AHMM, November 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  I took a drink of my Boodles and tonic. “So no home cookin’ tonight."

  He almost laughed. “Hey, I'm a newlywed. Carolyn wants to know when you're coming over for dinner, by the way."

  "Do you think that's a good idea?"

  Ordinarily, Howard Rappaport was the most decisive man I knew. That decisiveness was one of the reasons I liked working for him. If the current situation had involved anyone other than his brother, Howard wouldn't have volunteered anything about what was going on with either his new bride, or our associates from California and the East Coast.

  He would have just told me what he wanted done, and I'd have done it. But this involved Howard's Achilles heel, his brother Eddie. So instead, we talked about his happy home while he tried to figure out our next move.

  "Sure I do,” he said. “Carolyn knows me, she knows what I do for a living. She wants to know all the boys who work for me too. She liked meeting you at the wedding."

  "She didn't sound too happy to hear from me when I called."

  "Her sister just moved out here, and she's been calling Carolyn a lot lately, always late at night. She probably thought that's who you were when you called."

  "Sister's been annoying her, huh?"

  "Yeah. They don't get along too well."

  "That's too bad."

  "You're telling me. Her sister's something straight out of the gutter. I can't believe they're even related. Carolyn can't stand her. Thinks she's trash."

  For a fleeting moment I wondered whether Howard saw a parallel between his own situation with his brother and the one he was talking about between his wife and her sister. If he didn't see it, it was because he didn't want to. Howard Rappaport didn't get where he'd gotten by being a stupe.

  He sat silent for a moment, lost in thought. Then he roused himself, winked at me, and said, “And I think she was expecting a different sort of wake-up call, pally."

  I let that go, allowing the silence to prod him toward some sort of decision. People walked past us nonstop. We drank for a bit. Howard lit a cigarette.

  "Have we got a pocket cop we pay enough to trust with something like this?” he finally asked.

  I thought for a minute. “Depends on what you want. If you're thinking of covering up, then having one of our cops call it in to Metro, maybe.

  "If you're thinking of dumping the body and hoping no one from back home in Minneapolis, or Georgia, or wherever the girl's from files a missing person report on her, sure. The Valley of Fire is full of places where we could get rid of her."

  He took a deep drag off his Camel. “Which is it?"

  "Which is what?"

  "Minneapolis or Georgia?"

  "If you ask your brother, Georgia. If you ask the super, Minneapolis."

  "That answers the question. Carolyn's from Minneapolis, you know.” Yep, he was a newlywed, all right. Everything could always be brought back around to the new bride if we talked about it long enough.

  "Really. I thought it was Chicago.” He was the boss. I needed a decision, and I'd tried to let him talk his way to one, but in the end, he was the boss. If he wanted to make conversation, no one was going to find my fingerprints in the blonde's apartment.

  "Midwest. They all sound the same.” He got quiet again for a minute or so, then his features hardened, and he said, “I need you to get ahold of a homicide dick we can trust. Have we still got the double set of negatives of the photos we used to turn Brannigan?"

  We had good, clear shots of Ed Brannigan's wife checking into the Silver Legacy up in Reno with one of Metro's police commissioners. “Yeah,” I said.

  Howard's cigarette had burned down almost to his fingers. “Good. Pay him double what we usually kick in his direction. Offer him one of those sets. Have him help you with the girl's apartment. He's to call it in, say he got an anonymous tip from a concerned citizen, but not before we get Eddie on a train someplace."

  "Do you want him to know that Eddie's involved? And what will I tell the judge in court to—this morning?” I thought I knew the answer to both questions, but like I said, Howard pays me to be thorough.

  He noticed the smoking butt in his hand and stubbed it out. “No, of course not. Tell him that we're involved because of the proximity to Eddie's place, but that's it, and we just want to make sure the story gets told right.

  "As for the judge, you play dumb: ‘I have called his home several times, Your Honor. I cannot locate my client,’ that sort of thing.

  "We'll worry about the fallout from this later. Right now, we've got to get Eddie where the Feds can't squeeze him. If you can get him over the border, that would be ideal. If it comes to that, let me know, and I'll make some calls to our people in San Diego and see about them meeting the train and getting him over from there."

