Little Girl Lost (Hard Case Crime) Page 9

  Big Murco was a head shorter than his son but had the same olive coloring and a skinnier version of the same features. He looked a little like Jack Kevorkian, I thought. He held the front door open and his son prodded me in the back with his pistol. I stepped outside.

  Across the street, a black four-door sedan sat with its engine running and its lights on. Had it been there before, waiting for me when I’d gotten home? I couldn’t remember. Most likely Little Murco — Catch — had been watching the building, maybe with instructions to call his dad when I showed up. Then I’d thrown a monkey wrench into things by calling him myself. If I hadn’t, would they have just kept watching, hoping I’d lead them to something — maybe to Susan — or would they eventually have come calling on me? I’d never know now.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as the father followed me into the car’s back seat. Catch squeezed in behind the steering wheel.

  “Nowhere. We’re just going to sit and talk. And you’re going to tell me what you’ve found out about that bitch who set me up.”

  I thought back to the conversation I’d had at Zen’s. “You don’t mean the burglary, do you? I thought you got the guys who did that.”

  “You see? This is a man who knows how to do his job.” He said this to his son, who was turned sideways in his seat and watching over the headrest, gun at the ready. “Yes, I mean the burglary.” He pointed to a scar running from above his right eye to his hairline. It looked recent and was about the right size to have been made with the butt of a pistol. “It’s true that I got the men who did this to me. I could show you more of what they did, but I won’t. Let’s just say those two men won’t be doing it to anyone else ever again.”

  “So?”

  “Those two men — they were nothing. Amateurs. They didn’t plan the job themselves. Someone else told them where to go and what to do and when to do it. It was no accident that they broke in when they did. Someone knew I’d have a lot of cash at home that night. Someone who got half the take for putting the finger on me. Someone who walked away with five hundred thousand dollars of my money.”

  “You think it was Miranda?”

  “I know it was.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” he rasped, “they told me it was. While they could still talk.”

  I thought about Catch and the cup full of teeth. I pictured the two burglars tied to chairs, the father and son working them over till they spilled everything they knew. I looked from one to the other. Would the old man have held their heads, or would he have been the one working the pliers?

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “How could Miranda have known about the money?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Blake. But I can tell when a man’s lying and when he’s telling the truth, and those two, at the end... they weren’t lying.”

  No, they probably wouldn’t have been — and it didn’t sound as though Murco was, either. He believed what they’d told him, and he believed what he was telling me. But what did that mean? If it was true, it meant Miranda hadn’t just turned into a stripper — she’d turned into a thief as well. It also meant he’d had one hell of a reason to kill her. It certainly explained why Miranda had been so frightened of him.

  But if he had killed her, why was he talking to me now? “You killed Miranda,” I said, “and now you can’t find the money she took from you.”

  “If I’d killed her, Mr. Blake, you’d better believe I’d have gotten her to tell me where the money was first.”

  “You’re saying you didn’t kill her?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “You realize everyone thinks you did it.”

  “Everyone’s an idiot. You think I would have done it in my own club? You think I would have left the body there for Lenz to find? You think I’m stupid?”

  It didn’t seem to call for an answer.

  For the first time, Catch spoke. His voice was a husky baritone. “If we’d killed her,” he said, “it wouldn’t have been with two bullets to the back of the head either.” His eyes were completely dead. This was the man who’d held the pliers, I decided.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” the father said, “I would have killed her, if I’d known she was the one who set me up. But I didn’t know it was Sugarman until after she was dead.”

  “You said the two men you caught told you—”

  “They told us the person who’d set them up for the job was a woman, a stripper named Jessie they’d met at a club in the Bronx called the Wildman. They didn’t know Jessie’s real name, just that she had blonde hair and fake tits and that she gave them my address and took her cut of the money when they returned after the job. That’s all they knew. We talked to the owner of the Wildman, but by that time Sugarman hadn’t shown up for work in weeks, and all the information they had on her in their files was wrong. You understand? She made it up. Fake name, fake address. That left me nowhere. You know how many blondes with fake tits there are in this city?

