“If he’s so smart, and so tough,” I said, “how did it happen that you were able to run him out of town so easily? It must’ve taken more than threatening to expose his Mafia connections.”
He looked at me thoughtfully. “Why would you say that? I’m curious.”
“Because it sounds like he had himself covered. Right from the first.”
Approvingly, he nodded, then smiled indulgently. “Very good, Lieutenant. As I said earlier, you’re an atypical policeman.”
“Even a typical policeman could figure that one out.” I didn’t return his smile.
He sat silently for a moment, studying me. Finally he said, “You’re right, of course. It did take more. A lot more.”
I decided not to say anything in return. He knew what I wanted: an answer to the riddle.
He was staring off across the quiet restaurant now, obviously deciding how much to tell me. Finally he said, “I’m going to take you into my confidence, Lieutenant. That is to say, I’m going to tell you some things that, frankly, I wish I didn’t have to talk about. I’m not proud of them. However—” He drew a deep breath and looked again at his watch. Then, speaking faster, in the clipped accents of a lawyer summarizing his case for the jury, he said, “The reason I could ‘run him out of town,’ as you say, is simply that, in the vernacular, I made it my business to get the goods on him. Old habits die hard, you know. He cut some corners, doing business in San Francisco. I found out what he’d done, and documented it.” He paused. It was a taut, meaningful silence. Then: “When you realize that, as a lawyer, I’m an officer of the court, you’ll realize how difficult it is for me to admit that to you, to a fellow officer of the law. However, you’ll also realize why I’m doing it. I want you to hear the facts from me. Not from someone else.”
“Are you saying that Kramer broke the law? Committed a crime?”
He nodded. “That’s what I’m saying.”
“Did you get this information after the divorce? Or before?”
“I got it before. Call it a precautionary measure. I always distrusted Kramer, always suspected that he’d cause me trouble. As it turned out, I was right.” He hesitated, then said, “I’m being candid with you, Lieutenant. I hope you appreciate that. And I hope you respect my confidence.” He sat silently for a moment, eyeing me speculatively as he toyed with the stem of his wine glass. His fingernails, I noticed, had been manicured. He was dressed in a beautifully tailored double-breasted gray flannel suit. His white shirt and stiff collar gleamed. His gray-on-gray silk tie was impeccably knotted. His gray hair was beautifully barbered, meticulously styled. His expression, as before, was sardonic. His lips were curved in a slightly supercilious smile. His eyes, coldly unrevealing, never left mine.
“I should probably make it clear,” he said, “that we’re not talking about your kind of crime, Lieutenant. Nobody got killed. Nobody got hurt. We’re talking about white collar crime. Specifically, falsification of assets for the purpose of borrowing operating capital. Fraud, in other words. It happens every day, believe me.”
“He could’ve gone to jail, though, if you’d given the information to the D.A. Is that it?”
Guest nodded. “Yes, he could’ve gone to jail. Not for long. But long enough.”
“But, ultimately, it didn’t work. He came back to see his son. Then he hired Lester Bennett to steal John.” I decided not to go on. I wanted to see how Guest would respond. Would he tell me, voluntarily, about Bennett warning him that John might be taken?
“And then Bennett told me of Kramer’s plans.” The supercilious smile widened almost imperceptibly. He’d anticipated my tactic, and finessed it. “Or didn’t he tell you?”
“Yes,” I admitted, “he told me.”
“And did Bennett also tell you that I hired Charlie Quade to work for me, on his suggestion?”
I nodded. “That, too.” Then, continuing the game, I said, “And Charlie’s girlfriend told me you hired him to go to New York.” It was a lie, but a safe one.
His eyes flickered momentarily. Had I caught him by surprise?
“Charlie talked too much.” He spoke quietly, ominously.
I didn’t answer, and after a moment of calculating silence he said, “She’s right. When Bennett told me what Kramer was planning, I hired Quade to go to New York and threaten him.” He eyed me for another calculating moment before he said, “I mentioned earlier that I intended to unburden myself. Now you know what I meant.”
