A Murder Too Close

by Penny Mickelbury

  A guy I didn’t know came in carrying four large bags, followed by a guy I did know.

  “Henry,” I said to the security system guru, relief thick in my voice. Henry would take care of the door opening and closing like a stall in a public bathroom. Then I looked at the stranger with the bags, but my nose told me what was in them. “Arlene sent you.”

  He nodded and shivered; snow was melting and dripping off him. “Your food’s probably cold, though—sorry. I had to walk the last four blocks ’cause a four-car smash-up’s got traffic stopped in all directions. I bailed on the taxi driver.”

  Abby and Mike took the bags of food to the kitchen while I tried to pay for it, but he wouldn’t take the money; said I didn’t owe anything. So I gave him a hefty tip, for which he was heftily grateful. “I haven’t seen you at Arlene’s before.”

  “I’m a friend of Brad’s, we go to school together, and I help out sometimes, but Mrs. Edwards, she’s got some new guy starting tomorrow.” He dropped his voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “Brad’s grades were falling because he was working so many hours in the restaurant, and if you know Mrs. Edwards, you know she won’t stand for that.” I knew what he said was true. I walked him to the door and opened it, to find Henry standing outside with a flashlight trained on the buzzer panel. I waved the kid good-bye and asked Henry what he was doing.

  “Somebody’s tampered with this panel, Phil.” But before I could react, he said, “But don’t you worry. This whole wall would have to come down before somebody could bypass this system. Nobody has ever penetrated one of my systems and nobody ever will. That’s my guarantee to my customers. I put it in writing, as you know.”

  I did know; it was in the maintenance contract. Still. “When you say that somebody ‘tampered’ with the panel, Henry, what exactly do you mean?”

  “I mean it looks like somebody took a screwdriver head or a chisel and tried to pry the panel up. But like I said, it’s not possible. They’d have to take down the whole wall, and even then, they’d have to know what I know to disable or bypass the system. You’re safe here, Phil. Yolanda, too.”

  “And the system at my building, at home?”

  “Exactly the same,” Henry said. “These systems are new, state of the art, and fire and police departments don’t like ’em. The only way to stop ’em is to cut power to the entire building, like they did this morning, which is why I have to come and reset it, and which is why you paid so much money for it.” He grinned wickedly. “Worth every cent, though, isn’t it?”

  I agreed that it was, watched him finish, signed the paperwork, and went upstairs to tell Yolanda that she was secure again. The visible smoke was gone, and the odor almost was gone, but it was icebox cold. Rudy had done a really good job and I told him so. “There’s still some water on the second floor,” he said, “but most of it’s been sucked out. We’ll get the boards up in here so it can start to warm up. The second floor, though, that’s gonna take a while longer, and I gotta break my guy for lunch.”

  We watched them nail the plywood up to the front window and Yo had to turn on all the lights it got so dark. I told Yo she could set her alarm and the relief on her face told me what she had never and would never say in words: That she had been truly and completely terrified. My hands itched with the desire to wrap them around the carotid artery of the fool who set this fire and squeeze. We followed Rudy down the stairs and stopped on the second floor to check out the mess that had been the yoga studio. He was right: Most of the smoke and water were gone. We’d have our building back by the end of the day. We stepped over the hose that was sucking out the water and continued down the stairs and out the door. “By the way, the alarm system is back on,” I told Rudy, “so you’ll have to buzz us when you get back.”

  He nodded and they walked off. I used my key to open the office door for Yo and me. She smelled the food immediately. “You got lunch?”

  Lunch. I felt like I’d been up since last week and it was only lunchtime. “Arlene sent food.” And Mike and Abby had heated it up and had plates and napkins and utensils stacked on the cabinet and ready for us. Horowitz was going to be an okay fit but he was no Eddie Ortiz, and I knew that Mike and Yolanda were missing him as much as I was. Yolanda put on some music and we ate, not talking much, each of us, I was sure, thinking through what had happened and what was yet to come.

