Immaculate Deception

by Warren Adler

  “My word worth shit? Is that what you’re saying? think the old Eggplant’s gonna blow it in a moment of extreme vulnerability.” He pointed the panatela in her direction, smoke oozing from his nostrils. “Gotta remember, sergeant. It’s your badge gave that word, not your person. There is a chain of command here. You give your word, you speak for me. For all of us. Capish?”

  “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t want to destroy . . . oh shit.”

  “I don’t want to hear, woman,” the Eggplant hissed through clenched teeth.

  “I was just buying your point of view,” Fiona said, caught in the web of her own making, unable to extricate herself. Just like a woman, she mocked. Again, her mother’s voice tumbled from the void. Women are different Fiona. Never forget that.

  “You are procedurally correct,” Fiona said, uncomfortable under his scrutiny.

  “Which supersedes your personal word.”

  “All right then,” she said feeling her throat constrict. Once removed, he would never be constrained to protect Charlie Rome if his own career demanded it. Information was ambition’s most effective weapon, a double-edged sword. He would use it if he had to.

  “Don’t tell me,” he snapped, taking a deep pull on his cigar. Again he pointed it in her direction.

  “Is that an order?”

  He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, opened it, showed his badge, then flung it into the wastebasket.

  “Hell, no.” He smiled. She got the obvious symbolism.

  “You can be one hell of a ball buster when you want to be,” she sighed, relieved. He fished his badge out of the basket.

  “Next time. No word. Nobody gives words without authorization from on high.”

  “Got it, chief.”

  “Question is, sergeant. Can we sleep nights on this one?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  At that moment, the telephone on the Eggplant’s desk erupted. He picked it up.

  “Yeah,” he barked, handing her the instrument.

  “Sorry, Fi. We’ve got to talk.” It was Cates, agitated and secretive.

  “Sure.”

  “We clear?”

  The Eggplant had directed his attention to some paperwork on his desk.

  “Yes.”

  “I got something. It’ll knock your socks off.”

  “So have I,” she said. Had her word included Cates?

  “Where?” she asked.

  “Sherry’s. Leave now.”

  She hung up.

  “Cates up to something?” the Eggplant asked indifferently.

  “Not really,” she said calmly. The fact that Cates had insisted on rerouting the call to the Eggplant’s office had obviously increased its level of importance.

  “You get the paperwork ready,” the Eggplant said without looking up. “First thing tomorrow. I’ve got an appointment with hizzoner and I want to lay it on his desk.”

  “I’ll do that,” she said, hiding her agitation.

  “All in all, sergeant. I’m pissed off . . .” He paused. “But I got no complaints,” the Eggplant said, looking up briefly. “Our game is catching the bastards.”

  “And leaving the politics to the politicians.”

  “You got it . . . sister.”

  It was near as he ever could get to a meaningful heartfelt spoken compliment. He quickly returned his gaze to the papers on his desk and she let herself out of the office.

  26

  “Leaching,” Cates said. It was his first word of response, except for a muffled greeting. He looked brooding and introspective when she first spotted him sitting at a back booth at Sherry’s. Nor had he brightened when she came forward and slid into the booth facing him.

  “That’s it,” she said. “All this angst for leaching.”

  “It’s an industrial process.” He caught Sherry’s eye and she waddled from around the counter to pour them two cups of coffee, offering no greeting. Surliness was her trademark. But she did know cops, could read their faces and body language and had often proved her loyalty by generosity.

  “You know leaching?” Fiona asked Sherry.

  “Yeah. Pain in the ass deadbeats,” she snapped, not cracking a smile, parading her outward pose of nastiness as she waddled back behind the counter.

  “It’s a process used in gold mining,” Cates said, taking a sip of coffee and watching Fiona’s face.

  “Metallurgy. You called me in the chief’s office for metallurgy?”

  Part of the game, she knew. He was deliberately drawing it out, requiring such a put-down comment, warming up the information, setting the stage, preparing her. Instinctively, she knew he was getting ready to throw a bomb.

