by Bill Bernico
“This Sonny must live nearby if he can get here in a few minutes,” Matt said.
“I guess,” Jacobs said. “I never thought about it before.”
“Just make yourself comfortable,” Elliott said. “We’ll all just wait until Sonny gets here.”
They didn’t have to wait long. Twelve minutes later Jacobs’ doorbell rang. Elliott and Matt stepped into the kitchen, around the corner while Jacobs let Sonny in.
“Thanks for comin’, Sonny,” Jacobs said, closing the door behind his visitor.
“So what’s all this stuff you need from the store?” Sonny said.
Matt and Elliott quickly stepped out of the kitchen, their guns pointed out in front of them. Elliott caught Sonny’s eye. “Freeze right there, Sonny,” he said, pulling the hammer back on his .38. The sound immediately registered in Sonny’s ears and he stood like a statue, moving only his eyes.
Sonny’s dirty blonde hair hung greasy over his ears and neck, which was full of pimples. His eyes were set far back in his head with overhanging brows. He looked like he hadn’t quite finished evolving.
“On your stomach,” Elliott barked, still pointing his .38 at Sonny. “Now.”
Sonny sunk to his knees and laid flat on the floor. Elliott turned to Matt. “Cover him,” he said, holstering his weapon and frisking the prone man. He pulled a wallet from Sonny’s back pocket, flipped it open to the driver’s license window and read. “Salvatore Riteman. Is that you?”
Sonny said nothing.
Elliott nudged him in the ribs with his shoe. “Is that you?” he repeated, louder this time.
“Yeah, what of it?” Sonny said, defiantly.
Elliott turned toward Matt. “Did you bring your cuffs?”
Matt pulled a pair of handcuffs from his jacket pocket and tossed them to Elliott, who slapped them onto Sonny’s wrists, behind his back and pulled him to his feet by his arm. Elliott walked him backward to the kitchen wall until he couldn’t go any further. “Now you just stand right there and don’t move, you understand?”
Sonny didn’t answer but just leaned forward, away from the wall and gave Elliott a dirty look. Elliott pushed Sonny back against the wall. “I said, do you understand?”
Sonny gave one half-hearted nod but still said nothing.
Elliott stepped back away from Sonny, withdrew his cell phone and called Eric at the twelfth precinct.
“Lieutenant Anderson,” Eric said.
“Eric, it’s Elliott. I think I have the guy who set fire to our building. You might want to stop over here and take him off our hands. Oh, and bring your rubber gloves. He ain’t the cleanest thing I’ve ever come across.” Elliott read the address to Eric off his printout and added, “We’re in apartment twelve at the end of the hall.”
Elliott closed his phone and dropped it back into his jacket pocket. He pulled Sonny toward the kitchen, sat him down on one of the chairs and turned back to Jacobs. “You might as well sit, too.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Jacobs said. “I told you all this before.”
“Have a seat anyway,” Elliott said. “The good lieutenant will still want to talk to you. If you haven’t done anything, you’ll be free to go.
While they waited for the police to show up, Matt stepped in front of Sonny and looked down at him. “Just tell me this much,” Matt said. “Why’d you set that fire in my building? Someone pay you to do it or were you after one of the tenants?”
Sonny didn’t answer and just looked away, ignoring Matt’s inquiries.
Matt grabbed Sonny by the hair and yanked his head back around to face him. “I said, why did you set that fire? You nearly got me killed.”
Sonny managed a half-hearted laugh this time. “That was you out on that ledge, wasn’t it? I seen you on TV that same day.” He laughed again and Matt backhanded him in the face, wiping the smile clean off it. Sonny lost his balance and fell onto his back, smashing his cuffed wrists to the floor. He howled with pain.
“Let him go,” Elliott said to Matt. “We don’t want anything to screw this up for the police when they get here.”
Matt stepped away and then walked to the kitchen, looking for something to wipe his hand on. He turned to Sonny. “I think maybe Leroy and me will take a walk around outside for a while,” he said. “Maybe while we’re gone you’ll think of something you forgot to tell Matt.” Elliott gestured to Leroy and then led him by the arm toward the apartment door.
