Queens Noir

by Robert Knightly

  "How will I know that? I mean, when it's empty?"

  I consider this for a moment, then say, "Put the gun in your mouth and give it one last pull. If you're still alive, it's empty."

  "Very funny." Joanna glances down at her hands. Her mouth works for a moment, before she speaks. "You really think I can do this, Jill?"

  "Tell you the truth, Joanna, I don't see as you have a lot of choice. But you might wanna think about this: If Joanna Kelly shoots Paulie Malone, Uncle Mike's never gonna be sure that at some point Joanna Kelly won't shoot Uncle Mike. It's an edge you can use to your advantage."

  Joanna thinks it over, then says, "Now I know why they call you Crazy Jill."

  I ignore the comment. "Two things to remember. First, this gun with the tape on it? Put it somewhere close to Paulie's hand. Second, call Uncle Mike. Not 911. Uncle Mike."

  She looks at me for a second, then mutters, "Uh-huh."

  "Now, I'm going outside to sit in the sun before it gets too hot. If Paulie shows up, I'm not gonna stop him. I'm not even gonna slow him down."

  Joanna's tongue slides over her lips. She raises her hand and flicks her fingers in a little wave. As I open the door, she finds her voice. "Jill," she says, breaking into a heartfelt smile, "I just want you to know. If I ever decided to go to bed with a woman, I'd pick you."

  I expect Paulie to charge up the walk, but when he comes through the gate he's limping noticeably and his swollen mouth is the color and texture of chocolate cookie dough. Still, his features are twisted with rage and the sledgehammer he grips with his right hand makes his intentions abundantly clear.

  By the time he sees me, Paulie's halfway to the door. He stops abruptly and throws out his chest as though offering a larger target. But when I circle him, heading for the gate, he becomes confused. He glances toward the front door.

  "Whadaya doin'?"

  "I'm going home, Paulie." I want to add something about him maybe doing the same thing, but I find that at the moment I don't care what happens to him. Or to Joanna. I step through the gate, turn right, and start walking. Maybe, I think, I can get away before it happens, though I'm still short of the neighbor's yard when Paulie crashes the sledgehammer into the front door. A moment later, I hear him shout, his tone still defiant, "What are you gonna do, Joanna? What are you gonna do with that gun? You gonna kill me?"

  I count the gunshots, one through nine. They come faster toward the end. Paulie cries out once, early on, a short choking moan that ends almost before it begins. Then silence and, very faintly, the acrid stink of cordite through the open door.

  Bye-bye, Paulie.

  I drive to a gas station on College Point Boulevard, pull up at a pay phone at the back. There's somebody using it, but I don't mind. I nod to the jerk on the phone when he flashes an apologetic smile. I even thank him when he finally hangs up.

  I take my time getting out of the car, searching my pockets for a quarter. I feel there's no hurry, that Joanna will shut her mouth until Uncle Mike arrives, that Uncle Mike has no choice except to keep me out of it. I punch Joey Kruger's number into the keypad, wait as it rings three, four, five times. I know Joey's been working the late tour for the last week and he's most likely still asleep. I realize, too, that I have no idea what I want Joey to say when he eventually answers. I have no idea until he finally says it.

  "Baby," he whispers, his voice dulled by sleep, "when are you coming over? I've been dreaming about your ass all night."

  LAST STOP, DITMARS

  BY Torn CARRINGTON

  Ditmars

  ule #37 in the P.I. handbook: Never eat where blood's been spilled.

  "I want you to find my husband's killer."

  I knew what words the woman would say even before she said them. I knew the instant she spotted me, said goodbye to the man she was talking to at the counter of the Acropolis Diner, and headed straight for my table. She was dressed all in black, her mascara smeared because she'd been crying. I figured that since she was only two days into her new role as widow, she was entitled.

