by David Bishop
Jack glanced at Nora who was fighting back a smile.
“In the event you are not aware,” Jack said, “McCall Investigations is looking into the death of Dr. Christopher Andujar, which the Metropolitan Police Department has ruled a suicide. In the course of our investigation we have come to learn the following: You were a bag man for Luke Tittle. You disbursed bribe monies on behalf of Mr. Tittle to insulate the illegal activities of Mr. Tittle’s business, known as Luke’s Place, from the lawful activities of both the DC police and various regulatory agencies. You owned a fifteen percent interest in Luke’s Place. We have a witness who will testify to this fact. You now function in that same capacity in the employ of Donny Andujar with respect to protecting the illegal activities of his business, known as Donny’s Gentlemen’s Club. We have a witness who will testify that you own fifteen percent of Donny’s club.
“During your years as a police detective, you maintained Metro’s files on old federal fugitive warrants. Benny Haviland, one such federal fugitive, worked as a supervisor for the Clark Janitorial Service. As such he had after-hours access to Donny’s club, and also the buildings in which the following psychiatrists had offices: Dr. Christopher Andujar, deceased, Dr. Phillip Radnor, and Dr. John Karros, whose patients included MI’s client, Candice Robson.”
“Except for Robson I got nothing to do with none of that.”
Jack continued. “The curator of a major art gallery has been blackmailed into switching forged paintings for works of art. The leverage over the curator included photographs of him having sex with a lap dancer at Donny’s club. Available witnesses include the forger of the paintings, the curator at the gallery, and Donny Andujar. We allege that the murdered Benny Haviland gave you access to install that camera. Said lap dancer has also been murdered. Donny Andujar will testify that you pushed him to get that specific lap dancer to have sex with that curator.”
Tyson’s body language indicated he was getting the picture. All of it pointed to him.
“We have other prominent locals, patients of the deceased Dr. Andujar, who are ready to testify they were blackmailed about issues they discussed only with Dr. Andujar. We believe it can be proven that Benny Haviland got you into Andujar’s office where you illegally installed surveillance equipment. Dr. Andujar’s patients were blackmailed for a total of one-and-a-quarter million dollars.
“Dr. Andujar had private treatment sessions with Dr. Radnor, in whose office we also found indications you had installed surveillance equipment. We are confident the equipment used for this and these other instances of illegal surveillance will tie to equipment the police will find in your office. Before his death Dr. Andujar paid a quarter of a million dollars. That blackmailing contributed to the death of Dr. Andujar. Two federal fugitives are ready to testify they were also blackmailed.”
Perspiration worked its way down Tyson’s grainy skin to spill into the deep crevices along each side of his nose. The trail of sweat followed those creases until it flowed in at the corner of his mouth. Annoyed by the sensation, Tyson swung his head fiercely. The sweat flew from his face.
“I believe that the police, using the information we’ve uncovered, can establish that you illegally installed surveillance equipment in the office of Doctor of Psychiatry John Karros that led to your attempt to blackmail one of his patients, our client, Ms. Candice Robson, for one million dollars.”
“I swear, other than that Robson thing I didn’t shake down nobody, and I didn’t rub out Haviland or hire Rockton to kill the whore.”
“You just blackmailed Robson. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yeah.”
“How did you get the dirt on Candice Robson?”
“Like you said, I bugged her shrink’s office.”
“Dr. Karros?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on, Tyson. You expect anybody to believe that you bugged Dr. Karros’s office, but that you didn’t bug the office of Doctor Radnor who is in the same building? Also Dr. Andujar’s building for which Benny Haviland also had keys. The equipment in your own office will smash that lie.”
“Okay. I bugged them too. But the real blackmailer made me do it. I just put the recorders in the offices. I don’t know nothin’ else.”
Tyson twisted his head to the side and wiped the coagulated saliva from the corner of his mouth onto the shoulder of his denim shirt.
Max spoke for the first time. “You’re an ex-cop, Tyson. How many years you think you’re gonna do for all this?”
Tyson again jerked his head, his flailing hair flipping perspiration into the air.
