Fatal Deception

by Russell Blake

  “We can give you a lift to the station and back,” Ron offered.

  Gunter took in the group and tilted his head toward Ron. “Lead the way.”

  Once in the car, Gunter tried broaching the subject again, but Ron remained closed-mouthed until they arrived at the station and he and Ben escorted the big Dane to an interview room. Gunter sat expectantly and Ron continued killing him with kindness, treating him like a guest rather than a suspect. Ron adjusted his approach with each suspect, and something about Gunter told him that he’d get further with a gentle probing than a frontal assault. He didn’t have any leverage on the man, unlike with Stibling, who valued his reputation and position of privilege; or Paulo, who had a record; or Sato, whom they’d caught red-handed with dope. Gunter could easily refuse to answer any questions if he believed he was a suspect, and Ron wanted to avoid that for as long as possible. He set his voice recorder on the table and switched it on.

  “Mind if I record this? It’s easier than taking notes,” Ron said.

  “However you like.”

  Ron stated the date, time, and Gunter’s name, and then sat back, his body language relaxed and open.

  “Mr. Ausberg, can I ask you where you were Friday night, a week ago?”

  “Oh my, let me think,” Gunter said, eyeing the ceiling before looking at Ron. “At a party.”

  Ron nodded as though the vague answer was perfect. “Where, if I may ask?”

  “Off the island. In Greenwich.”

  “Nice.”

  “Yes, well, I have a select clientele and often get invited to events. I’m very fortunate.”

  “Do you recall how long you were there?”

  “Oh, probably till eleven. It didn’t go late.”

  “I see.”

  “You mentioned a young lady?”

  “Yes. She was also at the party. We’re trying to ascertain her movements that night.”

  “I see. I didn’t really know most of the people there. As I said, it wasn’t my soiree…”

  “This young lady was rather memorable, I’m told. She had full-sleeve tattoos and dyed black hair. Were there many like her at the event?”

  “Mmm, not that I recall. Oh – wait. I think I know the one you mean. Good Lord. She was murdered? How awful.”

  “Yes, it was a tragedy. But back to you. You left the party…with someone or alone?”

  Ron thought he detected an edge to Gunter’s expression, and then it softened. “Alone, I’m afraid.”

  “How did you get home?”

  “I drove. What does this have to do with the murdered girl?”

  “We’re just trying to place everyone at the party, in case there’s a connection.”

  Gunter gasped and held a manicured hand to his chest. “You think the murderer was at the event?”

  “We honestly don’t know. But we’re ruling people out by process of elimination. We’re almost done, Mr. Ausberg. Again, thanks for being so patient. It’s a necessary evil.”

  “I’m just shocked at the idea, frankly.”

  “Yes, I know it’s unsettling. When you got back to the city, did you go out or home?”

  “Oh, home, and then took a long walk to get the alcohol out of my system.”

  “Hmm. Do you recall where you went?”

  “Just around the neighborhood. It’s quite lively on weekend nights. Like a street party, you know?”

  “Did you see anyone you know? Stop in at a bar or anything?”

  The hard look came back into Gunter’s eyes. “No, I just went home after a walk and went to sleep. It had been an exhausting week.”

  Ron nodded sympathetically. “I forgot to ask – which route did you take home?”

  “The Kennedy Bridge.”

  “How was traffic? I hear it can be a bear during the day.”

  Gunter appeared puzzled by the question. “It was fine going that direction. Not many cars at that hour.”

  “And you drove straight home? What time did you hit the sack?”

  “I just said I did,” Gunter said, exasperated. “It took perhaps an hour. I was in bed by one, one thirty. I walked for forty-five minutes or so.”

  “Okay, then. Final question: did you see the young lady leave the party?”

  “No. But I honestly wasn’t paying much attention.” Gunter thought for a beat. “I’m afraid I don’t know when she left. I wish I could be of more help.”

  “Thanks for your cooperation,” Ron said. “Is there anything you’d like to add?”

