Phantom Angel

by David Handler

“Come on in.”

  He came on in, clenching and unclenching his jaw.

  “Why, good afternoon, Lieutenant,” Leah said to him pleasantly.

  “I asked the lieutenant to join us, Leah. You don’t mind if he’s here while we talk, do you?”

  “Of course not. Why would I mind? Would you like some coffee, Lieutenant? I can make a fresh pot.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Your timing was excellent, Legs. Leah was just about to tell me why she did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “Kill Morrie.”

  Leah looked up at me like a panicked animal, then down at the worn rug. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  I sat on the sofa across the coffee table from her. Legs stayed on his feet, his ripped, veiny arms folded in front of his chest. “Joe Minetta is a loan shark. He wanted Morrie alive, not dead. Ira Gottfried is a cold-blooded shark, too. But he’s also a very patient man. All he had to do was wait for Morrie to implode and then pick up his leavings. He didn’t have to hire a hit man to bump him off. But the attack on Morrie wasn’t a professional job. My friend Legs here knew that right away. A professional wouldn’t have shot Morrie on 42nd Street in broad daylight in front of so many witnesses. No, Morrie’s shooting was the work of a small-time lowlife. Someone like, say, your son Charlie.”

  “I ran his sheet on my way over here,” Legs said, leafing through his notepad. “Charles Nelson Shimmel has two priors. One for possession with intent to sell, the other for breaking and entering. He served eighteen months on the B and E.”

  “Mind you, a good deal of careful planning did go into Morrie’s murder,” I continued. “And that points to someone with an organized mind. Someone like you, Leah. Morrie’s shooter was smallish and on the slim side. That was you in the hoody and sweats, wasn’t it? Charlie was behind the wheel. You did it together.”

  Leah didn’t dispute this. Didn’t say anything at all. Just sat there on the sofa, calmly and quietly.

  “Why did you do it, Leah?”

  “Why?” Her lower lip began to quiver. “You’re just a kid. You don’t know a damned thing about life. You can’t possibly understand.”

  “Help me to understand. I’d really like to.”

  “So would I,” Legs said. “But if you want to wait for your lawyer…”

  “My lawyer is dead, Lieutenant. Morrie was my lawyer. We were a team. Do you understand what that means? It was us against the world since we were fifteen years old.” Leah’s eyes were moist now. She was fighting back tears. “Morrie trusted no one in the whole wide world except for me. And I trusted no one but him. We fought together, side by side, for forty-seven years. And, my God, we did great things together. Not so long ago we had four hit shows running at once. We ruled Broadway. And would you like to know how we pulled it off? Because of that trust we shared. It was the one thing, the only thing, we both knew for absolute certain we could count on. It was sacred, that trust. Deep down in my heart, I knew that Morrie would never, ever lie to me. He wouldn’t dare.”

  I nodded my head. “Until he did.”

  “Until he did,” she acknowledged bitterly. “He sat right here and he lied to my face. Told me that R. J. Farnell was a real person and then scammed me out of my last hundred thousand. You have no idea what a betrayal that was. None. How could you?” She reached for a half-empty coffee cup on the table before her and took a sip from it. “This is cold. Are you sure you don’t want me to make a fresh pot, Lieutenant? It’s no trouble.”

  “Positive,” Legs said.

  “Leah, when did you learn the truth about Farnell?”

  “I had my doubts about him from the very beginning. As soon as Morrie started gushing on about how many millions the man was going to invest in Wuthering Heights.”

  “How come?”

  “He wouldn’t let me near him, that’s how come. Wouldn’t let me talk to him on the phone. Wouldn’t even give me the man’s phone number. I had no idea how to contact him. That was not the way we usually did things around here. I always took care of our angels. They were my responsibility. If they had questions, I answered them. If they wanted to bitch and moan, I patted them on the head. Yet for some reason Morrie didn’t trust me with Farnell. I didn’t understand why. I wondered if…” Leah trailed off, swallowing.

  “You wondered what?” Legs pressed her.

