No One Rides for Free Page 5

  Which was how, with less grace and drama in his gestures, Edgar Wood looked at his automobile. Mud marring the British racing green was a personal insult, smudges on the interior finish were faults of character.

  He went back into the house. When he came out, he had changed from his suit to chinos and an old shirt. He carried a flight bag in one hand, a vacuum cleaner in the other, and an extension cord trailed behind him.

  He placed a towel on the ground, then pulled his cleaning equipment from the bag—mink oil, furniture polish, saddle soap, rags, whisk broom, dust pan, brushes, chrome polish, sponges, buffing pads—like he was preparing for surgery.

  I sighed with impatience. This was going to be as tedious to watch as it was to do. Franco offered me some coffee from his thermos. It was laced with Sambuca. It was good.

  Wood spent almost three hours, just on the interior. I thanked God that me sun was almost completely gone and he wouldn’t be able to do the exterior.

  He went inside. We waited. We sipped the last dregs. At last he emerged. Even from a distance I could tell that his clothes were custom-made. Probably on Savile Row, where they create the same kind of understatement that Rolls-Royce creates. A simple announcement that nothing in the world costs more. His face had a hint of pink from reshaving and his shower-fresh hair was neatly combed. He stood for a moment and spoke to the air. “Oh, to be in England,” is what I think he said.

  When at last he started the car, he sat and listened, head cocked, to see if all twelve cylinders were in tune. It sounded good to me, all that money just ahummin’ away. Wood eased it down the driveway. When he reached the road we could hear him bear down on the accelerator, and the car roared off into the distance. The sound died. I stood up and went into the house.

  It was a piece of cake. A kitchen window was open and I didn’t even have to play games with locks. I opened the plate over a light switch; the transmitter clipped to the A.C. where it could be a power parasite. The mike went where a screw had been.

  My recording system was a pair of Panasonics put together so that when the tape ran out in the first it started the tape in the second. Both were sound-activated, and both were modified to run at one-fourth normal speed. A C120 cassette, which normally ran sixty minutes per side, now gave me four hours per side. They did not flip automatically, but that still gave me an eight-hour run. The debriefing sessions seemed to run no more man six hours, so even with the starts and stops of garbage noise I figured it would do the job. A backup battery pack was attached so that both machines could pull from it. The arrangement meant that someone would have to come once a day to change the tapes and, as needed, the batteries. It was cheaper and less conspicuous than setting up a full-bore listening post with a full-time attendant.

  We checked the rig with me in the farmhouse and Franco outside. It worked. We put it in a waterproof box, buried the box in a shallow grave with a topping of dead leaves and ran a wire-up a tree as an antenna.

  Then we strolled out of me woods to our car, where no one was waiting with a gun or some other form of ugliness.

  There’s nothing like a walk in the woods on a cool evening to build up a man’s appetite. We had spotted a restaurant in a small shopping center. It was called Scotch & Sirloin. I liked the name because both items require so little preparation that I could reasonably expect the place to serve at least one of the two without screwing it up.

  I heard sirens as we approached. I looked at my speedometer reflexively, then out my rearview, and realized that the siren wasn’t for me. When we came around the curve we saw bubble-gum lights coming from the opposite direction heading the same place we were. I didn’t think much of it and drove in after them.

  There were four squad cars, lights flashing, and all sorts of busyness at the far end of the lot where almost no cars were parked. Curious, like any rubbernecking civilian, I strolled over.

  Wood’s body lay on the blacktop, facedown and crumpled. Even from behind the hasty police barricade I could see that something like a pipe or a tire iron had crushed the back of his skull. I looked around the lot for his XJ-12.

  A uniform and a detective were talking to a waiter. I sidled over to catch what I could of the conversation.

  “This guy says the victim has been coming in for about three weeks. Usually alone,” the uniformed officer said.

  “What about a car? Does he know what kind of car the guy drives?” the detective, on the same track I was on, asked.

  “A nice car, a real nice car,” the waiter said. “A Jaguar, but a regular kind.”

  “You mean a sedan?” me detective said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Does he park it way over here, usually, I mean?”

  “I don’t know what he does usually. I only seen it once.”

  “Was it way out here?” the detective asked.

  “Lots of times, a man got himself a high-priced machine, he likes to park it where nobody opening a door gonna scratch at his paint,” the uniform said.

  “Yeah, I think we got a car theft with a mugging. But let’s look around, see if we can find it.”

  I noticed that some of the cops were scanning the crowd of onlookers. There were fifteen or twenty of us by then. It says, right on page fifty-eight of Practical Homicide Investigation, “Obtain pictures of the people in me crowd. Often witnesses … including possible suspects, will be watching.” I wasn’t either, but neither would what I was doing there bear scrutiny.

  I took one last look at the corpse. The wallet, rifled, lay near it. The ring was off his finger and the silver links were gone from his French cuffs. The collar of his custom shirt and Savile Row suit were stained with blood. His shoes were scuffed from the fall. His pants were soiled on the inside when his body released urine and excrement, soiled on the outside by oil and trash of the day gone by.

