Lady Killer

by Lisa Scottoline

  “I know where the impound lot is.” Anthony touched her shoulder. “Let me take you. Wait here with my mother, and I’ll go get the car. Be right back.”

  “Thanks.” Mary threw an arm around Elvira as he left, then thought of Brinkley and Missing Persons. Her cell phone had been turned off in the hospital. But somebody should have called back. “Excuse me, Elvira. You mind if I take a second to check my calls?”

  “Nah, go head. Ant does the same thing, alla time.” She waved a hand, and Mary went into her purse for her phone. The screen said she’d missed a call. She pressed the button to return the call, and it was Brinkley who answered.

  “Mary?” he said, when he heard her voice. “We found a body.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Mary sat, numb, in the backseat of the Prius, having taken the news like a physical blow. She couldn’t breathe a word of what Brinkley had told her to Anthony or his mother, because it wasn’t public knowledge. Luckily, the car radio was off, and the only sound was the familiar cadence of the back and forth between the two, who talked in the front seat, oblivious to what had taken place only ten blocks away.

  Mary struggled to keep her composure, only half listening.

  “How about Judy Garland?” Anthony was saying.

  “Now she was a star, a real star. But Sue hates her, too.”

  “Mrs. Ciorletti hates Judy?” Anthony scoffed. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Sue’s grumpy, but that’s just her way.”

  “It’s called depression, Ma.”

  “Nah. She just don’t like things, or people. Like Mary here. Sue don’t like her at all.”

  “Ma!” Anthony said, embarrassed.

  Mary’s ears pricked up. “Why not?” she asked, not that she really cared. Before Brinkley’s call, she’d cared.

  “There’s a lotta talk about you, Mare, and it’s not very nice.”

  “Ma, please,” Anthony said, looking over.

  “Don’t be so fresh and don’t make that shut-up face. Mary knows I love her.” Elvira twisted around to the backseat, her coarse gray hair making a frizzy halo, backlit from a streetlight. “People are sayin’ that you forgot where you’re from, you know what I mean? It started all of a sudden, with Trish Gambone, because her mother told everybody that you wouldn’t help her and then it’s on the TV. They’re blamin’ you for what happened to her.”

  Mary felt sick. She could only imagine what they’d say when they knew what had happened tonight.

  “Then the other day, you stood Roberto up.”

  “Roberto Nunez? You know him?”

  “I don’t, but my camarr Linda does. She knows his son who used to buy life insurance offa her brother-in-law from St. Monica’s.”

  Mary didn’t bother to follow it. Her head was starting to pound.

  “I heard that you didn’t go to his case, or his trial, or whatever it was. You were too busy. You told him it wasn’t worth your time. You sent your secretary instead.”

  Mary closed her eyes. It was like playing telephone.

  “It’s like you’re gettin’ a bad rep, and it’s gonna get worse, with Dhiren.”

  “Dhiren? What about Dhiren?” Mary asked, bewildered.

  Anthony shook his head as the car cruised along, entering South Philly. “I told you this was a bad idea,” he said, hitting the gas.

  Elvira harrumphed. “Don’t get me wrong, Mare. I stick up for you. But you didn’t get Dhiren outta that school, and now he’s up in the hospital. People will say you don’t care about the old neighborhood no more. That’s what Sue thinks. You’re Center City now.”

  “It’s only ten blocks north, Elvira, and she’s wrong. They all are.”

  “I know, that’s what I tell ’em. You and Celine Dion, I always fight for.”

  “Okay, Ma, say good night.” Anthony stopped the car in front of the Rotunno house and after Mary had kissed Elvira good-bye, he got out to walk her up the steps. When he got back in the car, he asked Mary to come up front, and she took the passenger seat, stiffly. Anthony looked over, his smile warm in the darkness. “Please forgive her.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Now I see what you meant at dinner the other night, about the neighborhood. Maybe I was too glib.” Anthony cocked his head. “You wanna get a coffee? Or go straight to the impound lot? Up to you.”

  “Unfortunately, neither.” Mary tried to stay in control. She hardly knew him and she didn’t want to lose it now. “Can you take me somewhere else?”

  “Sure, why?”

