The Original Alibi

Chapter 9

For now, the cops were working the homicide of Cory Jackson, while I was working what I saw as the Eddie Whittaker case, but in the Long Beach Police Department they had it booked as the homicide of Ileana Corrigan, cold case. My job was to find out who killed her so General Whittaker would absolutely know it wasn’t his grandson Eddie, or that it had been Eddie. That would likely kill the old man, but I would do my job.

I anticipated Fidge would drag his feet some to allow me to keep my shrinking lead on the department. But, at some point, Fidge would need to act out discovering the link of Cory Jackson to the Ileana Corrigan case, and my head start would begin to evaporate. To press my temporary advantage I headed for the address in the file for Tommy Montoya, the gas station attendant who claimed he sold Eddie gas a few minutes after someone had permanently ended Ileana Corrigan’s problems and pleasures.

The address in the file was no longer good. According to the retired lady who lived in the duplex next to where Tommy Montoya had lived, Tommy had moved about a year ago. She first shared her opinion that Tommy should be spelled Tommie, with an “ie” rather than a “y.” Then she did something useful. She dug a crumpled note from the drawer in her small kitchen desk. It had Tommy’s new address. We chatted a while longer and she didn’t ask for the scrap of paper back, so I left with it. Taking it might allow me to stay ahead of the cops for a few more hours. It wasn’t Fidge’s job to help me, not officially, but the death of Ileana Corrigan had been a case that lodged in his craw. He couldn’t work it, but he knew that case sat on top of my list.

I found Tommy’s new address with the help of a little boy with two lanes of glazed snot traveling from his nose to his upper lip, where his tongue came into play. I said Tommy Montoya and the boy pointed with his left hand, using his right hand to hold his hair above his eyes while he looked up at me.

Through the apartment window I saw a man sitting with a blonde. They were on the couch facing the TV, starting to watch a movie. The title on the screen, Debbie Does Dallas, a classic for folks who cotton to that style of entertainment. What looked to be a blank white business card attached to the screen door with a pushpin had his name printed in block letters: Tommy Montoya. The screen was unlatched; I turned on the recorder and walked in.

Tommy was tall and thin with a nose broken often enough to permanently point it toward his ear. I gave my name and extended my hand; he shook it like it wasn’t worth the effort. Offsetting these negatives, he had beautiful hair, dark and wavy, with a healthy sheen. He had bluish-green eyes that didn’t seem to belong in his face.

The bleached blonde wore a dull look that told me that her bra size exceeded her IQ, which despite her abundance left her not very smart. I said nothing, just stared at the blonde. After a couple of minutes she clearly got uncomfortable, which was my reason for staring. She got up to go, likely disappointed she wasn’t going to watch Debbie work her way through Dallas. Tommy patted her backside as she went out. Then he turned his attention to me.

“Who the fuck are you?” His voice didn’t go with his look. It went with his nose but not his hair and eyes. His diction was bad and he swore too much.

“I’m your conscience. I’m here to give you a chance to die without that load of guilt you’ve been carrying around for the past eleven years.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I’m not telling you jack until I know just who the fuck you are.”

“Then die with a guilty conscience, your choice.” I pulled out Quirt Brown’s gun. Tommy responded by sticking both his hands in the air, like we were acting out a stagecoach robbery in a 50s B-western.

“I’ve got a few questions I need you to answer. If you don’t cooperate you have no more value to me than did Cory Jackson.” I showed him the picture still in my cell phone of Cory lying in the wet surf with a hole in his forehead. “The picture doesn’t do him justice,” I said. “You can’t see the sea water pooled in the hole.” I paused to grin. “Cory didn’t tell me shit. But then, from now on he won’t be telling anybody anything. So, which way are you going to play it, tough or smart?”

Montoya’s eyes kept flittering between my face and the hole in the end of the gun that I held pointed at his heart. It’s fun to tell the truth in a way that makes the listener feel he heard something different than what you said. Everything I told Tommy Montoya had been the truth. In listening, he added two and two together to come up with a total that to him meant I had punched Cory’s ticket. Being a PI could be so much more fun than playing under cop rules.

“Eleven years ago, you and Cory Jackson consorted to get Eddie Whittaker arrested for killing his woman.”

“I never met this Cory guy.” He flinched, ducked actually, when I crinkled my lips and angled the gun more toward his face. “Really,” he said like that was supposed to make his denial more convincing. “I mean it,” he added for even more emphasis. “I never knew him, but I’ve known the name ever since. He was the dude on the beach who claims he saw the killing.”

“Cory’s history. Let’s stay with you. You lied about Eddie buying gas. Why?”

“For money, man, you know. We all do shit for money. I sold myself as a witness against the guy.”

“Who and why?”

“I got no clue who. When I asked why, the man said, ‘I wanna fuck up the general.’”

“So, how much money?”

“Ten grand.”

“That’s what Cory got too, ten big ones. He also got a bullet, but that came eleven years later. Your bullet could arrive any time now.”