  “Not really, other than that it’s disconcerting to consider that someone at the party could be a murderer. Are you absolutely sure?”

  “Unfortunately, nothing in this business is absolute. But it’s our current best guess.” Ron glanced at Ben. “Would you take Mr. Ausberg back home?”

  “Sure,” Ben responded evenly.

  Ron shook hands with the art dealer and returned to his office. Ben called twenty minutes later. “I dropped him off. What do you think?”

  “He’s way too smooth. Cocky.”

  “I got that. But where does that leave us?”

  “With his story. So now we do the heavy lifting to pick it apart. Same as ever.”

  “You like him for it?”

  “Either him or Stibling. They both give me the creeps.”

  “Pity that’s not admissible.”

  “In either case, we have to proceed carefully. Neither of them is stupid.”

  “I’m going to head home. See you tomorrow morning.”

  Ron sighed at the thought – another wasted day with little to show for his efforts. “I’m going to be out first thing. I want to question the dancer’s boyfriend, get an alibi.”

  “There’s nothing to tie him to the first two, is there?”

  “No. But I promised her cousin I’d speak with him.”

  “Ah. Okay. See you when I see you.”

  Ron sighed at the pile of reports in his inbox and rubbed his eyes. He was operating on almost no sleep, and to continue trying to make sense of things was a fool’s errand until he caught up on his rest. He sent off a few emails requesting verification of several elements of Gunter’s story, and shut down his computer, resolving to return to fight another day and leave the remnants of this one to the bad guys.

  Chapter 33

  Paulo signed for his belongings and stormed through the precinct doors, furious at having been detained frivolously. His time in custody had cost him dearly in lost profits. His loansharking business was a seven-day affair, and he’d intended to pay personal visits to reluctant debtors to remind them of their obligations – but now that night had fallen, that would have to wait until the morning.

  He made his way past groups of uniformed policemen smoking and joking on the sidewalk, and darted between two cars to cross the street before hurrying toward a larger intersection and the subway that ran beneath it. Some primitive part of his reptilian brain registered a threat, and he slowed to identify it without being obvious. He paused in front of a deli and studied the reflection in the storefront window, and spotted the likely cause: a man in a black leather jacket across the street who was watching him from near a trash can while he pretended to consult his phone.

  Like most predators, Paulo had a keen survival instinct, and the watcher tripped every internal alarm Paulo had. The possibility that he was a cop occurred to him, but Paulo dismissed it. He recognized a professional when he saw one, and if he’d had to guess, he would have said the man was an assassin, either Russian or Puerto Rican mob, both of which boasted scores of hired killers in the city – men who would snuff out a life without compunction for anywhere from five to fifty thousand dollars, depending upon the level of difficulty and whether the hit needed to appear accidental.

  If Paulo was right, he was probably safe on the same block as the precinct, but would run the risk of a bullet in the back when he turned the corner. He made a quick calculation and decided to err on the side of safety, and retraced his steps to the station as he
placed a call to one of his associates, who would know what to do.

  Paulo reentered the precinct and moved to the front desk under the watchful eye of several cops. He asked to use the restroom and was told to move along and find a public toilet. He nodded and proceeded to read the wanted posters tacked to a large corkboard, waiting for a call that would tell him that his countermeasures were in place.

  Fifteen minutes went by before his phone rang.

  “Yeah?” Paulo answered.

  “We’re in position.”

  “You have him in sight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s rock.”

  Paulo smiled to himself as he dropped his phone back into his pocket and checked the time. He could have easily arranged for the stalker to get an ice pick to the spine in the crush at the station, but he wanted to know who the man was working for, and killing him wouldn’t achieve that.

  He had to be taken alive.

  After which the man’s remaining hours would be the most agonizing in his life.

  The Italian mafia had long ago learned the value of organizing itself into cells rather than a centralized structure, and Paulo had a loose affiliation with several dozen hardened criminals, any one of whom would relish the chance to do a job for him in return for a deposit in the favor bank. Three enforcers were now out on the street in strategic locations and would converge on the hapless pursuer when he followed Paulo around the corner.

