Nice Place for a Murder

by Bloom, Bruce Jay

  “I mean, didn’t she say, ‘Ingo’s been killed, and Felix is in critical condition?’ Because there was a mix-up at first. At the hospital, they thought their patient was Felix, and that Ingo had been burned up in the plane. And when they called, that’s what they reported. They didn’t know then that it was really Ingo who’d survived.”

  Brody was making notes again. “I recall something like that,” he said. “It was a mistake that was soon corrected.”

  “Not so soon. Not until days later, right?”

  “Is there a point to all this?”

  “Certainly,” I said. “Here’s the story. You arrive and they take you to Ingo’s bedside. You and everybody else thinks it’s Felix there, all bandaged up. You wait days for him to regain consciousness. When he does, he can’t speak, but he can understand you, and you lay it all out for him. You tell him he’s inheriting control of the company, and this is his opportunity to turn it into a money machine that’ll make him enormously rich. And finally get him some respect, because right now everybody — including him — knows he’s a loser. You’ll show him how to be a shrewd manager, and avoid all the dumb mistakes made by poor dead Ingo, who was just too shortsighted to recognize the company’s potential. All Felix has to do is make you president of Julian Communications.”

  “I’m putting down two words under my notes on all this,” Brody said, not looking up. “Absolute nonsense.” He wrote boldly, and turned the pad around on his desk so I could read the words. “You haven’t the least notion of what I said to Ingo.”

  “But I do,” I told him. “I heard it from Giannone. Here’s the rest of the story. See, Giannone thinks, just as you do, that the man in the hospital bed is Felix. He hears you telling that man about taking over the company. He doesn’t think much about it then, because he has his own troubles. The hospital is onto him for his drug habit, and is just about to kiss him goodbye. In fact, Giannone is gone from the hospital before the Ingo-Felix mistake gets straightened out.”

  “I’m trying to understand this,” Brody said. “Is there anything here that’s not the flimsiest conjecture?”

  “I’m getting to the good part,” I told him. “It’s years later, Giannone is a down-and-out junkie. He sees Ingo’s name in the news, and he thinks ‘This can’t be Ingo Julian. Ingo Julian is dead. His brother must have taken his place.’ He gets it all wrong, a fantasy in the fried brain of a drug addict. But now Giannone needs money, and he figures he has something to sell. He wants to be paid off, or he’ll tell the world about the fraud at Julian Communications. Only he’s afraid to show up himself, so he tells me the story and asks me to take it to Ingo.”

  Brody leaned forward, his elbows propped on the desk. “And this story, this is what you really believe?”

  “I really do,” I said.

  “Have you asked yourself why Ingo didn’t just get rid of me if I’d made such a blunder?”

  “He needed you,” I said. “There he was, barely alive, unable even to reach down and scratch his balls. He was facing a long road back, and you were the only one in sight who could run the company for him. While he was lying there, he had plenty of time to think about what you’d said when you thought he was Felix. You know, about Ingo being a half-assed manager. He did some soul-searching, maybe, and decided you were a little bit right.”

  “What a curious story,” Brody said, writing again. “Then what?”

  “Then the truth came out. You learned Felix was dead, and the man in the bed was Ingo. But he went along with your scheme, anyway. What choice did he have? He made you his right-hand man, let you call the shots, whisper in his ear, just as you wanted to do when you thought he was Felix. He let you put him on the track to an IPO. A man can be very forgiving when he’s looking ahead to that kind of payoff.”

  “You know Ingo Julian. He’s an autocratic bastard — a description of him I’ve articulated to his face, by the way,” Brody said. “Do you think for a moment he’s going to let me or anybody control him the way you suggest?”

  “No, I don’t. Not any more, he won’t,” I said. “But back then, he looked past your insults, and made a deal with you, made you the president of the company. And in the end the deal turned out to be everything you’d promised. He has a hot company, and the IPO is about to make him hundreds of millions of United States dollars. The thing is, once that happens, will he still need you?”

