He wanted somebody he could trust. Had Carolyn from the Caroline told him how trustworthy I was?
What did I say? I said yes.
Chapter 7
I took a train one stop into Brooklyn and met TommyTillary in Drew Kaplan's office on Court Street a few blocks fromBrooklyn 's Borough Hall. There was a Lebanese restaurant next door. At the corner a grocery store specializing in Middle Eastern imports stood next to an antique shop overflowing with stripped oak furniture and brass lamps and bedsteads. In front of Kaplan's building, a legless black man reposed on a platform with wheels. An open cigar box on one side of him held a couple of singles and a lot of coins. He was wearing horn-rimmed sunglasses, and a hand-lettered sign on the pavement in front of him said, "Don't Be Fooled by the Sunglasses. Not Blind JustNo Legs."
Kaplan's office ran to wood paneling and leather chairs and oak file cabinets that might have come from the place on the corner. His name and the names of two partners were painted on the frosted glass of the hall door in old-fashioned gold and black lettering. Framed diplomas on the wall of his personal office showed he'd earned his B.A. at Adelphi, his LL.B. at Brooklyn Law. Alucite cube on top of a Victorian oak desk held photographs of his wife and young children. A bronzed railway spike served as a desktop paperweight. On the wall alongside the desk, a pendulum clock ticked away the afternoon.
Kaplan himself looked conservatively up-to-date in a tropical-weight gray pinstripe suit and a yellow pin-dot tie. He looked to be in his early thirties, which would fit the dates on the diplomas. He was shorter than I and of course much shorter than Tommy, trimly built, clean-shaven, with dark hair and eyes and a slightly lopsided smile. His handshake was medium-firm, his gaze direct but measuring, calculating.
Tommy wore his burgundy blazer over gray flannel trousers and white loafers. Strain showed at the corners of his blue eyes and around his mouth. His complexion was off, too, as if anxiety had caused the blood to draw inward, leaving the skin sallow.
"All we want you to do," Drew Kaplan said, "is find a key in one of their pants pockets, Herrera's or Cruz's, and trace it to a locker in Penn Station, and in the locker there's a foot-long knife with both their prints and her blood on it."
"Is that what it's going to take?"
He smiled. "Let's just say it wouldn't hurt. No, actually we're not in such bad shape. What they've got is some shaky testimony from a pair ofLatins who've been in and out of trouble since they got weaned onto Tropicana. And they've got what looks to them like a good motive on Tommy's part."
"Which is?"
I was looking at Tommy when I asked. His eyes slipped away from mine. Kaplan said, "A marital triangle, a case of the shorts, and a strong money motive. MargaretTillary came into some money this past spring upon the death of an aunt. The estate's not through probate yet but the value's somewhere in excess of half a million dollars."
"Be less than that when they get donehackin ' away at it," Tommy said. "A whole lot less."
"Plus there's insurance. Tommy and his wife had a pair of straight-life policies, each naming the other as beneficiary, both with double-indemnity clauses and a face amount of"- he consulted a slip on his desk- "a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which doubled for accidental death is three hundred thousand. At this point we've got what begins to look like seven, eight hundred thousand motives for murder."
"My lawyertalkin '," Tommy said.
"Same time, Tommy here's hurting a little for cash. He's having a bad year gambling, he's into the bookies and maybe they're starting to press him a little."
"Not so it amounts to anything," Tommy put in.
"I'm telling it the way the cops would tell it, all right? He owes some money aroundtown, he's a couple of payments behind with the Buick. Meanwhile he's putting away this girl at the office, bouncing around the bars with her, sometimes not making it home altogether-"
"Hardly ever, Drew. I'd almost always make it home, an' if I couldn't grab a few hours in the sack I'd at least shower and change and have breakfast with Peg."
"What was breakfast?Dexamyl?"
"Sometimes.I had an office to go to, a job to do."
Kaplan sat on a corner of his desk, crossed his legs at the ankle. "That'll do for motive," he said. "What they don't bother to noticeis a couple of things. One, he loved his wife, and how many husbands cheat? What is it they say? Ninety percent admit they cheat and ten percent lie about it? Two, he's got debts but he's not in a crunch. He'sa guy makes good money over the year but he runs hot and cold, and for years he's been fat one month and strapped the next."
"You get used to it," Tommy said.
"Plus the numbers sound like a fortune, but they're not unusual figures. A half-million is substantial, but as Tommy said it won't net out to that much after taxes, and part of it consists of title to the house he's been occupying for years. A hundred fifty thousand dollars' insurance on a breadwinner isn't high by any means, and having the same coverage on the wife isn't uncommon, a lot of insurance agents try to write policies that way. They make it sound logically balanced, so you overlook the fact that you don't really need that kind of coverage on someone you don't depend upon for income." He spread his hands. "Anyway, the policies were taken out over ten years ago. This isn't something he went and set up last week."
He stood up, walked over to the window. Tommy had picked up the railway spike from the desk and was playing with it, slapping it against the palm of his hand, consciously or unconsciously matching the rhythm of the clock's pendulum.
Kaplan said, "One of the killers, Angel Herrera, except I suppose he pronounces itAhn -hell, did some odd jobs at theTillary house last March or April. Spring cleaning, he hauled stuff out of the basement and attic, did a little donkey work for hourly wages. According to Herrera, that's how Tommy knew to contact him to fake the burglary. According to common sense, that's how Herrera and his buddy Cruz knew the house and what was in it and how to gain access."
"How'd they do that?"
"Broke a small pane in the side door, reached in and unlocked it. Their story is Tommy left itopen for them and must have broken the glass after. It's also their story that they left the place relatively neat."
"Looked like a cyclone hit it," Tommy said. "I had to go there. Made me sick to look at it."
"Their story is Tommy did that the same time he was murdering his wife. Except none of this works out if you take a good look at it. The times are all wrong. They went in around midnight, and the medical examiner places the time of death at between ten P.M. and four A.M. Now Tommy here never made it home from the office that evening. He worked past five, he met his friend for dinner, and he was with her in a variety of public places over the course of the evening." He looked over at his client. "We're lucky he's not much on discretion. Hisalibi'd be a whole lot thinner if he'd spent every minute in her apartment with the blinds drawn."
"I was discreet as far as Peg was concerned," Tommy said. "InBrooklyn I was a family man. What I did in the city never hurt her."