  The phone rang and we all jumped. I waved Yolanda back down and went to my desk to answer it. It was the insurance adjuster. He couldn’t make it today; the weather was really a problem. He hoped we wouldn’t be too inconvenienced. I told him as long as it was him and Thomas Kearney who were coming, I didn’t care how long it took. I knew my remark surprised him because of the dead silence on the line. Then he wanted to know why I’d said what I said and I told him because Kearney had a reputation among city business owners, and then I hung up, hoping he’d report back to his boss.

  “Was that wise?” Abby asked.

  I shrugged. I didn’t care if it was wise or not; it reflected how I was feeling. Besides, I didn’t want some nameless claims adjuster, I wanted Kearney. “Remember, Jackie told Raul that Kearney was a mean drunk,” I said.

  Yolanda finished my thought for me. “And mean drunks usually are arrogant and stupid, too. He won’t be able to let it rest,” she said, which is exactly what I was thinking. And hoping. We finished eating and cleaned up the kitchen, then told Yolanda what we talked about and what we’d decided to do, and asked her what she thought.

  “I think we should talk to Richard King first.”

  “Who’s Richard King?” Mike and Abby asked in unison.

  “The man who signs the check,” Yo said, dry as the Kalahari.

  “But if they’re running a sex slavery ring out of that building . . .” Abby started.

  “Then Richard King has himself a very big problem, which we have a legal obligation make him aware of, and which then gives him the opportunity to hire us to help him solve that problem.” Abby got down on his hands and knees, crawled over to her, and kissed her feet. She pointed at Mike and me. “I wish you’d teach them how to do that.”

  “You’re the boss,” I said.

  “Which is a good thing,” Mike said, “otherwise we’d all be broke.”

  “However,” Abby said, his brow wrinkled in concentration, “wouldn’t Mr. King be a lot more inclined to hire us to solve his elephant burger of a problem if we had some proof of the evidentiary nature to show him?”

  “In other words, not give him the opportunity to decide to do anything but the right thing,” I added, making it both question and comment.

  Yo nodded and gave us a look that said there might be hope for us after all. “Make sure your surveillance video is date and time stamped, and that it’s clear what the building is.”

  “We got it, boss,” Mike said, and saluted her.

  She stood up. “I’m going upstairs to start cleaning up the mess and reclaiming my home. Let me know when Rudy and Don Corleone come back.”

  “Who?” the three of us said, and Yo laughed.

  “Guy’s from Italy, speaks no English. I asked Rudy what his name was, Rudy didn’t know. The guy’s somebody’s cousin and he needed a job. Rudy points at what he wants done, then he waves his arms and yells at the guy. You know how some people think that talking loudly will help somebody understand a foreign language better?” Then she demonstrated Rudy’s tactics.

  We were all laughing when Yo started up the back stairs to her place. We heard her coming back down quickly and we all snapped to attention. “I forgot to get the fires file for Abby.” She gave him a foot-thick stack of material and he groaned. “You asked for it,” she said, and left us.

  Mike and I familiarized ourselves with the video cameras while Abby immersed himself in the fires file. He was so engrossed he didn’t hear Rudy and Don Corleone return, didn’t even notice the sound of silence when the generator and exhaust fans were shut down, didn’t hear the suction hose being retracted down the sta
irs. The only thing that roused him was the front door buzzer. He and Mike went on alert. I opened the door. It was Yolanda in hands-on-hips mode.

  “He wouldn’t take any money!” Something she truly didn’t understand. “I’m going to write Carmine Aiello a check and he’s going to take it. You tell him that.”

  I nodded. I’d tell him, for all the good it would do. “Let’s call it a day, guys, okay?” I was way past tired. I wanted to go see Eddie, and Mike and I were going to reconnoiter the Avenue B building at dusk, so we could determine the best angles for filming. Then I wanted to go home and fall on my face. I knew Yolanda wanted to clean up her place and do the same thing. I offered to help her clean. She said thanks but no thanks; she needed to do that for herself, and I understood.

  “Are you taking all that paper home with you?” Mike asked Abby.

  “Yeah. I’ll take a cab.”