  “They told me you were smart, Seidenberg. But I’m starting to question it.” Brody tore a page of notes from his pad and slipped it into a desk drawer. “Even if everything you say were true — and none of it is — do you really think Ingo Julian would kill the goose that’s laid a golden egg for him? Whatever personal differences Ingo and I have had, he’s always been sharply aware of how valuable I am to the company. Certainly Ingo will still need me. Because there’s a lot more money to be made. Ingo knows continued growth will drive the stock up after the offering. And growth is my great strength. Read what they say about me in the financial pages”

  “I have. So has Ingo,” I said. “I have to think he doesn’t like reading that you’re the brains of the company, not him. As you say, he’s an autocratic bastard. And just maybe he’s learned enough over the past years to run the company skillfully on his own. Tell me, when did he give you the news you that you were on your way out? It must have been a very satisfying moment for him after resenting you for so long. ”

  Brody stared at us for a moment, then said, “I’d really like to hear more of this because it’s so bizarre. But I have a lunch.”

  “Where?” I said.

  “Where? To the Yale Club. I have lunch there with Lawson Carey, my old college friend. Every Wednesday.”

  “At the same time?” I asked him.

  “What is this about?” Brody said.

  “Do you go to the Yale Club every Wednesday always at the same time? And do other people know you do it?”

  “Twelve-thirty every Wednesday, when Lawson and I are both in town. Yes, I suppose other people here know it. It’s no secret.” His annoyance with me was beginning to break through the Brody reserve. He stood and started for the door. “Forgive me. I try never to be late.”

  “I told you Sosenko is in New York,” I said.

  He stopped. “Yes, you did say that. I don’t intend to spend my life hiding from Sosenko.”

  “Any reasonable man would be concerned. Sosenko’s killed two people already, and you told me he’d been stalking you.”

  “I’ll be late,” he said.

  “Are you unreasonably brave,” I said, “or is there something else?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Try this. You believe Sosenko won’t touch you because you’re not the target. Never were. You’re the one behind it all. You paid him to kill Ingo before the stock offering, before Ingo could get rid of you. Sosenko was an interesting choice, because he had his own reason to hate the company. But he screwed up again and again. He drowned Newalis by mistake. And later, when you called him from New York to tell him Ingo would be on the Shelter Island Ferry, he shot Hector Alzarez by mistake. You regretted getting involved with someone as erratic as Sosenko, didn’t you? So you gave me a lot of money and suggested I kill him for you. Did he ever know you were the one who hired him to kill Ingo, or did you manage to stay anonymous?

  “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Do you really think I’d involve myself in a scheme like that?” he said.

  “Sure I do,” I told him. “But what I think isn’t the issue. I don’t suppose I can prove it, anyway. My job is to serve the best interests of Julian Communications. And I have to admit it’s getting harder to know what those interests are. Keeping company officers alive, I imagine. So I should tell you that Sosenko is in New York to assassinate you.”

  “You’re certain, are you?” Brody said.

  “The thing is, he doesn’t work for you anymore. Ingo got tired of being the target. He bought Sosenko off last night on some dark shore of Shelter Island. Not only
has Hick Sosenko failed you. Now he’s coming after you. And you can bet he’s been told exactly when you’re leaving here for lunch, and where you’re going.”

  “You’re in a dangerous position,” said Wally, joining in the spirit of the thing.

  If Brody was at all shaken by my news, or by Wally’s announcement of the obvious, he gave no indication. “Lunch,” he said, and walked out the door.

  “We’re coming with you,” I said.

  “Suit yourselves.” Brody walked smartly toward the elevators.

  Wally leaned toward me as we followed him and spoke quietly behind his hand. “He’s trying to make like a hero, but I think he’d be crapping in his pants now if we weren’t right behind him.”

  Brody never looked at us as we all made our way to Vanderbilt Avenue, and over to the celebrated Yale Club, a distance of three blocks. I went inside with Brody and prowled around the lobby. Not surprisingly, I turned up no one with matted yellow hair and tattooed snakes up his arms, only old boys of Yale with flawless haircuts and dark suits, on their way to lunch. The uniformed concierge assured me that no one matching Sosenko’s description had been seen on these hallowed premises. Ever,

  Brody went upstairs to the dining room, presumably to meet a certain Lawson Carey. I joined Wally back outside on Vanderbilt Avenue, across the street from the club.

