Choke

by Stuart Woods

  “Not without selling the house and the yacht, she won’t.”

  “She might, if you scare her enough. Especially if she thinks the people in L.A. know who and where she is.”

  Tommy thought it through. “You’re right; it’s not worth the risk. Maybe what we should do is to reassure her, make her more comfortable.”

  “I like that better,” Daryl said.

  “You’re wise beyond your years, kid.”

  Clare Carras made a very good widow, Tommy thought. She seemed a little more demure today, more restrained, more dignified.

  “What can I do for you, Detective?” she asked when she had arranged herself on a sofa.

  “I just wanted to bring you up to date on our investigation, Mrs. Carras.”

  “I would appreciate that,” she said.

  “I know it won’t come as a surprise to you that we have concluded that your husband’s death could not have been an accident.”

  “I should think not. Do you have a suspect?”

  “We do. In spite of my initial reservations, I now believe that Chuck Chandler murdered your husband.”

  She sighed. “I didn’t want to believe it myself,” she said, “but I’m afraid I’ve been drawn to that conclusion myself.” Her voice was full of regret.

  Tommy was impressed by her performance. “He seems to be our best bet.”

  “Have you arrested him yet?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, the weight of evidence points to him; he certainly had a motive, and there is reason to believe he had the technical skills to accomplish it, but we don’t have any physical evidence to link him to the crime. The way things are, in a trial his lawyer would certainly try to implicate you in order to get him off.”

  “Me?” She seemed astonished.

  “Of course I don’t believe it, but a clever lawyer could hang a motive on you-to further your husband’s death in order to inherit his wealth-and opportunity-you were on the boat often enough. The mechanical skills involved are not that great.”

  “I see,” she said.

  Daryl was right: he couldn’t read what she was thinking. Still, he could make a wild guess.

  They met behind a failed, boarded-up restaurant off Highway 1, near Islamorada. Clare meant to keep this short, but he was insistent. She had to administer a quick fellating before he was satisfied, and she used all her skills to bring him off quickly. When she was done, she started in quickly with her purpose, before he could recover himself and demand more.

  “We’ve got a problem,” she said.

  “What’s that? I thought everything was going smoothly now, with Carman out of the way.”

  “That situation is resolved; you did good work, but we have another problem.”

  “What is it?” he sighed, zipping up his trousers.

  “The police believe Chuck killed Harry, but Sculley says he doesn’t have enough evidence to make it stick.”

  “What else could he possibly need?”

  “Something conclusive, something that would wrap up the whole thing.”

  “Such as?”

  “I was hoping you’d have a suggestion.”

  “Not off the top of my head.”

  “Maybe we should just arrange a suicide for him. You know, the weight of guilt was too much. Maybe he could blow his brains out in some secluded spot.”

  He shook his head. “That might just make them even more suspicious of you.”

  “You’re right, I guess. Sculley said that a good lawyer could make a case for me having a motive.”

  “Not a doubt of it.”

  “Then we have to arrange something else, some piece of physical evidence that the D.A. can hold up to a jury and say, ‘See, he did it, no doubt.’”

  “That may be easier said than done.”

  “Oh, you can handle it, sweetie,” she said, pinching his nipple.

  Now he seemed impervious to her attentions, pushing her hand away.

  “Why don’t we just leave things the way they are? Maybe they can’t convict Chandler, but they can’t get you for it, either, and they don’t have a clue about me. Just be patient, sell the house and the boat and let people know you’re leaving. Tell them you’re moving to New York or something. You could even contact a real estate agent up there, go up and look at some apartments. Then, when nobody’s worrying about you anymore, I’ll abandon ship and meet you someplace nice.”

  “No, I don’t want this left unresolved. I want somebody convicted, and it’s going to have to be Chuck. Otherwise, the police might one day decide they have some more questions for me and come looking.”

  “By that time you’ll have a new identity, we both will, and we’ll be long gone.”

