“How did he get them?”
“I don’t know. I told you, that was an area of his life I made it my business to stay out of. Sometimes I would see him with a boy. He would take up with one sometimes, the way he did with the one you saw at the fights last week. He would treat him like a son, and then one day you wouldn’t see the boy anymore. And I would never ask what happened to the boy.”
“But you would know.”
“I wouldn’t even think about it. It was none of my business, so why should I think about it?”
“But you had to know, Richard.”
I hadn’t called him by his first name before. Maybe that helped the words get through his armor. Something did, because he winced as if he’d taken a hard right to the heart.
“I guess he killed them,” he said.
I didn’t say anything.
“I guess he killed a lot of people.”
“What about you?”
“I never killed anyone,” he said quickly.
“You were an accessory to Leveque’s murder. According to the law, you were as guilty as if you’d used the knife yourself.”
“I didn’t even know he was going to kill him!”
He knew, just as he had known what happened to the boys. I let it pass. “You knew he was going to commit assault and robbery,” I said. “That made you a participant in felony, and that’s enough to make you fully culpable if the felony results in a death. You’d be guilty of murder if Leveque had died of a heart attack. As far as the law is concerned, you’re guilty.”
He took a couple of deep breaths. Dully he said, “All right, I know that. You could say the same thing about the girl he went back and killed, if he killed her. I suppose I was guilty of rape. She didn’t resist, but I didn’t exactly have her consent.” He looked at me. “I can’t defend what I did. I can’t justify it. I’m not going to try to say that he hypnotized me, although it was like that, it really was, the way the two of them set me up and . . . and just got me to do what they wanted.”
“How did they do that, Richard?”
“They just—”
“How did they get you to kill your wife?”
“Oh, God,” he said, and put his face in his hands.
MAYBE they had planned it from the beginning. Maybe it had been part of a secret agenda all along.
“You’d better take a shower,” Olga would say. “It’s time for you to go home to your little wife.” Your little wife, your darling wife, your charming wife—always said with a hint of irony, a touch of mockery. You have spent an hour in the world of the brave, the bold, the reckless, the daring, she was telling him, and now you may return to the black-and-white humdrum world and the Barbie doll who shares it with you.
“A shame she has all the money,” Stettner said early on. “You give all your power away when your woman has more money than you do.”
At first he’d been afraid that Stettner would want Amanda sexually. He had allowed Thurman to share Olga, and would want a quid pro quo. Thurman hadn’t liked the idea. He wanted to keep the two lives separate, and was relieved when the Stettners did not seem to want Amanda included in their relationship. The first meeting of all four had not been a success, and, on the two subsequent occasions when both couples had drinks and dinner together, the conversation was stilted.
It was Stettner who first suggested he increase his insurance coverage. “You have a child coming, you want to protect that child. And you should have the mother covered as well. If anything happened to her you’d have a nurse, you’d have a governess, you’d have expenses for years.” And then, when the policies were in force: “You know, Richard, you’re a man with a rich wife. If she died you’d be a rich man. There’s an interesting distinction, don’t you think?”
The idea grew gradually, little by little.
“I don’t know how to explain this,” he said. “It wasn’t real. We would joke about it, we would think up impossibly farfetched ways to do it. ‘It’s a shame microwave ovens are so small,’ he said. ‘We could stuff Amanda in with an apple in her mouth and cook her from the inside out.’ It’s sickening to think of now, but then it was funny because there was no reality to it, it was a harmless joke. And, because we went on joking about it, it began to have a kind of reality.
“ ‘We’ll do it next Thursday,’ Bergen would say, and we’d plan some ridiculous black-comedy scenario, and that would be the end of it. And then when Thursday came Olga would say, ‘Oh, we forgot, today was the day we were supposed to kill little Amanda.’ It was a joke, a running gag.
“When I was with Amanda, when they weren’t around, I was a normal happily married man. That sounds impossible, doesn’t it? But it was true. I guess I must have had this idea that someday Bergen and Olga would just disappear. I don’t know how I expected this to happen, whether they would get caught for some of the things they had done or whether they would just drop me or move out of the country or, I don’t know. Maybe I expected them to die. And then the whole dark side of life that I was leading with them would vanish and Amanda and I would live happily ever after.
“One time, though, I was lying in bed and she was asleep next to me and I started having images of different ways of killing her. I didn’t want to have those thoughts but I couldn’t get them out of my head. Smothering her with a pillow, stabbing her, all sorts of murderous images. I had to go into the other room and have a couple of drinks. I wasn’t afraid I would do anything, I was just upset by the thoughts.
“Right around the first of November I mentioned that our downstairs neighbors would be spending the next six months in Florida. ‘Good,’ Bergen said. ‘That’s where we’ll kill Amanda. It’s a natural site for a burglary, with the owners in Florida. And it’s convenient, she won’t have to travel far, and it’s better than doing it in your apartment because you wouldn’t want police parading in and out of your place. They make a mess, sometimes they even steal things.’