  "One thing. Eddie was at the Sands earlier this evening. I'm sure people saw him there."

  He downed the contents of his glass. “My brother.” Then he sighed.

  "My client,” I echoed him. We both laughed.

  "We can make witnesses forget anything if it comes down to it.” He looked up from his glass and searched my face. I'd seen that look before. I knew what came next. “Do you think he killed her?"

  "No. I think someone set him up to look like he did though."

  "Because of this grand jury thing hanging over his head?"

  I had my own ideas on that, but kept them to myself.

  Howard could read my silences the way I could read his grimaces. “Speak up,” he said.

  "He can hurt us. You know it. I know it. We can't be the only ones either in town or in the outfit who do. When the Feds pick a guy up on a material witness warrant, nine times outta ten, he stays where they put him until they've got what they want. We got lucky that Danielson was working warrants that day."

  When he was running for the state senate seat which had served as his eventual springboard to the place he now occupied on the federal bench, the Right Honorable James Danielson had received so much campaign money from Howard's friends back east that many of his colleagues in Carson City had taken to calling him “the Senator from Rappaport” behind his back. We had called in a marker the day the Hoover Boys brought Eddie in on that witness warrant.

  "I know, I know."

  "You pay me to think about things like this."

  He rattled the ice in his glass absently as he looked out into the casino, at the crowds milling about. Then he glanced at his watch. “I've got to get back to the Sahara. Take care of this and report back to me at home, wake me up, I don't care. Do what you have to."

  "I will."

  "Of that,” he stood and dropped a twenty on the table, winking across the bar at our waitress, “I have no doubt."

  * * * *

  It took me until four thirty to get Brannigan awake and agreeing to meet me at Eddie's building. The plan was for me to get there first, get Eddie over to the train station, then return and meet Brannigan there after he had gone in and “discovered” Brenda's body.

  I called Eddie once I'd gotten off the phone with Brannigan. No answer. I called back and let it ring. Nothing. I began to sweat again, even though the pre-dawn is the coolest time of day in the desert.

  I needn't have hurried.

  Why do they always end up in the bathroom? He'd tried to open a vein, but judging by the jagged gash on his left wrist, his hand had shaken too much. So he'd taken the cord from the blinds in his bedroom, used the doorknob, pulled the cord tight around his throat, and done it that way.

  No dangling feet swaying in the shower stall, just him using his own weight to finish the job in a sitting position. He reeked of liquid courage again.

  * * * *

  The next few hours were a blur. When Brannigan got there, he took one look into the bathroom, and then used Eddie's phone to call in for both corpses. I settled on a story that was pretty close to the truth: that Eddie had called me in a panic, that the girl next door was dead, and that he didn't know what to do about it. In the new revision thoug
h, Eddie placed the call later, and I was just getting home from a late-evening drive down to the Strip, and so on.

  The Metro bulls didn't want anyone saying that they went easy on a mob lawyer whose client wound up dead on the very day he was set to testify before a federal grand jury, and they really didn't like it that this same mob lawyer had found the body. And since Brannigan didn't want there to be any talk about him dining on a steady diet of mob pocket lint, he took the lead in taking out Metro PD's ire on me.

  It's true what they say about Vegas city cops. They really do only hit you where the marks won't show.

  After Metro had sat on me for a few hours, they released me into the custody of a couple of Bureau guys I didn't know, who in turn escorted me straight up to the office of the United States Attorney for the District of Nevada.

  Once I was there, I got to see the top man himself; the actual United States Attorney for the District of Nevada. When I met him, he made a point of telling me how he felt about my client being dead and me being involved. He went on from there to tell me all about the big plans his office now had for me.

  These plans included releasing me immediately, and then turning around and putting the word out through Metro's snitches that I had cut a deal with them to keep from being implicated in Eddie's death. The upshot being that I had done so in order to avoid charges of witness tampering, hindering a federal prosecution, and murder.

  It's true what they say about Feds too. They don't need to hit you to make it hurt.

  * * * *

  The maid ushered me into the sitting room at Howard's place as if she had been told to expect me. Howard was in to greet me not long after I'd managed to settle gingerly into one of his wing-back chairs.