  Mary gave him the address. “There’s been a murder.”

  This section of the city was normally deserted after dark, but tonight it was alive with activity. The full moon was a bullethole in a black sky, and people filled the street. Anthony double-parked down the block, but almost before he braked, Mary was in motion, opening the car door, grabbing her bag, and climbing out onto the sidewalk. “Thanks,” she called out. “I’ll get my own ride home.”

  “I’m coming with you.” Anthony unclipped his safety harness and got out of the car.

  Mary hurried heedless into the crowd. People stood smoking and talking on the sidewalks, swigging beer from a can or watching the scene at the end of the street, their arms folded over their paunches. She threaded her way through them, toward where police cruisers had been parked and wooden barricades had been erected. She got to the uniformed cops behind the sawhorses and picked one, his face shadowed by the black patent bill of his cap, then went up to him.

  “I’m a lawyer and I got a call from Mack Brinkley, and he told me to come down here right away.” Mary ducked under the barricade, and Anthony followed, until the cop grabbed him by the elbow.

  “Wait a sec, sir.”

  “Let him go, he’s with me.” Mary dug for her wallet and flashed her bar admission card, and the cop waved Anthony ahead, and he kept going.

  “Thanks,” Anthony said, on her heels, and they passed groups of uniformed cops talking in tight circles, silhouetted in the headlights from the cruisers. Up ahead, she spotted the calcium white of klieg-lights and headed straight for them.

  Ahead had to be where they’d found the body.

  Mary screened out the noise and the curious stares and reached the TV lights, like electrified trees on their aluminum stands, with black cables that stretched like roots to boxy generators. The press was kept at bay behind the barricades, but they had cameras and lights, too, and she picked up the pace as she went toward the light, past the brick rowhouses, decrepit in this part of South Philly. On the right, next to a house with a sagging front porch, a tall, boxy white truck was parked, its side reading CRIME SCENE UNIT in reflective blue letters. The truck sat near the mouth of an alley, and Mary remembered Brinkley saying that the body had been dumped in the back of an alley.

  “Almost there,” Mary heard herself say, her heart racing.

  “Right behind you,” Anthony said, thinking she was talking to him, but she wasn’t. There was noise and talking around them but she didn’t hear it. She heard only her own heartbeat and the echo of Brinkley’s voice:

  I have bad news. We got a body.

  Mary felt her mouth go dry when she spied Brinkley, slim and well dressed, talking with a crowd of men in suits and loosened ties, undoubtedly from the DA’s office. He stood with his partner, Stan Kovich, big, brawny, and gray-blond, whom she remembered as open and friendly as Brinkley was reserved and self-contained. She made a beeline for them, giving a discreet wave to catch their attention, in case they didn’t want to acknowledge her in front of the suits.

  Kovich bent his head over some notes, and Brinkley spotted her first, then broke from the group to meet her. A gleaming black van stood on her right, its white MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE letters shiny in the lights, more reflective paint. The two back doors of the van hung open. It meant the gurney was out, pressed into service for the body.

  Mary had gotten here as fast as she could and she guessed they would be finishing up about now.
The reporters swelled toward the barricades, sensing it, too. They held cameras high over their heads, trying to get the “bag shot.” Mary had been to some crime scenes, but not like this. Not where she knew the body.

  “Mare, how you doin’,” Brinkley said quietly, reaching her. “Sorry we didn’t get there sooner. We could’ve prevented this.”

  “You tried. We all did.” Mary forced herself to say it, but she knew she should have tried harder.

  “You sure you can handle it? I thought you should know.”

  “Sure.” Mary glanced over, distracted. More lamps had been set up inside the alley, flooding it with light. Men in ties and coroner’s assistants in dark blue jumpsuits crammed the alley, and others working at its mouth made shifting shadows, blocking Mary’s view of what lay beyond.

  “Who’s this?” Brinkley meant Anthony, coming up next to her. “He with you?”

