Nice Place for a Murder

by Bloom, Bruce Jay

  “No. Couldn’t,” she said. “The hospital in Utica reported Jimmy to the state medical people, and they told him he can’t be a doctor anymore. Can you imagine? After college, medical school, internship and a year of residency. He was lost, desperate. Finally he got a job at a medical lab in Chicago, but it didn’t last, because he couldn’t give up the drugs. He had nowhere to go, so he came to me. Slept on the sofa. He had no money, and —“ Her soft voice began to crack. “ — and he was having periods when he talked to people who weren’t there, saw things that weren’t there. Animals.”

  “Ferrets?”

  “I think so,” she said. “Sometimes he was all right. Just sometimes. He stayed here in the apartment, mostly. Only went out to buy drugs. I don’t know how he found them around here, but he did. Out on the streets somewhere.”

  “You said he had no money.”

  “He’d take my money.”

  “Steal from you, you mean?”

  “Yes, steal.” She said it with a flicker of guilt, as though she had done it, not her brother. “There was some cash I kept in my bedroom, you know, for emergencies. A few hundred dollars. He found it when I was out at work. When that was gone, he’d take what I had in my purse when I was asleep. Once he got hold of my checkbook, forged some checks and cashed them. We had a bitter fight about it. I don’t have that kind of money. Just Al’s pension from the city, and what I make running the office for an orthodontist in Manhattan. It’s not that much, even together. It didn’t take long before I was in debt. Wasn’t sure I could keep paying the rent.

  “One day I came home from work and Jimmy was gone. He left a note. Said he couldn’t go on letting himself ruin my life. Said he’d have to make his way on his own. Oh God, I was so worried. Where would he live? Who would take care of him? I was sure something terrible would happen to him. But what could I do? I had no idea where he went.

  “Weeks went by, and no word from him. Then one night he called. He was at a church shelter in Manhattan, he said. He was trying to straighten himself out. He sounded better. Almost — “ She stopped to search for a word.

  “Lucid?” I volunteered.

  “Yes, lucid,” she said. “I told him I’d come in and see him, but he said no, he wasn’t staying there. He had a job, sort of. A warehouse in a building near the old docks, you know, on the West Side. He said they gave him a space there, a room to live, in exchange for watching the place at night. And a little money, too, off the books. So that’s where he is.”

  “Have you been there?” I asked.

  “No. Every time I say I’ll come see him, he tells me no, he wants to be straightened out first. He won’t let me come. But I don’t think he’s getting better. Because he isn’t so — lucid — any more. I know he’s spending the money they give him on drugs. He calls sometimes, but he says strange things. I cry when he hangs up. It’s so awfully sad.”

  “Mrs. O’Connell, let me see if I can help. Tell me where he is. I’ll get to him and do my best to keep him safe.” I leaned forward and took her hand. “I promise you.”

  Jane O’Connell looked at me for a long moment. Then she wrote down an address on a small pad, tore off the page and handed it to me.

  CHAPTER XXII

  The building looked out over the West Side Highway and across the Hudson River, for an unobstructed view of the least attractive waterfront features of Weehawken, New Jersey. And that only if you could find a clean window to look through. At ground level, fronting the street, was a murky and sinister hamburger joint, a tiny shoe repair shop and a no-name store that apparently sold used office furniture. Upstairs were full-story loft spaces, accessible by riding an open elevator that trembled its way up at a pace so slow it made me begin to wish I’d brought a bite to eat.

  The slip of paper Giannone’s sister had given me said I could find him at Lucky Imports, Ltd., which turned out to be a distributor of made-in-Asia novelties, on the sixth floor. It was a vast space almost entirely filled with boxes stacked on wooden pallets, and so dimly lit that the far end seemed to bleed off into blackness. Maybe it would appear less forbidding, I dared to hope, when my eyes got used to the gloom.

  Two men were moving pallets here and there, while a third, who seemed to be in charge, was keeping score with a pencil, pad and clipboard. None of them appeared Asian, even vaguely.

