The Original Alibi

Chapter 4

The fog had silently come ashore before I left General Whittaker’s house, dressing the outdoors in wet. Everything obscured as if veiled in the angel breath that adorned the general’s Christmas tree. The time to drive home was twice what it took to get there.

I had lingered an extra fifteen minutes to visit with Charles, mostly just to get his cell number so I could reach him later when I was ready to talk. I quickly learned he was more than the general’s houseman. He also served as administrative assistant, with his own assistant, a maid and cook for the pure household duties. He gave me the numbers and names for the general’s CPA, banker, and investment broker. Charles agreed to call ahead to clear the runway for me to get in and get answers. The general’s attorney, Reginald Franklin III, and I had already met.

Charles also told me about Cliff, who drove for the general. Cliff had been a sniper in the Marine Corps when on duty, and then as now a hard drinking man off duty. One night, off the base, Cliff had gotten into an argument with a superior officer. The confrontation was not Cliff’s first altercation over a woman’s favors. When it was over Cliff had nearly killed the officer. He spent some time in the brig before being dishonorably discharged.

*

I walked in my door at eleven to find Axel waiting up like a nervous mom on the night of her daughter’s prom, taking his self-proclaimed duties as case nanny a bit too seriously.

Before Axel got paroled I had considered getting a shell parakeet. They are well known talkers. There are times when I’m so slammed writing a novel that I want to hear a voice other than the characters that live in my head, but a voice that wouldn’t demand any more of my time than I cared to give at the moment. A voice I could shut off by simply dropping a dark cloth over its cage. Another advantage, one I hadn’t considered previously, the parakeet would not wear my trousers, but then I don’t need to clean the bottom of Axel’s cage. So, I imagine on balance things had worked out well enough.

Last week, I bought Axel a one-bedroom in my condo building on the floor below mine. In any event, a decent investment as the prices had dropped along with the rest of the ugly real estate market. Axel spent most of his non-sleeping hours in my place, at least those hours he didn’t spent in Mackie’s, a local bistro and watering hole owned and operated by one of his ex-prison pals. Mackie’s prison term had expired the year before I went in, so I had only recently met Mackie. The year after he got out he received a significant inheritance, a portion of which went to buy a seedy bar in a good neighborhood a few blocks from our building. After remodeling, Mackie’s opened and immediately became a gathering place for ex-cons. Mostly older ex-cons who had retired from whichever careers had incarcerated them. Mackie and Axel had been inside together for twenty-five years; they were tight.

“I knew you’d take the case, boss. Give me the dirt. All of it.”

“This stuff is confidential, Axel. These are real people, not characters in my novels.”

“Hey, I’m your assistant. Telling me is like, well, telling yourself.”

“Except I’ll keep it to myself.”

“Who would I tell, boss?”

“Half the ex-cons in Long Beach, that’s who, your pals at Mackie’s Bistro.”

“Hey, there’ll be times you’ll need my pals. Trust me on that one. There’s a lot of talent in Mackie’s, people who know how things really go down. The whos of the whats and whens. They’ll be cases where-”

“Not cases. This is an exception, one case.”

“Talmadge was one case. This here’s number two.”

“Okay. One more case. But that’s it. After this one I’m a writer, period.”

“Sure, boss, whatever you say. Still, every professional shares stuff with their staff; I’m your staff. I won’t repeat nothin’. Well, nothing touchy anyway. I was never no snitch inside. You know that. The same thing goes on the outside, with your cases.” I frowned. Axel revised his comment. “Okay, your case, singular. Just one, now open up.”

So I cracked like an egg and gave up what I knew. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but Axel had been right. As the poets often write, no man is best alone. Everybody trusts somebody and there’s no place you get to know a man better than in a cell. Nothing I ever told Axel came back to me in the yard, so, okay, Axel was my staff, well, sort of. He always said. “Our cell’s our home and home stuff don’t get repeated in the yard.” Our current home was much nicer than the one we had in those days, but that principle seemed one of Axel’s core beliefs.

“Actually, I don’t know all that much,” I began. “I’ve called Sergeant Fidgery. I’m taking him and his family to lunch tomorrow. He made copies of the relevant police files. We’ll get into those at his house in the afternoon. The department is carrying the Whittaker case as an unsolved … for them it’s the Ileana Corrigan homicide case, but they haven’t done anything with it for more than ten years.”

“He’s the one you told me all about while we were inside? One of those two guys who came to see you a lot. Fidge, right?”

“Yeah. Ten years we were together.”

“So, what do you know at this point?”

“The pregnant fiancee of the general’s grandson, Eddie Whittaker, was murdered in a house she rented on the beach up the coast toward Malibu. There were two witnesses. One who claimed he saw Eddie in the house doing the killing. The other said he saw Eddie in the immediate area fifteen or so minutes later. The cops arrested Eddie. A week or so later, witnesses came forward saying they had seen Eddie in a different location. The D.A. dropped the charges and Eddie walked. I’ll know more after I talk with Fidge. I’m going to bed. Let yourself out.”

“Where are you meeting Fidge?”

“At noon at Red Robin, I’m taking his whole family to lunch. Then we’ll go back to his place. He has a great family so it’ll be a nice Saturday.”

“Okay, boss, but I’ll want a full report.”

“Maybe. The odds will improve if you’re wearing your own pants when I get back.”