ER - A Murder Too Personal (14 page)

“Why did he want to fire her?”

McCormack looked at Laura and then at me like
he was giving out a deep, dark secret. “She was going to be fired
because she offended one of the firm’s clients, a big real estate
developer named Jergens. Alicia found out that the free cash flow
on one of his buildings was artificially inflated and that made all
of his other projections suspect. He was pissed off beyond belief.
He went to Stallings and said if she wasn’t fired, he wasn’t going
to float the new stock issue with us. And he said he was going to
sue Stallings into bankruptcy court. Stallings panicked—he’s that
kind of a guy,” he said with an ugly snicker.

He seemed to enjoy telling this tale. A small
smile gave him a Peter Pan look, like an elderly teenager. “He
fired Alicia. But then she came up with something to make him
re-hire her.”

Laura looked at him in disbelief. Or maybe it
was a look of hurt. “She never told me about this.”

A waiter came up and asked for our drink
order. Laura ordered another martini and I seconded the
motion—extra dry. McCormack pointed at the yellow-green concoction
in his hand and wordlessly ordered a refill.

The violins had segued into a medley of Noel
Coward songs and had picked up the tempo. Some delicious aromas
were drifting out from the kitchen, curry and garlic and something
else I couldn’t identify, and my stomach was starting to make rude
noises.

I watched as a tall thin female sliced her
way across the dance floor and stopped in front of us. I recognized
her as Mrs. Chisolm, only older and more bitter than her photos.
She was wearing a full-length red gown pulled in at the waist, and
it was a tiny waist. Her hair was honey brown and fluffy. She had a
small straight nose, a pinched mouth and smooth skin, except for
some fine lines at the corners of her eyes.

She grabbed my hand with a cool grip and said
to my face, “Laura, my dear. You didn’t tell me you were bringing
such a good-looking date. Wherever did you find such a luscious
specimen?”

Without waiting for an answer, she squeezed
my good arm and edged me onto the hardwood floor.

“You poor baby,” she said, as she eyed my
sling. “What happened to your arm?”

“I sprained it opening a beer bottle.”

She must have been well-oiled because she
thought that was very funny. She gave me a big laugh, more like an
extended snort.

“Do you like to dance real close, lover boy,”
she hummed into my ear in time with the music.

“Only if I can lead.”

She stepped back and looked at me in mock
horror. “My God, you’re so forceful..so eloquent.”

With a pronounced lack of subtlety, she
snuggled up to me so tight her body had no secrets. I moved her
around the dance floor to the beat of a fox trot. As we danced, she
ground her crotch into mine like an eight-hour drill press operator
on a four-hour shift.

Was this woman capable of murder? It all
depended on how much she hated her husband. How many times had he
betrayed her? How many times had she returned the favor? Maybe she
didn’t give a good goddam.

There were a dozen couples dancing around us
in various stages of inebriation. The band was good. They wanted to
approximate the forties sound and they were doing a credible job of
it.

Her relentless grinding was beginning to have
an effect on me. I could see she noticed it too. She smiled the
kind of smile that envelops you.

“Are you having a good time, lover boy?” she
purred.

“You keep rubbing my crotch and you’ll find
out.”

She laughed out loud.

I pulled out of her iron grip and stepped
back about a quarter of a centimeter. “We have a lot in common,
Mrs. Chisolm.”

“Is that so?” She raised her eyebrows. “What
do we have between us?”

“Your husband and my wife.”

Her face darkened. She was no longer the cool
seductress. Now she looked more like a wounded lamb.

“Who are you?” she asked in a more tentative
voice.

“My name is Rogan.”

She still didn’t make the connection. But
something in the dark recesses of her mind was telling her this was
going to be unpleasant.

“Your husband was engaged in various and
sundry sexual activities with my wife.”

“Who is your wife?” she asked.

“Was…”

Her eyes got it first before her mouth
opened. “You’re…”

“That’s right, Mrs. Chisolm. Alicia’s
husband.”

She was clearly shaken. “What right do you
have coming here? You’re not welcome at this party.”

I gave her a ugly grin. “From the state of my
member, I would say I was pretty welcome.”

