3 Strange Bedfellows (19 page)

"Knock
whose
socks off?"

"I'm not sure. And then he said, 'They won't be calling me the Hack anymore after tomorrow night. Everyone'll know, I'm my own man.' "

I sipped my café au lait
cum
tear drop thoughtfully.

"I'm my own man
. Does that mean, instead of being Ducky Medwick's man?"

She bobbed her head vigorously up and down. "See, Jack was paranoid everyone was laughing at him behind his back. He knew people thought of him as a nobody, a yes-man to Ducky who just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Jack didn't discuss it with me—he never discussed
anything
with me—but I'd hear him on the phone with people. He was scared Will Shmuckler would keep calling him a 'puppet of the party bosses' and stuff like that, and eventually it would stick in people's minds, and he'd lose the election."

"Get real. There's no way he was gonna lose."

"Everyone knew that but him. Jack was always insecure. He knew his Dad didn't approve of him, and deep down he felt like he didn't really
deserve
to be a congressman. So he wanted to do something to prove himself."

I circled the rim of the coffee cup with my finger. "And you think he was
planning to prove himself how—by saying something in the debate that would be damaging to Ducky? That doesn't seem logical."

She threw me a frustrated look. "I'm telling you, he
wasn't
logical. He was so scared of losing that election, he went off the deep end! He beat me for looking at him the wrong way. He screamed constantly at our son. And he was fucking Ducky Medwick's wife! So don't tell me about
logical
. What that man did has nothing to do with
logical!"

The veins stuck out in the widow's forehead and the pulse in her neck was throbbing. It struck me that she might not be acting too incredibly logical herself. Again I wondered if her father-in-law/lover was right, and she really did kill her husband and Zzyp.

But if that was the case, then why would she come to me? Maybe she felt guilty about George taking the rap for her, and she was hoping against hope that I could find some plausible alternative suspect to toss to the police.

"Mr. Burns, if you want money, I can pay you
—"

I put up my hand. "Enough already, I'll take the case."

As soon as the words escaped my mouth, I regretted them. I mean, the man who had confessed to both murders and almost certainly committed them was behind bars; my wife and kids were calm again, and so was my mother-in-law; and my man Shmuckler was about to become the first-ever Jewish liberal Democratic congressman from the 22nd District. Why couldn't I just leave well enough alone? All I had to do was say no to this woman, and I'd get to spend a quiet morning sipping yuppie beverages and doing the
New York Times
crossword puzzle.

But I guess just like everyone else, I was a sucker for a grieving widow. I picked up my caf
é au lait and drank some more of her tears. Then I got down to work.

Susan and I went out to her car, a Volvo that used to be her husband's. We searched the glove compartment and map tray for any slips of paper or other stuff that might possibly tell us what he was planning to say in the debate that never was. But we came up empty.

I decided to confess to Susan about stealing her mail. She glared at me for a moment, then shrugged it off. We went to my Toyota, pulled the box of the Hack's personal effects out of my trunk, and scavenged it anew for evidence. But we found nothing striking, just the same random personal miscellany and boring official documents. I thought Susan would break down when she found a photograph of the Hack with their son, but she bit her lip and kept on going.

Then we went to her house and scoured for clues there. She hadn't gotten around to going through his clothes and things yet, so they were pretty much the way he'd left them when he died. We tried the pockets of his suit jackets, the drawers of his bedside table, and the desk where he paid his
bills. But we didn't hit on anything that seemed useful. We did find a long computer printout in his desk, entitled "Campaign Finance Disclosure Form," which recorded all of his campaign income and expenses; but I saw nothing in there that looked suspicious.

No, let me rephrase that. I saw
a lot
of suspicious things in there, since big contributions from big corporations always make me suspicious. However, I saw nothing that looked positively illegal.

Apparently this operation was a bust. I sat back in the Hack's chair and closed my eyes for a moment.

"How about calling Linda Medwick?" the widow suggested. "Maybe he told
her
what he was planning to say."

Just what I needed
—another skirmish with the blonde bombshell. That
New York Times
crossword felt mighty inviting right about now. "Did your husband have a safety deposit box?"

"Not that I know of."

"There must be some special place where he kept his private stuff.
All
men have one." Maybe not all men, but I certainly do. Excess cash, condoms, etc., always go in the back of my sock and underwear drawer. Come to think of it . . . "What about his sock and underwear drawer? Have we checked that yet?"

