Where Nobody Dies (8 page)

“Thank God!” My relief was genuine; it never occurred to me to hold them back. Now that I knew somebody upstairs was interested, that I wouldn't just be humored if I tried to tell the truth about Bellfield, it seemed one of my troubles was over. Just turn the tapes over to the proper authorities like a good little citizen and go about my business. Right?

Matt Riordan was not well-known as a good citizen. “Are you really that naïve?” he asked, his mouth a near-sneer.

“I'm naïve enough to want this dynamite of mine planted firmly under Ira Bellfield's chair instead of my own,” I retorted. “What do
you
think I should do with them, put them in my cassette deck along with Paul Simon?”

“Maybe. That might be as good a place as any for them until you make up your mind how to use them to your best advantage. Do you really want to hand over your bargaining chips without getting anything in return?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“How about an enforceable promise to really investigate Linda's death? Maybe even Brad's release—in return for which you'll guarantee them Ira Bellfield on toast. They'll go for it. They'll have to. Too many politicians have gotten elected on an anti-Bellfield platform not to.”

“It just seems so scuzzy. Bellfield's a bad dude, okay, but why can't they nail him on their own and investigate Linda's death because they're supposed to, not because I've got them by the shorts?”

Riordan grinned. “Why can't you stop talking like a fourteen-year-old chain snatcher?”

I grinned back. “Come off it, Matt,” I countered. “You know you're in this business for the same reason I am—you like the action.”

“True,” he acknowledged with a rueful smile. “It's like a surfer riding a wave—you can't control the force that moves you, but you
can
work it, glide along its edge, use its power to your own advantage.”

“Sounds dangerous, the way you put it.” My smile began to fade; there had been too many conversations lately in which I'd had the sense that Matt Riordan was heading his surfboard along giant waves too rough even for him to handle.

The court officer came into the hall to call Matt back inside.

“Think about what I said,” he cautioned, his eyes serious. “The game's called hardball, and if you want to survive as a criminal lawyer, you'll have to learn to play it.”

“What would you do if you had the tapes?” I asked.

The famous Riordan grin split his face. “What I always do—bluff.”

6

I hate open caskets. It's like watching someone become a junkie—a once-animated face is replaced by a permanent glassy stare.

I tried to tell myself I wasn't a ghoul, that I'd be at the funeral anyway, out of respect for my dead tenant. But it was no good; my eyes kept wandering from the casket to the mourners' faces. Which of them, I wondered, had she blackmailed? Which of them had hated her enough to kill?

Finally it was my turn to file past the bier. It was lined with gold satin; Linda would have approved of the way it flattered her coloring. But even the gold lining and the expert makeup job couldn't hide the tiny lines of discontent around the mouth, the crow's feet near the expressionless eyes. She had the hard permanent smile of a Barbie doll.

As I turned, I glimpsed Marcy and Dawn standing stiffly in the pew. Dawn towered over her tiny aunt; I had hardly recognized her in her tailored black suit. It was the first time I had ever seen her wearing clothes that fit. It was also the first time I had seen her hair styled. She had a grown-up air about her that went beyond clothes and hair. If, as Millay says, “childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies,” then Dawn was an exile.

I turned away after a brief nod to the chief mourners. I had come less to mourn than to watch. I resumed my seat in the fourth pew and scrutinized the people filing past the coffin.

I recognized Art Lucenti at once. Everyone in Brooklyn over the age of six knew Art. His face had beamed at us from our TV screens and our front pages; even our shopping bags proclaimed:
LUCENTI FOR CONGRESS
.
HE
'
S
YOUR
MAN
. His politician's smile was subdued as he walked slowly up to the coffin and gazed meaningfully down at the body of his late secretary. I could already hear the six o'clock news gushing over the congressman's touching grief at his tragic loss; we had already had camera crews on Court Street canvassing neighbors who had never met Linda Ritchie for their opinions about her violent death. I knew that whatever Art said for the cameras would reflect nothing of the relief he had to be feeling.