  “If maybe Farnell was an associate of Joe Minetta’s. If that was why Morrie didn’t want me involved. It was the only thing I could think of, Lieutenant. That Morrie was laundering dirty money for some hoodlum. That’s why I gave him the last of my savings. Because I was genuinely afraid for him—especially after a couple of Joe Minetta’s goons came around here. It never occurred to me that Morrie had flat-out invented Farnell. And then Farnell vanished, supposedly. And Morrie hired Benji to find his girlfriend, who I knew nothing about. I’d never heard Morrie so much as mention her name until that morning you showed up here, Benji. I didn’t understand what was going on. I found all of it so … bewildering,” she confessed, wringing her hands. “That’s why I went to see you at your office. Because I was so confused. After I got back here I confronted him. I said to him, ‘Morrie, who is this Farnell guy? What in the hell is really going on?’ And that’s when he told me the truth. That he was in so deep to Joe Minetta the only option he’d had left was to run the old phantom angel scam.”

  “How did you feel about that?” I asked her.

  “My first reaction was shock. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t let me know what he was doing. And then, when I realized why he hadn’t, I got furious. I said to him, ‘Morrie, you lied to my face about Farnell so you could scam me out of my money, didn’t you?’ He said, ‘Leah, I’m in the deepest hole I’ve ever been in. I’m just trying to dig my way out.’ I said, ‘So why didn’t you just ask me for the money?’ And he said, ‘Because if you knew the truth you wouldn’t have given it to me.’” Leah shook her head at us in amazement. “Do you have any idea how many offers I had to leave him and produce my own shows? See my own name up there on the marquee? Dozens. But I always turned them down. Because we were a team. Because I was loyal to that man. And this was how he repaid me. By treating me with the same contempt he treated everyone else. After everything we’d been through together Morrie used me. I was just another sucker to him. There was no us. There was only him. You can’t even begin to comprehend how devastated I was. Let me put it to you this way—when I found out that my husband, Phil, had taken up with another woman? That was a paper cut compared to what Morrie did to me. I had to go in the bathroom and throw up. After I came out I told Morrie how angry I was. And do you know what he did? He laughed at me and said, ‘What’s gotten into you today? Did you forget to take your estrogen or whatever the hell it is that you—you…?’” Leah broke off, her chest rising and falling. “I couldn’t stop stewing about it when I got home that night. The more I stewed the angrier I got. Morrie was the center of my universe. I gave my life to that man. And he betrayed that. He destroyed it.”

  Legs studied her curiously. “So you decided to destroy him?”

  “I had to,” she said quietly. “I simply could not let him get away with it. Are you sure I can’t offer you gentlemen anything? A soda?”

  Legs shook his head. So did I. I can’t speak for Legs but I was thinking that Leah Shimmel had to be the most polite killer I’d ever come across.

  “Mind you, I remained the good little soldier,” she pointed out. “I followed his orders. He said, ‘This stays between us. Don’t show Benji your cards.’ And so I didn’t.”

  “Meaning you were playacting when I showed up here and confronted Morrie about Farnell,” I said. “You weren’t shocked at all to find that he didn’t exist. You already knew.”

  “I did. I’m sorry about the charade, Benji.”

  “That’s okay, you were following orders. And you’re a pretty good actress, Leah.”

  “I’m a damned good actress. Better than half of those flight
y airheads with dirty hair who I’ve auditioned over the years. And I had no problem doing what Morrie asked me to, because by then I’d already figured out how I was going to pay him back. Charlie and I had it all planned out.”

  “You recruited Charlie to help you?”

  “I asked him to do me a favor. After all of the scrapes I’ve gotten Charlie out of he owed me one. And he was happy to help. Charlie never liked Morrie. He thought he was a nasty prick who didn’t respect me. Which, as it happens, was entirely true. The basic plan was Charlie’s. I can’t take any credit. I simply told him that I couldn’t do anything to Morrie while we were here at the office together. That would have made me the only suspect, wouldn’t it?”

  “Most likely,” Legs acknowledged.

  “So Charlie came up with what hoodlums refer to as a ‘drive-by.’ Lieutenant, are you…?”

  “I’m acquainted with the term,” Legs assured her, nodding.

