Little Girl Lost (Hard Case Crime) Page 13

  The idea flickered briefly and died. For one thing, I was still unsteady and couldn’t face two flights of stairs on my own, much less the walk back to Main Street. For another, what were the odds that no one would see me along the way?

  I slipped the gun into my jacket pocket and dropped to a squat next to Lenz’s body. He’d been shot at least twice, once in the gut and once in the chest. It would have been the chest shot that had killed him. I looked at his clenched fingers and decided that the look on his face might only be pain.

  I took out my cell phone and speed-dialed Leo at the office. On a Friday night he’d normally be long gone, but given everything that was going on, I was hoping he’d decided to stick around.

  “Come on,” I said as it rang. “Leo, pick up.”

  The answering machine picked up instead and I heard my own voice asking me to leave a message. “Leo, I need your help. Call me back as soon as—”

  The machine cut off with a beep. “Johnny?”

  “Leo, we’ve got a problem.”

  “What is it?”

  I stood up, moved away from the body. The bedroom rug was charcoal gray and leading toward the door I could see two parallel streaks, the sort that might have been made by the wheels of a piece of luggage after rolling over a patch of bloody carpet. “I’m in Flushing,” I said, “at Wayne Lenz’s apartment. He’s—” I looked at the body. Leo had strong feelings about what you did and didn’t say over a cell phone, because you never knew who was listening in with a shortwave. But fuck it. “He’s dead. Shot twice, once through the heart. There was someone else in the apartment, came up behind me and knocked me out with something heavy, then used my gun to shoot him. Your gun, I mean.”

  “Damn it,” Leo said. “Did you touch anything?”

  “Just the gun.”

  “Just the gun?”

  “Leo, I—”

  “Forget it. Just give me the address.” I gave it to him. “Stay there. Don’t touch anything else, don’t move anything. I’m going to call some people, but I’m not sure what I can do. The local precinct will want to handle it, and I don’t know anyone in Queens.”

  “Next time I get framed for murder, I’ll try to do it in Manhattan.”

  “This is not a joke. You’re going to be arrested. I’ll try to get them to listen, but Johnny, every murderer has a story. Every one of them, and plenty of times it’s how they were knocked out and when they woke up, there was a dead body and they didn’t know how it got there. It won’t look good.”

  “Neither does the back of my head, Leo.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first man to smash himself in the head to get out of a murder charge.”

  “Leo — you don’t think I did it, do you?”

  He said no, but I heard the moment of hesitation.

  “I was knocked unconscious, Leo, and someone else — I don’t know who — took my gun, shot Lenz with it, and walked out with a trunk full of money. You’ve got to believe me.”

  “I’ve got to,” Leo said. “The police don’t.”

  Leo was with them when they showed up at the door. They rang up from the lobby and I buzzed them in, just as if I lived there and they were coming for a friendly visit. Won’t you sit down? No, not there, that’s evidence.

  There were three men with Leo, two middle-aged uniformed cops and one in plain clothes who looked about thirty years old except that he was balding like an old man. One of the uniforms took me by the arm and started reading me my rights while the other headed for the bedroom.

  “Do you understand these rights as I’ve explained them to you?”

  I looked at the name stitched above his breast pocket. “Yes, Officer Lyons, I understand. You’re going to want this.” I picked up my jacket, which I’d taken off and left by the door. “There’s a gun in the pocket. I touched it — I shouldn’t have, but I did, I’d been hit on the head and wasn’t thinking straight. But there may still be other prints on it.” He took the jacket. “Also, I’ve looked around for the object the person who hit me might have used, and I couldn’t find it. But I did find this.” I walked him over to the recliner, and next to where I’d been lying there was a piece of frosted glass. It looked like a horse’s head. “It probably broke off from a bigger piece, some sort of heavy glass sculpture, maybe a cowboy on horseback, something like that. You might find it thrown out somewhere on this block or in the neighborhood.”

  “John,” Leo said gently. “Let them do their job.”

  “I’m letting them, I’m just pointing a few things out.”

