Felony Murder

by Joseph T. Klempner

  The problem, once again, was one of strategy.

  Dean rejected the idea of bringing her the videotape. Even presented as an unconditional peace offering, it implied a threat. At the very least, it would put Janet Killian on the defensive at a moment when Dean would be asking for her cooperation.

  He rejected also the notion of calling her ahead of time as he had before. He knew what would happen if he did. She would hang up the phone and call Detective Rasmussen, and shortly, Dean would get a call. “Counselor,” he could hear Rasmussen scolding him, “we had a deal. A deal’s a deal. The lady doesn’t want to talk to you. Stop harassing her.” And that would be that.

  In the end, he settled on a harmless enough ploy. He needed to get access to Janet Killian’s apartment in order to take photographs from the vantage point she had had as she observed the crime that night. If she would simply give him five minutes at her window, he could shoot looking down across the street to the spot where Joey Spadafino and Edward Wilson had confronted each other five months ago. She’d see the camera in his hand, the tripod under his arm, and know his intentions were legitimate. If necessary to persuade her to let him in, he’d promise to refrain from asking her any questions.

  Then, while setting up the tripod (he’d bring it along precisely because the business of setting it up and adjusting it would buy him extra time) and peering down to the street below, Dean would muse aloud at how surprising it was that she could have seen the knife at that distance so as to be able to describe the color of its handle in the man’s hand, in the dark, with the snow falling. He’d snap a few pictures, change lenses, make further adjustments. Finally, he’d turn to her and look her straight in the eye. “Miss Killian,” he would say as softly as he could, “you never saw a knife that night, did you?”

  And whatever her answer, at least he would have taken his best shot.

  The following day, Dean received two unexpected phone calls. The first was from Marie Wilson.

  “I wanted you to know, Mr. Abernathy. I called my husband’s physician. He never prescribed any antidepressants for Edward. And I checked our medicine cabinet and Edward’s dresser. There were no pills that I can’t account for. So if he was taking diben-”

  “Dibenzepin.”

  “Dibenzepin. If he was taking dibenzepin, I have no idea where he was getting it or where he was keeping it.”

  The second call was from Walter Bingham.

  “So, did you ask your guy about the robbery offer?”

  “Yeah, Walter, I did.”

  “And?”

  “And he says you can take your twelve-and-a-half to twenty-five and stick it in your ear.” Dean was being charitable; if he remembered correctly, Joey had been a little more graphic in his phraseology.

  “Doesn’t he know I’ve got him cold on felony murder?”

  “He’s not exactly a rocket scientist, you know.”

  “I know, but let’s be reasonable about this,” said Bingham. What’s he looking for?”

  “Oh, we’d settle for a $25 fine, two days’ community service, and a strong reprimand from the judge.”

  “I’m serious, Dean. What would it take to get rid of this case?”

  “Seriously?” said Dean. “At four to eight I’d break his arm.”

  * * *

  As Dean thought about the conversation afterward, he was baffled. A general rule of thumb in negotiations involving criminal cases - or negotiation of any sort, Dean assumed - was that the party with the weaker hand bore the burden of initiating the negotiations. Prosecutors with strong cases didn’t have to make offers; they enjoyed the luxury of being able to wait for defense lawyers to come begging to them on behalf of clients who would have no chance at trial and whose only hope, therefore, lay in getting a plea to a lesser charge and the reduced sentence that came with it.

  But Bingham had now come to Dean, not once but twice. Twice he’d called Dean with the express purpose of making plea offers. Furthermore, rebuffed the first time, he’d now called back to find out what the defendant would take. “What would it take to get rid of this case?” he had asked. A question that interested Dean not so much in terms of what Joey’s answer might be, but in terms of why the question was being asked at all. A prosecutor wanted to “get rid of” cases that were nuisances, those too old, too trivial, too complex, or too boring to try. This case was none of those. That left only one explanation, as far as Dean was concerned: that to Walter Bingham, despite his air of supreme confidence about the strength of his evidence, for some reason this case was too risky to try.

  Or to someone calling the shots for Walter Bingham.

  For hadn’t Bingham remarked about the close interest his supervisors and the police brass had taken in the case, that he had even heard from the Mayor? Bingham wouldn’t have the authority to make offers on his own in this case. Which meant that someone up the ladder had to be telling him to “get rid of this case.” And for some reason that Dean could not begin to comprehend.

  That evening, Dean returned his copy of When Carry Met Sally to Mark Wexler, symbolically removing any temptation he might otherwise have had to use the videotape as a trump card.

  The following day, he gathered his camera and tripod, an extra lens, a couple of filters, and three rolls of 35 millimeter film, and headed to 77 Bleecker Street. He found a parking place up the block, a legal one this time. He looked at his watch. It was ten-fifteen, late enough in the morning so that he would not be waking anyone, even a sometimes movie actress.

