LOSERS LIVE LONGER (Hard Case Crime Book 59)

by Russell Atwood

  In a few minutes, I knew she liked me at least a little. Much of it could’ve been faked for motives of her own, or maybe just out of habit. But some things couldn’t be faked. I was sopping wet with her.

  She raised my head by the hair and looked me in the eyes.

  “I want to see you.”

  And she did.

  And so did the neighbors across the street because we never got around to drawing the curtains.

  Naked on my daybed a quarter-hour later, sticky and sweaty and sated, she finally told me how she’d gotten out of her country.

  “I blackmailed one of the officials I’d met with and convinced him it was in his best interest to rush through a student visa for me. I came to America, bringing with me a laptop I’d stolen from Raphe. It had copies of all his files, all the business information about Tweensland. That’s when I decided to start my own company, Rauth Realty—and for capital I contacted some of the website’s former customers to request their help.”

  It was the strangest pillow talk I’d ever been party to. She told me how she’d started shaking down the website’s former customers. It wasn’t so easy. She had to research them first, find the ones with the most to lose, updating their records with current addresses by going through their local newspapers in the library or online. Then she’d had to contact them.

  “My English was not very good, so it was hard. But in time, it got better. And it was even a little fun,” she said, and laughed to herself, her pert breasts jiggling. “The fear in their voices when it hits them what I’m calling about. These men. The stammering, the limp threats, and finally the pleading. They all end up sounding like little girls themselves.

  “Soon I had enough money in an online bank account to start going to classes to learn the language better and reduce my accent. I was in America now. Here surface is everything. I came up with the name ‘Sayre Rauth.’ I hired Paul Windmann. I rented the townhouse.”

  “Sounds like everything was going peachy. So what went wrong?”

  “Elena,” she said.

  “What about Elena?”

  “I saw her. Just one day on the street. I was surprised —I look very different than I used to, but she…she looks the same. I followed her. She was living on First Street then; the place she is now on Avenue C is new. I found the name she was using and the name of the man she was living with. I ran a credit check on them and what do you think I found?”

  “Lots of debt?”

  “The opposite. A joint savings account they had totaling over seventy thousand dollars.”

  I whistled.

  She nodded.

  I said, “So naturally you wondered where that money had come from. Were you afraid she was running the same set-up as you, shaking down former customers?”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “That would really screw everything up, wouldn’t it?” I said. “After all, the whole point of blackmail is exclusivity, the promise that no one else in the world knows. If more than one person knows the secret, why pay up?”

  A quote from Benjamin Franklin popped into my head: Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

  Sayre nodded. “As you say, if it was true. I needed to know. So I contacted her. Politely, I swear to you. But she was spooked, started making threats. And then the robbery.”

  She propped herself up on an elbow and pulled some strands of hair out of her mouth.

  She asked, “How much money would you need to live on for the rest of your life?”

  “The rest of my life? Darlin’, the way today is shaping up, probably what I got in my pockets right now.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  So was I, but I’d play her game of what-if if she wanted. Only problem was: all far-reaching numbers are relative, all currencies in flux; to have given her a truly honest answer, I would’ve had to project a figure phrased in gold ingots.

  In my experience, money wasn’t everything. For instance, I always got a much better return when I bartered in information. It provided a higher yield.

  But she wanted a number, so I said, “Five million.”

  She huffed. “Dollars?” She frowned. She blew hair out of her eyes. “That’s a lot of money. Too much, I’m afraid.”

  I stretched out, airing my matted armpit hair. “Sorry, but at least now you know what you’re working for.”

  “Why so much? I would think from the way you live that—”

  “Look, I never haggle. It’s part of my charm.”

  “I only asked—”

  “And I answered. Now let me ask you one: Did you kill Paul Windmann?”

  “What?” Her mouth formed a moue. “Paul is—”

  “Paul was,” I corrected her.

  “When…when did this happen?” She dug an elbow into my chest, raising herself to look down at me. “I saw him at one.”

