The Caesar Clue (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “Think Stokley will be there?” Katherine asked.

  “I understand,” said Sandy with raised brows, “that he is under sedation, as they say when they can’t think of anything else.”

  O’Rourke started to say something but didn’t. I knew it had been hard for him. Unlike the rest of us, he’d known the man.

  “I still can’t believe it was the missus,” Mancuso declared. “I mean, she seemed like such a lady, so …”

  “That’s the worst kind,” Sandy said. “He was two-timing her, when he made those weekend trips home to attend to his constituents, which was bad enough. There wasn’t anything she could do but sit there and watch him pick up all these bimbos and play his games with ‘em. She could live with that, as long as there was some kind of payoff. But when his games got rough and one or two of ‘em started to complain, she realized he might just upset the whole game plan. You’re looking at a pretty determined lady. She wanted big things from her little congressman. And I’m not talking about having to run for reelection every two years.”

  “So she decided to get rid of them?” Katherine asked. “I go along with Sal: It seems like a big change for a society woman. And a big chance to take.”

  “There’ve been society killers before,” I said. “And women at that.”

  “But how did she ever get hold of this Rivas?” Katherine asked. “A congressman’s wife doesn’t exactly hobnob with his type.”

  “Well, I think we’ve figured that out,” I said. “I had a long talk with the congressman. Stokley’s on a subcommittee investigating drugs, and his investigators turned up Rivas as a hit man based in New Orleans. They were going to have the DEA stage an arrest, in front of the cameras, of course, to show what good work the committee was doing. Mrs. Stokley managed to get hold of some of her husband’s papers, probably when he brought them home one weekend, and found this out. She also came across an intelligence report on Rivas and where he could be found. It was a hangout in Harvey. As best we can put it together, she called and asked for him. Naturally, nobody would say anything. So she told the bartender to tell him not to be there in two hours, and then gave him the number of a public telephone to call at a certain time if he was interested in talking with her. Naturally, the message was passed to him and he kept clear of the bar, so the DEA turned up an empty nest. It impressed him. What did he have to lose by calling the number she’d given him?”

  “And when he did she laid it all out,” Sandy said.

  “More or less,” I agreed. The afternoon sun was hot, a last gasp of summer, and the air was heavy with water vapor. I was sweating and looking forward to Katherine’s, and the barbecue grill waiting on the patio.

  “She told him she had a source that could help him. Then she offered him money to work for her. He was to follow Stokley and scoop up the women when Stokley was finished with them. The idea was to kill them before they could spill the goods on her husband, by talking to a friend or a cop.”

  “But there had to be more to it,” Katherine said. “She was taking a big chance, bringing them back to the estate.…”

  “Honey, there’s nothing like a mad woman,” Sandy laughed. “She probably enjoyed the long ride with Rivas holding them down in the backseat, with a knife at their throats. Watching him kill ’em back by the bayou was icing on the cake.”

  “Actually,” Mancuso said dourly, “some of them were found with ropes around their necks. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d strangled them herself.”

  “And Jenny was the only one who escaped,” Katherine said. “Hey, that night at the house, when she saw me and went crazy … do you think she mistook me for Aline Stokley?”

  “Seems likely,” I agreed. “Do you remember what you were doing?”

  “Doing?” Katherine’s face went blank.

  “You were twisting the belt of your bathrobe. A scared girl in Jenny’s condition might have thought you were getting ready to strangle her. Especially if somebody about your build and general appearance had already tried it one night not long before. After all, I’d noted that you two share a general resemblance.”

  “God,” Katherine shuddered.

  “Yeah,” Sandy said. “A high-class lady playing second spot to a bunch of bimbos. You don’t think she hated them?”

  “That’s how I make it,” Mancuso agreed. “But what a hate.”

  “But bringing them back was stupid,” Mancuso grimaced. “Plain stupid.”

  “Well, there was a certain logic to bringing them all back: She could be sure their bodies wouldn’t turn up somewhere else, and who was going to look for bodies on a congressman’s plantation? She was a lady used to controlling things and she’d lost her control over her husband. But this was something she could control.”

