“Was he your husband?”
She looks at me evenly and says with considerable pride, “He was. Now, who are you?”
“My name is Andy Carpenter. This is Laurie Collins. Just before your husband died, the passenger in the car he was driving tried to kill me.”
“I’m sorry about that. I’m sure Antwan meant you no harm.”
“Do you know why he was driving the car?”
“That man paid him five hundred dollars.”
“Archie Durelle?”
“I didn’t know his name,” she says. “But Antwan knew him. He trusted him. Said when you fight next to a man, that was all you needed to know about him.”
“Were they in the Army together?” Laurie asks.
“Yes. But Antwan didn’t recognize him at first. I think ’cause he hadn’t seen him in a long time. He just showed up one day, said he needed a favor, and that he would pay Antwan five hundred dollars.”
“And Antwan didn’t ask what the favor was?”
She looks at me as if I’m not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. “It was five hundred dollars.”
“What happened to the money?” Laurie asks.
“He had it when he died. You think I’ll ever see it?” It’s a rhetorical question; she knows the answer all too well.
I reach into my pocket and take out a fistful of cash. I’ve taken to carrying a lot of it lately, ever since a cash machine ate my card a couple of months ago. I have a little over six hundred dollars, which I put on the table. “Thank you for the information,” I say. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
As we turn to leave, the teenager says, “How’d you get past Little Antwan downstairs?”
He must be talking about Statue Man, who could only be called “little” in comparison to the Chrysler Building. “You call him ‘Little Antwan’?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s downstairs talking to little Marcus.”
We leave, and once we close the door behind us, Laurie says with a smile, “Now you’re paying for information?”
“Why not? Who am I,
* * * * *
LAURIE COMES BACK to the office with me for a meeting with Kevin.
These meetings are basically of dubious value, since all we seem to do is list the things we don’t understand in our preparation for a trial we don’t know will even take place.
It’s the first chance I’ve had to tell Kevin about my meeting with Petrone. When I get to the part where Petrone denied trying to have me killed, Kevin asks, “And you believed him?”
“I did.”
“Just because that’s what he said?”
I nod. “As stupid as it might sound, yes. I’ve had dealings with him before, and he’s always told me the truth, or nothing at all. And he had nothing to gain by lying.”
“Andy, the guy has had a lot of people murdered. How many confessions has he made?”
“I think Andy’s right,” Laurie says. “If he admitted that he was behind the shooting, there’s nothing Andy could have done about it. He could still easily have denied it later. And if he is trying to scare Andy off of the case, saying that he was out to kill him would have been more effective.”
I nod. “You got that right.”
“Okay,” Kevin says. “Petrone wasn’t trying to kill you, but somebody was. Unless it was a random shooting.”
I shake my head. “No chance. Durelle specifically went to hire Cooper to be the driver for the attempt. He paid him five hundred bucks. Random shooters don’t do that kind of thing.”
“So the question is, who was Durelle and what did he have against you?”
“Right,” I say. “And I’m betting the answer has to do with the Army. That’s how Durelle knew Cooper, and Durelle was in the service when he apparently faked his own death. And it also might explain why the government was tapping my phone. Cindy Spodek said it could have been the Defense Intelligence Agency.”
“This sounds like a job for my brother-in-law,” Kevin says. “I’m glad I send him a birthday card every year.”
Kevin’s brother-in-law is Colonel Franklin Prentice, stationed at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. He was nice enough to help us on a previous case, and at the time he was only a lieutenant colonel. Now that’s he’s moved up a notch, maybe we can get him to solve the case for us.
Kevin will call him to learn all he can about Archie Durelle, the shooter who was killed in the helicopter crash and who came back to life. I’m particularly interested in whatever contact he and Antwan Cooper had in the service, and who else was on the copter with Durelle when it went down. If Durelle didn’t die, maybe they didn’t, either.
Laurie and I head home to enjoy our last night together before she goes back to Wisconsin. Wild and crazy pair that we are, we’re going to spend it by ordering in a pizza and watching a movie on DVD. We each have our role to play. I order the pizza and she chooses the movie.
She chooses
We eat the pizza while watching the movie, carefully saving the crusts for Tara and Reggie. They have completely different eating styles. Tara virtually inhales the crusts in a matter of moments, while Reggie savors them, chewing slowly and carefully, then licking his lips clean after each one. The net effect is to have Tara finished and watching him, probably hoping in vain that he won’t finish. It must drive her nuts.
Laurie and I share a bottle of Rombauer chardonnay, though the dogs don’t get to sample it. Our drinking styles mirror the way the dogs eat. Laurie slips her wine slowly, while I chug it down like an ice-cold Pepsi on a hot day.
I know nothing about wine, but this tastes pretty good. Of course, in this setting I could serenely sip gasoline. “Mr. Carpenter, might I recommend an ’88 Chevron? Or perhaps a ’91 Texaco? Both are fruity and quite flammable.”
Laurie doesn’t say much all night, and it isn’t until we’ve made love that she decides it’s time to talk. It’s unfortunate, because I have already come to the conclusion that it’s time to sleep.
“Andy, I’m going to tell you something because I think we should be open and honest.”
“I’m taking a risk by saying this.”
I don’t say anything, because I find it hard to talk and cringe at the same time.
“Andy, I think that if you told me the only way to keep us together would be for me to move back here, I would move. That’s how important you are to me.”
This conversation just took a turn for the better. “I feel the same way about you,” I say, and then worry that I may have just offered to move to Wisconsin.
If I made the offer, thankfully she doesn’t pick up on it. “I love where I live, Andy, and I love my job, but I would give it all up if that were necessary to keep you.”
My mind is racing for a way to appear understanding and generous and yet actually get her to move back here. “I would never want you to give that up,” I say. My mind obviously didn’t pull off the trick.
“And you’ll tell me if that changes? Because right now I love you more than ever.”
“I’ll tell you,” I say, knowing I won’t, because then she’d love me less than ever.
In the morning we have a quick breakfast, and I drive Laurie to the airport. We don’t talk about when we will see each other again, because we both know it might be quite a while. She’s used up her vacation, and if we get
