"That's good,” I said. “Because God knows that innocent men never get sent to jail."
I grinned at him as we walked on. He looked at me and then turned away. We carried on until Perry stood off towards one side of the path, looking into the trees. He pointed at something. I saw what they called a red panda. It looked to me like a furrier ginger cousin of the raccoon. He, could have been a she, was lying in the trees sleeping.
"Funny that animals don't need police and jails to keep themselves in check," said Perry, smiling up at the red panda.
"Maybe that's because there are way less of them than there are of us."
I watched the sleeping red panda, and in the warm vestiges of summer sun I wanted to curl up next to him and take a nap. But that was probably the beer from lunch speaking.
"What else can you tell me about Paul that I might not know about?" I asked.
Perry turned to look at me.
"Not sure there's anything really that I can tell you. He's a self involved philanderer. Though you probably figured that out by now. He had a valuable violin, at least that's what I heard. And he got one of the women pregnant a few years ago. Other than that, I try not to keep abreast of the orchestral gossip."
I nodded at him. It wasn't helpful but I wasn't expecting him to have any news being removed as he was from him.
"What about Kieran? Did he ever share any information with you about Paul?"
"Well, he told me how he'd given Paul a bit of what for, said it made him feel better. But he said Paul hurried off saying he was being followed, and he seemed quite upset about it."
Perry paused for a moment and looked around.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Well, Kieran said, and this was totally in a non-serious manner, that he thought maybe our luck would change and the two guys who were following Paul would solve our problem."
I nodded.
"I heard about them. You don't know anything about that though, do you?"
Perry shook his head and looked down at his watch.
"Listen, I should really get back to my guys if there's nothing else I can do for you."
I shook my head. I was hoping for an easy close. The number of perps who've ended up being jealous husbands and boyfriends stacked the deck this way for me. But on this occasion I was coming up empty. Seemed like maybe Kieran and Perry weren't my Huckleberrys. That meant it could be only one of three things. One of the disgruntled women killed him, these shadowy tails killed him which meant they're real or lastly, it was JJ and his crew, looking to cash in on the value of the violin.
"If you think of anything else," I said, "please let me know. You can reach me through the musical director, Frank."
Perry shook my hand. He had a good, firm honest man's handshake.
"Will do," he said. "And I hope you catch the guy who did it. Not that he meant much to me. I still think he's an ass but that doesn't mean he deserved to die for it."
Perry smiled at me and looked me in the eyes for a moment. He was sincere, and I admired his magnanimity. With more men like that, there'd be less work for the likes of me. I liked the idea of that.
I watched Perry turn back the way we'd come. When he was gone from sight, I looked back up the panda. He was yawning. It was coming on two. He was as cute as a baby but furrier, and I wondered if he'd made his mama proud. I wondered if Paul had too.
THIRTEEN
Chapter 13
FLUSHING Meadows holds the U.S. Open tennis tournament every year. I was just vaguely familiar with it. I'm not one of those chumps that thinks a man hitting a ball a few times a year is worth millions. But many do, and that's why they get paid so much for hitting all sorts of balls. White ones, yellow ones, hard ones, soft ones, big ones and small ones. And we watch millionaires do this ad nauseum. There's gotta be some sociologist who's studied this weird behavior.
Anyway, what am I trying to say? Not much worth listening to. Only that I'd sooner do the hitting of the balls than the watching. I'm only telling you about Flushing Meadows because that's where I was heading. Not to play tennis. Not really to Flushing Meadows, but to a coffee shop in Queens called Frangelico's that's in Flushing. Not far from the botanical gardens. The U.S. Open was over. The traffic was light and Terry was driving me the scenic route.
I was heading out to see Stephanie Yerkes née Perkins. She's the one that Paul got pregnant. She lives in Queens and was quite happy to have me come around for coffee. At the local coffee shop that is. Not her home.
Terry dropped me off and said he'd wait. I wasn't going to bitch about it. I was getting used to driving around in the Maybach. Maybe I was getting soft, maybe I was getting sentimental or maybe I was just trying to save Sonia some money. That's how I am… sometimes.
Queens, like much of the island, is full of hardworking middle class folks. You might find some doctors and lawyers out here, but mostly you'll find the trades, office ants and lower management. As such, Frangelico's represented the community quite well. It wasn't fancy. The couple of comfortable chairs might have come out from the owner's basement when he set up his business. The floor was fake tile and patterned so you couldn't tell if it was dirty or not.
The lights were dim but the atmosphere wasn't cozy. It was just around four in the afternoon. The place was mostly empty and the woman I was going to meet was in one of the comfy chairs. I knew that because when I'd called her up she said she'd be wearing a New York Yankees ball cap and she was the only one in here wearing a ball cap. I took off my fedora and tossed it on the empty chair. Stephanie stood up and smiled awkwardly. She was shy or coy. I couldn't tell which.
"Stephanie Yerkes?" I asked, offering her my hand. She took and we shook. She nodded and looked down. I noticed she had a cup of tea on the table by the wall that was between the two chairs.
"Can I get you anything else?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"No, thank you."