  “I think I was wrong,” he said. “From the beginning. Dead wrong.”

  She felt the heartbeat in her throat. You can’t, she thought.

  “Call it an accidental discovery. The unexplainable meant to be.”

  “Will you cut the horseshit, Cates,” Fiona hissed.

  “I was just sitting there,” he said ignoring her comment. “In Rome’s outer office. Waiting to see this fellow who could explain the mysteries of abortion politics. Maybe, as you said, we were missing something. Keep an open mind. The slogan of Fiona FitzGerald. Always an open mind. Did you know that in Congress, the abortion battle lines are drawn around funding abortions for poor kids.”

  “Next thing you’ll start reading me Roe v. Wade, Cates, for crying out loud.”

  “I was just sitting there shooting the breeze with this cute little black receptionist . . .”

  He never shoots the breeze, Fiona thought. Nothing he does is without purpose. She did not interrupt.

  “You know chitchat. She started to give me opinions about her boss.”

  “Rome?”

  “She worshipped him. Thought he was real cool. He has a truly gung-ho staff.” He shook his head and smiled. “It’s her they can’t stand.”

  “Mrs. Rome?”

  “Herself.”

  “What can’t they stand?”

  “Calls ten, twenty times a day. One of these real possessive ladies. Gets mad when this kid says the congressman is out. ‘Well, find him.’ Kid’s a real mimic.”

  “Does she call mornings?”

  “Mostly.” He looked puzzled. “How did you know that?”

  “Just tell it, for chrissakes,” Fiona said curtly.

  “Well, this Rome lady, according to the receptionist is apparently real rude. The kid comes in at seven-thirty. When she first came to work for Rome about two years ago, Rome was always in the office ahead of her. Real early bird. That stopped about a year ago. He started to stroll in about nine, nine-thirty. By then, Mrs. Rome had called six or seven times, getting nastier and nastier.”

  “Then it began again,” Fiona said. “Rome coming in early. Say about right after Frankie died.”

  “On the money. You’re a clairvoyant, Fi.” He looked at her with mock suspicion, cocking his head. “Now when Mrs. Rome called the receptionist could put her right through. No more lip from Madame Nasty. Not in the mornings, anyway.” He looked at her and his eyes narrowed. “How did you know that?”

  “That confirms it.” Fiona said suddenly elated. “Mornings he spent with Frankie. After her death he was back on schedule.”

  “I was heading in that direction,” Cates said, genuinely surprised. “But you said confirmed. That implies a lot more than theory.”

  “I did better than that. I got a confession. Heart to heart. Person to person.” She lowered her voice. “The man emptied himself, poured it out.”

  “Rome?”

  She remembered her earlier discussion with the Eggplant. We don’t give word without authorization from on high. She nodded.

  “You’re kidding. He went that far?”

  “As far as you can go,” she said.

  “Official. In writing.”

  “Wasn’t necessary.”

  “He turn himself in?” Cates asked. He was acting oddly, stunned.
/>
  “Why would he do that?”

  “I thought you said he confessed.”

  “He did. He was her lover. They met mornings. I think you’ve just confirmed it. I hadn’t checked that part, you see. It did worry me a little. But now you’ve settled that point.” Something continued to nag her. Rome had told her that Barbara did not know, had never found out. How had he put it? He was “thankful” that Barbara had never given him grounds for suspicion. Thank God for that, he had said. According to him that was the part that had troubled him most. It wasn’t only his career. It would hurt Barbara. Why punish Barbara? he had said. The conversation with Rome only a few hours ago was recycling at high speed.

  “So Barbara Rome was indeed suspicious,” Fiona said.

  “I still don’t understand,” Cates replied, obviously confused. “You said, ‘confessed.’ ”

  “To being her lover, yes.”

  “We’re talking murder here,” Cates said. “Did he confess that?”

  “Afraid not,” Fiona said. “But you just put a whole new complexion on the case. You implied that Mrs. Rome suspected that Mr. Rome was catting around.” She waved her hand suddenly like a traffic cop stopping traffic. “Did the girl, the receptionist, say anything else about Mrs. Rome’s morning calls?”

