by Tom Turner
“I need to ask him some questions.”
“About what?”
“I can’t go into it.”
She put her hands on her hips, and lowered her voice.
“But it’s okay you ask me any damn thing you want?”
“Like I said, once a cop—”
“Yeah, yeah . . . bye, Charlie, I got customers to attend to.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
After her customers walked out, Lil beelined to the front door and hung up a little sign that said, “Back in fifteen.”
She had a lot to absorb.
She sat down at her desk, rested her elbows on it, put her hands up to her head and rubbed her temples.
She flashed back to when she was an eighteen-year-old, five-dollar-an-hour employee of Paul Pools outside of San Francisco. Her job was to scoop out palm fronds and dead chameleons with a long-handled strainer, then add chlorine tablets to maintain a pool’s PH balance. Her rounds included rich people’s houses in Mill Valley, Tiburon and Ross, where lots of kids her age squinted down their long aquiline noses at her. She was invisible to most of them as she scrubbed green mold off the sides of their pools. She noticed a lot of $300 bikinis on scrawny, flat-chested girls and made sure to thrust out her well-developed breasts when boys were around. She always wore short shorts that showed off her long, perfect legs.
One of the rich boys asked her out one day when she was cleaning his parents’ pool. She figured out early on he just wanted to get into her pants, which wasn’t about to happen until he spent a lot of money on her. Until she got a taste of what life was like in the big houses behind the high stucco walls.
She had come a long way, for sure. But now . . . Avery Robertson was, in reality, some fraud named Nick Greenleaf. Christ! The goddamn phony even had a phony sounding name. That explained his rough-around-the-edges thing.
So his whole spiel about having tagged along with his grandfather when he bought art was . . . complete bullshit. And the painting she had sold for him was no doubt . . . stolen goods. And the whole divine plan she had cooked up to make her a millionaire was about to come crashing down around her shoulders. She should have figured something was up when his eyes changed overnight from green to blue.
She could always call up Charlie and tell him everything. Admit that she had just told him a white lie—that the $16,000 check was made out to Avery Robertson, not Nick Greenleaf. That she was an innocent victim of this horrible con man, whatever his name was. That he was living at Spencer Robertson’s house passing himself off as Robertson’s grandson. She could give Charlie his cell number instead of the one at the place where he used to live. Charlie would arrest him and she’d be a hero. Probably make the front page of the Glossy. Something like, “Art Gallery Owner Assists in Con Man Takedown.”
Whoopee.
And just how did that pay the rent? How did that cover the cost of the Elsa Peretti necklace she’d just sprung for at Tiffany?
And what about the gallery? At the pathetically anemic rate she was selling paintings, the gallery was going to get foreclosed on like every third house in South Florida. So she’d end up the only nonmillionaire in Palm Beach? That was totally unacceptable. She’d already charged up the white sequined Chanel dress, figuring with what she was going to make on the Hopper, she could fill a couple of walk-in closets. So now if the Hopper deal didn’t happen . . . what was she supposed to do? And what was she going to wear to the Fall Ball? The three-year-old Ungaro everyone had seen her in?
No way in hell.
Lil got up from her desk, went over to the love seat across from it, sat down, exhaled and did some deep breathing. She did her best thinking when she sank into its deep plush comfort.
She reviewed the plan that had been creeping into her head and taking shape over the last twenty-four hours. No question about it, it was brilliant. Yeah, okay, maybe it was a tad . . . felonious. But it was so damn inventive, plus the jig wouldn’t be up until after the old guy, Spencer Robertson, was moldering in his grave. By then she’d be ensconced in a penthouse on Park Avenue, living under the pseudonym she had dreamed up in tribute to her two favorite artists: Stella Hockney.
Then she changed her mind . . . better make it San Francisco. Her triumphant return to her hometown. They had penthouses there, too. Problem with moving to New York was that too many New York people had come to the gallery and knew her. San Francisco would be just fine. Then she remembered one of the reasons why she left . . . but there had to be at least a few good men there. Right?
