“You don’t seriously think Matt Riordan killed Eddie?” I seemed to be asking that question of far too many people lately.
“Believe it or not,” Winthrop assured me, “I know better than to accept as gospel everything I read in the Post.” As I’d predicted and feared, a photo of Matt with his hands in the air, being searched for a weapon, had been plastered on the front page of the tabloid under a bloodred headline that read MOB LAWYER KEY SUSPECT IN COP KILLING.
In much smaller letters underneath the picture, the Post admitted there had been no arrest.
“Since you have such an open mind,” I said, trying hard to suppress the sarcastic edge to my voice, “why don’t I tell you the whole story of what went on in the plaza last night?”
I did, starting with the anonymous fax and Matt’s determination to meet the sender and see what dirt he could get on Lazarus. I continued with Matt’s account of what he’d seen in the plaza, of the three other suspects who’d been in the area at the same time.
“So it seems clear,” I finished, “that whoever this faxer was, he probably lured Stan Krieger to the plaza with the same kind of bait. Something that would help Krieger in his own troubles with the police. Davia Singer was already there, but it seems equally clear that whoever killed Eddie knew she was in the habit of meeting him at the sculpture after work. And Lazarus has a reputation for working very late hours, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to think he’d be around at midnight.”
“You think the murder was premeditated, then,” Winthrop said. “Not a spur-of-the-moment thing, an impulse.”
“Not with four prime suspects all on the scene at a time when at least two of them, Riordan and Krieger, would ordinarily have no reason to be there. Not with three out of four of those suspects standing alone at different landmarks in the plaza, none of them really able to alibi the others for the whole time. Not with—”
“You make this killer sound like a real manipulator. A chessmaster,” Winthrop cut in.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I agreed. “I don’t know what ploy he used to get Krieger to the plaza, but I can guess.”
“You say ‘he,’” the journalist pointed out. “Are you ready to eliminate Davia Singer as a suspect?”
“No,” I admitted. “But I do have my eye on Lazarus. He’s the one whose balls are on the line here. He’d have access to the kind of inside information that could bring Stan Krieger to the plaza. He’d know how to jerk Riordan’s chain as well, how to bait the hook that brought him to the plaza. And I can’t believe he’s ignorant of the little affair between Singer and Eddie.”
“Doesn’t it occur to you that the same could be said for your client?” Winthrop’s eyebrows rose, and he held up a hand to forestall my protests. It was a workingman’s hand, callused and hard-fingered. I decided he was a woodworker in his spare time.
“Hear me out before you start preparing your defense, Counselor,” he urged. “Don’t you think Matt Riordan is smart enough to plan Eddie’s murder and cover his own ass by making sure he committed the crime at a time and place when Lazarus and Singer would be on the scene? And don’t you think he knows enough about cops to set a trap for Stan Krieger? Don’t you think he’s capable of faxing himself an anonymous message, to explain his own presence in the plaza? Everything you’ve said about Lazarus is equally possible for Riordan.”
“But Lazarus is the one who really benefits from Eddie’s death,” I protested. “Matt had no reason to kill Eddie; he wanted to destroy him in court.”
“No reason other than revenge,” Jesse Winthrop said in a deceptively soft tone. “No reason other than to wipe off the face of the earth the man who’d humiliated him, who’d almost cost him his professional life. And to put a frame around his old enemy Lazarus at the same time.”
“Then why drag in Krieger?” I countered. “Why not tighten the noose around Lazarus instead?”
The waitress hovered next to me, waiting for an order. One thing about The Peacock, it was possible to sit there for a half hour before anyone mustered enough energy to walk over and see what you wanted. I ordered iced cappuccino, Winthrop a double espresso with lemon peel.
After she walked away, it occurred to me that I’d defended my client and sometime lover, not on the grounds that he wouldn’t commit murder and frame an innocent man for it, but on the grounds that he’d have done it more efficiently, without muddying the waters with bitter, crooked cops and jilted lovers.
“I’ve heard a little something through my police sources,” Winthrop went on. “I’ve heard they’re comparing the bullets that killed Eddie with the bullets that killed TJ and Nunzie Aiello.”
