I leaned back in my chair and stared at Roger. He did not wither under my glance. In fact, he seemed as bemused as a man can be with his arms chained behind a chair.
“I’d be more inclined to believe whatever you’re about to tell me,” I said, “if you hadn’t threatened me with a gun back in the good old days.”
“What can I say? I was an asshole.”
“ ‘Was’? Just last week, you tried to deck me while my back was turned.”
“I was angry and a little drunk. I thought you were telling Stew that same old bullshit about me murdering Tiffany.”
“I wasn’t.”
He shrugged. “So I’m still an asshole. That doesn’t carry a prison sentence.”
“In your case, maybe it should.”
“You know, Blessing, if you’re wrong about me, there’s a dynamiter walking free out there who wants you dead.”
Was he being purposefully disingenuous by continuing to mention dynamite, or was he actually ignorant of the composition of a bleach bomb?
“My guess is, the dynamiter is precisely where I want him,” I said.
“Come onnn. Do I strike you as the kind of guy who’d build a bomb?”
“I don’t know that much about you, Roger.”
“You’re not thinking straight,” he said. “A: If I’d wanted you dead, why in God’s name would I think of dynamite when there are so many simpler and less-dangerous-to-handle weapons? And B: If it had to be dynamite, why would I risk blowing myself up when I could hire an expert?”
I’d been trying to keep a straight face, but some uncertainty must have slipped past my filter.
Encouraged, Roger unloaded one more argument. “Assuming I thought so little of my own safety, would I have kept all that crap in my shed for the cops to find? Especially after Brueghel’s visit the night of the crime?”
“Okay,” I said, with the weariness of a man beaten down by what had at least the appearance of logic. “Tell me why you couldn’t have killed Tiffany.”
He took a second or two to shift his concentration to the earlier crime, then replied, “I have a real alibi I’ve never been able to use.”
Apparently convinced he’d hooked me, he leaned back in his chair and waited for me to ask what that real alibi was. I hadn’t seen a smile that smug since Bruce Willis won his first Emmy. I’m not a big fan of smug. I looked at my watch, yawned, and said, “It’s a little late, folks.” I turned to Darrow. “Will you buzz for the guard, or should I?”
“Okay, Blessing,” Roger said. “I was at Palm Springs when Tiff … when she was killed.”
I frowned. “That’s your alibi? I was at the restaurant that night, remember? When I left at about eleven, you were still there with Tiffany and Victor.”
“Yeah,” he said, “but just after you guys took off, Tiff started getting on my ass. Finally, she told me to go fuck myself. That didn’t sound like much fun, so I decided to fuck somebody else.”
“Palm Springs is a long way to go for a booty call,” I said.
“You go where the action is.”
“It’s what, a two-and-a-half-hour drive?”
“Maybe the way you do it. In that beautiful little Vette I had, at that time of night, I made it in just under two hours. We hit the sheets right away and kept it going all night long.”
“Too bad there wasn’t an Olympic category,” I said. “So let me guess why you couldn’t use this marathon boink for an alibi. The guy didn’t want it known you were his gay lover.”
“Fuck you, Blessing. It was a woman I was with. But before I say any more, you’ve got to promise me something.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“That you won’t mention anything about her to the crazy cop,” he said. “Even if I wasn’t fond of her, I wouldn’t want that asshole to mess up her life.”
I thought about it. “What good is the alibi going to do you if nobody in authority knows about it?”
“You’ll know about it. That’s what I’m going for here. Promise me you’ll keep her identity a secret.”
I shrugged. “If that’s the way you want it …”
“And it’s a little late to be asking, but I’d appreciate it if you also didn’t tell Brueghel what I said about Victor lying. The old man had a stroke a couple years ago, and he’s still in pretty bad shape. But that hasn’t stopped the fucking cop from dropping in on him every now and then to give him a hard time. Brueghel may have even caused the stroke.”
“I don’t see what the point of this meeting is, if I have to censor everything that has to do with establishing your innocence,” I said.
“Humor me, please?”
“It’s your freedom,” I said. “So what’s the story on your booty call that I’ll be keeping a secret?”
“Like I said, she’s a good woman. Back in those days, she was quite a beauty. She’d made that New York supermodel–to–Hollywood starlet move. When that didn’t work, she got married, and that did work, for a while, anyway. I picked her up one night in Dan Tana’s. She was at the bar, crying into her martini. Over a couple of Tana’s red-sauce specials, she told me she and her old man were having problems. He was gone a lot, leaving her alone with too much time on her hands. She wanted to work. He wanted her to be a housewife. Ordinarily, I stay clear of married broads, but Glory’s special. And twenty years ago, well, any guy would have found her irresistible.”
“What about Tiffany?” I asked.
“Well, that was the thing,” he said. “Glory and I weren’t in love. In lust, maybe. We didn’t get together all that often, maybe four or five times total. She had a husband, and I had Tiffany. The night I drove to the Springs was the first time I’d seen her in months. Her marriage was headed for the rocks, but she still had some hope for it.”
“So rather than destroy what sounds like the ideal American marriage, you got Victor to lie,” I said. “You’re a regular Sir Galahad, the white knight of sleazy affairs. Can I go now?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“It’s not much of a story, Roger.”
“I got there at around one-thirty and stayed the whole night. Even if the murder took place at one, no way could I have made it to the Springs before two-thirty, even by plane. Talk to her. Talk to Glory. She’s been divorced for a long time. She’ll tell you the truth.”
“How would I know the truth from a lie? I don’t suppose you have a canceled charge receipt from Palm Springs? Or anything like that?”
“Just Glory,” he said. “Talk to her.”
The lawyer snapped open his briefcase and withdrew a sheet of paper that he handed to me. It had a neatly printed name, cellular phone number, a phone number at the Bank of California with extension, home, and email addresses.
“Gloria Ingram,” I read.
“You say that like you don’t know the name.”
“Should I?”
He stared at me for a beat, then said, “Guess not. L.A. always seems like a small town to me. Everybody knows everybody.”
“I’m just a visitor, myself.”
“Yeah, well, anyway, she’s expecting you to call.”
“And then what?” I said. “Suppose I wind up believing her, and you? How does that help you?”
“I trust you to do the right thing,” he said. He turned to his lawyer and gestured with his head toward the door.
“What right thing?” I asked.
Malcolm Darrow stood and headed for the buzzer. Watching him press it, Roger said, “Once you’re convinced that I’m no killer, I know you’ll do everything in your power to see justice done.”
The door opened, and the guard checked the room before entering. He marched to Roger, freed him from the chair, and recuffed him.
“Do the right thing,” Roger said, as the guard led him away.
He seemed sincere, but as I joined the lawyer at the door, I asked, “Was that some kind of racist razz, him repeating that Spike Lee movie title?”
“Oh, I think not,” he said. “Although with Roger one can never be quite certain.”