The Fitzgerald Ruse

by Mark de Castrique

  “Follow me, Sam. We’ll check Amanda first and then you tell me anything that’s missing or out of place.” He stepped inside. “You can hit the lights.”

  I switched on the overheads, and this time Amanda looked even more frail and broken on the floor.

  Newland halted. “Poor girl.” He squared his shoulders and knelt beside her. “No sign of blood. No sign of a struggle. It’s like she dropped from a gallows and was hanged by invisible rope.”

  “If she’d been headed into my office, someone could have come out of Nakayla’s and surprised her from behind.” I walked back to Nakayla’s open door. “The drawers are pulled from her desk.”

  “Anything taken?” Newland asked.

  “Nothing to take. The drawers just held supplies. We only moved in yesterday.”

  “What about computers?”

  “The laptop and new printer are there.” I crossed the reception area and edged around Newland where he still knelt by Amanda’s body.

  My desk drawers were also pulled out. Printer paper, empty hanging files, and paper clips littered the floor. Like Nakayla’s, my laptop was still docked with its desktop monitor and connected to a full-sized keyboard.

  “I see only one thing missing,” I said.

  Newland’s face snapped up, his brown eyes quizzing me. “What’s that?”

  “A lockbox I was holding for a client.”

  He scrambled to his feet and walked around my office, careful not to step on the items on the floor. “Where was it?” He searched as if the location should be obvious.

  “Tucked behind my chair. It was hidden in a Staples bag. Nakayla and I went to dinner and it seemed better to have it locked in the office rather than leave it in the car. I’d come back to pick it up.”

  “You don’t have a safe?”

  “Not yet. Till this afternoon I didn’t have a client.”

  Newland put his pen to his notepad. “Who’s the client? And don’t give me that crap about confidentiality. This is a murder case, not some philandering husband dipping his wick all over town.”

  “Ethel Barkley. You know her?”

  “I don’t think so. What’s in the lockbox?”

  I shrugged. “I haven’t a clue. My job was to bring it to her.”

  “Where can I find her?”

  “Golden Oaks in Arden. She’s ninety and not going anywhere. In fact, she’s in their infirmary. That’s why I couldn’t deliver the box tonight.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Wachovia down on Patton. Check with Ross Tennant. He’s the manager.”

  Newland kept his eyes focused on his pad and continued writing. “Describe it.”

  “Gray metal. Kinda beat up. About a foot and a half long. I’d guess ten inches high and wide. Internal locking mechanism with a release button.”

  “You try it?”

  “Yeah. It was locked. Ethel Barkley must have the key.”

  Newland tapped his pen on his pad impatiently. “Who else knew the lockbox was here?”

  I repeated the list Nakayla and I’d discussed earlier.

  After Newland jotted down the names, he asked, “The old lady tell anyone else at the retirement center what you were fetching?”

  “I don’t think so. She’s very secretive. She might not be totally connected to reality.”

  Newland flipped his pad closed. “And we don’t know whether her lockbox was the target of the break-in. Every drawer was still pulled out.”

  “Maybe the search was for the key,” I said. “Or Amanda could have come in, been killed, and the bag with the lockbox was the easiest and quickest thing to take.”

  “What do you think?”

  I shook my head. “I think we’d better turn up some hard evidence. The only thing we know is it wasn’t a break-in.”

  “Maybe someone forced Amanda to open the door.” Newland looked down at the dead woman. Reinforcements had arrived and mobile crime lab techs began dusting and lifting prints. Two men gently rolled Amanda’s body over.

  “Here’s something under her,” one of the techs said. His gloved hand pinched a black circle about the size of a nickel. “A button.” He passed it over to Newland.

  The detective knelt again and studied Amanda’s uniform. “Definitely not off her clothing. Does it belong to you or Nakayla?”

  I examined the button. Hard plastic with four thread holes. It was too big for a shirt button unless it came from outdoor wear like one of those flannel or wool shirts that adds an extra layer without the heavier weight of a jacket.

