After regarding him for a long moment through the glass, Cazo pushed a button on the side of his desk. The door’s lock clicked open. Gurney entered the office, which reeked of cigar smoke, and introduced himself as an investigator following up on some loose ends related to the Slade murder trial. Apart from a slight tightening of his lips, the man showed little reaction. The hostility in his small dark eyes had a chronic look.
Gurney took the transcript out of his pocket. “According to this record of your interview with Detective Scott Derlick, when he questioned you regarding Lenny Lerman’s state of mind, you stated that his attitude and behavior had changed a month or so prior to his resignation.”
Cazo shrugged. “So?”
“Could you describe that in more detail? How exactly did Lerman change?”
“I don’t get the point. Trial’s over. Slade’s in the can. End of story, right?”
“Slade may be appealing the conviction. So we’re double-checking everything—especially what Lerman knew about Slade and how it affected him. Those changes you saw in him could be important. Can you describe them?”
Cazo picked up a paper clip and began examining it. “He got quiet.”
“Quiet?”
“Lerman liked to talk. Liked to make people think he had some juice, always saying he knew this guy, knew that guy. You’d see in the news that the feds pulled some major sting, all of a sudden Lerman knows the guy, could even be a relative. Uncle Vinnie, Uncle Joey, whatever. You listen to him, you’d think every wiseguy was his fuckin uncle.”
“Then he stopped doing that?”
“Like somebody turned off his switch. Not a fuckin word for like four, five weeks. Then, all of a sudden, he comes back to life, like he’d been storing up all his bullshit, talking for the next week or two like he was connected to some guy so big he can’t even say how big the guy is. Tells me he’s got this hot-shit idea to shake some celebrity down for who the fuck knows how much, enough that he don’t have to bust his balls here no more. So I can take the job and shove it up my ass.” Cazo paused, shaking his head in amusement at such foolishness. “Big idea got the little fucker iced, right?”
“Were you surprised that it turned out that way?”
Cazo let out a whispery laugh. “Only a fuckin moron woulda been surprised.”
The dead-cold look in his eyes brought to mind Marcus Thorne’s interjection of the man’s nickname into Slade’s trial—Tommy Hooks—and its ugly meaning.
IN HIS CAR, GURNEY SWITCHED ON THE WIPERS TO BRUSH away the snow that had accumulated during his meeting with Cazo. He was thinking about the changes in Lenny Lerman, and the timing of those changes in relation to the dated entries in Lerman’s diary. Three dates seemed significant. October 24 was the date of the diary’s first entry, and it referred to the conversation between Lerman and someone named Jingo, during which he learned of an event in Slade’s past that struck him as an opportunity for a blackmail scheme. The November 2 entry referred to the dinner with Sonny and Adrienne at which Lenny described the plan he intended to implement. The November 6 entry described his resignation from the Beer Monster.
That two-week stretch—beginning with his October 24 discovery of Slade’s secret and ending with his November 6 resignation—aligned closely with Cazo’s description of the period in which Lerman came “back to life.”
However, it was the three or four weeks prior to Lerman’s discovery of Slade’s secret—the period during which Lerman, according to Cazo, had been uncharacteristically quiet—that now interested Gurney. Since there were no diary entries for those weeks, discovering the reason for Lerman’s odd behavior at that time would require additional digging.
Remembering that he’d silenced his phone for his meeting with Cazo, he turned it back on and found two new messages. The first was from an unfamiliar name, Samantha Smollett.
The fake friendliness in her voice was like frosting on a knife. “Hello, Mr. Gurney. I hope you get this message in time. I’m Sam Smollett, producer on the top-rated RAM-TV show,
She ended her message with her personal phone number, repeating it three times. He didn’t bother making a note of it.
The second message was from Madeleine, her tone more upbeat than it had been for a long while.
