by Gary Starta
“You mean your mind becomes foggy?”
“I don’t know, Stanford. Either way, I lose the conduit. I don’t know why the men continue their attack against this man unless he was in on Donnie’s killing. But the media has already reported a lone gunman as the suspect from a video.”
“Yes, that’s right, Caitlin.”
“So I’ve probably left you even more confused, huh?”
“No, Caitlin. I know who the baby faced man is. He’s a private eye, although I shouldn’t disparage his line of work. I’m sure you’ll make a great PI.
“Well, I hope so. I’m still waiting for my first case.”
“Caitlin, you’re going to have more than you can handle and you’ve been a great help—as always. Maybe we’ll have lunch sometime.”
“Sounds great. Well, Celeste meows hi. Be careful, Stanford.”
Diggs was referring to the shoot out in bar’s parking lot. She mostly likely knew he would do everything in his power to come between the men in black and Fishburne. He reflected how similar the current case mirrored five years ago. It’s all going to end with a bang.
Carter already guessed which bar it was. It would be the hangout all the cops go to after hours. Jay and Sid must have spent a lot of evenings there. People were creatures of habit. And just because Jay was no longer a friend of Sid’s, it didn’t indicate Jay wouldn’t frequent the establishment he believed to be called Brian’s Bar.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Jill said.
“Do you?”
“You’re not going there alone.”
“I wouldn’t ‘dream’ of it,” Carter said, teasingly, referring to Diggs’ visions.
“So you’ve probably already come to the same conclusion then,” Jill said.
“What?”
“That it’s quite possible Jay Fishburne set up the Hispanic man killed in Diggs’ dream. And that’s why the mob is coming for him.”
“That’s one possibility,” Carter said, eyes distant.
He eyes lingered on the hair sample. “I am also thinking that it’s quite possible the Hispanic man was set up by someone else. And if so, that would make Jay Fishburne an innocent man.”
“Well, that’s ironic,” Jill said, speaking with confidence, as if she and Carter were having the conversation in their heads, each following the next logical deduction with the ease and casualness of two people playing chess. Carter surmised it had left Gelder befuddled. The analyst scratched his head and said, “You two really are on the same wave length. Would you mind explaining all this supposition to me sometime?”
“Yes,” Carter said, “but not now, the clock is ticking.”
“How about just one little question then?”
“Yes, Mr. Gelder?”
“Did this Caitlin Diggs ever tell you how she became psychic?”
“Oh yes,” Carter answered walking toward the door with Jill, his tone deadpan, “she touched a magic rock.”
Gelder turned back to his microscope after the swinging doors come to a stop he mumbled. “Some rock, I’d let to get that puppy under my lens.”
***
Carter was just about to call Jay Fishburne. He and Jill were walking the hallway toward his office when his phone rang again.
It was Jay Fishburne and he sounded agitated, nervous and fearful.
He nearly whined like a schoolboy to match his youthful looks.
“Carter, you’ve got to believe me. I had nothing to do with this.”
“Do with what, Mr. Fishburne? Please start at the beginning.”
“Yeah, sure.” He grunted to catch his breath. “I had an appointment with a man I’m investigating for identity theft. When I went to meet him this morning I found his home ransacked. It’s abundantly apparent he has come to physical harm. Everything in his living room was strewn about like a tornado hit it. But the thing is, I don’t know why—I don’t know why he would do such a thing again. You’ve got to patch me through to Sgt. Auerbach, I’ve been his friend, I can reason with him.”
“Mr. Fishburne can you tell me if the man you were going to meet is Hispanic?”
“Shit. Yeah. How the fuck did you know?”
“That’s not important. What’s important is that you stay at the scene. I’m sending over one of my CSI’s to process the house and get your statement.” He nodded at Jill. She ran to the lab’s computer room to ping Carter’s phone to get a location on Fishburne. “And don’t worry about Sid Auerbach, I’ll speak to him myself.”
