Losers Live Longer hcc-59

by Russell Atwood

  “Please, call me Jane.” She had a spry Midwestern accent. “Mrs. Dough is my mother-in-law.”

  She laughed and I politely laughed with her.

  Her husband’s phone conversation ended and she finally let go of my hand as he joined us.

  “Sorry about that, Mr. Sherwood, had to put out a little fire at work.” He took the hand his wife had just relinquished. His was a loose, dry handclasp, like shaking hands with a feather duster. “Thank you for seeing us on such short notice.”

  “Yes, well, actually, this isn’t, as it turns out, the best time for me right now. Tomorrow would—”

  Jane looked stricken, I thought she was going to cry.

  “Oh, please, Mr. Sherwood, if you would just hear our situation. It won’t take long.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Dough said, “we understand you’re very busy, but my wife has been worrying herself sick about this, and I know it would help if we could talk it over with you now. We can pay cash up front.”

  It was more his wife’s doe-eyed appeal than the talk of money that finally won me over.

  “Come on up,” I said, “I can spare you twenty minutes.”

  I unlocked the downstairs door and held it open for them. She went first, as her husband’s cell phone rang and he stepped aside to answer it, politely ushering me ahead. I followed his wife up the stairs watching with each step her firm buttocks flex and relax beneath the thin fabric of her dress. It was a nice sculpted ass, she must’ve worked out. I was wishing Mr. Dough had stayed at work to put out his little fires in person. To keep my mind on business, I asked how old their child was.

  “Three,” she said.

  “Two,” he said at the same time from behind me.

  “Annie will be three in November,” Jane Dough said quickly.

  Maybe I would’ve made something of that little discrepancy if I hadn’t been so infatuated with her ass. She may not have had the raw flame-to-the-moth magnetism of Sayre Rauth, but…a fine ass is a fine ass.

  At the top of the stairs, she stepped aside to let me pass and I went forward to open my office door.

  “Right this—”

  One of them hit me, a swift kidney punch that dropped me to my knees. Then one of them kicked me—maybe the same one—right between the shoulder blades. It knocked the wind out of me and sent me face-forward onto my office floor gasping for air and sucking up dust-bunnies.

  They didn’t even give me time for indignation or surprise as they patted me down, divested me of my gun, and handcuffed my wrists, not with metal handcuffs but with a plastic restraint, zipping me up like a trashbag.

  I got just enough breath back to utter, “What the f—”

  She kicked me in the side.

  “Shut up.”

  Just great, I thought, I poke my nose in where it doesn’t belong and someone hires these two to rough me up. I was stimulating the economy, creating new jobs.

  Mr. Dough made a quick tour of my office, drawing the curtains, looking in the bathroom and around the corner of the kitchenette. He nodded an all-clear to her.

  She opened up her purse and took out a cell phone and dialed a number with the tips of her tapered, tangerine-sorbet fingernails.

  He dragged me by the ankles into the center of the room and sat me up. Dust down my front. I had to clean the place one of these days. Definitely before my next bodily assault.

  “Keep quiet and don’t move,” he told me. He brought one of the club chairs over in front of me. The woman sat down in it.

  She said, “There’s someone who wants to speak to you.”

  She held the cell phone in front of me, aimed at my face. It had a brightly lit, inch-square LCD screen, and it was displaying the face of a bald-headed man with a short black goatee and little piggy eyes over a flat nose with nostrils flaring like an angry bull’s. He was a barnyard amalgam and I recognized him at once.

  Maurice “Moe” Fedel, the former NYPD detective who’d retired to start Fedel Associates, Risk Management Consultants, one of the biggest detective and security agencies in the city, with branches in Philly, Baltimore, and D.C. He was one of George Rowell’s oldest friends; they’d started as sparring partners when Fedel was still on the force.

  I’d never met him in person, but I’d seen him a few times on TV when visiting my folks. He was a frequent and outspoken guest commentator on their favorite 24/7 cable news network.

  He was wearing a blue shirt with a stiff white collar like those cones vets put on dogs so they don’t bite their stitches.

