Murder Keeps A Secret Read online

  Munson conferred with Bautista, then said, “Okay, Rowan, show me just how you went about killing your old man. Let’s say the window’s over there, and this is the desk. Now what happened?”

  Alan explained, with dramatic gestures, how he had grabbed his father across the desk and struck him on the right side of his neck, knocking him unconscious, then opened the window, picked up his father’s body in his arms and rolled him across the windowsill and out.

  “See, it was just as easy as pie—bye, bye American pie.”

  “Yeah, I see. What did you do next?”

  “I looked in his desk for money and then got the hell out.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Ain’t that enough?”

  “Now, Rowan, I want to run through it again. Same thing, this is the desk, window’s over there. Except this time Detective Bautista will be your father.” Bautista took a position sitting behind the desk. “Go ahead.”

  Alan came across the desk and grabbed Bautista by the lapels, pulling him up out of the chair. He did so roughly, but Bautista didn’t stop him.

  “Then what?” Munson demanded.

  “I hit him in the neck.”

  “Where, exactly? Show me.”

  “Right there,” the boy said, aiming an open-handed chop at Bautista’s right side, which Bautista deflected.

  “Then you opened the window, picked him up, and pushed him off the sill?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You knocked him out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “With one blow?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He didn’t resist?”

  “Nah. He was a weak bastard. He went right down.”

  “Then, after you threw your father out the window, the only thing you did was look for money in the desk? Did you find any?”

  “No.”

  “Then you didn’t do anything else. Right?”

  “No.”

  “Just got out of there?”

  “Right.”

  “How did you get out?”

  “The elevator.”

  “Didn’t anybody see you when you left the building?”

  “Nah. They’d found the body in the street and everybody was freaked out. Running around, screaming. Nobody saw anybody.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I went home and went to sleep.”

  Bautista switched off the monitor. “There it is,” he said.

  “Do you believe him?” Frost asked.

  “Maybe, maybe, that kid killed his father,” Bautista said. “Maybe his mind is so cooked that he remembers killing him, but not how. But my hunch is he was having some sort of hallucination and was making the whole thing up. The facts are all wrong. The decedent was hit on the left side, not the right. He didn’t go down, he fought like hell. The desk drawer was all in order, not ransacked by anyone. And what about those papers all over the place? Who made that mess, the tooth fairy?”

  “I agree, his story is cockeyed. But is it all cockeyed, or just the details?”

  “He’s now denying what he told us. An hour after he made the tape, he started coming down and acting normal. That’s when he decided he wanted a lawyer and we let him call his grandfather. And when we asked him again about killing his father, he denied the whole thing.”

  “What will happen to him now?”

  “They’ll take him down to central booking and then bring him back here, probably.”

  “There’s no way to get him out?”

  “Negative. Not with a potential homicide charge against him. They’ll probably arraign him Monday morning.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “Sure. You’re his lawyer. Stay here and I’ll arrange it.”

  Bautista soon returned and took Frost to a different office, one with a clear glass panel in the door. Then Sergeant Rafferty and another policeman appeared, flanking Alan Rowan.

  “All right, Rowan,” Rafferty said. “This man says he’s your attorney. You can talk with him, but if there’s any funny business you’ll go right back to the pen. Understand?”

  Alan made a face, but nodded affirmatively. The two policemen left, though Rafferty’s junior remained outside the glass door, looking in.

  The young suspect had perhaps been crying. And there were now no signs of the wild behavior evident on the videotape. Catatonia had replaced hysteria. He looked weak and vulnerable as he slumped down on one of the two chairs in the room, his legs spread wide and his arms dangling limply between them.

  “Granddad told me you’d come,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Hello, Alan. I’m very sorry to see you under these circumstances.”

  “It’s the breaks. I got burned.”

  “Yes, Alan, but what about your father? What about killing your father?”

  The boy looked at Frost with alarm. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “Alan, I just saw a videotape of you confessing that you pushed your father out the window.”

  “Videotape?”

  “Yes, Alan. A videotape of you the police made not three hours ago.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember—don’t remember telling the Assistant District Attorney that you got mad at your father and murdered him?”

  “No.”

  Frost was nonplussed. Was Alan playing some weird game, or did he genuinely not remember?

  “You’re absolutely sure of that—there was no videotape?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Alan, I just saw it!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Alan, listen to me carefully. They’re going to take you downtown and book you on the narcotics charge. Then hold you over the weekend, probably back here. Monday morning you’ll be arraigned in court. I’ll have a lawyer there to represent you. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah. I can’t get out until Monday?”

  “That’s right,” Frost said, tactfully refraining from adding “if then.”

  “Meanwhile,” Frost went on, “I don’t want you to say anything to anyone about the drug business—or your father. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yeah. Big mess, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, indeed. But we’ll do everything we can for you. Shall I call your mother?”

  “Don’t bother. I don’t talk to her if I can help it.”

  “Take care, Alan,” Frost said, clumsily shaking hands. The policeman outside, observing the scene, came in without knocking and took the boy away.

