The Detective Megapack

by Various Writers

  I got back to the hotel about five. Brenda’s swimsuit was hung on a drying rack near the window. I could hear the shower running. I hoped that Brenda wasn’t planning on a big evening out. After the day I had, all I was up for was a quick burger and then back to the room and some quality time with my laptop, checking for any activity on the credit cards Brenda’s parents told me she had.

  I opened the bathroom door and poked my head in. “I’m back,” I said to the silhouette behind the shower curtain.

  “Rough day?”

  “I’ve had better.”

  “Well, there’s a present for you on the night table. Now close the door, it’s getting chilly in here.”

  I went to look for my present, presents actually, since there were five of them—telescope pictures.

  Telescope pictures have nothing to do with bringing things closer. Imagine a small four-sided tube, about an inch on one end tapering to a half inch at the other. Hold the small end to your eye, there’s a lens to look through. Hold the big end to the light. There’s a picture inside. The pictures are taken by “scope” guys and gals who walk the beach. You call them over and they take your photo. Later that day you go to the scope place and they sell you a telescope with the picture inside, a lasting memento of your trip down the ocean. Mostly they snap kids and grandkids, young couples who’ve just started dating and newlyweds. This time the pics were of Brenda, posing provocatively in her all-too-brief bikini.

  “See anything you like?” Brenda asked from behind me as I was trying to decide which of her five poses was my favorite. I turned and there she was, wearing only a robe, her hair still wet from her shower. The burger and laptop could wait, I decided, putting down the scope in favor of the real thing.

  Later, with Brenda sleeping quietly and me at the desk running Darlene’s credit cards, my mind drifted back to the telescope pictures. There was something I’d almost thought of before Brenda had come out of the shower. Not of Brenda in her swimsuit, but of how nice it must be to spend your summer walking up and down the beach, just taking pictures and getting paid for it. For someone who likes the sun and has an interest in photography, it would be the perfect job.

  Ocean City had three scope shops. I got lucky with the second one.

  “Yeah,” the manager said, looking at her picture. “She worked here.”

  “Worked?”

  He nodded. “Hasn’t been in for a while. Shame too. She was a hard worker. Took lots of pictures. Good ones too, always in focus with nice exposure. Never got the customers in shadow or against the sun. Just about everything she took sold.”

  “She make a lot of money?” I asked, hoping he’d know where she cashed her paychecks.

  “The harder a kid works, the more money he makes. She worked hard, pulled in about $45-50 a day, and at a dollar a scope that’s a lot of hustle. And before you ask, we pay in cash.”

  So much for the bank idea. I tired another angle.

  “Why’d she leave?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows with these kids? Here one day, gone the next. One night she was all excited about the job, the next day she’s a no-show.”

  “When was this?”

  He thought a moment. “I think it was the day before the break-in, or maybe right before.”

  “What break-in?”

  “Somebody smashed the back door, went through the racks with the scopes in ’em.”

  I looked at the wall behind the sales counter. It was lined with bins holding bags of scopes waiting to be picked up. “What was taken?”

  “Not much. We don’t keep cash here overnight. Just some of the scopes. Who would want somebody else’s pictures?”

  Who indeed? The bad feeling that had been growing since my talk with Tiffany suddenly got worse. “Your photographers, are they assigned specific areas of the beach to work?”

  “Yeah,” the manager told me. “Each of the scope stores takes a third of the beach. My crew’s got from 28th St. up to 75th. Darlene worked between 35th and 45th.”

  “Any of her pictures left?”

  “None of the store’s. They went missing along with some others in the break-in. But we have some of hers.”

  “Hers?”

  “Yeah, she always carried her own camera with her. She saw something she liked, she’s snap it. Sometimes she’d take an extra pic or two of a customer—cute kid, good looking guy, something like that. Most people never knew she’d switched cameras. We’d develop them for her at cost overnight. In fact ….” He disappeared into the back of the shop. Came out with a manila envelope, handed it to me. “We had these in the developer the night of the break-in. You find her, give ’em to her. Tell her she’s welcome back anytime.”

  I thanked the man and left.

  On the bus ride back to the hotel I resisted the urge to look at the photos. With recent events, Darlene’s interest in photography and the area she worked, the break-in, the fact that there were no photographs to go with the cameras found in her apartment, I knew with a cold certainty what I’d find on at least one of the pictures in the envelope. And the longer I waited to look at them, the longer I had to decide just what to do about it.

  Someone had been watching him, probably followed him from Baltimore. Watched as he checked into his hotel, was behind him when he walked the Boardwalk and was close enough to him on the beach to see him have his picture taken by the scope girl. He wouldn’t have been the subject—no, he wasn’t that stupid, none of them were—but he‘d be in the background of one of the shots Darlene took on that beach. He may not have noticed, but the man who followed him from Baltimore, the man who was waiting for just the right time and place to do his job and leave his message, he would have seen. And this man would have acted, would have made sure that this photographic evidence would disappear.

  No doubt he followed Darlene back to the scope shop, then followed her home. Her apartment had a simple lock, easy enough to pass through without any signs of tampering. Take the film out of the camera, take any used disposables and any developed prints. Break into the photo shop and steal the scope pictures Darlene took that day. Oh yeah, and somewhere along the way, snatch up Darlene herself, just to be on the safe side.

