Judging Time Read online

  "I want the car and my share of the money."

  Julio shook his head. "Don't know about the car, but I'll get you some money. You take off. Okey-doke?"

  Wally nodded. "Fine, but don't shit me. I want the whole amount."

  "Okeydoke. I'll get."

  "When? Don't make this hard," he warned.

  "Sabado."

  "What the hell is that?"

  "Saturday. "

  "How about tomorrow? .

  "Saturday."

  Wally chewed on his lips, looked around at his wasted buddies, then nodded. He didn't want to push this Julio too hard. The little man was known to carry a machete under his jacket. Saturday it was.

  As the elevator door opened, Rick Liberty could see that the reception area was empty just as Marvin had promised it would be. The door to Marvin's office was open. He sat alone at his enormous desk, his head bent over some papers. Rick pushed back the hood covering his head and the lower part of his face. He unzipped his down jacket that covered the laptop he clutched close to his chest. Underneath the parka, he was dressed in the same well-tailored gray trousers and sweater he'd been wearing for four days.

  By rote he'd taken the clothes off to shower several times when he tried to cleanse his mind and find a way out of the tunnel. But the showers didn't help. He was deep inside a pit of darkness and couldn't find a way to go. The stock market had taken a huge dip of 350 points in the last two days on the threat of a rise in interest rates. The market fall looked like a major correction. His clients' portfolios were lined up like soldiers in his laptop computer, demanding his attention and review. But he didn't care about the market.

  Other thoughts disturbed him, and he wanted to hide away like a wounded animal. Tor and Merrill were dead, and Rick Liberty knew there was something wrong with him. In the instant of their death he'd been robbed of himself. The famous Liberty, who'd always known how to tum a bad situation into a good one, was suddenly completely at odds with the world, too ashamed to face it.

  Marvin looked up and gestured him in. For some reason the gesture frightened Rick. Suspicious of some kind of trick, he quickly pulled the door toward him and looked behind it, then felt stupid to see the space was filled with a Health Rider. Something new in the lavish private office of Marvin Farrish, president and chairman of the board of FCN, the largest black-owned cable-TV network in the country.

  "Come in, Rick. Don't worry, no one else is here." Like a cat stretching, Marvin unfolded his compact body from the tilt and swivel orthopedic chair specially designed to ease his lower back pain. The chair and the Health Rider clashed with the massive brass-and tortoiseshell-inlaid French Empire desk and the rest of the priceless antiques. Everything fought for attention in the huge and ornately decorated office that had its own kitchen and private elevator to which only a few of Marvin's closest associates—and his bodyguard—had access.

  Marvin Farrish liked to tell white folks that because he had not been tall enough to be a basketball player, dense enough to be a football or baseball player, musical or funny enough to be an entertainer, or handsome enough to be a movie star, he had had to invent some new little thing for a man, black as coal, to be. The white folks usually laughed uneasily when he said this, not sure exactly where the barb was aimed.

  "We missed you at the funeral." Marvin opened his arms and crossed the room, eyeing his famous friend as uneasily as white men sometimes regarded him. He tried to give Rick a hug but was prevented from getting close by the computer Rick still held to his chest as if it were the only thing keeping him alive. Drawing away, Marvin waved a hand at one of the two huge armchairs placed in front of his desk.

  "Go ahead, sit down. You look like you need a drink."

  "I need more than a drink, Marv." Rick sat in the chair, making it look small.

  "You sure? I have everything." He waved at the liquor cabinet hidden behind closed doors.

  "I know you do."

  "Okay." Marvin sat in the other chair, making it look large. "What did you do to your hair?"

  Rick reached for the top of his head. "Nothing. What's wrong with it?"

  "You've gone gray, man. What happened?"

  Gray? Rick was startled and lost his train of thought, didn't know what to say. There was no sound in the office but the ticking of a clock that told the time in six major cities around the world. The ticking clock reminded Rick of the shrink, Jason Frank.

  "You're going to need time, a lot of time to deal with this, Rick," Jason had told him. "There are a lot of stages people go through after a death, before they begin to feel better." Jason had never sounded so clinical to Rick before. Since his interview, he now understood where they were going with these questions, what he was looking for. He hadn't told Jason everything. How could he?