I nodded and went to the front counter. An Italian looking fellow asked me what I wanted. He was slim and young. Maybe in his early twenties with brown eyes and wavy Italian black hair that makes men envious and women weak at the knees. I ordered a coffee. He asked me what kind. I said the kind made from coffee beans. He laughed. He thought I was a kidder. He said they had a dark roast or a light roast. I said the darker the better.
He brought me a paper cup. I said I was having it to stay. He poured it into a yellow mug that had a blue smiley face on it. I took it from the counter where it had stained the surface after he'd spilled some from decanting it. I put down two bills. He said it was two fifty seven. I put down another bill and walked away.
This coffee had better taste like gold. I went over to the dumb waiter and put in sugar and cream. Then I walked over and took a seat by Stephanie. She'd been watching me this whole time. I smiled at her as I sat down. I took a sip of coffee. It was good, but not three bucks good.
"Some places I know, you can get a glass of Scotch for the price of this coffee."
"Not here," she said.
"I can see that."
She picked up her mug of tea and took a sip. Stephanie was a plump woman of average height. From what I could tell she had short black hair under the ball cap. She wore a purple windbreaker over a yoga top that was zippered up just above her chest. She wore black spandex pants that weren't becoming. There ought to be rules about who can wear black spandex yoga pants. Not men, and only fit women between about twenty and forty'ish. There's nothing more of an eyesore than two fat black sausages dangling from saggy blimps all encased in black.
Her face was cute though and she didn't wear much makeup. On a plate next to her was some sort of square that she had managed to eat half of. I was thinking of advising her to leave the rest. God knew she didn't need it. But I've learned that my mouth sometimes gets me in trouble.
Looking at her I was trying to figure out how she got Paul's interest. I didn't see how she would have been attractive to him. But maybe she was in better shape befor
e the kids.
"Thanks for taking the time to meet me," I said.
"Not at all. I want to help if I can. When I heard on the news last night about Paul, well, I was quite upset by it."
"Not many people were," I said, grinning.
Stephanie looked down and fiddled with her fingers. She was very self conscious. She took her fork and put another piece of square into her mouth.
"I understand that you and Paul had a relationship for a time," I said, trying to be delicate.
I drank more creamy coffee. A guy carrying a bale of a stomach held up by overalls that were dusty walked in and up to the counter. He had gray stubble that matched the thin curls on his head. Stephanie looked over at me.
"I don't think it was much of a relationship. Or if it was, it was more one sided."
"On your side," I said.
Stephanie nodded.
"I've heard things have worked out for you since then," I said.
"What do you mean?"
"You have a couple of kids and a family. I'm assuming things are well."
Stephanie nodded and reached for her tea. She took a sip and kept the mug in her hands, cradling it. It was a bumpy mug, the color of a blue sky in anger. It was one of those self made clay models. The kind that might have been a first attempt.
"I'm just gonna come out and ask, Stephanie, because I'm sometimes insensitive and mostly because I just hate beating around the bush. Did you kill Paul?"
She looked up at me and frowned.
"God no!" she said.
She said it with some force and I believed her. She seemed genuinely surprised that I'd be so bold as to ask such a question so early in our chat.
"Why would I be here talking to you if I had?" she said. "I just don't think that makes any sense."
"It doesn't," I agreed, "but sometimes murderers, thieves and the like think they can get away with it."
"Maybe I'll ask a more sensitive question then. Have you seen Paul recently?"
"No."
"When was the last time you saw him?"
I took a sip out of my bright yellow mug. The blue smiley face was smiling at Stephanie. She looked off for a moment before replying.
"Quite a long time ago. Probably just before they kicked me out of Lincoln Center."
I nodded.
"Look, I'll admit that Paul broke my heart. He did. But that's been about three or so years now. I've moved on. I have a husband who treats me much better than Paul ever did. I have a good life now. I'm happy, and I'm glad that Paul never kept in touch."
"So he didn't wish you a bon voyage?"
"No, after he heard that I'd gotten pregnant he wouldn't take my calls. He would barely acknowledge me if we passed and then a few months later I was fired."
"With a good severance package, right?"
"You probably already know this, yes, they, or I should say Sonia paid me off with half a million dollars."
I was never good at math. If I was, I wouldn't have become a gumshoe. But this math right here, I think I could figure it out. Stephanie was fired around three years ago and her son is about three. Seems to me she kept the child.
"How old is your son?" I asked.
She looked at me with a frown again. If she kept that up she'd be needing Botox. Though she didn't strike me as the kind that did that to herself.
"He'll be three in a month," she said. "Why do you ask?"
"I'm just doing some math in my head. I'm told that you were given some money for an abortion."
Stephanie nodded.
"But you didn't have it," I said.
She looked up at me and shook her head.
"I couldn't," she said, tearing up but holding it together. "They expected me to, but I didn't. No one knows except Donald, my husband."
"I see," I said.
She darted a hot look at me, that missed. I wasn't injured.
"Look, you don't know what it's like. I couldn't kill my baby. I just couldn't do it."
"I'm not judging," I said. "But how did you keep it from them?"
