complaining witness. He placed that all before the panel of twelve jurors, some who nodded in agreement as he hammered home his strong points, some who sat stone-faced in their chairs, and some who appeared to be napping through all of the argument. He worked his way painstakingly toward his conclusion.
‘… and I ask you to find the defendant guilty of the crime of rape in the first degree. Thank you very much.“
Mark had taken more than an hour for the delivery of his summation, and I smiled my approval to him as he returned to his seat at the prosecution table. The judge would now begin his charge to the jury, in which he’d explain the various laws that had to be applied to the facts in the case. I noted that it was after noon, so I slipped out of the courtroom and returned to my office, knowing that it would be hours before the jurors finished deliberations and reached a verdict in a case like this.
“Rod called. Wants to know if you’d like to go out for lunch,” Laura greeted me when I returned to my office.
“Please tell him I’m stretched for time – let’s do it next week. And would you order me in a salad and soda?”
“Sure. Call Mercer at Special Victims. And Lieutenant Peterson at the Homicide Squad.”
I was excited when I picked up the phone to dial Mercer’s number. We were overdue for a break in the serial rape pattern and I was hoping it had come.
“Special Victims. Wallace.”
“Any luck? Heard you went out on a call.”
“A bullshit run. Nothing.” Mercer sounded discouraged.
“Every time some pimply faced plumber rings a doorbell on the Upper West Side, somebody calls 911. Not our guy, not even close. It’s a bad month to be a repairman – this poor slob was scared out of his wits. Took me two hours to calm him down. Then I had to call his old lady and explain the situation – make sure she understood it was all a mistake. Sorry for the false alarm. I’ll be talking to you.”
Peterson was Mike Chapman’s boss at the Homicide Squad, a tough old-timer who had worked Homicide most of his career, and knew the business better than anybody.
“Hey, Loo, how’ve you been?”
“Pretty good for an old guy, Alex. Can’t complain.”
“What do you need?”
“It’s on the Lascar case. Mike’s due in at four. I just called him to let him know what’s been going on, and I thought you should know, too. Then we had an idea, maybe you could help us with.”
“Shoot.”
“Chief Flanders just called. I don’t know the case as well as you do, but Mike says you’d understand what I’m talking about. First of all, Flanders got a hit on the photo ID of this Segal guy from the two sisters at the lunch place. That make any sense to you? Mike says it would.”
Butterflies began floating in my stomach and my spirits sank to a new low. It made no sense at all to me.
“Yeah, Loo, it makes perfect sense. Go on.”
Now it was no longer speculation. And now it was no longer just a matter of infidelity. Mike had been right. Jed had been with Isabella less than one hour before she was killed. Despite all the indications, I had kept on hoping he had left earlier. I had refused to consider him a serious possibility as a suspect, but I had to come to grips with the reality of that fact. No wonder it was Peterson who made the call. Mike was too afraid I’d be shattered by the confirmation of that news.
“The next thing Wally says to tell you is that Burrell – I guess he’s the ex-husband – has something to hide, too. Must’ve followed his wife from Boston to the Vineyard. Stayed at a hotel in Edgartown called the Charles Inn. Know it?“
“The Charlotte Inn. Gorgeous. Expensive.” Son of a bitch, doesn’t anybody believe in telling the truth anymore? Burrell shows up here to pitch me his case, then he looks me in the eye and lies. Interesting approach, I got to give him credit. Admit the gun possession, admit the fight in the Boston hotel. Just leave out the part that puts you within fifteen miles of the crime scene. Mike’s right – they think we’re all stupid if we’re in law enforcement.
“Now that suggests two things to me, Alex. One is, he didn’t go to the island planning to off his ex-wife. I think he woulda known to use an alias at the hotel. Even in the movies cops canvass hotels and motels to check the guest lists. But it doesn’t mean something didn’t set him off once he got there maybe he saw her with the other man, maybe they had a phone conversation that made him crazy. He’s in town, so we’ll set up the interview and sweat him. It always helps to go in with a piece of information that he obviously doesn’t think we have.”
I was still focused somewhere back on Jed.
“The rest is just local gossip. People who claim they saw and heard things all week. Someone in the post office says a woman was in asking directions to your place. Doesn’t exactly remember what day it was. Could that have been Isabella or did you have other company?”
“I gave directions to Isabella a week before she went up there. But she could easily have left them behind or stopped in somewhere to check. Maybe she invited someone else over I sure as hell didn’t even know she had Jed Segal there.”
“Also, American Express confirmed the Chanel sale. Only thing is Segal bought the stuff in New York, on Saturday afternoon, after his European trip. Looks like he got it at a drugstore about two blocks from your place. Sorry. The good news was that he had purchased the Concorde ticket to Paris weeks ago, then he moved his departure back a day or two at the very last minute. So he hadn’t planned the trip to the Vineyard for long. Well, that’s today’s report. Next thing, that FBI agent, Luther Waldron is in town. The feds had to make calls to get some of these guys to come to New York, which leads me to the favor we want to ask you.
“Mike doesn’t want Waldron in on all the interviews tomorrow. Doesn’t like the guy’s style, doesn’t think he knows anything about murder investigations, says he’s no better than a Meter Maid. So Mike’s trying to get as much done as possible out of Waldron’s presence, okay?”
“Suits me fine.”
“Johnny Garelli you know that name?”
“Yeah. Johnny Gorilla, she called him. The stunt man stud Isabella romanced for a few months. I only met him once.”
“Waldron got him to come into town for a sit-down tomorrow. He arrived on the red-eye this morning. Staying at the Gramercy Park Hotel. Mike thinks that if you called him and asked him to meet you for dinner this evening, you might be able to get more out of him than we could in a formal interview. Mike says Garelli likes broads better than he likes’ cops I’m supposed to butter you up and say he likes blondes with great wheels does that work?”
“No butter needed. You know this is the kind of assignment I love. Do I have to tell Battaglia?”
“Hey, you know me. If it was one of my guys did a thing like that without my permission, I’d wring his fucking neck.
But in your case, don’t you go off duty at 6 P.M.? I’m not asking you to get a pass from nobody to have a dinner date. It’s nothing dangerous like Mata Hari. We have no reason to think he’s the killer, but Mike wants to look at him ‘cause he’s got such a history of jealous squabbles with the deceased. We figure he’ll bite if you call, one of yous’ll pick a place, and Chapman’ll be having a drink at the bar.
Maybe you’ll get some scoop, some juice he’ll give you as a friend of Isabella’s. Pick his brain. I guess I’m usin’ that term loosely. Worst that can happen to you is you have a boring evening and a bad meal. Choose the restaurant, you might even eat good.“
“On the job, Loo. I love it. I’ll try to reach him. Tell Mike to call me when he gets in this afternoon. I’ll really feel like a wallflower if he turns me down.”
“If he turns you down, Alex, I’ll take you to Sheehan’s for a steak.”
Ugh, the food at Sheehan’s, a friendly bar run by the family of a retired Homicide cop. Great place to drink, but damned if I’d eat another meal there. That was incentive enough to put in a call to the Gorilla.
I got the number of the hotel from Information and asked the desk for Johnny’s room. He answered the phone and sounded as though I had awakened him. I reminded him that we had met once at Mortimer’s, expressed my less than-enthusiastic sympathy for Isabella with exaggerated sincerity, and suggested that we might meet for drinks or dinner to commiserate about her loss. He told me he’d been napping because of his jet lag, and that he had a date with a dancer from one of the Broadway shows who couldn’t meet him till almost midnight. Yeah, he’d
