A Murder Too Close

by Penny Mickelbury

  I liked him better in that moment. I wasn’t in love yet, not even feeling any warm fuzzies, but I definitely was liking him. “Dumb fuckers motivated by anything petty and stupid—and greed and hatred fall into the petty and stupid categories—make the same mistakes,” I said, and I believed that. “And under the right circumstances, they’ll talk to you, let you get close enough to bring ’em down. Me they wouldn’t talk to if I was the last human on the planet. Why? ’Cause I’m the wrong color. Then they end up in jail surrounded by who? People the wrong color.”

  We all of us needed that brief moment of levity and laughter, but it was truly brief because the next words out of Horowitz’s mouth brought all my tamped-down anger right back to the surface. “You gotta call the insurance company right now. Get the claim started, get Kearney moving.”

  Yolanda and I looked at each other. We’d avoided making the call, not wanting to see if Kearney would be arrogant and stupid enough to come himself, or whether he’d send an underling. We guessed the latter since he’d certainly know by now that our building wasn’t destroyed, and therefore withholding our claim wouldn’t benefit his scheme. She opened her cell phone and hit a button. “I’ve almost made this call half a dozen times in the last couple of hours,” she said, walking back to her desk.

  I looked at Horowitz. “Don’t factor the greed out just yet, and keep the stupid factored in. Every one of those buildings the Kearneys set fire to was worth over a million dollars. Green is the one color that trumps all the others.”

  “Is that your way of saying this building is worth more than a million dollars?” Mike asked, and when I nodded in the affirmative, he said, “Hell, I might kill you myself, then.” And we let that light moment carry us until Yolanda returned.

  “Somebody’ll be here ‘as soon as possible.’ I suggested that ‘somebody’ visit the arson investigator first, to save us all time and trouble. My suggestion wasn’t appreciated. I can’t imagine why.” She headed for the front door. “I’m going to check on Rudy and the fans.” She opened the front door, then turned back to us. “It’s snowing.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Mike went to visit Eddie, Yolanda was upstairs keeping an eye on Rudy and his helper while they cleaned up the broken glass and boarded up the window in her loft, and I was sacked out on the sofa, waiting for the Henrys to come repair the alarm system and for the insurance adjuster to come do whatever he was going to do. I didn’t know where Horowitz was and didn’t really care. I wished that I felt differently. He seemed like an okay guy; Mike liked him and that was no small thing. I knew exactly what the problem was, and it was mine, not Horowitz’s: I didn’t want to need him, but need him I did. It would have been easier to accept my resentment if Abby Horowitz weren’t such a likeable guy and so obviously a very smart one. But he was those things, and I was a petty, irrational horse’s ass.

  “We really do owe Carmine a big fat smooch.” Yolanda came in from the back.

  “If anybody’s smooching Carmine, it’s going to be you.” I sat up and held out my hand to her. “I need to tell you something, been wanting to tell you all day.”

  She walked toward me, her face tired, scared, and worried. “Phil, what is it?”

  I pulled her down on the couch next to me and held her. “Nothing bad. Just the best. I asked Connie to marry me and she said yes.” Yolanda started to cry. Really and seriously weep, a major release of the day’s pent-up emotion.

  “I am so happy, Phil! You are such a wonderful man and you so deserve to be loved.” She hugged me and kissed me, tears forgotten. The she jumped up and ran across the room. “I gotta call Sandra. And Connie! I gotta call my sister! And Jill! Jill will want to know!” She was jumping up and down like a little kid, which is what I felt like doing. Why couldn’t guys jump up and down if they were happy? Maybe Mike and Eddie would know. I planned to ask them.

  Horowitz came in then and Yolanda went back behind the screens. He shook the snow off his coat and hat and boots, hung everything up, and sat down across from me. He’d gotten a haircut and a shave. With short hair and a trimmed, preppy mustache, he could easily pass for a Wall Street heavy hitter. “You clean up nicely.”

