Jake Lassiter - 02 - Night Vision

by Paul Levine

  “I’m trying to help you out, Jakie. Don’t fight me.”

  “Help me out! That’s a hoot. You framed me for the Rodriguez murder.”

  He studied me. “I can get you out of it. I’m willing to compromise my position to help you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Just then the distinctive aroma of rotgut breath invaded our space. “Scuse me, gentlemen, could you spare a shrimp?”

  “The fuck out of here!” Fox ordered, and my wino friend shrank away.

  “You killed Rod,” Fox said, “and I’m ready to cut a deal with you.”

  “No. You killed him, and I’m going to nail you.”

  “You are so fucking stupid, Lassiter. Why would I kill Rodriguez? He was my friend.”

  “So was Evan Ferguson.”

  He took a step toward me, thought better of it, and looked around.

  “What’s the matter, Nick, too many voters here?”

  “Okay, asshole, you got something to say, say it.”

  I took a deep breath and loaded my ammo. I only had one round. “I know all about you and the Medellin cartel. I know about the prosecutions you tanked and the information you passed to Bogota. I know about the bank accounts in the Caymans and Panama and just about everything else that could put you away. And in case you’re thinking about using that howitzer under your coat, everything gets delivered to the Journal in case I miss my breakfast meeting tomorrow.”

  Nick Fox didn’t call me an asshole and he didn’t pull his gun. His bluster was just for effect. I had tried enough cases to know that. Now it was all business, Fox trying to figure if I had the proof to back up the allegations. What cards does the guy with the fishing rod hold?

  A minute passed. He still hadn’t said a word. A second minute that seemed like a year. The bridge rattled under our feet as the cars thundered past. Three hundred yards away in the channel, a fully rigged custom Swan, maybe fifty feet, tooted its horn three times. The bridge tender pushed a button, the yellow lights flashed, and a moment later the traffic gates lowered and the bridge began its slow ascent.

  Finally Nick Fox said, “Rodriguez told you all this.”

  “Yep.”

  “Just words, and hearsay at that. Just a dead man’s words.”

  Already he had considered the evidence and decided I had nothing admissible. So I bluffed. “Plus photocopies, microfilm, and a bunch of bank records he delivered to me for the paper.”

  That stopped him, but only for a second. “Bullshit. He never had access to the accounts.”

  Confirmation. Instead of denying it, just letting me know I couldn’t prove anything.

  “Never? You never sent him to pick up cash, make a deposit. While he’s there, maybe a friendly banker gives him what he wants in exchange for a tip.”

  He chewed it over. It must have made sense. “That shithead Rodriguez! That simpleminded fuck.”

  And this is how he talks about his friends, I thought.

  “Once Prissy was killed, Rodriguez cracked,” Fox said. “He loved her, always loved her. When we broke up, I gave him the go-ahead. But she wasn’t interested in him except as a friend. He was still hoping and groping until she was killed. I should have figured he’d do something like this. He never wanted a piece of the action. Wanted to live a simple life as a cop. I was gonna make him head of a statewide crime commission. Supervisory powers over all capital cases. The best investigators, the latest equipment. I needed to get elected, that’s all, and I needed a middleman for the financing.”

  “To tote your bags, to haul your drug money. To aid and abet you in selling out your office. Maybe he got tired of it.”

  “Drugs are bullshit, Jakie. Read the papers. Federal judges, congressmen, your egghead professors are all calling for legalization. We can’t stop the flow. We close down Colombia, they move to Peru and Ecuador. Christ, they’re manufacturing in Europe now. We seal off the Bahamas for transit, they move to Mexico. We put on the heat in Miami as a port of entry, they come in through Texas and North Carolina. Forget drugs. It’s like booze. You can’t stop it if the people want it.”

  “You can rationalize anything, can’t you, Nick? Killing your best friend, selling out your office, framing me.”

  There was a tug on my line, then a leap, and a silver fish with a black streak from gills to tail took off. The wrong way. It headed under the bridge. Snook. Maybe twelve pounds. I yanked on the rod and tried to drive it out. Too late. It had fouled the line on a piling. I jerked the rod this way and that and then the line broke free.

  “Damn shame, guv’nor,” said rotgut breath from a few feet away.