She got up from the love seat. She’d made up her mind. She was going to go forward with the plan. All she had to do was keep a close eye on Nick. Make sure he didn’t blow it. Get him to stay put at the house on El Vedato, not go out in the open where Charlie or some other cop could spot him. Just keep doing his Avery Robertson routine.
Hell, he really wasn’t all that bad at it.
TWENTY-EIGHT
As he headed back to the station, Crawford pondered Lil’s reaction when he asked her about Greenleaf. Best he could come up with was a boxing analogy. Like she had taken a punch that stung, shook it off and came back with a series of jolting jabs.
He stopped by CSEU on the first floor to get the ball rolling on the warrant he got from the golfer judge.
Mel Carnahan was at the desk.
“Hey, Mel.”
Carnahan nodded back. Crawford caught a reflection of the overhead fluorescent light off Carnahan’s chrome dome.
“Any chance I get one of your guys to check out a suspect’s condo at the Princess?”
“I’d go, but I’m up to my ass in alligators,” Carnahan said.
Crawford never understood where that expression came from.
“Anybody else?”
“Think I can loan you McCarthy.”
“Yeah, whoever,” said Crawford, trying to act as if his heartbeat hadn’t just kicked up a notch.
“I’ll have her call you, she’s out now.”
“Good,” said Crawford and gave the counter a rap with his knuckles. “988-6215.”
Fifteen minutes later, he got a call.
“Charlie . . . Dominica McCarthy.”
“Hey, Mac, can I meet you at the Princess at around eleven?”
“Sure, what are we doing?”
“I need a DNA swab, lift a print or two. Hey, and thanks for the e-mail on that button.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Zegla? Was that the name?”
“No Zegna,” she said with a laugh, “Ermenegildo Zegna. High fashion, Charlie, something I wouldn’t expect you to know much about.”
“That’s a diss, huh?”
“See you there, Charlie.”
Zegla . . . Zegna . . . whatever it was, it struck Crawford as unlikely to be a button off a hitter’s jacket. Somehow he didn’t picture them as high-style fashionistas. Also, he wasn’t getting any connection between the killers of Darryl Bill and Cynthia Dexter.
Crawford called the number of the twin sisters at the Palm Beach Princess.
“Margaret?”
“Irene.”
“Hi, Irene, Detective Crawford,” he said, “can you open up Mr. Greenleaf’s condo for me at eleven? I have a warrant.”
“No prob,” she said, like after forty years of waiting, something eventful was finally about to occur in her life.
“Oh, also, can I ask you a big favor?”
“Sure, Detective.”
“You gotta cell phone?”
“ ’Course.”
“Would you mind going up to Mr. Greenleaf’s condo, dialing 655-0123, see if you hear a ring inside?”
Crawford had a hunch that the number Lily gave him was not Greenleaf’s cell number.
“Sure. I’m on it.”
Five minutes later, Crawford got a call back.
“It rang in there,” Irene said.
“You’re the best. You get an honorary detective badge for that.”
“Cool.”
Crawf
ord walked out to Ott’s cubicle. Splayed out on his desk was a Checkerburger and ketchup-soaked fries.
“Looks like a goddamn battlefield,” Crawford said.
Ott wiped his lips with a napkin and looked up.
“I hear envy in your voice. What’s up?”
“I forgot to ask you how it went on the street?”
“Zilch.” Ott offered him a limp, greasy fry.
Crawford frowned. “No, thanks.”
Ott popped it in his mouth.
“Total strikeout with the flyers. Nobody’d seen the guy. Stopped by CSEU when I got back. Nada on prints at the Dexter scene. So far no connection between the two scenes, and we don’t get DNA results for two weeks.”
“Battin’ a thousand, huh,” Crawford said, finally grabbing a fry.
“Oh, also, I made a bunch of calls to phone numbers in Dexter’s book to see if any of them knew Greenleaf. Tried the name Todd Tropez, too.”