Again, I said one thing, he heard another.

“You here to kill me?”

“My job is revenge against the man who killed Ileana Corrigan. She was Eddie Whittaker’s fiancee. My job is that guy. Cory Jackson played it stupid. He didn’t help me. If you help, I might just get the guy before he gets you. If not, don’t buy any green bananas.”

“I don’t know shit. The way it happened I never saw the guy.”

“Lay it out for me. First sit down.” He did. I remained standing. He sat in a leather Barcalounger that had seen its best days. The rest of his place wasn’t worthy of description beyond tawdry and tired. That same description had fit the blonde.

He started talking without further prodding. “One night late, two or three nights before Whittaker’s broad bought it, I was closing up. Locking up, you know. I went around back and saw light around the door to the women’s can. The gals are always walking out and leaving it on. I have to turn it off every night. If I don’t the boss gives me hell. When I pulled the door open the light went off like magic. Then somebody shined a large flashlight in my eyes. I couldn’t see shit. A voice told me, ‘don’t move.’ I froze, man, couldn’t have moved if I wanted. The dude reached out and stuffed something in my shirt pocket.

“‘Here’s two grand,’ he said. Not those exact words, but something like that. Then he said, ‘there’ll be eight more if you play ball. If you don’t, you die. What’s it gonna be?’ I said I loved to play ball. He handed me a picture and told me to turn around. Then he shined the flashlight over my shoulder down onto the photograph. ‘Study it. Day after tomorrow you’ll see this guy in the papers or on TV about a woman being killed. So you’ll need to pay close attention to the news.’

“I told him I didn’t want nothin’ to do with no woman being killed. ‘You got no choice on that,’ he said. ‘She will die. The only thing that’s undecided is whether or not you die. You catch my drift?’

“‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’m with ya. Just don’t pull that trigger.’

“He said, ‘When you see him in the news, you’re to go to the cops. Tell them that a few minutes past nine the night the woman was killed, this guy bought gas from you at the station. That he paid cash. You don’t recall his car, but you remember him because so few people pay cash these days.’

“When I tried to look back over my shoulder, he hit me in the side of the head with his frigging flashlight. ‘Eyes front,’ he said. ‘Study this picture.’ He pointed out a slight nick in the side of the dude’s ear and his square chin. His hair, you know, stuff to help me remember the guy. ‘They’ll do a lineup. Pick him out. Then stick to your story. That’s it, a piece of cake for ten thousand. Drop the ball and I’ll drop you and you won’t get up.’

“I did it just that way. I got my other eight thousand and nothing after that until you show up now. I wouldn’t be telling you shit if that other witness hadn’t gotten iced.”

“Do you remember the guy’s name that you identified?”

“Sure. Eddie Whittaker. Something like that falls in your lap, you remember, man.”

After a few more questions I verified he had not previously known Eddie or Cory Jackson and that he got the rest of his money after Eddie had been released. Pretty much the same story I had gotten from Cory Jackson, secondhand through his half brother, Quirt Brown.

The other three witnesses, the ones who caused Eddie to be released, were more reliable than Cory Jackson and Tommy Montoya. As I recalled, one was a local retired middle school principal and the other two were a husband and wife. He retired from a career as a bank manager, back in the days when bankers were considered respectable. She retired from being a registered nurse. From the D.A.’s viewpoint, three solid citizens trumped a pair of losers so it added up to cutting Eddie Whittaker loose. Right now, things were looking good for the general; his grandson Eddie was coming up clean as a choir boy.

I could see three possibilities, maybe more would come to me later. The first went something like this: Somebody had wanted Ileana dead for their own reasons and felt it would work best if there was a patsy set to take the fall and close the investigation into her death. It could have been one of the sugar daddies who were paying her rent and buying her expensive baubles. Thus the real killer bribed and frightened Jackson and Montoya into falsely setting up Eddie Whittaker as the patsy. The plan soured when three law-abiding citizens just happened to see Eddie dining right where he said he had dined.

Number two spread out this way: The murderer didn’t know Eddie or Ileana, using them both as a ruse in a violent confidence game wherein the real target was the general, or, more accurately, the general’s bank account. This scenario required the killer have a complex plan that would include the two losers to falsely accuse Eddie, and some citizens with solid credentials to come forward to alibi Eddie off the hot seat. Of course, for the second part to happen, the general would first need to pay the shakedown. If he didn’t, Eddie would take the fall. It would also require the illicit cooperation of three people we generally don’t think of being the types who take part in this kind of chicanery.

The last but not least scenario was that Eddie did kill his fiancee. But this stacking of the facts would again require the assumption that three good people would falsely testify to get him off the hook. If they were salt of the earth folks as they appeared on the surface, they would not agree to commit perjury in a murder case. Fidge said the D.A. looked into the three of them and they had all come up solid.

