“Anytime,” Turnbill said. “You know where to go. They’ve already deposited Rubinsky in an interview room. Good luck catching his brother.”
At the end of the corridor was another workstation, manned by a guard. Eli ducked into the men’s room. He pulled out a piece of paper with a girl’s name on it, which had been stuffed inside Tom Rubinsky’s wallet, then dialed the number on his cell phone. A softly seductive voice came on the line. “Trudy?” Eli said, trying to mimic Tom Rubinsky’s voice from the tape Joanne had given him from the preliminary hearing. “This is Tom, baby.”
The sugary sweetness disappeared, and Trudy’s voice took on a hard edge. “I heard that you were in jail, that the cops think you and Gary murdered Ian. Then tonight, they said on the news that someone had killed Willie. Where’s Gary?”
“Gary’s not here,” Eli told her. “What were you doing with Ian? I thought you cared about me. Why would you have sex with my best friend?”
“All I wanted was some grass and a ride back to my apartment,” Trudy told him. “Don’t ever call here again!”
Eli heard the dial tone and slipped his phone into his hip pocket. His instincts had paid off, but now he had to make some adjustments. Fortunately he had brought his portable computer and enough equipment to do what he had in mind. Instead of continuing down the corridor, he returned to the front desk.
“That was quick,” Turnbill said, scowling. “What did you do? Just look at the guy?”
“I haven’t seen Rubinsky yet,” Eli told him. “I have to get something out of my truck.”
“What do you want us to do with the prisoner?”
“Keep him on ice,” Eli answered, walking over and standing by the exit. Once he heard the clicking sound, he jerked the heavy door open and rushed out.
Approximately fifteen minutes later, a skinny dark-haired officer escorted Eli to the interview room where he’d already deposited Tom Rubinsky “He was asleep,” the officer said, finding the correct key and inserting it in the lock. “His jacket says he’s dangerous. If he gives you any trouble, be sure to hit the buzzer more than once. Three of our men called in sick tonight. I’m pulling a double shift. There used to be a phone in this room linked to the front desk. Then some maniac tried to strangle a detective with the telephone cord. We tried to get an intercom installed but the county never approved it.”
Eli walked into the interview room, taking a seat at a small table. Tom Rubinsky was slumped in the chair. “What do you want? And why are you here so late at night? It’s hard enough to sleep in this place without someone waking you up and dragging you out of your cell.”
“Detective Marvin Brown,” Eli said, showing his fake ID. “Sorry I had to wake you, pal. When you hear what I’ve got to say I think you’ll be glad I did.”
“How come I’ve never seen you before?” Tom asked. “I thought that other detective was handling my case.”
“Well,” Eli said slowly, “things change. Tommy.”
“My name is Tom,” the other man snapped. “I hate being called Tommy. It makes me sound stupid.”
“Sounding stupid is the least of your problems,” Eli told him. “Your brother just rolled over on you. He’s in booking right now.”
Tom bolted upright in his chair. “You’re lying.”
“Afraid not,” Eli said, placing his massive hands on the table. “They picked him up about three o’clock this afternoon, not long after he shot and killed your mutual friend, Willie Crenshaw.”
“Willie’s dead?” Tom exclaimed, wrapping his arms around his chest. “Gary didn’t do it. Willie was a dealer, you know? Anyone could have killed him. He’s been on the skids for months. He even had a warrant out for dealing.”
“Gary made a full confession,” Eli said, flicking a piece of lint off his black T-shirt. “We caught him with that fancy decoy gun in his possession, his clothes covered with Crenshaw’s blood. It’s over, my man.”
Tom remained silent, trying to assimilate what he’d heard. He was tired. Tired of being confined, tired of the regrets, tired of the whole disgusting mess. First Gary had shot Ian, a nightmare he would never forget. And Willie might have been a loser, but as far as Tom knew, he’d never intentionally hurt anyone. He was just your typical pothead. Like many drug users, Willie had started dealing to supply himself and his circle of friends. Then when his life had slowly drifted away, he’d had no choice but to sell drugs to survive. Even people addicted to hard stuff like coke, heroin, and crack could stay on a job longer than a pothead. The nature of the drug itself took away a person’s incentive to work. It was like waking up every morning and taking a dozen sleeping pills. The only difference was that pot didn’t put you to sleep. You could live in a rathole and be content. You could spend days without ever going outside, laughing your head off at some crazy old movie and munching out on anything that even vaguely resembled food. Gary could have easily become another Willie, except his brother had so much energy that he had to smoke three or four joints to get even slightly high. To get Gary to calm down, you had to practically hit him over the head with a sledgehammer. He looked over at Eli. “Willie’s really dead? Are you certain?”
