I tell him the offered deal and he tells me to go fuck myself. I realize that he is talking to me as a representative of the system, but I tell him that he shouldn't kill the messenger. He tells me that not only wouldn't he kill the messenger, but he also wouldn't have killed Denise, so he's not pleading guilty.
“Willie, there's a very good chance you're going to lose this trial.”
“Why?”
“Look at it this way. Suppose Dinky University's football team goes down to Florida State and gets beat a hundred and ten to nothing. Then somebody says, ‘Hey wait a minute, the water boy Florida State used wasn't eligible because his grades are shit and he used too big a bucket.’ So they rule that the game doesn't count, and decide to replay it the following week.”
“You gonna get to the point before the trial starts?” he asks.
I nod. “When they replay the game, you think Dinky is going to win?”
“That depends,” he answers, “on whether Dinky is bringing the same team down there.”
“Same team.”
“But I ain't going back to trial with the same team. I got me a new coach. You.”
“It won't be enough. Dinky is still Dinky. You get Bill Par-cells to coach 'em, they're still Dinky.” I may be carrying the analogy a bit far, but he's still into it.
“So you're asking me to crash the Dinky team plane before it even gets to Florida. Can't do it, Andy. I'm on that plane.”
There is certainly no way I'm going to convince him, and I don't really want to, since I'd probably do the same thing. If I were put in prison without any chance of parole, the first thing I would try to do is kill myself. Might as well let the state do it. Besides, I'm not just doing this for Willie, and I'm not just doing this for me. I'm doing it for good old Dinky U.
I call Nicole and tell her I won't be home until very late, and she's disappointed, because her father is in town for summer recess and wanted to have dinner with us. I tell her that I can't make it, and that she should go with him. I leave out the part about meeting Laurie at an XXX adult movie theater.
DENISE AND EDWARDHAD GONE TO A movie the night of her murder. In the years since, the theater they attended has not exactly thrived in the face of competition from the malls out on the highway. Back then it was called the Cinema One and showed first-run movies; it is now the Apex, and tonight is proudly presenting Hot Lunch and The Harder They Come. I want to go in so that we can really re-create the experience of the evening, but Laurie doesn't think it's necessary.
We stand in front of the theater, as Edward and Denise must have. Just another couple out on a date, except one of them only had about one hour left to live. Denise isn't here to tell us about the rest of the evening, so all we have to go by is Edward's testimony. So far I have no reason to doubt it. At least not this part of it.
“So they leave here,” I say, “just after midnight.
” Laurie nods. “And they decide to go for a drink.
” I point down the street. “They walk that way, although Edward had parked down there. Which means they didn't just happen to pass the bar … they were intending to go there.”
“Edward said it was a bar he used to go to when he was in college.”
Edward had gone to Fairleigh Dickinson University, less than a mile from where we were standing. I nod. “Care for a drink?”
We walk the three blocks down to the bar. The inside seems to have made the transition from trendy to seedy, and the ten or so patrons do not look as though they're waiting for their book club meeting to start. The television above the pool table is tuned to wrestling, and it has captured the attention of most of the group.
The bartender is a burly guy, about forty, with a friendly but grizzled face. It is as if we called Central Casting and asked them to send us a bartender. He comes over.
“Help ya?” he asks.
I point to the television. “Any chance you can change that to CNN? There's a Donald Rumsfeld press conference coming on.”
Laurie and I have developed a strange kind of synchronization between us. As soon as I open my mouth, she starts rolling her eyes. “Don't mind him,” she says. “He can't help himself.”
The bartender shrugs. “No problem.” You would think he hears Donald Rumsfeld jokes every day of his life. He directs his next question at Laurie. “What can I do for you?”
“We're looking for a guy named Donnie Wilson.”
“You found him.”
Surprised, Laurie says, “The same Donnie Wilson that was working here seven years ago, the night Denise McGregor was murdered?”
He nods. “My career ain't exactly taking off, you know?”
“Do you remember much about that night?” I ask.
“Are you kidding? Like it was yesterday.”
This is a mixed blessing. He'll be able to describe to us what happened, but he'll also look credible in front of the jury. When a crime has happened this long ago, one of the things the defense hopes for are faded memories by the key witnesses. This guy thinks it happened yesterday, which is not quite faded enough for our purposes.
I ask him to tell us about that night, and he jumps right into it. “Not much to tell. A preppie guy and a good-looking broad come in … didn't look much like they belonged here, but who knows, you know? This place was classier then. Anyway, the broad gets up and goes to the john. I was real busy 'cause Willie, that's the guy that killed her, had taken off an hour before.”
“Did you hear a struggle?”
“Nah,” he says. “In fact, I didn't even know what happened until the boyfriend told me. Then this older guy showed up. Turns out the preppie called his old man and the cops when he found the broad's body. When the cops showed, the place turned into a zoo.”
Laurie leans over to talk to him, as if she had a secret they were about to share. “Listen, Donnie, don't take this the wrong way, but if you call Denise McGregor a broad again, I'm going to cut off your testicles and shove them down your throat.”
Ever helpful, I tell Donnie, “I've seen her do it a number of times. It only takes a few seconds.”
Donnie has enough sense to be nervous and respectful. “Hey, I didn't mean no offense.”
Laurie gives him her sweetest smile. “None taken.”
It's now incumbent upon me to get Donnie thinking about the night of the murder, rather than the prospect of swallowing his testicles. It's not an easy job, but I give it a try. “So Denise gets up to make a phone call. The phone is in the ladies’ room.”
“Right. The ladies’ room … the ladies’ room.” Laurie has him unnerved.
“And that's the last time you saw her?”
“Well, I saw her in the alley afterward. You know … her body. The woman's body.”
Laurie and I go to the ladies’ room to check it out, and Donnie is really happy to see us go. The door has a faded drawing of Cleopatra on it, which identifies it as being for ladies. I start to push the door open, but Laurie grabs my arm.
“Where do you think you're going?”
“To check out the room, see where the phone is, solve the crime, whatever.”
“Let me make sure it's empty,” she says.
I shake my head in mock disgust. “Come on, this is business. Why do you have to turn everything into a sex thing?”
At that moment, even before Laurie has time to tell me what a pig I am, the bathroom door opens. A person comes out; I think it's a woman but I'm just guessing. She's at least two hundred fifty pounds, with tattoos all over her shoulders and arms. If she played for Dinky, we could kick Florida State's ass.