  Fox was thinking. I didn’t know what, but I was hoping. He didn’t disappoint me. “Okay, let’s assume you have what you say you have. All the more reason we work this out. You have something I want. Two somethings, as it turns out. I hold your keys to the jailhouse. You give me the Vietnam log plus whatever documents Rodriguez gave you, and you’ve got a free pass.”

  The Swan had putted through, its mast towering above us. Inside the shack, the tender pulled a huge lever and the bridge lowered again.

  “I’ve already got a free pass. I didn’t do it. You did. You had me under surveillance at Cindy’s apartment. When I limped home, you took the gun. Then you killed Rodriguez and planted it.”

  He gripped the handrail and stared toward the flickering lights downtown. “Jake, think about it. I didn’t know the asshole talked to you. I never suspected. It was suicidal for him. He’d have to do time. Look, I’ve been straight with you. I told you I killed Evan Ferguson. I ran dope out of ‘Nam, and I skimmed shipments here when I was a cop. As a prosecutor, I dumped some cases, and I took major-league bread from some very bad actors because I had other priorities. But I never killed Rodriguez…”

  Over the rise of the drawbridge appeared a figure shimmering in the artificial light. Pamela Maxson.

  Oh shit. Early. Just when I was getting ready to lower the boom. I couldn’t deal with both of them at once.

  Fox saw her, too. “Hey, Jakie, isn’t that your English squeeze?”

  She wore a beige linen suit and matching shoes and pursed her lips walking across the steel grating of the catwalk. She called to me: “Jake, my cab is at the end of the bridge. Double-parked. I must say, this is a most unconventional meeting place. And I must catch—”

  “A lady in our midst,” proclaimed the old wino, bending from the waist and extending an arm.

  “Dr. Maxson,” Nick acknowledged, nodding. “Perhaps I shouldn’t say this, but you have the greatest legs I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen them from here to Hong Kong.”

  Pam nodded politely but kept her eyes on me. “Well, Jake, you seem to have drawn us together in this hellhole. What is the purpose of it?”

  “I wanted to tell you a story. Nick, you might as well listen, too.”

  Pam cocked a hip and pouted. “Jake, really. It’s stifling and smelly”—she looked toward old fishbait nearby—”and I have to catch—”

  “A short story about a beautiful woman. She grew up in the English countryside, a picture-postcard place. But she was unable to resolve what they call the positive Oedipal complex. She couldn’t transfer her love for her father onto other men. At the same time she hated her mother’s promiscuity, which had driven Father off. She once told me, ‘Never underestimate the damage a mother can do.’ So she had a horrible dilemma. She was attracted to other girls, yet hated them for it, especially their heterosexual promiscuity, which reminded her of Mother. She began experimenting with homosexuality while a teen, and when she learned that her lovers, also country girls, had taken up with boys, too…”

  “You’re no good at this, Jake,” she said, an edge to her voice. “You’re just as wrong about me as you were about Bobbie.”

  “We’ll get to her in a minute. Let’s cut to the chase. The heroine of our story killed two of the Cotswolds girls, strangled them in their barns or pastures or wherever they met to entangle limbs. The exp
erience fascinated and repelled her at the same time.”

  “Jesus, Jake,” Nick said, “what’s going on?”

  “Shut up for once and listen. This girl was different than most psychopaths. She wanted to stop, really wanted to be normal. And maybe she could. After all, we are all born psychopaths. Maybe she could find the emergency brake. And she was smart enough to learn everything there was about the subject. Study, become a doctor, a psychiatrist. Spend years interviewing serial killers, dissecting their psyches, staffing mental wards. And for a while it worked. She ran group therapy and no one knew she was one of the patients. Except maybe the real patients. What was it the Fireman said? That she wasn’t my type, only I didn’t know it yet.

  “She’d take an occasional male lover and tried to convince herself that everything was in sync. But sometimes she drifted back to those early days in a hayloft in the Cotswolds. And the urges returned. To love and to kill. Finally she found radical psychiatry. She stopped delving into the reasons why. After all, the unconscious is a myth. There’s no such thing as mental illness. Her choices were as rational as those of an officer who killed his best friend on a rainy day in a muddy village far from home.”

