A Killer's Kiss

by William Lashner

  Re: Account #67855

  Dear Wren,

  As our recent conversations have not gone well, and you have lately been refusing to take my calls, I am having this letter hand-delivered in hopes that I can avoid taking action that you would find distasteful.

  We want our money, all of it, and we want it now. We don’t want to hear about shortages or preferences or problems with some stinking bank in Taipei. And don’t talk to me about lawyers. We don’t want to hear about lawyers. We want our money, all of it, and we want it now.

  This is not simply business. You owed me, and I trusted that you would live up to your obligation, and now I feel betrayed. You have screwed me again, and this time I will not sit back and allow you to keep what is mine. Return the money, all of it, or there will be no recourse other than violence.

  You will receive no more calls, no more letters, there will be no more attempts at polite conversation. Have the funds wired to my account immediately, or I promise, you will pay the price.

  Sincerely,

  Miles Cave

  There he was, in the flesh, the mysterious Miles Cave. I almost yelped when I saw the letter, it was like discovering evidence of a long-lost brother. So Miles had made his threat and gotten the one point seven mil out while the company teetered on the brink of bankruptcy and the other investors went hungry. It looked like he was demanding it for himself and for Gregor, but once it was wired, he decided to keep it all. Why the hell not? I’d probably do the same. And by now, with money in hand, he was no doubt long gone. He had his own lawyers, he was surely advised about what a preference was, he knew that if he was ever found, by the government or by Trocek, the money would have to be returned, so he found another way. Grab the money, kill Wren Denniston, spend the rest of his life on some beach in Brazil, doing the samba with tawny girls in blue bikinis.

  Son of a bitch, I had to admire the guy.

  And here, now, in my hand was just the tool I needed to send Sims and Hanratty to join the chase for Miles Cave. Let them all rush off in search of the great white whale, while Julia and I floated into the sunset on our boat, a smaller, tawdrier boat than I had hoped, absolutely, but a boat nonetheless. I was imagining the scene, the ocean breezes, the gentle waves, Julia’s lips pressed upon my neck, when something stopped me.

  There was an address at the bottom of the letter. It was a bit smudged, which was why I hadn’t noticed right off, but there it was. And from what I could tell, it was a familiar address.

  It was my address.

  The son of a bitch had been living in my building.

  Wait a second. There was something about the signature. The small i in Miles. The first two letters in Cave. What the hell?

  I took a piece of paper and signed my name and compared the two. Close enough to get my nerves a-snapping. It didn’t make any sense, unless…

  At that very moment, I sensed someone close. Instinctively I dropped the letter to my lap at the same time I looked up. There was a woman in the doorway. She wore a print dress that looked like wallpaper on her sturdy body. She seemed somehow familiar, though I couldn’t quite place her.

  “Mr. Carl,” she said, her voice both high and dismissive. “My name’s Margaret. I’m the secretary here. Mr. Nettles asked me to see if you needed any assistance.”

  “I’m fine, thank you,” I said.

  “Do you need something to drink?”

  “No, really, I’m fine,” I said. I looked at her for a moment. Short hair, thick nose, the jaw of a wrestler, knuckles. “Do I know you?”

  “Do you dance? Ballroom dancing, I mean. There are monthly events that our club sponsors. You might have seen me competing.”

  “No, definitely not. I have the grace of an aardvark—after it’s been hit by a car. The only thing worse than my dancing is my singing.”

  “Then I won’t bring out the guitar.” She looked down at the file open on my desk. “Do you need any copies?”

  “Yes, actually.” I closed the file and pushed it forward. “The whole file, please. One copy of each letter would be perfect,” I said.

  “Of course, Mr. Carl.” She stepped forward, took the file off my desk, clutched it to her chest.

  “Margaret,” I said, “has anyone else looked at this file in the past few days?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Were the police here?”

  “Two detectives, one big and one not so big. They came to talk to Mr. Nettles, and they examined the financial records. The big one left pretty quickly, but the little one stayed quite a while and made plenty of copies.”

  “But he didn’t see this file?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, thank you.”

  “I’ll be right back, and I’ll put the copies in a folder for you.”

  When she left, I lifted the paper that was still on my lap. My address. A signature that had much in common with mine. I read it again and picked out what I hadn’t noticed before. You have screwed me again, and this time I will not sit back and allow you to keep what is mine. Return the money, all of it, or there will be no recourse other than violence. The letter was a neon arrow pointing right at my heart.

  I took a quick glance at the empty doorway and then folded the letter in half, in quarters, in eighths, and stuck it in my pocket. Destruction of evidence, sure. Obstruction of justice, absolutely. But I was in trouble. Some son of a bitch was setting me up.

  And by the date of the letter, that son of a bitch had been setting me up from when Wren Denniston was still very much alive.

  18

  I went straight back to my apartment after leaving the Inner Circle offices, with a file of desperate letters, all copies, in my briefcase and a single original folded up in my jacket pocket. I wanted to wash the gel out of my hair, sure, but what I really wanted was to figure out what to do with that one original I had swiped. Examine it, hide it, immolate it, I wasn’t quite sure, but I was quite sure I wanted to figure it out on my own, without anyone looking over my shoulder.

