A Murder Too Close

by Penny Mickelbury

  A MURDER TOO CLOSE

  A Phil Rodriquez Mystery

  By

  PENNY MICKELBURY

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  About the Author

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  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  I like to think of myself as a normal, regular guy, in the sense that I don’t consider myself unusual or special in any way. I’m a second-generation New Yorican—a native New Yorker of Puerto Rican ancestry. I’m thirty-something, a shade under six feet, in excellent physical condition, have all my teeth and most of my hair, which I wear short in the summer and long in the winter. Simply put, I wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. Not a New York City crowd. Maybe in Portland or in Des Moines, but we’re not talking about those places. We’re talking NYC, the Big Apple, where I earn my living, which may be the one area in which I stray from the norm: I’m a licensed private investigator. Not necessarily a big deal—there are thousands of us in New York State, most of that number in New York City—but a step, perhaps, removed from the run-of-the-mill kinda guy. Where I choose to practice my trade—Manhattan’s Lower East Side—also may, in the estimation of some, mark me as unusual, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is my home turf: The East Village, Alphabet City, Little Italy, the Bowery, Chinatown. I know and understand the people who live here, in the narrow buildings crowded and bunched together on the narrow, crooked streets, fanned by the breezes of the East River, and they know and understand me. It’s a good match. Usually.

  I looked across the desk at the man who was asking a favor of me. People know that I do favors on occasion. Not every job requires a contract and a retainer. A small favor, done out of kindness or respect, can generate a lot of goodwill, which can be more valuable than money in my business. Probably in a lot of different kinds of businesses. However, what Sam Epstein was asking me to do was not a favor, it was an act of professional suicide, and that’s exactly what I told him.

  “You’re not asking for a favor, Sam. You’re asking me to stick my nose where it definitely does not belong, and maybe damaging my reputation along the way.”

  “How does this damage your rep, Rodriquez? Tell me that!” Sam slapped the desk top with the palm of his hand and it made a sharp, cracking sound. He’d always been an emotional, excitable guy. I’d known him since junior high school, which is how and why I knew this about him. We weren’t friends or pals back then, just what today, I suppose, people would call associates. He’d worked in his family’s dry cleaning store and one of my jobs as a kid was to ferry my grandfathers’ uniforms back and forth to the cleaners. Both abuelitos were doormen at high-rent West Side apartment buildings, and were expected to look as elegant as the people for whom they opened limousine and building doors and picked up and delivered packages. The Epstein Dry Cleaners and Laundry was a neighborhood mainstay, opened by his grandparents and now operated by Sam and a cousin. So, like I said, we weren’t pals but I’ve known the guy for more than twenty years, so when he called and said he wanted a word, I didn’t hesitate. I should have remembered, though, how he was and, given that, I should have known that the favor Sam Epstein would ask wouldn’t be something simple and uncomplicated like getting a building inspector or a traffic warden to lighten up or look the other way.

  “I know the kind of strain you’re under, Sam—”

  He cut me off. “Then help me out, here, Rodriquez. Please.”

  The helpless pleading in his voice almost got to me. Sam’s older sister and only surviving sibling was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center. She was a secretary, working for a temp agency, assigned that one day to an office near the top of the second tower. She left an eight-year-old daughter who now was fourteen and who became Sam’s responsibility on that awful September day. He could have refused and sent the girl to Florida to live with his parents, her grandparents, who gladly would have taken her, but Sasha had visited Miami Shores and that wasn’t the place for her; she was a New York City kid to the bone. So she and Sam shared the large rent-controlled apartment in Stuyvesant Town where the family had lived for more than forty years, and things had moved along smoothly—“under the circumstances”—Sam said, until last month, when Sasha began a friendship with the son of the owners of an Indian restaurant. It was this friendship that had Sam’s already ruddy face looking like it burned with fever. It was this friendship that sparked Sam’s call to me.

  “Think back to when we were that age, Sam. How often did we fall in love? Not to mention out of love, for that matter.”

  “It’s not the same thing!”