“He’s spending the night in the morgue,” Eli answered, tipping his chair back on its hind legs. “Not many people spend the night in the morgue unless they’re dead, know what I mean?”
Tom scratched a patch of dry skin on his left forearm. “And Gary confessed? He told you he killed Willie?”
“Gary told us everything,” Eli replied. “He told us how you insisted he go along with you the day you robbed the Quick-Mart. How you shot Ian, then stood and watched while he dug the grave. He claims you instructed him to kill Willie because you were afraid he’d sell out to the police.”
“No way,” Tom said, standing up and shoving the chair back to the table. “Everything you’ve told me is bullshit. Gary’s a pathological lair. Ask anyone who knows him. He started lying while he was still in diapers. I think the first word out of his mouth was a damn lie.”
“The ADA believes he’s telling the truth,” Eli continued. “She’s already offered Gary a deal. He pleads guilty to second-degree murder, and the rest of the charges will be dismissed. All your brother has to do is tell the court what he told us this afternoon, and he’ll be back on the street in six years. You’ll go down for murder one, the jury will rule that special circumstances existed, and maybe after twelve years and dozens of appeals, you’ll get your last meal and your lethal injection.”
Tom’s face flushed with rage. He swung around and punched the wall with his fists. The wall was solid concrete. His knuckles were bleeding, but he was so angry, he didn’t appear to notice. “It’s that Kuhlman broad, isn’t it? She tried to trick me into believing Gary was going to testify against me the day they arrested me.”
“Have you talked to your brother?” Eli asked quietly.
“The morning after I was arrested,” Tom told him. “Gary said he called the jail to see how much money he needed to get me out. When they read off the charges and told him I was being held without bail, he told me he’d decided to turn himself in and tell the cops he was responsible for everything.” Tom suddenly halted and leveled a finger at the detective. “That’s the real story, not this crock of shit you’ve been feeding me.”
“You planned the Quick-Mart robbery,” Eli told him. “In order to keep Ian in line, Gary said you repeatedly beat him.”
Tom leaned against the wall on the far side of the room. “You’re just making this stuff up.”
“Ian went to the emergency room for a cut on his head the day after the robbery.”
“We didn’t hit him,” Tom said. “He got wasted on sloe gin and passed out the next day, banging his head against the car window.”
“That’s not how Gary tells it,” Eli said, a hint of a smile on his face. He was going to score big. His veins were pumping with adrenaline, making it hard to maintain his composure. After looking at Ian’s mug shot and seeing the injur
y over his left eye, Eli had checked all the hospitals in Ventura. He’d finally learned that Methodist Hospital had treated Ian the day after the robbery. Ian, however, had told the emergency-room physician that the injury had occurred the day of the robbery. The DA’s office had made a mistake by not following through on this injury themselves, yet it wasn’t uncommon for defendants to have cuts and scrapes when they were arrested, particularly low-class thugs like the Rubinsky brothers. Ian, by association, fell into the same category.
“Gary says you kept Ian a prisoner,” Eli continued. “You knew you had to keep him away from Elizabeth for fear she might talk some sense into him. You also knew Ian would break, down on the witness stand. That’s why you decided to kill him.”
“I don’t have to talk to you,” Tom said, a trickle of saliva running down his chin. “You didn’t even read me my Miranda rights.”
“You’re already in custody,” Eli told him, although Rubinsky still had the right to refuse to speak to an officer outside the presence of his attorney.
Tom narrowed his eyes. “What else did Gary tell you?”
“That you told him he had to kill Willie. Gary said you spilled your guts to Willie when you ran into him at the Sunny Day car wash. This was after you’d transported Ian’s body in the Chrysler. You went to the car wash to clean the car of any evidence. That’s almost impossible, by the way With the kind of technology we have today, anyone who transports a corpse in a vehicle is dead in the water.”
