LAURA LEE

A Novel By

Lawrence De Maria

(An Alton Rhode Mystery)

Copyright © Lawrence De Maria 2012 (Revised 2016)

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

events or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book,

or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this book may be reproduced, downloaded, transmitted, reverse engineered, decompiled or stored in or introduced into any storage or retrieval system in any form or by any means, whether electric or mechanical, without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading or distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

(Special thanks to Nancy Kreisler, Deborah Thompson and Maryellen Alvarez)

Published by St. Austin’s Press

(305-409-0900)

Dedicated to Patti, without whose love, support and faith this book

– and others –

would not have been possible, and to my sons, Lawrence and Christopher, good men, both.

PROLOGUE

The squad car from the 122nd Precinct in New Dorp pulled into the Richmond County Country Club. The report of “possible shots fired” had been relayed from the private security company that patrolled the club grounds on Todt Hill. The two veteran cops in the sector car were not overly concerned. The new security firm hired by the club had a reputation at the precinct for being overly cautious; it was probably kids setting off cherry bombs.

False alarms aside, the cops knew the area well. A rash of burglaries a year earlier had shaken the neighborhood, especially after it was discovered that the previous security company had a silent partner, Nando Carlucci, the grossly obese head of the local Mafia. With access to many of the home alarm codes, he had orchestrated the break-ins. Carlucci had disappeared under mysterious circumstances and was presumably filling up several landfills.

The burglaries ended. But under pressure from some of the club’s more influential members, the board of directors hired KrullCorp, a national security company with no local ties. It had the responsibility of protecting not only lavish facilities that included a 150-year-old main clubhouse awarded Landmark status by the City of New York but also the many private homes on the property. The firm took its job seriously. There was no better, or at least pricier, neighborhood on Staten Island. None of the homes was worth less than $5 million and most contained museum-quality artwork, not to mention pricey jewelry Carlucci’s crew missed.

As N.Y.P.D.’s finest drove up the circular driveway to the address they were given, they spotted the familiar brown car used by KrullCorp. There was another car parked in the drive, a powder-blue BMW.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” the driver of the patrol car said, “here comes a fucking lawsuit.”

It wasn’t delinquents with cherry bombs.

“Let’s be careful with this guy,” his partner, a sergeant, said. “He probably thinks he’s Rambo. But scared shitless.”

Standing under the light by the front door was one of the security firm’s rent-a-cops. The man, a big, beefy guy who looked to be about 25,  was wearing a neatly pressed brown uniform. That’s not what had the cops’ full attention, however. They were more interested in the black Glock the guard was holding. At his feet was a well-dressed woman, face down, with her hands behind her head. A large revolver lay on the ground a few feet away. Both cops drew their weapons and got out, careful to stand behind their respective open car doors.

“Take it easy, pal,” the sergeant ordered. “Why don’t you put the cannon away.”

“Not a problem, officer,” the guard said, holstering his weapon. “I know the drill. She’s all yours.”

The kid doesn’t look scared, the sergeant noted as he walked forward. In fact, he looked like a tough son of a bitch.

“What do we have here?”

“Doing my rounds when I heard some shots,” the guard replied. “Called it in. Was debating to go in when this lady charged out the front door with a gun.” He pointed to the revolver. “I got to tell you, I haven’t had that much of a jolt since my last tour in Sandland.”

He’s a war vet, the sergeant realized, warming to the kid. No wonder he’s so calm. Been there, done that. And up close, he didn’t look 25. Late 20’s probably, maybe even older. Trying to grow a moustache, none too successfully.

“Anyway, I detained her. She’s OK. Didn’t give me any trouble. Her gun is empty by the way. I checked.”

The guard had a bit of a drawl, the cop realized. Not from around here, that’s for sure. The sergeant glanced down at the revolver, a strange, clunky piece. He’d never seen one like it.

“I handled it by the barrel only,” the guard added quickly. “Used a pen. Figured they’d want prints.”

“You touch anything else?”

“Nope. And I haven’t gone inside. She said she didn’t do it, but I figure I’d let you guys find out what she didn’t do. I’m taking the test for the academy in the fall. I don’t want to screw up a crime scene, if that’s what the hell it is.”

Sharp cookie, the sergeant thought. He turned to his partner.

“Frank, stay here, I’m going in. Call for backup.”

“Watch your ass, Pete.”

The front door was still open and the sergeant cautiously entered the center-hall colonial, sticking close to a wall to present a small target. The place was dark. He took a small flashlight from his utility belt and quickly found a switch in the front hall. He weighed the risks of smudging some prints against walking into an ambush.

“Fuck that,” he said to himself, and deftly using the barrel of his gun flicked up the switch. The hallway was instantly bathed in light. He let out a deep breath and started going room by room on the ground floor.

When he got to what appeared to be a study or den, there was enough light from the hallway and a roaring fireplace for him to see a form slumped in a weird-looking recliner facing the hearth. The flames flickered unevenly, creating weird shadow patterns on the walls and ceiling. The sergeant froze at the sight of a snarling wild animal across the room. He almost pulled the trigger. Using his gun again he flipped a wall switch. He laughed in relief. The wild animal turned out to be the stuffed head of a bear mounted above the fireplace. My kids have me watching too many vampire and werewolf movies, he thought.

As he approached the chair, he noticed a hand hanging toward the floor. Two bare feet rested on an ottoman in front of the recliner. They were splayed out from each other in an unnatural-looking ‘V’ shape. Underneath the hand was a toppled wine glass, surrounded by a dark purple stain. That will be a bitch to get out, the cop thought irrationally. The smell of cordite was intense and he was pretty sure what he would find when he got to the chair.

The sergeant walked around it and looked at the body. He was no rookie, but the “holy fuck!” came anyway. The man was naked, with a huge erection. Both the man’s eyes had been shot out, and the nose, chin and forehead also had bullet holes in them. Blood and brain matter were splattered over the back of the chair’s headrest. Five shots, at least. A remote control was clenched in the man’s right hand in his lap at the base of his penis. The sergeant looked around. There was no TV or anything else electronic anywhere in sight. Maybe the device was some kind of sex aid. They sold all sorts of stuff on late night cable. Nothing would surprise him. Why not a remote-controlled hard-on?

The sergeant was startled by a rustling sound and felt a breeze. He whirled to his left, his gun up. The door to what was probably the back yard was open and curtains on nearby windows were flapping. He heard sirens. Thank God. He wanted someone watching his back when he cleared the rest of the house. In fact, he decided to let someone else do it.

He went outside. Three more squad cars screeched to a halt. People started coming out of nearby mansions. He walked over to the woman, who was now standing docilely by the security guard and his partner. For the first time he noticed that she was blond and beautiful.

“What’s your name, Miss?”

“Elizabeth Olsen.”

Oh, crap. One of those Olsens? It was the country club, after all. Better do everything by the book. Let the homicide dicks handle the inevitable shit storm. He walked over to his partner and lowered his voice.

“Mirandize her, Frank, and cuff her. But go easy. Not too tight.” The sergeant shivered, only partially because of the late October chill. “And put Miss Olsen in the car, where it’s warmer.”

He turned to the security guard, whose nameplate said, “R. Ricks.” Pulling him aside, he said, “You did good, kid. After you give your statement, look me up. I know some guys at the academy.”

“Thanks, Sarge,” Ricks said.

CHAPTER 1 – CHIN MUSIC

Eight Months Later

Alice Watts and I were having a very good time. It’s hard not to have a good time in a new ballpark on a warm mid-week summer night, with cold beer and hot dogs at hand that you didn’t have to tap a line of credit to order. Ah, the beauty of minor league baseball.

Actually, I was probably having a better time than Alice, since she said her interest in baseball was limited. She knew who Derek Jeter was and rooted for New York’s major league teams, including the Mets. I didn’t hold that against her, since I also rooted for them unless they were playing my Yankees.

We were watching the Yankees, sort of. The Staten Island Yankees were a farm team of the Bronx Bombers, stocked basically with low draft picks out of college or Latin America who had little chance of making the big leagues. But with hope springing eternal the kids played their hearts out against teams from Oneonta and Buffalo and had built up a stirring rivalry with the Brooklyn Cyclones, a Mets affiliate that occupied another new stadium in Coney Island.

I often went to a game, especially when the parent club sent a rehabbing pitcher to work with the farm team, as was the case this night. It was always enjoyable to see the kids face a major league curveball. It was probably not that enjoyable to the kids, some of whom soon realized that minor-league ball was going to be the pinnacle of their professional career.

The Baby Bombers, as they were unfortunately dubbed by the local media, offered a slew of on-field promotions that delighted the crowd, which for a few innings at least could forget they were in New York City and act like upstate apple farmers. My favorite was the “Dash for Cash,” where lucky patrons, chosen by a random pick of ticket stubs, had 30 seconds to run the bases, under which were piles of dollar bills they could stuff in their clothing. I had never seen anyone make it to home plate. Some of the overweight or less athletic barely made it to first. I suspected that a club attendant with a CPR pack was poised on the dugout steps with the paddles.

Our seats were terrific, in a box just behind the home team dugout eight rows back. The box belonged to a law firm that I occasionally helped out with a skip trace. The firm owned the building where I had my office and in return for the pro bono traces they cut me a good break on my rent and threw me some extra perks, like baseball tickets. The lawyers rarely went to a ball game, probably because they couldn’t bill the time to some of the other patrons who were clients and might see them.

The only better seats were filled with politicians and their entourages. It was an election year and they were sitting in the open among the unwashed masses. On other nights in a non-election year they would have been up in one of the corporate sky boxes drinking scotch and eating sushi behind glass. The idea of skyboxes in a minor league ballpark struck me as vaguely un-American. The park itself was magnificent, offering a spectacular view of New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty and downtown Manhattan. With new towers rising to the sky where the World Trade Center had been, the vista was becoming less sad.

It was the top of the third and the hard-throwing lefty Saburo Yamaguchi was on the mound for the Baby Yanks. The game was a sellout, since the opposing team was the Brooklyn Cyclones. Saburo – “Sab” to the sportswriters – was a free-agent pickup from the Nagasaki Dragons in the Japanese pro league who hadn’t quite lived up to his potential during his initial stint in the bigs. As a result, the real Bombers, who had invested $15 million in Yamaguchi, left him in New York when they went on an extended West Coast road trip. Due to return to the Bronx from exile when the parent club came home on the weekend, he was spending this Wednesday evening working the kinks out on Staten Island.

“He’s rather large for a Japanese person, isn’t he?” Alice held out a bag of peanuts for me. It was true. Yamaguchi was a beefy six-three. “Is he on steroids?”

“I doubt that,” I said. “A lot of the ballplayers coming over from Japan don’t fit the stereotype of the Japanese being small. The adoption of a more Western diet probably has something to do with it, plus new training techniques.”

“Maybe there’s something in the water. After all, he is from Nagasaki.” Alice apparently had scanned the program. “Of course, sumo wrestlers are immense, too.”

I had the feeling that Alice was having fun with me.

There was a loud crack of a bat. It had the unmistakable sound of long ball, and, sure enough, a towering drive arched out into the distance and cleared the right field wall. The right fielder barely turned around, the ball exited the premises that quickly. Saburo had inexplicably grooved a 92-mile-an-hour fastball to the Cyclone’s cleanup hitter, a left-handed batter no less, who was now pumping his fist as he rounded the bases. That was a mistake. It was bad enough to blast a rehabbing major leaguer’s pitch into New York Harbor, but showing him up invited a response.

It wasn’t long in coming. The next batter went down in a heap as a fastball buzzed by his head. The home plate umpire took a step toward the mound and then thought better of it. Even the opposing dugout was silent. Yamaguchi settled down after that and quickly dispatched the batter with three obscene curveballs that buckled the kid’s legs. The next two batters, who not surprisingly also stayed pretty loose in the box, ready to duck, also struck out. When the home run trotter came to bat again, he’d probably wear a suit of armor.

“My, Sab-san looks angry,” Alice said as Yamaguchi stomped from the mound. “That kid shouldn’t have pumped his fist after taking him deep. We probably haven’t seen the last of the chin music.”

I stared at her. Alice was apparently more of a baseball fan than I realized.

“You ready for another dog?” I asked.

“No, thank you. I think I’ve reached my limit of nitrates and hog renderings. You know what they say. ‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but you can make a hell of a hot dog.’ But I could go for another beer.”

In my experience, good-looking, athletic women who don’t turn up their noses at ballpark beer are rare, and thus to be cherished. I went off for our refills. I met a few guys I knew waiting in line at the concession stand. We traded baseball chatter. The general consensus was that the jerk who hit the home run off Yamaguchi had the life expectancy of a mayfly. When I got back to our seats juggling the beers, my third hot dog and a box of fries, Alice was deep in conversation with Michael Sullivan and his wife. I had spotted them earlier sitting a few rows ahead of us and they now stood in the aisle next to Alice.

CHAPTER 2 – SLAM DUNK

Sullivan was the Staten Island District Attorney, and, in my opinion, a bit of a pretentious ass, as Harvard men tend to be. But he was competent enough and didn’t get the job just because he was Irish, the nationality that by unspoken tradition had occupied the D.A.’s office for decades. I never could figure that out. Most of the cops, judges and crooks in the borough were Italian. But the D.A. was always Irish. Perhaps the other nationalities wanted someone with a gripe against everyone, just to keep the rest of them in line. I knew for a fact that the Russian mob, a growing presence on the Island, felt a little left out. Of course, all was not lost for the Russians. Arman Rahm, the titular head of the Russkies, had managed to plant a mole in Sullivan’s office, in the form of a comely Assistant D.A. who had the hots for him. Arman, not Sullivan, who was known as a straight arrow. This was probably something that I should have mentioned to the authorities but I felt I owed Rahm for saving my life when Nando Carlucci, the late and unlamented head of the Staten Island Mafia, was preparing to carve me into landfill-appropriate pieces. The fact that Rahm had put me in line for Nando’s chain saw in the first place complicated matters, but a debt is a debt.

“Hello, Rhode,” Sullivan said as I struggled to my seat. “Need a hand with that?”

“No, thanks,” I said as I sat down. I felt rude sitting with them standing there but I wanted to balance the cardboard tray on my lap before I spilled something. I did anyway. They politely pretended not to notice.

“Sharon, you remember Alton Rhode, don’t you,” Sullivan said. “He’s a private investigator.”

“Yes, of course,” his wife said and extended her hand, then thought better of it when she saw the ketchup on mine.

Sharon Sullivan was a knockout. Not as good-looking as Alice Watts, to be sure, but still major league. Sullivan had married late, and well. He was pushing 50 and his wife, a tall redhead, was at least 20 years his junior. She was a former dancer at Radio City Music Hall, a fact that Sullivan’s opponent in the D.A.’s race, a political hack and perennial candidate named Connor Costello, tried to use as a campaign issue. He ended up alienating everyone who wished they knew, let alone, married a leggy Rockette. The Radio City Music Hall Christmas show, with its famous high-kicking revue, is a rite of passage for children in New York. Knocking a Rockette was akin to knocking Mom and apple pie. Even if he wasn’t such a straight arrow, Sullivan didn’t have much reason to look elsewhere.

They made a stunning couple. Her tireless community and charitable work was an asset in an election year. I had spotted her several times at various functions at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and always noticed how effortlessly she dominated the room. Tonight, however, she looked a bit out of sorts. Beautiful, still, but wound up. Perhaps she didn’t like baseball. From past conversations I knew her husband could care less about the game and was only in attendance to be seen. He probably dragged her along.

“Alice, I hope you will be at the Mancuso’s Saturday,” Sharon Sullivan said, brightening a bit.

“Oh, yes. I wouldn’t miss it,” Alice responded. “It sounds like a lot of fun. Thanks so much for inviting me. I know Alton is also looking forward to it.”

Mike Sullivan gave me his best “gotcha” smile. I had almost forgotten about the Mancuso gig, one of many pre-election campaign cocktail parties his supporters were throwing. It was the quid pro quo for my dragging Alice to the ball game. Although now that she had revealed her knowledge of baseball and fondness for cold beer it was apparent I’d been had. The women started chatting in the aisle and Sullivan sat next to me.

“I hear you’re going to prosecute the Denton case yourself, Mike. How come?”

I already knew the reason. John Denton was a prominent local banker who had been allegedly shot dead almost a year earlier by his mistress, Elizabeth Olsen. The “allegedly” was being used by everyone with a wink, since the Olsen woman was found at the scene holding the murder weapon with gunshot residue on her hand. It was a high-profile slam dunk, ready made for an election year. The case was scheduled to go to trial in October, fast-tracked to be completed in time for the November election.

“John Denton was an important member of this community,” Sullivan said. “North Shore Savings is one of our finest institutions. I feel it’s my responsibility to see justice done.”

Pure hogwash, I knew. The bank certainly had a strong reputation in the community. In fact, the bank’s ads were plastered all over the stadium in which we sat. On opening day there had even been a moment of silence in Denton’s honor. But among the cognoscenti the reputation of the bank’s dead chairman was less than stellar. John Denton was a notorious womanizer with lounge-lizard looks, and had not the Olsen woman been caught red-handed the potential suspects would have filled the ballpark. There had also been rumors that North Shore Savings had drawn the attention of regulators over some of its mortgage practices.

“Of course,” I said. “But surely Olsen is going to plead out. I’m surprised she hasn’t already. You can’t get first-degree in a crime of passion. She’ll deal.”

Plea bargaining was a cancer in the borough’s judicial system. Fully 95 percent of all criminal cases on Staten Island resulted in plea bargains. It was a scandal, of course, but nothing much had changed since the days when John Gotti, just then rising to prominence in the mob, was allowed to cop to attempted manslaughter after gunning down a Staten Island mobster in full view of a dozen witnesses in a local tavern.

“Who says it’s a crime of passion? She obliterated his face with five shots, point-blank.”

“We both know how Denton treated his women,” I said. “And how vain he was about his looks. That’s what a scorned mistress would probably do, Mike. Hell, you’ll be lucky if Long goes with passion.” Elizabeth Olsen’s lawyer, J. Steven Long, was considered the best criminal defense attorney in the borough, with a citywide reputation. He didn’t come cheap, but the Olsen family, which owned one of the largest real estate development and construction companies in the tri-state area, could easily afford him. “He’s probably dusting off an insanity defense. Or abuse. Maybe burning bed. Or in Denton’s case, burning couch. Don’t rule out alien abduction. What was his first offer, jaywalking? And why do you want to stick it to the Olsens?”

My implication was clear. Konrad Olsen, the suspect’s father, had clout. Until recently there had been an Olsen advertisement on the same outfield wall where the bank ads were. It had been replaced by a car dealership sign. But Olsen money still flowed into Borough Hall, whose current occupant would approve a real estate deal backed by al-Qaeda. Sullivan smiled.

“Still the wiseass, Alton. But in this case you’re wrong. Long says she doesn’t want any deal. Says that his client swears she’s innocent. Found the body and picked up the gun by reflex when she heard someone. Panicked and fired at a shape in the dark.” Sullivan smiled at the ludicrousness of the defense. “He says she won’t budge from her story. He thinks she’s crazy but he’s got his marching orders. The Olsens don’t own my office. We’re going to trial.”

“Well, let me know if you need help finding the courtroom.”

Sullivan took the jibe well. The women were saying their goodbyes and he got up to leave.

“You have mustard on your shirt,” he said.

Alice and I left during the seventh-inning stretch. The Baby Bombers had rallied and were up 4-1. Yamaguchi had been lifted by then, draining much of the drama from the game. He wouldn’t be drilling the guy who hit the homer after all.

“I didn’t realize Sharon Sullivan was behind the invite Saturday night,” I said as I walked Alice to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal a few blocks away. She is a philosophy professor and swim coach at Wagner College on Staten Island’s Grymes Hill but lives in Greenwich Village. I had hoped she had different plans for the night, but I wasn’t all that surprised she was going home. After all, I had basically run her previous boyfriend out of town on a rail not long ago. She knew I had done her a favor, but it was probably still a hard pill for her to swallow.

“I’m on one of her committees at the Harbor,” she said. “I really like her. She’s not phony.”

“You mean, like her husband?”

“Yes, he is a bit of a tool, isn’t he? But he can’t be all bad to love her like he does. And vice versa. They really adore each other. Everyone knows it.”

“I can’t argue with that,” I admitted. “He’s a decent enough guy. And a damn sight better than the idiot running against him. I’ll vote for him.”

“Who’s the, ah, idiot?”

“Guy named Connor Costello. Bagman lawyer even his supporters won’t make a judge, so they keep putting him up as a sacrificial lamb.”

“It sounds like his father was Italian.”

“No, Costello is also an Irish name. He’s full-blooded, if a half-wit. He’s so disliked that even being Irish in a borough where he might get Italian votes from people who are confused by his name doesn’t help. He gets fewer votes than one of those ballot propositions that nobody can understand. It’s pretty pathetic to come in third behind a sewer bond issue.”

Alice laughed. She had a good, deep laugh.

“But you’re still not crazy about Sullivan. Are you angry I roped you into a party for him?”

“Oh, hell. He’s too slick for my taste, but we get along pretty well now.”

I didn’t explain that Sullivan, who in the past was dismissive of me – and my profession – was showing more respect since the Carlucci case, in which I had found a man in witness protection. An unheard of accomplishment which, to protect everyone involved on both sides of the law, was supposed to remain unheard. But certain people with their own agendas, mostly criminal, had leaked my involvement. It was good for their business. And, obviously, mine.

We reached the terminal. I waited with Alice for the ferry.

“I think I saw you admiring Sharon’s legs,” she said.

“There is much to admire. Besides I’m a detective. I notice everything.”

“Dancer’s legs. She was a Rockette, you know.”

“Yes. Would you believe I was thinking about Christmas?”

“No. But just remember, Rockettes aren’t the only girls who know how to kick.”

She gave me a long, languorous kiss, which drew some friendly whistles and a “get a room” from a group of young Coast Guardsmen heading into Manhattan. Above the roar in my ears I heard the clanging bell announcing the doors to the ferry opening. I gave the Coasties a thumbs up as Alice walked to her boat. She looked as good from the rear as she did from any other angle. I read somewhere that through the miracle of evolution the female hip sway is tied to pelvic shape and its relation to fertility and child-bearing, and has also been structured to stimulate the male libido. I believe in evolution, but there’s no denying it’s a very intelligent design.

Political cocktail party torture or no, I was looking forward to Saturday night. Perhaps Alice would skip the ferry ride home.

CHAPTER 3 – ROOTING FOR NORBERTO

I spent the next two days tailing, with varying degrees of success, Norberto Cruz, a construction worker who had fallen from a scaffold on a new townhouse project in Eltingville and was suing the general contractor. The contractor’s insurance company hired me to find out if Norberto’s disability – he claimed his excruciating back pain prevented him from working anywhere – was as real as he and his doctor claimed it was.

Norberto sported a cane most days, unless he was due for a deposition; then he invariably used a walker. The insurance company’s doctors said they couldn’t find any serious injuries, but they might be inclined to say that about someone on life support. Since back pain is notoriously hard to diagnose or dismiss, only evidence of outright fraud could derail the suit.

I have no love of insurance companies, but they pay well, no matter what I dig up. Personally, I was rooting for Norberto. On Thursday morning I’d been waiting just up the street from the Cruz residence, a nice two-family in Mariners Harbor, when he hobbled to his car. He was wearing slacks and a golf shirt, which didn’t prove anything, although I knew he was a fanatic about the game. But it’s not like he was carrying a bag of clubs. In fact, the inability to pursue his passion on any of Staten Island’s four golf courses was invariably brought up by his lawyer at various depositions and settlement hearings. Not only couldn’t Norberto work, he also couldn’t play. His life, in effect, was ruined.

Norberto appeared to have real difficulty getting into the car. That also didn’t prove anything. If he was running a con, he probably assumed there was an insurance company camera behind every tree in his hometown. He drove away slowly, as a person with a bum back might.

It’s not easy to tail someone who is barely maintaining the speed limit. Two slow cars are conspicuous. I had to drop back several vehicles and was passed frequently by annoyed drivers. Norberto drove across Staten Island to the Outerbridge Crossing. Once in New Jersey, he took off, weaving in and out of traffic until he got to the Garden State Parkway, where I lost him. His change in driving style made me suspicious. If he was trying to lose a tail, he succeeded.

Just to be on the safe side, the next day I rented a car. Finding a vehicle more nondescript than my beat-up Malibu took some doing. My private investigation business, while not exactly booming, was picking up and it was probably time to upgrade my ride. Cormac Levine said I was running the risk of being the first person in history arrested for vagrancy while driving. Coming from the most slovenly detective on the N.Y.P.D., that hurt.

Norberto and I resumed our same slow-motion driving routine and again wound up at the Outerbridge. As we approached the crossing, I sped up and passed him, honking my horn and giving him the finger. I cut in front of him so that he actually had to brake. He would assume I was just another typically deranged New York driver.

I picked him up in Jersey a mile past the bridge, doing his weave job. This time I stuck with him all the way to Glenwood Country Club in Matawan. I drove past the club entrance and then circled back. His car was parked in one of the handicapped spots nearest the clubhouse. I’ve never understood the rationale for handicapped parking at golf courses, and never will.

I entered the clubhouse wearing golf togs myself and no one paid me any notice. I ambled out to the first tee and spotted Norberto putting on his golf shoes while he chatted with three of his buddies. His clubs were already on his cart. What are friends for? I got close enough to the foursome to get some nice shots with my iPhone, which takes better pictures than my regular digital camera. But I wanted some action photos, so I went back into the clubhouse and bought a shirt and hat with the club’s logo on them. Then I went to the cart shack and gave an attendant $20 to let me use a cart “to check out the course before I join.”

My next two hours were spent intercepting Norberto’s group on various holes. With my club attire, they took me for a ranger who was always on his iPhone. To add verisimilitude to the charade, occasionally I asked them to keep up with the group in front of them. I even made some phony calls to the starter, loud enough to be heard by Norberto and his pals. By the time I headed in, I had proof that Norberto’s expertise with a cane couldn’t hold a candle to his expertise with a 7-iron. He was a hell of a golfer. If I could get a swing like his, I’d happily fall off a scaffold. I emailed some of the best shots to the insurance company lawyers and told them I’d have a full package for them by the time of the next deposition.

I drove back to Staten Island, stopping at the Red Lantern in Rosebank to pick up some eggplant parmesan sandwiches for Abby Jones and myself. Abby, whose real name is Habika, normally works the security desk in the lobby of my building, which is on the waterfront in Stapleton. She wasn’t on the desk this day, however. She was upstairs in my office, where she moonlighted for me one or two days a week, depending upon her schedule with the building security firm.

Abby had put in 20 years in the Army, retiring as a staff sergeant in the Military Police. With a daughter headed to college, she was squared away and a hard, almost obsessive, worker. Divorced, but always looking, for both of us. When I walked into my reception area, I could smell the Pine-Sol. The place looked immaculate, which it hadn’t been when I last left it. I walked through into my inner office, where Abby was rearranging my file drawers. She looked up at me.

“I can see why you haven’t bothered with any fancy security systems, Rhode. It would take the C.I.A.’s best to figure out your filing system.”

“Hell, I don’t have that many files.”

“Makes this mish-mash even more impressive. So, how was your date?”

“It wasn’t a date. We just went to a ball game.”

“Un, huh. And Saturday night? That’s not a date, either? That girl has the hots for you.”

“It’s an election-year cocktail party. She’s friendly with the candidate’s wife.”

“Who’s the candidate?”

“Sullivan.”

“The D.A.? You’d better be on your best behavior.”

“My best is usually not good enough. But I’ll try. Now, let’s eat.”

I went to my small fridge and got out some sodas as Abby laid out the heroes.

“How come you never bring me soul food?”

“I can do that.”

“Hey. I’m just askin’. Don’t you ever bring me that crap. I’m on a diet.”

Abby was indeed looking a bit slimmer.

“But eggplant parmesan is OK?”

“No diet worth its salt eliminates a Red Lantern eggplant hero.”

After lunch I spent the rest of the day doing paperwork and preparing my Norberto Cruz report to the insurance company. Then I went home.

My folks left me a 100-year-old side-hall colonial on St. Austins Place in West Brighton. I parked in the back of my house and headed up the illegal deck two firemen built for me in their spare time. There was a Bengal tiger sitting on the top step. Actually, it wasn’t a tiger, but the biggest tomcat I’d ever seen. He’d been dropping by intermittently for more than a year. Nobody in the neighborhood owned him. I’m not counting, but his face seems to have a new gash every-time he shows up.

I call him Scar, of course. His sex life was apparently better than mine, or at least more interesting. Nancy Robart, the head of the Staten Island Botanical Garden in nearby Snug Harbor Cultural Center who had been a mutual carnal outlet, had gone monogamous as she set her sights on potential husband No. 4.

At first I assumed Scar was auditioning for the role of pet. But he never sticks around long and was obviously not going hungry during his sometimes lengthy absences. Maybe I was the one auditioning and he has found me wanting. The thought annoyed the hell out of me.

I stepped over the cat, who didn’t even bother to look up, and went into my kitchen. I found a can of beef broth and a couple of tins of sardines. Fixed a bowl and plate and brought them out to him. If he was grateful he managed to restrain himself.

“I’m a dog person,” I said. “You wouldn’t be so snooty if Scruffy was still around.”

Scruffy – in family conversations the appendage “the Wonder Dog” was always attached to the name – was a Belgian sheepdog and German shepherd mix with the best characteristics of both breeds. Smart as a whip and gentle with children, women and any animal that recognized his innate superiority, he had the bark of a Tyrannosaur. Neighbors put up with that bark and his occasional antics. He liked to jump our six-foot fence and roam the neighborhood. But once out of puppyhood he was the burglar and loiterer alarm for the entire block, treeing several ne’er-do-wells during his nighttime jaunts. I took him for a walk once when he was set upon by two larger mutts with delusions of canine grandeur. I had to rescue both of them before he turned them into Michael Vick rejects. The mangled mutts and I learned an important lesson: It’s not the size of the dog, it’s the dog. The only battle Scruffy ever lost was to old age, and half the neighborhood turned out when we buried him next to his favorite tree in our yard.

“I’ll probably never find another Scruffy, but I’ll keep looking. If I do find one, maybe you’ll learn some respect.”

Scar left without replying. Truth was, he looked like he’d handled dogs before. I went back into the house, turned on the oven and opened my freezer. I took out one of the containers of beef bourguignon I had left over from a Williams-Sonoma crock pot mix that has fooled even some Francophiles I occasionally have over for dinner. I do add some extra fresh mushrooms to the pot to lend a proprietary air to the dish. I also took out a frozen French baguette and some ice cubes. Bachelors must have had it pretty easy during the ice age.

After getting the food in the oven, I poured three fingers of Makers Mark over a couple of cubes in a rocks glass. Since I used my fingers vertically, the bourbon almost spilled out.

Unlike Scar, I had no plans for the evening.

CHAPTER 4 – LUNCH AT THE CLUB

I got up at dawn the next morning and needed to work off the bourbon, not to mention the half bottle of claret that had made the beef bourguignon even more memorable. I ran up Forest Avenue past the Silver Lake Golf Course and the reservoir to Victory Boulevard. It was no fun, since it is basically uphill. Then I turned down Victory to Clove Road, sprinted into Clove Lakes Park and circled three of its small lakes before heading back to Forest and home at an easy jog.

I walked the last few blocks and was pleased to note that even though my legs ached a bit, I no longer had even the slightest hint of a limp. Perhaps I could finally say goodbye to the doctors and physical therapists at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Brooklyn. The cute consulting shrink hired by the V.A. to evaluate my mental health had already cut me loose, convinced that my drinking habits and other lifestyle choices had nothing to do with post-traumatic stress. Her final diagnosis – given to me verbally, and gratefully not reflected in my file – was, “It seems that you’ve always been fucked up.”

Once home, I put on a pot of coffee. Then I whisked some eggs, sliced up what remained of the previous night’s baguette, added a touch of Makers Mark and made French toast. Day-old baguette is excellent for French toast. As for the bourbon, it wasn’t a hair-of-the-dog addition. It was from a recipe given to me by a Foreign Legionnaire I once shared a tent with on a combined op. He actually specified bourbon, although he said sour mash would do in a pinch. Either way, whisky does make a difference. So does real maple syrup, the only syrup I allow in my larder.

After breakfast, I showered, put on old clothes and headed to my basement, which I am in the process of finishing. I had finally cleaned the space out after my last case, the end of which found me there tied to a chair with limited prospects. When the people torturing you and your just-in-the-nick-of-time rescuers all comment on how dirty your basement is, it’s time to do something. As it turned out, the blood stains, mostly Carlucci’s, were the easiest part of the cleanup.

The whitewash on the walls had dried, so I started drilling holes to anchor the shelving and wall mounts I planned to install. I almost didn’t hear my cell phone. When I picked it up I was surprised by the name on the display.

“Mr. Rhode, this is Steve Long. I think we’ve met a couple of times at one function or another. I hope you don’t mind my calling on a Saturday.”

“Not at all. What can I do for you, Mr. Long?”

“Please call me Steve. I need an investigator for a case I’m preparing. You come highly recommended by one of my clients. I believe you know him. Arman Rahm.” I almost laughed. Rahm and his personal assassin, Maks Kalugin, had been responsible for most of my basement blood stains, having shot Nando Carlucci in the mouth not five feet from where I was now drilling holes in the wall.

“A Rahm isn’t a client,” I said. “It’s an annuity.”

“Quite so,” Long said, chuckling. “An interesting family. But this has nothing to do with them. You may have heard that I represent Elizabeth Olsen in the Denton incident.”

At least he didn’t say “accident.”

I said I’d heard.

“That’s where I may need your help. If you are interested, I’d like to buy you lunch.”

“I’m a big fan of lunch, Steve. Especially when someone else is buying. But I’m curious. The, ah, incident, occurred quite a while ago. You’ve had months to prepare for trial. Why are you just now getting around to hiring an investigator?”

“Very frankly, because I didn’t think we’d ever get near a courtroom. My client refuses to entertain any kind of plea. Take this as a compliment. I understand you are a man people go to when they are grasping at straws.”

Just over an hour later I drove into the Richmond County Country Club. The weather was good enough to bring out the tennis players. Most of the club’s eight Har-Tru courts were occupied. There was a doubles match going on the nearest court I passed. An elderly woman huffed after a ball that had been lobbed over her head. She never got close but watched it hit and vehemently shouted “out.” Even in a moving car, 50 feet from a court partially obstructed by bushes and a fence, I could see that the ball was clearly inside the baseline.

“Are you sure, Marjorie,” one of her opponents yelled. “It looked awfully close.”

“Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades,” Marge replied. “It’s 40-15.”

I’d bet she used that line in a hundred matches.

J. Steven Long was sitting at a table in the corner of the Grill Room by a window overlooking the club’s pool. He stood up when I reached the table.

“Mr. Rhode, thank you for coming,” he said.

“Please call me Alton.” Long looked to be about 60, but I knew he was closer to 70. I’m just six-foot tall and he had me by at least two inches. There was a drink with a lime in front of him. He raised it and pointed it at me. “How about something before we order lunch? They make a great gin and tonic here. Tall, thin glasses are the key.”

“That would be nice.”

He waved over a waiter.

“Two Pinnacles and tonics, Barry. And perhaps some nuts.”

“Pinnacle,” I said.

“Best kept secret in gin. British through and through.”

Long’s hair was brown and slicked back and looked slightly damp. He was wearing navy blue slacks and a clean, fresh pink golf shirt and he had that powdered look men at clubs have after a shower.

“I bet you called me from the golf course,” I said.

“How observant,” he said, laughing. “But then you are a detective. I have a regular Saturday game. In fact, Konrad Olsen, Elizabeth’s father, is in our group. He was in a foursome behind us and is still in the locker room. I’ve asked him to join us. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.” I presumed I was to be vetted. “I’ve heard a lot about him.”

“Good. Have you played the course?”

“Once or twice a year, as a guest. And I caddied there in high school, and they let us play on Tuesdays when the club was closed. It’s a wonderful layout. Do you think the city will keep it up when they take it over?”

Richmond County is the only private country club within the five boroughs of New York City. The land making up the clubhouse grounds and its 124-acre, 18-hole golf course, which was just down the road about a mile, represent some of the most valuable property in New York. In the 1980’s the city had raised the assessment on all the land and the club was faced with an astronomical tax bill. Rather than shoulder a huge dues increase, the club sold the golf course to the city, but got the right to lease it back at no cost for 99 years.

“Sure, and I’ll win the fucking Masters,” Long said.

“I guess they had no choice but to cut a deal.”

