Practice to Deceive

by David Housewright

  After they had been satisfied, I took the telephone off the hook and went back to bed, saying a little prayer before dropping off: “Dear God. Bring me the head of Michael Zilar.”

  I slept until noon.

  I RETURNED THE receiver to its cradle and went about fixing lunch. Well, breakfast actually. The telephone rang thirty seconds later. It was Cynthia.

  “You’re in the news again,” she told me.

  “I’m like Princess Di. The media can’t get enough of me.”

  “A Molotov cocktail?” Cynthia asked.

  “Can you imagine?”

  “Why is this happening?”

  “Payback for what I did to Levering Field. And I figure Michael Zilar is trying to soften me up before the kill.”

  Then I told Cynthia what I told Tammy the day before. “Stay away from my house for a while. Stay away from me.”

  “How long is a while?”

  Good question.

  IT WAS MUCH too early for gardening. The ground wasn’t ready and the nighttime temperatures were still dropping below freezing. But Amanda Field was out there just the same, digging in the three-foot-deep strip of dirt that ran from the front door to the corner of her house. She did not see me approach and jumped when I said, “Excuse me, Mrs. Field.”

  “Who are you?” she demanded to know, still on her knees, holding a trowel like it was a weapon.

  “Excuse me for intruding,” I repeated. “I’m hoping you will answer a few questions for me concerning your husband’s murder.” I was uncomfortable as hell speaking with her, but what could I do?

  “I have spent days answering your questions. Haven’t you had enough?” By then she noticed the crutches. “You’re not with the police, are you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Who are you?” Amanda repeated. “Are you with the media?”

  “I’m Holland Taylor,” I admitted.

  “Holland Taylor,” she said slowly, like a curse, then lunged at me with the trowel, the business end pointed at my groin. I pivoted on my left leg—probably causing me greater pain than getting stabbed in the nuts—and parried her thrust with my right crutch. The blow drove the trowel from her hand. I dropped both crutches, fell to my right knee, and grabbed her hands, trying to keep my bad leg straight. Her face, her eyes … You’ve heard the expression “She looked like an animal”? Well, she looked like an animal. A big one. A predator. But she did not make a sound except for the hissing of her breath. That painful grunting you heard? That was me.

  “I didn’t kill your husband, Mrs. Field. I swear to God I didn’t.”

  She turned her wrists this way and that, trying to break my grip. “Then who did?” she wanted to know.

  “Michael Zilar,” I answered looking directly into her eyes.

  “Who’s he?” she asked without beating so much as an eyelash.

  “A contract killer from Chicago.” As if she didn’t know, I was thinking.

  Her pupils narrowed, and she stopped struggling. A calmness settled around her like a comforter on a cold night. She smiled. “I think the neighbors have seen enough,” she told me quietly.

  I released her hands.

  She rose to her feet, picking up my crutches and handing them to me. Grateful, I pulled myself upright.

  “Let’s go inside,” she said, wiping her hands on her jeans and moving toward the door. I almost didn’t follow her. The look in her eye frightened me. Not the one I saw when we were struggling. The one that replaced it.

  I made sure she was well inside, made sure I could see her empty hands, before I entered her home. The house looked exactly the same as when Levering had invited me over, except for the carpet. The carpet was new.

  “I will not offer you anything,” Amanda said.

  Fair enough.

  “Who would hire someone to kill my husband? The only enemy he had was you.”

  “Levering was having an affair,” I told her.

  “So I discovered. It was you who sent the flowers, wasn’t it?”

  I refused to admit it, to apologize, for fear there was a tape machine nearby. Instead, I said, “You didn’t know until then?”

  Amanda shook her head slowly.

  “Swell,” I said.

  “Indeed.”

  I pushed on. “Where were you Saturday morning?”

  “Shopping with my daughter.”

  “No, you weren’t,” I said.

  “Yes, I was. Look, I went over all of this with the police. They seem satisfied.”

  “Why did your daughter come into the house alone?” I pressed on. “You didn’t arrive until an hour later.”

  “I dropped her off, then went to visit my friend.”

  “What’s your friend’s name?”

  “The police have the name of my friend.”

  “Is this the same friend you met at a hotel in Bloomington just a couple of days before your husband was killed?”

  “I met my friend at his office, and we went to the hotel for a drink. The hotel has a bar—or didn’t you know that?”

  I refused to let it go.

  “Did Levering know you were having an affair?” I asked.

  Amanda was standing next to a telephone table with a drawer large enough for a telephone directory. She had moved there slowly while we were talking and I hadn’t noticed—not until she flung open the drawer and pulled out a .38 Smith & Wesson. I instinctively went for my Beretta and managed to get my hand around the butt before I heard the click of the S & W’s hammer being thumbed back. I froze.

  “Go ahead. Take out your gun,” Amanda told me calmly, the .38 looking as big as a grenade launcher in her small hands. “After everything that’s happened, no one will call it murder.”

  I straightened up, leaving the Beretta in its holster. No sense making it easy for her. “You might get away with having your husband killed, but not this,” I warned her.

