“Mind your goddamn business,” he snaps, tossing the butt to the ground like it offended him and storming back inside.
But part of me thinks, Who knows—maybe that’ll be his last cigarette ever.
And they say I’m not an optimist.
I check the entrance. No sign of Simon Fraser. I quickly get in my car and pull it into the BAROCHE spot, hugging the right so that mere inches separate my passenger side from his Tesla’s driver’s side. There is no way Simon Fraser could squeeze in and reach his door, forget opening it.
I wait. I’m good with waiting. Waiting doesn’t bother me. I don’t really have to do true surveillance here—he’s not going to be able to get into his car in a hurry—so I break out the novel I brought, ease my car seat all the way back, and start to read.
It doesn’t take long.
At 12:15 P.M., I spot Simon Fraser exiting the building in my rearview mirror. I stick my bookmark between pages 312 and 313 and place the book on the passenger seat. I wait. Simon is talking animatedly on the phone. He draws closer to the car. With his free hand, he fishes into his pocket and grabs his key fob. I hear the little beep-beep noise of the door unlocking. I wait some more.
When he stops short, I know he’s realized the parking situation. I hear his muffled “What the hell?”
I lift my phone and put it to my ear and pretend I’m talking to someone. With my other hand, I take hold of the door handle.
“Hey . . . hey, you!”
I ignore Simon Fraser and keep the phone to my ear. This angers him. He comes around my side of the car and, using what I assume is his college ring, he raps on the driver’s-side window.
“Hey, you can’t park here.”
I turn toward him and gesture with the phone to indicate I’m kinda busy. His face reddens. Simon Fraser knocks harder with the school ring. I regrip the door handle.
“Listen, assho—”
I open my car door fast, smacking him in the face. Simon Fraser falls back. His phone flies from his hand and crashes against the pavement. I don’t know if it’s broken or not. I get out of the car before he has time to recover and say, “I’ve been waiting for you, Simon.”
Simon Fraser gently puts his hand to his face as if checking for . . .
“No blood,” I say, “yet.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Yeah, could be.” I put my hand out to help him up. “Here, let me help you up.”
He stares at my hand as if I’m holding a turd in it. I smile at him. I give him the crazy “I don’t give any Fs” eyes. He scuttles back a bit.
“I’m here to save your career, Simon.”
“Who are you?”
“Nap Dumas.”
My intent with this whole play is not to hurt him so much as bewilder and disorient. This is a man who is used to being in control, to neat lines and rules, to making his problems go away with phone calls to well-placed sources. He is not accustomed to off-the-beaten-path conflict or lack of control, and if I play it right, I can take advantage of that.
“I’m . . . I’m calling the police.”
“No need,” I say, spreading my arms. “I’m a cop. What can I do for you?”
“You’re a police officer?”
“I am.”
His face turns a tad redder. “I’ll have your badge.”
“For illegal parking?”
“For assault.”
“The car door? That was an accident, sorry. But, sure, let’s call more cops to the scene. You can see about having my badge for opening a car door. And I”—I point to myself with my thumb—“can see about having you disbarred.”
Simon Fraser is still on the ground. I hover over him, not really giving him room to rise without my help. It’s not an uncommon power play. I reach out my hand again. If he tries anything—a possibility at this stage—I’m ready. He takes my hand and I pull him up.
Simon Fraser brushes himself off. “I’m leaving,” he announces.
He walks over, picks up his phone, brushes that off too like it’s a small dog. I can see the cracked screen from here. Now that there is some distance, he glares at me.
“You’ll pay for any damage.”
I smile back at him. “Nah.”
He glances at his car, but mine still blocks the driver’s door. I can tell he’s now calculating the pros and cons of crawling across the passenger seat and driving away.
“You tell me what I need to know,” I say, “we keep this all between us.”
“And if I don’t tell you?”
I shrug. “I destroy your career.”
He snickers. “You think you can?”
“Not sure, to be honest. But I won’t rest until I do. I have nothing to lose, Simon. I don’t care if you”—I make quote marks with my fingers—“‘have my badge.’ I’m single. I have no social standing. In sum, to repeat: I have nothing to lose.”
I take a step closer.
“But you, on the other hand, well, you have a family, a reputation, what the papers like to call”—again with the finger quotes—“‘standing in the community.’”
“You can’t threaten me.”
“I just did. Oh, and if somehow I can’t destroy your reputation, one day I’ll come by and kick your ass. Plain and simple. Old-school.”
He looks at me in horror.
“My brother is dead, Simon. You may be standing in the way of me finding out who killed him.” I take another step toward him. “Do I look like the kind of guy who will just let that slide?”
He clears his throat. “If this has something to do with the work Officer Rex Canton did for our law firm . . .”
“As a matter of fact, it does.”
“. . . then I can’t help you. As I’ve already explained, the work falls under attorney-client privilege.”
“Not when that work you hired him to do is a crime, Simon.”
Silence.
“Ever heard of entrapment?”
Another throat clear, less sure this time. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“You hired Officer Rex Canton to get dirt on ex-husbands so as to benefit your clients.”
Simon snaps into lawyer mode. “One, I wouldn’t characterize Officer Canton’s work in that way. Two, having someone do background checks on the opposition is neither illegal nor unethical.”
“He wasn’t doing background checks, Simon.”
“You have no proof—”
“Sure I do. Pete Corwick, Randy O’Toole, and Nick Weiss. Do those names ring a bell?”
Silence.
“Cat got your tongue, Counselor?”
More silence.
“By startling coincidence, Officer Rex Canton happened to arrest all three of these men for drunk driving. By startling coincidence, your firm represented all three of those men’s wives in custody battles at the time of those arrests.”
I grin.
He tries: “That isn’t proof of a crime.”
“Hmm. Think the media will see it that way too?”
“If you breathe a word of these unfounded accusations to the press—”
“You’ll have my badge, I get it. Look, I’m going to ask you two questions. If you answer them honestly, that’s it. Your short nightmare known as ‘me’ is over. If you don’t answer them, however, I go to the papers and the American Bar Association and I tweet out what I know on Facebook or whatever the kids call it nowadays. Fair enough?”
Simon Fraser wouldn’t say it, but I could see from the slump in his shoulders that I had him.
“So here is the first question: What do you know about the woman who worked with Rex on the DUI stings?”
“Nothing.”
The answer came fast.
“You know he used a woman to seduce the guys into excess drinking, right?”
“Men flirting with women in bars.” Simon Fraser shrugs, trying to recover a bit of his normal bluster now. “The law doesn’t care why they drink, just how much.”
“So who is she?”
“No idea,” he says, and his words have the ring of truth. “Do you really think anyone in my firm, especially me, would want to know details like that?”
No. It was a long shot but worth taking. “Second question.”
“Final question,” he counters.
“Who hired your firm to set up the DUI the night Rex Canton was murdered?”
Simon Fraser hesitates. He is thinking it over. I let him. The red is gone from his face now, replaced with something more in the ash family.
“Are you implying that Officer Canton’s, uh, work for our firm led to his murder?”
“More than implying.”