  “I’m looking for Jim Giannone.” I said it to the clipboard guy. I believe in going right to the top.

  “Why?” he asked me, without looking up.

  “His sister told me to stop by,” I told him. “Jim will want to see me.”

  Clipboard guy shrugged. “He’s sleeping, probably. Down at the end, the brown door.”

  I made my way through a long aisle between walls of stacked boxes. The brown door was open an inch or two. I knocked, but there was no answer.

  I pushed the door open slowly, and saw that clipboard guy was wrong. Giannone wasn’t sleeping at all. He was in his briefs and a tee shirt, sitting on a cot, his back against the brick wall. Even in the dim light, I could see there was sweat streaming out of him. His breathing was shallow and labored, and he swayed from side to side. The room smelled of sickness and despair. It was clear that James Giannone was suffering, the result, I felt certain, of his need for drugs. He stared at me.

  “Remember me?” I said.

  “You’re — Seidenberg.” His voice was a whisper. “You — you’re —you’re the one who knows Ingo Julian.”

  “Yes, I know him. You asked me to meet you in Ronkonkoma, at the railroad station. Do you remember that?”

  He wiped his face first on one arm, then the other. “Not much,” he said. “I went there. But then I came back. I was crazy that day. When was it — yesterday? Day before?”

  “Are you crazy now?”

  “Sick.”

  “Do you see any ferrets?”

  Giannone didn’t answer. His shoulders began to jerk forward as though he had a tic, slowly and then faster. He winced with the effort as he pulled himself off the cot and made his way into a tiny bathroom in the corner of the room. He got down on his knees in front of the toilet, with his feet sticking out the door. His dry heaves at the bowl were so excruciating, and went on for so long, I could feel the poor bastard’s pain in my own gut. Finally the heaving stopped, and he stayed there motionless for several minutes, with his head hanging in the bowl, before he could pull himself to his feet and lurch back to the cot.

  “You all right?”

  “Better now. I’ll get by.”

  “Cold turkey?” I said

  “Trying.” His voice was so faint, I could barely hear him. This wasn’t the wild-eyed maniac who gave me the slip in Ronkonkoma. Today he was a pathetic addict, sick and defeated, going through withdrawal, trying to save his own life. But reasonably rational.

  “This has to be the hard way, don’t you think?” I said. “Why don’t you get some help, get into a program?”

  “Did that — three, four times. Not for me. Never stayed. I’m just — just too righteous to get down and — and grovel with those pathetic losers.”

  “Because you’re better than they are?”

  “Yes, I am,” he said. “I can only do this myself. Nobody watching me. I got in. I’ll get out. Or die, maybe. Either way, this will be over. But I — but I need — uh —“

  “What?”

  “Money. I don’t have any. Nothing. How can I get back on my feet if I can’t even afford a haircut?”

  “And you want money from Julian Communications.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you know something.”

  “Yes. You tell them about — about the secret I know.”

  “So what do you know that’s worth — how much do you want?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s say — let’s say twenty-five thousand dollars. Then I could get a place, some decent clothes. And I owe money to my sister. I stole from her. Jesus, I put her money in my arm.”

  “I know. That’s how I found
you. Through your sister.””

  He rubbed his eyes with his fists. “Twenty-five thousand, then. All right?”

  “Whatever you say. What’s the big secret you know?”

  Giannone forced himself to his feet, took a pair of trousers hanging over a chair, and hopping on one foot, pulled them on. “The owner comes in around this time. He thinks I’m crazy, but he knows I’ll be here. He just wants a — a warm body here at night, because people have broken into this building. I don’t let him see me when — when the ferrets — when they —. He doesn’t know about — about my problem. He’s so — incredibly dumb.” He put on a shirt and stepped into a battered pair of loafers. “Just in case he looks in, you understand.”

  “I’m waiting for you to tell me what you know.”

  “All right.” He sighed as he sat on the cot. “You think you know Ingo Julian, but you don’t.”

  “Oh? Why is that?”

  “Because — because the man is dead. Been dead for six years.”

