by Blake Banner
“Is it me? Am I going crazy? Or is it the world? You know, maybe it’s normal. Maybe it’s normal for a sweet girl that everybody describes as luminous to pull out a .38 and blow away the man she’s supposed to love. Maybe I’m the crazy one.”
I opened the door and climbed in. As she got in next to me, I said, “You’re not crazy, Dehan. We’ve been chasing ghosts and shadows.”
“You’re not kidding! The one motive we had, the one solid thing we had to hold on to, just got flushed down the can!”
I fired up the engine and looked at my double reflection in her shades. “But it never was the motive.”
Thirteen
It was six p.m. and as hot as midday by the time we cruised down Longwood Avenue in the Bronx and pulled up in front of Pepe’s Place. It was shady and quiet, empty apart from a couple of old guys sitting in the corner drinking beer and minding their own business. The place was seedy, but clean, and there were posters of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin on the walls.
Pepe was one of those rarest of men who walked his own path in life and managed to retain the respect of everybody who knew him. The Sureños drank in his bar, but they left him alone, and the cops knew he was clean and let him be. Even Mick, back in the day, steered clear of him.
He was a big Mexican with an ugly scar on his face. Rumor was he had done some ugly things back home and had to leave. But nobody was in a hurry to find out if it was true or not. Pepe was not a man you questioned. As we stepped through the door, he was polishing glasses. He looked at Dehan and recognized her.
“Hola, Carmen.” He gave me the once-over. “John, you want a drink or you want to ask me questions?”
I climbed on a stool, and Dehan leaned on the bar next to me. I said, “How about both? Let’s have a couple of beers.”
He pulled two draughts, and while he was at it, Dehan asked him, “Danny Schultz around?”
He glanced at her and finished pouring before he answered. He gave us our drinks and wiped the bar dry around the pump.
“Danny’s dead.”
I frowned. “Since when?”
He made a face that said he was thinking. “Eighteen months?”
“What happened?”
He gave a snort and leaned against the till. “You’re cops. You know how it is. With guys like Danny, if there ain’t some direct eyewitness, or some proof they can find right there and then, they shelve the case and leave it. Forty percent of cases don’t get solved for the same reason. The cops in hoods like this, they don’t even try. I’m sorry, I don’t wanna be offensive, and I can kinda understand it, you know? People don’t make it easy. Nobody talks, nobody saw nothin’, nobody heard nothin’.” He shrugged. “But if you want my opinion, he was screwing the wrong chick.”
Dehan glanced at me, then back at Pepe. “Danny Schultz? Danny never screwed anything but the IRS in his whole life.”
Pepe smiled and shrugged. “He got lucky. I saw it with my own eyes. If I hadna seen it, I wouldn’t believe it either. Danny Schultz. He was sitting right there, where you’re sitting now, complaining about taxes or the weather or whatever. I never listened to the pendejo. Then this chick comes in. Real sweet, real class, you know what I’m saying? Nicely dressed. Not a puta like these chicks you see ’round here. Nice. You could take her anywhere and feel proud, right?”
Dehan looked impatient. She was nodding. “So what happened?”
“She sits next to Danny and orders a martini.” He laughed. “I don’t think I ever served a martini before. She had to tell me how to prepare it. So Danny—” He looked at Dehan. “You know Danny, he knows everything, right? He starts explaining about the different martinis and how to make them, how much gin, how much vermouth, one olive, two olive, and he’s sayin’ something about James Bond drinks a Bradford martini, shaken, not stirred. Some shit. Anyway, I’m going to tell him to leave the lady in peace, when I see she’s liking it. She’s laughing like she thinks he’s cute. ‘Who would have told me,’ she says, ‘I was gonna come into a bar in the Bronx and meet a guy who’s an expert on cocktails?’”
I reached in my pocket and pulled out the picture of Tamara Gunthersen. “This the woman?”
