Bust

Twenty-Four

Sherry, today’s temp receptionist, buzzed Max’s office and told him there were two police officers here to see him. Was there a tiny smug tone in her voice?

“Shit,” Max said. “Tell them I’ll be right out.”

Max had been calling Andrew McCullough all afternoon and the bastard wasn’t returning his calls. And Angela still wasn’t back from lunch so Max didn’t know what was going on with her cousin and Popeye. As he opened his office door Max promised himself that this time he wouldn’t say anything without some kind of lawyer present, even if he had to use fucking Darrow.

Louis Ortiz, the detective who had questioned him the other night, was standing next to the reception desk, next to a tall, older man with a mustache whom Max had never seen before. Ortiz and the older guy were both wearing plain gray suits and they both had serious, angry expressions.

Max thought, Uh oh, and wished he’d taken a look at that freaking Zen book. Maybe if he had he’d be relaxed, he wouldn’t be shitting fucking bricks right now.

“Hello, gentlemen,” Max said, trying to stay as calm as possible. “Can I help you with something?”

“You can get your coat,” Ortiz said.

“Am I under arrest?” Max asked, trying to make it into a joke.

“We’re taking you in for questioning,” Ortiz said.

“What if I don’t want to go?”

“You don’t have a choice,” Ortiz said.

“I don’t understand,” Max said. “What’s going on?”

“Angela Petrakos was shot earlier today,” the tall man explained, “in Riverside Park.”

The words took a few seconds to register.

“Angela Petrakos?” he said. “You mean the Angela Petrakos who works for me?”

Several people in the office had been eavesdropping. Now people were talking at once, asking the detectives what was going on. Finally, Ortiz, talking above everyone, said, “This is police business. You’ll all be briefed as soon as it’s appropriate. Right now we need to talk to Mr. Fisher. Mr. Fisher, are you gonna come with us or am I gonna have to cuff you?”

Ortiz had a malicious grin, looking like he wanted to cuff Max more than he wanted his next meal.

Suddenly, the office was quiet. Although he was still looking at Ortiz and at the other detective, Max could sense that everyone else was staring at him. He remembered watching Law and Order, the ones with Jerry Orbach, and he was tempted to say, I think I need to get lawyered up. But instead he said, “Let me just get my coat,” and he went back into his office. When he came out, wearing his sport jacket, a larger crowd had formed.

“This isn’t a vacation day,” Max said, above all the other voices, using a tone of authority, of steel. “Come on everybody, let’s get back to work.”

A few people went back to their desks, but a large group remained near the front of the office. No one seemed to feel sorry for Max. Actually, the bastards seemed happy to watch him being taken away. Max couldn’t understand this. He’d always been a good boss. He only fired people when they deserved to be fired and hadn’t he just announced a ten-percent raise?

On the way to the precinct, Max remembered the appointment he had made with Mr. Takahashi for this evening at six-thirty. Sitting in the back of the car, Max asked the detectives up front how long this questioning was going to take.

“As long as it needs to,” Ortiz said.

“Seriously,” Max said. “I have an important appointment with a client in less than two hours. Am I gonna have to reschedule it or not?”

The detectives looked at each other as Max reached into his jacket for his Blackberry. The car stopped short. Ortiz got out and opened the back door.

“Give me that fucking thing.”

“What’s the big deal?” Max said. “I’m just making one call.”

Ortiz reached for the Blackberry. Max wouldn’t let go and, turning away, he elbowed Ortiz in the face.

“You fucked up big-time now,” Ortiz said. “I’m gonna book you for disorderly conduct and assaulting a police officer.”

Max thought Ortiz was kidding until he pulled him out of the car and cuffed him.

At the precinct, after he was booked, Max used his one phone call to call McCullough. McCullough was still in the office, thank God, but he was in a meeting and couldn’t be disturbed. Max screamed at the secretary, demanding to speak with him. The secretary said, “I don’t enjoy being spoken to this way” and was about to hang up. Max begged her to stay on the line and then he left a message that he had been taken into police custody and to please come to the precinct as soon as possible.

Max was put in a holding cell with two other men who looked homeless. One of them was lying on the bench, passed out, handcuffed to the bars. The other guy was squatting in the back of the cell, his hands crossed in front of his knees, mumbling to himself. They were both wearing ripped, dirty clothes. The whole place smelled like piss.

Max had been waiting in the cell for nearly two hours when McCullough finally showed up. Max was disappointed by how he looked. He was expecting an older, seasoned guy, but McCullough looked like he was right out of law school. He had short blond hair and light blue eyes and he didn’t look a day over thirty. He pulled a chair up outside the cell and spoke to Max through the bars.

“Sorry I couldn’t get here any sooner,” McCullough explained, “but I’ve had a chance to speak with a couple of detectives, so hopefully I can give you an idea what’s going on.”

“Just get me the hell out of here,” Max said.

“I’m working on that, but legally they can hold you overnight, or until a judge can see you downtown.”