  His husky shout sounded tinny over the phone’s tiny speaker.

  “So, you’re Sherwood?”

  I looked above the videophone at the woman holding it.

  “What is this? You want me to talk to an appliance?”

  “Hey! Don’t talk to them, dummy, talk to me!” The inch-high face shouted in its mini-bellow. “I’m the one asking the questions and I asked are you Sherwood?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Moe said, “What are you, stupid? John, tune him up!”

  The man walked behind me and lifted my pinned arms up over my head, twisting until fire shot into my shoulder sockets.

  The woman sighed, said in a bored voice, “He’s Sherwood.”

  Moe said, “I know all about you, Sherwood. You’re a fuck-up, a joke in this business.”

  “Saw my résumé on HotJobs.com? I gotta update it.”

  “Wise-mouth and smartass. I heard about you. All I want to know is why Owl came to see you this morning.”

  “Who?”

  “George Rowell. I know he was at your place this mornin’. And now he’s dead. And you’re going tell me what happened or it’s going to get ugly.”

  “It’s ugly already. You’re the best argument I’ve seen for going back to rotary phones.”

  “Tell me what—”

  “Fuck you,” I said. “Instead of asking what he came to see me for, ask yourself why he didn’t go to you, Moe. What was it he didn’t think he could trust you with? Or maybe you were too busy playing with your toys to help out an old friend. Ask yourself that, but first get these two turds out of my office!”

  The phone must’ve been a cheap model, because the face on it seemed to have tinted purple.

  “You’re done in this city, asshole! You hear me? Done!”

  Bang bang bang.

  Chapter Twelve: A PROCESS OF ELIMINATION

  Someone’s fist hammered on my door. It was the prettiest sound in the whole wide world.

  BANG BANG BANG.

  “Open up! C’mon, Sherwood, I know you’re in there.”

  It was Matt Chadinsky. He banged some more. He bellowed, “What’s with the closed curtains? Whatcha doin’ in there, pullin’ your pud?”

  It cost me a kick in the ribs, but I croaked out a loud, “Just a second!”

  “That I believe!”

  He banged on the door again, three times hard. He wasn’t going away. My playmates had to eat it.

  “It’s my probation officer,” I said. “He’ll probably need all your names, what should—”

  Moe Fedel said, “Okay, you guys get out of there. But, Sherwood, we’re not finished. Not by a long shot.”

  The cell phone videoscreen went to black.

  John Dough lifted me by my shoulders to my feet.

  Jane Dough brushed off my shirtfront as her partner cut the plastic wrist restraints behind me. She patted me gently on the chest.

  “No hard feelings,” she said. She’d dropped her Midwestern accent, replaced now by an easygoing New York twang. “Just business, right?”

  I massaged my wrists, working out the lingering bite of the restraints, and tried to think of a cutting comeback for her, but couldn’t. My heart wasn’t in it. So then where was it?

  I said, “So none of this—all this was a set-up. Jane’s not even your name, is it?”

  “Jane Doe and John Doe, get it?”

  “Yeh, I got it.” I rubbed a bruised rib. “So then…you t
wo aren’t really…”

  “Looking for a background check on our nanny? No, sorry to disappoint you.”

  “I was going to say married.”

  Standing by the door, John Dough laughed.

  “I think he wants to ask you out. Must like the way you roughed him up.”

  She arched an eyebrow at me. I felt a little like I was back in high school.

  Matt banged three more times on the door.

  “Open up, I need to piss!”

  “So what’s your name?”

  She turned around, let her eyes roam my dilapidated office before they rested back on me. She shrugged.

  “You’re a detective, figure it out yourself.”

  “I will.”

  She nodded her head once, then turned to her partner, who opened my office door and stood to one side. She stepped into the hall. He waited a moment then followed her out.

  I heard their footsteps echoing in the stairwell as Matt walked in. He looked around my darkened office, at all the drawn curtains.

  “What? Don’t tell me I missed the fucking slideshow?”

  I went around opening the curtains again.

  “How’d you get in?” He hadn’t buzzed.

