Where Nobody Dies

by Carolyn Wheat

  It was a good question. I waited for the answer.

  “‘It’s the temple,’ he says. The temple, for Christ’s sake!” Lessek laughed again. “Here he is, slumlord of the year, and he wants to be big man at the temple. He knows damned well the rabbi and all the big shots could care less that he rent-gouges the schwartzes, but let them hear one word about him lifting a finger to big-mouth Norma and he’s out. So”—Lessek shrugged, contempt on his face—“he puts Linda on the payroll. Biggest mistake he ever made in his fucking life and all for the temple.”

  “She does seem to have learned the business pretty fast,” I remarked.

  “She was one smart little cookie, I’ll give her that.” There was a note of grudging admiration in Lessek’s tone. “She got right onto Duncan Pitt. And of course, she still liked to tweak Ira every so often. Just to keep in practice. In fact”—Lessek laughed without humor—“she finally did what Norma always managed to do—get him so bad he punched her face. God, was he scared! I thought he’d shit a brick, he was so worried she’d blow his ass out of the water.”

  “Knowing Linda,” I commented wryly, “I’m sure she got her revenge.”

  “In spades. All-expense-paid trip to the Bahamas for three weeks, plus a little extra in the weekly pay envelope. She was the highest-paid real-estate broker in Brooklyn, our Linda.”

  “How did she catch on to you?” I asked.

  “I always told Ira not to leave too much around the office,” Lessek complained. “Trouble was, he couldn’t hide things at home either, Norma being as big a snoop as she is a bitch.”

  “So Linda got the goods and you killed her to save your deal,” I said flatly.

  “Why should I kill her?” Lessek countered. “I was giving her what she wanted, wasn’t I?”

  “Were you?” I asked. “Maybe the money you gave her wasn’t enough. Maybe she wanted more.”

  “I gave her more,” he said simply. “And not just money, either,” he added with a sly little wink.

  “Presents?” I asked, thinking of the expensive trinkets Linda had flashed before her sister.

  Lessek’s head snapped back and he let out a crack of laughter. “I gave her a present all right,” he chuckled. “I gave her Art Lucenti.”

  The wooden platform beneath my feet began to sway a little. I was out of my depth; the betrayals these people were capable of were beyond me. What I’d thought were realistic conclusions based on a firm foundation of logic were turning out to be naïve schoolgirl fantasies. I’d conjured up a Todd Lessek who hated Linda, who sought revenge at all costs, when what he’d done in reality was make her a silent partner.

  Which explained the separate envelope. Lessek wasn’t in the same category as Pitt, Pilcher, and the others. Where they paid her with money and jewelry, Lessek gave her new secrets to play with, new blood to suck.

  I must have looked as disgusted as I felt. Todd Lessek immediately began to defend himself. “Hey, what could I do?” he protested, with a hint of swagger in his tone. “I mean, it was him or me, you know what I mean?” The strutting masculinity with the hint of viciousness were pure Al Pacino. Todd Lessek must have gone to a lot of movies, I decided.

  “So what did you give Linda on Art?” I asked conversationally, trying to play down my personal distaste.

  “He was involved in a little conflict-of-interest thing,” Lessek replied. “No big deal, but you lawyers like to make mountains out of molehills when it comes to shit like that. But,” he shrugged, “it was enough to get her a job on his staff. She was getting bored with Ira the henpecked, wanted new horizons. She liked working for a city councilman.”

  “That wasn’t all she had on Art in her envelope,” I pointed out.

  “No,” he agreed thoughtfully, “she picked up some other goodies along the way. What I’d like to know is how she got her hands on my list of limited partners. That I never gave her.”

  “I believe it,” I said, then added, “That’s how she found out about Elliott Pilcher, I suppose.” He nodded.

  “And Aida? Art’s wife? How did she get that stuff from that drug program?” I was half thinking aloud, but some part of me must have suspected the answer, because I wasn’t really surprised when Lessek said, “She didn’t. I dug that up.”

  “Why would you—”

  “Art got out of line,” Lessek interrupted, his tone hard. “He’s no good to me in Washington; I wanted him on the City Council, where his vote was an asset. But he goes and gets himself on the ballot without my okay. So I owed him one; I wanted to let him know he and I weren’t finished, that he couldn’t just walk away from me.”

