The Mayor of Lexington Avenue (10 page)

“I can have the money for you tomorrow,” he told Marguerite.

“You can? Oh Mike, that’s great.”

“I’ll go to the bank first thing in the morning and I’ll meet you at the coffee shop at, say, nine or nine-fifteen.”

“That’s good. Mike, I know both Elena and Rudy will appreciate this.” She wanted to say more, to tell him that she would encourage Elena to call him, to let him know where she was. So at least he could visit his son. But that was not her decision and she didn’t want to raise any expectations in Mike’s mind.

She called Elena right away—no sense letting her worry all night about the money.

“Why did you do that?” Elena demanded.

“Because I knew it was the only way. I didn’t tell him where you were and he didn’t say anything about wanting to see Rudy. I told him you had asked me for the money and I didn’t have it. That was it. I’m meeting him at nine o’clock in the morning. Give me your bank information and I’ll wire-transfer the funds right after that.”

Elena paused for a long half minute, and then with a deep breath said, “Thanks, Marguerite, you’re right. I guess I have no other choice.”

Eleven

As soon as she received the fifteen thousand dollar retainer, which Elena personally delivered to her office, Tracey James went to work. Her first call was to Dr. Harold Victor Fischer, a forensic psychiatrist in Vero Beach, whom she had worked closely with in the past. H.V. had impeccable credentials and always seemed to find a way to provide Tracey with just the right professional opinion she needed. She then walked up to the second floor to visit with Dick Radek, her investigator. After that, she prepared a Notice of Appearance, a pleading she filed with the court saying she was representing Rudy, and a Demand for Discovery, calling for the state to turn over every shred of evidence it had in the case against Rudy.

Her plan was simple but shrewd: Dr. Fischer, after meeting with Rudy and performing an “independent” psychiatric evaluation, would provide an opinion that Rudy, because of his limited intellectual ability and his nature, did not have the capacity to refuse to engage in conversation when the police began questioning him. Because the police knew of his limited intellectual ability, they should not have begun the interrogation in the first place. At the very least, when his mother arrived before the questioning began and demanded that it be stopped, they should have acceded to her wishes. Armed with this opinion, Tracey was going to file a Motion to Suppress Rudy’s statement to the police. She wasn’t sure what evidence they had yet but she knew from Elena that Rudy’s blood type was O positive, something he shared with millions of other people. If the confession and the blood were it, he’d be walking if she won the motion. If some of the neighbors had seen him, she’d have Dick talk to them and find out exactly what they were going to say. It was a tentative plan based on assumptions, but it was the best she could do until she knew more.

Tracey had told Dick Radek to send someone to Bass Creek for two weeks to hang around the barrio and find out as much as possible about the murder, the neighbors, and Lucy herself. When Tracey received Wes Brume’s file, Dick’s people would re-interview each and every witness. Perhaps the police had missed something. Perhaps she could put someone else in that house at the time of the murder.

Elena had a new problem to deal with when she got home from her second trip to Vero. Her boss, Philip Randle, was waiting in her office. She knew it meant trouble as soon as she saw him. Phil was the managing partner of a syndicate that owned the hotel and several other commercial properties throughout the state. He showed up on a Monday once every six weeks to go over the books with her and discuss any problems. From the day he gave her the job, Phil had had the utmost faith in Elena’s ability. His stay usually lasted less than three hours. Then he was off over the big bridge, heading back to his home in Miami.

Today, however, Phil had a sour look on his face, a look that spoke volumes.

“We have to let you go,” he told her abruptly after the usual pleasantries. Elena wanted to demand a reason but she already knew. She wanted to ask for another chance but she was too proud to beg. She just sat there in the office chair staring at Phil, who felt an obligation to explain.

“It wasn’t me, Elena. I argued against it. You’ve done a great job here from day one and I will give you a letter of recommendation wherever you go. Somebody sent a copy of the newspaper to me and my partners. You know, the one with the front page picture of Rudy getting arrested in front of the hotel. Every one of my partners called me. They don’t know you, Elena. To them it’s just business, and the picture was extremely bad publicity for the hotel. I tried to talk them out of it but it was no use.”