I dismissed this with an airy wave of my hand. “That’s just Warren Zebart’s wishful thinking,” I said. “He’d like nothing better than to nail Riordan for every mob crime going back to Judge Crater’s disappearance.”
“What if there’s a match?”
“Well, I still have my suspicions that Lazarus had TJ eliminated, so a similarity of ballistics there won’t shake me up much. And I read the police reports on both TJ and Nunzie, and as I recall, the bullets mushroomed pretty badly. I’m not sure they can get a match in any case.”
We stopped when the drinks came. I sipped cappuccino and watched my companion taste his dark, bitter brew, lifting the tiny cup to his lips as if he were the guest of honor at a tea party for dolls.
“All my life, I’ve hated guys like Eddie Fitz,” he mused aloud. “I’ve hated the bully boys and the big dicks and the fascists. Because to me they’re all the same thing. They’re all variations on a theme: ‘I’ve got power and you don’t.’ That’s what they’re all about, guys like that. And I was the kid on the playground fifty years ago who’d stand up against those guys and defend the kids they picked on. I was strong and big enough that I could have been a bully too, but somehow I wasn’t. Somehow I stood between those guys and the fat kid, the retarded kid, the girl they called the class slut.”
I could see it. I had a sudden image of Jesse Winthrop as a boy, standing in an old-fashioned schoolyard with his legs apart, chin thrust out, eyes blazing with anger. Fighting back with logic and with words, with fists if he had to. And when he’d graduated from the playground, he’d fought back with his column. Instead of bloodying the noses of the bullies, he’d exposed their scams, revealed their petty political machinations.
Until now. Until he’d fallen under the spell of Eddie Fitz.
“So what changed?” I asked. “How did you miss the fact that Eddie Fitz was just another bully?”
“I’m not sure I did miss it,” he replied, his grating voice as soft as he could make it. “I’m not sure, but I think I ignored my gut on this one. I met Ike Straub, you know. I met him and I saw the way Eddie treated him, and I ignored it. I chose to believe they were friends, equals, but the truth was right in front of me: Eddie had that kid buffaloed. Straub was the little sycophant all bullies like to keep at their sides. A one-man cheering section, a guy who can always be counted on to play yes-man and butt.”
“Like Paulie the Cork,” I said, recalling the tapes of Eddie’s meetings with Fat Jack.
“Yeah, him, too,” Jesse agreed. “He was like Dwight, only older. And getting older just means the bullies dump on you even more. Poor stupid little fucker.”
“You mean Dwight, I suppose,” I commented.
“Hell, I guess I mean all the misguided assholes who think their dick is the most important thing in their lives. You’re a woman, you know what I mean. How many guys do you know who lead with their dicks? Guys like Eddie, it’s a macho thing you can see coming a mile away. But listen to these three at the next table, and what do you hear?”
I listened and gave my companion a wry smile; I heard what I’d been hearing ever since my first day at NYU Law School. Three guys arguing about whose was bigger. Oh, they thought they were arguing about the Rule Against Perpetuities; they would have sworn they were having a perfectly logical legal discussion that would help all three of
them pass Property. But underneath, the refrain was exactly what Jesse Winthrop said it was. One guy was trying to prove to his fellows that he knew it all, and that his knowledge made him better, made his bigger than theirs. The others were fighting back, championing their own viewpoints, but they accepted the underlying premise all too readily: Whoever was right was King of the Hill, which meant that being right was everything and being wrong made you a eunuch.
Guys like Jesse Winthrop, who actually understood what was going on and were capable of standing apart from it, were as rare and precious as rubies.
Matt Riordan had spent his whole life becoming King of the Hill, and now he was defending his right to stay on top. He had never stopped to question that major premise, never been able to let go of the compulsion to be right, to be the best.
And if he had indeed killed Eddie Fitz, as I was deeply and horribly afraid he had, it was because Eddie threatened his position on top of the hill.
The question was: Who else was Eddie trying to knock down? Who else stood to lose if Eddie was publicly exposed as the most corrupt cop in the city?
