Sleight of Hand: A Novel of Suspense (Dana Cutler)

by Margolin, Phillip

  “What’s your interest in Blair?”

  “I think he’s being framed and I want you to help me prove it.”

  Schatz leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers, and studied Dana.

  “Who do you think is framing him?”

  “Charlie Benedict.”

  “Now you’ve got my attention.”

  “Bobby, how much do you know about the Ottoman Empire?”

  Schatz listened intently as Dana told him about her quest for the scepter and all that had followed.

  “That’s some story,” Schatz said when she was finished.

  “That it is. What do you think of it?”

  “I think you’ve convinced me that Horace is innocent and Benedict might be guilty. But how do you intend to prove he’s innocent with Benedict as his lawyer?”

  “The key to this case is—if you’ll pardon the pun—the key with Blair’s fingerprints that the police found in Carrie’s grave. If Benedict killed Carrie Blair, he had to get hold of it before he buried her, but I don’t know if he had an opportunity to do that. What I do have is a plan that will let me find out. And the first step in that plan will be to get Horace Blair to fire Charles Benedict and hire you.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “By meeting with Horace Blair and convincing him that his attorney is trying to frame him. To do that, I have to talk to Jack Pratt, his civil attorney, the other lawyer who is allowed to meet with Blair. Do you know him well enough to set up a meeting?”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  “Thanks for coming over, Charlie,” Rick Hamada said.

  “It’s always a pleasure, Rick,” Benedict answered as he took a seat across the desk from the prosecutor. “So, what’s the reason for this get-together?”

  “The Blair case. You have no idea how much shit has been raining down on me since we arrested your client.”

  Benedict smiled. “Oh, I think I have a small idea.”

  Hamada didn’t return the smile. “Yeah, you probably do. You probably engineered the calls from the governor, the mayor, and every other politician in Virginia and the District of Columbia who gets money from Blair.”

  “Not me,” Benedict protested. “I don’t run in those circles.”

  “Then it’s probably Jack Pratt doing your dirty work for you.”

  Benedict shrugged. “If he is, he’s doing it without my knowledge. And I’m sorry you’re getting annoying calls, but you still haven’t told me why I’m here.”

  Hamada’s cheeks puffed up. Then he expelled the air he was holding.

  “I’ve been ordered to offer Mr. Blair a deal. This wasn’t my idea. I think I’ve got a pretty good case. If I could get my hands on a copy of the prenuptial agreement I’d have an airtight case, but I can’t. Mancuso is worried that we won’t be able to prove a motive without the prenup, and our only evidence about the contents comes from Barry Lester. Mancuso is nervous about using a scumbag like Lester to convict a person as prominent as your client. Personally, I think Lester will hold up, but I’m not the big boss. I just work here.”

  “What’s the offer?”

  “Blair pleads to manslaughter and we drop the murder charge. I told Mancuso he’s making a mistake, but I’m not the only person getting nasty calls.”

  “Interesting.”

  “It’s better than interesting, Charlie. It’s a fucking fire sale as far as I’m concerned.”

  “I’ll take the offer to my client and see what he thinks.”

  “Get back to me. All I can give you is two days. Then the deal is off the table.”

  The two lawyers talked a little longer, then Benedict left. As soon as the door closed behind Blair’s attorney, Hamada phoned Frank Santoro.

  “He just left,” Hamada said.

  “How do you think it went?” the detective asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “But you got him thinking about the prenup?”

  “Yeah, I played it up big. Now we just have to wait to see if your plan works.”

  “Absolutely not!” Horace Blair said.

  “At least think about the offer. Hamada hasn’t decided whether he’ll ask for the death penalty. Even if he doesn’t, you’re still looking at a possible life sentence as opposed to ten years. And, with your connections, you’d probably be out on parole at the first opportunity.”

  Every muscle in Blair’s face tightened. He leaned toward Benedict, his face scarlet with anger.

  “Let me make myself perfectly clear. I did not kill my wife. I am innocent and I will not plead guilty to anything, not even if Hamada offers me a jay-walking charge. Do you get that?”

  Benedict held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Hey, Horace, ease up. I’m on your side. I believe you’re innocent one hundred percent, but I have a duty as your attorney to bring you any offer a prosecutor makes. I’d be disbarred if I didn’t.”

  “Then you’ve done your duty and we will have no reason to ever discuss a plea again.”

  “I’ll tell Hamada.”

  Blair was still angry when the guard escorted him back to his cell. Benedict was just disappointed. He had a pretty good fix on Blair’s personality and he had not expected the millionaire to take the offer, but he had held out hope that he might. If Horace had pled, Benedict’s life would have become much simpler. Oh, well, life was like that. Sometimes it didn’t hand you an easy solution to your problems on a silver platter.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Horace Blair looked terrible. His hair was snarled and he was unshaven. There were dark circles under his eyes. The night before, the guards had placed an insane person in isolation and the man had howled like a dog for several hours before running out of steam. To make matters worse, the other inmates had added to the din by screaming at the lunatic and the guards. Horace had pressed his pillow over his ears, but his attempts to block out the manic baying and the angry shouts had failed, and he was exhausted.