Crawford looked up, hopeful. “And?”
“Nothin’.”
Crawford shook his head.
“So . . . all in all, had yourself a real productive day, huh Mort?”
Ott looked up and chuckled.
“An old broad propositioned me.”
“I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Smokin’ hot,” Ott said, shoveling six of the ketchup-spattered fries into his mouth. “This guy Greenleaf . . . slippery as a fuckin’ eel.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Crawford said, pointing to a ketchup stain above Ott’s upper lip. “Tell ya, man, I’ve never had two cases with so few suspects . . . ever.”
Ott wiped the ketchup off his lip.
CRAWFORD GOT to the Palm Beach Princess fifteen minutes late. There were eight people in the lobby, clustered, at a respectful distance, around Dominica in her blue vinyl jacket.
He walked up to her. She was holding a kit in her right hand.
“Hey,” he said.
“You’re late.” Her piercing green eyes flashed.
“I apologize, I’m going to get one of the managers to let us in.”
He went toward the sisters’ office and brushed past a few older residents, who were whispering and pointing.
“Hello, Detective,” said one of the sisters, in an orange top, with a wink.
He noticed she was wearing makeup and had coiffed her hair, like she expected to be on the six o’clock news.
“You’re Irene, right?”
“That’s me.”
“Could we get into Mr. Greenleaf’s condo now?”
She held up the key and stood up.
“That your partner in the jacket?” she whispered.
“She’s from our crime scene unit.”
“Like the TV show?”
“Yeah.”
“Awesome.”
Crawford walked past the group of whispering women, who had been joined by a man with a walker.
“Irene,” Crawford said, “this is CS Tech McCarthy.”
“Hello . . .” Irene said.
“Hello, Irene.”
“Just follow me,” Irene said.
They got in the elevator. Irene hit the button for the eleventh floor. Crawford and McCarthy followed her down the hallway to 11J, where she opened the burgundy metal door with a key.
“Be careful what you touch,” Dominica said, handing Crawford a pair of vinyl gloves.
Crawford patted his jacket pocket.
“Got my own, thanks.”
Irene smiled. “Okay, I’ll leave you two alone to get on with your forensics.”
“Thanks,” Crawford said.
Crawford followed Dominica in.
Dominica walked toward a brown sofa that was shiny in two spots. She leaned over it and examined it closely. Using a tweezer-like tool, she picked up a few small samples and put them in a plastic bag.
Crawford watched.
“I’ll just look around a little,” he said, not big on spectating. “I want to check out that desk over there.”
She was hunkered down on the living room carpet now with her tweezers.
“Do me a favor,” she said, not looking up. “Not ’til I’m done. You might contaminate something.”
He was going to say something about this not being his first rodeo.
“Okay,” he said instead.
Before he sat down, he looked at the painting over the sofa. It was a symphony of browns and oranges—abstract and ugly. He studied the painting. Looked like something a guy would do on the side of a subway car. Not like something you’d actually pay money for. But then again, that dead shark in formaldehyde he saw in a Time magazine article hardly looked like it would fetch twenty bucks, let alone $20 million.
“You got a problem if I take a few pictures of this?” he asked, pointing at the painting.
“Snap away.” She looked up and saw the painting, “Jesus, is that ugly.”
After he took the pictures, he kept quiet and let Dominica do her thing. He observed her from a few different angles as she crawled around on the floor lifting samples. She had thick dark hair that bounced nicely, and a lean, athletic body. Her green eyes flicked around constantly, alert to everything.
“So,” he said, making conversation, “I heard about that guy you popped last year, got DNA off his toothbrush.”
“Yeah,” she said, examining something Crawford couldn’t even see.
“Doing a nice long bit up at Starke, I heard,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Nice goin’.”
“Thanks,” she said, down on all fours, “still creeps me out, perp using the girl’s toothbrush.”