  The killing made the morning edition of the Washington Post. The tone of the story was muted schizophrenic. The reporters clearly wanted to make something out of “secret federal witness assassinated”; the cops were hanging tough with “mugging and robbery, similar to several in the area recently”; and the editors were remembering that a Post reporter had won a Pulitzer for journalism that ought to have been awarded for fiction.

  The story must have also made the New York Times because Choate Haven called me. Case closed.

  “I can still get the transcripts,” I told him, greedy for the bonus.

  “There is no need. Whatever Mr. Wood told the SEC will be revealed soon enough, and while his testimony may lead them to further investigation, any litigation must rest entirely on the record and the record alone, not on facts skewed by an angry man bent on ‘getting even.’”

  “Do you think he was killed for what he was saying?” I asked.

  “The average man in the street imagines corporations involved in every sort of skullduggery, possibly because they have not the opportunity or training required to examine the situation realistically. As counsel to Over & East I am privy to all aspects of their operations, and I can assure you, for the record, that based on the reality, based on the facts, that sort of speculation is frankly ridiculous. If Mr. Wood were alive and testifying, I suspect that, as is usual, Over & East would spend more on legal fees than on any penalties or fines.”

  Edgar Wood, a random chew in someone else’s hunger. To die for one’s deeds is called glory. It doesn’t matter if the death is soiled and the deeds are tawdry; you can still, like Jesse James, get a song out of it. If you think there is a sea god and Poseidon is drowning you, for reasons of personal malice, you can go under knowing your death is your own. We long to link the effect to a cause that is ourselves; there is dignity there. Wood was just dead.

  Unless, of course, it had been the Colombians.

  It really was not my business anymore. What was my business was that Choate Haven had requested neither a refund nor an accounting. I did not remind him. There was enough left that bottom-line-wise, dollar for dollar, pay per hour—that is, by every
rational measure—it was my best case, ever.

  8

  PATCHEN

  WHEN I FIRST MET Wayne he was about two. Not knowing a whole lot about kids I decided to treat him like a dog, and it worked out real well.

  If you treat a little kid or a dog like a regular person, you create tremendous frustration. For example, if you take either one for a walk and expect them to go straight ahead at a steady, even, purposeful pace, you have a very serious problem. What is natural to either animal is to run ahead, then dawdle back, check out the gutter on one side, the store fronts on the other, and when they meet another of their own species they have to go through some very strange, check-each-other-out rituals. Except when they don’t.

  Yelling at either one to train them to heel makes sense. Getting nuts because they don’t see going for a walk the same way you see it just hurts all the parties concerned.

  Wayne was now approaching the midget stage, sort of like a regular person, but smaller. I think we found each other instructive.

  There is a dark side and a light side in all of us. That is something I learned taking Wayne through the entire Star Wars trilogy twice.

  The force inside has its own urgency. It creates a pressure to act and does not care what shape those actions have. It is amoral, without concept of self-perpetuation or self-destruction.

  In D.C. I felt its presence awakening, like a rush from the adrenals. It was not the offers of drugs, a woman and violence; those things are always there for the picking. It was the feeling that I wanted the kick of crossing the line. That I was young, tough, resilient. That the legs had life enough for fifteen rounds and I could take the body blows and be back up before the mandatory eight-count was done. Forgetting that the last time I went down, it had taken over two years to remember what getting up means.

  Two divorce cases and one job fingering the inside man in a series of garment-center thefts later, I decided to spend some of the money I made down in D.C. We sent Wayne to get spoiled by Glenda’s parents and we went upstate to Mohonk.

  We ate huge breakfasts, dressed for dinner as required and generally behaved like gentry except for some of the positions in which we made love. I hiked; Glenda strolled. My favorite was the dawn hike: quick march up the mountains to watch the sun rise, then back down for a plunge in a lake fed by springs and melted snow. When I hit it, my testicles snapped back and my heart pounded like it had a hit of amyl nitrate. I also started taking rock-climbing lessons, pitons and all of that, and tore the pads off two fingers after a slight error.

  “If you want to go run up mountains and clamber over rocks like a child, jump in icy water and enjoy the feeling of a simulated heart attack, go right ahead. I will meet you back at the hotel for tea,” Glenda said, and actually meant it.

  Any other woman would have made my stay half miserable with “We came to be together, why don’t you stay with me,” or worse, attempted to keep up, through blisters, strains and sprains, never murmuring a curse of pain and only letting the sacrifice show in her eyes and written in the invisible ledger where women count the debts that men, unknowing, grow to owe them.

  The week after we returned to Manhattan, Choate Haven called.

  Edgar Wood was survived by a daughter, a wife and a mistress. The trustee of the rather considerable estate was the trust department of Choate, Winkler, Higgiston, Hahn & Moore. The mistress had been dismissed as a facility too distant to use when Wood went out of town. She would not have figured in the estate in any case. The wife was pre-estranged and when death came she decided that she was more content as a widow than as the wife of a living thief.

  “Edgar Wood’s daughter, however, is young and impressionable. She has reacted to his death in a neurotic and even obsessive manner. It may be guilt. She was out of the country, in Ibiza I believe, at the time of death, and due to problems with overseas communications and in locating her, she did not learn of the event until after the actual funeral.

