Hostile Witness Part 36

"His aide, actually. I just want to know if Chuckie was here the night Zack Bissonette was beaten into a coma."

"I saw Bissonette play down at the Vet," said Strickling. "What a b.u.m. I remember once, ninth inning of a tie ball game, slow bounder to second, the guy kicks it. He kicks it. Like he thought he was playing soccer. Two runs scored." He took a deep breath. "Well, seeing as you were on TV and all, what's that date again?"

That was it, I guess. Lawyers were as nothing in the new scheme of things, as were scholars and doctors and businessmen. But have your face flashed for a few seconds on TV and all of a sudden you were somebody to be trusted, to be revered, someone to do favors for. I gave him the date and he searched below the counter for the applicable register. With a heave he lifted it up and turned it around to let me look. There it was, Chuckie's signature going in at 9:37 P.M. the night of the murder and not leaving until 6:45 the next morning.

"Could this have been faked?" I asked.

"No, sir," said Strickling. "In fact, I signed him out. That's my writing there. I was on the late shift. So I can tell you for a fact he didn't leave between midnight and six-forty-five."

"Any other exits?" I asked.

"Just emergency exits, and alarms go off if they're used. We've had some thefts and we have lots of drugs here, so we're pretty careful."

"And that's his signature?"

He turned the book around and looked. Then he opened the most recent register to a few days back. There was Chuckie's signature signing in and out. It was the same.

So that was it. I shrugged at Strickling and he smiled at me and wished me a good night. I left the lobby and stood outside at the entrance and thought a bit. I believed the registers because I believed Strickling. He had two jobs at that place, to carry a gun and to keep the registers, and Strickling would do both jobs with an integrity I could only admire, not match. So Chuckie Lamb hadn't been threatening me because he had killed Zack Bissonette. Maybe he had ended up with part of the quarter of a million and was trying to protect his stake, as likely a possibility as any, Chuckie the thief. But he wasn't Chuckie the killer. Too bad, too, because I would have liked nothing better than to nail Chuckie Lamb for murder. Well, maybe one thing would be better: nailing that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Guthrie.

39.

I WAS IN MY OFFICE, working late revising my opinion letters to be appended to the Bishop brothers' prospectus for Valley Hunt Estates, when the phone rang. I didn't have time to answer, I was already late for my dinner date with Lauren Amber Guthrie, but thinking it might be Veronica wanting to change our plans for later in the evening, I picked up the receiver and said, "Victor Carl."

It wasn't Veronica.

"Victor. I need to talk with you. It is extremely urgent."

From the soft, rounded tones, from the precise p.r.o.nunciation, from the lockjawed superiority of the voice, I knew who it was.

"I don't have time to speak to you now, Mr. Osbourne."

"You took my car, Victor. My father's Duesenberg. I must have it back."

"It was lawfully seized by the sheriff, Mr. Osbourne. There are papers you can file if you believe the judgment we have against you is improper. Otherwise it is going to be sold."

"My car, Victor. It is a cla.s.sic, the only memento I have left of a more glorious time."

"If you want, Mr. Osbourne, you can have your daughter bid for it at the auction."

"After having the police stomp through her property she has refused to help me any further. I have offered you all the money I have. Victor, you must stop this hara.s.sment. You simply must. You don't know what you are doing to me. I have prospects, grand prospects, but you are ruining them. You are making me feel like a hunted animal. I am not an animal, Victor."

"We need to sell the car, Mr. Osbourne."

"Have you no compa.s.sion? I'm a man, Victor. If you p.r.i.c.k me, do I not bleed?"

"I believe that is my line," I said flatly.

"If you poison me, do I not die?"

"I'm not trying to hurt you, Mr. Osbourne. Make me a final settlement offer in writing and mail it to me and whatever it is, no matter how low, I will urge Mr. Sussman to accept it. I promise."

"If you wrong me, shall I not revenge?"

"Good-bye, Mr. Osbourne. I have to go," I said, and then I hung up the phone.

