Eleventh Hour

Savich rose suddenly. “You can go back to your cell now, Milt. You’re tiresome, mouthing all that crap, crying, for God’s sake. Just look at poor Inspector Delion. He’s nodding off, your lies have bored him so much. You need lessons, Milt. You weren’t really all that good a show.”

Savich leaned over and splayed his hands on the tabletop, got right in McGuffey’s face. “We’re going to hold you on the attempted murder of Nick Jones. After your accomplice talks-and he’ll fillet you but good, Milt, don’t doubt it-the DA is going to have a solid multiple-murder case against you. He’s going to enjoy parading you in front of a jury-talk about a slam dunk. He’s even got a witness, you know who she is, all right-Nick Jones. You saw her standing out there, didn’t you? The white bandage around her head? She sure sees you, and believe me, she knows who you are.

“Yeah, the DA’s really going to be happy about this one. You know what else is great about California, Milt? California’s got the death penalty. Killing a priest and an old woman, now there’s just no excuse for that at all-rotten childhood, too much sugar, chemical imbalance in your brain; none of that will work. They’ll drop-kick you right into San Quentin’s finest facilities. You can appeal for years, but eventually you’ll exhaust everything our sweet legal system has to offer you, and then you’re toast.”

Savich snapped his fingers in McGuffey’s face. “Dead. Gone. And everybody will be real happy when you’re off the face of the earth. See you at your trial, Milt. I’ll be waving at you from the front row.”

Savich walked out of the room, whistling.

McGuffey rose straight up and yelled, “Wait! Dammit, wait! You can’t just walk off like that!”

Savich just flapped his hand toward McGuffey, not turning around.

“Wait!”

SIXTEEN

Savich smiled at Dane, and very slowly turned, a dark eyebrow raised, obviously impatient.

McGuffey said, nearly falling over his own words he was talking so fast, “He’s a liar, he’d roll on his own mother, I didn’t do nuthing, do you hear me? You can’t believe a word he says. Old Mickey’s a king shit, got no sense of right or wrong, a real moral asshole.”

“Mickey seems just fine to me,” Sherlock said, coming to stand beside Savich, leaning against the door frame. “I spoke to him for a good ten minutes. He seemed real upright, not a lying bone in his body. I think everyone’s going to believe what he has to say, Mr. McGuffey, you know? I believed him.”

“No, no, you gotta listen to me. I didn’t kill no priest. I didn’t kill no old woman or any gay guy. It was Mickey who hired me. I didn’t hire him, I didn’t. I wasn’t going to kill her, just make a big noise, right? I was just supposed to scare her good, make sure she was on the next flight to China. I never murdered nobody! You’ve got to believe me, you’ve got to.” McGuffey was scrambling away from the chair, trying to shove the table out of the way so he could get to Savich. Delion simply clapped his big hand on McGuffey’s forearm and said very quietly, “No, Milt, you just sit right back down here.”

McGuffey yelled at Delion, “Mickey Stuckey’s a damned liar! Don’t believe him. He set the whole thing up.”

Sherlock said, “Mr. Stuckey told me you hired him, just to be his palm guy, to stand there, keeping his eyes on everything and take whatever you passed to him. He claims he didn’t have a clue about what you were going to do. He’s really against shooting a lady.”

Sherlock shut up and stepped back, no reason to lay it on too thick. The guy looked white now, not just pale, actually white.

Milt was on his feet, trying to pull away from Delion, who’d really clamped down on his forearm and wasn’t about to let go. “No! Man, you gotta listen to me. I told you, Mickey’s a liar.”

Savich sighed deeply, crossed his arms over his chest, and said, frowning, “All right, since I’m still here, why don’t you tell me your side of it. But don’t lie about it being Mickey who was the shooter because I saw you pass the gun to him. What you tell me better be right on target because I’ll tell you, Milt, I’m really leaning toward Stuckey’s story and I haven’t even heard him tell it yet.”

“Okay, okay, you gotta listen, okay? I’ll tell you the truth. Here it is.”

“Just a moment, Milt,” Delion said. “I want to tape-record this. You okay with that?”

“Sure, sure, let’s get on with it.”

Delion flipped the record button. He gave his name, the date, and McGuffey’s name, said, “You’re willing to make this confession, no one’s coercing you?”

“Dammit, yes. Let’s go!”

“You don’t want a lawyer present?”

“No, I just want you to hear the truth!”

Delion gave him his Miranda rights, asked him if he understood, to which Milt spewed out more obscenities before he said yes, he understood his rights, to the tape recorder.

“Okay, Milt, tell me what happened.”

McGuffey said, “Look, Stuckey called me a couple days ago, said this guy down in LA wanted me to scare this broad at a priest’s funeral. Stuckey said he’d give me ten grand, but I had to do it in the middle of the service, for God’s sake, in front of hundreds of people, which sounded real stupid to me, but he said that was the way it had to be. I didn’t want to do that, but Stuckey had me by the short hairs, you know? I owe him money, some bad investment decisions, you know? So I had to take the job or he might have broken both my legs. But it was never murder, oh no.

“Stuckey had a gun for me, and a silencer, and said the shooter had to be me, it just had to. When I asked him why, he laughed and said, ‘You look just right, Milt,’ that’s what the guy said. ‘You look just right, maybe even perfect for the role.’ Whatever the fuck that means.”

He really did look just right, Dane thought. A good physical resemblance. Damn, nothing was ever easy.

“You really expect me to buy this?” Savich said, lounging back in the uncomfortable chair, looking bored.

Milt sat forward, clasping his hands in front of him, like he was ready to pray. “Look, Inspector, like I told you, I had to have the money. I had to pay off Stuckey or I was in really deep shit. Then there’s my disability and that jerk of a landlord is nearly ready to throw me out. Hey, I was just three days away from sitting on Union Square, leaning against the Saint Francis Hotel, begging for money. I had to take the job. A man’s gotta survive, you know? A man’s gotta pay off his bad investment decisions.”

Delion had sat back in his chair, his arms folded over his chest, a sneer on his face. “You want us to believe that this guy specifically told Stuckey it had to be you because you just looked right? You were perfect for the role?”

“I swear it. Hey, Stuckey told me the LA guy’s name was DeFrosh-weird name-you’d never forget that stupid name.

“Stuckey said the guy faxed him a photo of the lady I was to give scare to, you know, shoot her just a little bit but not kill her, I wouldn’t ever do that. Yeah, the guy told Stuckey that the broad was homeless, but hey, she sure didn’t look homeless in the church, but what do I know? How would the guy in LA know about that? Stuckey didn’t tell me nuthing else, I swear it.”

Dane looked down at Nick, who was as white as the bra he’d watched her pick out in their marathon shopping spree. It was just this morning. Amazing.

Savich said, “What did you do with the photo he faxed of the lady?”

“Stuckey has it, just showed it to me, then took it right back.”

“What did it look like?”

“She was coming out of this police station with that guy who’s standing beside her out there, you know, that dead priest’s brother. It didn’t look like no police station I’ve ever seen in San Francisco. Yeah, Stuckey’s got it. She’s a looker, I wasn’t about to forget her. Like I said, she sure didn’t look homeless in the church so for a while there I wasn’t sure it was really her.”