Play Dead

by David Rosenfelt

  I call him on his cell phone, since that is the only phone he owns and uses. He cannot believe that I still use a landline in my home and office, likening it to someone tooling around Paterson in a horse and buggy. Wireless is everything, according to Sam, but the truth is, I’m barely starting to get comfortable with cordless.

  I can hear a loud public address announcer as Sam is talking, and he explains that he’s at Logan Airport in Boston. He’s a Red Sox fanatic, a rarity in the New York area, and he goes up there about five times a year to see games. This time he’s been there for almost a week.

  His flight lands in an hour and a half, and I tell him that I’ll pick him up at the airport because I want to talk to him about a job.

  “On a case?” he asks, hopefully, since he loves this kind of investigatory work.

  “On a case.”

  For some reason, I’ve always been a person who picks other people up at airports. I know that when I land I like someone to be there, even if it’s just a driver. It’s depressing to arrive and see all these people holding up signs with names on them, and none says “Carpenter.” It makes me feel as if I have my own sign on my forehead—“Loser.”

  Sam flies into Newark rather than LaGuardia, which is where most Boston flights arrive. I share Sam’s dislike for LaGuardia; it’s tiny and old and so close to the city it feels as though the plane were landing on East Eighty-fourth Street. Newark is far more accessible and feels like a real airport.

  Newark is far more accessible and feels like a real airport.

  Sam is outside and in my car within five minutes of landing, because he did not check a bag. Sam wouldn’t check a bag if he were going away for six months; he doesn’t think it’s something a real man should do.

  Sam has some mental issues.

  As Sam gets in the car, I realize I haven’t prepared for the song talking game that dominates our relationship. The trick is to work song lyrics smoothly into the conversation, and Sam has so outdistanced me in his ability to do this that he has taken to adjusting the rules so he won’t be bored. Now he will sometimes do movie dialogue instead of song lyrics, and I never know which it’s going to be. Unfortunately, I have not prepared for either.

  The good news is that Sam is so interested in finding out about the upcoming investigation that song or movie talking doesn’t seem to be on his mind.

  I brief him on what I know, and “brief” is the proper word, since I know very little. “For now I want you to focus on the victim, Stacy Harriman,” I say. “There is very little about her in the record.”

  “You know where she’s from, age, that kind of thing?” he asks.

  “Some. What I don’t have I’ll get.”

  “Is this a rush?”

  I nod. “Evans sits in jail until we can get him out. So it’s a rush.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” he says.

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  He shrugs that off. “No problem. Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me.”

  He’s doing Brando from The Godfather. It’s a movie I know very well, so there’s a chance I can compete, but right now my mind is a blank. “Sam, I want you to be careful, okay?” I say this because two people in my life have died because of material they have uncovered in this kind of investigation. One of the victims was Sam’s former assistant.

  “Right,” Sam says, shrugging off the warning.

  “I mean it, Sam. You’ve got to take this stuff more seriously. We could be dealing with dangerous people.”

  He looks wounded. “What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? If you’d come to me in friendship, then these people would be suffering this very day. And if by chance an honest man like yourself should make enemies, they would become my enemies. And they would fear you.”

  He is incorrigible. “Thank you, Godfather,” I say. “You want to work out of my office?”

  He frowns. “You must be kidding. On your computer? It would take me a year.”

  “I can set up whatever system you want,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “No, I’ll work at home… I’ve got wireless and a cable modem.” Then all of a sudden he’s yelling, “At my home! Where my wife sleeps! Where my children come to play with their toys!”

  “Sam, can we finish this before you start making me offers I can’t refuse?”

  “Sure. What else is there?”

  I’m about to answer when I hear a loud crashing noise and then feel a sudden rush of warm air.

  “Holy shit!” Sam screams, and I realize that there is no longer a side window; it has just seemed to disappear. “Andy! To your left!”

  I look over and see a car alongside us, with two men in the front seat. The man closest to us, not the driver, is pointing a gun at my head. He looks to be around forty, heavyset and very serious-looking. In an instant the thought flashes in my mind that he looks like a man on a mission, not a joyride. There have been some random highway shootings in the past few years, but I instinctively feel that this is not one of them.

  I duck and hit the brakes just as I hear a loud noise, probably another shot. It doesn’t seem to hit anything in the car, but I can take only momentary comfort in this. My fear-induced desire is to burrow under the seat, but I realize that my car isn’t equipped with autopilot, and if I don’t sit up and look at the road, we’re in deep trouble.

  I sit up and get the car out of a mini skid, staying on the road. The car containing the shooter is now ahead of us, and I start to think how I can get over to the side and off the road.

  Sam has other ideas. “Get behind them! Get behind them!”

  “You want me to get closer to people that are shooting at us? Why would I do that?”

  “Come on, Andy, you can’t just let them get away! Get behind them and put your brights on! We’ve got to get their license number.”

  Sam seems as if he knows what he’s doing, and since I know that I don’t, I do as he says, getting in behind the other car and putting the brights on. I get close behind, and then they speed up. There is no sign that they will or can shoot at us from this position. My heart is pounding so loudly that I can’t hear myself think, although I’m too scared to think.