He stared at it a moment, then shook his head. “Nah. This chick had black hair cut short and green eyes. That’s the girl next door, cute, nice. But this was a sophisticated woman, smart. She had class, you understand me? She sounded like Deep South, Louisiana, Alabama, something like that. With a real drawl, you know?”
“So what makes you think he saw her again?”
He looked at me with wide eyes and spread his hands. “They leave together!”
Dehan was incredulous and laughed. “They left together?”
“Si, hombre! She’s tellin’ him about her car. Is a classic Mustang, he should see it. Also she is a little scared in this neighborhood alone. And she ask him why he don’t go with her. So they go out together. An’ that is the last time I ever see Danny Schultz. They found his body next morning.” He gestured with his hand. For a moment he looked mad, like it was all wrong and that shouldn’t have happened to Danny. “Twenty meters from here! In the yard next door. Shot through the heart.”
Dehan was shaking her head. “Son of a gun…”
Pepe looked at me for a long moment. “You know, it don’t make a lot of sense.”
I nodded. “I agree, Pepe. It doesn’t. Whichever way you look at it, it doesn’t make sense.”
“But the cops weren’t interested, John. Is just Danny. Who’s gonna miss Danny? So he got shot; he probably deserved it. You know what Chavez says to me? He probably tried to rape her. How can you write off a guy’s life because of what he probably would of done?”
“You can’t.” I threw some coins on the counter. “Thanks, Pepe. Take it easy.”
“Yeah, you too, John, Carmen.”
In the car, Dehan said, “I am not even going to try.”
I nodded as I fired up the engine. “I agree. I need a shower and a good sleep. We’ll come at it fresh in the morning.”
“Who the fuck is this woman now? Every time a door opens, it doesn’t lead us closer to an answer; it lets in another character to make the damn case even more confusing!”
“We’ll dig out Danny’s case. It must be in the cold cases file. We’ll get the lab to compare the two slugs.”
“Steve and Danny?”
I nodded. “We need to get to Geronimo.”
“And Tammy.”
I looked at her. She was right.
I dropped her at her apartment, and she hesitated a moment before getting out. She smiled suddenly. “It’s been fun. We should do it again sometime.”
I laughed out loud. “You’re some kind of crazy, Dehan.”
The smile faded a little. “I mean what I said. If you ever need to talk…”
I punched her gently on the shoulder. “Okay, partner. Good to know.”
As I drove back toward Morris Park and Haight Avenue, I thought about Geronimo dos Santos and Tamara Gunthersen. They were the linchpins in the case. Everything hung on those two individuals. They were the dual keys to understanding the case.
And we knew next to nothing about dos Santos, but we had a superabundance of information about Tamara. Yet as we had discovered this evening, all that information was as good as useless, because the bottom line was, we still knew nothing about her. All the information we had was smoke.
Was she a ruthless sociopath? Or did she have good reason to kill Steve? Was it love that took her running back to him? Or was it some other, darker reason? Was she a victim, or was she a predator, preying on the people around her?
I thought of her house, her books, her scrapbook, her photograph. There was nothing there. In fact, it was the absence of any personality that was most striking about the house. I remembered Iago in Othello: “I am not what I am…”
And Geronimo, about whom we knew, what, exactly? That he was supposedly a Jesuit, that he was supposedly a collector of rare books, that he might b
e Portuguese or Spanish. That nobody that we knew, aside from Duffy, had ever laid eyes on him.
Which of the two was the most anonymous? Which, the most deeply cloaked in shadows? What did they want? What was their motivation? What was their purpose? Were they working together, or were they enemies?
And then, who was this southern belle, with the black hair and the green eyes, who had hunted down Danny Schultz and killed him for no apparent reason? Was she working for Geronimo dos Santos?
I pulled in outside my front door and sat drumming my fingers on the wheel. There was only one person I could think of who could answer those questions for me.
Baxter.
It was time to pay Baxter another visit. I was going to shake his tree and see which way he jumped.