  “When Sugarman was killed, my son had the idea to take the newspaper back to the club and show her picture to the owner. He said yes, it was Jessie.

  “So I sent my son to Sugarman’s apartment, and he found this.” He took a strip of paper from his pocket, held it up for me to see. It was a torn money band, the sort banks wrap around stacks of bills. “It was behind the dresser.” He put it away.

  “Now it’s your turn, Mr. Blake. I understand you’ve been going around, asking questions. I want to know everything you’ve learned. You see,” he said, “if you find the killer, I’ll find my money.”

  What was it I saw in his eyes? They weren’t dead like his son’s, they were alive, but what was it that animated them — greed? Anger? A hunger to get back what was his? He sat leaning forward, eager to hear what I had to tell him. What I felt like telling him was that he disgusted me, that sitting in the same car with him and his son made me feel physically ill. But it wasn’t worth it. There were many disgusting men in the world, some of them worse than these two. If I wanted the man who killed Miranda, I had to save my energy for that fight.

  “I might be able to help you,” I said. “I don’t know who killed her, but I’ll tell you what I do know.”

  So I told it again, from the beginning, from waking up to Miranda’s face in the paper through my second run-in with Roy. I left out the trip to Zen’s — they didn’t need to know about that if they didn’t already. But there was no point in leaving Susan out of it, since either Roy had already told Lenz about the encounter we’d had or he would soon enough, and I assumed Lenz would tell Murco. All I left out was where she was staying now, and they seemed to accept it when I said I didn’t know, that we’d separated on the subway.

  “Who do you think did it?” Murco said.

  “I’m going to have to think about that. Until now, you were at the top of my list.”

  “Was Sugarman living with anyone?” he said. “A boyfriend? A girlfriend?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about this old girlfriend, Mastaduno? What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know that either,” I said. “Just that somewhere along the line she and Miranda went their separate ways.”

  “You think they stayed in touch?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “It sounds to me like you’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said. “And you understand, it’s work I’d like to see done.” He tapped me in the chest with the gun. “Quickly.”

  When it was over, I found myself back on the sidewalk across from my building, watching the sedan pull away.

  For the second time this evening, I thought about taking a shower, changing my clothes — I could smell my own sweat. But I wanted to hear Leo’s voice first, know that he was okay. I called the office as I climbed the stairs to my apartment. Our answering machine picked up, so I tried dialing him at home.

  “This is Leo Hauser. Leave your name at the beep—”

  I hung up. Maybe he was in transit. That was the good po
ssibility. The alternative was that Roy had been waiting for him at the hotel, had overpowered him and taken his gun away, had given him the sort of beating you couldn’t expect a man Leo’s age to survive, no matter how tough he was. I tried the office again, hung up when I heard my own voice.

  I just had to wait. I unlocked the door to my apartment. I’d try him again at home in a half hour, and if that didn’t work—

  One of my windows was open.

  I tried to pull the door shut again, but from the side a long arm snaked around my waist and pulled me off balance. I fell to the floor and tried to roll out of the way but didn’t get far before I felt one hand grab my belt and another grab a handful of my jacket collar. Then I was off the ground and in the air. I landed on the floor on the far side of my bed, the phone charger in my pocket digging into my side. The man who’d thrown me was taking the long way around the bed. The lights were off and the door had swung shut, and in the darkness I couldn’t make out his face, but there were only two people I knew with a silhouette that massive, and one of them had just driven away with his father.

  “Roy, stop.” I looked around for something I could use as a weapon. I grabbed my desk lamp and yanked the cord out of the wall, brandished it like a club. He batted it out of my hands.

  “Don’t do this,” I said. He grabbed the front of my jacket and pulled me close. I could smell his breath.

  “Why not, motherfucker?”

  Why not.

