Robert Andrews - A Murder of Justice

“Think she knew Martin was up to his ass in dealing?”

“Probably. Mothers know those things. They might not know everything there is, but mothers know enough.”

“She was his grandmother.”

“Mother, grandmother”-Jose shrugged-“same thing.”

“Martin and Skeeter together the day Gentry was shot. Then Martin buys it later that same night.”

Jose didn’t seem to be paying much attention. He was looking up the street. “Spring gardenin’ goin’ on.”

Two doors away, Edward Teasdale saw them coming and got up slowly from his knees. He stood waiting, a pair of gardening shears in one hand.

Ivy had grown through and over the chain-link fence surrounding Teasdale’s front yard. The ivy was closely trimmed, so it made a low green wall around the azalea-filled yard.

Frank and Jose stopped on the sidewalk.

“Morning, Mr. Teasdale. I’m-”

“You’re Kearney and you’re Phelps,” Teasdale said, pointing with the shears.

“You got a minute or two we can talk?” Jose asked.

“More about Skeeter?”

“Some him, some Martin Osmond.”

“Martin?” Teasdale asked. “You talked to Missus Osmond?” he asked, making certain Frank and Jose had touched all the bases.

“Unh-hunh.”

“Then what you need to talk with me for?”

“Martin lived here on the block,” Jose said. “He died here. Maybe… just maybe… you can tell us something that can help us clear up some things.”

Teasdale thought about that, then waved the shears at the front gate. “Come on in. Sit on the porch, you like. Or go inside.”

“Porch’s fine,” Jose said.

The porch ran across the front of the small house. A low brick balustrade held flower boxes filled with geraniums. The four massive rush-bottomed wood rockers faced the street in a precise row.

Teasdale took an end chair and turned it to face the other three.

Frank eased himself into one of the chairs and pushed back slightly to test it. The big chair rocked smoothly. Just the right amount of motion with the least effort. He caught Teasdale appraising him.

“Rocks good,” Frank said. “They cut the rocker rails wrong, chair won’t rock right.”

“Chairs over a hunnert years old. Wife brought those up from her daddy’s farm down by Charlottesville,” Teasdale said. “We’d sit out here summers. Friends come by…” Teasdale trailed off, thinking of a time he had had a wife and they could sit on their front porch and friends could walk down Bayless Place on a summer night.

Teasdale rocked a moment, then asked, “Why you asking about Martin? And why now? Two years later?”

Jose asked, “Anybody talk with you when Martin died?”

“No.”

“You lived here, what… thirty-some years?”

“Six,” Teasdale corrected, “thirty-six.”

“And Martin… his grandmother took him in after his mother was killed?”

“Boy wasn’t in school yet.” Teasdale rocked back, eyes on the ceiling in recollection. “That’d be late sixties sometime.”

“Different times then,” Jose said.

“Last of the good times. Nobody knew what we’d see.” Teasdale scanned Bayless Place, as if trying to recall it as it had been thirty years before.

“You saw him grow up.”

Teasdale nodded. “He’d come up here. I’d give him a quarter to do chores. Weedin’, cuttin’ grass. Boy liked to work. He got older, taught him to take up for himself. Missus Osmond’s a good lady, but there’s things a boy got to learn from a man.”

Sadness dragged at Teasdale’s eyes.

“Bad,” Jose said, “him dying that way.”

“Bad, him gettin’ messed up with people who do shootin’ and drugs. Bible tells us about livin’ by the sword.”

“People say he and Skeeter were buddies,” Frank said.

Teasdale gave Frank a skeptical look. “His grandmother say that?”

“No.”

Teasdale studied Frank, then said, “Real battle was between Skeeter and Missus Osmond. Over Martin. She was always on that boy. I thought she’d won. Then…”

“Won? How’d she win?”

“She told me one day… a Monday… that Martin had found Jesus. Woman’s face shined. Like she had a fire inside. Like a young girl almost, excited, giggly.”

“Didn’t last,” Jose said.

“For a while… I thought maybe… Then Martin… he started hangin’ out with Skeeter again.”

“You remember when it was,” Jose asked, “he found Jesus?”

“Year… about a year… before he died.”

“He died February 1999,” Frank said.

“That’d be about right. Sometime early 1998.”

“You have any indication he was doing drugs himself?” Jose asked.

“No. You said you talked with Missus Osmond, she told you, didn’t she… that Martin didn’t mess with that shit?”

Jose nodded, like he’d heard Teasdale’s question but wasn’t answering.

Teasdale paused a beat. “I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“You after finding out about Martin? Or finding Skeeter’s killer?”

“Both.”

Teasdale cleared his throat and spit over the balustrade in the direction of the street. He stood and squeezed the gardening shears in the air as if to warm them up.

“Wouldn’t waste my time on Skeeter. Justice done there. Sum’bitch got what he deserved. Got what he shoulda got long time ago.”

Kevin Gentry recruited Martin Osmond,” Jose said.

Frank nodded. The two sat for a time in the car on Bayless Place not talking, but putting Gentry and Osmond together.

“What happened was, Rhinelander and Gentry set out to bag Skeeter,” Jose said. “With a little help from Senorita Free Drugs and maybe from his pals at the Agency, Gentry spots Martin Osmond as a potential source. Does his recruiting magic… persuades Osmond to go back into the business with Skeeter. Skeeter finds out… he and Pencil kill them both.” Jose paused, then asked, “We got a time for tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?”

“You, me, and the mayor… Rhinelander, remember?”

“Oh. Yeah. Tomorrow’s Monday.”

Oh Lord, give me a day when I don’t have to dread the next day. A cottage on a Spanish hillside where you could sit under the olive trees and look across to Granada or up above at the impossibly blue Andalusian sky.

He realized Jose was staring in his side-view mirror.

“Angry man,” Jose said, still watching as he fastened his seat belt. “Almost sounded like he lost a son.”

Frank found Teasdale in the rearview mirror. The big man was savagely attacking the azaleas with the shears, cutting away the winter kill.

Monday morning, Frank and Jose stood under the Rayburn portico and watched Seth Tompkins blow into the horseshoe driveway in grand mayoral style: sleek black Lincoln with U.S. and D.C. fender flags snapping, two motorcycle escorts front, two rear, lights blazing.

“Looks like the Queen of Sheba coming aboard,” Jose said.

The sight cheered Frank. It was like Ali making his way down the aisle to the ring. Coming on big, bold, and brassy, with absolutely no doubt about the outcome.

“Float like a butterfly,” Frank whispered.

We ready, fellas?” Tompkins asked as Frank and Jose led him down the corridor to Rhinelander’s offices.

“Politics your turf, Mayor,” Jose said.

Tompkins grinned. “Turf? Jungle’s more like it, Jose.”

Marge, Rhinelander’s gatekeeper, stood as Frank and Jose entered with the mayor. She opened a door into a short hallway.

“They’re waiting inside, Your Honor.”

“They?” Tompkins asked.

“The chairman and Director Atkins.”

Rhinelander sat at his desk. He was swiveled around to face Atkins, who was in an easy chair to Rhinelander’s left. Both men looked up as the door opened. Tension hung in the air as though a conversation had been cut off in mid-sentence. Frank guessed it had been Atkins who’d been talking-the FBI director seemed adrenaline-charged, while Rhinelander had a subdued, thoughtful air.