  All this ran through my mind as I looked through the last set of pictures Darlene had taken, the ones the man on the beach, just like her customers, didn’t realize she’d snapped. Hoping I was wrong, I looked at each one through a magnifying glass, looking at the people in the background, looking for a familiar face, one that had been in the paper just about the time Darlene had gone missing.

  I found Peter Bondello’s picture midway through the stack of twenty-four exposures. His was with some woman I didn’t recognize. They were laughing, sharing a joke maybe. His arm was around her—the same arm that George Belinski later found buried in the sand.

  The picture confirmed it. I was too late. It didn’t matter that it was too late by the time the Taubers had hired me. I’d taken their money and promised to get their little girl back. They’d put all their hope in me and now the best I could do for them was maybe find her body.

  For a while I just stared at the picture wondering what to do. Going to the police was an option, just not a very good one. True, tying the disappearance and possible death of a young girl to the brutal murder of a mobster was sure to generate a public outcry, massive news coverage and increased efforts by the police, but it would also drive those involved deeper underground than they already were. The woman in the photo, if she wasn’t already sharing a landfill with the rest of Bondello, would disappear just as Darlene had. And after all the publicity died down, Darlene would be just another missing teenager and Bondello an unsolved piece of OC history. I didn’t care too much about Bondello, but Darlene deserved justice.

  No, the police were out. I’d make arrangements to be sure they’d get a copy of the photo in case the plan I had come up with went wrong, but for now Darlene’s connection with the case was my little secret.

  Brenda and I left Oc
ean City that day, stopping at the scope place and the post office before we did. I called the Taubers when we got back to Baltimore, telling them that although I hadn’t found Darlene, there were still a few leads to follow that might tell me where she was. I hated myself for the false hope I left them with, but I couldn’t have them going to the police, not yet anyway.

  The call I was expecting came the next day. The whispered voice mentioned a place and time, and strongly suggested I be there. My package had arrived.

  When you think of meeting with a mob boss, your imagination no doubt conjures up images of Italian restaurants, dark warehouses or the backroom of a neighborhood bar. Sometimes it’s like that, but my meeting with the man I call “Mr. Louis” was just outside the Pratt St. pavilion in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. I arrived a few minutes early to find him sitting on a bench, watching the tourists go by. As I approached him (slowly), a large man in a “Charm City” T-shirt moved to intercept, but at a nod from Mr. Louis he let me proceed.

  “Mr. Louis, thank you …”

  “Shh,” he interrupted me, looking at his watch. He pointed to the U.S.S. Constellation, a naval sloop from the Civil War whose permanent berth is now in Baltimore. “Any minute now.”

  A cannon went off and white smoke erupted from the bow of the ship. Had the cannon been loaded with shot or ball, pieces of Federal Hill across the harbor would now be missing.

  “Everyday at one o’clock, they fire it. A demonstration for the tourists. It used to be louder, but the hotels complained about the noise rattling their windows. Now they just use a half load.”

  Must be convenient knowing exactly when a noise like a gunshot was going to go off. I kept this thought to myself and instead said, “You got my presents?”

  Mr. Louis reached into his pocket and brought out two telescopes, one in light blue plastic, the other pale green. Both had “Souvenir of Ocean City” written in gold on their sides. Without looking through either he said, “Yes, thank you for thinking of me. I have some of my granddaughters when they were younger, but these, these are quite different.”

  They should have been. The green one had Bondello’s face on it, cropped from the photo I’d found. The blue one was the unknown woman. As attention-getters they couldn’t be beat.

  “What is it you want of me, Mr. Grace?”

  I had to phrase this carefully. I needed this man to be in my debt, and not me in his. “To do you a service, Mr. Louis. A young girl is missing. Her parents hired me to find her. In looking for her I found a photograph she’d taken of Peter Bondello with this woman. Realizing there was a connection, I came to you rather than … going elsewhere.”

  Louis knew exactly where “elsewhere” was—a big building with men in uniform blue suits.

  “And how does this concern me?”

  “Make no mistake, Mr. Louis—I will do whatever it takes to find out what happened to this girl. Make as much noise as I have to. But I thought that, given the circumstances, maybe you’d prefer it if things were done quietly.”

  Louis took his time replying. He sat there for a few minutes, toying with the scopes, watching people go by. Finally, he nodded and turned to me with a smile.

  “As you say, Mr. Grace, quiet would be better—for both of us. And you have done me a service, but not how you think. Until now, what happened to Peter was as big a mystery to us as to you and the authorities. There had been no approval of … well, let’s just say that Peter’s name had not been discussed. And the way it was done …” Louis shook his head “… such a gesture is now for others.”

  He held the blue scope up to the sun. “I have not seen this woman, but perhaps others have. I will ask. Please wait for word from me before … making noise.”

  “You have my word, but I can’t speak for the parents. A day or two more, and they’re likely to go public.”

  “I understand. And thank you, Mr. Grace.”

  Mr. Louis got up and slowly walked away, leaving me on the bench watching the tourists and hoping I’d played my hand right.

