“You all don’t have to be here,” said Garrick. “We only need—”
“Never mind that,” said Harrison. “The steward told me the whole ship was trying to find us. What’s going on?”
“Very well.” Garrick stepped to a side table and crossed his arms, drawing everyone’s attention. O’Connell remained at the door. Through the steeply angled windows, he could see the foredeck, with two spotless anchor winches and scuttles along the gleaming teak deck. Over the rail was Long Wharf and Columbus Park. Even their car was just visible, past the crowds.
“It was murder,” he said.
Three voices at once:
“How?”
“Why?”
“How do you know?”
Garrick looked at Eccles. “Counselor, you have a concealed-carry permit.”
“That’s no secret. It’s public record.”
“They’re hard to get in Massachusetts. Really hard. We don’t live in Texas.”
“So what?”
“It means substantial certification requirements, including firearms training.”
“Pfft.” Eccles made a dismissive gesture.
“Was there really a codicil? Because neither Harrison nor Blakely seemed to know about it.”
“That doesn’t—”
“If they didn’t, then they had no motive.” Garrick stared him down.
Harrison spoke up. “Are you saying — why would he want Jake dead?”
“You told me yourself.” Garrick turned to him. “Jacob Fraxton planned to fire Eccles. Too expensive, maybe there were other problems, we don’t know. But Eccles’ gravy train was leaving the station.” He looked around. “Gravy boat? — no, never mind.”
“That’s nothing more than groundless, scurrilous speculation.”
“CSU found two prints on the handgun.”
“Impossible!” Eccles caught himself and blanched. “That is, what fingerprints could... Jacob showed me his weapons collection, I may have picked one up. Any further inference would be meaningless.”
Blakely moved to sit alongside Harrison, who put his arm around her.
“The elevator was closed,” she said. “Moving, between floors. How could anyone have been in there with Jake?”
“No one was,” Garrick said.
They gaped at him.
“But you said it was murder.” Harrison spoke first.
“Yes.” Garrick let the moment stretch. “The ‘cordite.’ Gunsmoke. That was the clue.”
O’Connell’s head jerked up, and he stared at Eccles. “Damn,” he said.
“Right,” said Garrick. “Everyone agrees that when they ran into the atrium, the elevator was still moving, between decks, with the doors shut. If the gunshot they heard had been inside, the smoke would have been inside too.”
“But there were no holes in the glass,” said Harrison. “He was definitely shot inside.”
“It’s the Fourth of July.” Garrick waited. “We’ve been hearing firecrackers go off all weekend.”
Blakely shook her head. “I still don’t get it.”
Garrick stepped away from the table. “Eccles didn’t want to lose his position overseeing the Fraxton billions. He came to the Whiz Bang early this morning, waited until Fraxton was somewhere else, and took the pistol from his suite. I have no idea if the elevator setting was planned, or just a convenient opportunity. But after you spoke—” he looked at Harrison and Blakely — “Eccles slipped in and fired at Fraxton, just as he stepped into the elevator.”
At this point Garrick pulled the evidence bag from his pocket and held it up. “Using this — a suppressor.”
Blakely audibly gasped. No one else moved.
Garrick looked at Eccles. “We found it in your file case, Counselor. I assume you planned to dispose of it as soon as possible — too many crew around, perhaps?”
Still no response, so he continued, “After that, Eccles simply let the elevator doors close. A few seconds later, when it was twenty feet up, he set off a firecracker. That was the smell everyone noticed when they came running in, and by then Eccles had made himself scarce.”
Harrison jumped up and lunged at Eccles, who tumbled backward off his chair. O’Connell moved in, trying to separate them. Garrick called into his radio and a moment later the Harbor Unit officer came rushing through the door, still holding his MP5.
“Thank you, Sergeant.” Garrick nodded as O’Connell pulled Eccles to his feet, hands behind him. “I think we have it under control now.”
They stood on the afterdeck, watching as Eccles was walked into a custody van by three uniformed officers. The crowd line was still fifty yards back, but camera crews were filming and a news helicopter buzzed overhead. The lawyer would be getting far more than his fifteen minutes.
“Hard to see someone like that doing something so dumb,” said O’Connell.
“What’s funny is, he told me himself.” Garrick sighed. “When people are around that kind of money — on the outside, looking in — they change. You can’t trust anybody.”
“Some way to live.”
A seagull landed on the rail and looked around, but every surface was scrubbed and shined, offering not even the smallest crumb or snack. After a moment, the bird squawked and flew off.
“Come on,” said Garrick. “Back to the real world.”
Clown
by Michael Z. Lewin
For forty years, Michael Z. Lewin has been a popular and prolific writer of private-eye and police series, non-series tales at both novel and short-story length, and plays for radio. A few years ago, entries in his newest series in the private-eye genre, starring the Italian Lunghi family, in Bath, England, appeared in EQMM. In December of this year, Family Way, a new Lunghi novel, is due to be published in the U.S. by Five Star Press. It’s set during Walcot Nation Day, an annual street party that used to take place on Walcot Street in Bath. An American by birth, the author makes his home in Bath.
The interrogation began conventionally enough. “Please state your name for the tape.”
“Howard Timmins.”
“And, Mr. Timmins, are you known by any other names?”
Timmins squinted up at me, a small man curled even smaller from the gravity of the situation. “You know I am.”
I waited.
“I’m Gordo the Clown,” he said.
“Gordo the Clown.”
“Mostly people just call me Gordo. I’m much better known by that name than my given one. Because of what I do, being Gordo. Well, that’s all I do now I’m not working at Whitney’s anymore.”
“What did you do at Whitney’s?” I asked. Sammonville is not a big town and most people around these parts work for the company one way or another. Originally it made aircraft engine parts but now it’s baby carriages — top-quality carriages that get shipped all over the world. The company’s long story is commemorated in the Sammonville Museum. That’s where my wife works, so I know a lot about it.
“I ran the catering department,” Gordo-Timmins said.
“Ran it? So you had a lot of responsibility?”
For the first time since he was brought into the station he seemed to perk up. “Before the downsizing we fed between a hundred and fifty and a hundred and eighty a day. Plus, the hospitality side, whenever the managers had visitors. I don’t know how many they feed now — I hear they may even close the cafeteria — but it’s a lot less.”
“How long ago were you fired?”