Phillip Margolin - Executive Privilege

“There’s this ex-cop I know, Andy Zipay. He’s a PI now. We used to play poker once a month. One night, we were in a big pot and I did something stupid. I had this really good hand and I flipped an IOU into the pot I couldn’t cover. So I owed him the money but I didn’t have it.”

“What’s this got to do with Charlotte Walsh?”

“That’s what I’m about to tell you. This guy could have been a prick about the money, but he cut a deal with me instead. Every once in a while he needs information he can’t get, now that he’s private, so he calls me up and I work off the debt. The night Walsh was murdered I got a call from Zipay asking me to run some license plates. There were three of them.”

Perez handed a list with the numbers to Evans and waited while the agent scanned them.

“One is for a car registered to Charlotte Walsh,” the policeman said. “The next day it’s all over the news that Walsh was murdered by the Ripper. I wasn’t going to say anything at first. Then I started thinking, what if it’s important? So I called.”

“You did the right thing.”

Perez nodded.

“You said Zipay asked you to run three plates,” Evans said.

“Yeah, one car was registered to an electrical contracting company, but the other is used by the Secret Service.”

Evans frowned. “What does the Secret Service have to do with this?”

“That’s what I asked. Andy said he didn’t know, he was asking for someone else. He sounded surprised about the Secret Service. If I had to bet I’d say he didn’t know I was going to say the Secret Service used one of the cars. Then again I’m not that great a gambler.”

Andy Zipay’s office was on the third floor of an older office building that had seen better days but was still a respectable address. Keith Evans guessed that he was doing all right but hadn’t struck it rich yet. The small waiting area was manned by a plump, pleasant-looking woman in her midforties who was typing away at a word processor when Evans walked in. He flashed his ID and asked to talk to her boss.

Two minutes later, Evans was seated across the desk from Zipay, a slender man a shade over six feet, whose dark suit contrasted sharply with pale skin that looked like it rarely saw the sun. A narrow mustache separated a hooked nose from a pair of thin lips, and there was a touch of gray in his black hair. The austere suit and the mustache made Zipay look a little like the private dicks in black-and-white movies from the 1940s.

“How can I help you, Agent Evans?”

“I’m in charge of the D.C. Ripper case and you can help me by telling me why you’re interested in a car belonging to Charlotte Walsh-his latest victim-and another car that’s the property of the United States Secret Service.”

Zipay steepled his hands in front of his chin and studied the FBI agent for a moment before answering.

“If I were interested in that information it would probably be on behalf of a client. If that client was an attorney who was acting on behalf of a client I would be an agent of that attorney and prevented by the attorney-client privilege from discussing the matter.”

Evans smiled. “Andy, you may be an agent of an attorney but I checked with some friends on the D.C. police force before coming over, and they say you’re also an ex-cop on the take who was lucky to avoid some real unpleasantness. These people would be ready, willing, and able to bust your balls if they found out how you learned the Secret Service and Miss Walsh owned those cars. So don’t go all legal on me and I won’t go all legal on you.”

Zipay flushed but he held his temper. “I didn’t know it was standard procedure for FBI agents to insult people when they want their cooperation.”

“I wasn’t being insulting. I was stating facts. Now I have no interest in busting your balls. All I want is information. If I get it I’ll probably forget the source unless you turn out to be an essential witness in the Ripper murders.”

Zipay mulled over the agent’s proposition. Evans could see that the PI was upset, which surprised him. Finally, Zipay took a deep breath. He looked very uncomfortable.

“Okay, I’ll help, but I don’t know much and the person who does…I don’t want her hassled. It wouldn’t be right.”

“Why is that?’

“She was a cop and she’s gone through some really bad times. She was in a mental hospital for a year.”

“What happened?”

“Nobody I’ve talked to knows the whole story. I was off the force by then so I don’t have a lot of the details-and I’ve never asked her for them-but what I know is pretty awful. She was undercover and she got friendly with a meth cook. These were bikers. Very violent guys, but she worked her way in. They had a secret lab. No one could figure out where they were cooking. She was going to lead the cops to the lab when the bikers got on to her.” Zipay looked down. He shook his head. “They had her for three days before they found her.”

Zipay looked up and straight into Evans’s eyes. “You know I left the cops because I got into trouble. Almost everybody turned their back on me, but she didn’t. When I went private she fed me jobs, helped me out when she could. She has some kind of pension but it’s not much. Whenever I can I return the favor by hiring her to do odd jobs. This deal with the licenses was one of them.”

“Why did she want to know the registered owner?”

“She wouldn’t tell me. She said I should forget about the conversation. I will say that she sounded surprised about the Secret Service. I don’t think she was expecting me to say that one of the cars was registered to them.”

Maggie Sparks rapped her knuckles on the door to Dana Cutler’s apartment. When no one answered she knocked again, louder.

“Miss Cutler, this is the FBI. We’d like to talk to you.”

“What now?” Sparks asked Evans after they’d waited long enough for a response. He was about to answer when the door across the hall opened a crack.

“Are you really the FBI?” a woman asked in an accent that placed her origins somewhere in Eastern Europe.

“Yes, ma’am,” Evans replied.

“Show me some identification.”

Sparks and Evans held up their ID in the narrow space where a chain spread between the door and the jamb. A second later, the chain was detached and the agents found themselves face to face with an elderly woman in a pink house dress.

“She’s not in,” the woman said. “She hasn’t been there since the commotion.”

“What commotion?” Evans asked.

“It was a few nights ago. I called the police as soon as I heard the gunshot.”

“Why don’t you start from the beginning, Mrs…?”

“Miss, young man. Miss Alma Goetz.”

“Miss Goetz, please tell us what happened.”

“These walls are paper thin. When I heard the shot I opened my door a crack to see what was happening. There wasn’t anyone in the hall and the shot sounded close by. That’s when I called 911. Then I heard her slam the door across the hall open.”

“Her?” Evans asked.

“Dana Cutler, the woman from across the hall.”

“How do you know it was Miss Cutler?” Evans asked.

“I saw her running toward the stairs.”

“Did the police come?” Sparks asked.

“Yes, there were two of them, but they were very rude.”

“Oh?” Evans said.

“You’d think they would be polite, since I risked my life to make the call. I could have been shot, you know?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sparks said. “What you did was very brave.”

“I’m glad you think so because the police officer was very short with me. He told me to go inside and he didn’t even ask me any questions.”