“Not a problem.”
“Is there anything here that you need?”
“Aside from my sanity? Just some clothes.”
“Then throw some stuff together. But first I want to go up top. Stay with me.”
We went up the stairs onto the flat tar roof. Two cops in uniform were poking around up there in search of a possible weapon.
I didn’t see one. There was nothing up there at all except for rain puddles and a ratty old plastic lounge chair that one of my neighbors sat on sometimes to work on her tan. Lulu sniffed and snorted her way around. Sat down for a moment. Got up, moved over a few feet and sniffed and snorted some more.
Very peered at her. “The hell’s she doing?”
“I couldn’t say. She doesn’t always tell me everything.”
“We need to talk this out, dude. I’m starved. Want to grab a burger?”
“Oh, I think we can do better than that.”
ROMAINE VERY STOOD there, awestruck, in front of the living room windows gazing out at the sixteenth-floor view of Central Park. It was not yet dusk, but lights were beginning to twinkle in the apartment towers across the park on Fifth Avenue. He’d left his racing bike downstairs in the lobby after showing the doorman his shield. This would be the night doorman, Frank—the one who hated me. Since Very was something of a New York tabloid hero, this meant Frank would now start treating me with a lot more R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
“Dude, you actually used to live here?”
“I actually did.” I deposited a suitcase stuffed with more of my clothing and two more garment bags in the master bedroom, where I hung my navy blue blazer in the closet and took off my tie before I rejoined him in the living room. “Right now I’m just house-sitting for Merilee until she gets back from Budapest.”
“Sure it’s not more than that?” he asked, peering at me.
“We’re working at it. We did spend the entire summer together on her farm. Admittedly, I bunked in the guest cottage, but we got along really well. And she’s never invited me to stay here before while she was away on location.”
“I sure wish I had a woman in my life,” he lamented, looking back out at the park. “It’s not the part about being horny all of the time that bothers me, although that certainly enters into it.”
“As it were.”
“It’s the not having someone to talk things over with. Someone who actually cares about me.”
“I wouldn’t think you’d have trouble meeting women.”
“And you’d be wrong. What I do scares them off. They hear homicide detective and run for the hills.”
“Lieutenant, I’ll be happy to continue this installment of Mary Worth in half a tick, but first I have an important call to make. Please excuse me.”
I went back into the master bedroom, sat down on the edge of the bed, called the Algonquin and asked to be connected with Alberta Pryce’s table. When the Silver Fox got on the line, I told her that Tommy O’Brien had just been thrown off the roof of my crappy brownstone on West 93rd Street, which was where he’d been hiding out.
Alberta greeted this news with a heavy silence before she said, “Do they have any idea who did it?”
“Not yet, but it’ll be on the local TV news soon if it isn’t already. I thought you’d want to call Sylvia and tell her about it yourself.”
“Yes, I’ll do that right now. She’s probably still at the office. I’m terribly sorry about your friend, dear boy. I’m also sorry I got you mixed up in this.”
“No need to be. My eyes were wide open.”
“Please forgive me if I sound like a money-grubbing agent, but have you had any luck finding Tulsa?”
“No, but I did find his rough drafts and research materials. If those two copies of the finished manuscript are really, truly gone then it’ll be possible for someone—not me—to re-create what he wrote. But it’ll be a tedious job and it means Guilford House will have no Addison James blockbuster next year.”
Alberta treated me to another moment of heavy silence before she said, “Stay in touch. And, again, I’m terribly sorry.”
After I’d hung up, I went into the kitchen and put down Lulu’s can of 9Lives mackerel for cats and very weird dogs. Took the fresh mozzarella and hunk of aged Parmesan out of the refrigerator so they’d get to room temperature and opened two cold Bass ales. Very joined me in there.
“Have a seat.” I handed him one of the bottles of Bass and rolled up my sleeves. “I’ll run it for you while I make us something to eat.”
He took a long, grateful gulp before he flopped down at the kitchen table. “I didn’t know you could cook.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how complex and multifaceted I am.”
“What I am starting to remember is how annoying you are.”