  Fox’s eyes hardened and he started to say something, but I kept going. “So now she finds occasional lovers, and when they stray, they die. But it’s suspicious if your girlfriends keep dropping off. So she controls it, maybe confines the killing to her travels. If we studied her passport and air tickets, what correlations would we find? An unsolved murder of a young woman killed in Paris, Barcelona—who knows, Miami Beach? And the corpses, some evidence of sexual activity, but of course, never any semen.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Nick Fox breathed. “You got any proof of this?”

  “At a homicide scene on Miami Beach a young assistant ME shoots enough pictures to make a family album. It’s good training. You never know what you’ll find. He takes close-ups of Marsha Diamond’s neck. He thinks he can tell if a strangler is right-handed or left-handed from the crescents. Charlie Riggs sets him straight. No big deal. Charlie notices that one of the crescents isn’t a crescent at all. It’s jagged because of a torn nail. But that’s no big deal either, because it’ll grow back in a few days. No use looking for a guy with a hangnail. It’s not like DNA, where your genes are your genes for life. Then Whitson takes shots of all the spectators, including one of Pam Maxson squeezing my forearm and a close-up of the marks. Nobody pays attention to anything but the reversal of the crescents. And that’s all you can see until you blow it up to an eight-by-ten and compare it to the enlargements of Marsha’s neck. They match, Nick, four crescents and one jagged edge.”

  I opened my tackle box and showed Nick Fox the blowups. He held the photos in the light of the tower and studied them. Then he grimaced. “This shit won’t hold up. There can be ten thousand people with a busted nail. This ain’t fingerprints. Jake, you’re off the deep end again.”

  “Nick,” I said, “do me a favor and shut the fuck up.”

  Pam was forcing a condescending smile. I hadn’t gotten through to her, and Nick wasn’t helping.

  “I should have seen it earlier, but I couldn’t or didn’t want to. But it was there all the time. She has a good grip, really dug her nails into me. Maybe her hands aren’t as strong as a jockey’s. No fractured larynx, but she was strong enough to cut off the air, squeeze Marsha into unconsciousness, and from there into death. Then there was the lipstick message on the bathroom mirror. ‘Catch me if you can, Mr. Lusk.’ Who’s the expert on Jack the Ripper? The lady from England, that’s who. And how about a motive? Insane jealousy. Infidelity infuriated her, and she found Marsha sweet-talking on her computer just after they made love. What was it Jack the Ripper wrote: ‘I am down on whores and I shan’t quit ripping them till I do get buckled.’ They were all whores to Pam Maxson, too. But one thing kept bothering me. Why did Marsha Diamond get out of bed with one lover—a lover who left no trace of semen—and start seeking another on the computer?”

  Nick Fox shrugged. Pam Maxson looked away.

  “Because Marsha knew this lover was just passing through, a one-night stand who was heading back across the Atlantic. I wasn’t listening, Nick, but the clues were everywhere. Maybe she wanted us to know. Even the title of her book, The Murderer Within Us. It was there, within her, now and always.”

  “Mr. Fox,” Pam said, “surely you don’t believe—”

  “It’s my fault, Nick. I couldn’t see. I was dumb enough to think she came back to be with me. She came back to be part of the investigation, to relive the murder, just like the ambulance driver who killed and rushed to pick up the body. It’s a thrill, isn’t it, Pam? Tell me, did you really want to be caught?”

  “Madness!” she spat. “Sheer madness.”

  “But you were right about one thing, Pam,” I said. “I fouled it up with Bobbie Blinderman. She wasn’t a killer. She was a pathetic lost soul in search of herself. She didn’t come to the hotel to kill you. She came to love you, to tell you there was nothing between us. You didn’t have to do it.”

  “She fell,” Pam said, “that’s all.”

  “She never would have hurt you, and you knew it.”

  Pam turned away and stared across the water. The cruise ships were lined up at the seaport on the south side of Government Cut, thousands of tourists prepared for their seven days, six nights of prepackaged Caribbean fun. When Pam turned back, she said, “Bobbie already had hurt me with her slutty ways. I could have treated her, arranged for her operation, everything. But she couldn’t help being a trollop, could she?”

  “And you hated her for it, just as you hate your mother and you hate yourself. But you would never kill Mum and you would never kill yourself.”

  “I would never kill anyone, not even a strumpet who deserves no respect whatsoever.”

  Nick Fox’s head was bouncing back and forth. Finally the enormity sank in.

  He grabbed my arm and said, “She killed them both?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” I said.

  “Christ, the two of you are something. The broad kills my girlfriend and some she-male. The guy I hire kills my friend.”