  “The police reports, which we have obtained for her, make it quite clear that this was a mugging, plain and simple. Apparently there had been several similar incidents in that area in the months directly preceding, though none of them resulted in death. I have gone so far as to speak to the local law-enforcement representatives, and I have assured myself that they take the case with utmost seriousness and that they have gone into the matter with unusual thoroughness.

  “In spite of that, young Miss Wood seems to feel that not enough is being done. She has suggested that the police are covering something up. To be quite frank, some of her statements and accusations have been, shall we say, extravagant. In view of her bereavement we have all tried to be tolerant of these hysterical outbursts.”

  I could visualize that. A half-dozen pin-stripers standing in a grave and tolerant circle around the screaming, spoiled daughter of the rich dead Wood. A JAP in hysteria, swinging her Gucci bag at increasingly patronizing old WASPs. And once in a patronization mode the WASP is a stone wall. As the WASPs grow blanker, her frustration rises and rises until it is total and she begins to tear at her own clothes, the Italian silk halter and designer jeans. The denim will not rip but the silk does, and at the sight of breast the pinstripes call for sedation all around.

  And there I was. Sedation.

  “Although I and the other trustees regard the use of a private investigator as, in all probability, a waste of money, the estate is considerable and Miss Wood can certainly afford to indulge her feelings.

  “We have had clients spend their money on far sillier things, believe me.”

  Humor, from Choate Haven. I was so shocked I chortled along with him.

  “As you are somewhat familiar with the case, I thought perhaps you would be suitable.”

  “Should I mention that?” I asked.

  “That’s hardly necessary. And I think you should report through our offices. You will find that more convenient, less taxing, and naturally your reports will carry more weight that way.”

  “Part of my job, or all of it,” I said, “seems to be to reassure Ms. Wood that everything that can be done is being done. I think she will find it more reassuring if she can deal with me directly. Of course I will communicate anything and everything to you, as her attorney, as well.”

  “Excellent point,” he admitted.

  “There’s one more thing. Has the SEC moved against Over & East yet?”

  “No, and I don’t understand the significance of the question.”

  “Well, sir”—he responded well when I said sir—“if they have, it would make the Wood transcripts subject to discovery. If we had copies of his statements it would tell us that either no one or someone had a motive to silence him. I agree with you,” I rushed to add, “that we will, in all likelihood, find nothing. But it is the testimony situation that is obviously the basis of the daughter’s fears and suspicions. If we want to quiet them and bring her back to reality, we should meet that issue head on.”

  “I see the point you are making, and you may be quite right. If the SEC proceeds with litigation, I shall try to obtain relevant portions for you.”

  This time I got paid by check. There was a two-week advance. After that, we would review and decide if it was worth continuing. I also got a copy of the police report and the daughter’s phone number and address.

  When I called her she sounded calm and businesslike, and had a pleasant voice. We made an appointment for the next day, Saturday, at 3 P.M.

  Then I got hold of Ol’ Chip and made a squash date for 1:00.

  In celebration of another overpriced job I bought myself a new Head racket with competition gut. These small indulgences can be thrilling.

  Though he lost, three games to love, both sets, I could see that he was pleased with me. Every interchange between an associate and a partner is a test. Had I failed, after being recommended by Chip, it would have been Chip’s head on the block. Apparently Choate Haven had never given him any feedback, either way, until by rehiring me he expressed his satisfaction
through action. The relief was enormous, and Chip was feeling a rush of gratitude that verged on warmth.

  Chip’s field was Trusts and Estates, and the steam room seemed a good place to pick his brains. I asked him if he was involved in the Wood estate.

  “Good Christ, no!”

  “What’s all the emphatics for?” I asked.

  “That name,” he laughed, “at Choate, Winkler, Higgiston, Hahn & Moore, that name is like Leon Trotsky’s name at a D.A.R. meeting or Ronald Reagan’s at an S.D.S. meeting. Is there still an S.D.S.? Something like that, anyway.”

  “Really?” I prompted.

  “Really. Wood is … a traitor to his class. A worm in the apple, the serpent in the garden and socialized legal services all rolled into one. Associates who worked for him go around telling anyone who’ll listen how much work they did for other partners. And partners, they say things like ‘Edmund Who? Oh, you said Edward, natural mistake, I hardly knew the man.’ The guy who had the space next to him wants to change his office. We’re not talking even guilt by association here, we’re talking guilt by proximity.”

  “So all your work is straight and safe. Administering the allowance of profligate children four generations down from robber baron forebears, doling out the treasured assets of sweet old biddies from Park Avenue.”

  “Actually, no.”

  “No?”

  “There can be drama and excitement in Trusts and Estates.”

  “No!”

  “Yes! You would never guess who retained us to put his financial affairs in order and to care for the financial future of his family, now that he is in the slammer for life … Ricky Sams.”

  Ricky was hot stuff. There was a semipermanent space reserved for him on page five of the New York Post. With photo. He got almost as much coverage as Hero Cops. Once the kingpin of heroin in Harlem, he was now the finest federal witness since Joseph Valachi. In the world of canaries, Ricky was the Diva.