  Rick listened to the clock and knew his time was running out. As Merrill was being buried in Massachusetts, the police had been in his building all afternoon. The Chinese and the Latino rode up and down in the elevator, timing the trip from his apartment to the basement. From his bedroom window, he had seen the two cops cross the garden that had won so many design awards to the matching building facing Fifty-sixth Street. He'd seen them exit through the gate to the street at a walk, at a run. He'd heard from the doorman that they'd also tried the underground routes through the basement and the garage. There were at least six ways out. He'd heard they tried them all. Then they interviewed the people in the building about his and Merrill's habits, even people in the neighboring buildings. By now they would have found out about the fights and Merrill's screaming. One of the maintenance men and a garage attendant apologized to him for having to tell bad things about Merrill.

  "I'm sorry for your loss," Marvin said to break the silence. "She was a good woman."

  "Yes, she was," he said with no hesitation.

  "It looks bad when a man doesn't go to his own wife's funeral."

  "You did a nice job covering it," Rick said. "I appreciate it."

  "Her folks are good people." Marvin grimaced and rubbed the small of his back. "It was a long ride to the cemetery and back. ... It took me all day to go, my friend. You had a lot of friends there. We needed to show that, didn't we? Wouldn't be good for the community not to show respect."

  "Well, I appreciate it."

  "You're looking real guilty, man."

  Rick was startled. "What are you talking about?"

  "Merrill's folks believe in you, Rick. Why'd you let them down?"

  Rick shook his head. "I spoke with Merrill's parents several times. They agreed that under the circumstances my presence would be more inflammatory than soothing."

  "I'm not sure that I agree."

  "You can be assured that I will visit them as soon as I can. It's a private thing."

  "No, it's not a private thing, Rick. You're Liberty, understand? You're public property. You belong to this community. You've got to do what's right. You can't let your friends and your community down and then expect me to protect you."

  "I don't need your protection, Marv. I didn't do anything wrong."

  Marvin looked around his crowded office, his whole face a question. "Then what you doing here, man?"

  Rick was engulfed by hellfire. He could feel it licking at him, teasing him with eternal damnation. He squeezed his eyes shut. "Okay, I do need help." He had to grit his teeth to say it. "I need help, okay?"

  "Oh, now you need help. Why not go to your partners? Won't they help you now that you're not Mr. White Nigger?"

  Rick's jaw worked on his fury. He didn't want to let go and kill a friend. Involuntarily, Marvin moved his chair back. Rick knew how scary he must seem.

  "Oh, they'll help me. But I don't want that kind of help."

  Marv made a church and steeple with his fingers. "Give me a hint. What kind of help?"

  "I don't want to hide behind a criminal lawyer."

  "Really? Why not?"

  "Because I didn't kill my wife."

  "You think I'm a dumb nigger?"


  "Shit, don't start that nigger stuff with me. I hate it. Can't you ever let it go?"

  Marvin's first slammed down on his beautiful desk. "No, I can't."

  "Shit. You're as bad as they are. Makes me sick."

  "Fuck you, asshole. You done a lot of things wrong here. Maybe you're the dumb nigger. You didn't answer my calls. What do you think I am?"

  Now Rick pushed his chair back. "Where are you going with this, Marv?"

  Marvin glanced at the laptop in Rick's arms, then gave him a hard look. "Why did you let your friends and your community down?"

  "I'm the victim here!" Rick's voice rose in fury. "Don't you get it? I'm being set up. The net is closing in. The police are all over my life. You understand? People I haven't seen for ten years have left messages on my machine telling me the cops called about incidents"—he raised his hands—"things that happened—"

  "They're doing a background search. So is every TV network, every tabloid." Marv shrugged, then he laughed. "So are we."

  "Why? Why?" Rick closed his eyes against the heat of hell.

  "Just in case," Marv said. "Just in case." He paused for a moment, then he said, "What do you want, my friend?"