  “Uh-uh-uh, answer my question first.”

  “What question—did I kill him? Payton, you think I—ha! Funny time to be asking me that, don’t you think?”

  I could think of a funnier time to have asked it, but then again I wasn’t in it just for laughs anymore.

  “Answer the question.”

  “No. I didn’t kill Paul. Are you satisfied?”

  “I was satisfied before you answered the question.”

  “Was he shot?”

  “Why, missing any bullets?”

  She turned her head away, so all I saw was her long dark hair. With her face averted, her voice sounded thick.

  “I loaned Paul my gun this afternoon.”

  “You did what?”

  “He said he needed it for protection. His keys were taken in the robbery. He was arranging to have all his locks changed, but until then…I gave him my gun.” She turned back to me. “Now tell me, was he shot?”

  “Yes.”

  I didn’t know a word of her native tongue, but just then I learned about half a dozen of the worst ones you could say in it. When she simmered down, she asked, “Was my gun still there?”

  “Yep. Looks like there was a struggle for it and it went off in his face.”

  She grimaced, but her voice held a note of resignation.

  “And you thought it was me?”

  I thought a lot of things. I thought she had a motive: Windmann wanted those files on the iPod for himself, either to take over her operation or, more likely, to blackmail her, threatening to expose her to some of those men on her list. A good enough reason enough to kill. I thought she was capable of killing anyone she set her sights on. But I didn’t think she was stupid.

  I said, “Nope.”

  I wriggled out from underneath. I stood and walked over to where my pants had ended up. I fished her gun out of my back pocket and tossed it to her. She caught it one-handed.

  I said, “If you shot him, you wouldn’t have left that behind.”

  She sniffed the barrel and reared back, her nose wrinkled.

  She looked at me. “I… Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  She grabbed the daybed’s quilt and hugged it to her, laying the gun on top of it.

  “It is very…considerate of you,” she said.

  “Stop. You’ll make me blush.”

  “Why did you take it from the scene?”

  I shrugged. “I wanted something to hold over you.”

  “But not anymore?”

  I shook my head. “If I were you, I’d get rid of it right away. It’s better than even money that’s the gun killed Windmann.”

  She asked, “Do you know who did kill him?”

  Maybe the woman who stole his keys and used them to steal the data. Elena. Though she’d seemed to be more of a knife woman.

  “Not yet,” I said. “But it’s nothing for you to worry about. I, on the other hand…”

  “What are you doing?”

  I was putting on my pants.

  “What’s it look like?” I said.

  “Where are you going?”

 
I shook floor dust off my shirt, put it on again and started buttoning.

  “Sorry—but I’m on the clock. Got one more lead to check out.” She had, god help me, a hurt expression on her face. “I wasn’t expecting anyone…” I started. “Look, I’ll be back in a couple hours. Stay. Help yourself to…uhm, there’s water in the sink.”

  She held up her gun and pointed it at me, while pointing out to me, in a voice as dark and velvety as moonshadow, “I could make you stay.”

  She would have been doing me a favor.

  Chapter Sixteen: MEAT MARKET

  At the turn of the 20th Century, the Meatpacking District on the lower west side of Manhattan was a bustling distribution center for slaughtered livestock, back when there were still boats docking actively at many of the Hudson River’s piers. But once transporting produce over roadways became more economical than doing so by water and the piers fell into disuse and disrepair, the life of that section of the city faltered and fell away.

  Around the turn of the 21st, it was a veritable no man’s land, though that’s a bit of a misnomer, since one of the few trades to flourish there in the 1980s and 1990s was freelance male prostitution.

  But now the early part of the new century had arrived and the area had undergone enormous changes. It began with many of the defunct and abandoned meatpacking establishments being bought up for art spaces and studios. Bars and lounges sprouted to cater to the people leaving the art galleries. Then trendy upscale nightclubs arrived to accommodate the people getting out of the bars. Finally, multi-million-dollar condominiums rose up to house the people who frequented and owned these businesses.

