Murder at the Flamingo

by Rachel McMillan

  The band took ten and Johnny dabbed at his forehead, seeing and approaching them. “Luca said I could play the Flamingo soon.” He beamed. “The club is all the rave and I don’t mind paying my dues.” He focused on Hamish. “When your cousin says something, he sticks to his word, doesn’t he?”

  Hamish hemmed through a sentence. He’d always thought Luca was trustworthy, but these past few months had showed him a side he hadn’t seen before. “I believe he tries as best he can to keep his word.”

  “We have a few questions about Mary Finn,” Reggie cut in.

  Johnny paled and it was noticeable even in the dark-lit club. “I miss her, you know. I know she wouldn’t give me the time of day while that Schultze was around. But we had a history. Worked at a few clubs together.” He mopped his brow with a handkerchief. “She believed in my music.” He laughed darkly. “But why are you still sniffing around? The police said it was an accident.”

  “Because you followed her to the basement and you had Schultze’s walking stick,” Reggie explained.

  “What?”

  “Whoever was with her before she fell down the stairs impressed an object into her neck. The police ignored it. We won’t,” Hamish said.

  “And how do you know it was a walking stick?” Johnny tugged at his collar.

  “Because a similar injury happened to me.” Hamish’s hand went to his neckline, under his collar.

  “And you’re implying what, exactly?”

  “Maybe you saw or heard something,” Reggie said.

  Johnny looked over the dancers, to the bar, up and over to the bandstand. It wasn’t as fancy as Roy Holliday’s: the stands didn’t have monograms. “I heard nothing. I saw nothing. Honestly, I’m a little tired of having to relive that night. I am trying to make a life for myself. A name for myself.” His eyes settled on Hamish. “Your cousin has everything I want. A club. A name. I just want to prove myself to him while creating my own music on the side. You hear that?” Even without their leader, the musicians had trailed into a slow, steady swing. “I wrote that. Publicity is good. I have had my name in the papers. Not the way I thought I would start out, but . . .” He shrugged. “So was that all you wanted?”

  “I know people will do a lot to win Luca’s loyalty and affection,” Hamish said, though he was starting to wonder why.

  “Because he’s worth it.” Johnny said easily. “He has a lot of connections.” He spun on his heel, jogged to the stairs, and ascended to the stage. Soon he was back in the spotlight, ramming his baton on the side of his stand and looping the air with his desired time. The band followed.

  “What are you thinking about?” Reggie asked Hamish a few moments later. They were standing there, drawing attention with their immobility. Finally, she tugged his arm and they meandered in the direction of the door.

  “I would do a lot for Luca,” he said.

  “I know. He’s your cousin.”

  “Not just that. There’s some magnetism to him. Look at you, you’re working for him.”

  Reggie nodded. “He has this allure. You want him to like you, you know? And then you want to make sure that you’re making him look good.” She laughed. “Look at me go. Just like Schultze or Johnny Wade . . .”

  “But you wouldn’t go off the deep end for him.” They were outside the club now, leftover strings of music funneling out and around them. The neighborhood wasn’t Scollay Square with its fluorescent fever of people and cars and billboards, but it still had a pulse and bustle about it.

  “Every so often there’s this spark to you, Hamish,” Reggie said after a moment. Hamish’s profile was strong under the streetlight.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re so shy, but there’s something else underneath. A guy who will carry a girl home on his handlebars, who gives in to the music, who loves pretty and ugly cookies. I am just getting to know that Hamish and I think he bubbles more closely to the surface than people think. And I feel special for knowing that.”

  Hamish blinked away the look of surprise on his face. “Maybe I just needed someone special to bring it out.”

  She smiled and felt it down to her toes.

  It was a waiting game. Waiting for something that would step out and flash itself. Some revelation that would prove that their suspicions about Mary were founded. Something. Anything.

