Alex Cooper 01 - Final Jeopardy

by Linda Fairstein

  “Did you have to learn all that technical business about guns for the movie?” I asked, realizing as soon as I did that it was not the most subtle approach for the nature of the investigation.

  His head was apparently thicker than his deltoids ’cause he didn’t seem to get the connection at all. “Are you kidding? Didn’t Isabella tell you how I taught her to shoot when we were in Central America making that Clancy movie? Man, I grew up on that stuff, from G.I. Joe right to the Marines.”

  “No, she just talked about your romance.” That had been nearly enough to make me question her sanity. I suppose I hadn’t asked too many more details.

  “We used to sit around at night, drinking and making love. There wasn’t much else to do down there. I tried to teach her how to shoot. We’d set up the empty vodka bottles on a tree stump in the jungle and blast them to pieces. Someday,—what do you call those guys—archaeologists? Someday, one of’em will come along and do a dig right on that movie set. Iz used to say they’d think the Aztecs had invented Absolut, there’d be nothing but fragments, of glass buried there.

  “Then I could really make her laugh when I could nail one of them snakes, you know, like when they were moving? Man, she hated those snakes. Anacondas. Those jungles were full of ’em. She used to say she never wanted to see another snakeskin shoe or pocketbook in her life. I could spot those suckers as soon as they came out in the daylight to sun themselves and I could blast ’em in half while they tried to slither back into their holes. It used to be quite a game. Iz had a nice reward for me every time I killed her a slimy anaconda.” He winked at me, so I was sure to know that Isabella was taking good care of Johnny’s snake when ever he played sharpshooter.

  To me it seemed like quite a skill. Not one that I wanted to master, much as I hated snakes. But Garelli had to be pretty good with a gun to hit that kind of moving target.

  Plates were exchanged for other plates, Maureen continued to ply the jukebox with dollar bills so that fine music constantly flowed out of it, and Johnny slugged vodka as if it were the last time he would ever have anything to drink.

  “Why do you think the police want to talk to you?” I asked naively. “Do you know anything about Isabella’s murder?”

  “Clueless, Alice, I am really clueless.”

  I didn’t correct him on my name. He was pretty drunk, and I guess his mind was on the dancer he was due to meet in another hour.

  “They ran me through every conversation I had with her lately, wanted to know about the man she was with all week, wanted to know which of her lovers she’d fought with. I guess they’ll do the same with you,” I suggested to him.

  “Well, they’ll get shit from me—excuse my language, sweetheart. She and me didn’t see each other for weeks. We talked on the phone, she was some kinda tease, but if these motherfuckers think they’re gonna dredge up my past and try to knock me outta the box, they got another thought coming.”

  “You got a lawyer?”

  “No way, man. I mean I got a lawyer back home, I got plenty of lawyers. But you walk into a police station with a lawyer, those cops know you did something wrong. I can go in by myself, tell ’em what they wanna know, and take the Fifth when I feel like it. I’m not payin’ some sleazebag to tell me, ‘You don’t have to answer that, Johnny.’ I been around the block a few times. No problem.”

  Garelli was working the tortoni now, for dessert, and Vic had brought over a bottle of anisette to place on the table. The espresso was thick as mud and delicious, but Johnny cut his with the syrupy liquor, as though he needed more fuel. He lit a cheap cigar, leaned forward and eyeballed me. “They ask you anything about me and Iz?”

  “Yeah. They asked me some things, and I know they’ve been talking to a lot of other people about you, too.”

  “They tell you what they know about me, I mean, besides me being like in the movies?”

  “They haven’t told me everything. I know they talked about your bad temper, your fights with Isabella—”

  “Shit, that’s nothing to talk about. That is zero, nada. You know these cops. They any good? Or are they complete fuck-ups, like the ones in L.A.?”

  “I don’t really know them. There’s some jerk from the FBI who thinks he’s running the show.”

  “Yeah, Luther Waldo or something like that. Did they find out anything about you they didn’t already know?”

  Boy, am I the wrong one to ask. “Yeah, actually, they did.”

  “Something bad?”

  “Very bad.” Put Tina on again, Maureen. Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?