“They had a choice.” The lawyer waved his arm. “Some of us wanted to sell all this up here. The clubhouse, the tennis courts, the houses we own on the oval, the whole shebang, and relocate to new facilities down on the golf course. We would have had to shorten a couple of holes and maybe have fewer tennis courts, but we’d still have a pool and a state-of-the-art clubhouse. We sold the golf course for $4 million. Do you know what this land up here is worth? If we held out a couple of years we would have made a bloody fortune. Hell, each of those tennis courts out there is probably worth $4 million. We would have had enough money to pay taxes forever, on the interest alone.”

“I guess you got outvoted.”

“Wasn’t even close. Do you know this club was started in 1888 as a hunt club? They actually rode to the hounds. Didn’t let the first Jews or Italians in until the 1970’s and then only a sprinkling, for show. No blacks until the 1990’s, same reason. The old W.A.S.P. money still ran the club when they cut the deal with the city. They don’t care what happens in 2088, probably figure Staten Island will be a sewer by then anyway. Most of their kids have moved off the Island, so what the hell?”

Long looked past my shoulder and smiled. He stood. I caught an approaching wisp of cologne and talcum powder. Konrad Olsen had arrived. I got up also.

CHAPTER 5 – THE WRITING ON THE WALL

“Konrad, this is the fellow I spoke about. Alton Rhode.”

Olsen and I shook, and we all sat. The waiter was back.

“Double Black, on the rocks,” Olsen said.

“And another round for us,” Long added. “And bring the menus, please.”

The two men made small talk about their golf games and I murmured appropriate comments. I refrained from bringing up the golf course lease. Olsen money was old money. I was pretty sure how he had voted. And now that his daughter had been accused of murdering her paramour on the club grounds he probably didn’t care if the place was sold to Hezbollah. The drinks and menus came. We took appreciative pulls. My second Pinnacle and tonic was in no way inferior to the first. Long was on his third but didn’t look any the worse for wear. The waiter hovered. We ordered.  Long ordered a Caesar salad, with chicken. Olsen another scotch. I opted for the steak frites, which in the old days and in English was called a steak sandwich. I always judge a club’s food by its steak sandwich, except you can’t find it on many club menus anymore. My fallback criteria is now a Reuben, but it’s not the same. I declined another gin and tonic, or wine, and asked for a Diet Coke. This was a job interview of sorts, and money would be involved.

Olsen’s scotch came. He nibbled on some nuts, which was apparently his lunch. While we waited for our orders, he got right to the point.

“Steve tells me you may be able to help my daughter.”

“Steve might be getting a little ahead of himself.”

“I don’t understand.”

Long jumped in quickly.

“Konrad, I need a savvy investigator to help me develop our defense. Mr. Rhode hasn’t agreed to come on board yet. This is a preliminary meeting. I thought I made that clear.”

I liked being called savvy. I wondered if I could put “Savvy Sleuth” on my business card.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Olsen said. He looked at me. “Elizabeth is innocent. Can you help us?”

It was what any father would say, unless he actually saw the murder. And maybe even then.

“I only know what I’ve read in the papers, Mr. Olsen.”

“My daughter is a romantic fool, but not a murderer.”

“Forgive me, Mr. Olsen, but one doesn’t preclude the other.”

He bridled.

“Whose side are you on, Rhode?”

“My own, sir. I haven’t been hired. But if I am, I’ll follow the leads where they take me. It will be up to Mr. Long to decide what to do with the information I provide. If it helps your daughter, I’ll get paid. If it doesn’t, I’ll still get paid.”

“That’s cold.”

“Yes, but you want cold. I don’t manufacture evidence. But if I find something that helps your daughter, you can take it to the bank. Even Denton’s.”

Olsen looked at Long and said, “He’ll do.” Then he knocked back his scotch and stood. So did I. We shook. “Steve will fill you in on everything, and arrange a meeting with Elizabeth.” Then he walked away. Every eye in the room followed him.

“Sorry about that,” Long said. “It’s tough on him. He loves Elizabeth, but she’s caused him a lot of trouble over the years, mostly with men. Nothing like this, of course. He can’t stand talking about it. But it was his idea to meet you here. He’s showing the flag. Same with the golf. He plays more now than he did before the shooting. The Olsens have been members here for two generations. It takes guts, considering that his daughter is accused of murdering another member not a hundred yards from where we’re sitting.”

“Old money may not have too many good qualities,” I said, “but those they do have should be appreciated.”

“Well said, well said. Are you on board?”

I was, especially at the rate he and Olsen were willing to pay. To top it all off, the club chef hit the steak sandwich out of the ballpark. We discussed the case as we ate. When I asked him what his strategy was, he laughed.

“I hope my client comes to her senses, or they legalize murder.”

“It’s that bad?”

“Elizabeth admits that Denton was her lover. He apparently abused her mentally and, on occasion, physically, then threw her over for another woman.”

“Who?”

“She doesn’t know. Elizabeth says she went to Denton’s house to confront him and find out. She says she found him dead in his chair in the den, naked, his face all shot to pieces, blood and brains all over the chair. The lights went out and she heard something and saw someone running out the doorway leading to the rear patio. She panicked and picked up the gun lying next to the chair and fired at whoever it was.”

“If the lights were out, how did she see the gun?”

“She says she saw it before the lights went out and there was a fire going in the fireplace so she still could spot it.”

“If he was already dead, how did she get in?”

“Elizabeth had a key. A lot of women apparently did.”

“Whose gun was it?”

“Denton’s. Family heirloom, apparently. Claimed he needed one for protection from robbers. Lot of burglaries up on the hill a while back.” Long smiled. “Given the economy, bankers are probably worried about the general public, too. Want coffee?”

I nodded and we soon had some. It was strong, and good.

“You said heirloom. Just what kind of gun was it?”

“A Webley something or other.”

“Webley-Fosbery. Six shots, .45 caliber?”

“Yes, that’s it. How did you know?”

“It’s the same type of gun that killed Miles Archer. I don’t suppose there is a missing statue of a bird involved.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Who is Archer? What statue?”

I laughed,

“Sorry. Miles Archer is Sam Spade’s partner in The Maltese Falcon. There can’t be many Webleys around anymore. They only made about 5,000 of them, the last one about 80 years ago. Would Elizabeth Olsen know where he kept his gun?”

Long sighed.

“I heard you knew more about stuff that doesn’t matter than a Jeopardy contestant. Anyway, Denton was proud of the gun. Showed it to anyone and everyone. He usually kept it in the night table by his bed. In a drawer with his condoms. It’s not a stretch that she would have known about it. She sure as hell knew about the condoms.”

“She isn’t making it easy on you, is she counselor? She says she only fired one round?”

“Yes, but claims she pulled the trigger several times until she realized the gun was empty, then ran out the front door, still holding the gun.”

“Right into the arms of the cops.”

“Well, into the arms of a neighborhood security guard, who held her for the cops. He was responding to a report of gunfire.”

“Did the cops find the sixth round?”

“No, but there was a bullet hole in one of the glass panels of one of the double doors leading out to the patio, which is in the opposite direction of the kill shots. The bullet is presumably in the woods somewhere.”

“The doors were closed?”

“One was. The other was open, according to the police first on the scene.”

“Obviously, the cops aren’t buying her story.”

Long smiled.

“I’m her lawyer and I didn’t buy it. The cops argue that she made up the intruder and fired the sixth shot through the door in a lame attempt to feign innocence. The cops love to exaggerate evidence, but here they have a scorned woman leaving her slaughtered lover’s house holding the fucking proverbial smoking gun. Hell, they could still smell the cordite when they entered.”

“Why did you take the case? I heard you don’t like losing.”

Long sat back and tented his fingers.

“I don’t. I assumed Elizabeth would see the writing on the wall and we could plead out. Denton was a sleaze. I could offer any number of mitigating defenses. Shoot a guy five times in the kisser and get a couple of years minimum security, that counts as a victory in my book, and the public’s. But she is adamant. Says it happened just like she said.”

The waiter had left two small pots of coffee on our table. I poured myself another cup.

“I don’t like just going through the motions, even for this kind of dough.”

Long poured himself another cup.

“Alton, I said I didn’t believe her. Past tense. Now I’m not so sure. I want you to talk to her. Let me know what you think. Then find me something I can use. That intruder would be nice, if he exists. But I’ll take anything. A grassy knoll with shell casings. Any fucking thing. And if you draw a blank, maybe I can convince her to take a plea, even if she’s telling the truth. It’s a shitty outcome, but she’s young. I can’t see her throwing her life away because she’s stubborn.”

“Or innocent.”

“That, too.”

CHAPTER 6 – TOO MANY EGGS

“Do you think there is a chance she’s innocent?”

I had picked up Alice at the St. George Ferry Terminal at 6 P.M. As she walked up the ramp to my car I noticed that she was carrying a large overnight bag. I took that as an encouraging sign, although I knew that she occasionally slept over in one of the Wagner College dorms rather than catch a late ferry back to Manhattan. As the coach of the women’s swim team, she often found that convenient for early-morning practices, particularly on weekends. In fact, that’s how we first met. She was prepping the team for a match and I was rehabbing in the same pool. She noticed my bullet holes; I noticed everything about her.

“If there is one thing I’ve learned recently,” I replied, “it’s that anything is possible. I’ll be able to make a better judgment after I talk with her.”

Alice had casually thrown her bag in my back seat with an enigmatic smile. At least I hoped it was enigmatic, and not pitying. Now we were making small talk on the way to the Mancuso’s.

“When will that be?”

“Her lawyer is setting something up for Monday.”

“Where is she being held?”

“Nowhere. She’s at her father’s house. Long managed to swing a million-dollar bail.”

“Isn’t that unusual in a murder case?”

‘She’s never been in any real trouble, has ties to the community and isn’t considered a threat to anyone. She had to give up her passport and is wearing an ankle monitor. Can’t leave the house except in an emergency or legal proceedings, including lawyer visits.”

“I’ve seen her picture. She’s quite pretty. This is a big case. Even the New York papers are covering it.”

“My dear Alice. Don’t be a snob. We are in New York.”

“Don’t be so Staten Island. I mean the Manhattan papers. They usually don’t care what you foreigners out here do to each other.”

“We like it like that. On a personal note, it’s good for my business. There’s plenty to detect.”

“It would seem that you have your work cut out for you on this one.” Following Alice’s direction, I drove up Victory Boulevard, the main bus and commuter route from the St. George area. It was a Saturday and there shouldn’t have been much traffic. But there was. The Mancusos lived on Duncan Road on Grymes Hill, not far from Wagner College. “What does her attorney think you can do?”

“Everyone deserves a vigorous defense,” I said. “I know that sounds lame. There may be mitigating circumstances. He will try to work out the best result for Elizabeth Olsen. The man she’s accused of killing wasn’t exactly a paragon of virtue.”

“I thought he was a prominent banker.”

“In this economic climate, that won’t hurt the defense,” I said. “But he apparently had other faults, mostly related to women.”

“Mostly?”

“There have been rumors that he swings from both sides of the plate.”

“So Olsen’s lawyer wants you to dig up stuff to smear him.”

I caught the tone of disapproval.

“He hired me to investigate the crime. And that’s all I’ll do.”

I must have sounded curt because Alice put her hand on my arm.

“I’m sorry, Alt. I didn’t mean to imply….”

“It’s OK. If Long has to, he’ll tar Denton to the point where the jury will want to exhume the body to make sure he’s dead. But he’s hoping this case never sees a jury. He wants his client to plead to a lesser charge.”

“Will she?”

“Not yet, but she may not have a choice, depending upon what I find out.”

“And if she’s really innocent but you can’t prove it?”

I thought about what Long had said about Elizabeth Olsen facing reality even if she hadn’t killed Denton. He was a good lawyer only looking out for his client, but I didn’t like it when he said it, and I still didn’t like it.

“If she’s innocent, I’ll prove it.”

***

The Mancuso house was the last one on Duncan Road before the entrance to the Staten Island campus of St. John’s University. The heavily treed and hilly campus had once belonged to the prestigious Notre Dame College for Women, which years earlier had been folded into St. John’s by the Archdiocese for financial reasons. It was now a full-service liberal arts institution and no longer restricted to women. Modern structures, including a new glass-walled library, had been added to the existing hundred-year-old Revival mansions that had served as the original school buildings, giving the whole place an awkward charm. I knew all this because Alice told me. She occasionally teaches classes at St. John’s as part of some sort of educational swap among all the colleges on Staten Island. I forget the name of the program but it has the word “Continuum” in it. I think you have to be able to spell it to participate. Regardless, between St. John’s and Wagner College just down the road on Howard Avenue, Staten Island has two of the prettiest college campuses in the country.

The Mancuso’s driveway was full of cars and there were few spots on the street, but I squeezed my Malibu in between a Lexus and a Mercedes. I thought I heard them both snicker in derision, but it might just have been their engines settling.

There was no one greeting guests at the door so we walked right in and headed toward a cluster of people standing in the middle of the living room.

“Alice! I’m so glad you could make it to our party.” A short, plump woman in a tight bright red dress had left the cluster and headed our way. She bussed Alice on both cheeks and then looked at me. “And who is this handsome devil?”

“Peggy, this is Alton Rhode,” Alice said.

Peggy Mancuso looked me over head to toe. She did everything but check my withers. I refrained from whinnying as we shook hands. I tried not to look at her ample breasts, not an easy thing to do since they threatened to spill out onto the floor.

“What can I get you,” Peggy said.

“Blinkers,” I replied.

“Is that the new vodka everyone is talking about,” she said as Alice kicked my ankle.

Our hostess led us to a small bar set up in a corner of the living room and asked the bartender if he had any Blinkers vodka. I settled for an Absolut on the rocks. Alice had a gin and tonic. Peggy Mancuso made a few introductions and then headed off to greet other arrivals. In addition to a bartender, there was a waitress moving among us passing out hors d’oeuvres. In the adjacent dining room, where the table was set up for a hot buffet, a waiter was lighting the little Sterno cans under trays. I looked around and recognized a few people in a kind of “seen you around” way. I spotted two judges and a city councilman among the 20 or so guests. Alice appeared to be having a nice time, so I was, too. It wasn’t that much of a struggle. The appetizers were good, and so was my drink, even if it wasn’t Blinkers. And I liked watching Alice having fun. At one point or another all but one of the men at the party glanced her way. She was a knockout and some did it repeatedly. The only exception was the councilman, who I knew to be gay. He glanced at me and waved. It was purely fraternal. He was in a committed relationship and I’d supported him in his last campaign.

Peggy’s husband, Joe, came over and introduced himself. He was a tall, thin man, who, I found out almost immediately, sold life insurance. And medical insurance. And annuities. And long-term care policies. And auto insurance. And home and renter insurance.

I finally asked, “Is there anything you don’t insure?”

That got me a glance from Alice. I hadn’t even known she was paying attention, but I expected that she was always alert to my social skills, or lack thereof.

“The Higgs boson,” Mancuso replied laughing, “but, hell, they just discovered it.”

He gave me his card and asked for mine.

“Wow! A private eye. I bet you meet all kinds. Had any interesting cases lately?”

“Just solved an insurance scam,” I said.

I could see Alice take a deep breath. Not that my remark bothered Joe Mancuso, who I was beginning to like.

“Well, I don’t know if there’s private dick insurance,” he said, then chuckled, giving me a man-to-man look. “I mean private investigator insurance. The other kind is probably covered under medical.” He really whooped at that and punched my arm. Some people looked our way. “But I can check it out.”

“Sure,” I said, and he went off happy.

I saw him collar two other men and I could tell he was regaling them with his dick insurance line. Several more couples had arrived, including Michael and Sharon Sullivan. They soon joined our little group, which grew larger as more men drifted into our orbit, which now included both Alice and Sharon.

The Sullivans ordered their drinks. A Diet Coke for the D.A. and a Beefeater martini, straight up, for his wife. When she had settled into a conversation with Alice and the other women, he turned to me.

“I hear you are working the Olsen case, Alton. I’m glad.”

“Really? Why?”

“We’ve had our differences, but I know you’re good. And honest. You won’t find anything to hurt our case and you won’t manufacture anything. Not that Steve Long will, either. So, everything should be quick and clean.”

“And appeal-proof.”

“You bet.”

“What if I find out she’s innocent?”

He smiled.

“The case is being tried on Staten Island, my friend. Not Lourdes. There will be no miracle.”

“I suppose I can expect full cooperation from your office. On disclosure.”

“Unfortunately for your client, there’s not much to disclose, and what there is, is damning. But you’ll have full access. You have my word. Have you met Elizabeth Olsen?”

“Not yet. Long is setting it up. Met her father, though. He’s no cupcake.”

Sullivan’s smile turned grim.

“Yes. I’m well aware of that. I know Konrad well and take no pleasure in prosecuting his daughter. My office has tried to be decent. We didn’t oppose bail.”

“I know. I’m a little surprised you insisted on ankle monitoring. She’s not going anywhere.”

“Elizabeth Olsen put five bullets in Denton’s face. That’s not a sign of stability. I’m not taking any chances.”

“Stability? That sounds like a word Long will use in defense.

Sullivan shrugged.

“Steve will use a lot of words. None of them will work. And despite what you think, Alton, I don’t need to convict Elizabeth to get reelected. I could beat Costello in my sleep, even if she pleads out. Nobody is out for blood. Only justice.”

“Costello will be out for yours, if the case is screwed up.”

“Which it won’t be. Especially with you on the job. And I’m not being facetious.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. It seemed like a lot of people on both sides of the Denton murder were putting their eggs in my basket. I didn’t like it.

CHAPTER 7 – CHECK PLEASE

I was working on a miniature crab cake, a safer sartorial bet than the miniature lamb chops that I tend to drip over everything, when I heard Peggy Mancuso ask for everyone’s attention.

“Now that we’ve got you properly liquored up and before we eat,” she said, “I would like our great District Attorney, Mike Sullivan, to say a few words.”

A few people clapped and Sullivan walked into the center of the room.

“Thank you, Peg. I want all your votes, so I will be brief. Very brief. And for that you can also thank my lovely wife, Sharon, who says nobody likes a windbag standing between them and a hot buffet.”

That got a few appreciative chuckles. Sharon Sullivan did a little curtsy. And true to his word, Sullivan kept it short. He recapped his office’s track record in suppressing major crimes on Staten Island, which, he noted, had the lowest incidence of murder, rape and felonious assault of the five boroughs in New York City. He ignored the fact that since the Susquehannock Indians stopped massacring settlers four hundred years earlier the borough always had the lowest rates of those three crimes, primarily because the police and Staten Island’s numerous mobsters were equally intolerant of non-organized violent crime in a community where they were raising their own families. But he rightfully pointed out that he had kept a lid on most other crimes despite the Island’s exploding population. I would have loved him to say that he intended to clean out Borough Hall, but the non-partisan Staten Island tradition of prosecutors avoiding white-collar crime or political corruption probably predated the Susquehannocks. The old boy network was a virtual religion on Staten Island. Its first commandment: Payback is only an election away.

“Well, that’s it, folks,” Sullivan finished up. “It looks like the buffet is ready, and I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

Now everyone clapped and a few people went up to shake his hand before joining the buffet line. I’m not a “line” person and neither was Alice apparently, so we did the next best thing and freshened our drinks at the bar. Sullivan and his wife joined us. Sharon had another martini and this time her husband, now officially off duty apparently, asked for a scotch on the rocks. We all toasted his speech and wished him luck.

“I’m sorry I can’t vote for you, Mike,” Alice said, “I don’t live on Staten Island. But I did bring Alton along to pay for my supper. Not that I can promise you his vote.”

The Sullivans laughed and Mike said, “That’s a promise you’re wise not to make, especially since he’ll probably be mad at me after I cross examine him on the stand.”

“Cross examine?”

It was Sharon, who looked confused.

“Didn’t I tell you, honey? Alton is working for the defense in the Denton case. He’ll try to convince the jury that Elizabeth Olsen did the world a service by shooting John Denton and I’ll try to convince them he’s the worst private detective in the Northern Hemisphere.”

The smile froze on Sharon Sullivan’s face.

“Mike, that’s uncalled for! You make it sound like a game. That poor woman is on trial for her life. You should apologize.”

The three of us were startled by her vehemence. Her husband started to say something but I jumped in. I’d actually thought what he’d said was pretty funny.

“Sharon, Mike is just teasing me. We bust each other all the time. Cop talk. You should hear what we say when there are no ladies around. Anyway, you missed the point. I’m flattered. Mike used to believe I was the worst detective in both hemispheres.”

“Besides, honey,” Mike said quickly. “Elizabeth Olsen is not on trial for her life. And she will probably plead to a lesser charge. We’re not monsters.”

“No,” she said, almost in a whisper. “I know that. But they exist.”

With that she walked away.  We all stared at each other.

“Excuse me,” Sullivan said. “I seemed to have put my foot in it.”

He walked after his wife. I looked at Alice.

“What the hell was that all about?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Let’s get something to eat.”

I looked over at the food table. Our fun time with the Sullivans had not worked to our advantage, buffet-wise. I’d seen shorter lines at Motor Vehicles.

“Could I interest you in a real dinner. It’s still early and I’d like to blow this joint.”

“My thoughts, exactly.”

A few minutes later we made our goodbyes. Peggy Mancuso, who gave every sign of being plastered, walked us in a semi-straight line to the door, holding our arms. She gave us both effusive kisses, which forced me to bend down, offering me a clear view of her cleavage. A vision of the Grand Canyon popped unbidden into my mind.

“Now don’t be strangers, you two,” she said. “And next time you’re here, Walton, I’ll be sure to have your favorite vodka.”

“It’s Alton,” Alice said.

“Alton? I thought it was Blinkers vodka. Oh, his name is Alton. I’m sorry. I’m bad with names. But I know a keeper when I see one, Alice. Don’t let this hunk get away. If I wasn’t so happily married I’d be all over him like stink on shit. Pardon my French.”

“That would be ‘puantes sur merde’,” I said.

“What?”

Alice grabbed my arm, digging in her nails.

“It was a lovely party, Peg. This hunk and I have to run. I’ll call you.”

On the way to the car, I could feel Alice laughing quietly.

“What’s so funny?”

“Puantes sur merde?”

“A rough translation. My French is a bit rusty.”

“You really do speak it? You never fail to amaze me.”

“Picked it up from a guy in the French Foreign Legion. There was a battalion near us. Funny thing was, he was a German, so I got a little of that, too. Kind of a Berlin Berlitz thing. Gave me a great French toast recipe, too. Speaking of French, you up for some?”

“Always. But I didn’t think there was a good French restaurant on Staten Island.”

We had reached my car.

“You Manhattan elitist. You are with a trained detective.”

There was a time when 90% of the better restaurants on Staten Island were Italian. There were still plenty of those but in recent years a few “Continental” places had made an inroad. I headed down Grymes Hill and ten minutes later pulled into the small lot behind Aesops Tables on Bay Street in Clifton.

“I hope they cook better than they pun,” Alice commented.

Without a reservation on a Saturday night, we had to kill a half hour at the small bar just off the kitchen. We ordered Kir Royales and were treated to a plate of appetizers by an apologetic host, “for your wait.”

I dove right in.

“I wonder if it’s possible to overdose on canapés.”

“I’m in no danger,” Alice said. “I barely ate at Peggy’s. You, on the other hand, didn’t seem to miss a tray.”

“I did pass on the lamb chops. I always make a mess.”

“Did Sharon seem a little, I don’t know, off, tonight?”

“You like her, don’t you?”

“Very much. I think she’s under a lot of strain.”

“It can’t be the election. Mike is a lock.”

“I just don’t think she is happy in the public eye.”

“She certainly puts herself there. And it’s not just when Mike is running for office. You know about her charitable work.”

“Yes. That’s one of the things about her I like. She does a lot with children. They don’t have any, you know. She apparently can’t.”

“That’s too bad.”

“She told me that they are thinking of adopting. But there must be something else bothering her. She never used to drink like she does now.”

Our table was ready. We were seated in a small alcove by the front window. There were blessedly few specials to hear about. We both ordered house salads. Alice had the coq au vin and I went for the striped bass. It was a special and the waitress said “it was flopping when they brought it in this afternoon.” The service was quick and efficient and the food, set off by a bottle of champagne, delicious. The waitress hadn’t lied about the bass.

“This place should be in New York magazine,” Alice commented.

“It is. That’s how I found it.”

“Some goddamn detective.”

“Hey, you said you didn’t know baseball.”

I enjoyed talking with Alice. Hell, I enjoyed just being with her. The meal went too quickly and toward the end I caught her looking at her watch. I asked her if she wanted dessert.

“It’s getting late,” she said. “I have a busy day tomorrow. I’m going to work with some of my swimmers.”

That explained the overnight bag. She was planning to stay the night in a Wagner College dorm and meet her swimmers for a Sunday practice.

“Aren’t classes over for the summer?”

“Yes, but the kids who live on Staten Island want to stay in shape and they use the Wagner pool. Keeps me in shape, too.”

“I’ll run you over to the school,” I said, hopefully keeping the disappointment out of my voice. I felt like a high-school kid who just had a screen door slammed in his face while he still had his lips puckered.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why take me to the school? Don’t you want to sleep with me?” She leaned across the table and kissed me. “I sure as hell want to sleep with you. Let’s go to your place.” Her voice grew husky. “I can be your dessert.”

I signaled our waitress.

“Check, please.”

CHAPTER 8 – EMOTIONAL LAND MINES

I have two rooms made up for visitors. While my own bedroom isn’t a man cave and I keep it in pretty good order, the others are neutrally decorated and have a bit more ambiance. Not that Alice was looking for ambiance. We barely got up the stairs to the nearest guest bedroom. After we stopped kissing and pawing, we undressed in front of each other, eyes locked. Then two sets drifted down for a full-body scan. I heard her breath catch. She looked back up and saw where I was staring.

“All the girls on the team shave,” she said, huskily. “It’s the suits.” She took my hand and led me to the bed, laying back across it sideways and lifting her legs. “I think you can skip the foreplay.” Her voice was very tight. I had no voice at all. A moment later she made a sound half way between a sigh and a moan and said, “perfect fit.”

After the natural progression of events and a brief respite, we rearranged ourselves properly on the bed and decided to catch up on the foreplay.

“It’s like having the salad after a meal, very Tuscan,” I said as I began my explorations.

“I don’t suppose a cannoli remark would be appropriate,” she giggled.

The respite hadn’t been quite long enough, but I was rallying.

“At least you didn’t say linguini.”

After that we were mostly silent until things got interesting again.

***

“What are you thinking?”

It’s not the first time I’ve ever been asked that by a woman with whom I’ve just had sex. Alice was lying on her side with her head on my chest. I was stroking her back and getting my breath under control. The question was casual and I couldn’t detect any dangerous undercurrents, but post-coital terrain is strewn with emotional land mines and I’ve made a wrong answer before. “I was wondering how Derek did against the Orioles tonight,” is never a good response. “That was one of the greatest screws I’ve ever had,” is also a poor choice, even though in this instance it might have had a ring of truth to it. I opted for honest humor.

“I think I may get this room sound-proofed.”

Alice raised her head and looked at me, then colored. But she laughed. Her hand drifted toward my groin and she gave me a playful tweak in an area where playful was all it could take.

We lay there a while and Alice’s fingers traced the scars in my side and probed a nearby indentation. She then felt around my back and found the exit wound.

“I remember the first time I saw you, at the pool, with my swim team. The girls all asked me about your bullet holes. They were very impressed.”

“If I recall, you once told me they thought I was a bank robber. Apparently an unlucky one.”

“No, I said they thought you resembled Johnny Depp, who played a bank robber in that movie. Only taller and more rugged-looking.”

“The Johnny Depp thing is good?”

“Hell, yes. One of the girls even asked me later if I knew how to get in touch with you. She said you seemed so dangerous.”

“In a bathing suit?”

Alice laughed.

“I told her to behave herself. She was too young for you.”

“You will be hearing from my attorney.”

She kissed my chest.

“Truth is, I didn’t want any rivals, especially 19-year-old with legs up to her neck.”

“Your gams ain’t bad, lady.”

“Gams?”

“I’m a film noir nut. That’s the way they talked in the 1940’s. But what’s this rival stuff. You had no idea you’d see me again.”

“I was pretty sure you’d track me down. You had that look in your eyes.”

It was easy to understand why most men don’t stand a chance. But it had worked out pretty well for me, so I let it go. Especially since Alice’s hand had moved south. A few minutes later, grasping my shoulders, she looked down at me and said hoarsely, “I’ll really try to be more quiet this time.”

She wasn’t.

***

We slept late the next morning. I shook Alice gently but she merely mumbled incoherently, rolled on her side and scrunched her pillow around her head. She was still naked. I spent a few moments looking at the pleasing lines of her back, buttocks and long legs. She had svelte, taut swimmer’s muscles. She had certainly proved her athleticism the night before. I pulled up a sheet to cover her but it was unceremoniously kicked away. She liked being naked, a trait I find admirable in a woman.

I padded downstairs to see about breakfast. I looked out the kitchen window to my deck. Scar was sitting on the top step. He was staring intently at a robin that was poking for a breakfast worm in my lawn. The robin was inching closer to the steps, where it stood a good chance of becoming Scar’s breakfast. I like robins. I opened the door and the bird flew off. The cat looked at me. His opinion of humans, probably never very high, was reinforced. I went back inside, emptied two cans of Bumble Bee tuna in a dish, mashed some Saltines into the mix, and brought it out to him with a bowl of water. I was in a generous “morning after” mood, but it was obvious that I would have to spring for some cat food soon.

Scar did an admirable job of suppressing any gratitude. As he ate I noticed that he seemed to have some new notches on his face.

“Had a good night myself,” I said. I don’t kiss and tell, but feline confidences don’t count. “If you stick around, I’m making bacon.”

I went back into the kitchen and started breakfast. I put on a pot of coffee, squeezed some oranges, started frying some hand-cured bacon and threw some biscuits in the oven. Hungry as I was, I began salivating like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Luckily, the smells also worked on Alice, who soon appeared, wearing gym shorts and a sweatshirt, tousled, but lovely. I wasn’t worried about her being a health nut. The beer and hot dogs at the ball game proved she wasn’t a granola girl.

“How do you want your eggs?”

“Fast,” she said.

We settled on lightly scrambled with fresh chives. We were almost finished when there was a scratching on the  rear storm door. It was Scar, who had apparently stuck around for the bacon. He was stretching and reached halfway up the glass.

“Good Lord,” Alice said. “Call the zoo. Something escaped.”

I got up and made a plate for the cat and brought it out to him.

“I didn’t know you had a cat,” Alice said when I sat back down.

“I don’t. He’s got me, and a few others in the neighborhood. But he seems to be showing up here more often.”

“It’s probably the chives.”

After a second cup of coffee, Alice said, “I need a shower. My practice is at noon.”

“Are you going back into the city?”

I said it casually, hoping she wouldn’t take it the wrong way. She didn’t.

“I don’t have to be home until Monday. I’m taking an afternoon class at the New School.” She smiled. “I thought that if you had nothing better to do I could come back here and we could make love.”

Which is what we did.

CHAPTER 9 – ELIZABETH OLSEN

I dropped Alice off for the 8 A.M. ferry Monday morning.

“Do you think I’m a hunk? I’ve always thought of myself as the wiry type.”

We were a little early. The ferry drop-off area was almost deserted so we sat a few minutes in the car.

“To Peggy Mancuso, a hunk is any male under 60 not on a respirator,” Alice said. “I think that the phrase cat’s meow better describes you.”

“Well, Scar likes me, I think.”

She leaned over for a kiss.

“You are wiry. There’s not an ounce of fat on you. And believe me, I looked. I think you could use a little more hunk, if that’s the word. I don’t know how you do it. You eat like a racehorse.”

“That’s not the equine comparison I was hoping for.”

“You do have good teeth.”

We could see the ferry pulling in.

“I can’t make out that name on the side of the boat.”

I told her.

“Who was he? A war hero?”

“No, they used to do that. Now they name them after former Island politicians who have screwed the borough. Kind of a tradition now.”

“Got to run,” she said.

We kissed, long and hard. It was unspoken, but we both knew that there was now something between us. Something that hadn’t been there before, even during the abandon of the previous days. She got out and walked away quickly.

“Jesus,” I said.

***

Abby was working the security desk when I got to my building.

“How’d your hot date go?”

“I had a nice time.”

Abby gave me the “who you think you’re kidding smile” women have patented.

“That good, huh, you dog.” Cats, horses, dogs; I was beginning to wonder if I was human.

When I got to my office there was a message from Steve Long. I called him. He asked me to meet him at Konrad Olsen’s house at 11 A.M. to interview Elizabeth.

“That’s not how I work, Steve. I want to talk to her alone.”

“Her father wants me present for all official contacts. In fact, I had a hard time convincing him that I had to talk to her alone.”

“Will he be there?”

“No, he’ll be at his office.”

“Does she know what her old man wants?”

“Maybe. But it probably doesn’t matter. She doesn’t usually do what he wants.”

“So, what’s the problem? We’ll start out together. You go take a leak, and I’ll tell her the facts of life. Then you don’t have to know the rest.”

“Works for me. See you at 11.”

***

A sad-faced man wearing a black lounge jacket and a black bow tie answered the door when I rang.

“May I help you, sir?”

“It depends. Who are you?”

“Robert. Mr. Olsen’s butler.”

It was my first butler on Staten Island. Maids, yes, but no butlers. I told him who I was.

“You’re my first butler,” I said.

“I’m not surprised,” he replied after looking me over. “Please follow me.”

I followed Robert the butler through a front hallway past a staircase that led up to a second floor. At the top of the stairs was a landing bordered by a rounded white banister supported by a series of ornately carved mahogany balusters. Just off the front hall was a den where Steve Long and Elizabeth Olsen were sitting on opposite ends of a leather sectional in front of a pedestal table with a wooden base and bluestone top, on which a coffee service was set up. There was a platter of tea sandwiches. Or coffee sandwiches, I suppose. Introductions were made and I sat in an arm chair that had been moved closer to the table. The wise-ass butler poured coffee, then left, closing the sliding doors to the den. No one made a move on the sandwiches. I was soon itching for someone to break the ice, because they looked pretty good. I love sandwiches without crusts.

Elizabeth Olsen was wearing grey slacks and a white blouse. She was wearing no jewelry and very little makeup, probably at Long’s direction. He was probably going for the mousey look, which might sway a jury in a battered-woman defense. The mousey look needed more work. She was petite, but had a full figure. She sat with her legs crossed and the slacks couldn’t conceal their good definition. They also didn’t conceal the slight bulge on her left ankle where the monitoring device was attached. She wasn’t classically pretty. Her nose was a little long and her eyes set wider than her thin face called for, but she had a strong mouth and piercing blue eyes. It all worked. She’d have no trouble attracting any male.

“Elizabeth, Mr. Rhode wants to ask you some questions. Tell him everything you’ve told me. There is no reason to hold back anything. He’s on your side. If there are flaws in the prosecution case, he will find them.”

“The major flaw is that I’m innocent.”

Her voice was deeper than I expected for such a slight woman. Cigarettes?

“Yes, of course. But I’d like you to bring Alton up to speed.”

“Alton Rhode? What an unusual name. English, isn’t it?”

“Alton is. The Rhode is Latin, or so I’m told.”

“I’m sure it is. The Romans had quite an influence on Britain. Hadrian’s Wall and all that. Have you been on Staten Island long?”

“My family goes back a few generations.”

“Mine, as well. We’re a Danish German mix. It always amazes me that people assume Staten Island is only about Italians and Irish. They see those stupid reality shows. We have such a history. Did you know that the Huguenots settled here in the 1600’s. Well, of course you do. There is even a town called Huguenot. And that this house is on Todt Hill, which, of course, is German for “Death Hill,” because some early Dutch settlers were massacred here.” She was silent for a moment, then smiled. “Of course, it has a whole new meaning now, doesn’t it.”

Long cleared his throat.

“Perhaps we can discuss your case, Elizabeth.”

“Of course. What do you want to know, Mr. Rhode. May I call you Alton?”

“Yes. Tell me exactly what happened the night you found Denton’s body.”

She smiled at my phrasing. Then took me through it, in a quiet dispassionate tone. It didn’t sound rehearsed, only made familiar by countless repetition. She had entered Denton’s home with her key after he didn’t answer the door. The house was dark, which was unusual. She called his name and got no response. There was a shimmering glow from the fireplace in his study. When she got there, he was sitting in a chair facing the fire. She smelled something she assumed came from the fire but later understood to be cordite. She turned on the light from a wall switch and went over to the chair. That’s when she saw the gun on the floor next to it.

“Did you recognize the gun?”

“Yes. It was John’s. He was quite proud of it. Took me to a shooting range once in New Jersey and showed me how to use it. Kind of big and heavy and makes an awful racket, but I got the hang of it. He said I was a natural.”

The irony of that statement didn’t escape any of us. I looked at Long and knew what he was thinking. He didn’t want Elizabeth Olsen convincing a jury she was Annie Oakley.