  "What are you doing here?” He looked his watch. “Why didn't you call before you went to court?” No one had told him. I couldn't believe it.

  "It couldn't wait,” I said.

  He went over to the air conditioner, turned it up high, and beckoned me over to stand beside it. The thing was plenty loud. I wondered who might be listening, and whether they already knew about Eddie. I got up slowly. My ribs were killing me.

  "Your brother's dead,” I murmured into Howard's ear once I'd gotten close enough.

  He looked at me with surprise written plainly over his face. I told him what I'd found. I told him about the Vegas cops and the Feds both sweating me. He took it like a punch. When I'd finished, he sat down heavily.

  I was standing there watching my boss stare at nothing, eyes wide, his mouth a little round “o,” when Carolyn Rappaport walked in. Radiant in a bright yellow chiffon dress, she greeted me enthusiastically and advanced to kiss my cheek.

  She had changed her hair color. At the wedding, she was a brunette. She stood before me now, blonde as Marilyn Monroe, looking over her shoulder to ask her husband something I didn't catch.

  "Howard, what's wrong?” She repeated and half faced him, frowning. Blonde as Monroe, I thought again. Blonde as Brenda too. The hair had been one thing. Seeing that face in profile, not the same, but similar, not swollen this time, either. Hearing her talk in the sort of flat, nasal tones they employed on the Midwestern prairies. In cities like Chicago. And Milwaukee. And Minneapolis.

  It all fell into place.

  Good God, I thought. Why didn't I catch it earlier, in Caesar's, when we were talking about brothers and sisters and all the things that can pass between them?

  Howard pays me to think about things like this. I took it as a testament to my innate humanity that I wasn't able to immediately connect Eddie's troubles to something so monstrous.

  Eddie's moon face flashed in my memory: mottled and purple, the way it was the last time I'd seen him. I looked back at the cause of all of this, and said, “Mrs. Rappaport, I'm sorry I woke you earlier."

  She smiled at me. “Oh, that's all right. And call me Carolyn. I know it's just business for Howard.” She looked back in her husband's direction. He didn't look at her. He had fixed his gaze at a point on the opposite wall. She frowned again.

  "Mr. Rappaport told me you understood,” I said. “Still, it must be annoying, having the phone ring off the hook night after night."

  She didn't stop looking at Howard. “It's no bother. We don't get many late calls."

  "Really?” I did my best to sound nonchalant. “Gee, that's funny. Mr. Rappaport said that you've been getting them quite often."

  She glanced at me, then began straightening the cushions on the sofa. “What?” She'd picked up on something in what I said, and tried to cover it by sounding puzzled.

  "Your sister. She calls a lot. Especially late at night. It must drive you crazy."

  She fluffed a pillow, and forced a smile, “Oh, yes! Well, it's nice to have family close by, even if she doesn't seem to know how to read a clock."

  "Yes,” I said. “Family is important.” At that, Howard took notice of the two of us again for the first time since I'd told him about his brother's demise.

  "How long has she been in town?"

  "Who? Oh, my sister.” Carolyn Rappaport clasped her hands together and looked thoughtful. “Six, seven weeks, I guess."

  "Brenda's been in town just under a month,” Howard quietly corrected her.

  There it was. The name. The last piece of the puzzle. I thought back to the only time I'd seen Brenda, how her face, too, was mottled when I found her in that frigid bedroom. Brenda, in full rigor when I got to her new apartment. Brenda, who'd no doubt been dead since well before Eddie got home from playing the ponies.

  I thought about the air-conditioning there in the Rappaport home, and how loud it was, and how it couldn't cover everything, so I said, “Your hair looks great, Mrs. Rappaport. When did you have it done?” I left the more important question of “why” unasked. I knew why. I wondered for a second whether Carolyn had hated her sister, or merely thought so little of Brenda and her low-class ways that she had simply seemed expendable.

  "I told you to call me Carolyn, Sean.” She looked relieved to be off the subject of her sister. “I did it myself. Just me and the peroxide."

  I saw my opening, and made the most of it. “Oh. A suicide blonde, huh?"

