Death by Chocolate

by Steven Henry

  “Hey, lady, is he, like, your seeing-eye dog?”

  “My eyes work fine,” Erin said, smiling. “He’s for when I need extra teeth.”

  Rolf looked Paulie over, unimpressed.

  The living room of the apartment was furnished in thick, heavy carpet, dark red curtains, and mahogany furniture. The whole effect made Erin think of a half-assed homage to The Godfather. It was probably supposed to be serious, but the self-consciousness of it made her want to laugh. She thought of Carlyle’s courtesy and confidence. It was no comparison.

  Mrs. Bianchi levered herself off the leather couch. She was a very large woman, dressed in black, who’d probably been pretty twenty years ago. She was wearing too much jewelry and makeup.

  “You the guy in charge?” she asked Webb.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “I figured. The girl’s too pretty, the boy’s got no neck, and the dog ain’t giving the orders,” she said. “So that leaves you.”

  “Is your husband home, Mrs. Bianchi?”

  “He’s in his study. What you want with him?”

  “If you could have him come out here, please, we’d like to speak with all three of you,” Webb said.

  “Hey, Lorenzo!” she shouted in a voice that could crack glass. “Get your old Sicilian ass out here! We got company!”

  Vic’s eyebrows went up. He exchanged a look with Erin.

  After a moment, an older Italian man came into the room. He was wearing a red silk bathrobe and holding a cigar.

  “Nina, you don’t have to shout all the time,” he said in a weary voice. “I hear you fine.”

  “Lorenzo Bianchi?” Webb asked.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Lieutenant Webb, NYPD Major Crimes. This is Detective O’Reilly and Detective Neshenko.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve come to arrest me?”

  “Would you like me to?”

  The Bianchi patriarch looked at him with sad, tired eyes. “Is it quiet in jail?”

  “Not particularly.”

  Lorenzo sighed. “Then there’s no point. Nina, get some coffee for our guests, would you?”

  “What am I, your maid? Get it yourself,” she retorted.

  “You’re killing me,” he grumbled. “A piece at a time.”

  “I’ll get it, Dad,” Paulie said, surprising Erin. She hadn’t thought he had a helpful bone in his body.

  Lorenzo sank into an armchair. “Thanks, Paulie,” he said. “At least youngsters got some respect. Now, Lieutenant, take a seat and tell me what I can do for you.”

  “If we could wait for Paulie to come back, that’d be best,” Webb said, settling into the chair across from Lorenzo. Erin took the other end of the couch from Mrs. Bianchi. Rolf sat bolt upright beside the couch. Vic remained standing next to Webb’s chair, arms crossed.

  “Paulie?” A look of concern crossed Lorenzo’s face. “What’s Paulie got to do with anything?”

  Webb acted like he hadn’t heard. He sat perfectly still, watching the other man.

  Erin had learned a lot from the way Webb questioned suspects. Sometimes the best thing to say was nothing at all. Let the other guy squirm a little, worry about what you knew. With weak-willed guys, that was sometimes all you needed to get them talking. What they said would clue you in to their state of mind, which could direct the interview.

  Lorenzo Bianchi wasn’t having any of it. After a minute or so, he nonchalantly picked up the sports page of the New York Times.

  “So that’s it?” Nina demanded. “You’re just gonna sit there reading your paper? What the hell’s goin’ on here?”

  “Spring training’s off to a good start,” Vic observed. “You like the Yankees’ chances this year?”

  Lorenzo glanced at him over the top of the paper. “Maybe. I’m not sure about the starting rotation. I don’t know if Tanaka can make up for losing Pettitte. Plus, with Rivera gone, they may not be able to close.”

  “Yeah, retirement’s a bitch,” Vic said.

  Lorenzo sighed. “Sometimes, you just get too old for the game. Then you gotta hang up the towel, before they bench you for good.”

  “You’re gonna talk baseball?” Nina said. “With the police?”

  “I like baseball,” Lorenzo protested. “Bitch,” he added in an undertone.