  That stopped me.

  He really thought I did it. He was willing to cut a deal to save his own skin, but he really thought I murdered Alex Rodriguez. Which meant, of course, that Nick Fox didn’t kill him.

  Pam said, “As you just indicated, Mr. Fox, you can’t prove a thing. You have no—what do you call it?—hard evidence. Just the pathetic ramblings of a man I assure you is quite unbalanced. Now, this has really gone too far, and I have a plane to catch.” The breeze was blowing her auburn hair into her eyes, and she brushed it away.

  “Wait,” I said, the fog in my mind beginning to lift. “Of course. Nick, was Rodriguez keeping you informed of everything he did in the Diamond investigation?”

  “Sure. You told him not to, but he worked for me.”

  “Rodriguez wanted to interview Pam again. He told the professor. What do you know about it?”

  “Fingerprints. She was never considered a suspect, but she was one of the last people to see Marsha alive. Rodriguez thought it was just covering the bases to get them. Compare with latents from the apartment. Apparently, he never did.”

  “No, she must have kept putting him off. But she couldn’t just refuse to give him the prints. How would it look? At the same time she figured he was the only one interested, and if he wasn’t around anymore…”

  “You’re quite mad,” Pam said.

  “I must be, to have gotten involved with you.” She shot a glance toward the end of the bridge where her cab waited. I couldn’t keep her from leaving, but as long as I kept talking I figured she would stay put. “The story’s not over yet, so humor me. The problem is, she can’t strangle a cop. Then she gets lucky. A gun drops into her lap, a .38 registered to me. Better yet, my fingerprints all over it. So are hers after she fires it, but that’s fine, too. After we go to my place
, I’m knocked out with the large economy-size dose of vodka and Darvon. She leaves to meet Bobbie but stops at Cindy’s and picks up the gun. Next day or so, she calls Rodriguez, says she’ll stop by his house, save them both some trouble. He could have a fingerprint kit there. He’s expecting a helpful witness, but he gets a slug in the chest. Then she dumps the gun where it’s sure to be found. Her prints are easily explained. One shot in the apartment, two witnesses. Second shot?

  Must have been fired by that hothead Lassiter. Now I see, Nick. You didn’t frame me. She did.”

  Again, three toots from an air horn. A big Bertram with a tuna tower was idling near the bridge. The tender hit his buttons and the traffic gate came down next to us.

  Nick Fox thought about it. “It’s just crazy enough to be true, and easy enough to find out. Dr. Maxson, we’re going to check your prints against the latents from the apartment. If they don’t match, you’ll be free to go. If they match, I’m going to hold you on suspicion of the murders of Marsha Diamond and Alex Rodriguez. As for the death of Mrs. Blinderman, Jake’s got his own ideas, but there’s no proof, so that’s between you and your Maker.”

  Pam Maxson didn’t stop to plea-bargain. She ducked under the traffic gate, ignoring flashing lights and warning signs in three languages, and headed up the bridge. She moved quickly, but the bridge had already started its jerky ascent. She stumbled after three steps, the heels of her beige pumps wedging into the steel grid work, each opening big enough to swallow a man’s fist. She fell to her knees, then kicked off her shoes. Regaining her balance, she started again, on all fours now, slowly climbing hand over hand.

  The bridge tender saw what was happening and hit the air horn, which bleated a frantic warning. Drivers poured out of their cars, pointing, laughing at the crazy woman scaling the drawbridge. Others began honking their horns, cheering her on, the same yahoos who holler “jump” at the guy on the ledge. One middle-aged man leaped from his custom van, video camera already running.

  I called after her. “Pam! No. There’s nowhere to run.”

  Nick Fox grabbed me by the arm. “Let her go, Jake.” I shook him off and moved closer to the foot of the rising span. As she climbed uphill, the increasing grade slowed her. In a moment I knew she would never make it. The opening at the mouth yawned wider. She couldn’t reach the top, and if she did, she couldn’t jump it. So she hung there, a hundred feet from the base of the bridge, clinging to the steel grating with both hands, digging her bare feet into the open grids, poised at a precarious angle as the bridge shuddered even higher. Then she looked back over her shoulder at me. In the eerie green haze of the vapor lamps I could not make out her face. She was calling to me, but the cacophony of horns drowned her out.