A Murder Too Close

by Penny Mickelbury

  This was not the time or place for Mike’s expressions of admiration for the military tank. “Why are you talking about tanks?”

  “Because that boy who just smoked us is just like a tank: Big and fast. And did you see him turn that corner? Like he had wheels on his feet.” The admiration for the military tank now was transferred to a guy who’d just tried to burn down my building? “I got one quick glimpse of his face and a real long look at his back, but I’ll know him if I see him again,” Mike said, reading my thoughts again.

  “If he’s not spooked,” I said, sounding as disgusted with myself as I felt. Suppose my brilliantly failed plan of attack scared him off for good?

  “He’s not smart enough to stay spooked for long.” We started walking the four blocks back. “What are you going to do?”

  Until Mike asked, I wasn’t sure, but whoever said the answer was in the question knew what he was talking about. “I’m going to work, Mike.”

  The rubber-neckers and nosey-roseys had scattered when we got back, and the people left were those who cared about us. Arlene and Raul had their heads together; Patty Starrett, Mrs. Campos, and Willie One Eye were having what looked like a serious discussion, and it appeared that the women had one opinion and Willie another; and Yo was talking to McNamara and the fire marshal. Everybody stopped talking and looked at Mike and me, everybody but Yolanda and Raul wearing expectant looks, and that was because only they knew why we’d run off and that we hadn’t been successful. I walked around talking to people, thanking them for the show of support, and being vague in the extreme about what I thought had happened. And one by one, they all left, except Raul. I knew he wanted to talk and that he didn’t want to talk in front of Mike and Yolanda, but I thought it was time for him to get over that. I walked over to him.

  “We couldn’t catch him,” I said.

  “You will next time,” he said. “Guys like him always come back.”

  “That’s what Mike said.”

  “He’s a cop,” Raul said, pointing with his head in Mike’s direction.

  “Used to be,” I said. “So did I.” I gave him a moment to feel whatever it was he was feeling about that piece of information, then I said, “And so what, Raul? You used to be a hype and a con but you’re not now. You’re a solid citizen with a job and a home and family and friends. It’s time to stop acting like a perp, ’mano.” I walked back to where Mike and Yo were standing. Raul followed and I made the introductions. He shook hands, said polite things.

  “I remembered something. About Jackie. I can’t stop thinking about him, you know? And I remembered that he had this little book that he wrote in, his journal, he called it.”

  I felt Mike straining not to react. He hadn’t recovered a journal. “What’s it look like, Raul? Did you ever see it?”

  “It was thin, about like this,” and he made a shape with his hands suggesting four inches by six inches, “and it had a brown leather cover, but no dates or months, just blank pages. He wrote in it every day.”

  “Where did he keep it?” Yolanda asked.

  “Usually in his back pocket,” Raul said, patting his own back pocket, “and up on the shelf in the closet when he was home.” He blushed, embarrassed. “I picked it up once and flipped it open and he grabbed it from me. Said it was personal, private. Then he laughed and gave it back to me, told me to go ahead and read it but I wouldn’t, not then. He said I couldn’t anyway because it was all in French, but after that, he always put it up on the closet shelf.”

  If Kearney had seen Jackie regularly writing in a journal, that would have been enough to consider the kid a threat, whether Kearney could read what he’d written or not, and the existence of something in writing would have motivated the search of Jackie’s apartment. Question was, had Tank found the journal, and if not, was it still on the closet shelf in Jackie Marchand’s apartment? “Thanks, Raul,” I said.

  He nodded, told Yolanda and Mike it was nice meeting them, and turned to walk away. “You going to work for Arlene?” I called after him.

  He turned back and it was a different man looking at me; the happiness on his face had transformed him. “I start tomorrow. And she’s going to teach me how to cook.”