  “Sosenko’s not in there,” I reported. “But you can bet he’s nearby. No coincidence. Ingo slips away into the dark last night, Sosenko comes to New York this morning.”

  “And your guy Brody going to the same Wednesday lunch he does every week,” Wally said, finished my thought. Then, hunching his shoulders and rolling his eyes, he added, “With all those Yalies.”

  “You got something against Yalies?” I said.

  “When I was at City College, we thought they were kind of la-de-da. You know what I mean?”

  “They seem to have turned out all right. They wear nice clothes.” I looked up and down the Vanderbilt Avenue, which was heavy with lunchtime traffic, both automobiles and pedestrians. “Sosenko could try to get it done when Brody leaves the club, then just duck into Grand Central Station and disappear. Let’s work both ends of this block.”

  Standing at each end, Wally and I did our best to check out the people who walked between us, plus the passing taxis. After an hour, no Sosenko. How long before Brody would come walking out the door of the club with his pal Lawson? Were they leisurely lunch types who lingered over coffee, or the one-hour-and-back-to-work variety?

  Then, above the traffic noise, I heard Wally call to me. I looked in time to see him wave me toward him, then turn and take off toward the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance to Grand Central Station, his long, skinny legs flying and his arms pumping as he pursued a hard-running Hick Sosenko. Sosenko, the killer for hire, disappeared into Grand Central carrying the big, black portfolio that hid from view, I was quite certain, the same rifle that he had used to shoot at me, and to end the life of Hector Alzarez.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  I broke into a run before I fully appreciated what I was doing to my circulatory system. This was not a smart move. I hadn’t gone ten paces before I felt my chest tighten and my breath stick in my throat. No choice, I had to stop, wait. Then take off again with an ungainly quick-walk. Best I could manage.

  Ahead of me I saw Wally sprint into the taxi drive-through and head for the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance to the station. He was getting farther ahead of me with every stride, running flat out in pursuit of Sosenko, while I walked as fast my heart would authorize. At this rate, by the time I made it through the station, Sosenko and Wally would be crossing into New Jersey.

  I pushed on, desperate that there was still a way I could get close enough to do some good, and longing for the days when I could still manage a run. I remember thinking to myself: Wally is chasing a man who has a gun, and you’re the one who got your friend into this, you pathetic fat-ass.

  I saw the cab heading for me as I crossed into the drive-through, but I pressed on, gambling that the driver would show some respect for my middle age and general portliness, and surrender the right of way. In the end he did, but not until he’d stopped inches from me, honking his horn to show he had the moral high ground. No time to tangle with a cabbie now. I stepped up onto the curb and hurried across the walkway to pull open a door to the station.

  Inside, I stopped at the top of the big stairway that descended into the grand concourse, a space the size of a football field, covered by an enormous ceiling that reached to the stars. There were people everywhere I looked, criss-crossing the floor, on stairways, on escalators, standing in ticket lines, heading for their trains, heading for the exits, everywhere. There were a dozen ways into and out of the teeming concourse, and I knew Wally might be chasing Sosenko through any one of them. I stood there looking from one side to the other, trying to take it all in at once, knowing that whichever way they were headed, the distance between them and me was growing even faster than before. But I didn’t see either of them.

  I couldn’t just stand there. With no idea which way I should go, I started down the stairs anyway. They had to be in here someplace. I was still on the staircase when the blur of Wally caught my eye. He was the only runner among hundreds of walkers, heading under an archway that led toward the far end of the building toward the Lexington Avenue exit. I set off after him, hearing the labored noise of my own breath hissing in my ears, and feeling my heart jumping against my shirt.

