Death on a High Floor (38 page)

Now I was sure that Boone was Quark.

“He gave you excellent tax advice, Mr. Quark,” I said, interrupting. “And, in any case, your problems weren’t caused by taxes.” On both points I was certain from the many discussions we’d had in the Executive Committee of the overdue Quark bill.

I suddenly felt, as much as saw, both Jenna and Oscar glaring at me. I had stepped out of role. The suitcase had become a lawyer again.

“Ah,” Boone said, “I see you have finally recognized me, Mr. Tarza.”

“Perhaps,” Oscar said, “the two of you could enlighten us about what you’re talking about.”

“Sure,” I said. “Mr. Boone used to call himself Top Quark. The company he founded,
Physical Science Concepts
, was an M&M client starting about six years ago. In fact, a client that Stewart Broder brought into the firm. Mr. Quark is a physicist.”

“Short-listed,” Boone said, smiling his goofy smile again.

“Short-listed for what?” Oscar asked.

“The Nobel Prize in Physics,” Boone said.

“Oh, I see,” Oscar said.

Ignoring Oscar’s incredulity, I picked up on Jenna’s questioning. “You sneaked into the firm that morning?”

“Yes,” Boone said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Like I just said,” he responded, “I wanted to scare the shit out of Stewart. I was going to strip him, tie him, gag him, and leave him under his desk. Then close the door to his office and hang a sign on it that said, ‘Do Not Disturb, Lawyer at Work.’ Call it an in-office kidnapping.”

“All for what you call bad tax advice? I guess it’s getting more and more risky to be a lawyer trying to do a job,” I said.

Boone ignored my sarcasm. “I would have been far better off,” he said, “getting tax advice from my local pharmacist.”

“Your company crashed four years ago,” I said. “Why did you wait four years to get even?”

“My anger was there the whole time,” Boone said. “It finally boiled over last month. When my shitty little used car broke down. I used to drive a new Mercedes. But for Stewart’s advice, I’d be driving a Rolls now.”

“Enough about tax advice,” Jenna said. “What did you see that morning, Mr. Boone?”

“Very good, Ms. James,” Boone said. “I like lawyers who can stay on target. I’m sorry you weren’t working on my matter.”

“Thank you,” Jenna said. “And the answer to my question?”

“Around 5:00 a.m.,” Boone said, “I saw Stewart, some guy named Harry, and two women having a big argument right outside Stewart’s office. They were mostly talking in very low voices. I was hiding under the desk in the secretarial cubicle, so I couldn’t hear what they were saying very well. Just caught a few words here and there, but only if they were loud words. That’s how I know one guy’s name was Harry. Stewart kept repeating it in a loud voice.”

Jenna was holding her notepad in the crook of her arm, writing notes on it as she went, looking up frequently to keep eye contact with Boone.

“You weren’t able to see any of it, then?” she said.

“Well, at one point, I peeked over the edge of the desk, for just a few seconds. To see what was going down. Stewart and the Harry guy were facing me. They were gesticulating, like they were arguing about something. The two women were just standing there. So I can only tell you what they looked like from the back.”

“Okay,” Jenna said. “What did they look like from the back?”

“One of them was a bleached blonde,” he said. “You know, with that greenish tint it gets when it’s been bleached too much. The other had black hair.” Boone peered out of the cell at Jenna. “Hair color and length a lot like yours. Just over the collar I guess you’d call it.”

Oscar made a harrumph-like noise in his throat, and Jenna turned her head to look at him. “Okay, fine!” she said and turned her back to Boone. Then she raised her voice so she could still be heard while facing away from him. “Did the woman with black hair,” she asked, “or the bleached blonde, for that matter, look at all like me from the back?”

“Not really,” Boone said. “You’re pretty slender, and both of them, at least up top, looked pretty wide.”

Jenna spun back around. “Happy, Oscar?”

“Maybe,” Oscar said. “Were they wearing coats, Mr. Boone?”

“No,” Boone said.

“Okay, I’m mostly happy now,” Oscar said.

Boone’s eyes were darting back and forth between Oscar and Jenna. He was laughing. “Are you a suspect, Ms. James?”

“No, I’m not. These two male pig lawyers are just having some fun with me. They enjoy having me turn around for them.”

