An Eye For Justice Page 20

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking,’ he replied. ‘I’ll get on it.’

  As Christoff departed I got ready to take issue with Pascal about what I thought was a pointless hair-brained scheme, and she adopted the resigned expression she put on when she knew exactly what I was going to say. But then I thought, what the hell, just let them get on with it. I had a speech to make in the morning and I didn’t have time to argue with them. Pascal’s face was a picture of surprise when I got up and left without saying a word.

  * * * *

  Pascal sat across the table from Daly sipping a Coors beer and thinking about Calver’s capitulation earlier in the evening. At the end of the day she guessed he had far too much on his plate to worry about what she and Christoff were getting up to. And he’d probably calculated, rightly, that their chances of surreptitiously gaining entry to the K tower penthouse and having a good look around were, lets say, pretty slim.

  They were sat back in Daly’s favourite sports bar in Chinatown, and tonight it was heaving with jocks and rednecks. She wondered whether Daly suggested the place just to wind her up, or to see whether she would chicken out and suggest somewhere else. If that was the case, he would have a long wait. She liked the place.

  Daly was sipping a Bud and telling her selective information about the findings from the O’Leary enquiry, even though he wasn’t officially involved.

  ‘Rope was generic and untraceable; you can get it in any five and dime hardware store. They reckon he’d been dead at least three hours before we got there,’ Daly said.

  ‘That poor little girl, waiting in there for hours whilst her Daddy was swinging in the garage,’ Pascal said.

  ‘Yeah. What kind of a father does that?’ Daly said, looking directly at Pascal with a speculative look in his eye.

  She looked away and sipped her drink

  ‘Look, why don’t you just take me through it again,’ he said, giving her the third degree with his eyes. ‘The guys in the local precinct are buying your story and it’ll go down as a slam dunk suicide, but I’m not buying it. You’re not telling me everything. Maybe it was suicide, but what d’you know that you’re not telling me? You said when you called, O’Leary had a reason for killing himself. So what was it?’

  Pascal watched him over her bottle of Coors. He wasn’t stupid. Okay, he presented a certain persona, partly to disguise what he was thinking, partly to catch people off guard, but underneath he was a careful and thoughtful detective. And he seemed to have that one essential ingredient you needed to do the job well, dogged determination. Thinking strategically, if she was going to try and enlist his help with Fossey, she was going to have to come clean about quite a lot of stuff she didn’t want to tell him about. But then if she didn’t let him in, at least some of the way, she could kiss goodbye to getting any help from him. She was going to have to walk a tightrope between truth and lies, something to be fair, she was pretty used to.

  She took another sip of Coors. ‘I got access, via an unknown third party, to a copy of O’Leary’s laptop,’ she said, tentatively, watching Daly’s eyes widen imperceptibly as he took in the information. ‘I’m guessing he destroyed the original just before he died. But on the copy, we discovered evidence that he had been systematically abusing Cara.’

  ‘And you used that to put the squeeze on him, instead of coming to us and getting the guy arrested,’ Daly said, and for the first time she sensed contempt in his voice. ‘He’d probably still be alive and in custody if you’d come to us.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ she said before she could stop herself. ‘You would never have taken that guy alive, believe me. He was a stoner pedophile, through and through, a believer - the very worst. He had genuinely convinced himself that his 8 year old daughter loved him in a sexual way - seriously. That was more important than all the other stuff. He was never going to see her again, so there was only one way out.’

  Daly raised his hand and ordered another round of bottles. His eyes still looked hard and cold. After a while he said, ‘I’m starting to get a handle on you, Pascal. It’s too late to do anything about O’Leary now, so you didn’t need to tell me about the laptop and the abuse. So, obviously, and forgive the cynicism, you want something.’

  ‘You believe what you want, Daly. You don’t know me. You don—’

  ’I know you killed your stepfather, and that crooked lawyer, Calver, defended you. Knocked it down to second degree, manslaughter. Few years in the slammer and your back on the street working for him. Not bad going, and I hear you’re ex- British intelligence. I’m guessing you’d sell your own grandmother if the price was right.’

