Phantom Angel

by David Handler

  “You don’t know Agent Dytman either. Why are you putting this on me?”

  “Because it isn’t Agent Dytman’s face that I see every time I turn on the TV. You like attention, Cimoli. People who like attention know how to go about getting it—by feeding the beast.”

  “I didn’t leak the Beausoleil girl’s name to Cricket O’Shea,” Cimoli insisted. “I don’t even know the stupid bitch.”

  “She’s not stupid,” I said. “And she’s not a bitch.”

  He looked at me in amazement. “I don’t get it. Me you disrespect up, down and sideways, yet Cricket O’Shea you’re defending?”

  “Cricket and I go back a few years. We went to school together.”

  Cimoli’s eyes narrowed. “Is that right? Then I think we know what happened here.”

  “We do?”

  “You leaked it to her, obviously.”

  “Obviously. Except I didn’t.”

  “Obviously,” Legs agreed.

  “You know what? I’ve had it up to here with you two assholes!” Cimoli roared. “Who the fuck do you think you are? A poverty-row PI and a hipster homicide detective who’s going to be on traffic detail in Ozone Park by nightfall if I have anything to say about it. And, trust me, I do!”

  “It seems to me,” Dytman put in soothingly, “that the purpose of this meeting is to establish the Beausoleil girl’s whereabouts and arrange protective custody for her. We’re all on the same side. We all want the same thing. Who cares if Cricket O’Shea has cultivated a source close to our investigation? All she’s put out there is the girl’s identity. It’s not as if the Minettas have any idea where she is.”

  “Yes, they do…” Sue was staring at her laptop’s screen.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked her.

  “Listen to her latest posting: ‘Why doesn’t some bright boy tighten up his brain and go look for Jonquil Beausoleil at the offices of Golden Legal Services?’”

  I felt my stomach clench. “When did Cricket post that?”

  “Twenty-five minutes ago. Is that where she is, Benji?”

  I nodded my head.

  Legs grabbed his cell phone and called it in. “I want that building flooded with men,” he said in a hard, commanding voice. “I want bodies surrounding that girl. And the entire intersection secured. I am talking full perimeter protection, got it? And I mean now!” He rang off, his jaw muscles clenching. “They’ll be there in less than five minutes.”

  I reached for my own phone and called the office. It was Rita who answered.

  “Hey, there,” I said, keeping my own voice extremely calm. There are times when I’m grateful for my acting training. “How’s our guest doing?”

  “That little kitty is a stone freak,” Rita answered. “She was getting bored, okay? So she decided to go up to your place for her second aerobic workout of the day. She invited me to join her, okay? Let me tell you—within ten minutes I was ready to pass out. She made me feel seventy years old. And I’m in good shape, Benji.”

  “You’re in great shape, Rita. Listen, I don’t want to alarm you but they know she’s there.”

  “How…?”

  “Cricket found out.”

  I heard voices from her end now. Male voices. And heard Mom say, “May I help you, gentlemen?”

  “Two cops in uniform just barged in here,” Rita informed me.

  “Good. Legs sent them. And more are on their way. But, listen, just to play it safe you’d better ask for—”

  “I’ll need to see your photo ID, please,” I heard Mom say to them. She is nobody’s fool. “Thank you, gentlemen. Allow me to show you the way.”

  “Rita, tell them to take the stairs. They’re liable to get stuck in that damned elevator for three hours.”

  “Not to worry, little lamb. Abby’s way ahead of you. And two plainclothesmen just got here. She’s checking their ID, too. It’s all good. Boso will be fine.”

  “Excellent. We’ll be there as soon as we can. Oh, hey, Rita? Do me one small favor, will you?”

  “Sure, what is it?”

  “Keep away from the windows.”

  Legs and I headed out of the conference room now, moving briskly toward the elevator with the others trailing along behind us. When we got there Legs pushed the button once, twice, three times.

  “Why did you do it?” I asked Cimoli as we stood there waiting for the elevator. “Why did you tip Cricket off?”