  Which was why the sight of Detective McDeiss leaning against the side of a car parked right in front of my apartment building was so distressing. He was on his phone, staring at me as I approached.

  “What’s that on your head?” said McDeiss when he clicked his phone shut.

  “Gel,” I said.

  He stared at my hair for a long moment.

  “It’s stylish,” I said. “Quite hip.”

  “It’s quite something. You look like a mortician I know named Prentice.”

  “Handsome guy?”

  “Not really. You want to take a ride?”

  “No.”

  “Excuse me. My sentence was phrased indelicately. It is a statement of fact and not a question. You want to take a ride.”

  “So that’s it, huh? Where to?”

  “The Roundhouse. Sims was waiting for you at your office. Hanratty was waiting for you at the Denniston place in Chestnut Hill, in case you happened to show up there again. I had nothing going on, so I volunteered to wait a bit at your home. I just got hold of them on the cell, so now they’ll be waiting for you at headquarters.”

  “Why didn’t they just call me?”

  “They want to talk, and Sims had the sneaking suspicion that you wouldn’t show up on your own. Let’s go.”

  “Can I go upstairs first and wash this crap out of my hair?”

  “No.”

  “It will only take a minute, but it’s starting to feel a little—”

  “Icky?”

  “Exactly.”

  He pushed himself off the car, opened the rear door for me. “Get in.”

  “Unless you have a warrant, Detective, I’m going upstairs to wash my hair. The Constitution gives me a right to clean hair.”

  “You’re already a gelhead, don’t be a dickhead, too. Get in the damn car.”

  I got in the damn car. McDeiss was right, I was being a dickhead. I had my reasons to squawk, first to get that gel out of my hair and second to
ditch the incriminating fake letter before I showed up at police headquarters, but to start asking about warrants and bitching about the Constitution with McDeiss was all wrong. He was a Philadelphia homicide detective, he had a caseload to choke a goat, when he said he had nothing going on, he was lying. He had volunteered to wait at my apartment on the odd chance that he could get to me before Sims did. He was trying to help, he had something to say, and I was being churlish by giving him lip before he said it.

  “Do you have any idea what the hell you’re doing, Carl?” he said as we drove toward the Roundhouse. He was in the driver’s seat, I sat in the back. I felt weirdly like an old Southern Jewish lady.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “It certainly shows,” he said, glancing at me through the rearview mirror. “Because you are screwing yourself big-time. I thought I advised you to stay the hell out of this until Sims finally charged the wife.”

  “You did.”

  “So that’s why you’re rushing all around town with a blackjack in your pants and a bottle of gel on your head?”

  “Er…”

  “Just so you know, questions are being asked about you. And not just by Hanratty.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Spare me the tears. It doesn’t matter what you say or if I believe you or not. Right now what matters is what Sims believes, and what he can convince the D.A. of. You’re making things too easy for him. And he’s not pulling this crap out of thin air.”

  “What does he have?”

  “That’s not my place, Victor. It’s his case, he discloses what he needs to disclose on his own time. But I’m telling you not to be a fool. The focus of the investigation is shifting. The wife’s lawyer has been whispering in Sims’s ear.”

  “Clarence Swift is an eel.”

  “Maybe, but that only means Sims has found a fellow member of the species. And he’s been listening.”

  “He’s right to be listening. She didn’t do it.”

  “Now, see, there you go again. How do you know? How do you know anything, you fool? How do you know you’re not being set up by a spider with dark hair and nice legs?”

  “Because I found her alibi.”

  McDeiss shot me a look through the rearview mirror. “Is this an alibi she manufactured and pushed you to find?”

  “No,” I said. “I found it on my own, and she made me promise not to tell anyone.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I. But it’s tricky, because the main alibi witness himself was committing a crime at the time, and so he won’t want to testify either.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Do me a favor and grab a look at the coroner’s report on the dead man. I’m wondering specifically about the toxicology findings. And on the wife, too, if you can manage it.”

  McDeiss drove on in quiet for a moment. “Drugs?”

  “Just take a look.”

  “You talk to this witness personally?”

  “Yah, mon,” I said, with an island lilt.

  “Where? Jamaica?”

  “Closest thing we got.”

  He glanced again at me through the mirror. “You understand, Victor, that if she has an alibi, that makes you the more attractive suspect.”

  “With this gel in my hair, I don’t think so.”

  “You should have just walked away when I told you.”

  “It’s not so easy.”

  “Why not?”

  I didn’t answer, because in truth I didn’t have an answer.

  “What is it, Victor?” said McDeiss. “You think you love her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Shouldn’t that tell you enough right there, son?”

  “Maybe we both changed. Maybe it will work out this time.”

  “And in your experience we all get better as we age?”

  “No.”

  “But still you’re willing to gamble your life because you think if only everything will go away—the dead husband, the cops, the suspicions, the fear—if everything can disappear, maybe that old love will blossom anew and save your stinking life, is that it?”

