A Murder Too Close

by Penny Mickelbury

  I looked at the check, whistled. I wouldn’t have paid this much for Sam Epstein, but then he wasn’t my kid. “We gonna keep it?”

  “Damn right, we’re going to keep it!” Yolanda snapped. She wasn’t a mercenary person. In fact, she was just the opposite—kind, considerate, generous—but business was business. We’d done what we were hired to do and if the client wanted to pay more than we billed, damn right, we’d take it. “Now, what are we doing to earn Mr. Patel’s money?”

  Mike and Eddie gave her a look, then exchanged one between themselves, then gave me one. “If you didn’t have her you’d still be walking a beat on the Upper East Side, hermano,” Eddie said.

  Since we all knew that was true I didn’t see any need to respond. Instead I behaved like the private eye businessman I billed myself to be. “McQueen and Casey aren’t going to present themselves at the Precinct and confess to torching the Taste of India which means that we’re going to have to find somebody else to drop them in it. I was hoping that would be Jackie Marchand. Now I’m hoping that Raul knows more than nothing.”

  “I still think we ought to drop that little asshole, Sammy Epstein, into the shit.”

  “Let the check clear first, bro.” He looked at Yolanda. “I’ll walk with you to the bank, you want.” Everybody laughed but me.

  Yolanda gave me a speculative look but she didn’t budge; I knew she wasn’t worried about Dave Epstein’s check, and not because she trusted Epstein. She had some kind of computer program that allowed her to put a hold on funds in a bank account until the actual check was deposited and cleared. Dave Epstein couldn’t block payment of his check now even if he wanted to. Yo’s look wondered whether I’d really turn Sammy in to help Ravi Patel, and I knew she knew that I would. “The police don’t have any forensics yet on Marchand or his apartment, but they’re treating it like a burglary gone bad.”

  Mike nodded. “I can see how they’d think that, given the scene, but that theory falls apart when you look at the building. Nobody looking for anything worth stealing would think to look in that building, and nobody would pick that apartment in that building—Jackie Marchand’s apartment—unless they knew he worked two jobs. And if Jackie Marchand was the target, then it was more than just a burglary gone wrong.”

  “And that may or may not enter into the investigation, depending on who’s doing the investigating, so we can’t count on it,” Eddie said. “Next thought.”

  “Then I go talk to Willie, see if he’s heard from Raul.”

  “And if he hasn’t?” Yolanda asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Then I’ll sic Bill Calloway on Sammy Epstein,” I said, then added as an afterthought, “I thought I’d have heard from him by now.”

  “He called this morning, Phil . . . and your cell phone’s dead again, right?”

  Shit! I fished it out of my pocket and flipped it open. Low Battery read the message on the screen. I plugged it into the charger. Day late and a dollar short. “What did he say?”

  “He wants you to call him but not at the office. He actually sounded a little upset, which is unusual for Bill. You know what Sandra calls him, right? Still Bill.”

  Appropriate, I thought. “Where am I supposed to call him, then? The office is the only number I have for him. Unless . . .” I leaned across the desk and put my face next to the cell phone on its charger and flipped it open. The little green charger icon was moving from side to side, doing its job. I pressed the message button and put my ear next to the phone. Two messages: Bill and Yolanda telling me that Bill had called. “Write this down,” I said, and rattled off the cell phone number Bill had left for me.

  “Slick move. You must be some kind of detective or something,” Eddie said.

  “He wants me to meet him behind Taste of India at eleven o’clock,” I said, looking at my watch. “If I leave right now I won’t be more than a few minutes late.” I grabbed my coat. “I’ll stop by Willie’s when I leave Bill.” I headed for the door.

  “Phil!” I turned around and just barely caught the cell phone Yolanda tossed to me. “You really can’t be unreachable out there, Phil.” Her no-nonsense tone chafed but I knew she was right. Good thing she had as many cell phones as computers.

  “You want some company, hermano, in case the federales are still hanging around?” Eddie asked, but he wasn’t waiting for an answer. He and Mike both had their coats on and Mike whipped his cell phone off his belt and flipped it open.

  “Charged and ready, Miss Aguierre, in case you need to reach me,” and he ran out the door ahead of any impending retaliation for his wisecrack.