I needed to confront Eddie. To get in his face and get a read on him. First, I needed to get the wheels in motion to find out everything I could about the bank manager, the RN, and the retired middle-school principal. That meant bringing Axel on board may have been a really good idea. Of course he was handicapped because he still hadn’t gotten his license to drive.

*

It had been a long day, but I wasn’t ready to sleep. Not yet. I had planned to talk with Axel, but he had gone downstairs to his place by the time I got back. We’d talk in the morning. I took off my day clothes, down to my shorts, pulled on a t-shirt and my too-short robe. Then turned on some Miles Davis and cracked the slider to the patio so the sounds of Mr. Davis could follow me outside. I got a snifter of Irish for sipping, and tugged on my Dodgers’ cap with a sweat ring obvious even in the ambient light.

Sitting in the patio recliner reminded me of late nights in prison. Just the quiet, after Axel had fallen asleep on the upper bunk. I’d think about whatever and leave my senses to snag on sounds and stray light. Out here on the patio, I didn’t have all the sounds and sightings down pat. Not yet, but I would. There was a greater variety of sounds here than in prison. Inside it mostly came down to differentiating between the steps of the various guards. Other sounds were mostly the farts, snores, coughs, and sometimes muffled sobs of inmates. Newer cons usually paced their cells, but that generally ended in a few weeks. Once in a while, a light would slide silently through the lockup when a guard opened a distant door. Lights and sounds were the only things that really escaped from anywhere inside stir.

My life had become much different from what I expected while growing up. It started for me, like it may have started for you. Mom could make any hurt go away. Dad could fix anything. The nuns who taught at the Catholic school weren’t gods; they just demanded to be treated as such. But we learned. We had to, our lives depended on our doing so. None of this mushy treatment kids get today in the public schools.

When my age rolled into double figures I started to see the world differently. Mom and dad weren’t perfect. They didn’t have all the answers. By the teen years, my head was where most teens’ were, angry at my folks for letting me down. For not deserving to be on the pedestal I had put them on, a pedestal I now realize they never claimed they deserved. At that point, in ever growing gobs, I turned to the real source of knowledge, other teenagers. My pals became the center of my universe. Along about that same time the girls started sticking their noses under the boys’ tent and things changed again. Tits. Legs. I still don’t understand how the girls all seemed to instinctively know how to look from the corner of their eyes, or turn to display the profiles of their breasts. Billy Bataglia, my tightest bud, said the girls learned it watching the vamps in the movies. That was about the time the girls started riding the cotton pony a few days each month, while we struggled to learn that women had two personalities when one was more than we were ready to handle. That last point, still hasn’t changed all that much.

Life kept advancing. I no longer carried my Hopalong Cassidy lunchbox. I spent mornings watching the clock in the classroom, urging it to move quicker. When lunchtime finally came, I dashed to the cafeteria and sat near Marilyn who had just transferred into our school from who knows where-heaven would have been my guess. She wore tight sweaters. Tight enough that rumors claimed the school had once called her mother to come and take her home to change clothes. One of the boys who happened to be in the office at the time said Marilyn’s mother had bigger bazooms and wore a tighter sweater than her daughter. That boy, who had been sent to the vice principal’s office for a paddling, likely smiled all the way through it.

By the age of sixteen, Mom and Dad’s image was totally tarnished, and Hoppy was out of my life except for watching him on TV when no one else was home. Life had lost its black or white clarity. I started knocking ever bigger hunks out of my childhood ideas about good and evil, reshaping it all into what I somehow concluded was reality. When I got confused my friends had the answers. The world of teens is the world where the blind arrogantly lead the blind, feeling smarter while the whole bunch of them stumble through puberty.

In those years, the only thing I ever did without my buddies was devise a plan to get hired to wash Marilyn’s mom’s car and mow her lawn. I longed to find out firsthand how accurate the one boy’s description of Marilyn’s mom had been. Fortunately, for me at least, Marilyn’s parents were divorced so her mom needed help with those chores. To me, their divorce spelled opportunity. My price was the lowest, lunch with them at their outside table after I had cleaned it and swept off the patio. It was here that I learned even more about the gray in life. Marilyn spent one weekend a month with her father and when she did, her mom fleshed out the things that had theretofore lived only in my private fantasies. This expanded my circle of teaching adults from Mom and Dad and the nuns at school, to Marilyn’s mom who took charge of teaching me the extracurricular stuff. I knew it was bad, maybe more bad for Marilyn’s mom than for me. I had the semi-excuse of being young, an excuse I would eventually grow out of so I wanted to use it to full advantage as long as I could.

I never told my buddies what went on at Marilyn’s. I just quietly prayed for summer when the grass grew faster. And, believe me, keeping my trap shut about what Marilyn’s mother taught me was really hard.

Don’t get me wrong. I grew up knowing, and still know, what good is. It’s that, for me, getting good done has become more important than how I get it done. At least that’s the way I see it. And I don’t have a lot of patience with the rest.