The fat man’s face went sheet-white. "Oh,
Jesus, you wouldn’t do that."
"Yeah, I would. Both parts."
He came up on tippy-toes, as if he didn’t want to
make a noise.
"Could we—could we talk about this someplace
else." His eyes darted nervously around the room, from drunk to
drunk, as if each one was a potential betrayer.
"Sure, Max. We can talk about it with the
district attorney."
"I can’t fucking do that! Those cocksuckers
would kill me." He snatched up a bar towel and scrubbed at the
sweat that had popped up on his forehead. "You don’t
understand what Stiehl’s like. He hates fags. I mean, he fucking
hates ’em. We’re not even human to him."
"Then your best bet is to put him behind bars."
The guy’s face started to tremble—very close to
tears.
"Please, Stoner. It don’t work that way. He’s
connected, man. Jesus, they covered this thing up, didn’t they?"
I stared at him. "You’re saying Segal and
Taylor knew that Stiehl and Sabato were the two men who’d met with
Mason Greenleaf in the bar."
"Of course they did. They practically told me
what to say and how to say it."
I wasn’t sure I believed him—at least, I didn’t
want to. Because if Segal and Taylor had known, then there was a good
chance that Jack McCain had known, too—and sat for it.
"What really happened that night?"
He shook his head.
I hooked my hand through the shoulder strap of his
apron and jerked his face close to mine. "What happened?"
"It was sort of like what you heard," he
said, his face trembling with fear. "I mean, the two of them met
with him—the old one and Stiehl. Except it was Stiehl who got all
worked up and started shouting."
"What happened after that?"
"The guy left. Like I said."
"Drunk?"
"I don’t know. Yeah, a little. I mean, he
wasn’t falling down."
"And then?"
He balked, and I practically jerked him over the bar.
One of the waiters was watching us. He got alarmed and shouted,
"Should I call the cops, Max?"
"Yeah," I said to him. "Call the
cops."
"No!" Carlson shouted. "No, it’s all
right, Sam."
I let go of his apron and he straightened up, smiling
at the waiter and the rest of the customers in the bar. "It’s
all right, everybody. It’s fine. Just a little misunderstanding
about some money."
The waiter snorted with disgust and went back to
polishing one of the tables.
Swallowing hard, Max turned back to me. "Stiehl
followed him out the door. Out into the lot. I don’t know what
happened outside. He come back in a few minutes later. The two of
them had another round, then left."
"What about Greenleaf? Did he come back in?"
Carlson shook his head. "I never saw him again."
30
THE rain was falling again, thick and gray, as I
walked up the Fifth Street hill, following Mason Greenleaf ’s track
to the Washington Hotel. He’d had to drag himself up that damn
hill, after Stiehl was finished. It had made him look drunk, the
beating. Made him weave like a featherweight, according to the clerk.
The rain made a drumming sound on the hotel arcade
that echoed down the hallway to the front desk. The old man, Pat, was
sitting behind the caged-in counter, thumbing through a tattered TV
Guide.
"You remember me?" I said to him.
He nodded. "He ain’t here right now," he
said, referring to the stout desk clerk. "Run out to get him a
snack of dinner."
"You’ll do, Pat."
He laughed. "What did you have in mind?"
I reached into my wallet and pulled out four
twenties, laying them down one by one on the counter in front of him
like I was dealing solitaire. The old man licked his lips.
"The guy that checked in and killed himself—what
did he look like?"
"Drunk."
"Just drunk?"
"Beat up some."
"How beat up?"
"Had him a red forehead, a shiner, and a swollen
jaw. You couldn’t see it real good, till he turned into the light.
But I seen it. He could hardly talk ’cause of it. Made him sound
stupid."
"What did he say to you when he came in?"
The old man shrugged. "Wanted a room, up top.
Said he was tired."
"Did he say anything about the beating?"
Pat shook his head. "Just that he was tired and
didn’t know if he could sleep. Asked me could I get him some booze
to help him sleep. I told him in a place like this, you can get just
about anything for the right price."
"You got him the bottle?"
He nodded. "Brought it up to his room."
"When was this?"
"Real late. Past two. I knocked on the door and
he says, 'Come in.' I come in. He was lying on the bed, staring out
the window. There was a tin of pills on the nightstand. I says, 'I
wouldn’t be taking no pills, if ’n you plan to be drinking. But
he says not to worry. He’ll be all right."
I didn’t believe him—about the last part, the
warning. But the rest of it sounded reasonable, if that was the word.
"Did you tell this to the cops?"
"Didn’t talk to ’em. Lester did."
"He’s the clerk?"
Pat nodded. "I tried to talk to them, but they
wasn’t much interested in me. Who’s gonna listen to an old drunk
like me?"
It was a point a defense attorney might make, too. I
picked up the twenties and handed them to him. He folded the money up
and stuck it in the pocket of his checked shirt.
I called Mulhane’s office from a pay phone on
Fifth. It was almost seven by then, and the oilice was closed. I got
his home phone from information and dialed it. A woman answered. I
told her who I was, and she called out: "Doctor, it’s for you.
One Harold Stoner."
"Hey, Stoner," Mulhane said, coming on a
different line. I heard his wife hang up with a click. "I’ve
been hoping you would call. In fact, I left a couple of messages on
your machine. We’ve got to talk."
"About the autopsy report?"
"Yeah. Someone did a real slipshod job. I mean,
it’s almost criminal."
That was the correct word.
"If you got a few
minutes, why don’t you stop over, and I’ll show you what I mean."