  “Sure it is—”

  He cut me off again. “Kids these days do stuff we didn’t even know about when we were that age.” He looked as if the thought made him want to throw up.

  “You’re right about that part. But you’re not asking me to make sure they’re not getting it on in her bedroom when you’re at work. You want me to, I believe the word you used was, ‘discourage,’ the boy from seeing Sasha. And the reason you want him ‘discouraged’ is because of his race. And that’s racist and I won’t do it, Sam. Not for you or anybody else. And since you asked, that’s how it would hurt my reputation. If word got out that I sided with anybody against anybody else based on race or color, I’d be finished in this neighborhood!” I was getting a bit emotional myself at the thought.

  “We’re Jewish, Rodriquez!”

  “No shit, Epstein,” I said as dryly as I could, hoping the absurdity of it would lighten the moment, but the irony was wasted. Sam wasn’t in the mood to be lightened. If his face got any redder he’d look like one of those cartoon characters with smoke coming out of his ears.

  “Look what they did to our country, and now you want to let them destroy my family! Or what’s

  left of it! Frankie, his name is supposed to be!” The way Sam said the name made it sound like a curse, or some other disgusting thing. “Those people, they don’t have names like ‘Frankie’! It’s probably Farouk or Farsi or some damn thing like that!”

  This had gone too far, way beyond excitable and emotional. This was getting close to Line In The Sand territory for me. I got up, walked around the desk, and sat on the chair next to Sam. I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He looked at me and the hurt and fear and sadness and anger and loss in his eyes were more than one human being should have to bear. But the reality was that he wasn’t the only one so burdened. I remembered other eyes: Jill Mason’s and Carmine Aiello’s and Arlene Edwards’ and Bert Calle’s and my own Yolanda Maria’s. I had learned from those people that while hurt, fear, sadness, anger, and loss can really kick your ass and might even bring you to your knees, you don’t have to bleed to death from the beating and that you can stand up straight again if you have the will to do so. “Sam, the boy and his family are, more than likely, Hindu, not Muslim. And believe me, his parents are as dismayed as you are by this thing.”

  He gave me the kind of look that called my intelligence into question, and when I realized why, I had to laugh. “Don’t tell me, Sam: You can’t imagine how some lowly Hindu people would have the nerve not to be happy to have their son dating Princess Sasha Heller.” I stood up. It was time for Sam to leave. Tha
nkfully, he took the hint and got to his feet. “Tell you what, Sam. I’ll check the boy out,” I said, leading Sam to the door, “make certain he’s not a pimp or a drug dealer or a religious fanatic. In the meantime, the smart thing to do, I’m telling you, is ignore the kids and let the thing run its course. You should be trying to get some free meat samosas and they should be trying to get some free dry cleaning out of this situation while it lasts.”

  “I’m just trying to do the right thing is all.”

  “I know you are, Sam.” We were at the door but I didn’t open it. “Speaking of doing the right thing, what about Sasha’s father? I thought he was going to share some of the responsibility of taking care of her.” I knew Jack Heller, too, from way back. His family had owned a deli on Avenue A that saved its old, spoiled meat and bread to sell to Puerto Ricans and Blacks. The deli went under before Old Man Heller realized that his neighborhood’s hue was changing. By the time he’d caught on, it was too late—either to change his ways or for anybody to care whether he did or not.

  Sam shrugged. “He’s got a new family now. He wanted to concentrate on them, he said, but I think the new wife didn’t want any reminders of his former life. Besides, Sasha doesn’t really like him all that much. Never did . . . even before . . . you know.”

  I knew. I opened the door and let Sam out into the frosty early March night, withholding from him my thoughts about his former brother-in-law. The woman Jack Heller lived with wasn’t his wife and her children weren’t his children and what a useless piece of shit he was that he couldn’t bother to travel fifteen or twenty blocks to see his own daughter whose mother had perished in the most horrible way. Truly he was his father’s son. Then I thought that Sasha Heller probably had pretty good judgment for a fourteen-year-old if she didn’t care for her father. And if she did like the Indian kid, Frankie, I didn’t expect I’d find that he was a closet lowlife. Or a religious fanatic who, in my book, were a dangerous breed no matter what religion or god they were pushing.

