Play Dead (14 page)

“That is what I’m telling you. But I am also telling you to be very careful.”

He turns back to the game, thus announcing that my presence is no longer welcome. I turn and leave, and the two men follow me until I’m back in the main casino room.

I spot Vince at a craps table, his arm around the woman standing next to him. There is a large pile of chips in front of them. “Okay,” I say. “I spoke to him. Let’s get out of here.”

He turns and looks at me, then at the woman he has his arm around, then back at me. Finally he picks up one of his chips and hands it to me. “Here, kid. Get yourself a cab.”

I
WAKE UP
to the whirring sound of my exercise bike.

It is not a sound that I hear frequently, since I have long treated the bike as a piece of furniture. Of course, it has more than just aesthetic value; I use the handlebars as a place to hang shirts.

Once I am able to pry my eyes open, I look over and see Laurie pedaling furiously. Her energy level is now inversely proportional to my self-esteem. We made love last night, and it left me so exhausted that it feels as if it will take someone with a shovel to get me out of bed. Yet either I have been unable to remotely tire Laurie out, or she is in a desperate rush to get somewhere but isn’t aware that the bike is stationary.

“What time is it?” I ask.

Laurie looks over at me, then at her watch, while continuing to pedal. “Four thirty.”

I look toward the window. “And it’s dark already?”

“In the morning, Andy. It’s four thirty in the morning.”

Tara and Reggie are paying no attention to this repartee; they are sound asleep on their beds. “Are you delivering newspapers or just out for a scenic ride?”

“I’m sorry, Andy. I exercise when I’m feeling stress.”

“You exercise every day of your life.”

“But I usually wait until six.”

“Why so stressed?” I ask.

She stops pedaling, comes over and sits on the side of the bed. “Today is my last day here. I leave tomorrow morning.”

I knew that, but it still hits me like a two-by-four in the head. I say this despite having no idea what a two-by-four actually is.

“How about if we spend it together?” I ask.

She smiles. “I’d like that. What did you have in mind?”

“Well, how about if we get dressed and go into the city?” I don’t have to specify which city; any time someone in North Jersey mentions “the city,” they’re talking about New York.

Laurie reacts, surprised that I would say that, since she knows I’m not a big fan of driving into the city. “What for?”

“I thought maybe we could spend some time in the Bronx talking to people who knew one of the guys that tried to kill me.”

She smiles again. “You really know how to show a girl a good time.”

I shrug. “I’m just an incurable romantic.”

Antwan Cooper, the driver for Archie Durelle the night they shot at Sam Willis and me, lived on Andrews Avenue in the Bronx. It is just across the street from the campus of Bronx Community College, which took it over from NYU in the seventies.

The campus seems like an idyllic oasis in the midst of what is a very depressed, run-down area. The people who live in houses like Antwan’s have a hell of a lot more to worry about in their daily lives than chemistry homework.

Laurie and I pull up in front of the house, which seems to defy the laws of physical construction just by the fact that it is standing. There are holes in the structure where there should not be holes, and boards over where there should be holes, such as the windows. Above the front door there is the outline of Greek lettering, indicating that this was once a fraternity or sorority house.

Sitting on the stairs is a very large young man who looks frozen in time, like a statue. His 250 or so pounds are sort of folded over, his chin resting almost on his knees. His clothing is nondescript except for a Mets hat and outlandish new sneakers that probably set him back two hundred and fifty dollars. He gives absolutely no indication that he has even seen us pull up, or that he is alive.

We get out of the car, and I immediately realize that Laurie and I are about to reverse the traditional male- female roles, as we always do in situations like this. I am by nature a physical coward, and what I perceive to be dangerous surroundings intimidate me. She is a trained police officer, used to threatening situations, and if she is worried, she certainly does not show it. Laurie and I both know that I’m glad she’s here.

I am still somewhat nervous about this. We are going to try to talk to people who were friends or family of a man who tried to murder me, who was killed in the process, and we are doing so in a place that does not exactly look open and inviting.

“We don’t need to be doing this,” I say.

“It’ll be fine, Andy.”

“We haven’t even gotten the new trial.”

Before she can answer, a car pulls up behind ours, and Marcus gets out. He most likely has judged this to be a time when staying in the background is not enough, and he wants to be present and accounted for if unpleasantness should break out. Suffice it to say that his presence changes my outlook somewhat.

I dare somebody to mess with Marcus and me.

Laurie and I approach the house, and Statue Man finally moves, albeit slightly. He tilts his head to follow our progress, and the look on his face is not particularly welcoming.

“Can you tell us what apartment Antwan Cooper lived in?”

“Get lost.”

“We’re looking for someone who knew him, maybe a family member that we can talk to.”

“Get fucking lost,” he says, slowly standing up. This is not going well.