  “If there’s something to find, we’ll find it,” Lyons said.

  The plainclothes cop came forward. “I’ll watch him, Lyons. You can go check out the body.”

  Lyons looked like he wasn’t sure he wanted to let go of me, but the tone in the plainclothes man’s voice suggested he wasn’t just making an offer. Lyons released my arm and went to join his partner in the bedroom.

  “Blake, you’re in deep shit. Leo filled me in.”

  His voice had sounded familiar, and now I placed it. “Kirsch?”

  He nodded. “I don’t have jurisdiction here, but if I can tie this in with Sugarman, maybe they’ll let us take it over.”

  “Oh, you can tie it in with Sugarman all right. That I promise you.”

  Leo had followed Lyons to the bedroom and now he came back. “What a mess.” I couldn’t tell whether he was talking about the scene in the bedroom or the situation as a whole. Both, probably. “Kirby, what are the odds they’ll let you book him in Manhattan?”

  “Zero to none,” Kirsch said. “Best we can hope for is Monday morning they’ll let us move him.”

  “Monday morning?” I said.

  “Look at it this way,” Kirsch said. “You’re going to spend a weekend in jail, would you rather do it in Flushing or at Midtown South?”

  “I’d rather spend it in my own apartment,” I said, “or better yet, working on this case, which I can’t do if I’m in jail. Look at this. Look.” I bent my head forward. “How could I do that to myself?” I pulled him toward the bedroom. “Look at the rug. Someone pulled a trunk through here. If I did it, where’s the trunk?”

  Lyons’ partner was talking into a walkie-talkie the size of a hero roll. Lyons looked up from Lenz’s body. “Sir, please calm down.”

  “I’m calm. I’m just telling you you’re arresting me for something I didn’t do.”

  “If you didn’t do it, that will come out and you’ll be released. In the meantime, we’ve got you at the scene of a murder with a gun you say is the murder weapon and you’re telling us we’re going to find your prints on it. Ask the lieutenant there what would happen to us if we didn’t book you.”

  I looked to Kirsch for support and then to Leo, but both knew Lyons was right, and I knew it, too.

  “Look, Blake,” Kirsch said. “If your story checks out, maybe Monday we can get you cleared.”

  “That’s great, but in the meantime whoever did this has a chance to get away.”

  Lyons got up and took hold of my arm again. “Let us worry about that, Mr. Blake.” He steered me toward the front door.

  “Do we have to wait till Monday?” I said. “Doesn’t anyone work Saturdays?”

  “A Queens judge? On a Saturday?” Kirsch said. “That would take more pull than we’ve got.”

  Chapter 21

  Booking me took the better part of an hour, and then they took me to an infirmary where a police surgeon washed the back of my head, smeared on some antibiotic ointment, and told me I didn’t need stitches. I didn’t argue. I had bigger things to worry about than a scar on the back of my head.

  They put me in a holding cell with stacked bunks along two walls. One of the bunks was occupied by a man who was shivering. It wasn’t cold. The others were empty and I sat on the nearest one.

  I wasn’t dazed anymore, but I still felt the soreness. It was worse when I lay down, but then I couldn’t have slept anyway, not with so much to sort out.


  I’d been assuming that Lenz and Miranda had worked alone — or more precisely that they had worked with no one else other than the two burglars Miranda had recruited at the Wildman. But someone had been in Lenz’s apartment, had hidden in the bedroom when I’d knocked, and had come out swinging when I’d started pressing Lenz for answers. In principle it didn’t have to be someone who’d been in on the robbery — it could just have been a friend who’d jumped to Lenz’s defense when it looked like I might shoot him. Except that jumping to someone’s defense generally doesn’t involve leaving him dead on the floor and walking out with his stash of stolen money.

  And the timing was suspicious, too: I didn’t get attacked right away, only after Lenz had offered to split the money with me. He hadn’t been serious, just desperate — but the friend in the bedroom might have thought Lenz was serious, might at least have thought he was going to talk. This certainly suggested someone with something to hide, someone whose face had gone as pale when I’d threatened to go to Murco as Lenz’s had.

