“Please take that man away from here. I’d like to consider assault charges. Please detain him somewhere until this has been sorted out.”
Spit was flying from Spicer’s mouth. “I demand to see my lawyer!”
Gottlieb dusted off the arms of his jacket and addressed the man. “Luckily for you, Mr. Spicer, there are plenty of lawyers who would cross the street to spit on you.”
He waved his hand again at the policemen. “For goodness’ sake, take him away.”
33
LEWIS GOTTLIEB WAS CHIDING his protégé.
“You’ve got to let a man like that put his own fool head in the noose. He’ll do it. He did it. I sacrificed my can, and then you come along and actually assault the damn fool. What in the world were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry, Lewis. It was the slur.”
“Oh, the slur. Screw the slur. You think I haven’t lived my entire life on the edge of a slur? I could care less at this point. Especially from a psycho like our Mr. Spicer. The point is that now he can charge you with assault.”
“The list of charges Bruce Spicer wants to bring is so long it’ll take him a year to get around to that one.”
“Let’s hope.”
Megan and I were sitting with the two lawyers in the hospital cafeteria. Gottlieb, it turned out, had smacked his elbow fairly hard on the floor when he’d gone down and had injured it somewhat. The attorney’s jacket was hung carefully on the back of his chair, and the left sleeve of his shirt was rolled up to his biceps so he could hold an ice pack to the injury. Peter was looking glum. He knew he’d screwed up in attacking Spicer. Gottlieb’s demeanor was surprisingly wily.
“The trial’s sunk, that’s obvious,” the elder attorney declared. “Bruce Spicer’s big mouth is not going to be denied. And a forewoman with a husband like that? If Fred Willis doesn’t demand that Sam declare a mistrial, I will. This is the most hackneyed affair I have ever been involved with.”
Peter groaned. “New trial. I think I’ll just shoot myself now. How are we going to pull that off? The entire country’s been handicapping this one up close and personal. What rock are we going to look under to get an untainted jury at this point?”
“I’m afraid that’s going to be your problem, young squirrel,” Gottlieb said. “I’ve got eighteen holes calling my name, and this time they will not be denied. It would have been nice to add Mr. Fox’s pelt to my collection, the self-righteous son of a bitch. But don’t worry, Peter. The groundwork’s been laid. The country knows what kind of sicko Fox really is. You’ll be fine. Detective Lamb here and Joe Gallo did a superb job of boxing that little prick into the corner, and the evidence isn’t going anywhere. We’ll take some public relations hits, no doubt about that. You’ll get your usual clamor that mistrial means the man must be innocent. Just ignore all that. Don’t get caught up in the sideshows. That’s all an idiot like Bruce Spicer is, a sideshow. And there’s your irony. Spicer hates Marshall Fox’s guts, but all he and his wife have succeeded in doing is giving the man a whole new day in court. Spicer’s got his agenda over here and his brains out in West China somewhere.” He turned to me. “Now that you’ve seen him in action, is my idea so crazy?”
Megan asked, “What idea is that?”
Peter explained, “Lewis believes we should be considering whether Spicer had something to do with Zachary’s and Robin Burrell’s killings.”
Gottlieb interjected, “Not ‘something to do with.’ Stop pussyfooting around, Peter. My contention, Ms. Lamb, is that Bruce Spicer’s our killer.”
Megan turned to me. “You were looking into this?”
“Lewis mentioned his theory to me the day I got dunked in the East River. I haven’t really had a chance to pursue it.”
Gottlieb lowered the ice pack. “We’ve got nothing to contain at this point-not after Nancy Spicer’s gesture. I suggest very strongly that you and your boss look into this. The man’s a fanatical anti-abortionist, and Ms. Burrell admitted on the stand to those two abortions. Not just one but two.”
“What about Riddick?”
“Lifestyle, Ms. Lamb. Our Mr. Spicer is fond of words like ‘heathen’ and ‘fornicator.’ Our dear departed Zachary surely falls into these categories.”
I turned to Megan. “What do you think?”
She steepled her fingers and rested her chin on them. Her gaze bored through the table to the floor below. “Something Spicer said just now. Upstairs…” She let the sentence drift off, unfinished.
“What?”
“Oh my God!” She looked up sharply. “Did you hear it? When he was going on about suing everyone? ‘I’m coming.’ I knew there was something that’s been nagging me.”
Peter’s mouth dropped slowly open. “My God. You’re joking.”
“I’m not. It’s what he said. ‘I’m coming.’ The same voice. ‘Can you taste the blood?’” Megan’s eyes traveled from face to face as the meaning sank in.
Four chairs screeched abruptly away from the table.
HE WAS GONE.
After his rant, Spicer had been escorted from the visiting area to the room that was being readied for his wife. Nancy Spicer had emerged from her coma nearly simultaneously to her husband’s histrionic display in the visiting area, and according to the aides who wheeled her up from the ICU, Bruce Spicer had whispered something in her ear, given her a squeeze on the shoulder and exited the room. A quick search of the floor told us that he was no longer on it.
“I’m going downstairs,” Megan said. “I’ll put in a call from one of the cruisers. He can’t have gotten far.”
Peter wasn’t so confident. “He could be on a subway. He could be headed anywhere.”
“We’ll flood the Port Authority,” I said. “We’ll alert the airports. Airport security will pluck him out in a heartbeat. Don’t worry. He’s stuck in the boroughs. Plus, you saw him. The man’s like a mad chicken. He won’t be able to hide.”
I joined Megan. We took the stairs two at a time. As we approached the hospital’s front door, I had a thought, and I pulled up short. “Allison Jennings.”
“What about her?”
“Spicer called her. He threatened her. We still don’t know why.” I pulled out my cell phone. “I’m going to see if I can get ahold of her. See if the name means anything to her.”
“I’ll be outside.”
I had to track around in the lobby before I could get a decent signal. I leaned up against a wall engraved with the names of financial Samaritans and pulled Allison Jenning’s card from my wallet. Something felt peculiar as I punched in the numbers. Just before the final one-a four-I realized why it felt peculiar. I shifted my thumb over one number and hit the five instead. It picked up on the second ring.
“Kelly Cole.”
Son of a bitch. That was it.
“Kelly, It’s Fritz. Where are you?”
“I’m still outside the hospital, why?”
“I want you to put your hand lovingly on your pretty throat.”
“My…what are you talking about?”
“And then I want you to say a prayer to whatever God you believe in.”
“I don’t believe in any of them.”
I switched ears, huddling in to the wall to fix the reception. “You might want to reconsider that stance, sweetheart. Just a heads-up.”
34
THE DIN WAS LIKE the amplified chewing of an army of ants, but it was only Brasserie on a Saturday night. Above the long sleek bar ran a bank of brushed chrome video monitors, ten in all, displaying in black-and-white stop-action the comings and goings of patrons, captured by a small video camera mounted just inside the glass entrance. The trip from the first monitor to the tenth and final one took about twenty seconds. It was a novelty that never failed to crane necks. Caught on hidden camera. (“There you are! That’s you!”) From Patty “Tania” Hearst to Princess Di at the Paris Ritz, no one can get enough of it.