  “Yeah. Why not?”

  “Past performance.”

  “She’s not a horse.”

  “You gave her your love, and she stepped on your face when she left to marry someone else. Then this someone else, he gave her his love and his name, and he ended up with a bullet in his head. There’s something wrong with her. There’s a hole in her heart. It’s what ruined the thing you had in the past, and it’s only gotten deeper. She’s not going to save your life, she’s going to tear it apart for good, if you let her.”

  “So what should I do?”

  “Give Sims everything you have, give him the alibi if you insist on trying to save her life, and then stay the hell away from her.”

  “It won’t be that easy.”

  “Why not, Victor?”

  “Isn’t love worth risking everything for?”

  McDeiss was quiet for a long moment, and then said, “You’re an ignorant son of bitch.”

  19

  The same green room with the large mirror, the same smell of sweat and vinegar and dead mice, the same clot of suppurating fear at the base of my throat. So why did the room suddenly seem smaller than before?

  “We just wanted to chat a bit, Victor,” said Sims, sitting across from me at the table, his hands clasped before him as unthreatening as a preacher’s. He wore a gray suit, a dark purple shirt, an unctuous smile. “I’m sure you don’t mind.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” I said.

  “Did you hear the hostility in his voice, Hanratty?”

  “I heard,” said Hanratty. His back was against the door, his jaw was pummeling a stick of gum.

  “I thought we were friends,” said Sims. “I thought we had an understanding.”

  “Is that why you sent McDeiss to my apartment to scoop me up like one of the usual suspects, because we had an understanding?”

  “There are a few things we need to clear up,” said Sims. “Nothing major, just timeline matters. The night of Mr. Denniston’s murder, you were home.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Be more specific, please,” said Sims. “Were you watching TV, ironing your shirts, jacking off to Internet porn, reading the Good Book, what, exactly?”

  “Nothing.”

  “How many times did you go out after you got home from work?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You sure? We received a report that you went out.”

  “What kind of report?”

  “And after you came back,” said Sims, “Mrs. Denniston called, isn’t that right?”

  “I never went out.”

  “Did she call you on your cell or your landline?”

  “I don’t remember, but I figure you have the records already, so you can tell me.”

  “Cell. And when you got the call on your cell phone, where were you?”

  “Home.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t be cute.”

  “I’m not the one wearing the puce shirt.”

  “You don’t like my shirt?”

  “It’s quite puce. And who the hell told you I went out that night anyway?”

  “It came as an anonymous tip.”

  “And how does that work in court, exactly?”

  “Not so well in court, but it’s boffo before the grand jury. Now, before that night, had she ever been up to your apartment?”

  “No.”

  “Did the two of you have any furtive assignations at the Denniston mansion?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “I never saw the place.”

  “Did you hear that, Hanratty?”

  “I heard,” said Hanratty, still pounding like a heavyweight on the gum. The way he was staring at me, it
was almost like he was staring through me. Involuntarily my hand reached up and touched the pocket where sat the letter that was meant to frame me but good.

  “I think he’s holding something back from us,” said Sims.

  “He’s been holding back all along.”

  “But I don’t think he means to. It’s just that he’s a lawyer, he can’t help himself.”

  “Hey, guys,” I said. “I’m here, remember?”

  “We found your fingerprint in the Denniston mansion,” said Sims, staring now right into my eyes. “On the panel leading to the safe where the gun was kept. The gun that was taken on the night of the murder. The gun that we suspect killed the doctor.”

  “Now, how did your fingerprint get there if you never saw the place?” said Hanratty.

  “I never saw the place until Dr. Denniston was murdered,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. “I assume you picked that up on your second go-round, the morning before you released Mrs. Denniston. The night after the killing, I visited the house and talked to Gwen. She took me into the room, showed me the safe. I must have touched the panel then. You can ask her, although I assume you already have. I assume it because if you hadn’t, I would be under arrest. Am I under arrest?”

  “He wants to know if he’s under arrest,” said Sims.

  “Let me work on him a bit,” said Hanratty. “I’ll squeeze something out of him. It might not be the truth, but it sure will be fun.”

  “Let’s give him one more chance before we resort to fireworks,” said Sims. “You know, Victor, we’re only trying to help you here, but you’re making it so difficult. We’ve got the fingerprint. We’ve got pictures of you and the dead man’s wife together even while the husband was still lying cold in the morgue. And we know that the dead man knew about the two of you.”

  “How do you know that? Another anonymous source?”

  “From the beginning I suspected the wife, and I still do. And what has convinced me even more than the evidence arrayed against her is her unwillingness to cooperate. Despite her lawyer’s advice.”

  “Her lawyer is a fool.”

  “Yes, isn’t it wonderful? But she’s not taking his advice, she’s not answering any of our questions. So maybe we were hoping that you could convince her to open her mouth. We have some very specific questions that need answers. Based on her current situation, the answers could only help her case. Without her cooperation I’m afraid that she is heading straight toward an indictment.”