“I thought it was a joke. ‘Oh, you’re going to a party? When you come home we’ll be waiting in the Jews’ apartment downstairs. You’ll walk right in on a burglary in progress. I hope I can still remember how to break in. I’m sure it’s like swimming, once you learn it you never forget it.’
“The night of the party I didn’t know if it was a joke or not. This is hard to explain. I knew but I didn’t know. The two sides of my life were so far apart it’s as if I didn’t really believe something on one side could touch something on the other. It’s like I knew they would be waiting there for us but I couldn’t really believe it.
“When we left the party I wanted to walk home because I wanted to delay getting there for fear that they’d be there, that it would be real this time. And on the way home she started talking about her brother, how she was worried about his health, and I made a nasty crack. So we had an argument, and I thought, all right, bitch, in an hour you’ll be history. And the thought was exciting.
“Walking up the stairs I saw the door to the Gottschalks’ apartment was closed and I felt relieved, and then I saw that the doorframe was splintered and there were jimmy marks around the lock so I knew they were there. But I thought if we were quiet we could get past the closed door and upstairs to our own apartment and we’d be safe. Of course we could have turned around and gone back down the stairs, but I didn’t even think of that at the time.
“Then we got to the top of the flight of stairs and the door opened and they were waiting for us. Olga had on a leather outfit she wears sometimes and Bergen was wearing a long leather coat. They looked as though they’d stepped out of a comic book. Amanda didn’t recognize them at first. She was just staring at them, not knowing what to make of it, and before she could say anything Bergen said, ‘You’re dead, bitch,’ and punched her in the face. He was wearing thin leather driving gloves. He made a fist and hit her full force in the jaw.
“Bergen grabbed her and dragged her inside with his hand clamped over her mouth. Olga got Amanda’s hands behind her back and handcuff
ed her. They taped her mouth and Olga tripped her and kicked her in the face when she fell.
“They stripped her and dragged her into the bedroom and threw her on the bed. Bergen raped her and turned her over and raped her again. Olga hit her in the face with a crowbar and I think that may have knocked her out. I don’t think she was conscious for most of it.
“I hope not.
“They told me I had to have sex with her. And this is the worst part. I thought I was going to be sick to my stomach, I thought I was going to puke, but get this, I was excited. I was hard. I didn’t want to have sex, I didn’t want to, but my cock wanted to. God, it makes me sick to think about it. I couldn’t finish. I was on top of her and I couldn’t finish and I just wanted to come so I could stop but I couldn’t.
“Then I was standing over her and Bergen had her panty hose wrapped around her neck and he made me take an end in each hand. He told me I had to do it and I just stood there. Olga was on her knees blowing me and Bergen’s gloved hands were holding my hands, and I was holding the ends of the panty hose, I couldn’t let go because of his grip. And he pulled his hands apart, and that pulled my hands apart, and her eyes were staring up at me, staring, you know. And Olga was doing what she was doing, you know, and Bergen was holding me very tight, and there was the smell of the blood and the leather and the sex.
“And I had an orgasm.
“And Amanda was dead.”
Chapter 16
“The rest was pretty much the way we figured,” I told Durkin. “They tied him up and knocked him around a little to make it look good, set the stage so it fit the profile of a bungled burglary. They walked out and went home, and he called it in an hour or so later, whenever it was. He had his story all ready. He’d had days to work it out, all the while he was telling himself it was a joke.”
“And now he wants to hire you.”
“He did hire me,” I said. “Last night, before we parted company.”
“What for?”
“He’s afraid of the Stettners. Afraid they’ll kill him.”
“Why would they do that?”
“To cover their asses. His conscience has been bothering him.”
“I should fucking hope so.”
“Well, according to him, it has. He keeps having the thought that she really loved him and she was the only person who ever did or ever will.”
“Only person damn fool enough.”
“And he wants to believe that she died without realizing he was a part of her murder. That she was unconscious when he had sex with her, that she was either unconscious or already dead when Stettner made him strangle her.”
“He wants the answer to that one, he doesn’t need a detective, he needs a medium.”
It was midmorning, Thursday. I had gone to Midtown North after breakfast and waited for Joe to show, and we were at his desk now. He had a cigarette going. He must have quit smoking a dozen times that I knew about. He couldn’t seem to stay off it.
I said, “He thinks his conscience is showing. And he thinks Stettner doesn’t need him anymore.”
“How did Stettner need him in the first place, Matt? It sounds to me like he’s making Stettner the heavy when he was the one using Stettner instead of the other way around. Way I figure it he got a mil and a half out of the deal, and what did Stettner get? A quick piece of ass with a woman who’s half-dead?”
“So far,” I said, “Stettner got four hundred thousand dollars.”
“I must have missed that part.”
“I was just getting to it. After it was all over, after she was buried and the press coverage had died down, Stettner had a talk with him. He said their little joint venture had been a great success, but of course if it was indeed a joint venture it was only fair that the proceeds be shared jointly.”