She then said she walked around to face Denton, and he didn’t have one, or at least much of one. Before she could even scream, the light went out and she heard someone opening one of the doors that lead out to a rear patio. She instinctively picked up the gun and shot at a shadowy figure. She pulled the trigger again but the hammer only clicked. She stood there a few minutes, too frightened to move. Then she ran out the front door, where the security guard grabbed her and held her for the police.

She finished and looked at us.

“It’s not too promising a story, is it?”

“I’ve heard worse,” I lied. “Can you think of anything else that was unusual?”

“Well, John had an erection when I found him. It was quite impressive. He was obviously just about to have sex. Steve, I suppose you could argue that I’m not the kind of woman who wastes a good erection.”

“Let’s see what Alton can come up with first,” Long said.

“How did you get to Denton’s?” I said.

“I drove.”

“Your own car?”

“Yes, a BMW.”

“The police impounded the car,” Long interjected. “They said they found nothing of interest. It’s been returned.”

“Why didn’t you turn on the lights in the hallway when you first walked in?”

“I didn’t have to. I knew my way around and I could see the light from the fire in the den.”

“The police said there was considerable blood and …. other matter …. splattered about. Didn’t you see it when you walked over to Denton.”

“It was a high-back recliner. His favorite. John liked it because he claimed he had a bad back. The back of it looked normal. I didn’t see anything on the floor, blood and such. I only could see the top of his head. It was tilted to the side. His arm was hanging over the side of the chair. I thought he might be asleep. There was a glass on the floor under his hand. There was a stain by the glass, wine I think. When I went around the front, that’s when I saw everything.”

Her voice didn’t change as she recalled the sight of a man’s demolished face.

“I assume there is another way to turn out the lights.”

“Yes. There is another switch in the alcove.”

“Why did you pick up the gun? Why not just run?”

“I was afraid. I was familiar with the gun. I felt safer doing something. So, I shot.”

“But you missed.”

“I didn’t say I can shoot particularly well in the dark. Who can? It was more a reflex.”

“Why didn’t you run away immediately?”

“I guess I froze. What do most people do in that situation?”

“It varies,” I said, remembering many such situations in which freezing was the absolute best thing to do.

I looked over at Steve Long. He caught the hint.

“Excuse me, Elizabeth. This coffee is getting to me. Must be my tenth cup of the day. I have to use the facilities.”

“You know where they are, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

He left. That took some of the pressure off, sandwich-wise. I grabbed one.

“You went there to confront Denton?”

She looked at me. She’d seen through the bathroom ploy. She didn’t care.

“Yes. He was throwing me over.”

“For another woman.”

“So he said. With John you never knew.”

“Do you know who it was?”

“No.”

“Any ideas?”

“John wasn’t monogamous. He had a lot of women. I never paid attention.”

“Were you angry?”

“Yes.”

“Angry enough to kill him?”

Elizabeth Olsen smiled.

“No. I wanted to cut his balls off, but I’m not a killer.”

“Heartbroken?’

“More like sex broken.”

“Excuse me.”

“I like to fuck. My father thinks I’m a nymphomaniac.”

“I’m not sure they use that term any more.”

“How about slut?”

“Are you trying to shock me, Elizabeth?”

She laughed.

“I doubt if I could. I’ve heard about you. I just want you to know that my interest in John was purely physical.”

“But you still didn’t like being dumped.”

“Who does?”

“You said he ‘claimed’ he had a bad back. Did he or not?”

“Is that important?”

“I don’t know what’s important. I just wondered why you were skeptical.”

She crossed her legs and rubbed the area around her ankle monitor.

“This damn thing chaffs. Anyway, John liked me on top. Said it was easier on his back. But I think he was full of shit. He played golf and tennis. I just think he wanted to be serviced by women that way. I read somewhere that JFK used the same excuse. Although he really did have a bad back, didn’t he? To tell you the truth, I didn’t mind. I prefer being on top. It’s easier for me to come. Actually, John liked to do it in the chair where he was shot. It’s a classic Eames leather lounger. A bit awkward, but I managed.”

Elizabeth Olsen reached into a leather box on the table in front of her and brought out a pack of cigarettes.

“Do you mind?”

“It’s your house.”

“It’s my father’s. I have a condo in St. George. Daddy hates me smoking inside, and I do most of it outside, but what the hell.”

She lit up and took a long drag, blowing the smoke away from me.

“You know, I had almost quit smoking when this all happened.”

“Did you tell the police what you told me? I mean about your sex life. Your lawyer?”

“I told Steve. He told me to keep my mouth shut to the cops. I don’t think he believes it will win me many points with a jury. But it will probably get out, especially if I testify.” She looked at the door. “I wonder where he is. I hope he really didn’t need to take a piss. If he did, he should see a urologist. In the future, if you want to talk to me alone, we can arrange it. Just call my cell.”

She reached in her pocket and handed me a card.

“You’re an interior decorator?”

“Yes, and a good one. That’s how I met John. I did his house. The Eames chair doesn’t really go well with the other furniture in the den, but he brought it with him and insisted on keeping it. That and the stupid bear trophy above the fireplace. Who the hell puts those out anymore. But he was adamant. I think it might have been one of the things his wife let him keep. She was probably happy to get rid of it. She must not have known about the chair. Worth a pretty penny. Dates from the mid-1950’s. At least it was leather. The new Eames knockoffs are plastic. Screwing in one of those would have been uncomfortable.”

CHAPTER 10 – RHETORICAL LUNCH

“She’s a piece of work,” Long said as we stood by his car outside the Olsen house. “I’ve known her since her teens. Always been a wild one. What did you think of her story?”

I thought about my last case.

“I’ve learned not to make assumptions, especially about good-looking women.”

“What’s your next step?”

“I want to talk to her father. I’ll dig into her background and that of Denton’s. I want to see where he was killed. I’ll want to read everything the cops and Sullivan have given you.”

“I’ll have copies made and get them to you.”

We could hear childish summertime shouts and squeals from the pool behind the main clubhouse across the common grounds.

“What about Denton’s family? How do I get in touch with them?”

“There’s a former wife, no kids, back in Missouri. That’s where he’s from.”

“Cops talk to her?”

“Just to notify her. She was barely interested. Remarried, with kids. Hadn’t seen him in years and happy about it. I’ll get you her phone number, but I don’t think there is anything there.”

“What happens to the house?”

“Couple of uncles somewhere. The estate is a mess. Ironically, Konrad Olsen was his real estate broker. Helped him find the house when he moved up here.”

“And Elizabeth helped him decorate.”

“Yeah. I think both business relationships have soured somewhat,” Long said, chuckling.

“You’re not thinking about putting her on the stand, are you?”

“She may insist on it. And unless you come up with something, that may be my only play.”

“Mike Sullivan will be licking his chops. He can’t wait to get me up there.”

Before I left Todt Hill, I called Cormac Levine and asked if I could buy him lunch.

“I believe that’s what they call a rhetorical question. I’ll wait for you outside the precinct.”

A half hour later we were sitting in Lee’s Tavern in Dongan Hills drinking chianti, eating salads and waiting for our pizza.

“I thought you’d pick Chinese,” I said.

“I’ll ignore the ethnic slur. Besides, I’m only half Jewish.”

“I notice that you’re also not ignoring the wine. Aren’t you on duty?”

“I’m head of Community Affairs for the precinct. I have to interact with the public. Lots of lunches, dinners, awards ceremonies and crap. Gotta blend in, put people at ease, prove we’re regular guys.”

Cormac was wearing a red Hawaiian shirt outside pink pants. The odds of him blending in anywhere in the Solar System were minimal.

“So, they encourage you to drink?”

“No. But as my sainted Irish mother would say, fuck it.”

“You mom would never say that.”

“Not in so many words.”

“Steve Long hired me to do research on the Olsen case.”

“I know.”

Of course he would. Cormac was one of the best detectives in the city. He had been a mainstay of the D.A.’s squad but was pushed out when Sullivan took over and put in his own crew. It was a move that I’d heard Sullivan now regretted and there was even some talk that Cormac might be restored to his old job. For the time being, he was in exile in the 122 Precinct in New Dorp. But a lot of cops consulted with him and he was dialed in to every precinct in the borough, and many of them in the other boroughs.

“So, what have you heard?”

Cormac finished his salad and was eyeing mine, half-eaten. I pushed it across to him.

“Salad is good for you,” he said.

“Especially with a loaf of Italian bread and just before a pizza.”

“Don’t forget the vino,” he said as he forked salad into his mouth. “Anyway. It’s open and shut. Broad had motive, opportunity, was caught leaving the scene a few seconds after the murder with the murder weapon smoking in her hand. The fact that she wasn’t carrying the Lindberg baby is the only thing she has going for her.”

“And me.”

He gave me a look I’ve seen a hundred times. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’d saved his career by lying about how a child molester fell off a balcony and he probably had prevented me from being electrocuted by Florida, I’d have been insulted.

“Don’t tell me you think she’s innocent. What is it with you and the dames? Aren’t any of them guilty?”

“I didn’t say she isn’t. But her story is just crazy enough to be true.”

“And you are an expert on crazy stories. Need I remind you of your last case?”

Our pizza arrived. Which gave me a chance to think up a witty riposte. Except I couldn’t. We both took a slice and started eating. There may be nothing better than the first slice of Lee’s Tavern pizza just out of the oven. The next slices were nothing to sneeze at either.

After a while Cormac said, “You talk to her yet? I hear she is a bit of a head case.”

I recounted my conversation with Elizabeth Olsen. Mac and I harbored many mutual secrets, any one of which would end our respective careers. As such things usually happen with people who are basically on the same side of the law, whichever that is, we went from having each other over a barrel to being fast friends. Short of murder, there was nothing I couldn’t confide in him that wouldn’t stay confided. And I wasn’t even sure about murder. Mac was a perfect sounding board. The fact that he was one of the sharpest detectives on the planet, other than moi, was a bonus.

When I finished, he said, “Sex broken. I like that. Haven’t heard that one before. Sounds like a Kraut sausage.”

“Is everything food with you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Mac looked at the slice remaining on my side of the pizza. “You gonna eat that?”

“I wouldn’t reach for it unless you were in the men’s room, Cormac. I value my hand.”

“Here’s what I think,” he said as he picked up the slice. “She’s a nut. She lied to you about not being emotionally bereft. The guy was a prick but probably didn’t deserve to have his head blown off.” He paused. “Or she’s innocent.”

I laughed.

“You are probably the only cop I know who can see both sides of an open-and-shut case, and uses the word ‘bereft.’ Will you help me?”

“Sure. I don’t want you to be bereft. What do I have to lose? I’ll wheedle a lot more meals out of you. And next time is Chinese. I love Chink food.”

CHAPTER 11 – EMPIRE BUILDER

After I dropped Cormac off at the precinct I went to my office. I wanted to work the Internet for every bit of information I could find on the Olsen family. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. But I’d learned that information opens doors, and I was in the door-opening business.

My outer office was looking a little bare. I had managed to kill off several of the plants and other flora that Nancy Robart at the Botanical Garden had given me when I first set up shop in the building. Since a couple of them were from a cacti strain that had thrived millions of years in environment and climates more hostile than New York City, Nancy said I probably qualified as an extinction-level event. Luckily, I had given some plants to other offices in the building, where they were thriving. And ever since Abby started working for me part-time, my own office survivors were now holding their own. She was also adding little decorating touches. Nothing I couldn’t live with. And somehow she had found coffee mugs like the ones they had in old-time diners, off-white with thick rounded edges and handles. They made even a mediocre cup of coffee taste better. And guys like me live on mediocre coffee.

After an hour on the computer I had a pretty good picture of the Olsens, or at least as much information about them as was public. Some of it, of course, I already knew. After all, they were a prominent family and everyone on Staten Island who wasn’t a recent immigrant had heard of them.

The first Olsens settled on Staten Island before the Revolutionary War and later descendants prospered in various mercantile businesses, of which Olsen Bakery, which had many outlets across the borough, was the most successful. There was only one store left, now owned by an Italian family that kept the name and still made decent stollen fruitcake.  But the most successful of the Olsens was Gus, Konrad’s grandfather, who accumulated hundreds of acres of mid-Island farmland. As a working enterprise, Olsen Farms was a mixed bag that eventually encompassed a nursery, riding stables, a small airport and an outdoor movie theater that served the necking needs of a generation of Staten Island teen-agers. Olsen Farms was barely a break-even operation until the Verrazano-Narrow Bridge opened in 1964 and Staten Island land suddenly became valuable as the population began to surge.

A visionary of sorts, Konrad Olsen sold the property to the developers who constructed the Staten Island Mall and many of the communities that surrounded it. He took the money and went into the construction and development business himself and built an empire. The numerous media articles about Konrad invariably depicted him as savvy, politically connected, civic-minded and, of course, philanthropic. Not one story mentioned the well-known fact that he was a ruthless son of a bitch, which everyone who didn’t benefit from his advertising dollars knew. Tempering that insider assessment was a grudging appreciation that the Olsens weren’t carpetbaggers and, unlike other developers, tended to build things that were nice to look at and didn’t fall down.

I shut my laptop. I was only scratching the surface. As with all families and businesses, there were secrets. Any family that could produce an Elizabeth Olsen, whether she was a killer or not, would have a bushel of them.

I called the Olsen Development Corporation and asked for Konrad Olsen. I was told by an efficient-sounding woman that he was overseeing the construction of the company’s new complex in a corporate park in Fairfield, NJ. Would I like her to reach him? I would. I was put on hold and a minute later she said Mr. Olsen could see me the next day unless I wanted to drive out to New Jersey. I did. She gave me the corporate park’s address.

It took me just over an hour to drive to Fairfield, which is in northern New Jersey just short of where the state becomes stunning. It always amazes me that New Jersey, billed as the most-crowded state in the union, looks verdant and vacant 20 miles west of its urban areas.

“Gladys,” which is what I call my GPS system, had no trouble finding the sprawling corporate park. I took it from there. Using all my detective skills, I quickly found Olsen. He was standing with a group of men outside a partially completed building next to a construction trailer and crane. They were all looking at plans. I think someone hands you a set of plans whenever you walk on a work site. I didn’t get one. It was late in the day. Maybe they ran out.

Everyone was wearing red hard hats. I hoped they wouldn’t offer me one. I have nothing against head protection. A helmet has saved my life on several occasions. But hard hats make me want to grab a shield and a sword and say, “We who are about to die salute you!” Besides, the only obvious danger seemed to be from the crane that was lifting pallets to the top floor of the building, which was at least 10 stories tall. If it dropped one of the pallets, the hard hats would only come in handy to identify the bodies. “Is that blood? Nope, a hard hat.”

Olsen spotted me and held up a hand. He said something to the men and then walked over. We shook.

“What is it that can’t wait until tomorrow?”

“Nothing in particular. But I’m easily distracted. By tomorrow I might forget I’m trying to help your daughter.”

He stared at me, then smiled.

“I’m just surprised that you are so conscientious. You’re being paid by the day, no? I would expect you to, how can I put it, take your time.”

“I’m not in the construction business. I don’t stand around looking at plans making believe I’m busy.”

He laughed.

“You’d never make it in the construction business.” He swept a hand to encompass the construction site. “This is my own project, and I’ve got cost overruns. Fucking unions.”

I didn’t want to get into labor relations with Olsen. Guys like him made millions selling homes to people who never would be able to afford them but for their union salaries and pensions, but logic is never a strong suit with the ‘haves.’ So I just smiled.

“Maybe you’re just trying to impress me, Rhode.”

“Are you easily impressed, Mr. Olsen?”

He snorted. In some books I’d read, people snorted, but it’s rare in real life. I hoped it was only a male thing.

“Hell, no. I don’t give a flying fuck about anyone. Except Elizabeth. Come on, let’s go over to the trailer and have a cup of coffee.”

The trailer was empty. With the boss on site, everyone was probably pretending to be working. There was a counter on which sat a large coffee maker and a tray with paper cups, powdered creamer, packets of sugar and other sweeteners.  We each took our coffees black. I was happy to find out it was good. There were several metal chairs around a small table. We sat.

“What do you think of my new building?”

From what I saw it was going to look like every other building in the corporate park, which itself looked like every other corporate park.

“Very clean lines. Almost nautical. I like your use of glass.” You can’t go wrong saying stuff like that. “Are you moving out of Staten Island?”

“No, no. At least not right away. But we have a lot of business in New Jersey. I see it as the future of the company. Staten Island is getting built out. And, frankly, as you might imagine, it’s lost its charm for me. So, what do you need?”

“I spoke to your daughter.”

“Long was there, right?”

“The whole time.”

Not a lie, exactly. The lawyer was in the house.

“What do you think?”

“Even if she is innocent, she’s in big trouble.”

“I’m not paying you to state the obvious. I know Beth’s in trouble, for Christ sake!”

“Do you think she killed Denton?”

He bristled.

“I already told you she didn’t.”

“No you didn’t. And even if you implied it, her lawyer was with us when you and I met at the club. I’m asking you straight up now. Do you think she killed him?’

“Absolutely not.”

“Is that her father speaking?”

“Yes, of course. But I know my daughter. She’s no killer. She didn’t even love the man.”

“How do you know that?”

Olsen ran his right hand through his hair.

“Because she told me. I’m not sure Elizabeth has ever loved anyone. And certainly not Denton. It was just a fling.” He paused and looked out a trailer window. “One of many.”

“You don’t approve of her lifestyle?”

He turned back to me.

“She sleeps around, a lot. I don’t like it. I’m not a prude, mind you, but it would have been easier to accept that kind of behavior from a son. We argued about it. I called her names. I’m not proud of it. I was just worried, that’s all. But she’s 32, never married. She told me I should be happy she’s not a lesbian. Can you imagine? She’s got balls, that one.” We both laughed at that remark, which broke the tension. “She had no reason to kill him.”

“What did you think about Denton?”

“Oh, hell. I know some people thought he was a bastard, but I kind of liked him. Being a bastard goes with the territory if you want to make any money in his business, or mine for that matter. He was too old for Elizabeth, almost my age. But she’s no kid, so it wasn’t a perv type of deal. Hell, if I came across someone like my daughter I probably wouldn’t pass up the shot. We’re men, ain’t we.”

“So you think there was someone else there when Elizabeth walked in?”

“Of course. She says there was.”

“Any idea who it might have been?”

“No, but if I had to guess it was a woman. Shot his face all up. I don’t think John was into boys, but who knows?”

“Where were you that night?”

“I was playing…. Jesus, you think I did it?”

“Mr. Olsen, I’m pretty sure I didn’t do it, but that’s where my certainty ends. You all live close to each other. Maybe you’re lying through your teeth and hated Denton for sleeping with Elizabeth. You went over there to confront him, argued, blew his head off and were interrupted by your daughter.”

“That’s sick. The gun was Denton’s. Where would I get it?”

“There’s a million explanations for that. Where were you that night?”

He looked exasperated, but then smiled.

“I guess that’s why Long wanted you. He said you’re a thorough prick. I was playing poker with a bunch of guys. Regular weekly game. We rotate. This one was at Biondolillo’s house.” Frank Biondolillo was a city councilman, locally famous for his “Beyond a Doubt, Biondolillo” campaign slogan. “Couple of judges there, too. Reporter from the Register. Long can give you their names. Sometimes he sits in on the game.”

“Elizabeth is your only child, Mr. Olsen?”

A look of sadness crossed his face.

“Yes. We wanted more but Mary, that’s my wife, was prone to miscarriages. She was on bed rest for two months carrying Elizabeth. Miracle she was ever born. She was two months premature. So tiny. Probably the reason we spoiled her so much. And after Mary died, I spoiled her even more. She’s all I have. Olsen Construction will be hers someday, and, hopefully, her children’s.”

“Will she want it?”

“Don’t sell Elizabeth short, Rhode. She’s more than a playgirl. I brought her up in the business. She knows almost as much about it as I do and she’s tough as nails. If she can beat this Denton thing I think it will straighten her out. Sometimes you gotta dodge a bullet to come to your senses.”

I could have said that dodging bullets was something Denton hadn’t done. But I didn’t. Instead I finished my coffee and said goodbye to Olsen. He seemed happy to get back to work.

CHAPTER 12 – BATTLE OF BRITAIN

I decided to take a local road, State 46, back home. I turned off my GPS, knowing that Gladys would have fits and prompt me to make innumerable “legal U-Turns.” I wanted to see if the 94th Bomber Group restaurant at the nearby West Caldwell private airport was still in operation. It had been a favorite of my childhood, a place worth the trip to celebrate special occasions once or twice a year. I knew I could find it in my sleep.

I got lost. I realized that I had never driven to the restaurant from the west. In fact, I had never driven there at all. My dad drove from Staten Island, and I usually slept on the way home. The trips ended when I turned 13 or so, when going out to dinner, or anywhere with your parents, became uncool. I probably would have stopped going sooner, but the Bomb Group was in New Jersey, where no one was likely to see us.

Now, of course, I wished those days and nights could have gone on forever. My parents, who married late in life died within a year of each other when I was in college.

I switched on my GPS and punched in a query for “Airports.” I half expected Gladys to say, “I told you so,” but she didn’t. A half dozen airports popped up on the screen, including the major ones like Newark and Teterboro. The North Caldwell strip was two miles away and after I made a “legal U-Turn” I found it quickly. Someday I’ll probably be able to punch in “Suspects,” or “Nearby Fugitives” or “Philandering Spouses” and save a lot of legwork.

The restaurant was still there, adjacent to the airport’s single runway, and memories flooded back. The place was designed to mimic a World War II British air base during the Battle of Britain. From the outside it looked like an air operations center with a barracks attached. The buildings themselves were faux-corrugated and splotched with camouflaged paint. There was a sandbagged anti-aircraft pit out front, with a realistic looking ack-ack gun. Military signage and posters abounded.

But the touch every kid remembers was the tail section of a Spitfire that protruded from one of the buildings. Even as a kid I always wondered why it wasn’t a Messerschmitt or Focke-Wulf, since it made more sense for a Luftwaffe fighter to have been shot down over a British base. My father had suggested it was the sad end of a gin-drinking English flyer, a remark that brought a sharp retort from my Anglophile mother. Whatever its rationale, the plastic and balsa wood wreck now also undoubtedly reminded people that West Caldwell was where JFK Jr. had kept his private plane. He and his wife and her sister had taken off from there on their ill-fated trip to Cape Cod.

It was still a little early for the dinner crowd so there weren’t many cars in the lot. It’s never too early for dinner for me so I parked and went in, despite my desire not to travel too far down memory lane. A young hostess, all legs and big boobs, asked me if I had a reservation, despite the fact that the place was almost deserted. I told her I’d go to the bar. She seemed happy about that and started to point the way. I told her that wasn’t necessary. I knew where it was.

It wasn’t. The bar, which used to be on the left, was now on the right, and twice as big. Probably moved after a bomb hit. But I found it quickly enough. The day I need a GPS or a hostess to find a bar is the day I hang it up.

I stopped in the men’s room. The walls were still covered with wartime posters and the front pages from newspapers for the 1940’s. You could go from urinal to urinal and follow the progress of Nazi aggression and the Allied counterattacks. And Winston Churchill’s wartime speeches were still being piped in, a kind of martial Muzak. I recalled listening to that marvelous voice intoning about “their finest hour” and “blood, toil, tears and sweat,” although as a Staten Islander I knew that Winston borrowed the latter phrase from Giuseppi Garibaldi, the Italian revolutionary who lived for a time on Staten Island. I had been to his museum there as well. But Winston said it better and I remember my father, standing next to me, telling me to pay attention, although at first I thought he was concerned about my urinal aim.

When I got to the bar I ordered a Maker’s Mark on the rocks and a burger. The bartender put a bowl of mixed nuts in front of me and after I picked the cashews out of it and ate them I turned to look out at the runway. There was a family of four sitting at a table by the window. The parents were deep in conversation and their two kids, a boy and a girl who might have been twins, were looking at their iPads. They did look up when a plane took off and landed, which I thought was a good sign. I wondered if they, or their parents, knew much about World War II. I wondered if they even knew about the war their country was currently fighting. I decided I was being pejorative; at least they came to this restaurant instead of a Pizza Hut. I went back to my nut bowl. I had exterminated the cashews, but I’m not a fanatic, and even the worst nut is better than no nut.

After a while my burger platter arrived. It came with lettuce, tomato, onions, French fries, pickles and coleslaw and could have fed the Allies for a week. But the burger itself was everything a burger should be, and so were the two more bourbons I ordered. While I ate I thought about being a kid out with parents, and Elizabeth Olsen, and whether Konrad had ever taken her to places like the 94th Bomber Group restaurant, and to museums and plays. He probably did. Being a girl, she probably hung out longer with her parents than I had. That didn’t make her better than me. I hadn’t shot anyone in the face five times. At least I didn’t think I had. In combat, at long distance, who knows? Then I remembered she said she was innocent. I suddenly realized I believed her. I finished my burger and ordered black coffee. The waiter brought it and asked if I wanted to look at the dessert menu.

“Only if they still have bread pudding with whiskey sauce on it,” I said.

It was the only dessert I ever ordered at the Bomber Group, excited because of the daring whiskey sauce.

“They do,” he said.

It was good, but not as good as it would have been eating it along with my folks.

When I finished, I pushed my maudlin memories back where they belonged and drove home.

CHAPTER 13 - OTTOMAN SEX

The next morning I drove down to St. George and went to Sullivan’s office to see Paul Vocci. Cormac had told me that Vocci, the D.A. Squad’s lead detective, was in charge of the Olsen investigation. Vocci and I had a history. I had been angry, with probably no reason, when he got Cormac’s job. He knew it and reciprocated the feeling. But we had run across each other on a few cases and by now had tempered our dislike for each other with mutual respect. Vocci thought I was an out-of-control hot dog who played fast and loose with the rules, but generally got the job done and kept his word. I thought he was a know-it-all who was too ambitious, but also got the job done and kept his word. We weren’t friends but could have donuts or drinks together without duking it out, especially if I was buying. He wasn’t that straight-laced.

“Mike says I have to cooperate with you,” Vocci said when I sat in the small room the D.A. Squad occupied, “up to a point.”

Another detective I didn’t recognize was the only other person in the room. He looked up from a nearby desk and then went back to his paperwork.

“Yeah,” I said. “Sullivan thinks you need help. Probably over your head on this one.”

I opened up a paper bag I was carrying and passed him one of the coffees I had brought.

Ignoring the remark, he said, “What’s in the other bag?”

“Cinnamon raisin bagels.”

“Not donuts?’

“I bought a couple but the court officers at the metal detector downstairs confiscated them. Said they looked too dangerous.”

“Cream cheese or butter.”

“Both. Want to split them. Have half of each?”

“Sounds fair.”

We chewed and drank for a while and then I said, “Anything bother you about the Olsen case?”

“Yeah. I wish they were all this easy.”

I told him Cormac’s line about the Lindberg baby.

“Levine’s a good cop. We could use him around here. I know you think I screwed him, but it wasn’t my call.”

“I know. Any chance he can get back?”

“Better than 50-50. Couple of us are working on it.”

“Not a problem for you?”

“Mac was never gonna be lead detective here. He’s too much like you. I’m not threatened.” He drank some coffee. “Anyway, what do you need?’

“I’d like to see the murder scene, maybe with a cop who doesn’t hate my guts and won’t give me a hard time.”

“Well, maybe we can bring in someone from Idaho. I’m surprised you don’t want our files, witness list, that sort of crap.”

“Sullivan is shooting very straight on this. Long tells me he’s being bombarded with disclosure.”

“You’ve got that right. You’ve been around. You know that sometimes the prosecutor holds back stuff until it’s forced out of him. Not this time. Just between you and me I think he wants to convince Long that he has to plead Olsen out.”

“Long doesn’t need convincing. But Elizabeth Olsen is adamant. She says she’s innocent. Won’t budge.”

“Maybe you can convince her.”

“Actually, I think she’s innocent.”

Paul Vocci stared at me.

“Jesus, Rhode. I think your last case went to your head. You’ll have an easier time finding someone else in witness protection.”

So, Vocci knew about it, too. I could see by the look on his face that it was a slip. He looked over quickly at the other detective, whose head was still buried in a file. Since the Feds weren’t breathing down my neck, it was further proof that the locals were covering my back. I may be a pain in the ass to them, but I was their pain in the ass. I smiled.

“Willing to bet a dinner on it, Paul?”

“Choice of restaurant? Any conviction?”

“Even jaywalking.”

Vocci was a happy camper now.

“Hey, Smitty,” he said, “come over here a second.”

The other cop left his desk.

“Tom Smith, Alton Rhode.”

We shook. Smith was a good-looking guy with a middleweight body and a Marine buzz cut. Friendly smile, wary eyes. First impression: good, tough cop. Vocci explained what I wanted.

“Tom’s new to the squad. Couple of weeks. He’s up to speed on the case file but hasn’t been to the Denton house yet. You can run out there together. Kill two birds with one stone. Don’t let him steal any silverware, Smitty.”

“This how you do things on Staten Island, Paulie? Chauffeur private dicks around?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Ongoing education. You get extra credit.”

That got a smile out of Smith. I turned back to Vocci.

“Paul, you mind if Cormac makes the tour with us?”

I knew Vocci couldn’t stop Mac from doing anything, but it did no harm to show a little professional courtesy.

“No problem.” He looked at Smith. “Now you have to keep an eye on the fridge, too.”

In a spirit of collegiality, I offered to drive Smith to Denton’s house. I called Cormac and he said he’d meet us.

Smith said, “Heard about Levine.”

“I thought you just got to the squad.”

“I did. Guys in my former precinct in the Bronx told me to look him up. Pick his brains when I got out here.”

“You won’t go wrong.”

“Heard about you, too.”

“Yeah?”

“No comment.”

Mac was already there when we pulled up. I made the introductions. Smith took out a set of keys and opened the front door.

“Place has been empty since the murder,” he said. “Been dusted for prints and they apparently got more DNA from the bedroom than there is in the known universe. Just try not to break anything. After we’re done, Detective Levine, I’d like to talk to you for a moment.”

“Sure, kid.”

We went in. The house had an unused, musty smell and I could see dust motes wherever the sunlight peaked through a window. Smith turned on lights as we went along. It took us just under an hour to walk through the two-story, five-bedroom house, starting in the basement. That was just to be thorough. We all wanted to concentrate on Denton’s bedroom area and the den where he was killed.

“Big place, for a man living alone,” Mac commented.

“It’s one of the smaller homes on the club grounds,” I said. “Probably bought for the location. He was a banker. Might have gotten a deal and the mortgage wouldn’t be a problem.”

The second-floor master bedroom was, as expected, huge. Denton’s king-sized bed had been stripped for DNA examination. At the base of the bed was a large cabinet.

“I’ve seen one of these,” Smith said. He walked over to a small console on a night table and pushed a button. There was a whirring sound and a large combination flat-screen TV and DVR system rose out of the cabinet. “Hot shit, ain’t it.”

I went over to the night table and opened the top drawer. We all looked. There must have been a hundred condoms, in all shapes and sizes, and several bottles of Viagra. I could see traces of powder and other residue of police fingerprinting.

“This guy died happy,” Smith said. He picked up a package of novelty shop condoms that were camouflage-colored and read the label aloud. “She’ll Never See You Coming.”

I opened the second drawer. There were two neatly stacked rows of porno movies. They appeared to be alphabetized.

“Who the hell buys porno movies anymore,” Mac said. “You can get anything you want on the Internet.” He paused. “Or so I’ve heard.”

“Nothing probably improves the mood more than a porno movie rising on a 50-inch TV at the foot of your bed,” I said. “Denton covered all the bases.”

“I thought bankers were supposed to be dull,” Smith said. “You know, conservative.”

“Don’t you read the papers,” Mac said. “They’ve fucked the country. They had to practice on somebody.”

I went into the master bath, which could have qualified as a small locker room. It had been dusted. The medicine cabinet was almost empty. The crime scene investigators had presumably removed any suspicious pill bottles for analysis.

We went downstairs to the den, which doubled as a small library. It felt closed in. The musty smell of the house had a burnt-wood overlay from the cold fireplace. I walked over to the bookshelves. Denton’s reading taste was eclectic. There were the predictable classics, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the like. Some of those volumes even had bookmarks, so they might not have been for show. One entire case was devoted to Civil War and World War II histories. Another held only thrillers. Denton had apparently collected all the James Bond, Spenser and Jake Scarne novels. There was a Kindle on the table next to a dark brown leather lounger. Apparently not all of the dead man’s time was devoted to money and women. The bookshelves, books, Kindle, the table and all the other furniture in the den had a small film of dust, just like everything else in the house. It badly needed a cleaning service. I walked to the double doors leading out to a real patio and opened one side. There was a nice breeze which started to air out the room. The other door had a small patch over the hole in a glass pane made by the bullet Elizabeth Olsen fired. Smith came up behind me.

“Never found the round. We hoped it hit a tree, there’s enough of them, but no luck.”

“They’re 90 percent air,” I said.

“You must be a golfer.”

I laughed.

“Yeah. And I never miss them.”

“I hear you.”

“One of these doors was open, right?”

“That’s what the responding officer said.”

I looked back from the doorway toward the chair by the fireplace where Denton died.

“Shot is consistent with what Elizabeth Olsen said, unless the bullet made a 90-degree turn.”

“Or she walked around the side of the chair and wanted to put one in his ear and missed.”

“Whoever shot him didn’t miss much.”

“She might have shot out toward the door to give herself a story.”

“Or she’s telling the truth. Even if she killed him she had no way of knowing that there would be a security guard waiting for her outside the house. She would have fled with the gun and dropped it in the harbor.”

Smith looked at me.

“Killers sometimes don’t make sense,” he said, finally.

But I could tell I had raised a glimmer of doubt in his mind. A doubt that might work with a jury. Long would be happy. We walked to the lounger facing the fireplace. There was a large purplish stain on the carpet under the left armrest. It wasn’t blood. I pointed it out to Smith.

“Wine. He dropped a glass when he was plugged.”

“Could he have dozed off and been asleep when he was shot?”

“No, his eyes were open, according to the autopsy report.”

“The lids?”

“Yeah. Mostly intact. He saw it coming, if only for a second.”

Had John Denton been sleeping, his closed eyelids, if not obliterated, would have been driven into his brain and beyond. I would mention that to Long. Shooting a sleeping man implies premeditation. It wasn’t much, but every little bit might help the defense.

“There don’t appear to be any other carpet stains.”

“No, the M.E. said his brain stem was destroyed and his heart stopped almost immediately, so there wasn’t much blood and what there was soaked his clothing and pooled in the chair. Two of the rounds went through his head, though.”

“Webley .45’s have a low muzzle velocity,” Mac said. “I’m surprised any rounds got through. First rounds must have cleared a path. But nothing got through the back of the chair.”

I could see two holes in the chair’s headrest, which was stained darker than the rest of the brown chair.

“Funny looking chair,” Smith said. “Doesn’t really go with anything else in here. Looks like something from Mad Men.”

“It is,” I said, “or at least from that era. It’s an original Eames. Classic. Probably worth a fortune now.” Both men looked at me. “If it didn’t have bullet holes, I mean.”

Despite its incongruence in the room, it was a handsome piece, as was the ottoman that went with it. Both were on pedestal legs and swiveled. The lounger was segmented in three sections and undoubtedly a comfortable place to read a book or just look at the fire. Or to have sex. Unless , of course, you were a woman on top. That would be awkward. Balance would be a problem, particularly in a chair that moved on more than one axis.

“Just holding on ….”

“What’s that, Alton?”

It was Mac. I realized that I had spoken aloud. I turned to Smith.

“I presume the chair was dusted for prints.”

“Of course,” he said. “And all the blood and brain bits were collected. I don’t think the prints helped one way or the other.”

“C.S.I. process the back of the headrest?”

Mac looked at me and grunted. He got it.

Smith looked confused.

“Why would they do that? Bullets didn’t go through. They dug them out the front.”

Mac and I both said “prints” simultaneously.

“I’ll call it in,” Mac said. “Get a C.S.I. team back here. Got a camera in the car. I want to take some time-stamped shots of that chair.”

“I don’t get it,” Smith said.

“Denton liked to get it,” I said, “in this chair. But he claimed he had a bad back so his women were always on top. They would have had to put their hands somewhere.”

“How do you know that?” A look of comprehension came to his face. “Your client?”

I was saved from answering when Mac came back with his camera. There was another man with him wearing a brown uniform. I almost took him for a U.P.S. delivery man until I saw the Glock on his hip.

“The techs are on the way.” Mac said. “This is the security guard from the company that patrols the grounds. He’s the one who detained the Olsen woman for the cops. Thought you might want to talk to him.”

The rent-a-cop took off his cap and nodded at me. He was a tall, strapping kid with slicked-back, jet-black hair and a pencil-thin moustache.

“Saw all the cars and wondered what was up,” he said.

“I’ll meet you outside in a few minutes,” I said, “if it’s OK with you.”

“Mind if I stick around and watch? I’m on the waiting list for the police academy. Might learn something.”

