L
OGIC TAKES A BUM RAP
. It is the way I live my life. I probably ask myself the question “Is it logical?” more often than I ask, “Is it right?” Because logic is almost always right, and as far as I’m concerned, it should be the primary basis for human behavior.
Yet I am often told that I am “too logical” by people who don’t understand that there is no such thing. Those people worship emotion and passion, and that’s fine. Their mistake is in thinking that such feelings are inconsistent with logic, when in fact they should be using logic to drive that fire within them. If you’re desperately, passionately in love with a woman, you don’t win her over by picking your nose. It wouldn’t be
logical
.
I guess that’s one of the reasons I’m so disconcerted by what I’ve been through these past few months. I’ve been trying to apply logic in order to figure it out, when all along it’s been a madman calling the shots. People have been literally dying all around me while I have been figuratively hunched over my desk, trying to apply logical theorems to the work of a vicious psycho.
Lassiter was angry because Daniel reneged on a deal, and he wanted revenge. So far it makes sense. But then he went out and killed five women and got Daniel on and off a legal hook, before killing Daniel himself. Why go to all that trouble? Why not just go out and kill Daniel in the first place? There is just no logical answer.
It’s been three days since my conversation with Dominic Petrone. I’ve shared what he said with Laurie, and while she couldn’t provide any real insight as to Lassiter’s behavior, she was less surprised by it. I suppose that comes from her years on the police force, during which she dealt with an unending list of villainous screwballs.
I also told Pete Stanton about the Petrone conversation. I value his advice, and I can trust him to keep it to himself. He was so interested to hear what I had to say that he didn’t make me take him to an expensive restaurant to say it.
I call Vince every day, but he’s still pretty much in a fog. He’s not ready to go back to the newspaper and says he doubts whether he ever will. I know it’s going to take him time to bounce back, and I’m frustrated that I’m powerless to speed up the process.
I’ve decided against sharing Petrone’s revelations with Vince. I know he has a right to know, but right now I just can’t see myself telling him that his son murdered his daughter-in-law. Maybe I’m looking for an excuse, but I know he wouldn’t believe it anyway; he would assume that Petrone had some reason to lie. Since he knows Petrone, he also might confront him about it, thus demonstrating that I revealed what Petrone told me, despite his warning not to. It could result in my untimely and very painful death, which would complicate matters greatly.
I haven’t been in the office since Daniel’s death; what little productive time I’ve spent has been at the foundation. There’s something comforting about taking care of those dogs. They absolutely need me to provide food and shelter and comfort and life, and I know exactly how to provide them. It’s all very logical.
I’ve also gotten to spend a lot more time with Tara, which is always good. We go on extended walks in the park, just like the one we’re on now. Tara seems to appreciate the world more than I do; each bend in the path provides new sights and especially smells that captivate her. I both admire and envy this.
We are passing the Little League fields, a place that holds countless pleasant memories for me, when my cell phone rings. It is an unwelcome intrusion, and I’m sorry I brought it with me. I see on the caller ID display that it is Vince calling.
His voice is crisper, more alert, and his message is to the point. “They found Tommy Lassiter.”
I’m very pleased to hear this, but my primary reaction is surprise. I had become convinced that Lassiter would never get caught, and I also assumed he was long out of this area.
“Where was he?” I ask.
“In a motel on Route 4.”
“Is he talking?”
“I doubt it,” Vince says. “He’s been dead for three days. Shot in the head. The maid saw the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, but the place started to stink, so she decided to disturb.”
“Any idea who did it?”
“Someone who knew him . . . he was having a beer and eating a sandwich. Somebody else’s beer was there also, but Lassiter’s was mixed with a drug to knock him out. The coroner thinks he was unconscious when he took the bullet.”
“So it had to be someone he trusted,” I say.
“Damn straight,” says Vince. “If Lassiter thought he was in danger, a marine division couldn’t have killed him.”
What Vince is saying makes sense, but I still think Petrone was behind it. “It’s got to be Petrone,” I say, since Petrone had said to me that if he found Lassiter, we’d be “talking about him in the past tense.”
Vince shrugs. “I don’t care who did it. I’m just glad it got done.”
“Thanks for letting me know, Vince. You doing okay?”
