by Dana Donovan
“How long have you known Ron Powell? Did you know him before you met René Landau?”
“I don’t see how that should matter to you.”
“Did he introduce you to Daniel Mochohyett?”
“Who?”
“You may know him as Chief Running Bear.”
“No. I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“But you know Superintendent Bill DeAngelo.”
“Of course, he is the warden at Walpole.”
“Yes, but he is more than that, isn’t he?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean he does pay the rent here, does he not?”
“Again, that is none of your business. Detective, if you are quite finished, I think you should—”
“I know about Maryann Gilmore.”
Her face grew flush. “I no longer go by that name.”
“I know, not since the trial. Did you change your name for René’s sake?”
“I did not change it. I simply resorted back to my maiden name. I was Maryann Stephanie Stiles before I married Edward Gilmore. After my divorce, I dropped the Maryann and went back to Stiles. Is that against the law?”
“No, but perjury is.”
“Perjury?”
“Ms. Stiles, let me tell you what I think went down. I think that you and Ron Powell are having an affair, and that this affair began at least eighteen years ago. I also think that about that time things started going badly for Powell, as he found himself in a world of gambling debts. To get out from under those debts, he volunteered his complicity in what should have been a simple crime. All he had to do was do nothing at all, just make sure he was the only police unit available when a 211 in progress came in. Then, through supposed bad luck, he would develop car trouble, allowing a couple of robbers to get away with six million dollars in cold hard casino cash. Is any of this sounding familiar?”
Stiles kicked back in her chair, crossed her legs and leveled a narrow bead of sight upon me. “It’s sounding fanciful, Detective.” She drew on her cigarette until it burned down to her fingertips. Then she rolled her hand so that her palm faced the ceiling and she flicked the ash onto the floor. “But I enjoy a man with an active imagination. Please, continue.”
“Oh, I will,” I said, “because it gets exciting from here. You see, it was supposed to be easy, no one was supposed to get hurt; everyone should have gone home and counted his blessings or his money, depending on what side of the law he was on. But it did not go down that way, and someone did get hurt. Someone got killed. Then a complicated mess got more complicated. René Landau tried to slight everyone involved. He killed his partner and hid the money. That is when Powell decided to move in. He drove up to the lakeside hideout just as Landau was making his escape. Now, no one knows what the two discussed, but it is fair to say that Powell could not kill Landau because he knew he would never learn where the money was. He also could not let him go because he would never see him again. What was worse, if Landau got away, Chief Running Bear would have killed Powell. So what does he do?”
“Tell me,” said Stiles. “I am all a-twitter.”
“It’s simple. He arrests him, takes him into custody and hauls him downtown.”
“So he is a hero.” Stiles removed another smoke from her pack and lit it off the last. “What is the problem?”
“The problem is now that Landau was in the hands of the Department of Corrections, Powell and Chief Running Bear no longer had control over the situation. They needed a way of monitoring Landau, a way to work him so that they might learn what he did with the money. That is where things became even more complicated.
“I don’t know whose idea it was, probably Powell’s, but someone put a lot of thought into it. It probably did not come together fully until the trial had already gotten underway. That is when the list of players and their connections to one another began coming to light for Powell. It started with Paul Kemper, Landau’s lawyer. Kemper, it turns out, had an old acquaintance from college who at the time was Deputy Superintendent of Operations at Walpole State. His name was Bill DeAngelo. Later, DeAngelo became Superintendent of Operations, but I am getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?”
“It’s your story,” said Stiles. “Tell it as you wish.”
I smiled politely. “Of course. As Deputy Superintendent, DeAngelo would find himself in the perfect position to lean on Landau until he found out what happened to the money, and with his brother-in-law, Judge Cardell, handing out the sentencing, that arrangement seemed all but assured.”
Carlos, who had maintained silence until then, said to Stiles, “That is where you came in.”
“Is it?” she said.
“You know it.”
“Yes,” I said, “you see, for the plan to work, the court had to find Landau guilty. Even with Kemper’s amateur performance as Landau’s council, without an eyewitness, he might still have gone free. Enter the mystery witness. Ron Powell calls you up, maybe takes you out for a drink and presents you with a million dollar proposal. All you had to do was perjure yourself, say that you saw Landau driving the get-a-way car and assure his guilty verdict. By providing closed-door depositions to the prosecution and to Kemper without Landau in the room, you could maintain anonymity. That way you were able to meet Landau in prison later under your maiden name, work your way into his life and make him fall in love with you. With luck, you could extract information about the money’s whereabouts from him and you all would run away laughing. I am sure it sounded simple enough at the time, didn’t it?”
I could see the questions on Stile’s face, wondering how I had put together the details of a scheme that should have made everyone involved rich. But she would not give me more than that. If I had hit the nail on the head, I had not driven it home. She leaned over the coffee table and flicked her cigarette into the ashtray. She then picked up one of the mixed drinks, swished the ice cubes around and drank it until the cubes slid down the glass and against her teeth. I thought she might respond after setting the glass down, but she did not. She merely sat back in her chair, hit on her smoke, crossed her legs and waited for me to continue. I did.
