Jeff Sherratt - Detour to Murder

“Are you being funny? That’s the number for time of day.”

“Just wanted to see if you knew any phone numbers.”

“What’s all this nonsense about, anyway?” Haskell asked.

“Just a hobby, old telephone exchanges.”

“I haven’t got time to play games.” He started for the door.

“Mr. Haskell, just a couple of more questions, please,” I said.

He stopped moving and glanced at the ten pounds of gold on his wrist that held his watch. “Make it quick.”

“Did Frank Byron, the Los Angeles District Attorney back then, keep your family fully informed during the investigation?”

Haskell shrugged. “Sure, why wouldn’t he?”

“Then Byron left public service and picked up a cushy job with your big rich foundation?” Sol asked.

That seemed to give him pause, although only briefly. “What do you want from me, anyway? I had nothing to do with all of this. Christ!”

“Maybe you killed Vera,” Sol said. “You said she tried to pull a scam on your father. Maybe you decided to take care of the situation. Be a tough guy in the old man’s eyes. He liked tough guys. Is that how it went down, Haskell?”

Sol practically accused him of murdering Vera and he just shook his head with a tight, thin-lipped smile stretched across his angry face. “You’d say a thing like that! I was a war hero. I went toe-to-toe with those Nazi bastards. Flew a B-17 in World War II, shot down over Germany, taken prisoner. Toe-to-toe! I risked my life for this country. You son-of-a-bitch.”

“What’s that got to do with anything? Your old man was a crook,” Sol said, “and so are you.”

So much for keeping it light. But Sol was pissed, and so was I-the cold bastard.

“Roberts spent the war playing the piano. He’s a bum and he murdered that woman. How dare you!”

“Your father was a slimy son-of-a-bitch, owned the largest illegal wire service in the nation. Big-time operator with ties to the mob. His company fed bookmaking parlors across the country race results in real time. Against Federal and state law.”

The pretense of a smile faded. “Hold it right there, you son-of-a-bitch-!”

“Let me finish. Your old man’s thugs put the squeeze on the poor bastards who owned the joints until they had to pay more than they could afford. He even had a few bookies bumped off when they didn’t cough up the dough. Good for business. Needed some examples. The basis of your fortune, Haskell, is steeped in blood.”

Haskell ran his hand through his silver mane. “There’s a rumor to that effect, but I wouldn’t know. I was barely twenty-eight when Father died. And who gives a damn about all that rubbish now?”

“Maybe, I do,” Sol said.

“Now you listen to me; I came back from the war in ’45, worked hard and built a one-hundred percent legitimate business empire-publishing, banking, real estate, oil. My refinery in Long Beach employs over a thousand people-”

Sol moved in closer to him. “Big fuckin’ deal. You got the money to start your company because your old man killed people for it.”

“I made more money than my old man could even dream about, all on the up and up. And now I’m giving it away: underprivileged kids, hospitals, you name it. With my money they may find a cure for cancer someday. What have you done with your life, Silverman? You’re just a fancy peeper. A snoop in a pinstripe suit looking in bedroom windows.”

Haskell turned away and muttered something. Though barely audible, I’m sure Sol heard the anti-Semitic remark the empire builder had expressed.

“Yeah, you built a business with your old man’s dirty money and Mafia connections, all right. Took all the bows, your name on buildings. People kissing your ass all over town. But there’s one problem. One really big problem.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“The money wasn’t yours. It was your brother’s. He was the first-born, first in line for the inheritance, and he died only a month before your old man croaked. Very convenient.”

“Bullshit!”

“Suppose you had a hand in your brother’s timely demise. Could’ve happened that way. You could’ve hired someone to do the deed.”

I jumped into the fray. “And suppose Frank Byron buried the evidence like he buried Roberts away in a cell for almost thirty years. Suppose he made your brother’s death just appear to be caused by a heart attack.”

“No statute of limitations on murder,” Sol said.

“What the hell’s the matter with you two?” Haskell’s face turned cherry-red. “You’re playing with fire talking like that. I could break you-”

“You’re a crook, just like your old man. Stole your brother’s inheritance and continued to do business in the same sleazy manner as your old man. Except you were smarter. You bought off Byron back then and you probably have the current DA in your pocket as well.”

The way Sol and Haskell were posturing, I expected that at any moment peckers would be whipped out and measured.

“Silverman, you piece of shit, if you breathe just one word in public of what you’re saying here, I’ll haul your ass in court and sue you for slander. I’ll own everything you got.”

He continued his tirade. We’d struck a nerve, and he couldn’t stop shouting.

“And you, O’Brien.” His fists were balled, like he was going to take a swipe at me, but silver-haired empire builders didn’t partake of such crude behavior. “Goddamn you, I didn’t murder anybody. My brother Charles died of a heart attack just as it said in the autopsy report. And suppose you tell me why are you concocting this outlandish fantasy now? Roberts will be released in a couple of days. That’s all that should concern you.”

Wait a minute. How did he know about the deal to release Roberts? Rinehart, the DA told him, of course. So much for secrets. But he was right-why bring it up now? We were through here. Sol got what he came for, the opportunity to vent at the big enchilada, a tycoon who happened to be a hypocrite and a liar.

I now knew that Haskell had been in bed with Frank Byron when he framed Roberts. He hadn’t admitted it out loud, but when he said he knew his brother had died of natural causes, he implicated himself. Only the District Attorney back in ’45 had known that Charles Haskell had died of a heart attack and that Roberts hadn’t clubbed him, that the wound on the head had happened postmortem.

It was obvious now why Joe Rinehart had pressured Governor Reagan to release Roberts. He was protecting Haskell. With Roberts out of prison and gone for good, who’d bother to check “ancient history”, as Raymond Haskell referred to the events that happened so long ago?

But as I told Sol when he first brought up tonight’s dinner, my job was finished. Roberts would finally get his freedom and that would be that. There was one thing that still troubled me, though. It annoyed me like an itch you couldn’t scratch.

Who murdered Vera?

Haskell had menace in his eyes as he continued to rant. “I’m warning you, O’Brien. You don’t know who you’re screwing with. You just made one huge mistake-!”

But before any more could be said, the restroom door swung open and one of Haskell’s goons stuck his head in. “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Haskell. But the governor’s out here. Wants to take a piss.”

“Oh, for God’s sakes, you fuckin’ moron! Let him in!”

Sol and I turned to leave. We brushed by Reagan as he came through the door. Sol cranked his head toward Haskell and said to the governor: “It’s hard to believe that guy’s a war hero. The money must’ve changed him.”

Reagan gave Sol a perplexed look. “Yes, it did. Made him richer,” he said as he rushed to the urinal.

Over Bavaria, March 1944