All I Did Was Shoot My Man

52

Aura and I talked for quite a while in that empty restaurant. The temporary wall that we’d thrown up over the past few years fell down and we were lovers again.

She talked about problems with some tenants and I told her that Twill had taken unwanted initiative on the first job I’d given him.

“He’s just like you,” she said of my son.

“We aren’t even related.”

“Neither are we,” she said, “but you’re my man just like he’s your blood.”

For a change I was in the office before Mardi and Twill. I sat behind her ash desk, flipping through the notes she wrote in light purple ink.

She kept detailed handwritten records of every case I’d had since she’d been with me. She also had some more sketchy coverage gleaned from audiotapes I kept from previous jobs.

Mardi had a deeper understanding of human nature than did I. I could see, often, what people were trying to hide. But Mardi saw what was hidden beyond vain attempts.

Her take on a job I’d done three months before was especially enlightening.

A woman had come to me worried about what was going to happen with her ex-husband. He had been sending her threatening e-mails and leaving certain disturbing items at her doorstep. A thug named Lassiter had appeared at various places she frequented; her job, the supermarket, and sometimes he drove by her on the highway and would ring her cell.

This woman, Laverne Sails, had left the husband, Benjamin Lott, a decade earlier, taking with her their two children. He was a rich man and she was from a working-class background. The courts had granted him custody and she and the children, now nineteen and twenty-one, had run from Connecticut to New York. There she managed, with a women’s legal group, to fend off Ben’s attempt to strip her of her children.

Laverne Sails said that Benjamin hated her for what she’d done and the children for not wanting to come back to him. She thought he meant them all harm.

I investigated Laverne for five weeks trying to find a break in her story. But I couldn’t.

The thug Lassiter and I had a physical altercation that put him out of the picture for the eight weeks it took him to heal.

Ben was an egotistical freak who had used his money and power to break Laverne down and bend the local law to his will. His attitude toward the world came from the same place his wealth did — his father, Lincoln Lott.

The elder Lott had used his self-confidence to build an empire; his son used a similar force to destroy whatever displeased him.

I took what evidence I could amass to Lincoln and asked him what he thought a man like me should do about someone like his son. No more than a few dozen words passed between us.

The next day Laverne called and said that Ben had been transferred to a glass-manufacturing factory that the family owned in southern India and that she and the children had been invited to come live at the Lott family compound in Connecticut.

Lincoln’s will was rewritten. Laverne didn’t elaborate on the details but I was pretty sure that bodily harm against Ben’s family would end up with him being out on his ear.

These results were satisfactory for me. I’d played Laverne’s hand with just the right amount of risk.

Mardi had written down the essentials of the case with insight but it was her note at the end that impressed me most.

Mr. McGill realized that his client was in real danger and he went out of his way to resolve the issue because he knew that he had to either stop Benjamin Lott or end him, she wrote.

She was right. I don’t think that I was completely aware of the conundrum while in the middle of it but my receptionist knew.

“Good morning, boss,” she said.

I was so deep in her files that I hadn’t heard her turn the locks.

I stood up like a kid being found out while going through his father’s Playboys.

“Um,” I uttered. “I wasn’t snooping.”

The pale young thing smiled and shook her head. “It’s your office, Mr. M. Everything in my desk belongs to you.”

I suppressed the desire to say thank you and moved to the side, allowing the brilliant child to get behind her desk.

“People have been trying to kill everyone involved in this Zella Grisham thing,” I said.

All Mardi did was look at me and nod. She’d experienced worse fears in her short life.

“So keep the door locked until you know exactly who’s out there,” I continued.

“Okay.”

About an hour later Twill knocked on my office door.

When he was seated before me I asked, “What else is it about this Kent kid?”

“What you mean, Pops? He was gonna kill that dude. Ain’t that enough?”

“It is but that’s not all of it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“There’s something personal about this, something that got to you. I mean, if it was just that store owner’s life, you would have come to me.”

Twill grinned and looked away, then back at me.

“Whatever,” he said.

I held the young man’s gaze a moment and then said, “All right. But I expect you to share with me in here.”