  “Only that during that period, when Rome was coming in late, the calls had gotten progressively persistent and rude.”

  “That had to mean that she didn’t know,” Fiona said, somewhat relieved. “If she knew she would have rushed downstairs to Frankie’s apartment with a rolling pin. You had me going for a moment, pal. We’ve just declared the matter suicide. The Eggplant and I. Before a witness, no less. May Carter.” She paused. “And tomorrow we give him the paperwork to present to hizzoner.”

  “Some partner,” Cates said. “Least you could have done was consulted me.”

  “I had no choice. She was threatening to go to the media with her cockamamie theory about a hit man. I needed to unload her wagons. Besides, you were suicide’s number one fan. From the go.” She felt her venom rising. She needed support from him, not opposition. “You should be happy to end the damned thing. Stop spinning our wheels. Get off the political trolley. I can tell you one thing. The old Eggplant was relieved.”

  Cates watched her over his coffee cup. He had taken another deep sip, but instead of replacing the cup in his saucer, he held it, looking skeptical.

  “Well she could have committed suicide,” Fiona pressed, her anxiety level rising. “She was in a triple bind emotionally. She couldn’t have an abortion. Her husband wanted to marry his pregnant mistress and her own lover wouldn’t marry her. Political dynamite. She saw her political career heading down the tube, her personal life exploding. She was a woman on the edge with one way out.”

  God, Fiona thought, was she trying to convince herself? She felt hyper and surely sounded it. Finally, after he had apparently concluded that she had wound down her story, he slowly put the cup back in the saucer.

  “The kid was moaning about the rudeness of this rich bitch,” he said, “wishing that she would stay away longer than overnight when she goes to Nevada.”

  “A gambler?”

  “Hell, no. I was telling you about leaching, remember.”

  “Okay, Cates. Time for a straight line. What the fuck is leaching?”

  “It’s a process of separating gold.”

  “You said this was something important. I didn’t come here for a metallurgy lesson.” She sensed that his bomb was coming at last and that there was no place to hide.

  “Cyanide is a key ingredient of the leaching process.”

  “For chrissakes, Cates,” Fiona cried.

  His nostrils quivered as he drew in a deep breath.

  “The rich bitch inherited a gold mine in Nevada. Ergo, she knew how and where to get the cyanide,” Cates said, his eyes glowing like hot coals.

  “Talk about circumstantial,” she snapped. She felt her shaky conviction begin to crumble.

  27

  “Only us again,” Fiona said pleasantly, hearing Barbara Rome’s voice from the other side of her apartment door. They were obviously being inspected through the door’s peephole.

  “Just some routine loose ends to wind up,” Fiona lied. “We’ll only take a moment of your time.”

  A burning debilitating anger had kept her awake throughout the night. She had roamed the well-kept garden in the clear moonlit April night, huddled in her mother’s old mink, which had hung unused in the hall closet for five years.

  Her mind seethed with self doubt. Few things ever were the way they seemed at first. Emotion had a way of brutalizing. Lies and betrayals were everywhere, hidden in the nooks and crannies, the camouflaged orifices of the human soul.

  “I know,” she spoke aloud, as if responding to her mother’s imaginary rebuke. Think only good of people, her mother had preached. Nonsense, her father had countered. Too many sly bastards plotting infamy and evil, waiting for their chance to own a pound of someone else’s flesh.

  Ironically, her mother’s demeanor was dour, her father’s devil-may-care, Irish, lighthearted. His crying was on the inside. Stop this, Fiona, she bayed to the full moon. Stop this silliness, this stupid exercise in trying to sort out her genes, looking for clues to her lack of insight. What was she in this business for in the first place? Her mother had berated her for that decision as well. You, Fiona, are a traitor to your class, turning your back on privileges honestly earned by your forebears, groveling in the filth of human degradation.

  “To see justice triumphant,” she shouted into the spring-scented night. Her mind’s echo sobered her into silence and she thought of Frankie McGuire, cold in her grave along with her dead fetus.