I looked at Smith, who shrugged a yes.

“So you figure the broads Denton was bopping in the chair might have wrapped their hands around the headrest,” Smith said to me. “Jesus. That’s good thinking. Son of a bitch. There was nothing like that in the case file. But that might not help your client. Maybe her prints are there.”

“Don’t care. We know they were intimate. I’m looking for anyone else Denton ‘chaired’.”

“Better check the ottoman, too,” Smith said.

Mac looked at him.

“The ottoman?”

“If she was facing away from him, she’d have to put her hands on the ottoman.” The young detective smiled. “I think you can see it on the Internet.” He smiled at Mac. “Or so I’m told.”

We spent a few more entertaining minutes debating the sexual positions possible in a lounger-chair combination. There were a surprising number of them.

“I gotta get me this chair,” Smith said.

“I bet that wasn’t on the test for the academy,” I said to the security guard, motioning him to follow me outside.

CHAPTER 14 – LITTLE LEAGUE

We leaned on his company patrol car. His name was Raymond Ricks and he couldn’t quite hide his Southern accent.

“Alabama?”

“No, sir. Vidalia, Georgia. Onion country. Sweetest in the world.”

Southerners, I knew, were inordinately proud of their Rebel heroes and root vegetables. Ricks had a baby face that made him look younger than he was. Probably why he was trying for a moustache. He had a lot of work to do on that.

“Play a little football?”

It was a safe bet. He was a big kid. About my height, but heavier. Southerners also loved their football.

“Just high school.”

“You ought to get a brown holster,” I teased. “Black one clashes with your car and uniform. Nothing you can do with the Glock, I suppose. Maybe a blue finish. That would go better. And you don’t have to ‘sir” me. I’m private.”

“I’m not going to be wearing this stuff much longer,” he said. “I should already be in the academy except for the city’s damn hiring freeze. I aced the test.”

“Good for you,” I said. “Now, tell me everything that happened the night you grabbed Elizabeth Olsen.”

“Told the real cops everything a dozen times.”

I caught the ‘real.’ Even cops-to-be can be snotty to a P.I.

“Humor me.”

He did. When he finished, I said, “Did she say anything?”

“Not much. ‘He’s dead.’ ‘Somebody’s still in there.’ ‘I didn’t do it.’ That sort of thing. She seemed pretty shook up.”

“Did you believe her?”

“Believe what? She came out waving a gun saying someone was dead and there might be someone else in the house. I wasn’t going in there. I’ve been in combat, but I ain’t stupid. Not my fight. I just waited for the cops and made sure she didn’t go anywhere.”

“Where did you see combat?”

“Iraq. Afghanistan. Couple of places they don’t tell anyone about. I was a sniper.”

“Figures. You Georgia boys are born with rifles in your hands.”

He smiled.

“Yeah. Painful for my mom, but it worked for the Army.”

If he was telling the truth about his military service, he probably was pushing 30. There were faint lines around his eyes, which had a slightly vacant look to them. Soldier eyes. Sniper eyes. He wasn’t lying. He had seen combat. I told him that at one time we had probably been in the same provinces at about the same time.

“No offense,” he said, “but weren’t you a little long in the tooth to be over there?”

“Not my first time, bud. My reserve unit was called up.”

“That blows.”

I traded a few war stories with him to establish rapport and then got back on point.

“Did you know Denton?”

“Sure. From my rounds. Good guy.”

“What kind of ‘good guy’ was he?

“Well, you know. Always said hello, smiled, you know. Some of them up here don’t. Snobby, especially the broads.”

“Been inside the house before?”

“Couple of times, when the alarm went off. We have the code so we can go in the houses where we have a key. Not all the owners give us keys, though. And even if we have them, we always wait for the cops. Unless it’s a fire or something.”

“Happen often?”

“All the time. I don’t mean this house in particular. Most of the homes up here have alarms. Just about every time it’s a false alarm, you know. Systems are too sensitive, or an animal sets them off, or a breeze or some fuckin’ thing. After a while the cops throw a fit and say they won’t respond anymore. But they do, anyway, at least up here. People in the club have a lot of pull, you know. And valuables. No false alarms at Mr. Denton’s lately, though.”

“No alarm that night?”

“No. He was home, remember. Most of them set the alarm when they go to bed.”

“You must know Elizabeth Olsen.”

“Sure. Seen her around. Her old man has a house up here.”

“So you recognized her from seeing her at her father’s?”

“Yeah. And maybe at the club. You know, playing tennis. She’s hard to miss. A looker.”

“Ever see her going into Denton’s house? Before that night.”

He paused.

“Might have.”

“What does that mean?”

“Means Mr. Denton had a lot of lady visitors. At night. All looked pretty good from a distance. Couldn’t swear she was one of them, but she might have been. She’s a small thing. Yeah, maybe. Don’t matter, does it? Everyone knows he was pounding her. It was common knowledge. Hell, it’s in the papers.”

“Got any names for other poundees?”

“No.”

“If you saw any of his other visitors, could you identify them?”

“Not to swear to. Like I said, saw them at a distance, at night.”

“Do you think Elizabeth Olsen did it?”

“Not for me to say. But I don’t like her chances.”

“You said she seemed dazed. What about remorseful? Angry? Frightened?”

Ricks shrugged.

“Just shook up. Tell you the truth, once I had her on the ground I kept my eye on the front door. One person with a gun had already come out. Didn’t mean there wouldn’t be another.”

I gave him my card.

“You think of anything else, call me.”

“Sure.”

“Good luck with the academy.”

“Thanks, Mr. Rhode.”

I went back inside to find Mac and Smith still debating the possibilities of ottoman sex. They had actually come up with a some variations we’d missed, although a couple of them would probably put a normal human being in traction. Mac said he’d wait for the C.S.I. team and get the results to us as soon as he could. I don’t think Smith was happy about my new status as an almost-equal on the investigation but, after all, the print idea had been mine. Besides, we had sort of bonded over the ottoman.

I wanted to go to the Olsen house and ask Elizabeth a few more questions. I was debating how to phrase anything relating to where she might have placed her hands during sex – a conversation that would definitely take place without her father present – when Smith asked me to run him back to his office. Elizabeth could wait. The C.S.I. team might draw a blank anyway.

After I dropped the detective off, I called Steve Long’s office. I wanted to tell him about the fingerprints before someone in the D.A.’s office did. He was in the midst of a trial but one of his staffers told me she would have him call me as soon as he was free. She also said the Olsen case files had been copied for me. I told her I’d stop by to pick them up. The law office was in West Brighton on Forest Avenue, near enough to Dick’s Deli, a local institution on Castleton Avenue, to make the trip doubly worthwhile. I hit Dick’s for a roast beef and Swiss cheese with Russian dressing on a hard roll and some potato salad, and took it all back to my office, where I spent the rest of the day plowing through the files and making phone calls. The files were comprehensive and filled with lawyer-speak, so I put on a pot of coffee to survive.

Long called me during a break in his trial.

“The prints might not pan out,” I said after I explained.

“It’s a straw, and we’re down to grasping at them. Are you going to talk to Elizabeth?”

“I guess I have to. I’ll make sure Konrad is at work and then go over there.”

Next, I spoke to Denton’s ex-wife and to the sergeant who was one of the two cops who initially responded to the Denton murder scene. Neither was particularly forthcoming, but said enough to confirm everything that was in the files.

Denton’s ex-wife, who lived in St. Louis, was properly saddened by his gruesome end, but wasn’t going to throw herself into the Mississippi over it. She hadn’t been in touch with her ex in years and never thought about attending the funeral. She did send flowers.

“Harry, that’s my husband now, thought it was the right thing to do.”

I basically had to read the cop’s statement back to him verbatim and he just grunted appropriately. I rang off and called Mac and asked him to speak to the sergeant, cop-to-cop. But my gut told me there was nothing else there.

“Cheer up,” Mac said. “We got finger and palm prints from the ottoman. Would’ve been something to see. Denton could’ve sold tickets.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Mac. Maybe it was the maid.”

“You think he was porking the maid, too?”

It was almost 6 P.M. when I finished. I called Alice. Got a message. I wondered what she was doing? I felt the first twinge of the green monster, as if I had any right to be jealous. Left my own message asking if she was free for lunch the next day in Manhattan. Feeling out of sorts, I drove home, changed and went for a run around and through the Snug Harbor Cultural Center. There were Little League games underway on the ball fields inside the Harbor and I stopped to watch. I knew some of the parents, who were contemporaries of mine. Except they were married and had kids who were now playing ball. Between innings I chatted with a guy I knew from my own Little League days who was now coaching the Pee Wee team his son was on. For the hundredth time we laughed at the memory of one of our teammates who showed up on the first day of practice wearing a cup on the outside of his uniform pants.

There was a food stand where volunteers, mostly mothers, sold burgers, hot dogs and fries. So much for my healthful run. A tip canister on the counter was labeled: Buy a Kid a Glove. I put in a twenty. That got me some extra fries from a woman who noticed.

I’ve been to a million baseball games, but in Little League there is always something new to see. On one play a kid, couldn’t have been more than seven, threw a runner out at the plate. What made the play unique was the fact that he chased the runner around the bases, right behind him, before throwing the ball to the catcher. It was a nice peg. The only problem was that the bases had been loaded and two other runners scored ahead of the last kid during the journey around the diamond. Still, we all shouted “great throw.” The adults laughed, the kid beamed.

There was the crack of a bat from another game nearby and more cheers. My cell phone buzzed. It was Alice. She couldn’t talk long. She was between classes. But lunch would be lovely. She was in classes all day but had a break from noon to 3 P.M. I took a bite of my hot dog. Decided to have another.

All was right in the world.

CHAPTER 15 – A PRACTICAL DEMONSTRATION

The next morning I sat in on the Norberto Cruz deposition, which was held in the office of the insurance company’s attorney in lower Manhattan at 25 Broad Street. Strictly speaking, my presence wasn’t necessary. The pictures of the “crippled” Norberto’s golfing prowess were damning enough. But the insurance lawyers wanted to show how serious they were.

I didn’t mind going the extra yard. Happy lawyers generate referrals. I even chatted up Norberto’s counsel, a good-looking African-American woman who knew a losing position when she saw it but would surely remember the ace detective who torpedoed her client. She might need that kind of torpedoing some day.

It was all very civilized. During a break, I corralled Norberto in the men’s room and got some advice on curing the slice that was bedeviling my own golf game. Later, back in the conference room, his attorney asked to go off the record. With the court reporter out of the room, she cut a deal with the insurance company lawyers. Fraud was off the table and she even managed to get a few bucks for Norberto by threatening to produce a doctor who would claim that a golf swing was not only the single activity that didn’t cause her client excruciating agony, but was also actually therapeutic. Everyone knew it was bull, but we all also knew she could get a doctor. Possibly even one with a degree. There were smiles all around as we left. I slipped my card to Norberto’s lawyer. She was a winner, even when she lost.

I was scheduled to meet Alice at 1 P.M. for lunch at the Knickerbocker Bar and Grill on University Place in Greenwich Village. I took the subway from Bowling Green and got off at Union Square at noon. The West Village is a wonderful place to kill time and there is no better place to do that than the Strand, possibly the best used-book store in the nation. I have a Kindle, of course, but agree with those who believe the 500-year-old technology of “real” books will remain an efficient delivery system for many years to come. I never bought into the buggy whip analogy, which is flawed. Cars are faster than horses but people still ride horses. Just not as many. And you can read a print book just as quickly as an e-book.

I happily roamed the crowded stacks and found an early edition of Berlin Diary by William L. Shirer, a classic I’d been meaning to get. By the time I left, it had started to drizzle. Nothing that diminished the neighborhood’s charm or couldn’t be handled by walking close to the buildings on the correct side of the street.

I was drinking a Sam Adams at the Knickerbocker’s small bar watching the rain pick up when Alice walked in, shaking her umbrella. The greeter at the door took it from her and Alice immediately looked over to where she knew I’d be . The world is full of attractive women, and New York has a disproportionate share. But only a handful have what can only be called a “presence” that seems to emanate from them, which people immediately notice. It’s not mere beauty, per se, but whatever it is, Alice Watts had it. As she walked toward me I saw a couple of the single guys at the bar stare at her. Their disappointment when she put her hand gently on my cheek and kissed me was palpable. I’d been alone in enough bars in my life to know the feeling. Tough darts, boys. I asked her if she wanted a drink.

“I have afternoon classes. I’d better stick to iced tea.”

The maitre d’ found us a table almost immediately and I ordered the iced tea, and another beer for myself.

“What’s in the bag?”

I showed her the Shirer book.

“He was such a wonderful writer,” she said. “I presume you’ve read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich?”

“Yes. I’m fascinated by the whole period. It amazes me that people were so blind to the Nazi’s. Correspondents like Shirer were reporting on what they were doing, and planning, for a decade before the war. His diary was published in 1940, and it recapped what he’d previously published or broadcast.”

Our drinks came and we ordered.  A grilled sole for Alice and a lamb burger with “mint jelly ketchup” for me. The Knickerbocker kitchen rarely disappoints, but I asked for the ketchup on the side, just in case.

While we waited for our food, she told me about her day, which included taking advanced graduate courses at the New School’s Department of Philosophy.

“We’re working our way through the European philosophical tradition, dating back to Plato, Aristotle and St. Augustine, but with a concentration on Spinoza, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Freud, Gadamer, De Beauvoir, Adorno, Benjamin, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva and Irigaray.”

“I think Husserl was a total fraud.”

“You’ve never heard of him, have you?”

“No, but I’ve heard of most of the other dead white guys. I’m glad someone still teaches them.”

“De Beauvoir, Kristeva and Irigaray are women, and not all those philosophers are dead.”

“I know Plato is dead. I read his obituary in the Peloponnesian Times. Who is still alive?”

“Kristeva and Irigaray.”

“Figures. All you broads live longer.”

Alice reached across the table and touched my hand.

“You are possibly the most delightful horse’s ass I know.”

“That’s quite a compliment, considering that there are more of us than there are horses,” I said, grasping her hand, which was warm and soft. “Now tell me about your classes.”

Alice could make the phone book sound interesting, so her brief rundown of  contingency, necessity, human freedom, tragedy, truth and their relation to unconscious and conscious processes was easier to take than one might imagine, although my second beer came in handy.

Our meals arrived. The “mint ketchup” was red, thank God.

“Your turn,” she said. “Anything new about the Olsen case?”

I hesitated. The Olsens were clients. Of course, both sides on the case, prosecution and defense, knew about the chair. Even the security guard was standing there when we discussed the possibility of fingerprints and had probably blabbed. Hell, the chair and any possible prints might be a dead end. Alice saw my hesitation.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s probably none of my business.”

After all, we hadn’t seen all that much of each other and only just recently slept together. Then I remembered how I felt when I couldn’t reach her the previous day. I looked at her and just knew. So I told her about the chair and Denton’s sexual proclivities. She listened and didn’t blush. And took my hand again.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For trusting me.”

She signaled our waiter and ordered a glass of wine. And another before we finished eating. That surprised me.

“What about school?”

My voice was a bit hoarse.

“I’ll cut.” Her voice was hoarser. “I thought of something better to do than listen to a lecture on phenomenology, hermeneutics and epistemology. Let’s go back to my apartment.”

Alice’s apartment, on Minetta Lane, was only a few blocks from the restaurant, but it seemed to take forever to get there. I thought it would be unseemly to jog. But once there we didn’t waste any time. I didn’t know if it was the fact that I had taken her into my confidence or the graphic description of Denton’s chair sex, but Alice made love with an abandon I suspect is rarely associated with philosophers, particularly women philosophers. After our first bout, I mentioned that.

“A sexist remark,” she said as her respiration slowly returned to normal. “I forgive you because you just rocked my socks off. I’ll have you know that Simone de Beauvoir was hot to trot. She had numerous lovers, including Jean Paul Sartre. She also slept with underage women students and shared them with him. Her nickname was ‘castor,’ the French word for beaver.”

“Do French parents give their kids beaver oil when they’re constipated?”

“Oh, do shut up,” she said, kissing me.

A few minutes later she got up and started moving chairs around.

“I’ve never watched anyone naked move furniture. Are we expecting company?”

She ignored me and repositioned an ottoman.

“I don’t believe it,” I said.

“College professors are always experimenting,” she said. “Come over here, your hunkness.”

Later that afternoon I helped her put the furniture back.

“Well, I think we proved it’s possible, maybe even practical.” She laughed. “Not that I’d be willing to testify. Did Elizabeth Olsen say anything about the ottoman?”

“No, but I will ask her tomorrow.”

“I bet you will.”

CHAPTER 16 – RED TOENAILS

I left Alice’s apartment before dawn and caught a subway to South Ferry. On the 20-minute ride across the harbor, still the best free trip on the planet, I called my office and accessed my answering machine. Dom DeRenzi, the athletic director at Wagner College, had left a message asking why I hadn’t been up to his gym for a workout. If he knew about my previous night, he wouldn’t have been so concerned. But he was right. I was neglecting my weight training.

When I got home I made coffee and boiled some water. I cracked two eggs in a bowl and then carefully slid them into the boiling water to poach as I toasted an English muffin. I buttered the muffins and, using a slotted spoon, ladled the eggs on the muffins. The yolks were perfectly runny and each egg fit nicely on its respective muffin half. Some people use their microwave to poach eggs, but you have to pierce the yolks with a fork to prevent an explosion. Even with that precaution, the inside of my microwave occasionally looked like the spaceship’s breakfast table after the creature came out of John Hurt’s stomach in Alien. Slower is better.

After showering, I called Elizabeth Olsen. No one picked up the house phone and she didn’t answer her cell. I didn’t leave any messages. Her father was probably at work, a good thing considering what I wanted to talk about. Maybe she didn’t want to answer her phone or was in the shower. I thought about the butler. I didn’t know much about butlers. Did they live in? Or just show up for work? All the butlers I’d seen on TV or in the movies lived in a small room out of sight and spent their free time reading the classics and drinking cheap brandy. What if you rang for a butler and he wasn’t there yet? Did you make a sound?

Of course, butlers aside, there was another possibility: Elizabeth Olsen finally saw the writing on the wall and was on her way to a non-extradition country. Ankle bracelet and lack of passport notwithstanding, there isn’t much money can’t buy. I had a mental picture of Kathleen Turner in Body Heat sitting on a beach sipping a drink with a parasol in it. Given Elizabeth’s prospects, I suspected it might be a sensible alternative.

I called Long. He didn’t have a meeting scheduled with her.

“She should be home.”

He sounded worried. Having a client flee before trial is embarrassing. I drove up to the Richmond County Country Club. Elizabeth Olsen’s BMW was the only car in the circular driveway, a good sign. I went up and rang the bell. No one came to the door. I rapped the big brass knocker. Nothing. Christ, maybe she really was on her way to the Maldives.

A car pulled up. Ricks, the security guard got out and walked over.

“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Rhode. What’s up?”

“You have a key for this house?”

He hesitated.

“Yeah. But I’m not sure I feel right about letting you in if no one is home.”

“Look. I work for the family. Elizabeth Olsen is not supposed to leave the house. She has an ankle monitor, remember. Her lawyer wants me to check it out. If she has left, we have to know about it. Now open the damn door.”

He did and stepped aside. I went in. The first thing I saw was the ankle monitor on Elizabeth’s leg. It was at eye level.

“Holy shit,” Ricks said from behind me. “I guess she did kill him.”

Elizabeth Olsen was hanging by her neck from the second-floor landing. I looked at her face. It wasn’t as bad as I expected. No bulging eyes and protruding tongue. From the obscene angle of her head it appeared that her neck had snapped. Death would have been almost instantaneous. She looked asleep.

“Check the alarm, but don’t touch anything,” I said.

“It’s on. The light’s green.”

“OK. Leave it alone and call 911. Wait outside for the cops.”

I walked over to the body. She was wearing a halter top and shorts. Her feet were bare. Her toenails were painted red. The toes on both feet were clenched. Possibly a neurological result of the hanging. I’d heard that men who were hanged often had reflexive ejaculations. Up close I could see a small trickle of blood from her left ear, the direction her head was tilted. Her lips were slightly parted. I didn’t want to touch her and possibly contaminate anything but noticed that there was no stain at her crotch. I couldn’t smell urine. She hadn’t been dead very long.

I felt sick. I wanted to cut her down but knew I couldn’t. I walked up the stairs. She had apparently tied one end of the rope to the base of one of the banister’s supporting balusters and looped the other around her neck and jumped. I looked at the rope. It appeared to be regular braided manila but I couldn’t tell if it was natural or synthetic. The lab boys would determine that. There was nothing fancy about the knot attaching the rope to the banister and when I looked down at Elizabeth’s body I saw that she hadn’t bothered with a hangman’s noose. Just a couple of double knots, which had been just as efficient. I went outside and made my own calls. Long, Vocci, Cormac. I would have killed for a cigarette.

It was three hours before the cops cut me loose. No one had turned up a suicide note, but that didn’t mean one wouldn’t turn up. And some people don’t leave a note. The house was swarming with cops and technicians and the local media, both cable and print, were camped outside. Konrad Olsen was supervising a project in southern New Jersey and showed up just as his daughter’s body was being loaded in the meat wagon. The cops took him inside, accompanied by Steve Long. I never got to speak to him.

Vocci, Smith and Mac were chatting by a squad car. I walked over.

“Anybody ask where the butler was?”

“Why, you think he did it?” Vocci said.

“Could have been Colonel Mustard in the parlor,” Smith chimed in.

“Just wondering.”

“The rent-a-cop said the butler had Thursdays off,” Vocci said. “Probably why she picked today. How did you get in, Rhode?”

“Security guard had a key.”

“Lucky break he was around,” he said. “Better than her father finding her. Look on the bright side. This gets you out of buying me dinner.”

“Your sensitivity in these matters is touching, Paul.”

The two D.A. detectives left.

“Hell of a thing,” Mac said. “Speaking of dinner, it’s lunchtime. Let’s eat.”

“I’m not very hungry.”

“So, I have to starve? I’ll eat, you drink.”

***

“So, what’s bugging you, Alt?”

We were sitting in a Chinese restaurant on New Dorp Lane. Mac had ordered enough food to sustain Mao’s army on the Long March. I was picking at some of it and drinking scotch.

“If she was innocent, why kill herself?”

“Maybe she wasn’t innocent,” Mac said, filling a pancake with moo shu pork.

“I think she might be.”

“Well, let’s see. There’s you, and then there are the other six billion people on the planet who think she’s guilty. But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. She killed herself because she knew she was innocent but was going to be convicted anyway.”

“She struck me as a tough cookie, a fighter.”

“Could have been a front. Even if it wasn’t, sometimes the hard cases crack the loudest.”

“Any word on the prints?”

“Nothing yet. I doubt if the D.A. will even pursue that now. Case closed.”

“Do me a favor. Make sure they follow up on them.”

Mac looked at me.

“Why? What good will it do? You don’t even have a client. She’s on a slab in the morgue.”

“I just want to make sure. And I want the autopsy results.”

He rolled another pancake.

“You ever been to Palm Springs?”

I said I hadn’t.

“Don’t go. Took Irene there on a vacation a few years back. Just outside of town they have these windmill farms, thousands of them.” He took a bite of pancake. “You’d spend all your time tilting at them.”

Outside the restaurant, Mac turned to me as he got in his car.

“Prints and autopsy?”

“Thanks.”

I liked Elizabeth Olsen. I’d never lost a client to suicide and my normal response after a liquid lunch would be to keep drinking. Instead, I drove to Wagner College. A sign of maturity? Age? I decided I was just angry and needed to punch something without winding up in jail.

I’ve had the use of Wagner’s spectacular gym for years, thanks to my relationship with the school’s Chief of Staff, an ex-Coast Guard captain named Dave Clapper, and to Dom DeRenzi, the Athletic Director. I didn’t have a private membership but they both looked the other way while I rehabbed from recent war wounds. My financial situation had improved to the point where I offered to pay, but Clapper told me that Spencer Bradley, Wagner’s president, had given me a complimentary lifetime membership.

“Bradley was very grateful for your help in getting rid of Pierce,” Clapper explained. He was referring to Pierce Lancaster, a junkie mob-connected professor who preyed on female undergraduates. “He is particularly happy that you kept the school’s name out of the media.”

I’d had my own reasons for sinking Lancaster. He almost got me killed and was a threat to Alice Watts. But I gladly accepted the membership.

“Don’t get a swelled head,” DeRenzi said when I told him about my membership. “Bradley probably figures you’ll get yourself killed soon enough.”

The membership came with a locker and after I changed I spent a grueling hour pounding a heavy bag with the gloves that Dom kept for me in his office. He wasn’t in the gym. Summer at Wagner is slow and he kept himself busy working at various camps run by other schools or organizations. I shouldn’t have had that last scotch. The heavy bag won. I hydrated and cooled down and then went to the weight room. My arms still felt like rubber but I managed to do three sets of 12 on every machine in the place. By the last set I was alternating seeing stars and black dots. I had my arms wrapped around the water cooler when Dom walked in.

“That stuff will kill you,” he said. “Come to my office. I got some healthy Coor’s Light in the fridge.”

CHAPTER 17 – STILL IN HER CORNER

The next morning, I woke to the persistent chiming of my cell phone. I sometimes use it for an alarm but didn’t remember setting it the night before. I shook my head to clear the cobwebs and realized it wasn’t the alarm. It was a call. Alice. I wondered why she was calling so early. Then I saw the time. It was after 9 A.M. Dead body, police interrogation, drinking, gym, more drinking. That would do it. For all that, I didn’t feel that bad. Sleep is never overrated.

“I heard about Elizabeth Olsen,” she said. “It was on the late news last night. The poor woman. You must feel terrible. They said a private investigator working for the family found her. I knew it was you.”

“I don’t like clients dying on me.”

“There’s more to it than that, Alton. You liked her, didn’t you? And you thought that perhaps she didn’t kill Denton. What are you going to do?”

I told her that Mac was going to get me the print and autopsy reports.

“If there’s anything there, I’m going to try to clear her.”

“Even if no one is paying you?”

“I’ve never been much of a businessman.”

“And the dead can’t clear their names on their own.”

“There’s that.”

My phone beeped.

“Alice, I have another call. It’s the Olsen’s attorney. I’d better take it.”

“Of course. Just remember, I’m here if you want to talk.”

“Just talk?”

She laughed.

“Wash your mind out with soap.”

***

An hour later Long and I pulled up in front of Olsen’s house. Konrad had asked for me. The butler let us in, looking sadder than ever. I didn’t blame him.

“Mr. Olsen is waiting for you in the library, Mr. Long.”

“How is he doing, Robert?”

I expected an “as good as can be expected.” Instead the butler surprised me. “He loved that girl,” he said. “It’s a terrible blow. This family has no goddamn luck.”

As we walked back to the library we had to pass the landing from which Elizabeth had dangled. I was glad Konrad had been spared that sight. I’m not sure I could have walked every day past the spot where my daughter had hung herself. There was no sign of the death and I could smell polish and floor wax. I suspected that every time Konrad smelled those odors, meant to eliminate memories, they would have the opposite effect. He rose when we entered the room, looking 10 years older.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Rhode.”

“I’m very sorry for your loss, sir. I liked Elizabeth. Very much.”

“I understand you found her.” He lost his composure for a moment and his voice cracked. “They said she didn’t suffer. Was that your impression?”

“It was probably instantaneous,” I said carefully. “Her face was very peaceful.”

The three of us sat quietly for a moment, then Olsen said, “I presume you were ignoring my request that either Long or I be present when you spoke to her.”

It wasn’t an accusation. His daughter was dead. He just wanted to know.

“Something had come up. It was delicate. I’m not sure she would have spoken of it in front of you. And I’m not sure it will amount to a hill of beans.”

Konrad sat down heavily and waved us to our own seats.

“You did the right thing, of course. But tell me now what it was.”

I looked at Long.

“Konrad,” he said. “It’s all very speculative. The longest of long shots.”

“Steve! My daughter is in the morgue, being cut up. Her name has been dragged through the mud. Her alleged suicide closes the books for everyone.” I caught the ‘alleged’ but didn’t say anything. “In two days I’ll be burying my child, who they all think is a murderess. What can you tell me that could make me feel worse than I already do?”

So I told him. When I finished, he smiled and said, “Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Parents are truly the only ones who are always in your corner.

“Mr. Rhode, I want you to pursue that lead and anything else you can think of. Elizabeth did not kill herself. She was murdered, probably by the same person who killed Denton. I don’t care what it costs, or how long it takes. Find out who did this!”

“Konrad, have you thought this through?” Long said, obviously shocked. “An open-ended investigation could cost you a fortune. And might not produce the result you want.” He looked at me. “I’m sorry to butt in, Alton, but as Elizabeth’s attorney, it’s my duty.”

“You were my daughter’s lawyer, Steve. Not mine. I want Rhode.”

“I’m speaking as your friend now. And I know Rhode. He’d want me to say something.”

“Steve’s right, Mr. Olsen. Much as I like to hear the words ‘I don’t care how much it costs,’ you should listen to him. If the prints don’t pan out, and the odds are very much against us, there’s no place to go.”

“Elizabeth would never kill herself. I know my daughter. There is something to find out and you’re the one to do it. I’m not worried about you cheating me.”

“But who would kill her? The real murderer? It makes no sense. If Elizabeth was convicted, the killer would be home free. And even if we went to trial and raised enough doubts to win an acquittal, the police would not follow up. They, and everyone else, would say she got off on a technicality, or because she had money to hire a good lawyer.” He started to protest and I held up my hand. “I’m not saying Elizabeth was guilty. But that’s just the way it is. The real killer would still be safe.”

“Alton is making sense, Konrad. Listen to him.”

“What about my daughter’s good name? Just because she slept around doesn’t make her a murderess. Don’t you two care about that? Elizabeth was a wonderful person. I loved her.”

His voice broke again.

“Mr. Olsen,” I said, “I told you I liked Elizabeth and I meant it. I was going to stay on the job until I proved or disproved anything the prints showed, if there are any. On my own time. If it makes you feel better, you can pay me until then. I should know soon enough. But if I draw a blank, then that’s it. I won’t continue to take your money. Deal?”

“Deal,” he said, and we shook on it.

Outside, by our cars, Long said, “Poor bastard. Such a waste. Even had we lost she’d have been out in a few years. Still young. Now she’s dead, and Konrad might as well be.”

I drove to my office, called Mac and told him about my conversation with Olsen.

“You know, I remember when you couldn’t buy a client. Now they even die on you and you can keep billing. You should be a lawyer.”

“He’ll probably only be a client until those prints come back. Have you heard anything?”

“Nah. Weekend coming up. They don’t think there’s any urgency now. In fact, I had to call in a lot of favors just to keep us in the game. Sullivan’s office doesn’t give a crap anymore. Hell, I can let them take their sweet time and it’ll be a month before we hear. I can even gum up the works. You’ll make a fortune. Just say the word.”

“Come on, Mac.”

“Just bustin’ your balls, kid. I’ll light a fire under their asses this afternoon, but don’t expect anything until next week. Take a break. Put it out of your mind. Elizabeth Olsen ain’t going anywhere.”

As I hung up I heard the door to my outer office open. I walked out just as Abby Jones was settling into her desk. I’d forgotten it was one of her days to moonlight with me.

“Are you early or late?” I teased her.

“I make my own hours, so I’m always on time. When you get successful enough to hire me full time I’ll put one of those clock things on the wall. Not likely, though, with your clients dying on you. I heard about it. Bad business. Poor gal, even if she was guilty. Bet the guy she plugged was no great shakes.”

I wasn’t surprised that Abby was sympathetic to Elizabeth. Abby had a hardscrabble life that included an abusive husband.

“Hell, no. Then you’ll hit me for overtime. I’ll make you management.”

“That’ll be the day.”

Abby didn’t blink an eye when I recounted my earlier conversations with Elizabeth Olsen and how Konrad Olsen wanted to keep me on the case.

“Man, the rich are different. Let me get my pad.”

Abby, as I had learned to my surprise, was a whiz with shorthand.

“You may get lucky with the chair,” she said after taking copious notes, which she would later transcribe into a succinct computer file of the case. “I was attached to a C.I.D. unit for a while in Iraq and we once got prints and DNA from a piece of a mortar shell after it exploded. Guy had rigged it with a cell phone to explode under a hard-ass officer’s cot. The base was always getting hit by insurgents and he waited until the bad guys tossed in a couple of rounds and then dialed a number and blew the shit bird up. He figured it would be the perfect fragging. Only problem was the base was trying out a new anti-mortar radar that identified where the shells were coming from. Nothing came down within a mile of the tent where the dead guy was. The C.I.D. guys are pretty sharp. Figured it out. The killer’s prints were on a piece of shrapnel.”

Later that afternoon I called Alice.

“Do you like horse racing?”

“I mist up and sing along when they play ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ at the Derby.’ But I’ve never been to an actual race.”

“There is a lovely little track down the Jersey Shore. Monmouth Park. I thought maybe we could go tomorrow. Head down to Spring Lake after and stay overnight at a bed-and-breakfast.”

She gave the husky laugh that I now found so alluring.

“I suspect there won’t be a lot of talking involved.”

“I may occasionally whinny like a stallion.”

“Only if you do it at the track.”

CHAPTER 18 – TRIFECTA

“These crab cakes are scrumptious.”

“Best I’ve had outside of Maryland,” I said, pouring us each some more champagne from a silver bucket next to our table. “We’re near the ocean. Everything here is fresh.”

We had spent the first hour at Monmouth watching the thoroughbreds up close as they walked from the paddock to the track. It was warm but not uncomfortably so and the sights, smells and sounds of the huge animals were invigorating. A woman jockey exchanged a smile and a small wave with Alice as she passed us.

“They are certainly beautiful,” Alice murmured at one point.

Now we were sitting in the air-conditioned clubhouse overlooking the finish line, which none of the horses on which I had wagered in the first eight races had managed to cross ahead of the pack. At the rate I was going, our four crab cakes, while large and almost solidly crustacean, would wind up costing me a couple of hundred dollars each. Alice, on the other hand, had cashed at least one ticket per race using a system that involved, as far as I could tell, the name of a horse, the color of a jockey’s silks and any last-minute hints she picked up from watching a post parade. In the third race she chose one horse because it evacuated its bowels and,  Alice said, was now “lighter” than the other nags.

Her success rate was helped by the fact that she bet $2 on every horse for win, place and show and collected something even if her nag finished a distant third. At other racetracks, where sophisticated bettors reign, betting “across the board” is usually a recipe for disaster. But Monmouth is a rural venue, more Southern in character, and has a reputation for attracting “little old ladies in tennis shoes” who make quirky bets. Sometimes the payouts for a third-place finish rivaled that of the winner. Alice, certainly not a little old lady – she was wearing a white sundress and looked like she belonged at Ascot – had turned her eight $6 bets into almost $140. I, on the other hand, was now a little more sanguine about accepting Konrad Olsen’s money.

“Explain to me again how those other bets work,” she said.

I went through all of them: daily doubles, exactas, quinellas, perfectas, trifectas, superfectas, Pick 3’s, Pick 6’s, boxes, wheels and keys.

“How can anyone keep them straight? And think of all those poor horses, trying to run in exact order.”

I was learning that Alice could be a great tease. I soldiered on.

“Before the advent of modern computers, no one could. The daily double was an exotic bet. Basically all these new bets are designed to help separate customers from their money.”

“They seem to be working in your case. Why are you using them?”

“Because I’m an idiot.”

Alice slipped a foot out of her shoe and moved it along my calf under the table.

“But you know how to pick women. And that’s all I care about.”

I whinnied. A couple at a nearby table looked at us. We ordered Key Lime pie. It came, yellow and slightly grainy. Which is the way it’s supposed to be. The green tint in most store-bought Key Lime pies is food color.

“Oh, good. It’s real Key Lime pie,” Alice said.

I really do know how to pick women.

And in the next race my luck improved. Alice’s horse, selected because its jockey shared the same last name with one of her swimmers, won handily. Fortunately, I had included it in an exacta box and cut my day’s losses in half. In fact, just to be polite, I included Alice’s picks in all the remaining races and while none of them won, their third-place finishes bailed out some of my more scientific wagers and I left the track almost even. Alice was up more than $200.

“That was easy,” she said happily.

A half hour later we pulled into the parking lot of the Evergreen Inn, a Victorian bed-and-breakfast in Spring Lake. I parked in a spot next to a rack that had several bicycles with picnic baskets attached to the handlebars or behind their seats. None of the bikes was locked to the rack. A small sign said, “For Use of Guests.”

“This must be a trusting community,” Alice said.

“No self-respecting thief would be caught dead on a bike with a picnic basket. They’re free, by the way. And the B&B will pack a lunch for you. Also on the house.”

“You’ve been here before, obviously. Although somehow I can’t picture you riding a bike with a picnic lunch.”