***
Mulhane’s house was on Interview in the gaslight
section of Clifton—a respectable red brick colonial in a
neighborhood of proper red brick colonials. The rain was still
falling as I pulled up out front. I parked in his driveway and dashed
under a dripping elm tree, across the lawn to the stoop. He was
waiting at the door with the autopsy report in his hand and a pair of
reading glasses propped, like sunglasses, above his forehead.
"Come in out of the rain," he said
cheerily.
Behind him, a pretty brunette woman smiled a quick
hello, as she rounded a newel post and headed up to the second floor.
"That was my wife," Mulhane said, smiling
after her. "Tactfully leaving us alone, I think."
I shook a little rain from my coat sleeve and stepped
into the hall. Immediately on the left, a portal opened on a large
study lined with bookshelves. There was a crowded desk on the far
wall, a sunken conversation pit in the center of the room, and a baby
grand piano near the door. Mulhane waved me through, then closed a
pair of sliding doors behind us. He walked me over to the
conversation pit. Sitting down on the couch, he reached out and
directed a standing spot so that its beam was focused brightly on the
pages of the report.
"Forensic medicine is an art unto itself,"
he said, paging through it until he found a color frontal photograph
of Mason Greenleaf ’s corpse stretched out on a steel examination
table.
As I sat down beside him, he held the picture up in
the beam of light.
"If you take a look at this, you’ll see Mason
definitely died of asphyxia, probably due to the inhalation of
vomitus—like the coroner’s report says. The blue lips, the
hemorrhaging of the eyes, those are classic indications."
Even in a photograph Mason Greenleaf ’s dead body
was a gruesome sight.
"It’s what the coroner didn’t note that
troubles me," Mulhane said.
Flipping down his reading glasses, he plucked a
magnifying glass from an end table and held it over Mason Greenleaf
swollen face. "Take a look at the area around the left side of
Mason’s head. You see that large purplish contusion and swelling
beginning at the corner of his mouth, extending up past the eye to
the forehead?"
"Yeah."
"That’s a goddamn blunt instrument blow, if
I’ve ever seen one. And a helluva shot, too. I mean, they picked
him up twelve hours after he died—you can see the lividity at the
back of his arms. But the left half of his face is still puffed up
and red. Which means there was considerable hemorrhaging in the soft
tissue, maybe even a broken cheekbone. All this crap about him
falling down or running into something is crap. I mean, it looks like
somebody hit him with a baseball bat. That’s the kind of force
we’re talking about."
He dropped the magnifying glass on the couch and
leaned back against the cushions. "Somebody worked him over. I
don’t think there’s any other reasonable conclusion."
"Are you willing to testify to that?"
Mulhane turned his head slowly toward me, peering
over the tops of his reading glasses. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, I believe you. I believe Mason was
worked over. I think I know who did it, too."
"Who?" Mulhane said breathlessly.
"A cop named Art Stiehl."
His face flushed with anger. "A cop did this?"
"That’s what it looks like."
"Why? Why the hell would he beat up Mason? I
mean, Mason was harmless, for chrissake. Mason never hurt anyone."
"I don’t know why exactly. I just know this
particular cop doesn’t like gays."
"Son of a bitch," Mulhane said. "We’ve
got to do something about this. We have to talk to the district
attorney. I mean, I have friends—"
"We’ve got to make a case first. This man is
well protected. In fact, certain cops may already be covering up for
him."
Mulhane threw a hand to his head, passing it heavily
through his hair as if he were trying to hold his top on. "Jesus,
I’ve read things like this. Seen them on TV. Are you actually
telling me that the cops are covering up a case of brutality?"
"It’s possible. Maybe probable. Is there any
way to tell how much bleeding would have resulted from Greenleaf’s
wounds?"
"Not really. There are some lacerations around
the nostril, mouth, and the corner of the eye. But it looks like most
of the bleeding was internal. Why?"
"I found some bloodstains the cops missed in the
backseat of Mason’s car. There wasn’t a great deal of it, but
enough to be sampled."
"They could possibly result from this kind of
wound."
" 'Possibly' won’t do it. This is important,
doc. Are these photographs proof positive that Mason was deliberately
mugged or beaten up?"
He sighed. "Proof, no. I mean, if they were
proof positive, even the county coroner couldn’t have missed the
finding. What we got is a strong likelihood. And I will testify to
that—and get colleagues to testify to it."
But likelihoods, even strong ones, weren’t going to
get a grand jury to indict a respected cop. Not in this town.
"What we need is a witness who will testify to
the beating," I said, just saying it outright.
"But if the cops are covering up . . ."
"Maybe they’re not all covering up." I
glanced around the room.
"Is there a phone in here?"
"On the desk."
I went over to the desk and dialed the CPD and asked
to be transferred to Vice. "Ron Sabato," I said when a duty
sergeant picked up.
There was a momentary pause, and then Sabato came on
the line.
"This is Sergeant Sabato."
"Ron, this is Harry Stoner."
"Yeah, Harry," he said in a friendly voice.
"Did you get the autopsy report?"
"Picked it up last night."
"So what more can I do for you?"
"I’d like to buy you a drink, Ron. You’re a
Scotch man, aren’t you?"
He laughed. "How the hell did you know that?"
"The bartender at Stacie’s told me. You know,
you put away a lot of Scotch that night when Mason Greenleaf killed
himself." There was a dead silence on the other end.
"I don’t know what you’re talking about,"
he said, sounding like a completely different man.
"Sure you do, Ron. You and Art. I’ll be in
Arnold’s in about half an hour, you want to talk it over. You don’t
show up, I’m going to the DA and the FBI."