Jenna’s answer was excellent, in the circumstance. Although I couldn’t recall ever having asked her to turn around for me.

Jenna was consulting her notepad, looking to pick up at the exact place she had left off. She found it and said, “Mr. Boone, I’d like to go on with what you were saying, because I think it’s going to help a lot. But maybe you’re getting tired. You don’t have to stand. It’s okay if you want to sit on the bench and talk from there. Or maybe we could get you some water or coffee.”

“They’ve refused to give me any coffee,” he said. “Too dangerous if it’s hot or something like that.”

“Okay,” Jenna said, “but if you want some water, just let me know.”

“I will,” he said.

“When you peeked out, could you see or hear anything else?” she asked.

“Only saw what I already told you. They went on talking, and I could hear slightly better, but, again, only fragments. They kept saying ‘Hello.’ Said it maybe four or five times.”

“Are you sure that they weren’t saying ‘Hilo’?”

“Could be. Those two words sound pretty much alike.”

“Anything else?” Jenna asked.

“Yeah, the thing that caused me to try to see the judge today. One of the men said, ‘Simon, that nosey fucker.’ I couldn’t really tell whose voice it was, but it was a man’s voice.”

Boone paused a second, as if gathering his recollections, then resumed. “I ducked back under the desk. A few minutes later, I heard people leaving. After that, it was quiet for a bit. So I poked my head up above the desk again to see if the coast was clear and saw Stewart walk through the doorway into reception. I ducked back under the desk again.”

“Then what?” she asked.

“Maybe thirty seconds later, I heard the elevator bell ping, like the elevator was arriving. Then I heard footsteps running into the reception area. Then right after that, the elevator bell pinged again, and I heard a scuffle. And grunting sounds. Then I heard a shout.”

“Could you make it out?” she asked.

“Yes. Someone whose voice I didn’t know—a man—shouted, ‘It’s fake!’ Or maybe he said, ‘
They’re
fake.’ I’m not sure. It was hard to make out.”

“Anything else you remember?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Boone said, “there was more. There were some more sounds. But I could sure use that cup of coffee now. Any chance one of you lawyers could scare one up?”

Both Jenna and Oscar turned their heads and looked at me. I got the message. I had turned from a suitcase into a coffee cart.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go see if I can scare one up from Deputy Green.”

When I got to Green’s tiny office, he did have coffee but was reluctant to give it to me for Boone because it was hot. At my suggestion, he watered it down, but insisted on filling almost half the cup with water before he poured in the coffee.

“I hope,” he said as he handed it to me, “that he doesn’t throw it at you.”

“I hope not too. Did he throw something at you?”

“No, but he seems like he could. When I gave him a cup of water earlier, he poured it on the floor. Said it was obviously tap water, and he only drank
Evian
.”

“Oh,” I said.

“In any case, you don’t have a lot of time left with him,” Green said. “Gotta risk giving him lunch shortly. It’s been ordered early for some reason.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks for the coffee.”

When I got back, I was both surprised and pleased to see that Oscar and Jenna were just chatting with Boone about this and that. They apparently had had the decency to wait for me to come back to hit the substance again.

I went up to the cell bars and held the coffee cup up. “Here’s your coffee, Quark. I’m sorry it’s only lukewarm. Deputy Green insisted.”

Quark reached through the bars and took the paper cup from me.

“They think I’m crazy, don’t they?” he said.

“Why on earth would they think that?” I said.

“Am I going to get any lunch?” he asked.

“The deputy told me they’d bring it shortly,” I said.

“Okay, thanks.”

“Can we,” Jenna said, “get back to what happened, Mr. Boone?”

“Sure.”

“What did you hear next?” she asked.

“Then I heard a . . . I don’t know how to describe it. A sharp thwacking sound? Maybe two? Then a really big thud. It scared me, so I waited under the desk until it had been quiet for a while. Then I crawled down the hallway on my hands and knees to where I could see into reception. I couldn’t see much because the lights were out. So I just got up and bolted through, heading for the elevators. And, then . . .”

Boone stopped and took a long swallow of his coffee, as if he needed the jolt to relate the rest. “Then I saw a . . . a body on the floor as I ran by. It was a man, but I couldn’t see him very well. I thought maybe there was a knife in his back. I was only in there a few seconds.”

