The Extortionist

by Vincent Zandri

  “No shit,” he says. “A rose among the thorns.”

  “I wonder what the hell she sees in a geezer like me?”

  “Maybe she’s blind and you just don’t know it.”

  “Ha . . . Ha.”

  He puts the tranny in reverse and backs out of the lot.

  A few minutes later, we arrive at my houseboat on the port.

  “What are your orders?” I ask.

  “Wait to hear from me,” he says. “I’m hoping to get word on the knife pretty soon. Turns out one of the blood types matches Kyle’s, we no longer have to worry about releasing her. In the meantime, keep digging. Keep asking questions and poking your nose into things. Maybe Kyle was working with a team.”

  “I could start with interviewing the women in the general office at the elementary school. They were in the picture with Kyle hanging on Mrs. Carter’s vestibule wall.”

  “Exactly. Meantime, we get lucky, and it turns out Kyle’s blood in on that knife, we can close this thing out.”

  “And I’ll be out of a job.”

  “Hey, Henry misses you, I’m sure. It must be lonely in the Unemployment Insurance Fraud Agency without the magnetic Steve Jobz hanging around.”

  “I hate offices,” I say.

  “Have fun tonight,” he says.

  I open the door.

  “Oh, and Jobz,” he adds.

  I turn to him.

  “Don’t forget to use protection,” he says. “You’re a little old to be changing diapers.”

  I close the door, his very valid point resonating in my brain.

  I don’t even bother with heading into the houseboat. Instead, I hop in the Mustang, double check to make sure my .45 is still packed away safely inside the glove box, then make my way to Lanie’s Bar for a couple pre-Brit pops. My guess is Henry will already be bellied up to the bar. She’ll want to be filled in on the Mrs. Carter Lunchroom Lady train wreck.

  As it turns out, Henry is indeed settled up to the bar, a giant bright red Cosmo set before her. It matches her red pants suit and open-toed pumps as if she planned it that way when she got dressed this morning. She spots me as soon as I come through the door. She also politely asks the people sitting beside her to move down a stool or two to free one up for me.

  I slide myself onto the stool, glance at the goateed bartender.

  “Bud,” I say politely.

  He brings me a beer, sets it down before me onto a napkin.

  “First off,” Henry says, “before you say anything, Jobzy. How’s your poor mother?”

  I drink some beer, set the bottle back down, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

  “Not looking so good,” I say. “I just left the hospital.”

  “You been consulting with her doctor? What’s she say?”

  “How do you know he’s a she?”

  “Only the smartest doctors work ICU. Trust me on that, I been there. Female doctors are the sharpest.”

  “That’s reverse discrimination,” I say.

  She carefully sips her Cosmo. “Call it what you will,” she says. “I call it the truth.”

  I’m thinking about the little Indian doctor she was drooling over just last night. Dr. Singh.

  “In answer to your query,” I say, “I haven’t actually been talking to a doctor, not that I won’t at some point.”

  “Who you been talking to then?”

  “My mom’s nurse. Brit.”

  “The girl you chasing after.”

  I smile. “It just so happens, she invited me to dinner at her house tonight. Seven PM, in fact.”

  “She invited you?” she asks, squinting her big brown eyes.

  “Gospel,” I say.

  “She gotta have a button missing, Jobzy,” Henry says. “No offense. Either that, or something ain’t right there.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  I drink more beer. Waving my hand to grab the bartender’s attention, I also order a Jameson. Neat.

  “Don’t you find it a little strange you ain’t talked to a doc yet?” Henry says.

  I allow the question to sink in for a minute. “Guess it never really dawned on me until now,” I say.

  “That because you got your head so far up Brit’s cute little white behind, you can’t see straight.”

  She’s got a point, but I don’t dare tell her that. That would be weak of me. She takes a moment to drink her Cosmo. Henry might be a big lady, but she’s beautiful and classy, and she’s very precise in her actions, even when she’s enjoying a cocktail.

  “I can’t help it if I like her,” I say, “and she likes me.”