  “Find us a taxi, ’mano, ’cause I’m not walking all the way over there,” Eddie said.

  “It’s not that far,” I said.

  “I know you’re into this walking thing, think it’s faster or hipper or . . . or . . .”

  “More egalitarian,” Mike offered, ignoring the hostile glare I shot him.

  “Right,” Eddie said, “but it’s not. It’s just dumb to do all that walking when you could ride. And you don’t even have to pay for it! You bill the clients. The three of us take a taxi and that nice Mr. Patel pays for it.” His eyes hadn’t stopped scanning the street and he released a shrill whistle from between his teeth. A taxi screeched over to the curb and we all climbed in. “This way, ’mano, you won’t be late for your appointment and my feet won’t be hurting.”

  And we weren’t late. We exited the taxi across the street and a block from the restaurant, receipt in hand, at eleven o’clock straight up. “Why does he want you to meet him behind the place?” Mike wanted to know.

  “I suppose because that’s where the fire started. Maybe he’s found some new evidence or information.”

  “I’ll stick with you. Eddie, you take the front. Is the crime scene tape still up, you think?” Mike was a tactician at heart and there was no such thing as a simple task.

  “Like you would care,” Eddie said at the same time I said, “Like that would stop you.” But it wouldn’t be an issue, we saw. We now were directly across the street from the burned out restaurant. The downstairs door and windows were boarded up, the windows of the upstairs apartments just empty, vacant. Eddie and I kept walking, crossed the street in the middle of the block, cut through an alleyway between a grocery-deli and a four-story walk-up with a beauty-shop-cum-nail-salon at ground level, and angled around to the rear of the Taste of India. The scent of charred, burned material still hung in the air, smelling old and unpleasant now. We could see trash and debris piled in the space behind the restaurant and I wondered what Bill could have discovered here that he wanted me to see. Then I noticed that the board securing the back door of the restaurant was off and in the same instant that I began to process the possible meaning of that, I heard gunshots. Two of them. Mike had his gun out and was running toward the restaurant, was inside, when there were two more pops. I had my gun out and was about to follow when I heard, “I’m down, Mike! I’m down! Take cover! Take cover!”

  I crouched low and crab-walked toward the restaurant using the pile of debris as cover. I stopped and my breath caught in my chest. Bill Calloway was lying on his back in what had been the back door, the kitchen door, of the restaurant. The hole in his chest and the blood pouring from it told me he was dead. I knelt beside him and touched his neck anyway, hoping, praying there still was blood flowing through his jugular vein. He was warm but he was dead. I closed my eyes, sick and dizzy. There was something in Bill’s shirt pocket, something that looked familiar. I grabbed it and then ran inside the restaurant and tripped over a huge kettle in the middle of the floor. I caught myself on the side of a stainless steel counter, got my balance, and moved more slowly through the muddy, ashy sludge on the floor. Mike was sitting on the floor in what used to be the dining room of the restaurant, holding Eddie in his lap. My heart thudded so hard it hurt.

  Eddie’s eyes were open and he looked more mad than hurt, but he definitely was hurt. Mike’s hands were pressing against the uppe
r right corner of Eddie’s chest and he was breathing hard. “Did you call it in?” I asked, and he nodded. I slipped off my jacket, sweater, shirt, and finally my undershirt. I folded it, and as Mike lifted his hands I put the thick pad of the folded cotton shirt on Eddie’s chest and pressed down hard and saw the blood spurt in the instant before the T-shirt and my hands stanched it.

  “In the back, that’s Calloway?” Mike asked.

  I nodded and Eddie said, “What’s wrong with Calloway?”

  “He wasn’t as lucky as you,” Mike said. “And if you know what’s good for you you’ll stay lucky, because I’ll kick your ass if you die on me.” Eddie tried to make a witty comeback but it got lost in a rattly cough and Mike shushed him and rubbed his head as if he were a child and Eddie’s eyes fluttered, then shut. “Open your eyes!” Mike yelled, and Eddie complied, briefly.

