take that at face value. He should do an autopsy to determine if it was an accident… or something else… Okay? The paintings he did… uhhh… he did them in the exact style of famous artists—and we’re talking exact here, Lieutenant—twelve of ’em are missing from his apartment at the condo—”
With that, Nestor hung up abruptly. He jumped into the Camaro and gunned it, heading back to Miami. ::::::Am I crazy? I can’t go “gunning it” anywhere. I’m a wanted man! a hunted man, for all I know. All I need is some Broward County trooper to haul me in for speeding… speeding!::::::
He slowed the Camaro to the wanted-man speed of just a shade below the speed limit. He let his breath out and became conscious of his heart beating too fast.
Mierda! The clock on the dashboard… way after 8:00 a.m.! The curfew—but also John Smith!… must be in his big meeting at the Herald by now—
This one Nestor could make on his iPhone while he drove… He had John Smith’s number in his contacts list… ¡Dios mío! All he needed now was for some Broward County cop palurdo americano to pull him over for driving while using a handheld device… He looked into the rearview mirror… and then the two side wing mirrors… then scanned the road ahead… the road and the shoulders… a chance he had to take. The wanted man tapped out the number on the glass face of the iPhone—
It was just a figure of speech, of course—“they’ve really got the noose around my neck now”—but Ed Topping could actually feel a constriction in his neck… or his throat, in any event. Things had progressed to where he couldn’t very well expect John Smith to discuss all this standing up. Oh no, this time, the three of them—John Smith, Stan Friedman, and himself—were seated at a round table near his desk. And there was a fourth: the Herald’s number one libel lawyer, Ira Cutler. He was a man in his early fifties, probably, one of those late-middle-aged men who still had smooth jowls, big ones, and smooth bellies that looked inflated not by age but by the vitality, the ambition and ravenous appetites of youth. He reminded Ed of the portraits of great men in the eighteenth century by the Peale brothers, who always gave their subjects smooth, stout stomachs as a sign of success and vigor. Belly, jowls, shiny fingernails, ironed white shirt, and all, Ira Cutler was a well-dressed, well-fed, highly buffed pit bull when it came to legal questions, and he loved litigation, especially in the courtroom, where he could insult people to their faces, humiliate them, break their spirits, ruin their reputations, make them cry, sob, blubber, boohoo… and it was all sanctioned. He had it in him to stop this six-foot-two baby, John Smith, in his tracks. There was something really crude about Cutler. Edward T. Topping IV would not like to have him to dinner or anywhere else his drooling-pit-bull persona might reflect badly upon the House of Topping… but he was welcome to be on his worst behavior at this table.
“Well, gentlemen… let’s get things under way,” said Ed. He looked at each of the other three, supposedly to see if they were “on board,” as the phrase goes, but actually to make them recognize his authority, which was in fact wilting in the presence of this tough guy. His T-4 gaze settled, as best he could make it settle, upon John Smith. “Why don’t you tell us about this latest piece of information you have.” Report in, soldier—that was the aura Ed wanted his leadership to establish.
“As I told you, sir, I think we have the sort of eyewitness information our case lacked. The off-duty policeman who’s been helping me in this, Nestor Camacho, ran into an old girlfriend who happened to be visiting Sergei Korolyov when he read our story yesterday about the painter, Igor Drukovich, who we think forged the paintings Korolyov gave to the museum. She described Korolyov’s reaction—”
Ira Cutler broke in. He spoke in a curiously high-pitched voice. “Wait a minute… Camacho… Isn’t that the name of the cop who got fired recently for making racial remarks?”
“He wasn’t fired, sir, he was ‘relieved of duty.’ That means they take the cop’s badge and service revolver away until they investigate the case.”
“Ummm… I see,” said Cutler… in the tone that says, “I don’t see, but go ahead. We can come back to this bigot later.”