  “I now know what they mean about drug users’ ‘mood swings,’” Frost said to Bautista when the detective reappeared. “Do you know he claims not to remember making the videotape?”

  “Crack does strange things, Reuben,” Bautista said. “Unfortunately I can believe it.”

  “What do we do?”

  “We get a blood sample and a skin sample from the kid ASAP,” Bautista said. “But I need your permission to do that. Or a court order. Take your pick.”

  Frost suddenly realized that Bautista, his friend and colleague, was at least momentarily an adversary. Though his knowledge of searches and seizures dated back to law school, Frost was sure that the boy’s admissions were sufficient grounds for getting a court order to compel the tests Bautista was asking for. Was it worth the effort to resist, or should he give permission as Alan’s lawyer?

  Uncertain of what to do, Frost decided to request Bautista to get a court order. When in doubt, delay, delay.

  “Okay, no problem,” Bautista said.

  “You said they won’t book Alan on a homicide charge,” Frost said. “Can I count on that?”

  “Until we get the test results, that’s right. We don’t need headlines about arresting the wrong guy for murder.”

  “I shouldn’t be asking you—you’re the opposition. But is there anything more I can do for Alan tonight?”

  “No.”

  “And you won’t be trying to question him anym
ore?”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do say so.”

  “Then I give you my word.”

  “Thanks, Luis.”

  “Why don’t you wait downstairs? I’ll double-check everything with Munson and meet you in a few minutes.”

  Back downstairs, Frost asked the desk officer if he could wait in the large room across the way and was told, in effect, that he could wait anywhere he liked. He sat down on one of a group of four folding chairs, obviously pulled together for an earlier conference. Of policemen? Relatives? An accused and his lawyers? He could only guess.

  As he waited, he observed two policemen standing beside a group of six women he took to be prostitutes. The policemen were writing down the answers to questions on vital statistics, and the women all gave the appearance of having been through the routine before. They performed their parts as if the play had run too long, a fact obvious to Frost, even though he was seeing the drama for the first time.

  While he waited, an unsettling, steady procession of arrested men, flanked by policemen, passed from the front door to the ominous metal doors in the back. A crime wave, he thought to himself. Or was business always better on Saturday night?

  Bautista reappeared, as promised.

  “Everything’s fine, Reuben. The kid will be booked on the narcotics charge and I will spend the night getting a court order for the tests.”

  “I’m sorry, Luis.”

  “Reuben, look, you got your job, I’ve got mine. Forget it!”

  The two men walked toward the outside door. “Under the circumstances I guess I won’t give my adversary a ride home, but I’ll help you get a cab. Unless you want to pick up one of the beauties over there,” Bautista said, indicating the prostitutes across the room.

  “No ladies of the evening for me,” Frost replied, smiling.

  “Ladies?” Bautista said. “I hate to tell you, Reuben, but they’re transvestites.”

  “Good God.” Frost was genuinely shocked, though he guessed he’d heard or read about transvestite whores. But his own naïveté, his uncertainty in representing his godson’s offspring and his being at cross purposes with Bautista suddenly made him very depressed.

  “Are you all right?” Bautista asked.

  “Fine. I just need to get home to bed.”

  “As I say, I’ll help you find a taxi.”

  “No, no, I can manage fine.”

  “Never mind, I’m coming with you. I don’t want you to get mugged. This is a bad neighborhood.”

  “Mugged in front of the police station?”

  “That’s what I said, Reuben, it’s a bad neighborhood.”

  18

  Giardi’s

  As usual on Sunday morning, Frost immersed himself in the Times. An analysis of the New York Democratic primary, ten days hence, caught his eye. The reporter stated flatly that supporters of Wheeler Edmunds were likely to capture a majority of the state’s delegates to the party’s Presidential convention.

  “Contrary to predictions,” the Times reporter wrote, “the field of candidates for the Democratic nomination has not narrowed appreciably. That may change next week, when the results from the Empire State are in, since there is every indication that the voters will prefer Wheeler Edmunds, the senior Senator from Michigan, and delegates committed to him will sweep the primary races.

  “Of all the candidates, Edmunds has been the only one to stake out a consistently liberal position, picking up on themes that Robert Kennedy, as a New York Senator and Presidential candidate, espoused before his assassination a generation ago: an unambiguous stand on racial justice, including strong measures to promote school desegregation; a pledge to enhance racial and sexual equality by affirmative action techniques more sweeping than any other candidate—past or present—has proposed; an announced determination to view increased national defense expenditures with a highly skeptical eye.

  “These are not positions popular everywhere in the country,” the Times reporter continued. “Indeed, they are not necessarily popular with all of New York State’s Democrats. But Edmunds has been so articulate in making his case that he has struck a chord with the core of liberals who control the party here. Unless there are surprises to come, Edmunds should sweep the primary and gain important momentum toward his party’s nomination.”

