by Delia Rosen
“All for one, huh?”
“Corny as it sounds,” I said with a nod. “Whatever happens next, I won’t fail them if I can help it.”
Cazzie considered that, shooshed a fly from its erratic flight pattern around her punch glass.
“Do you have any idea what will happen?”
“As far as Ramsey, it depends.” I shrugged. “My sense is that he’s all too happy to stay in the background and have his lawyer…”
“What was name again?”
“Liarson, appropriately enough,” I said. “Cyrus Liarson. I think he’s more of a down-and-dirty hardcase than his client. A real fixer. He’ll throw every trick in the book at us…whatever it takes to make people so wary of eating at Murray’s Deli that they stay away.”
“You think he’ll succeed?”
“If he can keep the Buster Sergeant story going in the press, tip them off about a stalker hanging around the restaurant to attack me…he certainly has plenty of bullets in his gun.” I sighed. “It’s good for him that we’re already in a financial hole. Bad for us.”
“Because it puts you in a defensive position.”
“Backs against the wall,” I said. “We’re had if we can’t pay our bills.”
Cazzie looked at me. The breeze kicked up and romped through my hair again. I brushed a few strands from my eye with my left hand, winced at a sharp twinge the sudden motion brought about in my wrist.
“Ow,” Cazzie said.
“You felt my pain, huh?” I said.
“Not really, but I did notice it.”
“It isn’t so bad. I just need to avoid little things like showing off how well I can flap my arms.”
She smiled, sipped her punch. “Okay if I ask a question or two about those bullets you mentioned?”
“Shoot.” I grinned meekly.
“Have you found out anything new about what killed Buster Sergeant?” she said, ignoring my cleverness.
I considered how to answer. McClintock had made me promise to keep quiet about the coroner’s discovery of Furadan poison in his body. Lousy as I felt about it, I couldn’t tell Cazzie.
“The police want to keep it under their hats for now,” I said, not quite lying.
She met my gaze. I had a hunch she’d picked up on there being more to it, but she didn’t press me. “Leaving that aside,” she said, “last night’s incident at the restaurant has me worried. Somebody sneaked up on you from behind, pushed you with such force you were knocked unconscious, and then locked you in the refrigerator. In a district attorney’s office, that falls somewhere between first-degree assault and attempted murder. I wonder…that is, I assume you must be wondering who’d have a motive?”
I sat there a minute. The fly that had buzzed around her glass alighted on my nose, momentarily made me cross-eyed, and shot away. “Caz,” I said, “are you heading down the lawyerly path I think you are?”
“I’m only looking at possibilities,” she said in a low voice. “Let’s lay it out in the open. The notion that Royce Ramsey would want to have you killed is crazy. But no crazier than stories I’ve heard from friends who are criminal lawyers. The deli is literally the only thing standing between him and a cash-cow real-estate project. And maybe it isn’t about murder. You brought up Ramsey’s intimidation tactics…”
“You think he might have intended to throw a scare into me?”
“That was an effect of what happened,” Cazzie said. “I know I’m scared anyway. And once the police documents become public record, the story’s bound to make the newspapers, which you told me yourself would make Liarson happy.”
I was imagining her reaction if I could have disclosed that Buster Sergeant’s death hadn’t resulted from food poisoning—at least of the accidental variety. But I couldn’t afford to ponder it—she’d reminded me of something that had nearly slipped my mind altogether.
“Caz, I hate to cut this short, but I need to stop at police headquarters before heading back to the deli,” I said, glancing at my watch. “Detective McClintock’s still waiting for my statement—and it’s getting late.”
“Do tell.” She put her glass down on the tray she’d brought from her condo. “Grace should have the kids home in an hour or so and there’s nothing ready for them to eat.”
“Sounds dangerous,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to leave here wondering about the safety of my cats.”
She laughed as I got up, added my glass to the tray, and lifted it off the table, figuring I’d give her a hand.