It rang immediately afterwards, but I didn't pick it up again. Since learning from the Bishops that Winston Osbourne was an old school chum of William Prescott's, I hadn't enjoyed my moments with him as I had in the past. I think it was the grayness of it all that did it. The dun-colored skies of that bleak autumn, the haziness of my own p.r.i.c.kly moral dilemmas, of my own twisted arrangements with Prescott, it had all turned the crisp blacks and whites of the world into a muddle. Things just weren't as simple as I had pretended them to be when I sat down with Winston Osbourne's wife and destroyed his life. Though at that moment, with the phone tolling on my desk, I didn't want to judge myself for what I had done in the now-distant past, I couldn't help but know I had done something deep within the gray. And I couldn't help but sympathize with Osbourne's plight and his attempts to maintain his position in the club that I was still desperate to join. Whatever it was that was working its way through my spine and into the recesses of my intellect, I found I could no longer gleefully despise him. I would indeed call my uncle Sammy. I would tell him the whole situation. I would advise him to leave it at the car, to cash in the Duesenberg, and then mark the note as satisfied. My uncle Sammy, surprisingly, was what Morris would have called a mensch. He would do it if I asked him, and I would ask him. I would let Winston Osbourne off the hook.

Lauren was waiting for me at Restaurant Tacquet, a small bistro nestled in a Victorian hotel smack in the middle of the Main Line. It was suburban chic, large bay windows, almond and blue walls with a stenciled border, pale green ceilings. Charmingly informal and gallingly expensive, it was a very in place for the horsey set, just down the road from the Devon Horse Show grounds. Lauren sat at a trapezoid table by one of the windows. Beside her on the table were long fuchsia flowers in a narrow black vase. She had ordered a red wine and was deep into the bottle already by the time I showed up.

"I was afraid you were going to stand me up, Victor," she said in her soft, breathless voice, reaching out her braceleted arm, fingers pointing down for me to take hold of. "I was feeling like one of those sad blue-haired ladies who dine alone each night, as if I had jumped into my future. It was too horrible to bear, so I ordered some wine."

"Chateau Lafite Rothschild, 1984," I read from the label.

"Appropriate, no? Pour yourself a gla.s.s and we'll toast."

I did as I was told.

"To the renewal of our... Well, to the renewal of our whatever," she said with a gay laugh.

We clinked gla.s.ses and I took a sip. True to its name, it was rich and powerful and slightly exotic. I let it linger on the back of my tongue for a moment before I swallowed and took another mouthful right away. Even with my Rolling Rock palate I could tell it was magnificent.

"So how is your friend Beth doing these days?" she asked.

"Fine," I said, content to leave it at that, and as far as I knew she was. It was I who was missing her terribly. We still hadn't talked since she walked out on me from that witness room. But her office now was sadly empty of all her personal effects. Just a file cabinet and a desk and a wastepaper basket.

"It's too bad about Alberto." The "r" rolled lightly off her tongue.

"What happened?" I asked.

"She dropped him. It looked like things were going so well and she just up and ended it. And no one knows why. Poor Alberto was devastated. It appears he was in love. He's a very serious young man but apparently your Beth made him laugh."

"She has that talent."

"A simple thing like that and Alberto was lost. If I had known that was all it took, I would have learned to tell a joke."

"You do all right."

"But not with the serious ones. I could never have gotten Alberto to laugh." Lauren stared at me and twisted her head slightly, giving me the impression her eyes were boring into mine. "I could never get you to laugh much either. But I'm still willing to try."

I broke the moment by dropping my gaze and taking a sip of wine and then another. "Actually, Lauren, I'm here on business."

"Please, no. Victor. Don't tell me you are only wooing me as a client. Do you do divorce work now? All right, darling, you can represent me, but only if you promise to forget all about that silly old precept against sleeping with your clients."

"That would be against the code of ethics."

"Which would make it all the more fun, no? The best s.e.x is always surrept.i.tious. If nothing else, marriage has taught me that."

"I don't do divorce work."

"Good. I've already hired Ca.s.sandra. She's a tiger, I hear."

"Guthrie deserves something for his years with you, don't you think?"

"I let him sleep in my bed for a good part of the time, Victor. What more could he want?"

"Money."

"Don't be vulgar. Besides, Ca.s.sandra says we have a case."

"Was he cheating on you?"

"Men don't cheat on me, dear."

"So it was the violence."

"Something like that."

"How violent is he? I was just wondering, you know. What exactly do you think Guthrie is capable of?"