“Those baskets are perfect for a six-pack. But, no, I’ve never used one. I just like this place. It has history. Dates from the 1880’s. At one time it was a brothel.”

“I bet they didn’t give anything away for free then.”

It was light out, and balmy, so after unpacking we drove to the beach for a swim. But it was still June and the water wasn’t balmy.

“Bracing,” I chattered as we treaded water after swimming out past the breakers.

“It’s effin’ freezing,” Alice corrected me. “Let’s keep moving.”

I’m a strong swimmer, but I could tell Alice was holding back so as not to humiliate me. She was, after all, a swim coach who once had Olympic aspirations. But after a half mile up and back, we weren’t cold. Later, sitting on the sand, we watched the sun go down as the surfcasters came out.

“You’re an excellent swimmer,” she said.

“Said the dolphin to the sponge.”

“No, I mean it. And I could never go as long as you can under the water.”

“It’s called drowning.”

She laughed.

“No, you idiot. I remember how you swam the length of the Wagner pool underwater just to impress me the day we met, when I was with my team.”

“You noticed?”

“Of course, we all did.”

“Foiled, again.”

She leaned over and kissed me. I could taste the salt on her lips, and neck, and shoulders as I pressed her back on her towel.

“I think we might get arrested,” she said, finally, sitting up. “What time is our dinner reservation? And where?”

“Doolan’s Shore Club, at 9.”

“Then we’d better get back to clean up.”

“We have a little time.”

“Not if we’re going to fit in a quickie before we eat.”

Which we did.

The next morning we slept in, and almost missed the luxurious brunch the inn put out for guests. We both marveled at how we could be so hungry after the meal we’d had at Doolan’s. Of course, in the interim the night before there had been a couple of not-so-quickies. We had reached that point in our relationship where there were virtually no inhibitions, physically. At one point Alice even reminded me that we were in a bordello. The implication being that anything went. And did.

After checking out of the inn, we drove back using rural local roads and stopped at every farmer’s market and “antique” store Alice spotted.

“Some of the fruit you bought is older than these antiques,” I said in one faux shop.

“I know it’s kitsch,” she said as she paid for a small cuckoo clock. “But it’s adorable kitsch. Besides, in a hundred years it will be an antique. I’m just ahead of my time.”

I’m never sure when Alice is kidding.

When we finally got to Greenwich Village, it took me a half hour to carry her loot up to her apartment. By mutual consent we decided that I should go home.

“We both need the rest,” Alice said, handing me an apple rhubarb pie she had bought at one roadside stand.

I drove back to Staten Island, stopping for a turkey sandwich at Dick’s Deli. It went well with the pie. Both slices. And then to bed, feeling as if I had hit a trifecta.

CHAPTER 19 – WORKING GIRL

I was in my office Monday when Cormac called in late morning.

“Bingo,” he said.

“The prints panned out.”

“We got a hit on both fingers and palm. Same woman. She’s in the system. And it’s not Elizabeth Olsen. That’s the good news.”

I waited.

“I hate it when you do that, Alton. Go all quiet. It ruins all my fun. Anyway, the bad news is that the prints are from a hooker, one Laura Lee Litton.”

“Why is that bad news? The fact that Denton used hookers won’t surprise anyone. And putting one in that chair near the time of his murder gives me a viable suspect.”

“Cause there’s even worse news.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Mac, spill it.”

“Laura Lee apparently doesn’t exist. At least around here. I checked with IAFIS and our vice boys. No working girl by that name has popped up on the radar locally in years. Vice has no record of any arrests going back at least a decade. I can’t even find any record of a Laura Lee Litton anywhere in the tri-state area. Address, phone, driver’s license, anything. I know illegal aliens with more paper.”

“Then why are the prints on record?”

“She was arrested as a prostitute in Georgia 16 years ago, when she had just turned 17. Only reason her prints hit IAFIS was that she did some of her best work servicing soldiers on the Fort Stewart army base and the Feds got involved. But then cooler heads prevailed and they kicked her loose.”

“She must have had an address.”

“You want a hooker’s address from 16 years ago?”

“It’s a start.”

“What, you think Denton flew her up here for a quick screw? She probably doesn’t live there anymore. Came up to the Big Apple to pursue her hooking career and changed her name. Without any recent arrests, you’ll never find her. Hell, maybe she’s not even a pro anymore. What are you going to do, get fingerprints from every broad who’s been in Denton’s house? There’s fewer people at Yankee Stadium on opening day. I know you found someone in witness protection but that was easy compared to this.”

“Oh, ye of little faith. Give me the address. What are Sullivan’s boys going to do with it?”

I knew Mac would have spoken to them. He was my friend but didn’t need a pissing war with the D.A.’s squad by going behind their backs.

“I spoke to that kid, Smith. He says Sullivan’s crew thinks it’s a non-starter. They were sure the Olsen woman aced Denton and her suicide saved them a lot of work. Denton was a big deal and they aren’t anxious to smear him posthumously with talk about a hooker. Sullivan told them to drop it. I got the impression Smith isn’t happy, but he’s too junior to make waves. I told him making waves was your reason for living and he said if you come up with something to keep him in the loop. He’s a sharp cookie.”

Laura Lee Litton’s last known address was in Statesboro, GA, which as Mac noted, was “a hop, skip and a hump” from Fort Stewart.

“Anything unusual turn up in the autopsy?”

“Not really. Death was consistent with suicide by hanging. Broken neck. It would have been quick. Better than strangling. She knew what she was doing or she caught a break, no pun intended.”

“Where did she get the rope?”

“Her old man is in the construction business. There were coils of the stuff in the garage. Manila hemp. Forensics matched a section that was cut from one of the coils with the rope around her neck. Coroner’s report says suicide. It’s not what you and the old man want to hear, but it is what it is.”

“Still doesn’t mean she killed Denton.”

“I see another Southern road trip in your future.”

“Maybe.”

“Yeah. Well, while you’re at it, see if you can a get a line on Amelia Earhart. That’s right up your alley.”

I called the security desk in the lobby, where Abby was at her regular job. The line was busy so I went down. She was just hanging her phone up. I asked her if she knew anyone in the Provost Marshall’s office at Fort Stewart.

“I never was based there but I can make some calls to my old MP buds and get you a name. What’s this about?”

I told her.

“Man, this gets nuttier and nuttier. Denton must have been a piece of work. Liked his taste in women though.” She held up a copy of the Richmond Register. There was a follow-up story to Elizabeth Olsen’s death, with a photo of her on the front page, apparently taken at some society gala. “She was a pretty thing. But I guess she didn’t look that way when you found her. She must have looked terrible. I saw a couple of suicides in my time. Strangulation is never pretty.”

“Actually, she looked quite peaceful. It was quick. Broke her neck.”

“What did she hang herself from?”

“Banister on the second-floor landing.”

“Jesus. You’re lucky at that. Coulda been a lot worse. A drop like that and her head might have snapped clear off, like those Iraqi dudes they show on YouTube.”

“She didn’t drop very far. Only a few feet.”

Abby looked at me.

“You sure? How much she weigh?”

“I don’t know. She was small, maybe 100 or 110 pounds at the most. Why?”

“Then you must have gotten the distance wrong. A 120-pound person would have to drop at least eight feet to break the neck.” She mimicked a person hanging by holding a hand over her head and lolling her head to her side with her tongue out and gurgling.

“Her mouth was closed,” I said.

“Doing this just for effect.”

It apparently worked. Two visitors had walked up to the security desk and were now looking at both of us strangely. Abby straightened her head.

“Can I help you folks?”

After she directed them to the correct floor we watched them move quickly to the elevators, glancing back at us nervously.

“Now, what did you say about an eight-foot drop?”

“As part of my training I took a course on the history of the Military Police,” Abby   said. “It included a section on Fort Leavenworth. That’s where the Army executes people, although they don’t do that much anymore. Anyway, the old method was hanging. It’s been replaced by lethal injection. But they actually had a table, or chart, that calculates how far a body has to drop to ensure a clean neck break. Morbid. Always stuck in my head. Has something to do with dividing the weight into something in foot pounds. The Brits came up with it. Figures. They hung a shitload of people. What can you expect from such a stiff-necked bunch.” She liked that. I smiled politely. “Hell, you can look up the chart on the Internet.”

I tried to reconstruct the death scene in my mind.

“I don’t think she dropped that far, but to tell you the truth, I wasn’t paying that much attention. Maybe the fact that she’s a woman made a difference.”

“There was no sex difference on the chart. A neck is a neck.”

A few more visitors came up to the desk.

“I’ll get a name for you at Fort Stewart and call you,” she said, turning to them.

Back in my office I opened my laptop and found a British website devoted to capital punishment. Sure enough, there was a sophisticated explanation of “Execution by Hanging” drop distances, complete with a chart that, according to a footnote, was last updated in 1913. The chart conveniently listed all the weights by stones, kilograms and pounds, and lengths into both feet and centimeters, which I’m sure made the condemned very happy. It detailed the optimal neck-breaking drops for people weighing from 110 to 200 pounds, given in 10-pound increments. Given the explosion of fast food over the last 100 years, I suspected that the chart was due for a revision, weight-wise. Of course, the British banned capital punishment years ago.

But Abby was right. A woman weighing less than 120 pounds would have to plunge eight feet or more to ensure a clean broken neck. Much shorter than that, strangulation was likely. Longer, decapitation. I called Cormac.

“How long was the rope Elizabeth Olsen used?”

“Long enough, apparently.”

“I’m serious. Can you find out?”

“What are you thinking?”

I told him. He didn’t laugh. He’d fielded a lot crazier ideas from me. Besides, Mac was a good detective.

“I’ll get back to you.”

My phone buzzed. It was Abby, with a contact number at Fort Stewart.

“I don’t know him. So, don’t get your hopes up.”

I didn’t, and thus wasn’t disappointed. The Army officer I spoke to pointed out that Fort Stewart was the home of the 3rd Infantry Division and one of the largest military facilities in the eastern half of the country.

“We have absolutely no idea who any teen-aged hooker arrested 16 years ago was, or is. And we don’t particularly care. We have other priorities. Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

I wanted to remind him that there always seems to be a war on, but let it go.

Next I called the Bulloch County Sheriff’s Department, which is responsible for Statesboro and surrounding towns. The sheriff was out of town at a conference in Savannah until Wednesday, but a female deputy tried to be helpful. But she drew a blank. There were no Littons currently living in town, let alone at the address on Porcupine Road I gave her.

“Houses there, shacks really, were torn down years ago when they ran the 301 Bypass through that section of town, or so they tell me. I’m only here a few years.”

“What happened to the people who lived there?”

“Don’t know. Most of them were apparently poor. Must have thought they hit the lottery when the state bought them out. You could probably check the old real estate records to see who they were, although I’m told some of them were just renters, maybe even squatters, who worked some of the farms around here. We’ve got some big peanut farms, you know. But you might have more luck checking the high school. The girl you’re lookin’ for would have been of an age where she might have gone to Statesboro High. I can give you the number. Course, school’s closed for the summer.”

I took the number, thanked her for her troubles and hung up. Then I found the Statesboro High website on my laptop. It was comprehensive and sophisticated, which undoubtedly meant it was created by the students. The site listed the names of all the teachers and counselors. No phone numbers and home addresses, of course, but plenty of email addresses.

Mac called me back. He was angry.

“They threw away the fucking rope.”

“Jesus Christ. Why would they do that?”

“No one thinks it was anything but suicide. Case closed. Next corpse.”

“Did you ask them how long they thought it was?”

“Yeah. Got a couple of guesstimates, between four and eight feet. But they said it was difficult to remember because she was cut down by an E.M.S. guy on a ladder. So there were two pieces of rope, neither of which made an impression on anyone. They were more interested in the type of rope than the length.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Hey, listen, she probably did kill herself.” He paused. “But you’re right. Son of a bitch.”

I spent the rest of the day with the high school website tracking down phone numbers and both calling and emailing everyone from the principal on down. Abby made a lunch run to the Red Lantern and brought me up a sandwich. By the time I went home I had spoken to, or had emails from, enough people from Laura Lee’s era to know that she had attended the school but didn’t graduate, leaving halfway through her senior year.

One teacher, now nearing retirement, remembered her as “hot” but obviously not from “the best class of people.”

“What do you mean?”

“I shouldn’t say this, but are you familiar with the term ‘white trash’?”

“You just did, and I am.”

“Well, I’m just calling a spade a spade.”

“I’m sure you do that, too,” I said, hanging up.

No one I spoke to knew what happened to Laura Lee after high school. And the one person I really wanted to speak to, the school guidance counselor, a Mrs. Faulkner, was out of town. One of the other teachers had mentioned that she had been the guidance counselor at Statesboro High for almost 20 years, and thus must have interacted with Laura Lee.

“My mom went to a writers’ conference,” her son told me when I called the Faulkner home. “Then she stopped off to see my gram on the way back. She’ll be here tomorrow.”

The kid wouldn’t give me his grandma’s phone number or his mother’s cell. Good for him. I wasn’t about to try to frighten the numbers out of him by mentioning my flimsy murder theory.

I was frustrated. It seemed I had nowhere to go in Statesboro. But one of my investigative rules, which rarely pays dividends, is that when I have nowhere to go, I go there. Rarely is not the same as never.

CHAPTER 20 - MEASURING

The next morning I went to Elizabeth Olsen’s funeral. The service, at Trinity Lutheran Church on St. Paul’s Avenue in Stapleton Heights, was packed and parking was a problem. Luckily, there was a large police presence and a cop I knew directed me to a spot under a “No Parking” sign.

Once in the church I grabbed a seat in a rear pew and looked around. No one had a sign on their chest saying, “I Did It!” I sensed that many of those in attendance were just drawn by the notoriety of the situation, but I did recognize a few faces from the local Staten Island real estate and construction community. I assumed there were plenty of similar types from elsewhere in the tri-state area where Konrad Olsen did business. Sitting in a pew ahead of me across the aisle was a tall, striking woman who, in profile, looked familiar.

At the end of the service, the funeral director announced that since Elizabeth Olsen was to be cremated family and friends were invited to the Richmond County Country Club for a repast that would follow immediately. The choice of venue didn’t surprise me. It would have been tough to host a crowd in a house where your daughter had hung from a banister.

Then it hit me. Cremation. I hadn’t counted on that. Any evidence I found contradicting the assumption that Elizabeth killed herself would probably need an exhumation for confirmation. And that was now an impossibility. I couldn’t stop a cremation on a hunch based on a 100-year-old British hangman’s chart. No rope. And now no body.

The service was mercifully brief. The woman who seemed so familiar to me in profile got up to leave. It was Sharon Sullivan, the D.A.’s wife. I caught up with her as we left the church.

“I’m surprised to see you here, Sharon. Did you know Elizabeth?”

She looked startled, but only for a second.

“Oh, Alton. I’m sorry. I almost didn’t recognize you. Yes, I knew Elizabeth. Same clubs and charities, you know. We weren’t close, but it’s such a tragedy.”

The last time I’d seen Sharon, she was tipsy and had trouble with a few words. Now, she spoke with a precise diction and seemed almost ethereally composed. She really was quite beautiful.

“It’s a lovely gesture, Sharon, given the circumstances.”

She smiled.

“How is Alice?”

“Fine.”

“Please give her my love.”

With that, she walked to her car, and I to mine.

I’m not a big fan of post-funeral parties, which is what a repast is. But I wanted to talk to Konrad Olsen. Back at the country club I found him sitting at a table with a bunch of friends. He introduced me to them. I had been right. They were rough-hewn New Jersey construction guys, looking uncomfortable in their suits. But Konrad was comfortable with them. Occasionally someone wandered over to offer a condolence, but the table wasn’t getting as much business as the buffet, which was undoubtedly fine with him. There had been a two-day wake for Elizabeth. He was probably sick of condolences and watching people peering into the casket surreptitiously looking for rope marks on his daughter’s neck. I asked him if we could speak privately. He motioned to a waiter.

“Bring me a double Johnny Walker Black on the rocks.”

He looked at me. I nodded.

“Make it two,” he said and took me by the arm and walked me over to the window overlooking the pool. We stood looking down at children frolicking in the water. “It goes so fast. I can remember standing right here looking at Elizabeth on the high board as a child. She was fearless.” His voice wavered. “So fast.”

I told him about the fingerprints. But I didn’t have the heart to mention the mechanics of hanging death or the inconvenient cremation, which for all I knew was going on as we spoke.

“It may mean nothing,” I said. “I’ve made phone calls but if there’s anything I’d probably only find it out face-to-face. I want to go to Georgia.”

Our drinks came. I thought it was a little early for a double scotch, until I started drinking it. Death does that.

“Alton, you don’t need my permission to do anything. But I appreciate the heads up. And I appreciate that you came to the funeral.”

“Mr. Olsen, is there anyone at your house right now?”

“Just Robert.”

“Your butler?”

“Yes, a few of the boys will come back to the house after this.” He indicated with a wave of his hand that he was talking about his cronies. “Old friends, you know?”

“Sure.”

“Robert is setting things up. In addition to his other talents, he’s a hell of a bartender. I expect we’ll keep him pretty busy. He’s an old friend, too, when you think about it. Why do you ask?”

“I’d like to go there now and talk to him. I haven’t had the chance. Can you call and tell him I’m coming?”

“Of course. You can take your time. I’ll be here a while”

He looked around the room.

“This sucks.”

I left my car in the club lot and walked toward the Olsen house. On the way a KrullCorp security car pulled up alongside me. It was Ricks.

“Hey, Mr. Rhode. Need a lift?’

I thought about what I wanted to do at Olsen’s house. The security cop could come in handy. I certainly didn’t want to ask the butler for help.

“Sure.”

On the drive over I asked him if he wouldn’t mind waiting a few minutes in the Olsen’s hallway while I spoke to the butler.

“Not a problem.”

We got out at the house and I rang.

“Very nice to see you again, Mr. Rhode,” Robert said after answering the door.

Butlers have to lie a lot.

“Do you mind if this officer waits for me inside? I have some questions for him.”

“Of course not, sir.”

Robert had his jacket off and was wearing a black apron. He asked me if I could conduct my interview in the kitchen so he could keep working. When we got there I leaned against a counter while he made sandwiches and filled a cooler with ice and beer.

I really didn’t have anything to ask him. He wasn’t the reason I was in the house. He’d been with the family for years and no one, myself included, seriously considered he was involved in any aspect of the case. Someday I hoped to solve a crime where the butler did it, but this wasn’t the one. But I went through the motions. He told me that he was shocked by Elizabeth’s death. She had not appeared despondent. On the contrary, she seemed girded for battle.

“Miss Olsen had a great deal of faith in you,” he said.

It was a faith, I could tell, that Robert didn’t share. Elizabeth died on one of his regular days off, and he felt guilty. There was nothing I could say to that. After I exhausted enough meaningless questions, I thanked him and told him to go about his business. I’d let myself out.

When I got to the front hallway, I pulled a tape measure out of my pocket and went to the spot where I had looked up at Elizabeth Olsen’s body. Again, I tried to reconstruct the scene in my mind, a task made easier by actually being there. Elizabeth’s dangling feet had been at my eye level. I asked Ricks to confirm my recollections. He did. We were about the same height, so I asked him to stand in the spot where we both remembered Elizabeth’s feet had been. Then I went up the stairs to the landing.

The rope around Elizabeth’s neck had been tied at the top of the banister between two supports. I measured the height of the banister. It was exactly three feet. I knew that she was not much taller than five-feet and weighed perhaps 100 pounds, maybe 110. I let the tape measure drop down to Ricks and told him to stop it at his eye level. I could do the exact math later, but factoring in Elizabeth’s height, it was obvious the plunge that supposedly broke her neck was only about three feet. I even considered the possibility that she’d sat on the top of the banister and slid off. That put the potential drop at six feet, at most. The other possibility was that she stood at the top of the banister and jumped. She would have had to be a Wallenda to do that on a rounded banister. I now had a working theory.

Elizabeth Olsen died of a broken neck. But she didn’t break it.

I really wished I had the rope and her body.

Outside I told Ricks that I didn’t want anyone knowing what we had just done.

“Not a problem.”

CHAPTER 21 – POSSUM HOUSE

“Your son told me that you were at a writers’ conference.”

Mimi Faulkner smiled, looking slightly embarrassed. I had flown to Savannah in the morning, rented a car and driven 40 miles due west on I-16 to Statesboro to look for information on Laura Lee Litton. I was surprised by the alacrity with which Mrs. Faulkner agreed to meet me for lunch, especially after initially telling me on the phone she didn’t think she could help me.

“Yes,” she said, as she took a ladylike forkful of her house salad. I’d already finished mine. “The Sewanee Writers’ Retreat at the University of the South in Tennessee. I’ve gone the last three years.”

She was a well-proportioned woman with jet black hair. I estimated she was in her mid-50’s, but like many Southern women, looked younger, no matter what the hair color. We had a corner table in the Possum House Inn, which looked like it had been around since the surrender at Appomattox. But if the delicious smells coming from the kitchen were any indication, the Possum House was going to be an improvement on the Taco Bells, Longhorn Steaks, Chili’s, Applebee’s, Pizza Huts, Shoney’s and Ruby Tuesdays that I passed driving into town. Statesboro, as I learned, was home to Georgia Southern University and the undiscriminating palates of 20,000 students during the school year.

“What do you write, Mrs. Faulkner?”

“Please call me Mimi. Some poetry and short stories. Now I am working on a novel.”

“Well, you have the right name for a novelist. What’s it about?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t like talking about my work. I know that sounds pretentious, but I don’t even discuss it with my husband or my children.”

“You don’t have to be defensive. The woman I’m seeing has written a novel and she won’t let me see it. I thought it might be easier to pry information out as our relationship progressed, but I think she’s even more reluctant now.”

Mimi Faulkner took a sip of the white wine she’d ordered. I had opted for a beer after our college-age waitress told me that the house wines, the only ones available, came in “red, white and pink, I think.”

“I imagine you’re pretty good at prying things out of people,” Mimi said, “but the fact is the closer we are to someone, the less we want them to see into our souls.” She laughed. “There I go again, sounding like an artiste. Truth is, if we get published and start making money, we don’t care who reads our stuff.”

“Well, let’s see how good I am at prying something out of you.”

She reached in her bag and took out a reporter’s notebook.

“Two can play that game. I have a small confession. One of the reasons I agreed to lunch was that I’ve never met a private detective and this is a chance for me to do some research. That’s one of the things they teach at the conference.”

“A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.”

“A private eye who quotes Eugene Ionesco. I’m impressed.”

“I told you, I’m dating a college professor who is also writer. She has that line taped to her computer screen.”

“So, you won’t mind if I pick your brains.”

“You’ll need a bigger notebook.” I said, dropping my voice.

She laughed.

“Jaws, right?”

Our meals came. Scrod for her, Brunswick stew, the “Specialty of the House,” for me. I typically go native when I’m eating in out-of-the-way towns, unless I see everyone walking around with rickets. The stew was basically a dark and very thick meat-based soup the consistency of oatmeal. There was already a basket of warm biscuits and corn bread on the table, now half full because I’d been working on them. But the waiter also brought me a plate of white bread with the stew. I must have looked confused because Mimi Faulkner said, “You’re supposed to put the stew on the white bread.”

“Tell me this isn’t possum meat,” I said, lifting a small chunk with my spoon.

“In the old days it might have been, or squirrel,” she laughed. “But, don’t worry, that won’t be anything but chicken, pork or beef, or a mixture of all of them. With okra, tomatoes, onions, potatoes and you name it.”

I smeared some of the mixture on the white bread. Not bad. I tried it on the corn bread and biscuits. Much better. I let Mimi pump me for private-eye tidbits, which she dutifully jotted down in her notebook. I played the charming, roguish Big Apple gumshoe and was particularly forthcoming, figuring that she would then be more inclined to spill the beans about Laura Lee Litton. We were occasionally interrupted as women, usually in pairs, stopped by to say hello to Mimi and check me out. I didn’t mind. I like Southern gals, of any age. I like the way they sound, the way they hold themselves and the way they look at you. They exude a sexy femininity that should be bottled. Mimi introduced me but didn’t go much beyond that.

When one pair walked away, she said, “My girlfriends will go crazy trying to figure out who you are. They’ll wonder if I’m cheating on Mike. That’s my husband.”

“Who would be crazy enough to cheat in a place called the Possum House?”

“I know. That’s delicious.”

“Why didn’t you tell them who I am?”

“A private detective?” She laughed. “Then they’d think it was Mike who was doing the cheating and I’m checking up on him.”

“A lot of that going on?”

“Are you serious? This is the South. We invented adultery. And a lot of other stuff. Why do you think some of our best writers come from here? There are more skeletons in Southern family closets than in the cemeteries.”

We ordered sweet potato pie for dessert, never a bad idea. Finally, over our second coffees, I got to ask some of my own questions.

“How well did you know Laura Lee Litton? Turn up any skeletons?”

“Is she really involved in a murder? Why aren’t the regular police involved?”

Mimi Faulkner was naturally sharp, with the added curiosity of a budding novelist. I wasn’t going to get anywhere by beating around the bush, so to speak, in the Possum House.

“Her prints turned up at a crime scene. The police aren’t interested because they think they already caught the killer, a woman who is conveniently dead. An apparent suicide. They are probably right, but the dead woman’s father hired me to clear her name, and the only clue, if I can call it that, are Laura Lee’s prints. The fact that she has a record for prostitution, albeit ancient history, is not that interesting. The murdered man had a reputation for screwing any woman not in an iron lung. I’d bet she wasn’t the only hooker he used. But Laura Lee has apparently disappeared from the face of the earth. That bothers me.”

Mimi Faulkner jotted down a few more notes and didn’t bat an eye. Perhaps life in a Southern town was as interesting as she suggested. She finally looked at me.

“I wasn’t sure how comfortable I’d feel talking about Laura Lee. I was her guidance counselor and there is the expectation, if not the legal obligation, of confidence in that relationship. But since you know about her prostitution, which is the worst I could have told you about her, I guess it doesn’t matter what else I tell you. And there isn’t much.”

***

The Litton family, Laura Lee and her parents, had rented a small two-bedroom cottage in what would have been a poor neighborhood, if it had been a neighborhood.

“It was basically just a collection of cabins on the outskirts of town,” Mimi Faulkner recalled. “Virgil Litton worked as an itinerant laborer, doing odd jobs for other folks. Laura Lee’s mother mostly stayed home, took in some laundry. They moved here from Alabama and put Laura Lee  in Statesboro High when she was a junior. It was tough on her, being uprooted like that, having to make new friends. That’s when I got to know her. She was lost. She had no real refuge at home. Her mother loved her and tried to protect her, but I’m pretty sure her father was abusive to both of them, although she never came right out and said it. He had a very bad reputation in town. He drank.”

Then Virgil disappeared. There was talk of some property missing from some of the houses he worked on as a handyman in the Irongate section of town, one of the newer neighborhoods springing up as Georgia Southern University expanded.

“I got the impression that the move from Alabama was also precipitated by a flight from the law. But this time Laura Lee and her mother didn’t run with him. And I don’t think they ever heard from the bastard again.”

The two women survived alone. Laura Lee got a part-time job in a restaurant and her mother took in more laundry and babysat.

“Mrs. Litton doted on her daughter. Whatever spare money they had went to Laura Lee’s clothes and to dance class. Apparently that had been her mother’s dream and she passed it on to Laura Lee. And she was a wonderful dancer. She was always clean and well-dressed and was soon recognized as one of the prettiest girls in high school. Auburn hair down to her shoulders. She was very proud of her hair.”

“Was she popular?”

“With the boys,” Mimi Faulkner said. “A lot of the girls looked down on her. At that age they can be cliquish. She was from Alabama, remember. Despite her beauty and dancing talents, she wasn’t selected for the cheerleading squad. She closed down even more after that. The boys, however, saw her physical attributes only too well. And given her sense of not belonging, her loneliness as an outsider, she used sex to win acceptance.”

“A lot of girls her age do that.”

“But most don’t look like Laura Lee did.”

“How promiscuous was she?”

“She was what we delicate Southerners call the ‘town pump’.”

“When did she start hooking?”

“Senior year. She had plans to go to Georgia Southern. I helped her get in. Despite everything, she was a good student. The university is an athletic powerhouse and has a nationally famous dance team called the Southern Explosion. Like everyone in town she’d been to the school’s football and basketball games and seen them perform. She had her heart set on going out for the team. And she might have made it.”

“How could she afford college?”

“Georgia Southern is a state school. In-state tuition for her would have been about $5,000 a year. And a partial scholarship took care of half of that. It would have been tight, but with both her and her mother working, it was doable. But then her momma got sick. Cancer. No medical insurance, of course. College was out and they needed money. There was only one way that Laura Lee knew how to get a lot of it.”

“How did you find all this out?”

“Her sex life aside, Laura Lee was one of my success stories. When she quit school, I went to see her. She told me she was selling her body. Not locally, because it would have killed her mother if she found out. So she went down to Fort Stewart and worked the bars near the base. I told her that we would figure out another way. But she was arrested before I could do anything. And she was right. It did kill her mother. After the funeral, Laura Lee disappeared. That was, I’d say, 14 or 15 years ago.”

That would make Laura Lee Litton around 33 or 34 now.

“Do you think I might have another glass of wine?”

“After that story,” I said, “I think I’ll join you.”

“I told you Southerners have a lot to write about.”

I called our waitress over. I opted for the “red.”

“And you never heard from Laura Lee again?”

Mimi smiled and reached for her bag.

“I debated showing this to you. But I can’t see the harm.”

CHAPTER 22 – THE LETTER

She passed across an envelope. Both it and the note inside had the distinctive Cartier imprint. There was also a tattered black-and-white photo of a thin, seemingly malnourished, young girl wearing a dirty, torn dress. The child, about 10, was barefoot. She had close-cropped dark hair and eyes set wide apart. There was a bitter but defiant look on her face. But it was a face that, despite its underlying conflicts, had the potential for beauty. I read the note; its penmanship was exquisite.

“Dear Mrs. Faulkner,

I never forgot the kindness you showed me, particularly after my mother’s death.

I know I was a disappointment to you, after all the trouble you went through to get me into college. It just wasn’t meant to be.

Your support and understanding after my ‘indiscretions’ – that’s what you so delicately called them – made me realize that I should do something with my life. I just couldn’t do it in Statesboro, or anywhere in the South. Too many bad memories.

But you’re not one of them! I just wanted to tell you that I’m doing well. I earned my high school diploma and have even taken some college courses. I’ve got a job waitressing at a good restaurant. The tips are incredible and I have plenty of time to pursue you know what – dancing! I have enough classes now so that next year I can apply to the Gotham Theatre of Dance. You must have heard about it. It’s simply the best dance school in the country and my friends all tell me I’m sure to get in. Yes, I have friends! I’m splitting the rent with three other girls, also Broadway stars in waiting! And, like me, waitresses. Sometimes I think that if it wasn’t for us girls (and guys) trying to break into show business, there wouldn’t be anybody waiting tables in New York!

I hope you and yours are all well. I will never, ever forget you. And don’t worry about me!

Love,

Laura Lee

PS: This may be the last time I sign my name Laura Lee. I’ve changed my name. Don’t be angry, but I’m not telling anyone what it is. My old life is ‘gone with the wind.’ As a Southerner, I know you understand.”

There was no return address on the envelope, just a Brooklyn postmark dated six years earlier. I held up the photo.

“Laura Lee?”

“Yes. She didn’t look anything like that in high school, but those are her eyes. When she disappeared I went back to her house. It was empty, stripped clean, really. The landlord left a box with trash to be thrown out. On top were some novels. Nothing special but I can’t abide the destruction of literature. So I took them. That photo was stuck between the pages of one of the books. I’d bet the novel belonged to Laura Lee’s mom. The picture was so striking I just had to keep it. It’s like something out of Dickens. I don’t know what Laura Lee is now, but she came from the abyss. That letter is the last I heard from her. Just reading it now breaks my heart. From what you told me, I guess it didn’t work out for her. She went back to prostitution.”

“Not necessarily. She apparently hasn’t been fingerprinted since she was Laura Lee. Even if she is still a working girl, she may be working for a high-end escort service that keeps its girls out of trouble.”

Our wines came. I tasted mine. It would have gone perfectly with the Brunswick stew. Or road kill.

“And there is another possibility,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“She’s not a hooker anymore. Just a bored housewife on Staten Island having an affair.”

“Either way, it’s a long way from Broadway. And you think she may be involved in a murder.”

“I think I have to find her.”

“How on earth will you do that?”

“I’m hoping she got into that dance school she mentioned in her letter. They could have some sort of record. Even if she didn’t make it, there may be an application.”

“But you don’t have a name. Wouldn’t she use her new stage name?”

“Not on the application necessarily. It’s obvious she didn’t want her old acquaintances tracking her down. But she might not care if the people in New York knew her real name at the beginning, especially if she was looking to get into a school or needed a job. After a while, her stage name would just take over.”

Mimi Faulkner looked doubtful.

“You’ll be trying to find a needle in a haystack. I’ve been to New York a few times. I can’t believe how many people live there. I get lost going around the block.”

“I’ve had pretty good luck with haystacks recently. And I don’t have much choice. It would help if I had a photo of Laura Lee. There must be one in the school yearbook. And if any of her friends are still around, I’d like to talk to them. She might have kept in touch. It’s hard to cut all ties, no matter what she wrote to you.”

Before I left New York I’d checked online to see if the Statesboro High School yearbooks were on Classmates.com or any other websites devoted to America’s apparently insatiable appetite for nostalgia. There were only three Statesboro yearbooks online: 1950, 1953 and 1972.

Mimi shook her head.

“Laura Lee wouldn’t be in any graduate photos. And she didn’t have any close girl friends that I know of. I told you, a lot of the girls barely tolerated her.”

“What about a boyfriend?”

“She had a lot of boyfriends, of the under-the-bleachers variety.”

“Other pictures? The yearbook would contain a lot of photos, from clubs, activities and such. She may be in one of those. Can you get it for me, Mimi?”

“I’ll try. The school is closed, of course, but I know the librarian. I’ll give her a call. But I doubt if there are any pictures with Laura Lee in them. She was only in the school a year and a half or so.”

I gave her my cell number.

“While you’re at it, could you find out what photography studio took the yearbook photos. She may have been there long enough for them to take one, even if it wasn’t used. The studio may have negatives.”

“God, you are thorough.” She jotted down something in her notebook, which she had filled up during our lunch. “I have to use this stuff in one of my books.”

At that point one of the women who had stopped by earlier passed us on her way out.

“My word, Mimi,” she said. “What are you scribblin’ down so enthusiastically?”

“Sex tips,” I said.

The woman looked startled and Mimi flushed, then they both laughed.

“Well, darlin’,” the woman said, looking at me, “I’m free for lunch, anytime.”

Outside on the verandah, Mimi promised to call as soon as she heard anything.

“Sex tips,” she said. “You are a hoot.”

Following her directions, I hooted over to the Bulloch County Sheriff’s Office, which was in a two-story red brick building just off the town square. I parked my rental near a statue of a Confederate soldier that was apparently a favorite with local birds. Sic transit gloria mundi. Inside the sheriff’s department, which looked like just about every police station I’d ever been in, I spoke to the same deputy who had tried to be so helpful on the phone earlier. The door to the sheriff’s office was closed. A sign next to it on the wall said “Burton R. Blossom, Sheriff.”

“My, but you’re serious about this, aren’t you,” she said. “Comin’ all the way here. You been a cop?”

“I’ve been just about everything, sweetheart,” I said, using my best W.C. Fields accent.

“You’ve never been an actor,” she said. “Your W.C. needs a lot of work. Sheriff Blossom is over at Lulu’s, coffee shop across the square. You just missed him. He’ll be a while. You might want to just go over there.”

“I don’t want to disturb him on his break.”

“It’s no break. He goes there to be disturbed. Meet and greet, pick up on gossip. Besides, if you bug him, you’ll know it soon enough.”

I thanked her and walked across the square. Lulu’s stood out, since it was one of the few establishments that seemed to be doing much business. There were “Vacant,” Going Out of Business Sale” and “For Lease” signs in every third storefront window.

CHAPTER 23 – SAUSAGE BISCUITS

Sheriff Blossom also stood out. He was big and square in a linebacker sort of way and filled out his uniform impressively. And he was the only African-American in the joint. He was sitting at a table with two white men in overalls. They, and everyone in the place, looked at me with suspicion when I walked in. I wanted to tell them that I had nothing to do with the bird crap on the statue. Instead I went over to the sheriff and introduced myself.

“Give me a minute,” he said.

I went to the counter and ordered a cup of coffee. The men at Blossom’s table got up and left and he waved me over.

“Sit,” he said. “Let me see your I.D.”

I took my license out of my wallet and showed him.

“Holy Cow! A real New York City private dee-teck-tive. My deputy told me about your call. Now you’re down here in the flesh. Just what I need. A Yankee hotshot muckin’ around askin’ a lot of questions.”

