No, that wasn’t true. There was one person I could call.
* * *
A day later she posted my bail. Maybe it was because I insisted I knew who threatened her son. I promised to track him down and take care of it. Regardless, Juliette was there for me. Soon enough I’d traded my cell and my junkie roommate for the deep leather seat of her Benz, with her tanned legs stretched out beside me. She wore a short white sundress. Her hair was down and glowed golden across her face. The scent of her, the rich clean smell of lavender and lotion, filled the space with promise. Everything would be taken care of, until our problems drifted away in the rearview. I gazed out the window as the sedan glided through the city. A shirtless homeless man was slumped on a stoop. We made eye contact while stopped at a light. He held an empty vodka bottle by the neck in one hand. The look on his ragged face said he was contemplating flinging it through our window. The light changed and he was gone.
“How’s Stevie doing?” I asked.
“He’s fine. He’s taken a liking to Terrance. He loves hearing his stories.”
“Sounds like I’ve been replaced.”
She glanced over, but didn’t reply. We drove a few more blocks in silence before she said, “So tell me how you’re going to deal with this. How are you going to find this guy and prove he did it?”
“I’m working on it.”
“You haven’t got a clue, have you?”
“I said I’d take care of it.”
“Well, at least you have strong incentive. It’s your ass that’s going down if you don’t.”
“Thanks for the reminder.”
“Though you’re probably more worried about saving your partner’s ass than your own. You’re so damn obsessed with her.”
“Fuck her,” I said. “You never had any need to be jealous, Juls.”
She scoffed. “It wasn’t jealousy. Don’t flatter yourself. I am not threatened easily. But stop pretending. You are obsessed with that woman.”
Now wasn’t the time to bicker with the lady responsible for posting my bail. The judge had set it at one million—a down payment of a hundred grand to the bail bondsman, a good-sized check, even to Juliette.
“Can I see him?” I asked after a few more blocks.
“Who?”
“Stevie, I’d like to talk to him.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s scared to death, Duck. He’s eight years old and he’s in danger. He’s not stupid. He knows what’s going on. He goes to school with an armed bodyguard. He already has anxiety and now he knows that someone wants to hurt him, for reasons he can’t understand. All he knows is that you’re responsible for it.”
“That’s why I’d like to see him, to reassure him. Please, Juls.”
“No.”
There was no sense arguing. Her cub was in danger and mama bear wasn’t budging. Until I took Oliver off the board and proved he was behind it, the conditions of my release were clear. I was free only to continue my job. If I couldn’t do that, Juliette would make sure I ended up back in jail. I was back in her employ. Now instead of those envelopes of cash on the nightstand, I was in debt, a hundred large and counting.
“Can I ask for one more favor?”
“What?”
“I need a lawyer,” I said. “I’ll follow up with Cass’s guy, Eddie Lutelman, but I’m not sure he’s alive, or if he is, if he’d be willing to help me.”
“I’ll find someone,” she said. “I’ll email you the details later tonight.”
She drove the rest of the way in silence until we stopped in front of my building on East 17th. Juliette had never been to my place before. I didn’t bother to ask how she knew where I lived. Cardboard still covered my tagged front door. I spotted old Mr. Petit peering out his parlor window as I climbed from the Benz. I glanced back at her sharp blond profile. She turned and said, “Get to work.”
Chapter 34
I learned that Lutelman was still alive, and no, he was not interested in speaking with me. He’d suffered a heart attack on the sidewalk, but they managed to reboot it in the ambulance. He was taking an extended leave from his practice. That was all I could get from his secretary. I wondered if he would still be helping Cass. The loyalty of slaves is hard to overstate. Cass owned him in a way that no spouse ever could. My guess—as long as Eddie Lutelman was breathing, he would do Cass’s bidding. But as for her partner, that guy could fend for himself.
