Sweet Liar Read online

  Holding his left hand up, Walden studied it. “When I was sixteen, I got drunk for the first time in my life, and when I woke up I found that I had gone to a tattoo parlor and had this done to my hand in memory of my grandfather. When I was sober I wanted to have it removed, but my father said it was an omen.”

  When both Samantha and Mike looked puzzled at that, Mr. Walden chuckled. “My dad had a rich fantasy life. He got married when he was little more than a kid and I was soon on the way, so he never had a chance to go to school. After he saw my hand, he said I was destined to become an attorney and save men like my grandfather. I don’t know how a sixteen-year-old with a hellacious hangover and a tattooed hand equaled attorney to my father, but the whole scheme sounded good to me. I went to law school thinking that I was going to be spending my life saving misunderstood men and women, but I find that I defend the dregs of humanity.”

  His words and his expression were at odds with each other, for he looked well pleased with himself.

  “Why?” Samantha asked.

  “Money, my dear. The scum-of-the-earth wouldn’t do scummy deeds if it didn’t make them a lot of money, and defending them has made me a rich man. My parents lived in a two-room apartment with five kids. I have a penthouse on Fifth Avenue and an estate in Westchester. I’ve sent my four daughters to Ivy League schools, and my wife has her clothes made for her in Paris.”

  He smiled at the innocence of the two handsome young people before him, for their faces were readable, telling him that they would never sell their souls for money. But, then, from the looks of the way they were dressed and from the way they carried themselves, neither of them knew what it meant to be hungry or cold or have the landlord evict them in the middle of the night for nonpayment of rent. His daughters were like this pretty little Samantha, well groomed, well fed, not haunted by memories of poverty. Inadvertently, the garbage he defended had done this good deed and helped put something clean and good on earth.

  “When I was twenty-one, I changed my name to H. H. Walden, a nice WASP name that I used all through law school. It helped me with the blond tennis players, and later, I could tell the bums I defended that the H. H. stood for Half Hand, so it helped me there too.”

  “Because they had heard of Half Hand’s lost three million,” Mike said, making Walden smile.

  “You’ve done some searching, haven’t you?”

  Mike told him about the biography he was writing and about Maxie being Sam’s grandmother. “What can you tell us about her?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Mr. Walden said, his eyes locked with Mike’s and never flinching.

  A practiced liar, Mike thought. “Not even the name of the nursing home she’s in?” Mike asked. “Do you have any idea who’s paying her bills?”

  At that Walden put his head back and laughed uproariously. “Caught me, did you? Yes, I know where Maxie is, but I’m not paying her bills. If you want to know that, you should ask her where the money comes from.”

  “She pretends she’s someone named Abby and won’t even admit she’s Maxie.”

  “Ah, well, that’s understandable. She’s probably afraid for the young lady here, afraid Doc will do something to her, or if not Doc, then someone else. The legend of Half Hand’s money is still alive in some circles. Of course, you do know that her name really is Abby, don’t you? No? It’s Mary Abigail Dexter. When she signed on with Jubilee to sing in his club, she initialed the contract, but instead of using her initials of M.A.D., she wrote M.A.X. Jubilee’s bookkeeper, who needed glasses, thought her name was Maxie and the name stuck.”

  Mike gave Walden a hard look, for he had a feeling the man was withholding information, information that he had no intention of telling them. “Someone broke into an upper floor of my house and tried to kill Samantha.”

  Walden didn’t so much as blink, but then he lived with death and murder and mayhem on a daily basis. “Did they now? You catch him?”

  “No,” Mike said tightly. “You have any idea who it could have been? Someone you know?”

  Walden smiled. “It could have been any one of thousands of people I know. There isn’t a person I’ve defended who isn’t capable of climbing into a window and trying to kill a pretty girl. You just have to tell me a time and a place, and I can match a murder with it.”

  Samantha opened her mouth to speak, but Mike beat her to it.

  “February 1975, Louisville, Kentucky,” Mike shot out, but he didn’t turn to look at Samantha who was glaring at him. That was the time and place when her mother had died.

  “I’d like to go now, Mike,” she said softly, but Mike kept looking at Walden and didn’t move from his chair.

  After looking from one to the other of them, Walden punched a button on his phone and told his secretary that he wanted anything she had for the date and place Mike had given him. “She has everything on computer so it should take only a minute,” he said into the silence that had developed after Mike asked his question.

  For five long minutes he sat back in his chair and looked at the two of them, trying to figure out what was going on besides the writing of a biography. He wondered if they knew the full extent of what a nasty creature Doc was, or if they thought he was a sweet old man merely because he had defied the devil long enough to reach the age of ninety-something.

  When his secretary placed a single fat file folder on his desk, Walden leaned forward.

  “Ah, I remember this creep well. He went to the gas chamber about ten years ago and never was there a more deserving occupant. I defended him, but I was glad to know that there was no way I could win the case. On the night before he was executed, he asked me to come to his cell so he could tell me all about his life. I’d like to tell you that he was remorseful, but he said he wanted me to write everything down so he could be put on TV or in the movies like Al Capone was.”

  Walden flipped through the pages of notes. “I wasn’t going to tell him that I’d die before I made him into a folk hero, but I recorded everything he said in case I later had someone accused of something he’d done.”

  Running his finger down the pages he said, “1975. Ah, here it is. My, my, but he was busy that year. Four, no five killed by him, all of them gang members. No, wait, here’s one.”

  Glancing up at Mike, he said, “Louisville, Kentucky. February.” He looked back down at the pages. “Nasty, nasty, this one. Good lord! I had forgotten about this. He was looking for Half Hand’s money. I think someone hired him but he wouldn’t say if he was hired or on his own. I think he wanted me to think he was smart enough to kill people without someone else telling him who, what, and where.”

  “What did he do?” Mike asked quietly

  “He killed a woman. He said he had a tip that someone in her family knew about Half Hand’s money, so he went to Louisville, kidnapped the woman, and tortured her a while to get her to talk. Let’s see…He held her against a hot radiator, but when he realized that she didn’t know anything, he took her out and ran her over with his car. He bragged about how the woman begged him not to hurt her little girl, so after he killed her he stayed in town a few weeks and talked to the kid and asked lots of questions to see if she or her father knew anything. He decided they didn’t, so he left town.”

  H.H. looked up at the two of them. A moment before they had been healthy-looking and pink fleshed, but now they appeared pale and sickly. The man reached out and took the woman’s hand where it was gripping the chair arm, and it was then that H.H. realized that the tortured woman was probably this young woman’s mother.

  “I…I…” he began, and H. H. Walden, the man who was never at a loss for words, could think of nothing to say.

  Mike stood up. “Mr. Walden, thank you so much for your help. I think we’ll leave now.”

  “Look, I’m sorry I told you that story. I didn’t mean…” There was nothing else he could say as he watched the two of them leave his office.

  “Are you all right?” Mike asked when they were on the street.