Slugfest db-4

by Rosemary Harris

  “See, I had you pegged for a chardonnay,” she said.

  “Always a mistake to assume. My cop friends tell me that.”

  “You have cop friends?”

  “In Connecticut.”

  “And what do they do? Catch bad guys who park illegally in the handicapped spot? Oh, no that’s right, you said you found some bodies. I’d like to hear about them one day.”

  The bartender brought the drinks himself, apparently a first, and I put my hand over the glass to prevent him from pouring my beer.

  “Brian, stop pretending this is a fine dining establishment when all you really want to do is ogle this woman’s cleavage.” His face turned as red as the dress, but the bartender did as he was told and left.

  “You trying to impress me, knowing shady characters, drinking from the bottle like one of the masses?”

  “The beer stays colder this way. Who do you think I am? I live in Connecticut. Doesn’t make me Caroline Kennedy.” I took a long pull on the frosty bottle. “So how was your day, honey?”

  “By the time I got to the members’ lounge, a swarm of people had gathered, getting in the way and probably contaminating a crime scene. Allegra Douglas was rallying the troops, saying we’d all be bloodied and battered before the show ended.” Vandalism was outrageous enough but personal violence was unspeakable. That didn’t, however, keep Allegra from speaking. Nothing and no one could.

  “She went on about the old days and how management had sold out and she practically accused that Ms. Peete and her students of vandalizing the show and attacking Nikki. That teacher stayed cool, but I could tell she was still shaken up at having found the body.”

  “What do you think happened?” I asked. Rolanda gave it some thought but came up empty, shaking her head.

  “I’ll tell you what didn’t happen. Some high school kid followed a woman into the toilet just to knock her on the head. No rape. No robbery. No personal connection or grievance. What the hell for? Now if someone had bashed Ms. Douglas on the head, I could understand it.” She sipped her drink, pinky up. She talked to Brian over my head. “Less ice next time, baby.”

  Rolanda was right. There were probably a lot of people who wouldn’t mind taking a whack at Allegra, and that number was rising. But why Nikki? What was the motive? Rolanda said she’d been found fully clothed, her handbag untouched, and still wearing an expensive watch.

  That was all the news either of us had and I didn’t know how we’d get any more. The hospital was only likely to give relatives information over the telephone, and I didn’t really feel like schlepping downtown to the hospital to ask in person. But who did she have? No kids and no family here, as far as I knew, just an unhappy husband, who had had a few too many and, depending how long Nikki had been lying there, could have been the head basher.

  Thirty-four

  Rolanda and I stared at each other until she broke into a smile. “You want to be her sister? I gots an accent, sho ’nuff they won’t believe me.”

  It was worth a phone call. “Please … I can pretend to have an accent, too. Can’t I be her cousin?” Not sure why I thought that was an easier lie to tell, but I did.

  “Stay on the safe side. Immediate family always gets you in. You just found out and you’re calling from out of town—that’s why you’re not at the hospital. That’s one of the good things about cell phones. Caller ID can’t instantly give your location away. You can call in sick and be partying in Rio.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that. They can do amazing things with cell phone technology these days.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not till way later. Besides, you’re just making a phone call. It’s not a congressional hearing.”

  The call went better than expected. I lied through my teeth, and my tentative delivery worked to my advantage, making me sound even more concerned than I was.

  Nikki had regained consciousness but was being kept in the hospital overnight for observation. After much prodding, the staff nurse told me she’d overheard snippets of Nikki’s statement to the police. Nikki claimed she wasn’t struck, she simply fell off the toilet seat and hit her head. The nurse was a little fuzzy on what Nikki was doing balanced precariously on the rim of the toilet when the blackout occurred.

  “Can I talk to her?” I asked.

  “It’s late and she’s very groggy.”

  “Daddy would be so relieved to know I was able to speak with her—even briefly. He’s ninety-one and in assisted living but still sharp as a tack.” I hated that expression but other people seemed to love it. Rolanda gave me a thumbs-up. I was getting comfortable in my role as Nikki’s concerned sister. The “daddy” part worked. I felt guilty deceiving the kindhearted nurse, but she agreed to put the call through and I could almost see her carefully holding the phone to Nikki’s ear as we spoke.