Eli stopped speaking, wanting to see Tom’s reaction. On his way to the jail, he’d driven by Willie’s Crenshaw apartment building, noticing the Sunny Day car wash on the comer of Lewis and West Main Street. As soon as he’d heard the news about Crenshaw’s death, Eli’d pegged him as the anonymous caller. Under the guise of Detective Brown, he’d placed a call to the crime lab. They confirmed that a receipt from the Sunny Day car wash had been found on the floorboard of the Chrysler. Unless there was more going on than Eli was aware of, perhaps something related to the decoy gun, Gary Rubinsky would be a fool to risk stealing a hubcap, let alone committing a murder. Eli’s primary goal wasn’t to trick Tom into confessing. Since he’d falsely represented himself as an officer, nothing Tom said would be admissible in court. Eli’s only interest was to get Tom to tell him the precise location of Ian Decker’s grave. Once the police recovered the body, the rest of the case would fall in place. By then, Eli would be on his way to Bali.
“Call the guard,” Tom demanded. “I want to go back to my cell.”
Eli decided it was time to bring out the fireworks. Shortly after four that afternoon, he’d stopped searching and returned to the Night-watch. Joanne had given him both a transcript and a tape recording from the preliminary hearing of the Quick-Mart robbery, which allowed Eli to compile a fairly extensive vocabulary of words and phrases spoken by Gary Rubinsky Once he’d input Gary’s speech patterns and frequently used words into his computer, his voice synthesizer could then mimic anything Eli typed. Interspersing Gary’s real voice with the computer-generated Dalek, he’d recorded his version of Gary Rubin-sky’s confession. The fact that the recording was spliced gave it a ring of authenticity. Rubinsky was allegedly confessing to two homicides, so the starts and stops in his speech would be expected.
Finding out about Trudy had been a lucky break, Eli told himself. Since he’d brought his computer, he’d been able to insert new material into the phony confession. Reaching into his pocket, Eli removed a micro-cassette player and placed it in the center of the table, then rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
“Put that thing away,” Tom barked. “I’m through talking to you. Didn’t you hear me? Go see my attorney Let her answer your questions.”
Eli hit the play button and Gary Rubinsky’s voice echoed out over the room. Tom appeared stunned, then returned to his seat at the table.
“Tom had a thing for this girl named Trudy,” Gary’s voice said. “When he found out Ian had slept with her, he was furious. He shot Ian in the parking lot of the Economy Inn. I didn’t want any part of it. What could I do? My brother was holding a gun on me.”
“That lousy son of a bitch,” Tom shouted, a line of perspiration popping out on his forehead. Eli stopped the tape. “Gary shot Ian. And he didn’t shoot him in the parking lot of the Economy Inn.”
Eli depressed the play button again. “We put Ian’s body in the trunk of the Chrysler,” Gary’s voice said. “I wanted to dump him along the side of the road somewhere, but Tom wouldn’t let me. He said we had to bury him…. That way, the police might never find him.”
“Where did you bury him?”
“Is that your voice on the tape?” Tom had his arms wrapped around his chest and was rocking back and forth in his chair.
“Yes,” Eli said, pausing the tape again. “I’m in charge of the Crenshaw homicide.”
“Gary’s out of his mind,” Tom said, “i begged him not to kill Ian. And Trudy didn’t have anything to do with Ian’s killing. She dated Gary for a few months because he told her he could get her a part in a movie. She dumped him about six months ago. She got stranded one night and didn’t know who else to call for a ride back to Los Angeles. In exchange for keeping Ian occupied, Gary gave her some pot and promised to give her a ride home the next morning.”
“Why did Gary need to keep Ian occupied?”
“Because Gary wanted to hit the Quick-Mart that night,” Tom said. “We’d made a copy of Ian’s car keys, but we knew he wouldn’t let us take the car out by ourselves. Ian’s mother was calling him all the time. Gary knew the situation with Ian was about to blow up. He didn’t want to steal a car, though. Using a stolen car in a holdup is a sure way to get caught, unless you ditch the car a few blocks away”
“Why don’t you tell me what really happened the night Ian died?” Eli reached over and removed the tape recorder from the table. “The recorder is gone. Whatever we say from this point on is off the record.”