  “We’re on the New Jersey Turnpike, heading north about a mile past the Newark Airport exit. Two men in a black Acura have just fired a handgun at us and hit our car. Their license plate number is VSE 621.” Sam is talking into his cell phone, apparently having called 911. “Yes, that’s right. In the left lane, going approximately seventy-five miles per hour. Yes, that’s right.”

  “What did they say?” I ask, when he stops talking. He still has the cell phone to his ear.

  “They want me to hold on.”

  “But what did they say?”

  “They said to hold on.”

  I’m not getting anywhere with this line of questioning, so I concentrate on driving. I’m now doing almost eighty and they’re pulling away. Since I don’t want to get killed by either a bullet or a crash, I don’t speed up any more.

  Moments later, we hear the sound of sirens, and police cars with flashing lights go flying by us as if we are standing still. “Holy shit, will you look at that!” Sam marvels.

  It isn’t long before the car we’re chasing and the police cars are all out of sight, but I keep driving because I don’t know what else to do. Sam has lost his cell phone connection with 911, so we’re pretty much in the dark.

  “Man, that was amazing!” Sam says. He seems invigorated; this is a side of him I haven’t seen before, and he certainly does not seem shaken by the fact that a window inches from his face was shot out. Am I the only coward in America?

  We drive for a few more miles, turning on the radio to hear if anything is being said about the incident. I’m aware that I need to report this in person to the police, but my preference is to drive to the Paterson Police Department and tell my story to Pete Stanton.

  “What’s that?” Sam a
sks, and when I look ahead I see what he is talking about. There’s a large glow, far ahead and off to the right, which turns out to be the flashing lights of at least a dozen police cars. As we approach, there is no doubt that a car has been demolished, and another car is also damaged at the side of the road. The police are surrounding the smashed vehicle, which I believe is the one that had contained the shooters, but not seeming to take any action.

  Two ambulances pull up as well, and paramedics jump out. If there is anyone in the car, it will be up to the paramedics to help them. Good luck; they haven’t invented the paramedics who could help people in that car. It looks like a metallic quesadilla.

  I pull over, resigned to speaking to the cops on the scene rather than to Pete. I park a couple of hundred yards away and turn off the car.

  “We getting out?” Sam asks.

  I nod. “We’re getting out. Leave your carry-on and take the cannolis.”

  WE GET AS close as we can to the crash scene, which isn’t very close at all. The police have set up a perimeter at least a hundred yards away and are in the process of closing all but the left lane of the highway to traffic. This is going to be a long night for drivers heading north to the city.

  Sam and I approach one of the officers in charge of keeping people away. “That’s as far as you can go,” he says. “Nothing to see here.”

  “We’re the ones who made the call to 911,” I say. “They shot out a window in our car.”

  “Who did?” the officer asks. He probably is not even aware that there was a prior incident on the road; to him this must just be a crash scene.

  “The two guys in that car,” I say. “They shot at us, we called it in, and they must have crashed in the pursuit.”

  The officer considers this a moment. “Stay right here,” he says, and then goes toward the crash scene to check with his superiors. A few moments later he comes back and says, “Follow me.”

  We do so, and as we get close to the crash, it looks as if the car containing the shooters smashed into a car parked along the side of the highway. It then flipped over, perhaps more than once, and came to rest as a complete wreck.

  There is no doubt in my mind that no one in that car could have survived. The police have already set up a trailer, where they will spend the night as they investigate what they will consider a crime scene.

  The officer takes us toward the trailer, and just before we get there, I whisper to Sam, “Do not say anything about the Evans case.”

  He nods. “Gotcha.” Then, “This is so cool.”

  “Sam, you might want to get some professional mental help. On an urgent basis.”

  “You mean see a shrink?”

  “No, I mean as an inpatient. A locked-in patient.”

  We are led inside the trailer, and I can’t stifle a groan when I see that the officer in charge is Captain Dessens of the New Jersey State Police. I have had a couple of run-ins with Dessens on previous cases, and it would be accurate to say that we can’t stand each other.

  Dessens looks up, sees me, and returns the groan. “What the hell are you doing here?” He looks around. “Who let this clown in?”

  The officer who brought us in says, “These guys are the ones I told you about.”

  Dessens shakes his head. “Well, so much for motive.”

  The officer standing next to him says, “What do you mean?”

  “That’s Andy Carpenter, the lawyer. I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t want to take a shot at him.”

  “Is the shooter dead?” I ask.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ll still find a way to screw up the arrest.”

  Dessens starts an angry response and then seems to think better of it. He motions for us to sit down, then questions us on the details of what happened. Sam lets me do most of the talking; he just seems happy and content to be a part of it.

  After we’ve given our statements, Dessens asks if I think the shooting was random or if I might have an idea who could be after me.

  “Everybody loves me,” I say.

  Sam nods. “Me, too.”