“What’d you threaten him with? Physical harm?”
Instead of answering directly, he said, “The case of fraud I mentioned involved a company called Generex. Basically, Quade’s mission was to get on an airplane, and go to New York, and tell Kramer that the Generex file was still active.”
“Just that? Nothing more?”
He nodded. “Just that. But the implication is, you see, that others know about the file, except me. Kramer would wonder how many others.”
“Quade seems an odd choice for a job like that.”
He shrugged. “He was handy. And I felt I owed Bennett something.”
“Couldn’t you simply have called Kramer? It would’ve served the same purpose.”
“Almost the same purpose, not quite. I also instructed Quade to imply that, should Kramer come back to San Francisco, Quade and a couple of others like him would break Kramer’s legs for him. He’d stand trial for fraud with his legs in casts.” He smiled, subtly taunting me. “I’ll deny I ever made that statement, of course. But I want to be perfectly candid with you, as I’ve said.”
“You did threaten him with physical harm, then.”
“Only if he came back to San Francisco. As long as he stayed in New York, he had no problem.”
“Would you actually have done it—hired people to break Kramer’s legs?”
He shrugged. “Probably not. But, of course, Kramer didn’t know that.”
“Had you hired Charlie to bodyguard John when he went to New York?”
“Yes.”
“Did Quade tell Kramer he was John’s bodyguard?”
“I’ve no way of knowing.”
I nodded. “It doesn’t appear that Quade was very successful, scaring Kramer off.”
“Obviously. On the other hand, Kramer didn’t succeed in stealing John.”
“He would have succeeded, if Quade hadn’t interfered—and gotten killed.”
“Yes,” Guest answered, “that’s probably true. But the point is, you see, that he did interfere. He was doing his job.”
“About that night—Friday night—there’re a couple of points I’d like to clear up with you.”
“What points are those?” He glanced at his watch again, then signaled for the check. My time was running out.
“The number of shots,” I said. “You say—you’re positive—that four shots were fired. Is that correct?”
He nodded. “Of course. Four.”
“The physical evidence bears you out. Four shots were fired. But Kramer says only three shots were fired.”
“Kramer also says he didn’t kill Quade.”
“He would lie about that, of course, assuming he’s the murderer. But why would he lie about the number of shots?”
“Have you asked him?” Using a gold pen, he signed the check.
“Once,” I answered. “I’ll ask him again.”
“Do that. Either way, it doesn’t seem critical.” He pushed back his chair. “Is there anything else, Lieutenant?”
“One thing—” I pushed back my own chair, but didn’t rise. I saw his eyes narrow slightly.
“What’s that?”
“I have to talk with John.”
Instantly, his face hardened. On the white damask tablecloth, the fingers of one hand tightened. “You’ve already done that, Lieutenant.”
“I only talked to him for a few minutes. I didn’t mention the crime. The D.A. wants an interrogation. A complete interrogation.”
“An interrogation concerning Quade’s murder?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because John’s an eyewitness at the scene of the crime.”
He slowly shook his head—just once. It was a practiced mannerism, calculated to intimidate. And it succeeded. In that moment, Alexander Guest seemed to grow larger than life. More than merely a man, he became a presence, an irresistible force.
“I don’t want you to interrogate John,” he said. “You’ll do him harm. I’ve got a psychiatrist’s opinion—two opinions, in fact—to that effect. It’s obvious that he’s had a shock, witnessing a murder. It’s also obvious that his father has brainwashed him, told him what to say. So, when you interrogate him, you’re bound to produce conflicts, since the truth differs from what his father told him to say. And that kind of conflict can obviously be traumatic. Especially when, literally, his testimony could mean life or death for his own father.” He paused, a long, ponderous silence. Then: “What you’re proposing, Lieutenant, could irreparably damage John’s mental health. And I oppose it.”
“You’re assuming that Kramer’s lying. It could be that he’s telling the truth. And if that’s the case, then John would be helping his father, not harming him.”
