The Original Alibi

Chapter 2

Eleven Years Later

“Don’t forget, boss, we got a ten o’clock appointment. It’s eight now.” Axel handed me the morning paper, and put down a tray holding a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, a carafe of coffee, two cups, and a small plate of buttered English muffins.

It was pleasant enough sitting on the balcony, a little chilly but that’s why they made robes.

Axel had been working for me only a couple of weeks, but we’d known each other for years in a very different setting. We were cellmates during my four years in state prison. I looked up. “Isn’t that my shirt you’re wearing?”

“Yeah.”

“And my belt, why are you wearing my belt?”

“You wouldn’t want your pants to fall down, would you, boss?”

“No, of course I wouldn’t. And before you set up any more of these appointments, let me remind you I write mysteries. I don’t handle cases in real life.”

“You was a homicide dick and a good one from what I hear. And you got yourself a PI license.”

“I wanted to prove I could get the license after the governor pardoned me. I write murder mysteries.”

“Aren’t you cold out here, boss?” Axel wrapped his arms around himself, gripping his biceps. “You wanna go inside?”

“It’s a little nippy, but I’ll stick for a while. I do wish they made robes in various lengths. No reason they can’t.” I’d been six-three since the eleventh grade but over the years robes kept getting shorter.

Axel had been inside close to forty years, during which he became as sweet a senior citizen as you’ll ever know. Forty-one years ago, a half-million dollar payroll had been taken by a lone gunman, without violence. The jury had found Axel guilty. Axel had never changed his claim of innocence, but he has sometimes winked at me when the subject came up. The fact they had never found the money is likely why they held onto Axel over the years, while letting out younger hard-asses because of the overpopulation of prisons. For his last five years he had been an administrative assistant for the warden, doing a lot of his online research. Axel was a whiz using computers. I helped his parole along with the promise of a job.

In these first few weeks, his duties included trips to the dry cleaners and doing the home laundry and keeping the place clean. Axel always kept our cell neat, and he carried that forward to caring for my condo. I had to go with him to shop for groceries because Axel wasn’t up to speed on driving anymore. He planned to take care of that but hadn’t as yet. As you can see, his job description lacked clarity, it would evolve or so we imagined.

Unfortunately, we wore clothes similar enough in size for Axel was an even six feet. For each wearing, he had hand-altered my slacks by rolling up the pant legs. He also adjusted for our different waist measurements. I wear size thirty-eight. I’m guessing his at thirty-six, maybe thirty-four because he had my belt two notches tighter, which meant there would now be his-and-mine cinch marks in the leather.

“Boss, you remember that movie where Jack Nicholson’s character said, ‘never waste a boner and never trust a fart.’ Well, that man was a prophet.” Then Axel rushed inside. The Bucket List was a wonderful movie, but I didn’t like him quoting that line while he was wearing my slacks. I settled back and looked at the newspaper with an eye out for Axel’s return.

A few minutes later, Axel came back out. I felt some relief from his still wearing the same pair of my pants. He ran his hand across his mostly hairless head, and then wiped that hand on the backside of my pants.

“You helped save Clarice Talmadge,” he said, as if he had never left the conversation. “I kept up with that story before you got me sprung.”

I looked over at a gull circling past the balcony just off the railing. “I didn’t get you sprung. The parole board was about to release you anyway. You’d been in long enough. I just tossed a job offer in the mix. That’s all.”

“That’s what tipped the scales.” Axel looked over at the gull that squawked while making its third pass.

Axel was sort of like a friend you took under your wing after he had spent thirty to forty years in a coma. I knew why the gulls, there were three now, were squawking. Axel sometimes threw pieces of bread out over the rail and, with me out here, he hadn’t this morning. Feeding the birds was against building policy. I’d have to speak to him about it, but for now I couldn’t refuse him the kind of small pleasures he had been denied for decades.

“You got out because you were no longer a threat to society, maybe to my wardrobe, but not to society.”

“Well, that don’t change the brilliant way you saved Clarice Talmadge’s ass and, from what I’ve seen in the hallway, I’m glad you did, although from what I hear the woman’s not the swiftest card in the deck.”

“Now where did you hear that?”

“From Clara Birnbaum down on my floor, the former school teacher, she says Clarice spells Cincinnati with an ‘s.’”

“That’s Clara. She’s a good lady but she’s jealous of Clarice.”

“Anyway, the point is you helped her with her case. So, you still dig investigating stuff.”

“That was different. Clarice was a neighbor and a friend accused of killing her husband, Garson Talmadge. I handled the investigation for her defense attorney.”

“This case’ll be different too, boss,” he said while picking up the coffee carafe.

“How many times do I need to tell you to stop calling me boss? It’s not necessary.”

“Seems right to me, after all I work for you.”

“You can’t call me Matt, but you can wear my pants?” I held up my empty cup.

“Now you got it, boss.” He filled my cup with a smirk on his face.

“The appointment, fill me in.”

Axel took a seat and poured himself a little coffee. “Not much yet to tell. This guy, Franklin’s his name, Reginald Franklin III, how’s that for a handle, he’s an attorney with a client who needs your help. He freely admitted his client specified Matthew Kile as the investigator he wanted. Admitting that up front told me he ain’t shopping the job, so money’s not an issue. I told him it would be a grand for this morning, just to talk and see if you’ll handle the case. He understands that money’s gone whether or not you join up. He didn’t quibble. He’s bringing the check.”

I expected Axel would be around during the Franklin meeting. Axel didn’t really have a set schedule. If I needed him, I told him and he’d be there. Otherwise, he came and went as he pleased and when he wasn’t around I fended for myself. Like I said, his duties were evolving. I think Axel saw himself as my Kato or Dr. Watson or some such character. If I had my choice, I’d prefer him to be Archie Goodwin, the able assistant of Nero Wolfe, but then I would fail in comparison to Wolfe. My waistline was likely only half of Wolfe’s girth, not to mention my falling well short of his genius.

“So what do you have going today?” I asked.

“After our meeting with Franklin, I’ve got a few close-by errands then I’ll hoof it over and have lunch with the fellas at Mackie’s. Don’t worry, boss, Franklin won’t know I’m around unless you call for me.”

“You think Franklin could be the real client?”

“No way, he’s fronting for someone. I could tell by his voice. He wasn’t uptight. He did tell me it was some old case the cops have tossed aside. The dude’s a smoker, so get him out on the balcony if he tries to light up. A pipe, I think. I could hear him inhale and bite down on the stem the way pipers do.”

After all those years in the big house, as Axel still called prison, he had mastered reading the tone and pace of people’s voices. He can read body language or faces, cons or bulls. All the old timers could do it, at least the ones with an ample helping of brains and judgment.

“The odds say I won’t take this new case.”

“Why not? You’ve about done up the book you was working on. And, hey, a grand’s nothing to sneeze at. You know?”