Nick Lazarus, for one. Like Riordan, he accepted the rules of the masculine game. You’re either on top or you’re nothing. You’re either a bully or a patsy. You’ve either got balls or you’re a girl. Eddie Fitz had played Lazarus for a patsy. In Lazarus’ world, this merited a death sentence.
“Did Lazarus know the truth about Eddie?” I asked. “I have reason to believe he did, but I want to know what you think. Did Lazarus put Eddie on the stand knowing that he was going to lie?”
“If he did, he was taking one hell of a chance,” Winthrop pointed out. “There were a number of people who could have taken the stand and blown Eddie out of the water.”
Playing devil’s advocate was one way to get through law school without directly playing King of the Hill; you didn’t exactly challenge the alpha male, but you undercut his position with little zingers that had him scrambling for territory.
“People like TJ?” I asked with a sly smile. “But TJ was dead. He was dead the whole time Riordan and I were combing the five boroughs looking for him. And if Lazarus knew he was dead, he had nothing to worry about putting Eddie on the stand. He’d know from the beginning that TJ wasn’t going to pop up and tell the world Eddie was his partner in crime.”
Jesse made the logical leap I had every confidence he was going to make. “You want me to write a column accusing the United States attorney’s office of having a drug dealer killed so he wouldn’t tarnish their chief witness.”
“Face it, Jesse,” I replied, “your book deal is down the tubes unless you change your premise from Eddie the Hero Cop to Eddie the Guy Who Screwed Everyone and Got Away With It. Why not start with a column raising a few questions about what Lazarus knew and when he knew it?”
“I don’t suppose you have any information you’d care to contribute to this column, Counselor,” my companion said. “In the interests of journalistic integrity, of course. No benefit whatsoever to your client.”
I brought Winthrop up to date on everything I’d learned from Dom Di Blasi and Fat Jack Vance.
“So here’s the prosecution rushing to judgment to nail Matt Riordan for Eddie’s murder,” I concluded, “when the truth is we wanted Eddie alive so we could discredit him. The only people who benefited from Eddie’s death are Nick Lazarus and Davia Singer.”
“Nice try, Counselor,” Jesse’s gravel voice replied, “but what about Stan Krieger and the other cops? Aren’t they getting a reprieve, what with Eddie out of the way?”
“Yes,” I agreed crisply. Always concede what you absolutely have to. “Yes, but why now? Why kill Eddie now? Why not before? Why not later? The only reason to kill him right now is that he was on the verge of being unmasked before Judge de Freitas.”
“As I recall, you were the one he threatened with disciplinary action,” Winthrop countered. “It seems to me Lazarus just had to sit tight and watch you go down in flames.”
“But if I didn’t go down in flames, if Matt and I managed to prove to the judge that Lazarus deliberately suppressed evidence that Eddie had committed crimes, the, judge would have turned his wrath on Lazarus. He still will; he’ll have no choice. No judge wants a lawyer from either side parading perjured testimony in front of a jury and getting away with it. De Freitas would have to discipline Lazarus, and if he does, there goes Lazarus’ political career.”
Winthrop stood and gave a little bow, then walked with a heavy, old man’s tread toward the door of the coffeehouse.
I watched him go, then ordered a second cappuccino.
He’d left me with a great deal to think about. Underneath my ringing defense of Matt, there was an uneasy suspicion that Winthrop and Zebart might just be right about Matt. He’d wanted Lazarus destroyed; he had to feel the same way about Eddie Fitz.
Had Matt gone from my bed to the stone steps of the courthouse instead of to St. Andrew’s Church? Had the man who’d held me in his arms, made hot, sweet love to me, gone from me to the killing ground where Eddie Fitz lay in his own blood?
That would be worse than going to Taylor’s.
Or would it?
I needed to know. I needed to know whether he’d betrayed me with Taylor or with murder. Either way, it was betrayal, and I wasn’t sure which I hated more, but I had to know the truth.
One way, of course, was to ask the lemon-haired lady in question.
