William Bernhardt - Murder One

“ Stop it! ” Ben shouted. “Both of you. Now!”

Ben and Jones yanked the two women to opposite ends of the office. The fighting finally subsided.

“Let go of me!” Andrea shrieked.

Ben refused. “Not till you’ve got a grip on yourself.”

“I said, let go of me!”

“Do I have to call security? Because I will before I’ll let you attack my client again.”

“Did you hear what that woman said to me?”

“I don’t care what she said. I advised Keri not to press charges the last time you attacked her. I won’t do that again. So cool it!”

“But she said—she said—” All at once, as quickly as Andrea’s rage had come on, it subsided. She crumbled into tears. She fell to her knees, weeping so loud and hard she couldn’t seem to stop.

“She—took—my—husband—” she managed to spit out, in hard gasping breaths, wracked with sobs. “She—took—everything—”

“Excuse me, Boss,” Jones said. The expression on his face alone was enough to inform Ben that he was not having a good time. He nodded toward Keri, who was still struggling to get free. “What should I do with this one?”

“Put her in my office,” Ben grunted. “Lock the door, if necessary.”

Jones steered Keri toward the office, still keeping her safely locked in his grip.

Andrea was practically convulsing. She seemed wracked with sorrow. Her head swung from side to side, her hands pressed between her legs.

“I loved him,” she said, still gasping for breath. “Truly loved him.”

“I’m sure you did,” Ben replied. Gazing into her eyes at this moment, he couldn’t doubt it.

Gradually, the wrenching sobs subsided. Ben gave her some tissues.

Andrea pushed herself back onto wobbly legs. “I—I think I’d best go now.”

Ben held her elbow, steadying her. “Didn’t you have something you wanted to tell Christina?”

She gave him a harsh look. “Not anymore.”

On the street behind Two Warren Place, just below Ben Kincaid’s office, two men sat alone in a motionless car. The one in the passenger seat, an immense man with an extreme buzz cut, was wolfing down Chinese food from tiny white carryout containers. The other, the man in the driver’s seat, was peering through a pair of high-powered infrared binoculars.

“He’s still in the office,” Matthews murmured, eyes locked to the lenses. “Stargazing or something.”

“Maybe he’s wishin’ upon a star,” The Hulk suggested, barely comprehensibly, due to the quantity of moo goo gai pan in his mouth.

“Maybe he’s thinking about throwing himself out the window.” Matthews lowered the binoculars. “We can only hope.”

“More likely thankin’ his lucky star.” The Hulk shoved some more noodles into his face. “I can’t believe he weaseled out of those charges. Makes me sick.”

“But we got the Dalcanton case reopened. It wasn’t a total loss.” Matthews lowered his binoculars. “We just need to think of some other way to nail Kincaid’s ass to the wall.”

“I don’t know, Arlen. Maybe we ought to give it a rest.”

“Would Joe McNaughton give it a rest?” Matthews’s face tightened.

“ Well … I don’t—”

“No, he wouldn’t. And neither will we.”

“Arlen …”

“Joe saved your butt on more than one occasion, Frank, and you know it.”

“Sure, I ain’t sayin’ otherwise, but it seems like there’s a point—”

“Joe was my partner, did you know that?”

“Hell, yeah, Arlen. You mention it every day.”

“I knew him before either one of us was on the force. We were best friends, right up to the day he died. If something had happened, he would’ve been there for me. And he wouldn’t give up just because things got a little hairy.”

“Well, sure, Arlen, but still—”

“I knew Andrea back then, too. Did you know that?” All at once, Matthews’s hard-lined face seemed to soften. “She was a pretty thing back then, before she married Joe. Not that there’s anything wrong with her now. I was the one who discovered her, you know? She was dating me first. We had some great times together. I mean, the girl had a temper, believe you me. But she was special, I could see that right away. We got really close, least I thought so. Then Joe entered the picture, and those two hit it off and … well, six months later they were married.” He paused, and his voice took on an odd quavering tone. “I loved that Andrea.”

He gazed out the car window. “So you see, Frank, I got two reasons for doing all this. I gotta do it for Joe. And I gotta do it for Andrea.”

The car fell silent. The Hulk shifted his enormous bulk around to the edge of his seat and gazed at LaFortune Park. Without streetlights to illuminate the vast area, it seemed dark and foreboding, like the woods in a Grimm fairy tale, an unsafe place where the wary would not venture.

“You know, Arlen,” The Hulk began, “I didn’t want to tell you this, but I think Barry’s been talkin’. To that Loving guy. You know. That works for Kincaid.”

Matthews’s eyes were glassy and fixed. “I know.”

“You do?”

“Not much goes on in this town that I don’t know about, Frank.”

“But—if Barry’s gonna be blabbing, I don’t know how safe it is—”

“Barry doesn’t know anything. Not really. Just rumors. Vague plans. He’s on the outside.”

“Well, sure. But if Kincaid gets wind of the Blue Squeeze and all—”

“It will be perfect.”

Frank did a double take. “Excuse me?”

“Perfect. Exactly as I planned.”

Frank pondered. “You know, Arlen, I’m really not as dumb as some people think. But I got no idea what you’re talkin’ about.”

Matthews drew in his breath, then released it with a weary expression. “If Kincaid comes to believe that we were behind the knife in his office, and he has effectively defused that bomb by getting the charges dismissed, he will think he’s safe. That he’s escaped the Squeeze.” He paused, turning to face his companion. “So he won’t be expecting anything else. He won’t, Barry won’t, no one will.” His eyes became dark and narrow. “And just when he feels safe, when he thinks there’s nothing more we can do—that’s when we’ll crucify him.”

23

HIS GRANDFATHER HAD LOVED racetracks, Ben recalled, as he paid his money and passed through the turnstile to Winchester Park. It was a bit of an odd dichotomy, now that he looked back on it. His grandfather was a sophisticated man; he’d managed to educate and advance himself from utter and abject poverty to a successful career in the medical arts. He was a stern man with a serious streak, but that was probably what was required to travel from the world in which he was born to the world in which he died. He didn’t have much time for frivolity, and when free time did emerge, he usually preferred to spend it with a good book. He abstained from cards, dancing, smoking, loose women, and strong drink.

But he loved the racetrack.

When Ben was a boy, he and his sister Julia were not infrequently palmed off on one set of grandparents or the other while their parents vacationed in exotic foreign locales. If they went with their mother’s parents, it meant treasure hunts and hikes in the lush wooded land surrounding their Arkansas farm. But if they were with their father’s parents, it meant the horse races. They would all pack up in an RV that was gigantic (or so it seemed at the time) and head for Taos.

Not bad days, all in all. Ben had learned to read a racing form when he was six, and he was better at calculating odds than his grandfather or most of his friends, which made him somewhat popular in that set. The boy genius and his beautiful baby sister. It was fun to watch the horses run, and if he got bored, no one objected to his sitting in the rear of the stadium and reading comics—which was a refreshing change from the reception such activity received at home.