Crawford remembered using the toothbrush that belonged to his old girlfriend, Gwen Hyde, a few hundred times.
“Yeah, I agree,” he said.
Dominica looked up, and shook her head, “A guy would use someone else’s toothbrush. A woman? Never.”
After a while she stood up and went into the kitchen. She started dusting for prints on the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator. Crawford checked out her CSEU pants. They had about seven pockets and were made of something in the rayon family. Whatever they were, they fell short of Worth Avenue haute couture.
“Where you get a pair of pants like those, Mac?”
She looked up and rolled her eyes.
“Saks,” she said, straight-faced. “How ’bout letting me work, huh?”
After a while she reached into a pocket of her jacket and pulled out a pair of glasses with thick Coke-bottle lenses. He had seen them before and knew they were some kind of super vision-enhancing things.
He was impressed with her speed and precision at dusting. Totally focused.
“Anybody ever tell you, you look good in glasses?”
She groaned. “Anybody ever tell you, you talk too much?”
He smiled.
“Hey, okay if I check out that desk now?”
“A couple more minutes.”
Finally, a few minutes later, Dominica picked up her case.
“I’m gonna go through the bathroom, go ahead and check out the desk.”
She shot him a quick smile.
Crawford got up from the sofa and started going through the drawers of the old wooden desk. He was looking for a picture of Greenleaf or an address where he might be. Nothing. All he found were five yellow pads with a few pages ripped off of one. He looked closely to see if there was a pen imprint on the top page. But there was nothing.
“Any luck?” Dominica said, coming out of the bathroom.
“Nah, you get the guy’s toothbrush?”
“There wasn’t one,” she said, then held up a blue plastic disposable razor blade in a plastic bag. “Got this instead.”
Crawford nodded and followed her as she walked out the door. He closed it, then walked behind her to the elevator. She had a smooth, confident walk. Long legs, a nice roll and sway.
When they got down to the lobby, there were even more people there, talking in little knots of three and four. One of them
turned and clicked a picture of Dominica in her blue jacket.
“I’m a big CSI fan,” a woman said to her.
Dominica kept walking. “New York or Miami?”
“New York, definitely.”
Dominica gave her a thumbs-up.
The man in the walker thrust a pad and pen at her.
“How ’bout an autograph, honey?” he said, with a wink.
She smiled and signed it.
Crawford went over to Irene. It was like she had mass e-mailed the tenants announcing a surprise celebrity visit.
“Remember,” Crawford said to Irene, “if Greenleaf shows up, call me right away, okay?”
“You got it.”
He gave her a smile, went over to Dominica and they walked outside.
“A little tip . . . if you’re going to be signing autographs, do a really fast scrawl.”
Crawford scribbled in the air.
She looked up at him. “That from personal experience?”
“Personal observation.”
He wasn’t about to tell her it was from watching Gwen Hyde.
TWENTY-NINE
Alcie had to hand it to Nick, the man was slick. “Slick Nick” he mumbled to himself, then shook his head and chuckled. Just what kind of scam was the kid working? Obviously, something to do with the old man’s big, ugly paintings. Big and ugly, yes, but worth big money, he knew.
There was one he really liked, though. By a guy named Francis Bacon. Dude had a fucked-up way of painting people’s heads. But he could definitely see it on a wall of his, though.
Then he thought about the old man. Shit, guy didn’t even know his name, called him Zapruder, for Chrissakes, which made it highly unlikely that he would be provided for when the old man bought it. Unlike one of those beloved, loyal retainers who becomes part of the family and ends up getting more than the black sheep son.
Alcie realized this was the only opportunity he’d ever get.
Grab it or end up being some homeless guy living under a bridge. Instead of returning to his mother in North Carolina as the conquering hero, the way he always dreamed it.
He went back to the library where Nick was reading an art book.
Nick looked up from the white wingback chair. It was beginning to develop an avocado-shaped dark stain from the back of his head—spending all his time reading all those books.