  “Murco just hired me,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Your boss. He was here, just a minute ago. With his son. They want me to do some work for them. Call them. You’ll see.” I couldn’t stop talking. As long as I was talking, he wasn’t hitting me. “His cell phone number’s in my pocket. Call him. He’ll be very angry if you hurt me.”

  I could almost see the gears turning in his head, the enormous effort it took for him to hold himself back. But Murco’s name scared him.

  “If you’re lying... ” he said. He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t have to.

  He released me with one hand and took the slip of paper from me when I dug it out of my pocket. He pulled me over to the window so he had enough light to read it. “Dial,” he said and read the number off to me. I pressed the buttons on my desk phone, held the receiver out to him.

  I heard someone pick up and Roy took the phone. He was still holding tight to the front of my jacket with one huge fist.

  “Mr. Khachadurian? This is Roy from the club. Yes. I’m with John Blake, he says you — Yes, in his apartment. Wayne did. Because he’s sticking his nose — He’s hanging around the club, he’s bothering the girls — No, I haven’t. Yes. Yes. Yes, I understand.” He slammed the phone down.

  He pulled me close again. “You’re one lucky son of a bitch,” he said. He shoved me back and my knees buckled against the bed. I went sprawling. Then he was standing above me, blocking what little light came in through the window. I didn’t see his fist come down, but I felt it as he buried it deep in my belly.

  “Murco,” I croaked.

  “I don’t work for Murco,” he hissed. “I work for Wayne Lenz.” An uppercut slammed against the underside of my chin, snapping my head back against the mattress. “That’s first of all. Second, I don’t like getting sprayed in the eyes.” One more punch, this one aimed at my groin. I turned and caught it on my hip.

  “He’ll kill... he’ll kill you.” I could barely get the words out.

  “Well, now, that’s third,” he said, and I could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “The man said don’t do any permanent damage. Didn’t say don’t hit you.” The next blow caught me on the side of the head. After that, I didn’t feel the rest, just heard them as they landed.

  Eventually he got tired of the game. “Lucky son of a bitch,” he said again.

  He walked out, slammed the door behind him.

  Chapter 15

  The window was still open, letting the cold air in. I rolled to the edge of the bed, got my feet under me, limped over to the window, and pulled it shut. Though I knew it wouldn’t do much good. This apartment was too insecure and getting a little too well known.

  Moving slowly, I stuffed a duffel bag with an armful of clothes, slung it over my shoulder, grabbed the Serner files and my notebook, and made my way down to the street. There were no cabs, so I started walking.

  The streets were dark and empty, and the few people I saw left me alone. Bit by bit I made my way to Ninth Street.

  The heated lobby was a balm at first, warming my stiff fingers and cold face, but by the time I got to the fourteenth floor the protective numbness the cold had provided had worn off and I felt sore in every part of my body. I don’t have a lot of padding and, like most people, have never learned the right way to take a beating. Some of the worst of it had been absorbed by the mattress, thank God, but the rest of it had been absorbed by me, and I could still feel every spot his fists had landed. I leaned against the wall and put all my effort into pressing the doorbell. I felt like an old man.

  My mother let me in. I must have looked pretty bad, because her hand flew to her mouth when she opened the door. Behind her on the living room couch, I saw Leo. Of course he’d come here, I realized belatedly — he’d had to drop off Susan’s things.

  “Sorry, Leo,” I said. “I lost your gun.”

  “What happened?”

  I tried to shrug, but it hurt too much. “Too much,” I said. “I’ll tell you in the morning. You get her stuff?”

  He pointed to two suitcases next to the couch. “No problem. I didn’t see anyone watching the room.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have. They were all at my place.”

  I heard a toilet flush and a moment later Susan came in. Her hand flew to her mouth, too. “My God, John, what happened?”

  “I’m okay,” I said, but she stood there wanting more. “Just had a nice little meeting with the Murcos, pere and fils—”

  “They did this to you?” she said.

  “No, they were perfect gentlemen. Though they were the ones who took your gun, Leo.”