Matt returned from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel. He spoke to Elliott but was looking right into Sonny’s eyes. “Where you going, Dad?” he said.
“I thought I’d take Leroy outside for some fresh air,” Elliott said. “You want to join us?”
“Maybe later,” Matt said. “Sonny and I still have some unfinished business, don’t we, Sonny?” Matt flexed his fists and set his jaw. “You go ahead. We’ll be fine by ourselves.”
Elliott opened the apartment door and pulled Leroy toward the opening. Defiance dropped off Sonny’s face and was replaced with fear. Matt shot Sonny a knowing look and smiled.
“Wait,” Sonny yelled to Elliott. “I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me what?” Elliott said, turning back toward Sonny.
“I’ll tell you who hired me to start that fire,” Sonny said. “Just keep your dog off me.” He gestured toward Matt with his chin.
Elliott turned around and pulled Leroy back into the room, handing him off to Matt. “Matt, why don’t you take Leroy out for that breath of fresh air while I talk to Sonny?” Matt resisted at first, his fists still clenched. “Go on, Matt,” Elliott said. “Give us a few minutes.”
Matt reluctantly pulled Leroy out into the hall and closed the door, but instead of taking him outside, Matt stayed there, just outside the door and listened. He couldn’t hear what was being said but still did not want to leave, just in case Elliott needed him.
Sonny tried to pull his cuffed hands as far around to the front of his body as he could. He looked at Elliott. “Come on, man,” Sonny said. “You don’t need these things. Take ‘em off and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
“You’ll tell me with ‘em on,” Elliott said. “Now spill it fast before I call Matt back in here.”
Sonny swallowed hard, licked his lips and said, “It was Jack. He paid me three hundred bucks to light the fire and then get out of there.”
“Jack who?” Elliott said. “Give me Jack’s last name.”
“I don’t know it,” Sonny insisted.
“Yeah, right,” Elliott said. “Some stranger comes up to you on the street and offers you three hundred dollars to start a fire. How did you know this Jack?”
Sonny’s eyes darted around the room and then settled on Elliott again. “I’m tellin’ you, man, Jack never told me his last name and that’s the truth.”
“Where’d you meet him?” Elliott said. “What kind of arrangements did he make with you for payment, or did he already pay you?”
“I met him in a bar over on Figueroa one night and we got to talkin’,” Sonny explained. “We had a few drinks and he starts crying on my shoulder about some guy who screwed him outta a couple thousand bucks, see. He says he’d give anything to get even with the guy and I says something like, ‘how much is it worth to you to get even?’ or something like that and he says he’d pay five hundred bucks to fix that guy’s wagon.”
“Five hundred?” Elliott said. “You just told me paid you three hundred.”
“Three hundred up front and another two hundred when the job was done,” Sonny said. “But I ain’t see the other two bills yet and Jack’s disappeared.”
“Which bar was this where you said you met Jack?” Elliott asked.
Sonny shook his head. “Hell, I don’t know,” he said. “Some dive on the boulevard. I don’t know the name.”
“How can I find it?” Elliott said. “Name something familiar near it.”
Sonny thought for a moment and added, “Wait a minute. I remember looking down at
the sidewalk as I was leaving the place. You know, where they have those famous people’s stars in the cement.”
“What about them?”
“I remember seeing Ernest Borgnine’s star outside of that bar,” Sonny said. “It was somewhere near that movie theater.”
“The Pantages?” Elliott said.
“No, I know where that one is and it’s further down the street. No, this one had a different name. Just let me think a minute.”
“The Vine?” Elliott said.
“If that’s the name of it,” Sonny said. “Whatever it was called, it was across the street from this bar.”
“You go in there a lot?”
“All the time,” Sonny said.
“Why?”
“Why not? It’s right near…”
“…Your house,” Elliott said. “That’s your neighborhood, isn’t it?”
“How’d you know?” Sonny said. “Who told you?”
“You just did,” Elliott said with a smirk. “You ever see this guy in there before that night?”
