by Tim Cockey
And getting deeper.
Peter Morgan stepped into it too. And down he went. Four days after Kate’s arrest for the killing of Lou Bowman, Julia phoned me to tell me that she had broken it off for good with Peter Morgan.
“I don’t like how the other half lives,” she told me. I reminded her that the Peter Morgans and Amanda Stuarts of the world are not really the other half. They’re the other one-trillionth.
“Whatever. Their shit still stinks.”
Nearly three years ago, Peter Morgan had arranged for the sale of a worthless tract of railroad land to a corporation called Epoch Ltd. The railroad had picked up the land—the site of a long-defunct chrome-plating factory—decades earlier, with plans of expanding its railyard. The expansion plans had died on the vine. Presumably the railroad board could have had no idea back then that Senator Harlan Stillman would be lobbying so hard in the next two years to win the federal contract to build their gleaming new prototype pyrolyis plant (their shit-recycling plant) right here in Charm City or that the government would be seeking an appropriate piece of industrial property on which to build it. Well, maybe the railroad board hadn’t known this, but it now seemed abundantly clear that Peter Morgan had certainly caught a whiff of the plan. So too his brother-in-law, Alan Stuart. The property was unloaded to Epoch Ltd. for a pittance. Of course one of the reasons for the low asking price was that the property was still littered with hundreds of drums of chemical waste from its old chrome-plating days, many of them leaking and seeping their toxic sludge into the ground. And so Epoch Ltd. had picked it all up for a song. Peter Morgan quietly arranged for one of the railroad’s storage warehouses to be made available to store the drums of waste. The bogus silica gel labels were slapped on the drums, loaded on a boxcar and shipped off to the Midwest. Lo and behold, when the government came looking for a place to build their pyrolysis plant, where do you suppose Senator Still-man directed their attention? To land owned by a corporation controlled in part by his own son-in-law and by the wife of the man Senator Stillman hoped to see in the statehouse in a few years?
Do goddamn tell.
Maybe you can see why all of this got to be a little confusing to the average Sunpapers reader. What does a bunch of barrels of chemical sludge and a waste-recycling plant have to do with naked pictures of the embattled police commissioner’s wife? At first blush, nothing. But for those who stayed with the story the tale finally fell into place.
Alan Stuart and his political buddy, Senator Still-man, dreamed up the scheme. A nifty skim. Pulling in Peter Morgan to broker the land deals and installing Stuart’s own wife on the board of the newly formed Epoch Ltd., Stuart was able to direct several million dollars of pure profit into his pocket. So was Senator Stillman, via his son-in-law. Ditto Joe Pappas.
However, on an otherwise unnotable day when a train derailment dumped several dozen mislabeled drums from a boxcar way out in Indiana, events were set in motion that would threaten exposure of all of this increasingly ill-gotten gain. Events that, if uncovered, would surely snuff out several political careers on the verge of their budding as well as one in full and venerable flower. The political lives of Stuart, Stillman and Pappas would be, quite simply, obliterated. This was the power that Detective Charley Russell held as he made his way closer and closer to learning the source of the sludge barrels. And the poor guy probably didn’t even live long enough to realize it. It was the power that would get him killed. Alan Stuart saw to that. The sweetheart deal for Lottery Lou Bowman was fifty thousand dollars for the hit and a lifetime allowance of five big ones a month, cash, delivered by Federal Express, right to the NAPA Auto Parts store of his choice. The fact that on that fateful night in Sparrows Point Kate Zabriskie pulled her service revolver and fired at her own husband just as Lou Bowman himself was taking aim simply made the evil deal sweeter. For all but Kate, of course.
Question: Why was it that when Carol opened up the Federal Express envelope in Bowman’s 4x4 in Heayhauge it contained eight thousand dollars instead of the usual five thousand dollars?
