Return to Murder

by John Osipowicz

  “How old was Lulu at the time you say this was happening?”

  “Fourteen. I didn’t go in the bar that often. For all I know, she and Walt could have been going at it for quite a while before this and quite a while after. My feeling was it wasn’t with her total consent, or if it was she eventually wanted out, but Ma and Walt didn’t want that to happen. The only way to stop it was to kill both of them.”

  “Why a year apart, and on the same date?”

  “To confuse Sheriff Carbon, but maybe Larry caught on, and Lulu had to kill him also.”

  “Why would Ma do such a thing with her own daughter?”

  “I told you how Ma and Walt almost ruined by job here when I made the mistake about Ma with the church fund. They both got very nasty. How could Ma do that with Lulu, you ask? She was simply a bad person.”

  “How come you didn’t tell me this sooner, Nancy?”

  “Like you just said, I didn’t have any eyewitness proof. I thought if there was something like that going on, Larry would have discovered it. Then when he was shot and you came along I had hope about you also. But then since neither of you revealed anything like that, I thought I’d better come to you with what I knew. Maybe Larry began getting hints about this, and that’s why he was killed. So if you start talking to Lulu about it, be very careful. I don’t want you killed. Also, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell Lulu it was I who told you this. I could be the next victim.”

  CHAPTER FORTY SIX

  Nancy left. After hearing all this, Todd’s food was not digesting too well. He would have to talk to Lulu about it, and as soon as possible.

  As usual she was at the bar, basically taking care of the upstairs action. Now that Todd thought about it, how did she know all about what went on upstairs? Maybe it was through town gossip, but then why would she want to be connected to it, as a kind of managing director? She seemed very accepting of the liaisons, even though none of them had anything to do with legitimate marriage. Possibly Todd had been fooled because Lulu had always seemed to be on his side during the investigation.

  She asked him what he wanted to drink.

  “Nothing right now, Lulu. I just want to talk with you.”

  “Uh oh, that sounds bad. Actually it sounds like Ma. I knew I was in trouble when she wanted to have a conversation with me. All right let’s talk.”

  On the other side of the bar, she leaned way over to get close to where Todd was sitting. In doing do her ample breasts starting fighting their way out of her short halter-top. Todd had to look away. “That couple at the other end have their drinks,” Todd said. “There’s nothing immediate for you to do behind the bar. Come here and sit next to me.”

  “A cozy conversation. Here I come.”

  Was it Todd’s imagination, or was she now sitting on purpose so their legs were touching? He moved a couple inches away.

  “I want to ask you about Walt.”

  “Yes, I’m still sad he’s gone.”

  “I know you were friends with him.”

  “Yes, he’d let me help with the bartending even though I was really too young to even be in here. He treated me like an adult.”

  “Did your mother ever object to you being in here?”

  “Not at all. She was good friends with Walt. I was closer to him than I was to Clem, my own dad.”

  “How close were you?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Did you ever sleep with him?”

  “That’s ridiculous. He was an old codger, as old as my mom. Why would I sleep with him?”

  “Why would he give you so much responsibility around this bar?”

  “I told you. He treated me like a grown-up. Day-after-day, he showed me how to make every variety of drink. He was fun. I liked being around him. That was as far as it went. Why are you asking me these stupid questions?”

  “I have to think of every possibility that could have gotten your mom and Walt killed.”

  “I can’t believe you’re actually saying this to me. A while back you risked your life for me, and now you’re accusing me of murder? And not just murder of a complete stranger. You’re saying I could have killed my good friend and my mother. Even the thought of that is terrible. Get out of here, and don’t come in here again, at least not while I’m bartending. If I ever serve you a drink again, it’ll have a strong dose of poison in it.”

  Todd walked back out into the street. Todd knew a police investigator’s job was not to make friends, but he certainly didn’t want to make enemies either. That girl was now his enemy.

  He was now on his way to possibly make another enemy.

  At the general store porch he sat down next to Clem. The man had his usual half-asleep look, but Todd knew much was going on inside that brain.

  “Clem, I want to talk to you about your daughter.”

  “Yep.”

  “I know she was close friends with Walt Fosdick. Did you ever suspect anything intimate between them?”

  “Nope.”

  “Maybe she was sleeping with him in those upstairs rooms at the bar?”

  “Didn’t happen.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yep.”

  That was the end of the conversation with Clem.

  Of course from all reports he wasn’t too connected to his daughter’s activities. However, Todd would put faith in Clem’s ability to trust the right people. So Todd was left with this dilemma? Who was lying, Nancy or Lulu?

  Nancy certainly had reason to be angry with both Ma and Walt because of how they had treated her with her false reporting of Ma’s embezzlement. To Todd both people could be innocent of any wrong doing, but then who the heck had done the killings?

  He spent most of the night not hearing the TV as he kept thinking about Calypso and his case. He decided that since this had all started with Billy Jessup’s murder back in Philly, maybe the answer was there and not in Calypso. Possibly the Calypso killings were totally separate from Billy’s murder, or if there was some connection he would find it back where it had all begun. In the morning he was heading back to the City of Brotherly Love to look for a murderer.