  The only problem might be if the man wasn’t working alone, but Paulo didn’t think that was likely, based on his shoddy tradecraft. No, he had all the earmarks of a low-level hired thug who had jumped at the chance to make some easy money without researching his target.

  Paulo descended the precinct steps and strolled past the police again, this time a little more slowly, although not so much so that he would arouse suspicion. He didn’t make any rookie mistakes like glancing over his shoulder or stopping again, instead walking determinedly to the larger street, ignoring the few other pedestrians around him, none of whom appeared threatening.

  He again crossed the street and entered the deli, watching the sidewalk from the corner of his eye as a paunchy clerk rang up a sandwich and can of soda. Two minutes later Paulo was back on the street, a bag with his dinner in hand, and increased his pace as he neared the corner in order to create urgency in his tail.

  Paulo ducked around the corner and broke into a run, sprinting past a doorway where two of his associates waited with saps in their hands. Moments later his pursuer trotted past, and then things happened quickly as the man withdrew a suppressed pistol from the folds of his jacket and prepared to end Paulo’s life.

  The swat of a sap against the back of the man’s head sounded like a wet sack of cement hitting pavement. His knees buckled and he pitched forward, his gun dropping harmlessly against the ground as he went down. The two men caught him before he struck the sidewalk, dragged him to a waiting van, and threw him through the side cargo door. One of them darted to scoop up the pistol and then ran to the open door and climbed aboard. The van pulled away at a measured pace as a few pedestrians watched with open mouths.

  Paulo’s phone rang moments later. “Butcher shop. Fifteen minutes,” a voice said.

  Paulo flagged down a taxi and gave him an address in the Flatiron District, where his associates did business out of a butcher shop that catered to the restaurant trade. When he arrived, a swarthy balding man with the jowls of a basset hound nodded to him from his position outside the service exit, a toothpick sticking from his lips, the bulge beneath his windbreaker as clear a warning to would-be troublemakers as a snake’s rattle.

  When Paulo arrived at the oversized walk-in freezer at the rear of the shop, the man who’d been stalking him was hanging upside down by a chain wrapped around his ankles, suspended from an iron pipe near the ceiling, with his hands bound behind him. The man’s eyes were closed, but a swift kick to his ribs got his attention and they opened, wide with shock.

  “He have any ID?” Paulo asked one of the three men watching by the sides of beef cured on meat hooks.

  “Nah. Clean. Just a couple Benjamins and an extra clip. .22 long rifle, hand-loaded dumdums,” one of the mobsters said, his New Jersey accent as thick as a brogue. His hair was trimmed to a quarter inch long, revealing the white trace of a scar that ran from his right ear to the crown of his head.

  Paulo nodded and kneeled to look the captive in the eyes. “Who are you working for?”

  The man didn’t answer. Paulo shrugged as he straightened. “He’s going to need some convincing.”

  The mobster grinned. “No problem. How much you want of him left by the time I’m done?”

  “Enough to answer questions.”

  “Joey, go get the blowtorch and Drano, capiche?” the mobster called out. The shorter of the waiting muscle nodded and offered a twisted grin before disappearing into the warehouse area.

  Paulo returned to the hanging man and stared down at him with indifference. “Here’s how this is going to work. These boys will burn your skin off, section by section, and then use drain cleaner to eat your nerves alive. You can’t imagine the pain – I’ve seen real hard cases beg for death seconds after the Drano hits. Or you can answer my questions, and it’s no hard feelings. You need I should let them at you for half an hour, just so you know I’m not bullshitting?”

  The man shook his head. “Please. I didn’t know,” he said, in a Russian accent.

  “Yeah, well, we all make mistakes, am I right? So let’s try this again, and maybe you get to walk out of here alive. Doesn’t matter to me. Who are you working for?”

  “Drugov.”

  Victor Drugov was a mid-level Russian mafia capo who ran operations in the Bronx.