I laughed out loud.

“What’s so damn humorous, gumshoe?”

“Jesus Christ, Blossom. You sound like Bull Connor. You’re black, for crissakes!”

“My, you really are a detective.” He smiled. “Hey, I’m just funnin’ with you. Want a sausage biscuit?”

I had tried, with little success, not to notice the basket of biscuits on the table.

“Thanks. But I just had lunch.”

“What the hell does that have to do with Lulu’s sausage biscuits?”

“Good point,” I said, picking up a biscuit. “I think the Brunswick stew missed an artery.”

We both ordered more coffee and felt each other out for a bit. I commented on the pearl-handled revolver in his hand-stitched leather holster.

“Not regulation, but since I write the regulations I sometimes make an exception. What are you carrying there, on your right hip, under your jacket?”

Man had sharp eyes. I never saw him look.

“Taurus, .38, five- shot.”

“Georgia isn’t reciprocal with New York for concealed weapons.”

“You going to arrest me?’

“You going to shoot anyone?”

“Other than whoever made these sausages?”

“Yeah.”

“Not planning to. I might have trouble finding anyone else to shoot around here. What’s the story on downtown? This place looks to be one of the only going concerns.”

“Statesboro used to be a sleepy little place. Then the college expanded. Became a Division II football powerhouse. Give Florida State a run for their money every year. Beat Villanova for the Division II national championship last year.”

“You look like you played. Middle linebacker?”

“Outside right.” I still had it. “We played a three-four. Anyway, population exploded and they put in the goddamn bypass. Sucked everything toward the school and the restaurants the kids use. Killed downtown. There was even talk of a new civic center near the college, new sheriff’s office, too. Kind of died down in this recession, but it’ll happen eventually.”

“How long have you been sheriff?’

“Goin’ on 15 years in the department. Started as a deputy, of course, got elected first time five years ago. Just got reelected.”

“Not bad.”

“You’re wondering how does a black guy like me become the law in a town like this.”

“I was.”

“You Yankees kill me. Hell, I was born here. Local boy makes good. The football and my degree didn’t hurt in gettin’ elected, I’ll tell you. But my family knew everyone anyway, white and black. My daddy ran a restaurant on West Jones Avenue that served the best barbecue in the county. Hell, I get more votes from the native white folks here than from the newcomers who moved down here to work in the university and the factories we stole from up north. Non-union, you know. It’s the Northerners who harbor prejudices. You won’t catch any of those liberal college professors eatin’ sausage biscuits here at Lulu’s.”

“A pity,” I said.

Blossom nodded.

“Betty says she told you over the phone all we know about this girl you’re lookin’ for.”

“Which was pretty much nothing,” I said.

“So why are you down here.”

I held up a biscuit.

“Local cuisine.”

Blossom laughed.

“Sure. So what’s the real reason.”

I saw no harm in telling him about the case, or whatever the hell it was. He was no shit- kicker cop. Around town as long as he was, he might know something useful.

“Man, you are a piece of work,” he said when I finished. “That’s the goddamnist thing I ever heard. What are you people up there on Long Island smokin’?”

“Staten Island.”

“Whatever. You all must be nuttier than a Claxton fruitcake.”

“So, what can you do for me?”

“Nothing much. I was around here back then, of course. All the black folks knew the old man, Virgil Litton. Real piece of crap. Racist bastard. We’ve been politically correct for years but Virgil still used ‘nigger’ as a noun, verb and adjective, sometimes all in the same sentence. Was drunk a lot, except when he was drunker. Suspected of stealing from homes he worked in. Nobody cried when he left town, includin’ his wife and kid. There was some talk of abuse, but no charges were ever filed. They were probably afraid. Heard they were decent people.”

“One of the teachers at the high school called them white trash.”

Blossom shook his head.

“Guilt by association. Plus, you got an element in town that looks down on anybody without a big lawn. Much different where you live?”

“No.”

Blossom stood. So did I.

“I don’t like your chances, Rhode. But I do like your perseverance. Let’s go over to the City Hall. I’ll tell the clerks you’re helpin’ me out on a case. I don’t think there’s anythin’ to find, but it will make it easier not to find it.”

As Sheriff Blossom predicted, the records at City Hall proved virtually worthless. I probably could have traced some Statesboro families back to their slaveholding days, but the Littons were itinerants, and after she left Laura Lee had covered her tracks like a mole in a John le Carré spy novel. Her parents had been renters and a check of legal judgments from the period showed that when Laura Lee’s father was handling the finances he’d been taken to court numerous times for stiffing various landlords. Once he was out of the picture, Laura Lee and her mom somehow scraped by. Blossom’s recommendation gave me the run of the place, so I even redid my earlier Internet search, using City Hall computers. All I confirmed was that there are thousands of people named Litton in the United States. And none of them were named Laura Lee or Virgil. I found the names of people who lived on Porcupine Road at the same time as the Littons, but none of them still lived in Statesboro.

I spent the night at a Holiday Inn Express and much of the next day trying to find anyone who remembered the family. No one did. I might have had some luck if there were people still living in their old neighborhood, but their old neighborhood was now a six-lane highway.

Mimi Faulkner called me. She said she hadn’t yet found anyone to let her into the high school to look at yearbooks. But she gave me the name and location of the photography studio that took the photos. It was in a mall next to a Food Lion. I had high hopes, which were soon dashed.

“I bought the business three years ago,” the owner said. “Worst mistake of my life.”

A woman sorting envelopes at the counter looked over and said, “You got that right.” She had to be his wife.

“Everything is digital now,” the man said. “We sent out letters to everyone in the files asking if they wanted to buy the old school shots. Thought I’d make a little money.”

The woman said, “Brilliant.”

He ignored her.

“But hardly anyone responded,” he said. “Everyone’s got 12-megabit cameras now, minimum. And the newest cell phones take better pictures than some of the old SLR’s. People have more photos of themselves and their kids than they know what to do with. So I threw all the extra photos out. Took up too much room.”

I heard the woman grunt. It’s not a womanly sound.

“Maybe you can sell him some empty space,” she said. “We’re havin’ a special this week.”

It seemed like an opportune time to leave, so I did. It also seemed like I had used up all my haystack luck in my previous case. I called Mimi Faulkner back and told her I’d struck out and was heading home. She said she’d call me if she found anything. I drove to Savannah and caught a late flight. Unless I got lucky with the dance school lead or the yearbook, I would tell Konrad Olsen there wasn’t anything else I could do.

I wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.

CHAPTER 24 – BREAK A LEG

The Gotham Theatre of Dance is located in a six-story building on West 53rd Street in the Clinton section of Manhattan, appropriately close to the Broadway shows to which most of its students presumably aspire. The Gotham itself occupies the top two floors of the building. I arrived at 9 A.M. sharp and the place was humming with activity. There were four large studios and all were filled with young dancers, mostly women, with a smattering of men. I assumed the classes would thin out as the lunch hour approached and the hopefuls scattered to their day jobs serving tables. Then the studios would slowly refill in the afternoon before emptying again for the dinner hours.

I paused before one glass-enclosed studio. With a few exceptions the dancers in it were tall, athletic and leggy. The women filled out their colorful leotards and shorts nicely as they danced, stretched or exercised. I wondered how long it would be before my raw animal magnetism disrupted the class and I was mobbed. None of the women appeared to notice me, but a couple of the men smiled. I moved on.

I found the Gotham’s administrative office. In the reception area a middle-aged woman with beady eyes and white hair cropped so severely it could have been a helmet looked up from her desk without smiling. I felt like saluting but instead asked to see whoever was in charge.

“Why?”

Her voice matched her appearance; it sounded like a dueling banjo.

“I want to take a class. I’m auditioning as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman and have to practice my tap.”

“Death of a Salesman isn’t a musical.”

“It’s not? I’m going to kill my agent.”

If anything, her lack of a smile became more pronounced. She squinted at me. Being surrounded by hundreds of women – hell, men – who were better looking then she was undoubtedly made her bitter.

“I don’t have time for this. And Mr. Darragh is very busy. So, why don’t you buzz off?”

The door behind her was closed. I could hear a woman’s laughter.

I took out one of my cards and dropped it in front of her.

“Listen, Nurse Ratchet. I’m a private cop investigating a homicide. Tell Mr. Darragh to speed  up the blow job he’s getting from that ingénue in there. I haven’t got all day.”

“Well, I never!”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

I plopped down in a chair next to the wall and picked up a copy of Variety. She sputtered for a moment and then picked up the phone. A few minutes later the door opened. A tall man in a three-piece suit ushered a pretty young thing out. She turned and pecked him on the cheek.

“So long, Irma,” the girl said to the wardress at the desk. As she breezed passed me she gave me a thousand-watt smile.

“Break a leg,” I said.

“Come on in,” the man said to me.

I didn’t look at “Irma” as I followed him through the door.

“Barry Darragh,” the man said as we shook. “Pull up a chair.”

“Nice looking girl,” I said, handing him my card.

“Thank you. Takes after her mother.”

“Her mother?”

The guy was a real pervert.

“Yes, that was Stephanie. My oldest. In for the summer. She goes to Wellesley.”

There was a picture on the bureau behind his desk. A woman and three daughters, all in similar blue dresses sitting on a beach, obviously professionally posed. Stephanie was clearly visible. Nice going, Rhode.

“Lovely family,” I said lamely, nodding at the photo.

He smiled, studying my card.

“You have more identification than this? Anyone can gin up a card.”

I took out my wallet and showed him my license. He nodded.

“So, what’s this about a homicide?”

“I’m trying to find a girl, a woman now, who may have attended, or at least applied, here five or six years ago. Her name was Laura Lee Litton and she came from Statesboro, Georgia.”

“She the one murdered?”

“No. But she may have information about the case.”

“What makes you to think we had her?”

“She wrote a letter to her high school guidance counselor saying she hoped to be accepted here.”

“You have a photo?”

“I was hoping you’d have one.”

“We don’t keep individual photos. But let me check our files. Spell her last name.”

I did and Darragh twirled his computer monitor toward him and started working his keyboard.

“We only put our files on computer last year,” he said. “Or I should say, Irma did. She’s a whiz. OK. Here we go. No, no Laura Lee Litton either applied or attended Gotham. Got an address? I can cross check.”

“Only the one in Statesboro.” I gave it to him. “But I doubt she used it. She moved up here.”

He checked anyway.

“Nope. Strike two.”

“I can give you a description.”

Darragh laughed.

“Let me guess. Five-foot-nine, maybe ten. Legs to die for. Blonde and beautiful.”

“Red-head, actually. More auburn.”

“Well, my friend, that narrows it down to a few hundred dancers, out of a few thousand. For God’s sake, they’re all beautiful. I’m afraid you’ve struck out. Wait, there’s one other thing.” He picked up his phone. “Irma, I need you for a second.”

Irma the Whiz came in and gave me a look somewhere near absolute zero.

“Do you recall a girl named Laura Lee Litton, from Georgia. Red head. Few years back.”

I didn’t expect Irma to help me even if she was Laura Lee’s landlady. But she surprised me.

“Yes. She was with us one year. Nice girl. Always polite.” When she said “polite” Irma stared at me. I wanted to ask her if her last name was Bunt, but I had lost the high ground with her so I kept my mouth shut. I probably should do that more often.

“Why can’t I find her in the computer?”

“She changed her name after a few months and asked me to put her new one in the file. Look under Sharon Starr, with two r’s.”

“Sharon Starr. That’s rich. Don’t know why we need computers when we have Irma, right Rhode?”

“She’s a whiz, all right,” I said and smiled pleasantly at Irma, who still looked like she wanted to disembowel me.

“Yup. Here she is. Sharon Starr, 221 West 81st Street, Apartment 4E. Don’t know if she’s still there, of course.”

I looked at Irma.

“Would you happen to know if any of your current students knew her? Maybe still do?”

“No.”

“Do you know what happened to her?”

Irma looked like she swallowed an armadillo.

“No.” She looked at Darragh. “Is that all?”

“Just a second,” I said. “Isn’t there some sort of database for talent?”

“There are several,” Darragh said. “Actors Equity, the union, has the most extensive. And we subscribe to several that keep track of dancers.”

“Would Sharon Starr be in one of them?”

“Perhaps, if she got a card, or landed a couple of dance gigs and was working professionally.”

I knew there was a chance Laura Lee was a professional, but not the kind Darragh was talking about. Cormac had already checked the records for that kind of working girl.

“Tell you what,” Darragh continued, “Irma can check for you easy enough. Right, Irma?”

Irma looked like she would rather have a colonoscopy performed by Stevie Wonder. But she went to her computer. Darragh and I were discussing the shortcomings of the Knicks front office when she returned 10 minutes later.

“There is no Sharon Starr, either in Actors Equity or any of the major databases,” she said. “If she’s working as an actor or dancer, she probably changed her name again.”

“Too bad there’s not a waitress union,” Darragh said.

“And there is no Sharon Starr currently living in New York City,” Irma continued in a monotone. “There is one in Altamont, up near Albany, and three in Texas. According to the search engine, the youngest of those is 52.”

“See, I told you Irma was a whiz.”

“I just want him to leave,” Irma said.

She turned on her heels and walked out.

“Irma can be high-strung,” Darragh said, “but I’d be lost without her. After a while she grows on you.”

A few other things that grew on people came to mind, but I kept my trap shut. Darragh printed out the file for Sharon Starr, which contained little more than her address, phone number and record of classes she attended. There was a line for “Instructor” and the initials T.D.

“It seems she had the same instructor for every class,” I said. “Is he, or she, still around? They may have kept in touch.”

Darragh shook his head.

“That was Tommy Dunne. He handled a lot of the group classes, which are more economical for someone just starting out. But he’s dead. A.I.D.S.”

“I thought they had that under control with maintenance drugs.”

“Mostly, they do. But Tommy was almost 60. He fought it a long time and had some other problems. We kept him on when nobody else would have him. The group sessions were easy on him. Great guy. Fine dancer.”

And that was that. I thanked Darragh. As I walked passed Irma’s desk, she said, “Mr. Rhode?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you a fucking fool?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t want to call the phone number Darragh gave me in case “Sharon Starr” was still there. No use in spooking her, if she had any reason to be spooked. I took a cab to the address on 81st Street. The name above the buzzer for 4E in the doorway was “Kahananoku,” which barely fit on the slip and sounded Hawaiian. That wasn’t promising. But maybe it was a roommate who danced the hula. In any event, no one answered. I buzzed the super. He came to the door and we stood outside on the stoop. He was a short, tough-looking Puerto Rican guy. I hoped he spoke English. My Spanish is worse than my W.C. Fields.

“Three guys live in 4E now,” he said in perfect English. “They work at the museum.” I knew he was talking about the nearby Museum of Natural History. He sounded like a Princeton don. I was getting a lot of lessons in not judging a book by its cover. “Nice guys. Straight, too. Give me a little girl trouble now and then, but I was young once so I can deal with it. I remember Sharon. Real sweetheart. Lived with a couple of other girls. All quiet kids and all very pretty, but she was a real knockout. She OK?”

“As far as I know.” It was sort of true. “I’m hoping she knows something that can help a client of mine in a domestic dispute.”

The outer door to the building opened and we stepped aside as a young man wearing a black speedo and a neon tank top clopped by us in high heels. He and the super exchanged greetings. When the inner door closed, the super said, “He’s not straight.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“How did you trace Sharon here?”

“Her dance school.”

“Oh yeah, the Gotham. She was real proud of that. So you know all about her dancing.”

“Yeah. She leave a forwarding address or anything?”

“No. She left before the other girls did. Her name wasn’t even on the mailbox. I don’t think she ever got any mail. She just chipped in for the rent. I didn’t ask any questions. Neither did the landlord. When you get good tenants and they put someone on a pullout couch, who cares?” He smiled, man-to-man. “Especially if they’re beautiful.”

“Was Sharon close to any of her neighbors in the building?”

He considered that.

“The girls were all friendly and popular, but I don’t recall Sharon being especially close to anyone. ‘Hello, how are you doing,’ that kind of thing. Helped old ladies with their packages. She was good that way. Only a few of the residents from her time are still living here anymore. We have a big turnover, students, actors and such.”

“How many apartments are occupied here now?”

He laughed.

“All of them. This is New York. But if you want to know how many doors you have to knock on, the total is 24, or 23, since I live here and you already asked me. Hardly anyone is home right now, so you’d have better luck at night.”

“You don’t have a problem with me doing all that?”

“Hey, it’s your job right? Just check in with me if you come back. OK?”

I weighed the possibilities of actually finding someone who remembered Sharon Starr, let alone kept in touch, against the thought of going to lunch to think about it. Lunch, as usual, won out. I  gave the super my card and told him to call if he thought of anything else in the meantime.

I was standing at the curb trying unsuccessfully to spot a cab when I got a call on my cell phone. It was Mimi Faulkner.

“I went through the yearbooks that might have contained some photos of Laura Lee,” she said. “But there weren’t any. She just wasn’t a joiner. I’m sorry. Are you having any luck?”

“Not much. I found out she changed her name to Sharon Starr, with two r’s. But there is no one by that name listed in the theatrical databases. I’ll widen my search but she may have changed her name again.”

I thanked Mimi for all her efforts.

“It was my pleasure, Alton. My reputation is in tatters and I love it. If you ever get down this way, I hope you will let me know.”

I had resumed my cab quest when the super from Laura Lee’s old apartment opened the door.

“Hey, Mr. Rhode. I’m glad you’re still here. Do me a favor. If you find Sharon, tell her I said hello, will you?”

“Sure,” I said.

“You’ll never get a cab there. Go up to Columbus.”

I waved and took his advice. I’d only gone a few feet when he yelled after me.

“And tell Sharon my kids really enjoyed the Christmas show.”

I stopped and walked back to him.

“What Christmas show?”

“Radio City Music Hall. We go every year. Sharon was one of the Rockettes. Said it was her dream come true. The girls had a little party to celebrate. Even invited me. We were all so happy for her. I tried to see her after the performance but it was a madhouse and my little one was acting up. But Sharon was really good. Boy, can those Rockettes kick!”

“Sharon Starr is a Rockette?”

“Not anymore. We go every year and that was the only time I’ve seen her.”

“Why didn’t you mention that before?”

“I don’t know. I guess I assumed you knew, since you knew about her dancing. Is it important?”

A half-formed but sinister thought was playing ping pong in my brain.

“God, I hope not.”

CHAPTER 25 – LOVE AND MARRIAGE

A cab wouldn’t cut it. I needed to think and walking was better for that. Sitting in a bar would be even better. I needed all the thinking I could get. Solution: I would walk to a bar near Radio City Music Hall at Rockefeller Center.

It simply wasn’t possible. Laura Lee Litton’s fingerprints were all over John Denton’s favorite “sex chair.” Laura Lee changed her name to Sharon Starr, who was, or had been, a Rockette. She was a redhead. She was in her early 30’s.

The Staten Island District Attorney’s wife was named Sharon. She was in her early 30’s. She had red hair. And she had been a Rockette. The only thing she didn’t have was a Southern accent but I’d wager a million Confederate bonds that Laura Lee would have ditched her accent or any ties to her cornpone background. The handwriting on her note to Mimi Faulkner hinted at some sort of post-Statesboro, post-hooker training, which probably included elocution lessons.

Still, it had to be a huge coincidence. There was more than one redheaded Rockette in the world. Maybe “my” Sharon even knew the “other” Sharon and could help me out. Detectives and cops are always saying that they don’t like coincidences. Hell, the world is full of coincidences. History is replete with scientists, some on different continents, simultaneously coming up with the exact same theories.  Alexander Graham Bell is credited with inventing the telephone, but Antonio Meucci came up with the idea at about the same time. I knew that because Meucci tested his device on Staten Island of all places. Yeah, it had to be a coincidence.

I don’t like coincidences.

OK. So what if Sharon Sullivan turns out to be Laura Lee Litton? Big deal. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that the Sullivans had been guests in Denton’s house. The dead banker had been a political animal and a power broker. Even though he was a prosecutor, Mike Sullivan kowtowed to people like Denton to get elected. That was it. At worst, Sharon Sullivan was just a reformed hooker and a dutiful wife who sponsored children’s charities. It didn’t mean she was bonking Denton’s brains out.  She just had probably helped move some furniture around in Denton’s den, including the Eames recliner and ottoman, for a fundraiser. Really kind of admirable when you thought about it. The super said she helped old ladies with the groceries. Abused kid, whore, Rockette, wife, pillar of the community. A wonderful tale of redemption.

Deep in thought, I was crossing a street against the light at 59th Street and narrowly missed being creamed by a Lincoln Town Car, whose blaring horn shocked me out of my reverie and brought me back to earth. I waved an apology and continued walking down Columbus.

Moving fucking furniture?

***

The most wonderful tavern in the world used to be at 49th Street and the Avenue of the Americas, which is really Sixth Avenue because it is between Fifth and Seventh Avenues. But that’s something probably not worth worrying about. The tavern was Hurley’s and stood on that corner of Rockefeller Center from 1870 until 1999 as a monument to fighting City Hall, or in its case, the Rockefellers, same thing. When the richest family in America wanted to build Rockefeller Center, and bought up all the other businesses on the property, the owners of the three-story building that housed the bar were the sole holdouts. Rock Center was constructed around the old building and Hurley’s became a much-beloved institution and a hangout for NBC stars and other celebrities. But in keeping with its “up yours” history, the tavern, which had a terrific restaurant upstairs, wasn’t pretentious. I had been taken there as a kid and years later the bartenders and maitre d’ all remembered me, as they did everyone. I always had rhubarb pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert. Alas, the lease finally lapsed and the location now houses a gourmet food store.

I needed a stiff bourbon more than foie gras but that could wait. I went over to the Radio City Music Hall box office and asked a clerk to direct me to the Rockette offices.

“There are no shows until next month,” she said.

“I just want to speak to someone in administration.”

“They are very busy. They’re having their summer tryouts.”

Remembering my morning skirmish with Irma the Whiz, I restrained myself from making a wiseass remark. I merely flipped out my identification and closed it quickly.

“It’s police business.”

Almost true, and if Sharon Sullivan was Laura Lee Litton, probably more than that. The flip ploy doesn’t always work, but this time it did. Five minutes later I was talking to Lisa Ostermann, the no-nonsense director of the Rockettes.

“I understand you want to know about one of my girls,” she said, handing me back the identification she’d asked to see. “Is there a problem?”

We were standing in front of the massive Radio City Music Hall stage, where perhaps 60 girls and women, in small groups, were going through various dances and routines. All were lithe and attractive and I would have been less distracted interviewing someone while being water boarded. It helped that Ostermann stood facing the stage. With my back to all the feminine pulchritude I was able to soldier on.

“She’s probably not a Rockette, now. Her name is, or was, Sharon Starr. I’m just trying to locate her.”

The tapping and shuffling behind me was continuous, punctuated by shouted commands from instructors. There was no music. Lisa Ostermann looked at me coldly

“They told me that you claimed to be a police officer. But you are really a private investigator. You misrepresented yourself. Isn’t that illegal?”

“I never said I was a cop. The young lady must have misunderstood.”

I was treading on thin ice. This was a tough, savvy woman responsible for choosing who among thousands of talented and driven hopefuls each year would join one of the most professional and famous dance troupes in the world. Judging character was probably as important as judging beauty and form. It was obvious she found my verbal tap dance somewhat lacking.

“Frank, switch the first two lines,” she said in a loud voice over my shoulder. “And pick up the tempo. This is an audition, not Dancing With the Stars.” Her gaze shifted back to me. “Is Sharon in some kind of trouble?”

So, she did know her.

“I hope not.” Which was the truth. “She may have important information in a case I’m working on.”

“How did you find out she was a Rockette?”

I told her, leaving out everything before my visit to the Gotham Theatre of Dance.

“Luckily, her old super remembered. There was no Sharon Starr listed anywhere. Isn’t that unusual for a Rockette?”

“Sharon changed her name. We all thought it was too, what’s the word, contrived. Rockettes are supposed to be regular girls, you know. Even though we know they are very special. Her stage name here was Sharon Lee.”

I tried to recall Sharon Sullivan’s “maiden” name, but couldn’t. I was still rooting for a coincidence.

“Sharon was a good dancer. Not great, mind you. But one of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen them all. Driven. Which was why I was surprised she left us to get married.”

“Why? That must happen a lot. After all, your dancers are all beautiful women.”

“Oh, you’ve noticed. You really are a detective. Listen, to become a Rockette you have to have at least five years’ experience as a dancer and be proficient in tap, jazz and ballet. Our dancers often stay with us 10, 20 years. But Sharon met this man and fell in love. I tried to talk her into staying. Not that I’m against love and marriage. Far from it. Many of our girls raise families and remain Rockettes. But she was adamant. I think the only thing she wanted more than dancing was a stable relationship and she put her husband’s career ahead of her own. She never really talked much about her life, but I can tell when one of my girls has had an unhappy childhood. I think she needed a father figure.”

I could sense where this was going.

“She married an older man?”

Just then a large tour group walked down one of the aisles and stopped behind us.

“Excuse me,” Ostermann said.

She walked over to the group and was introduced by its guide, a young man wearing a maroon Radio City Music Hall blazer. She spent a few minutes talking to the group, explaining the history of the Rockettes and the mechanics of the audition. It was obviously a speech she made hundreds of times. Then the tourists were allowed to snap pictures of the dancers, who never paused in their workouts. After ten minutes the guide ushered his charges back up the aisle and Ostermann came over to me.

“Sorry about that. Where were we?”

“Sharon’s older husband.”

“Right. I never met him. Sharon invited me to the wedding, which was very nice of her. But we were on the road at the time. Russia, I think. Otherwise I would certainly have gone. Would you believe I’ve never been to Staten Island.”

“Staten Island?”

I don’t even know why I said it. I was on autopilot by then.

“Yes, she married the District Attorney out there, or whatever they call him. I get a Christmas card from them every year. Maybe I’ll take a trip to see her at that. Hell, I go all over the world and I’ve never been to, what do they call it, the forgotten borough. Anyway, that’s where she is. I’m sure you can reach her through her husband’s office. Which is probably what you should do if there are legal issues involved. But I imagine they won’t be too happy with you snooping around Sharon Sullivan. That’s her married name, by the way.”

I don’t think I’ve ever been so grateful that my private investigator’s license didn’t list my business address. I don’t know what I would have said if Lisa Ostermann had asked me why a Staten Island detective was having a hard time finding the Staten Island District Attorney’s wife.

“Anything else?”

“One more thing. Where do people go for a drink around here now that Hurley’s is closed?”

She looked sad.

“Try the Pig ‘N’ Whistle on 48th, between Fifth and Sixth.” She actually said ‘Sixth.’ “It’s pretty good, gets some of the old crowd. But it’s not the same.”

“Thanks.” I turned to leave, then said. “I don’t suppose any of these girls will be doing a kick line anytime soon.”

She smiled.

“Not today. I bet you came here as a kid. Sorry, it’s like Hurley’s. You can’t go back.”

The Pig ‘N’ Whistle was no Hurley’s, but since I had missed lunch running around Manhattan turning my case into a hair ball I was easily seduced into ordering one of its signature, if overpriced, hamburgers. Bourbon and burgers is my fallback comfort meal. The bartender was a nice fellow, and our debate about the Yankees’ depleted pitching staff served to take my mind off Laura Lee Litton Sharon Starr Lee Sullivan. But I doubted if he’d remember me the next time I came in. And there was no rhubarb pie on the menu.

I took the subway to South Ferry and picked up my car on the other side. I debated going to my office but figured I had done enough damage to my career for one day and went home. Scar, the feral feline, was waiting for me on my rear deck. Despite the fact that he wasn’t really my cat, he looked at me as if to say, “What kept you, you’re late!” I started to tell him that I was never home this early when I realized I was talking to something with four legs. I went in to my house and opened up three cans of tuna fish. Then I got out onions, celery, Dijon mustard, lemon, sea salt and mayonnaise and made enough tuna salad for both of us. I wasn’t hungry but knew I would be later. At this point any normal cat will rub up against your leg. Scar sat on his haunches staring at me. If he wore a watch, I think he would have raised a paw and looked at it. I split the salad and put Scar’s half in a small bowl. The rest I put in the fridge. I prefer my tuna salad chilled for a couple of hours. If Scar didn’t like the added condiments it didn’t show. He ate steadily and neatly. I took it for a rave, so I also put out a small plate of milk.

I went to the laptop on the desk in the alcove off my kitchen and, in a moment of perverse curiosity, called up the website of the Richmond Register. I had been overseas when the Sullivans were married. I quickly found their wedding story and the accompanying photos, all of which had been given prominent play. They certainly made an attractive couple.

I knew Mike’s biography pretty well. It was all there and nothing about him in the story surprised me. Born in Great Kills. Monsignor Farrell High School. Holy Cross College. Harvard Law. Wall Street corporate lawyer, Manhattan D.A.’s office, Assistant D.A. on Staten Island, and, finally, District Attorney. His bride, Sharon Lee, was described as a native of Kentucky, an actress and dancer who “studied at the prestigious Gotham Theatre of Dance” and became a world-famous Rockette. I figured that the Kentucky part might even be true, given her family’s peripatetic lifestyle. Or maybe she just picked the Southern state that sounded the most respectable. The article said that they met in Manhattan at the Abused Children Consortium, a non-profit charity where they were both volunteers. In addition to the photo of them together, there was a separate shot of the bride in her wedding dress. Laura Lee Litton, a.k.a. Sharon Starr, a.k.a. Sharon Lee, looked radiant and very happy.

I was not happy.

CHAPTER 26 – PERSONAL BEST

I got up before dawn the next morning without any idea of what to do with the information. Just head down to the District Attorney’s office to see Mike Sullivan? I tried to imagine how the conversation might go:

“Mike, it seems that your wife is a former hooker named Laura Lee Litton who bopped the entire 3rd Infantry Division back in high school. Not to worry, she changed her name before she married you and has apparently straightened out pretty much. Oh, there is one more thing. She was doing a Cirque du Soleil routine naked with John Denton around the time he was murdered.”

Since I didn’t expect Mike’s comeback would be, “I know, ain’t she a card,” I decided to go for a run to think things over. It was still semi-dark out when I headed toward the Snug Harbor Cultural Center in Randall Manor. I had just broken into a nice sweat when I entered the grounds and began an interior circuit of the property, which occupies 44 acres, a good portion of it wooded. A half hour later I took a break at the pond near the main administrative buildings. Several ducks paddled over toward me expectantly as I leaned against a “DO NOT FEED THE DUCKS” sign that was ignored by everyone. When they realized that I had no bread, they began quacking angrily. Two of them actually left the water and headed toward me. I thought about showing them my gun but even a duck might laugh at the .25 Beretta I carried for jogging comfort. So I hastily beat an ignominious retreat.

I headed back toward home on a dirt road through a long stretch of woods that led out of Snug Harbor. Birds were chirping and squirrels were scurrying up the trees that lined both sides of the path and created a solid canopy. Even during the mid-day sun that stretch of road was bathed in a cooling shade. As it was, the sun was barely up and had I not maintained such a fast pace I might have been chilled. There was no one about and I relished the isolation. It brought back memories of youthful hunting trips with uncles who lived upstate. I will never regret those times – the shivering silence of a tree stand in the snow, the bragging around the campfire, the first taste of venison – but I’ve shot too many men since to ever again find sport in killing creatures that don’t mean me any harm.

The memories were so vivid that when I heard the distinctive report of a high-powered rifle I thought I’d imagined it. Only the familiar whisper of air just behind my neck began to nudge me out of my reverie. I slowed next to a tree on the side of the trail. The second shot, and the bark splinters that peppered my face when a bullet tore into the tree inches to my left, brought me all the way back. I knew that kids occasionally used the woods for target practice with their BB guns but nobody in their right mind would take as much as a .22 into Snug Harbor, bordered as it is by residential neighborhoods. And that was no .22.

I plunged into the woods and had almost reached the partial shelter of some fallen trees when a third bullet smacked into a tree not a foot from me. Whoever was doing the shooting in the half light was damn good. I dove behind the logs and pulled my gun. So this was how Bambi’s mother felt.

I fired off three quick shots in the direction I thought the rifle fire came from. Another bullet smacked into a log, but nowhere near me. He was firing blind now. I didn’t bother to fire again. I knew I couldn’t do any damage at that range. The .25 Beretta is what the politically incorrect call “a ladies’ gun” and is small enough to fit in my shorts. Mae West probably wouldn’t have even noticed it. I may have to rethink the comfort part of the jogging equation, although I couldn’t imagine what kind of handgun would be useful in the predicament I was in. And going for a run with a rifle is awkward. It tends to scare other runners and attract the police.

But at least the Beretta is loud. I was actually hoping to attract the gendarmes. Between the sniper and my return fire the normally quiet woods of Snug Harbor sounded like the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan. Sure enough, I heard the first sirens. I got up and ran, zigzagging and dodging trees, if not branches, adding several more cuts to my face. There were no more shots. The sniper was hopefully making himself scarce as well. I had no intention of spending the whole day explaining to the cops what happened, especially since I didn’t know what happened. Just the fact that I fired my weapon could cause me all sorts of aggravation. In New York that’s a bigger offense than trans fats.

I eventually exited the woods near the north entrance of Snug Harbor. The siren sounds were all south, so I jogged back to my house, avoiding the road that borders the cultural center. That added another mile to my normal workout, the only upside to the whole incident. I was pretty certain the sniper was long gone, but pretty certain is not absolutely certain. For all I knew he was a persistent cuss and was now sitting in a car waiting to finish me off before I reached home.

Winston Churchill once said that “nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” Far be it from me to amend a statement made by the man who temporarily saved Western Civilization, but being shot at by a known enemy is infinitely preferable to being the target of an unknown sniper. Especially when out for a quiet jog.

I don’t know how long my total run was, but, time-wise, it was undoubtedly my personal best.

***

“They didn’t find the shooter and nobody reported a jogger fleeing the area.”

Mac had just gotten off the phone with the cops at the 120 Precinct in St. George, whose patrol area encompasses Sailors Snug Harbor.

“I wasn’t exactly fleeing.”

“I bet you weren’t jogging, either.”

I was sitting in Mac’s kitchen drinking coffee and eating one of the bagels I’d brought. He and his wife, Irene, had recently moved to Oakwood, a few blocks from Great Kills Park, which is part of the Gateway National Recreation Area. A couch potato in all other respects, Cormac was an avid fisherman and could often be found casting into Raritan Bay from Gateway’s rock jetties. I’d driven out to see him after the shooting incident.

“Did they ask you how you heard about it?”

“Yeah. Said my cousin lived on Henderson and saw the activity and wanted to know what was up. They didn’t care. Cop courtesy. Everybody has a cousin somewhere.”

“Where’s Irene?”

“Out. There’s a sale somewhere between here and the Mississippi. Where did you get these bagels?”

I told him.

“They’re pretty good. Almost as good as my mother used to make.”

“Jewish mothers don’t make bagels, Cormac. And your mother was Irish.”

“Figure of speech. Anyway, the area cars didn’t find anything. Couldn’t even tell where the shots came from. And since you didn’t report it, I guess you don’t want to tell them where they were going.”

“What’s the point?”

“They may be able to pull a bullet out of one of those trees he hit,” Mac said as he put cream cheese on his second bagel.

“Gee, I forgot to mark them with a yellow ribbon.”

“Any idea who the mystery sniper was?”

“No. But I’m going under the assumption the shooting is related to the Olsen case and what I’ve found out. It’s the only one I’m actively working.”

“It could have been random.”

“He fired at me after I shot back. That smacks of specific intent.”

He chewed on that, and his bagel, for a moment.

“OK. Tell me what you found out.”

After I finished, Cormac poured us both more coffee.

“Want to know what I think?”

“That’s why I bought the bagels.”

“You should have let the sniper hit you.”

“I knew I could count on you.”

There was a scampering sound and a large hot dog slid halfway through the kitchen. Actually, it wasn’t a hot dog, but rather a Dachshund puppy. It slid because it went from hallway carpet to kitchen tile without putting on the brakes.

“What the hell is that?”

“That’s Brutus. We’re dog sitting for Nelson.” The Levines married young and Nelson was one of their three out-of-the-house kids, and the only one married. Mac broke off half the bagel and gave it to the puppy, who, having regained some stability, headed cautiously back to the safer environs of the hallway, looking like it was carrying an inner tube in its mouth. “He and Mary went to Disneyworld.”

“Their baby can’t be a year old.”

“Nelson loves Disneyworld. Goes every year. Hell, they honeymooned there.”

“How are the other boys?”

“Fine. Trying to avoid Irene’s matchmaking schemes.”

I was also on Irene’s “To Do” list, which made me glad she was out shopping.

“So, assuming I don’t take the easy way out and let myself get shot, you have any constructive advice?”

“Well, it’s a fucking nightmare. Ordinarily, I’d tell you to forget everything you know. Sharon Sullivan was shtupping Denton, but so what?”