  “In?” he said, his face a mask of mock innocence. “Oh, your downstairs door. I used this.” He wiggled the pinkie of his right hand. “You should have your landlord put a better lock in. Your forehead’s bleeding.”

  I touched it and it stung over my right eye. Bright red blood filled in the arches and whorls of the fingerprints of my forefinger and thumb. I headed for my bathroom.

  Matt said, “You should apply—”

  “I know what I should apply.”

  “Oh, right. I forgot. This is what you do best.”

  I wanted to wish him into the cornfield just then, but I was imagining I might need his help. I ran a towel under cold water and pressed it to my forehead until the bleeding stopped.

  When I came back out, Matt was standing behind my desk.

  I went to sit down and he didn’t move.

  “Do you mind?”

  Matt shook his head. “No. I don’t mind.”

  I squeezed by him. By the time I was seated he was on the other side of my desk.

  “So, who were those two?”

  “Don’t you know?” I asked, airing out a nasty hunch.

  He narrowed his eyes. “How would I know?”

  “They work for Moe Fedel.”

  “No shit.”

  “They wanted to know what George Rowell came to see me about.”

  “No shit.”

  “Yeh, no shit.” I walked up to Matt, stopped a foot away. “The shit part is how’d Moe find out Owl came to see me this morning? Unless you told him, Matt.”

  I faced him. He was a head taller than me and a foot wider. Trying to read his expression now, I realized I’d never really looked this closely at Matt Chadinsky before. Never had to, never thought I had to; he was always just Matt, I knew who he was.

  Looking at him now was like seeing a stranger. I never noticed that mole on his left temple before or that the whites of his eyes were dullish gray like pearl-inlay, nor that his ears were slightly crenulated like arugula.

  He didn’t utter a word, just looked at me like I was something he’d picked out of his teeth but couldn’t remember what he’d eaten that was that shade of green.

  I said, “You sicced Moe Fedel on me and he sent those two glamour ops of his over here to pull my teeth. Then you show up, pounding on my door, all Mighty Mouse, here-to-save-the-day.”

  He squinted at me. “What, are you high?”

  “I don’t hear you denying any of it.”

  “Deny what, you paranoid piece of shit? You’ve gone off the deep end. Why would I rat you out to Moe?”

  “He was pretty quick off the mark setting up those two to rough me up.”

  Matt’s mouth twisted into a sour smile.

  “Those two roughed you up? What’d they fucking do, rap you on the knuckles with their goddamn Blackberries?”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I also didn’t tell you there’s no fuckin’ Tooth Fairy. Some things you’re just supposed to know.”

  “So how’d he know so quick that Owl came to see me?”

  “He didn’t have to know, you cockfart! He runs one of the biggest detective agencies in the city, he found out. What did you fucking expect? One of his oldest friends—a private investigator—gets hit by a car and killed practically on your fucking doorstep. All he had to do was open the Yellow Pages to make a connection.”

  “I don’t buy that,” I said, but I was unsure. “He knew too much when he talked to me.”

  “Or too little. Why else would he dispatch those two and ‘rough you up,’ except to haze you, rattle you, and get you to talk? He was just wavin’ his dick around and you swallowed the bait. I warned you, Payton. But no, you don’t want help. You know better. You’re always the smartest fucking guy in an empty room.”

  I thought about it, going over again in my mind what Fedel had actually said to me, and in a way it fit.

  An ex-cop, Fedel knew the way to work information out of someone was to act like you already knew everything and then just sit back and listen for the contradictions.

  Had I ratted myself out? I wasn’t sure. It still bothered me, though, Matt’s showing up in the nick of time.

  “So what’re you doin’ here, Matt? I don’t see you for five years, then twice in one day. My star must be in Uranus.”

  He ignored the feedline, which made it only half a joke.

  “Need to talk to you,” he said. “I was waiting across the street for you to get back. Saw you go up with those two, then all your curtains shut. Thought I’d investigate.”

  I found where they’d put my gun and where I’d dropped the plastic bag with the iPod in it. Nobody wanted my goodie bag. I went to my desk and dropped everything in a drawer.