  “Maybe he was getting sick of running your errands,” I said. I still had a hard time dealing with the fact that Art Lucenti, who’d started out as a decent lawyer working on the side of poor people, had become so completely the creature of Todd Lessek. “He used to be such a good lawyer till you got hold of him.”

  To my surprise, Lessek smiled reminiscently. “The guy was hell on wheels. It was really something to watch him in court. I decided if he could do the job he did for peanuts, to help a bunch of welfare cheats, how much more could he do for me if I got him on the payroll? I went after him like some guys go after women. It was pure seduction.”

  “You offered him money,” I said disgustedly.

  “You think I’m stupid, don’t you?” Lessek frowned as he continued. “I know you don’t start with a guy like that by offering money. That comes later. What I did was, I put some of his welfare clients into one of my new gut-rehab buildings. Next thing I know, he’s telling all the community groups how good I am for the neighborhood. Then I find out how ambitious he is to go into politics, and I know I’ve got him.”

  “But you like to remind him, to keep him in line. So you gave Linda Aida’s criminal record.”

  Lessek was talking to me for only one reason—to sell me the idea that he hadn’t killed Linda.

  “She came to me,” he shrugged. “She wanted something on Art’s wife. I figured she had the hots for Art and wanted the competition out of the way.”

  I nodded; that fit my impression of Linda. A woman who’d insure her affair with a married man by blackmailing his wife. But how did her blackmail of Art himself fit into the picture?

  “So you gave her what you had,” I concluded. “Wasn’t that dangerous? What if she used it when you didn’t want her to?”

  “Hell,” Lessek replied. “Linda wants to play cat-and-mouse, better Aida than me for the mouse. Besides, I got no vested interest in Art as a congressman, remember. I don’t care if he’s elected or not, and it doesn’t bother me at all that he gets a little pressure put on him. Matter of fact”—Lessek’s capped teeth gleamed in the dull orange glow of sunset—“I let him know I had his balls in the palm of my hand.” Lessek spread out a leather-gloved palm as if to show me Art Lucenti’s private parts. Then, a smile crossing his face, he began to squeeze. “All you have to do,” he explained, a teacher lecturing a bright pupil, “is know where to squeeze, and anything is possible.”

  “And you always know.”

  “I always know,” he agreed. His subtle emphasis on the word always had me shivering in my coat. I was beginning to think it was me he was about to squeeze. Because I didn’t kid myself; I had my weak spot, and her name was Dawn. One hint of danger to her, and I’d be off this bridge, out of Lessek’s life, and off the case, forever.

  He knew it. Grinning broadly, Lessek said, “Cold, Counselor? Pretty stiff breeze up here? Or are you thinking how cold you’d be if anything happened to that house of yours?”

  I started: For once, my first thought hadn’t been my brownstone. I should have known Lessek would be aware of all the details of my financial life. He probably knew to the penny how much my mortgage payments were—and what a struggle it was to keep up with them.

  I asked an unoriginal question. “Is that a threat?”

  “Of course not,” came the breezy reply. But the gloved hand holding the imaginary b
alls gave a convulsive squeeze. “It’s just a friendly warning. In fact,” he went on, spreading both his hands, “it could be considered as a choice. On the one hand”—he lifted his right palm—“the right decision could lead to an increased cash flow, permitting early payment of that mortgage of yours. On the other hand”—the left palm rose and clenched as he talked—“you could make a decision that could put you in a wringer. That could leave you out in the cold financially, and in other ways. It’s totally up to you, Ms. Jameson. The ball’s in your court.”

  “Are you offering me money?” I asked.

  “Up to a reasonable amount,” he agreed. “I’m sure we can come to terms.”

  “Maybe not,” I said lightly. “We seem to have company.”

  As the plainclothes policemen advanced out of the shadows, Lessek took a last desperate chance. Flinging me to the ground, he began to run. He got about six feet before he was stopped.