  He gave me a Magnum PI grin, caterpillar eyebrows dancing up and down, and I knew I wasn’t the only person who’d ever noticed the similarity. “I really appreciate the opportunity to work with you on this, Phil. I don’t miss being a cop, but I do miss the work I did. I was good at it—I’m still good at it—and I think I can help you guys.”

  “I know you can help us, Abby, and I’m glad you’re willing to.”

  “But you wish you didn’t need my help.”

  “That’s right. I do wish we didn’t need your help. At least not for the reasons we need it.”

  “I didn’t make the world the way it is,” Horowitz said.

  “No,” I said, “you didn’t.”

  “What were you planning to do before I showed up?”

  “I’ve got access to a couple of reporters.”

  “Effective,” he said with an appreciative nod and stroking his newly-trimmed mustache, as if trying to get used to its thinness. “Not a total solution, but certainly an effective one.”

  “Some days I’m really happy just to be effective,” I said.

  He didn’t have anything to say to that and I didn’t have anything to add, so we sat there in the quiet, neither of us uncomfortable, and I thought that was probably a good sign. I yawned, Mike came in looking like the abominable snowman, and Yolanda came back into the office from behind the screens. She kissed the top of my head three times. “That’s from Sandra, Jill, and Arlene. Connie’ll deliver her own message. Mas tarde.”

  Mike and Abby looked questions at me. I wanted to tell Mike, couldn’t do it without telling Abby, so told them both. They both pumped my hand, slapped me on the back, hugged me, congratulated me, and it made me feel good that these men who were older than me, who’d been married for lots of years, were happy for me. “When did this happen?” Mike asked.

  “Last night, this morning . . .” Was it only this morning?

  “This morning must feel like a month ago to you,” Horowitz said.

  “At least that,” I said, then I stood up, yawned and stretched. “But this day isn’t half over and I can’t spend it sitting here.”

  “Where are you going, Phil?” Yo asked.

  “I don’t know, but I can’t just sit around here doing nothing!” I suddenly was edgy and jumpy and exhausted and the anger had come back. “I need to be working.”

  “You need to be here, Phil. We both need to be here right now. Today.”

  “And I really need to be able to ask you some questions, to pick your brain,” Abby said.

  “We already told you everything,” I said.

  “You told me all the facts. You didn’t tell me everything.”

  I shot Mike a dirty look. He returned a blank stare that transmitted a volume of unspoken communication, like how dare I think he would violate my trust by revealing protected client information to Horowitz or anybody else; like how dare I take out my frustrations on him; like why didn’t I stop acting like a jackass and get down to business.

  “What is it you think I didn’t tell you that you think you need to know?”

  “How well did you know Bill Calloway and how much did you trust him?”

  “Very well and without question.”

  “How did you get his files?”

  “Protected.”

  “Can I have a copy?”

  I looked at Yolanda. She hesitated, just briefly, then nodded. “What else, Abby?”

  “How did you get Jackie Marchand’s documents?”

  “Protected,” I said.

  “Bullshit,” Horowitz said. “Marchand wasn’t your client but he was a murder victim and if you took anything out of his place, if you compromised a crime scene—”

  I cut him off. “I didn’t compromise a crime scene and I don’t need a lecture on procedure from you. I
completed the same police academy training that you did.” I watched the surprise fill his face. “You didn’t know?”

  He shook his head. “I knew that you and Mike were friends but I didn’t know how. And you know what? It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. I’m looking for a strategy here, for a way in to dealing with these Kearney characters.”

  “I was wondering whether Casey and McQueen were connected to the Kearneys, and I’d started doing a computer check, but I got distracted,” Yolanda said.

  “God, Yo, how could you let something distract you from connecting all those lovely Irish names to the same stinking scam? What was it?”

  “The damn Russians!” she exclaimed, and ran back behind the screens.

  “What damn Russians?” Horowitz was on his feet, on Yolanda’s heels.

  “Hey!” I yelled at him.

  He stopped in his tracks, turned, came back and sat down. “What damn Russians?”

  I told him.

