“Yes,” I said.
“Played her the tape.”
“I assume so.”
“That must have been pretty,” Epstein said. “So why’d she want it?”
“Wondered the same thing,” I said. “She offered money. She offered sex. A combination of both. Whatever I wanted. She said if she didn’t get the tapes it would ruin her life.”
“Doherty know there was more on the tape than you gave him?” Epstein said.
“Yes.”
“So she probably remembered that when they weren’t talking blow jobs,” Epstein said, “they were saying things that might draw attention to Alderson.”
“I would guess,” I said. “The day she came to see me, that evening she went to Alderson’s condo with an overnight bag. She was in there maybe an hour and came out with the bag and checked into the hotel next door.”
“She probably told him about the tapes,” Epstein said.
“Probably.”
Epstein drank a little of his coffee.
“And,” he said, “she probably expected to move in with him now that her husband had kicked her out.”
“Probably.”
“And he said no.”
“And they had a fi ght,” I said. “And he gave her the boot.”
Epstein got up, carrying his coffee, and began to walk around my offi ce.
“She may not have told him about you,” Epstein said.
“If she had,” I said, “someone would have come after me.”
“True,” Epstein said. “And no one has.”
“Once he got mad,” I said, “she probably didn’t want him to know that it was even worse than he thought.”
“Dennis was FBI,” Epstein said. “He’d know how. Alderson probably thought Dennis did the bugging.”
“Yes.”
“And the next morning after she told him this she was killed, and that same day, probably, her husband was killed.”
“Sounds like Alderson,” I said. “Doesn’t it?”
Epstein was nodding as he walked.
“And when they searched his house and found the tape they thought they’d got it all?”
“She probably minimized the damage when she told him about the tape,” I said.
“Seems a lot of trouble,” Epstein said, “kill two people just to avoid being mentioned in a divorce proceeding.”
“I guess he valued his privacy.”
“You have a tail on the woman the day she was killed?”
Epstein said.
“Yes.”
“And it was your guy plugged the shooter.”
“Yes.”
Epstein walked past my desk into the little bay behind me, and looked down at the street and sipped his coffee. Neither of us spoke.
Then Epstein said, “Lotta nice-looking women walk by here.”
“They do?” I said.
Epstein turned from the window and smiled.
“So,” he said. “You got a theory of the case?”
“I do,” I said.
“How ’bout that,” Epstein said.
“I think that Alderson believed that he could insulate himself from any investigation by killing the only two people who knew anything. Jordan, because they were lovers. Doherty, because he’d heard the tape.”
“Uh-huh,” Epstein said. “Except the tape Doherty heard didn’t have anything actually incriminating, unless we still prosecute for adultery.”
“But Alderson didn’t know that,” I said. “Until he listened, by which time both Jordan Richmond and Dennis Doherty were dead.”
Epstein nodded slowly, paused to drink some coffee, and nodded some more.
“So he tries to make it look like Doherty killed her when he learned of the affair,” Epstein said. “And then, crazed with grief, he killed himself.”
“But would the cops know of the affair?”
“We learned that she and Alderson were an item when we began investigating her death,” Epstein said. “Lotta people knew.”
“And,” I said, “when you got to him he could say, I’m sorry it turned out this way, but we are, after all, men of the world.”
“But your guy tailing Jordan ruins it by putting one into the shooter’s head. Nice shot, or a lucky one, hit him under the right eye.”
“It wasn’t luck,” I said. “Too bad, though. If he hadn’t been so good, the guy might not be dead and we might have an ID.”
Epstein fi nished his coffee.
“Too bad,” Epstein said.
“You knew who Alderson was before I ever came to see you,”
I said.
“He was a person of interest,” Epstein said. “But pretty low priority.”
“And his organization,” I said.
Epstein shrugged.
“Like you told us everything,” he said.
“You started it,” I said.
Epstein grinned.
“You got a plan?” he said.
“I want to bring him down,” I said. “For the murders.”
“And your FBI? He killed one of my agents. You want me to stand around and reload for you?”
“You get him for subversion or whatever you were looking at him for in the fi rst place,” I said.
“And if we overlap?”
“We’ll adjust,” I said.
“A race?” Epstein said.
“First one to bust him wins?” I said.
“He gets busted everybody wins,” Epstein said. “I don’t care who gets the credit.”
“J. Edgar must be doing ring-around-the-rosy in his grave,”
I said.
28.
And he didn’t ask who shot the mystery assassin?”
Susan said.
“No.”
“Well, that’s some sort of vote of confidence, isn’t it,” she said.
“He knows I wouldn’t tell him.”
“And he wants your help,” Susan said.
“I can do things that are illegal for him.”
“And you,” she said.
“Sometimes,” I said.
“But he can do things you can’t,” Susan said.
“He has resources I lack.”
“So you avoid the minefields,” Susan said. “And you both know that you’re doing it, and you know why, and you don’t say anything.”
“We both want the guy that killed Doherty,” I said. We were at my place, I was making supper. She was at my kitchen counter, on the living room side. Pearl had claimed the couch, which she managed to occupy more fully than one would think possible for a seventy-fi ve-pound dog.
“It’s about Doherty,” Susan said.
“Man was murdered,” I said.
“His wife was murdered too,” Susan said.
I mixed bread crumbs and pignolia nuts with a little olive oil, and began to toast them in a fry pan on low.
“Doherty was one of Epstein’s,” I said. “Makes it kind of personal.”
“And you?” Susan said.
“Guy’s going along doing his job, living his life, and his wife takes up with another guy, and it breaks his heart, and then gets him killed,” I said. “That needs to be evened off a little.”
I took the fry pan off the fire and emptied the toasted crumbs and pignolias into a bowl. I had a large pot of water boiling on the stove. I put some whole-wheat linguine in it and set my timer.
“But she doesn’t need evening off? Because she caused the trouble in the fi rst place.”
“Alderson’s responsible for both,” I said. “We get him, we even everything off.”
“You don’t hold her responsible?”
“I don’t know enough,” I said. “Maybe Doherty drove her to it.”
Susan nodded. She was sipping a glass of sauvignon blanc.
“Happens,” she said.
After the pasta had cooked for three minutes I added slices of yellow squash and zucchini.
“You think I’m overidentifying with Doherty because of what happened to us all that time ago?” I said.
Susan smiled.
“Happens,” she said.
“It didn’t get me killed,” I said.
“But people died,” Susan said.
I nodded. I had a tall scotch and soda working and I drank some of it.
“Hawk thinks I’m identifying.”
“He’s spoken of it?”
“Not really,” I said. “But it’s what he thinks.”
“And he’s probably worried about it for the same reason I am,” Susan said.