  “Are you going to tell me that the person running the company today is his brother Felix? That it was Ingo who was burned up in that plane crash in the mountains, and Felix who survived? I’ve heard that before. It’s nonsense, a story somebody dreamed up.”

  “The story is true,” Giannone said. “I overheard the whole plot. I’m the — the only one who knows what really happened. Beside Ingo — Felix Julian, that is — and Arthur Brody.”

  “Brody? How Brody?”

  Giannone leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. He was still sweating heavily, and his shirt had already begun to soak through. “This is what I know, what I heard. I’m — I was — a resident at the hospital. They brought a man in by helicopter. They said it was Felix Julian. They said there was another man on the plane, his brother Ingo, who burned up in the fire. That’s what — what I was told when I went on shift at six in the evening. Twelve hour shift. Twelve on, twelve off.

  “The man they’d flown in had second degree burns over a third of his body, multiple fractures on one leg, fractured arm, fractured ribs, severe thoracic trauma. The medic on the helicopter had cut most of his clothes — burned clothes— cut them off. He was nearly naked when they brought him in, they said. He was on the operating table for — for a long time, and it looked as though he might not survive. When they finally got him into the intensive care unit, he was covered with bandages.”

  Giannone sat absolutely still, his eyes staring straight ahead, as if observing a scene from the past that only he could see. He was in a sort of reverie.

  “I was on shift when Brody arrived from New York in the middle of that night. He asked me about Felix’s condition, and I told him the man had a decent chance to survive, but that he was facing more surgeries to repair the damage to his face and his body. His burns and other injuries were so — so extensive, he’d never be the same man again. Brody was so concerned, and he was completely — he was desperate to see the man. I told him he could. The ICU was nearly dark at that hour, and Brody stood by the bed. Felix had his eyes shut. Never moved. I saw Brody leaning close. He was very intense. That’s when I went off shift.”

  Brody, intense? The same serene executive who had handed me an envelope stuffed with money and calmly suggested I do away with Sosenko? “What do you mean, intense?” I asked Giannone.

  Annoyed at the question, he broke away from his reverie. “I mean anxious, very apprehensive about Felix. Look, you want to hear this, or not?”

  “Go on.”

  “When I came back the next night, I checked the ICU and saw that Brody was still there, all that time, sitting in a chair by the bed. Felix was still unconscious. Later, Felix — he opened his eyes for a while, but he didn’t move at all. He was heavily medicated, of course. For — for the pain. Finally Brody left. Said he’d get a room at a hotel. But he was back again in a few hours, just sitting there, watching the man in the bed. It wasn’t until the next night that Felix finally — finally was able to turn his head a little. I saw Brody talking to him, but Felix couldn’t answer. He just — just stared up through the bandages. He might have heard Brody. I don’t know.

  “Later that night, coming back to check, I was outside the curtain at Felix’s bed. Brody didn’t see me. I couldn’t hear everything, just — just pieces — bits of what Brody was telling Felix. But I did hear him say, ‘Now we don’t have to sell the company. You’ll be a better Ingo than your brother ever was. I’ll show you how to make the smart moves.’”

  Giannone seemed to be running out of breath. “I never thought about it then. Meant nothing to me. Company politics — I don’t live in that world. Beside, I had my own troubles at the hospital. But years later I read something about Ingo Julian, chairman of Julian Communications. And I laughed because I knew Ingo was dead. I knew it had to be Felix playing the part of his brother.”

  “Did you ever ask yourself why Felix would do that? Why should he bother?”

  “Were you listening to me?” he said, with the same sudden anger I’d seen in him at the railroad station, when the ferrets were nipping at him. “Without Ingo, they’d have had to sell the company. That’s what Brody said. Pay attention, Seidenberg. Brody was — he had this scheme. He used Felix, to hold onto the company.”

  “And you got all that from what you heard Brody say?”

  “Yes! The patient in the bed was Felix!” Now he was shouting at me.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe the guy in the bed was Ingo all the time.”

  “Ingo was dead in the crash.”