  Resisting the impulse to sit in his Jeep and hope that Janet Killian would fortuitously stroll out the front door, and leaving his strip of Venetian blind behind, Dean walked directly to the front of the building and opened the outer of the two doors. He didn’t try the inner door. Instead, he pressed the button alongside the listing on the board that read 1a novacek (super). Nothing happened. He pressed it again. Still nothing. He reached for the button again and was about to press it a third time, when he saw a door open onto the lobby beyond the inner door. A large man dressed in dark work clothes moved toward the door and cracked it open. Standing in the doorway, he looked Dean up and down. Apparently satisfied that Dean did not present an immediate menace to him, he pushed the door open and stepped into the vestibule area, joining Dean but continuing to hold the door open behind him.

  “Vut can I do for you?” he asked in what Dean took to be an Eastern European accent.

  “Are you Mr. Novacek?” Dean was careful to pronounce the third syllable “check.” He knew of both a professional tennis player and a tight end for the Dallas Cowboys whose names were spelled the same and pronounced that way.

  “That’s me.”

  “I need to see Miss Killian, Janet Killian,” Dean explained. “I need to take some photographs from her apartment.”

  “She expects you?”

  “Sort of,” Dean said. “I’ve spoken with her several times, and we’ve met.”

  “So?” said Mr. Novacek, holding the inner door open and allowing Dean to enter the lobby. “Ask her.”

  “Thank you,” Dean said and began walking toward the elevator.

  “Ask her,” Mr. Novacek repeated, and when Dean stopped in midstride to look at him, he saw that the man was pointing across the lobby in the direction of what appeared to be a mailroom. The only person in sight was propped up in a baby stroller and looked to be about six months old. Dean looked back at the super and thought he saw the man roll his eyes upward slightly.

  “Janet,” he called, making it sound like “Zhanet.”

  “Yes?” came a voice from within the mailroom.

  “Young man to see you,” called Mr. Novacek.

  Dean braced himself for the appearance of Janet Killian. At their first meeting, he had appraised her California blond good looks only in the context of how she would strike the jury as a witness. Now he felt his heart beat in anticipation and what he recognized instantly as pure lust for her other persona, the uninhibited, unclad co-star of When Carr
y Met Sally.

  So he was totally unprepared for the appearance of the dark-haired, fine-featured young woman who emerged from the mailroom and fixed her gaze on him.

  “Yes?” she said.

  Dean returned her stare. “Ah - I’m looking for Janet Killian.”

  “I’m Janet Killian.”

  Dean stared at her. A lawyer, a college graduate, a person of at least average intelligence, Dean prided himself in the fact that he rarely if ever said things that could be classified as completely stupid. Nonetheless, he now distinctly heard himself say, “Are you sure?”

  “Reasonably,” replied the young woman. She moved to the baby stroller and focused her attention on its occupant. Then she turned back to Dean. “And who do you think you might be?”

  “A moment ago I’d have sworn I was Dean Abernathy. Now I’m totally confused.”

  “Dean Abernathy,” the woman repeated slowly. “The man’s lawyer.”

  “Yes.”

  “And photographer.”

  Dean looked down at the equipment in his hands. “I can explain this,” he said. And as if to demonstrate, he held out the camera. But in doing so, he managed to tangle the strap with one of the legs of the tripod, which had apparently not been completely closed. He shook the camera to free it, but the strap remained snagged. He shook it again, harder, and it broke free. Too late, Dean realized he had no grip on it. The camera, launched from his hand, rose a foot or two in the air and seemed to float there before finally succumbing to gravity and beginning its inevitable descent to the lobby floor. Instinctively, Dean lifted his right foot, the way a soccer player would use his foot to catch a ball that had bounced off his chest, to control it before letting it reach the ground. But Dean’s soccer days were well behind him, and his timing was off. Instead of breaking the camera’s fall with his foot, Dean succeeded in kicking it squarely and lofting it across the lobby. He watched it land hard and slide to a rest. He looked sheepishly at the woman, who was fighting to suppress a smile.

  “I hope you’re a better lawyer than you are a photographer,” she said. The smile won.

  “I meant to do that,” Dean said, walking to the camera and retrieving it. “I never liked this camera.” The woman’s smile broadened, causing Dean to wonder if his clumsiness might prove worth the price of the 35 millimeter, which in truth was secondhand and somewhat temperamental at best.

  “Do you do things like that often?” she asked.

  “Only when I’m trying to make a total fool of myself. Not more than once or twice a day.”

  “We were supposed to meet with Detective Rasmussen,” the woman said, her attention again turned to her baby. “Only you changed your mind.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Detective Rasmussen. He set it up, then he called me back to say you had changed your mind. You decided you didn’t want to talk with me after all.”

  “He lied,” Dean said.

  She looked back at him. “Why would he do that?”

  “I’m not sure. But he did more than that. He got somebody to play your part.”

  “Play my part?”

  “Miss Killian - Mrs. Killian,” he corrected himself, glancing at the baby in the stroller.

  “Miss Killian,” she corrected the correction.

  “Miss Killian, I need to speak with you. What’s more, I think you need to speak with me.”

  “Would you like to come upstairs?” she asked.

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Upstairs was a comfortably furnished one-bedroom apartment that the real Janet Killian shared with her six-month-old daughter, Nicole. Dean sat on a sofa in the living room, which doubled as Janet’s bedroom, while Janet did whatever one did with a six-month-old in the other room, which she described as a combination nursery and attic. “I’ve decorated it in pink clutter,” she explained, but to Dean’s eye it looked pretty orderly.