  I sat back in the booth, considering her where she had taken the seat across from me. I'd also known what she was going to say because I knew her. And had known her husband. Mihalis Abramopoulos had owned and operated the Acropolis Diner on Ditmars Boulevard in Astoria, Queens, for the past thirty years. Ever since he'd come over from Greece in the early '70s. Not unlike many of Astoria's Greek population that had been trying to escape military coups and martial law and were looking for a safe environment in which to raise their kids. Hey, my parents had done it in the '60s, before the colonels had staged a military junta in Greece and taken over control of a country that was still trying to get its shit together after the civil war. I'd been seventeen at the time, but I'm told I still speak like I'd just arrived on the last plane over the Atlantic. Usually after I've had one too many glasses of Johnnie Walker Black and was trying to figure out the mystery of my life rather than one of the many cases on my desk back at the agency.

  But I'm getting ahead of myself here. My name's Spyros Metropolis and along with my silent partner, Lenny Nash, I run Spyros Metropolis Private Detective Agency, which is located on Steinway Street halfway between Broadway and Ditmars. While most of my family gravitated toward the Broadway end of Astoria, I preferred Ditmars. Mostly because my family gravitated toward Broadway. I didn't live in the rooms above the agency, partly because they'd need extensive restoration to make them livable. Mostly because I preferred to keep my business life separate from my personal life.

  I eyed the widow across from me. So much for that philosophy.

  Then again, being a twice-divorced P.I. with alimony and child support payments, where else was I to take my meals if not a diner?

  "My condolences, Kiria Abramopoulos."

  Hermioni blanched, possibly tired of like sentiments even though her husband wouldn't be lowered into the ground until the day after next, when the M.E. officially released the body. "Can you do it? Find my husband's killer? I'll pay your going rate."

  Probably she didn't know what my going rate was. Probably she would change her mind if I told her. "Kiria Abramopoulos, I'm sure the police will find your husband's killer."

  And I had every confidence that they would. Not because I was a big fan of the NYPD, but because I used to count myself as one of them.

  "The police have their hands full with the blackout. Mikey's death is a low priority."

  The blackout. Over 100,000 Queens residents had gone without power for almost two weeks, predominantly in the Astoria area. LaGuardia Airport had been closed down, parts of the subway, and even Rikers Island's jails had to rely on backup power for the duration. Many businesses were forced to close their doors. But the diner had remained open, Mike relying on propane burners and a grill set up out back to offer a short menu of items, and a generator to operate a couple of fans and a cooler.

  The blackout had coincided with a heatwave that left residents scrambling to find someplace with air-conditioning or sweating it out. And all my good shirts bore sweat stains to prove it.

  Then the night before last, the lights came back on. Revealing Mike Abramopoulos lying on his diner floor in a pool of his own blood. The floor I was looking at filled now with white orthopedic shoes as Petra, the young Albanian waitress I'd come to know since she hired on eight months ago, approached to top off my coffee cup. I noticed her smooth alabaster arms as she poured, as well as her other fine parts; she was a very attractive kid. She asked if Hermioni wanted coffee. The widow waved the girl away.

  There had been a rash of restaurant robberies in the Astoria area of late, perhaps blackout-driven, perhaps not. Chances are, Mike was a random victim. Greeks worked hard for their money and were loathe to give it up. Especially to a masked man who would make in two minutes what it had taken the Greek all day to earn. It was the principle of the thing.

  It was also what tended to get Greek business owners into heaps of trouble.

  Hermioni covered my hand with hers
where mine held my coffee cup, a damp Kleenex between her skin and mine. I grimaced and pulled my arm back and pretended to fix the right cuff of my white long-sleeved shirt that I had rolled up to my elbows. My wardrobe was limited to white shirts, plain ties, and dark slacks in the summer, and varied little in the winter except for the addition of a black trenchcoat and hat. My appearance had never been a priority for me beyond staying neat. I'd been cursed with a Greek nose that my brother said you could see turning a corner at least half a minute before I did. And the march of time on my hairline couldn't be stopped with a lifetime supply of minoxidil.

  "Please, Spyros. I ... need to know who killed my husband. I need justice."