“You know,” I said, “I meant to bring you and the boys some Johnny Cashew pie from the restaurant.”
“Seriously?”
“It was what I was getting out of the fridge last night,” I said. “But whoever shoved me—and the fire extinguishers—took care of that.”
She paused and looked at me midway to her back door. “Now I really want somebody punished for the deed,” she said.
Chapter Seventeen
“Okay, Gwen, I think we’ve covered everything.” McClintock said. He picked his digital recorder up off his desk blotter. “I appreciate you giving me permission to get your statement in an audio file—it beats taking notes, and not only because I can’t read the chicken scrawl that passes for my own penmanship.”
I smiled from across the desk, glad to be done with the interview. Reliving my experience in the refrigeration unit hadn’t been fun. Also, it was almost a quarter to five and I was impatient to return to the restaurant.
“What’s the other reason?” I asked, slipping my purse strap over my shoulder. “And don’t tell me it’s that you like the sound of my voice.”
The detective gave a small chuckle. “I’ll refrain from making that admission…which doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be truthful,” he said. “Frankly, it’s advisable to have a recording for evidentiary purposes.”
“You mean if there’s an arrest?”
“And particularly at trial,” he said with a nod. “Nowadays, defense attorneys scrutinize every last item of proof. I don’t blame them…it keeps cops like me on our toes. The problem’s that guilty parties have walked because the cases against them were undercut by minor inaccuracies in handwritten notes. You have to take them when there’s a lot of hubbub around and the background noise might drown out people’s voices—like at your restaurant Friday night. But a recording’s perfect for a one-to-one here in my office. Whenever a jury can actually listen to a statement, it eliminates one potential stumbling block in a prosecution.”
I’d stayed in my chair, thinking. “Do you feel you’ll be able to catch whoever locked me in the fridge?”
“I’m not big on predictions, and that would be the last kind I’d be inclined to make,” McClintock said. He shrugged. “I also don’t believe much in coincidence, though. And my guess would be there’s a link between Buster Sergeant’s poisoning and your episode last night.”
“Do you have any idea what kind of link?”
“Not yet,” he said. “As of this moment, we have no suspects, no theories for what’s behind these incidents, no clues…but we’re at an early stage of the investigation.
I sat there, wondering if I should have mentioned Cazzie’s suspicions about Royce Ramsey. But resentful as I was of his buyout offer, and despite my intense aversion to his stooge Liarson, neither of them had twisted my arm into accepting it—or done anything too far out of line that I knew about. Even Liarson’s having approached members of the deli’s staff behind my back to entice them into getting behind the buyout was unscrupulous, but not really crooked.
It seemed a bad idea to throw his or Ramsey’s name into the hat—not that I cared about creating hassles for them, but because I felt it would muddy the waters and maybe even make me look paranoid, vindictive, or both. Best to keep Cazzie’s bit of speculation to myself unless or until something happened to give it credibility.
No, I’d keep that bit of supposition to myself unless something happened to give it credibility.
Satisfied I�
�d made the right decision, I thanked McClintock for his consideration, and was taking another shot at getting up to leave when, for the second time in as many visits to the office, I happened to notice the snapshot on the wall near his desk—a varsity baseball team in gold and orange uniforms, a younger McClintock smiling at the camera from the front row of players. That, and the baseball in its display case at one corner of his blotter.
“Artie mentioned something about artists. Athletes too, I guess—”
“Let’s not go there.”
“Huh? I—”
“I don’t want to talk about no lousy ingrate ballplayer.”
I froze halfway off my chair, staring at McClintock’s photograph, recalling every word of my cheery exchange with Thomasina over Murray’s penchant for helping people in need of a cash fix. How often over the past couple of days had I picked up hints that McClintock and Uncle Murray had been more than just passing acquaintances? Three, four times? Yet whenever I’d started asking about it—or broached the subject with McClintock himself, for that matter—a brick wall had gone up in front of me, as if I was raising the question at the absolute worst possible moment….