  “Right,” Sandy said, smirking at Mancuso. “And cops ain’t going to work too hard when street girls turn up missing. If they get killed, that’s different. But missing? Maybe they saw the light and went home to Momma.”

  “Next time you handle it,” Mancuso declared. “I did what I could. Do you know how many damned crimes there are in New Orleans?”

  “Calm down.” Sandy jabbed him with an elbow. “I know you’re special.”

  “When did Cox and his people find out?” O’Rourke asked. He’d been silent so far and I knew he had to work through it on his own.

  “I don’t know for sure,” I said. “I think Rivas’s escape from the DEA alerted them that something was wrong. Then, from their intelligence sources in the underworld, they probably picked up some rumblings about a rich woman running their man. The break was when Stokley picked up Jenny, Julia’s sister. When Stokley dropped her they were watching and they saw Rivas and Aline Stokley swoop. She got away in the confusion and when they caught her she identified Rivas. They whisked Jenny away to Laurent’s clinic, and tried to decide what to do with her. They also went to talk with Stokley.”

  “That’s the son of a bitch I blame,” Mancuso swore.

  “Well, he couldn’t reject the evidence any longer,” I said. “He’d had an idea his wife was involved in something, but he didn’t want to acknowledge it. Maybe he confronted her, maybe not. I don’t know. What I do know is they were locked into it by now, all three of them—Stokley, his wife, and Rivas. Stokley couldn’t turn in his wife even if he’d wanted to, without blowing his own little adventures with the ladies who’d disappeared. His wife knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t stop his extracurricular activities, and she and Rivas each had enough on the other to keep things quiet. I doubt Stokley knew where the bodies were. But I think Elias knew a lot more than he’s ever let on. Like Benedict, he just wanted to protect Stokley.”

  “Like Cox,” Sandy said with disgust.

  “Stokley was an important man,” I said. “His influence and his vote meant a lot of power and a lot of military projects. Cox saw his mission as one of protecting the goose that laid the golden eggs.”

  Mancuso muttered something under his breath as we reached the cars.

  “And that meant going after Rivas,” he said. “Cut off the arm, not the head.”

  “It was the best he could do,” I said. “Then, when it turned out I was involved through Julia’s phone call, and Solly recommended me to help them, Cox got the idea of setting me up as bait.”

  “But they knew Mrs. Stokley was doing this and didn’t do anything?” O’Rourke asked.

  “They suspected, but they were in a tough spot. How do you tell a congressman you think his wife’s a mass murderer?”

  “Tough,” Sandy agreed.

  I went on. “Evidently, as soon as Julia got her revenge on Stokley and his wife found out, Mrs. Stokley knew she’d have to get rid of Julia quick, before she got back to the mainland and told everybody what she’d done. She called Rivas in a panic, I’m sure. Here was her husband in a clinic, in pain, maimed, and the culprit had disappeared. I don’t know what she promised Rivas, but he was on the next plane. Maybe he even had one of his drug associates fly him out
specially. Or maybe Rivas was even there all along, at Aline Stokley’s orders, shadowing her husband.”

  “Meanwhile,” Sandy said. “Back at the Flying A Ranch …”

  “Okay,” I smiled. “Cox and his people spirited Stokley over to St. Croix. Remember, the congressman’s injuries were painful and disfiguring, but not lethal by any means. With antibiotics there was no need to rush him to surgery, which was only cosmetic. The main need was to explain how he’d been injured and that involved getting him away from the location where it had actually happened. Naturally, they didn’t realize Rivas had been sicced on Julia. Things were pretty panicky and confused.”

  “Seems like,” Sandy said.

  “Rivas got word she was booked on a flight, ready to make her run. He concocted a bomb and bribed some local woman to make the flight, checking in the bag. She thought it was just a routine dope haul, I’m sure, not a death run.”

  “It wouldn’t have been if the bomb had just held off another few minutes,” O’Rourke said, shaking his head.