“I am guessing that René Landau was not the pushover everyone thought he was,” I told her. “It is obvious he fell smitten with you. He received you eagerly on visitation days. However, he never gave you the clues as to the location of the money. Maybe he knew that DeAngelo recorded your conversations. Maybe he did not quite trust you. What happened then? Did weeks become months, months became years? I know that DeAngelo eventually became Superintendent of Operations. That is when he began allowing you two conjugal visits, isn’t it? Still, that did not provide results. I imagine that in time you grew tired with the scheme. Here you were, putting forth all the effort while the men were sitting back waiting for the big payout. You decided to renegotiate your end of the deal. If they were going to have you continue seeing Landau, then they would have to put you up in this apartment, pay your bills and keep you in cigarettes and alcohol. How did they decide whose checks they would use? Let see, the casino’s books are subject to review by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as well as the State’s Gaming Commission, so that would not do. Kemper certainly could not afford to risk his name coming up in connection with payouts to a witness for the prosecution. Powell was only a street officer at the time. His bank account could hardly conceal the flow of money coming in from the others and then out to you. I guess that left DeAngelo. Have I missed anything?”
“Only your calling,” said Stiles, “because I think you make a better story teller than you do a cop.”
“Is that right?”
“It is.”
“Tell me then how the story ends. What happened next? René Landau gets out of prison, and what happens? Does he find out about you and DeAngelo? Maybe his kid tells him about you and Powell. You have already admitted that you and he argued over you seeing another man. Did he tell you he was leaving town? I imagine that must have forced some hands. I can imagine a scurry of activity be
hind the scenes; Chief Running Bear getting nervous about the money, Powell afraid he might lose you, DeAngelo and Kemper watching eighteen years of nest sitting about to hatch a dud. Which one panicked and pulled the trigger? You all saw him after he got out. Was it you?”
“Me? You are joking. I am the grieving fiancée, remember?”
“Grieving like a black widow.”
“Oh, Detective, I am hurt.”
“Not now, but this case will prove me right.”
“No, you have nothing. It seems to me that you are trying to solve a closed case. The court found a suspect guilty of a crime, and that suspect has finished out his sentence. Is this what we pay our civil servants for now, to work old cases that have already been solved?”
“Ms. Stiles, the armored car robbery case may be closed, but the money from that robbery is not up for grabs. Besides, it is precisely the details surrounding that robbery that lead to a motive in the killing of René Landau.”
“All you have is theories, Detective, theories and no evidence. Except for a corpse and an overactive imagination, you have nothing. Now then, please get out of my apartment before I lodge a complaint against you for police harassment. We are through here.”
“We will get out, however, we are not through. If we feel the need, we will return.”
“Then you better have a warrant, Detective, because I have said all I have to say.”
Carlos and I got up and headed for the door. We were almost there when I stopped and turned back. She had followed us only half way and was waiting by the bedroom door for us to leave. “May I ask one more question, Ms. Stiles?”
She stole a drag of her cigarette, and I swear the smoke never left her when she spoke. “What is it?”
“Do you own a gun?”
“A gun?”
“Yes, you know,” I pointed as though I were holding a revolver, “a gun.”
“No, I do not, Detective. Now will you leave?”
I tipped an imaginary hat, said goodbye and we left. Outside, Carlos was ready to throw me under a bus. “What the hell was that?”
“What?”
“That, in there.” He threw his glance at the apartment as if flicking bangs from his eyes. “Why did you tell her all that? You laid out our entire case. Now she knows everything.”
“Carlos, if we are right, then she already knew everything anyway.”
“Yes, but now she knows that we know.”
“So?”
“So…where is the element of surprise?”
I nudged him on toward the car. “There is no surprise. She is right about the robbery case. It is a closed matter.”
“What about her perjuring herself?”
“Too late, the statute of limitations for perjury expired fifteen years ago. If we cannot connect her to René Landau’s murder, then we have nothing on her.”
“Then what did you have to gain by telling her all that?”
“Maybe nothing, maybe something. Look, if we can spook her or DeAngelo or anyone else involved, then perhaps it will jolt one of them off kilter, force someone to make a mistake.”
“Are we going to wait out here to see who comes out of her apartment?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“She knows we are here. I am not going to sit out front of her apartment all evening playing a waiting game just to see who she is shagging now.”
Carlos laughed. “Shagging, Tony?”
“Yeah, it means—”
“I know what it means, or what it meant in 1966. Man, you look twenty-something now. You should act it.”
“What? I have to change my vocabulary just because I am forty years younger now?”
“Sure, why not? Lilith does it.”
I pushed him away in jest. “Lilith is Lilith. She has been doing it longer.”
“Lilith is a contemporary. She moves with the times. You can learn from her.”
“What you mean is Lilith is a witch.”
“You’re a witch, too. Maybe you should start acting like one.”
“What does that mean?”
“I mean use it or lose it. Take this case for instance. Why don’t you cast a spell or something and make everyone tell us exactly what they know? We can have this case solved in no time.”