  Little crescents of red rimmed his palm, some scabbed. When he was little, his mother would file his nails down to nonexistent so he couldn’t dig them in. Hamish went over the facts again and again in his mind until the story connected. He was good at this: creating tapestries in his imagination. When you spent your life thinking you were on the outside looking in, you had a long time to sharpen your perception of others. He fingered his braces. When he was a kid, his math teacher always told him he complicated things. Adding steps to an equation. Always thinking there had to be more lines and figures. While, really, he only needed to trust his intuition. There was something simpler here in the two parallel lines connecting the stories, just like in Notre-Dame. Hugo’s book had a whole chapter about it: different plots intersecting at just the right time. The plot of Esmeralda and Phoebus and the gypsies on the Feast of Fools and the plot of Quasimodo. Hamish just had to figure out what it was. He would use the book that had seen him through days pulling his knees up to his chest and flexing his fingers, the sun hidden through the drawn blinds of his bedroom, for a different purpose. Not to hide, but to solve. What if what he thought was a weakness all these years—living in a book, afraid of getting too close to people or of failing—was actually a strength that would help him?

  Hamish walked by Nate’s slightly ajar door, and Nate muttered something about that fiend Aaron Leibowitz before reaching for the ringing phone. But Hamish heard something in his voice that didn’t ring true. Nate was lying. This wasn’t about his editorial letters to the Advocate at all. Hamish sometimes wondered if his friend left his door open on purpose so if Reggie or Hamish popped by they were a part of the ongoing conversation of his life.

  Hamish stalled, drew a breath, and listened.

  “Paul. Yes. Let me see.” A shuffling of papers. “I need another electrician. Wiring? Telephone repair? I can put you in and you need . . . A moment. I think I hear someone.”

  Nate opened the door just as Hamish retreated to his own office. North End Housing Development was one thing. Hamish knew enough from his brief acquaintance with Nate that he was good at his job. Fair too. And from what Reggie said about his predilection for sweets and his ability to keep his own rooms on the other side of the Prado, he made a decent living from it. Sure, Nate cultivated proper housing bylaws, but what had he said about the skim off the top? The residents had to fend for themselves. He could only do so much within the metrics of his business. Were there other strings he could pull or deals he could make beyond the bold block lettering of “North End Housing Development” on his office door?

  Hamish slumped behind his desk in an office all but useless, occupied only intermittently by him and Reggie, cannoli, and Winchester Molloy. He had half a mind to give it to a well-meaning entrepreneur who needed a boost for his business. One of the men Nate was always trying to help.

  The familiar sounds snuck under the crevice of the open window. Church bells pealing, horns honking, carts dragging, people greeting and laughing and yelling in a rainbow of languages. His very own Court of Miracles. Where miracles could happen when people exchanged goods and thoughts and goodwill. Hamish jolted up. Nate had mentioned that people traded services to forgo the paperwork and reports for landlords who didn’t care about tenant laws. And what if someone arranged it?

  Why else would Nate need to document who taught piano and who fixed telephone wires? Unless he ran a Good Samaritan service . . .

  Hamish heard Reggie’s whistle before he saw her. It was almost 10:00 a.m. He wondered if she had thought ahead far enough to line up interviews for a new job.

  “Any interviews?” he asked her when she strolled in wit
h a smile. He felt a pang thinking of someone else sharing her mornings or looking across an enclosed space and finding her there. Her little hums. Her incessant need to scribble in her journal. The look on her face when she melted at the first taste of cannoli on her tongue.

  “Not today.” She blew a strand of hair from her forehead.

  Hamish’s smile matched his relief. “I have a theory, Regina. Look at your influence.” He flashed her a look. “My brain is working overtime.”

  She laughed, though it was somewhat forced as her eyes worked over the slight red marks on his hand. “At least your brain is working.”

  “It’s about Nate and what he does, and it might just help us finish this.”

  “He works in property development and yells at Aaron Leibowitz at the Jewish Advocate over their ongoing theological feud. I want to solve our murder mystery.”

