by Blake Banner
“They struggled for the gun. Al was big and strong. He got the gun and his killer took cover in the kitchen. Al fired at him and missed. Then the guy came out with a kitchen knife…”
I gestured back at the sofa. “Al retreats to the sofa, surrenders the gun without firing again, and gets stabbed cleanly in the heart.”
She shook her head. “The only way it does make sense is if the shots came after Al was killed.”
“Explain.”
“There were two of them, like you said from the start. One with a gun, one with his mom’s kitchen knife. They pick the lock while Al is engrossed in Jessica Fletcher. They surprise him. He lumbers to his feet and the boy with the knife kills him. He drops there. Boy retrieves his knife and Al bleeds out.”
I nodded. “OK.”
“Now, meantime, Ned has found a box, a rucksack, whatever, full of cash. A row breaks out. Ned shoots at the boy, who takes cover in the kitchen, and then escapes.”
“That could work. What about Max and the gang?”
She spread her hands in a, ‘what you want from me?’ gesture. “It’s either or, Stone. Unless you want to argue that Max had his fixer pay Ned to do the job.”
I smiled. “That would be neat.”
“Too neat. Honestly, Stone, it is very easy to see Max talking a good fight and then going home and doing nothing.”
I agreed. “It is. But it’s also easy to see him picking up the phone and telling somebody to ‘see to it.’ I’m not sold on any theory so far, Dehan. What I am clear about is, to paraphrase Socrates…”
“Yes, I always like to paraphrase Socrates.”
“…that I am not clear about anything. What happened in this room is not really explained by any of our theories. Even your two bad guys who turn against each other theory. How come bad guy number two never went after Ned? Ned gets a stash of money and tries to kill his pal. But the pal never seeks revenge or his share of the cash. Why did that never come to anything?”
She scratched her head. “So what do you hope to prove by fixing the position of the shooter? The shots may have come from more than one place while he was moving around.”
I nodded and smiled. “That is exactly what I want to see. And that will tell me everything else.”
“Oh…” She nodded. “So now you’re going to be a smug pain in the ass and not tell me anything?”
I laughed and walked toward the door, speaking loudly over my shoulder. “You know my methods, Dehan! Apply them!”
We made our way back to the station. Neither of us spoke much. We both had the feeling that this might be the one that got away. It was, after all, why I had chosen it to write about. But the more involved we had gotten in the case, the more we had gotten to know Al, and the more we both had the feeling that we had to do the right thing by him, and bring it home. I didn’t need Dehan to tell me she felt that way. We both felt it and we both knew it.
There wasn’t much to do once we got back until the lab results came in. So Dehan started on some background searches on the Chesters and I started digging up what information I could on Ned Brown.
At half past five, my phone rang.
“Yeah, Stone.”
A woman’s voice breathed in my ear. “Is that Detective John Stone, of the 43rd Precinct, NYPD?”
“The very same. Who am I speaking to?”
“I am the one Chester you haven’t spoken to yet.”
“Dr. Annunziata Chester?”
I glanced at Dehan. She was shaking her head and mouthing, ‘son of a bitch,’.
“Indeed, the very same.”
“What can I do for you, Dr. Chester?”
“Please, call me Annunziata, Doctor sounds so, recherché! I am, after all, just a woman, like any other…”
“Good to know. So, what can I do for you, Annunziata?”
I was scanning a list of documents on my screen as I was talking to her. I wanted to know who Ned’s father was. I knew his mother was Chevronne Brown, of Underhill Avenue, but I hadn’t heard any mention of his dad.
Annunziata was saying, “I understand you have spoken to both my brothers, and Justinian is such a fool, he may have given you a completely distorted picture of the situation.”
“You think maybe he said things he shouldn’t have?”
“It is, sadly, Detective Stone, all too probable. Not only does Justinian often blab about things he should really stay quiet about, he will also ramble off on one of his blurb fests and give a body an entirely erroneous impression of the facts.”