"No, but there's nothing there. I should know, I washed the man's dirty underpants for ten years."

I stood up. "Let's check anyway."

About twenty-five seconds later, I was sitting on the Hack's bed feeling like Sherlock Holmes. No, I hadn't found a copy of that final undelivered radio speech. But in the very back of that drawer, stuffed inside a pair of long underwear that Susan said the Hack never wore, I'd found something equally
fascinating: a second computerized printout of the Campaign Finance Disclosure Form.

This disclosure form was different, though. It was unexpurgated. There were several "contributions" that hadn't been listed on
the other printout, and some expenditures, too. The expenditure that grabbed my eyeballs and held them was one dated May 31 that read: "$20,000—Zzypowski Research."

I felt goose bumps rising. M
ay 31—that was right before Robert Pierce dropped out of the race. I'd bet my entire nest egg the timing was no coincidence: The Hack had paid Zzyp for info, then immediately used it to blackmail Pierce into dropping out.

My goose bumps rose even higher when I realized the
$20,000 figure rang a bell. It was the identical sum Hack Sr. had mentioned to me.

I stared down at the
printout, which shook in my excited hands. Everyone and his brother had been blowing smoke at me for a week and a half, but now at last the fog was clearing. When you came right down to it, the solution to these murders was really simple.

One man had the exact same motive for both killings. Jack Tamarack spent $20,
000 to blackmail Robert Pierce—and Pierce whacked him. Then George Tamarack was about to spend $20,000 so
he
could blackmail Pierce—but Pierce stopped that by whacking Zzyp.

And finally, I had the kind of evidence that even cops would have to pay attention to.

"Find anything good?" Susan asked, looking over my shoulder.

"You bet your ass," I replied.

18

Unlike Chief Coates's office in Troy, Chief Walsh's office in Saratoga had
mucho
class. But as Walsh leaned back in his antique leather chair and frowned at me from behind his oak desk, it occurred to me that despite his distinguished silver hair and perfect unwrinkled suit, the man himself had about as much class as Joey Buttafuoco.

"For Christ's sake already," he said, irritated, "your boy Shmuck is off the hook. The other guy confessed. Quit bothering me."

I angrily slapped the two campaign finance forms onto Walsh's desk. My gesture would have been more impressive if the forms hadn't slipped right off the desk and onto the floor. "Look, this is major new evidence."

"Yeah, major new evidence you got a bug up your ass. I'm not going off hal
f-cocked on some half-baked vendetta against Robert Pierce."

"It's not a vendetta
—"

"What's the problem, you got the hots for the widow?"

What a jerk. "At least let me look through Zzyp's files, see if I can find proof for this blackmail scenario."

"You already went through his files, remember? When you found his body."

"I was in a hurry. Maybe I missed something."

"You didn't. We we
nt through them ourselves. Nothing there but seedy sex and insurance scams."

"Come on, Chief," I wheedled, "just go in your back room, get me the files, and then I'll leave you alone."

"Can't do it. We examined Zzyp's files on-site. They're still there."

I gave him a look. Thi
s sounded like yet another example of his sloppiness—or unwillingness to get involved in any political controversies. Sensing my exasperation, the chief defended himself. "You can't just confiscate a P.I.'s client files. They're confidential, like a lawyer's."

"You don't expect me to believe a mere technicality like that would stop you."

"Believe what you want. I don't like having my evidence thrown out in court. We did take a
quick
peek at his files right after the murder. And we were gonna ask the judge to let us examine them in detail. But now that the killer's confessed, we don't need to."

"Yes, you do. You need to reopen the whole
—"

"Wrong.
You
need to get the hell out of my office."

I grabbed the campaign forms off the floor and stood up. Clearly it was useless asking the local police chief to investigate crooked local politicians. "You'll look pretty damn stupid when I crack this case."

"Crack your head is more like it. Don't blame me if you piss someone off and get yourself killed."

"How sweet. You're actually worried about me."

"That'll be the day."

I would have stayed and bantered some more, but since Walsh refused to help me out, there was a mission I wanted to accomplish pronto: sneak into Zzyp's office somehow and search through his files again. This time I'd do it right. Maybe the chief was bothered by legal impediments, but I wasn't.