  “Can we sleep nights on this one?” the Eggplant had asked. Well here, by God, was the answer to that question. Me floating like an apparition through the night, searching for advice from the ghosts of my progenitors. She laughed aloud, like some cackling witch.

  By the time she had crawled back into bed, she had roused a bellyful of anger. No one, by God, no one, fucks over Fiona FitzGerald. Echoes of her father surfaced. It had been his own muttered theme. You’d have to get up damned early in the morning to do that. And since she hadn’t gone to sleep, she had them beat on that score.

  And after all the angst and internal pub-crawling, Fiona knew what had to be done. It carried a deadline as well. The Eggplant had asked for the paperwork, “First thing in the morning. I have an appointment with hizzoner and I want to lay it on his desk.”

  At the crack of dawn, she called Cates.

  “Okay, so we slept on it,” she said. “You game, Cates?”

  “We don’t shake her tree, we’ll never sleep again.”

  She knew, of course, that that had to be his response. The irony was that they had ended their speculations the day before with “let’s sleep on it.”

  All yesterday afternoon and evening they had considered possible scenarios, all of which reached legal, political or public relations dead-ends.

  “So we place her in Nevada,” Fiona had speculated.

  “At the mining site.”

  “An office, a physical place. There would be a manager and materials, including the cyanide.”

  “Inventories, too. This is a substance that begs for control.” Cates had grown thoughtful. “Or maybe not. Maybe it was just lying around available.”

  “So she gets it, brings it back with her.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “We’re assuming.”

  “We’ll have to do better than that. Half a loaf won’t fly. It boils down to the old chestnut. Too circumstantial. This one needs proof positive.”

  “But we do have her accessible to the poison,” Fiona had pressed. “She would be clever. Keep far away from local sources. Too risky. This way she could get her hands on it without ringing warning bells.”

  “It makes all the sense in the world,” Cates had pointed out. “She finds out that hubb
y and Frankie are a duo. She gets this idea to eliminate the competition. She concocts this plan. She goes to Nevada on her regular run. Brings back the poison, then goes downstairs for a heart-to-heart with the lady, drops the cyanide in her glass. Two and two makes four.”

  “Five,” Fiona had countered. “Lots of logic but not a shred of evidence.”

  “It’s there somewhere, Fi.”

  “In the hot and guilty mind and black cold heart of Barbara Rome.”

  By then the scenarios had gotten repetitive and Cates had suggested they sleep on it. Not long, though. He was going to drop the paperwork on hizzoner’s desk in the morning. Except that he wasn’t going to have it.

  Barbara Rome opened the door to them. She was wearing a blue satin dressing gown. Not a hair was out of place, despite the hour, which was barely 8 A.M. Her make-up, too, was immaculately applied. She was a perfect accompaniment to her apartment, which was as shiny as a new penny. Fiona wondered if the bed she shared with Charles Rome had already been made. Tight hospital corners for the sheets, she speculated. There was no sign of a maid.

  Fiona’s study of both the lady and her surroundings was intense and she was certain that Cates was equally as diligent. Her mind was a receptor now, a blend of scrutiny and memory. And something was already nagging at her, lurking in some dark corner of her mind, waiting to emerge. For some reason, too, her mind had also dredged up inchoate thoughts of Greg, something about him or something he had said. It was an odd intrusion and she tried to dismiss it.

  “I have coffee,” Mrs. Rome said, leading them to the living room. As before, it was scrupulously clean. A white-gloved inspection would not have garnered even a microscopic speck of dust.

  “That would be fine,” Fiona said. It was important for their purposes that the woman not feel threatened. Cates also nodded his acceptance of her offer.

  They waited in the living room, silently inspecting. The damask drapes were pulled back, letting in the morning light. Even the windows, Fiona noted, were immaculately polished. Books on their shelves were arranged neatly, like shiny soldiers in formation. On the floor was a fringed oriental rug. With her foot, she flipped a corner aside. Beneath was a parquet floor polished to a mirror shine. Even what was hidden was carefully tended.