  “Where’s the fuckin’ ambulance . . .” The sirens’ scream overrode me. “Take the pressure, Mike,” I said, and he slid his hands beneath mine on top of the blood-soaked sweater. I stood up and headed for the front door.

  “Shoulder your piece, Phil,” Mike shouted at me. “They’ll shoot your ass you run out there with a gun in your hand.”

  I went out the front door with my hands in the air. Mike had already kicked the board away; it was lying on the sidewalk. The paramedics came first, saw the blood on me, and stopped short, but I waved them forward. Then came the cops. I started talking as soon as they got close enough to hear me and kept talking until one of them finally agreed to do what I was asking over and over and over for them to do: Call their captain, Bill Delaney. He knew me. He didn’t like me but he knew me. He was my desk sergeant when I walked a beat on the Upper East Side and now was the captain of this precinct. We’d butted heads and traded insults a few months ago but Delaney knew enough about me to listen to what I had to say. And I knew enough about cops that telling them there was a DB at the back door would shift the focus from me for a while.

  The EMTs rolled Eddie out the front door on a stretcher at full speed. It was three hours before Mike and I could follow, and when we got there, to the ER waiting room, four women gasped at the sight of us: Eddie’s wife, Linda; Mike’s wife, Helen; Yolanda and Connie. We’d forgotten that we were both covered in Eddie’s blood. We looked at each other, looked at the women looking in horror at us. “We’re going to find a bathroom,” Mike said to the women, and we hurried down the hall, attracting horrified stares with every step. “He must be okay. The women aren’t crying.”

  “You know that was meant for me.”

  Mike stopped walking. “You think Calloway set you up?”

  “I think somebody set us both up.”

  Mike contemplated that for a moment, then said, “That’s Miss de Leon with Yolanda, right? What are you thinking about her, bro?”

  “I’m thinking maybe she’s the one, Mike.”

  We used all the liquid soap and most of the paper towels and a good bit of the hospital’s water supply so we didn’t look like slasher movie extras when we rejoined the women. Linda Ortiz wouldn’t let me apologize, didn’t want to hear an apology. She hugged me, told me that Eddie loved me, and said she loved me, too, because I gave him something to do. Otherwise, she said, he’d just be a retired cop getting on her nerves, making her life miserable because he was miserable. Helen Smith hugged me, too, and told me not to do anything silly like blame myself for what happened. Then Yolanda hugged me, just hugged me tight, didn’t say anything. Then Connie hugged me and didn’t let me go. “What’s the word?” I asked.

  “He’s in surgery,” Linda said. “They think the biggest problem is blood loss. The paramedic said you two—you and Mike, Phil—definitely saved his life with the compression on the wound.” Then she started to cry and all the women, Connie included, wrapped their arms around her. I felt cold without her arms around me.

  I walked a little away from the circle of women and Mike followed. “Sounded like Eddie got off a couple of rounds out there,” I said. Mike and I had not had a chance to talk—cops wouldn’t give us a chance, kept us separate to see if our stories matched.

  He nodded. “There was a car, Toyota or Honda, silver or gray, four door. Guy leans out the back window, fires two at Eddie, one hits him. He goes down, rolls, pulls his weapon, fires twice. Doesn’t know if he hit anything. If he did, he says, it was the trunk, the back windshield at best.”

  “One shooter?” I asked, trusting Mike’s gut opinion as much as anything before we had any forensics, and given Bill Delaney’s chilly reception and treatment of me, I had no reason to hope that the cops would tell me whether the gun that killed Bill Calloway also put a hole in Eddie Ortiz’s chest.

  “My guess would be yeah, especially if, as you speculate, you were the intended target. And the more I think about that, the more I think you’re right. But that doesn’t really get us anywhere, bro. No place good, anyway.”

  “I don’t know how good the place is, Mike, but we know two things: The shooter isn’t from this neighborhood because he doesn’t know what I look like; and wherever he’s from, he thinks all Ricans look alike.”

  “You fuckers do all look alike. You look just like that hairy-faced bastard . . .” He couldn’t finish. I grabbed him, wrapped my arms around him, and held him tight. And he let me. Mike was bigger than me. Older, tougher, smarter, stronger than me. I looked up to him and Eddie though, technically, they were my employees. Right now, in this moment, we became real friends. Not the more-than-twenty-years kind of friendship that he and Eddie shared, but important and real enough.