I had found a link to Ned’s birth certificate and I clicked it. Meanwhile, I asked Annunziata, “What facts exactly did you have in mind?”
She was quiet for a while. I sat forward, frowning. She said, “You are naughty. I mean, Justinian must have…”
I said, “Let’s not talk on the phone. When can I come and see you?”
“Well, it’s a little sudden…”
“You in New York or in San Francisco?”
“New York. I have a small apartment at 400 Riverside Drive.”
“Tomorrow, one PM.”
She laughed. “My! You are assertive! Make it two, in time for postprandials. I shall look forward to it, Detective Stone.”
“I’ll be there.”
I hung up and sat staring at my screen, typing at my keyboard. Dehan was watching me. “What was that? What’s up?”
“We’re invited for postprandials…” I said absently.
“What the hell are you looking at? What’s wrong with you?”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” I said, and flopped back in my chair. “Son of a gun.”
“What?”
“Ned Brown.”
“What about him, Stone?”
“He’s adopted. And I am forbidden access to his birth certificate and his adoption records.”
Her jaw sagged. “Son of a bitch. So the anonymous will…”
“Could have been either one of his biological parents.”
“We need to see that will.”
I nodded. “But this may well weaken our case. It makes the legitimacy of his fund more likely, and our grounds for wanting to see it weaker.”
“So we should talk to his mother, his adoptive mother, Chevronne. See how much she will volunteer.”
“Yeah…” I sighed. “But what she volunteers is going to be to protect her son. She’s not going to volunteer anything that implicates him.” I gave a small laugh. “I mean, the fact of his being adopted may well have prompted the idea of making a phony will… We need to see the will, but we also need to see his adoption papers. We need to know who his biological parents are—or were.”
“Good luck with that.”
I climbed the stairs to the deputy inspector’s office. He was as polite and mannerly as ever. He told me to sit and listened with care to what I had to say.
“The problem is, John,” he said, when I had finished, “it actually weakens your case. It makes the legitimacy of Ned’s fund more likely, and your grounds for wanting to see the will consequently weaker.”
“My words exactly, sir. On the other hand, the fact that he was adopted may well…”
He interrupted, nodding elaborately. “…have put the idea in his mother’s head. Oh, yes, I see that. She and the son may well have colluded. No doubt. I see that very clearly. And it is very frustrating. But still, it is not a case the courts are likely to look on favorably. I have a meeting tomorrow with the DA and Judge Mathews. She’s one of your hanging judges, you know. I’ll put your arguments to her. You never know, she might be sympathetic. I’ll let you know as soon as she’s given me an answer.”
I carried my frustration downstairs again. Dehan watched me lower myself into my chair and threw a small eraser at me that she’d picked out of the end of a pencil. “You’ve been erased,” she said. Then she added, “We need to go talk to Epstein again. We need to know why he didn’t tell us about Al’s plans to get married, or if those plans were even real.”
; “I want to talk to Annunziata first.” I flicked the eraser back at her. “You know, the English call these rubbers.”
She threw her head back and laughed raucously. “Hey, little Sperm Guy, you have been erased by this rubber!” She did some more noisy laughing.
I looked at Mo and smiled. He ignored me, but also shook his head and sighed.
When she was done, I said, “Anything on the Chesters?”
“Zip. But in any case, what we are looking for? We’d need another court order. If they paid for a hit on their brother, you can bet your ass that payment will be almost impossible to trace.”
I grunted. “I know, and that, I fear, is one court order too far. We’ll be lucky to get the ones we’re after.” I shook my head. “We need to come at this another way.”
“Like what?”
My phone rang.
“Stone.”
“John, it’s Joe, from the lab.”
“Hey, what have you got?”
There was a moment’s silence. “I’m not sure what you were expecting, John. I had a quick look at the file. Martinez said he thought the shots were made while the killer and the victim struggled for the gun.”