Elena didn’t say anything. She continued to stare at Phil, who felt compelled to fill the silence with words. “They want you to leave right away but I’m going to give you a week’s severance pay along with my letter of recommendation.” He handed her an envelope and made a move toward her to hug her goodbye. Elena stiffened, took a step back and glared at him. Phil got the message. He headed for the door but stopped before leaving.

“We’re sending someone over tomorrow as a temporary replacement. Her name’s Alice Stevenson. Please give her the keys and show her around.” He didn’t wait for an answer.

Twelve

When Clay Evans received the Notice of Appearance from Tracey James, he almost shit his pants on the spot. He’d never tried a case against her, nor had any of his staff, but he’d seen her billboards all over the state. There was no doubt she was big time. He’d been wheeling and dealing to make this case a slam dunk for himself on the assumption that good old Charley Peterson would be defending the kid. Having Charley as your attorney was like being represented by a dead man, which seemed most appropriate in a murder case: the dead representing the about-to-be-dead. Clay really got a chuckle out of that line the first time he thought of it. Now it didn’t seem so funny. He’d hidden evidence. He’d had a knock-down-drag-out fight with the coroner, Harry Tuthill, to convince him to alter his report—all based on the assumption that he could pull the wool over Charley Peterson’s lazy old dead eyes. And now he had Tracey James on the case.
There’s still time. I could go back and fix things. I could drop the charges. Or . . . Tracey James is big time—lots of publicity. If I really want to get out of here, I’ve got to take certain risks. . . .

His session with Harry Tuthill hadn’t gone as smoothly as he would have liked, either. Harry was like him, an old blue blood in a dead-end job. They often had a few drinks on Friday afternoon and bemoaned their present status in the world, which usually meant slamming Bass Creek and most of the sorry souls who resided there. Clay thought he could count on Harry but Harry balked. He was in his sixties, on the verge of retirement. Harry’s window of opportunity had closed a long time ago.

“You want me to leave information out of my report? That’s illegal.”

“Look, Harry, you know what they’re going to do with that information once they get it. This kid is going to sail out of here.” This time, however, Clay wasn’t preaching to the choir.

“I don’t care, Clay, I’m just the medical examiner. I report the findings and let the chips fall where they may. The fact is this woman had semen in her body—I can’t leave that out of my report.”

“You do agree, don’t you, that there were no signs of rape?”

“Yes.”

“And you know that the blood type on the floor and the blood type in the semen were different.”

“Yes.”

“What do you conclude from that?” Clay was practicing his direct examination.

“Either she had sex with someone she knew before she was killed or her lover killed her right after sex.”

“What about the other blood? How do you account for that?”

“I don’t. That’s not my job.”

“Think about it for a minute, Harry. Have you ever seen or read about a lover killing another lover right after sex without some evidence of a battle: the room’s a mess, bite marks, scratch marks?”

“Of course I have, Clay. You’re reaching for straws now. Besides, we haven’t seen the lover. He might have bite marks or scratch marks on him.”

“But there’s no evidence of an argument in that bedroom.”

“Look, she was killed in the bedroom. She had sex that night. She could have had sex with somebody who left the scene and then Rudy could have come over and killed her, or Rudy could have come and left and someone else could have arrived and had sex with her and killed her. Those are the two possibilities, one equally as plausible as the other. In either scenario, she didn’t fight with the person who killed her and there is no evidence of a break-in.”

“You’re wrong, Harry. We’ve got the broken glass in the garbage, blood on the carpet—different type from the semen. We do have evidence of a struggle
with a different person than her lover.
” It was an accurate analysis and Harry mulled it over.

“I guess you’re right. We have evidence that she might have struggled with Rudy, which would make him the more likely suspect—assuming that a struggle occurred.”

“You know as well as I do that it was Rudy, Harry. As the evidence stands now, we both know I won’t even be able to get an indictment. This kid is going to walk unless you help me, Harry.” Harry hesitated for a minute before declining Clay’s invitation to become a co-conspirator for the second time.

“No. No. I can’t do it, Clay.”

