by Philip Cox
Will was not convinced. ‘He asked you to spy on me?’
‘Don’t be so stupid. He was just concerned about you, that was all.’
‘And what about “thanks for telling me. X”? Since when have you two been putting kisses at the end of messages?’
‘Jesus Christ, Will - that’s just Dan. You know him as well as I do. He was just being Dan.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of. Chrissy, we’re not…?’
‘No, of course we’re not.’ Her tone softened slightly. ‘Will, that was all a long time ago. A long, long time ago.’
‘It still hurts.’
She slid over the bed and sat beside him. Put one hand on his shoulder and the other on his knee. She spoke softly. ‘I know. I know.’
She leaned her head against his shoulder; he tilted his head to rest on hers. They sat in this position for a full two minutes until she started to nuzzle the front of his shirt, gradually moving downwards.
Will looked down at her, ruffling her hair, his face expressionless.
FORTY-SEVEN
Detective Roberts got home at 11:30pm.
Earlier, after she had sent Eric Alvarez home, she returned to her desk. As always, there seemed to be a mountain of paperwork to deal with.
She was aware she needed a quick result on this case. After all, it was originally supposed to be a secondary investigation. It would not be long before Nkomo would be jumping up and down.
It seemed to her, and she was sure Eric agreed with her, that Mitchell Breed and Walter Ackerman had killed Carmine DiMucci; probably second degree. Breed was kind of in custody; at least he wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. And it was only a matter of time before Ackerman was picked up. They would get hold of Social Security the next morning, and trace him that way.
This was a frustrating case – but at least she had gotten to meet up with Dobson again.
Thinking about Dobson, she got to reflecting about an old partner of hers. She allowed herself a wry smile: it was a pity that had ended so badly. She hoped he was happy and settled now, with the LAPD.
Soon it would be Thanksgiving and Christmas, two holidays she had not looked forward to for a couple of years. This year, as normal, she had already put her name down for extra shifts.
Once the paperwork had been done, she had the choice of going straight home, or going to the gym, or spending an hour or so at the practice range. She chose the gym: five miles on the treadmill, another five on the cross trainer, and then some weights.
After a couple of hours at the gym, she went home feeling fitter, but sweatier. Once inside, she sniffed an armpit. She badly needed a shower, but needed to eat first. She had only had a cup of coffee for breakfast and a hot dog with Alvarez. She groaned: it was not good to go to the gym on an empty stomach.
She pulled open the refrigerator door, leaning on it as she looked over what she had in stock. There was not much here: a couple of eggs, some questionable cheese, three bottles of water, two cans of diet coke and a small stack of meals for one. She leafed through the stack and chose Ricotta and Spinach Cannelloni. Once that was nuked, she opened a diet coke and sat down to eat.
She was half way through the meal when her phone rang. It was Alvarez.
‘Hey, what’s up, Eric. You know what the time is?’
‘I do. It’s twelve thirty. Did I wake you up?’
‘I’m eating. I just got in from the gym. Don’t you sleep?’
‘I did earlier, but I just woke up. Got to thinking.’
Roberts rubbed her brow. She was getting tired now, and this call was not what she needed. ‘Thinking what?’
‘I couldn’t sleep; you know, lots of thoughts spinning round in my head. So I went online, did some searching around Bronx Estates Corporation.’
‘What kind of searching? LAPD searching?’
‘LAPD? Jules, what are you talking about?’
‘Sorry, Eric; I’m half asleep. NYPD, I mean.’
‘Just normal, civilian searching. Google, Bing, you know.’
‘Okay.’
‘I found a couple of websites - you know, giving details of companies, and I found the pages for Bronx Estates. It says… the company was first registered seven years ago, deals mainly with -’
‘Eric, just cut to the chase. Please.’
‘Okay. It said on one site - and two others confirmed this - that Bronx Estates Corporation is a subsidiary of a firm called C & G Real Estates, who have offices on West 45th. Remember the zip code on that girl’s letter?’
Roberts sat back in her chair, rubbing her tired neck. ‘C & G? Should that mean anything?’