  Dessens asks a few more questions and then tells us that they will want to check out my car and that an officer will drive us home.

  “Did you ID the dead guys?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer and instead calls out to one of the other officers, asking him to take us outside. He’s apparently not into sharing.

  It’s not until I get home and have a glass of wine that I really think about what just happened. Word got out today that I was taking Richard Evans’s case, and somebody tried to kill me tonight.

  I don’t believe in coincidences, and it wouldn’t be productive to start now. I have to believe that the shooting is connected to Evans, even though I would much rather not. If somebody could react this quickly and this violently to my simply taking on Evans as a client, then he’s got some very determined and deadly enemies.

  Which means I now have them as well.

  Laurie calls just as I’m about to get into bed, and I tell her the entire story. She believes in coincidences even less than I do, and I can hear the worry in her voice. Laurie is one of the toughest people I know, but she’s well aware that toughness is a trait she and I don’t share.

  She’s frustrated that she can’t get away from her job to come back east until the end of the month, and cautions me to be extra careful. She also has one other piece of advice, the one I expected.

  “Get Marcus.”

  MARCUS CLARK IS a terrific investigator, but that is not what initially comes to mind when one thinks of him. Focusing on his investigating talents first would be like somebody asking for your view of Pamela Anderson, only to have you respond that you hear she’s a pretty good bowler. It may or may not be true, but it’s not “top of mind.”

  Marcus is the scariest person I have ever seen, and there is no one in second place. He is cast in bronze iron, impervious to fear or pain, and possesses a stare that makes me want to carry around a piece of kryptonite, just in case.

  He has been one of my key investigators since even before Laurie went to Wisconsin, and has displayed an uncanny knack for getting people to reveal information. They confide in him, operating under the assumption that they can talk or die. I, for example, would tell Marcus whatever he wanted to know, whenever he wanted to know it. And I would thank him for the opportunity.

  Because I seem to have an involuntary knack for pissing off dangerous people, I sometimes employ Marcus as a protector, a bodyguard, rather than an investigator. That’s why I’ve called him into the office this morning. I’ll probably have a need for him to gather information at some point, but right now that takes a backseat to my need to stay alive.

  I stop on the way in to drop my car off so that they can replace the window that’s been shot out. They drive me to my office and promise to bring me the repaired car before the day is out.

  I’ve had Kevin come in for this meeting as well. When I meet with Marcus, I like as many other people in the room as possible. It makes me feel safer, although if Marcus wanted to do me harm, the Third Infantry on their best day couldn’t help me.

  All I really need to tell Marcus is that some people tried to shoot me and that for whatever reason, it’s very possible that I am a target. His job is to keep me safe and alive, pure and simple. But because I have respect for Marcus’s investigative skills, and because I think he should have as much information as possible about whom he might be dealing with, I tell him all I know about the Richard Evans case.

  My recitation of the facts takes about ten minutes, and Marcus is either silently attentive or asleep the entire time. His eyes are open, but that doesn’t really mean anything one way or the other. Kevin sits as far away from Marcus as is possible while remaining in the same room.

  When I’m finished, I wait for him to comment, and after twenty long seconds it’s obvious that is not going to happen. I prompt him with “So that’s it. Any questions?”

  “Unhh,” says
Marcus. Marcus is a man of very few words, most of which are not actually words.

  “Will you need anything from me?” I ask.

  “Unhh.”

  “Can you get started right away?”

  “Yunhh.”

  I don’t quite know how to end this, so I turn to Kevin. “Kev, you got anything you want to add?”

  He shakes his head a little too quickly. “Not me. Not a thing. Nope.”

  Marcus gets up to leave, without my asking him how he will perform his protective functions. I’ve learned long ago that he will be there if I need him, and I won’t see him if I don’t. It’s comforting to me, though I’ll certainly miss our little chitchats.

  As he reaches the door, it opens from the other side, and Karen Evans is standing there. She is one of the most talkative people I know, but the sight of Marcus stuns her into silence. Her eyes widen, and her mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

  “Oh, my God…,” she says, once Marcus has left. “Is he on our side?”

  I nod. “He is.”

  She breaks into a wide smile and smacks her hands together, generating more of her infectious enthusiasm. “This is gonna be great!”

  I had not asked Karen to come to the office, and I’m not a big fan of unannounced visits. “What are you doing here, Karen?”

  “I don’t know… I’m just real nervous, and excited… and I thought I could hang around and help. You know, run errands, get coffee… I spoke to Edna and she was okay with it.”

  “Edna was willing to give up running errands and making coffee? You must be quite the persuader.”

  I tell her that she can hang around now but that she should call before coming by in the future. I understand her excitement, and as a person who knows her brother and knew his fiancée, she can be helpful. However, I do not instantly share all information with my clients, and I can’t have her rushing to him with constant updates.

  I turn on the television to follow press reports about the shooting on the highway last night, and it’s being treated as a pretty big story. They’re calling it a random shooting, though the fact that I was one of the intended victims is duly noted, as is my recent representation of Richard Evans.