  “So what’d you need to talk to me about?”

  He sat heavily on the edge of my desk, his buttock knocking over my cup of pencils and pens and spilling them out. He didn’t pick them up, I had to. I shook my head, lamenting, “Oscar, Oscar.”

  He said, “Law Addison was spotted today, here in the city.”

  “He’s back?”

  “I shit you not.”

  “Where in the city?”

  “Right round here. Fucking Tompkins Square Park, y’believe it? Only two hours ago.”

  “Who by?”

  “One of my people clocked him coming out of a bakery, but my guy was on another job. Lost sight of him before he could signal his back-up.”

  “How’d he know it was Addison?”

  “Addison’s the one that got away over at Metro. We’ve got his ugly mug tacked up next to every goddamn coffee-maker. But it’s nothing positive yet—otherwise I wouldn’t be talking to you, asshole, I’d be giving it over to the cops. Addison’s a fugitive.”

  “What did they say at the bakery?”

  “What?”

  “He was coming out of a—”

  “We’re on that. What I need from you is what Owl said to you about Addison.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he must’ve fucking seen him too. Why else would he pull his name outta the air?”

  “I asked him if he’d found Addison. He said he didn’t.”

  “Then why—”

  “He didn’t find Addison, but he did find the woman Addison ran off with.”

  Matt didn’t say anything, but his mouth hung open like he was straining to get a breath out, or else haul something from out of his memory. “Michael Cassidy? Owl told you that he—”

  “No, never got the chance. But when I went over to his hotel room, he had her stashed there. She hit me on the head and booked.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Shit. So did you get anything out of her? Fuck, I can’t believe you let her get—hit y
ou on the head!?”

  “I didn’t know who she was, I only just found out.”

  “What were you doing in Owl’s hotel room anyway?”

  “What?”

  “What were you doing in Owl’s hotel room?”

  “What was I…was doing…where I was where—”

  “Yeh, yuck-yuck-yuck, funnyfuck. Knock off the Abbott and Costello. How’d you get in?”

  I wiggled my little pinkie at him.

  He snorted. “You sure it was Michael Cassidy?”

  “She’s hard to take for anyone else.”

  Matt nodded. “So both of them came back.”

  “What’s he look like, Addison?”

  “Mid-30s. Six-two, about two hundred forty pounds. Towhead, looks like a Swede. But according to my guy, says he’s lost weight, looks trim. Shit, what did I tell you, no way that guy could stay under wraps for long. Probably thinks it’s blown over, the idiot-fuck.”

  “He’s such an idiot, how come he’s so rich? Not to mention still walking around and not in a cell.”

  “Give it a day or two, he’ll be in a cell.”

  “What would he come back to the city for anyway? It can’t just be for the cheesecake.”

  “If that junkie girlfriend’s still with him, maybe they’re in town to score some dope. I always figured she’d lead us to Addison one way or another, either by ending up on an ER gurney or a slab.”

  “An O.D. like Craig Wales?”

  Matt ignored that. “Or maybe he left behind a stash of cash,” he said, “and now he needs to replenish. How did she look to you, still on the needle?”

  I shrugged. “Didn’t find any of the utensils, not even an alcohol prep. Nothing in the room. Heard a phone conversation, though, from outside the door, that sounded like a score, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she were.”

  Matt, reluctantly eating crow, said, “Look, I know I didn’t ask you in on this Law Addison thing to begin with. Maybe I should’ve. Maybe it wouldn’t of mattered. But you’re in on it now. Understood?”

  “Ordering me that you’re hiring me?”

  “What was Owl’s connection to all this? Did you find out what he was working on? Anything that might be a lead to where Addison is stashed now?”

  I thought it through: Owl comes to the city to help Elena deal with Sayre. While he’s with her in the apartment, Michael Cassidy walks in. She has keys because the apartment belongs to Law Addison, under the alias of L. Andrews. Owl tags her and puts her in his hotel room for safekeeping. On the way, he picks up a tail. Then he decides to bring me in to flush out whoever’s following him and…