Hire a Hangman (22 page)

Hastings nodded. “Absolutely.”

“Then there’s Paula Gregg, the beautiful stepdaughter who everyone says Hanchett molested, and who’s apparently running wild, and who could’ve been screwing John. Why couldn’t Paula and John have planned to kill Hanchett? It sounds like Paula would’ve known where to buy illegal guns. Then she got John into bed, maybe got him doing a little cocaine, whatever, got him all psyched up. She could’ve done it just for the thrills, it seems to me. Just for the kicks—the satisfaction of having Hanchett killed, the satisfaction of manipulating John. Or maybe she just used John to buy the guns. Given her personality, I think it’s a real possibility. Maybe she actually pulled the trigger on Teresa Bell.”

“You’re right about her personality. She’s …”He searched for the word. “She’s awesome. Beautiful, but awesome. She’s capable of anything, I think. Anything at all.”

Intrigued, Friedman spoke softly, speculatively: “Interesting cast of suspects.”

“Hmmm.”

“I still think Pfiefer’s the only one who makes sense,” Friedman mused. “Especially if we factor in your theory about the murderer using Teresa Bell. It’s hard for me to believe that Paula, for instance, knew about Teresa Bell’s child.”

“Except that we don’t have any evidence against Pfiefer. None.”

“The guns,” Friedman said. “They’re our only hope. If our boy has the forty-five, and we tie him to it, then we’d have him, especially if his fingerprints show up on the Llama’s shell casings. Incidentally, the lab finally got around to lifting Teresa’s prints at the morgue. And her prints don’t show on either the Llama or the Llama’s cartridges. Signifying that she probably wore gloves when she fired the gun.”

“Thanks for telling me.” Hastings’s voice was heavily ironic.

“It just came down.”

“Hmmm.”

“Cheer up. It corroborates your theory that some mastermind was pulling Teresa’s strings. Ergo, your mastermind loaded the gun, gave it to Teresa, and told her to shoot Hanchett.”

“What about prints on the forty-five shell casing found at the scene of Teresa’s murder?”

Regretfully, Friedman shrugged. “No prints. In fact, no shell casing.”

“No shell casing? How come?”

Friedman shrugged. “The murderer must’ve taken the casing with him. Or her, as the case may be.”

“Shit.”

“Exactly.”

“And the prints on both the fired and the unfired Llama cartridges match, you say,” Hastings mused.

Friedman nodded. “So if your theory proves out—if Pfiefer, or whoever, programmed Teresa, gave her the game plan, showed her how to use a gun, gave her the loaded gun—then there’s a good chance that his prints’ll match the prints on the Llama’s cartridges.” Plainly pleased at the prospect, Friedman nodded again.

“Except that if you’re talking about Pfiefer, I have a lot of trouble believing that he’s going to let us take his prints. A
lot
of trouble.”

“There’s always a way …” As he said it, Friedman’s gaze wandered speculatively to Hastings’s window, with its view of the East Bay hills in the background and a sliver of the Bay in the foreground. Hastings knew that look, knew that particular mannerism.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“Alan Bernhardt,” Friedman intoned. “It so happens he owes me back-to-back favors.”

Alan Bernhardt, Friedman’s favorite PI, the actor who also wrote plays and directed little theater. To support his habit, as he wryly called his addiction to the theater, Bernhardt hired out as a free-lance investigator.

“What we’ll do,” Friedman said, “is put tails on Pfiefer and Vance—and maybe John Hanchett, too. When they’re out of the house—safely out of the house, under surveillance—Bernhardt can get inside, hopefully, and lift some fingerprints, or maybe swipe a glass, whatever. If we get a match with the Llama’s cartridges, we’ll go for a search warrant.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Kidding?”

“What if the judge asks us how we got the prints? Christ, Bernhardt could be jailed for breaking and entering.”

“We get a broad-minded judge.”

“Bullshit.”

“Okay.” Airily, Friedman waved. “We’ll go to plan B.” His expression turned crafty. “As I understand it, even as we speak, Canelli and Dolores are down at juvie, where her kid is being held. Right?”

Warily, Hastings nodded. “Right.”

“Well, then, our game plan is obvious. We contact Canelli. He gets it across to Dolores that, in exchange for springing her kid, she’s got to make at least a tentative identification of whoever we say.”

“Are you serious?”

