Getting nowhere with Tom, Bobby Hilton returned to lower-key material. He told Tom how he was going to work in his father’s pizzeria in Racine with an eye toward taking over the place. He talked about how he was engaged now. He repeatedly asked Tom if he needed anything, but got nothing but one-word responses. Tom kept his head turned to the left, looking off in the distance, for the remainder of the conversation. It was painful to watch.
“Take care, Lew,” said Hilton. He placed his hand on the thick glass again before he walked past me and out the door.
I approached the glass. “Tom, I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.
My client didn’t answer. He was gone for the moment. No sign of recognition or emotion, save for a tear that formed and ran down his cheek.
When I walked back out in the hallway, Sergeant Bobby Hilton was on the floor, head in his hands, sobbing like a child.
He looked up at me with a tear-streaked face. “Tell me… what you need me to do,” he said to me, struggling. “I’ll do anything.”
20
Detective Gary Boxer led me into an interview room. He had a file folder in his hand and a small notepad. He dropped them both down on the desk and motioned to me.
“So what’s your interest in Lorenzo Fowler?” he asked.
“He came to see me a few days before he was murdered. Legal advice. I didn’t take the case, but we talked. I wish I could tell you what he said to me.”
Boxer opened his hand. He was probably just over forty, with a rash of blond hair and deep-set eyes. A toothpick moved freely in his mouth. “He’s dead,” he said to me. “He’s got no worries at this point.”
“But he’s got the privilege. It survives his death.”
“Okay, so you can’t tell me what he told you. So why are you here?”
“Thought I might ask you some questions.”
“You’re gonna ask me questions.” He eyeballed me for a moment. “Okay, shoot. Not saying I’m gonna answer.”
“You know a strip club called Knockers?”
He kept with the poker face for a moment before relaxing. “So maybe we liked him for that murder. We sweated Lorenzo pretty good two days before he died. You probably know that, right?”
“Not saying I do, not saying I don’t,” I answered.
Boxer tapped his fingers on the table. “You’re not the Capparellis’ lawyer. So if he’s coming to you, it means he wanted out. He wanted an independent lawyer.” He nodded as he thought this over. “Lorenzo was thinking about a trade. Turning state’s evidence. We figure the Capparellis hit him, right? He was becoming a liability. Maybe he was trying to find a way out of the whole business. Stop me if I got it wrong.”
I didn’t stop him.
“And that’s the very reason the Capparellis would want him out of commission,” he continued. “A liability, like I said.” He worked the toothpick expertly from one side of his mouth to the other. “This isn’t exactly stuff I didn’t know.”
Right, but he was going to take his time extracting information from my silence.
“Might Lorenzo have given you some valuable information?”
“He might have,” I said. “He might not have.”
“He might have, he might not have.” Boxer was going to wait me out.
“You play cards?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Used to play poker. You?”
“I like a different game,” I said. “I prefer gin rummy.”
A wry smile crept across the detective’s face. Boxer got it. “Funny,” he said. “The Capparellis have a guy who goes by that nickname.”
“What a coincidence,” I said.
“We don’t know his identity. There’s some people in the brown building downtown who’d sure like to, though. So would some of my colleagues.”
“So would I,” I said.
Boxer frowned. He’d gotten his hopes up. “So Lorenzo didn’t tell you.” He drummed his fingers again. “Was that gonna be the trade?”
“I’d be breaching my privilege if I answered that.”
“Sure. Right.”
“From the papers, Lorenzo’s murder sure read like a Mob hit,” I said. “One in the throat. One in each kneecap.”
“They’re not subtle, these guys.”
“Maybe you can’t answer-but does it look like Gin Rummy?”
Boxer shrugged and sighed. Couldn’t tell if he was debating whether to share with a civilian or if he didn’t know the answer. “Hard to say, Counselor. Whoever it was, he was a damn good shot. These were precision shots, and not from close range.”
“Shell casings?” I asked.
“No, no. Nothing like that. Trajectory of the windpipe shot, lack of tattooing or charring or anything. Wasn’t close up. The offender shot out the kneecaps while Lorenzo was up against the door of the bookstore, and the offender wasn’t on the sidewalk or the curb or the street, either. Two eyewitnesses on the corner said so.”
“The shooter was, what-across the street? Bent down between cars?”
Boxer smiled. He was done sharing, but it seemed like I’d guessed right. He leaned in toward me. “I’m gonna ask you straight, just so there’s no misunderstanding with these games we’re playing. Do you know who Gin Rummy is?”
“No.”
“Then I’m out of time for you.” He slipped me a card. I slipped him one of mine. Then I slipped out of the police station.
21
Tori, Joel Lightner, and I strolled along Arondale Avenue as the sun threatened to sink beneath the real estate. We didn’t get any snow last night, but it was forecasted, so I wanted to do my due diligence before the weather clocked me out.
West Arondale was becoming the new Boystown, and wherever the gay population moved in, the city became a mecca for nightclubs and cafes and art shops and boutiques, some of the risque variety. Bars advertised specials on chalkboards along the sidewalks. A clothing store featured a mannequin dressed in leather bondage.
When I was a kid, anything on Arondale Avenue that was west of Coulter was off-limits. Think the red-light district in Amsterdam, except the women weren’t displayed in windows. The strip clubs stayed around until the early nineties, when the gentrification began and the city started strong-arming them through zoning changes that were litigated in court for years. James Madison probably never thought that his beloved First Amendment would apply to a nude woman grinding herself in the lap of a middle-aged man for twenty bucks.
“You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” Tori said to me as we reached the 2700 block of West Arondale.
“You wanted to know what it’s like to defend criminals,” I said. “This is what it’s like.”
Lightner looked over the two of us. “This is your second date?”
“It’s not a date,” Tori and I said together.
“Hey, okay, excuse me.”
“Our first date,” I said, “Tori informed me that she found me interesting in a purely nonsexual way.”
Joel said, “You have good taste, Tori. Except for the part about finding him interesting.”
Tori seemed to enjoy the back-and-forth. I can always count on Joel for subtlety and discretion.
“I never said my interest was nonsexual,” she clarified.
“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.” Joel rubbed his hands together.
“I just said the sex wasn’t going to happen.”
“Oh. So, what-you’re just going to be friends? That doesn’t work.”
“Lightner, for Christ’s sake,” I said.
“Well, if you’re ever in the mood for a more mature gentleman like myself-”
I stopped. Joel did, too, belatedly. “What’d I say? You’re all sensitive these days?”
“I’m not sensitive, Lightner. I just figured, if we’re here to investigate a crime scene, I don’t know-maybe we shouldn’t walk right past it.”
“Good point.” He turned and looked across the street at the Tattered Cover bookstore. A huge mat had been thrown down in front of the store where Lorenzo Fowler had bled out.
“Witnesses say they didn’t see anybody in the street,” I said. “And he wasn’t shot at close range. So he was shot from across the street, where we’re standing, basically. I’m thinking he crouched down between two cars and waited for Lorenzo. Sounds like Lorenzo was coming around the back of his car and he got one in the windpipe.”