She gritted her teeth. “Get out of here,” she
said.

I grabbed her wrist so hard she winced.
“Listen to me, sugar. First you tell me if you knew your husband
was banging my wife.”

She tried to struggle out of my grip. The
music was playing louder and louder. The band was back to Cole
Porter.

Birds do it…bees do it…

Why don’t we do it?

She stopped resisting and went limp. I let
her go.

“Yes, I knew,” she said, so low I could
barely hear her. “But she wasn’t anything special. She was only the
latest in a string of women. Michael is a man of prodigious
appetites. One or two women could never satisfy him. He always
keeps written records, to help him remember. She was just one
insignificant notation among many. He showed me his records.”

“Damn considerate of him.”

I took her in my arms and started dancing
again. I figured I could hear her better that way. She didn’t
resist. She followed me like a dutiful wife, submitting
graciously.

“At first I thought he might have killed your
wife. That is, if she ditched him.” Her voice was still muffled, as
if it was coming from a faraway place. I had to strain to hear her.
“But then I realized he didn’t have the balls to do it. He just
doesn’t have the pure hatred you need in your heart.”

I gave it to her. “Do you?”

She grimaced like I’d stepped on her toes and
stared right into my eyes. Yeah, she had it. A long-smoldering
anger from how many remembered betrayals. Her look said it all.

I let her go. No use dancing with a bitch
long dead. She gave me a grim half-smile, so different from the
come-on of a few minutes ago.

“What’s the matter, big boy? Lost your
appetite?”

It was true. My hard-on was gone, replaced by
a cool revulsion. One look, the wrong kind, was enough to dampen
any guy’s interest.

The band had finished the set. The room was
quiet except for some giggles and the clink of ice cubes.

“Yeah. I just remembered I have to feed my
piranhas.”

I did an about-face and walked away.

Gene Black was waiting for me when I got
home. John, the doorman, nodded at me and jerked his head at the
hunched figure of the cop. It was 1:10 AM and he was sitting in the
lobby on a sofa that was badly in need of reupholstering. He’d been
deep into the sports pages of the News and his stubby fingers were
black with ink.

When he saw me, he stood, grinned sheepishly
and rubbed his hands together. “Nice tux. You just get off
bartending?”

“Jesus,” I said. “The hours you keep. You
should’ve been the madam in a cathouse. Sleep all day, play all
night.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Black nodded in tired
acquiescence. “Listen, Rogan. I’ve had a long day. Gimme a break,
willya, buddy?”

I nodded. He was right. That was no way to
treat a long-suffering civil servant. “Come on upstairs. We’ll make
some brewmaster happy.” I threw my arm around his shoulder and
pushed him toward the elevator.

It took a long time for the elevator to get
to the ground floor and it took just as long to get to the tenth.
There was always some problem with the mechanism and I suspected it
was about to give out again. The other car had been out for weeks.
The walls of the elevator were some kind of wood-like veneer that
was warping and pulling away from the backing. Some glue would have
served to stick it back in place, but no one had ever had the
motivation to fix it, so each week it separated a little more from
the wall.

When we got to ten, Black got off first and
followed me down the hall to my apartment. The door had just been
painted for the first time in ten years, but some bozo of a workman
had brushed against it and left a streak where his back had
been.

Black looked at the door. “What happened? You
try to knock some guy through the door?”

I grunted. It was too late in the day for
witty repartee. I opened the door for him and pointed the way to
the living room.

“Help yourself to a brew. I have to drain the
lizard first.”

On the way back from the head I checked the
machine for messages. There were a couple of calls from bill
collectors and one from Rachel. Her voice sounded edgy. She said
she had something important to tell me. I didn’t know what time she
made the call. My answering machine was one of the ancient kind
that didn’t have a time stamp.

I looked at my watch. It was 1:25 AM. I
decided to call her after Black left.

By the time I got back to the living room,
Black had polished off half a bottle of Rolling Rock. I got one for
myself and caught up with him.