  “Yes,” Mary answered quickly, and while Anthony introduced himself, she kept her gaze on the alley. She caught a glimpse of a crumbling brick side wall, and when somebody in front of her moved aside, she could see that the wall was behind an overflowing trashcan. Strobes fired from a still camera, taking photographs, and there was the sound of men talking and counting off. She sensed the coroner was closing up for good, his assistants slipping the body on top of the black vinyl bag, then doing their practiced pitch-and-roll to bag the corpse with efficiency and a modicum of dignity.

  Mary did and didn’t want to go into the alley. She had to see, yet she didn’t want to see, and in the next instant, before she realized it, she had pushed her way to its mouth as if she belonged there. Brinkley called to her from some faraway place, then Anthony, too, but she ignored them both to see. When the way cleared, she looked down at the sight.

  He looked exactly the same, except that his skin was now as gray as marble, and he lay in the black body bag, which was half zippered up. His blue eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the black sky. His head lay slightly to the side, and his bangs lay fanned across his forehead, just like they always did, soft and brown. She flashed on him raking his hair back with his fingers at the kitchen table. It was so hard to believe that those hands had pummeled a woman, but Mary had seen the pictures herself. Now the coroner’s assistants were tucking those same hands, each bagged in transparent plastic to preserve evidence, inside the black body bag and zipping it closed.

  “He took a bullet to the back of the head,” Brinkley told her in low tones. “We think it’s a Mob hit, and so do the feds. I told them about the skimming.”

  How did it all go so wrong? How did he turn up dead? And where was Trish?

  “Mare?” Brinkley put a hand on her shoulder just as the assistants zipped up the body bag.

  A shadow blocked Mary’s view, but it didn’t matter. The image had been seared into her brain. She would always see him lying there. In the next second, she became aware that Brinkley was looking at her funny.

  “Mare? You losin’ it here?”

  “No, of course not,” she answered, but it didn’t ring true, even to her. “I’m just confused. When you told me you had a body, I couldn’t believe it was him who got killed. It’s Trish I was worried about.”

  “So where’d you get the tip on the location?”

  “The sister, in Jersey.”

  “Fill me in later, will you.”

  “Sure. Did I redeem you?”

  “More or less. Thanks.” Brinkley half-smiled.

  “Good.” Mary felt some satisfaction, if only for that reason. The body had been discovered by a uniformed cop, sent there by her tip about Ninth & Kennick. It was why Brinkley had called her when they found the body, and he had sounded grateful. Mary felt herself recovering from the shock, trying to understand. “So where’s Trish? I mean, now that he’s dead?”

  “I’m not gonna speculate.”

  “But what do you think? He turns up dead, so is she still alive? That’s possible, right?”

  “Mare, I can’t speculate. It’s all what-if.”

  “Reg, it’s me. Just tell me what you think.”

  “Okay, fine.” Brinkley lowered his voice. “You have to prepare yourself for all the possibilities.”

  Mary felt her knees weaken and prayed she could keep it together, especially in front of all these people.

  Brinkley was asking, “You sent that diary to Missing Persons, like I asked?”

  “Sure.” Mary forced herself to think clearly. “I had it hand delivered to them today.”

  “Good, I’ll get it. Anything else I should know?”

  “A mob guy named Cadillac, who suspected he was skimming.”

  “Cadillac?” Brinkley pulled a thin steno notebook from his back pocket and a ballpoint from his inside pocket.

  “Yes. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “No.” Brinkley made a note. “That’s in the diary, too?”

  “Yes. Trish was worried about him.” Mary tucked her emotions away. She had to help. If Trish was still alive, maybe it could help find her. “His sister told me he had a house somewhere. She doesn’t know where, they’re estranged. He wanted a place he could get lost to.”

  “What’s her name again?”

  Mary answered him, then asked, “When was he killed?”

  “We think late last night. That’s unofficial, you know that. We found Trish’s cell phone on him, and it has the call she made to her mother, at seven thirteen. There’s no other calls after that.”

  “He had her cell?” Mary tried to wrap her mind around it. It couldn’t be good. The thought made her sick. “Did you find his car? It’s a black BMW. New.”

  “We don’t have the car.”

  “It’s gotta be parked here somewhere. They left in it. The neighbor saw them. Unless it’s back at home.”

  “We’ll check on it.” Brinkley made a note.

