bar. There were about thirty people standing around it, more than half of them female. I smiled at a few, and made my way through the restaurant, into the glass-enclosed smoking area.
The smoking area attracted all the cigar smokers, and the air was stale with that smell. Four men were seated at the bar, which was on the right, and two of the eight tables were occupied. I sat at the bar, and the bartender came over to me.
“What can I get you?”
“Scotch on the rocks,” I said, “Johnnie Black.” I decided to stray from my usual. My whole life had turned upside down, so I thought perhaps I could affect some changes myself.
He grabbed the bottle, poured my drink, and handed it to me. It was a large glass, about twice the size of the average rocks glass. The last time I was there, I had four drinks and had problems speaking my name.
I placed a twenty on the bar, and he gave me my change, three bucks. I know I said the prices were reasonable, but I meant the steaks. Any place in the city of any status charged double figures for a drink during happy hour.
I took a sip, and it burned. I hadn’t drunk Johnnie Walker in a while. I pulled out my pack of cigarettes, which was near empty, and the bartender was quick with the lighter. I inhaled this cigarette deeply, to get the smell of cigars out of my nose. I hated cigars, and I hated the fact that it was cool to smoke them.
I waited about fifteen minutes for my uncle to show up. He walked in the room, dressed in his usual brown suit and tan raincoat. He smiled when he saw me at the bar.
“Just where I expected to find you,” he said, taking a seat next to me.
I shook his hand. “Can I get you something?” I asked.
“Citron on the rocks.”
I didn’t even have to tell the bartender. He poured the drink, and placed it in front of Uncle Paulie. I handed him another twenty, and he brought back the same change. What a guy.
“How are things?” I asked Paulie.
“Busy, as usual. Working on a couple of big things.”
I knew not to ask him about it.
“How are your parents?” he asked. Uncle Paulie was my mother’s other brother, the one who did things right. He didn’t talk to the drunken Uncle Ralph, and from my experience, he never mentioned his younger brother either.
“I saw them today. They’re doing well.”
“Your sister’s still living there, right?”
I nodded.
“Your father must be banging his head against the wall.” Uncle Paulie took out a pack of cigarettes, Marlboro’s, and lit one. I was happy he had smokes on him.
“He’s dealing with it.”
“I know what you mean.”
“It’s tough on all of them.”
“It has to be. Hopefully they get back on their feet and make everything easier for everybody.”
“Yeah.”
I finished my drink and ordered another. Before I had a chance to pay, Uncle Paulie beat me to it.
“Thanks,” I said.
“What, you think I’m gonna let some young blood like you pay for all the drinks?”
I took a sip of the drink, and looked around the bar. A couple of women walked in, about thirty years old, with blonde hair and dressed up in their Donna Karen outfits.
“Nice specimens,” Uncle Paulie said. He had never married, and I think that was why we got along so well. We both were incapable of such a thing. I wished I could see him more, but we both were so busy, it just didn’t happen.
“Why don’t we get a table, so we can talk?”
“Good idea,” I said. I turned to the bartender. “We’d like a table.”
“Pick any one you want.”
We walked to the far left corner, and sat down. There were two pillars around the table, so we had a good deal of privacy. I scanned the names on the cigar humidors on the wall and found Don Mattingly’s name. I wondered how often he frequented the place since his retirement. They probably just kept his name up there for stature.
“So,” Uncle Paulie said, “what’s going on?”
“I’m in a mess. A big mess.”
“I figured that.”
“You know what’s going on?” I asked.
“Not really, but I have heard whispers.”
I told him the story about how I was busted, and how they took me down to the station and tried to get information from me. He listened to everything I said without saying anything, just nodding and shaking his head when it was appropriate. When I was done, he looked me straight in the eyes.
“Listen, you are my nephew, my family, so don’t be offended by what I am about to ask you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Are you guilty?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Okay. I just needed to hear you say that. Now, what is it you want me to help you with?” Uncle Paulie asked.