  By the time I struggled to the archway, Wally was gone. Had Sosenko led the chase toward the Lexington Avenue exit and out onto the street? His truck was probably parked in one of the nearby garages, after all. Or wasn’t he thinking about his truck just now?

  Then I heard the screams. They were coming from the food market, a long, brightly lit passage that ran inside the station all the way to Lexington Avenue. It was lined on both sides, I knew, with vendors of gourmet foods — seafood, meats, exotic produce, cheeses, baked goods— toothsome viands at fancy prices.

  Now, as the screams continued, people began spilling out of the marketplace, fleeing back into the concourse. Holding my hands out in front of me, I bucked the flow of frantic customers, and vendors in white aprons, and made my way just inside the market. A struggle was exploding halfway down the passage.

  “Where’s a cop? Get a cop,” I heard someone say.

  I felt a pull at my sleeve, and turned to see a tiny, seventy-something woman looking up at me. “Are you going in there?” she said, “Would you get my tuna steak. It’s in a bag on the counter, there, where those two idiots are fighting, with a gun, yet. I’ll be right outside.”

  “Can’t,” I said, pulling away from her and heading toward the brawl ahead.

  “Twenty-two dollars a pound, it cost,” the woman called after me. “What am I going to serve. I got company coming. Have a heart.” When it became clear I wasn’t going to rescue her fish, she added, “I’ll remember your face forever, you big piece of shit.”

  Now the market had emptied, except for me and two men locked in a struggle. Display tables were overturned, and the seafood market’s refrigerator case was smashed, shards of glass sparkling on the fish fillets inside. Wrapped wedges of cheese from the cheese monger littered the floor, along with picture-perfect pineapples and grapefruit from the greengrocer across the passage. I saw what could have been grandma’s bag of tuna steak on the floor, too. Someone had stepped on it.

  Wally must have been getting too close. Faced with my friend’s speed and tenacity, Sosenko’s only option was to stop and make a stand — pull the rifle out of his portfolio case and put an end to his pursuer. But Wally was on top of him before he could work the bolt and fire. Now both of them had hold of the gun, shoving and stumbling, smashing into displays of food. Sosenko was growling like an animal.

  I reached under my jacket and pulled my gun out of its holster.

  A cop came through the door at the Lexington Avenue end of the market, and started toward us. “Th
e one with the tattoos is a killer,” I shouted at him. I saw the cop go for his gun.

  It’s amazing how much can happen in less than five seconds. Sosenko pulled the butt end of the rifle down, then brought it up sharply against Wally’s face. Stunned, Wally released his hold on the gun and fell heavily against a shelf piled with vegetables, then slid to the floor, blood running down his chin..

  Sosenko racked the bolt and made ready to fire at Wally. The cop had his pistol in his hand, but was still twenty yards away.

  I screamed something at Sosenko, and raised my .38. Recognizing that I was the most immediate threat, he swung the rifle around from Wally to me.

  I fired only once, catching him squarely in the chest. The rifle dropped out of his hands. He fell instantly to his knees, then toppled onto his side.

  I set my gun down on the floor, so the cop wouldn’t get the wrong idea. I knelt next to Sosenko and looked into that primordial face of his. He didn’t die all at once. His eyes were open and he was working his lips. He was getting ready to spit at me, the only fight he had left in him.

  But he crossed over before he could let the spittle fly.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  I waited until I was on the ferry, watching Greenport grow smaller off the stern as we made our way to Shelter Island, before I called Roger Teague on my cell phone. I wanted him to know I’d been up all night. I wanted him to know I had to face a hearing in New York, but after talking with me until four in the morning, the cops appeared willing to accept the Sosenko shooting as self defense, and let me loose for the time being. I especially wanted him to know I was on my way to deal with Ingo Julian, a confrontation Teague would fear, but had no way to stop. The idea of a face-off between me and Ingo was certain to drive him wild, and he’d earned some aggravation.

  Teague did not disappoint. “What the hell you going to Shelter for?” he said on the phone, much louder than was necessary. “This thing is over.”

  “Not quite,” I told him. “I feel a real need to share some ideas with Ingo.”