tells us that the detective is shedding no tears for Daniel’s current plight, since he has always had a hunch that Daniel was behind Margaret’s death.
Daniel was widely considered a solid citizen in Cleveland, and support for him through his ordeal was almost unanimous, the detective being the notable exception.
“Does he think Daniel pulled the trigger?” Laurie asks.
“Unh-unh . . . farmed.” That is Marcus-speak for “No, the detective is of the opinion that our client employed a subcontractor to do the actual deed on his behalf.”
Marcus goes on to grunt that a young man had been arrested for the murder but that the case against him fell apart, and he was no longer a suspect.
Marcus has certainly not found any real evidence implicating Daniel, which is no surprise, since apparently the Cleveland police didn’t either. I ask him to stay in Cleveland and keep digging, though it makes me slightly uncomfortable to do so. The truth is that there is little chance he can uncover anything to help Daniel’s defense against the multiple-murder charges. If I were to be honest with myself, which I try to do as rarely as possible, I would admit that I’m hoping Marcus can help me learn more about who it really is we are defending.
The weekend starts tonight, and I am very much looking forward to it. Laurie is going to spend the entire time at my house, which at first glance seems like an increase in our normal scheduled time, but really isn’t. That’s because it’s a college and pro football weekend, which means that even though we’ll be in the same house, we’ll have almost no daytime interaction.
As we get close to the trial date, we’ll all be working seven-day weeks, but we’re still far enough away that we can have some relaxation. Tonight’s relaxation consists of sitting in my living room and watching
Laurie and I sit on my couch and watch the movies, a bowl of popcorn and Tara between us. Tara positions herself there so she can be petted from both sides, and neither of us minds. It is literally stunning how right these times with Laurie feel, and for the first time it flashes through my mind that maybe we should get married.
The next flash is the realization that Laurie has never brought the subject up, not even once, not even in passing. I’ve always been pleased by that, relieved actually, but now I’m starting to wonder. Shouldn’t she be plotting to win me? Pressuring me to make an honest woman out of her? Telling me her goddamn clock is ticking?
I decide not to bring the subject up, but the next thing I know it’s dribbling out of my mouth. “You never bring up marriage,” I say.
My timing is not great, since just as I’m saying it Jack Woltz is discovering the bloody horse head in bed with him. Laurie screams, as she does every time we watch that scene. Moments later, when she calms down, she asks, “What did you say, Andy?”
“I said, ‘Watch out, I’ve got a feeling there’s a severed horse’s head in that bed with him.’”
We go back to watching the movie, and I successfully keep my mouth shut until just about the time that Michael goes to visit the don in the hospital. He discovers that the guards have been sent away, though I’ve always wondered why they never bothered to inform Sonny about that little fact. Michael goes to the phone and dials, at the exact moment the phone in my house rings.
“I’ll get it,” I say. “It’s probably Michael telling me to get some men down to the hospital to guard the don. Can we spare anybody?”
“No,” she says. “All our button men are out on the street looking for Solozzo.”
I nod and pick up the phone. “Hello?”
“Mr. Carpenter, this is County General Hospital calling.”
For an instant it registers as comical that it actually is the hospital, but I just as quickly realize that getting nighttime calls from hospitals is never a good thing.
“What’s the matter?” I ask.
“We have a woman here . . . she’s been shot.”
“Who is she?” I ask worriedly, but glad that Laurie is sitting next to me.
“She hasn’t been able to give us her name; she’s in surgery. But she was carrying your card in her purse.”
I’m not sure how to ask this. “Does she appear to be . . . a lady of the evening?”
“Yes, I believe she does.”
“I’ll be right there.” I hang up and turn to Laurie, who has heard my end of the conversation and is worried herself. “There’s a woman in the hospital . . . a gunshot victim. I think it’s Sondra.”
“Damn,” she says, and without another word walks with me out the door and to the car.
• • • • •
LAURIE IS SILENT during the ride to the hospital. I don’t know what she’s thinking, and I don’t feel like I should ask. It’s only when we pull into the parking lot that she breaks the silence.
“I shouldn’t have left her there,” she says. “I should have dragged her out.”
“You did all you could.”
She shakes her head. “No. I could have pulled her away and shown her something better. Made it easier for her. Instead, I asked her if she wanted to leave. She said no, and I said fine.”
“Rick is the villain of this piece. Not you.”
Sondra is out of surgery by the time we arrive. We stop in the recovery room to see how she is and to confirm that it is really her. She’s still out of it from the anesthesia. The doctor says she took the bullet in the shoulder and has lost a lot of blood, but that eventually she should be okay. A half inch to the left, and she’d be dead.
Drive-by shooting, not baseball, is a game of inches.
A hospital official brings us into his office, then asks us if Sondra has any insurance. Somehow I don’t think Rick provides major medical for his employees, so I sign a form taking financial responsibility for the costs. I wonder if they would otherwise throw her out into the street and if they would first disconnect the tubes helping her breathe.
The officers that answered the initial call have since left, but Detective Steve Singer of the Passaic police arrives to talk to us. He and Laurie know and like each other, which is the good news. The bad news is that I once took him apart in a cross-examination, and my guess is every time he shows up at a murder scene he hopes that I’m the victim.
Singer tells us Sondra was shot in a drive-by, but there are no witnesses so far willing to come forward. He asks how we came to know Sondra and how she came to have my card. I tell the story, after which he looks at Laurie, hoping she’ll refute what I have to say.
“You know anything about this?” he asks.
Laurie nods. “I was there, Steve.”
I see a quick flash of disappointment on his face, then a nod of resignation. He was hoping to at least arrest me for solicitation of prostitution, but he now knows that’s not going to happen.
“Okay,” he says. “What else can you tell me?”
“She had a pimp, a guy named Rick. He hit her while we were there,” I say.
Suddenly, Singer’s face brightens. “Wait a minute, I heard about this,” he says to Laurie. “You kicked his ass, right? The guys were talking about it.”
“He slipped and fell,” she says. “I just neglected to catch him.”
He turns to me. “What were you doing while the lady was punching him out? Holding her purse?”
His question confirms my low opinion of his intelligence. He knows nothing; the fact is that Laurie wasn’t even carrying a purse that night. It was more of a handbag.
I fire back. “Maybe if you geniuses hadn’t let the pimp walk so fast, a woman wouldn’t have been shot tonight.”
Singer grunts, goes to the phone, and calls in to the precinct. He talks softly for a few moments, holds on for a short while, and then hangs up, a self-satisfied look on his face.
“Rick is still in custody, genius.”