  ‘Fuck you, Daly. You know, I thought you were a good cop, a cop that always wanted to find out what really happened. Not just so you could put someone - anyone - away. But I guess I was wrong, huh? But forget all the bullshit for a minute. What do they tell every law enforcement officer on the planet when they’re training them up? That’s right: “Follow the evidence”. Ring a bell, Daly? So why don’t you start doing that, huh? Whether you like me or not.’

  For moment they sat glaring at each other, then Daly started to smile, just at the edges of his mouth, and then he said, ‘fuck you too, Pascal,’ and clinked his bottle against hers. But behind the smile he was still watching her carefully, then he said, ‘you know O’Leary’s cellphone is missing? Its not at the house and its off the grid?’

  That stopped Pascal in her tracks. She watched him to see if he was blowing smoke, but he looked solid. She hadn’t seen a phone in the garage or the house although she hadn’t really been looking. ‘What about the stuff that was burning in the garden?’

  ‘Nope,’ Daly said, still watching her, eyes accusatory.

  ‘I didn’t find it, if that’s what you’re thinking - really,’ she said, holding his gaze, until he nodded.

  ‘But he did give you something before he died, didn’t he?’

  Yet again, he surprised her with his mental quickness, almost like there was a chess player hiding behind that hokey facade. Time to reveal her hand, if she wanted to get anything out of the clever detective. ‘Yes. Look, I mentioned following the evidence just now, and believe me I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, but tell me again. What stops you believing in the possibility that Calver might have been framed for Helena Palmer’s murder?’

  ‘The CCTV,’ he replied instantly. ‘And your guy couldn’t shake the prosecutions expert. From 1 a m in the morning when Palmer returned to her room, until 9.40 a m when they went in with a master key, the only person. I repeat, the only person, who enters and leaves that room is Jonas Calver. And the CCTV proving that, is absolutely solid and unassailable.’

  ‘O’Leary gave me a name,’ she said.

  ‘When you put the squeeze on him? What name?’

  She ignored the dig. ‘He gave us a guy called John Fossey. He’s kind of head honcho at a CCTV security outfit called Protecta, based out in Cincinnati. K Corp hold around 19% of their stock. John Fossey was booked in at the Marriott five minutes walk from the murder scene, night of the killing. And check this out,’ she said, handing him her smart phone with the story in the Cincinnati Enquirer about the collapse of Fossey’s trial 9 years earlier.

  As Daly read the story Pascal leant back on her stool, stretched, took a drag on her bottle and looked around the heaving bar. There were even some girls there tonight, making the place feel a little less like a male locker room. Daly leaned back as well and took a swig. She waited.

  ‘You want me to pull Fossey’s string, right, and check him out?’ Daly said, not looking at her.

  ‘You got it, detective,’ she said.

  * * * *

  People v Calver - Manhattan Supreme Court

  Day 6

  I was back at the defense table still trying to come up with an opening speech. My defense: I didn’t do it, and they spiked the CCTV. Oh, but I can’t prove it. How d’you say that to a jury and make it snappy? I didn’t know.

  I glanced up as judge G
onzalez breezed in and settled herself on the bench and nodded to the bailiff to get the jury in. My time was up but I still didn’t know what I was going to say. Judge Gonzalez welcomed the jurors back and reminded them of some of the rules about procedure and conduct, and then she turned to me and said, ‘Mr Calver, opening statement?’

  I stayed seated for a long moment, finishing up a particularly complex doodle, and then I slowly rose to my feet, my mind a complete blank. I guess I’d have to wing it again.

  ‘May it please the court,’ I said as I ran my eye over the jury. They still looked reasonably alert and ready to listen, and that was something I guess.

  ‘You know,’ I said, starting off conversationally. ‘I came over to this country to pursue a case for a client called Hannah Palmer. She’s a little old lady and she is, as we speak, giving evidence in a civil trial taking place in your Southern district court, also in this city.