‘It’s where that Will Carter works. He owns half of the company, in fact.’
She was beginning to wake up. ‘Interesting. So there’s a connection between Ackerman and Carter. Between perpetrator and apparent witness.’
‘A tenuous connection, but yes. Apart from both of them being in the same john at the same time as DiMucci.’
‘Well done, Eric. I think we’ll go speak to Carter again in the morning. At his place of work. Who owns the other half?’
‘Guy called Daniel Gleave.’
‘That name means nothing to me.’
‘Same here.’
‘We’ll head there first thing. Good work, Detective Alvarez. Now get back into bed with that wife of yours. See you in the morning.’
‘Will we need to get warrants first?’
‘Not sure if we have grounds for that. We’ll just see what they have to say first.’
The conversation over, Roberts took one last mouthful of Cannelloni, and leaned back, chewing.
So, Ackerman used to live in an apartment where he paid rent to a firm owned by Carter.
This was one mother of a coincidence.
FORTY-EIGHT
It was Chrissy who first heard Will’s phone ringing. She turned slightly and nudged Will, who was snoring over the shrill tone.
‘Will, wake up.’
‘Wh... what is it?’ came his response.
‘It’s your cell. Somebody’s calling you.’
He rubbed his eyes and sat up slightly. ‘Who’s going to be…?’ he asked, reaching over to where he had left the phone the night before. ‘Oh,’ he said.
Chrissy sat up a bit more. ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s Dan,’ replied Will emotionlessly.
Chrissy said nothing.
‘Fuck him,’ muttered Will, tossing the phone down on the carpet, and lying back down again. The ringing stopped.
There was a pause of a few seconds then the ringing began again. Angrily, Will snatched up the phone. ‘Son of a bitch.’
Chrissy leaned up again. ‘You need to get it, Will; otherwise he’s going to call the landline and wake the kids up.’
Will grunted then answered. ‘Yeah?’
Dan sounded breathless down the phone. ‘Will, I need you to come down to the office. We’ve had a break-in.’
Will said nothing; just exhaled loudly.
‘I’m here now,’ Dan continued, ‘with the police.’
Will sat on the edge of the bed, scratching his head, thinking of what to say or do. ‘What’s been taken?’
‘Not sure yet. The place is in one hell of a mess. The police want us to do an inventory.’
‘Now? At four in the morning?’
‘That’s what they said, yes.’
Will groaned. ‘All right. I’ll throw on some clothes and come down now.’ He threw the phone down on the bed and groaned loudly.
Now Chrissy was sitting up in bed. ‘What’s happened?’
Will turned round and explained.
‘You have to go there now?’
‘That’s what the cops have said.’ He stood up, stretched and got dressed. ‘I’ll take the car,’ he called out as he pulled up his pants. ‘It’ll be easy to park right outside at this time of the morning.’
‘Drive carefully,’ she called out as he was on his way out. She listened out for his foots
teps going down the stairs, picking up the car keys, the front door opening and closing; then the sound of the car door and engine. Finally, the beam from the headlamps passing over the bedroom window as he drove off.
She lay back: normally he would have kissed her goodbye before he left, but not this morning. She would try to get some more sleep before the kids woke up.
*****
The streets were not exactly deserted at that time of the morning, but Will was still able to make it to 45th Street in just over ten minutes, and he was easily able to park across the road from the offices. A few cars were parked along the street, and a couple of delivery vans. No police vehicles, though, to his puzzlement.
The glass doors to the building were already unlocked. Assuming the elevators would be switched off, Will climbed the stairs to the floor on which the offices were based. The door to the C & G offices was open ajar. It was dark and quiet in there. This was not what he had been expecting: he had imagined the place to be full of police officers milling about.
‘Hello?’ he called out, opening the door and stepping in.
He stopped at the doorway. The office was tidy, just as it had been left at six the night before; no sign of one hell of a mess, as Dan had said. The lights were switched off, and the place would have been totally dark had it not been for the illumination from the streetlamps outside.