“Yeah. I’m getting there. You up for Charlie’s later? There’s a college game on.”
Laurie and I were planning to spend a quiet night at home, but I know she’d want to support getting Vince back into the world. This news about Lassiter seems to have given him a lift, and I don’t want to do anything to discourage it. “Sounds great. Okay if I bring a date?”
“Only if it’s Laurie.”
We meet at seven-thirty, and by seven-forty-five the table is covered with burgers, french fries, and beer. The game is on ESPN 2; it’s Boise State versus Fresno State. The NCAA claims to be against gambling, yet they don’t complain when ESPN buys a game like this for national broadcast. Do they think there’s a single person east of Idaho who would be interested in Boise State-Fresno State if they weren’t betting on it?
I take Boise State minus seven points. For the entire first quarter, Vince is yelling at the bartender to adjust the color, refusing to believe me when I tell him that the football field in Boise is actually blue. My mind is filled with interesting tidbits of knowledge like that.
Boise is up twenty-one at the half when Pete Stanton comes in. He tells the bartender he’s going to run a tab, but the tab he’s talking about is mine.
“I knew I’d find you losers here,” he says, then turns to Laurie. “Female company excepted.”
Laurie smiles. “Exception noted.”
“What’s the score?” Pete asks.
“Twenty-eight-seven, Boise,” I say.
“Who’d you take?”
“Boise.”
“Damn,” he says, shaking his head. “Money goes to money.”
Like most of his comments, I let this one slide off my wealthy back. “Anything new on Petrone?”
He nods. “Yeah, the word on the street is he didn’t hit Lassiter. He wanted to, but somebody beat him to it.”
“You believe that?” I ask.
“Yup. The people who told me would know one way or the other. And the word is that it had to be somebody Lassiter trusted. Also, the gun was a Luger. Not the Petrone group’s weapon of choice.”
“So who could it have been?” I ask.
“Come on, you want a list of the people that would want to see Lassiter iced?”
“I’d be at the top of that list,” says Vince.
Pete frowns. “You’re not confessing, are you, Vince? ’Cause I’m off duty.”
“Nah. But if I had a clean shot at him, I’d have taken it.”
I’m getting that disconcerting, “where the hell is the logic?” feeling again, and Laurie picks up on it. “Let it go, Andy,” she says. “You’re out of it now.”
But even if I wanted to drop it, Vince doesn’t. “If someone else killed Lassiter besides Petrone, you think that person could have killed Daniel as well?”
I shake my head. “No, I think it was Lassiter that shot Daniel.”
“Why?” Vince asks. “I still don’t see what he had against him. I mean, to frame him like that and then kill him . . .”
I don’t know what the indoor record is for quick, embarrassed eye contact, but Pete, Laurie, and I are certainly smashing it. The three of us know about Petrone’s accusations against Daniel, but we’ve left Vince in the dark. Right now that doesn’t feel right, and Laurie seems to agree. Her slight nod tells me she thinks we should come clean with Vince.
“Vince, there’s something I’ve got to tell you, something Dominic Petrone said.”
“What?” asks Vince, and he literally prepares himself for a bombshell by gripping the table with his hands.
“He said that Daniel hired Lassiter to kill Margaret and then reneged on the payment. That’s why Lassiter did what he did; he was getting revenge on Daniel.”
“He’s full of shit.” It’s a knee-jerk reaction, made without thought. A defense of his son.
“I didn’t say he was right,” I say. “I just thought you had a right to know.”
“He’s wrong,” Vince says.
“Of course he is,” says Laurie.
“Did he say why he thought so?” Vince asks.
“No. But he didn’t say it’s what he
thought
. He said it’s what he
knew
.”
Vince takes a drink from his bottle of beer but finds it empty. He looks around for the waitress. “Whose ass do you have to kiss to get a beer around here?” It’s Vince’s way of ending this part of the discussion, and it’s fine with me.
I signal to the waitress that she should bring beers for everyone. Telling a man his son is a murderer is thirsty work.
A
NOTHER LONG-STANDING
tradition goes down the drain. And in this case, the drain is where it belongs.