  Rick took a deep breath and exhaled. "You have resources. You know what's going on. You have to find out about this guy Wally Jefferson, Petersen's driver. I know he's involved somehow. He says he left Merrill and Tor in the restaurant on the night of the murders. But Tor promised me he'd bring Merrill home in his car. Tor knew I didn't like her out on the street at night. Why would Tor let the driver go home on such a bad night? It doesn't make sense."

  "Maybe you're making too much of it."

  "The man stole my car while I was in Europe."

  "Your limo?"

  Rick nodded.

  Marvin stroked his chin. "Hmmm. How'd that happen?"

  "I was away. He took the car out of the garage. I don't know what he wanted it for." Rick changed the subject. "I need to drop out of sight for a day or two."

  "You want me to use my sacred position in this community, where I'm respected as an honest man, to hide a suspected murderer?"

  "Oh, come on. I can't even kill a cockroach."

  "You almost killed me a few minutes ago, my friend."

  As sudden as a tiger, Rick lunged out of the chair, his fist clenched. From behind his desk, Marv watched him without flinching. Rick stopped in mid-gesture. He fell back into the chair, shaking his head. "I'm under a lot of stress."

  "Watch the antiques," Marv said softly.

  "Okay, think of it this way," Rick said wearily. "When I'm proved innocent, you'll be the only one in the country with the story. How does that sound?"

  Marvin turned his head toward the window, but the magnificent view from the high floor was shrouded by heavy velvet drapes drawn against watchers and the night. "Looks real bad when a man doesn't attend his own wife's funeral," he murmured.

  "Doesn't mean I won't love her as long as I draw breath."

  "You should try a black woman next time."

  Rick shook his head. "It never was about color for me. It was about her, but you'll never get that. You're a dumb nigger. You're as dumb as they are."

  "Still, I'm the dumb nigger you came to. You haven't been to my home for dinner in a while. Elsie also missed you at the funeral. She'll be glad to know you're all right." Marvin rose and hit a switch, dousing the lights as they left.

  22

  At 8 A.M. Friday, Lieutenant Iriarte slammed his fist on the pile of newspapers he'd neatly arranged on his desk. He'd stacked them up like pancakes and looked as if consuming them had been a long and bitter breakfast. He scowled in turn at the five detectives in his office as if each one had personally failed him, the department, indeed, the entire Criminal Justice System.

  "What the hell is happening here?" The squad commander was having a cow, and the effort of controlling his temper and losing it at the same time caused a vein to pulse dangerously in his forehead. His cheeks flushed purple.

  April had seen that particular facial hue for the first time on a tourist from Des Moines having a heart attack in a Chinatown subway station. It had been only by the sheerest chance that they'd gotten him to the hospital alive. She had a familiar impulse to tum to Mike, find out what he was thinking, but after what happened yesterday, she knew all possibility of closeness between them was over. His behavior proved she'd always been right about one thing. Men and women could work together, but they could not be friends or lovers. To this view she didn't think her own interest in Dean Kiang presented a contradiction. Falling for the right man was business everywhere, even in America. She returned her attention to Iriarte as he raised his voice.

  "What do you people think you're doing?" Iriarte had wanted the case tied up by today. The commander of the precinct had wanted the case tied up by today. The police commissioner and the mayor had wanted the case tied up by today. That was a lot of people wanting something that hadn't happened. And who was taking the heat? his voice insisted. He was. "What are you, stupid?" he demanded.

  April could feel Mike's eyes on her. Was he stupid? Iriarte slammed his fist on the newspapers again.

  "You two talked to him all day. You were supposed to make nice and clear this thing up, Sanchez. I thought you assholes had this under control."

  Mike's mustache began to quiver. He was not having a good week. He didn't like being called an asshole. "Are you finished, Lieutenant?" he asked softly.

  No, the lieutenant wasn't finished.

  "You told me you had this under control. You told me we had plenty of time, I'm reading here in the newspapers this guy has a history beating women, and now I find out he took off. Where was surveillance? Getting a sandwich. Do we know where the suspect went? No, we don't. So you shits don't have anything under control." Iriarte's fist came down on a copy of the Star.

