TURTLE DOVE (Alton Rhode Mysteries Book 7)

by Lawrence de Maria

  “I didn’t think Vocci was your biggest fan,” Arman said.

  “We get along better now, even though he commented that a stretch on a North Carolina chain gang might do me a world of good. But he mellowed toward me after we all pulled his boss’s chestnuts out of the fire in the Denton case.”

  “Sullivan would still put me away if he could.”

  “That’s just professional courtesy, Arman. He’s still the D.A. You’d get a fair shake. Anyway, I told Mike he didn’t owe us anything. That Denton debacle was personal, and you know it.”

  “It’s moot. He’ll never get anything on me.

  There was a knock on the door, and a beautiful young woman, fully clothed, entered. She was holding a platter of food, which she set on the table between us, along with small plates, forks and napkins.

  “Thank you, Galina,” Arman said, and she left.

  “Russian appetizers,” he explained. “Every now and then I need some home cooking.”

  “You were born here,” I said. “You’re more American than I am.”

  “Eat up,” he said, smiling. “It goes well with vodka.”

  “Everything goes well with vodka,” Kalugin observed.

  The platter was piled with marinated herring and black bread, caviar on toast, fried meats, salami with Russian bread and butter, roasted potatoes and something I could not identify.” I pointed to it. “What is that?”

  “Fermented cabbage,” Kalugin said. “A delicacy.”

  I’d had enough vodka to try anything, so I filled my plate. Everything was delicious, even the cabbage.

  “The Nidus woman’s lawyers will try to paint the old actress as an accomplice, to discredit her testimony,” Arman said.

  “Or as a mental defective,” Kalugin said, piling more fermented cabbage on my plate. “Eat up. It is good for the hangover you will have.”

  “The prosecution will have the recording I made on the boat,” I said.

  “It’s lucky the bastard Vole died,” Kalugin observed. “He surely would have taken back what he said.”

  “Maks is right,” Arman said. “After all, the recording was made under duress. Even now, the defense will argue, quite reasonably I might add, that a man will say anything when sharks are about to eat him.”

  I took another swig of vodka.

  “I knew that. I may have neglected to tell the cops that Vole was about to get chomped when he confessed. They think my hands were free the whole time I was on the boat and I secretly managed to turn on my phone. I told them he was bragging. They think he fell overboard in the struggle and I made a valiant effort to save him.”

  “And you didn’t.”

  I finished my glass of vodka and poured more shots all around. Then I told them how I loosened the drag on the reel and let Vole float back to his death. I wasn’t worried about the place being bugged. The Rahms had the best anti-surveillance people in the state on their payroll. The room we were in was swept daily.

  “How did you finally get him into the boat?” Rahm asked quietly, when I finished.

  “I gaffed him. He was pretty light by then.”

  Arman shook his head. Even Kalugin looked shocked.

  “Mater Bozhya,” he said. “I think you have been hanging around with us too much.” He leaned forward and looked hard at me. “You did not tell Alice this, did you?”

  Kalugin always worried about her.

  “Of course not. But she is still upset about the whole thing. Anna’s death, of course. She insisted on calling the kid’s brother. I was glad of that. I didn’t really have the heart for it.”

  “You don’t deserve her,” Kalugin said.

  “Tell me about it. Alice was also disturbed about what happened to the real Ashleigh Harper, who should have been remembered for her great book, and not her brutal murder and this literary scandal. She was a wonderful writer and to sully her reputation by publishing material she didn't want to see the light of day is a tragedy in itself. It is more than fraud. It is a mockery of everything the woman stood for. To Bury a Turtle Dove is part of the national conscience. Young people embraced its environmental message.”

  The vodka had loosened my tongue. I was waxing poetic. I waited for one of the others to tease me. Instead, Kalugin started singing, in a deep, sonorous voice:

  Ya plachu ne za golubyami,

  Yya plachu za nas.

  Moi slezy polivat' zemlyu,

  Iz kotoroy ikh molodoy nikogda ne letat' besplatno.

  Arman and I both stared at him, and he translated the song for my benefit:

  I weep not for the doves,

  I weep for us.

  My tears water the earth,

  From which their young will never fly free.

  “Those are the most famous lines in To Bury a Turtle Dove,” I marveled. “The one the young girl says when she sees what the developers did to the nesting ground she loved to visit.”

  “A good book,” Kalugin said. “It was translated into Russian and was required reading for my Guards division in Afghanistan. We turned those lines into a song. It proved you Americans were raping and polluting the planet.”

  “I need more vodka,” I said, trying to picture Maks Kalugin sitting on a tank reading To Bury a Turtle Dove. “I bet it was a best seller in Chernobyl.”

  Kalugin grunted in appreciation at my jibe. Arman laughed and poured us all drinks, and we sat there in silence for a while.

  “It was the watch,” I finally said. “When those sharks were closing in on Vole all I could think of was that little Disney watch on Anna’s little arm.”

  “Rotten bastard,” Kalugin said.