‘Dan?’ he called out. ‘You here?’
‘I’m here,’ said a voice behind.
Will swung round to see his best friend Dan Gleave step out from the shadows, with a younger man, wearing a hooded sweatshirt.
The gun Dan was holding was pointing directly at Will’s chest.
FORTY-NINE
‘Go sit over there.’ Dan motioned with the gun over to the low sofa-style chairs they kept in the office reception area, opposite from May’s desk. Will complied.
‘What’s all this about?’ Will asked, once he had sat down. ‘Why the gun? And who’s this?’
‘Don’t you recognise Mr Ackerman?’ Dan asked. ‘No, I forgot - you were cowering in the stall.’
‘In the st-?’ Will asked, then it began to sink in. ‘Protecting my daughter, you mean. And what has all that to do with you?’
‘You just had to get involved, didn’t you?’ Dan asked, stepping round the office, still covering Will. Ackerman remained where he was. ‘You’ve always been the same, haven’t you? Right since we were kids. You can never just walk away, or look away; you always had to stick your nose in and poke about in stuff that has nothing to do with you.’
‘What are you talking about?’ All the time Will spoke, he was watching the end of the barrel of the gun Dan was holding.
‘DiMucci. Carmine DiMucci. Know him?’
Will nodded slowly. ‘Yeah, I know him. Know of him. He was the guy who…’ As he spoke, Will pointed at Ackerman. ‘You murdered in the men’s room.’
Ackerman smirked.
‘Not exactly murdered, Will,’ Dan continued. ‘Not first degree in any case. It wasn’t premeditated. Don’t think so, anyway.’ He looked at Ackerman, who pulled a face and shrugged. ‘There was just something they wanted from him.’
‘The Comfort Zone Hotel room key,’ Will said.
‘Oh, I knew you’d figured that one out. You see, Will, DiMucci and I had had a long running business deal. To cut to the chase, he and I were trading MJ.’
‘What?’ Will asked. ‘MJ? What the hell’s that?’
‘You got a short memory, Carter. Remember High School? MJ, Mary Jane, Catnip…?
‘Marijuana?’
‘Go to the top of the class. You look surprised, Will.’
Will shook his head. ‘I don’t know what to say. How…how…?’
‘How long has all this been going on? Didn’t you see Carmine in the restroom?’
‘A quick glance, yes; but -’
‘And you didn’t recognise him from High School?’
Will slowly shook his head.
Dan laughed. ‘You surprise me. Well, I ran into him about ten years back, and we exchanged numbers, email addresses, that kind of thing. But we also got to talking, and it turned out he knew a guy who knew a guy who knew another guy who could get his hands on some wacky terbaccy for use or resale. So I said why not?’
‘So you’re a drug pusher. God, you really are a piece of shit.’
‘I’d get off the moral high ground, Carter. You know, to sell the stuff is as easy as taking a dump. The demand’s so high. Teens love it. It’s easier to get a hold of than booze: it’s being sold in schools, for Chrissake. And teens prefer it to alcohol. If you drink too much you feel sick; if you get stoned, you don’t. And it’s easier to carry about and conceal than booze.’ His eyes lit up. ‘And it costs more. A pound of the stuff can earn me two to three thousand bucks in New York City, a bit less in Jersey.’
Will slowly shook his head. He could not believe his ears. ‘Two thousand?’
‘Hey Will, how do you think I can afford that condo on the shit we take home from Real Estate?’
‘But… how do you…?’
‘How does it work? The late lamented Carmine had… contacts, as he used to tell me. He got the stuff from them. We did at first hand the stuff over in a bar or in a park, but he was worried we were being watched, and the last thing we wanted was the DEA crawling all over us. Now, he used to have to come to the city on business - he sold faucets or some shit like that - so we arranged to hand over the package in a hotel or something.
‘Now, you never checked the company accounts very well, otherwise you’d know we have a subsidiary company called Bronx Estates, which owns a couple of apartment blocks, in the Bronx, clearly. I was collecting rent from these slums - no offence, Ackerman - and I came across Walt here and his sister. Half-sister, step-sister, whatever. Now it turned out this bitch - no offence, Walt - worked as a maid in a hotel.’