Answer: The rising price of murder. Kate explained this part to me the day she was released on bail. Kate told me that she and Spencer Davis pieced it together the night they met at his office and she turned over the videotape of Amanda Stuart and Guy Fellows. The five-thousand-dollars-a-month bonus that Lou Bowman received in untraceable fifty-dollar bills had indeed been more than a simple ongoing payoff to keep Lou Bowman quiet about the Charley Russell murder. It had also served, as Kate had surmised earlier, as a retainer. Bowman had killed for cash. Perhaps he had even done so prior to Charley Russell. He was certified scum; he could be bought. Or at least rented.
And according to Kate, that’s what Alan Stuart had done. Soon after the naked pictures of Mrs. Stuart showed up in the mail, Alan Stuart had called Lottery Lou Bowman down from his Heayhauge home and aimed him in the direction of Guy Fellows. It was no secret that Lou Bowman had been in town that week. Even I saw him. Kate and Spencer Davis speculated that Stuart must have sweetened the pot as an enticement to kill Fellows. An additional three thousand a month is an additional thirty-six thousand a year, not too terribly far from the paltry sort of salary level at which a police detective can hope to top out. Kate and Davis further speculated that after killing Fellows, Bowman had located the videotape that Fellows kept at his place but that he had not turned it over to Stuart. Bowman had kept it for himself. Insurance.
That very night of their meeting, District Attorney Davis had pulled the necessary strings to arrange for a search of Lou Bowman’s house on the harbor cliffs. Kate had him tell the Heayhauge police to take an especially close look at any Disney classic videos they might find. Sure enough, right there among the handful of tapes in Bowman’s small video collection, the Heayhauge police had located a copy of Fantasia, or, at least, a tape in a Fantasia cover. But there weren’t no Mickey on the tape. No sorcerer’s apprentice sweeping up floods. The tape featured Amanda Stuart and the late Guy Fellows. They were doing quite a number of things, but sweeping up floods wasn’t one of them. The tape was the clincher.
A confession would have been nice. But of course Kate had fired five bullets into the guy out at the Morgan estate. Bowman had never regained consciousness.
Justice delayed … but justice swift.
CHAPTER 39
Ultimately, it was Julia who won Kate her freedom. As the sole eyewitness to the encounter between Kate and Bowman, the re-creation of events pretty much hinged on her account. And her account squared with what Kate had told me up in Carol’s place. Bowman fired first. Not only did he fire first, he hit Kate in the arm. His bullet ripped right through her biceps.
Kate’s return volley ripped right through Bowman’s cheek, his right lung, his left-side kidney, his throat and his heart. Fancy shootin’, girlfriend.
Julia was questioned as to whether in her opinion Bowman had been subdued by any particular one of those bullets. The question was intended to suss out whether Detective Zabriskie had shown excessive force in her self-defense shooting of Lou Bowman. Julia told me that she had laughed at the question, unable to restrain herself.
“Was he subdued by any particular bullet? Please. I told them that each bullet seemed to subdue the guy a little bit more than the previous one. I mean… come on!”
Was it excessive force? Otherwise known as overkill? You bet your ass it was.
Kate walked. The district attorney’s office—Spencer Davis’s office—gathered the information and issued a statement that Detective Katherine Zabriskie acted in self-defense in the shooting of Lou Bowman. The report went on to recommend a thirty-day paid leave of absence for Detective Za-briskie. Kate went them one better. She handed in her resignation.
She also broke it off with me. She wouldn’t explain her reasoning except to say that she needed to get away from everything and everyone. I protested.
“Don’t push away the people who care about you. Push away the jerks and the ones who want to use you.”
>
We were at the Oyster. Kate had been cleared earlier that day.
“I need time to think,” Kate said.
“Then think! Think all you want, Kate. Please. I’m not going to stop you from thinking. Why don’t you take a thirty-day leave of absence from me? From everybody. Go out to the desert somewhere, where it’s just you and sand and nothing else for hundreds of miles around. Take sixty days. Take as long as you need, Kate. Then start making decisions. Don’t start slamming doors now.”
Personally, I thought it was pretty good advice. But when I finished, Kate got up from the table, leaned down and kissed me gently on the lips. Then she walked out the front door of the Screaming Oyster … letting it slam behind her.