  THE END

  If you’ve enjoyed this novel, we hope you will drop a review on Amazon. Here is a handy link:

  TURTLE DOVE

  ***

  Alton Rhode met Laurene Robillard in the first of this series, CAPRIATI’S BLOOD. This is an excerpt:

  PROLOGUE

  “They look smaller than the last bunch.”

  “You’ll get more in the box,” the elderly woman working the counter said. “Same price. You can’t beat it.”

  “They taste the same?”

  “If anything, they are sweeter.” She pointed to a stand a few feet away. “We have some free samples cut up over there. Try them.”

  The man looked over at the table and saw that some flies hadn’t needed an invitation.

  “I’ll take your word for it.” His mother probably wouldn’t know the difference. At least that was what he’d been told. The information had eased his conscience. Why risk a visit to someone who wouldn’t even recognize her own son? But perhaps the occasional – and anonymous – gifts would soon be unnecessary. But just the thought of what he was going to do sent rivulets of sweat down the man’s sides. “What do I owe you?”

  “It comes to $34.95, shipping included east of the Mississippi.”

  Prices were going up on everything.

  “Where’s it going?”

  The customer recited the address. Three times. Like everyone else in the goddamn town, the clerk was a few years past her expiration date. That was one reason he was about to take the biggest risk of his life.

  “Want to include a card?”

  “No.”

  “What’s the return address?”

  “If it doesn’t get there,” he said, smiling. “I don’t want them back.”

  “I know, but we can apply a refund to your account.”

  “I don’t have an account.”

  “It would be credited to your card. We take them all. American Express, MasterCard, Visa, Discover. Debit cards, too.”

  “I’m paying cash, don’t worry about it.”

  “Well, if you give us your address, phone number and email, we can contact you.”

  He wanted to throttle the old crone. But long ago, for safety’s sake, the man learned not to make a scene.

  “No, thanks.”

  “We send out emails about our specials. People love them.”
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  He took a deep breath and forced another smile. Then he pulled out his wallet and handed the woman $40.

  “Just send the box. Keep the change.”

  ***

  It took the man an hour and a half to drive to Fort Lauderdale and settle in at the rundown motel off Dixie Highway straight out of the 1980’s and run by a couple of Russians, which he thought was ironic considering what he was about to do. He registered using one of the many phony I.D.’s he’d collected over the years. They’d wanted a credit card at the desk “for incidentals,” which from the look of the place might include pest control, but the extra hundred bucks he gave them along with the room charge he prepaid shut the Russkies up. They assumed he just wanted to get laid and didn’t want to leave a paper trail. They were half right.

  The call he planned to make on the room phone wasn’t going to cost a hundred bucks. It would be short, sweet and to the point. A previous call, made a few days earlier from a similar dump in Sarasota, had insured that the lawyer would be in at 4 P.M. to take his call. The lawyer’s secretary was a dim bulb but the mention that he had important information about the lawyer’s main client finally sealed the deal.

  The man looked at his watch. An hour to go. There was a bar across the street from the motel. He walked across and had three stiff bourbons. The last one barely managed to stop the tremor in his hand. One of the rummies sitting on a nearby stool smiled in commiseration. He pegs me as an alky like him, the man thought. He doesn’t know I’m just scared shitless.

  ***

  “It’s that call you’ve been expecting, Mr. Rosenberg.”

  Samuel Rosenberg’s secretary stood in the doorway to his office and could have announced the arrival of the Messiah with less fanfare. She was all of 22 and proof to him that the New York City public education system had gone into the toilet. He had tried to get her to use his first name and the phone intercom, with no luck on either.

  Rosenberg sighed. She had only recently mastered the basic legal forms he rarely produced. His previous secretary was canned for running her mouth in the wrong places and the lawyer decided that if he had to choose between stupid and indiscreet, stupid was the way to go.

  “Thank you, Francine,” he said. “That’s a fetching outfit you are wearing today.”

  She smiled and twirled away. Her clothes were still terrible, he knew, but at least they now covered her midriff. That was one battle won.

  “This is Samuel Rosenberg,” he said into the phone. He looked at the calendar on his desk for the name. “What can I do for you, er, Mr. Wagner?”He put his feet up on his desk and rocked back in his chair. “You mentioned something about one of my clients. I have many. Can you be more specific.”

  “Quit dicking around, counselor. You don’t want me to be specific. We both know who we’re talking about. I want you to be an intermediary between us. I have a proposal, a trade.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I know who killed Fred Jarvis.”

  Rosenberg’s feet came off the desk as he sat up. Like every attorney on Staten Island, he remembered the unsolved killing. Jarvis was a piece of crap, a crook, but a lawyer nonetheless. If crooked lawyers became targets on Staten Island, who was safe?

  “If it wasn’t you,” Rosenberg said coldly, “then I suggest you contact the police. If you need representation, I can suggest someone. What does this have to do with my client?”

  “You’re client was with me. He saw everything, too.”

  Jesus H. Christ. He reached for a pad and noted the time, just because he felt he had to do something. He looked at the caller I.D. It said “Unknown Number.”

  “I thought that might get your attention. I guess he forgot to mention it. We were young, and just along for the ride, so to speak. Even so, we might have been implicated as accessories. Not that we were inclined to say anything back then. We were all just one happy family. But things have changed. I read the papers. He’s got a shitpot of reasons why he’d want the murder solved now, capische? He would probably love to blow the whistle, but can’t, not without corroboration. So, here’s the deal.”