“Actually, I’m not serious,” Friedman answered blandly. “Not totally. But, what the hell, it’s worth a shot. She gives us enough to get a search warrant. We pick up a glass, or whatever, and we’re in business. Maybe we’ll even find a Colt forty-five, who knows?”

“What if Dolores refuses to go along?”

“Then we let Canelli play the white knight who virtuously defies his superiors to save Dolores’s child—who, obviously, we plan to get released no matter what. But Dolores, of course, won’t know that. So maybe she’ll be so grateful that Canelli’ll get himself laid.”

Hastings shook his head incredulously. “You’re really something, you know that?”

Modestly, Friedman cast his eyes downward. “I try.”

“Of the two, I’d rather go with Bernhardt. Forget about Dolores. Christ, we’d
really
be in trouble if she told the judge we conned her. Think about it.”

“Fine. We go with Bernhardt. I’ll set it up. Meanwhile, though, let’s tell Canelli to put some pressure on Dolores. What can it hurt? He tells her he’ll spring her kid and we’ll drop the receiving-stolen-goods charge. All she has to do is go along. If she does, then we’ve got two ways to go. We’ve got Bernhardt
and
Dolores. That’s called insurance.”

“Hmmm.”

2:15
PM

“Wait a minute,” Dolores demanded. “Let me get this straight.” She stood truculently before Canelli, hands propped on her hips, dark eyes snapping furiously. Giving way a half step, Canelli was conscious of her breasts, so close to his chest. They stood in the large reception room of the youth guidance center. The windows were screened with heavy steel mesh, the linoleum floor was cracked, the chairs and tables and walls were covered with graffiti. Most of the bedraggled chrome-and-orange-plastic chairs were occupied by grieving adults, almost all of them minorities. For a terrified child and his despairing parents, Canelli knew, this was the anteroom of hell, the first way station on a long, sad journey to nowhere.

“Wait a minute,” she said again, each word sharply bitten, “are you telling me this is a setup—a deal? A ransom, for God’s sake, my kid for your murder case, is that what you’re telling me?”

“Aw, jeez, Dolores, that’s not it. You’re—jeez—you’re exaggerating. All I’m saying is—”

“You want me to lie. You want me to—”

“Not lie. It’s just—just—” Lowering his voice, he glanced at the couple closest to them: two blacks, both of them gray-haired, both of them crying, tears streaking their worn, seamed faces as they touched each other awkwardly, seeking comfort. “It’s just that the lieutenant needs a little room to maneuver, that’s all. See, he wants to—”

“Yeah, he gets room to maneuver, and I get the shaft, same old story. I’ve got a choice: fall for fencing, or fall for perjury. And I’ll tell you right now, Canelli, I’ll take the fencing fall. My record’s clean. There’s no way I’ll do time for fencing. Probation, sure. But there’s no way—”

“Dolores. Wait. You’re—jeez, you got it all wrong. All you gotta do is go along, do like you’re told, just this once. Your kid gets sprung, and we drop the fencing thing. So you’ll be clean, nothing on your record. All you gotta do is have a little, you know, a little flexibility. A little faith. All you gotta do is—”

“Faith?
Christ, faith in what? In who? You? The cops? You’re all—all
crooks.
You—” Suddenly her knees buckled, and she sank into a nearby chair. She opened her purse, began furiously looking for a handkerchief.

“Aw, jeez …” Canelli drew another chair close to her, produced a handkerchief, handed it over. As she snatched it out of his hand and began blowing her nose, he ventured a smile. “That’s two that you owe me. Handkerchiefs, I mean.”

The handkerchief muffled her monosyllabic response. Tentatively he touched her knee. She moved sharply away, blew her nose with a note of finality, dropped the handkerchief in her purse, and turned to face him.

“I trusted you,” she said. “I—” As if it were painful to say, she winced, shook her head, finally confessed: “I liked you. And now you—you’re doing a number on me. You’re—”

“Dolores. Please. Jeez, I—”

“What you’re doing—really doing—is holding him hostage.”

“Holding—?”

“Oscar. He’s your—your goddamn captive, that’s what he is.”