For as long as I can remember, at the conclusion of every major case I’ve had, I take Tara and head down to Long Beach Island, where I rent a house and spend two weeks decompressing. It seems like I’ve done this for twenty years, but I realize that it’s actually only seven years since I rescued Tara from the animal shelter.
This time Laurie has come with us, and while I haven’t discussed it with Tara, I can’t believe we didn’t bring her along before. It’s really quite remarkable; Laurie is all plus, no minus. By that I mean that she is great company, terrific to talk to, and I love having her around. At the same time, there are no negatives; she doesn’t intrude, doesn’t make me feel like I have to entertain her or be anything other than myself. When I want to be alone, I can be alone, either literally or just with my thoughts.
And since Tara has twice as many hands petting and giving biscuits to her, I suspect she agrees with me.
At the ten-day mark, I’m trying to figure how to add another week onto the trip. And maybe another decade after that. A phone call from Willie puts an end to such fantasies.
“When are you coming home?” he asks.
“Why?” I evade. “Any problems at the foundation?”
“Nope. We’re doing great. I just wanted to know if you’d be home by Saturday.”
“I will if you need me,” I say.
“Good. I need you.”
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Sondra and I are getting married Saturday night. You’re the best man.”
“That’s a real honor, Willie. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Laurie walks into the room at that moment. “And neither would Laurie.”
“Good,” Willie says. “’Cause she’s the best woman.” I hear Sondra’s voice correcting him in the background, so he corrects himself. “Maid of something.”
“Maid of honor,” I say.
“Right.”
Willie goes on to tell us the location of the wedding, an Italian restaurant/pizzeria in Paterson. He’s negotiated a private room in the back. I would venture to say that Willie is the wealthiest person ever to get married in a pizzeria, but I think it has a certain panache.
I hang up the phone and turn to Laurie. “Willie and Sondra are getting married Saturday night. We are the best man and maid of honor, respectively.”
“That’s wonderful,” she says.
For a woman who thinks that every marriage is “wonderful,” Laurie makes surprisingly little effort to have one of her own. “Jealous?” I ask, casting my bait and hook into the water.
“For sure,” she says. “I’ve had my eye on Willie for a long time.”
We stay at the house until Saturday morning, trying to make the vacation last as long as possible. Just before we leave, I take Tara for a walk on the beach, a departure tradition that I want to continue. I throw a tennis ball into the water, and she dives in after it, oblivious to the cold and the oncoming waves. It is an act of absolute joy, and I want to watch her do it for years to come.
Weddings for me are high on the list of things that I dread attending. They’re generally fancy and boring, and the fancier they are, the more boring they are. I particularly hate “black-tie affairs,” which is one of the reasons why Willie and Sondra’s wedding is so much fun. It’s not fancy, not boring, and very much a no-tie affair.
The ceremony is nondenominational and relatively brief. Willie and Sondra take their vows, kiss, and the fifty or so guests raise their beer bottles in salute. We are all led into another room, where huge bowls of pasta are on the tables, and buffet tables are set up with every kind of pizza imaginable.
As best man, I am called upon to make a toast after dinner. I’m not at my best in situations like this, but I do the best I can. I toast Willie and Sondra as two wonderful people who have turned their lives around and who deserve each other, and I speak of Willie as a cherished partner and friend.
I’m not much for dancing, so Laurie must find other partners to satisfy her apparent need for public gyration. Fortunately, Vince loses all inhibitions after his fifth beer, so he is able to more than fill in ably for me.
It is while they are dancing that Willie comes over to me and sits down. “Man, I know you don’t like to hear this, but I owe everything to you. Everything.”
“Who said I don’t like to hear it?”
Willie never likes to talk about his time on death row, and we don’t do so now. But we do talk about the other things that have happened since, the money, the foundation, new friends, and finding Sondra.
“It’s weird,” he says, “all these things happenin’, one after another.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” I say. “They’re happening because of who you are and the way you’re living your life.”
“You always say that.”
“What?”
“That you don’t believe in coincidences.”
“That’s because I don’t,” I say.
“Well, I’ve got one for you. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.” His tone is uncharacteristically serious, maybe a little worried.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“In just a few months, Sondra almost got murdered twice.”
His words hit me right between the eyes. Sondra was shot and then almost strangled. I never connected the two; they seemed like isolated events. Coincidences.