“I’m going to give you a free pass on that one, since it’s as plain as the large black nose on Lulu’s face that you’re not getting nearly enough sleep or sex. I took to gardening this summer on the farm. Helped me sort out my thoughts while I was writing. The best part about it is that you get to eat the results. And if it’s fresh out of the ground, you don’t have to do much to it.”
I grabbed three ripe heirloom tomatoes from the bowl on the table, cut them into slices, did the same to the fresh mozzarella, and arranged them on a platter. Plucked some fragrant basil leaves from their stems, tore them into pieces, scattered them over the cheese and tomatoes, then drizzled the plate with olive oil. The crusty loaf of bread that Merilee had bought was in the bread box. I tore us off a couple of hunks, handed Very a fork and said, “Dig in.”
“Jesus, dude, this is unreal,” he exclaimed after we’d both devoured several forkfuls.
I got the bags of three different salad greens out of the fridge, grabbed several handfuls from each bag, put them in a big pot and filled it with water. I lifted the greens out carefully so as to leave the dirt behind and put them in a spinner to dry them. Then I put them in an old wooden bowl Merilee and I bought in the Shenandoah Valley shortly after we were married and set them aside.
Lulu finished her dinner and curled up under the kitchen table with her head on Very’s foot. He reached down and patted her.
“Yesterday I got a call from my agent to meet with Sylvia James, editor in chief of Guilford House, Addison James’s personal editor and only child,” I began. “His first wife died many years ago. It was Sylvia who told me that Tulsa had been snatched. She hired me to try to get it back. Since Tommy and I were old pals, she thought I’d be able to persuade him to come to his senses.”
Very devoured the last of the tomatoes and mozzarella, mopping up the plate with his bread. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning she thought he’d made up the whole mugging story and was basically holding it for ransom until she made good on the lucrative contract he claimed she’d offered him and she claims she didn’t.”
“And who did we believe?”
“Tommy, most definitely.” I squeezed the juice of a lemon through my fingers into a Pyrex measuring cup, discarded the pits, added an equal amount of extra virgin oil, then salt, pepper and a dab of Dijon mustard. “You’d have to hunt far and wide to find a single human being in the publishing world who trusts Sylvia,” I said as I whisked the salad dressing. “She’s a genuinely horrible human being. Nobody likes her. Not even her famous father, who bullies her with vicious glee.”
I found a box of linguine in the cupboard. Got out the Lodge cast-iron skillet. Put a pot of salted water on to boil, then slivered several cloves of fresh garlic. “Sylvia’s also the heir to 99.9 percent of her father’s estate. He’s worth hundreds of millions and owns over half a dozen mansions scattered from Provence to Maui. Plus the royalties from all of his bestselling books, which sell all over the world, pay off like crazy, year after year after year. Only a tiny fraction of what he’s worth goes to Yvette, his second wife, due to the ironclad prenuptial agreement Addison forced her to sign. Yvette’s thirty-two and you’re just going to love her. Sy
lvia calls her Princess Lemon Jell-O because she’s so blond and jiggly. When Yvette got wise that she’d signed the world’s worst prenup, she retained a South Shore shyster named Mel Klein, whose firm just so happens to employ a PI named—cue the drum roll—Jocko Conlon.”
“Whoa, small world.”
“Whoa, isn’t it? Yvette puts on the airhead tootsie act but she’s no fool.” My pasta water had come to a boil. I dropped in half a pound of linguine, stirred it and set the timer. Put the heat on low under the Lodge pan and poured some olive oil in to warm. “I also got a funny hit off of her.”
“What kind of a funny hit?”
“The kind that if I were you I’d run a criminal background check on a Phyllis Yvette Rittenaur of Larchmont, New York. R-I-T-T-E-N-A-U-R.”
“Consider it done.”