Aida followed him, looking as demure as possible in a black Chanel suit with a white ruffled blouse. As usual, you felt she could have taken the skirt a size larger. She tried to subdue her sexy walk, but the narrow skirt and high heels created their own engineering, and she attracted every male eye in the church. Yet at the same time there was a genuine reverence in her bowed head and respectful gaze. Her expression was unreadable; between her high-fashion makeup and enormous tinted glasses, she was inscrutable as a mannequin. Once past the coffin, Art took her arm and led her past Marcy and Dawn, where he murmured a few words and received a gracious nod from Marcy. Dawn, however, stared straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge his presence. In any other context it would have been deliberate rudeness; here it could be put down to sorrow.

I was still watching the Lucentis when I heard somebody say the name “Ira.” I turned to see a slight, balding man approaching the coffin. I stared in disbelief.
This
was the King Slumlord?
This
was the man whose goons and torches had terrorized whole neighborhoods? He looked like an accountant with ulcers. He looked like Maude's husband. He looked, I finally decided, like the voice on the tape.

Then I saw him peer down into the coffin. I was standing at just the right angle to see his profile. He pursed his lips ever so slightly, and I saw droplets fall into the casket. Ira Bellfield, blackmail victim, had just spit on the dead body of Linda Ritchie. Another line of Edna's came to me. “Brought to earth the arrogant brow,” I recited to myself, “and the withering tongue/chastened. Do your weeping now.”
Dirge
for a dead blackmailer.

What happened next I saw first as a flash of blue. It took me a moment to realize that what I was looking at were two uniformed corrections officers and, between them, handcuffed, stood Brad Ritchie.

A funeral order. It had to be. Impossible as it may seem, some lawyer had actually secured the court's permission for a man accused of his wife's murder to attend her funeral.

My only thought was for Dawn. Brad Ritchie apparently agreed. Passing the coffin without a glance, he headed straight for the first pew. The officers were hard put to keep up with his pace. Strain as I might, I could hear nothing of his conversation with Dawn. I saw his mouth work with the effort of keeping his tears back, and I saw him shake his head. Dawn reached out to him, only to have her arms virtually slapped back by one of the officers. Marcy turned sharply on him, and both officers hustled Brad away. Dawn turned a white, tearstained face in his direction, following him with her eyes. Then Dawn fell into the pew, head in hands, sobbing. Gone was her grown-up poise. Marcy stood protectively next to her niece, her hand poised over her shoulder, yet not touching the black suit jacket.

Then I saw Button. He was in the back pew, a smile of anticipation on his face. However Brad had come to the funeral, I reasoned, it was not against Button's wishes. And I thought
I
was a ghoul! Listening to Dawn's subsiding sobs, I felt a moment of pure hatred for Button. He had once done the same thing to me, treating me with little kindness after Nathan's death, just to see what my anger might produce. I'd long since forgiven him for that, recognizing the motive behind the cruelty. But this was different—he had his suspect, and it was a child he was hurting. I gave him a venomous look and got a subdued smirk in response. Button knew what he was doing all right!

After the service, people stood next to cars, deciding how to get to the gravesite. I had no car, so I waited, considering a cab. Button came up behind me. “Want a ride, Counselor?” he asked blandly.

“How could you—” I began, then stopped in mid-fury when I realized how predictable I was being.

“We can talk about it in the car,” he said, as though the matter were settled. Which it was; I needed the ride, and I was determined to get a few things off my chest. I opened the passenger door to the white Audi he indicated was his.

“I can't believe you did that,” I said coldly, “to a
kid
, for God's sake. What
are
you, anyway?”

The answer came as no surprise. “A cop,” he snapped. “A cop with a weak case. I was hoping for a nice spontaneous graveside confession. The kind some bright lawyer can't get thrown out on a technicality.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I remember how much you love lawyers.” Then the words registered. “What do you mean, weak case?”

“You shysters,” he began, but he grinned when he said it, “would call it circumstantial. What we have got,” he explained, “is one hell of a strong motive, which as you know cuts no ice in the courtroom, supported by fingerprints found in the deceased's apartment—”

“You're kidding,” I exclaimed. “Brad wasn't even supposed to know where she
lived
, let alone go inside.”