  “I don’t recognize it,” I said. “Better show it to Nakayla.”

  “Drop it in an evidence bag,” Newland said. “Where is Nakayla?”

  “She was in Donaldson’s office keeping an eye on the paralegal.”

  Newland smiled. “Smart move. Your idea?”

  “Hers.”

  His smile broadened. “Can’t hide homegrown talent. Well, I won’t keep you two any longer than necessary. Have Nakayla look at the button. Then each of you come to the department and write up a statement.”

  “One other thing.” I motioned for him to step back into my office where we’d have more privacy.

  “What?” he asked.

  “In addition to the lock, the stolen box had a lead seal covering the seam of the lid with the imprint of a swastika.”

  Newland’s notepad flipped open so fast I felt a breeze across my face. “I’ll need to talk to your client right away.”

  “She’s supposed to be released to her room in the morning. Okay if I tell her you’re coming? I’d like to explain why. And I don’t think bringing her to the station straight from the infirmary is a good idea.”

  “All right. We’ll go there about eight-thirty tomorrow. I don’t want to sit on our best lead.”

  “Fine,” I said, but like the smart little pig battling the big, bad wolf, I hoped to get to Ethel Barkley an hour earlier.

  It was nearly ten-thirty when I drove the CR-V into the rear parking lot of my apartment building. The back of the once grand Kenilworth Inn offered the quickest entry for residents. I parked along the dark edge of the lot and walked through drizzling rain across the asphalt, dodging puddles of water that had collected in the pavement’s depressions. A fast-moving line of thunderstorms had dumped an inch or two of rain while Nakayla and I’d been finishing up at police headquarters.

  We’d submitted our signed statements, and then I’d had the unfortunate task of phoning Nathan Armitage to tell him of his employee’s death. Right now, he and the Newland twins were making a personal visit to Amanda’s mother and quadriplegic husband, and as tough as the evening had been for me, carrying such bad news to a family already burdened with tragedy would be far worse.

  The Kenilworth Inn sat like a royal castle atop the knoll of a mountain. I looked up at the random pattern of rectangles created by the lighted windows of those fellow tenants who were still awake. The slope of the land meant I had to climb a flight of exterior stairs to reach the ground floor, but I’d found the ascent less exerting than walking across the expansive lawn from the front parking spaces.

  As I reached the hand railing, a featureless silhouette moved in the murky shadows of the bordering shrubbery.

  A gruff voice whispered, “Blackman. Another step and you’re a dead man.”

  I froze, my blood chilled more by the sound of my name than the threat. This was no random mugging. Someone had lain in wait for me.

  “Hands out to your side. Now!”

  I snapped my arms at right angles, wishing they were wings.

  “Turn away from me.”

  I pivoted to face the parking lot. The rustle of leaves signaled that my assailant came closer.

  “Take a step back and then lace your fingers behind your head.”

  I used my good leg to test the soft ground, but my prosthetic foot snagged on an exposed root and I struggled to keep my balance.

  “Easy. Keep it nice and slow.”

  He
had ordered me into the shadows where the spill light couldn’t penetrate. If he meant to shoot me, I didn’t understand why he hadn’t pulled the trigger as I started up the stairs.

  “What did you do with it?” The voice was so close to my ear I could feel hot breath on my neck.

  “Do with what?” I asked.

  The cold steel of a pistol pressed against the back of my skull.

  “Don’t be cute. You got it out. We want it back. Or the cash. Or the account numbers.”

  “The lockbox was stolen,” I said.

  “What’s in the account?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said. “Somebody broke into my office and stole the lockbox. End of story.”

  The gun muzzle pressed harder against me. “No. The end of the story will come if you don’t give us back what you took from us.”

  “Tell your Nazi friends I don’t have it!”

  Across the parking lot, a pair of headlights flared and an engine revved to life.