  Now Johnny was puzzled. He had been convinced the meeting with the cops was going to be a complete cakewalk when he agreed to do it. “D’you have something to hide?”

  “I didn’t know it at the time, Johnny, but it turns out that I did. Why, is there something you don’t want them to know?”

  I had started to confide in him, and he leaned farther into my face to return the favor by trying to trust me with his secrets. “I didn’t have anything to do with killing Isabella—and, man, you know she coulda driven me to it—but I got things I don’t want nobody to know about. We all do, don’t we?”

  “You bet.”

  “They’re gonna wanna know where I was the day she got it, right?” He was well oiled now and getting sloppy. “Well, I got nothing to tell them about that. I’m not gonna ruin somebody else’s life that’s got nothing to do with their business, see?”

  “Hey, Johnny, I’d be careful about lying to them. You know with credit cards and telephone bills and things that leave a trail of dates and records, it’s stup—It’s not too smart to lie about something they can check on as easily as that.”

  He tried to absorb that for a minute. “Well, I don’t have to lie to them, I could just take the Fifth, right?”

  “Well, not exactly.” I tried to explain the difference between being questioned by the police and being on the witness stand in a court of law. Forget about it.

  I decided to try the direct approach. “Maybe it’s not all that tough, Johnny. Where were you last Wednesday? I mean, as long as you weren’t on Martha’s Vineyard I think you’re absolutely right—it’s nobody’s business. Try your story on me—see how it flies. Isabella always trusted me.” That was a one-way street.

  I smiled sweetly at him, and hoped it looked warm and fuzzy as he stared back at me through his alcohol-filled haze.

  He propped one elbow on the table and rested his chin in the palm of his hand. “You know The Tempest?”

  “Shakespeare?” The Gorilla and I are gonna talk Shakespeare tonight? The lieutenant won’t believe it.

  “No, not the movie. The boat, the yacht.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure. Sir Robert Ardmore’s yacht. That one?” What unlikely shipmates: Johnny Garelli and British department store mogul, recently knighted, Sir Robert Ardmore.

  “Yeah, Alice, that one. It’s like an ocean liner. I don’t know Ardmore, but you could say I’m a good friend of his wife.” Garelli smiled. “When Iz dumped me, I thought I’d drown my sorrows in the ocean.”

  Ardmore’s fifth wife, a twenty-six-year-old stripper whose instep was reputed to be higher than her I.Q., had met the elderly billionaire when he was in Vegas, doing a site inspection for a series of shopping malls. He was still married at the time, and his fierce battle to retain the remarkable yacht—which had originally been named for his fourth wife—in the divorce proceedings led to its lavish rechristening as The Tempest.

  “So you and Tiki Ardmore were together last week?”

  “Obviously, that goes no further than this table, right? Her husband’s got a lousy sense of humor, if you know what I mean. Really straight guy. Jeez, I’ve known Tiki since she was working the door at Morton’s.”

  I think Lord Ardmore and I could do very well together, sailing off into the sunset, faithful and loyal like a pair of cocker spaniels.

  “Where was the boat?”

  “I flew on board by helicopter when
Ardmore went back to London last Monday. I was in Easthampton, and the boat was cruising off Montauk, at the end of Long Island.”

  Fifty-five miles from the Vineyard, as the crow flies.

  “Well, at least you’ve got witnesses, Johnny. Crew, pilots, deckhands—”

  “I got ’em all right, but one thing Tiki don’t want is witnesses. Everybody who works for Ardmore is deaf, dumb, and blind, if you follow me. This marriage may be hard work, but it beats the shit out of the last two jobs she had. I can’t burn her on this.”

  “Did you put into port anywhere?”

  “Are you kidding? Those dinky little islands can hold stinkpots and Sunfishes, but not a yacht the size of this one. The Tempest needs its own dock. Nah, last thing we wanted to see was other people.”

  I guess Tiki Ardmore was a snake-charmer, too.

  Johnny gave me a few more details about his shipboard adventure, and I was confident that there were enough people who could confirm or contradict his story, were his involvement really to become a major factor in the investigation. I don’t know that I was any help to Lieutenant Peterson, but I would not have to eat again for at least a week.