“That was his theory, yeah.”
“Well, that isn’t what happened.”
“I had a feeling you might say that. What did happen? He stood in the kitchen doorway and let off three shots into that corner, right?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly right. How did you know?”
“It just seemed to fit with all the facts I haven’t got. Thanks, Joe. I owe you.”
“Sure. We’ll catch up.”
I hung up. Dehan and I sat and stared at each other. Eventually, she said, “So, he stood in the kitchen doorway, Al must have gone in there to take cover when he saw the gun…”
“Somebody stood in the kitchen doorway…”
“To miss at that range…”
I drew breath, but she went on.
“But! He has two broken fingers, and if they are struggling, and Al is holding Ned’s arm out, you know? Like a tango?” She demonstrated, holding her right arm out like she was dancing. “And because of the pain in his hand, with his broken fingers and Al squeezing his hand, he fires three shots almost simultaneously!”
“It’s feasible. Let’s go and talk to Ned’s mother.”
“I thought you didn’t want to yet.”
“I changed my mind. We’re getting stuck, losing momentum. Let’s go see what she knows. On the way, we can get some eggplant.”
“Eggplant? What for?”
“You’re making moussaka tonight.”
As we pushed out of the detectives room, I head Mo muttering, “Ain’t they just adorable? Ain’t you glad they found each other?”
The rasp of his partner’s nicotine-stained voice was just audible. “Yeah. I had an ingrown toenail once. I adored that more.”
THIRTEEN
It was a short drive. Mrs. Brown had a pleasant, pale blue, two story clapboard house on Underhill Avenue, near the corner with Watson Avenue. There was no front yard, but a flight of ten yellow brick steps led up to a small porch which housed the front door. I parked out front and climbed out into the late afternoon sun. I climbed the yellow steps and rang on the bell. Dehan stood behind me, looking uncomfortable.
The door opened to reveal a woman who, for a moment, looked oddly familiar. She had tightly curled black hair and large, serious brown eyes. She smiled, and it was a nice smile, but she held on to the door and there was caution evident in her manner.
We showed her our badges. “I am Detective John Stone, and this is my partner, Detective Carmen Dehan. Are you Chevronne Brown?”
“Yes. What’s this about?”
“I wonder if we could come in for a moment and talk to you about your son, Ned?”
The smile faded from her mouth, leaving only the caution in her face. “He ain’t done nothing, has he?”
I shook my head and tried to look reassuring. “No, not that we are aware of. This is really just routine. We are investigating the death of Aloysius Chester, twelve years ago, and there are just a few, standard fact-checks that we need to make.”
She sighed and stepped back. “You’d better come in, I guess.”
We stepped into a bright, agreeable hallway and she pointed toward the kitchen in back of the house, down a short passage where bright, afternoon sunlight was lying in patches on the floor. Outside, I could hear birds singing. The smell of baking bread was on the air. It felt like home, and for a moment, I felt a rush of anger at Ned, for all he had thrown away. Chevronne Brown gestured again.
“I’m in the kitchen, if you don’t mind. I’m afraid I am very busy.”
Dehan smiled without a lot of feeling and said, “We’ll be quick,” and led the way to a large, bright room. There was bread baking in a large, blue AGA, the makings of an apple pie on the work surface, and the kitchen door stood open onto a large back yard with a well-tended lawn.
Chevronne went straight back to the cooker, where she started stiring some apples that were stewing in a pot. Dehan rested her ass against the sink and I leaned on the doorjamb.
“Is Ned your only child, Mrs. Brown?”
She nodded as she stirred. “Yes.”
“Do you mind telling us where his father is?”
“I wouldn’t mind telling you. I wouldn’t mind knowing, either. He disappeared just after Ned was born.”
Dehan was blunt. “Was he Ned’s father?”
Chevronne stared at her. Her eyes were bright, but it was hard to tell if it was with anger or fear, or perhaps both.