  “I just don’t want them looking for me, for any reason. I want this wrapped up tight. Come up with something.”

  He sighed again. “All right, I’ll think on it.” He reached for her.

  “No,” she said. “We can’t take a chance staying here any longer. I’ll go first; you wait.”

  Grudgingly, he got out of the car and waved good-bye.

  She pulled back onto the highway, looking around to be sure she hadn’t been followed. He’d come up with something, she was sure of it. In the meantime, she’d have to turn her own attention to the problem.

  35

  Chuck stepped out of the lawyer’s office into the sun, and he did not like the way he felt. He was in excellent health, an athlete, and he was accustomed to feeling perfectly well, but now there seemed to be a cold, solid object resting in his stomach, and his head hurt.

  He had not liked what he heard from the lawyer. It was obvious, the man had said, that Chuck was the chief suspect, and he might look forward to being arrested in the near future. He had the lawyer’s card in his pocket, with instructions to make the first phone call to him when the ax fell. He had signed some papers that would make arranging bail easier, using his boat as collateral.

  Chuck was not looking forward to being under indictment. If that happened, teaching tennis would be a thing of the past. Merk would have to let him go, and he had no other way of earning a living.

  As he walked to the car he added up his assets: the boat, the car, two thousand dollars in the bank, and about sixty thousand in his retirement account, plus a few bonds. A trial could reduce the total of all that to zero; the lawyer had made that plain. Once he had been indicted, the snowball would start to roll, and it would be rolling downhill, getting bigger as it went. He could not allow himself to be arrested, it was as simple as that. But how to avoid it?

  He drove slowly back to the boat, went aboard, opened himself a beer, and sat heavily down on the afterdeck to drink it. He took a few sips, then looked up and saw his colleague, Victor, standing on the deck of the Raw Bar, talking to a blonde. He waved, catching Victor’s eye, and Victor waved back, then turned his attention once again to the girl.

  Chuck was on his second beer when Victor appeared at the gangplank.

  “Yo, pro!” Victor called. “Permission to come aboard?”

  “Permission granted,” Chuck replied. “I’ll get you a cold one.”

  Victor settled in a deck chair and accepted a beer.

  “Looked like you were doing pretty well at the Raw Bar,” Chuck said. “What brings you down here?”

  “You know,” Victor replied, “I thought I was doing pretty well, too, but I guess she didn’t share my view of our relationship. Gave me some excuse about having to rejoin her tour party. No luck tonight.”

  “Let’s have a few, then,” Chuck said.

  Victor looked at him pityingly. “No luck for you, either, huh? Is Clare Carras playing the widow?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m well out of that.”

  “Listen, Chuck,” Victor said, “there’s something I want to ask you straight out, and I’ll be as subtle as I can about this. Did you knock off Harry?”

  “No, sir,” Chuck replied. “I did not. I most definitely had
not the slightest fucking thing to do with knocking him off. Not that the police, in the person of Tommy Sculley, seem to believe that.”

  “They giving you a hard time?”

  “I think Tommy’s cutting me all the slack he can, but he told me I’d better see a lawyer.”

  “Have you?”

  “Half an hour ago.”

  “Was he encouraging?”

  “He encouraged me to take steps to raise bail, just in case.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You look depressed, kid.”

  “Me? Depressed? Nah, I’m just your happy-go-lucky tennis pro, waltzing through life with a wink and a chuckle.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “Yes, weirdly enough.”

  “Shoot.”

  “How the hell did I get into this, Victor?”

  Victor shrugged. “You got into Clare Carras.”

  “Yeah, but getting laid isn’t supposed to get you in trouble, is it?”

  “Is this the father in the hysterical pregnancy case that I hear talking?” Victor asked.

  “Okay, okay, maybe it gets you in trouble with the odd husband, but it isn’t supposed to get you a shot at the death penalty, is it?”

  Victor held up a hand. “Hang on, let’s analyze: Why do the cops even dream you might have done it?”