  We watched him walk away and nobody but me knew that the head up, shoulders back, quick stepping dude leaving us was a new man, a man with purpose. I was a man with a purpose, too, though my walk to the front door of my building was more foot dragging than quick stepping; part of me didn’t want to see what was inside. Even though the fire inspector said the damage was limited to the second floor, I’d seen enough fire aftermaths to know the kind of damage firefighters do in their efforts to contain a fire. Yolanda and I must have both been holding our breaths because we both exhaled loudly when we got inside. Except for a thick layer of smoke hanging in the room like fog over San Francisco, everything looked normal. We walked around, not touching, just looking, Mike following us, his gun in his hand, and I was grateful for his willingness to display his unease. If Delaney didn’t return my weapon soon, I’d have to get another one.

  “So, would I be right in thinking that if the second floor window was broken and that’s how the fire started, that’s also how the firefighters got into the building?”

  “Or through my place,” Yo said. “The ladders stretched all the way up.” The small voice was back.

  I wrapped her in a bear hug and asked the question I should’ve asked two hours ago. “The alarm woke you and Sandra?” I felt her head nod up and down against my chest, then I felt the warmth of her tears. I held her tighter.

  “The alarm scared us half to death, then we smelled the smoke. I was in some kind of catatonic state, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Sandra was up and moving, got us dressed, grabbed the essentials. I didn’t want to leave, Phil! She had to drag me down the stairs. I couldn’t believe—no, I couldn’t understand—what was happening! When we got outside and saw the fire trucks, it still wasn’t real. It was all so dreamlike.” She shivered.

  “Let’s go upstairs, Yo, take a look. If it’s like this, like the inspector said, it’ll be all right. Smoky, but all right.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t, Phil.”

  “It’s okay. I understand. I’ll go check it out.”

  “You’ll tell me the truth, won’t you? Even if it’s bad, I want you to tell me, Phil. I don’t want to see it, but I do want to know.”

  I headed for the back stairs, the ones nobody but the two us knew existed. I saw the surprise on Mike’s face. “I’ll be okay, Mike. Stay with Yo, will you?” I knew what she was thinking: That it was bad enough that firefighters in their dirty boots had invaded her space, but enough was enough.

  The smoke was deep and thick in the stairway, especially on the second floor, but as soon as I got to Yolanda’s door, I could feel it begin to dissipate. I could also feel cold air. I opened the door to her space and marveled, as always, at the beauty and elegance she’d created here. It was, in a way, like Jill Mason’s loft, only Jill’s had cost a couple of million dollars more. Yolanda’s open space felt open—the only walls and door were to create the bathroom. The kitchen was open and shared a fireplace with the living area. The sleeping loft was invisible unless you knew where to look. The hardwood floors, usually gleaming, showed imprints of heavy rubber boots and the drag marks of hoses. So did a couple of the Chinese rugs. But nothing was broken except the front window—broken from the outside so all the glass showered in. If we got the window boarded up and the utilities back on, she could stay here tonight if she wanted to. And I knew she would, and that’s what I told her when I got back downstairs.

  “Thanks, Phil,” she said in her normal voice. Then she pushed an envelope at me. “I forgot all about this until just now. What’s this all about?”

  “What is it?” I asked, but before she could answer the door swung open and a Tom Selleck look-alike from his Magnum PI days waltzed in. All this guy needed was a flowered shirt and some short shorts. Mike’s gun was in his
hand again.

  “Damn, Smith. You gonna shoot me before you say hello?” Guy even sounded like Selleck, even had the same smart aleck grin beneath the same thick lip rug.

  Mike stared, put his gun away, and shook his head. “I thought I left all my bad habits behind when I retired.” He shook hands with our visitor, then introduced him. “This degenerate is Detective Second Grade Abraham Horowitz, and what the hell are you doing here, man?!”

  “Actually, these days it’s just plain ol’ Abby Horowitz, and Ace sent me.” He looked around, then raised his nose and sniffed the air like an expensive and well-bred hound. “Gas and kerosene mixture would be my guess,” he said.

  “Ace sent you for what?” Mike queried. “And you put in your papers? When?”

  “I’ve been a private citizen since the first day of January. And Ace thought you and your friends might need some help.” He stuck his hand out, first to Yolanda, then to me. “He didn’t say what kind of help but he knows how bored I am already, and how sick my wife is of me already.” He shook his head sadly. “All those years of marriage about to go down the drain, just because I pulled the plug on the NYPD.”