“Gwen? What is it?” McClintock sprang to his feet.
“Nothing,” I said. “No worries.”
“You’re sure? If you aren’t feeling well…”
“Seriously,” I said. “I’m fine.”
We stood there looking at each other. And then it occurred to me. The two of us alone in his office, no distractions…maybe this was the best moment to ask about his relationship with my uncle. I could even use the chummy call-him-by-his-first-name, let’s-get-personal ploy. Why not? He’d handed it to me gift wrapped after all.
“Beau,” I said. “I’ve been hoping you’d tell me…that is, I’d like to know about you and Murray.”
We must have thrashed a good, long minute to death swapping looks across his desk before he finally sat down. I followed his lead, taking it as a fair sign he wasn’t about to Hail Mary me out the door.
“Guess you were looking at the photo of me,” he said, nodding his head back at its spot on the wall behind him. “I also reckoned it caught your attention when you were here yesterday.”
“Yes.” I gestured at the baseball in its desktop display case. “And that too.”
His head went up and down. “The colors I’m wearing in that picture belong to the University of Tennessee baseball team. The UT Vols…that’s short for Volunteers. Fifteen years ago, I was a junior at school, a pitcher. The number-three starter in the team’s rotation.”
“I’m no baseball junkie…but isn’t that a big deal?”
“It’s an important role,” McClintock said with a nod. “So anyway, the Chicago Cubs have a farm team over in Knoxville called the Smokies, and the Minnesota Twins have an affiliate in New Britain. And their scouts came to watch me throw, and I got drafted low by the Twins. But the Cubs wanted me even more and made a trade and picked me up.”
I blinked. “Hang on. You were a Major League pitcher?”
McClintock’s smile was reflective and, I thought, tinged with sadness. “Never quite…but I did come close,” he said. “My father worked as a lineman for Middle Tennessee Electric. Mom was a secretary at a trucking firm for over thirty years. But then Pop got into an accident running cable, lost his legs, and couldn’t work at all. That’s with three other kids besides me to feed and clothe.” He paused, shrugged. “I wasn’t offered a fat signing check. Twenty-seventh-round prospects aren’t bonus babies. And baseball’s an iffy enough living without having to start out as anyone’s financial burden. So I figured I’d have to pass on my chance to play pro ball, dream though it might’ve been. Graduate college, get a decent-paying regular job, and help out at home.
“That was it? You decided to stay in school?”
“Yep,” McClintock said. He sighed, a long, heavy breath that seemed to come from way down around his toes. “And I would’ve stuck to my choice except for one kind, decent man offering to help with my family’s expenses.”
It sunk in all at once. “Uncle Murray,” I said.
“I worked for him part-time. Started when I was a senior in high school, and went on through my three years of college.”
I was shaking my head incredulously. “that’s quite a long while.”
“Five years in all,” McClintock said. “Murray hired me as a part-time delivery boy and gofer. I used to run takeout lunches over to the music studios, keep the tips. After a bit, I started doing different odds and ends around the restaurant. Worked the register, cleaned up, and so on. Never waited tables because your uncle reserved that for full-timers.”
“And when you got traded to the Cubs, he gave you a loan….”
“I suppose you could call it that, even though he wouldn’t ever let me repay it,” McClintock said, folding his hands on the desk. “Really, it was for my family, so I could give baseball a go with a clear mind and wouldn’t have to be concerned they’d fall short on paying their mortgage and bills.”
I still couldn’t help but be amazed by what he was telling me. “What happened after that?”
“I left school, pitched Double-A for the Smokies, and was better than anybody expected,” McClintock said. “My first season in the minors, I threw the only no-hitter in team history and was going to be fast-tracked up to Triple-A.” He shrugged, expelled more air through his mouth. “And then I got hurt on the mound—a shoulder injury. Last game of the year, wouldn’t you know. I went through rotator cuff surgery, a year of rehab. But I never could throw the same afterward. They say shoulders are dicier than elbows, and I guess that was true for me.”