Measuring his words with icy precision, he said, “Either Kramer is lying, or I’m lying, Lieutenant. What’s your preference?”
“That’s not necessarily the choice, Mr. Guest. You’re telling me what you saw, and what you heard. And the facts certainly seem to back you up. But it’s possible that Kramer’s telling the truth, too. It’s possible that both of you could be telling the truth.” I let a beat pass, then said, “What I’m saying is, it’s possible that something else happened Friday night—something neither you nor Kramer saw, or heard. And that’s what I’ve got to find out—whether something like that could have happened.”
“If Kramer is telling the truth when he says that he was outside the house on the driveway when the shots were fired,” he said, “and if we deal with the facts as we know them to be, then there’s only two possibilities. Either Quade killed himself, or else I killed him.”
“Those facts could change, though. There could be something we don’t know, another piece to the puzzle.”
He rose to his feet, and I did the same. I hesitated, then said, “You should know, Mr. Guest, that I intend to interrogate John. Of course, his mother will be with him. But I have the right to interrogate him. Legally, I have the right. And you know it, sir.”
Standing with his head lifted, shoulders sharply squared, arms rigid at his sides, he looked at me for a last long, larger-than-life moment. If he were in uniform, he could have been a general of the army, posing for a portrait.
“The law is a living thing, Lieutenant. It has its slaves, and it has its masters.” He let another moment of regal silence pass. “And the slaves never win. They protest, sometimes. They can cause problems, sometimes, for their masters. But in the long run, they never win.”
He thanked me for my company at lunch, turned on his heel and left the restaurant. A blue Cadillac waited for him at the curb.
TWELVE
WHEN I JOINED THE homicide squad, captain Krieger was the boss. Friedman was the second in command, with two sergeants and fifteen inspectors working under him. When Krieger had a heart attack and died, at age fifty-two, I was the senior sergeant. Everyone assumed that Friedman would be promoted to captain, and I’d make lieutenant. Everyone was only partly right. I made lieutenant, but Friedman declined to take the captaincy when it was offered. His reasoning was typical. He didn’t like departmental politics, and he didn’t like departmental politicians. Besides, he said, his home was paid for, his only son was halfway through college, and his wife had come into a sizeable inheritance. Result: For the last several years, Friedman and I had run the homicide squad as co-lieutenants.
When Friedman declined the captaincy, he also declined Krieger’s large corner office. After a short interdepartmental tug of war, the office fell to me, along with Krieger’s outsize desk and his large, leather-upholstered chair, both handed down from Krieger’s predecessor. I knew Friedman coveted the chair, and I offered it to him. He thought about the offer, then declined it. The chair, he said, would provide for his comfort whenever he decided to walk down the hallway and instruct me in the art of solving homicides.
Now, leaning back in my visitor’s chair and lacing his fingers over the bulge of his vest, Friedman listened to the last of my report on my lunch with Alexander Guest.
“I don’t think,” Friedman said, “that we should get all bogged down in who’s going to suffer, if we interview this kid. If we start playing the lawyer’s game and the psychiatrist’s game, it’ll never end. There’s been a murder, and the kid was probably a witness. We’re cops. We investigate homicides. Which means we interrogate witnesses. What happens afterwards, in court, that’s not our problem. Whether this kid makes it to the witness stand, that’s between the D.A. and the judge. Whether the kid’s little psyche is bruised—” He spread his hands. “That’s his problem, and his family’s problem. So let’s let the lawyers hassle, and the psychiatrists argue. That’s their job, that’s what they’re paid for. Our job is to investigate—to find out who murdered Charlie Quade. And the deeper we get into the investigation, the more it appears that John could have the answers. So—” He waved an airy hand. “So we go to the mother and explain that, doing our lawful duty, we’ve got to interrogate her son—in her presence. Either she agrees, or we charge her with obstructing.”
I snorted. “Will you be the one who turns the key on Alexander Guest’s daughter?”