“You don’t like my ‘moving furniture’ theory?”

Cormac ignored me.

“For the life of me,” he went on, “I can’t understand what she would see in a turd like Denton. She’s not hooking anymore, and for a retired whore she has class. And a lot to lose.”

“We’re both passed the point where matters of the heart surprise us, Cormac.”

“Sure. But that doesn’t change anything. You have information that would destroy both her and her husband. I wonder if Mike knows about her background.” I was wondering about that myself. “Either way, it will crush him to find out about her affair with Denton. And what purpose would it serve now? Chances are Elizabeth Olsen killed Denton, anyway. Unfortunately, you can’t let it drop?”

“Why?”

Mac was right. I wasn’t going to let it drop, but I was interested in his reasons.

“First off, you gave Konrad Olsen your word you’d do everything to clear his daughter’s name. I know you. You won’t let it go. You’re like a Dachshund with a bagel.” Cormac always liked to make things topical. “Second, and we knew this from the start, putting a hooker in that room creates another viable suspect. The fact that she is the wife of the District Attorney fucks things up to a fare-thee-well, but that’s par for the course for anything you’re involved in. Finally, there’s the sniper. If that’s related to the Olsen case, and we can assume it is, then someone doesn’t want you to follow it through to the end. You won’t be safe until you find out who that is and what’s his motivation.”

“Or hers. It’s possible Sharon Sullivan killed Denton.”

Cormac shook his head.

“Does Sharon Sullivan seem the kind of person who runs around the woods with a rifle?”

“She’s a Southerner, so who knows? I admit it’s unlikely, but she could have hired someone.”

“Too risky. What respectable hit man is going to take an assignment from a D.A.’s wife?”

Brutus padded into the kitchen. He’d learned his lesson in locomotion. Cormac gave him another half bagel, which he decided to play with before he ate it. He pushed it across the floor with his nose and finally trapped it in a corner. When he bit into it, he shook it back and forth violently. For a Dachshund.

“He’s making believe it’s a rabbit,” Mac said. “They bred Dachshunds to chase them into their holes and drag them out. Prairie dogs, too. Great hunters.”

“Fascinating,” I said. “Next time I’ll bring a bag of prairie dogs. But let’s get back to whoever is hunting me. Maybe someone else is trying to head off a scandal that could cost Mike Sullivan the election. He holds a powerful office and there is a lot of patronage involved.”

“I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t think it’s someone tied to the D.A.’s office. They know about the prints, but if they wanted to ace you they wouldn’t use a fucking rifle. You’d be shot close range with a silenced pistol and there would be nothing traceable. Cops would chalk it up to mob revenge or overbilling.”

“I don’t overbill.”

“But you get my point.”

I did, and agreed with it. I had briefly harbored the suspicion that the Rahms might want to take me out. With a mole in Sullivan’s office, they would want him to be reelected. But even if I thought Marat or Arman Rahm wanted to stop my investigation, I knew they were, in their own perverse way, fond of me. They’d try to reason with me first. Only if that didn’t work might they send their killing machine, Maks Kalugin, to turn me into a sidewalk stain. It would be messier than the cops might manage, but just as unsolvable. No, my assailant had another agenda.

“Who, other than the cops and the D.A.’s office, knows what you’ve been up to?”

“You mean, other than a lot of people in Georgia and Manhattan, no one.”

“You’re fucked. The only choice you have is to finish this.” He paused. “Or blow the whistle on Sharon Sullivan, even if she’s only guilty of hiding her past. If that’s what the shooter is trying to prevent, once it’s out you’re in the clear.”

“I can’t do that. Not without talking to her first.”

Cormac nodded. We both looked at Brutus, who had added growls to his repertoire and was still shaking his meal back and forth.

“I’d rather be that bagel,” I said.

CHAPTER 27 – A WAY WITH WOMEN

After agonizing much of the day about how to approach Sharon Sullivan in private, preferably not in her home, I finally caught a break. There was a front-page story in the Richmond Register about a fashion show sponsored by All Our Children, a local nonprofit devoted to rescuing kids from abusive homes. The article, which normally would have been relegated to the society pages, prominently featured the wife of the District Attorney whom the Register was not-so-subtly supporting in the upcoming election.

The event was scheduled to start at 7 P.M. at Li Greci’s Staaten, a historically named West Brighton catering hall not a mile from my house. Sharon headed the decorating committee, which meant she would probably be at the hall most of the afternoon helping to set things up. And unless Michael Sullivan was brain dead, he, and all the other husbands, would be home watching a ball game or playing golf.

I was right. When I got to the Staaten, Sharon and a dozen other women were flitting around tables arranging centerpieces and place cards in the main ballroom. An elevated runway had been built in the middle of the floor extending to one of the doorways, behind which, I assumed, was a makeshift dressing room.

When Sharon spotted me, she smiled and walked over.

“Are you here to volunteer, Alton? We can use all the help we can get.”

I hadn’t seen her since Elizabeth Olsen’s funeral. Her presence there had taken on a whole new meaning, although I wasn’t sure what it was. Guilt? Triumph? She looked more serene now, and more beautiful than ever.

“Actually, I was hoping I could speak to you in private for a few moments.”

“This is a terrible time. We’re running late as it is. We haven’t even started on the dressing rooms yet and the fashion show starts in less than two hours.”

As if on cue one of the other volunteers came over.

“Sharon, we have place cards for 10 people at the Bank of Richmond County table. It only seats eight. What should we do?”

“Tell them to empty their pockets,” I said. “Then they’ll all fit.”

The woman looked shocked. I turned to Sharon Sullivan.

“I need a few minutes. Now.”

There was the barest flicker of concern in her eyes.

“I’ll be right with you, Marge,” she said.

***

The Staaten has a restaurant that offers decent lunches at what has to be break-even prices. As a result, at one time or another it feeds just about everyone living on a fixed income on the North Shore. The retirees and their families reciprocate with funeral repasts, wedding receptions bar mitzvahs, first communions and charitable functions. The catering halls are booked into the next ice age. The restaurant also has a good bar. It was well past the lunch hour and the early drinkers hadn’t drifted in yet so Sharon and I had the place to ourselves, except for the bartender, Richie, who I knew slightly. I know a lot of neighborhood bartenders slightly. Maybe too many. He smiled at me and walked over as Sharon and I sat in the short corner of the bar away from the television, which was tuned to a soccer game. I’m beginning to believe the game is catching on in the U.S.

I ordered a scotch. Sharon said she didn’t really want anything.

“I think you want a drink,” I said.

Something in the tone of my voice got through to her. Her eyes widened and she lost her semi-permanent smile.

“I’ll have an Absolute on the rocks,” she said.

“And a bowl of nuts,” I said.

A cigarette would have gone better with the conversation I was about to initiate. It’s easier to discuss things, especially hard things, when you can do something with your hands. But those days are gone in New York City. The Mayor has reportedly leased C.I.A. drones armed with Hellfire missiles to discourage smoking in bars and restaurants. So nuts would have to do, at least until he declared war on salt.

When Richie brought our order, I asked him to turn up the sound on the TV.

“Why don’t you and the lady sit closer, Alton. It’s a good game. Arsenal versus Cologne.”

I  looked at Richie. He knew the look and went to sit by the TV, which he turned up. We were effectively alone. I took a long pull on my scotch.

“I don’t know quite how to say this, Mrs. Sullivan.”

“Please, call me Sharon.”

I ignored that.

“You know that I was hired by Konrad Olsen to help Elizabeth’s defense.”

“Yes. I remember Mike mentioning it at the Mancuso cocktail party.”

“Something has come up.”

Up till then she had ignored her drink. Now she picked it up and downed half of it. I could see her hand trembling slightly.

“Something has come up?”

“Yes.”

“I thought that after the poor woman’s suicide, well, that, you know, the case was closed.”

“Her father doesn’t think it was a suicide. He thinks she was murdered. So do I.”

Sharon Sullivan’s complexion, naturally pale, went paler and her jaw dropped. I had some doubts about my ability to judge a woman’s sincerity. During my last case I had been hoodwinked by two women portraying a mother and daughter. One was a professional actress, which took some of the sting from the con. The other was a hooker, of the type basically sitting next to me in the bar. But that whole deal was a setup. Sharon Sullivan looked genuinely shocked. I think she believed Elizabeth Olsen had killed herself.

“Murder.”

It was barely a whisper.

“Yes.”

She finished her drink and looked down to the bartender. I signaled him and held up two fingers. I ate some peanuts while he fixed our new drinks. He left.

“Do you have proof?”

“Nothing that will stand up in court, yet. But I’m convinced. And I’ll eventually get it.”

“Does my husband know what you think?”

She was staring into the smoked mirror behind the bar. Her voice had taken on a strange timber. It was almost as if I wasn’t there.

“Not yet.

I let that hang there.

“What are you going to do?”

“Someone tried to kill me today, and while I’m not the most popular guy in the world it occurs to me that the attempt is probably related to the case I’m working. The real killer thought he, or she, was in the clear with the apparent suicide of the primary suspect in Denton’s murder. But I’m still digging, which makes me a threat.”

Sharon Sullivan continued to look into the mirror. I thought I saw her nod her head, almost imperceptibly. I was going out on a limb. I hadn’t reported the shooting. But I suspected that Sharon Sullivan wouldn’t either. Finally, she turned and looked at me.

“You said ‘he, or she.’ Does that mean you think a woman might have killed Denton?”

I had reached the Rubicon.

“We found another woman’s fingerprints on the chair and ottoman that Denton used for his sex games, the chair he was found murdered in. They are your fingerprints.”

I heard a burst of feminine laughter from the ballroom. I was glad somebody was having a nice time.

“My fingerprints! You must be crazy.” Her voice rose. I saw Richie the bartender glance at us. “What would my fingerprints be doing … wait, of course, Mike and I have been in Denton’s house several times. It’s only natural….”

“You’re not making this easy,” I said. “Laura Lee.”

She actually physically recoiled in her chair. I grabbed her arm to steady her.

“Don’t call me that!”

She threw the remainder of her drink in my face, and then slapped me for good measure. Bursting into tears , she got up and walked unsteadily toward the ballroom. Riveting soccer game or no, our little scene had drawn Richie’s attention. He walked over, smiling.

“A twofer! Drink and slap. You still got a way with the women, Rhode. You do know that’s the D.A.’s wife , don’t you? Who are you planning to proposition next? The First Lady?”

“Ah, a man’s grasp should always exceed his reach,” I said, wiping my face and throwing some bills on the bar, “or what is heaven for?”

“Shakespeare?”

“Robert Browning.”

When I got to the ballroom I saw a huddle of women, but no Mrs. District Attorney. From the looks the women gave me I knew I had precipitated the huddle. I walked up to them.

“Have any of you ladies seen Mrs. Sullivan?”

I flashed my most endearing smile. It never fails.

“She just ran through here crying, you bastard.” Well, almost never. It was Marge. “What the fuck did you say to her?”

Marge was apparently a tough cookie, and the other girls surrounded me. They looked like they were ready to turn their huddle into a scrum.

“I’m afraid I gave her some bad news. Her cat was run over by a road paver.”

As I quickly headed toward an exit I heard one woman say, “That’s so sad. Sharon really loved that cat.”

I didn’t know the Sullivans had a cat. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky.

CHAPTER 28 – ON THE HOOK

By the time I got out to the parking lot Sharon Sullivan was nowhere to be seen.

“Excellent job, Rhode,” I said to about a dozen empty cars.

I drove home. When I pulled around the back of my house I was actually looking forward to seeing Scar. He wasn’t there. Perhaps he’d heard about my cat remark and disapproved. Or maybe he didn’t want to be accidentally shot. I went in and called Alice Watts.

“I was hoping you’d call,” she said.

Of all the things a beautiful woman can say to a man, that’s near the top of the list. At the very top was the last thing she said.

“Why don’t you bring a change of clothes?”

***

We were sitting in the rear courtyard of a small French restaurant on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. It was warm but not unbearably so and the yellow hanging lanterns gave the place a charm that I assumed would be matched by the food. Alice had picked the restaurant and she knew the area. We were both drinking vodka gimlets, straight up. I had asked for a shot glass of Rose’s Lime Juice on the side.

“Sometimes they don’t get the proportions just right,” I explained to Alice. “This way we can adjust without having to send the drinks back.”

“What happens if they make the drinks with too much lime juice to begin with?”

She never failed to ask the sensible questions.

“In my experience, that has never happened, so I play the odds.”

“And we know you’ve had a lot of gimlet experience.”

“Enough for a statistically relevant sampling.”

“Why only one shot glass? I’ve never seen you have just one gimlet, or martini or Manhattan.”

“One shot glass is plenty to make a gimlet perfect,” I said. “After the first it doesn’t seem to matter. They could put a lime tree in the glass and it would taste good.”

Our waiter told us the specials. He recommended the rabbit. That reminded me of my recent adventure in the woods at Snug Harbor.

“No venison?”

“Sorry, sir. Just rabbit.”

Neither of us felt like eating Thumper. Alice ordered sole meunière and I opted for the cassoulet. I indeed ordered a second gimlet, while Alice asked for a glass of chardonnay. I glanced at the wine list and told the waiter to bring a bottle of Brick House Pinot Noir when our meals came.

“Something is bothering you,” she said after he left.

“I’m having second thoughts about the cassoulet.”

“Alton.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I’ve had a bad day.”

“What happened?”

“Well, someone tried to shoot me this morning, and it went downhill from there.”

“My God! What could be worse than getting shot at?”

“Well, Sharon Sullivan threw a vodka in my face. She also slapped me, which I thought was overkill. Of course, I did tell her I knew she wasn’t really named Sharon and that I suspected she may have killed John Denton.”

A server holding tongs and a bread basket came to our table and asked us what kind of rolls we wanted.

“Round ones,” Alice said, her eyes locked on mine.

“Start at the beginning,” she said after the server departed.

“The Big Bang?”

“Keep joking, buddy, and your chances of any kind of bang will evaporate.”

By the end of dinner, I’d told Alice everything.

“What are you going to do now?”

“I think I’ll have a brandy.”

“Funny.”

“Hell, Alice. I don’t know. I have more information than I know what to do with, information that has the potential to destroy two lives. If Sharon Sullivan is guilty only of lying about her past, do I have the right to expose her? But if she killed Denton, then I have the obligation to clear Elizabeth Olsen’s name.”

“You have the obligation to stay alive! Someone doesn’t want you to find out who killed Denton. Whether it’s Sharon or someone else who wants to cover up the murder, you have to find out.”

“For a philosophy professor, you have a very logical thought process. Are you sure you’re not an imposter?”

Our waiter started to clear.

“Would you like to see our dessert menu?”

“I’d like to see two cognacs,” Alice said. “Courvoisier.”

“Can I bring some coffee, Madame?”

“You can bring the brandies,” she said with an edge to her voice.

He scurried away.

“If you expose Sharon, it will reopen the investigation into Denton’s murder,” Alice said.

“Probably.”

“Then there would be less reason to shoot you.”

“At least as far as this case is concerned.”

She ignored me.

“But you won’t do it, will you?”

“Not without more evidence. I want to give it more time. I’m missing something. I don’t like the feeling. There’s more at stake than Sharon’s reputation. Someone broke Elizabeth Olsen’s neck like a twig. She was my client. I can’t take my ball and go home and let the cops handle it.”

Our cognacs came. The waiter didn’t tarry.

“But you told your friend, Lieutenant Levine.”

“Cormac will keep his mouth shut until I tell him not to.”

“Or you get killed.”

“Yeah.”

“Why? He’s a police officer. Doesn’t he have a legal responsibility?”

“He’s part Jewish and answers to a higher authority. We keep each other’s secrets and respect each other’s wishes.”

Alice started to say something.

“It’s the only way it can work in my world,” I said. “We play by the rules only when they make sense and if they don’t harm people more than they help.”

“You are rationalizing what some people would say is irresponsible behavior.”

“Who the hell rationalizes responsible behavior? The question is, what do you think?”

Alice took a long pull of her cognac.

“I’m a philosophy professor. I can justify anything.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“I love you. I don’t want you to get shot.”

***

“I’m glad you don’t have a cat,” I said.

Alice was snuggling in my arms the next morning.

“What?”

“They say that if you don’t scare the cat, you’re not doing it right. I think last night we would have frightened a cat into therapy.”

I felt her body shake with suppressed laughter.

“We’ll have to try it in front of Scar,” she said. “That will be the ultimate test.”

“To frighten him, one or both of us will probably have to die in the attempt.”

“What a way to go,” she said.

Then she turned serious.

“I’m going to let you off the hook, Alt.”

“About what?”

“You said you loved me last night.”

After dinner we had walked to Alice’s apartment and gone straight to bed. Her ardor was intense. She had dropped the “love” word earlier in the evening and later so had I.

“So?”

“It was in a moment when, how shall I say it, you were having an out of body experience.”

“Well put. But I don’t see the problem.”

“Men will say anything at that point. It doesn’t count.”

“Now, just a minute.”

“Don’t be mad. I’m not being critical.” Alice stroked my face. “And I really don’t have all that much experience. I just want you to know I understand.”

I should have kept my mouth shut about the goddamn cat. But I never saw a gauntlet thrown that I didn’t pick up.

“Listen, Alice, boys may tell girls they love them, to close the deal. It’s called high school. But men generally don’t throw the word around. I certainly don’t. If I said I loved you, I meant it. I love you.”

Jesus Christ. I suddenly rolled on top of her and looked into her eyes.

“Did you just maneuver me into saying that again?”

Her smile lit up those beautiful eyes.

“No, but it worked out pretty well, didn’t it?”

We both started laughing as she slid into the proper position and adjusted her legs around me.

“How about another out-of-body experience, big boy?”

CHAPTER 29 – SANDWICHES AND SVETLANA

After leaving Alice late in the morning I went directly from the ferry to my office. I was working on the assumption that no one would try to kill me in broad daylight in a busy part of town. I had second thoughts about that assumption when a black Mercedes sedan pulled alongside me in the parking lot near my building and the driver-side window rolled down. My hand was on my gun when I recognized the driver. The fact that he didn’t shoot me indicated that it was probably a social call.

“Hello, Maks,” I said. “You really should be buying American. You steal enough of our money. It must gall you to drive a German car.”

Actually, Maks Kalugin, the ageless killer who solved most of the Rahm family’s problems, looked like he belonged in a tank turret.

“I hate the fucking Krauts,” he said, “but you can’t beat their engineers. The Nazis almost made it to Moscow. Get in. Arman wants to see you.”

“It’s lunchtime,” I said, mainly to piss him off.

“Get the fuck in.”

I got in.

“So what have you been up to, Maks? Still regret saving my life?”

“Both times.”

Despite his fireplug body and thick stubby hands, Kalugin was an accomplished driver and weaved in and out of traffic with a bodyguard’s practiced finesse. But not everyone drove as well. He had to brake hard as someone cut us off on Targee Street. He cursed in Russian. I hoped the rest of the ride would be uneventful. The thought of Kalugin road rage was something I didn’t want to contemplate.

“I presume you didn’t try to shoot me the other day in Snug Harbor.”

He laughed, a rare occurrence.

“You are still alive.”

“Sorry, it was a dumb thing to say.”

He looked over at me.

“You should be shot, and often.”

There wasn’t much to say to that, so we spent the rest of the ride in silence.

The Rahm dacha on Todt Hill would have pleased the Czars. That didn’t surprise me. Scratch a Rahm and you’ll find a Romanov. The family changed its name and politics during Stalin’s times, for obvious reasons, and its members became dedicated, if convenient, Communists. The current patriarch, Marat Rahm, even rose in the ranks of the KGB and then Russia’s GRU after the breakup of the Soviet Union. But the new Russia was too chaotic for his taste and he emigrated to the United States and restored his family’s capitalist inclinations. First settling in Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, he consolidated loosely-associated Russian gangs into a disciplined organization. Unique among crime bosses, after relocating to Staten Island Marat recruited from other ethnic gangs, including the Mafia, usually after their leaders met untimely deaths.

I followed Kalugin to the rear of the huge house. Arman Rahm was swimming in an Olympic-size pool. A young and very attractive woman was sunning herself topless in a lounge chair. She was reading a book that she balanced on her rather massive breasts. As we passed her I said to Kalugin, “It must be large print. I don’t think I could read something that far away.”

That got my second Kalugin smile of the day, a new record for me.

Arman spotted us and climbed out of the pool. He walked over to a table on the other side of the pool from the topless reader and motioned me to sit while he toweled off. There was a large bowl of ice on the table in which a pitcher filled with limes and liquid sweated in the shade of the table’s umbrella. A dragonfly with mottled gold wings hovered above the pitcher. Kalugin gently swished it away.

“Why didn’t you just shoot it?”

“I like them,” he said seriously. “They eat their weight in mosquitoes every day.”

“We used to call them ‘darning needles’ when I was a kid.”

“In Russia we call them ‘eap uyttep,’ means ‘ear cutter’.”

When he’d dried off, Rahm sat. He was a tall, good-looking man with matinee-idol looks and degrees from Columbia and Wharton. In the past I’d teased him that he reminded me of a Czarist cavalry officer from a silent film, only to be told that his ‘Rhamanov’ ancestors had indeed served the Czar but shortened the family name to survive the Bolsheviks. Now, he was royalty of another kind, the heir apparent in a criminal dynasty following the assassination of his older brother. Arman and I were about the same age and had been, if not friends, friendly in our youth, frequently on the same pick-up basketball teams. That didn’t stop him from setting me up and almost getting me killed a few months earlier. But it had all worked out in the end and I didn’t hold a grudge.

“Would you like a Margarita, Alton?”

“Sure.”

He pointed to a bowl of salt. I shook my head.

“He’s hungry,” Kalugin said dismissively.

“Well, so am I,” Rahm said as he made us both drinks. He didn’t rim his glass with salt, either. “Maks, will you tell the kitchen to send out some sandwiches for us?” He yelled across the pool. “Svetlana, do you want some lunch?”

The woman placed the book flat on her chest and said, “Yoghurt.”

“Watching her figure,” Rahm explained as Kalugin walked away.

“There’s a lot to watch,” I said.

Rahm laughed as we clinked glasses. The Margarita was excellent.

“How is your father, Arman?”

“Very well, thank you. He’s in Europe, visiting Eleni.” He smiled. “She asks for you often.”

I wanted to change the subject. Rahm’s sister was a sore subject to me.

“And how is Porgie Carmichael working out?”

Porgie was an inept thug working for the Carlucci crime family whom I’d grown fond of, especially after he refused an assignment to kill me. One of the favors I had asked the Rahms after inadvertently solving their Carlucci problems for them was to find a job for Porgie in one of their legitimate operations.

“He was one of your better recommendations,” Arman said, pouring us another drink. “We own a marine supply business in Great Kills. He manages it for us. Knows boats like the back of his hand. He even bought one of his own and runs his own fishing charters.” There was an evil twinkle in Arman’s eyes. “Who knows, that may come in handy some day.”

I had a vision of men with their feet in cement.

“Arman, I want him to stay out of trouble.”

“I know, I know. I’m only teasing you.”

Kalugin walked up with another man who was carrying a tray. The man, who looked like he should be sitting on a Cossack pony, set out our lunch and then brought Svetlana her yoghurt. He went back into the house and Kalugin sat with us, but didn’t eat.

“You on the Svetlana diet, Maks?”

He ignored me. The sandwiches were terrific. I don’t think Russian mob bosses have to send back food too often.

“You’ve got something on Sharon Sullivan,” Arman said between bites. “What is it?”

Ah, the reason for my summons.

“So, you’re still sleeping with that blonde assistant D.A.”

“Among others. The point is, I have a vested interest in the status quo in St. George.”

“I bet you do. Every other crook on Staten Island hopes that Costello wins. He’s so incompetent it will be open season.”

“I like to know what’s going on. Costello would allow too much competition. Tell me what you have. I know about the argument at the Staaten.”

“Does Sullivan know?”

“I don’t think so. No one in his office would have the temerity to tell him, I imagine.”

I suspected, and hoped, that was also true of the people in the Staaten who witnessed the scene.

“So, what was it about?”

“Un, unh.”

He poured us both another Margarita.

“Alton, just because we have a history together and I let you walk out of this house once doesn’t mean we have to make a habit out of it.”

I laughed.

“Oh, for Crissake, Arman, spare me the gulag threats. You know I won’t tell you anything I don’t want you to know. You won’t kill me because then you’ll never know. Torture? I think not. I’ve handled worse than you can probably dish out.”

“Chemicals?”

“Oh, come on.”

“Just asking.”

I took another sandwich.

“Look. I’m not even sure what I have. And you’re not the only one threatening me.”

“He said someone tried to shoot him the other day,” Kalugin interjected.

“Tell me about that,” Arman said.

I did, and also told him of my suspicions about the deaths of Denton and Elizabeth Olsen.

“But you won’t tell me how Sharon Sullivan is involved.”

“I didn’t say she was.” I hadn’t mentioned the fingerprints. “But she and the Olsens were close and I think she knows something she’s not telling her husband. That’s why we fought.” It felt really good lying to Rahm for a change. “I think we’re working the same side of the street, Arman. I don’t want anything happening to Sharon Sullivan or her husband, either.”

I thought it was time to throw him a bone.

“There may come a time when you can help me out on this. You’ll just have to trust me.”

Rahm looked at Kalugin.

“What do you think, Maks?”

Kalugin looked at me.

“What choice do we have? Except hope the sniper has better luck.”

CHAPTER 30 – HORNETS NEST

The next morning I stopped at the King’s Arms diner on Forest Avenue. A nice healthy breakfast of oatmeal with fruit and nuts can unclog the arteries of the brain and promote sharp thinking. Alice the waitress came over with her pad and a pot of coffee.

“What will you have, honey?”

“Eggs over with bacon. Home fries. Extra butter on the toast.”

I would have enjoyed my meal but for the woman who was sitting at the next table with a small child. The kid, who was no more fidgety than any other three-year-old, wasn’t the problem. In fact, she was absorbed with her crayons and grilled cheese sandwich. Her mother, on the other hand, was absorbed in a conversation on her cell phone, virtually ignoring the little girl.

“She’s just a slut,” the woman said. “And she has the balls to call me an unfit mother. I’m not the one sleeping with every swinging dick in town. I don’t know why my brother doesn’t kick her ass out. Fat piece of shit that she is.” She reached over and yanked her daughter’s arm. “Eat that sandwich, Miranda.”

All of this said in a loud voice. By the end of my meal I – and everyone else in the diner– knew that her brother had just gotten out of jail, her ‘piece of shit’ sister-in-law didn’t want her kids hanging out with Miranda and that it was too bad Oprah was no longer on TV.

“She gave away some terrific fuckin’ stuff. Yeah, Ellen is good, but she’s no Oprah in that department.”

At one point Miranda, who was a cutie-pie, dropped a piece of her grilled cheese on the floor. Her mother slapped her hand and the kid began to cry.

“Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about,” the woman said, raising her hand.

Everyone in the place froze. If she hit the kid again, I would have to do something, although I doubted I’d get there before a gaggle of grandmotherly-looking ladies who were sitting nearer to her table. They were ready to pounce.

We were saved by Alice who quickly moved to the little girl and picked up the offending sandwich from the floor.

“Don’t cry, honey. Happens to anybody. How about a cookie?” She looked at the mother. “Can she have a cookie? On the house?”

The magic words.

“Yeah, sure. You want a cookie, Miranda?”

Miranda did, and stopped crying. I paid my check and left, secure in the knowledge that the grandmother brigade had the kid’s back, at least until she left the restaurant. Seeing the mother, I couldn’t help but wonder what the “piece of shit” sister-in-law was like.

I eased my sudden feeling of depression by recalling that some great adults came out of terrible childhoods. But then I thought of Sharon Sullivan and how far she had traveled from her upbringing. I drove to my office with a sense of foreboding.

***

I was pretty sure something would happen if I just sat back and waited. I had thrown enough rocks at the hornets’ nest. I can’t say it was a fun time. I stopped jogging and avoided standing by windows. But that wasn’t the worst part. Konrad Olsen called and asked if my trip to Georgia had proven fruitful. I gave him some half-truths. After he hung up it occurred to me that I was getting very good at misleading people. If private investigating didn’t work out, I could always become a weatherman.

On the third day of waiting, something happened. I was sitting on my back deck drinking a beer tempting fate when my cell went off.  It was late and dark enough to discourage the average sniper, so I wasn’t too worried. My yard has a lot of trees, besides.

“Mr. Rhode, this is Raymond Ricks, you know, the security guard. Remember me?”

“Yes, Ray, what can I do for you?”

“Well, I hate to bother you so late, but you said to call if something came up.”

I slapped at a mosquito. All in all, I prefer snipers to mosquitoes. I’ve been in combat zones where we lost more blood to the bugs than to the enemy.

“I remember you said you’d call the real cops first.”

“I know. But I figure that might not be such a good idea. Tell you the truth, I don’t know what to do, but maybe you will.”

“Spit it out, Ray.”

Something screeched from behind my garage at the rear of my property. It was a death sound. I suspected that Scar had made his own dinner plans.

“Well, I was doin’ my rounds when I spotted someone going into Mr. Denton’s house. It bein’ so late and all, I got suspicious.”

“So, why didn’t you call the cops?”

“Because I thought I recognized her. She’s been in the papers, and, of course, she comes to the club a lot.”

“She?”

“That’s what I’m tellin’ you. It looked like Mrs. Sullivan, you know, the D.A.’s wife.”

I came out of my deck chair.

“Are you sure?”

“I am now. I went to a window and looked in. She was roamin’ around like she was searchin’ for something. I can’t just call the cops on her, can I? I mean, she’s the fuckin’ D.A.’s wife.”

“Didn’t the alarm go off?”

“No. She must have used a key and turned it off. What should I do?”

“Just sit tight. I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”

***

Ricks was leaning against his company car twirling his cap when I pulled up. There was another car in the drive. I walked up to the door and tried it. It was open. I turned to Ricks, who was right behind me.

“I’m going in,” I said. “I can take it from here. You can go about your rounds. And it might be better if you kept this to yourself, at least for now.”

“I’m supposed to report this kind of thing.”

“I appreciate the call. I don’t want to get you in trouble but this may be a delicate matter. If we handle it properly, you might wind up helping some powerful people, who won’t forget.”

“I still don’t feel right about just leavin’.”

“OK. Just wait out here. I’ll talk to you when I come out. I’ll know more then.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Rhode. I haven’t had this much excitement since the Army.”

***

Sharon Sullivan was sitting on a couch in the den. The Eames chair was still in front of the fireplace fulfilling its role as the elephant in the room. When she saw me a look of shock, then confusion, crossed her face.

“Oh, God, no! What are you doing here?”

“Never mind that,” I said. “Are you all right?”

“How did you find me? You’ll ruin everything. He’ll be here any minute.”

I had no idea what she was talking about.

“Why did you come here, Sharon? What the hell is going on?”

“He called. Told me to meet him here.”

“Who called?”

“I don’t know. He just said he knew who I really was. Said he was the one who first told Denton about me. He said he wants money. A lot of it.”

“I’ll wait here with you, Sharon. I’ll fix it, don’t worry. When it’s over, you can decide what to tell Mike. He loves you.”

Her face sagged into a visage of hopelessness.

“You don’t understand. He said he has videos of what …. of the sex with Denton. He said the videos were here, in this house.”

Jesus Christ.

“He said he would send it to Mike unless I paid him $100,000.”

I had no idea how I was going to get her out of this.

“Listen. There is a security guard outside. I’ll send him away. If we haven’t already scared the blackmailer off, I still want you to let me handle him. It’s the only way.”

For a second I thought I saw a glimmer of hope in her eyes. But then they widened as she looked behind me over my shoulder.

“Hey, Laura Lee. How’ya been? It’s been a long time, honey.”

I recognized the voice, of course, and I knew what I’d be facing as I turned around.

CHAPTER 31 – STAR TREK

Raymond Ricks stood there with a wolfish grin pointing his black Glock at my midsection. It still clashed with his brown uniform.

“Open your jacket slowly, Mr. Rhode.” He saw my gun in its holster on my right hip. “Using your left hand, take your piece out and put it on the table. No quick moves. You ain’t in Snug Harbor now. I can hit you blindfolded from here.” I did as he said. “Now, back up and keep your hands where I can see them.”

“This is even worse than finding out the butler did it,” I said.

He laughed as he picked up my Taurus revolver with his free hand and put it in his waistband.

“Don’t feel too bad. You got closer to the truth than anyone else would have. I think you would have figured it all out eventually. I could have kicked myself when I slipped up and told you I was from Vidalia.”

“The onion capital of the world.”

“Yeah. Next town over from Statesboro, just about. Was a freshman on the JV football team at Vidalia High, palled around with some of the guys from the Statesboro High team, who clued us in on the action Laura Lee was providin’. She broke my cherry.”

Ricks looked over at Sharon Sullivan.

“I bet you don’t even remember me, Laura Lee. Hell, I know you don’t. You passed me so many times up here at the club and never said a word. But I sure as hell remembered you. Guy never forgets the first gal he screws. Talk about a small world. I damn near died when I found out you were married to the goddamn District Attorney. I just knew that kind of information could come in handy. The borough’s top lawman married to a hooker. Can’t make that shit up.”

Sharon, or Laura Lee – I thought about asking everyone to pick one name for her that we could all use – began to cry, quietly.

“Why didn’t you blackmail her to begin with? Why go to Denton?”

Ricks smiled.

“I wasn’t thinking blackmail back then. Too dangerous. Besides, I heard some of the members talkin’ about how Denton’s bank might be in trouble with the Feds. You’d be surprised how loose some of these rich assholes up here talk with a bunch of drinks in them. Like we’re not even around.”

“Star Trek extras.”

“What’s that?”

“I said you were just a Star Trek extra. Nobody pays you any attention.”

“Hey, you’re right. Anyway, it occurred to me that a crooked banker might appreciate having something on the local D.A. Hell, I knew he’d use it just for the sex if nothing else. He was some horn dog. You shoulda seen some of the gash who traipsed through here. And he had videos of them all. Sick son of a bitch.”

So, there were videos.

“What was in it for you?”

“Two grand a month, cash, and the promise of a lot more down the road. Then Denton fucks it up by getting himself killed. I’d seen Laura Lee go in the house. I was passing by again on my rounds when I heard a bunch of shots. Then I hear another shot and Elizabeth Olsen comes out. I thought I was hallucinatin’. Hell, tell you the truth, I didn’t know what to do. But I figured I’d better play it straight, so I called it in. Then I found out Olsen said she’d fired at someone else and I knew who it was. So, plan B.”

“Blackmail.”

“Yup. Not only did I have Laura Lee on the hook for hookin’, but murder, too. I’d let the Olsen woman take the fall and squeeze Laura Lee for years. Who knows what I could have done after that.” His face clouded. “It was perfect. Until you started looking for fingerprints on the chair. Sherlock Fuckin’ Holmes. I couldn’t take the chance that you’d find out about Laura Lee.”

“So you killed Elizabeth Olsen.”

“Sure.”

I felt the gall rise in my throat.

“Must have been easy, Ricks. Breaking the neck of a small, helpless woman like that.”

“They taught me a lot of stuff in the Army. I didn’t like doing it, but I had no choice. If it makes you feel better it was quick. With her dead, obviously guilty, the investigation would end. But you wouldn’t leave it alone. You figured out she didn’t kill herself.”

“With your help, as I recall.” I had a mental picture of Ricks holding the tape measure for me when I calculated how far Elizabeth Olsen had dropped. He had been good, even feigning reluctance to let me in the house when I found the body. “Why did you try to kill me in Snug Harbor?”

“You’re such a pain in the ass I was afraid you might figure out who I was and tie me to the Olsen broad’s murder.”

“Thank you, I think. You must have been a rotten sniper in the service.”

That angered him.

“I was damn good. But I’m not used to shooting in the woods in the fuckin’ dark. And you were moving. I didn’t think things through.”

“Yeah, it’s not like shooting some innocent goat herder standing in an empty field, is it?”

It was his goat I wanted to get. I wanted him angry. He might do something stupid.

“I got mixed feelings about killing Laura Lee,” he snarled, “but I’m sure gonna enjoy shooting you.”

“Why hurt Laura Lee now? You still have something on her.”

He shook his head.

“Can’t let you live cause you’d have figured it all out. But killin’ just you would get too many people thinkin’ and all riled up. Besides, I missed my chance with you in the woods. You’d be on your guard. But if you kill Laura Lee, that opens up a whole other can of worms.” He tapped my Taurus in his waistband with his free hand. “The bullets in her will be from your gun. I’m supposed to be here. You’re not. I’ll be a hero for shooting you. Too late to save the D.A.’s wife, but I’ll get credit for trying. Who knows how far that will get me in the N.Y.P.D.?”