  Mike offered up a commiserating and wry grin. “Took my wife about the same length of time.” Then he looked at me. I looked at Horowitz, then at Yo. She looked at Horowitz and I could see her brain doing its computer thing. She was about to say something when the door swung open again.

  “Dammit, I’m calling the Henrys!” is what she said. “Who are you?”

  The guy standing in the door was too young to have the pot belly that stuck out over and hid his belt. He barely had facial hair. “I’m Rudy. Mr. Aiello sent me. I’m supposed to blow the smoke outta this place, then board up the windows.”

  I thought I understood exactly how little Alice felt on her tumble down the rabbit hole. First a deputy police chief sends me exactly what I need to work this case the way it should be worked, then a Mafia middleman sends me exactly what I need to get my office back up and running. I didn’t much like the idea of being beholden to either one of them, but I also knew much better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. Whatever that meant in its literal sense.

  “How many exhaust fans you got, Rudy?” Abby Horowitz already was demonstrating his potential value.

  “Two,” Rudy said. “That’s what Mr. Aiello said I’d need.” He sounded slightly on the defensive, like we could blame Carmine if we needed more than two.

  Horowitz, obviously a very smart man, looked at Yolanda. “You want to blow the smoke out from the top two floors first, and then get those windows closed up? Snow’s in the forecast.”

  Yolanda gave him the look that conveyed absolutely nothing, then said, “Sure. Rudy, I’ll open the front door for you and your fans,” and she headed toward the front door, Abby Horowitz on her heels without a glance back, like he knew who he had to convince and impress.

  I looked at Mike and he answered my question before I could ask it. “I had not a clue, Bro. Horowitz showing up here was as much a surprise to me as it was to you. But I’ll tell you this: He’s an okay dude and with him, what you see is what you get. And because Ace sent him, you get Ace, too.”

  I knew why I thought Ace Spade thought I needed a guy like Horowitz, and even though he was right, I found myself resenting the assumption and the intrusion. “What did he work, Mike?”

  “Bunko and white-collar crime.”

  White knight in shining armor. All that was missing was the horse. I could resent him until hell froze over; fact was I needed him. I couldn’t go and I couldn’t send Mike and Eddie to places Horowitz could go as a matter of right, like into the Irish and Italian neighborhoods of Long Island and Queens looking for connections to the Kearneys and the people who did their dirt for them. That’s the way things were, the way they’d always been, and probably the way they always would be. My choices were few and they were boldly and brightly numbered: I could limit myself to work that kept me in my neighborhood, or I could be open-minded and receptive and let Abby Horowitz show me his moves. Or, put another way, I could have Deputy Police Chief Ace Spade in my corner, or I could have precinct Captain Bill Delaney breathing down my neck, making my life and work uncomfortable if not miserable. I also could stop thinking about things I couldn’t change and do something useful like calling the gas, electric, and water companies to get service restored. I picked up the desk phone: Dial tone loud and clear. I punched in Carmine’s number, listened to it ring, listened to Theresa, his wife, give their we’re not at home message, and left my own, thanking Carmine for his generosity and his consideration in my time of need. Carmine likes shit like that; he’s very old school that way. I think he also likes that his wife gets to hear people calling her husband a nice guy, which can’t be something that happens with great regularity. Or maybe it was; maybe Carmine did unexpected and nice things for people all the time. Besides, it was the only telephone number I had for him. I could have called the pastry shop and left a message but that would have me feel a little lower down the food chain than I cared to be.

  “It’s cold in here,” Mike said. “Call the utilities and get the heat back on.”

  “Why? You afraid it’s going to snow?”

  Mike threw back his head and laughed. “Don’t blame the messenger.”

  Yolanda and the messenger came back in then and as soon as the door was opened, I could hear the roar of the exhaust fans. “I was just about to call the utility companies,” I said. I looked at Horowitz. “They’ve been saying it was going to snow for a week.”

