by Paul Levine
"The computer is wrong."
"You admit being Passion Prince?"
"With all that melancholy sobriquet implies."
"And prior to that night, you chatted with TV Gal?"
"But of course."
"And you admit talking with Flying Bird, Mary Rosedahl, on the night of July two shortly before she—"
"Yes, yes. We've been over all that. You have my flagrant plagiarism from Equus."
"So why do you deny what the computer says is true?"
He smiled a sad smile. "Come now, Mr. Lassiter. Does a computer know truth from illusion? How can it, when those who feed it are just as blind? What is a computer anyway but the mechanical mind of a man, a man stripped of emotion? Can a computer feel passion? Does it have a soul? Does it know the freedom of the human spirit?"
"You lost me somewhere between illusion and passion."
"My dear boy, welcome to my class. You played football, didn't you, just like Biff? Your darling secretary told me you were a professional gladiator."
"Not very well and not very long."
"Surely you recollect Willy's speech at the end of Act One, the wistful remembrance of Biff's last football game, the celebration of lost youth and promise."
"Vaguely, something about a star never fading away."
"Yes, yes. But what does it mean?"
Give them tenure and two courses a semester, and they wallow in their little world, playing their little games. He looked at me, the demanding teacher, awaiting a response.
"Okay," I said. "Willy was lost in his illusions. His son once played a game, but there was no substance to it. Not when the rest of his life was built on lies."
"Precisely."
"Precisely what?"
"Shall I put it in terms you can understand?"
"If it's not too much trouble."
"In Act Two, Willy's out in the garden at night and Biff tells him he's going to leave home and not come back."
"Yeah."
"Remember Willy's lines?"
It was there somewhere, buried in the attic trunk of memories. "Willie was planting carrots, putting some seeds down."
"Yes, very good. And what did he say about Biff's leaving, about his son's failure as a man?"
I was still rooting around for it. "Something about not taking the rap for him?"
"Right. We each bear responsibility for our own actions, but that's all."
I stared blankly at him. He reached into his pocket for the silver flask and, with the same hand, unscrewed the cap, letting it dangle on a chain. He took a healthy slug, and in an instant the flask was back in the pocket, two ounces lighter. Practice, the coach always said, makes perfect.
Professor Gerald Prince smiled and looked at me through watery eyes. "What I'm telling you, my dear Biff, is quite simple. I was framed."
CHAPTER 18
Passwords
The plaintiff leaned back, crossing his arms in front of his chest as if to ward off blows. He was a short, slender Oriental man in his fifties, and he fidgeted in a squeaky chair. He wore a short-sleeve white shirt and baggy trousers and kept shooting glances from the stenographer to me and back again.
H. T. Patterson crammed all of us into his miniature conference room—Chong Gong Wong, his client; Rosalina Bustamente, the stenographer; Symington Foote, publisher and noted critic of the legal system; and little old me, courageous battler for the rights of Fortune-500 companies. Patterson sat next to his client, trying to calm him with occasional smiles and soothing pats on the arm. The room had no windows, one table, and six chairs, and was overflowing with the detritus of the plaintiff's personal-injury practice—models of the spine and circulatory system, printed posters totaling damages for nearsighted jurors, blowups of various rear-end collisions at local intersections, and a tire that had suffered a blowout with ominous results.
Either the air-conditioning was broken or my crafty adversary was employing the oldest trick in the book for shortening his client's deposition. It didn't matter to me. I just took off my suit coat, rolled up my sleeves, and plunged ahead.
"In fact, Mr. Wong, shortly after the Journal's review appeared, you changed the recipe for the duck á l'orange, did you not?"
Wong didn't say a word but his chair squealed.
"Ob-jec-tion!" H. T. Patterson sang out.
"On what ground?" I demanded.
"Remedial measures are inadmissible," Patterson proclaimed with a heavy dose of self-righteousness.
I corrected him. "This is not a case where a defendant has remedied a safety problem after an accident. A city would never fix a pothole after an accident if the remedial actions were admissible. But your client is the plaintiff, and the doctrine simply does not apply."