  “You won’t get a cab tonight. Blizzard, remember?”

  He looked truly disappointed. “Oh, yeah, right.” He looked at the pile of paper and sighed deeply, then selected a couple of folders from the pile. “I’ll finish tomorrow.”

  Yolanda walked us to the door, assured me that she would be fine before I could ask her, and I heard her lock the door and I knew she set the alarm before we walked away. It had been one of the longest and strangest days of my life, and it wasn’t over yet.

  It was practically dark when we got outside though it was just a little past five o’clock. Just last week it had seemed that the days really were getting longer, that spring really was coming. Now it was dark at five o’clock again. I was one of the few people who’d admit to liking winter, but when it was time for it to be over, it was time for it to be over.

  “Let’s do the Avenue B thing first,” Mike said, “so we can hang with Eddie for a while. It’s the first time he’ll be awake and alert.”

  “Works for me,” I said, and the three of us, hunched inside our coats and scarves, heads down as if that would keep the snow off us, walked east for a couple of blocks, then separated, Abby to head for the uptown train, Mike and me over to Avenue B.

  “Hey, Phil. Thanks,” Abby said in parting.

  I waved at him. “See you tomorrow, Abby.” I hunched down deeper into my coat and followed Mike as he zig-zagged and snaked his way through the traffic in the street and that on the sidewalk. Everybody just wanted to get home, to get warm, to get dry. I wanted all of that, and sleep. There would be no Connie tonight; she thought it wise to go tell her parents that she was engaged. I thought it wise to call mine in Puerto Rico and tell them that I, too, was engaged. I hadn’t said those words out loud to myself yet. “Hey, Mike,” I called out, and he stopped in his tracks, turned around and looked at me.

  “What?”

  “I’m engaged.”

  It took him a moment, then he grinned like a big kid. “I called Helen and told her and she’s very happy for you. She likes Connie. Linda does, too.”

  “You told Eddie?”

  “No, no, no! I told her not to tell him. You get to tell him yourself. Now come on, bro, it’s cold out here!” And we walked as fast as we could. Fortunately for us, lots of people on that block of Avenue B were heading home so we were fairly inconspicuous as we strolled up one side of the street, then down the other, so Mike could get the lay of the land. Then we walked around the corner, made certain that nobody was watching us, and slipped into the alley. Kallen’s building was the third one in, backed by a brand-new chain-link fence, with a brand-new eight foot wooden fence snuggled up next to it. Smart: People inside the yard would see an attractive wooden fence, people outside would see a double layer of protection. There was no way to see through the fencing to the yard. There was a gate in the chain-link fence which opened out toward the alley when the latch was lifted, and which provided access to a door in the wooden fence which was locked.

  “Seen enough?”

  Mike nodded but just as we were about to turn away, the entire area was flooded with light. We scurried up the alley and behind a Dumpster just as we heard the chain-link gate clatter open. Two men stepped out into the alley, buttoning their coats. They said something in what I assumed was Russian to someone behind the fence, then the gate clanged shut and the latch dropped into place, followed by the thud of the wooden gate closing and the click of its lock turning. The two men walked toward the mouth of the alley. Mike and I followed, grateful for the deep snow that muffled our footfalls. We waited a few seconds, then entered the street. There still were pedestrians about and cars moving on the street, slowly, looking for the impossible, improbable parking space. We’d lost the two men we’d followed, but it didn’t matter; they didn’t matter. Nor did the two who were entering the front door of the building when we sauntered past; we’d seen what we needed to see. Still, I risked a glance up the steps and there, opening the door to the two new arrivals, was Boris. I nudged Mike and he looked, got a good enough picture to remember the face, and we jogged up the street, away from Boris and his whorehouse. I wondered how he kept the law-abiding residents of the building from complaining, then remembered that at least one of them called him the KGB and had written a four-page letter to the Housing Department making accusations that she couldn’t prove and that city officials, if they’d gotten her letter, probably would have ignored. Good thing, then, that she gave her letter to the wrong guy that day. But Mike and I would have to gather our proof sooner rather than later, get it to King, and hope that he would move to shut down this operation before somebody—our informant for starters—got seriously hurt. Nothing benevolent about the KGB’s dictatorial practices.