  “I didn’t tip her off, you little shit!”

  “I don’t believe you. And if you call me a little shit again I’m going to slug you.”

  “I’m all done talking about this, understand? We’ll extract the girl from your building and we’ll put her in protective custody at an undisclosed location.”

  “Until Cricket discloses it, you mean.”

  “Listen, you little—!”

  “If you boys don’t knock it off,” Sue warned us, “I’m going to slug both of you.”

  Legs’ phone rang while we were still waiting there for the elevator. He took the call. Listened. Listened some more. Then rang off and said, “We’re too late. We lost her.”

  I stared at him. “What do you mean we lost her?”

  “I mean she’s dead.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  ONE OF HER BIG, BLUE EYES—the left one—was gazing directly at me. But that haunted look I’d seen in those eyes was gone now. It had been replaced by a shocked, unblinking stare. And her right eye wasn’t even there anymore. The bullet took it out before it went straight through her brain and blew out the back of her head.

  She was lying on her back on the steamy tar roof with the hot sun beating down on her. Her arms were spread wide, palms facing the sky. Her tanned legs had splayed rather awkwardly as she fell. It was not her best look. Even so, a crime scene photographer stood over her shooting her from this angle and that for one final pictorial gallery. She was still an object of fascination. The camera loved her.

  “I—I told her, stay off the roof,” Rita sobbed as Mom and I stood there trying to console her. “After we worked out together in your apartment, I told her do not come up here.”

  “I told her the very same thing, Rita.” I put my arms around her and hugged her. She towered over me in her high-heeled sandals. “It’s not your fault.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Mom echoed softly.

  “She kept telling me h-how much she hated being cooped up. She wanted to see the sky.”

  “She liked to be able to see the sky,” I said. “You didn’t hear the shot?”

  Mom shook her head. “Not over all of our street noise. Not with my AC on.”

  “I should have stayed there with her,” Rita went on. “I shouldn’t have left her by herself.”

  “Rita, you had no way of knowing what would happen.”

  “Bunny’s right, Rita.”

  “She wasn’t a bad kid,” Rita sniffled.

  “Boso was a good kid,” Mom agreed. “And she was smart. She would have made something of herself.”

  “It’s going to be okay, Rita.”

  Rita breathed in and out raggedly. “No, it’s not. It’s never going to be okay.”

  Legs stood over near Boso’s body with his face drawn into a tight grimace. All of the bluster had gone out of Gino Cimoli. He looked quite ill. Jack Dytman looked defeated and glum. Sue Herrera just looked pissed off. The roof was crowded with people. An EMS crew was still there. So were a half-dozen cops, the crime scene technicians and the photographer. I wondered if our building’s tired old roof could handle so much weight. I wondered if we’d all go crashing down into my apartment below. It wouldn’t be such a bad thing, really. The fall might kill me and put me out of my misery.

  “What a damned shame,” Dytman said, shaking his head.

  Legs said, “I swear to God, Cimoli. If I find out that you leaked this to Cricket O’Shea I’ll—”

  “I didn’t,” Cimoli insisted. “It wasn’t me.”

  Dytman craned his itchy nec
k. “What a damned shame.”

  “If you say that one more time,” Sue informed him, “I will throw you off this roof.”

  “How did the shooter get here so fast?” I asked Legs. “He took her out, what, forty minutes after Cricket posted it on her site?”

  “The Minettas wanted this girl gone,” Legs said, thumbing his goatee. “My guess? They had shooters who were cruising different parts of the city just waiting to be green-lighted.” He looked around at the high-rise apartment buildings that surrounded us on Broadway and on West 103rd Street. “I’m seeing at least eight buildings he could have shot her from. Judging by those entry and exit wounds in her head I’d say he used an M4 sniper rifle. It fires a 5.56 NATO, by way of the .223 Remington. Your standard Special Forces sniper weapon. We can study the angle of the wounds and calculate the trajectory. We’ll locate where the shot came from. But I guarantee you he left no trace evidence behind. No shell casing. No fingerprints. No nothing. And no one will remember seeing him. He probably showed up wearing maintenance overalls, his weapon stuffed in a duffel bag. Found himself a nice, quiet hallway window. Or maybe the roof. Was out of there sixty seconds after he took her down. He’ll be halfway to Philadelphia or Providence by now—unless he lives in the ’burbs and has a perfectly respectable cover identity.” He glanced at me, his knee jiggling, jiggling. “This is how a pro operates.”