“A few times,” Sonny offered. “But he always kept to himself before.”
“So you get close to him that night,” Elliott said. “What did he say exactly?”
Sonny shrugged as much as he could in handcuffs. “He must have heard me talking at the bar and before I know it, the bartender’s giving me a drink and tells me it’s from the guy at the table behind me. I turn around and he’s lifting his glass to me so I join him at his table. He tells me I sound like a tough guy and would I like to make some easy money. I said, sure, who do I have to have to kill? You know, like sort of a joke only he ain’t smiling. Instead he leans closer to me and says he’s serious.”
“And what did you say?”
“Nothin’,” Sonny said. “I thought he was some kind of crackpot or something so I get up to leave and he pulls a wad out of his pocket big enough to choke a horse and I sat back down again. I couldn’t take my eyes off that wad. He had a big rubber band wrapped around it and just kept holding it where I could see it.”
“And you figured why not. Is that right?” Elliott said.
“Hey, times are tough,” Sonny explained. “Money ain’t easy to come by so I agreed to listen to what he had to say.”
“Go on.”
Sonny was really starting to get into this whole confession by now. “So anyway, this guy who calls himself Jack says he got screwed by his lawyer and he wants to get even, see.”
“What lawyer?” Elliott said.
“Hell, I don’t know. Some dude on the second floor of that building.” Sonny gestures with his chin, as if he was pointing at my building from across the street. “Got an office in the back, lookin’ out over the parking lot.”
Elliott knew that office. It was occupied by Fenton McCauley, a cut rate lawyer one floor below Cooper and Son Investigations. That made sense. The fire had to have started below the third floor in order to work its way up to Elliott’s office and higher. He turned back to Sonny. “Then what?”
“Then nothing,” Sonny said. “Then I got the hell out of there.”
“And you were driving Leroy’s Lincoln, weren’t you?”
Sonny raised his eyebrows, cocked his head and sighed but said nothing more.
“Matt,” Elliott yelled. “You can come back in now.”
Matt opened the apartment door and dragged Leroy back inside, closing the door behind him.
“Did you hear any of that?” Elliott said.
Matt frowned. “How’d you even know I was out there in the hall?”
Elliott smiled. “I knew you wouldn’t go outside.” He gestured at Sonny. “Sonny told me everything. Why don’t you give Chris a call now? Tell her you might be late for dinner.”
Matt made the call and kept it short. No sense letting all these other people hear what he had to say.
A few minutes later a knock came on the door and Matt reached over to open it. Lieutenant Anderson and two uniformed officers walked in to find Matt and Elliott babysitting two lowlifes. One of the officers took up his position next to Leroy, hanging onto his arm. Eric gestured with his chin at the Sonny. “Who’s the guy wearing the cuffs?”
“That’s Sonny,” Elliott said. “I mean Salvatore Riteman. He’s our arsonist for hire. The other guy lives here. It was his Lincoln Riteman was driving when he left my parking lot and clipped that other car.”
“You got the key for those cuffs, Elliott?” Eric said.
Matt stepped up to Sonny and removed the cuffs, dropping them back into his jacket pocket. Sonny took that opportunity to spring to his feet and bolt for the door. Elliott stuck out one foot and hooked it around Sonny’s ankle, sending him face first to the floor. Sonny eased himself up on his hands and spit out some blood and one front tooth.
“Shouldda stayed put,” Elliott said and laughed.
Eric pulled his own cuffs off his belt and fastened them to Sonny’s wrists, again behind his back, and sat him in a chair. Matt tossed Eric the dish towel he’d used earlier and Eric wiped the blood drips from Sonny’s mouth with it.
Elliott filled Eric in with Sonny’s half of the conversation, ending with the fire in the lawyer’s office. Eric turned to Sonny and recited from memory, “You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
“Wait a minute,” Sonny said. “I already told that cop everything and he didn’t read me my rights.”
“What cop?” Eric said, looking at me and smiling wryly. “All I see is a private investigator.”
Sonny glared at Elliott. “You ain’t no cop.”