  Strong arms grabbed me from behind and propped me up. “You okay?” The voice in my ear was Button’s. I opened my eyes to the welcome sight of two uniformed cops. One held Lessek’s gun, initialing and bagging it for use as evidence. The other snapped handcuffs onto a snarling Lessek. They gave an extraordinarily satisfying click as he was led away.

  “You were right,” Button said, a broad smile lighting his face, “the DA’s gonna love this. It’s just what he needs to put the finishing touches on the Bellfield indictment.”

  “Glad I could help,” I said dryly. Sweat poured down my face, in imminent danger of turning to icicles from the cold. “Now do you suppose we could adjourn to the precinct and get this wire off me? The tape,” I confessed in a voice I couldn’t stop from shaking, “itches like hell!”

  19

  Look at the co-offin

  With golden ha-andles

  Isn’t it grand boys,

  To be bloody well dead?

  The Clancy Brothers, singing from the jukebox, had plenty of help on that one. They always did. The crowd at the Donegal Bay loved the idea of being the center of attraction, the laid-out star of the wake, surrounded by flowers and boozy, grieving loved ones.

  I was an outsider, a Scotch-drinking Protestant. Matt Riordan, on the other hand, was home, lifting his glass of Irish and his fine tenor in a display of comradeship that was all the more impressive for being wholly genuine. He was Matty the Lawyer here, among the cops and bus drivers and civil servants, and yet his three-piece suits and educated diction didn’t set him apart. They merely served to fix his identity, his role in the closely knit Inwood Irish community. They knew—and he’d proved it more than once—that his high-priced legal talents were theirs for free should young Kevin the rookie cop mistake an unarmed kid for a dangerous robbery suspect or should someone’s wayward Mary Margaret get caught selling pot at the Sacred Heart dance.

  It was getting late. Eyes were getting bleary, and whiskey-red noses were getting redder. But Matt Riordan was just beginning to relax. The tension lines in his face were smoothing out, the famous Riordan smile was broader, the voice richer and deeper without the strident edge of nerves. We both had something to celebrate; he’d won an acquittal and I was still alive.

  Let’s not have a sniffle,

  Let’s have a bloody good cry,

  And always remember the longer you live,

  The sooner you’ll bloody die.

  The song ended, as usual, with a rousing cheer. Riordan raised his glass to the red-haired barmaid, who nodded and smiled. I was about to protest that one more would be one too many, then decided that one too many was just what I needed.

  I was in that heady state of euphoria plus exhaustion in which everything I’d done seemed to have happened to someone else. Surely it couldn’t have been me, I now protested, who’d strapped on the Kel set recorder at the Eighty-fourth Precinct and proceeded to trap Todd Lessek into spilling his guts on tape? I, Cass Jameson, hadn’t really played Cagney and Lacey up there on the Brooklyn Bridge, looking into the barrel of a snub-nosed revolver, had I? Then I recalled the world-turned-upside-down feeling of being thrown to the ground. I’d skinned my knees on the bridge walkway. Button, back at the Eight-four, had insisted on mercurochrome. My knees, tingling under my wool skirt, looked like they had in my tomboy childhood.

  “I can’t believe I did all that,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t believe I let Button talk me into it.”

  Matt shrugged noncommittally, but there was a gleam in his blue eyes. “It’s what Nancy would have done,” he remarked.

  I fell for it. “Who’s Nancy?” I asked, then laughed in spite of myself. “Is this another Nancy Drew joke?”

  Riordan grinned. He’d once warned me against “playing Nancy Drew,” and my reaction of mortal insult had amused him no end. He seldom lost an opportunity to kid me about it.

  “And now Nancy has successfully solved another case,” he said, his mouth full of bar peanuts. “What’s this one called, The Case of the Dead Lodger?”

  “That’s Perry Mason,” I replied automatically. To Riordan’s puzzled frown, I explain, “All of the Perry Mason books use The Case of in the title.”

  A red-nosed, bleary-eyed man came over to slap Matt’s back and borrow the price of a drink. After giving him a five, Matt turned to me and shook his head. “That guy,” he said, “used to be a bail bondsman. Best in the business and rich as God. Now look at him—he’d drink it from a boot.”

