by Nancy Martin
Some pathetic homeless guy was the suspected shooter. The police had found a gun in his nest behind the Hyde garage.
Roxy turned a corner and saw Nooch waiting nervously at the gate of the salvage yard.
Behind him, a rattletrap squad car sat in the middle of the yard, the idling engine sending up a noxious cloud of blue smoke.
Nooch hustled over to the truck before Roxy shut off the engine. His eyes were round with anxiety. Through the window, he said, “It’s the cops. They want to talk to you. What did you do?”
Roxy killed the engine and climbed out of the truck. “Walk down the street and buy us some bagels. Some of those pecan-flavored ones. Take your time.”
She handed over twenty bucks. Nooch grabbed it and obeyed, glad to get away before any trouble started. He glanced over his shoulder as he went.
Roxy slammed the door of her truck and crossed the gravel, still humming the old Jefferson Airplane.
Bug Duffy got out of the passenger side of the cruiser, balancing himself on two crutches. In high school, Bug had once punched Roxy, but he had since matured, gone to college, worked as a substitute teacher in the city schools for a while, then joined the Pittsburgh police force and worked his way up to detective. He didn’t seem to regret punching her, though.
“You deserved worse than a fat lip,” Bug said after they’d shaken hands. “You called my mother names.”
“You were picking on Nooch, remember? You almost knocked out my front teeth. One’s still crooked, see?” She showed him the damage.
Bug gave her teeth a closer look, grinning. “You took care of Nooch, even back then. What’s he doing for you now?”
“Heavy lifting.”
“What did he lift out of the Hyde mansion a couple of nights ago?”
Roxy eyed Bug sideways. “Nothing I didn’t tell him to. What? You missing something? Or do you think Nooch killed Julius?”
“You know about the murder?”
“Hell, Bug, it’s all over the news.”
“I just wondered if maybe you have some information we hadn’t heard yet.”
Although his tone was still jaunty, Roxy gave Bug a once-over. He’d gotten his name in elementary school when he showed off for classmates by eating insects on the playground. Now he had a wife and a couple of redheaded little boys, Roxy knew, and a reputation for being a good cop. He was stubborn and thorough—exactly the kind of detective she didn’t want hanging around her place of business.
She pointed at his crutches. “What did you do to yourself? Get wounded in the line of duty?”
His leg was encased in a blue strapped-up thing. “I tore up my knee playing touch football a couple of weeks ago. Nothing permanent. But the Hyde case brought everybody back on duty—even the ones in worse shape than me. You have time to talk a little, Roxy? Your name is on the list of contractors who were hauling junk out of the mansion. I drew the short straw, so I’m here to interview you.”
Best to make like she was happy to see him. Roxy hooked her thumb at the garage. “Sure. I’ve got the Hyde job paperwork in my office. Want to take a load off while you read it?”
“That’d be great.”
Bug’s partner got out of the driver’s side of the cruiser. She was a middle-aged woman with a ponytail that seemed to yank her face so tight she looked like a hawk. With obvious distaste, she glanced around the yard.
The place was littered with the usual stuff Roxy collected—piles of building materials, a few Victorian toilets, and some broken garden accessories, all sitting in mud. A lion’s head fountain, propped against the fence, was going to bring in a couple of hundred bucks as soon as the right customer drove by. Some general refuse was lying around, too. Roxy hadn’t had time to make a trip to the dump lately.
The centerpiece of the yard, however, was the old hydraulic Al-jon car crusher, a piece of heavy equipment once used to smash automobiles down to stackable size. The rusting hulk hadn’t been used in over ten years—back when some of her uncles had run a junkyard on the same property. The whole setup was a city block in length, surrounded by a chain-link fence topped by razor wire to keep out the druggies and the homeless looking for a place to camp.
Roxy acknowledged that maybe the yard didn’t look very tidy.