"That's the second time you asked about Sam's violent tendencies." She looked at me with a touch of appraising coldness in her blue eyes. "I'm beginning to see a pattern."

Lauren was a lot of things, dissolute, depraved, dissipated, but she was far from stupid. If not born with the twin handicaps of being very rich and very pretty there is no telling what she could have accomplished.

The waiter came over to our table before Lauren could say what was on her mind. His accent was French but I suspected it was fake. Lauren ordered the mixed greens and a fish. I ordered lobster ravioli in a vodka cream sauce and a steak au poivre. She ordered more wine. When the waiter left, Lauren sat back in her chair, crossed her arms, and frowned at me.

"Frankly, I'm insulted, Victor. Pumping me for information like I was a common street tart."

"I could never accuse you of being common."

"Sweet boy. How did you find out about Zack?"

"He took a picture," I said. "From a remote-controlled camera, I think. The police have it, along with scores of others."

"It's a good likeness of me, I hope."

"Actually, no. The camera was up high. The picture is only of your back."

"But you recognized me anyway. How encouraging."

"It was the bracelets," I said, indicating the diamond studded, rune engraved gold bracelets that lay spectacularly on her delicate forearm. "And a certain way you grabbed at his b.a.l.l.s."

"Darling of you to remember, Victor. You told the police, of course, who the unidentified figure was."

"No, I didn't," I lied.

"My Galahad."

"I just want to know what happened," I said.

"You just want to know if my taste for beefcake had something to do with the beefcake's murder, is that it? You want to know if my husband killed him, is that it? Because if it is my husband, then your grubby little politico client might just get off, is that it?"

"That's it," I said.

"Once again, Victor, the girl from Bryn Mawr is going to disappoint you. Pour me some wine, please."

I poured her the wine from a new bottle the waiter had brought. She drank it quickly, too quickly for its price. She was still drinking it when the salad and ravioli arrived. My ravioli were light and radiant. I sopped up the dregs of the cream sauce with thickly b.u.t.tered bread. I could feel my arteries clench. Lauren merely picked at her greens between deep drafts from her winegla.s.s.

"How much do you want to know?"

"As much as you want to tell me."

"Wonderful. We won't discuss it at all."

I shook my head and she reached out a hand and cupped my chin.

"All right then, I'll tell you everything. It was at that vile little club he put his name on. We went there now and then. Guthrie had run off to the bathroom. He was always running off to the bathroom. They don't make men with bladders anymore, Victor. It's true. All the good bladders are gone. While he was away Zack came over and asked if everything was satisfactory. He asked it with a smile that I recognized from my own mirror. So I told him no. Which was the truth, Victor. I had married Sam with the best intentions. My little piece of rebellion. I mean, he wasn't a Biddle or a Pepper, but then he wasn't anything scandalous either."

"Like a Jew," I said.

"Maybe you should go to the men's room and straighten yourself, Victor. Your chip is showing." She smiled at me, a broad, cold smile. "My intentions with Sam were always honorable, but things simply weren't working out. I had thought him insouciant at first. But that was an act. Underneath he is very earnest. I don't like earnest, do you?"

"That's not how I think of Guthrie."

"Marry him and find out. A very perspirable, very earnest young man. We should have lived together first. I would never have made such a mistake. But Mother wouldn't have it. So instead I married him and found myself sadly disappointed. I began to dally. Discreetly, while he was at the office. Just minor bits of fun here and there. Decidedly dry, decidedly unearnest fun. So when this very handsome, very well-built man asked me if I was satisfied, I said no. He had the most marvelous apartment, a real bachelor pad. All kinds of wonderful toys."

"I saw them."

"Yes, I suppose you did. We had a wonderful few afternoons together." She laughed in spite of herself.

"How did Sam find out?"

"Oh, so you know that too. A detective, hired by my earnest husband to discover if I was cheating on him."

"And when he found out he went apes.h.i.t," I said.

"What a pleasant term. Yes, he went apes.h.i.t. He hit me in the face with the back of his hand, knocked me clear over the bed. I had a perfectly beautiful bruise. I must tell you, Victor, it was the most pa.s.sionate I had ever seen him. What a night we had."

"And then he went off to find Bissonette."

"No, Victor, I'm sorry."

"Yes, he did. You're protecting him now."