“In other words, come up with half the dough.”
“That’s the idea. Not the money he inherited from his wife, Stettner was willing to overlook that, but certainly the insurance proceeds. As soon as the insurance company paid up, he wanted half. It was a million with the double indemnity, since murder is accidental death—”
“Which I never understood.”
“Neither did I, but I guess it’s an accident from the point of view of the victim. Anyway, it came to a million tax-free, and Stettner wanted half of it. The insurance company paid up late last month, which seems pretty quick in a case like this.”
“They had a guy over here,” he said. “Wanted to know if Thurman was a suspect. Officially he wasn’t, which is what I had to tell him. I was convinced he did it, I told you that—”
“Yes.”
“—but the only motive we had was the money, and we couldn’t establish any need for the money, or anybody else he was mixed up with, or any reason to kill her.” He frowned. “What you’ve been telling me is he really didn’t have a reason.”
“Not the way he tells it. But the insurance company paid, and Stettner wanted his, and the way they worked it was that Thurman would turn over cash to Stettner in increments of a hundred thousand dollars that would ostensibly be used to purchase foreign currencies. The money would just go in Stettner’s pocket, but Thurman would get memos of nonexistent transactions and they’d be structured in such a way that he would ultimately be able to write off most of it as losses for tax purposes. I think that may be my favorite part, Joe. Split the proceeds with your partner in crime and write it off on your taxes.”
“It’s not bad. He’s made four of these payments?”
“At one-week intervals. The final payment’s due tonight. He’ll be meeting Stettner in Maspeth, he’s producing a telecast at a boxing arena out there. He’ll turn over a briefcase with a hundred grand in it and that’ll be that.”
“And then he thinks Stettner’ll kill him. Because he’ll have the money and he won’t need Thurman anymore, and Thurman’s just a loose end and is starting to develop a conscience, so why not close the account?”
“Right.”
“And he wants you to protect him,” he said. “Did he happen to say how?”
“We left it open. I’m meeting him this afternoon to figure all that out.”
“And then you go out to whatchacallit, Maspeth?”
“Probably.”
He stubbed out his cigarette. “Why you?”
“He knows me.”
“He knows you? How does he know you?”
“We met in a bar.”
“So you said, last night in that shithole your friend Ballou owns. Incidentally, I don’t know what the hell you’re doing keeping company with a guy like that.”
“He’s a friend of mine.”
“One of these days he’s gonna step on his cock and you don’t want to be there when it happens. He’s a good dancer, he’s slippery as a fucking eel, but one of these days the Feds’ll put a RICO case together and he’s got free room and board in Atlanta.”
“ ‘Mother of mercy, is this the end of RICO?’ ”
“Huh?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s not important. We met at Grogan’s last night because we needed a quiet place to talk. The reason he called me is we ran into each other the night before in another bar, a place in his neighborhood.”
“You ran into him because you’re on his case. Did he know that?”
“No. He thought I was on Stettner’s case.”
“Why would you be on Stettner’s case?”
I hadn’t told him anything about the tape of Happy’s murder, or about the killing of Arnold Leveque. All of that seemed extraneous. The case in Joe’s open file was the murder of Amanda Thurman, and that was the case I’d been hired for and the one that looked to be breaking.
“It was a way to hook him,” I said. “I’d managed to connect him with Stettner, and that turned out to be the shoe in the door. If he can hang it all on Bergen and Olga, maybe he can get off the hook himself.”
“You think you can get him to come in, Matt?”
“That’s what I’m hoping.
That’s what I’ll be working on when I see him this afternoon.”
“I want you wearing a wire when you see him.”
“Fine.”
“ ‘Fine.’ I wish to God you’d been wearing a wire when you saw him last night. You can get lucky, a guy feels like talking, he spills his guts and feels better. Then he gets up the next morning and wonders what got into him, and for the rest of his life he never gets the urge to open up again. Why the hell didn’t you come in and get a wire before you saw him?”
“Come on,” I said. “He called out of the blue at ten and wanted to meet me right away. Were you even here last night?”
“There’s other people could have fitted you with a wire.”
“Sure, and it only would have taken two hours and ten phone calls to clear it, and I had no realistic reason to think he was going to open up like that in the first place.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“I think I can get him to come in,” I said. “I think that’s what he wants to do.”
“That’d be nice,” he said. “But if not at least he’ll talk to you, and you’ll be wearing a wire. You’re meeting him at four? I wish it was earlier.”
“He’s got appointments until then.”
“And business is business, right? I’ll see you here at three.” He stood up. “Meantime I got appointments myself.”
I walked across town to Elaine’s, stopping en route for flowers and a bag of Jaffa oranges. She put the flowers in water and the oranges in a large blue glass bowl and told me she was feeling a lot better. “Weak,” she said, “but definitely on the mend. What about you? Are you all right?”