The Match (Wilde, #2)(58)

“I just told you.”

“But they let you go?”

“You think that makes it better?” Wilde shook his head. “I managed to call Laila before they took me. She called Hester, who called someone in Hartford and made threats neither one of us want to know about. That someone made a call and they let me go.”

“Oh, shit.” Oren’s face dropped. “Hester? She knows about this?”

“She doesn’t know I’m here.”

“You figured it out,” Oren said. “How long do you think it will be before she does?”

“Not my problem.”

“You’re right. It’s mine.” He rubbed his face with his hands. “I messed up, Wilde. I’m sorry.”

Wilde waited. He didn’t have to prompt Oren to come clean. He would now. Wilde was certain of it.

“I need a drink,” Oren said. “You want one?”

That sounded pretty good to Wilde right now. Oren poured them a Macallan single malt scotch. “I’m really sorry,” he said again. “I know that’s not good enough, but a cop had been murdered.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“As you already know, Hester called in Henry McAndrews’s body being found on behalf of”—Oren made quote marks in the air—“‘an anonymous client who is protected under attorney-client privilege.’ You can’t imagine how much this pissed off the Hartford police. One of their own takes three bullets to the back of his head in his own home—and some loudmouth city lawyer won’t tell them who found the body? They were enraged. Naturally. You can understand that.”

Oren looked at Wilde. Wilde’s expression gave him nothing.

“And then?” Wilde said.

“And then the cops, still furious, checked into Hester and—surprise, surprise—they learned that she was currently dating a fellow law enforcement officer.”

“You,” Wilde said.

Oren nodded.

“So they came to you.”

“Yes.”

“And you betrayed her attorney-client privilege.”

“First off, you’re not a client, Wilde. You don’t pay her. You’re a friend.”

Wilde frowned. “For real?”

“Yes, for real. But second of all, and far more important, Hester didn’t tell me it was you. I didn’t ask her. I didn’t overhear her. I didn’t obtain the information that you were the client in question in an illegal way. I surmised that you were the client that Hester was unethically protecting independently of my private relationship with her.”

Wilde just shook his head.

Oren leaned forward. “Let’s say this happened before Hester and I started dating. The Hartford cops come to me and say, ‘That slick New York attorney from your hometown is protecting someone who broke into the house of a murdered cop, do you have any guesses who that might be?’ My educated guess, even back then, would have been you, Wilde.”

“Nice,” Wilde said.

“Nice what?”

“Self-rationalization. ‘If I didn’t know what I did know I might have known what I said I knew.’”

“I made a miscalculation,” Oren said.

“You gave them my name, right?”

“I did, yes, but I also made it clear that you and I were close. I told them I’d sit down with you and ask you to cooperate because you weren’t the type to want a killer to go free. I never imagined they’d go rogue.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Even when the victim is ‘one of their own’?”

Oren nodded. “Fair enough. Look, Wilde, I want to know who did this to you. I want them to be punished.”

“That won’t happen,” Wilde said. “They blacked out their license plates. They put a bag over my head, so I never saw their faces. They did it on a quiet part of the street with no cameras. Even if I could figure out who they were, it would be my word against theirs. They knew what they were doing.” Wilde took a sip and stared at Oren over the glass. “And you know how cops stick together.”

“Damn. I’m really sorry.”

Wilde waited. He knew what was coming. He just needed to turn it in his favor.

“But you need to listen to me,” Oren said.

And here it comes, Wilde thought.

“A cop, a father of three, has been murdered. You have pertinent information. You just can’t hide from that. You have a responsibility to come forward.”

Wilde considered his next move. Then he asked, “Did the cops search McAndrews’s computer?”

“They’re working on it,” Oren replied. “It’s pretty sophisticated security and there’s a lot on it. What should they be looking for?”

“How about we share?”

“Share what?” Oren said.

“You tell me what the police know about McAndrews’s murder,” Wilde said. “Based on that, I tell you what I think you should do or look into.”

“Are you serious?”

“You have other options,” Wilde said. “For example, you could ask your colleagues to torture me again.”

Oren closed his eyes.