  Before I said a word, Nikki croaked out some words.

  “Show … Mrs. Mofffff—”

  “Don’t worry, Sis. The booth was fine. We made a few sales.” She groaned.

  “Sarc—sarc…” It sounded as if she were hiccuping or about to throw up.

  “The sarcophagus? Fingers crossed, Mrs. M. might be interested. Jensen came sniffing around again.”

  Rolanda pulled at her chin as if scratching an imaginary beard. I didn’t know what she meant until she mouthed the word daddy.

  “And daddy says he loves you.”

  “Whaaa…?”

  The line went dead and I assumed Nikki had fallen asleep and the nurse had replaced the phone in its cradle.

  “At least she’s all right,” I said.

  “You’ve got a future as an actress. Daddy? Where’d that come from?”

  “Lord knows. I didn’t want to upset her by mentioning her husband and I couldn’t say Mommy without cracking up.” I twisted in my seat and held up my empty beer bottle to get the bartender’s attention. There was that picture of Otis Randolph again, in a dark blue suit, probably the one he was wearing now in the back of a Baptist church. One person falls and it’s the punch line to an amusing anecdote. Another falls and winds up dead.

  The excitement and concern when Otis’s body was found had vanished like a puff of smoke and been replaced by other dramas. If it hadn’t been for the mention of the out-of-service escalator, most people wouldn’t have known that someone who’d spent the last thirty-six years changing lightbulbs at the Wagner Center and putting down rubber mats when it rained was gone. He was removed from the building like a begonia with aphids.

  The unspoken assumption was still that Otis Randolph had gotten drunk on the job and collapsed, falling down the escalator steps, after which, injured, he crawled off to a prefab, fake Amish shed where he lost consciousness and died.

  “They said he reeked of Scotch, but I never knew him to overdo it, especially when he was working.”

  Even though I’d just gotten a refill, Rolanda called for another round. El Quixote was filling up; this time she walked to the bar to pick up our drinks.

  The bartender got our order, and over his shoulder Rolanda saw the picture of Otis. “Brian, you ever know Otis to get loaded on his way to work?”

  “Otis could put away a few. Sometimes he was pretty happy when he left here, but only after he knocked off. Never going in.” He straightened Otis’s picture and took a heavy breath. “I heard you mention Scotch, though. He was a gin drinker. Said the ladies liked it because it didn’t smell nasty when he kissed them. He was a pistol, even at his age.”

  Drinking and flirting. At least Otis went out on an upswing. Rolanda rejoined me at the table.

  “I don’t mean to sound clinical or harsh,” I said, “but people don’t usually drop dead from a fall and a knock on the head, do they?”

  “That’s a fact. I was shopping in Sally Army once and a sofa fell on my head. Hurt like hell but didn’t kill me. It’s true. It was hooked to the wall. Fell and hit me on the back of my head. Didn’t even get me a discount.” She sucked down her rum and Coke and rubbed the back of her
head as if looking for the bump. “But didn’t I read in People about some actress who died after she hit her head?” she said.

  “That was a skiing accident. Very unusual. I understand falls from a standing position are rarely fatal. Think about it. The skull is pretty hard.”

  “How do you know that? That what you ladies who lunch talk about? How to crack your husbands over the head so it looks like an accident?” Rolanda’s notions of suburban life weren’t much different from what mine had been before I moved to one.

  “That’s exactly right. After we finish our watercress and cucumber sandwiches. I used to be in television. The very classy outfit I worked for was just changing its focus from documentaries to all crime, all the time when I left. Some of it rubbed off.”

  “That was a career misstep. Too bad you left. You coulda done a show about me.”

  “Could Otis have been hit?”

  “By whom? And why?” she said, sipping her drink. “You call the cops about that kid’s bag?”

  “It’s gone. I’ve looked everywhere. Someone took it.”