  She chuckled as she sat on the sofa. “A suicide blonde? Why, because I did it myself?"

  I made eye contact with her husband again. The shock had begun to ebb from his features, replaced by something darker and harsher, and less human. He had Eddie's pinkie ring out of his pocket, running it back and forth through his fingers as if it were a section of a rosary.

  "Yep. A suicide blonde,” I said. “Dyed by your own hand."

  Copyright (c) 2008 Brian Thornton

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  Department: SOLUTION TO THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER

  When the people gathered together on one of the great trial days, they never knew whether they were to witness a bloody slaughter or a hilarious wedding.

  —Frank R. Stockton

  From “The Lady, or the Tiger?” (1882) by Frank R. Stockton

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  Department: REEL CRIME by J. Rentilly

  In this era of complex, nuanced, serialized storytelling, crisp production values, and top-drawer talent before and behind the camera, one could hardly call television the “boob tube” any longer. Indeed, despite the savage writers’ strike, which upended almost every series on air, today's TV drama has never been better. In our roundup of this fall's offerings, the 2008-2009 season delivers the goods of the returning series, resolving nerve-jangling season finales while unspooling new mysteries and introducing new characters and locations. And the fall's new shows (Crusoe, Fringe, Life on Mars) are spectacular: Look for character-driven mysteries, deeply literary in origin and thrillingly executed.

  * * * *

  Crusoe (NBC) Call it Lost without the airplane. Or Fantasy Island without the midget. This ambitious adaptation of Daniel Defoe's literary master
piece is visually stunning, pulse-poundingly exciting, and generally true to its source material. Philip Winchester (Flyboys, Thunderbirds) stars as the titular hero who, with his man Friday, battles marauding militias, hungry cannibals, wild cats, starvation, and apocalyptic lightning storms on a dangerous, mysterious island. Expect a star-crossed love story between Crusoe and his wife, left behind in England, as well as—via flashbacks—the slow-boiling mystery behind Crusoe's mentor and patron, played by Sam Neill (Jurassic Park, The Tudors). October 17

  * * * *

  Fringe (Fox) The team behind Star Trek, Mission: Impossible III, and Alias—J. J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman—offer up this paranoid thriller that blends conspiracy, science fiction, and reality, a la The X-Files and Lost. The pilot is sheer genius: two hours of knockout twists and turns, solid characters, and enough spicy plot threads to have us ready to devour another hundred hours of Fringe storytelling. The premise: An international flight lands in Boston, all of its passengers and crew victim to a grisly, unexplainable death, drawing the interest of the FBI and the curiosity of an institutionalized, Einstein-ish genius. Evil corporations, torrid personal relationships, and the supernatural merge in this dynamic newcomer, starring Joshua Jackson (Dawson's Creek), Lance Reddick (The Wire), and John Noble (Lord of the Rings). September 9

  * * * *

  Life on Mars (ABC) The behind-the-scenes drama of this freshman series, which will premiere either this fall or midseason, is outpacing the twists and turns onscreen. Based on the hit BBC series and adapted for American audiences by TV maestro David E. Kelley, Life on Mars has suffered cast changes and location switcheroos. Rumor has it that Kelley himself has been replaced. Backstage chicanery aside, don't miss this tale of a modern-day cop who is hit by a car, goes into a coma, and wakes up in 1972. If you think it's a simple case of hit and run, or that there's no sinister conspiracy covering up the truth of our hero's “accident,” then you don't know your post-9/11 landscape. With a little flesh and blood, this could be a real keeper. TBA

  * * * *

  24 (Fox) Between seasons five and six of this groundbreaking action-thriller, its protagonist Jack Bauer was kidnapped and held captive for eighteen months by corrupt Chinese government officials. By the time 24 returns to air for a movie prequel November 23 and a full season in January, fans—who haven't had a new episode of their favorite show since May 2007's muddled and season six finale—will have endured nearly as much torturous waiting. Season seven is looking sharp on all fronts. No more CTU. Lots of Chloe. The return of Tony Almeida. Jack on the lam. A South African military coup. A Washington conspiracy. And Jon Voigt as the Big Bad. January 2009