  Except for those condos, on the surface little of the neighborhood had changed. But now outside the buildings instead of idling refrigerated trucks waiting for deliveries, there were air-conditioned limousines making pick-ups. Adding a bit of extra color tonight were two local news vans with roof-mounted satellite dishes. The media had been attracted by the film festival’s association to the overdose death of Craig Wales, like sharks drawn by chum.

  The screening was at the Lyndsford Gallery on Bethune and Washington Streets. In front of the main entrance was a red velvet cordon rope outside a door manned by a six-foot-two, 250-pound behemoth wearing a plain black t-shirt, a pair of stiff black jeans, and an expression that oscillated between hostile scrutiny and indifference.

  I was glad I had an invitation to hand him for admission.

  Once I was over the threshold, a perky redhead dressed in a neck-to-toe black leotard and miniskirt lightly grabbed me by the arm. I didn’t protest, curious to see where this might lead, but just as quickly she let me go, leaving something behind on my wrist.

  “What’s this for?”

  “If you go out to have a smoke, you can get back in.”

  I thanked her and looked at the plastic bracelet she’d fastened on my wrist, like the one I’d found inside the wastebasket in Owl’s hotel room. Different color, but same make, same manufacturer. Different night, different color, but two pieces fitting together.

  Looking at my hand, I realized I hadn’t washed up after leaving my office—after leaving Sayre Rauth—and I grinned stupidly, remembering her sweet sounds, her fingers let loose in my hair. My jaw was sore and my tongue—

  Someone bumped me from behind and I moved forward.

  The wide, brightly lit lobby was almost full. A nice turnout, no doubt a result of all the press coverage the festival had received in the wake of Wales’ death. People were there to see and be seen. I was just trying to see, myself. Looking for a skinny woman with beet-red hair and mesmerizing green eyes or a tall blond man who looked like a Swede. I didn’t see either one.

  Instead, I faced a pond of strange faces talking, drinking from plastic cups, eating hors d’oeuvres from paper napkins, laughing, arguing, acting up, posturing and posing. People wearing sunglasses indoors, sporting slide-rule sculpted beards and haircuts set to expire at midnight.

  I waded in among them, picking up snatches of their conversations (“You know Prentice? Well, he’s dying.” “Why?”), bits of gossip (“Stole his mother’s jewelry to get the money to finally cut his film”), and just plain inanities (“What’s the name of that gray I like?”).

  Most of the guests were dressed in anonymous black suits and dresses, while a few were decked out in unusual eye-catching getups, as if sporting costumes from different genre flicks—a period piece, a sci-fi techno-thriller, a horror movie.

  “Crabcake?”

  “Wha?”

  I turned. A tanned young man with curly sideburns held a silver tray aloft, balanced on his fingertips.

  “Nibbles!” I said, reaching out with both hands.

  I swear the guy shrank back in alarm. I scooped up four, left him two. Such a look! You’d think he’d been up all night preparing them himself. I crammed one in my mouth and shooed him away, because I saw a woman carrying a tray of chicken fingers coming by. I didn’t want her to think I was taken care of. I tried to catch her eye as I ate another crabcake.

  I guess I was looking the wrong way. An unfriendly hand clamped down on my shoulder. I stuffed the other two crabcakes in my mouth and turned.

  Jane Dough, Moe Fedel’s lovely rowdy, looking tough and terrific in a dark blue pantsuit, had hold of me. From her left ear protruded something like a black bendi-straw.

  She said, “I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  I said, “Mlff-mifuf wuhlff-mmulmuf. Mulmluff?”

  She rolled her eyes. I chewed and swallowed.

  “Working security?” I asked. “Moe must be understaffed. How ’bout putting in a good word for me? I’m affordable.”

  “Go quietly.”

  “Go? Hey, I just got here, I—”

  “—please,” she said, a wintry smile on her face while her eyes continued to scan the crowd. “Just go now without a fuss. No scenes. Don’t forget, I can take you.”