  “I think he is the middleman for an enterprise that matches people with services. If someone needs their wiring fixed and their landlord is a goon like Schultze, then he has . . .” He arched an eyebrow with a knowing look, waiting for her to catch his drift.

  “Someone who can tutor their daughter after school in payment.”

  “No money exchanges hands. No dirty laundry. Just services.”

  “Which is why Mrs. Leoni and her friend were so desperate to see him.”

  “And why he has immediate access to Old North Church.”

  Reggie sparkled. “He’s kind of like Robin Hood. He . . .”

  They turned at the sound of Nate bounding in with a copy of the Advocate. “This mutt Leibowitz! He thinks I am playing a game of chess. That he can make a move. But it is so much more than pieces on a board. It is . . . What? Why are you both looking at me like that?”

  “Sit down, Nathaniel.”

  “Am I in trouble?” Nate laughed. “You two play Sherlock Holmes and suddenly everyone is a suspect.”

  “We figured it out,” Hamish said.

  “The murder? Was it me? Because as exciting as that prospect might be, I was nowhere near the Flamingo that night. I was playing seven-card stud with my Bubbe. I lost, by the way.”

  “You’re the North End Robin Hood,” Hamish said. “You broker services.”

  Nate laughed. “I’m not smart enough. Now, see here, Aaron Leibowitz!” He rapped his paper. “He would have you believe that I was put on this earth just to cross him with theological bickerings. But I will prevail!”

  Hamish held up a hand. “Enough of Aaron Leibowitz. I am starting to question his existence or whether he is just some way you quickly change a subject.”

  “Ha!” Nate reached into his back trouser pocket for a folded newspaper. He unraveled it and held it demonstratively. Most of it was in a language Hamish couldn’t read, but he believed Nate.

  “If you’re trying to be so sneaky, don’t leave your door open.”

  “And don’t take phone calls when one of us is in your office,” Reggie joined in, grabbing the newspaper and searching for Leibowitz’s name amidst Hebrew characters.

  “Fine. I have nothing to hide. Do you need your sink fixed?”

  “No wonder everyone loves you.” Hamish smiled. “No wonder you have access to Old North Church.”

  “Everyone loves me because I know the ins and outs of the neighborhood. But mostly because they read my editorial letters to the Advocate and Aaron—”

  Reggie laughed. “Oh, Nate.” She reached over and squeezed his hand. “How many people do you think actually read your letters to Aaron Leibowitz?”

  Nate smiled. “What’s the point of living in this magnificent city of freedom if you can’t help people find liberty here?” he said solemnly. “What do you call it, Hamish? From Notre-Dame? The Court of Miracles? If I can make a little miracle happen now and then, it’s a heck of a lot more fun than property development.” He smiled at both of them. “You’re quite good detectives, you know. I mean, on one hand I cannot believe it took you this long to figure it out. I didn’t exactly lock myself in a vault and my door was always open. But . . .”

  After Nate had retreated to his office, Reggie and Hamish exchanged a smile.

  “I am going to buy him dozens of almond cookies,” she decided. “Forever. Then subscribe to the Jewish Advocate. I can’t understand half of what he says, but at least I will root for him against poor Aaron Leibowitz.”

  “Nate is a middleman. He is the one who arranges it all.”

  “And free of charge.” Reggie sparkled. “I like him more and more.”

  “Yes, well, somewhat free of charge. We both know he actually works at that office of his. That . . .” Hamish felt something stirring. A parallel line . . .

  “Obviously he doesn’t take money for it. He would never . . .”

  “Reggie! But what if someone had the same type of setup for a different enterprise? Who knew who could be bribed and who knew where to launder money? They take their crummy slumlord money and invest it in clubs.

  “Nate has a file,” Hamish continued. He was looking at everything but her. She could see the wheels turning in his mind. “But at core he is the arranger of his little miracles.”