  “That’s all right,” he said, but I could see he was seething.

  “Then,” I said, “after they left, I had a nice little visit from Roy. Been nicer if I’d still had the gun. But I’m here.”

  Leo cleared a place for me on the couch and I lay down.

  “Anything else you want to tell us?” Leo said.

  “No,” I said. “Yes. He didn’t do it. Murco. He didn’t kill Miranda. Someone set it up to look like he did, and he would have, but he didn’t.”

  “Johnny, you’re not making sense.”

  “Tomorrow,” I said. I’d never realized my mother’s couch was this comfortable. My eyes were closing. Someone kissed my forehead. Probably wasn’t Leo.

  Under the spinning lights, Miranda was dancing. Her face was the face from the newspaper, from the yearbook, and she was dressed in her graduation gown and mortarboard cap, but she was on a stage between two brass poles, and as I watched she threw the cap to the crowd and started unzipping the front of the gown. The stools on either side of me were packed and behind me men were cheering, clapping rhythmically to the beat of the music. Across the stage from me one man made a bullhorn of his hands and started shouting, Take it off! Take it off! until the chant spread, and now the room was echoing with the words and the sound of pounding palms. The zipper went down, down, and the V-shaped split in the gown spread, showing nothing under it but skin. Her breasts spilled out, enormous and surgically sculpted, and the men roared their approval. She shrugged the gown off and danced up to me, dropped to her knees in front of me, lifted her breasts to me with one arm and cupped the back of my head with the other. She was pressing my head forward, and behind me someone clapped me on the back and urged me on. Then her breasts were in my face, soft under my cheeks, and her skin smelled like I remembered. With her arm around my head, the sound was blocked — I could still hear it, but only from very far away. And from much clo
ser I heard her voice, her soft voice saying, “Don’t let me go, John, please, don’t let me go... ”

  When I woke up, my shoes and socks were off and there was a blanket over me. My mother’s bedroom door was closed and so was mine. Leo was gone, maybe back to Jersey, maybe just to the office. I wasn’t the only one who occasionally spent the night on a couch, though I seemed to be doing an unusual amount of it lately.

  Standing up wasn’t as bad as I feared, though I’d never heard my legs or back crack so loudly. I dragged my duffel bag into the bathroom, stripped off the rest of my clothes, and climbed into the tub. It was still dark outside the window, but as I lay there with the hot water pouring in and the drain open to let it out again, it slowly turned light. My left wrist hurt — I must have twisted it when I landed. My neck was bad, and so was my abdomen. But the water helped, as did lying in one spot and not moving. I flipped the lever to stop the drain and eventually turned the water off with one foot, then just lay and soaked.

  I thought about what Murco had said. Was it possible that Miranda had dreamed up a million-dollar theft, had talked two poor sons of bitches into pulling it off for her, and had vanished with half the money while they were left twisting in the wind? I thought about the girl I’d known, the one who’d grown up with dreams of helping people, and I told myself yes, it was possible. Because anything’s possible. Turn on the nightly news and you’ll see that every killer was a nice young man to his neighbors, a good son to his parents, a faithful parishioner at his church. Every corporate swindler led off in cuffs had a history of donations to the Metropolitan Museum or the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. Maybe my Miranda couldn’t have done the things Murco described, but my Miranda had vanished the day she got on the plane to New Mexico.

  But how? There were only so many people who’d have known that Murco was about to make a big buy. The son would have known, presumably, but I didn’t see any signs of disloyalty there. Maybe Lenz, although the way Murco had talked about him, it didn’t sound like he was part of the inner circle: You think I would have left the body there for Lenz to find? You think I’m stupid? Certainly the sellers — whoever Murco was giving the money to would have known about the buy. But that was about it. And how would Miranda have known any of these people? She would have known Lenz, of course, from working at the Sin Factory; but would she have known any of them well enough to be in a position to hear them talking about Murco’s upcoming buy and all the cash he’d have on hand the night before?