The dapper one responded to Ted. “Yes, Blaise Procutto, attorney-at-law, with offices in Providence, Rhode Island. Are you Attorney Summers?”
“Yes, but I’m afraid you’ve made a trip for nothing. You see... oh, this is Assistant District Attorney Ruker.”
“How are you, Ruker,” Procutto said, shaking his hand. “Did some D.A. time myself once. Well, there she is, and here’s the confession, and I wish they had had detectives on the Providence force as sharp as Sergeant Thomas Tanuka when I was with the prosecutor’s staff. This fella not only wraps it up, he practically writes your summation to the jury for you.”
“Sergeant Tanuka?” Jaffee moves menacingly toward Tall Tommy. “Sergeant of what?”
Meanwhile, Ruker, who had been reading the document that Procutto had handed him, looks up and says, “Later, Lieutenant Jaffee. Attorney Procutto, this is a very detailed statement Miss Banks has made.”
“And all of it checks out. This trooper is Lieutenant Matti of the Rhode Island State Police, who worked with Sergeant Tanuka on the investigation. I was instrumental in getting both law agencies together since my offices were used by Miss Banks in her scheme. I’m only sorry that I failed to see through her plot to bilk Mr. Pemberton.”
“Lisa?” Jay Porter said to the woman. For the first time since she entered the room, she raised her head. When she did, we could see how her black eyes crackled with emotion.
“What do you think you ever did for me, you wealthy pig? Pay for the care of a fine man crippled by the bad boat handling of your stupid wife. Guilt money, that’s what it was. All you goddamn Newport rich men are the same. So you cripple some poor handyman: toss him a bone. Send his daughter to secretarial school so she can support his pain-wracked body. That’s not even charity, it’s an insult. When he is dying, the doctors say he has no spirit to live. She took that spirit,” her finger pointed to Byerle, “because she is reckless with a boat, and I decided to pay you back for my father after his death. He made me swear revenge. I would have had it, too, if that fool Gina hadn’t lost her head to high society.”
It was almost ten o’clock before Ruker was through with me, Jack Mac, Ted, and Tall Tommy. He went over the Banks confession point by point, with Tommy filling in his end of it. “The one thing that bugged me all along was that this Gina dame supposedly had the smarts enough to dream up a big-time complicated con, and then kisses it off for Chick. No offense, amigo, but a crafty mind does not work in such a manner. So I figure she’s a dupe, but whose dupe? The mark’s wife? How does she find this dupe, then, want ads? No, there has got to be some connection on the same social level. On my first visit to Procutto’s office, I’m struck by this savvy little secretary who hipped the mark to the con in the first place. Not being without charm, I take her to dinner and find out she went to business school in Boston. Chick had mentioned that Gina was a secretarial school dropout, so I hustle to Boston and find a Gina Tobin who was a classmate of Lisa Banks, and one of the teachers I.D.’s the Gina Velker in a news photo as Gina Tobin.
“With this connection, I am on my way. Banks is a local girl and she keeps close tabs on the caretaker at the mark’s house in Newport. She learns the gee is coming up for an inspection. I figure a quick call to New York, a fast shuttle flight and a waiting car, and you have Gina coming in from the snow. The Rhode Island state cops checked the car out. It was rented on Lisa Banks’s credit card in Boston. So Chick’s hustle turns the dupe’s head, and she calls Banks and wants out and threatens to blow the whistle to Pemberton. It’s murder time! Banks could have gotten the bottle of champagne from the Newport house or maybe her old man stole it, but she knew it was exclusively Porter’s so she does the poison injection trick. I’ll bet she nearly died herself when she found another bottle of Codar ’58 unopened as she was cleaning things up after killing the Velkers. That’s where her lack of social class comes in. What’s a small town secretary know about private stock being kept at restaurants? She must have thought it was given to Gina when she was snowed in.
“Her original plan had been to wipe the poisoned bottle clean of her prints and leave it behind, hoping to implicate Pemberton when the cops traced the private label back to him. Now she thinks she’s in clover with a set of his prints on another bottle.”
“So why did she just switch the sleeves instead of opening the new bottle, emptying it, and pouring in the remainder of the poisoned wine?”
“But she did change the bottles, Chick!”
“The hell you say, Tall Tommy. There were no prints on the bottle the cops found.”
Tall Tommy grins me a cat’s whisker-licking grin. “And what does a good wine steward do when he takes a bottle out of storage for presentation?”
I looked over at Jack Mac. “You wiped the bottle clean?”
“Just to get rid of the dust, Chick,” he said sheepishly. Now he tells me!
“And being so neat, you only held it by the sleeve while wrapping it. So the bottle and sleeve found by the cops were from my cellar, and Lisa took the original with her...”
“Leaving the hypo-injected cork behind her, of course, to make it complete.”
“How did you figure it out, Tall Tommy?”
“You just have to understand a liar’s mentality, Chick.”
It was a few days later — the day the mortgage payment was due — when I sat in the bar lounge waiting for Jay Porter to return any of my many phone calls.
“He won’t call,” Barry grumped.
“Why not? I kept my end of the deal.”
“The hell you did. You tried to pin a murder rap on his wife and her cousin. You’re some genius.”
“Before Ruker could get to mention the criminal conversation scheme, Dunn blew up all the evidence with the damn boat being a lemon. It was Tall Tommy bringing in the confession that opened up the fact that Gina spent a weekend with Jay Porter.”
“Which Mrs. P. couldn’t blame him for. It was a scheme. He won’t call because he smelled a rat.”
A voice says to Cuz, “Metaxa and beer,” and I turn to Tall Tommy climbing onto the stool next to mine.
“Hello, Sergeant Tanuka,” I said.
“You know, this Jaffee character is still making noise over that. I am on a mission, Chick.” He places an envelope on the bar. “It was no easy task, but I got ten iron men for you out of J. P. Pemberton. Five for your mortgage, five for your trouble. Also, stop calling him, he does not like you henceforth.”
“La-dee-dah. What did he lay on you for all that detective work, sarge?”
“You are looking at an executive of Pemberton Enterprises.”
“Security.”
“Hell, no. I’m director of public relations.”
“It figures, for a ligner of ligners,” moans Barry.
“So I’m really on the list, huh?”
“I’d give it a double yes, Chick. Well, I’ve got to be on the amble, friends. The public needs relating. By the way, Chick, did you figure out why I was bothered about Gina’s not spending the weekend at the Plaza? If she had, by the way, she might still be alive.”
“Yeah, I figured maybe she didn’t want to cheapen our relationship with a quick shack-up. Sort of old fashioned morality, Tall Tommy, but to tell you the truth, it might have been a lie.”
“See, Chick, you’re learning all the time.” He ankled.