  Hamish chewed at his thumbnail. “Someone who gets a cut of everything. Someone who knows everyone. Has ties from back here in the North End to the glitz of Scollay Square. Someone who is always around, tapping his way through every club and baseball game and meeting with people who would use his services.” Hamish flexed the fingers on his right hand. “Someone who has a good enough memory not to have to leave a paper trail. So no police officer could ever flaunt a concrete piece of circumstantial evidence. But still convince people that they could have a piece of whatever miracle was on offer. That it was some living and tangible thing. A safety net,” Hamish surmised. “Every investor, banker, accountant, property manager, club owner, and police officer . . .” He raked his fingers through his hair.

  “A gold mine.” Reggie bit her lip. So many phone calls that knew something.

  “Someone would kill for that level of power. Or”—and here he thought about Frank Fulham—“be sent away.”

  “And if Luca has access to this person . . . maybe someone wanted him behind bars. Maybe it was an easy way to lock him away so they could get access. Cut him out completely. One less person to share with. Simple fractions.”

  “And creditor calls are a good ruse,” Hamish continued, “to put people off a trail.”

  “He was never at the office, though. He just put someone there for people to yell at.”

  Hamish shot Reggie a compassionate look. “Come on.”

  Reggie shook her head. “Don’t I have to man the fort, sit here, and get yelled at?”

  Hamish’s mind trailed off. “I couldn’t find anything when I went sniffing around his office in the apartment; but maybe I was looking in the wrong place.” He darted in the direction of his bike leaning against the wall. “It will be faster.” He answered the question in her eyes.

  When they reached the sidewalk, Reggie hopped on the front of the bike with ease, and in her maneuver over the handlebars, a tickle of hair brushed his cheek. She was so close these days: her scent, her warmth, the little tics and quirks that made her unique. Wonderfully irreplaceable.

  He pushed off, biceps straining on either side of her, flexed with the control of movement and extra weight. His mind was weighted too. Burdened on the precipice of a revelation that would see the summer come full circle. What started with Luca ended with Luca.

  Reggie hopped off just as they passed the Granary Burying Ground, catching the wink of the summer sun, soft and a little mournful.

  The doorman smiled at him and even more pleasantly at Reggie. “How do you do, young lady?”

  Reggie flipped on the switch of her usual charm, melting him with a smile and poised shoulders.

  Once in the elevator, he exhaled.

  “Something’s bothering you? I mean, everything is bothering you. But this is something more.” She ran a red-accented finger over the o
rnamentation of the elevator. The bellboy did well at air whistling and looking up and not directly at them.

  Hamish didn’t say anything, but his mind was a movie reel. It was as if he was finally able to see his cousin for the first time. It startled him. He wasn’t sure how it had evaded him, other than he knew it was his nature to see the best first. Especially in someone like Luca. How could he not give Luca the benefit of the doubt?

  They alighted at the penthouse floor and crossed the russet-and-gold carpet. Hamish extracted the key in his pocket and turned it in the lock.

  He heard Fidget the moment he pushed the door open. Her usual noises: rattling some dishes, humming something in a voice that might have been sweet if not undercut by the sad songs she sang.

  “Fidget. I should probably call you Florence, though?”

  She laughed softly, turning to the kitchen. “You’ll want tea.” She looked at Reggie.

  “I don’t want tea. I want to know who my cousin is.”

  “I gotta tell you.” She folded her skirt under her and sat in an armchair. “I was surprised when he brought you. Maybe he thought you were naïve. Maybe he thought you would redeem him.”

  “Redeem him from what?”

  “Himself.” Fidget shrugged.

  “Your husband is Frank Fulham. Luca’s—”

  “Attorney. In Chicago. And the man he trusted more than anyone else in the world. His vault.”

  Hamish cleared his throat. Why hadn’t Luca trusted him? “He’s in Cicero.”

  Fidget nodded. “Frank thinks he sold him out, but he doesn’t know that Luca was supposed to arrange a far more drastic measure for him. Instead, he made it look like he had finished him.”

  “Finished him how?” This from Reggie.

  Fidget’s look told Hamish everything he needed to know. “Your cousin isn’t a killer.”