  “It couldn’t have been a strict time fuse,” I said. “That would have been foolish. I think Rivas must’ve used a barometric detonator, the kind that responds to differences in air pressure, with a timer to close the initial circuit. That is, about halfway into the flight the timer would close the circuit to the barometer and when the plane began its descent, the main circuit would close. That way, the explosion would be far away from where he was. He didn’t know the plane’s approach route, but he figured there was enough water and swamp to make it difficult to fish up all the debris, like the detonator. He was right there.”

  “But there was residue on the frame of the airplane from the explosive used,” Mancuso said. “That was what gave it away originally.”

  We got into the car, Mancuso taking the wheel. It was a pretty cemetery, I thought, lots of trees and grass, and far away from the city. I couldn’t help but think that she wasn’t the first girl who would have been better to stay away from the bright lights.

  “She must have been a strange person,” Katherine offered as Mancuso started the engine and turned on the air conditioning. “My God, to bring back a trophy …”

  “What do you mean?” O’Rourke asked from the backseat, and I forgot I hadn’t told him about the medical examiner.

  “When the pathologist called me,” I explained, “he said he’d found something in a bag, something they’d gotten from the crash site, in the swamp. I thought he was talking about cocaine. Unfortunately, Cox got to his boss and scared them both into silence. Then the man downstairs, Lavelle, bought a bunch of monkey paws.”

  “Monkey paws?” the lawyer asked as we started forward slowly. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all,” I said. “Except that it started me thinking. I thought of Stokley and the way his head had been wrapped up, his claim that he had trouble hearing, which was probably true, considering the gauze pads over his ears, and all of a sudden it made sense: Dr. Schwartz hadn’t found any dope, he’d found what Julia had taken from the congressman’s body.”

  “Oh, Christ,” O’Rourke said, his face greenish. “You mean his …”

  “His ears, baby,” crowed Sandy. “That was her revenge against somebody that lived for the cameras. He was the bull and she was the matador. And she brought ’em back with her to show around. Hell, I bet she was gonna mail ’em to the Picayune.”

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” O’Rourke said and Mancuso slammed on the brakes.

  “Not in my car,” he growled.

  “I’ll be okay,” O’Rourke mumbled, embarrassed. “Just don’t hit any bumps.”

  “Well, I think Micah did good,” Sandy said brightly. “Took a lot to figure this all out.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “And I wish it was true. But I was way off a lot of the time, especially about Stokley’s wife. I was so sure Julia was still alive I bit when he tried to blame her. Even though I had a lot of evidence to point to something strange going on with the missus.”

  “You mean the thing Solly said about a woman being behind it?” she said.

  I nodded. “I thought he was talking about Julia. But I should’ve known there would have to be something pretty drastic to bring Stokley all the way back from a hospital up east, before he could even have plastic surgery, and in the face of a storm at that. If I’d just put things together, about the mystery patient they were bringing into Laurent’s clinic in the middle of the night, I’d have realized it was Mrs. Stokley, that they’d drugged her and were going to put her on ice, like Jenny, until they could decide how to deal with the problem. It just never occurred to me that in the confusion over Jenny’s escape she’d manage to walk out, too. That was enough to sound alarm bells everywhere and Stokley came back as quickly as he could.”

  “Must have been panicked,” Sandy said.

  “They all were,” I said. “But Stokley had no sooner gotten back than they caught her on the grounds, at Godsend. In retrospect, it was natural for her to go back there: It was her home, the bodies were all there, and, most important, off and on she’d been hiding Rivas on the estate, in a shack on the other side of the bayou. She hoped he’d be there when she showed up and he was, though she didn’t get a chance to talk with him before Cox grabbed her. Cox knew Rivas was around somewhere. I imagine they gave her Pentothal to get her to confess—at that point Stokley was willing to do anything to keep the lid on the scandal, even letting them drug his wife. With the storm, there wasn’t a lot Cox could do. Benedict, who knew what was going on and was as dedicated as Cox to keeping things quiet, didn’t trust Cox one bit. Suppose Cox decided his boss was expendable after all? Cox was too much of a loose cannon, and Benedict needed somebody else there to protect Stokley. That’s why he called me. After all, without me there, Cox might have used him for bait. I finally realized, after Cox was dead, that Benedict wouldn’t have called me unless Stokley had been there all along, and that that was his real reason for calling me.”