  The headline read NOT THE FIRST TIME, over an article about Liberty's brutal attack of a white coed in Princeton nearly twenty years ago when he was in college there.

  "With all due respect, sir, since when do you read the Star?" Hagedorn's face was as pale as his boss's face was red.

  "I don't fucking read the Star!" Iriarte blasted the tiny room.

  "Then how come you got it there?" Hagedorn muttered.

  "My wife reads it. It was on the kitchen table last night when I got home. You know they buried that poor woman yesterday, You want to know who was at her funeral? Half of fucking Hollywood was there. Every star you can name. Half the black community—

  Was her husband there? No, he was not there. You know what they're saying?"

  "Who?" Mike said solemnly.

  "Huh?" Iriarte lost his train of thought.

  "What who's saying," Mike persisted.

  Iriarte scowled at him. "The whole world. The whole world is saying California may not be able to convict, but New York can't even find its killers."

  "Since when do you care what's on TV, sir?" Hagedorn said.

  "I don't have time to watch TV. 1 get home last night. My wife is crying."

  April knew where Mike was going with this. She didn't dare look at him. She tried to focus on the issue and brush the ghost of her feelings for him away. Iriarte's wife was crying last night. Again.

  "You know why she was crying?"

  "No, sir, why was she crying?" April spoke with a straight face.

  "She was crying because she didn't see anything on the news last night about our arrest. You understand? Even my wife is asking why we haven't arrested the bastard yet." The venom spurted over to April. "Woo, you tell me why you didn't arrest the bastard yesterday when you had a chance."

  "We didn't have enough yesterday, sir," April said softly.

  "What do you mean you didn't have enough?"

  Mike straightened his shoulder against the wall where he was leaning against Iriarte's blackboard. His expression said he didn't like the way Iriarte was handling this. Maybe Iriarte was the stupid one.

  "We don't have the tox reports o
n Petersen yet. The COD may have been a heart attack, but we're not convinced yet that there weren't contributing factors. We're not convinced yet that Petersen's widow didn't have something to do with his death."

  "What the fuck does that have to do with nailing the bastard for killing his wife?"

  April raised her own shoulder in a half shrug. This hysteria wasn't like the commander at all. He liked women to be women and men to be gentlemen. He wasn't one of those commanders who had a girlfriend in the office on the side and thought the rules of the department and the law were different for him. As far as she knew, Iriarte had never spoken like this to her or anyone else. Who was he scared of, the commissioner or his own wife?

  "We don't have a clear picture yet of what happened that night, sir," she replied.

  "What? What?" The commander grabbed the purple handkerchief decoratively arranged in his suit breast pocket and mopped the shine from his forehead.

  "There are some things that aren't clear. There's a lot of lab work to do. A lot of background work."

  "I did the damn background work." Hagedorn waved his own sheaf of papers, finally ready to jump in with his two cents. "I have it. I got three incidents that form a pattern going back to the bastard's schooldays. We can nail him."

  "I've had it. I'm getting out of here," Mike muttered.

  "No, you're not getting out of here until I know what the hell went down yesterday when you went over to the bastard's place."

  "Fine," April said.

  "Don't you want the background?" Hagedorn whined.

  Iriarte threw up his hands in frustration. "Al right, let's have it."

  Hagedorn was seated in the front row with his harvest of dirt from Liberty's life. From the thinness of the manilla file, it didn't look like all that much. Creaker with the scary-looking scars on his head sat blank-faced and empty-handed next to him. He and Skye, leading garbage-and-questioning-of-neighbors detail, had come up with zip from the streets in the crime scene area. Zip. Nada. Nothing at all. When it got that cold, the street people made fires in metal drums in several of the small parks along Ninth Avenue. No one hung out on the side streets. Creaker and Skye had nothing to say about what went down on the street that night. When an arrest was finally made, people would come forward claiming to have seen everything, then they'd have something to do, check it all out. It happened all the time. After the fact, an army of witnesses would appear. They'd want to tell their stories about what they'd seen and what they'd known all along, and just happened to neglect to pass along in a timely manner. Somebody would have to sift through these stories for a possible real story they could use.