“Of course he was! I just got though tellin’ you he left after Ned was born. That means he was still here, so he was Ned’s father. Is there something complicated about that that you don’t understand, Detective Dehan?”
I sighed. “The reason my partner is asking that question, Mrs. Brown…” I paused, watching her face, and changed tack. “Mrs. Brown, can you tell us who Ned’s benefactor was? Who left him the money, on the condition he went to college…?”
She returned to stirring her stewing apples. “Reason I can’t tell you that is for the same reason why I can’t tell you where his father is. I just don’t know, see? We was notified by an attorney. We went along to his office on Metropolitan Avenue, we had to sign some papers…” She shook her head. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing, but however much I asked, ‘who done this?’ they just kept on giving me the same answer. ‘We can’t tell you that. We are not allowed to tell you.’”
Dehan gave a small laugh. “Come on, Chevronne…”
“Oh, now I’m Chevronne? I’m not Mrs. Brown anymore? Do I get to call you Carmen and John? You tell me how this works, cause I’m just a stupid black woman who don’t know nothing!”
“Mrs. Brown.” I smiled at her. “We do not mean any disrespect at all. We just want to understand the facts about what happened that night. We have a few conflicting accounts…”
“Who from?”
I spread my hands. “Amongst others, Julio Chavez.”
“That thieving bastard! You know him an’ his no-good brother are with the Chupacabras!”
I ignored her and kept right on going. “He told us that Ned and Lucky left the hospital together…”
“And that’s why you’re here, asking about my son’s father and his inheritance?”
I held her eye a moment. “Yes, Mrs. Brown. That is the reason.”
“Why? Because a black boy can’t inherit money? Is that a privilege preserved for the white folk?”
Every time she brought up the race issue, her accent changed. When she wasn’t on the defensive, she had no definable accent, but when she got her claws out, it was recognizably Caribbean.
I shook my head. “No. The issue has nothing to do with race. In fact, if you can show us where that inheritance came from, then we can eliminate Ned as a suspect.”
She froze. “He’s still a suspect?”
I shrugg
ed. “The case was never closed. Anyone who was a suspect back then is still a suspect now.”
“You got any other suspects?”
Dehan nodded. “Yeah, but we can’t discuss with you who they are, and you know that. But I can tell you they’re white.”
“Like hell!”
“You can believe it or not, Chevronne, but it’s the truth. Now if we can say, conclusively, Ned’s money did not come from a robbery at Al Chester’s house, then we can also say we have no reason to believe Ned was there at all.”
Her eyes were bright again, studying Dehan’s face. “I was with him from when he got home with his f… with his loser friends. His hand was broken. I could see that with my own eyes. I took him to the hospital, I waited with him, and those no-good punks, and after they finished with him, I took him home and told his friends to clear off!”
“What time was that?”
She shook her head. “How the hell should I know? About ten o’clock? Something like that.”
I pushed away from the doorframe and put my hands in my pockets. “Did Ned own a gun?”
Her eyes went wide. It looked like genuine shock. “A gun? No! Not in this house!”
“Mrs. Brown, can you swear to the fact that Ned stayed here the whole night after you got home from the hospital?”
“I just got through tellin’ you that! I already told the first detective, and I ain’t gonna change that!”
“OK, that’s fine. We’re almost done and we’ll leave you in peace. I just have one more question. Who did you adopt Ned from?”
It was as though I had slapped her in the face. Her skin, a deep brown, turned a pasty color. She laid down the wooden spoon she was holding and steadied herself on the work surface.
“He is my son.”
“We’re not disputing that, Mrs. Brown. We know he’s your son, but we also know he’s adopted. We just want to know where he was adopted from. More to the point, who he was adopted from. Was it the same person who left him the money? The inheritance?”
Her voice was almost a hiss. “I already told you I can’t tell you that because I don’t know!”
Dehan’s voice was harsh. “You don’t know where you adopted him from? Which orphanage?”