“It’s nuthin’, Pops. Really.”

Alone in my office, with the reinforced door locked and cops on the job back at my home, I was almost comfortable. Antoinette Lowry found me attractive but unintelligent. Katrina believed that, after all these years of discord, she had been unfair to me. I was in love with Aura and she returned the emotion. Putting all that together, I irrationally figured that it was time for a break in the case.

“Call on line six, Mr. M,” Mardi said over the intercom.

“Who is it?”

“He said his name is Plimpton.”

“Mr. Plimpton?” I said into the phone.

“I got a call from Ms. Lowry this morning,” he said.

“That Antoinette gets around.”

“She wanted to know how Mr. Brighton’s assistant, Claudia Burns, got hired and by whom.”

“I don’t have the answer to that question. Maybe you wanna try HR.”

“Lowry said that you believe Miss Burns has something to do with the heist eight years ago.”

“That’s going a little far. I said that someone believes that she was involved. Or maybe they want us to think so.”

“And who would that be?”

“Why are you calling me, Alton?”

“What do you know about Miss Burns?”

“She married a man named Quick,” I said.

“Do they have anything to do with the robbery?”

“Some people think so. I doubt if they do.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Why are we talking, man?”

“Do you believe that Claudia Burns was involved in the robbery?”

“And murder,” I added.

“What?”

“One of your guards was murdered. That’s a crime too.”

“And do you believe Miss Burns or Quick or whatever was involved?”

“I think that the person who hired her was involved.”

“But not her?” he asked.

“I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“What are all these questions about, Mr. Plimpton? Does Rutgers want to hire me?”

“Are you available?”

“I have a job right now but no one is paying me. If you have the same interests as my client I could possibly bring you in on a twofer.”

“Can you prove that the person who hired Claudia was involved in the robbery?”

“If I’m given proper access, I believe that I can — yes.”

“What if I were to hire you?”

“Out of your own pocket?”

“This theft is the worst single event that has ever happened to Rutgers,” Alton Plimpton said with deep gravity. “It is a perpetual thorn in the side of the corporation. If I could solve the crime, maybe even recover some of the money, I would assure a promotion and maybe even a bonus.”

“You might even get that one-point-five percent reward,” I suggested.

“No. No. Employees aren’t allowed to get any reward offered by the firm.”

“But I could get it and split it with you on the side.”

“I never considered that.”

“No?”

“No.”

Silence descended on our electronic connection. Maybe Alton was considering the possibility of sharing the reward with me. Maybe he’d just run out of words.

“Why did you call me, Mr. Plimpton?”

“I think I know how Claudia Burns got hired.”

“Tell Ms. Lowry.”

“I don’t trust her.”

“You think she’s involved somehow?”

“No. But she works for the higher-ups. I don’t believe that she will have my best interests at heart.”

“You think that she’ll take all the glory for herself.”

“Can I hire you, Mr. McGill?”

“Sure you can. But it’ll cost ten thousand dollars.”

“Ten thousand!”

“That’s my corporate rate.”

“I don’t have that kind of money.”

“Can you borrow it?”

“I’m not a rich man, Mr. McGill. I’ve worked for Rutgers my entire life but I have an ex-wife and two children near the end of high school. If I put out that much money, I’d have to have guarantees that you will produce.”

“Guarantees come with washing machines, Alton, and even they have time limits.”

“Are you sure that the man who hired Miss Burns was involved with the heist?”

“I can’t see it any other way.”

“Why?”

“Am I hired?”

The floor manager didn’t answer immediately.

For that moment I fell into a waking daydream; in that reverie I was set upon by a boa constrictor. I was fast. I’d grabbed its head but it’d looped its tail around my left leg. With my free hand I got it by the tip of that tail but then it encircled my neck with the central bulk of its slithering scales.

That snake was my unwanted case. It was both my telephone cord and my fault.

Fault: Responsibility, and also a natural material flaw. I was wrong no matter what way you looked at it.

“All right, Mr. McGill,” Alton Plimpton said. I’d almost forgotten that he was there. “I’ll pay you. But it’ll take me a few days to come up with the money. I’ll have to borrow it.”