  Amanda was six feet away, her feet spread, weight evenly distributed, a two-handed grip holding the gun steady, pointing it at my heart. I got the impression she knew what she was doing. I hoped to keep her talking, hoped the weight of the gun would bring her hands down. Then I would make my move. I didn’t like my chances.

  “I’ve never killed anyone, Mr. Taylor,” she told me calmly. “Certainly not my husband, though I admit I thought about it. I’ve never been angry enough to kill anyone. Except now. Except you. You threatened my family. You killed my husband. You ruined my life.…”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Now you dare come to my home, accusing me, looking to save yourself.”

  I heard the key in the lock behind me. So did Amanda. I turned my head just so, hoping to draw her gaze to the door as it opened. She didn’t move, didn’t take her eyes off mine. She was good. And she was going to kill me unless whoever came through the door stopped her.

  There was a gasp behind me, then silence. Then the rustle of a jacket. I saw the girl first out of the corner of my eye. It was Emily Field. She moved next to her mother, the jacket draped over her arm. “This is Holland Taylor, isn’t it?” she asked Amanda.

  “Yes,” her mother said.

  “I can go back outside,” the sixteen-year-old volunteered. “Later, I can tell the police I didn’t see anything.”

  “No,” Amanda said. “That’s not necessary. Mr. Taylor was just leaving.”

  “Are you sure?” the girl asked, just as cool as can be.

  “I’m sure.”

  I left the house as quickly as I could without running. No pronouncements, no wisecracks, no bray of last words. I got out of the house and beat as fast a pace to my car as my crutches would allow, cursing myself with every step. Letting a woman get the drop on me like that, an amateur to boot … I had no business working as a detective. I should become a baker. Get a job with McGlynn’s. Beat up on some bread dough. That was about my speed.

  I started up the Colt and drove away without looking at the house, my hands trembling on the steering wheel.

&n
bsp; CRYSTALIN WOLTERS WAS not in school. Somehow I didn’t expect that she would be. I went to her apartment. The door was open to the hallway, so I knocked loudly on it and walked in, leaning on a single crutch, calling her name, my right hand in my jacket pocket—the pocket containing a 9mm Beretta. I had no intention of making the same mistake twice.

  I found her in the center of her living-room floor, kneeling before a large carton, wrapping the base of an expensive-looking lamp in newspaper. She looked up from the task when I entered the room but did not speak.

  “The door was open,” I told her, excusing myself.

  “You’re Holland Taylor,” she told me. “You killed Ring.”

  “No, actually, I didn’t. That’s why the cops let me go. That’s probably why I was shot.”

  She looked at my crutch like she was seeing it for the first time.

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  I didn’t say if I did or didn’t. Instead, I said, “Moving?”

  “I am unless you want to pick up the lease.”

  I shook my head.

  “I didn’t think so,” she said, placing the lamp inside the carton. Next, she picked up a crystal ashtray and started wrapping that. I took my hand out of my pocket.

  “I take it Field didn’t leave you anything.”

  Crystalin looked at me like I was the dumbest human being alive. Then she started to laugh. “No, he didn’t leave me anything.”

  “Not much job security, being a mistress,” I said.

  “Not much,” she admitted. “But it was fun while it lasted. I drove a nice car, lived in a nice apartment, wore nice clothes, even got a year of college out of it. I can’t complain.”

  “Still, it would have been nice if he remembered you,” I suggested.

  “I suppose.”

  “How much was Field worth?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “None?”

  “He paid the rent, he made the payments on the Porsche, he covered my tuition and the credit card expenditures. That was all I cared about.”

  “Tell me,” I said, “was Field here Saturday morning, around ten, ten-thirty?”

  She didn’t answer, still kneeling at the carton, wrapping.

  “It’s easy enough to check,” I suggested. “This apartment building uses video cameras for security. We’ll just call the office and ask to see the tape.”

  “Yeah, all right, he was here,” Crystalin admitted, rising to her feet. “And you’re a dick.”

  I’ve been called worse, I told myself, watching her move, making sure her hands stayed empty. “How long?”

  “He stayed just long enough to tell me we were through, OK?” Crystalin said. “Ten minutes, tops. Long enough to tell me the apartment and Porsche were paid up only to the end of the month, that the credit card was canceled. Course, the card was canceled a few days before. He said you did that somehow. Did you?”

  I ignored the question. “He broke up with you?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Waltzed in without knocking, like usual. Told me he loved his wife. Told me he loved his daughter. Told me we were through. Bullshit like that.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t bullshit,” I suggested, not knowing why I was defending the man.

  “Levering Field didn’t love anything but money. I asked him once if his wife knew about us and he said she didn’t. So I asked him what he would do if she found out. He told me that since she was having an affair, too, he didn’t think it would be a problem.…”

  Amanda had lied to me. Good.

  “Do you know who Amanda was sleeping with?” I asked.

  “No,” Crystalin answered. “I didn’t ask. It didn’t interest me.”

  “No reason why it should.”

  “I’ve known a lot of men—trust me on this, OK?—I’ve known a lot of men who wouldn’t think twice about cheating on their wives but who would have coronaries if their wives cheated on them. And I told Levering that. I told him most men would go nuts. Know what he said? He said, ‘It’s all right with me. It’s good for business’.”

