Open Season (40 page)

Leatherton had been open since eight o’clock, but I’d wanted every one to get settled before making my play. I’d also wanted to make sure that Teicher would be there. His secretary had assured me he would when I’d anonymously phoned twenty minutes before.

We drove up, lights flashing, and clustered around the two entrances—the van, Tyler’s car, and one patrol car out front, the rest covering the back. I led my four men, armed with Winchester pumps, through the lobby, past the startled receptionist and up the stairs to the top floor. There I showed my badge to the woman at the first desk I saw and demanded to see Teicher. She looked at the badge, at the guns, at her phone and then silently pointed down the hallway. We marched off like a bunch of commandos in search of a battlefield, and I threw open the double doors at the end of the hall.

We fanned out into a large, square, dark-paneled office that looked as if it had been helicoptered in from some New York corporate penthouse. It made Cioffi’s digs look humble by comparison. Whatever other philosophies fueled Leatherton’s machine, one of them was obviously to pamper the executives. In this case, the executive was a middle-sized man, both in girth and height, with a swept-back shock of dazzling white hair and a wide-open mouth. He was standing next to a ping-pong-table-sized desk, holding a folder in his hand.

I pointed to Tyler. “Watch the door.” Tyler made a nice snappy move with his shotgun and put his shoulder against the doorjamb, looking fully prepared to die for the cause.

I crossed over to the man, whose mouth was beginning to close, while at the same time ordering one of the patrolmen to close the curtains. “Are you John Teicher?”

“Yes. What’s going on?”

I grabbed his elbow and propelled him to the corner of the room away from the window. I noticed the patrolman looking through the curtains. “See anything?”

“No, sir. All clear.”

Teicher was now standing with his back against the wall. “What’s this all about?”

I ignored him and pulled my radio from its pouch. “Red Two, this is Red One. Do you read?”

I had to admire the response. Billy Manierre was enjoying himself. “Roger, Red One. That’s affirmative. The perimeter’s secure. No sign of hostiles. I’ve opened a field patch to headquarters.” Total baloney, of course—we were all on the same frequency.

“Roger. Red One out.” I pocketed the radio. “Mr. Teicher. We have strong reason to believe your life is in danger. Are you aware of the man the newspapers have identified as the Masked Avenger—Colonel Henry Stark?”

He blinked several times and wet his lips. “I’ve read something about it, yes.”

“Well, we believe he has made the connection between you and his daughter’s murderer, Mr. Cioffi. He has vowed to kill everyone even remotely involved in her death, and you are very high on that list.”

I was crowding him, and he started to step away but bumped into the wall. His eyes were flitting around the room, as if looking for a place to rest. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Come on, Mr. Teicher. Cioffi and I talked before he was shot through the head with an explosive bullet. Your name, shall we say, came up rather prominently. Now, if you want to play dumb, that’s your prerogative, but I doubt you’ll live to see the end of the week. This man’s very good.”

Now was the break point. This had all been pretty hokey, but I was hoping he had been spending the last few weeks watching the waters slowly rise around him. Unless he was made of stern stuff indeed, he had to be feeling pretty isolated by now.

It worked. His head suddenly slumped to his chest, and he rubbed his forehead with his hand. “Christ. What a nightmare.”

“Then, just for the record, you admit to knowing that Cioffi killed Pam Stark and to covering up that fact?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’ll have to place you under arrest.”

He nodded dumbly, and I read him his rights. After he’d acknowledged them, I steered him to the sofa lining the wall to his right. “You want to talk about it now, or wait for a lawyer?”

He sat down heavily and laid his head back so that he was staring at the ceiling. “How much do you know?”

I thought hard for a second, deciding how far I should stick my neck out. “I know you’d been having an affair with Pam Stark at the time of her death and that she was pregnant with your child. I also know that Cioffi put the squeeze on you for a promotion and a steady payoff. What I don’t know is how you tie in to her murder.”

He stared at me anxiously. “I had nothing to do with that. I was in love with her. I was going to divorce my wife and marry her.” He looked away, his face creased with sorrow, his voice suddenly low. “I guess in that sense I did have a hand in her murder.”

“How so?”