  After the man finished speaking, Rosenberg said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “It won’t be easy, pal, there is a slight problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your client wants to kill me.”

  ***

  A half hour later Rosenberg pulled into the Crooke’s Point Marina in Great Kills Harbor. Not for the first time he reflected that, considering who owned many of the boats docked there, the “e” could have been dropped from the marina’s name.

  Nando Carlucci was standing on the bridge of a Grady White whose engine was just then rumbling to life. Rosenberg climbed aboard clumsily. He didn’t like boats, or fishing. But it was hard to bug a boat, especially when his client belonged to a boat club that allowed him the use of dozens of crafts of varying sizes on short notice. At least the Grady White was big enough to have an interior cabin. It really was cold. Ten minutes later he and Carlucci, the grossly overweight head of Staten Island’s last remaining Italian crime family, were cruising a half mile offshore, far from any possible listening devices aimed their way. Yes, thank God for the Grady, Rosenbrg thought. Nando in anything smaller was an invitation to capsize.

  “So, what the fuck is so urgent?”

  The lawyer told him. Carlucci stared at him for a full minute.

  “I can’t believe the balls on the guy. After what he did to me. He’s right, I’ll kill him. What did he call himself?”

  “Said his name was Wagner.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  When Carlucci calmed down, he said, “What does he want?”

  Rosenberg braced himself for another tirade.

  “One million dollars and a head start after the trial.”

  Carlucci erupted again, flinging charts and ashtrays around the cabin. When he stopped, he said, “What do you think? Can you swing the deal?”

  “I think so. It would be a feather in the D.A.’s cap. Can you swing the million?”

  “Yeah, but tell him some of it has to be in jewelry, mostly diamonds.”

  Rosenberg didn’t want to know where the jewelry was coming from. There had been a rash of burglaries in some of the borough’s most upscale neighborhoods over the past few months. The cops were stumped, since some of the homes had state-of-the-art alarm systems. But the burglars vanished before the response cars arrived on the scene.

  ***

  Wary at first, the D.A. and his assistants had grown more interested and animated as Carlucci and his lawyer outlined his plan in more detail during several secret meetings.

  “We insist on full immunity for Mr. Carlucci,” Rosenberg said, “as well as for the corroborating witness.”

  That had been the sticking point during the weeks of negotiations. The D.A. and his subordinates loathed Nando Carlucci. The idea of letting the fat mobster off the hook for a murder was repugnant to them.

  “But you still won’t tell us who this alleged witness is,” one of the A.D.A’s said.

  “You don’t have to know that now,” Rosenberg said. “You have nothing to lose. We’re the ones who have to produce. Mr. Carlucci wants to do his civic duty and clear his conscience, even though he was but an innocent bystander in the lamentable affair.”

  In the end, the D.A. went along with it.

  “We’ll get Carlucci eventually,” he said after the meeting. “One big fish at a time.”

  As they drove away from the D.A.’s office, Rosenberg said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Nando. This is a big risk. Opens up a can of worms. He’d better produce.”

  “Don’t you worry, counselor. He’ll produce. He wants it bad.”

  “It’s not just you, Nando. I’ve got my reputation to think of. My name will be anathema with the D.A. if we stiff him on this.”

  Carlucci looked at his lawyer with ill-concealed contempt.

  “Your fuckin’ name is an enema. You got
no reputation to protect. Just do your job and wrap up the immunity thing tighter than a virgin’s pussy. I don’t have to remind you what happened to the last lawyer that fucked with my family, do I? That’s how we got here, ain’t it?”

  CHAPTER 1 – THE RED LANTERN

  Two Months Later

  The workmen wheeled the last of the potted plant life into my office on hand dollies.

  “You sure you don’t want us to put some out in the reception area, Mr. Rhode?”

  “I haven’t finished painting it and the carpet is coming next week,” I said. “I’d only have to move them all.”

  He shrugged and handed me an envelope.

  “Miss Robart wrote down some instructions on how to care for them. She said if you have any questions, just call.”

  I’m not a plant guy. I’d keep the hardiest. The best shot at survival for the rest was my plan to donate them to other offices in the building. I called Nancy Robart at the Staten Island Botanical Garden to thank her for the foliage. She was the Executive Director and had donated the plants to give my new digs “some much needed class.” She was at a luncheon, so I left the thank you on her voice mail.

  Lunch sounded good to me. I opened a drawer in my desk, dropped Nancy’s instructions in it and pulled out the holster containing my .38 Taurus Special. A lot of people in my line of work don’t carry guns. Most of them have never been shot at, in war or peace. I have, in both, and like the comforting feel of iron on my hip. Besides, with all the hoops you have to jump through to get a permit in New York City (if you fill out the paperwork wrong they send you to Guantanamo), it seems silly not to carry. The Taurus revolver has only five chambers in its cylinder, to keep the weight down. But the bullets are big. The gun is meant for close-in work. Presumably if you need more than five shots a sixth won’t matter.