  Dishes and silverware clanked where Stamatis, the busboy, cleared the table behind Hermioni. The widow slanted him a glance that told him he could have picked a better time. I agreed. Stamatis ignored its both.

  I drew my attention back to Hermioni. "Did Mike have any enemies?"

  "No, no." She smiled feebly. "Aside from me, of course." An attempt at humor. "But you know I could never do that to him."

  Did I? Over the course of my career, I'd seen a lot of things I'd originally thought were impossible. Learning that Hermioni did away with Mike so she could take over the diner and move in with an Ethiopian half her age would rate somewhere on the less-shocking end.

  "So you'll take the case then?"

  I told her my going rate.

  I had to give the old gal credit. She didn't even blink.

  "I'll bring the retainer by the agency this afternoon," she told me.

  My intention had been to scare her away. Instead, I'd just let her in the front door.

  Murder cases didn't make up a large percentage of my caseload. Mostly because they were best left to the boys in blue and it wasn't a good idea to get in their way when you were a P.I. But those I had worked had taken a great deal of detective work that rarely included any fancy crime lab results. Fact was, a lot of evidence was contaminated and untraceable. And the results on most of the potential evidence they collected was slow in coming. New York's forensics labs were so backed up that a suspect on a case stamped low priority could have skipped to a foreign country and started a new family by the time the authorities caught up with him.

  As far as I was concerned, solving any case almost always came down to pounding the sweltering NYC pavement and examining a few rocks to see which way the moss grew, in order to find the answers.

  Later that afternoon, I stopped on the corner opposite the diner and lit a cigarette. Whereas before I might have taken a seat in the restaurant opposite to watch the joint, now New York City law had chased me outside. Oh, a lot of places had smoking areas. Usually outdoors in the back surrounded by neighboring buildings and glass. But I didn't particularly like the feeling of being walled in, put on display like a smoking turtle in a terrarium for the other diners to stare at as they ate. Which was probably a good thing, because I didn't smoke half as much as I used to. But I wasn't going to admit this to anyone that mattered.

  I drew deeply on my cancer stick and slowly released the smoke, watching as Petra updated the chalkboard propped outside announcing the dinner specials. I had half hoped that Hermioni Abramopoulos wouldn't come by the agency. But she had, putting down the retainer I'd asked for. Which meant I was pretty much in this till the end.

  Inside the diner I could make out at least seven regulars. Whereas before I might have viewed them simply as fellow diners, now each and every one of them was a suspect.

  Could a customer have been upset at his burned steakearlier thrown out of the house by his wife, fired from his job-taking his rage out on an unsuspecting Mike? Or, in the case of the young couple holding hands in the first booth and sharing moussaka, could an argument have grown loud, causing Mike to intervene and become victim rather than mediator?

  At any rate, I didn't have many resources to dedicate to this case. Sure, Hermioni was paying me. But I was in the middle of a sticky job that commanded most of my attention.

  Since Mike had been a friend of sorts, however, and a fellow Greek, I figured I could give him at least a fraction of the time I'd spent eating at his establishment.

  I looked up and down the street. To my left, Ditmars Boulevard would take me toward the East River and Astoria Park, the Hellgate Bridge looming as a reminder of history in a city full of history. To my right, the street would take me to LaGuardia Airport.

  But it wasn't the river or the airport I was interested in now. I turned and walked east, crossing 31st Street, the squealing brakes of the N train announcing its arrival at Ditmars station, the last stop on the elevated line, a regular sound that blended with the din of cars and airplanes sweeping down from the northwest. I stopped and bought a fresh peach from the Top Tomato on 35th, then walked further up still, to the only spot I'd been able to find in this parking-challenged area. I climbed into my old Pontiac and pointed the car in the direction of the 114th Precinct on Astoria Boulevard at 34th Street.

  A little while later, I sat opposite Detective Sergeant Tom McCurdy, who I'd learned was the guy in charge of the case after a quick call to my NYPD mate, Officer Pino Karras. If the files littering Tom's desk were any indication, Hermioni was right: It might be some time before anyone got around to finding out who had killed her husband.