  “As opposed to the Morrie Frankel shooting, you mean?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So you think it’s a different shooter?”

  “I don’t think it. I know it.” Legs looked over at Rita. She’d burst into tears again. Mom had her arms around her. “How’s she doing?”

  “Not so good.”

  “She’s lucky that Boso came up here, you know. So’s Abby. He would have gone for a window shot if she hadn’t. You could have lost more than just her.”

  “No need to tell me that,” I said quietly. I knew perfectly well how close I’d come to losing the two people in the world who I cared about the most.

  Legs motioned for me to follow him away from the others. Then he put his hands on my shoulders and said, “Are you okay?”

  “Legs, she’d still be alive if I hadn’t butted in . She’d be up on credit card fraud charges with the others but she’d be alive. But no, I had to drag her away from that place and play the white knight. I got her killed.”

  “She got herself killed. You were doing a job. You were paid to find her. You found her. What happened after that isn’t on you. Hell, if you’re looking for someone to blame then blame me. I knew you were holding out on me when you swore you had no idea where she was. I could have grabbed you by the scruff of the neck and forced the truth out of you.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  “Because your dad taught me that you’ve got to let a man do things his own way.”

  “I should have just left her alone.”

  “You could have,” he acknowledged. “But that would have made you a heartless schmuck, and you’re not. You’re one of the good guys, little bud.”

  “If I’m one of the good guys then how come my client and the girl who he hired me to find are both dead?”

  “You tried. Listen to what I’m saying, because if your dad was standing here right now he’d tell you the exact same thing. It didn’t work out but you tried. That’s all you can do. You drag yourself out of bed every morning and you try. So don’t get down on yourself, okay? I’ll take over from here. You’re all done now.”

  I stared at him long and hard before I said, “No, I’m not.”

  * * *

  IT TOOK ME A WHILE to find her.

  First I tried the offices of a couple of big time producers where I knew she liked to hang out during business hours. Then I tried Joe Allen’s. Then Bruno Anthony’s. Then I began working my way up and down West 45th Street, my eyes flicking this way and that. When I finally spotted her in her pink T-shirt, black jeans and white go-go boots she was bopping her way across Shubert Alley, yapping into one iPhone while she thumbed out a tweet on the other, so absorbed in what she was doing that she didn’t even notice me.

  Not until I grabbed her by her pale arms and slammed her against the wall of the Booth Theatre.

  “Ow, Benji, that hurt! And since when do you like it rough?”

  “Who tipped you off?”

  “Let me call you back,” she said into the phone before she rang off, grinning at me impishly. “I’m liking this new beastie-boy thing you’ve got going on. You were always a little too gentle, if you want to know the truth.”

  “Who told you, Cricket?”

  “Told me what, cutie?”

  “That Boso was hiding out at our office.”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “Because a sniper just shot her right through the eye. It was a professional hit. And it wasn’t pretty. And it was your fault. You tipped them off. Who told you where she was?”

  Cricket gulped. “Jonquil Beausoleil is dead?”

  “Severely dead.”

  “Unfucking real…” Her little thumbs promptly went to work on one of her phones. “Hang with me for just one sec because I have got to put this out there.”

  I wrenched both phones from her grasp and hurled them out into the middle of West 45th Street, where they were instantly run over by cabs.

  “Benji, that was my whole office!” she cried out.

  “Who’s your source?”

  “You know I can’t give up my source. I’d be violating my ethics.”

  “Cricket, I’ve known you since we were freshmen together. You don’t have any ethics.”