“You went down the elevator?”

“Yeah. I remembered that there was a security guard in the lobby, so I pushed the button for the first parking level and walked out that way, up the ramp. I was worried the garage gate would still be down, but it wasn’t. I guess they open it really early.”

“Did you notice what time it was when you walked out of the garage?”

“No. The best I could tell you was that it started to get light out well after I left. But it was December. It stays dark late.”

“Where did you go after you left there?”

“I took a bus home. I live in a small apartment in Santa Monica.”

He was at the end of his story. The three of us just stood there for a moment, and I could tell we were all thinking the exact same thing. Was there any way to prove that his story was true? Because if he told it uncorroborated, it would not be believed.

I posed the first question along that line.

“Do you have any way to prove you were actually in the building?” I asked. “And it’s not that I doubt you. It’s just that the DA is going to say you made it all up.”

“Nothing that I can think of,” Boone said. “I mean, no one saw me. That was the whole idea.”

“Anybody or anything else that would tend to show you were there?” Jenna asked.

“Not that I can think of. But if I do, I’ll let you know.”

“You know,” I said, “I think one of the most important things in terms of the credibility of your story is how you got past security and into the building at 5:00 a.m. Monday morning? How did you?”

“It was easy,” Boone said. “I was already there. I had been a client, so I knew the drill—that the elevators locked at 7:00 p.m. and that the firm’s receptionist went home at 7:00 sharp. I took a guess it hadn’t changed much, even with 9/11. So I went into the building on Friday evening, about two minutes before 7:00. I got asked to show ID to go up, of course. I used a fake one. I’ve got a bunch. But the elevators weren’t locked yet.”

“Okay. Then what?” I asked. I kept to myself my thought that having a witness with lots of weird name changes, who keeps a drawer full of fake IDs, would not be helpful to his credibility.

“I went up the elevator,” he said, “and walked into the reception area about one minute before 7:00 on Friday. The receptionist was just packing up to leave, same timing as when I’d been a client. I told her I had an appointment with Jack.”

“Did you actually know Jack Strachan?” I asked.

“No, I just picked his name up off the directory in the lobby. But like I said, I told the receptionist that I had an appointment with him. An appointment with Jack. That’s what I called him. Jack. Like I really knew him. I only gave her a last name when she asked for it because I knew that M&M has that system where the receptionist sends an e-mail to the lawyer, telling him he’s got a guest.”

“You took a risk. He could have been in his office. Or on vacation or something, with the receptionist aware he was gone.”

“Yeah, I took a risk. I took all kinds of risks that weekend. And, hey, now that I think about it, maybe the receptionist would remember me.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “But if she did, she’d remember you from Friday evening, more than two days before the murder, not the morning of.”

“True, that could be a problem.”

I glanced at Jenna, a former member of the apparently secret Security Committee, and I could see that she was both believing it and not believing it, all at the same time.

“Then,” Boone said, “I told the receptionist I was desperate to use the john. So she gave me the key card, and I told her I might be awhile. Something I ate for lunch. So please e-mail Jack to come get me in about ten, if you will. If he doesn’t respond I’ll call him on his cell. I’ll drop the key card back. She bought it, because when I got back from the john, she was long gone.”

“And then?” I asked.

“I stayed in a stall in the men’s room till almost midnight. Nobody ever knocks on a stall door to ask who’s home, you know. Especially if, when they look underneath, the pant legs they see near the floor are pinstriped. I stayed in there and read
The
New York Times
I’d brought with me till I thought the coast was clear.”

“That’s rather clever,” I said. “Then what did you do?”

“I waited to come out of the men’s room until I heard the cleaning people show up. When I came back, they had all the doors open. I walked into reception and then down the internal stairs to the eighty-fourth floor, like I knew what I was doing. And then into reception on eighty-four, where there were more cleaning people. Cleaning people don’t challenge a guy carrying a Gucci briefcase and wearing a thousand-dollar suit.”

“Okay,” I said. “That was Friday night. Where’d you hide out till early Monday morning?”

“In a lawyer’s office. When I walked in, I just looked around for an empty office. One that still had the desk and phone and stuff, but was obviously vacant. When I found one, I sat down, took my laptop, pads, pens, and so forth out of my briefcase and set up shop. Then I did some work I’d brought with me.”