  Of course, I hadn't ruled Hermioni out as a suspect yet. Call me jaded, but there was something about the human condition that allowed some folks to believe that if they hired a private dick, it deflected suspicion away from them, no matter how damning the evidence. One of my former clients had learned the hard way that guys like me weren't wired to look the other way. While I wasn't a cop anymore, the basic principles that had led me in that direction were still very much intact.

  Besides, I knew enough about life to know that you took order where you could find it.

  Tom McCurdy finished a phone call, sighed, and then nearly dumped the contents of his coffee cup over the files covering his desk as he reached for a pen.

  "Looks like you've got your hands full," I remarked.

  "That ain't the half of it. That goddamn blackout has us backlogged two weeks. We're investigating every death until we can rule out those that were heat-related." He fingered through one pile, then began on another, pulling out the file on Abramopoulos. "I thought you might be by for this. Ugly case, this one. Steak knife to the neck. Real mess."

  I'd known Mike had been stabbed. Only I hadn t known where or with what. "You wouldn't happen to have handy the list of the vouchered evidence and crime scene photos, would you?"

  "Probably. But you know I can't let you see them."

  I crossed my arms over my brown tie and grinned. "I don't think I have to remind you that you owe me."

  Tom frowned, plainly remembering the hit on a prominent Greek politician I'd helped him thwart a year ago. "I think you just did." He squinted at me. "The widow hire you?"

  I indicated she had.

  He swiveled in his chair and pulled out another file. The evidence itself had been collected by the Crime Scene Unit and was probably at the NYPD lab waiting to be tested. After that, it would be sent to the prosecutor's office, once a suspect was named. I looked over the list Tom handed me and the photos. One shot was of a steak knife, the blade coated with blood. Another showed a short-sleeved blue shirt stained with blood in a pattern I guessed was consistent with a neck wound. I squinted at the third shot.

  "The knife was still in the side of his neck." Tom tapped a spot near his left carotid artery.

  "Any idea if the attacker approached from the front or the back?"

  "Nah. Still waiting on the M.E. for that. But this guy was a fighter. Scooted at least ten feet toward the telephone on the wall before he blacked out. Hit the left carotid head on. There ain't no bigger bleeder in the body."

  I nodded, my gaze catching on a small, blood-caked item featured in the third shot. A dime had been placed next to it to indicate scale.

  "Dori t know what in the hel
l that is yet," Tom said. "Maybe after the guys scrape the blood off we'll get a better clue."

  I already had a good idea what it was.

  "What's your take on who did it?" I asked.

  "Cash register emptied, hour late. Robbery gone bad, is my best guess."

  "That's what I figured you'd say."

  I again looked through the photos that had been printed out on regular paper. Not very good detail. But with digital cameras and computers nowadays, there was very little need for hard photos, unless you wanted to make a point with a jury. Needed to know something? You used a computer to zoom in on it.

  While originally I had been reluctant to add the new technology to my inventory, in the past few years I'd become quite proficient, updating my software every year and a half or so to make sure I had the latest.

  I held up a photo. "Prints on the knife?"

  "Only those of the victim. Probably he tried to take it out. Made a real mess of things. Which is why he bled out."

  "How about footprints in the blood?"

  "Only those of the victim."

  "Was the knife clean or dirty?"

  Tom grimaced. "Do you mean, did someone use it to cut a steak or something before burying it in Abramopoulos's neck?" He shrugged. "I don't know."

  I eyed a shot of the entire diner and then handed him back the photos. "Thanks."

  "That's it?"

  "I'll be in touch," I said over my shoulder, heading for the door.

  I sat back in my office chair, staring at the notes I'd made. Was Tom right? The killing the product of a robbery gone bad? Mike was the kind to resist.

  Hermioni had provided me with a list of the staff-names and Social Security numbers; I'd checked them out. Nothing but minor traffic violations. Hermioni had also told me about a customer Mike had argued with the morning before he was killed, but she didn't have a name, so I'd have to ask around if I was to pursue that lead.