I looked at him. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It must’ve been an awful blow.”
McClintock’s eyes lowered to his hands for a while, then slowly returned to my face. “What happened to Pop…that was awful,” he said. “Things just didn’t work out as I hoped, no tragedy. I went back to school, majored in criminal law, got hired as a Metro patrolman, made my way up through the ranks….”
“And here you are now,” I said quietly into the silence. “A police detective.”
He nodded, his gaze firmly on mine. “With my baseball mementos and the niece that Murray couldn’t talk enough about.”
I hesitated, wishing my cheeks hadn’t felt warm all of a sudden. “There’s something I still don’t understand. Thomasina’s attitude—the way she’s so hostile to you—is it somehow connected to your not repaying the loan?”
He shook his head. “If that was it, I wouldn’t be alone in this town, nor rate her meanest stares,” he said. And then pinched his face in an impression of one.
I laughed. “Not bad,” I said. “But it lacks the full, ornery weight of her personality.”
“I don’t suppose that’s too easy to mimic,” he said. And paused for a long moment. “Getting back to your question, Gwen…you do know your uncle enjoyed his gambling, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “When I was little, he’d hit Aqueduct Racetrack all the time. The Big A, he called it. The track was in a New York City neighborhood called Ozone Park, maybe fifteen, twenty minutes from his house on the expressway.” I chuckled. “Never mind that the beach was right in the area. One day, he’d wanted to bring me to see the thoroughbreds run there, introduce me to some of his friends in the clubhouse. Me with my hair bows and Barbie dolls. I must’ve been nine years old.”
“I bet your parents were overjoyed.”
“If I’d kept my stupid mouth shut about going with him, they wouldn’t have put the kibosh on it,” I said. “No kidding, though…being his niece was a blast. And it wasn’t as if he ever stuffed one of his Cuban cigars into my mouth.”
McClintock gave a thin smile. “When I was a Cubs’ farmhand, Murray’d come to watch me pitch all the time. He seemed to take pride in my ability. I could count on seeing him in the stands at every home game, and sometimes on the road too.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I swe
ar to you, Gwen. He was like a proud father,” McClintock said. “And then I started hearing whispers about him.”
“Whispers?” It took a moment for the meaning of that to sink in. “Are you saying people thought he was betting on your games?”
“The stories were that I was an investment…it made no difference they weren’t true. Murray never broadcast that he’d fronted money to more folks than you could count, and people who didn’t know him only cared about his rep as a gambler.” He lifted his hands off the desk and spread them apart. “The rumors dogged me that whole season, till I finally asked Murray to stop coming to the games. There must have been a better way to handle it. If I was older, I’d have done it differently. But I was under pressure from my manager, the team owners, even some players…and it got to be a distraction…and I did what I did. And though it might’ve pained him to his core, I think he understood my reasons.”
I looked at him, a sudden realization overspreading my features. “And Thomasina didn’t.”
McClintock shook his head. “No, not at all,” he said. “She’s as headstrong as she is loyal. And she loved him too much to be forgiving of me.”
We sat in silence. I wasn’t sure what else to say, and guessed he wasn’t either. Then it occurred to me that we’d probably said everything necessary.
I stood up, slipping my purse over my shoulder. Then McClintock came around the desk and showed me to the door. I stood there feeling awkward for a few moments, altough I wasn’t quite sure why—which only made me feel more self-conscious.
If McClinctock noticed, he didn’t let on. Instead, he thanked me for dropping by to give my statement, and I told him he was more than welcome, and then I left.
Chapter Eighteen
The restaurant emptied out by seven-thirty. There hadn’t been many diners, but everybody who came in got a choice of a free knish to take home and seemed pleased. The last of them, an elderly man named Earl who showed up every Sunday like clockwork, even cracked a joke that I supposed had Buster Sergeant’s demise at its root.