"Well, I don't really see any of them. Sometimes Sonia and I visit. Probably no more than once or twice a year. During those first six or seven months I pretended that I was depressed and didn't want anything to do with any of them. It wasn't far from the truth. Now, I've told them that Jayden is Donald's son from before."
"Sonia still sends you money I understand?"
"She does. I think she feels guilty about forcing me into the situation she did. I think in her mind it's blood money. Anyway, it's not much but with Donald's salary it helps us from getting into debt."
"And the half mil?"
"We used most of that to buy our house and fund the kids' college education. We also put a little away for our retirement."
I sipped my coffee and Stephanie took another bite of her square. From her lips to her hips. But I kept my mouth shut. She had another bite left.
"Where are your kids now?"
"They're with the neighbor. She babysits once in a while. You know, for a PI, you really ask all sorts of weird questions."
I grinned at her.
"Maybe I'm just not very good at this," I said.
She shook her head.
"No, I don't think so. I get the sense you're pretty good at this, but odd."
I raised my mug at her.
"I'll take that as a compliment then," I said.
Stephanie took a sip of her tea. A young man dressed in a suit came into the coffee shop and walked up to the counter to order something. It was the gray of a banker's suit and his hair was immaculately cropped. Though I wouldn't trust him with my spare change.
"I'm starting to think you had nothing to do with Paul's murder. But maybe you can help me figure out who might have."
"I'll try. But like I said, I haven't kept in touch with anyone there since I left."
"Except Sonia"
"Except Sonia," she repeated.
"Paul was known to have a roving eye," I said. "And from what I've heard, he wasn't very discreet about it."
Stephanie nodded and sipped her tea.
"You might have known about Lauren and Rosanna."
She nodded again.
"I found out towards the end of our… relationship, I guess. Though it just seems farcical to call it that now. But yes, I found out that he'd been sleeping with both Rosanna and Lauren."
"And they're both married."
"I guess Paul wasn't discreet," she said.
"That's what I'm hearing. How did those two get along with each other?"
"Not well once they found out about each other. They turned particularly bitchy. At least that's what I heard. You have to remember that I wasn't in the orchestra, I was part of administration, so I wasn't around them all the time."
"Did you hear about the altercation recently with Paul?"
Stephanie shook her head.
"No, I really haven't kept in touch with anyone."
"In the past few months Paul was confronted by both husbands within the same week. Rosanna's husband slapped him around a little bit."
Stephanie put the last piece of square in her mouth. It was a big piece. I might have made it a two bite piece, but I wasn't eating. She chewed it for a while, maybe trying to digest the information I'd just shared. Perhaps that was a big morsel too.
"I'm not surprised by that. Paul could be very charming when he wanted to be, but he also didn't really care about anyone else's feelings. Paul wanted what Paul wanted and he didn't mind stepping on toes to get it."
"I'm getting a fuller picture of him as each meeting passes."
"Maybe," said Stephanie, drinking some tea. "Maybe, one of them did this to him?"
"That's what I thought. I've already spoken with both of them. I don't think they're candidates."
She didn't say anything. She drank more tea. I drank more coffee. The earth spun a little more on its axis and I wasn't getting any closer to the truth.
"I don't know what to suggest then. P
aul wasn't very nice once he'd had enough of you or if you couldn't help him anymore, but I don't think that deserved to have him murdered."
I smiled at her.
"In my business you'd be surprised at how little some people think of killing. The man, or woman, capable of murder doesn't think rationally about it like you or I. Why? Because it is an irrational act."
I took the last drink from my coffee and put the smiling-faced mug on the table.
"Did you know much about Paul's drug use?" I asked.
Stephanie nodded.
"A little. He didn't use around me because I wasn't like that. But I knew he liked a bit of cocaine and marijuana now and then."
"Seems to me that now and then turned into more and often."
She looked up at me and frowned.
"I didn't know it was that much of a problem. What I was concerned about when we were together was his drinking."
"He drank a bit then?"
"He drank a lot. Whenever we were out with friends or just out for dinner together, he'd drink more than he should. I always had to drive us around. Looking back now, I'm not sure I would have stayed with him if he hadn't got it under control."
The thing I like about hindsight is how crystal clear it is. But I doubted her sincerity. The number of domestics I went to where alcohol was a factor sometimes gave me the impression I was being paid by the breweries.
"Tell me about his violin?" I asked, hoping to get somewhere with this conversation. His alcoholism wasn't going to help me. It was either his drug use or violin abuse.
"Which one?" she asked.
"The expensive one, the Stradivarius."
"What's there to tell? He had it insured for a lot of money and he got it as a gift from his grandfather," she said.
"How much did he have it insured for?"
"I don't remember, some outrageous number. Ten million maybe."
Ten million exactly.
"Did he tell you how his grandfather got the violin?"
"No, he just said it was a gift from his grandfather."
"So you didn't know his grandfather was a concentration camp guard who stole it from a Jew who ended up under his watch?"
Stephanie frowned most severely this time.
Anthony Carrick Hardboiled Murder Mysteries: Box Set (Books 1 - 3) Page 42