  “That was an awful thing to say to me, Benji. I know you’re upset, but that was just totally mean. Besides, it was a nothing one-liner. A throwaway. I must post a hundred of them a day.”

  “Yeah? Well, this one got a girl killed. The Minetta family thought she ratted them out. I was trying to get her into protective custody before they could find her. They didn’t know where she was. Not until you told them. And then they shot her dead. You don’t get it, do you? You’re like a kid playing in a sandbox. Except these people aren’t playing. They use real ammo. And that girl is really dead. Boso doesn’t live here anymore. Tell me who tipped you off.”

  She shook her head at me. “No can do. Sorry.”

  “Cricket, I want you to look into my eyes, okay? I want you to understand that I am being totally serious. Tell me who your source is right now or I swear to you that I will devote the rest of my life to making sure that you are toast in this city. You’ll have no career. You’ll have no friends. You’ll be a dead woman walking.” My eyes locked on to hers and held them tight. “Tell me who tipped you off. Tell me right fucking now or so help me I’ll destroy you. I mean it. Tell me, Cricket.”

  Cricket told me.

  * * *

  “WHEN YOUR CHILD GETS INTO TROUBLE you don’t stop loving him. You love him more, because he needs you more.” She was boxing up all of those framed, autographed photos of pimply-faced Morrie standing backstage with Broadway’s biggest stars of yesteryear. She was very calm and composed in her trimly cut pale yellow linen dress. She had politely offered me a cup of coffee. I had politely declined. “Charlie is hoping to be a chef someday. He’s taking classes. He tries. He really does. But he gets so frustrated by little setbacks. And he’s had substance abuse problems. Practically every penny I’ve made has gone toward trying to keep him out of trouble and clean. He used to tend bar at Barrymore’s, that nice little restaurant that was on West 44th Street. Do you remember it?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “One of his coworkers, a waitress, claimed that Charlie tried to rape her in the kitchen one night after closing. She was going to go to the police. I convinced her to take ten thousand dollars from me instead, and Charlie went into drug rehab. It was all handled very quietly. But your friend Cricket got wind of it because the girl was one of those ambitious young actresses who are always talking to her, hoping to get a nice men
tion. You know how that works.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Cricket was planning to run an item about it,” Leah said as she removed more of Morrie’s photos from the living room wall, leaving one sooty outline after another behind. They’d been hanging there forever. “When she called me for a comment I begged her not to run it. I told her she’d be ruining the life of a decent young man who was trying so very, very hard. Charlie’s not a sexual predator, Benji. He’s just weak. Cricket agreed to sit on the story if I agreed to feed her choice morsels of information that I happen to hear about. I did agree, for Charlie’s sake, and she’s been holding it over me ever since. If I hear something, I’m supposed to call her—or else. And so I do. I’m the one who told her that Morrie and Henderson got into a lover’s quarrel over Matthew Puntigam. She got that story from me after Morrie came to me with tears streaming down his face. And I told her what you said to me on the phone this morning—that Jonquil Beausoleil was in safe hands and that I didn’t have to worry about her.”

  “So you were doing Cricket’s legwork for her when you called me.”

  “Yes, I was,” Leah admitted. “And I regret it terribly. But she leaves me no choice, Benji. I had no idea what would happen to that poor girl. She was so young, and none of this was her fault.”

  “Let’s not talk about her, okay? I didn’t tell you where she was, Leah. How did Cricket figure out that she was stashed at my place?”

  “Because Cricket knows you. She called you a softy and a sap and a number of other names that led me to believe that you two have a history together.” Leah looked at me searchingly. “Were you and Cricket romantically involved?”

  “Let’s not talk about her either. Let’s talk about you. Why don’t you have a seat, Leah?”

  “All right.” She sat down on a sofa, her bony, translucent hands folded in her lap. “What would you like to know?”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “That’ll be for me.” I went to the door and opened it.

  Legs stood there in the hallway with an intense, feral look on his face. “What’s so urgent?” he demanded.