“Tell him the number.” It’s Marcus’s voice; he has approached and is standing just behind us.

Statue Man looks over and sees Marcus. He sizes him up for a moment, then looks back at me. “Two B,” says Statue Man.

We reach the front door and I attempt to ring the bell, though no sound can be heard. Laurie doesn’t do or say anything, so I knock on the door a few times, but it doesn’t seem to attract any attention. “We appear to be thwarted,” I say.

Laurie frowns and turns the doorknob. The door swings wide open. I graciously let her enter first. The interior is predictably depressing, with a narrow, dark corridor with six apartment doors, and a staircase leading upstairs. Since Statue Man said we should go to 2-B, we head up the stairs. As we climb, I look back and see that Marcus has taken a position at the bottom of the stairs, thereby positioning himself as an impenetrable barrier between Statue Man and us. If the Alamo walls were that reliable, Davy Crockett would have spent his declining years in a condo in Boca Raton.

The second floor is identical to the first, and the B apartment is the second door on the right. Since I am apparently the designated knocker, I try my luck.

“Yeah?” a voice calls out from within the apartment.

“We want to talk to you about Antwan Cooper,” I say through the door.

“You cops?”

That’s a tough question to answer, and not just because Laurie is a cop and I’m not. It’s tough because I’m not sure which answer will get whoever’s inside to open the door and talk to us.

I decide to avoid the question. “Can we come in?”

“Nobody’s stopping you.”

I take that as an invitation to open the door, but Laurie motions for me to wait a moment. She has apparently decided that caution is called for, and she takes out her handgun, concealing it at her side. She gives me the okay, and I open the door.

The apartment is sparsely furnished but looks neat and cared for. Sitting at a small table is a teenager, maybe fifteen years old. He is obviously whom we were speaking with, but his voice sounds older. His eyes look even older than that.

“So, you cops?”

“I’m a lawyer,” I say. “Did you know Antwan Cooper?”

“They want to talk about Pops,” he says, and I realize he’s talking to someone else. I look over, and there’s a middle-aged woman standing in the doorway between this room and the kitchen. She is holding a kitchen towel in her hand.

She looks at us. “What about?”

“Was he your husband?”

She looks at me evenly and says with considerable pride, “He was. Now, who are you?”

“My name is Andy Carpenter. This is Laurie Collins. Just before your husband died, the passenger in the car he was driving tried to kill me.”

“I’m sorry about that. I’m sure Antwan meant you no harm.”

“Do you know why he was driving the car?”

“That man paid him five hundred dollars.”

“Archie Durelle?”

“I didn’t know his name,” she says. “But Antwan knew him. He trusted him. Said when you fight next to a man, that was all you needed to know about him.”

“Were they in the Army together?” Laurie asks.

“Yes. But Antwan didn’t recognize him at first. I think ’cause he hadn’t seen him in a long time. He just showed up one day, said he needed a favor, and that he would pay Antwan five hundred dollars.”

“And Antwan didn’t ask what the favor was?”

She looks at me as if I’m not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. “It was five hundred dollars.”

“What happened to the money?” Laurie asks.

“He had it when he died. You think I’ll ever see it?” It’s a rhetorical question; she knows the answer all too well.

I reach into my pocket and take out a fistful of cash. I’ve taken to carrying a lot of it lately, ever since a cash machine ate my card a couple of months ago. I have a little over six hundred dollars, which I put on the table. “Thank you for the information,” I say. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

As we turn to leave, the teenager says, “How’d you get past Little Antwan downstairs?”

He must be talking about Statue Man, who could only be called “little” in comparison to the Chrysler Building. “You call him ‘Little Antwan’?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s downstairs talking to little Marcus.”

We leave, and once we close the door behind us, Laurie says with a smile, “Now you’re paying for information?”

“Why not? Who am I,
Sixty Minutes
?”

L
AURIE COMES BACK
to the office with me for a meeting with Kevin.

These meetings are basically of dubious value, since all we seem to do is list the things we don’t understand in our preparation for a trial we don’t know will even take place.

It’s the first chance I’ve had to tell Kevin about my meeting with Petrone. When I get to the part where Petrone denied trying to have me killed, Kevin asks, “And you believed him?”

“I did.”

“Just because that’s what he said?”

I nod. “As stupid as it might sound, yes. I’ve had dealings with him before, and he’s always told me the truth, or nothing at all. And he had nothing to gain by lying.”

“Andy, the guy has had a lot of people murdered. How many confessions has he made?”

“I think Andy’s right,” Laurie says. “If he admitted that he was behind the shooting, there’s nothing Andy could have done about it. He could still easily have denied it later. And if he is trying to scare Andy off of the case, saying that he was out to kill him would have been more effective.”

I nod. “You got that right.”