“So you believe me then? That I’m innocent?” Jay whined more than he stated.
“Innocent? Not sure, Mr. Fishburne. But a murderer, well let’s just say the jury’s out.”
***
Jay Fishburne lied to him yesterday. He did indeed tell someone about his next case.
Fishburne could have very well versed Lucy on his next case. But someone else now had come to the forefront of Carter’s mind as a prime suspect. It was a man who had managed to disguise himself. Possibly, the same man who wore the blue slicker, hiding his face in its cowl, while he put a bullet in the back of Donnie Cinelli. Maybe it was the same person who donned a disguise to kill Cheryl Thomas, to possibly win her trust by impersonating someone else.
He drove thinking the simplest explanation or deduction was not always the correct one. It would seem that the man Fishburne had been investigating, Esteban Cruz, had possibly become another victim of the contemptible PI. Yet Fishburne did not have the opportunity to kill Cinelli himself, he had been with him in the interrogation room. Would Esteban Cruz, a petty thief go so far as to kill a mobster? Anything’s possible, but Carter’s gut didn’t buy this. It would be more likely a rival family might have wanted Cinelli dead, possibly the Lamperti’s. And if so—then one of their henchmen would have done the deed. It’s most likely, that somebody had set up Cruz. And if it wasn’t Fishburne, there could only be one other suspect.
Carter’s sedan lurched into the Auerbach’s long and winding, paved driveway.
A dog barked on the porch. Ms. Auerbach was mumbling something at her pet just underneath her breath. “It’s just like him to do this,” she said.
Carter introduced himself.
“I know who you are,” Nancy Auerbach said, waiting for her pooch to pee.
“I’m here to see Sid,” Carter said, dispensing with courtesy. The woman was obviously distressed, her hair was unkempt and she wore a smock for a shirt and some kind of out of date pants. Carter believed they were called Capri.
“Well, if you see him, please tell him to get the hell home. And why are you looking for him? Aren’t you his boss or something?”
Carter shook his head.
“Well, he always complained about you like you were his boss. Regardless, he told me he’s working a triple shift, trying to catch the latest spree murderer.”
“Ma’am. I’ve got something to tell you. Can we talk inside?”
She nodded and yelled at Skippy her Pomeranian to go into the house. The dog folded its ears downward and scurried, a ball of white fur disappearing down a dark, long foyer.
Carter was invited into a parlor to sit down on a paisley couch, but there was no offer of drink or refreshment.
“Well, what do you have to tell me? Has he been shot, killed in the line of duty?” She was nothing short of abrasive. Carter tried to attribute her rudeness to stress; although, her voice carried a strange quality, almost as if she was happy to hear some bad news.
“No. As far as I know Sid is alive. But I need to find him.”
“I still don’t understand, Detective. How can I find your employee?”
“He didn’t work a triple shift, Ms. Auerbach. He’s been suspended from the force.”
Nancy pursed her lips. “I knew something like this would happen, one day.” She buried her face in her hands. “But it’s not our fault, it’s not Sid’s fault . . . ” She cursed underneath her breath while her finger pointed absently in the air, accusing some intangible element
.
Carter allowed a moment to pass. It was obvious the woman knew some hidden secret. She practically lived in a lightless house. All the shades were drawn on a sunny July day. He waited for her to compose herself—if that was possible. While he waited his eyes scanned the room. He noticed a closet door was open and some of its contents had spilled upon the floor. But Carter’s eyes were still trying to focus from the light to dark transition.
As he was observing this, Nancy had retrained her focus on Carter.
“Wondering what he was looking for?”
“Well, yes, Ms. Auerbach. Can you please tell me?”
“He told me he needed his twenty two. Says the department issue was too high profile to catch a serial killer. He grabbed it from that closet in some kind of frenzy, kissed me and dashed out the door.”
“Do you know where he might have gone? I mean, if he didn’t go on shift, were there ever other places Sid might go if he was feeling—distressed?”