  “I think their reasoning goes like this: I was screwing Harry’s wife, so maybe I wanted Harry out of the way so I could cash in his chips for him.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Victor said cheerfully. “What else?”

  “Somebody put carbon monoxide into the diving tanks; I’m a diver, and I have some mechanical ability, so they reason that while I was down below fiddling with the exhaust, I pumped some of it into the tanks. Either that, or I swam over to the marina in the dark of night and screwed with the tanks.”

  “Impeccable logic,” Victor said, beaming. “Anything else?”

  “Not that I know of, and I wish you’d stop looking at this their way.”

  “Anybody see you put exhaust fumes in the tanks?”

  “No. I mean, I didn’t do it, so nobody could have seen me do it, right?”

  “Right. Sounds to me like the cops are coming up short in the evidence department. If I’ve seen enough cop shows in my time-and I most certainly have-to know anything about criminal law, they ain’t got enough to nail you.”

  “That’s what the lawyer said, although he made the point that they would be doing their dead-level best to get more.”

  “I suppose. Still, if you’re innocent, what can they get?”

  Chuck brightened a little. “Now you’re talking,” he said. “And you’re right. How could they possibly get more?”

  “Well, they could invent it, I suppose.”

  “Victor, don’t say things like that.”

  “Let’s look at this as simply as we can,” Victor said. “You didn’t do it; that’s a given, as my math teacher used to say.”

  “Right.”

  “So, if you didn’t do it-ergo, somebody else must have.”

  “Right again.”

  “Got any ideas?”

  “Not a one. Well, Clare, of course. She gave them some answers that didn’t jibe with mine, and that’s what got them on my back, I think.”

  “Aha, the lovely Clare!” Victor crowed. “A veritable black widow! We have another suspect!”

  “She’s my favorite, actually.”

  “Do you think the possibility might have crossed the minds of the cops?”

  “I suppose. They seem to be buying her version of events, though.”

  “Tell me, Chuck,” Victor said, suddenly serious. “During your little rolls in the hay with Clare, did she, I wonder, ever propose that perhaps the two of you might do Harry in?”

  Chuck shook his head. “No. Wait a minute, she did say something about how at my age I should be looking to the future.”

  “That seems to be a leading question, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t lead any further. I mean, she never got around to saying that I should doctor Harry’s tank.”

  “Pity,” Victor said.

  “Why?”

  “Well, if she had, then you could mention that to Tommy Sculley and see if that causes him to tack for the other side of the bay.”

  “Victor, are you suggesting that I should make up something like that to divert Tommy’s interest toward Clare?”

  Victor shrugged. “Never, old sport; I’d never suggest that you lie to the cops. On the other hand, in your place, I’d lie like a bandit if it would get me out from under.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Chuck said.

  “Probably not,” Victor replied. “I rarely am. Look here, I’ve got a few grand tucked away. You’re welcome to as much of it as I can spare and still pay my bar bill.”

  “Thanks, Victor, you’re a friend, but I hope it won’t come to that. I’m okay for money unless I have to go to trial.”

  “Just let me know.” Victor looked at his watch. “Well, the big hand’s on the six, and that means the lovelies have begun gathering in the various watering holes. Care to join me? Might do you some good.”

  Chuck shook his head. “Thanks, but I think I’m done in for today.”

  Victor stood up. “I’m off, then. Remember, I’ll help in any way I can. Just say the word.”

  “Thanks again, Victor. See you.”

  With a wave, Victor jumped ashore and ambled off toward the music down the quay.

  Chuck watched him go, and he felt a little better. It was good to know he had at least one friend in all this. He drank the rest of his beer and went below to find something to heat up for dinner.

  36

  Tommy and Daryl were back in the chief’s office, and Tommy wasn’t looking forward to the meeting. He watched glumly as the chief entered and arranged himself at his desk.

  “Sorry I wasn’t here to see you when you got back from L.A.,” the chief said. “How’d it go?”