I considered Oliver. He was staying with his mother, at least on the night of Crowley’s murder. It appeared Uli lived around the corner from her bar. I thought about heading to Kruger’s to confront her, but that would land me back behind bars in short order. I decided to lurk nearby unseen, wait for her to leave, and then follow her home. Maybe I’d get lucky and catch Oliver in the neighborhood. Maybe he was so damn brazen that he’d stop in for a beer at his mother’s pub, sip it on the same spot he killed her husband. No, Uli may be complicit in her son’s crimes, but I never doubted that she loved Carl. Her son would keep his distance from the scene of that particular crime. If he was indeed behind it . . . I remembered with a jolt that Crowley was killed half a block away, in the park across the street.
I finished the rest of my beer and headed back out.
The police tape was still up. Whoever bludgeoned him had done it in the prettiest spot in the park: under a centuries-old elm in sight of the statue of peg-legged Peter Stuyvesant. The usual assortment of students and muttering addicts were scattered along benches around the perimeter. A few dogs pulled at leashes. Their owners looked away as the dogs pissed over blooming tulip beds. I wondered if anyone was watching me. So typical—the accused posts bail and returns to the crime scene. Even if an officer wasn’t assigned to my tail, there were cameras hidden in the trees. There are few public places in this city where you are not being filmed. Good luck getting away with a crime committed in the open. They must have footage of the night Crowley died, the night Detective Miller seemed to think I was in a murderous blackout state of alcohol psychosis.
Perhaps those telltale tree cameras didn’t reveal much at all. A hoodie and a mask under a dark night would make any ID difficult. I wondered if I had any hoodies at home, anything that could function as a mask. Wondered about the reliability of my memory and whether or not I was going insane. Had Uli really taken me to Cass’s dungeon—the home I’d been so curious about for so long? Had I submitted to her kinky torture, while her son stood in this park and beat his boss to death? I remembered limping home, feeling the sting of her lashes, but then why weren’t there any marks? I closed my eyes, tried to imagine the scenario I was being accused of. Did I do it? Was Uli telling the truth?
I shook away that madness, swore my innocence. It couldn’t have been me. I could trust myself. Couldn’t I? I began to salivate for strong drink. Another muttering addict, just like the bums on those benches . . . I still had a roof over my head, I wasn’t that far gone, but for how long? When would I fall through the floorboards? The poles of ruin and respectability were so much closer than anyone dared to admit. The billionaire on the sidewalk, waiting for the light, alongside a homeless smack addict, drooling over scarred skin—they were aliens to each other, two different species forced to share the same city. But wasn’t I a testament to that cruel swinging pendulum? I began life inside the gilded homes of the rich, and now I was dangling my foot over the abyss, a few decisions from that bench, or another jail cell.
Back home I stared down the bottle of Bulleit on the counter. Lost again. I knew it wouldn’t help matters, but sometimes a man needs his medicine. I poured four fingers and gulped it down before any guilt could rise. If I didn’t care about myself, the least I could do was help the boy. Maybe Stevie was safe now after all. If Cass and I were taking the fall, then why would anyone bother to fulfill those threats? All I had to do was give up. Let come what may. Maybe Lutelman would get Cass off. Maybe Juliette would find a lawyer to help me to
o. Maybe I just needed to sit back and let the law handle this. At what point do you give in and stop searching?
Never.
The cops aren’t there to help. Neither are the lawyers. They’re there to clean up. The only one that can help you is you.
Come night I would travel down to East Broadway. I would do whatever it took to find Oliver and prove his guilt, but first I needed to do some homework. I reached for my cell and found the number for their offices in Coral Gables. She owed me. The girl sold me out to her boss.
* * *
“BioVida,” chirped the receptionist. I pictured her, all peroxide and silicone and overdoses of vitamin D.
“Could I please speak to Natasha?” I asked.
“She’s very busy, may I ask who’s calling?”
“Tell her it’s Duck,” I said. “Tell her it’s urgent.”