  “But you old enough to know when something ain’t right, Jobzy,” she goes on. “How come she always with your mama? Don’t she have other places to be? Like her job, for instance? She ain’t your mother’s private nurse, or so I assume. Your mama’s got quite the bank account from what you told me, your dad being a successful businessman and all, but I don’t think she paying to have a private nurse looking after her every need.”

  I pull another sip of beer. While she’s talking, my Jameson arrives. I take a careful sip of it, feel the warm liquor soothing my nervous system as it goes down.

  “I was just assuming she likes my mother. Really likes her, I mean. Likes her enough to stay by her side. Brit is sweet like that.”

  “You don’t even know her, Jobzy,” she says. Then, patting my thigh with her meaty hand. “Listen, it’s quite possible this Brit girl is everything you say she is. I hope that’s the case. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep your guard up. There’s crazy people out there. Look at what happened to the nice elementary school principal right up the road. Brutally murdered in the prime of her life. Tragic, you ask me. You can’t trust anybody nowadays.”

  I picture Brit, her body that just won’t quit, her beautiful unblemished face, her brilliant green eyes . . . I see her standing vigil over my mother, and I just find it hard to believe she’d have an ulterior motive up her sleeve.

  “Speaking of the principal,” she says, “how’s that case going you’re working on for Miller?”

  Draining my beer, I order another. Then I proceed to tell her about Kyle Carter. How she’s been living in her mother’s house and impersonating the long dead woman for five years. Also, how she somehow managed to get the woman cremated while keeping it away from the public records and therefore collected I don’t know how many years’ worth of Social Security checks. I go on to tell her that, while it can’t be proven without a doubt that’s she’s the one who’s been stealing cash from the Loudonville Elementary School cafeteria, the perp is almost certainly her. It all adds up. Then, I go on to tell her about Principal Simon’s murder, and how I nearly had my throat cut, possibly by the same murderer with the same knife.

  “But you had to let Kyle Carter go in the end?” Henry asks after ordering a second Cosmo.

  “She’s not quite free yet,” I tell her. “They might be able to hold her on the extortion charge, even if they can’t prove beyond a doubt that she’s guilty. There’s the Fed charge, too, but that’s out of our wheelhouse.”

  “And the murder charges are dropped because she’s right-handed?” Henry presses. “Maybe she likes to kill with her left hand.”

  “Pathologist insists that a left-handed individual is the guilty party,” I say, draining the rest of my whiskey. “Says he’ll testify to that in court before a jury of his peers if he has to.”

  Henry’s next Cosmo arrives. It’s filled to the rim. She picks the glass up by the stem, steals a sip without spilling a single drop. If I were drinking it, half the cocktail would be running down my necktie.

  “So, the killer is potentially still out there,” she says.

  “Potentially,” I say. “Miller’s waiting for the lab report on the knife he took from Kyle Carter’s home. If her blood is on the blade, then the murder charge sticks.”

  “If it isn’t?”

  “Then it’s my job to track down the real killer.�
� Shrugging my shoulders. “Mine and Miller’s job, I should say.”

  I drink the rest of my beer. Goateed bartender gestures at me with wide eyes, like he’s asking me if I’d like another.

  “No thanks,” I say glancing at my watch. “I’ve got me a date.”

  He smiles.

  I slip off my stool.

  “You watch your back, Jobzy,” Henry warns. “Sounds like you’ve already pissed one person off enough for her to put a knife to your throat.”

  “Still don’t know if it’s a her,” I say. “She was using a fake voice.”

  “Everyone involved in this shit storm is a she,” she points out. “I’m betting on the killer being a she.”

  “Me too,” I say. “If it turns out to be Kyle, I’ll be back to work tomorrow.”

  “Lucky me,” she says.

  I kiss her on the cheek. “You know if I had my way, you and me would be married.”

  “Get out of here, little white man,” she says, not without a laugh. “Go see to your teenage nurse.”

  I laugh along with her. But as I’m heading toward the door, she calls out for me one more time.

  “Yes, Henry?” I say, my hand on the door opener.

  “You best watch your back with that sweet nurse too,” she says. “Don’t let those green eyes fool you.”