  Something about the man reminded me of the ugly burned-out hovel the Unknown Homicides called home. “At least Tito Fernandez is off the hook,” I remarked. “Button told me Ira Bellfield admitted having that fire set.

  “I hope you’re right,” I went on, “about this being the end of Linda’s case. But both Lessek and Bellfield, after howling for their lawyers, denied that they had anything to do with her death.”

  “What did you expect?” Matt shrugged. “Full confessions? Why should they admit anything they don’t have to? The important thing is that the police have to follow up on the possibility that someone besides Linda’s husband did away with her.”

  “I guess,” I admitted, “it was a kind of a fantasy. That Brad would walk out of jail just as Lessek was walking in.”

  “Give it time, Cass,” Matt Riordan advised. “Let the dank reality of life in a cell seep through to one of the bastards, and maybe he’ll decide to put a knife into the other one.”

  “You,” I said, only half-kidding, “are the most cynical man I’ve ever known.”

  He responded with a twisted smile that would have done justice to the hero in a gothic romance. “How do you think,” he asked, “the Brooklyn DA’s office made its case, such as it was, against the client I just got off? One of his fellow bribe-takers cut a deal. What the DA didn’t tell the news media—but what I hammered home to the jury—was that Mr. State’s Evidence got away with over a hundred thousand in bribes, whereas my poor schnook had at most fifteen thousand. It was like using the salmon to catch the minnow.”

  “Catchy line,” I grinned.

  “Highlight of the summation,” he admitted with an answering smile. Then he got serious. “What do you care,” he challenged, “what happens to the real killer, as long as Brad Ritchie goes free?”

  He had me there. Dawn was my only concern; abstract justice was taking a backseat and I knew it. But I wasn’t ready to admit it to Matt Riordan’s knowing face, so I mumbled the word “cynical” again and got up to go to the ladies’ room.

  On the way back, wobbling slightly from an excess of Scotch, I noticed that the jukebox was playing a militant IRA song. All the mugs and glasses in the place were raised in an attitude of respectful belligerence, and at the bar, a hoarse voice cried, “I love you, Maggie Thatcher, but get your bloody troops out of my country!”

  I looked over at Matt. His glass was raised, and his face was flushed as he sang along with the words of the song. One line referred to the “land that the English stole.” As he mouthed the words, all pretense of cynicism fell away, and I was l
ooking at the face of Irish patriotism. The thought crossed my mind that the gun-running Matt had said took place at the Donegal Bay was something he knew firsthand. These Irishmen supported their case with bullets as well as maudlin ballads.

  I spoke of none of this as I sat down in my chair and lifted my drink, noting dispassionately that the idealism had left Matt’s face the minute he’d seen me return to my seat.

  As we finished our drinks, the jukebox went into “The Wild Colonial Boy.” The red-haired barmaid held up her skirt and began a jig, her varicose-veined legs looking pretty good as she hopped in perfect time to the music. The men at the bar clapped her on, and she danced faster and faster, never missing a beat. She ended in a flurry of applause, her red hair flying, her face flushed. She acknowledged the audience with a pleased curtsy. Matt Riordan blew her a kiss as we stepped out into the night.

  We went to Matt’s apartment. His lovemaking was uncharacteristically tender, and I thought of the idealism he suppressed so ruthlessly in his professional life, but which surfaced in the boozy patriotism of the Donegal Bay. He was a man of contradictions, Matt, and I’d spent fruitless hours trying to sort them all out. Tonight I contented myself with snuggling against his chest, accepting his kisses, and letting myself feel protected, even comforted, by his presence.

  The mood was broken by a phone call. The sleepy quality in Matt’s voice vanished as he spoke into the receiver. He sat up in bed and fumbled for a pencil. “Fifth Precinct,” I heard him mumble. “Detective Malek. Okay. Just remember,” he instructed, his voice now completely lawyerly, “no questioning until I get there, or that confession won’t be anything but toilet paper. And no lineup either. I’ll be there in a half hour.”

  He hung up the phone and turned to me, his face a study in rueful regret as he told me he had to go. But his voice was crisp, his eyes bright. He was already calculating, his head at the Fifth Precinct even as his body stood next to his bed.