  “Long ways from home here on the island, aren’t you?” Paulo asked.

  “They didn’t tell me anything about who the target was, or I wouldn’t have taken the contract.”

  “How much they pay you?”

  “Ten.”

  “Who’s the client?”

  The man’s eyes closed for a second. When they opened, they were welling with tears. “Don’t know.”

  “Ah, see? And you were doing so good.” Paulo looked to the small man, who’d reappeared with a blowtorch and a container of Drano. “He says he doesn’t know who hired him.”

  “Only one way to find out whether he’s full of shit or not,” the man said expressionlessly.

  “No, please, it’s the truth. I swear,” the Russian hissed.

  Paulo nodded to the man with the torch. “I’m gonna go outside and have a smoke. Start with his face, but leave enough so he can talk.”

  Paulo moved to the freezer entrance, feeling for his pack of cigarettes. With the door closed behind him, the Russian’s first screams were barely audible, fading to nothing by the time he was outside, drawing contentedly on a Marlboro as he mulled over how to proceed from there. He had a strong suspicion he knew who’d paid to have him killed; and if he was correct, the disappearance of the hit man would do nothing to stop another from taking his place. There was only one way to ensure his own safety, and that was to demonstrate that nobody was invulnerable or safe from Paulo’s reach.

  But he would need confirmation before taking action. The hitter probably knew nothing more than he’d told him, but he had to be sure. A call to Drugov would yield little better result, but if Paulo stressed that he was taking the contract personally, it might alter the Russian’s willingness to cooperate. No contract was worth going to war over, and to target a protected man like Paulo escalated the offense to one where his superiors would get involved. They would put pressure on the Russian and both ensure no further attempts were made on Paulo’s life as well as yield the name of the client, he was sure. The Russian would, of course, claim he’d had no idea that Paulo was part of the Cosa Nostra, and the Italians would accept his assurance as a face-saving way out. Balance would be restored to the universe, and business would continue as usual, without a dangero
us upset in the fragile criminal equilibrium in which they all operated.

  As to the hit man, Drugov would get his head in a box as a reminder to better research the contracts he accepted, and a warning of what would happen if he stepped out of line again.

  Chapter 34

  Tess walked slowly down the hall to her father’s apartment, each step as reluctant as a convict to the gallows. Claire had called to tell her that the moving crew had cleared the place out, a cleaning company had been over it for the last few days, and it was ready to be shown. They’d agreed to meet on Monday morning to do a walk-through, which Tess had been looking forward to with the same enthusiasm she would unanesthetized oral surgery.

  The door stood open and she looked inside. Claire’s perfume lingered in the air, and Tess called into the apartment.

  “Claire? It’s Tess. I’m here.”

  Claire’s voice rang out from her father’s bedroom. “Just a sec, Tess. I’m on the phone.”

  Tess entered and moved to the kitchen. The cleaners had done a remarkable job. Any familiarity had been scrubbed away, and now it was just a cluster of too-small rooms with no emotional impact on her whatsoever.

  She’d paid for a storage facility off the island, but hadn’t had the heart to supervise the offloading of her father’s things. She would have to sort through them at some point, but not now – it was still too fresh, and she needed time to heal.

  The disequilibrium that had resulted from news of her cousin’s death had brought back a score of unpleasant memories, and she felt like she was barely holding it together. Her dreams had been filled with visions of her father tortured to death, sprawled on his shop floor, and she would wake up in a cold sweat, heart racing, unable to breathe. She knew the sensation all too well – it had defined her first month in Europe – but had convinced herself that she’d managed to banish the panic for good.

  A conceit she now understood had been misguided.

  She moved to the now-bare window, the curtains and blinds removed with the furniture, and gazed out at the street below. Pedestrians hurried along with the urgency of ants, unaware of the drama playing out above them. Was that all any of them were? Temporary blips that came to life, lived in futile self-delusion, and then died and were forgotten by future generations, who were equally convinced of their vitality and importance and uniqueness, but destined for the same end?