When he didn’t answer, Max prodded him again. “I got no sympathy for you, Arthur—how many years?”
Tyson just sat there with sweat dripping from his nose onto the thighs of his overalls.
Max slammed the flat of his hand on the table. “Right, Artie, the number of years won’t matter. These charges will get you into a prison where there’ll be lots of your old friends. Fellows you worked over when you carried a badge. Fellows you sent up, who hold a grudge.”
Except for a tic just left of his mouth, Tyson’s posture hid his being alive. Then he blurted, “I can’t go in one of them prisons,” his voice beginning to crack.
“Tyson.” Jack said sharply. “Intelligence work has taught me that justice comes in lots of forms. Some are unconventional, but still effective.”
Tyson hunched forward and then turned his head to each side, using his hunched shoulders to wipe the sweat from his cheeks. “If I cooperate,” he said. “If I help you solve them other blackmailings and murders, can you get the charges against me knocked down to just Robson, with any time served to be in minimum security?”
“Artie,” Jack said, “you know I can neither control nor speak for Metro or the D.A.’s office. If what you’re saying is true and you help slam the cell door on the blackmailer and murderer, at the least you’d be free of those charges. I would also agree to use my influence with Ms. Robson. I may be able to get her to ask the D.A. to drop that charge.”
Tyson sat erectly. “Yeah. That’s the only real charge against me. Robson lost no money. Maybe a few nights sleep, but hell, that’s nothing. Right?”
“I want to ask you more questions, Mr. Tyson, but before I do, let’s go back over the terms for this interview. At your instruction I will call Metro to come here. If you wish I will stop asking questions and you may at any time refuse to answer any or all questions.”
“Yeah. Yeah. What I’m saying I’m saying of my own free will. I wanna cooperate. So ask. Go on for Christ’s sake. Ask.”
Chapter 47
Jack turned to Nora. “Please get Mr. Tyson a towel from our washroom. Max, remove the handcuffs.” While Max moved around behind Tyson, Jack said, “Tell us if you need to go to the head. Otherwise, don’t get out of that chair.”
Tyson nodded. “Sure. Okay.” He rubbed his wrists and watched Nora walk back in.
She threw the towel at him. He caught it, grinned at her, and wiped his face. During this brief break, a let’s-get-it-done attitude had replaced Tyson’s tough-guy act.
“So ask.”
“How have you sustained your standard of living over the years? Oh, before you answer, I want to again remind you this is being recorded and filmed.”
“No way, McCall,” Tyson raised his hands above his shoulders, stretching from side to side. “I’m here to talk about the blackmailer. I ain’t about to rat on myself.”
Jack was pleased by Tyson’s reply, it had confirmed he understood his right not to answer, and that Jack would respect his decision.
“Then tell us about the blackmailer.”
“He paid me to put the bugs in the offices of them shrinks.”
“Andujar. Radnor. Karros. And Donny Andujar’s club?”
“Not Karros, but, yeah … the rest of ‘em.” He swabbed his neck with the towel before adding, “Nobody else.”
Max and Nora had glanced at Jack when Tyson split out Karros, but Ja
ck shook his head. He would let that pass for now.
“Lemme tell you something else.” Tyson looked at Max, then Nora and finally, Jack, his silence building suspense. “You know as well as me the big risk in blackmail, like in kidnapping, is picking up the dough. I took that risk.” He shook his head. “I hope you nail the sonofabitch.”
Max pulled out the chair next to him and put his foot on the seat. “That brings us to the big question, Artie, who’s the blackmailer?”
Tyson shrugged. “Search me. He gave me instructions by phone. He was always reminding me I didn’t know his identity, and that I would die if I took one dollar more than my cut.” Tyson looked up and pleaded, “I just picked up the loot a coupla times. Not from all them pigeons you mentioned. I took my end and left the rest at a drop like he told me. I don’t know who he is. That’s how he kept me in line.”
“Which payoffs did you pick up?” Jack held up his right hand, his index finger pointing toward the ceiling. “And Artie, I have solid information on this, so don’t try to stroke me.”