"Thank you for a most cogent lecture on the rules of evidence, Mr. Lassiter, but my objection stands, and I instruct my client not to answer your insulting and harassing question. If you disagree, I suggest you take it up with the judge after the deposition."
I disagreed, but I didn't have time to run to the courthouse. I also was getting nowhere with Chong Gong Wong, owner-chef of Chez Saigon, Miami's only French-Vietnamese restaurant.
"Can he get away with this?" Symington Foote whispered.
I leaned close to Foote's ear. "As long as we're in his office and deposing his client, he's the boss. We'll file a motion to compel after the depo."
Sweat dripping from his patrician nose, Foote sneered his disapproval and made a note in his pocket calendar. Tomorrow, I suspected, the Journal would condemn lawyers who prolong litigation and cause untold expense to our last bastion of freedom, billion-dollar media conglomerates.
"Now, Mr. Wong, what is your recipe for duck á l'orange?"
Again, Wong clammed up and the chair creaked. Patterson said, "At what point in time?"
A lawyer will never use one word when five will do.
"Before the newspaper published the review," I told him.
"Objection! Irrelevant."
"What about the current recipe, Mr. Wong?"
Before Wong had a chance not to answer, Patterson sang out, "Objection! Trade secret."
Patterson sat there smiling at me, resplendent in a three-piece white linen suit, unfazed by the heat and humidity. I wanted to strangle him with his Italian silk tie, and he knew it.
"Tell me, H.T., is there any question I can ask this transmitter of ptomaine, this bearer of botulism, that won't draw an objection?"
"What he say?" Chong Cong Wong demanded. The chair was silent.
Patterson slapped the conference table in mock horror. "Slander! Defamation! Obloquy piled upon libel! Is it not enough that your illiterate restaurant critic referred to the acclaimed Wong entree as 'duck a la slime'?"
"Fair comment," I retorted.
"Is it not enough that he called the rice soup 'cream of phlegm'?"
"Hyperbole, nothing more."
"That he denigrated the foie gras as 'toxic scum.'"
"A timely reference to environmental concerns."
"That the rabbit cassoulet tasted like 'road-kill muskrat.'"
"Intended humorously, no doubt."
Patterson bounded from his chair, put a hand on his client's shoulder, and thrust his chin toward the heavens. "Lies! Prevarications! I have never witnessed such calumny—"
"Save it for the jury, H.T. Look, we're wasting a lot of time. You've got a waiting room full of clients, and from the looks of them, most are lucky to be out on bond. Let's conclude discovery, ask for an early trial date, and finish this."
"—A string of malicious canards impugning my client's cuisine, damaging his reputation, assaulting his honor. The jackals of the Journal shall pay the ultimate price; their ledgers will flow with red ink in this, the Mother of all Lawsuits. And may I enlighten you as to how Shakespeare described the importance of a man's reputation in Richard II?"
I'd already heard it, something about the purest treasure mortal times afford. By now I figured Patterson was getting paid by the word o
r maybe the syllable. He would go on for a while, making the stenographer earn her keep. I checked my watch. Three-thirty. Barely time to beat rush hour on the drive to Hialeah.
"A man loses everything in his war-ravaged country..."
Odd, since Wong was a Viet Cong sympathizer.
"Then in our land of opportunity, he employs dozens of unfortunate souls from the Caribbean, South America, and the Orient..."
Not one green card in the bunch.
"Our city leaders dine at his famous establishment..."
Freebies for the commissioners, no kitchen inspections for Wong.
"Until that savage reporter unleashed his venom..."
Actually he was drunk and the copy editor asleep.
***
Max Blinderman looked me up and down and didn't like anything high or low. "She ain't here," he announced, leaning on the counter in the Compu-Mate office.
I gawked over his shoulder, which isn't hard to do when you're nearly a foot taller. True enough, Bobbie was nowhere to be seen. Max wore a black T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve. I hadn't seen anything like it in years.
"Actually, I came to see you," I said, and waited for my nose to grow.