• • •
Spencer Davis barely had time to conduct his gubernatorial campaign. Then again, his only serious contender was out of the race. In fact, his only serious contender was placed under arrest within a week of Jeff Simons’s funeral and formally charged with accessory to murder in the cases of Charley Russell and Guy Fellows. Peter Morgan was charged as well in connection with the Russell case. He was charged with conspiracy to commit murder and with obstruction of justice. In fact, obstruction of justice charges were being handed out like pancakes in a church basement. The case against Morgan and the fine people of Epoch Ltd. was the one that promised to become the most tangled. Senator Stillman would be sucked into the investigation for his lobbying efforts on the part of Epoch Ltd.’s dirty patch of land, as would Alan Stuart for his role in the whole boondoggle. A fine mess, no two ways about it. The kind of mess that makes me glad that I simply bury people, not prosecute them in a court of law. By comparison, my job’s a cinch.
Alan Stuart was denying everything. There was no direct evidence linking him to the murders of Guy Fellows or Charley Russell, nor was there direct evidence of his involvement in the payoffs to Lou Bowman. He protested in the media that he was being persecuted because his wife had turned out to be a tramp. That good old “tramp defense.” A surefire winner. Everybody loves that one.
Amanda Stuart kept the house. Released on bail, Alan Stuart moved into an apartment in Bolton Hill. A clever reporter for the Sunpapers pointed out that the ground-level windows of Stuart’s new digs had barred windows. Spencer Davis picked up on the observation and was quoted more than once saying that Stuart would be well served to get used to the bars as soon as possible. God, how the winner in us loves to gloat. I don’t know how Beth Davis slept at night; it looked to me like that husband of hers had lost all ability to shut off that hundred-watt smile. He was ear-to-ear practically every time I saw him on the news.
Hutch was also investigated but was cleared of any suspicion. He hadn’t known a single thing about the land deal. And, of course, he hadn’t knifed Guy Fellows. I picked up the phone about a half-dozen times to call him, but each time I put the phone back down before I finished dialing. A leave of absence from that friendship seemed appropriate.
The beat went on. Other people died. I put on my dark suit and my somber face and I helped their loved ones bid them adieu. Sometimes I’m asked if it doesn’t get to me after a while, dealing with the dead so much. I don’t know. I’ve always felt that it’s a good job. I meet a lot of people, many of whom are insanely grateful for what I’m doing for them. I get to observe a little waltz of human behavior, sometimes a minuet, occasionally even a slam dance, after which I’m handed a fat check for my troubles. Also, I get outside a lot. In between deaths, I’m a free bird. And if I’m ever in the mood for finger food and conversation, a daytime cocktail party is mine to attend practically any day of the week.
But I know what it really is that people are asking me. It’s all the death. All that living in the Land of Farewell. I don’t know what I can say to that. Maybe for balance alone, a guy like me should marry a pediatrician. Or better yet, a midwife. The mortician and the midwife. Sounds like a bad TV show, doesn’t it? My midwife would run off at all hours of the day and night bringing new life into the world while I spend my days lowering lids on caskets.
A show like that wouldn’t last a season. Or maybe it would. But I sure wouldn’t watch it.
Besides, I didn’t want a midwife. I wanted a traumatized former police detective with dark hair and nice long legs. Call me crazy. Go ahead.
CHAPTER 40
Julia said that she needed the distraction. Don’t tell anyone, but I happen to feel that what she needed was to climb back on her pedestal and dangle her legs over the side. She wanted to deflower Michael Goldfarb. As carefree an exterior as Julia presents to the world, she’s not without her ability to be hurt. The entire Peter Morgan fiasco had left her a little hurt, a little angry and a little embarrassed. She was knocked off her stride. There were several avenues of response that Julia could choose to travel. Popping a virgin seemed the easiest. And the most fun.