  Paulie came back into the room with a tray of coffee cups, a pitcher of cream, and a sugar bowl. Erin took a cup and added a dash of cream. The kid sat down between Erin and his mom. He was twitchy and nervous.

  “Relax, Paulie,” Lorenzo said. “Nobody’s getting arrested here.”

  “How you know that?” Paulie replied.

  “This is a fishing trip,” Lorenzo said, folding his paper carefully. “Though I don’t know what they’re hoping to catch. You must have something better to do than harass a retired Italian gentleman, Lieutenant.”

  “What line of work were you in, Mr. Bianchi?” Webb asked.

  “Sanitation.”

  “That why they call you ‘Sewer Pipe?’” Vic asked.

  “Who’s ‘they?’” Lorenzo fired back.

  “Your colleagues,” Vic answered. “In your other job.”

  Lorenzo shook his head. “I honestly got no idea what you’re talkin’ about, Detective. I ran daily operations for a waste-collection service, but I been retired more than a decade.”

  “Garbage pays pretty well,” Erin said, looking around the suite.

  “I’m an American businessman,” he said. “Lots of people look down on garbage, ‘cause it’s smelly. But that just means they gotta pay to haul it away. The more it stinks, the more they’re willin’ to pay. There’s a lotta cash in garbage.”

  “Valentine’s Day was a few days ago,” Webb said.

  Lorenzo blinked. “Not sure how you got from garbage to hearts and flowers, Lieutenant. I don’t follow.”

  “Maybe he’s thinking about his love life,” Paulie snickered.

  “You got a girl, Paulie?” Webb asked, turning his attention to the younger Bianchi as if noticing him for the first time.

  “I got so many I can hardly keep ‘em straight.”

  “That’s because you hardly bother remembering the names of those tramps,” Nina said. “I tell you once, I tell you a hundred times. You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”

  Erin glanced involuntarily at Rolf, who stared intently back.

  “You’re pals with Rocky Nicoletti,” Webb said. He was deliberately jumping topics, trying to keep Paulie off-balance.

  “What’s Rocky got to do with anything?” Paulie asked. He’d been nervous and belligerent. Now he just looked confused.

  “You gave him something for Valentine’s Day,” Webb said.

  “The hell I did!” Paulie snapped. “What you think I am? I just told you I got lots of girlfriends!”

  “This is the twenty-first century, kid,” Vic said. “No one cares if you got a boyfriend.”

  “I think you misunderstood,” Webb said. “You gave him a spare box of chocolate, to give to his girlfriend.”

  “What if I did? It’s just—”

  “Paulie,” Lorenzo said. His voice was quiet, but the steely undertone in it made Paulie swallow whatever he’d been about to say.

  “Is there a problem, sir?” Webb asked.

  “The problem is, you’re tryin’ to get my boy to admit to something,” Lorenzo said. He was angry now, and his accent was slipping back into the street accent of his younger days. “When he ain’t done nothin.’ I seen it a hundred times before. Maybe there’s a box of candy you found at some crime scene. Maybe there ain’t no candy, you just want him to admit to a connection wit’ some other guy who’s in trouble. Maybe that guy wants to save himself, he makes up a story about my boy. Point is, guys like us talk to cops, we gotta be careful. Otherwise, we take a fall for somethin’ we didn’t do. I think maybe I oughta call my lawyer.”

  “No one’s being accused of anything, Mr. Bianchi,” Webb said. “I’m sorry for intruding. T
hank you for the coffee.” He stood up. “And thank you for your cooperation.”

  Outside, waiting for the elevator, Erin and Vic were both just about ready to explode. They went off simultaneously.

  “What are you—” Vic began.

  “I can’t believe—” Erin said over him.

  “One at a time,” Webb said.

  “Ladies first,” Vic said. “Or Erin, in the absence of ladies.”

  “I can’t believe we walked out of there,” Erin said. “They knew something. Paulie was ready to spill!”

  “And they were about to lawyer up,” Webb said. “That was everything we were going to get with the old man present. We want to lean on Paulie, we have to get him alone. If I’d pressed him, Lorenzo would’ve called his lawyer. And believe me, Lorenzo’s lawyer is going to be well-connected and extremely well-versed in criminal statutes. Then the whole thing gets shut down, along with any chance of Paulie telling us anything more. Besides, he pretty much confirmed he gave the chocolates to Rocky.”