“I don’t, um . . . okay, just a second. Let me see. Hold, please.”
I hummed along to Jimmy Buffett Muzak while I waited. “Changes in Latitudes . . .” It did not improve my attitude. I listened to the whole bastardized song before she came on.
“Let me call you back in ten minutes,” she said.
“No, it’s urgent. Listen . . .”
“Not here. I’ll call you back.”
Click.
I reached for the bourbon while I waited, then thought of Stevie and pushed it aside. Some, I would grant myself some, but not much. Strictly maintenance drinking from here on out, there’d be time to drown myself later. In my days at chez Cohen, playing mentor to the boy, lover to his mother, I had been teaching myself temperance. It seemed long ago now. I could relearn it. It was the only way.
My alcoholic ponderings were silenced when my phone rang ten minutes later, as promised.
“I heard,” she said by way of hello.
“About Crowley? Or that I’m being accused of it?”
“Both. Are you okay?”
“Out on bail,” I said.
“Have a good lawyer?”
“Working on it.”
“Listen, Duck, about the last time I saw you, with Dr. Lipke . . .”
“You sold me out, darling, and now you can make it up to me.”
“I can’t help you. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”
“You know I didn’t kill Crowley, right?”
“No, I don’t know that. I barely know you. I know you’re a liar and that you had a hard-on for him, so who knows?”
“It was Oliver,” I said. “Lipke’s son.”
“Eberhard doesn’t have children,” she said.
“Oliver’s adopted. Considering his boy’s outright racism, I’m not surprised he kept him away from the office.”
“Duck . . .”
“Apparently, it’s a recent thing, the adoption. That’s what Crowley told me. I don’t know what his relationship is to his so-called father, but he’s a fucking lunatic. He’s worked for them, in some capacity, as their muscle. He’s a full-on neo-Nazi. He’s also evidently on a meth bender. I think he’s killed them all—Victor Wingate and his stepfather, Carl Kruger. Then he hit the trifecta when he bashed in the skull of Crowley. And now his mother is covering for him.”
“His mother?”
“Uli Kruger, Carl’s widow. I’m guessing Lipke knew him as a kid, felt some responsibility about the demon he became.”
I listened to her breathe, pictured the baking pavement down Ponce De Leon Boulevard. Finally she spoke: “She was upset about the book.”
“Uli contacted BioVida?”
“A few months back. She spoke to Dr. Lipke. I heard she was distraught.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“He did. He’s an old man. He feels a lot of guilt for what happened back then. He never meant to hurt anyone.”
“He hurt a lot of someones, and as far as I can tell, he never paid for it. What did he get, a small fine, some bullshit slap on the wrist? And then he set up shop down in South Florida, where he could teach Americans how to cheat? I know you’re not that naïve.”
“What do you care? Why does anyone care? It’s sports. That’s what people do. I got no time for that high-and-mighty moral bullshit.”
“We’re talking about murder, Tasha. Three and counting—maybe ordered by your boss, a man who has both a past and a present to protect. And as for sports, it was child abuse back then. Those kids he doped, they were minors and they didn’t have a choice. Lives were ruined, and—”
“You think this is Scarface? Somebody’s putting out hits from down in Miami? Listen to yourself. Lipke’s an aging queen who just wants to be left alone. As for this boy, Oliver, I’d remember if some racist Nazi came around the clinic. I never met the dude, but if he’s Uli’s son, my guess is that Eberhard was trying to look after him out of guilt.”
“Maybe at first,” I said. “But Lipke’s no fool. He made a point of telling me how dangerous Oliver is. He probably has some kind of paramilitary training with hate groups. You send out a guy like that, on a mission with a head full of meth, on a case that involves the mother who abandoned him? You’re asking for a horror show, and that’s what we’ve got. So I need you to deliver a message to your boss from me. Tell him what I just told you. Tell him I know all about Oliver and his mother, Uli. Tell him that he’s an accessory to murder. You tell him that, and then tell him to call me. Can you do that for me?”