He looked at me skeptically. On his forearm, the tattooed snake seemed to hiss. Looking down, I noticed a bald spot expertly camouflaged by some vigorous back-to-front combing and a healthy dose of hairspray.
"I wanted to apologize for that story in the Journal," I continued, making it up as I went along. "Bobbie threatened a lawsuit because of what it would do to your business. I just wanted you to know that I had nothing—"
"Fergit it. Hey, business never been better. Babes are calling in, wanting to join, talk to the murderer. Some kind of turn-on, can you believe it? And guys, too, one wants the handle 'Sexy Strangler,' I won't give it to him." He paused a moment to pat himself on the back. "This is a classy operation."
I nodded in agreement, and my nose was still normal except for a curve where an elbow once came through my face mask. "It's a strange world out there, eh, Max?"
"Yow."
"One more thing. When Bobbie responded to the subpoena, she gave me a printout of the calls to both women on the nights they were killed."
"Yow."
"Could the list be wrong?"
"Whaddaya mean?"
"Is it possible for someone's name to be listed by mistake? Can the computer be wrong?"
He loosened up a bit, probably figuring I'd have served him with a warrant by now if that was my mission. "Don't see how. The computer records the handle automatically when the customer gets online. No human error possible."
"What about an impostor? My handle's Stick Shift, but what's to keep me from logging in as Passion Prince?"
"Won't work. Customer's handle can only be used when matched with his password. And that's something known only to the customer."
"Not quite," I said.
"How's that?"
"You know all the passwords, don't you, Max?"
A smile flashed like a blade beneath his mustache. "Yow. What of it?"
CHAPTER 19
Tourist Season
"But I can't go to England."
Charlie Riggs continued packing his battered leather suitcase.
"I've got a partners' meeting next week. If I miss another one..."
Charlie neatly folded a heavy mackinaw and placed it in the case. Next came a woolen scarf and a pair of gloves.
"I've got a libel trial with H. T. Patterson. If I can prove that Chong Gong Wong pisses in his soup..."
With his hand Charlie dusted off an old fedora that Harry Truman would have loved. He placed it lovingly on top of the clothes and gently closed the case.
"To say nothing of the Diamond murder investigation. I'm stuck with a suspicious state attorney and a horny professor, and I don't think either one is Jack the Ripper. Plus the reporters are driving me crazy. Rick Gomez was hiding in a mango tree this morning when I went outside to water the crabgrass."
"Precisely why you should accompany me to London. While I'm lecturing, you can follow up on the Ripper connection. Tour the East End if you wish. Call New Scotland Yard. Anything."
"I don't know, Charlie. I think the Mr. Lusk stuff is a curveball."
Charlie was stuffing his favorite pipe with cherry-blend tobacco. He would have to go eight hours without a puff and was going to miss it. "I'm sure Nick Fox would approve your travel expenses as part of the investigation."
"No doubt. He probably wants me out of town."
"It could be useful, getting away, thinking about the case. Tempus omnia revelat. Time reveals all things."
"It doesn't feel right, leaving just now."
Charlie shrugged. "It's up to you. And maybe just as well. You didn't seem to get along that well with Pamela Maxson."
"What's she—"
"As the hostess for the lecture tour, she'll be around quite a bit. I can understand your reluctance to go if the two of you don't—"
"What time's our flight?"
***
The Miami airport in July. An air-conditioned icebox stocked with frozen tourists. Shorts and thongs and legs broiled lobster red. Europeans on charters to art-deco South Beach. South Americans booking off-season rooms and escaping winter back home. Miamians heading for Asheville, Bar Harbor, and Aspen.
Intentional tourists. Tourists from the islands hauling boxed Sonys and Panasonics, tourists from the Midwest loaded with tax-free liquor from the islands. Tired children screaming, caged dogs yowling, monotone messages in three languages on the PA.
And the businessmen. Another day, another city. Gray suits, blue shirts, rep ties, a thousand weary faces. Briefcases stuffed with forms, Dictaphones, and calculators. Guys from sales or marketing peddling software or mainframes or this season's widget, sitting at the gate, figuring last week's commissions, fudging the expense accounts, making lists, taking inventory.