  “Could have called them anyway.”

  “Hi, there, I had a bag that may have belonged to a dead guy, but I don’t have it anymore?”

  “I see your point.”

  “All right. There’s something else. Do you remember the jacket the kid was wearing?” She recalled the T-shirt because the words were printed on his chest where his badge should have been, but she had to work hard to conjure up an image of the jacket that had been tied around his waist. “There were all sorts of names and patches on his jacket. I noticed it the day before.” I told Rolanda about our accidental meeting at the museum.

  “That wasn’t mentioned in the police report. Just the shirt. So he wasn’t wearing the jacket when he died,” she said.

  “Unless someone ripped it off his dead body,” I said.

  Thirty-five

  I leaned in so neither the bartender nor any of the other patrons could hear. “Jamal Harrington was wearing a jacket like that this afternoon.”

  Rolanda leaned in. “Who’s Jamal Harrington?”

  “One of Lauryn Peete’s students. Sticks and Stones? The high school display?”

  My gut and nothing else told me Jamal wasn’t responsible for Bleimeister’s death. Or Otis’s. But what was he doing with the dead guy’s jacket? Did he know Garland Bleimeister?

  “I wonder who Garland was looking for,” I said. “The person he was so anxious to see before the show opened. He asked me to deliver a note, but then Connie screamed and we all took off.”

  “Doesn’t that mean someone at the show should be missing him?” Rolanda said.

  “Only if they were going to be happy to see him. Otherwise, they might be relieved. He gave me a note. He handed it to me while he leafed through the directory to find the name of his friend’s company.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Jeez, it’s anyone’s guess where a slip of paper someone handed me two days ago is now.”

  “Maybe you stuck it in the directory?” Rolanda asked.

  It was possible. I hadn’t looked at the book since the show started. Why? I was selling, not buying. Was the note in the jeans I’d been wearing or my card case? A pocket? A bag? The garbage? It could be anywhere in a twenty-block radius, and in New York that might just as well be twenty miles.

  “Well, I don’t know about that other stuff,” she said, “but where’s the directory?”

  “At the booth, I think. Under the table where the kid’s bag was.”

  * * *

  Rolanda didn’t have a key to the convention center, but what she had was almost as good—a nearly full bottle of Rémy that she’d wheedled out of Brian, the bartender. That tariff got us past Vincent, the night man at the employees’ entrance, and Rolanda’s knowledge of the Wagner got us upstairs.

  “Most of the doors are locked from the outside,” she said.

  Only one door in each hall was open, so the overnight security guard could go in and out, punching his code into the alarm system to report to an off-site company that everything was copasetic.

  “Alarm Central’s not even in New York. Probably in Indiana somewhere. But they’re wired into the local precinct.”

  I was surprised the center had such a sophisticated system for the flower show, but maybe it had been installed pre-Javits, when the building had been used for shows with more valuable merchandise.

  After three beers and nothing in my stomach but a mini-pierogi from four hours earlier I was light-headed. After three tall rum and Cokes, light on the ice, Rolanda was unchanged. “Anthony is on tonight. I’ll text him so he knows we’re here and doesn’t shoot us.”

  “There’s an armed guard at the flower show?”

  “Only for the orchids. Chill out, I’m kidding. Of course he’s not armed, but why scare the man?” Rolanda’s fingers flew over her keypad and two passages of electronic Caribbean music told me first that her message had been sent and then that a reply had been received. She smiled. “He says we owe him a bottle of Rémy and he’s looking forward to meeting the woman in red.”

  I pulled my jacket closed and folded my arms over my chest.

  The open doors weren’t difficult to find, as an eerie whitish-blue light emanated from one rectangle every thirty feet or so. The glow came from the exit signs and the off-hours lighting on the beams, which backlit some of the pigeons still perched in the rafters.

  Without the people, the lights, and the buzz, the deserted flower show was like a fairy-tale jungle, albeit a cold one. We didn’t need to worry about snakes or tarantulas, just the occasional fluttering of a bird we’d disturbed. And all the vegetation was perfect. No slugs, no deer, no bunnies.

