Richard Patterson - The Lasko Tangent

The police station was down Berkeley Street in a squatty grey building. The police ushered us into the main room. It was sterile and badly lit, a paranoid’s cop-house. A fat sergeant with lifeless grey eyes sat at a desk behind a rail. The sharp-eyed cop disappeared. When he returned he told us we were seeing Lieutenant Di Pietro. He steered us down a dark corridor to an office on the left, and opened the door.

The room was light green, except where paint flaked off the walls, which was all over. Di Pietro sat behind a beat-up metal desk, next to a picture of a plump woman and three black-haired kids, and in front of a map of his precinct. He asked us to sit.

He was in his forties, with dark, curly hair, swept back. He had a kind of ridged, Castilian nose, hooded eyes, and a thin mouth set in a seamed face. “You gentlemen are both lawyers?” he said abruptly.

We nodded. The word “lawyer” had a dry sound, as if Di Pietro had just swallowed something disagreeable. I sensed bleakly that he would have preferred two run-of-the-mill murderer-rapists. “Sergeant Brooks”-he gestured at our sharp-eyed guide-“says that you think this is a homicide, Mr. Paget. I’d like you to tell me why.”

I felt Gubner’s eyes on me. “Do you know a man named William Lasko?” I asked.

The hooded eyes turned vague; evidently Di Pietro was not a reader. I went on. “Lasko’s a big industrialist here in Boston. We got a telephone tip a few days ago concerning some illegal transactions in his company’s stock. Then Lehman contacted me through Mr. Gubner and asked for a meeting. I flew up to Boston and met with both of them at the Ritz. Lehman was controller of Lasko’s company. He didn’t know about the stock. But he said he had something on Lasko-something worse. He never got to tell us what it was.”

Di Pietro inspected me wordlessly. I talked at the impassive face. “The thing is this. Lasko doesn’t need problems with the government. If he does, Justice may stick by its antitrust suit. That means Lasko may lose part of his company. And Lehman had something bad on him. As I recall, that’s known as motive.”

“What else?”

The stiff face was beginning to anger me. “Look, Lieutenant, how many pedestrians get run down in front of the Ritz at forty miles an hour? By hit-skip drivers in late model Cadillacs that accelerate instead of brake? Show me another and I’ll buy two tickets to the Policemen’s Ball.”

Di Pietro snapped at the holes in my argument. “Mr. Paget, I was thinking about motive when you were in prep school. Tell me this. What was Lehman going to tell you? Who drove the car? Whose car was it? How did Lasko find out about the meeting, or where it was going to happen?”

It was the last question that made me sick. “If you find the Cadillac,” I parried, “the rest may come easier. Lehman had to have left some marks.”

Di Pietro looked from me to Gubner. “Was Mr. Lehman a friend of yours?” he asked.

“Yes,” Gubner replied in a far-off voice. In our own ways, Di Pietro and I had started to look forward. Gubner was still looking back.

The contrast seemed to impress Di Pietro. He turned to me. “We were talking about motive. We’re not geared to come up with a motive on a man like this Lasko. I’m not a stock market wizard.” That was obvious. Still, the admission seemed to cost him something; the voice had trailed off unhappily. It struck me that he had been talking like a cop talks to a lawyer. And that I hadn’t helped.

“And I’m not a criminologist. But I can keep pushing and give you what I get.”

Di Pietro nodded stiffly. Then he stepped back into the safety of his own routine. “First you and your friend give us a complete statement. And don’t leave anything out.”

This last was said to me with the unblinking stare. Either I was touchy, or Di Pietro guessed that I was holding back on something. The possibility suggested dimensions to him that I hadn’t considered. I switched subjects. “I’d like some help from you, too. Sort of a trade-off.”

His voice was noncommittal. “We’ll see how it works out. But don’t get your ass in a wringer, playing detective. You’re not a cop.”

The thought seemed to give him some satisfaction. He stood up. We exchanged telephone numbers and a wary handshake. Gubner did the same, belatedly. Then Sergeant Brooks led us away.

They took our statements in a pale green room with a metal lamp hung from the ceiling. Then the crew-cut cop drove us back to the Ritz. Gubner brooded out the window. I wasn’t much better. My game with McGuire had turned into murder.

Giving the statement had made me feel more organized. But it didn’t help with anything else. Lehman’s chances had run out.

I figured Lasko had killed him. Nothing else made much sense. The question was how he had known to do it.

There were a couple of possibilities. I didn’t like them at all.

Gubner and I got out at the Ritz and wandered aimlessly through the lobby. We passed the bar without looking in, both of us carrying the weight of unsaid things. I decided to get them out.

“Let’s talk, Marty.”

He gave me a resentful look, like a trapped animal. Then he nodded. “OK, my room. But not long.”

We went to his room. I selected one of two matched blue chairs and turned on all the lights I could reach, to push away the police station. Gubner fell into his chair with a thick-bodied slump. He looked like a man who could use a drink. But this wasn’t the kind of tough day you could ease away with gin. I felt sad and helpless.

“This is pretty worthless, Marty, but I’m sorry.”

Condolences didn’t interest him much, especially from me. The useless words hung in the air. Gubner looked at the wall with an air of deliberate choice.

“OK, let’s have it.” The defensive sharpness in my voice surprised me. He turned on me with tired distaste.

“How did they know about the meeting?”

I wondered how he was so sure of the answer. “You can turn off your spotlight. I didn’t tell anyone outside of my agency. Try Lehman or yourself.”

“I didn’t tell anyone,” he said distinctly.

“That leaves Lehman.” I said it with the hollow feeling that Gubner had an answer.

“I talked to Alec once. He called from a pay phone on the Mass. Turnpike. No tap possible. Sorry.” His voice wasn’t sorry at all.

I decided to play out the string. “What about meeting you? That could have looked strange.”

Gubner’s eyes flashed impatience. “I had lunch with Alec about seven, eight times a year. Almost every time I came to Boston. I was an old friend. Everyone knows that. And Alec swore he hadn’t told anyone else about meeting you. Not Valerie. Not anyone.”

I believed him. I could see Lehman cowering in a lonely phone booth before I could imagine him calling Gubner from his office. His sad afternoon apologia had the freshness of catharsis.

“Do you know anything more than what he told us?”

He shook his head. “Not about what he had on Lasko.”

I got up. “I can’t help you, Marty. But I may want to talk to you later-to get your help.”

His eyebrows raised in bitter inquiry. “Why should I?”

“You’ll have to answer that question yourself.” I let myself out, went down to my room, flopped on the bed, and stared at the bare ceiling, trying to pull my scattered thoughts together. A slow, sick anger spread through me like nausea. Lasko, Catlow, and a friend of theirs paraded around in my stomach. The phone rang.

It was McGuire. I looked at my watch. 7:30.

“Chris. I was at the office late. How was your wild goose chase?” His voice sounded reedy through the bad connection.

“Not good.”