He paused, looking quite pleased with himself, then continued.

“In the end, hardly anybody came by,” he said, “and no one asked who I was. Had they asked, I was going to say I was a client working with Stewart to close a tax-driven deal before year’s end, that our closing was on Monday, and he’d lent me the office for the weekend. I was prepared to say that Stewart was over at the underwriters. I spent the whole weekend there, and slept there, too.”

It all made sense to me. I had always said, “If you want to rob a law firm, wear a suit and carry a briefcase. You can go wherever you want.” In a place as big as M&M, most people didn’t even know all of the other lawyers by sight.

Oscar chimed in. “What about food?”

“I brought some food in the briefcase,” he said. “Plus you can get a lot from the vending machines these days. And I didn’t even have to risk the public bathroom again. There are a couple offices on that floor with private ones. No one uses them much on weekends.”

“Well,” Jenna said, “as someone who’s been involved in office security, I’m impressed. How long did you spend under the desk, waiting for Stewart?”

“Not very long. I knew that Stewart liked to get in super early on Mondays, so about 5:00 a.m. Monday morning, I went out to reception to wait for him so I could surprise him and really scare the shit out of him when I nabbed him. I was lying on the floor next to the big plant. But then I heard a bunch of people coming, not just him, and I ran and got under the desk.”

“Were you in court this morning?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Boone said, “I was. And yes, I saw that police detective testify about the depression in the carpet. It was there. It just wasn’t you who put it there.”

Oscar stopped and tapped his chin. “Another question, sir. One you’ll be hammered on if you take the stand.”

“What’s that?” Boone asked.

“Why’d you wait so long to try to tell anyone about this?”

“Well, after I saw the body, I was so freaked out I went down to Mexico for three weeks. So I didn’t know who or what was being investigated for it. When I got back, I read the papers and saw they were investigating Mr. Tarza.” He nodded his head at me.

“Go on,” Oscar said.

“I had met Mr. Tarza only once when I was a client, and only briefly. But as a result I knew what he looked like, and I’m quite sure I never saw him in the firm that weekend or that morning. So I thought he was being framed. But to prove it, I would have had to admit I’d committed a bunch of crimes getting into that building. Finally, I just couldn’t stand it. I loathe injustice, so I called my local police station to tell them I knew something about it.”

“You did?” Oscar seemed genuinely surprised.

“Yeah, but they blew me off. No one would make an appointment to meet with me, nobody ever returned my call. And I called three times.”

“Did you use your real name when you called?” Oscar asked.

“Well, no, of course not.”

“What name did you use?”

“I was sloppy. I used Top Quark. That was a mistake, because I was kind of famous under that one.”

“Famous where?” Oscar asked.

“Well, with other physicists. I mean, the top quark particle was the holy grail of physics before it was finally discovered. So pre-discovery, the name attracted attention.” He paused. “Okay, maybe it wasn’t always favorable attention.”

“I bet,” Oscar said. “Do you think the person who answered the phone at the police station knew about top quarks?”

“Oh, good point,” Boone said. And then he clapped his hands. “Very good point!”

Deputy Green appeared suddenly, carrying a lunch tray. The food was on a paper plate, with a soft rubber spoon next to it.

“I’m sorry folks,” he said, “it’s lunch time for Boone here, and anyway, the judge called and wants you all upstairs post haste. I’m going to feed Dan Boone here. You guys can just go up yourselves. I’m sure you can find the elevator again, and I unlocked it electronically so that you can go up without a key. Just punch 7.”

And so we were dismissed, just like that.

As we left, Oscar said, “Mr. Boone, as soon as we walk out of here, I’m going to call that lawyer friend I mentioned—his name is Christian Ogalu—and see what he can do to get you out of here. He is a good man, I guarantee it.”

“Okay. Thank you, Oscar.” Boone said. “In exchange, I’ll be sure that you have a front row seat in Stockholm.”

“Stockholm?”

“At the Nobel ceremony. I’m guessing it will be next year.”

“Why, thank you,” Oscar said. “I’d be truly honored. And thank
you
, Deputy, for arranging this.”

“No problem, Counsel.”

We got in the elevator, and Jenna pushed ‘7’ as instructed. The elevator started up.