“Don’t sugarcoat it, Detective. He was sure as hell distressed. And now I’m going to lose his pension, aren’t I?”
Carter felt the woman’s wounds, he couldn’t answer immediately.
“Ah,” she said. “I’ve been living with a secret for a long damned time. I bet you come across people everyday who tell you this, am I right?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
She was seated across from him in a plush velour chair, pea soup green. She arched her back and allowed her arms to rest on her legs. “I think it’s time to get a weight off of my shoulder—off of Sid’s shoulders as well.
Nancy Auerbach resembled a black cat, perched and preening, readying herself to launch herself off of her seat at any moment, possibly for no other reason than curiosity. Her eyes were nearly yellow in the dim light, slanted and feral like an angry cat.
“He used to have fits. I thought it was just normal night terrors for a young cop,” she said. Carter noticed one of her fists was balled up. “He would wake up in these fits, screaming. When I asked him what was wrong he would stare at me for long periods of time as if he didn’t know who I was. I would let it go, believing every cop’s wife goes through this. But I started connecting his fits to a beating he took one time. He should have gone on disability I think, but his pride wouldn’t let him. He sucked it up. Went to work, put up and shut up. Did everything the men in blue told him to do. But his strange outbursts continued; they started happening during his waking hours too. He would suddenly start mumbling some incoherent nonsense, then he started to lose consciousness, he fell upon that end table one night”—she pointed to Carter’s left—“there’s a still a mark on it where he hit his head. And from that hit, he has a nice matching scar.”
“What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you noticed the scar on his forehead? He got that one from the beating. The other he got on the side of his head. He conceals it with his hair.”
“Why didn’t you have Sid report this behavior to our department’s psychologist?”
She stared at Carter, a long mean stare.
“You know the reason.”
The pension.
“So,” she paused to exhale, “I helped Sid through his incidents the best I could. I let him blow off steam after work with that turd of man he calls his best buddy. Drinking and carousing, it’s apparently what all men want to do, well past adolescence. I put up with it for Sid, and for the sake of Sid’s career.”
“Weren’t you afraid he might have one of his episodes at work?”
“No. He told me had a confidante on the force. Someone was watching his back.”
Carter leaned forward. He had a good notion of who that confidante is.
“And the drinking. Didn’t it make things worse?”
“I think it masked the urge. I don’t know what else to call it. It’s like he turned into somebody else. I know this sounds all Jekyll and Hyde to anyone who’s sane. But I really feel I’ve spent the past few years with two different men. On the nights he drank he would come home as Sid, the man I married, that’s why I put up with him hitting the sauce.”
“And when Sid gets this urge, what do you think he wants?”
“Shit, if I knew that I’d be the next Freud, wouldn’t I? But honestly, I think he wants justice. He wants to make a difference, but he failed the detective’s exam, so like a good copy he strives to stay in the boundaries set out for him. But I see how it’s killing him, day in and day out. If you ask me, he’s out there right now getting whoever is responsible for those murders. Call it street justice if you want. That’s why I was expecting the worst from your visit. Maybe Sid failed; maybe he’s too much like his friend, and was never meant to shine in his work.”
“Did you try to stop him?”
“No. Mr. Carter, I’ll tell you something if I had tried to stop him, I wouldn’t have known which man to appeal to. And now I’m left to deal with all this”—she used her hands like parentheses to emphasize the vastness of the house—“by myself so it seems.”
Carter thought of the irony. The man who was so hell bent on punishing someone may now have become his own target.
As her rant continued, Carter eyed something in the dark. He excused himself and walked toward the object. Upon inspection, he saw it was a dummy’s plastic head, the kind used to display wigs. His eyes followed up and into the closet, to the top shelf where there is a long, flowing copper-colored wig.
“Ms. Auerbach,” Carter said holding the wig in his hands, “have you ever worn this?”