  “The only complication Charlie foresaw was that the ‘drive-by’ would probably take place while Morrie was out walking on the street somewhere. That meant there’d be innocent bystanders. Therefore, I’d have to hop out of the car, shoot him at close range and then hop back in. After all, I couldn’t risk hitting other people with stray bullets, could I?”

  “No, you couldn’t,” I agreed.

  “Charlie purchased the hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants for me at a sporting goods store. Also a good pair of binoculars. He got me those big sunglasses at a Duane Reade. The gun he already owned. He purchased it illegally several months ago. Charlie sells drugs from time to time on a very modest scale and he needs it for his personal protection.”

  “Had you fired a nine-mil before?” Legs asked her.

  “Charlie showed me how,” Leah responded. “Not that there was much to learn. You point and you shoot. Believe me, I found it a whole lot easier to use than my new iPhone.”

  “Just to be straight about this,” Legs said. “Was Charlie aware that you intended to kill Morrie?”

  “I told him I was going to pay Morrie back. I didn’t specifically say I’d shoot him.”

  “But he provided you with a gun and showed you how to use it.”

  “Well, yes,” she admitted. “And he did offer to ‘blow away that fat bastard’ for me, but I wouldn’t let him. Morrie was my demon. Besides, Charlie’s already been in enough trouble with the law. You’ll go easy on him, won’t you, Lieutenant?”

  Legs thumbed his goatee for a moment. “I don’t see how we can. My guess is he’ll be charged as an accessory to first-degree murder. And you’ll be charged with that first-degree murder.”

  “I’m prepared to accept the consequences for what I’ve done,” Leah said. “I have no regrets. None. I pulled the trigger. And I handled the details. That’s what I do. I take care of details. I suggested that Charlie get up early in the morning, take the subway a good distance from Williamsburg and steal the first good-sized vehicle he could find that had tinted windows. So he rode the No. 7 train out to Flushing and—”

  “Stole the Navigator from a Waldbaum’s parking lot,” Legs said, nodding his head. “We tracked it coming into Manhattan through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel at seven minutes after ten. What did he do after that?”

  “Circled around midtown until I called him. I was just waiting for Morrie to go somewhere, anywhere, so we could set our plan in motion. I needed for him to leave. Only he didn’t. And then Benji showed up here to tell him that he’d discovered the truth about Farnell.” Leah arched an eyebrow at me. “It was really quite remarkable the way you told Morrie off, you know. Most people didn’t talk to him like that. And you look like such a little nebbish, too. After you took off, Morrie paced around here for at least another hour, making one phone call after another. He was desperately trying to raise more money from his roster of angels. But he got nowhere, which meant he had to ask Joe Minetta for it. He phoned Joe and arranged to meet him in Bryant Park. That’s when I knew I had my chance. As soon as Morrie went out the door I called Charlie and told him to meet me on the corner of 42nd Street and Sixth. Then I changed into my costume and I took off.”

  “My people questioned the hotel’s doorman,” Legs said. “How did you get out of the building without him seeing you?”

  “I rode the elevator down to the basement and went out the service entrance that’s used by the chambermaids and kitchen staff. And not just by them. The Morley has seen better times, sad to say. Some of its rooms these days are booked by lovers for noonday trysts. They don’t necessarily want to be seen going in and out of a midtown hotel at that hour, so they slip out the service entrance. The kitchen workers are paid to look the other way. When I got up to the street I spotted Morrie halfway down the block heading toward Sixth. And I spotted you, Benji. You were following him, too.”

  “The job left a bad taste in my mouth. I wanted to see what his next move was.” I looked at Leah curiously. “I can usually tell when I have a tail, but I didn’t feel you. I wonder why.”

  “Possibly because I wasn’t tailing you. I was tailing Morrie. And I wouldn’t second-guess myself if I were you, Benji. I’m really a very efficient person when I set my mind to a specific task. Charlie was waiting for me on the corner as planned, gun in hand. I got in and we idled there, waiting for Morrie to finish his chat with Joe. I kept watch on the entrances through the binoculars. Morrie wasn’t hard to spot when he came waddling out of the park. Not in that horrid green jumpsuit of his. Charlie floored it and pulled up alongside of him and I…” Leah paused, her mouth tightening. “I wasn’t sure I’d have the nerve to do it. Shoot him, I mean. But I did. It was astonishingly easy, in fact. Because it was the right thing to do. It’s never hard to do something when it’s the right thing to do. Or so I’ve learned in my sixty-two years of living. Then I jumped back in the Navigator and we took off.”