  “Come on!” Mike shouted. He was sprinting toward a taxi half a block away, and was at the door by the time the couple exited and paid the driver, and inside by the time I got there. I slid in and shut the door and almost immediately began the thaw; the driver had the heat on inferno. Mike told him where we were going, then said to me, “What the hell makes that dude think he can get away with doing shit like that?”

  “The fact that he is getting away with it, Mike, is what makes him think he can.”

  “And I’m lying here in the bed, helpless as a baby.” Eddie looked pretty helpless, too. He was wan and pale and he’d lost weight—his cheeks looked hollowed out and his usually bright, shiny eyes were alert though they had a hooded look about them, as if keeping them open took effort. He still had IV tubes in one arm and a drainage tube in his chest. But he was awake and he was talking. Actually, he was carping and complaining: The food sucked, the television didn’t have the soccer channel, and the nurses kept waking him up to ask him how he was feeling. “I keep telling ’em I’m fine. They keep telling me I’m losing too much weight. I keep telling them their food sucks. If I could get up outta this stupid bed I’d do-si-do with ’em.” He was propped up in the bed, reading glasses pushed up on his head, glaring at us like we were the culprits. I was so grateful and relieved to see and hear him acting and talking like his old self I really didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I did a little of both.

  “Get outta here if you’re gonna do that shit, Phil,” he said.

  Mike clapped me on the back, I collected myself, and we told him about Abby Horowitz, and then laid out for him everything we knew about both cases. He listened like he was prepping for an exam, like we’d be asking him questions. Instead, he did the asking, and we had answers for most of them, including whether I trusted Horowitz.

  “Not yet, but I think the guy’s smart, and we need him, Eddie. Or somebody like him, if we want to expand our reach. Besides, it can’t hurt to have a deputy chief on our side, especially if he can get Delaney off our backs.”

  “Did he give you your gun back?”

  “No, and he’s not going to until I ask for it. And he wants me to ask for it.”

  “You going to?”

  “Nope,” I said. And hell would freeze before I did.

  Eddie gave me one of his looks. “Mike can’t watch your ass for the rest of your life. Yo
u need your own piece, ’mano.”

  “Then I’ll get another one,” I said, mostly out of anger; then a moment of calm rationality took over. “And I’ll bet if I ask nicely, Deputy Chief Spade will rush through a carry permit for it, bypassing Delaney and his minions.”

  “Now you’re thinking, Bro,” Mike said, and we all enjoyed the moment in which we imagined Delaney’s reaction to being outmaneuvered and being helpless to retaliate, which is the part that would really singe his shorts: Delaney lived for retaliation.

  Linda came back into the room then and Eddie, taking advantage of his audience, got her to agree to let Mike take her home. I didn’t know whether it was because she finally was convinced that her ornery husband wasn’t going to die or that she finally was just too exhausted to remain upright in a chair for another night. I told her to have Yolanda arrange to have a car take Eddie home—he was being released tomorrow though I didn’t know how with a tube running out of his chest and I said so.

  “If they can’t safely remove it tomorrow, he won’t be going anywhere,” Linda said.

  “Which is why it’s comin’ out,” Eddie snarled.

  “I’ll bring you some peas and rice and jerk chicken from El Caribe to celebrate your homecoming,” I told him, not willing to argue the point and betting the doctor wasn’t, either.

  His eyes lit up. “That was almost worth getting shot for.”

  Linda’s eyes bored into him with a look that would freeze spit and she walked out of the room without kissing him good-bye. He was still trying to explain how he hadn’t meant what he’d said. She didn’t want to hear it. Even I knew better than to joke about almost being killed and I wasn’t even married yet—only engaged.

  I turned around and ran back into his room. “I forgot to tell you: I’m engaged.” Then I did a little dance while Eddie chanted, “Go Phillip, go Phillip, go Phillip.”