  “You think he poisoned them?” Erin asked.

  “I don’t know,” Webb said thoughtfully. “If so, I’m surprised he was so ready to admit it. And I don’t see the point, unless it’s what passes for a friendly prank for these guys.”

  “You’ve really thought this through,” Vic said.

  “Wisdom comes with age and experience,” Webb said.

  “It takes the place of muscle tone and bladder control,” Vic said to Erin.

  “Laugh now,” Webb said. “Live long enough, you won’t think it’s so funny.”

  Chapter 8

  “It’d be easier to nail down a suspect if we knew who the intended victim was,” Vic muttered. He and Erin were staring at the whiteboard in Major Crimes. They’d laid out a chain of custody for the deadly chocolate. It started at the Bianchi household, passing from Paulie to Rocky Nicoletti, then to Amber Hayward, and ending up in Norman Ridgeway’s stomach.

  “Makes the motive simpler,” Erin agreed.

  “Let’s see if I’ve got this straight,” Vic went on. “Hayward might’ve poisoned Ridgeway because he was screwing the Berkley chick. But Berkley had access to the candy beforehand, so she might’ve done it to take out Ridgeway, Hayward, or maybe both. Nicoletti gave the candy to Hayward, and he knew she was cheating on him, so maybe he wanted to kill her, or her boyfriend, or both. But he got the candy from Paulie Bianchi. Damned if I know why Bianchi would want to kill Nicoletti. Maybe he was skimming on the drugs he was dealing. Usually gangsters take care of that sort of thing with a gun or a knife, but who knows? And then there’s the possibility the candy was already poisoned when Bianchi got his hands on it, in which case none of this makes a damn bit of difference.”

  “That’s about it,” she said. “I guess one of us better call the candy company.”

  “They’ll have a whole file cabinet full of threatening letters,” he gloomily predicted.

  “You got a better idea?”

  “No.”

  That was how Erin ended up spending her afternoon sorting through dozens of e-mails and scanned letters from deranged New Yorkers. The chocolate company rep was eager to help. He was almost pathetically glad to provide anything she needed. Erin got the feeling he was imagining banner headlines screaming about tainted sweets, leading to the company’s stock going into free-fall and massive staff cuts, including himself. The only thing he asked in return was that the NYPD not issue any sort of public-health warning without talking to his office beforehand.

  The letters were a blend of commonplace extortion attempts, health-food fixations, apocalyptic rants, and deeply weird psychotic manifestos. Erin learned, over the next few hours, that chocolate was to blame for global warming, acid rain, teenage acne, sexual impotence, and North Korea. She wasn’t clear on the logic of that last one, but the writer was both well-educated and clinically insane, so his four-page, single-spaced typing was strangely compelling. Or maybe compellingly strange.

  “Well?” Webb asked just before five.

  “I don’t know, sir,” she said. “Once you weed out the crazies, there’s a few that might be credible threats, but we may not even be able to trace them.”

  “If they’re e-mails, I can put Computer Crimes on it,” he said.

  “I’ll forward them to you,” she said. “What a waste of a day.”

  “Every lead’s a waste,” Webb said. “Except the ones that solve the case. And we don’t know which those are until we solve it.”

  Erin smiled. “You’re right. I’m just tired, hungry, and cranky.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” Webb said. “I think this one will keep for a day or two. No need to pull overtime on it. I’d like to brace Paulie again, preferably without his dad in the picture, but a guy like that, I think I’ll let him sweat. It’s not like anyone else is going to die in the meantime. Go on, get out of here, you two. I’ll stick around a while. You young people have lives to get back to.”

  “I’m actually dead,” Vic said. “Still got a pulse, and some residual EKG activity, but it’s fading fast.”

  “I suspected as much,” Erin said. “It explains your report writing. See you tomorrow.”

  “That’s optimistic of you,” he said.