  ‘Now Helena Palmer, the victim of this terrible murder that I am charged with, is the daughter of my client, Hannah. Complicated isn’t it?’ I said, with a whimsical smile. ‘In that civil case currently taking place in the Southern district court, Hannah Palmer, the mother of our victim, is seeking recovery of jewellery that was taken from her during the second world war. The proceedings are against K Corporation, its CEO Angel Milken, his son, David, and his wife Kendra. All very prominent and powerful people in this city who I am sure you have heard of.

  ‘Helena Palmer was over here to help me prosecute her mothers case, recover that jewellery and nail the people who slaughtered most of her family.’ As I said the last words I checked Stahl and Gonzalez, expecting an objection, but it never came.

  ‘Now, Mr Stahl here,’ I said, nodding towards him. ‘Alleges that my motive in killing the daughter of my client, is sexual, and I wont legitimise that with a response here and now. But what I will say, and what you may yourself have worked out from what I have told you about Hannah’s claim, is that there are others out there - very powerful people - who have a far greater motive than I for silencing Helena Palmer.

  ‘The evidence: no one witnessed me killing Helena Palmer, because I didn’t kill her. The fundamental evidence against me is CCTV tape showing the entrance corridor leading to Helena Palmers room at the time of the killing. It purports to show only me entering and leaving her room at the material time. I intend to show that that CCTV evidence against me is fabricated. If I do that, Mr. Stahl’s case turns to smoke. Thank you ladies and gentlemen,’ I said. Then I sat down.

  Short and succinct it was, but it was also based on a wing and a prayer. I’d committed myself to showing the CCTV was a fraud, and if I couldn’t do that, I would be smoke as well. It was stupid, but it was also just about the only thing I could do, and it was the truth. The only way to get out from under was to discredit the CCTV evidence, the rest of it was just hooey. So Pascal and her helpers better come up with something soon, or I could look forward to going back to Rikers, for good.

  Chapter 22

  As Pascal slid into the passenger seat of the nondescript black Hertz hire car parked at the curb, Christoff leaned over and took one of the Styrofoam cups of coffee she had been carrying.

  ‘Anything?’ she asked, but then her cellphone was screaming, the caterwauling terminating abruptly as she held it to her ear and said, ‘yes.’ She listened for a minute or so, then said, ‘okay, Daly. Thanks for trying. Now we’ll do it my way.’ She listened some more, then said, ‘Will do. Call me and we’ll get together.’

  She turned to Christoff who was watching her. ‘Fossey’s blown Daly out,’ she said. ‘Won’t talk without a lawyer, so Daly can’t go any further. Thinks Fossey was scared, but will keep quiet about the approach unless he’s pushed, so maybe no harm done. So we better have a go at him, and I’ve got an idea about how we can do that, but first things first. Anything doing over there?’ she said, nodding her head at the building across the street from them.

  Oskars, the delicatessens mentioned by Chantelle was on the ground floor of the large four storey block opposite them. The building seemed to house mostly apartments, but the ground floor was given over to commercial use, a mixture of offices, an Italian restaurant and then Oskars on the corner. The Deli was quite large and the trappings, the signage as well as the clientele they had seen going in and out for the last hour or so, suggested it was a pretty upmarket kind of a joint.

  ‘Only thing I’ve seen so far is a little white delivery van that bowled up when you were getting our coffee,’ Christoff said. ‘Stopped for around five minutes while they loaded it up with some bread, looked like French sticks. Van was driven by a young guy, looked mid-twenties.’

  Pascal ran a speculative eye over Christoff’s attire. He was wearing a mustard yellow three piece suit with gold watch chain stretched across his waist and a bright green silk cravat at his neck. He caught her look and raised an eyebrow of enquiry.

  ‘You look just perfect for the part, Christoff. A debonair, rich toff, ideal customer profile for an outfit like Oskars. If I go for Fossey now,’ she said holding up her phone. ‘You happy to take a run at Oskars?’

  ‘You think I came out dressed like this for fun?’ he said, raising his eyebrow again. He climbed out of the car and looked in at her with wolfish smile. ‘Just like old times, eh, Courtney?’

  ‘Just like old times,’ she repeated, and then he was sauntering off towards the Deli.