“Maybe you should move out of this neighborhood,” I say, but the words have a hollow, foolish ring to them. It may even be a sign of a bias I didn’t know I had: This is a poor, mostly black neighborhood, so attempted murders are not such earthshaking events. If it happened in wealthy suburbia, they would be forming commissions to investigate it.
“Maybe,” he says, but he doesn’t sound any more convinced than I am.
“And with all the expensive jewelry you’re buying her, it makes her more of a target,” I say, grasping at more straws.
“What are you talking about?” he asks, annoyance creeping into his voice. “Add everything up, I ain’t spent a thousand bucks. Sondra thinks I’m cheap.”
“Come on, Willie, it’s none of my business, but that locket alone is worth ten thousand. It didn’t fall off a truck, did it?”
His look is one of pure amazement. “Ten thousand? Are you kiddin’ me? For that thing around her neck?”
“What did you pay?”
“I didn’t. It was her friend’s . . . Rosalie. It was in her stuff. Sondra wears it all the time . . . it’s kind of a good-luck charm.”
“Let me get this straight,” I say. “Rosalie, the . . . girl that was working with Sondra, she had an alexandrite locket?”
Willie calls out to Sondra, sitting across the room, and asks her to come over, which she does. She’s wearing the locket, and Willie points to it. “That was Rosalie’s, right?”
Sondra reacts defensively, her hand covering the locket. “Yes . . . it was hers . . . I didn’t know anyone to give it to.” Some defiance creeps into her voice. “I think she would have wanted me to have it.”
“Can I see it?” I ask.
She takes it off and hands it to me. I’m not an expert, but I have no doubt that it’s real. “Rosalie had this in her apartment?” The apartment was ransacked after the murder; it would take a stupid criminal to leave this behind.
“No, we shared a safe-deposit box. All the girls had them. The guys that would come around . . . let’s just say we didn’t trust them that much.”
I nod, and hold up the locket. “Did she have anything else like this?” I ask.
“No, not really. Just some old clothes . . .” She points to the locket. “Is it worth anything?”
“Ten grand,” says Willie, and Sondra makes a sound somewhere between a gasp and a shriek.
“Oh, my God . . . ten thousand dollars,” she says, then points to the locket. “It opens. There’s a picture inside.”
She shows me how to open it, and there is in fact a picture of a quite attractive woman, maybe fifty years old. The woman is well dressed and seems to be wearing the same locket, or one just like it. In the background is a stately Victorian house; it does not take a genius to figure out that this is a wealthy woman. “Do you know who this is?” I ask.
Sondra shrugs. “She sort of looks like Rosalie, so I just figured it was her mother or grandmother.”
“Can I borrow this for a few days?” I ask.
“Sure. No problem.”
On the way home I relate the story to Laurie, who doesn’t see it as so remarkable. “Most of these kids don’t start out on the street, Andy. Some of them come from upscale families, and if they run away, they could take a piece of those families with them.”
“But Randy Clemens said it was all about ‘the rich one’ and that the others were ‘window dressing.’ We all just assumed it was Linda Padilla. What if it was Rosalie? What if she was the real target, and Linda Padilla and the others were killed to cover up that fact?”
“So we need to find out who Rosalie was,” she says. “Without prints, that’s going to be tough. Dental records don’t help unless you know who it might be, so you can get them and compare. They—”
I interrupt her, slapping the steering wheel in my excitement. “Maybe that’s why he cut off her hands! Laurie, this guy was out there committing these psycho murders, but he didn’t fit the profile of a psycho. There was no passion, no sexual molestation. He was cold and calculating, but cutting off the hands didn’t fit in with that. Now it does! Maybe he was cutting off the hands so we wouldn’t be able to identify Rosalie.”
Laurie asks me if I have any idea at all who Rosalie might be, and though I do, I’m still so unsure that I don’t want to voice it yet. Instead, I pick up the phone and call Kevin, Vince, and Sam Willis and give them each an assignment. I ask them to come to my house at four
P.M
. tomorrow with whatever they find out.
In the morning, I’m going to call Cindy Spodek and ask her a key question. Other than that, I’m going to just wait until four
P.M
. and try to relax. Because if I’m right, that’s when the shit is going to start hitting the fan.