“If you think I’m spending a night in jail-”

“Let’s not worry about that right now. The important thing right now is why you’re here. I understand you assaulted Detective Ortiz.”

“I didn’t assault anybody,” Max said. “I was just trying to use my Blackberry and I accidentally elbowed the guy in the face.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve got bigger problems anyway,” McCullough said. “The detectives seem to think you had something to do with the murders of your wife and your niece and Detective Kenneth Simmons, as well as the attempted murder of Angela Petrakos. Now before I can agree to represent you I need to know the truth – did you have anything to do with any of those crimes?”

Max remembered The Godfather, Diane Keaton asking Al Pacino if he was in the Mob. Max stared into McCullough’s eyes for a few seconds, trying to get his face to look like Pacino’s, then said, “Absolutely not.”

“Alrighty,” McCullough said, opening a small notepad, “so now we can get down to business. Let’s talk about Angela Petrakos first – she’s your executive assistant, I understand?”

Max nodded.

“She was shot this afternoon in Riverside Park, a little after two o’clock.” Max thought there was a prissy tone in McCullough’s voice and he noticed that the man’s teeth were capped. The caps were bad news. They were a sign of self-absorption, the last quality in the world you wanted from your lawyer.

“Who shot her?” Max asked

“They don’t know yet. They haven’t had a chance to speak with her. She’s still in critical condition at Columbia Presbyterian.”

Fuck, Max had been hoping she was dead. If she lived, it would be a freakin’ disaster. The police would grill her and, in her condition, she’d probably spill everything. Wasn’t he ever gonna catch a break?

“So, do they think she’s gonna make it?” Max asked, praying the answer would be no.

“It’s hard to say,” McCullough said. “Her injuries are quite severe.”

“Shit,” Max said, hoping “severe” meant brain damage or something like that.

“Unfortunately, that’s not all the bad news,” McCullough continued, reading from his pad. “About an hour ago, the police entered Angela’s apartment on East Twenty-fifth Street and discovered a body decomposing in her bathtub.”

Max blinked. “A body?”

“Apparently the neighbors had complained about the smell. According to the police, she or someone else had poured Drano all over the corpse.”

Jesus Fucking Christ. She was a psycho. It was as simple as that. Max couldn’t believe he’d fallen for her. If he’d just had a thing for flat-chested women none of this would have happened.

“The police haven’t been able to get a positive ID on the body yet,” McCullough said, “but going by some other evidence they found in the apartment, they’re almost certain the dead guy is Thomas Dillon. Does that name mean anything to you?”

Max tried not to have a reaction. If he’d learnt one lesson in business, it was never show the person sitting across the table from you what you were thinking. He shook his head slowly.

“They’ve talked to some people who’d seen Dillon around the neighborhood, and they said he used to carry a book around with him, a book about Zen. They think it’s the same book they found on your desk in your office.”

“Wait a minute!” Max said. “Angela gave me that! This morning, she said it was a fucking gift.”

“Unfortunately, she’s not in a position to corroborate that right now. In the eyes of the police, it’s a connection between you and Dillon.”

Max shook his head miserably, thinking, What next?

“The police also found a gun in the apartment,” McCullough said. “A Colt Lady. 38. They think this was the gun that was used in the three murders.”

“So Angela killed my wife?”

“Or Dillon,” McCullough said, “or both of them. The police definitely don’t think it was just a coincidence that Angela works for you. They think you were having an affair with her and conspired with her, or with her and Dillon, to kill your wife.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Max said.

“Well, we’ll have to convince a judge of that,” McCullough said. “Which means we need a better explanation for what happened. For instance, maybe Angela had the idea to rob your house, talked Dillon into doing it, and gave him the code to your alarm, but then your wife and niece came home during the robbery and everything went to hell. I don’t know how that cop got killed, but I’m sure he’ll fit into the picture somehow.”

Max hesitated for a second, then said, “There’s one problem you need to know about. A big one.”

McCullough looked at him, waiting. Max wasn’t sure he could trust the guy, but what choice did he have? He had to figure out some way to take care of Rosa and he couldn’t do it if he was spending the rest of his life in jail.

Max leaned close to McCullough and whispered through the bars, “The problem is, it’s true, I was having an affair with Angela. And there’s this guy – his name’s Bobby Rosa – he has these pictures of Angela and me…”

“What kind of pictures?”

“He got into our hotel room the other night,” Max said, “while Angela and I were… well. We were in bed, and he took photos. Then he came to me and asked for a quarter million dollars. I said no, of course. What am I gonna do, start paying off a blackmailer, right? But if those photos get out, it would be bad. I mean, wouldn’t it?”

“The detectives told me about that hotel room. They say they have surveillance video from the hotel showing the two of you going into the room. I don’t know that having photos of you actually in the room would make things a lot worse.”

Max didn’t have an answer to that. He wanted to tell McCullough the rest, wanted to tell him about the cassette Rosa had played for him, about Dillon admitting to Rosa on the tape that Max had hired him to kill his wife. But he couldn’t.