“Wait.” Firmly, he raised his hand.
“Wait.
Back up, here.
I
didn’t fence those two guns.
You
did that, Dolores. Don’t forget that. And I didn’t give Oscar a sack of dope to deliver. Your ex-husband, or whoever he is—he did that, not me. So don’t start doing a number on me, Dolores. Don’t try to run over me, because it won’t work. I—I’m glad you like me. I like you, too. You probably know that. Girls know those things, I finally figured that one out. But let’s keep the record straight here. Nobody ever said cops don’t cut corners. But—”

“Half the people I know, the cops’ve got them by the throats. They want something hot, maybe girls, dope, TVs, whatever it is, the cops always get a deal. They don’t pay full fare for anything. They snap their fingers, and—” She sniffled, blinked, pressed the handkerchief to her nose.

“Listen—” Uneasily, Canelli pointed. “Your, uh, mascara, or whatever it is, it’s—”

“Ah!”
Furiously she turned her back on him, dug into her purse for a mirror and compact. “You always get me crying. I don’t cry, except when you make me. You know that?”

“No fooling?” Speculatively, Canelli frowned. Then, puzzled: “Really?”

“Oh—fuck off, will you?” With her back still turned, she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, crossed her legs. “Just fuck off.”

“Ah, jeez …” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t be like that, Dolores.”

She drew away from his touch.

“Listen,” he said, “don’t sweat it, okay? Just cool it, hold on to that goddamn temper. And I’ll—” He rose, touched her shoulder again. “I’ll give the lieutenant a call, set him straight.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

2:30
PM

He stared at the telephone as if it were an icon. It sat on its own stand beside the window. It was as if the table were a pedestal, and the window a celestial backdrop: shape and shadow and substance, one fateful composition.

He’d once read that the telephone was the ultimate twentieth-century power symbol. In medieval times it had been the lance and the sword. Whoever commanded the most swords wielded the most power.

Now it was the telephone: life or death at the sound of the dial tone. The red phone sat on the President’s desk. Lift the receiver, say a few words, and millions would die, vaporized.

Lift this phone—his phone—and two had died. Hanchett, sated with sex, blinded by his own ego, had died in the gutter. Teresa Bell, haunted by her demons, had gotten his call, opened her door, smiled her madwoman’s smile—and died.

He got to his feet, walked a dozen steps to the far side of the room, turned, fixed his gaze on the telephone.

Two calls made …

One call remaining.

Before the police came again, there was one call yet to make.

But not here. Not yet. Not from this phone.

Even though it was a local call, it would doubtless be logged. Somewhere, on some phone company tape, the record would exist.

And yet, if they went back over the phone company records, the police would discover that, until Hanchett had died, they’d talked almost daily. So now it would be suspicious that they didn’t call each other, didn’t talk almost every day.

He realized that he was still standing staring at the phone, his back braced against the wall.

Back against the wall …

Was
his back against the wall?

A prisoner, awaiting death by firing squad, that was the meaning of the phrase. All pleas exhausted, all hope gone, the prisoner stood with his back to the wall, blindfolded.

As he stared at the phone, his eyes lost focus; the image of the phone blurred.

To call, or not to call …

Hamlet’s lament. Laurence Olivier with bleached blond hair, weighing his options, life or death.

Just as now—here—he was weighing his own options, calculating his chances, life or death.

No, not death. In California, only the indigent went to the gas chamber. Thank you, Governor Jerry Brown. Thank you, Justice Rose Bird.

Moving slowly, conscious that an effort of the will was required, he pushed himself away from the wall, returned to the chair beside the telephone, lowered himself into the chair.

Before he called her, he must first bring it all into focus. Sometimes it was essential that the chronology be complete.

He could vividly remember the words that had first touched fire to the fuse: “There’s the money,” she’d said, sugaring her espresso. That had been the beginning.

But where would it end?

In death?

Yes, surely in death.

After the first words spoken in the coffee shop, those words that seemed so innocuous now, it was then necessary that they speak of death. They’d been in bed. In the afterglow, he’d been lying on his back, fingers laced behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. She’d been lying on her side, turned away from him, aloof. Yet, making love, she’d been fierce, demanding everything, taking everything for herself.

Was that what had him hooked—that fierce, rapacious, headlong sexual greed? Or was it her utter ruthlessness, contemptuously undisguised?

Earlier in the evening, dressed in jeans and sweaters and running shoes, the uniform of the yuppie, they’d had pizza and gone to a movie on Union Street. Eating the pizza and drinking red wine, she’d been moody, preoccupied. After the movie, driving to her place, they’d hardly spoken. He’d debated the wisdom of questioning her. Would she flare up? The answer was inherent in the question: yes, she would flare up.