Page 181 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Jury-rigged

table already harboring a couple of teenagers. He pushed them out of
the way—panicked, he said. All of that is corroborated by about
twenty people. A couple of squad cars came and took statements
from everyone present. An ambulance carried away our shadow, who
took a ricochet fragment in the calf.”
“But you weren’t notified?”
“Not a homicide, the gang-violence squad said. Too much turf-
guarding, in my opinion. They knew who Rommel was but he was a
victim, and treated no differently than the other customers. He told
them he had no idea who the attackers were. Nor could he give a
license plate number, not even partial, nor any description of vehicle
or occupants. Nevertheless, he stayed in the diner until morning.”
“How can that be established, once the police left?”
“Indeed, it was chaotic in there, with old Mr. Petrow, the owner,
arriving in his bathrobe to direct a clean-up crew. He has not closed
the place, even for holidays, in twenty years, and was not going to let
a bunch of hoodlums shut him down now—that was his quote in the
papers. Although various people on the scene told me later that they
were aware of Rommel’s presence at odd moments throughout the
night, I could not stitch all their testimony into a seamless account of
those hours. Fortunately for Mr. Simulian, he used the ATM in the
diner just past midnight, and placed a long distance call to New Jersey
on the pay phone at 2:05 a.m. using a prepaid calling card. The party
did not pick up the call, and Rommel left voice-mail. The Atlantic
City police checked it out for me and the time of the message was
correct—it couldn’t have been faked because the system was the
phone company’s, not an answering machine. Given those reference
points, the distance to Bowan’s trailer is too great, even if he had
found a way to sneak out.”
Labelle Gramercy typed away. I hoped I hadn’t misquoted myself.
“Anyone can place a phone call and hang up before the message is
taken, while a second person somewhere else places a call to the same
number a few seconds later and does leave a recording with the
desired date/time-stamp. His alibi, therefore, is imperfect.”
Good! That was a neat trap I had set for her, and it worked. I knew
Rommel’s alibi wasn’t unassailable, on just such grounds, but now
she would focus on him just because I had expressed the contrary

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