  The women came then and added their emotional weight to Mike’s hug. I didn’t know if he felt any better but I certainly did. Then Linda saw the doctor and we all rushed her. She didn’t flinch at the horde of humanity charging her, and she started talking as soon as we were within reach: Eddie would be fine. Eventually. He’d lost too much blood but the arteries severed by the bullet were patched up enough to stop the blood loss and he was being transfused. When he stabilized enough, the arteries would have to be repaired, one, perhaps, replaced, and then he would be fine. But he wouldn’t wake up any time soon, she said, so we should all go home and get some rest.

  Linda Ortiz said she’d stay, and Mike and Helen Smith said they’d stay with her. Yolanda, Connie, and I eventually left. I walked between them, an arm around each of their shoulders, each of them with an arm around my waist. We were holding each other up. Or maybe they were just holding me up because I thought if they stepped away from me, I’d just collapse.

  We climbed into a taxi that fortunately was right outside the ER door. We dropped Yo first, then crawled in the evening rush hour traffic to my place. Then I crawled up the stairs to my apartment and collapsed on the couch. Connie left me there for a few minutes, and I was vaguely aware of familiar sounds—in the kitchen and in the bathroom—but I couldn’t focus on them, couldn’t connect them to reality. Then Connie was back. She took off my shoes, then sat me up and took off my jacket, sweater, and shirt and I started to shiver. She led me through the bedroom and into the bathroom and when she opened the door, a wonderful scent rushed at me on a cloud of steam. She unfastened my pants and let them drop to the floor; my boxers followed. “I can’t pick you up and put you into the tub,” she whispered. I heard the smile in her voice and tried to give her one back; don’t know if I succeeded, but I did step out of my pants and into the warmth of the water and bubbles and oil. An extra long and deep tub I’d had installed and this was first time I’d ever sat down in it and covered myself in liquid luxury. I leaned back and my head was resting on a pillow. I had a bath pillow?

  I started talking. The words spilled from my mouth like the blood had gushed from Eddie’s chest. And Bill Calloway’s chest. I said everything I was thinking and feeling and worrying about. Connie sat on the floor beside the tub, held my hand, and listened. She didn’t say a word. I kept expecting her to comment or question but she didn’t say a word. She just listened. Then I realized—un
derstood—that she was doing what she knew I needed her to do. I needed to talk and I needed somebody I trusted to listen. She was, by profession, a counselor, a therapist, and she knew when to talk and when to listen.

  The water cooled and Connie ran more hot into the tub. Then she washed my hair and scrubbed my nails. Then she scrubbed my back with one brush and my feet with another one. Not only a pillow, but different kinds of brushes, too. I smiled at her and she smiled back at me and stood up. “Rinse and dry and put on your nighties and get into bed. I’ll be right back.”

  She left and I did what she told me to do and then she was back with a tray. I wasn’t hungry; in fact, I was anything but hungry. I was trying to think of a way to say that without hurting her feelings when I saw what was on the tray: A big bowl of tomato soup, a grilled cheese sandwich, and a beer. I was ravenous. “Thank you, Connie,” I said. “For everything.”

  “You’re welcome, Phil. For everything.” She picked up the remote and flicked on the television, surprising me; she wasn’t much of a TV watcher. “It’s snowing. I want to see if it’s just a tease or if we’re getting a real March blizzard.”

  I was chewing and nodding. “Blizzard,” I said, when I could talk without offending. “I felt it earlier today, outside the Taste of India, before . . .” I had, for a few brief and wonderful moments, managed to put the day’s events on a back burner. Now it was all back. “Whoever killed Bill Calloway is not getting away with it. Jackie Marchand’s murder hurt because he was a kid, just getting started in life, but Bill was a friend and this cuts way too close.”

  “How will you find out why he called you?”

  I sat up so fast I made myself dizzy and almost knocked over the tray. “That pen. There was a pen in my pocket . . . I think it was in my pocket . . .”

  Connie hurried out of the room and was back in seconds. “This flash drive?” she asked. Did everybody but me know what a flash drive was?