  “One thing I don’t understand,” Katherine said, “is how they got messages to Rivas and made him believe they were Mrs. Stokley.”

  “Well, Rivas didn’t use the plantation consistently. A lot of the time he was in the city: After all, he was a city boy. Once Cox and company were able to get Aline Stokley under control with drugs, after the so-called explosion, they used dead drops, trash cans and the like, where they’d leave notes. Since the notes were printed, it was hard to say they weren’t from her. But for emergencies Rivas had a couple of buddies at a bar who took the calls and relayed them. They’d used the head nurse at the clinic to pretend to be Mrs. S. before, on the phone. It was risky, but it had worked.”

  “Did Benedict know about Stokley’s women and the mass murders?” she asked.

  “About the first, yes. Congressmen’s aides learn to be blind to a lot of things. But the murders were something else. It wasn’t until after the fake explosion when they were able to use drugs to get the truth out of Aline Stokley. Benedict was in Washington with his boss most of the time, so he didn’t know what was happening when he and Stokley left New Orleans.”

  “And Elias?” Katherine persisted.

  “He was loyal, too. He may have seen the car coming back and seen lights back in the swamp, even heard screams, but he made it his business not to be too curious.”

  “Emerson Stokley,” Sandy sneered. “What a creep. And to think I voted for him.”

  “Lots of people made that mistake,” O’Rourke said sadly.

  “Makes you wonder about the rest of them,” Katherine ventured.

  “Nah,” Mancuso said. “I don’t wonder. They’re all the same.”

  “I guess,” said O’Rourke, “Linda was really killed by accident, then.”

  “Right. Cox and his people saw her meeting with me, were afraid of what she might know, and swooped down on her. They were in such a hurry she dropped her cigarette on the rug and almost burned the place down. Anyway, they were
going to take her to the clinic and stash her until they could figure what she knew. But first they were taking her to a safe house to shoot her up with Pentothal. On the way she jumped out of the car and before they could get to her she’d gone over the side, into the bayou. They couldn’t very well hang around and look for her, so they left and she washed up the next day, drowned. Of course, they went back to the apartment and tried to erase all the prints and everything else they could find to keep any of the locals from clouding their investigation with embarrassing questions.”

  “Gawd,” Sandy breathed. “And I thought the projects were bad. Look, you think Stokley still thought he could weasel out of it after his wife killed herself?”

  “Politicians never stop trying,” Mancuso said. “He’d have claimed she couldn’t stand her disfigurement. Everybody would’ve felt sorry for him.”

  I checked my watch. I was tired of Stokley, tired of the web of death he and his wife had spun around themselves.

  “If we hurry, we can get back in time for me to see Solly at the hospital,” I said.

  “Yes, sir,” Mancuso said dryly. “But only if you tell us one thing.”

  “I’ll try.”

  He turned to face me. “That business about Julius Caesar and Marc Antony’s speech. What the hell was that all about?”

  I smiled. “That,” I said, “was the key to the whole business. It was vintage Julia, being melodramatic, and yet it was so simple I guess we all overlooked the obvious.”

  “Well, I wish you’d tell us what was so obvious,” Kather-ine said. “I’ve reread the whole play three times and all I can figure is that Stokley, like Caesar, was ambitious.”

  “He was that,” I agreed. “But that wasn’t what she had in mind. It was something simpler, that fit in with the macabre aspect of what she was planning to do.”

  “Well, for God’s sake,” Mancuso said, “tell us.”

  “Remember what she said to Linda? That she was going to make Marc Antony look like a piker?”

  “So?” Katherine said. “We all assumed that meant she was going to pull off an even bigger deception than he did in turning the crowd on Caesar’s assassins.”