  “Don’t worry,” I say, “it’s me you’re talking to.”

  “That’s precisely what worries me,” she chimes.

  Opening the door, I step out into the cool evening, suddenly realizing I have no idea where Brit Boido lives.

  Pulling out my phone, I’m just about to call Brit when it rings. I glance at the number displayed on the screen. A number doesn’t appear. The name Miller does, instead. I answer the phone while walking over the bar’s outdoor patio toward the parking lot where I’ve parked my Mustang.

  “What have we got?” I say in the place of a hello.

  “More bad news,” he says. “But interesting news all the same.”

  “You got my attention, Miller,” I say, opening the driver’s side door.

  “We got two DNA types on the blade,” he says. “One of them is Anita Simon.”

  “No shocker there,” I say. “Second blood type?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “It means whoever killed Anita was not the same asshole who threatened you outside your home.”

  “Because if that were the case, my DNA would be on the blade,” I deduce.

  “Whoever pressed the knife against you cut your skin. As a former cop, your DNA is registered in the data base. You’d pop up as a match, Jobz.”

  “Two different knives,” I say. “So, the killer’s blood belongs to a person of unknown origin. No DNA matches in the database as of yet, anyway.”

  “Could be a first-time killer,” he says.

  A first-time killer. Why does that little tidbit of information send chills up my spine?

  “You gonna release Kyle, Miller?” I ask after a beat.

  “Gonna hold her overnight,” he says. “With any luck, all those lesser charges will stick, and we can keep her for a while. Till Kindlon gets his demand for bail approved, anyway.”

  “Tomorrow, I’ll do some more snooping at the grade school, see what turns up.”

  “Press them hard. Those ladies out at Loudonville Elementary School could know more than we think. Judging by how friendly they were acting in that photo, they might know a lot about our killer. Hell, maybe they were all in on the extortion even. Anything’s possible.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Dead air for a beat or two.

  “Where you off to now, Jobz?” he asks. “You working on a future hangover?”

  “Heading out on my date, remember?”

  “Oh yeah,” he says. “How could I forget? With your mom’s nurse.”

  “Say, while I have you,” I say, “can you look up an address for me?”

  “What am I a phone book?”

  “Phone books don’t exist anymore.”

  “Shoot,” he says. “I can plug the name into my computer.”

  I give him Brit Boido’s name. I even spell the last name for him.

  “Brittany Boido,” he repeats while typing in the name. Clearing his throat, “If it’s the one who’s coming up as a thirty-two-year-old health care professional, then she resides at Park Lane Apartments, building eight, apartment two-B, in North Albany, in the village of Menands. And . . .”

  He’s hesitating a bit. For what reason I have no idea.

  “And what?”

  “Oh, it’s probably nothing,” he says. Then, “Eight Park Lane.”

  “Menands,” I say. “Eight Park Lane Apartments. Duly noted, Detective.”

  “Thirty-two-years-old, huh,” he says like a question.

  Her precise age must come up in whatever White Pages search he’s just done.

  “So what, Miller?”

  “You’re most definitely robbing the cradle, Jobz.”

  “She’s an adult who can make her own informed decisions, Detective Miller.”

  “She is mentally sane?” he presses.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Never mind,” he says. “Have fun.”

  “Plan on it.”

  I hang up. Firing up the Mustang, I’m suddenly smacked over the head with this realization: Miller and Henry are either busting my balls about my dating a much younger woman. Or—and this is a big or—they are genuinely concerned that something is wrong with the situation. Maybe it’s just a matter of their getting to know Brit. But then, like Henry said, I don’t even really know her.

  I back out of the space and drive toward the road that will take me out of Loudonville and into neighboring Menands.

  Pulling up to a liquor store located only a few hundred feet away from Lanie’s Bar, I buy a mid-range bottle of red. From there, it only takes me seven or so minutes to get to Park Lane Apartments. It’s that close. The long, rectangular buildings are brick and uninteresting, the facility probably having been constructed in the early 1970s. Lots of trees and green grass surround the buildings. There’s even a pool, which was probably closed the day after Labor Day a couple weeks back.