“I never said I was,” Elliott explained.
Sonny caught Eric gaze now. “Him and that other guy were gonna beat the crap outta me if I didn’t tell ‘em. Especially that guy.” He gestured with his bloody mouth at Matt.
Matt shrugged and spread his hands. “I wasn’t even in the room,” he told Eric. “I was out in the hall with Leroy there.”
Leroy nodded in agreement and then looked at Eric. “What about me?” he said in a whiny voice. “I didn’t do nothin’.”
I looked at Eric. I had to agree with Leroy. “Leroy’s just guilty of having bad judgment in picking who he hangs around with. Sonny stole his car keys last time he was here and took Leroy’s car for a joy ride over to my building.”
Leroy nodded again. “Can I press charges against Sonny?” he asked Eric.
“Don’t worry about Sonny,” Eric said. “He’s already in enough trouble without adding the joyride to it.” He turned to the officer holding Leroy’s arm. “Let him go,” Eric said, handing Sonny over to the officer. “Take this one in and book him for murder and arson. I’ll be there in a few minutes. I just need to talk to the Coopers first.”
The uniformed officer released his grip on Leroy, took Sonny by the arm and led him out of the apartment, the second officer close behind him. Eric turned toward Matt and was about to say something when he remembered Leroy was still sitting there listening. “Let’s go,” Eric said to Matt. “We can talk outside.”
Eric led Matt and Elliott from the messy apartment and didn’t stop walking until all three of them were back in the parking lot. He turned to Matt. “Is there anything to what Sonny said about you threatening to beat the crap out of him?”
Matt put on his innocent face and said, “He must have been hallucinating on something and imagined it all in a paranoid delusional…”
“Save it, Matt,” Eric said. “It’s obvious Leroy’s never gonna tell anyone what went on in the apartment and that just leaves your word against Sonny’s.”
“And?” Matt said.
“And I expect to see you both in my office right away,” Eric said. “I’ll need both of your statements for the record.”
“So we’re cool then?” Matt said.
Eric answered with a simple wink and walked back to his cruiser, leaving Matt and Elliott standing there, dumbfounded.
“Just what did you say to Leroy to make him keep his mouth shut?” Elliott said.
“I can’t reveal all my secrets,” Matt said. “What if you were to quit and go to some other P.I. outfit? There’d go my secret with you.”
Elliott punched his son in the arm and had to laugh. They walked back to their car and drove to their new office on Sunset. Gloria had finished cleaning and straightening and had left Elliott a note on his desk. Elliott picked up the note and read it aloud. “Elliott, I think I got everything. You two should be ready to move in and resume your normal business. You’re welcome. P.S. You owe me a dinner out.”
Elliott turned to Matt. “You and Chris are welcome to join us if you like.”
Matt waved him off. “We’ll have to take a rain check, Dad. The kids are just too young for Chris to feel comfortable leaving them with a sitter.”
“Tell you what,” Elliott said. “Why don’t you take your mother and Chris out for dinner and I’ll watch the twins?”
“You?” Matt said, somewhat surprised by the offer.
“And why not me?” Elliott said. “I helped raise you and Olivia and you both turned out normal, didn’t you?”
“More like Abbey Normal,” Matt said.
“How’s that?”
“Didn’t you ever see Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein?” Matt said.
Elliott remembered seeing the movie and then he got the inference. He laughed. “Nothin’ wrong with being Abbey Normal, is there?”
“Let’s just wait until all four of us can go,” Matt said and then looked around the room. A question played on his face.
“What?” Elliott said.
“We never decided who was going to sit where,” Matt said. “Which desk is mine?”
Elliott sat behind the first desk and swiveled in the chair, leaning it back and then rolling it across the floor. He got up and did the same at the second desk before standing up and returning to the first desk, nearest the door. “I’ll take this one,” he announced.
“What’s the difference?” Matt said.
“No difference,” Elliott said and then looked at the ceiling.
Matt sat down behind his desk and leaned back in the chair. It nearly fell backwards before he caught himself and grabbed the top of his desk. “That’s why.”