  Horace was used to being on the go constantly, so he found surviving the empty hours that comprised most of his day in jail very difficult. He could not help spending a lot of his idle time thinking about his case. When he could not sleep he found himself mulling over the evidence that had landed him in jail. Much of it made no sense. There were all these anonymous tips. There was the gun, which he had never seen until Frank Santoro held it up in front of his eyes. There was the other evidence the police had found in the trunk of his car. And Barry Lester! How had that little weasel learned the terms of his prenuptial agreement and the location of Carrie’s grave? But what bothered him the most was that damn key with his prints on it. How had a key to his front door found its way into Carrie’s grave?

  Horace was trying to solve these seemingly impossible problems when the door to his cell opened.

  “You have visitors,” the guard said.

  Horace was eager for any change in his mind-numbing routine. The guard led him to a contact visiting room. He assumed that his visitor would be Charles Benedict. Instead he found Jack Pratt waiting for him.

  “How are you holding up?” Pratt asked with genuine concern.

  “How do you think?” Horace answered angrily. “I can’t sleep, I get no exercise, the food is inedible, and I’m facing the possibility that I may be executed for a crime I never committed. Not to mention the fact that the businesses I’ve cultivated all my life are swirling down the toilet.”

  “Don’t worry about business. The people you’ve put in place are doing a great job.”

  Suddenly all of the anger drained out of Blair. He looked like a beaten man.

  “I don’t know how I’m going to get by in here. I’m going crazy.”

  “You have to stay positive, Horace. You can’t let this thing beat you. And right now you’ve got to focus. We have something very urgent to discuss.”

  Blair looked up.

  “You have to change attorneys. You’re making a big mistake by having Benedict as your lawyer.”

  �
�Why? What have you learned?”

  “Very little that’s good and a lot that is very bad,” Pratt replied. “Even if I didn’t know what I’ve learned recently I’d be urging you to drop Benedict. He’s out of his depth with a case like this. He has handled a few murder cases but only one went to trial. Most of his caseload involves narcotics and prostitution. He’s had some success with those cases, but a friend in the commonwealth attorney’s office told me that there’s something fishy about the way some of his victories were achieved.”

  “Such as?”

  “Nikolai Orlansky is a mobster, Russian Mafia. A lot of Benedict’s business comes from him, and a lot of those cases have been dismissed because of missing witnesses or evidence, not because of anything Benedict has done. Basically he’s a lightweight, a .250 hitter. You need a big bat in your corner, Horace. You need to get rid of this guy. Especially after the way he fucked up your bail hearing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In court a witness can’t testify to what another person has told him if the testimony is introduced to prove the truth of the statement. That’s the hearsay rule. For example, if you’re my witness and I ask you where the sun rises, you can’t say, ‘I don’t know, but Joe told me it rises in the east.’

  “But there are exceptions to the hearsay rule. A witness can testify about something someone told him if a lawyer ‘opens the door’ by asking a question that invites the witness to testify to what someone else has told him.

  “Benedict killed your chances for bail when he asked Detective Santoro questions that let Santoro testify about everything Barry Lester told him about the prenup and your supposed confession. That was an amateur mistake no decent lawyer would ever make.”

  Blair looked crushed.

  “Don’t beat yourself up for hiring Benedict,” Pratt said. “You didn’t have a lot of time to think after you were arrested and you trusted him because he gave you the DVD and didn’t ask for anything in return.”

  Pratt paused. “Horace, we go back a long way, and you know I’m your friend as well as your attorney. Do you believe you can trust me?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m going to tell you something that is going to be tough to hear. There’s another reason you have to get rid of Benedict. There’s a good possibility that he did not make a mistake at the bail hearing. He may have acted intentionally so you wouldn’t get bail.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There is someone waiting outside I want you to meet. Dana Cutler is a private investigator who knows more about your case than anyone else. She’s convinced me that Charles Benedict murdered Carrie and has been framing you for her murder from the start.”

  Horace listened to Dana’s tale of her quest for a mythical golden scepter and the trail of clues that led her to the conclusion that Charles Benedict killed Carrie and framed him for her murder.

  “There’s one piece of this puzzle I can’t solve,” Dana concluded. “If Benedict murdered your wife and is behind this frame, he had to get your front-door key. Did he have an opportunity to do that before the body was discovered?”

  Horace looked completely defeated. “I’ve been a fool,” he said so softly that Dana had to strain to hear him.

  “Benedict is a brilliant criminal,” Pratt said. “We’d all have fallen for his tricks.”

  “I certainly did, and I know exactly how he got the key.”

  Horace told Dana and Pratt about Benedict’s demonstration with the keys at his home on the evening he brought over the DVD.

  “Do you remember telling me that you had seen Benedict perform magic at a Bar Association awards dinner, Jack?”

  Pratt nodded.

  “I know very little about magic but I imagine that a magician would have little trouble swapping my house key for a look-alike that would not open my front door.

  “And the evidence in the trunk of my Bentley. The trunk was locked and there was no sign that it had been forced open, but Carrie had a key to the Bentley. After he murdered Carrie, Benedict could have made a copy and used the key to get into the trunk.”