  As she watched him go she lifted her cellphone, located the number for Protecta in Cincinnati, and pressed the call button.

  * * * *

  The interior of the deli was dark and cavernous, but in the half light Christoff could make out glass topped counters stretching away. They seemed to contain an endless array of rich meats, game, hanging sausages, cheeses, pickles and sauces. He wandered down the aisle with a smile on his face, wallowing in the glorious food all around him. Then he caught the sweet smell of fresh baking bread, wafting and floating like a slipstream over all the other aromas.

  Up ahead he could see a long white counter behind which stood a large round shaped man; from a distance he almost looked like a big rubber beach ball. As Christoff approached, he could see the man was swaddled in what looked like chef’s whites, and he had a disposable blue coloured hairnet on his head. Christoff estimated the guy ran to at least 300 pounds, and he had that jolly look that a lot of fat men seemed to have, with a kind of perpetual friendly smile stamped on his fleshy face.

  ‘Quite a place you got here,’ Christoff said.

  ‘Why, thank you, sir,’ the big man responded immediately, enthusiasm vibrating through his chest, giving his voice a tone of eagerness. ‘Can I help you? Are you looking for anything in particular? You’re English, aren’t you? A most discerning race when it comes to food, if I may say so.’

  ‘Thank you. Yes, I am English born, but my forebears were German. Tell me, would you have such a thing as Pumpernickel bread here? I mean baked the German way like my grandmother used to make it? I just can’t abide the American version,’ Christoff said, trying to inject just the right tone of pedantic fastidiousness into his voice.

  The mans smile almost disappeared into the folds of his face as he chortled away, his whole frame shaking with happiness, like a blancmange on a plate during a mild earthquake. ‘Why, sir, you have come to exactly the right place. Wait here a moment, if you will,’ he said,’ skipping away down the counter at a surprising pace for such a large man.

  Moments later Christoff was examining and smelling a variety of breads as the big man fussed around him pointing out the particularities of each one.

  ‘What about delivery? I’m going to be here for 12 months and would like to maybe set something up, if that’s a possibility.’

  For the first time a hint of doubt crept into the big mans responses. ‘Well we do a few special deliveries for our most favored customers,’ he said, looking more closely at Christoff for the first time. ‘In fact we do do a weekly delivery for a very special customer, and for this very
same bread,’ he said nodding down at the tray. ‘I believe he is Austrian or German.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ Christoff said. ‘I just love this bread here. Why don’t we start a trial run of weekly deliveries, and I’ll pay up front for three months. How about that? And to make it easier, you can deliver to me on the same day as your special customer gets his. Say come to me first and then onto him, whatever time suits; save you time and trouble. Cause I gotta tell you, I can’t live without this bread.’

  When Christoff gave him the address of the loft apartments the big man nodded and seemed to relax, smiling, impressed at the upmarket location of the property. He checked delivery schedules on his computer screen. ‘We do our deliveries on Wednesdays, noon at the K Tower, so how about we come to you with delivery at 11. How would that suit?’

  ‘That would be just fine and dandy. Credit card okay for payment?’ Christoff asked.

  The big man was smiling again as he dug out the card machine and worked out quantities and price.

  ‘Just so I know who to expect, who does the deliveries for you?’

  ‘Oh that will be Emilio. He’s very good and reliable, been with us five years.’

  ‘Great,’ Christoff said, sliding his card into the machine.

  * * * *

  ‘Hi, Mr. Fossey, my name’s Lucy Kellaway ,’ Pascal said in her approximation of a New York accent. She was still sat in the car at the curb watching Oskars as she spoke. Fossey had sounded guarded when he had answered the phone. She continued, in the same gushing tone. ‘I’m an in house journo at the Hotel Business Review mag online and we’re doing a piece on hotel security and CCTV. So we’re casting around for industry pro’s to talk to and be quoted in the piece. Your names come up a couple a times and I was wondering if you might have time to talk to me, give me an insight into your thinking about how you see the industry going forward. I understand you’re regularly in New York on business and maybe you could fit me in for a chat next time you’re up here. I know our readers would be fascinated to hear what you’ve got to say?’