“Why no? What the fuck . . . ?”
Nancy probably wouldn’t be able to give him Sid’s whereabouts. But he could surmise one thing—who Sid might be with right now. And if he was right, Sid would eventually be led by those people to the very place Diggs saw in her vision.
Chapter 20
“So, did you do him?” It was odd for the seated man, the accused man, to be making accusations. He wanted to know if the ‘family’ had whacked Donnie’s murderer.
Sid Auerbach was seated in a wooden chair in the middle of a vacuous warehouse. He fiddled with the cranberry striped tie hanging from his neck. Slumped forward, eyes trained on a cement floor, Sid imagined he reminded the men who formed a semi-circle around him of a nervous father waiting for news from the maternity ward. Serves them right to worry. They think they’re all so above it all.
Yet Sid Auerbach had given birth not to a child but something vicious, untamed and uncontrollable. He had planted an idea in the heads of the men around him and like a tree it had quickly taken root, submersing itself in the environment around it to get sustenance. The men around Auerbach provided him—the tree—with this sustenance. It was in the form of their curiosity, disdain and vulgarity; but most of all they fed him with their grief. Deep inside Sid Auerbach was in his happy place. He had managed to plant roots of dissension in a cement garden all without giving up his true identity.
***
“I know you did it. Just give me one detail.” He sized up a finger and thumb to the width of an inch. “Just one teensy detail on how you whacked the SOB.” Not one of the men surrounding Sid answered. And the only sound to be heard in this room was the footsteps of an older man who wore a very expensive pair of brown Mariano Campile handmade loafers.
The salt and peppered haired man paced back and forth, breaking away from the half circle. He stared upward for a moment noticing a small window about twenty feet high spilling some sunlight into the humongous room filled with only unmarked cartons and one forklift. This man wondered how someone had become privy to a rival family’s plans. He had been careless once. Officers had overheard plans to do a hit. But that was just one time. And for the Lamperti’s—the most successful crime family in the nation—to fuck up like that was almost unthinkable, the odds infinitesimal, yet it could have happened. Just like that tiny beam of sunlight, someone had managed to infiltrate their secret society, a group whose members met in public venues, taking great pains to keep family business ‘secret’ bus
iness. It was almost common knowledge that these business meetings took place outside their homes—homes that might be bugged with surveillance devices planted by FBI operatives. So they talked business in stores, dentist offices and restaurants where they believed no one was listening. But belief and truth could sometimes be two entirely different things.
The man with salt and pepper hair extended the moment of silence. No one in the half circle formed around Auerbach dared speak without his consent. He was the boss. The don. The man of all men; his name: Johnny ‘Sin’ Cinelli. And less than a day ago he had planned to give the reigns of his cherished business to his youngest son, Donnie—the arrogant, flashy, brassy son of a Cinelli who had given the rest of the family angina on a daily basis. Johnny sighed. Still no one spoke. Johnny realized the weight his sigh carried. It spoke volumes. Although Johnny had had his reservations about making Donnie the king of the Cinelli family on more than one occasion in fact—tradition, more than common sense had led Johnny to make 99% of his decisions; and Donnie himself would have told you this was a bull crap way to run an empire—still, Johnny had had no doubt; young Donnie would have been the heir despite his public displays of wanton drunkenness and promiscuity. But now someone—some little shit the man in the chair called Esteban Cruz—changed the game plan. It had given Johnny the biggest ‘Whad da fuck—Why me?’ complex he could ever imagine. And the men in the warehouse were aware his dam was about to burst. He had thrown a few inanimate objects around. Sheer rage was coming. He felt its pulse. As Johnny threw objects he recalled how many times he implored Donnie not to dine at the same restaurant every evening, not to lay his fucking life out like a pattern rug to the enemy. And the enemy, Johnny remembered, came in many forms: the cops, the FBI, not to mention the Cinelli’s biggest rivals—the Lamperti crime family.