  The rain had started to come down heavily while we were having dinner, and I was glad to see that there was a stretch limo waiting for Garelli at the curb. He left generous tips for Vic and the waiter, exchanged kisses on both cheeks with Joey, and asked me if I wanted to be dropped at my apartment on his way back to the hotel. Maureen and Mike had slipped out while Johnny was settling up his bill, and I saw their car parked just beyond the streetlight, as they watched me get into the rear seat before starting up their engine.

  It was only a ten-minute ride down the Drive to my place. Garelli leaned his head back against the seat cushion and let the alcohol do its work, while I played out the visions of a helicopter or a speeding launch whisking him from The Tempest to the Vineyard, to kill Isabella, while Tiki Ardmore soaked in a bubble bath. The logistics of it were certainly possible, as any navigator could tell you. I had gotten the basics for Chapman and his team—they would have to go the distance.

  I thanked Johnny for the meal and wished him good luck with Luther tomorrow, then I got out of the limo and waited in the lobby for Mike and Maureen to park and join me.

  “You guys must be starved, watching me eat all that food while you just sat at the bar the whole time. I’ll send out for a pizza for you.”

  “One glass of wine and three bottles of Pellegrino water, just to keep our glasses looking full. I’ll be running for the powder room as soon as you unlock your door,” Maureen responded.

  “What d’ya get?” Mike asked.

  “Nothing memorable. Has no use for cops, plans to lie to you guys tomorrow and stonewall you about where he was. Has a thing going with the wife of a billionaire, so he doesn’t want you to know the truth and blow it for her by going public. And yes, in fact he was on the East Coast the week of the murder, cruising in the Atlantic Ocean on his personal ‘love boat,’ not too far from the Vineyard. He’s a superb marksman, especially good at moving targets. Don’t remind me that I’ve been fooled before, Mike, but somehow I don’t think he killed Isabella. Too stupid to have actually formulated and carried out something that needed to be planned in advance like this murder. See what he tells you when he comes in to the office, but I don’t think he’s your man.”

  We went into my apartment and I showed Maureen where to freshen up while I went into the den to call Steve’s Pizza. It was only ten-thirty, so I called David Mitchell, too, to ask him to join us. “I’ve got two detectives with me. Is this a good time to come by and talk things over with us?”

  “It’s great. Didn’t you get my message? I just got home twenty minutes ago and suggested you call if you got in before midnight. I’ll be right over.”

  “Oh, I haven’t even gone into the bedroom yet to check the machine. Glad it’s still working. My mother seems to have given up on me this week. The door’s open.”

  Maureen called out to me from the bedroom. “Mind if I use the phone to call my husband? You know how jealous he gets when I’m out dancing with Chapman.”

  “Next to the bed, Mo.” Mike had gone through the Police Academy with Gene Forester, who left the job a few years back for a top position in corporate security.

  David came in a few minutes later and the four of us positioned ourselves in the living room for an attempt to brainstorm with the information we had to date about Isabella’s death. Mike had brought Maureen up-to-speed while they were sitting at the bar at Rao’s, and David had spent some of his day considering the psychological aspect through the mumbo-jumbo of the correspondence found in Iz’s house.

  Each of the known suspects went up and down as possible perps in my view, depending on the hour of the day and the latest information. We filled David in on Jed’s role and today’s photo confirmation by the Quinn sisters, and I could see him watching me out of the corner of his eye to try to measure the effect of that news on my emotional well-being. Burrell had been an early consideration whom I had eliminated, but who now had reinjected himself into the mix with his deception and the fact of his drug delivery. Garelli was a long shot, but certainly within geographic range—and a great shooter. Whenever we thought we could narrow the field, a name like Freddy Weintraub, the felonious accountant, muddied the view.

  “What’s the likelihood that the killer is someone you’ve never even considered, someone whose name has never come into this yet? An unknown, a complete ringer?” David asked, directing his inquiry to Mike.