How would I get in there, though? I wasn't in the mood for another AAA B and E. I'd had more than enough of that lately, thank you very much. Also, I had a better idea. I'd go see the mall manager and tell him I was interested in renting out Zzyp's old office.

The mall was in such dire economic straits that I guessed this approach would get quick results, and I was right. The mall manager was a guy in his twenties who looked eager and freshly scrubbed, like this was his first Big Responsible Job. When I entered his brightly lit, faux-cheerful office an
d told him what I wanted, he almost began drooling right before my eyes.

"Sure, I'll be glad to show you the office. We can go
right now," Freshly scrubbed said, jumping out of his chair. "It's a wonderful space. Mr. Zzypowski was very happy there, and please rest assured, we've never had any crime problems before. We have complete twenty-four-hour security with at least two well-trained security guards on the premises at all times . . ."

He babbled on for the entire walk to Zzyp's office. It was almost as irritating as the Muzak version of "Eleanor Rigby" playing over the loudspeakers. People who turn beautiful songs into Muzak should be strung up, shot, and sent to outer space.

Freshly Scrubbed's oral motor kept right on running as he unlocked the door and we walked in. Then he took a break from his monologue at last and asked, "So what will you be using this office for?"

I didn't want to mention my name or my million-dollar movie, in case he recognized them and realized I was connected with Zzyp's death. "I'm a writer," I said.

"A writer? How interesting," he said doubtfully. I could hear the alarm bells going off in his brain:
This guy's a writer? That means he won't be able to pay the rent
. "What do you write?"

"All kinds of thing
s," I blustered. "National magazines, internet marketing, and so forth."

He frowned. "Internet marketing
—is that well paying?"

I threw him a wink.
"Very
. Listen, this office feels very promising, but I need to see if it's a good writing environment."

"I'm sure it would be
—"

"There's only one way I can really find out for sure."

"What's that?"

"I have to actually, you know, do some writing here. Do you think I could hang out here for thirty minutes while I test the place out?"

He eyed me warily. "I don't know, that's kind of an unusual request."

I gave a self-deprecating
smile. "It's an artistic temperament thing. You know how writers are."

He smiled back condescendingly, as if to say he knew
exactly
how writers are. "Okay," he said, "no problem. I'll be back in half an hour."

"Good. I have a real positive feeling about this space. It has writer vibes."

"Writer vibes. Glad to hear it," Freshly Scrubbed said as he walked away. No doubt he'd go back to his office and tell his colleagues about the eccentric writer who was testing out the "writer vibes" in Zzyp's office. I'd better get those files examined fast, before people wandered by to gawk at me.

First I went through Zzyp's desk and found the same paper clips and Wite-Out I'd found last time. In fact, everything was just like it had been before, with one exception: The quart of Jack Daniel's in the bottom drawer had gone from almost full to almost empty. Hmm. Maybe this was how those well-trained security guards entertained themselves on dull weekday afte
rnoons.

Then I headed for the back room to search through Zzyp's cabinets. Since I didn't really know what I was looking for, I looked through everything. I began with the insurance files and their seedy tales of arsons, fake thefts, and accident victims
who were supposedly crippled for life but actually played handball daily at the Y. All very enlightening, but there was nothing even remotely related to my murders.

The divorce files looked even less useful. No variety here: every single case was about infidelity. I must admit, though, I enjoyed the photographs of all those adulterous couples kissing, petting, and, well, coupling. You know those reality-based TV shows like
Cops
and
Rescue 911?
Somebody could make a lot of money off of a show like that called
Adultery
.

But after thirty or so files, even the most pornographic of the photos began to lose their charm. As I flipped rapidly through the nude bodies in the "Wilson, Kate" file, I wasn't paying too much attention. Then suddenly something hit my eye. Startled, I took a closer look at the happy-go-lucky adulterers in the photograph.

I didn't recognize the woman. But I recognized the man, all right. Kate Wilson's philandering hubby—or by now, I suppose,
ex
-hubby—was none other than Dennis Sarafian.

Kate must have gotten
a hefty divorce settlement, because there were a lot of other hot photos in this file, too. They featured Denny baby with no less than five different women. I couldn't help getting jealous. The guy was ferret-faced and balding, but here he was with his willowy brunette receptionist, a cute redhead, a petite Japanese woman in a miniskirt, and a—

A man in a ski mask?

