The Wrong Man

21

Tori, Joel Lightner, and I strolled along Arondale Avenue as the sun threatened to sink beneath the real estate. We didn’t get any snow last night, but it was forecasted, so I wanted to do my due diligence before the weather clocked me out.

West Arondale was becoming the new Boystown, and wherever the gay population moved in, the city became a mecca for nightclubs and cafes and art shops and boutiques, some of the risque variety. Bars advertised specials on chalkboards along the sidewalks. A clothing store featured a mannequin dressed in leather bondage.

When I was a kid, anything on Arondale Avenue that was west of Coulter was off-limits. Think the red-light district in Amsterdam, except the women weren’t displayed in windows. The strip clubs stayed around until the early nineties, when the gentrification began and the city started strong-arming them through zoning changes that were litigated in court for years. James Madison probably never thought that his beloved First Amendment would apply to a nude woman grinding herself in the lap of a middle-aged man for twenty bucks.

“You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” Tori said to me as we reached the 2700 block of West Arondale.

“You wanted to know what it’s like to defend criminals,” I said. “This is what it’s like.”

Lightner looked over the two of us. “This is your second date?”

“It’s not a date,” Tori and I said together.

“Hey, okay, excuse me.”

“Our first date,” I said, “Tori informed me that she found me interesting in a purely nonsexual way.”

Joel said, “You have good taste, Tori. Except for the part about finding him interesting.”

Tori seemed to enjoy the back-and-forth. I can always count on Joel for subtlety and discretion.

“I never said my interest was nonsexual,” she clarified.

“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.” Joel rubbed his hands together.

“I just said the sex wasn’t going to happen.”

“Oh. So, what-you’re just going to be friends? That doesn’t work.”

“Lightner, for Christ’s sake,” I said.

“Well, if you’re ever in the mood for a more mature gentleman like myself-”

I stopped. Joel did, too, belatedly. “What’d I say? You’re all sensitive these days?”

“I’m not sensitive, Lightner. I just figured, if we’re here to investigate a crime scene, I don’t know-maybe we shouldn’t walk right past it.”

“Good point.” He turned and looked across the street at the Tattered Cover bookstore. A huge mat had been thrown down in front of the store where Lorenzo Fowler had bled out.

“Witnesses say they didn’t see anybody in the street,” I said. “And he wasn’t shot at close range. So he was shot from across the street, where we’re standing, basically. I’m thinking he crouched down between two cars and waited for Lorenzo. Sounds like Lorenzo was coming around the back of his car and he got one in the windpipe.”

We waited for a couple of cars to pass and then hustled across the street. The bloodstain on the street was still apparent. “Lorenzo stumbled backward from that shot, all the way back against the door of the bookstore. Then he took one in each kneecap.”

“The shooter is still across the street at this point?” Lightner asked.

“Yeah. Must have been. The witnesses say there wasn’t anybody in the street walking toward him or anything like that. They didn’t see anybody.”

“And he used a Glock?”

“A semiautomatic handgun. A Glock or something similar, probably.”

I thought about all of this, taking it in now that I was at the crime scene itself. It was always different seeing it in person, versus case-file photographs or witness accounts.

In my peripheral vision, I noticed that Lightner was watching me carefully. I glanced at him and broke eye contact. We were both thinking the same thing: Two cases of absolute precision shooting, from a considerable distance, with a handgun?

We were standing at the curb now, directly in front of the Tattered Cover bookstore. A faint bloodstain was still visible from the point on the sidewalk where the first bullet blew through his windpipe. “Why does Lorenzo walk around the back of the car?” I asked. “He’s walking eastbound. That’s what the witnesses said. So most people would go around their car from the nearest side. In this case, around the front.”

“Maybe his car was close up against the car in front of it,” said Lightner. “Maybe there wasn’t room.”

“Or he was being careful,” Tori chimed in.

I looked at her and pointed.

“A woman walking alone wants to check out her car before she gets in it,” she went on. “She walks around the car so she can see into the backseat and make sure nobody’s waiting for her. She circles the car and then gets in.”

“And Lorenzo was definitely paranoid,” I said. “I can attest to that.”

Tori nodded. “So you think whoever shot him knew he’d act that way?”

I looked at Joel. “Lightner, what do I need you for? Tori here’s a natural. You’re right,” I said to her. “This was a Mob hit. Lorenzo was about to get pinched on something, and the Capparellis were afraid he might start looking to cut a deal and spill some secrets.”

“And this is a case you’re working on? That’s pretty cool. More interesting than quadratic equations.” She looked me over. “So this is why you defend criminals.”

“He believes passionately in the Bill of Rights,” Lightner said. “He doesn’t do it for the money. Just like he doesn’t hang out with beautiful women for the sex.”

Tori paid attention to that, the use of the plural.

“You should see his law partner, Shauna,” he explained. “Another knockout, strictly platonic.”

Joel doesn’t have a filter. It was hard to believe that neither of his marriages worked out.

We were walking now, returning to our car. “Lightner,” I said, “nobody born after 1960 uses the term ‘knockout.’”

“I was born after 1960.”

“Not by much.”

“But I’m a kid at heart.”

Tori shook her head. “Do I even need to be here? Neither of you needs a girlfriend. You just bicker with each other.”

We stopped the next block down at a bar advertising a Bloody Mary special. That sounded good to me, but minus the tomato juice and celery stick and whatever else polluted the vodka. Tori excused herself for the bathroom and Lightner admired her exit.

“I like her,” he announced.

“What are you, my dad?”

“If I were your dad, you’d be better-looking.”

Fair enough. Lightner lifted a glass of scotch off the bar and hit my arm.

“I thought this was just idle curiosity on your part,” Joel said. “Y’know, this guy Lorenzo comes to visit you, then he gets popped, you’re curious to see it all. Isn’t that what you said to me-‘Just curious’?”

“I’m a curious sort.”

“Yeah, and then you bring Tori along, so I figure you want to impress her. Otherwise, why would you interrupt a planned dinner with her to visit a crime scene?”

“You got it,” I said. “I was trying to impress her.”

“Bullshit. Bullshit. Could this be a coincidence?” Joel asked. “Two shootings with a small-caliber handgun from an intermediate distance with spot-on results?”

He was right, of course. I raised my glass of Stoli, so Joel wouldn’t feel awkward drinking alone.

“Now I have to figure out what all this means,” I said.