I made the turn and saw him scrambling on all fours near a live oak tree that bordered the canal. It occurred to me then what I was doing. Here I was, without even a stick, a stone, or an Italian leather briefcase, and I was chasing a guy who had a gun. And had just used it. Yes, Abe Socolow, you’re right. Sometimes circumstantial evidence is very persuasive.
I didn’t know what I’d do if I caught him. He was thirty yards or so away when I saw him duck as he neared the tree, then… whoosh… my feet were swept out from under me. My body was jolted upright, my feet were off the ground, continuing their running motion like Wile E. Coyote, and I wondered who had crushed my Adam’s apple. No one threw a flag or blew a whistle, and I crumpled to the ground, looking up to see the clothesline humming like a guitar string.
T he sweat was pouring off me when I got back to Crespo’s trailer. I gingerly walked into the bedroom, felt a squish beneath one foot, and looked down to see a potato splattered in pieces across the floor. It made no sense to me.
I was trying to swallow but couldn’t. In football, a forearm across the throat is called a clothesline, for obvious reasons. As a linebacker, I had lots of chances to level receivers coming across the middle that way. Never did it intentionally, so why aren’t the gods kinder to me?
I looked toward the bed. I half expected the body to be gone, like something from a Hitchcock movie. Now, Mr. Lassiter, you say you saw Mr. Crespo with two bullet holes in him. Really, had you been drinking? But Crespo was still there, lying on his back, hands beneath him. I rolled him over. The hands were tied at the wrists with baling wire. I felt for a pulse. Not a flicker. As I held his wrist, I saw a metallic glint in Crespo’s palm. I pried open the fingers, and something fell out, rolling across the bed and onto the floor. I found it among the potato pieces-a gold rabbit holding an egg of what looked like brown glass flecked with gold. A loop that would have held a thin chain was fastened to the bunny’s head. Somehow, I doubted that the gold rabbit was part of Francisco Crespo’s personal jewelry.
I picked up Crespo’s phone with two fingers and called the police, Abe Socolow, and Charlie Riggs. The cops were there first, Abe next, and Charlie last, but he had to interrupt a med school lecture on figuring date of death by the extent of insect larvae in the corpse.
I was sprawled on the sofa holding my throat when Socolow came in. He took a look at the body and said, “Looks like somebody saved the state some money.”
“Abe, do you try to be an asshole, or does it come naturally?”
“Oh, excuse me, counselor, I forgot. This was one of your minions. Presumed innocent until proven an asshole.” He looked at the red welt forming on my neck, did a double take, and smiled. If I’d been shot, he’d probably bust a gut laughing. “Somebody doesn’t know you, Jake, they’d say you struggled with your client, then shot him.”
“Somebody doesn’t know you, Abe, they’d say you were a supercilious son of a bitch. In fact, somebody who knows you would say the same thing. So, before you shoot off your mouth anymore, let me tell you something. Francisco Crespo was more than a client. He was a friend, and you keep it up, the only arrest you’ll make today is for assault on a state official.”
“Okay, okay, keep your cool. Don’t be so touchy.” He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and turned to a uniformed cop. “Must be the weather. Makes everybody crazy.”
An assistant medical examiner opened the door, followed by Doc Riggs. A homicide detective came in, then the crime scene investigators, then a man in a gray suit who looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him. Maybe he was a homicide detective I didn’t know. Cops like to travel in flocks, stand around and shoot the bull, reminisce about other cases, and gossip about who’s screwing the new divorcee in communications. One of the lab technicians was shining a laser at every nook and cranny in the trailer, trying to pick up invisible fingerprints. Another was using a portable computer to draw the crime scene.
“What the hell was he doing, making potato salad in the bedroom?” Socolow asked nobody in particular.
Charlie Riggs scratched his beard. “A silencer,” he said.
Socolow wrinkled his forehead. He didn’t enjoy someone else figuring out something first. The man in the gray suit whispered something to Abe Socolow, and then it occurred to me. He was the guy in the courtroom who came up to Socolow during voir dire. Now Socolow was listening attentively. Something in Abe’s body language showed deference, a trait for which he was not well known.
“The gunman used a potato for a silencer,” Riggs continued. “Or two potatoes, actually, one for each shot.”
“A potato silencer?” Abe Socolow repeated, incredulous.
“Messy, but effective,” Charlie said.
Somewhere in my mind, a children’s rope-skipping rhyme was singing to me. One potato, two potato, three potato, four…
The man in the gray suit walked to the sofa where I was sitting. He had a lean leathery face and walked on his toes. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, and his body gave the impression of rangy strength underneath the baggy business suit. His hair was short, dishwater brown, and had a cowlick at the peak of his forehead. A vein protruded from his neck as he spoke to me. He asked me to tell my story, and I did. He tossed a pad and pen on the sofa and pointed with an index finger. “Would you write it out and sign it,” he said. He didn’t make it sound like a question. The lawyer in me said not to do it. But now I was a client, and I knew I didn’t kill Crespo, so I scribbled a statement, going through it step by step, then signed my name, putting an “Esq.” at the end of it, which sounded more impressive than ex-linebacker.
When he asked whether I could identify the assailant, I told the truth for once. When he asked whether I had left anything out, I lied. Then it was my turn. I asked his name, and he handed me a card.
Robert T. Foley and a phone number, area code 703. No gold stars, embossed titles, or even an address. I’ve known some heavy-hitting businessmen like that. Maybe you’re just supposed to know who they are. That might work with Galileo or da Vinci, but Robert T. Foley didn’t mean anything to me.
Socolow was scowling. Silencers meant assassinations, organized crime, or Colombian cowboys. Not just a murder of a nobody in a trailer park. Even worse, a potato silencer was screwy enough to interest the newsboys. Socolow looked straight at Charlie Riggs. “You can buy a silencer on the street for a hundred bucks. Why would anyone use a potato?”
Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more.
“Maybe he wasn’t going to kill Crespo,” Charlie said, “at least not here. Maybe he wanted to talk to him, didn’t like how it was going, and made a hasty decision. Maybe Jake spooked him by coming to the door. Or maybe it was just a botched robbery.”
Socolow looked around the tiny trailer. “What would you steal from this place?”
Nobody answered him.
“Jake, you know anybody who would want to kill your client?”
I shrugged. Inside my pants pocket a gold bunny rabbit was growing warm. “Maybe Vladimir Smorodinsky had a friend.”
“My thought exactly,” Socolow responded. “Maybe just a revenge killing, one slimeball’s pal knocking off another slimeball. Crespo tell you anything we ought to know?”
“I don’t know any more than you do, Abe.” I’m not sure why I didn’t tell Socolow and his gray-suited friend about the gold rabbit. Part of it had to do with Emilia Crespo. She had trusted me to protect her son, and I had failed. I was responsible. Part of it was Francisco Crespo. He had trusted me, too. He took my advice, and my advice killed him. I had owed him something-everything-and I let him down. Now, it seemed, I owed him even more, and I needed to set things straight on my own.
Finally, part of it was my natural suspicion of authority. I remembered the reporter’s line from Graham Greene’s book about the French-Indochina war. Something about not giving information to the police because it saves them trouble.