  “That must be it,” Pratt said. “But, unfortunately, this is all guesswork. However, Dana has a plan.”

  Horace looked at the investigator. For the first time in a long while Horace Blair thought he might be saved.

  “If I’ve learned one thing about Benedict,” Dana said, “it’s that he’s very, very smart. I have theories about every step he’s taken to frame you but I can’t prove any of them because Benedict dots every I and crosses every T. And that’s what’s going to trip him up.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Charles Benedict woke up with a smile on his face. The nubile young blonde who had shared his bed last night had been expertly trained by one of Nikolai’s whoremasters, and her performance had left him drained and satisfied, but not as satisfied as he was with the way the case was proceeding.

  If there was an afterlife, Tiffany Starr and Gregor Karpinski were residing in very hot accommodations in its low-rent region. He had no idea where Ernest Brodsky was, and he didn’t care. What mattered was that none of them could testify against him.

  Better still, Horace was falling apart. His arrogance would alienate the jurors and he would make a terrible witness. Meanwhile, Benedict would make enough subtle errors to ensure his client’s conviction. With Horace behind bars for Carrie’s murder, the case would die and he would be safe.

  Benedict stretched and got out of bed. He was on his way to take a shower when his cell phone rang. Caller ID told him that Jack Pratt was on the line. He debated not answering, because he couldn’t stand the supercilious prick, but curiosity got the better of him.

  “Hey, Jack, what’s up?”

  “Horace would like to see you at the jail as soon as possible.”

  “Oh, about what?”

  “He’ll tell you. When can you be there?”

  Pratt’s tone was not friendly and alarm bells began to go off.

  “I should be able to make it by nine-thirty.”

  “Good,” Pratt said before ending the call abruptly.

  Benedict showered and shaved and arrived at the jail an hour and twenty minutes later. When he told the jailer at reception why he was there he was shown to a contact visiting room. When the door opened he saw Horace Blair, Jack Pratt, and Bobby Schatz.

  “Hey, Charlie, come on in,” said Schatz, who had met Benedict at several Bar Association functions.

  Benedict didn’t move from the doorway. He looked back and forth between his client and the two attorneys.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “I’ve decided to hire Mr. Schatz to defend me at my trial,” Blair said. His voice was firm and Benedict knew immediately that there would be no way to change his mind, especially with Pratt and Schatz in the room. He faked a smile.

  “Bobby is a terrific lawyer. I have no problem being second chair to someone of his caliber.”

  “I haven’t made myself clear,” Blair said. “Your services will no longer be required. Mr. Schatz will take over all aspects of my defense.”

  “What’s the story here, Horace? Is this about the plea offer or the bail hearing? I told you I have a duty as an officer of the court to tell you any plea offer the prosecutor makes, and you heard the evidence at the bail hearing. If you think Schatz could have done better, you’re mistaken.”

  “The problem is experience,” Pratt said. “You’re an expert in certain types of cases. If this were a drug case, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But you’re not experienced when it comes to homicides, and Mr. Schatz is.”

  An image of the three men sprawled in pools of blood flashed through Benedict’s brain but he realized very quickly that his best move was to bow out gracefully. He ignored Pratt and addressed Blair, forcing himself to sound magnanimous.

  “I’m sorry you feel this way, Horace, but you’re in excellent hands. I want you to know that there are no hard feelings o
n my part. I wish you the best.”

  “Thank you, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” Horace said.

  Benedict could tell that he didn’t mean a word of what he’d said. What had happened to make Blair decide to fire him?

  Benedict rang for the guard and all four men felt uncomfortable in the ensuing silence. As soon as the heavy metal door closed behind Benedict his fists curled into a knot and he had to restrain himself from smashing them into the concrete walls as he walked toward the exit. It was that motherfucker Pratt. Benedict was certain of it. He toyed with the idea of waiting for him in his parking garage or breaking into his house and blowing his brains out but passed on those ideas quickly because there was no benefit to them. What he needed to do was remain calm and assess the situation.

  The evidence was still in place and the evidence pointed unerringly toward guilt. Schatz was good, but Benedict didn’t think he was good enough to convince a jury that Horace Blair did not kill his wife. So maybe he had no reason to be concerned. Sure, he would lose the money he would have made defending Blair at trial, but he could go on with his life without having to worry about being arrested for Carrie Blair’s murder. Even if Schatz got Blair off, the cops and the prosecutors would still think Blair killed his wife. And if Blair was convicted with Schatz handling the trial, no one would think that he’d thrown the case. By the time Benedict parked in the lot behind his office he had concluded that getting fired wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

  Benedict entered the building through the side door. He settled behind his desk and read through his mail. Then he buzzed his secretary and asked for messages.

  “Robert Curry called about the Hernandez case, Martin Schechter wanted you to call about the deposition in Raines, and a woman named Myra Blankenship called from Seattle.”

  “Blankenship? What did she want?”

  “An appointment.”

  “Did she say what it’s about?”

  “No, and she didn’t leave a phone number.”