  “Damn it,” muttered the man behind me.

  I stiffened, expecting the pistol to fire at point-blank range. Instead, a fist smashed into the small of my back and pain seared through my kidney. A thrust against my shoulders propelled me over the curb and sent me sprawling onto the asphalt. As my face scraped the pocked surface, I managed to look back and see a man in a black shirt and pants running for the woods. Then beams swept across me and a car squealed to a stop a few yards from my head.

  I twisted around and squinted against the glare of the headlights. The vehicle’s door opened and the driver stepped out.

  “Well, Chief, you just gonna lay there, or you gonna invite me in for a drink.”

  Chapter Seven

  “And then when you didn’t go up the stairs I got suspicious.” Calvin Stuart swirled the ice in his glass of scotch. “Nice to be the cavalry to the rescue for once.”

  He sat across from me at my dining table and stared at his large, black hands. They gripped the glass tighter and for a second I feared Calvin would break it. Through gritted teeth, he said, “I should have been there for you at the checkpoint.”

  “And what? Gotten killed? We could have had ten more guys there and the outcome would have been the same. They had Iraqi uniforms and came close enough to make us sitting ducks for the first rocket grenades.”

  Warrant Officer Calvin Stuart had been part of my team. I knew he felt guilty that he’d been in the infirmary the morning we’d been hit. But if I’d had a choice between him being with me then or being with me tonight, the present beat the past.

  I reached out and grabbed his wrist. “Cal, you were here when it counted.”

  He nodded, took a deep swallow of scotch, and leaned back. “And I told you to watch your back.”

  “That you did.” I shifted in my chair and winced. My back hurt like hell.

  “You sure you don’t want me to take you to the ER?”

  “I’m fine. I’m more interested in how you wound up in my parking lot at ten-thirty.”

  Calvin rose, as if what he had to say couldn’t be expressed unless he was in motion. He stood a good six inches taller than me, nearly six-four, and though we were both in our early thirties and had enlisted in the U.S. Army out of high school, Calvin came late to the Criminal Investigation Detachment. He’d transferred about a year ago from prison administration duties, even though it extended his Iraqi tour. He’d told me he’d been fortunate not to be tied to any of the abuse scandals, but the taint of those gross injustices was spreading from the guilty to the innocent. Calvin saw no future down that military career path. I’d found him to be a good soldier, if not a little cocky. But he’d always deferred to my judgment, and jokingly accepted his subordinate role. In short, I liked the guy.

  “The Ali Baba case,” he said. “I called you because I picked up a tail here in the states.”

  “You’re on leave?”

  “Such as it is. Six weeks. I’m a rotation statistic so the Pentagon can claim they’re not keeping personnel in Iraq too long. Of course, I’ll head right back.”

  “Who’s following you?”

  He stopped pacing and grabbed the back of his chair. “Who do you think, Chief? If the swill’s got the connections to smuggle booty out of Iraq, they can certainly find me in Paterson, New Jersey.”

  “That’s where you were?”

  Calvin started pacing again. “At my grandmother’s. I noticed this guy parked down the block. Even though I’ve been out of the hood for years, some things never change. You sense when someone’s not where he’s supposed to be.”

  “You confront him?”

  Calvin looked at me like I’d grown an extra ear. “And do what? Let him know I made him so he could shoot me down in the street? Man, I was packed and out the back door so fast I’d covered twenty yards between saying good and bye to Granny.”

  “Is that when you called me?”

  “No. This was last Saturday. Monday my grandmother phoned nearly in hysterics.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “I guess it was. Seems longer. Granny found her cat on the stoop, dead with a noose around its neck. She read me the note: ‘Tell your big buck and Blackman to return what’s ours or they’re next.’ I told Granny to catch the next bus to Philly where she can stay with her sister and not to leave till I said so.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Calvin whipped the hard-backed chair around and straddled it. “They think we plundered their cache. The one you were headed for when you were ambushed.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because three days later when my runs had stopped and I could walk without shitting myself, we went after it. Charlie and Ed were dead, and you’d been flown stateside, so I led some MPs to the site hoping to catch the bastards. That storage shed behind the contractor’s motor pool was empty.”