  I snorted. “You know something, Jane? You’re nothing but a bully.”

  She met my eyes, but only briefly and barely, like when a sweater sleeve catches on a sliver of wood.

  She smiled smugly.

  “So, haven’t found my name out yet?”

  “Why bother? Whatever it is, ‘Jane Doe’ suits you better.”

  She didn’t like the barb. She bared her teeth and whispered something into the tip of her bendi-straw.

  I saw a pair of heads in the crowd revolve toward me and settle. Two stocky guys worked through the mob until they were on either side of me.

  Jane, her eyes roving again, told the pair, “Show him out.”

  But before they could, up popped in front of me a Malibu-blonde whose black roots came up to my chin.

  She was all-around tanning-booth golden, the color of a Thanksgiving turkey done to a turn, and smelled of cocoa butter. She wore a shimmering tasseled dress like a gun moll in a road company production of Guys and Dolls. The low-cut top hugged tight across her chest, prominently outlining her breasts. They had the shape and gravity of two clutch purses full of nickels.

  “Payton! You made it.”

  Jane was taken aback. Her eyes stopped scanning the faces in the crowd, went wide with disbelief.

  “You know this man, Ms. d’Loy?”

  “What? Of course, are you stupid? He’s my guest! Who are you?”

  “I’m—”

  “I don’t care. Payton,” she linked my arm and towed me away, “come with me and meet people.”

  I craned my neck back, “See ya round, Jane.”

  I asked Coy d’Loy, “Do you know that woman’s name?”

  “Who? What, her? She’s no one, just additional security we’ve put on. Had to because of—” she dropped her tone lower, then compensated by raising the volume of her voice “—the tragedy. What happened to poor Craig.”

  Heads turned and I noticed a smile tug on Coy d’Loy’s cheek, wrinkling her too-tanned flesh like the skin on last week’s butterscotch pudding.

  She led me to a corner
table where three people were seated. Two of them I knew, but wished I didn’t. The skateboard kid FL!P dressed in a plain white t-shirt and chowing down on chicken fingers. And the Russian thug with the black satchel-handle mustache who’d choked me demanding to know where Michael Cassidy was. He was pouring himself a shot from a bottle of Stoli as I approached.

  The third person at the table was an attractive young black woman in a shimmering copper-colored dress that conformed to her firm figure like electroplating. I gave her my full attention and she returned it with an amused grin.

  Coy d’Loy said, “Now Philip here you already know.” She indicated the blond kid, who didn’t look up from his plate of food. “And I believe you’ve also met Gladimir.”

  The Russian shot me a hard look as he downed his drink and muttered, “Ya.”

  I said, “I’ve had the displeasure.”

  “Yes, well, I understand there was a slight misunderstanding earlier today between you two,” d’Loy said.

  “Hopefully we can work past that. But first, I’d like you to meet Moyena. Moyena, Payton.”

  I shook her hand and she dazzled me with a smile.

  “Moyena is my newest associate. We at The Peer Group are expecting great things from her. You wouldn’t believe the trouble we had luring her into the fold.”

  “Just playing hard to get,” Moyena said, a touch of irony in her low, lazy voice. “Nice to meet you, Payton.”

  “Back at you.”

  She tilted her head to one side and commented, “You’re actually quite handsome, Payton.” Like somebody had been contesting the fact.

  Coy d’Loy tittered in agreement. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

  I wasn’t surprised; I always get a bit more attractive when I’m working on something. A subtle form of lycanthropy triggered by the scent of prey.

  I asked the Russian, “How ’bout you, Gladys? Still think I’m pretty?”

  The blond kid laughed through his mouthful of chicken.

  Gladimir stared hard at me with his nearly black eyes, like he was measuring me for a four-ply plastic trashbag.

  He poured himself another shot.

  “Okay,” I said, “so we all agree I’m the best looking boy since Michelangelo carved the David. What am I doing here, Ms. d’Loy?”