“Yeah, sure,” he said. But from his tone I knew he wasn’t at all sure I was kidding.
“I didn’t have a warrant for this, either.” I tossed him the tape I had made of my Biltmore conversation with Marovich. “Marovich spilling his guts. Can’t use it in court, but it’s interesting. He mentions you, big guy.”
“Jeez,” Mike muttered, but he slipped the little tape into his shirt pocket.
“I have a legal question for you,” I said.
“A little late for that, isn’t it?”
“Say you’re a lawyer, defending a client.”
“Never happen,” he said, a reflex.
I punched his arm, almost gently. “Say you’re a lawyer defending a client for crimes in which you participated.”
The know-it-all sneered. “Jennifer was in grade school when Wyatt Johnson got shot.”
“Wrong crime. Baron Marovich has retained Jennifer to defend him. He’s facing a campaign fraud charge, according to the docs on Jennifer’s desk. He has an appointment tomorrow with the U.S. attorney to discuss Roddy’s crimes, and Jennifer is going with him.”
“No shit?” Taken by surprise. I love it when I can drop one on him. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Well, Baron will get one tight defense,” Mike said. “If he goes down, he’ll sure as hell take her with him.”
“Poor Jennifer,” I said. I handed him the print-out I had made at her house. “But we can bring her down without Baron. She’s the lynchpin in all of this, the connection between Conklin and the D.A. and the preacher and the campaign. It’s all one. I don’t know whether Jennifer actually lit any fires, but she was there with the marshmallows when it happened.”
Mike turned off the player. “What are you going to do with this shoe bomb?”
“Copy to Jennifer, copy to Hector, one for the Bar Association, put it in the Big Film. Guido and I have a beautiful one-hour package almost ready for Lana, lays out the chain of conspiracy from the shooting of Wyatt up to this afternoon. We still need to work on the hearing this afternoon and the resignation of Baron, but we’re close. The network’s legal people are going to have fits, but I think we’re okay until we get to Jennifer at the fire’s point of origin.”
The cop came back to me, deep furrows between his white brows. “What are you going to say about Jennifer and the fire?”
I glanced at Guido before I answered, because we had argued this one out. “We’ll run the lab reports on the shoe found at the scene, highlight where they say traces of gasoline and paraffin were present. If we were doing a dramatization, I would have an actress run across the gravel lot, take off her shoes because they got full of rocks, slowed her down. And she was in a hurry. When that fire started, to quote the expert, ‘Kaboom.’ She’s lucky all she lost was a shoe.”
“That’s all wild supposition,” he said.
“I don’t think so. When she ran away from Kelsey’s, she just kept right on running. Like a jackrabbit, found some cover. She had the weekend to think things through, to talk with the other players. By Sunday night, she was still shaken, but resolved to gut it out to the end. To shut me up.”
The telephone rang. Guido answered, said, “She is,” and handed the receiver to me. But I heard only a dead line.
“Who was it?” I asked.
“Man.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Asked for you.”
“How did he sound?”
“Nervous, maybe. How much can you get from, ‘Is Maggie there?’”
We all went back to work. The call, or Mike’s reaction to it, unsettled me. Mike didn’t say anything, but he pulled out his shirttail and tucked it back in behind the automatic holstered at his side. After a while, maybe half an hour, Casey, stretching her back, asked, “Can I take Michael up and show him around the studio?”
Mike scowled, so I said, “Later. We’ll all go up and see what’s happening.”
“I’m bored,” she said, and yawned. She stretched out on the old sofa and turned on a TV sitcom.
It was about five minutes later that there was a knock on the door. Everyone froze, except Mike. He unholstered his gun. “Who is it?” he asked through the closed door.
“Ben, security. Courier delivered a letter for Maggie.”
Mike opened the door enough to make sure that it was Ben, then enough to accept the envelope. He said thanks, then shut and bolted the door again. He held the envelope to the light, smelled it, bent it a couple of times before he handed it over to me.
The return address on the envelope was the district attorney’s office. My name was handwritten on the front, and the notation that it was personal. I took out a sheet similar to the one on which he had written his resignation.
Over my shoulder, Mike read the single line on the page. He asked, “Do you get it?”
“I think so. You better call someone to go check on Marovich. Some of the things he said earlier-this feels bad.”
Casey said, “Mom?” in a quavering voice.
She was sitting bolt upright, her eyes wide as she pointed to the television screen. There was a news break interrupting her program.
“The condition of the district attorney has not been confirmed. Paramedics are still in his offices. Earlier reports that gunfire was involved in his injury also cannot be confirmed. Members of Mr. Marovich’s staff have reported that the district attorney, who resigned from the re-election campaign only hours ago, was alone in his office when they heard what sounded like a single gunshot.”
Mike took the note from me, the single, handwritten line over Marovich’s signature: “Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.”
Chapter 35
The Saturday night housewarming smelled like a house fire-Mike was barbecuing range-fed chickens and air-lifted Louisiana catfish. It was a good thing the weather held so that we could entertain outside, not only because of the volume of smoke, but because it seemed that many of our guests felt comfortable about bringing guests of their own. I floated from group to group, catching pieces of conversation, collecting hugs, before I moved on. Doing the lady of the house thing.
Hector brought his wife. She was beautiful. As she clung to him, she kept an eye on me, but didn’t seem overly concerned I would steal him away in the tradition of Mike’s women. Etta brought Baby Boy, both of them looking radiant when they announced their engagement.
Guido showed up with LaShonda and several of his film students and promptly disappeared with them into my new workroom.
James Shabazz had filled his car with the boys who worked in his store, and invited Mrs. Rhodes to ride shotgun. I remembered James saying once that he detested Mike. But after he collected a soda water with a lime slice, he walked straight for the barbecue. I walked after him, carrying a beer for Mike as an excuse to be nearby in case things turned ugly. Mike looked up and recognized Shabazz-Mike knew I had invited him-but he made no effort to seem welcoming.
“Messing up some pretty nice fish, officer,” James said, offering his hand to Mike.
“You never did see things quite straight, Shabazz.” Mike put a spatula in the offered hand. “Think you can do better, be my guest.”
“That’s your own mess. I can’t help you at this point.” James traded the spatula for the long-handled basting brush and slathered more barbecue sauce on the chickens at the far end of the grill. “Not that I could ever help you.”
“I don’t recall needing your help,” Mike countered.
“That’s a matter of opinion, officer. Perhaps you failed to see there can be more than one way to approach a problem. For instance, trying to keep young people on the straight and narrow: You used your stick, I preferred the reason of Allah.”
“Yeah?” I saw a smile lift the corner of Mike’s mustache. “You have an armed crackhead climbing through your window at night, tell me who you’re going to call to save your sorry ass, me or Allah?”
Shabazz laughed. “At that point, it might be a toss-up.”