“Okay,” Kevin says. “Petrone wasn’t trying to kill you, but somebody was. Unless it was a random shooting.”

I shake my head. “No chance. Durelle specifically went to hire Cooper to be the driver for the attempt. He paid him five hundred bucks. Random shooters don’t do that kind of thing.”

“So the question is, who was Durelle and what did he have against you?”

“Right,” I say. “And I’m betting the answer has to do with the Army. That’s how Durelle knew Cooper, and Durelle was in the service when he apparently faked his own death. And it also might explain why the government was tapping my phone. Cindy Spodek said it could have been the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

“This sounds like a job for my brother-in-law,” Kevin says. “I’m glad I send him a birthday card every year.”

Kevin’s brother-in-law is Colonel Franklin Prentice, stationed at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. He was nice enough to help us on a previous case, and at the time he was only a lieutenant colonel. Now that’s he’s moved up a notch, maybe we can get him to solve the case for us.

Kevin will call him to learn all he can about Archie Durelle, the shooter who was killed in the helicopter crash and who came back to life. I’m particularly interested in whatever contact he and Antwan Cooper had in the service, and who else was on the copter with Durelle when it went down. If Durelle didn’t die, maybe they didn’t, either.

Laurie and I head home to enjoy our last night together before she goes back to Wisconsin. Wild and crazy pair that we are, we’re going to spend it by ordering in a pizza and watching a movie on DVD. We each have our role to play. I order the pizza and she chooses the movie.

She chooses
Inherit the Wind,
which is one of the few lawyer movies that I can tolerate. I especially like when Spencer Tracy, playing Clarence Darrow, gets to crucify the opposing lawyer, William Jennings Bryan, played by Fredric March. I’ve wanted to cross-examine a few prosecutors in my day. The fact that the prosecutor then literally collapses and dies when making a speech in the courtroom is as good an ending as you’re going to find anywhere.

We eat the pizza while watching the movie, carefully saving the crusts for Tara and Reggie. They have completely different eating styles. Tara virtually inhales the crusts in a matter of moments, while Reggie savors them, chewing slowly and carefully, then licking his lips clean after each one. The net effect is to have Tara finished and watching him, probably hoping in vain that he won’t finish. It must drive her nuts.

Laurie and I share a bottle of Rombauer chardonnay, though the dogs don’t get to sample it. Our drinking styles mirror the way the dogs eat. Laurie slips her wine slowly, while I chug it down like an ice-cold Pepsi on a hot day.

I know nothing about wine, but this tastes pretty good. Of course, in this setting I could serenely sip gasoline. “Mr. Carpenter, might I recommend an ’88 Chevron? Or perhaps a ’91 Texaco? Both are fruity and quite flammable.”

Laurie doesn’t say much all night, and it isn’t until we’ve made love that she decides it’s time to talk. It’s unfortunate, because I have already come to the conclusion that it’s time to sleep.

“Andy, I’m going to tell you something because I think we should be open and honest.”

Uh-oh,
I think, bracing for what is going to come next.

“I’m taking a risk by saying this.”

I don’t say anything, because I find it hard to talk and cringe at the same time.

“Andy, I think that if you told me the only way to keep us together would be for me to move back here, I would move. That’s how important you are to me.”

This conversation just took a turn for the better. “I feel the same way about you,” I say, and then worry that I may have just offered to move to Wisconsin.

If I made the offer, thankfully she doesn’t pick up on it. “I love where I live, Andy, and I love my job, but I would give it all up if that were necessary to keep you.”

My mind is racing for a way to appear understanding and generous and yet actually get her to move back here. “I would never want you to give that up,” I say. My mind obviously didn’t pull off the trick.

“And you’ll tell me if that changes? Because right now I love you more than ever.”

“I’ll tell you,” I say, knowing I won’t, because then she’d love me less than ever.

In the morning we have a quick breakfast, and I drive Laurie to the airport. We don’t talk about when we will see each other again, because we both know it might be quite a while. She’s used up her vacation, and if we get the new trial for Richard, I’m going to be intensely occupied with it.

I’ll still be jealous and worried about what she might be doing in Wisconsin, and who she might be doing it with. That usually begins about twenty-four hours after she gets on the plane to go home. She has never given me any reason to be concerned; my jealousy is more about my insecurity than her lack of trustworthiness.

“I wish I could stay and help you,” Laurie says.

“You’ve got your own criminals to catch.”

“You’ll keep me updated on what’s going on?”

She’s feeling left out; she’s not used to seeing me work a case without her having a role as my investigator. “I will.”

“I’m sorry, Andy. I’m having a tough time with this.”

“Move back here, Laurie. That’s the only way I’ll ever be completely happy.” That’s what my mind is thinking. What my mouth winds up saying is, “It’ll be fine, Laurie. It’ll be fine.”

And maybe it will. And maybe it won’t.