  I find Building 8 and park the Mustang in one of the few free spaces. Grabbing the bottle of wine, my eyes catch the glove box. I’m not looking at it so much as I’m glaring at the .45 stored inside it. My gut is speaking to me. It’s telling me it might not be a bad idea to bring it along. But it’s Brit we’re talking about here. Sweet, green-eyed, Brit. The very woman who has taken a personal interest in my mother’s well-being. The young Florence Nightingale with the soft voice, the sweet face, and lush black hair, and the even sweeter personality.

  “You’re just reading too much into Henry’s and Miller’s warnings,” I say aloud while opening the door and getting out. “You’re spooked, Jobzy.”

  Judging by how tight my stomach muscles are, and how dry my mouth is, and wet my palms are, I’m also nervous for other reasons. I really like Brit. And because I really like her, I feel like I’ve suddenly been transported back to the early 1980s. Once again, I’m a pimple-faced teenager on my way to my first date with the one girl I’ve been admiring from the opposite side of math class for half an entire school year. I’ve finally worked up the courage to ask her out, and to my utter shock, she said yes. Now, D-Day has arrived and she’s either going to like me or regret the moment she agreed to see me.

  Approaching the faux wood hollow metal front door, I find the button for apartment 2B and press it.

  “Two B or not two B,” I whisper to myself.

  I laugh on the inside at my own silly joke.

  “Yes,” comes Brit’s voice over the intercom.

  “Hey, Brit,” I say. “It’s Jobz. I’m outside.”

  “Wow, you are soooooo on time, Steve Jobz,” she says, her voice filled with sugar and spice. “Come on up.”

  She hits the buzzer, and
the front door automatically unlocks. Pushing it open, I step inside. I’m greeted with that same musty smell most moderately priced apartment building vestibules always seem to possess. A staircase accesses the building’s four floors. A door opens and Brit steps out onto the first landing.

  “Come on in, Steve,” she says, her face full of smiles, her perfect body dressed in her usual getup of tight Levi jeans, black cowboy boots, and matching black t-shirt.

  I have to admit, it’s one hell of a greeting. How lucky am I that this young lady, who by all rights should be out of my league, actually digs my ass? I’m feeling so happy, I take the stairs two at a time like I’m a man half my age. But like a man who is every bit middle-aged, I trip on the top stair tread and fall flat on my face. Lucky for me the landing is carpeted because the wine bottle doesn’t crash and spatter the walls like somebody who’s blown his own brains out.

  “Oh no, Steve,” Brit says, bending over and taking hold of my arm and helping me up.

  The ball knot on my tie is crooked, and my glasses are half on and half off my face. My hair looks like a giant comb-over. But it’s not my outward appearance that bugs me so much as the embarrassment that’s swirling around my insides like Jello inside a mold.

  “Now, I feel really stupid,” I say, straightening my glasses and finger combing my hair.

  Brit grabs up the bottle with her still bandaged left hand and faces me.

  “No harm done,” she says, holding up the bottle. “You saved our booze, which makes you my hero.”

  Cradling the bottle in her right arm like it’s a baby, she straightens out my tie.

  “There, there,” she says. “Good as new.”

  She steps inside. As opposed to the building’s vestibule, the place smells terrific. Like she’s been cooking up a storm. She immediately goes to the kitchen to uncork the bottle. Or so I’m assuming.

  “Have a seat,” she barks. “I’ll bring us a couple glasses.”

  Music is playing, most likely on a Blue Tooth system since I can’t actually spot a stereo system anywhere. The apartment is neat. To my left, as I walk in the door, is a large square living room with a massive high-definition flat-screen TV mounted to the wall that separates the living room from the kitchen. A black leather couch is pressed against the opposite wall, and the far wall contains a big sliding glass door that access a balcony. The black metal coffee table is long and topped with glass and a vase of flowers. Set in the corner between the TV and the glass doors is one of those carpeted towers cats like to play on with their claws, telling me there’s a cat or cats prowling around. I’m allergic to cats. So long as I don’t touch them, I’m usually okay. But then, Brit could own an untamed mountain lion and I’d still hang around.