I stirred the linguine some more and tossed the slivered garlic in the skillet, keeping the heat low so that it wouldn’t burn. Grabbed a fistful of fresh Italian parsley from the fridge and chopped it up. When the timer went off, I drained the linguine into a colander. By now the garlic was golden and filling the entire kitchen with its aroma. I dumped the pasta into the skillet with a half-cup or so of cooking water I’d reserved, stirred it, added more oil and turned off the heat. Dumped in the parsley. Grated a ton of the aged Parmesan over it. Spooned the contents of the skillet onto two plates and added some fresh ground pepper.
“Want another beer or a glass of wine?”
“Another beer’s fine by me.”
I pulled out a tray, put the plates on it and grabbed us a couple of forks. “Why don’t you carry this out to the living room and put it on the coffee table? It’d be a shame to waste that view. I’ll bring the salad and two more beers.” I poured some of the lemon vinaigrette on the salad, tossed it, opened two more Bass ales and joined him. He was seated in one of the armchairs, anxiously eyeballing our dinner plates.
“No need for formalities here, Lieutenant. Dig in.”
He reached for one of the plates and started eating. I sat on the sofa, grabbed my plate and dug in. Lulu stretched out next to me and began to doze contentedly.
“Dude, this is the best dinner I’ve had in months, no lie,” he said as he devoured his linguine, pausing to fork some salad onto his plate and dive into that as well. He sipped his Bass, gazing around at Merilee’s magnificent pieces of signed Stickley furniture before his eyes settled on the view of the park again. “I could get used to living here real fast.”
“It’s not hard at all, trust me.”
“So if we run a check on Yvette James, aka Phyllis Yvette Rittenaur, where do you think that’s going to lead us?”
“To someone who’s not quite who she appears to be, and never has been. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if she’s the so-called brains behind this operation. Convinced Mel to mug Tommy and snatch Tulsa as big-time leverage in their would-be prenup renegotiation. Mel recruited Jocko to make it happen. Jocko found a couple of street punks to snatch Tommy’s briefcase, then threw a scare into Tommy. It worked like a charm—aside from the troublesome fact that Tommy could identify Jocko. That didn’t sit too well with Jocko, I’m guessing. So he goes back to Mel and says, ‘I don’t want this guy to be able to finger me.’ Mel says, ‘I don’t either. Take care of him.’ And there you have it. A rat’s nest of nasty people, also known as a criminal conspiracy.”
Very mulled this over, his head nodding, nodding. “It plays.”
“Mind you, it’s just one of several scenarios that do. You’ll also want to take a good look at Norma Fives, an up-and-comer at Deep River, who is—or I should say was—Tommy’s mistress. She’s young, ambitious and in big trouble. Can’t make good on the follow-up to her huge bestselling thriller of last year, The Girl Under the Bed, because it seems that her young unknown author has flipped out. Norma desperately needs someone to ghost it for her and was anxious to throw the job to Tommy. It would have meant a big payday and royalty participation for him. Unfortunately, Tommy was under exclusive contract to Addison. The only way to spring him from that was for Tommy to do something so heinous and unforgivable that Sylvia would have to fire him.”
“Something, like, say losing the only two copies of Tulsa in existence?”
“Precisely. I should also point out that Norma is Sylvia’s former assistant at Guilford House as well as her mortal enemy. Sylvia abused her so relentlessly that Norma blew a gasket in the middle of a weekly editorial meeting and hurled a Stanley Bostitch stapler across the conference table at her. Came within half an inch of blinding her. Near as I can tell, it’s one of the proudest moments of Norma’s young life. So it’s possible that she’s the one who engineered the snatch of Tulsa, although I haven’t figured out how she would know Jocko unless I’m missing something, which is entirely possible. I did consume a generous quantity of psychedelics in my youth.”
“Was that before or after you snorted your literary career and your marriage up your nose?”
“Before, but thanks large for reminding me.”
“You’re welcome large. You were saying about Norma . . .”
“She was aware that Tommy was hiding out at my place. He called her from there today, like I told you. So it’s possible she paid him a visit right after I met her for a drink in Midtown at four. Lulu and I walked home from there through Central Park. She’d have beaten us there by a half hour if she took the subway. That puts her in play as a suspect. Tommy certainly would have buzzed her in. Trouble is, I can’t figure out why she’d want him dead. She loved the guy. She believed in him.”