  “It looks like your friend Richard Taylor may get to the White House yet,” Frost told his wife over breakfast, quoting her the conclusion of the Times correspondent.

  “Do you really think this is a year for an out-and-out liberal like Edmunds?” she asked.

  “I’ve given up making predictions, my dear. But you have to concede that Edmunds is articulate and seems to believe very genuinely in what he says. He’s a pretty appealing character when you consider that all the others seem to be saying what the public wants to hear. Or what the polls say they want to hear.”

  Frost’s analysis was interrupted by a call from Bautista.

  “We haven’t closed the book,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just as I—we—expected, your client doesn’t have the right blood type. He’s type AB and it wasn’t AB under his father’s fingernails. We don’t have the skin comparison back yet, but we don’t need it. He was making the whole thing up.”

  “Lunacy.”

  “That may be. But people on crack do crazy things.”

  “What happens now?”

  “I’m through with your client. I strongly suggest you get a criminal lawyer for him and see if he can work out a deal to get the kid back in Fairhaven Gables.”

  “Thanks for the advice. I already did that about eight o’clock this morning. The whole mess is out of my hands, thank God. I felt like a dermatologist doing brain surgery last night.”

  “You did okay, Reuben. Clarence Darrow you ain’t, but I see a great future for you as a mouthpiece.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I tell you what. Francisca and I are going to enjoy our Sunday—or what’s left of it. I was up until five getting that damned court order you insisted on.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Never mind. I was going to propose that we talk tomorrow.”

  Frost agreed, though he had now been pulled out of the comfortable verbal cocoon afforded by the Sunday newspaper and began, once again, thinking about David Rowan’s murder. What could he usefully do to advance things on a quiet April Sunday in Manhattan? He asked Cynthia if he was correct that the meal they were eating was both breakfast and lunch.

  “You know very well it is,” she answered. “Why?”

  “I think tonight we should have a good, solid, old-fashioned Italian dinner. And I know just the place.”

  “Giardi’s, I suppose,” she said.

  “Precisely. Do you think we should wear steel vests?”

  “A bottle of Pepto-Bismal in my purse would probably be more to the point.”

  Making a reservation that afternoon, Frost was surprised, when looking up the restaurant’s telephone number, to find that the place was only blocks away on Third Avenue. It must be one of those dim, nondescript restaurants I’ve passed a hundred times, he thought.

  Continuing his research after making his reservation, he could find no description or rating of Giardi’s in any of his collection of city restaurant guides. The only knowledge he could gather was from a large display advertisement in the Yellow Pages, which proclaimed that Giardi’s had served “traditional Italian cuisine to a discriminating clientele since 1958” and that it featured “fine wines and liqueurs.” He did not find the self-promotion promising, but deduced that the place must have been started by Tom Giardi’s father.

  Cynthia and Reuben presented themselves to a beefy maitre d’ at the restaurant promptly at eight. His greeting, while not unfriendly, was delivered in a rough, raspy voice. Despite several vacant tables, the Frosts were told to “have a drink at the bar and I’ll have a nice table ready for you in a few minutes.”

  Aside from bei
ng imprisoned in a barber’s chair while having his hair cut, there was nothing Reuben hated more than waiting for a table in a restaurant, most especially after having made a reservation. He particularly resented the “drink at the bar” con game. He and his wife drank quite enough, thank you, when they went out to eat; there was no need to trick him in order to inflate his check by the cost of two cocktails. In the circumstances, however, he did not want to provoke an argument with the rather menacing headwaiter and risk having to storm out of the place to save his honor.

  Grumpily he ordered a negroni—“they ought to be able to make that”—while Cynthia had a gin and tonic.

  “Do you suppose that’s him?” he said in a low voice to his wife.

  “I doubt it. I’m sure he’s too grand to act as the headwaiter.”

  “Well, cheers, and keep your eyes open,” he said, touching his wife’s raised glass with his own.

  The circular bar occupied the front part of the restaurant. As they drank, the couple swiveled on their stools to survey the spacious dining room behind them.

  “Don’t I recall correctly that Renaissance art flowered in Italy?” Reuben asked his wife, nodding toward the works on the plush-velvet walls, amateurish oils of a grotesque, white-faced arlecchino and several village scenes featuring donkeys, children and garishly bright garlands of flowers.

  “It’s appalling,” Cynthia whispered. “But you’d better be quiet.”

  The maitre d’ came over and, once their drinks were paid for and a tip left for the bartender, showed them to one of the tables that had been empty when they came in.

  “Would you like another cocktail?” he asked hopefully.

  “No thank you,” Reuben answered, firmly but politely. “Let’s just have the menu and the wine list.”

  Outsize menus, printed in italic lettering, were presented in stony silence, along with an unwieldy wine list bound in imitation leather.

  “This isn’t nuova cucina,” Reuben muttered, as he scanned the menu. The fare was old-style Italian, bereft of the currently fashionable yuppie pastas with eccentric sauces. “Everything seems to be made with eggplant,” he added, referring to the frequent references to melanzane.