Gil Vance was thrilled to have Julia rejoin the cast of Our Town. Chinese Sue had not been working out as Emily. Her Kabuki approach to the role of the loquacious teenager had given the other actors just too little to work off of. Faced with an Emily so sullen as to be bordering on the hostile, the other actors had reached the point where they basically ignored the character and were attempting to restitch their scenes with improvised chatter to one another or, at times, directly to the audience. A week before opening, several members of the Gypsy Players board sat in on a dress rehearsal. By the end of the run-through, two of them were sitting onstage as dead people in the final scene, one had tendered her resignation from the board effective immediately and one was backstage flirting with the costume mistress. And so the show went on.
This rehearsal had proved to be Chinese Sue’s farewell appearance. At the conclusion of the run-through she had approached Gil to suggest a lastminute alteration in the script. She told him that instead of dying of natural causes, as Thornton Wilder had penned it, she felt that Emily should kill herself. She argued that decisive action was more in keeping with the character. And she made her arguments in single syllables. The look the director gave to Sue in response indicated that perhaps Gil would consider going so far as to have the entire population of Grover’s Corners simply stone the sullen girl to death. But Gil held his temper. “It’s a little late for suicide,” he said. Then he added, “But I’ll think about it.” And I’m sure he did.
No matter. Julia had a talk with Sue at the gallery the next day and the Emily switch was made. Professionally speaking, Gil was thrilled to have Julia back in the show. On a personal level, he soon enough saw that he would be no match for my ex-wife as concerned Michael Goldfarb. When Julia showed up that evening for the rehearsal Michael Goldfarb was more the puppy than ever. Julia would have no trouble whatsoever clicking her leash onto him. Sit. Speak. Beg. Lie down … He would heed his mistress’s voice.
When we spoke about my fiasco, Julia was as tender as could be.
“I’m sorry about Kate, Hitch. The whole thing is a goddamn mess, isn’t it?”
I had to agree with her.
“She might come back around,” Julia said hopefully. “She’s seen more than her share of bad men. She knows you’re a good one. Give her time.”
I asked Julia to explain more specifically what had happened out at Peter Morgan’s.
“What did Kate tell you?”
“Very little. She said that she went there to confront Morgan about his role in the contract killing of her husband. Once she saw Morgan’s sister’s name listed as a board member of Epoch, she went straight to Morgan’s place. She said that Bowman was standing at the front door when she arrived and that when she got out of her car he shot at her. She shot back.”
Julia added simply, “That’s how it happened.”
“And you were at the front door?”
“I was passing by it on my way to the den when Bowman knocked. I opened the door just as Kate was getting out of her car.”
“Did you hear Kate say anything to him before he shot her?”
Julia picked up my Teddy
Roosevelt glasses from the lectern. Her eyes locked on mine, she parted her lips and very methodically huffed on each of the lenses, then tugged out a corner of my shirttail and wiped them clean. She handed the glasses back to me.
“You want to know?” she said finally.
“That’s why I’m asking.”
“Yes. She did say something. She yelled out, I believe it was, ‘Hey! You bastard!’ ”
“I see.”
We fell silent. Onstage a piece of scenery fell over. The church, I believe.
Julia finally asked, “Any other questions?”
“Just two.”
I looked up at the black ceiling. It was easier for me to reconstruct the scene there.
“Was Kate’s gun already drawn when she yelled out at him?” I asked.
“It was out and it was aimed right at him.”
“I see.”
“What was your other question?”
I put the glasses on. They weren’t plain glass but were in fact a very weak prescription. I could see perfectly, everything just looked very flat. Even Julia’s scrumptious body looked as if I could have slipped it under my arm like a cardboard cut-out and walked it out of the building.
“My other question was, did you tell that part to the police? That Kate was out of her car, aiming her pistol at the guy before she said ‘boo’? That she provoked him. That he was shooting in self-defense? Did you tell the police all that?”
Julia drew in her lower lip for consultation. “I seem to recall that I missed that part.”
“Remind me to buy you a drink sometime,” I said.
“You don’t have to thank me, Hitch. I didn’t like the way that guy looked at me anyway when I opened the door.”
“Yeah, well. I don’t think that’s why Kate shot him.”