“Exactly,” he agreed. “And when he was first questioned, he stuck to the story that he didn't know her address. Then he broke down and admitted that he knew, but said he'd never been there. Then he changed his story again and said he'd been past the house but never inside. When he was confronted with the fingerprint evidence, he told us he'd broken in to check on who his wife's boyfriends were but said it happened a month before the murder.”

“Linda
was
broken into a couple of times,” I told him.

“Yeah,” Button said glumly. “We found the sixty-ones,” he added, referring to the police reports. So Linda had reported the crimes; that would lend credence to Brad's story.

“And there's nothing to show when the fingerprints were made?”

“You got it. Your tenant wasn't exactly housekeeper of the year. Those prints could have been there a month—as Ritchie's lawyer will undoubtedly tell the jury—in which case he might just beat the rap. Which, in my opinion, would be a crying shame. So I brought him to the party to see if looking at his dead wife and seeing his kid might not jar loose a little truth. It still might,” he shrugged. “It's not over yet.”

“There's something else you ought to know,” I said. I told Button everything Dawn had told me the night of the murder, about how Brad had planned a kidnap. “And another thing,” I went on. “Why was Dawn sent to Marcy's that night? She only went there when Linda had a date, so who was Linda meeting? Find that out,” I finished triumphantly, “and you might find another motive for murder.” I didn't add, you might find Art Lucenti.

“The kid doesn't know,” Button said. “I asked her. Besides, maybe she had an appointment with her ex-husband. Ever think of that?”

“If Brad so much as
thought
about visiting Linda,” I countered, “she dug out her order of protection and had him arrested. Ever think of that?”

Any ideas I might have had about turning over the blackmail materials died a quick death. Button was still convinced that Brad was guilty. It would take more than speculation on my part to open his mind.

As we pulled into a small parking area in the cemetery, I saw Marcy in heated debate with an elderly woman. My heart sank. Ma Ritchie. Brad's mother. I jumped out of the car and ran to where the two women stood. It looked like trouble.

I'd run into Ma Ritchie in court a few times. Once she'd even brought a petition to get Dawn's custody transferred to her if the court wouldn't give it to Brad. “You don't understand,” she sobbed into her handkerchief. “That child is my life. It's one thing for you, you've got a good job and no husband, you don't care, but I spend all week looking forward to my granddaughter's visits. And that sister of yours was going to take her away from me …” She broke off in a fresh flood of tears. Marcy, standing stiffly at attention, arms folded, looked distinctly uncomfortable in the face of so much uncontrolled emotion.

“Please, Mrs. Ritchie,” I murmured, “this isn't the time or the place.”

Mrs. Ritchie looked up through red-rimmed eyes. “I know,” she sobbed. “I just can't help it. My poor boy in jail …” Her voice trailed off. “Some people just don't understand a mother's heart. All I wanted was for Dawnie to spend the weekend with her grandma. Was that so much to ask?” She shot me a look of mute appeal, forgetting for the moment that as Linda's lawyer, I was the enemy.

“I told you before,” Marcy replied, spacing her words in a way that spoke of controlled frustration, “she has a very important tennis match in White Plains on Saturday.”

“Would it be so terrible”—again Ma Ritchie appealed to me as though I were an arbitrator—“if she missed one little tennis game?”

Even I knew that at Dawn's level, no match could be brushed aside as “one little tennis game,” but I was unprepared for the controlled fury of Marcy's reply.

“Dawn
will
play that match, Mrs. Ritchie,” she replied coldly. “And the court will decide how much visitation you will have in future.” Her face was implacable. I bet her Madison Avenue competition knew that look well.

“She'll be coming to live with me,” Mrs. Ritchie announced, her damp eyes wary of the challenge she knew must come. “No judge could keep her from me now.”

“We'll see about that,” cut in a steely voice. Marcy faced the woman with determined patience. “I have de facto custody, and I think Ms. Jameson here can persuade the court to make it de jure.” She turned to me. “Will my retainer,” she asked, “cover the cost of a custody petition?”