“Great. Come by my office with the cashier’s check or the cash and I’ll get right on it.”

“We can’t wait on this, Mr. McGill,” Plimpton said. His voice had become brittle.

“You expect me to help you without some kind of assurance?” I smiled at my use of the last word.

“You could, you could start to investigate and only turn the information over after I paid,” he suggested.

“Okay,” I said. I shouldn’t have agreed. If I were advising Twill about the business, I would have said that people don’t call you on the phone and throw information at you like that. As a matter of fact, if I was anyone else instructing my son, I’d have never suggested PI work.

“Okay,” I said again. “Who is it that hired Claudia?”

“That’s a difficult question.”

“With a two-word answer.”

“Johann Brighton is the reason she was hired but it was Seth Marryman that completed the paperwork.”

“Not Harlow?”

“No. Leonard has nothing to do with it.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Seth died three months ago,” Alton said. “It was a heart attack, completely unexpected. I knew his family and was asked by Human Resources to help with anything they needed. I’ve been with the company for so long that I’ve done that with other unexpected deaths. Seth’s wife, Virginia, told me that he had papers from the company in a trunk in their attic. Removing any information from the workplace is strictly forbidden. I should have told somebody but that might have affected the monies his family received so I took them to my place and asked her not to tell anybody else.”

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll bite.”

“He had a file on Claudia Burns. It was her employment assignment and a letter he’d signed recommending her. He was very specific in stipulating that she be assigned to Brighton. He even had Brighton’s previous assistant promoted to make the job available.”

“That’s not much to go on,” I said, “him being dead and all.”

“There was also a document detailing a Swiss account with eight hundred and eighty-two thousand dollars in it. It’s a numbered account. Seth made less than I did. There’s no way he saved up that much. The deposit goes back eight years, just nine months after the robbery.”

“Explain something to me, Alton,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Why didn’t you tell anybody about this?”

“If I turned those files in, his wife might have lost that money and maybe his retirement too.”

“But the timing.”

“When I discovered it I had no reason to think that Claudia and the money had anything to do with each other. It’s not enough to have come from the heist; I mean, that would be millions. There were no other accounts. It’s only when Agent Lowry asked about Claudia that I became suspicious in a larger sense.”

“But you still aren’t going to the company,” I said.

After a significant pause Plimpton said, “It’s a lot of money.”

“Yes,” I said, “it is.”

“The man you want is Johann Brighton,” he said then.

“How did you come to that conclusion?”

“There’s a request from Brighton for Seth to hire Burns. It’s just a note with the words personal and confidential written in red across the bottom.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Yes, I am.”

“But what could any of that have to do with the robbery? I mean, if Zella is innocent, and I believe that she is, what could Zella’s boyfriend’s girlfriend have to do with anything?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Claudia Burns is Minnie Lesser.”

“Who?”

“The woman that was with Zella’s boyfriend when she shot him.”

“Oh.” He sounded really surprised.

“So how could she be involved with the heist if Zella wasn’t?”

“I don’t know,” Alton said, “maybe this Burns woman found out something about the evidence, proving that Grisham had been framed. All I do know is that Seth received nearly nine hundred thousand directly after Claudia was hired.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll accept your argument for the moment. But even if that’s all true, what can we do but tell Antoinette and her bosses?”

“You get Brighton to confess to you,” he said. “Maybe you can even get him to pay you off. Then you can tell the higher-ups that I hired you because I suspected something I couldn’t prove and I was afraid that if I brought it in-house that Brighton would find out.”

“So you just want me to go to his office with Marryman’s name and see what he does?”

“No. No. They won’t let you in the building now. Harlow has made sure of that. But Brighton has a meeting with a man named Furrows this afternoon at an apartment we own in Tribeca. I’ll cancel Furrows and you can go instead. Confront him with the information and get him to confess and maybe pay you off.”

“You can do that?” I asked. “Cancel a private appointment for a VP like Johann?”

“It’s all computerized,” he said. “You just have to know what codes to enter.”