  * * *

  One of the advantages of not trying to hide her relationship from the Irish Mob was that Erin could go back to the Barley Corner, Carlyle’s pub. She’d saved it from being blown up the previous year, which meant, according to the unwritten code of bar owners, that her drinks were on the house. She liked the atmosphere of the place. Sure, it was full of mob associates, but that was part of the charm. These folks might inhabit the dark side of Erin’s world, but it was the same world and they understood one another. Plus, when you stripped away the outer layers, they were the same sort of blue-collar Irish guys she’d grown up with.

  She spotted Carlyle right away, in his usual place at the bar. He saw her come in and gave her a nod and a smile. As she and Rolf slipped through the after-work crowd, she saw Corky at a corner table, chatting up Caitlin. None of the other players from the previous night were present.

  “Evening, darling,” Carlyle said, standing to welcome her. “Still protecting our fair city?”

  “It’s still standing, isn’t it?”

  “It should be,” he said. “New York was built by Irishmen, after all.”

  “So was the Titanic,” she said with a grin.

  Carlyle winced. “That’s downright unkind, especially to a Belfast lad.”

  She gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Glad to see you, too.”

  “Hey, Erin,” the bartender said.

  “Hey, Danny.”

  “What’ll you have?”

  “Shot of Glen D, straight up, and a Guinness.”

  “On the way.” Danny produced a shot glass and a beer glass and filled them.

  “Are you wanting to talk business?” Carlyle asked after she’d downed her Scotch and started on her beer.

  She shrugged. “Not much to tell. We got a murder with a victim, but too many motives and too many suspects.”

  He nodded. “Anything I can do to help, you’ve only to ask.”

  “I may need to know a little more about Sewer Pipe Bianchi.”

  “What about him?”

  “Is he in the drug business?”

  “To my knowledge, he’s in no business at all at present. He’s retired.”

  “Was he ever connected with the drug trade?”

  Carlyle rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’d heard when he was running his trucks, he used to carry more than rubbish from time to time. But that would’ve been a good twenty years ago.”

  “And his son?”

  “Paulie?”

  “That’s him.” Erin was continually astonished at Carlyle’s encyclopedic knowledge of underworld figures.

  He made a dismissive wave of his hand. “He’s strictly low-level, a petty earner. I can’t imagine he’d be doing anything you’d be interested in.”
<
br />   “Even low-level guys commit murders,” she said dryly. “Especially the low-level guys.”

  “I’d not heard he was involved in the muscle side of his family,” Carlyle said. “Though anything’s possible. Would you be wanting me to make inquiries?”

  “If you can do it discreetly. We don’t know for sure he’s our guy.”

  “Have you known me to be anything but discreet?”

  She nodded, conceding the point. Then she raised a hand to get Danny’s attention again. He finished serving a couple of burly construction workers down the bar and hurried back.

  “I think I’ll grab dinner,” she said. “How’s Marian’s Irish stew tonight?”

  “Good as always,” he said.

  “Then give me that, and another Guinness with it.”

  “Grand choice for a cold February,” Carlyle said. “Forgive me if I don’t join you. I’ve an engagement later this evening, with my employer.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Oh aye, he just has some matters to discuss.” Carlyle said it lightly, but Erin saw he was a little tense. She leaned closer and put a hand on his arm.

  “You in trouble?”

  He shook his head. “Not to my knowledge.”

  “But you’re worried.”

  “Darling, anyone who goes to a meeting with Evan without being at least a trifle concerned ought to have his head examined.”

  Erin tried to shrug it off. Having a mobster for a boyfriend was helping her appreciate how hard it was for some guys to date a cop. It was a dangerous, stressful life, and it was never guaranteed that your loved one would come home at the end of a shift.

  The stew, when it arrived, was exactly what she wanted. It was steaming hot, rich, and tasty, with fresh-baked oat rolls on the side. She dug in with pleasure. Rolf watched her eat, but didn’t lay on the begging. He was a German Shepherd K-9, not a spoiled house-pet. While she ate, she and Carlyle chatted about the Yankees’ prospects for the coming season. Mafia, Irish Mob, or NYPD, everyone in Erin’s underworld liked baseball.