  The next meeting was in a bar, one of those neighborhood places whose name changes every few years as the guy who bought it realizes that running a bar is way too much work and not as much fun as Sam Malone made it look on television. So he sells the business and license to another guy with a dream and if he breaks even he considers himself lucky.

  I got to the bar a few minutes early. Mr. Louis was already waiting for me in the back room. He was sitting at a table which had two other chairs around it, his ever-present bodyguard standing alertly in a corner, one that provided a clear view of the room and an even clearer line of fire.

  Louis gestured for me to sit down. “You have news?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “Maybe, I believe so. We will know for sure once our guest arrives.” Louis looked at his watch. “He will make it a point to be late, as a demonstration of his independence.”

  “But that won’t change the fact that you called and he came, right?”

  “It is sometimes best to let people ignore the strings that bind them. You have the photograph, and the negative?”

  I passed them over. This was the part I didn’t like. To find out what had happened to Darlene I was giving up the only evidence I had, the only evidence anyone had that would tie her to Bondello’s death. Sure, I had kept a print for myself, and had scanned the image, but without the negative either could be dismissed as photo manipulation. Still, it was the only chance to find out the truth. And tonight that was all I was interested in.

  As Louis predicted, our guest arrived twenty minutes late. He entered without knocking. As he moved to our table he shot a glance over to Louis’s bodyguard, sizing him up as if deciding which of them could take the other, then smiled as he figured that he’d probably be the one to walk away. He sat down without any apology for being late.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  “Yes,” Louis sad quietly, “thank you for coming, Mr. Wills. This is Matthew Grace. Mr. Grace, Derek Wills.”

  I’d heard of Wills. His name had been in the paper a few times. He was usually mentioned as “allegedly” being involved in Baltimore’s drug trade. He’d been arrested several times but never convicted. Witnesses against Wills tended to disappear or suddenly change their testimony on the stand. Word on the street was that if it was illegal and could be sold—narcotics, guns, flesh—Wills had or wanted a part of it.

  Wills gave me the same scrutiny he’s given the bodyguard then asked Louis, “What’s up?”

  Louis handed Wills the photograph of Bondello and the woman. “I believe you know this couple.” It was a statement not a question.

  Wills looked at the photo, shrugged, and threw it back on the table. “Knew them, you mean. She was my lady, before she took off with this piece of dirt.” He smacked the photo, his hand hitting Bondello’s image.

  “I take it then that you are responsible for what was found on the beach?”

  Wills started to answer, then looked my way. It finally occurred to him that I might not be part of Louis’s organization. “He okay?” he asked Louis.

  “Mr. Grace came to me with this photograph. He could have gone to the police. And he promises not to go to them if you will answer some questions.”

  I hadn’t promised any such thing, but if that was the price I guess I’d have to pay it.

  At Wills’s hesitation, Louis prompted. “We are both of us in his debt.”

  “Yeah, what the hell. Bondello took what’s mine. Nobody takes what’s mine. When I heard they were going down the ocean I followed them. Saw them on the beach, watched as they went back to their hotel. That night, I did them right in their room, nice and clean.”

  “The police never found his room,” I said.

  “Yeah, like any of us use our real names. She probably checked in while he sat in the car.”

  “The arm, that only drew attention,” Louis pointed out.

  “That was the point. You put a hand on what’s mine, you lose the ha
nd. Some people needed to know that. Now they do.”

  “And their bodies?” Louis asked before I could.

  “Lots of dumpsters in OC. Who’s gonna notice a few more trash bags?”

  That was my cue. “Is that what happened to the girl?” Before he could ask “What girl?” I added, “The one who took this picture.”

  Another smile. “Saw her snap the pic. Couldn’t take the chance that it’d turn up on the front page of the Baltimore Sun. Tried to get it back, when I couldn’t I snatched her up, just in case.”

  “And where’s her body, another dumpster?”

  Wills smiled, then laughed out loud. “Who said she’s dead. Nice piece like that, it was a shame to waste it. Gonna turn her out, make some money.”

  I went dead inside. Until then I thought that the worse news I could give the Taubers was that their daughter was gone and that the man responsible was beyond the law. Now I’d have to tell them that for just for taking a picture she’d been sentenced to a life of disease and addiction. To myself I swore that somehow I’d get her back. If she was in Baltimore, I’d find her. If not, I had contacts in other cities. One way or the other I’d get her back. She wouldn’t be their little girl anymore, but I’d bring Darlene back to her family. And once she was safe, Wills would pay. If Louis had to go down too, so be it. I’d pay the price when I had to.

  I barely heard Louis ask me if I had other questions. I mumbled out a “No” and he said, “Thank you, Mr. Wills.” There was a hard edge to Louis’s voice, an iciness that hadn’t been there before. “I believe that will be all.”

  Wills stood up. “A pleasure, gentlemen.” After another challenging look at Louis’s bodyguard, he walked out. The pictures he left on the table.

  When we were alone, Louis asked me, “Mr. Grace, are we done here?” It was the way he said it that made me think we weren’t, that he was waiting for something. I looked at the photo on the table and I knew what it was.