Fourteen
I had a late breakfast of toast and coffee and called Frank at nine to ask him to make the ballistics comparison between the slug that killed Steve and the slug that killed Danny Schultz. Then I picked Dehan up outside her apartment.
“You got plans for this morning?” she said, as she slammed the door.
“Yeah, I talked to Frank about the ballistics comparison. Now I want to go and shake Baxter’s cage. Why?”
“I was going to say, we need to go shake Baxter’s cage.”
I smiled and pulled away. “After we talk to him, I want you to get a cab back to the precinct and get a court order to check Peter Gunthersen’s accounts.”
She looked surprised. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to stay with Baxter. I want to see where he goes after we scare him, or if anybody visits him.”
He was already in the office when we arrived, and looked surprised when we walked in.
“Detectives!” He smiled like a man who isn’t amused. “I wish you’d called. I am just on my way out.”
I smiled back with the same feeling and sat at his desk. “No, Baxter, you’re not. We are going to talk.”
He stood.
Dehan pulled up a chair and sat beside me. She looked up at him and said, “Sit.”
He sat.
I said, “Tell me about Geronimo dos Santos.”
All the blood drained from his face. He made like a goldfish for a moment, then shook his head in an “I have no idea who that is” fashion.
I said, “Are you about to lie to me, Baxter? I would think carefully before you do that. Because if I know that dos Santos is your client, and he is involved in a homicide and you lie to me, that’s your license gone right there. Is it worth it?”
He swallowed. “Homicide?” He glanced at Dehan. “My client is interested in the case. That isn’t the same as being involved…”
“How about Ernesto Sanchez’s murder? How about Danny Schultz’s murder?” I studied his face a moment. He looked scared. “Do you know what you are getting yourself into, Baxter?”
“I don’t know anything about Ernesto Sanchez or Danny Schultz…”
Dehan snorted. “But Geronimo dos Santos sure does. You led us on a pretty wild goose chase, Baxter, but we unearthed a few things, and let me tell you, pal, you are running with the wolves on this one.”
I nodded my agreement. “People who do odd jobs for dos Santos seem to wind up dead shortly after. Usually shot with a .38. Does that sound familiar?”
He was thinking, fast, but not clearly. He said, “Danny Schultz…”
He knew who he was. Dehan cut in, “He was shot through the heart. Just like Steve. Do you know who shot them?”
Before he could think about it, I said, “Let me make it easy for you, Baxter. You don’t need to tell me whether Geronimo is your client; I already know he is. All you need to do is tell me about him. Who is he? Where is he? What is his deal? What’s his game? Do that for me and I will let you keep your license.”
“Jesus, Stone!”
“What’s it going to be, Baxter?”
“I don’t know that much, and that’s the truth! Before you start threatening me again, the fact is I don’t know much about him at all. He plays his cards real close to his chest. He’s a weird fucking guy, I can tell you that much.”
“Where is he from?”
He shrugged. “The name is Brazilian, but he talks a lot about Spain. About a castle near Santiago de Compostela, Soto Mayor or something like that. So maybe he’s Spanish. I don’t know. It belongs to the church, and he was a custodian of the library there.”
“Where is he now?”
“All I can tell you is that he is in New York. Where, I have no idea.”
“How do you contact him?”
“I don’t. He contacts me.”
Dehan cut in, “How often?”
He hesitated, “Once every day. Before you ask, I don’t know what time. It’s randomized.”
I thought for a moment. “Would he agree to meet me?”
Baxter laughed. “No way. The minute I tell him you know about him, he will vanish.”
“Don’t tell him.”
“I don’t plan to.”
“Will you give me permission to tap your phone?”
His jaw sagged. “No. I’ll tell you what, Stone, I’ll give you my license, you wipe your ass on it and then flush it down the can. What do you think it will do for my business if it gets out I let the fucking cops tap my phone?”
“Okay!” It was Dehan. “Keep your pantyhose on, Baxter. We need to talk to this guy. He’s involved in a triple homicide. We could use your help.”