  Horowitz was rubbing his hands back and forth against each other as he listened, hunched forward, absorbing every word. His eyes glittered and he looked less and less like cute, cuddly Magnum, and more and more like a shark following the scent of blood in the water. Yolanda came back with a sheaf of papers. Horowitz stopped rubbing his hands together and held one of them out, then, aware of himself, snatched it back. Yolanda gave him her own version of a shark-like grin, and gave him the papers.

  “Where’s that envelope, Phil?”

  “What envelope?” I asked, then immediately remembered. I stood up, patted my pockets, then hurried back to the closet. The envelope was in my jacket pocket. I got it out, looked at it, smacked myself upside the head. The letter to the housing department from the woman in Kallen’s building who thought he and Boris were the KGB. “What’s this got to do with Russians, Yo?” I asked. “Just because a disgruntled tenant calls the building manager the KGB doesn’t mean he is. Maybe she’s just set in her ways and doesn’t like the new rules.” Or, I thought, maybe, like Carmine, she doesn’t like Russians.

  “Read the letter,” Yolanda told me.

  I sat down, opened the envelope, took out four pages of single-spaced copy, and started to read. It didn’t take long to get to the part that started making me nervous. Everything Carmine had said replayed itself in my mind: They lie, they cheat, they steal, they got no rules, they got no organization, they got no morals. Everything in this lady’s letter to the Housing Department could be construed to be confirmation of everything that Carmine had said and it was scaring the shit out of me. I wanted no part of any kind of mob—Carmine’s or Mike Kallen’s. Mike had come over and was reading over my shoulder. “Oh, shit,” he said.

  “No shit,” I said, and passed the letter to Horowitz.

  He read quickly, put all the papers neatly together, and returned the pile to Yo.

  “Russian mob?” Mike asked.

  “Almost definitely,” Horowitz answered.

  “Prostitution ring?” I asked.

  “Something a little worse than that,” Horowitz answered.

  “Sex slavery,” Yolanda said.

  Mike and I looked at each other, then at Yolanda, the question written in large letters across our faces: Slavery? Damn you, Carmine. Right again.

  Yo exhaled deeply. She was equal parts mad and sad. “All those young, single female tenants in that Avenue B building, yeah, they’re prostitutes, but not by choice. They’re probably in this country illegally and they don’t see a dime of the money they earn.”

  Horowitz nodded, then looked from Yo to me and back again, then at Mike. “What interesting lives you people lead. I wanna play on your team. I really do. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it, no questions asked.”

  The three of us exchanged looks with each other, then looked hard at Horowitz. He looked like the last kid waiting to be picked for the team. “Look, Abby. Ace Spade sent you here to help us, and I appreciate that. I really do, resentment put on the back burner where it belongs. But I can’t have somebody who reports to the chief of police in my house, pretending to work for me.”

  “I don’t report to him.”

  “Sure you do! He didn’t send you over here just because he’s a nice guy.”

  “That’s exactly why he sent me over here, Rodriquez.” Horowitz hesitated, then his shark grin joined his Magnum eyebrow lift. “That and the fact that he hates Bill Delaney and he knows I’m bored to tears and that my wife is ready to kill me. He thought I could help you and, along the way, I might find something that could help him get Delaney out of his command and behind a desk downtown.”

  I thought about that. “He’s got somebody he’d rather have commanding this precinct?” Horowitz gazed at the ceiling and at the four corners of the room and we all knew the answer to the question. I wouldn’t mind having somebody in charge at the local precinct who wasn’t threatening to yank my license every fifteen minutes, and I could imagine that whoever Spade wanted to replace Delaney with might be easier to get along with. “You can’t be reporting to Spade, Abby.”

  He raised his right hand in oath-taking fashion. “I swear to God I won’t.”

  “And our first obligation is to the client, not the police department.”

  “I can make the adjustment.”

  “It’s tougher than you might think, making that adjustment,” Mike said.

  “I decided years ago that I served the citizens of the city, not the department.”

  “We sometimes walk really close to the line, legally—“”

  Yolanda’s snort stopped me short and Horowitz did a pirouette. “I dance really well,” he said, “toes on the line being a specialty of mine.”