  Obviously, it had to be someone who knew about the money. Someone Lenz trusted, though he shouldn’t have. I thought immediately of Roy — Lenz had presumably been behind it each of the three times Roy came after me, and if Roy was willing to break into a man’s apartment on Lenz’s say-so, there was obviously more going on there than a simple manager/bouncer relationship. And God knows Roy would be capable of murder. But Roy wouldn’t have needed to smash me in the head with a piece of sculpture — a fist would have done fine. And Roy wouldn’t have left me alone once I was unconscious. Even if he needed me alive to take the fall for Lenz’s murder, he would have gotten in a kick or two.

  So who? If I weren’t stuck in this cell, I might be able to find out.

  “Coffee?”

  A cop stood at the bars holding a cardboard deli tray in one hand. I reached through the bars and took one of the cups.

  “Think he wants one?” The cop nodded toward my cellmate, who was still twitching in his sleep.

  “Not unless you’ve spiked it with bourbon.”

  I took the cup back to my bunk. It was barely warm. Hell, it was barely coffee. I couldn’t help comparing how the day had started and how it was ending. The smell of fresh-brewed coffee, the feel of Susan’s arms around me, her head on my chest — how had I gone from that to this cell stinking of Lysol and sweat? I had a murder charge hanging over my head, a killer slipping further away by the minute, and this cup of brown water that tasted like nothing but would probably keep me up all night if my aching head didn’t.

  I poured the coffee down the cell’s sink, left the cup on the rim, and sat down again. I’d get out. Somehow. But by the time I did, would it be too late? Would Lenz’s killer have vanished? Probably. Would I ever find out what had really happened on that rooftop on New Year’s Eve? The odds were dropping by the minute.

  Come on, Leo, I thought. You can get me out of here.

  “You’ve got a visitor.”

  It was the same cop who’d brought me the coffee the previous night, looking bleary and eager to get to the end of his shift. But he kept a firm grip on my arm as he led me out of the cell and down the long corridor to one of the station’s interview rooms.

  I figured it would be Leo, or possibly Susan, or maybe a lawyer Leo had managed to get to come in on a Saturday morning. Or maybe my mother, carrying a cake with a file baked into it. It wasn’t.

  “Good morning, Mr. Blake,” Murco said.

  He was by himself, though I imagined the son was probably not far away, maybe waiting in the car outside. He’d dressed for the occasion in a double-breasted suit with a narrow chalk stripe, a shirt with French cuffs, even a handkerchief in the pocket. Classic overcompensation, I thought. The man’s trying very hard to show he doesn’t belong in here.

  His voice didn’t suggest any discomfort, though. He spoke quietly and calmly in his hoarse whisper, periodically glancing up over my shoulder through the chicken wire-laced glass at the cop waiting on the other side of the door. “You made the morning news shows,” he said. “The papers haven’t got it yet, but by tonight they will.”

  “What are they saying?”

  “That you killed my floor manager.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Wayne was a valuable employee. Not a perfect one, but he was worth something to me. I can’t have people going around killing my employees. Unless, of course, there was a good reason for it in this case.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” I said. “I went to his apartment, but someone got behind me and knocked me out. That’s who killed him. As for whether whoever did it had a good reason, the answer is yes. Five hundred thousand good reasons.”

  “You’re saying Wayne... ?”

  “Yes, I’m saying Wayne. He and Miranda worked together to set you up, and then when it looked like you might identify Miranda, he killed her to keep her from talking.”

  “That’s hard for me to believe,” he said. “The man had worked for me for years.”

  “That’s probably why he was able to get away with it.”

  “And who is it you’re saying killed him?”

  “Not me. That’s all I know.”

  “And the money?”

  “Gone,” I said. “Whoever killed Lenz has it, presumably, but I’m damned if I know who that is. And as long as I’m locked up in here, I can’t find out.”

  He leaned forward and spoke even more softly than he had until now. “Mr. Blake,” he said, “if you weren’t locked up in here, would you be able to find my money and the person who took it?”