He pulled a face. “Aw, you’re breaking my heart, Detectives. So go investigate! I’m not here to wet nurse you. I got a business to run.”
“How about Tammy? You find out anything about her?”
“No. How about you?”
“Nothing you don’t know already.”
“Jeez, and me just a one-man operation. Go figure.”
“Okay, Baxter. Have it your way.” I stood. “But be careful. If I am reading him right, and I am, dos Santos is a dangerous man. People around him and Tammy Gunthersen wind up dead.”
He watched us leave. He looked scared.
Downstairs, it was already getting hot again. We got in the car, and I put the air-con on. I drove Dehan to the end of the road, and she jumped out to get a cab back to the 43rd. Meanwhile, I drove around the block, parked forty yards down the road, and waited. I waited for half an hour. At ten o’clock he came down, crossed the road, and climbed into his car, a cream Toyota. He headed south on Melrose. I let him get away a bit, then did a U-turn and followed at a distance. He joined Third Avenue and continued south all the way down to where it meets Morris Avenue. At 138th Street, he turned right and crossed the Madison Avenue Bridge. Over the river, he turned in to 5th Avenue, and I followed him down all along Central Park as far as East 68th, where he turned left, and left again into Madison Avenue. He crossed East 69th and parked on the left. I stopped short of the junction and pulled over.
I saw him get out of his car and lope across the road to push into a shop. It was on the same side as me, so I couldn’t make out the name or the window display. I got out and dodged through the traffic so I was opposite, but still forty or fifty yards away. There was a hot dog stand on the corner. It was a little early, but I bought one anyway and stood behind the stand, where I was hidden from sight but had a good view of the shop.
It was an antiques shop. Henderson & Girt, Fine Antiques. It had a plate glass front, and I could see Baxter through the window. He was talking to a woman. After a minute or two, he took out his wallet and seemed to give her a card. After that, he left.
I stood for a long while trying to fit this new piece into the puzzle. I couldn’t, so I crossed the road and entered the shop. The woman was still standing there, staring out at the street, as though lost in thought. She looked as though she was in her mid to late twenties, fair, with pale skin, and exquisitely dressed. I watched her a moment and thought she was probably one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. She turned and looked at me. I smiled. She blinked and said, “I’m sorry. I
was miles away.”
She was English. She spoke what the English call cut glass English. It was as beautiful as she was. I smiled. “I’m glad you came back. I’d hate to have missed you.”
She liked the compliment but didn’t respond to it. She moved toward me. “Was there anything in particular you were looking for, or were you just browsing?”
She had taken in my clothes and noted they were unremarkable, not Armani and not Savile Row. So she wasn’t real interested. I thought I’d stimulate it a bit and said, “I’m moving into a new apartment down the road, and I was looking for a nice dining table.”
Her pupils dilated and she allowed the pleasure to show on her face. “May I ask where the apartment is?”
“Only if you come to dinner when I get my table.”
“I’d love to. Can my husband come?”
“No.”
Her cheeks colored and she stepped away. “Were you looking for something elaborately elegant, Rococo, or more restrained in the English style?”
I followed her. “I like the English style, but not too restrained.”
“We have this rather lovely Queen Anne. The line of the legs is quite exquisite.”
I stood close to her. “I have a weakness for exquisite English legs, and these are some of the nicest I have ever seen.”
She studied my face a moment, trying to read me, wondering how to respond. “Are we still talking about furniture, Mr…”
“I never was, Miss…”
“Mrs. Girt.”
I pointed back toward the door. She nodded. I smiled. “Henderson lost out.”
“You’re at risk of overplaying your hand.”
“I’m always at risk of doing something. My name is John.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Is that how you make your money? By taking risks?”
“Would that make a difference?”
“It might.”
Her eyes traveled past me to the plate glass window. I turned to follow her gaze. There was a big man of about sixty with a large belly and a yellow waistcoat lumbering across the road.