Tyson spread his hands as if he were a TV evangelist. “I never got told names, but I picked up a payoff of one million. I shoulda just grabbed that one and kept going. I also picked up a half mil and a quarter. That’s it. You say the quarter was Chris Andujar. I never knew that. Chris was an okay guy. I got no clue why I was told to force Donny into pushing Jena Moves to spread her legs for that pipsqueak, and I can’t help you on Jena gettin’ bumped off. The word is the biker did it for his own reasons. This town’s full of hookers, so we got one less. No big deal.”
Jack clenched his fists and leaned closer, his knuckles pressing white against the table. “You didn’t even know her name, you bastard. It was Phoebe Ziegler, a young woman with a mother and a future.”
Max put a firm hand on Jack’s shoulder and took over questioning Tyson. “How do you know the blackmailer knocked off Haviland?”
“He told me.” Jack sat down while Tyson embellished his answer. “He kept telling me he’d plug me too if I didn’t do exactly what he told me every step of the way. And Jack, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had a thing for Jena. Hey, but get in line. Guys all over town were walking with stiffies every time they saw that broad.”
Jack wanted to slug the soured ex-cop, but he fought down the urge. He was not about to hand Tyson a defense that he had been beaten and intimidated.
“You knew Benjamin Haviland.” Jack made it sound like a statement of fact, not a question.
“Yeah,” Tyson freely admitted. “A good while back the blackmailer told me to meet a guy who would get me in Chris’s office. That guy was Benny.”
“How did you pass the surveillance tapes to the blackmailer?” Jack asked.
“Benny handled all that. I showed him how to put in new tapes and take out the full ones. He did it during his visits to the buildings as janitorial supervisor. The only thing Benny ever told me was that he left the tapes at drops like he was told. One time he said he was ordered to go behind the building and give them to some guy on a motorcycle. My guess is that was the same biker who iced Jena.”
“Did Benny know the blackmailer’s identity?” Max asked.
“I asked him once and Benny got all freaky. ‘Listen, man,’ he said, ‘I don’t know and I don’t wanna know.’” Tyson snorted. “In his college days Benny was one of them smart-ass, I’ll-save-the-earth hippies. That bum never even made it to flyspeck on the ass of the earth.”
Jack looked at him askance. “Artie, you’ve taken calls from this guy for a long time. You can’t tell us you don’t know his identity.”
“What name did the blackmailer use to refer to himself?” Nora asked.
Max tagged on, “What did he sound like?”
“He sounded different all the time,” Tyson said while bobbing and weaving his head to add a visual illustration. “Sometimes muffled, sometimes with one of those vibrator gizmos against his neck, and other times he just whispered. Sometimes he sounded like Donald Duck. About once a week he’d call me while I was in a restaurant, to remind me his guys were always watching me.”
Tyson spread the towel open and held it using both hands, covering his face.
“A name!” Nora barked. “What name did he give you?”
Tyson slid the sweat-soaked towel up his face and over the top, his straight damp hair matting to his head. “Moriarty! Okay? He called himself Moriarty. And every time that looney tune said ‘Moriarty,’ he chuckled. I’m telling ya, this asshole is fuckin’wacko. I only went along ‘cause he threatened to shoot my ass.”
He’s working on his defense again.
“And the money was good, right Artie?” Nora asked in a disgusted tone.
“Moriarty was the name of Sherlock Holmes’s archenemy,” Jack said.
“I know that,” Tyson protested. “I tried reading Sherlock Holmes once, but it was too old-fashioned. I don’t know why the blackmailer picked that name … Can Nora get me a dry towel?”
Jack stood up. “I’ll get it.” Jack went into the washroom off the conference room, dropped the sweat-soaked towel into the trash and washed his hands. When he returned, he slid a clean towel across the table to Tyson who grabbed it and again started talking.
“The blackmailer once said, ‘Holmes often prevented Moriarty from getting the loot, but Holmes could never catch Moriarty.’” Tyson ran the fresh towel over his forehead and neck before continuing. “Then the guy said, ‘I’ll top Moriarty. I’ll get away with my spoils.’ … I‘m telling you, he’s one weird motherfucker. This is the only guy who’s ever scared me, and I ain’t never even met him.”
