny. Crew, pilots, deckhands-‘ ”I got ’em all right, but one thing Tiki don’t want is witnesses. Everybody who works for Ardmore is deaf, dumb, and blind, if you follow me. This marriage may pn be hard work, but it beats the shit out of the last two jobs she had. I can’t burn her on this.“ ps ”Did you put into port anywhere?“

  “Are you kidding? Those dinky little islands can hold stinkpots and Sunfishes, but not a yacht the size of this one. The Tempest needs its own dock. Nah, last thing we wanted to see was other people.”

  I guess Tiki Ardmore was a snake-charmer, too.

  Johnny gave me a few more details about his shipboard adventure, and I was confident that there were enough people who could confirm or contradict his story, were his involvement really to become a major factor in the investigation. I don’t know that I was any help to Lieutenant Peterson, but I would not have to eat again for at least a week.

  The rain had started to come down heavily while we were eating dinner, and I was glad to see that there was a stretch limo waiting for Garelli at the curb. He left generous tips for Vie and the waiter, exchanged kisses on both cheeks with Joey, and asked me if I wanted to be dropped at my apartment on his way back to the hotel. Maureen and Mike had slipped out while Johnny was settling up his bill, and I saw their car parked just beyond the streetlight, as they watched me get into the rear seat before starting up their engine.

  It was only a ten-minute ride down the drive to my place.

  Garelli leaned his head back against the seat cushion and let the alcohol do its work, while I played out the visions of a helicopter or a speeding launch whisking him from The Tempest to the Vineyard, to kill Isabella, while Tiki Ardmore soaked in a bubble bath. The logistics of it were certainly possible, as any navigator could tell you. I had gotten the basics for Chapman and his team they would have to go the distance.

  I thanked Johnny for the meal and wished him good luck with Luther tomorrow, then I got out of the limo and waited in the lobby for Mike and Maureen to park and join me.

  “You guys must be starved, watching me eat all that food while you just sat at the bar the whole time I’ll send out for a pizza for you.”

  “One glass of wine and three bottles of Pellegrino water, just to keep our glasses looking full. I’ll be running for the powder room as soon as you unlock your door,” Maureen responded.

  “What d’ya get?” Mike asked.

  “Nothing memorable. Has no use for cops, plans to lie to you guys tomorrow and stonewall you about where he was. Has a thing going with the wife of a billionaire, so he doesn’t want you to know the truth and blow it for her by going public. And yes, in fact he was on the East Coast the we
ek of the murder, cruising in the Atlantic Ocean on his personal ”love boat,“ not too far from the Vineyard. He’s a superb marksman, especially good at moving targets.

  Don’t remind me that I’ve been fooled before, Mike, but somehow I don’t think he killed Isabella. Too stupid to have actually formulated and carried out something that needed to be planned in advance like this murder. See what he tells you when he comes in to the office, but I don’t think he’s your man.“

  We went into my apartment and I showed Maureen where to freshen up while I went into the den to call Steve’s Pizza. It was only ten-thirty, so I called David Mitchell, too, to ask him to join us. I’ve got two detectives with me. Is this a good time to come by and talk things over with us?”

  “It’s great. Didn’t you get my message? I just got home twenty minutes ago and suggested you call if you got in before midnight. I’ll be right over.”

  “Oh, I haven’t even gone into the bedroom yet to check?r the machine. Glad it’s still working. My mother seems to ie have given up on me this week. The door’s open.”;t Maureen called out to me from the bedroom.

  “Mind if I;r use the phone to call my husband? You know how jealous he gets when I’m out dancing with Chapman.”

  “Next to the bed, Mo.” Mike had gone through the Police Academy with Gene Forester, who left the job a few years back for a top position in corporate security.

  David came in a few minutes later and the four of us positioned ourselves in the living room for an attempt to brainstorm with the information we had to date about Isabella’s death. Mike had brought Maureen up to speed while they were sitting at the bar at Rao’s, and David had spent some of his day considering the psychological aspect through the mumbo-jumbo of the correspondence found in Iz’s apartment.

  Each of the known suspects went up and down as possible perps in my view, depending on the hour of the day and the latest information. We filled David in on Jed’s role and today’s photo confirmation by the Quinn sisters, and I could see him watching me out of the corner of his eye to try to measure the effect of that news on my emotional well-being. Burrell had been an early consideration whom I had eliminated, but who now had reinjected himself into the mix with his deception and the fact of his drug delivery.