  “If I weren’t locked up in here, I could do lots of things,” I said. “But I’m being held on a charge of murder.”

  “If it’s true that you didn’t do it,” he said, “and it’s just a matter of their releasing you sooner rather than later... ” He spread his hands, palms up, as though there were a simple answer to it all. “The police will listen to reason when you talk to them the right way,” he said.

  “I tried.”

  “Then you didn’t do it the right way.”

  “Are you saying you can—”

  “Let’s not talk about what I can do,” he said. “What I want to know is what you can do.”

  Could I give him what he wanted? Maybe. But saying “maybe” wouldn’t get me out of jail. “Yes,” I said. “I think I can do it.”

  “You’d better do more than think, Mr. Blake. If I do this for you and you don’t come through for me... ”

  Could he really get me out? He seemed confident of it — and given that he’d managed to keep himself out of prison all these years, maybe he had reason for his confidence. I thought about Kirsch’s explanation for why they had never booked Murco: he was small potatoes and maybe he’d lead them to someone bigger. Sure, that could be. But maybe this small-potatoes gangster was also making installment payments to the Stan Kirsch Memorial Fund. And maybe he knew the right palms to cross in Queens, too.

  Of course, if I accepted this favor and then wasn’t able to deliver, I’d wish I was back in my cell with nothing to complain about but bad coffee. But the alternative was worse: sitting in jail while maybe my last chance to find out what had happened to Miranda evaporated.

  “Do it,” I said.

  Whatever Murco did, it worked quickly: I found myself on the steps of the precinct house in less time than it had taken for them to book me in the first place. The cop who gave me back my belt and shoelaces was one I hadn’t seen before and he gave me a warning about not leaving town while I was still a material witness in a homicide investigation. I told him I wouldn’t dream of it.

  An hour later, I climbed out of the train station on Eighteenth Street. I’d tried calling Leo from the train, but couldn’t get a clear signal long enough to complete the call; I tried again now and got him.

  “Where are you?”

  “On my way to the office. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “How did you—”

  “Long story.”

&n
bsp; “I’ve been making calls all morning,” he said. “But I didn’t think I’d gotten anyone to pay attention.”

  “I got some help from Murco.”

  “From Murco? Johnny, you don’t want his kind of help.”

  “What I don’t want is to be in jail,” I said. “And what he’s asking for in return happens to be something I want to do anyway.”

  “Now it is. What about when he asks for something you don’t want to do?”

  “I’ll deal with that then.” I hung up as I turned onto our street and whipped out my keys to unlock the door, but Leo beat me to the punch. He looked worse than I did, haggard and rumpled, as though he’d slept in his clothes, if he’d slept at all.

  He led me inside and handed me a FedEx package marked for Saturday delivery. “This came this morning. Susan told me you were expecting it.”

  I looked at the return address: Jacksonville, Florida. This had to be Mo Levy’s reluctant contribution. I tore the package open and took out the unlabeled videocassette that was the only thing it contained. Would it be worth watching, I wondered, especially now, when there was so much else I needed to do? What good could it do me to see Miranda and Jocelyn dancing in a video shot three years ago and a thousand miles away?

  I almost put it down — I wanted to. But in the end that’s what decided it for me. I didn’t want to watch the tape because of what I was afraid I might see, and that was a bad reason. I slipped the tape into our VCR, powered up the TV set above it, and pressed Play.

  After a minute of snow, a picture jumped into focus. The camerawork was steady, though not otherwise of high quality. I figured Levy had probably hidden a security camera in a light fixture, trained it on the stage, and left it at that. The sound was tinny — I could hear the high notes of the music, but the bass was missing. Of course, sound wasn’t what Mo Levy had been most interested in capturing.

  Miranda and Jocelyn were already on stage when the video started. They were wearing matching gowns, one red, the other green. They had played up their resemblance to each other with identical haircuts, identical makeup, mirror image moves as they strutted away from each other and back. They moved with self-confidence and the crowd responded. I sat down on the couch, forced myself to keep watching.