  When she emerged, Janet held her index finger to her lips and whispered, “I think she’s asleep.” Before she would turn her attention to Dean, however, she insisted on making tea. “I can’t help it.” She shrugged. “It’s the Irish in me, I guess.” He found himself following her into the kitchen, where he looked on as she went through her ritual. She seemed to derive pleasure from it, and he enjoyed watching her.

  She was maybe five-five or five-six, and slender to the point of being almost skinny. Her skin looked lightly and evenly tanned. Her hair was somewhere between dark brown and black, with a hint of auburn visible only when she passed in front of the window. It was straight, but looked soft to the touch. Her nose was a bit too sharp and her lips a trifle too full, but both of those flaws disappeared when she smiled, revealing small white teeth that looked like they belonged on a dental health magazine cover. But it was her eyes that captured Dean. They were disproportionately large, giving her, along with the fullness of her mouth, the hint of a street urchin capable of breaking into a pout at any moment. They were blue - but not the blue that eyes usually come in. They were a darker slate-blue color, more suitable perhaps for the exterior of an expensive car or the hull of a sleek sailboat. The combination of these unlikely components caused Dean to catch himself staring for long moments at this young woman he had just met, and who now brought them tea that smelled slightly of orange and cinnamon.

  Dean was reminded of being served tea by Marie Wilson and wondered if there was something about him that inspired mothering in women, triggering some primitive need to brew dry leaves in steaming water.

  Back in the living room, she sat on a chair opposite him and watched as he examined his camera.

  “Is it going to live?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s not going to be taking pictures for a while, that’s for sure.”

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. It’s not really why I came here in the first place,” he confessed. “Oh?”

  “It was a ploy.”

  “I see.” She sipped her tea, her tongue testing its temperature. “And why did you need a ploy?”

  “Because you didn’t want to speak with me again - at least the person playing you didn’t want to.”

  “I think you better explain why someone’s been playing me,” she said.

  Dean did his best. He told her about the irregularities he had discovered in investigating the case, about the forged signature of Joey Spadafino, the presence of an exotic drug in the toxicology report, the conflicting reports regarding the drinking habits of Commissioner Wilson, the mysteriously ordered cremation. He described his meeting with Detective Rasmussen and the blond “Janet Killian.”

  “So who is she really?”

  “An actress of some sort.” Dean did not elaborate.

  “Why would they do that? Why would they go to all that trouble?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Dean confessed. “Except that they obviously felt it was very important to keep you away from me. If you’re willing to tell me what you saw that night, maybe we can figure out what they don’t want me to know.”

  Janet Killian sipped her tea again. Then she said, “The man you’re representing is guilty.” When Dean didn’t say anything, she added, “I mean he did it.” She looked at him almost apologetically.

  Two Janet Killians, Dean thought, and they both have to blow my client away. But he shrugged and said, “That tends to happen a lot in my business. Why don’t you tell me what you saw.”

  “I was nursing Nicole,” she said. “I mean I still am, but I was nursing her that morning. It must have been about two-thirty. I had just put her down. I went to the window and looked out. I do that sometimes. It was snowing. I saw a man bending over something. I couldn’t see what it was at first. After a moment, my eyes got accustomed to the darkness, and I realized it was another man lying on his side. He wasn’t moving. And I saw the first man - your client - going through his pockets.

  “I dialed nine-one-one. I have one of those cordless phones, and I was able to keep watching at the window whi
le I called. I told the operator what was happening. She asked for my phone number. I don’t think I gave it to her.

  “After a moment, the man - the one going through the other one’s pockets - he looked up, like he realized people were watching what was going on. I saw him put something in his pocket. I’m pretty sure it was money. Then he started walking away, toward Seventh Avenue. He walked quickly, then he sort of broke into a run.

  “I had got disconnected from the operator, so I called back. A different operator answered, a man. He asked me for a description of the man who took the money. I described him as best as I could. I don’t remember exactly what I said, except that he was short and had a dark jacket. Oh, yes - he had a cap on, a dark cap. I think I said that, too.”

  “Anything else?” Dean asked.

  “Well, I’m sure he had pants on-”

  “No, I mean, do you remember anything else that happened between the two men?”

  “Like what?” Janet asked.

  Dean hesitated, then reminded himself that this wasn’t a trial; there was no need to refrain from asking the dangerous questions, the ones that might hurt his client. It was the truth he wanted. He needed to know.

  “Like a knife?” he said, and held his breath in spite of himself.

  And Janet Killian said, “Oh, no.”

  Research studies have shown that a type of mental paralysis, an actual inability to cognate, can result from the simultaneous bombardment of the brain with two equally powerful but competing reactions to a single stimulus. Thus, we sometimes find ourselves figuratively “frozen in our tracks” when confronted by some emergency we want to both rush to confront and flee to avoid.

  So Dean now sat dumbly on the sofa for what seemed like minutes, unable to fully absorb either of the two messages that tried to penetrate his thought process.