‘The Comfort Zone.’
‘Correct, William. So in a word, Carmine was booking himself into the hotel every time he came to New York.’
‘Always Room 205.’ Will was getting the picture.
‘Always Room 205, where Ackerman’s sister had previously made a hiding place. He’d leave the package - about a pound of MJ, two thousand bucks, yes? - in that little hole, and when housekeeping arrived to make up the room, Ackerman’s sister would collect, pass it on.
‘I ought to explain that Walt and his sister couldn’t afford their rent, so I very kindly let them stay on, rent free, as long as they work for me now and then. The same with the other guy in the restroom - a little shit called Mitchell Breed, a waste of space friend of Ackerman here. He had no money either.’
‘He’s in hospital, you know that?’ said Will.
‘Yes, I know that.’ Dan looked over at Ackerman. ‘Guess if he doesn’t make it, there’s only three to share it out.’ Ackerman leered and laughed.
‘So,’ asked Will, ‘if DiMucci was making all that money for you, why…?’
‘Why did he end his days in the john? I’ll tell you why: the greedy little fuck wanted more money for a pound. I told him no, so he said he’d go elsewhere. I sent Ackerman here and Breed to the hotel to intercept him, but he ran soon as he saw them. They followed him on the subway; caught up with him at Columbus Circle. Guess you know the rest, Will.’
‘They killed him.’
‘No, they taught him a lesson. That was their brief. How was I to know he’d die from his injuries?’ Dan began laughing. ‘Then, when I found out it was you sitting on the can listening to it all, I couldn’t believe it. Jesus Christ, what a fucking coincidence. The irony is, Will, that when Carmine and I first set up business together, I thought of cutting you in on the deal.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Two reasons. One would be, more people taking a share means a smaller share; the other is that you’re so fucking narrow-minded I couldn’t trust you not to go to the cops with it.’
Will asked, ‘These drugs: how do you distribute, then?’
‘When I collect the rent due to Bronx Estates. Most of the low-life - no offence, Walt - living in the apartments are on something anyway, so persuading them they’d feel better on my stuff was easy. I thought you’d found that out anyway.’
‘No,’ said Will. ‘How would I have done?’
‘One afternoon, I had to go out of the office suddenly. By mistake, I left the folder where I keep all the distribution records in my desk drawer. Next morning, May told me you were looking through it.’
‘A red folder? I just picked it up, didn’t read it. May interrupted me.’ Something dawned on him. ‘May? Surely not May?’
‘Relax. If it makes you feel better, she has no idea what’s in it. She just mentioned it in passing. When she told me, I thought, good old Will, can’t just look away. You’ve been like it all the time, you know that? Remember when we were driving back from Brooklyn the other week? That asshole in the old Mustang? With the ghoulish-looking broad?’
‘Yeah, I remember.’
‘You kept on eyeballing them while you were driving. If we weren’t in so much fast moving traffic, you can bet he’d have made you pull over.’
Will sat quietly. He knew Dan was right. Changing the subject, he asked, ‘And how do you know what I’ve been doing? From Chrissy?’
‘She told you, did she?’
‘Didn’t need to. How long’s it been going on for?’
‘Off and on, for years. Hey Will, you ever wondered why your Jake and my Clyde get on so well?’
Something dawned on Will. He leapt out of his seat. ‘You son of a bitch!’
Dan took a step back, but kept Will covered. ‘Get back! Sit back down again. That’s better. No, Will; I was only fucking with you. Jake’s not mine. Jesus H, if anybody told me that retard was mine, I’d want to see a DNA test.
‘No, Will, it was just the sex. Always had been. You know Chrissy and I always kind of clicked, right back from the early days. Thing is, Jia’s always been somewhat conventional in bed. Chrissy likes to be adventurous, energetic. As you know, Will.’ Dan made a dramatic pause. ‘Or maybe you don’t.’ He laughed. ‘I like more than conventional.’