  We’d tagged some ex-Blackwater men as possible actors in the Ali Baba operation and traced them to a construction company who’d hired them for private security. A tip had told us about the storage shed.

  “What about the suspects?”

  “Gone. Disappeared like a desert mirage. But one local laborer said he saw them the night after you were attacked. Screaming, cussing, guns drawn. He hid because he didn’t know what they were going to do.”

  “How many?”

  “He said three. We’d pegged two, Lucas and Hernandez, but it stands to reason there would be a third, either working higher or lower. We know Lucas and Hernandez are fired Blackwater employees and working independent.”

  “Did the laborer understand what they were saying?”

  “Not really. He spoke very poor English. I was questioning him through an interpreter. He said someone had ripped them off.”

  “Who?”

  The tension in Calvin’s face eased into a cold smile. “The informant pointed at me. ‘Black man,’ he said. I understood those words well enough.”

  “They thought you robbed them?”

  Calvin gave a humorless laugh. “Oh, the MPs jumped on that all right. The interpreter got him to explain that he didn’t mean me, but someone like me. He thought they were accusing a black guy.”

  “That description doesn’t help much.”

  “No,” Calvin agreed. “Uncle Sam’s definitely an equal opportunity employer. But what if the words they’d been screaming hadn’t been black man but Blackman? You, Chief—the guy they knew was onto them. The guy I think they tried to kill earlier.”

  I wasn’t buying it. “We were attacked by insurgents.”

  Calvin raised his hands, palms out as if pushing me into reconsidering. “Maybe. Maybe not. We must have been getting close to cracking the case. You think our perps couldn’t have paid for a hit? Hell, they could easily get freelancers from a militia or even a legit Iraqi unit if the price was right.”

  I felt weak. A cold numbness grew in my belly. If what Calvin said was true, then the Iraqi insurgents in stolen uniforms who’d attacked
the checkpoint had been targeting us. The men weren’t on a random assault. They were hired assassins. Hired by Americans. And they’d killed Charlie Grigg and Ed Cuomo, two of my best buddies, and left me walking on a mechanical leg.

  Calvin got up and poured more scotch from the bottle on my kitchen counter. “This guy who jumped you, did he say anything?”

  “He accused me of taking something. Cash, I guess. He wanted the cash or the account numbers.”

  “What account numbers?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.”

  Calvin leaned against the counter, towering over me. Although he wore black jeans and a dark green golf shirt, his military bearing wasn’t disguised. “Look, Chief, here’s the way I see it. We got a tip on the storage shed. It sounded reasonable because the two guys we’re onto perform private security for the construction company.”

  “The tip was your source,” I reminded him.

  “Yeah, and the little worm had been reliable since his prison days.” Calvin shook his head. “But I think he conned me this time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Someone knew we were going to search that shed and he emptied it. But I don’t think that fact was shared with everyone in Ali Baba. While you were being taken out at the checkpoint, the loot was being moved. The attack on us was a ruse to give someone cover. Why move it if we were never supposed to get near it?”

  “Aren’t you arguing against your own theory? They got wind of our investigation, relocated their cache, and then we had the bad luck to be at the wrong place at the wrong time when the insurgents attacked.”

  “Okay, Chief. Then why does my witness see our suspects raising holy hell at the storage shed? Why’s my grandmother got cat food she no longer needs? Why are you going to be pissing red for a week while your kidney heals?”

  I felt sure Ethel Barkley’s lockbox was the reason I’d been jumped, but I didn’t have an answer for Calvin’s other two questions. I saw the logic of his theory. “So, someone in the conspiracy betrays his partners and says we did it. We stole from the thieves before our official search of the premises.”