“I agree the affair makes things a little more complicated,” McCullough continued, “but your case isn’t impossible. If it turns out Angela’s the one who killed Thomas Dillon and poured Drano on him, it’ll be easy to show she’s unstable. As long as you’re telling me the truth, I think we’ll be able to build up a solid defense.”

As long as you’re telling the truth. Always a goddamn catch.

“What about Bobby Rosa?” Max said, trying again.

“So he has some pictures of you having sex. So what? It’s not like he has pictures of you killing somebody.”

This was hopeless. He’d have to find a way to handle Rosa himself.

Max shot a glance at the homeless guy on the floor and lowered his voice further. “Do me a favor, don’t tell anybody about Rosa, all right?” He hated that he was almost pleading with this teenager, this freaking child. “Forget I ever mentioned his name.”

“Mr. Fisher, if it’s going to come out, it’s better if we’re the ones who disclose it-”

“Don’t. Just don’t.”

“But-”

“No.” Max wanted to grab him and bang his head against the bars, get him to fucking pay attention for Chrissakes.

“What if Rosa had something to do with the shooting? What if he was working with Thomas Dillon-”

“Look,” Max said, “we didn’t discuss your fee yet, but you came highly recommended and I’m willing to pay top dollar for you to take me on as a client. But if I’m your client that means you work for me. Those pictures Rosa has could be a big embarrassment, especially if turns out Angela is involved with the murders. I don’t want the police finding the pictures and the whole story going public. Do you get it?”

Reluctantly, McCullough agreed not to bring up Bobby Rosa’s name to the police. He stayed with Max for a while longer, discussing strategy, then an officer came and led them into a small interrogation room with a square table. Ortiz and the tall detective sat on one side of the table, and Max and McCullough sat across from them on the other. In the middle of the table a little recorder was going. Ortiz began grilling Max, asking many of the same questions he’d asked the other night. Before answering each question, Max looked at McCullough, but McCullough had a blank expression, like a kid in the back of the class who didn’t do his homework assignment, and didn’t interrupt one time. These days it seemed like they handed out law degrees on street corners – you can probably get one online; answer a few questions and, boom, you’re a lawyer. Max just hoped this McCullough knew what the hell he was doing. But Max had to take it easy. He knew the cops would love it if he started chewing out his own goddamn lawyer in front of them. His lawyer was his ace, his only good card in a shitty hand. His father, a poker addict, used to say, Doesn’t matter about a bad hand, it’s playing it badly that matters. Max finally understood what the hell the bastard had been talking about.

Then Granger, the tall detective, asked Max if he was “involved” with Angela Petrakos.

“Yes,” Max said. “We’d been having an affair for the past few months.”

“How come you didn’t tell me that the other night?” Ortiz asked.

“I didn’t want it coming out,” Max said, “out of respect for my dead wife and her relatives.” He made sure he hit the right somber note. He didn’t go overboard, wiping at his eyes and sniffling, but he let the words hang there.

Max looked at McCullough who blinked once as a sign of approval, or maybe just to show he was actually alive.

“We might as well tell you, then,” Ortiz said, “we talked to some people at the Hotel Pennsylvania and they ID’d you and Angela Petrakos. So it’s just as well you admitted it. Now, you want to tell us where you went after you left the hotel that night?”

“I went home,” Max said. It was nice to tell the truth for a change. Being honest was so foreign to him it gave him a rush. He’d have to try more of it.

“You never saw Detective Simmons that night?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Did you ever meet a man named Thomas Dillon?” Granger asked.

“No,” Max said, hoping the British accent wasn’t coming out again.

“Were you aware that Angela Petrakos had been living with Dillon?”

Now Max felt feverish, realizing what an idiot he’d been for believing all those stories about Angela’s roommate. He would’ve killed for a half bottle of Stoli.

“Angela led me to believe that she lived with a woman.”

“So you never went to her apartment?” Ortiz asked skeptically.

Max shook his head.

Ortiz and Granger continued to grill Max for about another half an hour. Max continued to deny knowing anything about Angela and Dillon’s relationship or any murder plot to kill his wife. When Ortiz suggested the possibility that there might be “a fourth person,” someone Max had hired to try to kill Angela this afternoon, Max could tell McCullough wanted him to bring up Bobby Rosa, but Max told the detectives he had absolutely no idea what had happened in the park today. He was going to add, What the hell’s happening to our city? but was scared it would come out in that fucking accent.

Finally Max was taken back to the holding cell. About a half an hour later, McCullough came to the cell and said, “I have some good news for you – they’re dropping the assault charges.”

“That’s very nice of them since I didn’t assault anybody.”

“And they’re going to let you go on your own recognizance.”

“For good?”

“No, just for now. They want to see what happens with Angela and get her side of the story. If they get a confession out of her you might be off the hook, so let’s just hope, for your sake, she pulls through.”