The neighborhood was what some people were calling “postindustrial.” The streets were laced with bone-jarring potholes. A couple centuries of soot coated the cobblestone streets with a greasy black layer of crud. Surrounding blocks featured no-name warehouses, a restaurant supply house, and some “collision repair” shops that probably included at least one dealing in stolen car parts. Half of the other buildings sat empty while their owners hoped a developer might come along and convert them into trendy condos. But the ballet theater’s rehearsal space and a flower wholesaler—signs of hope for the gentry—lay several blocks eastward. The smell of the nearby Allegheny River hung around most days. But the city had installed fancy new streetlights—high-tech and green—with hopes that good things might follow.
Bug said, “Roxy, this is Crystal Gaines. She’s stuck driving me around today. Crys, this is Roxy Abruzzo.”
The lady cop didn’t acknowledge Roxy except to say, “What are you? Some kind of junk dealer?”
“Read the sign.” Roxy pointed at the board that swung over the open door of the garage: Bada Bling Architectural Salvage.
“Looks like junk to me,” the woman muttered.
“Crystal,” Bug said, “why don’t you wait with the car? I’ll talk to Roxy alone.”
“You better stay in the car,” Roxy said. “My dog doesn’t like girls.”
Crystal opened her mouth, but Bug shot her a look and she shut up.
“This way,” Roxy said, leading him toward the garage.
Her office had once been a barbershop that opened onto the side street, but she’d blocked off that door with some sheet metal, then busted through the wall to the garage to connect the two. Which made for an almost civilized space for her desk, dusty computer, and files. The office was warmed by a temperamental electric space heater. The floor was pockmarked linoleum. The barbershop mirrors had been broken long ago, but the counter remained and now functioned as a place to heap the mail. She kept a broken hockey stick on the counter in case trouble walked through her door.
Inside, Bug said, “Don’t hold anything against Crystal, Roxy. She just got her promotion, but she’s stuck playing chauffeur to me until the Hyde case cools down. She thinks of it as Driving Miss Daisy in reverse, so she’s feeling pissy.”
Roxy closed the door. “Does she suspect Nooch, too?”
“Aw, c’mon, we’re just asking around for information, that’s all.”
Roxy grabbed a couple of Red Bulls out of the case on the floor. This time of year, the office was usually cold enough that she didn’t need a refrigerator. She handed a can to Bug. “Sorry. Best I can do. A methhead stole my coffeepot. Sit down while I find the paperwork.”
Bug leaned his crutches against her desk and eased himself down onto the sprung leather sofa that had been part of the original barbershop. It hadn’t gotten any more comfortable, but Bug didn’t seem to mind. He stretched his bad leg out in front of him. “I hear Nooch’s probation hearing is next week. He ready for that?”
“Sure, why not? He’s behaved himself for ten years.”
“Except for that thing last Christmas. He helped his cousin steal an old lady’s Toyota?”
“That was a mix-up. Nooch thought they were helping Mrs. Sedlak find her car in the Macy’s parking lot.”
“But the cousin drove it off and sold it two days later.”
“Hey, a judge decided Nooch was innocent in that situation. Even Mrs. Sedlak said so. He carried her shopping bags, for crying out loud. He stays out of trouble.”
Bug cocked an eye at her. “That first conviction of his? Nooch beat up Poskovich real bad, Roxy. Brain damage and everything. Okay, Poskovich was a lowlife, but still. Everybody figures the only thing keeping Nooch
from doing something like that again is you.”
“He won’t go nuts again.”
“Unless he thinks he needs to protect you. He’s as bad as that dog of yours—loyal and vicious. Not a great combination.”
“Don’t worry about either one of them.” She shuffled some papers, counting to ten. Then, “You still married to Marie?”
“Yeah, eight years.”
“She okay? I heard…”
“She’s doing all right. Lots of tests.”
“What do they think it is?”
“Maybe just exhaustion. Or that, whaddayacallit, Epstein-Barr.” He ran his thumb around the top of his pop can. “Or MS.”
“You tell her I said hi, okay?”
“She may not want to hear I’ve seen you.” Bug grinned a little. “She’s still mad about her brother Darrell.”
“I didn’t do anything to Darrell.”
“Took his girlfriend. Hid her for a month.”
“He was beating her up, Bug, and you know it.”