  “Our security cams tracked you going down Fifth Avenue to West 37th Street,” Legs said. “You made a right turn there and headed toward Sixth.”

  “That’s correct. When we got to Sixth, Charlie went up one block to West 38th Street, pulled over and let me out.”

  “Were you still wearing your costume?” I asked.

  “Yes, I was. And, my lord, was it hot to be wearing a hooded sweatshirt. But I didn’t think it would be safe to get out of the car wearing my regular clothes. I might be observed, after all. There was an outfit waiting for me in the Navigator, folded inside a shoulder bag. I took the bag with me when I got out. Charlie headed east on West 38th Street, took the Midtown Tunnel back to Queens and ditched the Navigator somewhere. He made sure to wipe it clean of fingerprints. Then he took the subway home. He tossed the gun in a trash can somewhere along the way.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I strolled my way up Sixth Avenue, as planned. There are a couple of discount dress shops next to each other on Sixth just below West 40th Street. One is called Kara New York. The other is called Steps. They have racks and racks of cheap, brightly colored summer dresses. Do a very good business with young secretaries and tourists. I went in Kara New York and tried on a dress. I didn’t buy it, but this gave me the opportunity to change into my own outfit unobserved. They’re not allowed to have security cameras inside the dressing stalls, as I’m sure you know, Lieutenant. I stowed my costume and sunglasses in the shoulder bag and tossed it in a trashcan as I walked back here to the hotel. When the doorman greeted me he no doubt figured I’d been out running an errand. I wasn’t gone very long. And I was back here in plenty of time to receive you two when you arrived with the sad news about Morrie.”

  “At which point you treated us to more playacting,” I said. “You were very convincing in the role of the loyal assistant who was devastated by her boss’s brutal murder.”

  “That wasn’t entirely playacting, Benji. That was quite an emotional ordeal I’d just been through. And the reality was starting to sink in that Morrie was gone. Really, really gone.”

  “Were you feeling any regrets?�
�� Legs asked her.

  “Not a one,” she answered bluntly. “I was at peace. I still am. Morrie got what he deserved. And the plan that I drew up worked to perfection.”

  “I have to disagree with you,” Legs said. “The part about your plan working to perfection, I mean. Because it didn’t, ma’am. It took Benji almost no time at all to figure out that you were Morrie’s killer because, well, Benji is Meyer Golden’s son. The rest of us plodding mortals would have been on to you in another day, tops. We tracked the Navigator until it made that right turn onto West 37th Street. We’ve been checking that whole block and it turns out there’s a Marriott Fairfield Inn midway between Fifth and Sixth. Their security cam nailed you driving by. There are cameras on Sixth that no doubt filmed Charlie dropping you off and filmed you walking into that dress shop, coming out of that dress shop and tossing your costume in the trash. We would have followed you every step of the way right back here to the Morley. Speaking of which, the Morley’s own security cams will show you leaving the building by way of the service stairs. It’s no good. You were never going to get away with it, don’t you understand?”

  Leah studied him with her alert brown eyes. “You’re the one who doesn’t seem to understand, Lieutenant. I don’t care about what happens to me. I don’t care about anything anymore.”

  “Not even Charlie? You roped him into helping you commit murder.”

  “He was happy to help. He felt useful.”

  “But he’ll be spending a long time in jail now, thanks to you.”

  She looked at Legs curiously. “Have you ever met Charlie?”

  “No, I haven’t had the privilege yet.”

  “Trust me, he’s much better off in prison than he is on the outside. I suppose that sounds harsh coming from his own mother. But it’s the cold, hard truth. Charlie’s happier on the inside. He makes friends easily. Gets plenty of exercise, has unlimited access to drugs and he doesn’t have to make any decisions. Charlie does fine in prison. It’s when he’s on the outside that he gets into trouble.”