“You’re crazier than I thought, Ricks. Whatever your problem, it must be hard to spell. How will you explain why I killed her?”

“I won’t. Someone will come up with a wacky theory. Maybe you killed Denton. Maybe you and Olsen were in it together and Laura Lee found out and you lured her here.”

“There are people, cops, who know what I’ve been doing. Who know I was shot at in Snug Harbor.”

Ricks shrugged.

“Hey, what do you expect? It’s a fuckin’ plan C. I’m wingin’ it. The rumors will fly, lots of dead-end leads, headlines. It will be like a Chinese fire drill. But nobody will ever suspect the security guard. The Star Trek extra. Man, I really like that.”

Time was my only currency and I was down to spare change. I had to keep Ricks talking. It wasn’t hard. He was enjoying the stage.

“How did Denton do it?”

“Do what?”

“Video the sex.”

“He grinned and ‘beared’ it,” Ricks said, cackling.

I looked at him. He nodded his head toward the fireplace. I turned and looked at the bear head over the hearth. Its gaping mouth was aimed directly at the Eames chair.

“I don’t believe it.”

“Yeah. He put a video camera in there. Worked it with a remote. The scumbag even filmed his own murder. That video would have been the most valuable of all. You’ve cost me a fortune, asshole.”

“Where are the videos now?”

“With all the others, in a safe place. I enjoy watching them from time to time. I got to say, Laura Lee, you don’t seem to be enjoying all the weird stuff Denton made you do. Not like some of the other woman. They were so loud I had to turn the sound down in my apartment. But you got the best body of all of them by a long shot. It sure brought back memories. Tell you the truth, honey, I’m kind of proud of you. Trashy Laura Lee Litton from Bulloch County, Georgia, a Rockette. To think I got an early piece of your snatch….”

Ricks didn’t get to finish the sentence. Maybe it had been building up inside of her. The humiliation. The hopelessness. Maybe it was the mention of the Rockettes, which reminded her how far she had come, how she had transformed herself, only to lose it all to a slimy, peckerwood blackmailer. Whatever it was, Sharon Sullivan snapped.

She screamed and rushed at Ricks, coming off the couch with a dancer’s speed and agility. It took him by surprise. She had almost reached him when he shot her. That was a mistake. He should have killed me first. He realized that and tried to shoot me, but Sharon was on him and he had to shoot her again. And again, and again, his Glock pressed against her body,  muffing the sound. By the time I got to him, she was slumping off him onto the floor, leaving a smear of blood down his front.

I plowed into him like a linebacker and knocked him halfway across the room into a table, my left hand grabbing at his automatic. Both the table and the lamp on top of it shattered with our impact. Ricks tried to pivot his gun hand to shoot me in the head but couldn’t as we rolled together on the floor amid broken glass and ceramic. I felt shards go into my back. He cried out. Not all the glass was going into me.

I got hold of his gun hand and violently shook the Glock loose. Then we both remembered my revolver in his waistband and wrestled over it until it, too, went flying across the room. Now, it was just the two of us, man-to-man. Which sounds fairer than it was, since he was 10 years younger and had me by 30 pounds, at least. But he had been a sniper, which I hoped meant he preferred to do his killing from afar. And, as they say, this wasn’t my first rodeo or, more specifically, my first hand-to-hand combat. I would have liked a knife, though.

We flopped around on the floor, trying to keep our respective hands off each other’s throats, slippery work when sweating and bloody. He managed to get a grip on mine but pulled it away with a scream when I dug a thumb in his eye. Did I mention that the first thing they teach you in Unarmed Combat 101 is that anything goes? The next yell was mine, when he brought a knee up into my groin. He was learning fast. I slammed my forehead into his nose and broke it. His nose, that is, although for a second I saw double. We split apart and I rolled away and jumped up. So did Ricks, his face covered in blood. We stood facing each other. All we needed was an ultimate fighting cage and a breathless announcer.

We both glanced around the room looking for the guns. Sharon Sullivan was slumped motionless on the floor. My revolver was nearest, next to the fireplace about halfway between Ricks and me. He got to it first, but only because I made a stop along the way to grab a poker from a stand next to the hearth. I whipped it across the side of his head as he bent for the gun. The blow should have ended the fight right there but he was tough. He roared in pain and lunged at me in a rage. His second mistake. That’s when I knew I had him. I chopped him in the throat with my curved knuckles of my left hand. As he staggered back I shoved the pointed end of the poker into his Adam’s apple with both my hands. He fell to the floor on his back and I followed him down all the way, pressing the poker with the full weight of my body behind it until I felt it go all the way through and out the back of his neck. Like I say, anything goes.

I must have hit an artery because bright red blood spurted up the poker shaft as I heard its tip hit the tile that surrounded the fireplace. My gory hands slid down the shaft. We stared at each other, faces inches apart. He gurgled horribly and the life began to leave his eyes.

“Star Trek extras always get killed, asshole.”

I wondered if he heard me. I hoped so. It was a damn good line. I stood up, breathing hard but, as usual, surprised how easily I took to killing.

I staggered over to Sharon Sullivan. She was lying on her side with her head resting on one arm. She was dead. But for her staring, sightless eyes, she could have been sleeping. I knelt beside her. I closed her eyes and stroked her hair.

“You were quite the gal, Laura Lee. I won’t let anyone ever say different.”

My cheeks were wet. It wasn’t blood or sweat. I realized I was crying.

CHAPTER 32 – THE SAME PAGE

I thought I had a little time. I was pretty sure no one heard the shots, only the first of which was loud. But pretty sure was not the same as sure. Ricks’s home address was on the driver’s license in his wallet. I started making calls.

Cormac Levine, whose quotient of alarm decreases in direct proportion with the gravity of a situation, listened quietly and said he’d come right over. He’d call Vocci on the way. I’d thought about asking Mac to go to Ricks’s apartment and find the videos but breaking and entering wasn’t his forte. Besides, I needed him with me to run interference with the homicide and other cops who would soon arrive in D-Day numbers. I had another option. A potentially better one. I hit another speed dial.

“No one must know you were there,” I said after I finished.

“Please,” he said. “I’m insulted.”

Finally, I called 911, just to be on the record. Then I went back to the den to make sure I hadn’t missed anything that would jeopardize the story still forming in my head.

***

Two young cops came through the door, guns drawn. One was black, the other Asian. The new face of the N.Y.P.D. I could tell they were nervous. They had that just-out-of-the-academy look. I doubted they had ever been at a crime scene quite like this one. The room was a shambles, with blood splattered everywhere.

The black cop looked at Ricks with the fireplace poker sticking out of his throat.

“Jesus, what was he, a vampire?”

The other said, “Who’s the broad?”

They were obviously shocked and trying to out-cool each other. I thought I’d better bring them up short and maybe save their careers.

“The lady’s name is Sharon Sullivan. She’s the wife of the District Attorney. The dead guy killed her. I killed him. Do yourselves a favor and wait for some senior people. A Detective Paul Vocci on the D.A.’s squad will be here soon and he’ll vouch for me.” At least I hoped he would. “Don’t ask any questions, don’t speculate, act like you do this all the time.”

They both looked down at Sharon.

“Who the fuck are you?” It was the Asian cop. “How do we know you didn’t kill her?”

“I called it in. I wouldn’t be standing around waiting for you guys if I murdered the D.A.’s wife, would I? You’re asking too many damn questions. Do what I tell you.”

Maybe it was my tone, or my logic. Whatever it was, they got it.

“Jimmy, do what the man says,” the black cop said. He looked at me. “You hurt bad?’

“Nothing the E.M.S. can’t handle.”

We heard sirens, doors slamming. Two more cops came in, one a sergeant. He took in the carnage and didn’t look as surprised as I expected.

“Jesus. What’s with this fucking house? Last time I was here there was only one body. This is gonna knock the D.A.’s crime statistics all to shit.”

The young black cop cleared his throat.

“This guy says the br…., I mean, the lady, is the D.A.’s wife.”

That got the sergeant’s attention. He walked over and looked down at Sharon.

“Mother of God.” Then he moved on to the other body. He leaned down for a closer look, careful to avoid the poker. “I know him, too.”

“Ricks, the security guard,” I said. “He killed her.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Rhode. Private cop working the Olsen case.”

More cars arrived. Cormac came in and flashed his badge. Vocci and Smith were right behind him. They both stared at Sharon Sullivan.

“Pete,” Mac said, addressing the sergeant by name, “secure the crime scene. We want to talk with this guy.”

They obviously knew each other from working in the same precinct.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Vocci said. “Let’s take this outside.”

More vehicles pulled up. Squad cars. An E.M.S. van. A fire truck. The U.S. Marines couldn’t be far behind.

We walked around to the side of the house. Vocci spoke first. He was badly shaken.

“What the hell happened here?”

“We don’t have time for a long version, Paul, so I’ll give you the highlights. You’re not going to like them. And your boss would like them even less, so we have to figure out how much to tell him. Personally, I don’t think it will do anyone much good if the real story gets out. But you guys are big boys. It will be your call.”

When I finished I said, “I’d like to hang all three killings on that piece of crap inside.”

I knew Mac was on board. The other two looked at each other and read each other’s eyes. Partners can do that.

“It won’t be easy,” Vocci said.

“But it might be fun, Paulie,” Mac said. “As long as we get on the same page.”

“I’m getting to like Staten Island,” Smith said.

***

Vocci and I sat down with Michael Sullivan and broke the news of Sharon’s death and her real identity in a conversation the likes of which I hope never to repeat. It had to be done. If there was going to be a cover up, it had to start at the top.

“She loved you, Mike, and died trying to protect you,” I said.

“She killed Denton,” Sullivan said.

“He was a sexual predator and blackmailer. She wasn’t in her right mind.”

He looked at me. His eyes were red and he was barely holding it together.

“I laughed at you when you suggested that might be a good defense for Elizabeth Olsen. If I do what you’re both suggesting, I’ll dishonor my office. I’ll be a hypocrite.”

“You’ll be human. Not a bad thing in a prosecutor.”

“Listen to him, Mike,” Vocci said. “Don’t throw your life away.”

“And Sharon’s,” I said. “Do you want her remembered for what she fought so hard to leave behind? Or for the wonderful woman she became and you loved? Who loved you enough to debase herself. I was willing to risk my neck to protect both of you until I had real proof she killed Denton. I even lied to Konrad Olsen, who just wanted to clear his daughter’s name. Don’t throw the fucking honor word at me. What we want you to do is the honorable thing.”

***

“You were pretty rough on him,” Vocci said as we walked from Sullivan’s house, a two-story Tudor on Bard Avenue in West Brighton. “The man just lost his wife.”

“It was the only way.”

Two squad cars pulled up. A captain and a priest got out of one and the head of Sullivan’s political party got out of the other. They walked past us without a word and rang the doorbell.

“It begins,” I said.

“Everyone thinks you’re a cupcake, Rhode. But you’re a cold bastard.”

“Let me tell you something, Paulie. Sullivan was right. He is a hypocrite. Probably has to be, being a D.A. He spent his early career on Wall Street keeping crooks out of jail when he wasn’t helping them avoid taxes. Now he prosecutes low-level drug dealers and convenience store robbers who can’t afford good lawyers. Most get sent away without a trial, since everything gets pleaded out. The goddamn legal system is broken. Prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges all drink in the same bars. They belong to the same clubs. Their wives go to the same parties. Hell, some of them vacation together. The poor schmucks who get caught up in the so-called wheels of justice are just paydays to them. The whole rotten structure is held together by hypocrisy.”

“Mike is one of the good guys.”

“Fuck the good guys. I’m finding more honor among some of the bad guys lately.”

“What’s got you so wound up?”

“My back hurts. The bandages itch. I just yelled at a distraught man. Want to go get drunk?”

***

As it turned out, we pulled it off with less trouble than we expected. I did so much lying I felt like I was running for office.

The crimes, of course, were compelling and the media frenzy was fierce. Initial coverage centered on the unprecedented murder of a District Attorney’s wife, which even in New York doesn’t happen every day. But calculated leaks soon steered the coverage to Ricks, who was painted as a closet lunatic who killed Denton and then tried to frame Elizabeth Olsen. When his scheme didn’t work – because a certain intrepid private eye was on the ball – he faked Elizabeth’s suicide to make her guilt apparent. But the same intrepid private dick also figured that out. In a final spasm of insanity, Ricks kidnapped the poor woman and brought her to Denton’s house, for reason’s unknown.

I was quoted as saying that “no one understands the mind of a madman.” I explained that I had been keeping tabs on Ricks and spotted him forcing Sharon into Denton’s house. Alas, I intervened too late to save her, but managed to slay Ricks.

I actually didn’t say “alas” or “slay;” one of the reporters did, and no one used the word “intrepid” to describe me, which I thought was a pity. But the press did run some nice photos of me. The story, Cormac said, made him want to puke. But I forgave him, since he did somehow make Laura Lee’s fingerprint evidence disappear. The likelihood that some technician in the overworked N.Y.P.D. lab in Manhattan would connect the dots was infinitesimal.

With all the principals dead and everyone who knew the truth keeping their mouths shut because they had broken all sorts of laws, not much media effort went into trying to disprove the story. Connor Costello quickly demolished his own candidacy with an interview during which he claimed that Sharon Sullivan’s murder, “while tragic”, was a direct result of her husband’s “lackluster approach to violent crime.”

The coverage finally petered out with dueling editorials in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal about gun control laws. The public’s attention was soon centered on the Housewives of the Jersey Shore, or something like that.

Konrad Olsen came by my office to give me a check for $20,000. I told him that I would settle for what he owed me on a per-hour basis. He told me that unless I took the 20 grand he’d tell his New Jersey construction pals that I was pro-union. We finally agreed on a compromise. I took $10,000 and he donated the rest to Sharon Sullivan’s All Our Children charity in his daughter’s name.

CHAPTER 33 – RUSSIAN BROTHEL SONG

Alice and I were in my kitchen putting the finishing touch on dinner.

“More wine?” she asked.

“It has enough,” I said, stirring the cast iron pot. “Too much ruins a beef bourguignon.”

As if I knew what I was doing without the help of a Williams-Sonoma mix. It was my first attempt at making the dish from scratch.

“Not for the pot, silly, for us.”

She was holding up the empty bottle of one of the Francis Ford Coppola reds she’d brought.

I was opening a new bottle when the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” she said.

I heard a familiar voice from the hallway. When I got to the door Alice was talking to Arman Rahm. Maks Kalugin was standing on the stoop behind him.

“May we come in?”

“Sure,” I said, and made the introductions.

Arman took Alice’s hand and kissed it.

“Enchantée, Miss Watts. You are as beautiful as I’ve been led to believe.” He turned to his bodyguard. “This is my associate, Mr. Kalugin.”

Unlike most people meeting Rahm’s fearsome henchman for the first time, Alice didn’t hesitate to put her hand out. Maks quickly took off his watch cap and extended his beefy paw. He even gave her a small smile.

“Alton, I wonder if we might have a word, in private,” Rahm said. He looked at Alice. “My apologies. Believe me, I’d much rather talk to you.”

“Of course, I understand.”

“I knew you would. Perhaps Mr. Kalugin can keep you company for a moment.”

“Alton was just opening some wine and I have to keep the pot stirred, so if he doesn’t mind coming into the kitchen?”

“Smells delicious. Maks can open the wine for you.”

“Will you have some?”

“Thank you, no. We will only be a few moments.”

I took Arman into the living room. We sat on a couple of wing chairs facing each other.

“Last time I was in your house,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “it didn’t smell so delicious. Perhaps it needs a woman’s touch.”

“Last time you were here, there were two dead men in the basement.”

“Good point. How is the basement coming along?”

“It’s getting there.”

“I admired the way you and the police concocted the story about Ricks. You turned him into a veritable serial killer. I presume there was some planting of evidence.”

“All in a good cause.”

“I agree. The news stories were also delightful. I liked the part about you being a war hero. Maks did, too.”

“The cops added all that crap to muddy the waters, deflect any serious scrutiny into what was a shaky story at best. And if I recall, Maks thinks the Taliban didn’t shoot me enough when I was over there.”

“Yes,” Rahmn laughed, “he believes his war was tougher than yours.”

“You and your men did a good job at Ricks’s apartment, Arman. The police never suspected it was burgled.”

“We have our moments. Of course, some of my employees have a lot of practice. Do the police know about the videos?”

“No. I didn’t see any upside to that. They had enough on their plate cooking up a believable scenario tying Ricks to all three murders. And Mike Sullivan is devastated enough.”

“Quite so.” He reached in his pocket, brought out several DVD’s and handed them to me. “I presume the police didn’t find the camera in the bear’s mouth.”

“I doubt they would even look,” I said, “but I ripped it out before they showed up. If anyone ever finds the wiring in the wall they’ll probably think it belongs to an old TV system.”

“Will you watch the videos, Alton?”

“No. But I bet you did.”

Rahm smiled.

“Considering that you asked me to commit burglary, I thought I earned the right. It turns out that I know several of the women. In addition to Sullivan’s wife, that is. More importantly, I know their husbands, some of whom are prominent businessmen and politicians. It is a sordid world we live in, my friend.”

“And what will you do with that knowledge?”

He looked at me steadily.

“What would you have me do?”

“Forget what you saw and destroy the copies you made.”

“And why would I do that? The images on the videos are potentially worth a fortune. Besides, you lied to me that day by the pool.”

“It must have been the Margaritas.”

“I think not. You were protecting the Sullivans, which was admirable. And you undoubtedly enjoyed misleading me after what Eleni and I did to you.”

That was true enough.

“So, what now?”

He leaned back and crossed his ankles.

“There are no copies. And I will forget what I saw, unless I should happen to meet the other ladies socially. Then I may see if they are willing to do with me what they did with Denton. On a bed, though. I have no desire to try out for the Russian Olympic team.”

“Thank you.”

Rahm smiled.

“I’m not being entirely altruistic, of course. This entire affair has worked out well for us. With Denton and that psychopath, Ricks, both dead, and Sharon Sullivan a heroine, her husband will easily be reelected as District Attorney.”

“And your mole will be safe.”

“I prefer to think of her as a good friend.”

“Mike Sullivan is pretty broken up about his wife. He has taken a leave of absence. He may step away for good.”

“I have it on good authority that his party has convinced him to stay at least through the election. No one wants that fool Costello to win by default. Sullivan won’t even have to campaign. After that, who knows? No one would blame the poor fellow if he eventually resigned. Then my friend will happily serve his successor.” Rahm gave me his best shark smile. “Or, perhaps, as his successor.”

I had to laugh.

“But,” he went on, “there is another reason I won’t use the videos in the manner that you fear. I would feel dirty, soiled. Denton was a pig. Perhaps one could accept what he did with those other women. They performed voluntarily, and, from what I saw, enthusiastically. But Mrs. Sullivan was coerced. You could see it on her face during the sex acts. And he made her do things he didn’t ask of the others, because he knew he had absolute power over her. He would just sit in that chair without any clothes on and wait for her to service him. You should have seen the look on his face when she walked in front of him with the revolver. She was right to shoot him.”

He stood and so did I. As we shook, he recited a short poem:

“Not for this I was born and raised up;

Unacquainted was I with such need;

I once prayed to God, I was faithful;

I once had a soul that knew peace.”

“You have to stop throwing your Ivy League degree around, Arman. It won’t do your reputation as a thug any good. Next thing you will do is wax poetic about Sonia Marmelodov in Crime and Punishment.”

He clapped me on the shoulder and laughed.

“You know your Dostoyevsky! I forgot that you are an educated man, Alton. You will be happy to know that I didn’t learn that at Columbia, but at my father’s knee. It’s an old Russian brothel song. We are suckers for tales of fallen women. By the way, what was Mrs. Sullivan’s real name?”

“Laura Lee.”

“A beautiful name. A beautiful woman. And a courageous one. Now she knows peace.”

When we got to the kitchen, Alice was making a salad while Kalugin stirred the pot. He tasted the bourguignon with the wooden spoon and looked at me.

“Needs more wine,” he said.

***

After Rahm and Kalugin left, I took out the DVD’s and told Alice what Arman promised.

“Will he keep his word?”

“Yes.”

I reached in a drawer and took out a meat pounder. Placing the DVD’s on the edge of a wooden cutting block, I smashed them one by one.

“Because of his sister?”

Alice knew about my former relationship, if that’s what it was, with Eleni Rahm.

“That may have something to do with it. But I think there are certain lines Arman won’t cross. Abusing a helpless woman is one of them. Using her death to destroy a man who loved her is another.”

“And he likes you.”

“In his way. At least enough not to kill me without a really good reason.”

“God, he’s a handsome devil,” Alice said. “Does he really kill people.”

“Occasionally, although I think Kalugin does most of the heavy lifting for the family.”

“I can believe that. He’s like a force of nature.”

I took Alice in my arms.

“When Maks came in I was afraid he’d crush your hand when you shook. Instead you had him eating out of it. I was reminded of a scene in Androcles and the Lion.”

“He was as gentle as a baby. And he knows how to cook.”

“Speaking of cooking, how long before we can eat?”

“The longer beef bourguignon simmers, the better it tastes.” She reached over to the stove and turned the heat under the pot to its lowest setting. “Let’s give it an hour.”

“We’ll be plastered by then.”

“Not if we go upstairs,” she said, kissing me, “and screw our brains out in the interim.”

“I bet it will taste sublime in two hours.”

It did.

THE END

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***

Alton Rhode returns in another mystery, SIREN’S TEARS. Here is an excerpt:

PROLOGUE

Cordillera Occidental (Western Andes) - 2003

Black spider monkeys are social animals, often found in close-knit family groups of 20 or more. Social, but not stupid.

Those that inhabit the Pacific slopes of the Andes of western Colombia are particularly cautious, constantly on the move, swinging through the trees with a genetic grace and power that would be the envy of Cirque du Soleil. To remain motionless for more than a few minutes in a South American rain forest is to be eaten.

But even some arboreal creatures must come down out of trees occasionally. But when a group of spider monkeys, mostly females and immature males, is on the ground foraging for fallen fruit and other food, the older males higher up are constantly on the watch for predators. These they usually manage to thwart with their early warning system. If an anaconda or jaguar is spotted in time, all it takes is a screech from one monkey to send the entire troupe up into the canopy, frightened babies clinging to the backs of their howling mothers.

There they will all sit for a moment, looking down at their frustrated pursuers, until, at a signal from the dominant male, all the monkeys will swing toward even more safety. Adding distance to height almost always works. Almost always.

Spider monkeys are reluctant to leave a group member behind, although in dire circumstances self-preservation wins out and, with the exception of females with young, it’s every ape for itself. On this day it was not a 20-foot snake or a big cat that caused the tribe to climb frantically into the trees. Humans were walking through the forest: Four loin-clothed Noanamá Chocó Indians and a young white woman. The Indians carried long palm-wood tubes; the woman, binoculars. Except for the low buzz of insects, the forest was now silent. Animals, even those not in danger, instinctively sense a hunt. Death was in the air.

The spider monkeys were the most nervous, and with good reason. The five humans circled their trees far below. But they made no move to climb. The four Indian men merely put their tubes to their mouths. There was a series of barely-audible “pfftts.” The small primates awaited a sign from the alpha male to flee. Suddenly, he jumped to another branch with a screech. It wasn’t the normal signal, but it was enough for the others. They started swinging away through the branches.

Surprisingly, the humans followed, at a loping pace that gave them no chance to catch the monkeys. With safety assured, the troupe slowed, waiting for their leader. For some reason, he lagged behind. At one point he did something none of the animals ever did. He missed a branch, and barely caught a lower one. He wrapped his legs and arms around it. Another big male, showing unusual courage, swung back toward the alpha. The leader raised his head, shaking it violently back and forth, as if to say, “Don’t come any closer.” But even had he been capable of such intelligent thought, it was merely the beginning of a convulsion. The shaking soon spread to the rest of his body.

Suddenly, the alpha male stiffened, and tumbled off the branch to the forest floor 60 feet below. With millions of years of accumulated rainforest detritus breaking his impact, the fall wouldn’t have killed him. It didn’t matter. The alpha male was dead before he hit the ground.

The other male didn’t hesitate, or wonder why the other ape fell out of the tree for no apparent reason. All he felt was fear. And even if he could have felt regret, he wouldn’t have. The dead alpha male had bullied him into second place in the tribe, and mated with all the best females. Now, he was the leader. He let out a loud screech and led the survivors away. The sounds of the chattering band soon receded in the distance. But other animal sounds, muted to be sure, resumed. An animal died, but the forest lived.

Below, at the base of the tree, the four men squatted around the dead animal. Their blowguns lay next to them. One of the Indians reached out and pulled a small dart from the monkey’s shoulder and placed it in a pouch tied to the lace string that held up his scanty loincloth. The woman came up to them and sat cross-legged. One of the men reached down and cupped his own dangling testicles and said something. The other Indians laughed and then looked at the woman. She smiled and nodded. The first man took out a knife and expertly castrated the dead monkey. Carefully, he sliced the animal’s genitals in four roughly even pieces and passed the dripping delicacies around to the other three men. Each tilted his head back and dropped their portions into their mouths. They looked like they were slurping oysters, she thought.

The woman had eaten much worse in her time with these people, but the monkey gonads were not offered. She was not offended. They liked her, and accepted her almost as one of their own, but she obviously didn’t need male spirit.

Thank God, they didn’t kill a female, Dr. Mary Naulls thought. Although I doubt if they even know what ovaries are.

***

A half hour later the small hunting party emerged from the tree line and walked into a small village. Two of the men carried a long pole, from which hung the body of the spider monkey, its long swishing tail almost touching the ground. The man whose dart killed the animal walked at the head of the column. No monkey-carrying for him. Naked children and several hairless dogs ran out to greet them. A woman with a baby at a breast walked over to the lead man and said something. She pointed at the dangling animal. He looked chagrined. Mary Naulls had a limited grasp of the language, but she got the drift. Something about a “small monkey.”

Mary smiled. It was domestic conversation, she knew, that dated from when the first humanoids themselves climbed down from trees. The man made a show of arguing but was quickly silenced by a sharp retort. He didn’t want to antagonize his wife. The traditional delicacy of monkey brains, eaten right from the skull, is reserved for the successful hunter’s family, and the woman of the house divvies up the portions.

Two of the village children ran over to Mary and took her hands. She was their favorite. Mary loved these simple, generous people, especially the kids. She wondered how long their way of life would survive. The rainforests were shrinking, though not as fast as on the east coast of South America. The Indians loved her back, admiring her fortitude. She could sit for days in a steady rain studying the plants and animals that fascinated her. Mary couldn’t explain to them that at least she was usually comfortable, unlike the many hours she spent shivering and hiding from her father back in Ocean Falls, off the coast of her own Columbia, British Columbia. The spelling was different, but Ocean Falls had almost as much precipitation as the Colombian rainforest, an average of 170 inches of chilling rain annually. To Mary, walking around with Chocó hunters during a downpour was as pleasant as taking a warm shower. In fact, she always carried a bar of soap with her and when alone stripped naked to wash.

One of children, the boy of about five, had a small sack in his hands, which he held up proudly. Mary knew what was in it but made a show of delight. A tiny frog hopped out, only to be snatched in mid air by the little girl and returned to the sack. Mary was momentarily startled until she saw that the little girl’s hand was wrapped in plantain leaves. Some adults handled a Rana Tóxico, the Spanish name for Poison Dart Frog, without even that rudimentary safety precaution. Just touching the skin of the tiny amphibian could be painful, as Mary knew from experience. She suspected that many of the hunters had built up immunity to the poison, at least externally. But when the toxin entered the bloodstream, via dart or ingestion, it was another matter. No animal was immune from its effects internally. Except for one local snake, anything that ate the brightly colored little frog died.

There are several varieties of Poison Dart Frogs in South America. Most are truly beautiful, with skins dappled with colors so bright they almost hurt the eyes. But none are as deadly as the one the little girl held, which had the scientific – and appropriate – name of  Phyllobates terriblis. In fact, biologists consider it the most potentially lethal of all animals, its batrachotoxin even surpassing the potency of sea wasp jellyfish venom. One milligram of the thumb-sized frog’s skin-secreted alkaloid poison can kill 20 men or two bull elephants. The minute grooves in the darts used by the Indians contained a fraction of that amount and it had been more than enough for the unfortunate spider monkey.

When Mary got to her hut she carefully added her new frog to a small wicker basket containing a dozen others. Using techniques taught her by the villagers, she had been collecting toxin from her little captives for months. The villagers never asked her for any. The frogs were all over the jungle. She was due to go back home and knew she would have trouble taking any live frogs with her. There were plenty of South American dart frogs in North American research labs, and even in private hands. But they had limited use for the kind of research Mary wanted to do. The native frogs synthesized their poison from chemicals obtained from the bodies of specific insects, mainly forest ants and beetles, consumed locally. Once on a different diet in laboratories, such as fruit flies and crickets, Rana Tóxico became just another Kermit.

***

The Rev. Humphrey Naulls was waiting impatiently for his daughter in the Avianca terminal in the Vancouver International Airport on Sea Island. It took Mary more than an hour to clear customs. Fortunately, her academic credentials were iron clad, with letters from both Colombian and Canadian officials and colleagues explaining why the attractive woman scientist was allowed to bring in the clearly marked samples of various venoms into North America.

The vials were in a small lock box and officials made a show of counting them against a list that had been wired to them from Bogota. No one bothered to check the toothpaste tubes and face cream jars that contained the bulk of the toxins Mary had collected. In them was enough batrachotoxin to depopulate Canada’s Western Provinces.

Not that Mary planned mass murder. On the contrary, most of the venom would go into legitimate research to further her career. But she had planned ahead.

There would always be enough left over for selective murder.

When Mary finally greeted her father, there was no kiss, or hug, despite the fact that she’d been gone more than a year. A casual observer might have assumed that Mary’s recent conversion to Catholicism, the result of her time spent with a dynamic Catholic missionary from Spain who worked with the Chocó villagers, explained her father’s coolness. After all, Rev. Naulls served one of the largest Lutheran flocks in British Columbia, and was locally famous for flying his own plane to remote congregations. He did, in fact, consider her a traitor. But their personal schism ran deeper than religion. Mary Naulls hated her father, for what he did to her mother, and to her.

Her mother, a morally weak woman to be sure, was dead. The official cause was heart trouble. But Mary blamed her father for driving the woman to an early grave with his philandering. Not that Mary missed her mother, who had never lifted a finger when Rev. Naulls satisfied his urges with late night visits to his daughter’s bedroom that lasted until she went to college.

“How long will you be home for?”

It was the first words spoken by her father since they had climbed into his single-engine Cessna Skycatcher for the two-hour flight to Ocean Falls. Mary looked down at the waters of Queen Charlotte Sound while she answered.

“Just a few weeks. I start my new position in Ontario in September.”

“I had hoped you might stay longer.”

She looked at her father. At 70, with a full head of white hair and a ruddy complexion, he was still a handsome man, catnip, she was certain, to lonely widows in remote congregations. She smiled grimly to herself.

***

Once home in Ocean Falls, they maintained a polite civility. A week into her stay, Rev. Naulls told his daughter he had to make a pastoral visit to Masset, a small town on Graham Island, part of Nakoon Provincial Park, 200 miles to the northwest. He asked her to go along.

“I can’t, father,” she replied, thinking the timing couldn’t be better. “I have too much to do preparing for my new position. But let me pack a breakfast for you.”

Mary watched his plane take off due west over the Pacific Ocean. She wondered how long he would be able to resist the smell of freshly baked sausage biscuits. Then, smiling, she went into the house.

***

In his plane, 45 miles out and having reached the Cessna’s 14,000-foot cruising altitude, Rev. Naulls put a half-eaten biscuit on the seat next to him and started to make his scheduled turn to the north toward Graham Island. Much to his surprise, the Skycatcher, normally a nimble aircraft, responded sluggishly. He looked at his instrument panel to see what the problem might be. The dials were blurry. He blinked, but that didn’t help, especially since he had trouble blinking. He was also having a hard time concentrating, and he suddenly realized that it wasn’t the Skycatcher that was responding sluggishly. He was.

The minister’s lips and tongue felt numb and he had a strange sensation in his throat. It felt like the temporarily unpleasant feeling one has in the dentist chair after accidentally swallowing a topical gum anesthetic. Except this time the feeling didn’t go away. He tried to swallow, and couldn’t, succeeding only in dribbling biscuit and sausage bits down his chin.

The plane started to roll, but with an awkward lurch Naulls was able to hit the autopilot and it straightened out. Panicking, he tried to reach for his microphone but discovered that he couldn’t move his arm. A moment later, he couldn’t move anything at all and he was having trouble breathing.

With a top speed of 129 miles per hour and a range of 541 miles, the Cessna flew on for just under four hours before running out of fuel. It began losing altitude in a slow glide but with the autopilot now useless soon tilted on one wing and stalled at 12,000 feet.  Nose heavy, it began a steep dive and smashed into the frigid waters of the North Pacific approximately one minute later.

It was a much longer plunge, resulting in an exponentially greater impact than experienced by a spider monkey falling in a rain forest. But, as with the monkey, it made no difference to Rev. Naulls.

He was already dead.

***

Because his intended destination was so close to the Alaskan border, the United States Coast Guard joined their Canadian counterparts in the search for Rev. Naulls, who, according to radar plots, had inexplicably flown almost 500 miles straight out over the Pacific until his plane presumably ran out of fuel.

The recovery effort was called off after three days, amid steadily deteriorating weather. A Canadian Coast Guard officer told Mary it was unlikely that either the plane or her father’s body would ever be found. As an islander, Mary knew that the Coast Guard took great pride in bringing closure to the relatives of those missing at sea. She wound up consoling the officer, who couldn’t know how really comforted she was by the news that her father’s body was lost.

There was, of course, a large memorial service that Mary found almost unbearable for reasons that would have shocked those attending. But she managed to convey a passable look of bereavement and a stoicism that impressed many and masked her disdain for words of praise she found hypocritical.

The next day, she informed LexGen, the company she was scheduled to start work for, that she now needed time to settle her father’s estate, for which she was the sole heir. Her new employers were very understanding. As one of the world’s leading experts in biological toxins, thanks to her work in South America, Dr. Mary Naulls was a valuable commodity to the startup pharmaceutical research laboratory.

A month later, flush with the proceeds from the sale of everything her father owned, plus a quick but generous settlement from an aircraft insurance company anxious to avoid litigation and publicity over the mysterious death of a well-known pastor, Mary Naulls moved to Ontario to start her new life.

***

If you would like to read all of SIREN’S TEARS, just use this link:

SIREN’S TEARS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lawrence De Maria began his career as a general interest reporter (winning an Associated Press award for his crime reporting) and eventually became a Pulitzer-nominated senior editor and financial writer The New York Times, where he wrote hundreds of stories and features, often on Page 1. After he left the Times, De Maria became an Executive Director at Forbes. Following a stint in corporate America – during which he helped uncover the $7 billion Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme and was widely quoted in the national media – he returned to journalism as Managing Editor of the Naples Sun Times, a Florida weekly, until its sale to the Scripps chain in 2007. Since then, he has been a full-time fiction writer.  De Maria is on the board of directors of the Washington Independent Review of Books, where he writes a regular column:

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Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1 – CHIN MUSIC

CHAPTER 2 – SLAM DUNK

CHAPTER 3 – ROOTING FOR NORBERTO

CHAPTER 4 – LUNCH AT THE CLUB

CHAPTER 5 – THE WRITING ON THE WALL

CHAPTER 6 – TOO MANY EGGS

CHAPTER 7 – CHECK PLEASE

CHAPTER 8 – EMOTIONAL LAND MINES

CHAPTER 9 – ELIZABETH OLSEN

CHAPTER 10 – RHETORICAL LUNCH

CHAPTER 11 – EMPIRE BUILDER

CHAPTER 12 – BATTLE OF BRITAIN

CHAPTER 13 - OTTOMAN SEX

CHAPTER 14 – LITTLE LEAGUE

CHAPTER 15 – A PRACTICAL DEMONSTRATION

CHAPTER 16 – RED TOENAILS

CHAPTER 17 – STILL IN HER CORNER

CHAPTER 18 – TRIFECTA

CHAPTER 19 – WORKING GIRL

CHAPTER 20 - MEASURING

CHAPTER 21 – POSSUM HOUSE

CHAPTER 22 – THE LETTER

CHAPTER 23 – SAUSAGE BISCUITS

CHAPTER 24 – BREAK A LEG

CHAPTER 25 – LOVE AND MARRIAGE

CHAPTER 26 – PERSONAL BEST

CHAPTER 27 – A WAY WITH WOMEN

CHAPTER 28 – ON THE HOOK

CHAPTER 29 – SANDWICHES AND SVETLANA

CHAPTER 30 – HORNETS NEST

CHAPTER 31 – STAR TREK

CHAPTER 32 – THE SAME PAGE

CHAPTER 33 – RUSSIAN BROTHEL SONG

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