“Cioffi had been blackmailing me with the affair. Somehow he’d found out about us. It was odd, actually. It wasn’t like anything you see in the movies. He was very polite about it, and not very greedy. In a funny kind of way, I liked him then. He was the one person I could talk to about Kimberly—I mean Pam Stark. He would listen and sympathize and sometimes even give me advice. Kimberly could be pretty demanding and she was a lot…” He groped for the word. “… Younger than I was; I mean in her tastes, if you get my meaning.”

“Sexually,” I muttered.

“Yes. Her needs were considerable. Anyway, things changed all at once, it seemed. Cioffi became quite ill—I think it was his asthma—and began taking massive doses of medicine. It changed him completely, physically and emotionally. He was like a temperamental time bomb. He became very suspicious of me and insecure about his position. I noticed he began to follow me around after work. He also began visiting Kimberly—Pam—and making friends with her. That upset me a bit. And then, right in the middle of it all, she became pregnant.”

“Did you think Cioffi might have been the father?”

He looked at me wide-eyed. “Oh, Lord, no. She thought he was a joke; she would never have done that with him—at least not then. No, she loved me, I think; or that’s what she said. In retrospect, I think I wanted to see more than there was. But anyhow, she wanted to get married and have the child.”

He sighed and shifted his weight. “At first, I couldn’t see it. I do love my wife, too, you see. And we have children. But Kimberly was like something I’d never dreamed could be mine. I couldn’t imagine giving her up, even though I subconsciously knew she’d probably tire of me before long. So I told her I’d do it. That’s what made Cioffi kill her. That’s how I’m responsible.”

“He saved the golden egg by killing the goose.”

He gave me an odd look, which I suppose I deserved. “I guess so. He was really quite unbalanced. It was like being with a schizophrenic, listening to him describe every detail. He demanded that I know it all—every move.”

“He framed Bill Davis.”

“The black man? Yes. Knocked him out with her lamp and dragged him into the room, scratched Kimberly’s dead fingernails across his face, left incriminating evidence all over. He was like a madman; completely demented. He said he wanted the scene to look as gruesome as possible so that no one would ever forget. But it was more personal than that. I realized he’d harbored a real hatred of me all that time, despite his amiability—he hated me for my money, my relationship with Kimberly, even my health. He told me time and again how he was going to end up in a wheelchair and that I was going to pay for that. He told me he did things to Kimberly, and that she’d done things to him, that were guaranteed to get at me. He was totally unbalanced.”

“What do you mean, ‘he did things to Kimberly’?”

He rubbed his forehead again. “They were sexual in nature. When he first came to see her that night, I guess he threatened her or something. He said she made love to him—orally, that is. He claimed it was her choice, but I don’t believe it. Then he killed her, tied her down, arranged the scene, and finally he masturbated on her—just before he left. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He was watching me like a hawk as he was telling me all this, looking for my reaction. I felt I was with a monster.”

He was slumped over in his seat by now, his hands clasped behind his neck, as if warding off an avalanche. He raised his head and sought my eyes with his. Tears were on his cheeks. “I was terrified. Terrified of him, of what he’d done, of what it would mean if it came out. I didn’t know what to do.”

“So you did nothing.”

“No. Not even after he was off the drug and was normal again and tried to make amends.”

“Make amends?”

“Well, that’s what it seemed like. He became friendly again, dropping by here after hours, telling me about his stock market coups. But I remained scared of him forever after. It was like waiting for Mr. Hyde to reappear; instead, it was Colonel Stark who appeared.” He paused and wiped his eyes.

“What happened when it started coming out—when Stark did his little number and the newspapers grabbed hold of it?”

He gave an enormous sigh. He seemed utterly exhausted. “We were like two men in a sinking lifeboat; totally different from one another but bound together, you know? We spent more time together these last few weeks than we had since Kimberly’s death. I never would have imagined any of this happening to me—not in a million years… I’m glad it’s over.”

“You may not feel that way when all this comes out.”

“I don’t have much choice, do I?”

“Not any more.” Unlike, I thought, ten minutes ago.

I GROPED FOR THE PHONE
with my eyes still closed, hoping the call would be brief enough that I could handle it without fully waking up.