“What do you know about Harold Chapman, from Techdata?”
“Well, after I heard you were on the case, I did a little investigating into him. The FBI has been looking at him for quite some time. They originally suspected him of being involved in some junk bond schemes, but they never could pin anything on him.”
“Doesn’t surprise me that he’d be involved in such a thing.”
“I’m sure he was, but they never got any hard evidence on him.”
“Now, this Mullins guy, he was the one that was going to run for Senate, right?”
“That’s the one.”
“Okay, then this gets interesting.”
For some reason, I hated the word ‘interesting’ then. Any time something got interesting, it meant trouble for me.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Well, the FBI just recently became interested in Harold Chapman again. Actually, they were investigating Techdata itself, but they suspected Chapman above all others.”
“For what?”
“Illegal campaign contributions.” He paused. “For U.S. Senators.”
It took a moment to set in. “What?”
“You heard me right.”
“That isn’t a coincidence.”
“I would think not. This fit in at all with what you were investigating?”
“Well, I don’t know about that. But it sure seems to.”
“I thought it would. Being that his partner was planning to run.
“I see that, but I’m not sure it really applies.” I took a sip of my drink. “Okay, so let’s assume that Chapman is illegally giving money to campaigns. He gives money to Senators so they look the other way for certain things. As much as I hate to admit it, that’s pretty much business as usual.”
“It is.”
“Okay. So now, Mullins decides to run for Senate. What would cause Chapman to want him killed, if we are going to stretch it to that point?”
Uncle Paulie smiled. “You’re overlooking one major thing.”
“What’s that?”
“When someone runs for public office, especially on a national level, what’s the first thing the opposition does?”
I didn’t get it, so I shrugged.
Uncle Paulie tapped his temple. “Think. They dig up dirt. They go into the person’s past and go over every detail until they find something that they can use. If Mullins was going to announce his candidacy, then his opposition would take a close look at Techdata, and if they did that, they might have found what Chapman did.”
“But wouldn’t that put them at risk, especially if Chapman had donated to their campaigns, their party’s even?”
“It doesn’t work that way. All they would have to do is bring that up, and Chapman would be exposed. He wasn’t thinking about what the dirt diggers were going to do, he was worried about getting caught.”
“So you think he offed Mullins for wanting to run for Senate?”
“He might have.”
“It just doesn’t sit with me well. Chapman seems like the kind of guy who would have those bases covered,” I said.
“Maybe he did, and maybe there’s
something that we don’t know about yet that pulls this all together.”
I tried to think about what that was. While I did that, I looked up at the pictures on the wall of cows. Happy pictures of cows playing golf, cows having a barbecue, and stuff like that. At that moment, they seemed ridiculous to me. What the hell would cows be doing having barbecue? Cooking their relatives?
I laughed.
“What?” Uncle Paulie asked.
“Nothing. I think I am getting delirious.”
“It happens.”
The waiter came over and we ordered. Uncle Paulie got the Porterhouse and I got the Prime Rib. We ordered garlic mashed potatoes and sautéed mushrooms on the side, and a dozen raw oysters for an appetizer, if you really care. The waiter walked away, and Uncle Paulie looked at me again.
“You know, they went after you to shut down the investigation. They are going to try to pin this on the wife, or they might just let it rest as a suicide.”
“I don’t think they can do that. We uncovered a few things that prove that to be wrong.”
He shook his head. “They could squash that in a second. The real question is, do you think the woman is capable of doing such a thing?”
“You think she was in on it with Chapman?” I asked.
“Very possible. What do you know about her situation?”
I told Uncle Paulie about the terms of the will, where Sondra was at the time of the killing, and the deal with the insurance.
“The insurance thing could just be something to throw you off. After all, what could she get from the insurance company? Five million, maybe? That’s nothing compared to what she’ll get from the buyout, which I am sure will happen. That malarkey about waiting to see what her son wants was just to throw you off too.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Well, do you think she is capable?”
“Anything’s possible,” I said, for lack of anything better to say. I