“Okay, Duck. I can’t promise he’ll call you back, but I can tell him.”
“If he doesn’t, he’d better close up shop and fly somewhere far away, because his life in this country is over.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all, Tasha.”
She lingered on the line. I thought she must be remembering our time together in that hotel room, so I said, “When this is over, I’d like to see you again.”
“Never gonna happen,” she said, and hung up.
* * *
Lipke made me wait an hour. Enough time for a refill and some loud apropos music. Hedwig and the Angry Inch . . . “Try and tear me down.” I worked myself into a righteous lather. I thought of Carl Kruger pouring drinks and cranking his metal behind that bar, an inverse through-the-looking-glass reflection of Hedwig. I thought of all the poor souls robbed of youth by Lipke, and other abusers worse than him.
When my cell finally rang, I was not feeling charitable.
“You asked to hear from me,” said Lipke.
“Goddamn right,” I said.
“You seem to have things mistaken, Mr. Darley. I was very forthcoming with you when we spoke. I told you the truth. Now I hope you’ll allow me to clarify some of your misconceptions.”
“And I hope you’ll listen closely, because if you fuck with me now, you’d better hope the cops reach you first.”
“The threats again, I understand you’re upset, so am I. . . .”
“So are you?” I shouted. “I’m being charged with murder, so is my partner. Murders that you had a hand in. Don’t tell me you’re upset.”
“If you’d calm down, I’d like to explain.”
“You do that. Now.”
“I fear my son is in the midst of a psychotic episode. I’m very worried. It would be in all of our best interests if you could find him.”
“That’s funny, your partner told me the exact same thing
. . . before your son killed him. Maybe your boy, Ollie, will decide to take care of you next.”
“He won’t do that.”
“And why’s that? Psychotic meth-heads are always so rational, I’m sure you can reason with him.” “Because we love one another,” he said. “You have to understand, this boy’s mother abandoned him. She left her husband and left her son behind when she defected. Two years ago Oliver sought me out in Miami. I felt an obligation to him. I tried to keep him out of trouble. I’m afraid his birth father is no longer. He has no other family.” “Who was the father?” I asked.
“That is irrelevant.”
“The law won’t think so,�
� I said. “Maybe you had a hand in his death too. For a man with nothing to hide, you have an awful lot of bodies to account for.”
“Please, enough with the blind accusations. Oliver’s father was a man named Hans Zesner. He was a former patient of mine, like Uli and Hilde. Hans was a member of our national swim team, alongside his future wife. They were part of our program in Leipzig, where I was the head doctor. That’s how they met. Hans was a bit older than Uli, by six, seven years. She became pregnant at seventeen. It ruined her athletic career. But Hans was in love with her and insisted they marry. Uli resisted at first, and then consented.”
“But then his wife fell for Carl Kruger . . .”
“Hilde. This was before . . . the change.”
“I can’t imagine that was a very popular romance back home.”
“It was a terrible scandal. Oliver was just a toddler. His father won custody, Uli was unwelcome, and then she fled.”
“And let her son be raised without a mother.”
“Yes.”
“I’m surprised she wasn’t jailed and executed by your party.”
“Mr. Darley, the DDR had its problems, but we are not talking about the Third Reich. Please don’t sound so American.”
“So Uli and Carl went and made a life in the States, while this Hans raised the boy by himself. What happened to him?”
“Unfortunately, Hans Zesner was not up to the task. He struggled after Uli left, after his competitive days concluded. He drank. Mental illness emerged, much as it has in his boy. He coached at the institute for some time, but he was soon unemployable. And with the instability after the Wall came down, Hans could not cope. He was killed in a drunk-driving accident when Oliver was ten. Hans was the one drunk. Three others died with him. After that, Oliver was sent to a home. I’m afraid I lost track of him after I left the country.”
Against Nature Page 27