  “They’ve got to get it right eventually. What would you bet you’ll get the blizzard the very time your windows are busted out?” The man made a lot of sense. I picked up the phone but Horowitz waved his hand at me and shook his head. I put the phone down. “The fire department shuts off power from a master switch outside.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a fat ring of keys, picked one and held it up. “One of my all-time favorite things to do would be to turn off all the power just before raiding one of those so-called smart crooks. We’d stage the raid for three, four in the morning. Cut the power and hit the door. No electricity, no alarm, no bedside clock, can’t find the eyeglasses or the lawyer’s phone number, can’t open the electronic safe or the panic room. And you’d be amazed at the number of them who’d spend a small fortune—tens of thousands of dollars—on those fool-proof security systems and then neglect to spend four or five hundred bucks for a back-up generator.” He laughed. “Watching those creeps crawl around in the dark, crying and cursing, alternating between mad and scared—see, we’re inside their burglar-proof home and we look like space aliens in our night vision goggles—it was better than sex.” Still chuckling to himself, Horowitz went back outside.

  Yolanda watched his exit and then stared at the closed door for a long moment before she said, “Those fans really work. They’re powered by a generator on the truck. You can actually see the smoke being sucked out,” she finally said. “If Rudy gets the boards up and Abby gets the heat and lights on, it could start feeling like home aga . . . dammit!” She whipped her cell phone out of her pocket and started scrolling for a number. “I keep forgetting to call the Henrys. Too much happening all at once.”

  It was another half hour before all the necessary phone calls were made—including mine to Connie and a group one to Eddie, who was in his own room and mostly awake and lucid—and the heat and lights were back on and we all had a cup of coffee and were seated in the living room area of the office. I don’t know if Horowitz felt as calm and relaxed as he looked but I did know that Yolanda and I were wound more tightly than was good for either of us, and that Mike was tense from watching us. Yo and I had had a quick conversation in the kitchen, agreeing that we needed Horowitz and that we could trust Mike’s assessment of him. Didn’t mean we liked it, though.

  Yolanda let me do most of the talking as we laid out our case and I found that talking through it was calming, in a way—it gave my anger something const
ructive to do for those minutes; harnessed it, focused it, gave it purpose. When I finished talking, nobody said anything—either because I’d done such a bang-up job of stating the facts, or everybody was waiting for the other guy to speak first. The only sound was the gentle roar of Rudy’s exhaust fans. Finally Horowitz said, “What do you need from me?”

  “Help finding the Tank, help ID-ing the shooters, and help nailing the owner of this scheme.” Horowitz had been nodding his head in agreement until I got to that last part. He frowned at me.

  “You don’t think the Kearneys own it?”

  I shook my head and he watched me, waiting for me to explain myself, but his impatience got the best of him. “Why not?”

  “Those two guys were nothing but a couple of putzes a couple of years ago: One of ’em selling tract houses to Eastern European immigrants in the ugly part of New Jersey for way more than they were worth, and the other one pushing papers in an insurance office, a barely functioning alcoholic. Then, all of a sudden, Francis has his own real estate office, and almost immediately becomes a developer? At the same time that Thomas becomes a supervisory claims adjuster?” I stood up and paced a few steps. “These aren’t fast track twenty-somethings, Horowitz, these are forty-something nobodies who have become overnight players in a game that’s way too sophisticated for them. No, I don’t think they own it. I don’t think they own their own toothbrushes and toilet paper.”

  Now Horowitz got up and paced off a few steps. “You don’t think this is about greed, either, do you?”

  “To some extent, yeah—people like that, greed’s always a factor. But that’s not all of it,” I said. “Or even most of it. This is about hatred. Every one of those burned out buildings the Kearneys are trying to steal belongs to a non-white immigrant.”

  “I might be in over my head, then,” Horowitz said. “I know how to run down and hog-tie dumb fuckers motivated by greed.” He ran both his hands through his head full of salt-and-pepper hair, leaving it standing on end, then he smoothed it back down. “Hatred’s new territory for me.”