  We reached my booth quickly and found the show directory in one of the nearly empty boxes where I’d stashed the box cutters, markers, and double-stick tape I’d used to set up.

  “This was where I put the bag.”

  I fanned through the book. No note.

  “Try again. Maybe the pages are stuck together. It’s humid in here.”

  Still nothing, but this time I noticed a dog-eared page. I have a congenital inability to dog-ear pages. I’m a bookmark gal, even if I use a magazine renewal card or a dollar bill.

  “I didn’t do this. It must have been Bleimeister.”

  There wasn’t enough light to read by, so we took the book and headed for the nearest exit. Two halls down from where we emerged, shadows waved and we heard a sound as if someone had bumped into a trash can. The person uttered a curse I hadn’t heard since I was a little girl back in Brooklyn and for which I had never gotten an accurate translation except that it had something to do with going to Naples. Rolanda texted Anthony to see if it was him. It wasn’t, but he’d seen the movement, too.

  “He says the cleaning staff should all be gone by now,” she whispered. I pulled on her arm and dragged her underneath a nearby staircase. Two slim figures made their way to the fire exit, and the heavy door closed behind them with a sucking sound. We exhaled.

  “I think I know who they were. Fat Frank and Cookie.”

  “First it was drinking straight from the bottle. Now you know two guys named Fat Frank and Cookie? Girl, I owe you an apology,” she said, “I have got the wrong idea about women from Connecticut.”

  “They’re two men who work for Guy Anzalone, Connie’s husband,” I whispered.

  The Caribbean music started up again and Rolanda fumbled in her pocket for the phone to silence it in case Fat Frank had heard and decided to come back to investigate. “Shoot, I’ve got to lose that music if I’m really going into this line of work.”

  It was Anthony again. His text message read:

  Someone is in Hall A. Stay away until I know it’s safe.

  She closed her phone. “He’s a tough old bird,” she said.

  “Older than Otis?”

  There was no discussion. I kicked off Lucy’s stilettos and we ran to Hall A.

  Thirty-sixr />
  In the fake twilight of the convention center we couldn’t see the men’s faces. They barely moved, but we heard the murmur of voices, though it was impossible to tell the nature of the exchange. Was this a friendly chat or was all hell about to break loose? Rolanda took charge.

  “Whoever you are,” she yelled, “you know you’re not supposed to be here at this hour. Show’s closed.” It was a cheerful admonishment meant to announce our presence and lighten the mood. We padded on the cold concrete floor to where the men stood. As we drew closer, Rolanda saw Anthony talking to a younger man I recognized as Jamal Harrington.

  “We’re okay, Ro. But, I’ll ask you again, sonny, what are you doing here? It’s a simple question.” Anthony might have been in his seventies, but he was the type of septuagenarian who probably still did one-armed push-ups. He’d have no problem subduing a kid, either physically or through personal authority, if it came to that. But none of us wanted to see that happen.

  “Hi, Jamal. Those pilgrim tablecloths worked great.” Rolanda and Anthony looked at me like I was crazy, but I wanted everyone to relax and I didn’t mind sounding ridiculous if that was what it took. We knew Anthony didn’t have a gun, but the jury was still out on Jamal. He must have known what we were thinking, or perhaps he’d had to do it before in another situation, but he held his arms out, carefully opening his hoodie and turning around. It was telling that the action came to him so naturally.

  “I was looking for the other guy,” Jamal said.

  “That’s pretty vague, young fella,” Anthony said.

  “Black dude. The one who was here Wednesday night. Something funny about his right eye. Really big hands like maybe he played sports before he got so old.”

  “That dude and I were friends for forty-three years. Nothing funny about his eye. He was a veteran. He lost it in a machine shop accident in the army. We worked construction together when this building went up. Still got one of the bricks in the locker room—use it as a doorstop. He played basketball up at the City College courts. Played with Cazzie Russell once. Before we got so old. His name was Mr. Otis Cleveland Randolph.”