What the hell was
this?

It was a dark, nightti
me shot of Dennis Sarafian handing over a briefcase to a man with a ski mask covering his head. But the ski mask man didn't have any weapons that I could see, and it didn't really look like a stickup. Apart from the unusual costume, this transaction had the aura of a business deal. It was the same sort of deal I'd seen recorded in that other photo of Sarafian, Pierce, and the envelope of cash.

Speaking of envelopes, as I stared closely at Ski Mask I noticed something in his left hand that looked like a large clasp envelope. H
e seemed in the process of handing it over to Sarafian. Were the two men exchanging the briefcase for the envelope?

The next two photos in
the file confirmed that impression. They showed the men walking away from each other, but now Sarafian had Ski Mask's envelope and Ski Mask had Sarafian's briefcase.

Who was that masked man? Pierce again? No, the guy was about as tall as Sarafian, which made him way too tall to be Pierce
—

And then all at once I knew
exactly
who that masked man was.

Okay, maybe I was jumping to conclusions
—but they were the only conclusions that fit all the facts. Yancy Huggins and Hack Sr. had been right all along: Hack Jr. did have dirt on Ducky Medwick. This was the dirt, right here. The man in this photograph was Ducky.

And the briefcase had to be full of dough. Sarafian
was bribing Ducky, probably on behalf of Global Electronics. But unfortunately for Ducky, Zzyp had been spying on Sarafian's whoopee-making, and he'd stumbled upon this payoff. Zzyp managed to identify the masked man as Ducky, and then sold this newfound dirt to the Hack.

Everything was clicking into place. The Hack, thus armed, blackmailed D
ucky into endorsing him for Congress. But then Ducky discovered the Hack was sleeping with his wife. To add insult to injury, maybe the Hack was also planning to double-cross Ducky and reveal the bribe during the radio debate. But Ducky found out. So finally he snapped. He couldn't take being blackmailed, cuckolded, and betrayed by some worthless two-bit politico. In a moment of fury he grabbed his gun and headed for the radio station to put an end to his own misery and the Hack's life.

With that taken care of,
Ducky proceeded to eliminate the other major threat to his safety: Zzyp. I realized with a guilty start that I was the one who'd informed him of Zzyp's existence. That made me, in a way, responsible for Zzyp's death.

Not a pleasant thought, so I shook it off and started rifling through the rest of
Sarafian's file. But then someone from the front room called out, "Hello?"

I stuffed the photos of Sarafian and Ducky down my shirt. Then I shoved "Wils
on, Kate" back in the file cabinet and went to the front room. "Oh, hi," I greeted Freshly Scrubbed, faking nonchalance. "Has it been a half hour already?"

"Just about," he said brightly. "So what do you think?"

"No go," I answered sadly. "Wrong vibes."

He wrinkled his forehead. "Are you sure? Because if there's something you want changed, or moved around ..."

I got an irresistible urge to mess with Freshly Scrubbed's narrow capitalist mind. He was probably a perfectly nice guy, but salesmen tend to bring out the worst in me. "It's the music," I said.

He threw me a puzzled look. "But that's no problem.
You can always just shut the door and close the music out—"

"Too late," I declared. "Aural contamination."

"What?"

"That Muzak version of 'Eleanor Rigby' has already seeped through the walls and fatally infected this office," I explained. "Just like nuclear radiation. Before any true creative work can be done here, the building needs to be defumigated, possibly even bombed. But thank you anyway for letting me check it out," I said, giving him a firm manly handshake as he stared at me in befuddlement. "I appreciate it."

Freshly Scrubbed found his voice. "No problem," he said. "Why don't we come on out of the office, and I'll lock the door."

He seemed in a hurry to get rid of me. I couldn't imagine why.

Actually, I was in a hurry to go, too. It was 3:30, time to hook up with Will at Madeline's and hustle him for that big Washington job.

And after I got done with the Shmuck, I'd go after the Duck.

When I stepped into the espresso bar, the Shmuck-man was standing at the front counter, but I could barely see him. He was surrounded by fawning customers and employees. Amazing. For months, whenever he came into Madeline's with me, people would greet him with a nervous "Good luck" and then sort of sidle away from him. They didn't want to
be stuck listening to his hopeless delusions about getting elected.