Gary looked confused. “Why? Why would you want to talk to me off the record? You’re a detective.”
Eli glanced furtively at the door to make it appear that he didn’t want anyone to hear what he was about to say. “I suspected Gary was trying to railroad you from the beginning,” he whispered. “Gary was too strong. He overpowered you just like he did Ian. You cared about Ian, didn’t you? You were horrified when Gary killed him.”
Tom placed his head down on the table, his shoulders shaking as he sobbed. He lifted his head, a dazed look in his red-rimmed eyes. “It all started with my mom. She started ragging on Gary about getting a job. He went nuts and hit her. He’d hit her once before when we were younger, but this time was worse. She fell down and broke her arm. I’m surprised my old man didn’t beat Gary senseless.
“Just before we hooked up with Ian again,” Tom said, a lifetime of memories playing over in his mind, “my dad threw both of us out of the house. I didn’t hurt my mother, but I still got punished. It was always that way. I sometimes imagined that Gary and I were the same person, that we just had different faces. Being out on your own is hard. I was only eighteen. I tried to get a job, but I didn’t have any experience. I finally got a job as a busboy at an Italian restaurant. We rented a cheap apartment. Gary took the bedroom, and I slept on the sofa. Gary thought he could get unemployment benefits so he wouldn’t have to work. The people at the unemployment office made him take a job as a laborer, though, cleaning up on construction sites. Gary was lazy. He’d lift weights at the YMCA for hours, but he hated to work. He’d rock along for a month or so, then he’d start calling in sick. First, it was a few days every month. Then he wouldn’t show up for weeks. Eventually the company figured out he wasn’t sick and fired him. Gary planned it that way so he could collect unemployment.”
“When did you start committing crimes?”
“Maybe a year ago,” Tom said, sniffing. “We were partying so much, everything is kind of a blur. Willie was another guy from the old neighborhood. He was closer to Ian’s age
than mine. We all four hung out together when we were kids. My brother did some dealing himself now and then, so Willie was always hanging around for one reason or the other. I was still bussing tables at Giovanni’s, but Gary grabbed whatever money I brought home. When the restaurant went out of business, I took it really hard. One of the waiters had told me he was leaving, and I was hoping I’d get his job. Giovanni’s was a classy place. If they’d made me a waiter, I would have been able to afford my own apartment. Drugs weren’t a big deal for me. I always thought I could get away from Gary, get my act together.” He stopped and linked gazes with Eli. “Things got out of hand. After the first robbery, I knew it was only a matter of time before we got busted.” He made a circular motion with his hand. ‘All of this: the jail, the courtroom, sitting here talking to you. It’s like I’ve already been here, you know, like it was gonna happen no matter what I did. I decided to live one day at a time, try to have as much fun as I could and forget about the consequences. I was an idiot. Everything you do has a consequence. As soon as you stop paying attention to what you’re doing, you’re screwed.”
Eli had placed the tape recorder in his lap. Without Tom noticing, he’d inserted a new tape to record their conversation. “Tell me about the crimes.”
“The first three robberies we pulled off with a toy gun,” Tom told him, the excitement of those days showing on his face. “Gary was jazzed. He loved the thrill that we might get caught, the piles of cash. He used to joke about it. He had to open a bank account when he had a job so he could cash his payroll checks. He was always bouncing checks. After we started pulling off the robberies, Gary would laugh and say sticking up a store was easier than managing a bank account. When we were around other people, our code name for a robbery was the instant-teller machine.”
Eli thought he’d heard it all, but this was a new one. “Can you give me an example of what you mean by that statement?”
“Okay,” Tom said, leaning forward. “We’re in a nightclub, see, and Gary opens his wallet. He realizes we’re getting low on cash. Maybe we’re with a couple of good-looking chicks. So Gary tells them we’ll be right back, that we have to go find an instant-teller machine. It really was a kick,” he said, chuckling. “We never planned anything ahead of time. Our only rule was that the store had to be part of a chain. Once we hit one store, we’d move on to another chain. The take was usually around five hundred bucks, a drop in the bucket compared to the kind of money these big corporations pull in every day.”
Conflict of Interest Page 21