“Maybe he got upset when she told him she engineered the snatch,” Very suggested. “Maybe he threatened to call the police on her, being a straight shooter and all.”
“That works. Trouble is, she weighs about ninety-five pounds dripping wet, which is an expression I’ve never understood. No way she could have thrown him off that roof. It’s possible she had an accomplice, but if she did, I don’t know yet who he might be.” I took a sip of my Bass. “And there are some other people you’ll want to look at.”
“As in . . . ?”
“Sylvia. Maybe she’d had enough of her father’s ceaseless abuse. Maybe she wanted, at long last, to be free of him. Arranged the Tulsa snatch so as to sabotage the old man’s career, quit the publishing business and spend the rest of her days living a life of moneyed leisure. Maybe Tommy got wise to the fact that she was behind it and she took care of him. He would have let her into the apartment if she’d buzzed him.”
“How would she know he was there?”
“Maybe he called her, too. Can you get a list of the calls that he made from the phone company?”
“I can, but I have to go through proper channels. It’ll take a while.” Very drank the last of his Bass, considering this. “It would certainly be easy to find out if she left the office shortly before it happened. Someone would have noticed, wouldn’t they?”
“Not necessarily. Those places are full of people coming and going. Sylvia could have slipped out for a while without anyone paying attention.”
“Is she strong enough to hurl him off of that roof?”
“She’s built like a Hubbard squash, to quote her adoring father. Speaking of whom, he’s in play, too. He’s seventy-eight and doesn’t see very well out of his one eye, but he’s incredibly fit. Plenty strong enough to throw Tommy off that roof. He also has a temper. Hates that he needs Tommy’s help to write his bestselling books. Hates that word might get out that it’s actually Tommy who’s written the last three. So maybe he strolled ten blocks up Riverside and paid Tommy a visit. Again, Tommy would have buzzed him in.”
“The old guy lives in a luxury building. One of the doormen would have noticed if he left, wouldn’t he?”
“You’d think so, but doormen can be bribed to keep their mouths shut.”
“Not in the middle of a murder investigation, they can’t. We’ll certainly check that out. You’ve given me a lot to work with, dude. Thanks.” He sat back in hi
s chair, patting his stomach. “And thanks again for the awesome eats. I don’t suppose you baked a blueberry pie, too, did you?”
“Sorry, I don’t bake. Furthermore, I’m not done yet. There’s another thread to tug at. Mighty big one, too.”
“Which is . . . ?”
“Kathleen, Tommy’s wife, who’s enraged that he took up with a younger woman and moved out on her. Which is not to say that Kathleen’s pining away, lonely and blue. She’s found herself a fellow StuyTown denizen who was on the job until he had to take early retirement due to a medical disability.”
“What’s his name?”
“Richie Filosi.”
Very’s face darkened immediately.
“Know him?”
“I know him. He’s dirty.”
“What kind of dirty?”
“A few years back there was this strange epidemic of cops who suddenly had to take early retirement due to herniated discs. Must have been two dozen men. Oddly enough, all of them had the same doctor. Internal Affairs launched an investigation and caught Richie on videotape playing tennis, golf, handball. When they braced him he came clean. Stayed out of jail but lost his pension benefits, and he has to pay back every cent of those bogus disability payments. He’ll be paying them back in monthly installments for years. As for the doctor, he cleared out and operates one of those anti-aging clinics in Miami now.”
“That sounds real kosher.”
“Doesn’t it? I am liking this thread a lot. Richie’s broke, needs dough, and listen to this, listen to this . . .”
“I’m listening to this.”
“I’m almost positive that he and Jocko worked out of the same house at the same time—mine, the two-four. I’ll have to check to make sure about that, but there’s zero doubt in my mind that those two sterling specimens know each other.” He sat there lost in thought for a moment. “You do realize there’s still one more thread, right?”
“What is it, Lieutenant?”
“So far you’re selling your boy Tommy as a stand-up guy who just happened to get caught in the cross fire.”
The Man in the White Linen Suit Page 10