  “Better than even, Doc. You know how low the clearance rate on homicides is if you don’t break ’em in the first forty-eight, seventy-two hours? It’s abysmal. We’re starting with guys who knew her and may have had a reason to do her in—God knows how many freaks we never heard of who hated her. And then there’s the simple fact that celebrities are fair game for more whackjobs than there are jail cells. Sometimes they just heckle and harass, other times they go for the gold.”

  “So these aren’t the only people to consider?”

  “Nope. Just the first wave. Still a lot to do on these guys. If Segal’s lawyer were smart and really wanted to give his client a shot, he’d tell us how and when his man left the island. There must be some way to prove that. The ferry’s not much help. I’ve checked airport records by name and came up empty. But there’s a couple of guys who paid cash on the 3 P.M. Cape Air flight. If he used an alias and no credit card, just ’cause he didn’t want to get caught cheating on Alex, we might be able to clear him. Either he doesn’t have that kind of alibi ’cause he was still on the scene when Iz was shot, or he’s a horse’s ass.”

  “Or the lawyer’s waiting for Mr. Green before he does any heavy lifting,” Maureen added as a possibility.

  “Mr. Green?” David looked puzzled.

  “Means Jed hasn’t paid him yet. Sometimes, the defense attorney wants a big bundle of green bills up front, before he lifts a finger. Wants to keep the client on the hook a little longer, then the guy’s really grateful when he’s cleared,” I explained to David.

  “If he’s cleared,” Mike threw in, as a warning to me. No question that Jed was still Chapman’s number-one suspect.

  “Those letters mean anything to you, Doc? Did Alex tell you about the poem Isabella had copied into that script we found when we packed up her belongings? That also had ‘Dr. C.’ written next to it.”

  “No, I don’t think you mentioned that, Alex.”

  At this point I couldn’t remember whether I had or not. “It was a few lines out of a Pope poem, David. The passage Iz had transcribed included the lines, ‘Is it, in Heaven, a crime to love too well?’ It looked like she thought this ‘Dr. C.’ had been the poet. I guess that’s Cordelia Jeffers. Maybe it’s got more to do with this than we thought.”

  David tried to take us through his reasoning. “Start with the fact that there is no psychiatrist named Cordelia Jeffers. I expect that no such person even exists, that it’s a
name assumed for the purposes of this particular correspondence.”

  “Why?” Chapman liked to get right to the point.

  “I don’t know why, at the moment. But it’s clear that the writer knew that Isabella was going to Martha’s Vineyard, and it’s even more clear that Isabella was not the source of that information.” He quoted back to us from the first paragraph, in which Jeffers commented on Isabella’s trip, which she learned about quite indirectly. “It’s also obvious that she knew Isabella was going with a man—shall we assume Jed?—which is far more than you knew, Alex.”

  “So if we want to know more about Dr. C., we’re looking, for someone who knew both Isabella and Jed, is that what you’re telling us?” Mike asked.

  “For openers, yes.”

  “I thought I was the common denominator there,” I was quick to acknowledge. “Perhaps there were one or two Hollywood acquaintances they had in common, but I was certain that there was no real link independent of me, except for friends of mine like Nina and her husband. Even Nina confirmed that she thinks this liaison only began a few weeks ago, when they ran into each other on the Concorde.”

  “And the pretext for Isabella calling on Jed?” David asked me again.

  “The fact that her accountant had been stealing her blind. Jed gave her the name of his man when we all had dinner together, and later on I urged him to follow up and make sure she was in good hands.”

  “Yeah, but by the time she invited Jed to the Vineyard, the week before last, she had a new stalker, didn’t she?” Mike went on. “Did you tell David that Jed had been stalked when he ran for office? That’s one of the reasons he told you he was so sympathetic to Lascar.”

  “What was that all about, Alex?”

  “I hardly know what to believe at this point, guys. When we first met, in June, one of the things Jed talked about when he heard I was a prosecutor was the time he’d been harassed. His version of the facts was that he shook hands with a young woman in a receiving line when he was running for the Senate and he couldn’t get rid of her after that. Phone calls, letters, showed up everywhere he went, got on airplanes with him. Finally had to go to the police to put an end to it.”