“Wait a minute, Harry. You were thinking about something. You were thinking about a way to do it, weren’t you?” Harry didn’t answer right away. He was still thinking. Finally, he started thinking out loud.

“Are you certain Charley Peterson is going to handle this case?”

“Yes, I am,” Clay lied. It was a reasonable lie. He was pretty sure the mother couldn’t afford a private attorney, which only left Charley. He knew where Harry was going. If Charley Peterson was on the case maybe he could fudge things a little.

“The report isn’t complete yet. Toxicology tests are still being performed. We could issue a preliminary report. I could inadvertently not mention the presence of semen in the original preliminary report but include it in the supplemental report. There’s no problem in doing that. I could delay the supplemental report for a couple of months, but after that you’re on your own. Anyone who asks for the supplement gets it. And if Charley Peterson is not the lawyer on this case, all bets are off.”

Clay was ecstatic. Harry had given him more than he had asked for, a legitimate way to hide the evidence. Charley Peterson in his normal state of inebriation couldn’t even spell supplement. He’d never ask for it in a million years, especially since the toxicology tests had nothing to do with the cause of death.

Clay’s initial ecstasy at Harry Tuthill’s compromise was all in the past now. Everything had changed dramatically with the appearance of the famous—more like infamous as far as he was concerned—Tracey James. There was no way he could hide the supplement from her.

Thirteen

Harold Victor Fischer had purchased an old two-story Victorian house on the outskirts of Vero Beach to serve as his professional office. Vero was for the most part a typical example of modern urban sprawl, Florida style, littered with high-rises, mobile home parks, and characterless, vanilla homes, block after block, one after the other like a monopoly board gone haywire. U.S. 1, which ran through the middle of town, was bordered on both sides by every restaurant chain in existence, their multicolored signs poking up at different heights like wild, psychedelic weeds on an ill-kept lawn. H.V.’s place stood out like a cultured, well-heeled thumb, which is exactly the way he wanted it—to stick out, that is. Culture wasn’t really his game, although H.V. was a most pretentious son of a bitch.

He’d originally set up his practice in Miami but the competition had been fierce. All his money had gone into advertising. He wasn’t bilingual and besides, everything in Miami was turned upside down. The vast majority of the people were absolutely certifiable, so H.V. typically found himself helping the marginally sane cope with the wholesale insanity of the world around them. It was a unique perspective, one that he never forgot, but as a daily diet he found it terribly unsatisfying—and it was beginning to tear at the borders of his own psyche. So he moved up the road to Vero, which was like taking a trip from Mars back to Earth.

H.V.’s reasons for choosing Vero were similar to Tracey’s. He wouldn’t have the competition of Miami but he’d be in an area large enough to attract a lucrative clientele. With H.V., the emphasis was on
lucrative.
He was definitely in it for the money.

He became a forensic psychiatrist, which meant that he didn’t treat people or “cure” them anymore—he sold his services to the highest bidder as an expert witness on cause and effect and everything else in between. He found Tracey, or she found him, soon after his move to Vero. It was a marriage made in heaven. Tracey moved clients through her office like logs through a paper mill, and a good percentage of them saw H.V. during the trip. Tracey and H.V. shared the opinion that everyone who was injured through the negligence of another had a psychiatric problem as a result.

Because Tracey usually settled cases at an early stage, H.V. was rarely deposed, so the public record of his opinions on behalf of her clients was scant. If the entire record were available, it would have revealed hundreds of opinions suggesting Tracey’s clients had psychiatric conditions ranging from mere depression to the more exotic, like post traumatic stress disorder, all caused by whatever trauma had befallen them. Those opinions translated into hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements for the James gang and some tidy fees for H.V. as well—not that he didn’t deserve them. On the rare occasions when he did have to testify, H.V. was always well prepared, well spoken, concise and impossible to cross-examine. His credentials were more than solid: He had received his undergraduate degree from Cornell and his medical degree from Penn. When asked about having worked with Ms. James in the past, the doctor’s pat answer was: “I seem to recall that I have but I’m not sure of the name of the client, or clients, or the date. I am called by a great number of attorneys.”