The modern drummer, poised for his daily dose of cardboard food and stale air. No more Willy Lomans in the Studebaker getting just past Yonkers. These days a guy from Richmond or Memphis can make the Atlanta hub for the morning flight to Pensacola or Biloxi, hop the bus to the rental lot, slip into the still-wet Taurus, and have lunch with the purchasing agent he's been sweet-talking all year. If he makes the sale, great, and it's bourbon on the rocks at the Holiday Inn before dinner alone and a pay movie in the room. No sale, there's always tomorrow and a hot new prospect in Mobile.
***
Charlie spent the interminable flight reading the Select Coroners' Roles, A.D. 1265—1413 while I went over what I knew. As usual, it was less than I didn't know. I knew Marsha Diamond was curious about Nick Fox's war record, but I didn't know why. She wanted a story, of course, but what story and why wouldn't Nick open up? Maybe I should talk to Priscilla Fox again. Maybe there's something she left out, something she knew from years ago. What happened in Dak Sut and on the dike outside the village and which happened first? Marsha thought the shooting on the dike happened before the troops entered the village. If it did, when was Evan Ferguson killed? And what about the translator? How did she die? What did Marsha know, anyway? And if Nick thought she had something on him, would he have killed to silence her?
So many questions.
What about Gerald Prince? He denied chatting with Marsha even though the computer recorded his password and handle attached to the crude dialogue. Then there were the frenzied lyrics from "Great Balls of Fire." It isn't too much love that drives a man insane, I thought. But what is it? Maybe Dr. Pamela Maxson knows.
Thinking about the professor inspired me to grab two little bottles of Jack Daniel's when the flight attendant rolled by. I listened to the drone of the engines, my eyes growing heavy, my mind drifting over the clouds.
Tom Carruthers. Now there's a character. Homophobic, chauvinistic tough guy in rawhide and boots. Who knew what evil lurked in his heart.
Henry Travers. A sad, middle-aged faker, scrounging for tw
o-dollar winners and lusting for the friction of body parts. A lifetime of resentment against women by a guy who never did anything but lease them.
And how about Max Blinderman? He could have been an electronic imposter, plugging into Marsha's line by signing on as the Passion Prince. But a guy with a record of misdemeanors doesn't usually leap to a Murder One. Unless he's done it before and has never been caught.
Back to Nick Fox. Maybe he liked beating me in court and wanted me to play the fool twice. If Nick Fox killed Marsha Diamond, unthinkable as that was, who killed Mary Rosedahl? Someone did, after apparently consensual sex, but why? And what did it have to do with Marsha?
Keep thinking, Lassiter.
No thank you, miss, not another of the little brown bottles, rich cool liquid twirling down the throat. On the other hand, it's my duty to lighten the load you have to push down the aisle.
Who knew both women? Biggus Dickus and Passion Prince. The first one had alibis, Alex Rodriguez said. The second one had his own frustrations, but a killer? I would ask Pamela Maxson about that, too.
Ah, Dr. Maxson. Sexy and sagacious. Tall, brainy, beautiful Dr. Maxson who stiff-armed me like Larry Csonka jolting a linebacker. I pushed the rewind button in my mind and played it back. I saw her in my old convertible, hair flying, as we crossed the drawbridge on the night we met, lights of the city shimmering in the bay. But the scene was out of kilter. She had been unsmiling and unresponsive, unimpressed by an ex-jock mouthpiece with a crooked grin and an ancient chariot. I hadn't made a dent in her armor.
Okay, admit it, Lassiter, it's not the first time. There've been others, wise to your aw-shucks counterfeit charm, to the sports-pub patter, the barbed sarcasm that passes for humor. Maybe the English lady sees through the veneer to the guy inside, the guy who despises renting himself out by the hour to the client with the largest checkbook. Which is almost always the client with the blackest hat.
No, Your Honor, Asbestos-R-Us shouldn't have to remove its exemplary product from the Sunnyvale Elementary School. No problem if microscopic spores pierce the lungs of little Jack and Jill. Toughen 'em up.