“Gunther?” It was James Dunn.

I opened my eyes. “What?”

“What the hell are you doing? You sound half asleep.”

“I am. Tony sent me home. Said I was a hazard to operations.” I looked at my watch. It was seven o’clock at night.

“Sorry. Thought you’d want to know the judge kicked Teicher loose at the arraignment.”

“What?” I sat straight up.

“Released on his own recognizance.”

“But what about protecting him from Stark?”

“Stark has made no threat against him, real or implied, as the saying goes.”

“But he’s a witness, goddamn it.”

“To what? All the principals are dead.”

“How about Bill Davis?”

“He’s being processed out anyway, and as quietly as possible I might add. That’s a hint, by the way, in case you decide to rub noses with Katz again.”

“Where’s Teicher now?”

“I think he went home.”

I hung up and dialed Brandt. “You hear about Teicher?”

“Yeah. I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“Dunn did the honors. What are we going to do about it?”

There was a pause. “Not much we can do.”

“Stark’s going to kill him.”

“Why? Teicher was going to marry the girl. That’s hardly a killing offense, even if it didn’t work out.”

“Stark doesn’t know that; he just knows Teicher knocked her up—that’s a capital crime in his book. Jesus, Tony, what the hell have you been doing all this time? Paying me lip service? Why did you let me do all that razzle-dazzle with the shotguns at Teicher’s office?”

“You told me that was to squeeze him for a confession.”

“Well, it was, but all I did was soup it up a little. The threat is real, believe me.”

There was a momentary silence at the other end. “What makes you so sure?”

I couldn’t believe I had to replow this field. The frustration made me blurt out: “Because by approaching Teicher like a platoon of Marines, we’ve all but challenged Stark to knock him off. I thought you understood that.”

Brandt’s voice went totally flat. “It wasn’t clear. Why did you go home without laying it out?”

“I thought Teicher would be locked up for a while. The arraignment wasn’t supposed to be until tomorrow. Look, I don’t know what I thought. Maybe I got cold feet, setting Teicher up as bait.”

“You sure choose your moments to be coy.”

I let a petulant flash of anger cover my guilt. “I told you he was in danger. I told Dunn that, too. What the hell did you guys think? That I’d suddenly gone soft in the head? Hasn’t Stark proved he’s nutty enough for something like that? Teicher’s all we have left, for God’s sake.”

“All right, all right, let’s drop it. You challenged him to a duel and Teicher’s the prize. We better get him back under cover. I’ll send a patrol out to his house now to sit on him until you get there.”

I fumbled with my clothes in a blind fury. Once I’d set the ball in motion, I should have covered it like a blanket. There was no excuse for slacking off at the last moment. I’d been complacent and stupid and scared to play by Stark’s rules to the end. As I slammed the door behind me, I inanely swore it wouldn’t happen again.

As it turned out, I was lucky. I found Teicher intact at his home, a patrol car parked out front. But he was obviously not a happy man.

“What do you want?” A superior emphasis was placed on the “you.”

“I just heard you were out of custody. I came to arrange security.”

He gave me a sour expression. “From what my lawyer tells me, you’re the one I should need security against.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That you lured me into confessing; it was blatant entrapment, and it’ll get thrown out of court. He said if I’d kept my mouth shut, my wife would still be with me and I’d still have a job.”

I was surprised at the speed of his demise. “You travel with a fast crowd.”

“Fuck you, too.”

“None of that abrogates your responsibility to Bill Davis.”

“Don’t give me that.” He turned his back and walked into the house. I followed him. “The only novelty of a man like that being in jail is that he’s innocent of this particular crime.”

I liked him better when he was a bowl of jelly. “I don’t really care if your case is thrown out of court. My job now is keeping you alive.”

He stopped and faced me. “That’s another thing my lawyer pointed out. Why the hell would Stark want me dead? He got his revenge.”

I felt like the boy who’d cried “Wolf” once too often. “That’s not how he thinks. He’s killed or beaten up every person who had anything to do with Pam Stark, including most of the jurors who sent Bill Davis up the river. I watched him torture a man with a knife just for a little information. Do you really think he’s going to ignore some snotty rich adulterer who knocked up his daughter? Not hardly.”