He grinned like a sly, overweight pixie. Meaning that, yes, Friedman would turn the key. More and more, lately, Friedman enjoyed taking on the establishment, win or lose. His targets were usually “the goddam politicians,” inside and outside the police department, inside and outside politics. When I asked him why he did it, his response, typically, was a quip. His wife, he said, had just gotten the second half of her inheritance.
Without having to ask I knew that, to Friedman, Alexander Guest was the perfect target, the ultimate goddam politician.
“We’ve got to give them time to think about it,” I said. “We can’t just go over to Marie Kramer’s house and tell …”
“Stringfellow wants to have the kid’s testimony before he goes to the grand jury,” Friedman interrupted. “He’s told us that. Right?”
“Right.”
“And Stringfellow is the one who runs the D.A.’s office while the D.A. is drinking martinis and making after-dinner speeches. Right?”
I nodded.
“Now let’s suppose,” Friedman said, “that Guest decides to take John to the Menninger Clinic, or maybe Switzerland, or wherever, to have his anxieties checked out. What happens to Stringfellow’s case then?”
“I don’t know what’ll happen to the case. But if Guest takes the kid out of town after we make a demand for interrogation, and if the mother lets the kid go, then she’s guilty of obstructing.”
As if he were an all-knowing teacher complimenting a backward pupil, Friedman raised a congratulatory forefinger. “That’s it exactly. So the thing for you to do, right now, is strike the first blow. You’ve got to make the mother realize that, legally, she has to let us question the kid. You’ve also got to make her realize that, if she lets Guest take the kid out of town once the demand for interrogation is made, she’s in big trouble. So you should drive over to Marie Kramer’s house, right now, and make your demand. You should take Canelli, as your witness. While you’re doing that, I’ll call a couple of friends in New York, and see what they say about Kramer. I’ll also do a background check on Marie Kramer’s live-in bodyguard. What’s his name again?”
“Durkin. Bruce Durkin.”
“Right.” He made a note of the name. “Then I’ll take Kramer through his story again, with his lawyer present. Okay?”
I nodded. “Okay.” I got to my feet. “By the way, what’s the word on the ownership of the murder
weapon?”
“By the time you get back, I should know. If I don’t hear from Washington in an hour, I’ll call them again. I just called an hour ago, but a computer was down, or something.”
I called for Canelli to get my car, clipped my service revolver to my belt and began shuffling through the papers on my desk, looking for Marie Kramer’s address.
THIRTEEN
“JEEZ,” CANELLI SAID, GESTURING to Marie Kramer’s house, then expanding the gesture to include the rest of it: Telegraph Hill, the downtown skyscrapers set so dramatically against the vivid blue of San Francisco Bay, the long, low curve of the Bay Bridge, the hills of Berkeley in the background.
“Jeez,” Canelli repeated, “that’s a million-dollar view, Lieutenant.” He gestured again toward the house, rising tier upon tier up the sharp slope of the hill. “That’s what that house cost, I bet. A million dollars. At least.”
“At least.”
“I read somewhere that the rich are different,” Canelli said, his swarthy brow earnestly furrowed as he stared at the house. “And, you know, when you see a place like this, or a place like Alexander Guest’s place, you realize that it’s true. The rich are different. Aren’t they?”
As I nodded, I was thinking of my ex-wife, and her industrialist father and his factory in Detroit, and his mansion in Grosse Pointe.
The rich …
When I’d married Carolyn, I was still playing professional football. But one illegal block thrown by a Green Bay Packer changed my life, and when I got out of the hospital I went to work for my father-in-law. I had a corner office with a leather couch. My secretary had graduated from Boston University and gone to Katherine Gibbs. Supposedly, I was doing “public relations.” Actually, I met important visitors at the airport, got them settled in their hotels and generally catered to their preference in food, drink—and women. After the first year, I realized that I had a drinking problem. Sometime during the second year, standing blearily at the bar of the Book Cadillac while I watched an important visitor paw a girl I’d hired for the evening, I realized that I’d become a pimp. I left the important visitor and drove home. I woke Carolyn up, and told her that I was through. I told her we were going to give our house back to her father, and pack up our things and take the children to San Francisco.
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