“She could have gone to a shelter.”
“Where her kids would get onto some CYS list? Once that starts, she’d be living in constant fear they’d be taken away from her. Which would have made Darrell perfectly happy, by the way. It was only a matter of time before he started beating on them, too.”
“Darrell went to jail.”
“For a grand total of five weeks.”
“And somebody put an open can of anchovies under the seat of his car. Only he didn’t find the can for weeks. He had to get rid of that car. It stunk permanently.”
Roxy grinned. “No kidding?”
“Marie’s whole family blames you for everything.”
“I can take it. His girlfriend couldn’t.”
Bug shrugged. “The system would work, if you’d let it.”
Roxy knew better.
Bug said, “You’re looking good, though, Rox. I hear you’re singing, too. For a couple of bands on the South Side, right? You’re just as hot as you were in high school. I had a crush on you back then. But who didn’t?”
“Believe me, I’m feeling my age at the moment.” Roxy popped open her Coke and slurped off the foam. “How old are your kids?”
“Justin’s seven. Trevor’s five.”
“Wait till they’re teenagers, then we’ll talk.”
Bug popped open his Red Bull, too, and held it away so the foam dripped on the floor. “What’s wrong? Your daughter giving you trouble? How old is she?”
“Seventeen, going on thirty.”
“Wow. Has it been that long? You have any more kids?”
“Hell, no.”
“Married?”
“Nope.”
“Seeing anybody? I heard Flynn’s back in town. He’s got a job working as a chef, right?”
“What are you, some kind of dating service?”
There had been no flirtation in his tone, and Roxy found herself glad that Bug was one guy she hadn’t seduced in high school. For her, the teenage years had been a struggle figuring out how to make the world spin in a way that gave an iota of power to a girl who didn’t have any to begin with. Plus the sex had been fun.
She shook off the memories and said, “Can you tell me about the Hyde murder? I heard the rainstorm messed up your crime scene.”
“A little.”
Roxy hoped the rain had obliterated all footprints and—more important to her—the wheel tracks of the handcart. She said, “I saw a homeless guy on the TV. He’s really the shooter?”
Bug rolled his eyes. “That’s the prevailing theory. Seems he lived behind a garage off and on for months. Had a few run-ins with Hyde and the chauffeur. That’ll all be in the newspaper tomorrow. For the last year or so, various people from the house called us to sweep him out. So there was a history of antagonism. We’re spending a lot of man-hours on him but you know as well as I do it’s a long shot. It keeps the media off our backs, though.”
“The news said something about you guys not finding any shell casings at the scene.”
“Whoever killed Hyde either used a revolver or had the presence of mind to pick up the shell casings after shooting him.”
“Professional hit?”
Bug laughed. “You a conspiracy theorist? Some international cartel decided to visit Pittsburgh to terminate Julius Hyde? We doubt it. Maybe the homeless guy ate his shell casings. Me and sixteen other cops are trying to dig up somebody else who had a reason to kill Hyde.”
“Good luck.”
Bug took a slug from his can. “I’m supposed to run down all the guys who were stripping stuff out of the house that day. When I saw your name on the list, I figured I’d come here first.” He smiled. “I mean, you’ve always had a temper, Roxy.”
“I hope you shared that opinion with everybody at the station house, too.”
“Nah, I want all the credit for arresting you.”
“Maybe somebody will give you a parade. Here’s the list of stuff I took from the Hyde house.”
She had ruffled through the mess on her desk. She found the paperwork for the Hyde job under the hammer she used to weigh down the stuff that hadn’t made it into the file cabinet yet.
Bug set his Red Bull on the floor and accepted the papers. He glanced down the list of items she’d been authorized to take from the burned-out mansion. “You still have everything here?”
“Yep. I sold some of the staircase spindles to an antiques dealer, but he won’t show up until tomorrow. You want his address? Phone number?” She reached for her Rolodex.
Bug asked, “When did you pick up the stuff?”
“Friday night. I was there until about six.”
“I heard that. Who else did you see?”