“No, I will not do that. You hear me all the time getting on Lilith’s case about using magic for everything. I have seen her use suggestion spells on people just to get ahead of the line at the grocery store. One moment some little old woman is counting out pennies to pay for a bunch of bananas, and the next she is stepping out of line to run down a bottle of Geratol.”
“So….” Carlos crowded the lines on his forehead. “If she is old, maybe she needs the Geratol.”
“It’s not just old women, Carlos. I mean it. Lilith never stands in line for anything longer than a minute. It never fails. You should see the way people part before her like the Red Sea. I find myself doing it, too. Like yesterday, I was in the bathroom, stripped down to nothing but a smile, ready to hop into the shower, and the next thing I know, I am stepping aside to let her get in before me.”
He laughed. “That just means you are a gentleman.”
“No it doesn’t. I did not want her to cut in. I was running late for work as it was.”
“So, why didn’t you get in there and shower with her?”
I gave him the hooked brow look. “Carlos, have you any idea what Lilith is like in the shower?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, and he smiled devilishly, his eyes sliding into a dreamy stare that lulled him miles from where we stood. “Have I thought about Lilith in the shower, emm-hmm.”
I slapped him on the head and woke him. “Not what she looks like, you perv, what she is like. She’s a hog in the shower. She takes up all the room. I mean the way she lathers up her hair and whips it around like a rodeo rope, and how she reaches behind her head with both hands to wash that impossible spot between her shoulder blades, her elbows skyward, her spine arched unnaturally like a contortionist. Then she makes me wash the rest of her back, and complains if the sponge isn’t soapy enough. Truly, the suds have to stay foamy and bubbly. Like pearly beads, they drizzle down her body; splitting paths that snake around her curves and down her legs. Oh, and God forbid if you miss a spot, or she will…. Carlos!” I swear, the man jerked as though I had zapped him with Spinelli’s stun gun. “Are you daydreaming?” He blinked in rapid succession, inhaled as though he had just surfaced from a deep sea dive, and then smiled, satisfied, I think. “Jesus, Carlos, would you like a cigarette?”
“No,” he said. “You know I don’t smoke.”
I opened the car door and nudged him in. “I’ll drive. You get on the phone to Spinelli. Let him know we are coming back. Tell him to have the ballistics report from Powell’s service revolver ready when we get there. Oh, and remind him about the séance tonight. We don’t want to be late.”
I started the car and we headed out. We spent the first part of the ride not talking, mostly because I was still filing the events of our visit with Stephanie Stiles away in my mind. I do that often, and as Carlos knows me so well, he usually affords me the first few minutes of the ride after an interview to do that. By the second half of the ride, however, I noticed that Carlos had something on his mind, too. He appeared locked in concentration, as he peered out the side window, his nose to the glass, fogging a nickel-sized knot on the glass that reminded me of snow. Against my better judgment, I reached over and tapped him on his arm. “Penny for your thoughts.”
He looked over at me, a curious smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Hey, you know how Ursula looks just like Lilith?”
She does, I think to most people, but not to me. I guess twins get that a lot, also. Except for the people closest to them, many distinct differences make them forget they look so much alike. I did not go into all that with Carlos. Instead, I said, “Yeah?”
His smile grew by degrees. “You should tell Dominic that story.”
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br /> I shook my head and smiled back suspiciously. “What story?”
His teeth were impossibly large now. “The one about Lilith in the shower. I think he would like that. It will drive him crazy.”
“Carlos, that…. I was telling you about—”
“`Bout Lilith, I know, but it works for Ursula, too.”
“Forget it.”
“Tony, come on.”
“I said no!”
“I will be fun. You know it.”
I turned the car onto Main. After a minute of silence, Carlos folded his arms to his chest and sank into his seat. I do not want to say that he was pouting, but it was close. As we pulled into the parking garage at the Justice Center, I looked to him and said, “It would be funny, wouldn’t it?”
His lips stretched to a thin white line, his side-glance checking me out covertly. “That’s the Tony I know,” he said, and getting out of the car, added, “Tell him tonight on the way to the séance, and throw in something about how she likes you to wash her feet for her.”
“Who, Lilith?”
“Yes.”
“But she doesn’t.”
“That’s all right. Tell him anyway.”
“Why?”
“Trust me.”
“Are you saying Dominic has a foot fetish?”
“Ha, you don’t know?”
“Really?”
He came around the front of the car and put his arm around my shoulder. “Have you ever seen him drawing in that sketchbook of his?”
“Sure, I see him doodling in it all the time.”
“Do you know what he is doodling?”
“Don’t tell me, Ursula?”
He laughed, slapped my back and pushed me away. “All Ursula, all the time. Tony, it borders on creepy, especially when he draws page after page of just her feet. Seriously, if you tell him that stuff about Lilith in the shower, and I mean tell it just the way you told me, it will drive him absolutely batty.”
We filed into the building, pass the security desk and into the elevator. “Carlos, I’m not sure I feel comfortable telling that to Dominic now. Don’t you think it’s cruel?”
I watched his expression change from glad to sad in the reflection of the elevator’s stainless steel doors. “Well, sure, but what’s your point?”