  From the alley came the clinking sound of the gurney being erected, metal hitting metal, bearing the body.

  Brinkley was saying, “I did the notification and I also called the mother, Mrs. Gambone. She was pretty upset. Your friend was with her, the one on TV.”

  “Giulia.”

  Brinkley put a hand on Mary’s shoulder. “The M.E. agreed to do the autopsy as soon as possible. The body could have evidence of where she is, and one way or the other, we’ll find her. Don’t worry.”

  Suddenly there came shouting from beyond the barricades and they looked over. A fight was breaking out in the mob, the crowd pushing and pulling. Policemen hurried from all directions toward the spot, and Mary craned her neck to see. The crowd surged toward the barricades, and the TV lights swung around and spotlighted the chaos.

  “Stay here!” Brinkley took off, hustling toward the fracas.

  But when Mary saw what the problem was, she knew it could take more than the Philadelphia Police Department.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Ritchie Po exploded through the crowd toward the barricades. Men flanked him, running interference, though cops tried to stop them, pulling them back. People shouted, and there was a panicky scream as cops brandished pepper spray. Ritchie thrashed this way and that, throwing punches. Brinkley reached the barricades and signaled to other cops to help. A metal stalk of lights toppled over, scattering onlookers and crashing to the street. People started yelling, and in the melee, reporters got shoved aside and the rowdy crowd took up for Po, hollering at the police.

  “What a mess!” Anthony said, almost drowned out by the din.

  “Stand aside, people!” came a shout from behind, and Mary realized that she and Anthony were sandwiched between the alley and the shouting crowd. They sidestepped out of the way, and crime techs, startled at the sudden violence, scooted from the alley. The coroner’s assistants bent over and rolled the metal gurney with the black vinyl bag, rushing it bumping on the street.

  Ritchie and his friends charged the barricades, and in front of him, the press struggled to catch the bag shot as the coroner’s assistants collapsed the wheels
of the gurney and hoisted it into the van.

  “I wanna see my brother!” he was screaming. “Get outta my way! Lemme see my brother!”

  “Hurry!” The coroner’s assistants shoved the gurney into the van and darted to safety as the crowd rolled toward them, Ritchie in the lead.

  Suddenly, reporters and cameramen were pushed forward from behind, the barricade toppled over, and a crowd of uniformed cops, Brinkley, Kovich, and Ritchie Po trampled the barricades and barreled ahead. “Stop right there!” Brinkley yelled, reaching out as Ritchie, carrying cops with him, rushed the van.

  Mary watched, stunned. The cops grabbed Ritchie and the men around him, finally tackling them to the street. The crowd booed and shouted, and above the din, she could hear Brinkley and the cops. Ritchie stopped screaming, and the shoving and pushing finally subsided, ending almost as quickly as it had begun.

  Mary stood speechless, trying to process what she had seen. She felt a squeeze around her shoulder and looked over, realizing that somehow she and Anthony had ended up at the edge of the crowd, out of harm’s way.

  “Jeez, this is incredible.” Anthony looked down at Mary with a bewildered smile. “Is your life always like this?”

  She couldn’t share the joke. Someone in the restless crowd had caught her eye. There, at the edge of the white light, stood Mr. Po, in a tan windbreaker and baggy pants. He rested a gnarled hand on a remaining sawhorse, and he was looking toward the black van. Wisps of his flyaway gray hair blew in the night air, and the ragged edge of light fell on the sunken planes of his face, reducing his eyes to black slits.

  Mary was struck by a single thought: He’s not half as upset as he should be.

  Later, Mary and Anthony followed Brinkley and Kovich down to the Roundhouse, where they were taking Ritchie Po and his father for questioning. She was dying to watch Ritchie’s interview, but unlike TV and movies, there were no two-way mirrors in Homicide. Instead, Mary, Anthony, and two FBI types, Special Agents Jimmy Kiesling and Marc Robert Steinberg, found themselves thrown together in another interview room, sitting in their mismatched chairs with cooling cups of terrible coffee. The agents were undoubtedly wondering why two civilians were getting so much respect, and Mary could feel how much they wanted to be in on the Po interview. The feds didn’t like to sit at the kiddie table.