Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 01 - TRIAL - a Legal Thriller by Clifford Irving

Underhill Clinic to get rid of a little cocaine habit. Before Clyde married Sharon he'd fucked more women in Harris County than the whole Houston Astro infield put together. Marriage didn't stop him. When he got to be a wealthy entrepreneur he still kept up his gynecological practice — he liked pussy and that was the fastest way to meet it. But his main squeeze in recent years was Johnnie Faye Boudreau. You saw her in the courtroom. Quite a woman. She runs a topless bar out on the strip behind the Galeria. Maybe she owns it, maybe she doesn't — who really knows? Won a couple of beauty contests when she was younger, then became a model, then a dancer. Couple of brothers got killed in Vietnam — she talks about them all the time. Married twice, no kids. First husband, musician of some kind, she divorced on grounds of nonsupport. Second husband was a drug dealer and ex-con. She divorced him after he got sentenced to a thirty-year bit over in Austin. That was just after she took up with Clyde Ott."
    Almost two years ago, on a sunny October morning, Clyde's wife, Sharon Underhill Ott, was shot down in a parking lot on her way to an aerobics class. A high-powered rifle had done the killing. A man in a black Lincoln town car was seen speeding away from the scene. Clyde Ott was in San Diego at the time, at a medical convention. Johnnie Faye Boudreau was visiting her mother down in Corpus Christi. Airtight alibis.
    "Johnnie Faye had another part-time boyfriend then," Scoot said, "called Dink, because his real name was David Inkman. He was an assistant manager at her club, an ex-Marine. Did some time up at Huntsville for assault and battery. Dink drove a black Lincoln town car. Naturally, considering the close relationship between Clyde and Johnnie Faye, Dink fell under suspicion. But he had an alibi too. A couple of hookers swore he'd got drunk with them the night before, slept over at their house and stayed till noon. They swore his Lincoln was parked in their garage. HPD never could pick up a tire tread in the parking lot to match Dink's white-walls, and they never did find the murder weapon. Case closed."
    Warren remembered photographs in all the papers of the grieving widower. After he had inherited the bulk of Sharon's $35 million estate Dr. Clyde Ott had donated $5 million of it to the Texas Medical Center.
    Scoot popped another can of Lone Star.
    "Dink — Inkman — had a little rundown wood frame house in Montrose. About three months after Sharon Ott was killed, Dink was shotgunned to death in the driveway of his home from a passing pickup. They had to scrape him off the concrete with a fucking trowel."
    Warren blew out his breath. "You're saying—"
    "Not me. Others did. Said that Johnnie Faye was behind it all, that she wanted to marry Clyde Ott, and the first thing she had to do was get rid of her husband, which was easy — there was a story made the rounds that she'd told the law where he was picking up the dope in Austin — and then Clyde's wife, which was hard. And then after Dink had done that for her out of the blackness of his loyal heart, she had to get rid of Dink too. They said there were a lot of ex-cons she'd done favors for. The theory was she'd hump these guys and supply them with dope, and then when she had them under her thumb she'd ask them for a little favor. Promise to pay them something, and payment would come later, if there was a later. Around the time of the Inkman murder there was another guy she was dicking around with, a guy named Bobbie Ronzini who also worked for her at the club. Ronzini fell under suspicion but the cops couldn't prove anything. Then he vanished. Maybe into a hole in the ground. No one knows. I'm just giving you some background," Scoot said graciously.
    "I never heard about the Inkman murder," Warren admitted.
    "Why would you? After Washington, D.C., and Detroit, Houston's the murder capital of the western world. May even beat out Beirut. The newspapers can pick and