“You said he told you he killed Benny Haviland?” Nora asked.
“He bragged about it. Said, ‘Benny disobeyed my orders.’ He warned me not to do the same or I’d end up lying next to Benny.” Tyson snuffed loudly and cleared his throat. “Moriarty told me half his gang used to tail Benny and the other half me. Now they was all watching me. And I’m here to tell you, those guys were good. I’ll give ‘em that. I never saw nobody.”
Jack brought it together. “We can tie you directly or indirectly to the blackmailing of eight people and several deaths. Do you want us to have the cops come now, or do you wish to keep talking with us?”
“I’m talking, ain’t I? Hell, the only guy I know ain’t Moriarty is you, Jack. If you was, I’d already be dead.”
“Why did you remove the electronic surveillance equipment from Donny’s Club and from the offices of Andujar and Radnor, but not from Dr. Karros?”
“After Moriarty silenced Benny, he ordered me to remove my equipment from Donny’s club and Radnor’s office. I had already cleared out Andujar’s office right after Chris took himself out. Moriarty told me I should toss the equipment and the keys to them buildings into the Potomac. I kept the equipment. Maybe I shoulda done what he said.”
Tyson had stopped just answering questions; he was now telling his story.
“Benny got gunned when Moriarty no longer needed him. I knew that once I removed the electronics, he’d no longer need me. Things were getting hot and the cops knew nothing about nothing. The heat was coming from you, Jack. Enough heat that Moriarty was pulling the plug. He wanted to get away from you. I wanted to get away from him.
“The same night I took my gear outta Radnor’s office; I stuck it in Karros’s. Both them shrinks are in that same building and they both see lots of rich patients, and being a cop taught me rich folks usually got more skeletons in their closets than the lowlifes. I figured even if Moriarty’s guys were watching me, they’d be outside the building with no way of knowing I had bugged Karros to get the goods on one of his nut jobs. Just my luck it turned out to be your client, the Robson broad.”
“Where did Moriarty have you leave the payoffs?” Jack asked.
“He kept changing it. One time a lockbox in Union Station, another time in an airport locker, then under the bench in a try-on room at a department store. Like that. Always public so I had no solid chan
ce to spot him. There ain’t nothing there for you to follow. He’s smart and careful.”
Tyson looped the towel around his neck and clung to the ends with his elbows down and continued spilling his story. “With Candy Robson’s mil, I’d be long gone. Moriarty would never find me. That’s my only blackmail job. The rest is a little B&E, illegal surveillance, and money pickups. I doubt the D.A.’ll buy into accessory to murder.”
“Bottom line,” Jack said, “if we don’t catch this Moriarty, maybe he doesn’t exist. Maybe the jury will see your entire Moriarty story as bull.”
Tyson yanked the ends of the towel hard enough to snap his head back. “Jesus. Jack. I didn’t snuff Benny. I got a solid alibi for my time the afternoon Benny got wasted. Me and Agnes Fuller were doing a threesome with Semisweet Connie from Donny’s Club. Them two’ll tell you. They’ll testify for me.”
“Arthur. Arthur. It’s not my call. The only way I can help you is to catch Moriarty. Will you help me do that?”
“What the hell I been doing here? I don’t know anything else. Gimme a break.”
“You haven’t come clean yet; I can’t help you yet.”
“I wear size fifty-two pants. What the hell else you wanna know? Tell me, so I can tell you. Christ all mighty.”
Jack smiled. “You and Engels are fifteen-percent silent partners in Donny’s Club, just like you were for Tittle. The third investor with the same percentage gets his cut through you. Who is it?”
“Some rich, politically connected local snob. Name’s Dean Trowbridge. The bastard thinks his shit don’t stink, but the sonofabitch was not too pure to take his cut—not too lily white for that.” Tyson said while rubbing the inside tips of his index and middle finger with the pad of his thumb.
When Tyson looked down, Jack glanced quickly at Nora and Max, who were also trying not to show their surprise from hearing the reference to Allison’s father.