  “I don’t believe it,” I said. “It sounds like a bad movie.”

  “It’s what happened. I was there.”

  “Didn’t anybody check? Didn’t anybody question all this?”

  “Why?” he said. “Nobody said — nobody was disputing it.”

  I sat there shaking my head. I didn’t believe anybody could pull off such an outrageous con, and make it stick, year after year. So many people knew Ingo. Nobody could fool them all. “I have to ask you something,” I said. “I know why you had to leave the hospital, all that. Were you on drugs six years ago, when Brody was there?”

  “You think this whole thing was a hallucination?” he snapped.

  “You do see ferrets,” I said.

  “I know what’s real. I can tell the difference.”

  “All right, it was real,” I said. “Just one more thing. You knew about this from the beginning. How come it took you six years to say something?”

  He stood and walked unsteadily into the bathroom. I heard the water run in the sink. He came out wiping his face and neck with a towel. “What did I care?” he said. “It was none of my business.” Then, heavy with sarcasm, ”And beside, doctors aren’t supposed to talk about patients.”

  “And now?” I asked.

  “Now Julian Communications is all over the news. Now Felix and Brody are going to make — what is it, hundreds of millions — with their scam. And now I need the money. Anyway, I’m not a doctor any more, now am I?”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  By the time I liberated my car from the garage, crossed town to the east side and made my way through the Midtown Tunnel, it was past four in the afternoon. The sluggish procession of homeward-bound commuters had already begun, and there was no choice but to join the endless line of cars on the Long Island Expressway.

  With the crawl of traffic testing my patience, I had more time than I needed to ponder Giannone’s story. I was satisfied that he was who he said he was, a doctor, now defrocked, who’d been at Utica General Hospital when a badly injured Felix — or somebody — was brought in. But had Giannone actually heard Brody propose a grand scheme to the patient in the bed, or was the whole episode just an imagined fantasy that seemed real to a rogue doctor tripping on drugs? Maybe he’d simply misinterpreted what he’d heard. Or maybe it was something Giannone’s addled mind misconstrued now, years after the fact. After all, this was a guy subject to spells of irrational anger, a pathetic addict who saw little an
imals where there were none.

  For all of that, should I still believe him? He’d been lucid today, and almost reasonable. And why should he lie? He’d have no hope of a payoff from Julian Communications if he were making it up. He couldn’t bamboozle Brody and Ingo. They’d both been there six years ago. They knew the truth.

  If Giannone was right, how did it involve what was playing out at Julian Communications? What if the man I knew as Ingo was really Felix, and Brody was the brains behind all his moves? It would pay them to stick together, a winning combination, especially now, with Wall Street waiting for the Julian stock offering. Not only that, if word got out about Felix impersonating a dead brother, the whole stock deal could collapse. So why the falling out? Smart guys would know better. Maybe that’s why Ingo — or whoever — wanted to kiss and make up with Brody.

  The ringing of the cell phone in my jacket pocket put my thoughts on hold while I fumbled to answer it. Wally’s lazy drawl sounded good to me, familiar and comfortable after my labored talk with Giannone. “Where are you at, amigo?”

  “Driving east on the LIE, talking on my cell phone, which is against the law. I’m in the traffic with the worker bees. Just passed exit 36,” I told him. “What’s up?”

  “Thought you might have a casual interest in this,” he said. “Our buddy Sosenko is nosing around out here again. Cops are after him, but he’s staying ahead of them. I saw his boat pulling away from the gas pumps over at Tyson’s marina. Still had that piece of white plywood nailed on the stern, but I could tell that was the boat.”

  “Which way was he heading?”

  “East, when I saw him. But he could have gone anywhere once he made it around the east end of Shelter.”

  “You don’t suppose Ingo Julian and Lisa Harper are still on Shelter, do you?”

  “I do suppose,” Wally said. “They’re in residence.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw them through my binoculars. I think it was them. Swimming in front of the Julian place. Back and forth. Swimming in October, for chrissakes. Got to be loco, no?”