He didn’t say anything for a couple of
minutes. Just sat there kind of shell-shocked. I didn’t disturb him
as he sat there rummaging through his thoughts. Then he seemed to
wake up and notice that I was sitting across from him.

He made a face and said, “Wadda you got for
me?”

I told him the truth. “I ain’t got dick.”

He nodded and fell silent for a long time.
Then he finished his beer and went to the kitchen for another one.
When he came back, he plopped down into the chair, took a long swig
and said, “I think it was the boyfriend.”

He pulled a pack of Camels out of his shirt
pocket, lit one and jammed the pack back into his pocket. When he
couldn’t find an ash tray, he tapped the ashes into the mouth of
the empty bottle.

I really felt like bumming a cigarette from
him.

“Chisolm?” I said.

He nodded and I could see that old cop’s mind
working.

“Why him?”

“I don’t like him. He’s too slick.”

“Sure,” I said. “Try to get a conviction for
that. You got anything on him?”

He shrugged and I could see he didn’t.
“Where’s his motive?”

“They were breaking up. She was going to walk
out on him.”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” I said. “Besides, you
don’t kill someone for walking out on you. That’s too Victorian.
He’s not the kind to do that.”

“I don’t like him,” Black repeated.

“Then don’t have his child.”

“He’s the one supplied her the coke.”

“Is that right?” I chewed on that for a
minute. “Or did she supply him?”

He shook his head vigorously. “Naw, he gave
it to her.”

“Even so, you still don’t have a motive.”

He threw up his hands. “OK, so who do you
like?”

He had me there. I didn’t even have as much
conviction as he did. What I did have was a goddam pain that shot
up my arm and down my side.

Black saw me wince. “Still hurts?” he
said.

“Only smarts when I do the high hurdles.”

He took a deep drag on his cigarette and
studied the lit end with real concentration. Then he let out the
smoke very slowly. I’d never seen anybody enjoy a cigarette so
much.

“What about Chisolm’s wife?” he asked. “She
looks like a bitch with a killer instinct.”

I nodded. I had to agree with him. “She sure
does, doesn’t she? I haven’t given up sniffing around her.”

He gave off a long sigh. I looked at him real
close. What a sorry sight the pair of us made. There we were, a
worn-out cop about to be pensioned off and a smart ass ex-marine
with a gimpy arm. Two seasoned pros and we couldn’t get to first
base.

“I don’t know who killed her, Gene. I wish I
did because I’d like to end his miserable life.”

“Now, now…I’m a lawman. You can’t say that
kind of shit in front of me. I might get offended.” He took a long
swallow of beer and cleared his throat with a hoarse cough that
sounded like he was about to puke up the contents of his
stomach.

“What about her boss, Stallings?” he
asked.

“What about him?”

“She didn’t like him.”

“Big deal. You like your boss?”

He grunted and spread his hands. Then he
leaned back and locked his hands behind his head. “Well, who else
is there?”

“Only a couple of hundred other suspects.” It
was getting late and I wanted to call Rachel. I got up from the
chair. “We’re out of beer, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said as he rose reluctantly.
“I get the hint. You don’t have to be so blunt. I can understand
subtlety.”

“Yeah. Like a two-by-four over the head.” I
gave him a smile and a half-salute. “Carry on, regardless.”

He turned serious when he reached the door.
“I wanna close this case. You get something, you give it to me,
right?”

“I want to close this case more than you do.
Make book on it.”

I shut the door behind him.

Rachel was sleeping when I called her. She
was also on something because I couldn’t get her to form coherent
sentences. She kept muttering something like, “My shrink is dead.
He left me behind. He left me all alone…”

“Listen,” I said finally. “I’m coming over.
Tell the doorman to let me up and leave your front door open. You
got that?”

I had to repeat it three times before she
gave me an acknowledgment.

I was at her building inside of fifteen
minutes. The doorman nodded when I told him my name and sent me up
the elevator with a small wave of his hand.

Her front door was half open. I shoved it the
rest of the way and walked in. The place looked like Hue after the
Tet offensive. Clothing was all over the floor and the place looked
like an unholy mess. I walked back down the long hallway to what I
assumed was her bedroom. The door was closed.