  Before he went to sleep that night he looked back over his first notes on Jessup’s killing. There was one notation that he had passed completely over. Three months before Billy’s death, he had gotten into a bar fight, after which time he was jailed after also trying to punch out the intervening officer. Todd had the name of that officer, Scott Cecil, but he had made no attempt to check further into the incident. Whom had Billy gotten into a fight with, and how had his jail time gone? Possibly his opponent in the fight didn’t easily forget that incident, and also in prison people can make enemies. Todd hadn’t even checked to see what the fight was about.

  Todd had gotten sidetracked by this whole Calypso thing and had not followed up. He would go back to Philly and dig into those areas he had neglected.

  Speaking of liking a pattern, Todd was happy to see Ben Franklin on the top of City Hall again, and also driving past the familiar Independence Hall he now felt he was home at last, even if it would be in a basement apartment with his wonderful view of people’s shoes as they walked by.

  Scott Cecil worked in a different district than Todd. It was a poorer area where robberies and murders were more prevalent than in the neighborhoods Todd covered. However, it was closer to the actual area where Billy was murdered, so the killer might have come out of there.

  Cecil might have been in his early forties, but he looked older. Either the job or life itself had worn him out. The face was impassive, no smile, and no reaction at all when Todd introduced himself. It was like he had seen every crime there was to see, and in the next few years he would see more of it. His eyes had no hopeful alertness to them. Would Todd soon become this way? After all, Todd had been on the job only seven years; in fifteen more years would he look the same way as Cecil?

  “Yeah, I remember that bar brawl,” Cecil said. It was a real fight, not a couple of oafs swing
ing at one another. When I came, patrons told me the fight had been going for five minutes. Both guys were bloody. When I stepped between them, they didn’t stop; they pushed me aside and kept punching. The smaller guy, I guess that was Jessup finally hit the guy with a left hook to the jaw. Everyone in the bar heard the sound of it. The fight was over. When I went to talk to Jessup he took a swing at me. That was it—he was under arrest.”

  “Who was the other guy?”

  Oddly enough he was a professional fighter: Giardello was his name. Paddy Giardello. A local kid, had fourteen fights, won them all. I guess this was his first defeat. That must have really burnt him up, beating people in the ring and then losing in a bar fight to a guy who frankly looked a little wimpy. I guess he got in a good punch.”

  “What started the fight?”

  “I don’t know. I just wanted to get the guys out of there. I didn’t arrest Giardello. I figured it was bad enough that he lost the fight. Then when he was in jail, Jessup got into it with another inmate. There were a bunch of arrests for robberies that week, and so they were moving the assaults to some of the back cells when Jessup jumps this guy and starts whaling the tar out of him. I guess during the three days the two were in there they were yelling things back and forth. I don’t know exactly because I was back out on the street. Stavros was there at the jail that night. He’s over at the far desk. Talk to him.”

  Stavros was a young kid, maybe in his early twenties at the most. He had a slanted forehead that must have produced a waterfall when it rained. Fat lips and a thick neck were prominent. The rest of him was skinny.

  “It was weird with Jessup,” Stavros said. “I didn’t think he knew the other guy in the cell across from him, but suddenly he began yelling obscenities at him. Jessup had been in his cell for only fifteen minutes. I started to listen to what both of them were saying, and they did know each other. The other guy was Ronkowski; we always called him Ronnie. His first name is on file, but I never knew it. He’s in there a lot for drunk and disorderly.”

  “What was the problem between them?”

  “Jessup accused Ronkowski of slashing the tires of his work-truck, some kind of delivery van. Ronkowski said he didn’t do it, and for Jessup to mind his own business. What followed was a half hour of profanity. I finally told them to zip the lip so I could get some reports done. Ronkowski was released a day ahead of Jessup. When he left he said now he was going to find that van and slash the tires for the first time. Both people suddenly seemed to hate each other for no reason.”

  Todd called the bar where Jessup’s fight had taken place. There was a girl bartender who answered. She had just come on at noon she said. She remembered that fight. “It was my sixth night in a row working nights, and I was plenty pissed. They told me I wouldn’t be working nights at all. Anyway, close to eleven, in comes Giardello. We all knew him; he stopped in often. I don’t think he ever trained for a fight. That night, people were asking him about his last fight which was a knockout. Suddenly this other guy out of nowhere says, ‘So you’re a tough guy? I bet you couldn’t knock me out.’ At first Paddy ignored him, but the guy kept pushing it, so Paddy says, ‘All right, let’s fight eight here.’ We were waiting for Paddy clobber him. Paddy threw the first punch, but this other guy—I guess Jessup was his name—ducked it easily and gave Paddy a couple hard thrusts the stomach. Paddy wasn’t ready for it, and it knocked the wind out of him. Then they really went at it. It was like watching a real fight on TV. I think Paddy had been drinking somewhere else because eventually he got a little unsteady on his feet. Jessup got in a hard punch, and that was it. The cop who came had trouble taking Jessup into custody. He was still in a fighting mood and tried to hit the officer but he missed.”

  “Had you seen that Jessup fellow before that night?”