  “It was interesting,” Tommy said.

  “Interesting?” the chief asked, and his face began to redden. “You’ve just been off on a department-paid junket to Hollywood, and it was only interesting? You’d better do better than that, boy.”

  “Oh, I learned quite a lot, Chief.”

  “Good. Tell me.”

  Tommy gave his boss a blow-by-blow on his trip to L.A., omitting his breaking and entering of Carman’s office.

  The chief blinked. “So? What does all this have to do with the murder of Harry Carras?”

  “There’s a pretty good chance that Carras was Marinello-or Marin, as he liked to be called.”

  “Great. How does that solve his murder?”

  “It doesn’t exactly solve it, but it certainly widens the pool of suspects to include the L.A. branch of the mob, whose money he stole.”

  “If Carras was Marinwhatshisname.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How does that help us?”

  “Well, if we can establish that Carras was Marinello, then it’s the mob, not Chuck Chandler or Clare Carras, who becomes the chief suspect, and that means we just might not solve this one. Those boys don’t leave a lot of tracks.”

  The chief began blinking rapidly. “Are you trying to confuse me, Sculley?”

  “No, sir; I’m just laying it out for you.”

  “Laying what out for me? Try as I might, I can’t digest all this into a coherent theory of who the perpetrator is.”

  “I understand, Chief, and it’s my first priority to bring some coherence to this case. Believe me, I’m working on it full time.”

  “Do I understand that you are relieved that there might be a Mafia connection to this murder?”

  “Only to the extent that, if true, it would absolve two local citizens, Mr. Chandler and Mrs. Carras.”

  “Absolve?” the chief blurted. “We’re not out to absolve anybody. We’re supposed to arrest somebody.”

  “I underst
and, Chief.”

  “I wish I did, Tommy. Now come on, I want you to give me-right now-your best theory for who committed this murder.”

  “My best theory?”

  “Don’t you even have one?”

  “Yes, sir, but I can’t back it up yet.”

  “Forget backing it up, for the moment. Just tell me what you think!”

  “All right, sir.” Tommy rearranged himself in his seat. “I think that Harry Carras was murdered by Clare Carras and an unknown man.”

  “Tell me why you believe that.”

  “It involves believing the story Chuck Chandler told me. If you accept his version of the events on the boat that day, then it has to be Clare.”

  “Explain.”

  “Chandler said he was in the engine room for less than ten minutes that day. That’s not enough time for him to sufficiently contaminate the tanks, even if the engine had been running, which it wasn’t. He also told us that Harry chose the red tank-the one that was the most contaminated-and that Clare said that Harry always used the red tank, and she used the yellow tank, which left the blue, least contaminated tank for Chuck to use. Chuck, if you believe his story, didn’t know any of this until Clare explained it to him. So Harry gets hooked up to the red tank and swims away before Chuck is ready to follow him. When Chuck does follow, Clare hangs back; even Clare doesn’t dispute this point. So Harry chokes on the fumes and expires. Chuck, whose tank is less contaminated, makes it back to the boat, where he finds Clare hanging on to the diving platform and puking.” He stopped talking and sat back in his chair.

  “So? Go on.”

  “Clare has all the necessary knowledge to set this up. She knows which tank Harry uses and which one Chuck is going to use. She hangs on to the boat, breathes from her tank until she gets nauseous, so she’s puking when Chuck gets back. And Chuck, the putz, doesn’t have a clue.”

  “Why do you think there’s another man involved?”

  “Because I don’t think Clare is grease monkey enough to pull this off alone. But she does know everything necessary to help somebody else pull it off.”

  “Who’s the other man? And why is it a man?”

  “The answer to your first question is, I don’t know-yet. The answer to your second question is that Clare Carras doesn’t strike me as the type to want to share Harry’s money with a woman. The lady is a human black widow spider. It’s what she does best.” Tommy suddenly sat up in his seat, and his eyes widened. “Holy shit,” he said softly.