'All right. If you say so. What about the thermos and lunch pail?'
'Put them in Jimmy's room,' Linda Decker said. 'Put them somewhere so he'll be able to see them if he ever gets a chance.'
The ward clerk gave me one last disparaging look and left. I stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to say or do, while Linda searched for another tissue and blew her nose. There was a coffee pot and a stack of styrofoam cups sitting on a table across the room. The light was on and the coffee smelled as though it had been there for hours.
'Would you like a cup of coffee?' I offered.
She nodded. 'Please.'
'Black?'
She nodded again. I poured two cups and brought them back to where she was sitting on the couch. Her hand shook as she took the cup from me. 'Thank you,' she said. The room was stuffy and hot, but she sat there shivering for several moments with both hands wrapped around the cup as though hoping to draw warmth out of the coffee and into her hands. She stared unseeing through a wavering column of steam.
'I'm sorry about what happened,' she said, her voice almost a whisper. 'Someone named Powell was here a little while ago. He said that you're a good cop, that you wouldn't be mixed up in anything crooked.'
Under any other circumstance, a vote of confidence from Captain Larry Powell would have been welcome, but in this instance I was sorry to hear that he too had been dragged into the melee.
'It's all right,' I answered. 'You don't need to apologize. If I'd been in your shoes, I probably would have done the same thing.'
She looked up at me, her face pained. 'No, it's not all right. That was my fault, and so is this. Jimmy went back to get Patches.' She broke off and put one hand over her mouth to stifle an involuntary sob.
'Patches?' I asked.
'A dog. A stupid stuffed dog that I gave him years ago. The firemen got him out of the house all right, but he broke away and went back after the dog. He was right in the doorway when the roof came down. He was completely engulfed in flames.'
'Just because you gave him the dog doesn't make you responsible.'
'You don't understand, do you.' It was an accusation.
'I guess not.'
'I used Jimmy as bait!' The last word was a cry of anguish torn from her body, one that left her doubled over and weeping. Unnoticed, the coffee spilled onto the floor beside her. I found a roll of paper towels and began to soak up the mess.
'Bait?' I asked, when she finally quieted. 'What do you mean, bait?'
'Jimmy can't lie,' she answered. 'I knew if I told him where I was and if anyone asked him, he would tell them. After Logan and Angie, I figured I was next on the killer's list. And I was ready for him, ready and waiting. But you came instead.'
I nodded. She closed her eyes and put one hand over them, shaking her head as if to deny the reality of what had happened. 'I didn't think he'd hurt Jimmy and Mom. It never occurred to me.'
My ears pricked up at the word 'he.' Not some nameless, faceless, sexless entity. Not some vague numberless they. But he. One person-a single, identifiable, male, he.
'Do you know who that person is?' I asked the question gently. I never considered not asking it. I'm a cop. They pay me to ask questions, but I was finally learning that for me asking questions is more than just a job. It's as necessary as breathing, a cornerstone of existence, and this time I was asking for free.
Slowly Linda Decker raised her head. Her eyes met mine and she nodded.
'Who?' I asked.
'Martin Green.'
I tried to contain my reaction. Martin Green. The ironworker union executive director who was busy creating a 'more perfect union.' The same man who lived in my building and who had thrown a temper tantrum because his mother didn't get to ride home from the airport in the Bentley.
'Are you sure? Do you have any proof?'
'The night he was killed, Logan had an appointment with Green to tell him about the tapes. He called and told me so. I begged him not to go. I told him it was too dangerous, that they wouldn't tolerate someone messing up their little racket.'
There were the tapes again, the tapes she had mentioned before.
'What tapes?'
'The accounting tapes. The ones Angie stole.'
'Wait a minute. Angie Dixon? The woman who fell off Masters Plaza?' Linda Decker nodded. It was all coming together too fast. So there was a connection between Logan Tyree and Angie Dixon.
'Angie didn't fall,' Linda said grimly. 'I can't prove it, but I know she was pushed.'
'One thing at a time. Tell me about the tapes.'
'Angie used to work for a guy named Wayne Martinson. He kept the books for the local.'
'More than one set?' I asked speculatively.
Linda looked at me quickly. 'How did you know that?' she asked.
'It fits,' I answered.
'Angie wanted to make more money. Martinson had her working part-time at minimum wage. Guys working iron make good money. Eventually, through her job, Angie figured out there was a lot of hanky-panky going on- people buying and selling union books, people bypassing the apprenticeship program, boomers paying to get put on the A-list. She started stealing the tapes. Not the journal entries, just the tapes. She took them at night as she left work.'
'And then she blackmailed somebody to let her into the union?'
Linda shook her head. 'That was what was funny. It ended up she didn't have to. They let her in anyway.'
'But I thought you said…'
'Nobody knew anything about it, until this party thing came up. I think she was too scared to tell.'
'What party thing?'
'International sent out an inspection team. Probably because of what happened to Wayne.'
'Wayne?'
'Martinson, the bookkeeper.'
'What did happen to him?'
'He went salmon fishing in Alaska last month and never came back. He's officially listed as missing. They haven't found his body.'
'Another ironworker accident? How come nobody made the connection?'
'Wayne didn't just work for the ironworkers,' she said. 'He worked for several different unions.'
'You mentioned something about a party.'
'According to Don Kaplan, Martin Green expected some of us to show up and improve the scenery at his little get-together. A command performance. I figured he wanted to create enough of a smoke screen so no one would figure out what had really been going on. He's big on public relations.'
Remembering the attractive young women scattered here and there around Martin Green's apartment the night I crashed his party, I suddenly saw that party in a far different and more ominous light. So that's what had been going on.
'And you were supposed to be part of the scenery?'
'Show up or else. That was the way Don Kaplan put it. We'd have drinks and dinner and guess who was supposed to be dessert.'
'Angie Dixon too?'
Linda nodded. 'That's when she went crying to Logan about the tapes.'
'And what did you do?'
'I called Green on it. Told him I'd see him in hell before I'd do that. I turned in my union book and told him he could shove it up his ass.'
'So you quit, but you said Angie went crying to Logan?'