  “Not at all. To my knowledge that was the first night he was ever in the bar. To me, Jessup was angry at something else and was taking it out on Paddy.”

  Ronkowski’s occupation—it turned out Ron was his first name—his occupation was listed on the police blotter as bus driver. Todd called the bus garage. The dispatcher there told him that Ronkowski was finishing his shift in two hours. He would bring the bus back to the garage before he left for home.

  In the meanwhile Todd would check on Paddy Giardello whom Stavros said was probably at Grogan’s gym on the near North side.

  It was three divided rooms, one with a boxing ring, another with a workout section and a third with a set pf bleachers to watch. The workout area had two heavy bags, three punching bags and a mat for weight lifting. Giardello was pointed out to Todd, with his first impression being that Billy must have gotten in a lucky punch because this man was punishing the heavy bag, and then did ten minutes of skipping rope. After all that, he wasn’t breathing hard at all.

  Todd stepped toward him. “If I might interrupt you?”

  “Only for a minute. I gotta keep up my workout. Big fight tomorrow.”

  “It’s about that bar fight you got into a few months ago. I hate to remind you, but you got knocked out.”

  “Yeah, that wasn’t my finest moment. Some punk slipped one past me.”

  “What do you think caused the fight?”

  “He caused it, the other guy. He didn’t even know me but suddenly started to harass me. He seemed angry at something else and just wanted someone to take it out on. It wasn’t that he was drunk. He just wanted to get rid of that anger.”

  “It must have been pretty humiliating to lose to the guy.”

  “I was embarrassed. I have a lot of fans in that bar”

  “So you eventually found this guy and showed him what it meant to embarrass you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That guy—Billy Jessup—was shot to death not long after your bar-fight with him. I think you could have stalked him and then caught him at an unguarded moment?”

  “I didn’t have to because I got him back a day later.”

  Now it was Todd who didn’t understand. “A day later?”

  “I happened to see the bloke on the street the next afternoon. I walked right up to him and punched him in the mouth. There, we’re even, I said to him. He lay there rubbing his jaw, and then gave me a thumbs up. That was the last time I saw him.”

  “Did anyone witness that punch?”

  “There were a bunch of people on the sidewalk but no one that I knew.”

  “Where did it happen?”

  “On Market Street, close to City Hall.”

  It was almost time for Ron Ronkowski to return that bus and get off his shift. Todd got thee in fifteen minutes and the dispatcher pointed out the man. Ronkowski was closer to Jessup’s size, but Billy was never gifted himself with the Mohawk haircut Ron had, or the tattoo on his arm of a Pelican.

  To make conversation Todd asked him about the tattoo. “Why a Pelican?”

  “I like Pelicans.”

  This fake-friendliness wasn’t going very far, so Todd told Ronkowski why he was there.

  “You’re correct, sometimes I do get into jail for a little too much alcohol. I never drink on the job. Don’t you go and get me fired.”

  “No, this has nothing to do with being fired. While you were in jail you had an altercation with a Billy Jessup about one of his delivery vans.”

  “I never knew the dude’s name. We were getting our cells transferred and suddenly the dude jumps on me, saying I’d slashed the tires on work vehicle.”

  “I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, but then he said he saw me near it when he looked about the window at five A.M. during one of his toilet calls.”

  “Were you there?”

  “All I know is that I was near there. I guess maybe I could have walked by that van. My girlfriend and I had broken up, and I was out walking it off. We’d been together for four years. I think the guy picked me because I was the only one he saw near his van. He seemed very angry to me. It seemed to be about something beyond that van, but he never explained it
. He was disturbed about something else.”

  “That man was shot and killed a couple weeks after that. Maybe it was you retaliating for the jailhouse attack.”

  “The guy had problems. I didn’t want to kill him; I wanted to get help for him. I think he was sincerely bothered by the tire slashing. I got the impression it did happen, and it was something beyond an ordinary kid wandering the streets thinking it would fun to cause some harm. I think the slashing meant something personal to the guy. He was bothered about it down to his core. It wasn’t simply about the work-truck. The tire slashing meant something else was wrong, but I wasn’t about to psychoanalyze a guy who had just jumped on me.”

  Ronkowski gave Todd his old girlfriend’s phone number. Todd’s call verified that she had broken up with Ron earlier that morning closer to three A.M. “But if you see him again, tell him to call,” were her final words to Todd.

  Later that afternoon Todd got to talk to the mayor’s safety director who honored his request to look at the tapes of two video cameras positioned down Market Street. Both of them, from different angles, showed Paddy walking up to Billy and sending him to the ground with one punch. Paddy’s story was verified.

  Todd was left, not with two additional suspects, but the fact that both of them said Billy was very angry about something, and it seemed personal. Todd believed them, but he couldn’t cross-reference their information with any facts he knew about Billy’s life.

  Possibly it all had to do with Billy’s transport company, WE-PACK. Todd was back to that idea because late that night he received a call from Merry Krismas, who now owned the company.

  “When you texted me that you were back in town, I was too busy at work to respond,” she said. But last night something happened, and now I need your detective expertise again.”

  “What happened?”