The doorman let me up without a second glance. Apparently I was dressed well enough for the Upper East Side; the designer briefcase didn’t hurt either. My low-heeled Ferragamos clicked on the tile floor. The lobby was decorated in black and white, with silver accents and not a speck of color. It was as cold and unwelcoming a place as I’d ever seen in the five boroughs. But it was chic as hell.
Her apartment was directly under the penthouse, which meant she had almost the same million-dollar view for considerably less in monthly maintenance. Shrewd, but then I’d never thought Riordan was a man who liked dumb broads.
She opened the door with a wide but puzzled smile. She invited me in with the same cool grace she’d probably used on the New York magazine people when they’d come to photograph her apartment. As I recalled, the theme of the article was “Country Life in the Heart of the City.”
What people in the Midwest think of as country: mass-produced wooden doodads with little carved holes in the shape of hearts. Dried flower arrangements with the flowers dyed Federal-blue. Cute sayings in calligraphy with folk-art designs around the border. Anything with geese on it, especially if the geese are wearing ribbons around their necks.
What Taylor Fredericks considered country: a Shaker chair, just one, against a white wall, an authentic shawl draped over the little rod on the back. A sampler, dated 1823, framed, next to a doll’s quilt with yellow and pink butterflies. A warming pan of highly polished brass, a hand-embroidered footstool next to a rocking chair hand-carved in mellow yellow wood. A dry sink with a painted china basin.
In short, a very high-class antique shop—with modern touches: a print (or was it a print?) of a painting by Leonor Fini, a glass-and-brass coffee table with a big book on the Wyeths lying invitingly on top, a Noguchi lamp next to the rocking chair.
I could live here. I could really live here.
For the first time, I saw Taylor Fredericks as a person. If she lived in a place that appealed to me, a place I could see myself living in, then she had to be somebody I might actually like if I got to know her.
I didn’t want to get to know her. I didn’t want to like her. All I wanted was to find out if Riordan had said anything important to her the night that Eddie Fitz had three bullets pumped into him.
She asked if I wanted tea.
Tea, yet. I withdrew the notion of liking her; this was all too civilized for me.
I nodded; tea meant I’d be staying a while, and I wanted all the time I could get with her.
I explored the bookshelves while she went into the kitchen. The
kitchen I didn’t have to see; I remembered that very well from the magazine piece. Copper everywhere. A stripped pine table with turned legs. A pie safe.
I’d always wanted a pie safe.
Her books were hardcover, lots of modern fiction, mainly by women. A whole shelf of heavy picture books on American antiques. Some pop history, no pop psychology. No genre fiction. All hard-core quality. I thought of my prized collection of Dell mapbacks and wondered if she had a softcover in the place. Maybe the bedroom; I wondered how I could catch a glimpse of—
The old bathroom dodge. I could peek in on the way to the powder room. And then I could sneak open the door to the medicine cabinet and wipe out my entire day’s stock of self-respect.
The prescription bottles were in the name of Sarah T. Fredericks. The “T” had to be for Taylor, which she’d taken as her first name, dumping the too prosaic Sarah.
Hah. I knew a name like Taylor Fredericks was too good to be true.
What else about her was phony? Her ash-blond hair? I didn’t expect to find any telltale Clairol bottles; that kind of color you pay a fortune for on Fifty-seventh Street.
There were no paperbacks in the bedroom. The book on her night table was the latest Alice Walker. And the quilt on the bed was to die for. A friendship quilt, with the names of all the ladies who’d worked on it sewn into the border. The design was log cabin, with rich colors and odd squares depicting buildings that seemed taken from life: a school-house, a church, a barn, a—
“What are you doing in here?”
“God, what a fantastic quilt!” This was not cleverness on my part; I coveted the quilt, and the fact that I’d originally opened the door to spy on her was wholly forgotten. Who cared what she read or what her real name was? She had wonderful taste and the luck and money to indulge it.
“It’s from Pennsylvania,” Taylor said, a hint of pride creeping into her voice. “It’s called a friendship—”
“I know,” I interrupted. “Because a group of women make it for a friend, usually someone who’s going away. They were often made for minister’s wives, when their husbands moved on to a new congregation.”
Mean Streak Page 18