  I looked at Mike. He looked at Horowitz, then back at me, then at Yolanda, then back at me, and nodded his head. I looked at Yolanda and she nodded her head. “All right then,” I said, and extended my hand to Horowitz. He jumped up and down, then did a little dance around the room, answering the question I’d posed to myself earlier about why guys didn’t do little happy dances when they were happy. Then he hugged Yolanda, hugged me, hugged Mike.

  Feigning a disgusted look, Mike pushed him away. “We’ve got two elephant burgers on the plate here, folks,” Mike said. “How’re we gonna go about eating them?”

  “One bite at a time, bro,” I said. “One little bite at a time.”

  “And who’s going to take the first bite of elephant ass?” Mike asked.

  “Who’s got the sharkest . . . I mean sharpest . . . teeth?” I asked.

  Yolanda gave another snort of disgust and walked away, leaving us giggling like the boys she thought we were. “I’m going upstairs,” she said.

  “The front way, Yo!”

  She stopped, turned, and came back. “Right. Thanks.”

  We didn’t want any more people knowing that there were back stairs; certainly not Rudy and his helper. “You got any surveillance equipment?” Abby asked.

  “Some,” I said. “Why?” But as soon as I asked the question I knew the answer: To watch the comings and goings at Kallen’s Avenue B building.

  “Is the front door the only way in and out?” Horowitz asked.

  “There’s the basement door, where the garbage gets picked up, but that area’s too public. Laundry room and storage lockers. You wouldn’t want johns wandering around down there . . .” I stopped mid-sentence, my thoughts following my memory.

  “What?” Mike and Abby said at the same time.

  “At the end of the first floor hallway there’s a door that was bolted and welded shut, so I don’t know what it leads to.” I closed my eyes and visualized the building, front and back, and where that hallway would lead. “If that door functioned—and I told Kallen that the fire code required that it did—it would be a back door. It should be a fire exit. There’s a small yard behind that building, and an alley running east-west.”

  “That would do it,” Abby said. “Johns in the front, out the back. Or vice versa.”

  “Mike and I can hand
le this. What do you need to go after the Kearneys?”

  “The paper. I always follow the paper like crumbs on the forest floor and it always takes me home.”

  “Get it from Yo.”

  “But keep the reporter close at hand,” he said.

  “What reporter?” Mike asked.

  “From the Buddhist temple. You remember I told you—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Mike said, nodding his head as the memory came back. “And speaking of which, where are your yoga people? I’d think they’d have shown up by now, given that their place of work is a wading pool.”

  “Yo says they’ve been gone for a month. I don’t remember her telling me that, but she says she did. They’re in India at some kind of conference.”

  “Who are we talking about?” Abby asked.

  “The second floor tenants. They run the yoga studio.”

  “They go to this conference before or after Epstein and his asshole friends started siccing the Feds on innocent people?” Mike asked, and it was a really good question, one I hadn’t thought to pose, and I should have, because the yoga studio is run by Sikhs. Like the Buddhist monk, they are American born; and like the monk, their wardrobe reflects their religious association.

  “I should know the answer to that, Mike, but I don’t. And what I’m wondering, now that you ask, is whether maybe they’re in hiding, whether, like Mrs. Nehru, they just decided to go away. Rational, law-abiding citizens aren’t comfortable being terrorized by their own government.”

  “So, you’re thinking now that you weren’t the target of the firebug after all?” Abby asked. “That the Sikhs were the target?”

  I didn’t know what I thought anymore. Nothing made sense. I walked to the front door, opened it and looked out. It was still snowing. Not quite a blizzard, but it definitely was more than a dusting. If it remained cold, the stuff would stick. Rudy’s truck still was parked on the sidewalk, generator humming. The writing on the side panel read AIELLO BROTHERS GENERAL CONTRACTORS. Gee. The things I didn’t know. I closed the door and walked back to where Mike and Abby were sitting. I heard the door open behind me and I moved quickly sideways as both men put their hands on their weapons.