  “What did he mean by that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Crystalin replied. “I’m only saying, the man didn’t give a shit about his wife or family, OK?”

  “Then why did he leave you?”

  “For another woman.”

  “You’re kidding!” I said.

  She smiled at me and said, “Thank you,” like I was paying her a compliment.

  “Are you sure?”

  Crystalin nodded. “After he left, I went out on the balcony. It overlooks the parking lot. I’m going to watch him drive away, OK? A woman was leaning on his car, waiting for him.”

  “Ever see her before?”

  “Can’t say. She was wearing a hooded scarf—red, with matching gloves. Very stylish. The slut.”

  “His secretary?”

  “I don’t know his secretary.”

  “His secretary is blond.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “His wife?” I was grasping.

  She shook her head.

  “What happened next?”

  “They chatted, they got into the car, they drove off.”

  I nodded for no particular reason, then asked, “Was he carrying a briefcase?”

  “A briefcase? Yeah, Ring had one. Black, I think. He had it when he walked in, never set it down. Why? What was in it?”

  “Did he have it when he left?”

  “Sure. He handed it to the woman before they got into the car.”

  “And you have no idea who the woman was?”

  “Hey, if the wife is the last to know, where do you think that leaves the mistress? Next to last, that’s where it leaves her.”

  I HAD PARKED in the second row of the lot outside Crystalin’s building. In the front row, three stalls to the left, was a ’91 Honda Accord nearly the same color as the Colt. In fact, if you were in a hurry, you might mistake it for my car. I did. Until I noticed that all the windows had been smashed, fragments of safety glass scattered everywhere.

  I looked around the lot but saw nobody. Then I looked up at the building. Cyrstalin was on her balcony, looking down.

  I PARKED IN the lot across the street from the Butler Square Building, but I did not go to my office. Instead, I hobbled over to Levering Field’s building and took the elevator up. The doors to his office suite were locked, and a sign indicated that the previous occupant was no longer at that address.

  “Nobody’s home,” a voice informed me as I stood outside the door. I turned toward it. It belonged to a woman, no longer young, who was carrying two white bags emblazoned with the name of a bakery down on Sixth Street.

  “A young woman used to work here,” I announced. “Miss Portia?”

  “Penny? Sure, I knew her,” the woman informed me as I walked with her to another suite of offices, this one occupied by architects.

  “How well?”

  “Well enough. We had lunch together a few times. Why?”

  “I’m trying to find her.”

  The woman shrugged as I opened a glass door for her. “Try her at home.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “Ann Arbor, Michigan.”

  MCGANEY AND CASPER were waiting in my driveway when I arrived home following my therapy.

  “Let’s go,” Casper said.

  “Go where?”

  “ACA wants to talk with you,” McGaney answered.

  “Tell him to call my lawyer.”

  I went to walk past him. McGaney blocked me.

  “We can do this easy, or we can do it hard,” Casper said. “You won’t like hard.”

  “You guys watch too much television,” I told them.

  They didn’t so much as smile.

  I went.

  THE ACA DID not rise when I was ushered into his office. He did not extend his hand, did not say, “Hey, Taylor, how’s it going?” Instead he left me and my police escort standing there while he scribbled in a file on his desk. It wasn�
��t that he was ignoring us. We were simply beneath his notice.

  After a few moments he said, “Do you know why you’re not in jail?”

  “You talking to me?” I asked.

  The ACA shut the file, rolled his chair away from his desk, and shouted, “Lisa!”

  Lisa scurried into the office, all blue eyes, short blond hair and skin like milk in a pitcher. An out-state girl from good Scandinavian stock. She reached around me and took the file from the ACA’s hands. My eyes followed her out the door.

  “I received a telephone call from Mrs. Field this afternoon. And another from her attorney,” the ACA said. “Are you listening?”

  “Hmm? Sorry, I was thinking about something else,” I answered as Lisa closed the office door behind her.

  “You don’t want to mess with me, Taylor,” the ACA warned, his face close to mine. “Because nothing will give me greater pleasure than to prove to you just how tough I am.”

  He stepped back, looking at me with a patient expression like he knew he was smarter than I was and was just waiting for the opportunity to demonstrate it. I didn’t care for the expression.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said. “You’re tough as nails. So, tell me about the phone calls that got your Jockey’s in a knot.”

  Ooooh, he didn’t like that at all, and for a moment, I thought he really would throw me in jail. Instead, he returned to the chair behind his desk, tried hard to keep his voice calm, and nearly succeeded. “Mrs. Field claims you broke into her home and assaulted her.”

  “I was invited into her house, and she assaulted me; she pointed a Smith & Wesson thirty-eight at my heart.”

  “What heart?” Casper snorted.

  The ACA chose to ignore us both. Instead, he reminded me, “The Ramsey County court issued a restraining order forbidding you to contact the Fields or go near them or their home.…”

  Jesus, I’d forgotten about that.

  “You violated that order. That’s a misdemeanor in this county.”