Biceps Of Death
Page 19
“For Christ’s sake, it’s not like I paid for it!” Michael whined, his dander rising because human emotions were being expressed. “Compliments of George Sheffield and Allen Firstborn. Mostly George. It’s in one of his buildings and he was only too happy to give you the apartment free if we gave him a certain CD. It’s amazing how a simple piece of fifty-nine-cent plastic could be worth so much.”
I began to blubber like a six-year-old who just had his lunch money stolen by two playground bullies.
“Oh, God, he’s turning on the waterworks!” Michael complained. “Now I don’t have to hear you bitch about having no heat in the winter or junkies in the hallway.” He blew out a large cloud of smoke from his cigar and left the room.
Marc gave me a hug, which started me crying even more.
“Don’t cry, Robert, this is a happy time.”
“Marc, it’s not that. You’re squeezing my broken rib,” I explained.
“Oh, sorry.”
“Now you can leave that dump behind you. You’re moving up in the world!” Monette said cheerfully.
“Please clear up a few things for me, Monette,” I pleaded.
“Your wish is my command.”
“So Michael blackmailed Firstborn and Sheffield?”
“Yup, he shook ’em both down. Also took the risk, too. But with what we have on the two of ’em, I don’t think they’ll be bothering Michael. He’s also a Stark. I don’t think either of them wants to tangle with Stark Pharmaceuticals.”
“So he took on the risk himself, just for me!” I said.
“Don’t get too teary-eyed, Robert,” Monette advised me in a lowered voice. “Michael is still Michael—he took a cut of the blackmail for himself.”
I snorted a little laugh that hurt like hell.
“So tell me anything else I should know, about the case, that is.”
Monette paused dramatically, then began. “Well, a lot has come out since the accident. The detective now in charge of the case let me in on a few things. John Bekkman was the mastermind behind a string of art thefts dating back to 1993. It seems that a few years ago, McMillan was conducting an investigation of a burglary involving some rare Roman coins and he questioned John Bekkman as a suspect. Bekkman must have felt that Luke was getting too close for comfort, so he bribed the detective two million dollars to look the other way. McMillan took the bait and was covering for John Bekkman until last year, when he asked to be transferred to the homicide division to let things cool off a bit.”
“But how does Chet Ponyweather figure into all of this? I can’t see where he’d ever come in contact with Bekkman or McMillan or any of their cohorts.”
“Easy, he was set up by Luke McMillan for his boss, John Bekkman.”
“What?” I asked in amazement.
“John needed a way to get the Van Goghs out of the Netherlands once he stole them and Chet’s shipping concern could provide it. McMillan knew that Chet was a frequent visitor to Central Park at night, so McMillan posed as an undercover police officer, made advances to Chet and arrested him on an indecency charge. He threatened to expose his dick-smoking episode to his wife. Chet complied.”
“Just fantastic,” I said.
“The rest of John’s co-conspirators really were former cops and they supplied the muscle, the equipment and their knowledge of alarm systems and police and forensic procedures to stay several steps ahead of the law. All of John’s henchmen have been rounded up, but alas, the Van Goghs are still missing. Bekkman stashed them somewhere safe and who knows if they’ll ever turn up. Oh, the reason Bekkman was living across from the Metropolitan Museum was because he was planning a major break in there. He was studying everything about the museum from security to building layouts and points of entry ... the police discovered his copious notes when they drilled his apartment safe open. It’s all over the news.”
“So who tried to run me down ... more than once?”
“That,” Monette sighed, “we may never know. Probably Chet Ponyweather, someone from Frank Addams, Addams’s IPO. brokerage firm, or Sheffield. I can say for sure that it wasn’t Bekkman, McMillan or any of their gang because they preferred to bump people off quietly.”
“Chloroforming them, mainly because their victims were big and strong,” I added.
“In Cody and Eric’s case, yes, but in yours, I think it was a quiet form of murder. No loud bangs, no noisy struggles or anything that could attract attention. Plus, they often used chloroform to knock out security guards while breaking into museums, art galleries or private apartments. Oh yes, one final thing: I used the photos of my boss, Hardcourt, to get him to forget about me putting that thyme on the extinct list, and to give me a nice little raise. And they all lived happily every after, the end.”
22
You Can’t Go Home Again—But Who Wants To?
A month and a half later, I was well on my way to recovery. I had outgrown the cane and was walking miles on my own. The hip still hurt when I spread my legs wide, but as Michael suggested, “That’s a situation that you shouldn’t face too often.” Marc was with me the entire time, helping me, pushing me, and packing for me. My new apartment seemed like a palace to me, the 840 square feet feeling like Versailles. The view was not too bad. My apartment looked west and I could actually see bits and pieces of the Hudson River between the buildings that blocked a good part of my view. But I didn’t care. It was mine, and I could afford the co-op fees with my meager salary.
And the big day came. Time to say goodbye to the old life and welcome to the new. I asked Marc to wait downstairs for me while I locked up my old apartment for the last time. I walked around the old dump, actually feeling like I was going to miss it in my own perverse way. Despite its size, despite the lack of heat in winter and overabundance in summer, it was the place I had spent a lot of my life and where a lot of memories were made. But it was time to move on, to grow.
And so I closed the door on the sordid apartment that I had called home for over a decade and I headed down the steps of my building to catch a cab with Marc to my new co-op in Chelsea. Things were actually getting better in my life. Sometimes in life, the little guy wins. You just gotta learn to hang in there and believe, believe, believe and have great friends who would do anything for you.
Of course, a little blackmail certainly helps things along.
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Copyright © 2004 by David Stukas
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