Roxy noticed he had waited for her to volunteer her whereabouts. “A couple of other contractors. And Julius, of course.”
Bug couldn’t hide his surprise. “You saw Hyde? Talked to him?”
Roxy propped her feet on the desk and linked her hands behind her head, making herself the picture of relaxed calm. “Yeah, I did some business with him before, so we were old buddies.”
Bug sat back on the sofa. “Hell, Roxy, maybe you know more than I thought. What was going on up there?”
“Last I saw him, Julius was peeing in the pool. Otherwise, nothing much.”
“Did you see our homeless guy?”
She shook her head. “Sorry.”
“Anybody else?”
“Couple of morons moving a stove.”
Bug nodded. “The Delaney brothers. Not exactly upstanding citizens.”
“I know them a little. Maybe one of them shot Julius?”
“Not likely. Jimmy was the one who called 911 when they heard shots.”
“They see anybody else?”
“You and Nooch.” Bug went back to studying the paper. “Except Vincent thought you were some kind of city inspector.” He glanced up. “You didn’t disabuse him of that idea, did you?”
Roxy smiled, remembering the twenty bucks she’d scored. “Nope. You gonna bust me for taking a bribe?”
“Split it with me?”
“Sure.” Smiling.
Bug said, “They also saw some other people. Hyde’s youngest brother, for one. Thomas the third.”
She nodded. “He goes by Trey. I didn’t see him there.”
“You know him? Wow, Rox, you get around better than ever, don’t you?”
She shrugged. “Julius paid me to dispose of some stuff when he tore down part of the old carriage house last February. Two gargoyles. I sold ’em to a company in New York—and I made some real money on them. Just in time to pay Sage’s spring tuition, thank heaven. Trey was in town at the time and thought his big brother should have gotten a piece of the profit, though, and the three of us had an argument. Eventually, they saw it my way. Nothing unusual in my business.”
“Which business is that, exactly?” Bug asked in a different tone.
“Salvage,” Roxy said evenly. “I buy and sell stuff fr
om old buildings.”
Bug let a pause fill the space between them before he said, “And what about your family business? The Abruzzos have had their fingers in a lot of pies over the years. Heck, Carmine was making book back when we were in school.”
“He probably still does,” Roxy said.
Most everybody in the old neighborhood knew a little about Roxy’s uncle Carmine and his crime organization—or they pretended they knew all about it—and certainly all of the cops in the city kept pictures of Carmine and his crew handy.
Roxy said calmly, “I don’t know what Carmine’s doing these days, except getting old.”
“I hear he’s sick.”
“News to me.”
“Okay,” Bug said. “What about you? With Nooch as your knee breaker, you got anything else going on?”
Roxy had grown up fielding questions about her family. Carmine’s operations were loosely connected to the larger, more complex Abruzzo family activities in New Jersey and New York. Locally, Uncle Carmine was smart enough to stay out of jail, but his various employees had done time for loan-sharking, illegal gambling, fencing stolen goods, and other, even less savory offenses.
Most of the time, Roxy had kept her distance from the Abruzzo family businesses. With Sage to protect and Nooch to keep out of trouble, she’d found her own path, which didn’t stray into Carmine’s territory unless she could keep her involvement completely quiet. The cops came nosing around with questions now and then, though.
Roxy looked him dead in the eye. “You’re fishing, Bug. If you had something on either one of us, you’d have come here with more backup than your lady driver.”
Bug said, “With Carmine sick, everybody’s wondering what happens to his empire.”
“Empire? You mean some old video poker machines and a restaurant that serves lousy spaghetti? C’mon, Bug, I’d make a better living if I sold burgers out of a drive-up window.”
He smiled again and shrugged. “I figured I have nothing to lose by asking. As far as I know, no Abruzzo ever killed anybody in this city.”
“As far as you know?”
Easily, Bug switched topics. “So you know Trey Hyde, too?”
“I know him a little. He isn’t part of the family company—Hyde Communications, or whatever it’s called. You talk about organized crime, that cable TV business is a license to print money. But Trey pays for those deep-sea exploration things—ships that go looking for old treasure.”