  I stood in the doorway watching the traffic and the people. Both street and sidewalk were clogged, but at least the people were moving. All the traffic could do was emit exhaust smoke and horn blares and wait for lights to change from green to yellow to red and back again. I shivered in the cold air and finally closed the door. I locked it, pulled down the shade, and turned off the front lights. Yolanda wouldn’t return to the office tonight—she had taken her mother to a doctor’s appointment—and we didn’t get many walk-in clients. People who wanted to see us, like Sam Epstein, usually called first and arranged to come early in the morning or late in the evening because, like Sam, they wanted to guarantee a measure of privacy. People wanting or needing the services of a private investigator usually didn’t want their friends and neighbors privy to that fact.

  I stood in the middle of the floor and surveyed the large, spacious room that was the office of Phillip Rodriquez Investigations. It occupied the ground floor of the three-story, narrow tenement building that my partner, Yolanda Maria Aguierre, and I owned. It was an open space and felt more like a living room than an office. That had been Yo’s idea—to make clients feel as relaxed and comfortable as possible since whatever had brought them to us in the first place most likely was anything but relaxing and comfortable. The floor was carpeted and there were a couple of sofas and easy chairs and side tables, along with the requisite desks and chairs. At the back of the room, behind a series of Shoji screens and newly installed sliding doors, were a fully equipped kitchen and full bathroom at one end, and Yolanda’s computers at the other. She had three of them and a new laptop that went everywhere she went. I could safely and effectively operate one of them. The others scared me silly. But if a scrap of information existed about anyone or anything at any time or place, Yolanda could—and eventually would—find it on one of her computers.

  I went to my desk, sat down, and turned on the gooseneck lamp. It cast a mellow glow on the darkened room and I felt as at home as if in my own living room. I took a notebook out of my desk drawer and wrote down, word for word, everything that Sam Epstein and I had said to each other, and included my thoughts and feelings about what he wanted me to do. Then I lowered all the window shades, turned down the heat, put on my coat, hat, scarf, and gloves, set the alarm, and headed out into the night. Traffic was still crawling along on both the crosstown and uptown-downtown streets and it still was cold. March for sure was the cruelest month. Temperatures had begun to moderate just enough so that the more optimistic among us would begin to anticipate the arrival of spring, but not enough so that anyone would be foolish enough to leave home without hat, scarf, and gloves. March was the month in which winter held on with both fists, determined not to let go. March was the month in which the wise among us had learned to expect a blizzard before flowers, green grass, and heat from the sun made it to town.

  I started the trek home, the conversation with Sam still ping-ponging around in my head, my brain walls registering every bounce. What I was thinking and feeling—and wondering and worrying about—was what could have given Sam Epstein the notion that I would hurt a fifteen-year-old boy? For that, in truth, was what he wanted me to do. That’s what “discourage” him really meant: Break something on the boy’s body. And the more I thought about it, the madder I got. How could he think I’d do something like that? I’d never been a bully, as a kid or as a man. Sure, I could and did and would hold my own, and with my fists if it came to that, but I’d never in my life started a fight and I’d certainly never fought anybody smaller, weaker, or younger than myself. Grown men did not hurt children or women.

  “You son of a bitch.” I’d spoken the words out loud and space automatically cleared around me on the crowded sidewalk, but nobody stopped or gave me more than a passing glance. New Yorkers. You gotta love ’em. Or not. But the extra space on the sidewalk allowed me to change direction, intention, and plans. Instead of heading home and ordering dinner delivered from my favorite neighborhood deli, I would eat Indian tonight. There was no need for me to rush home. My romantic interest, Consuela de Leon, a social worker at Beth Israel Hospital, worked the late shift tonight—not off until eleven—after which she’d go home to the Bronx. So, I could go eyeball young Frankie, satisfy myself that Sam was being hysterical, and justify my anger. I didn’t know the name of Frankie’s family’s restaurant, but I knew where it was. I’d never eaten there—meat samosas were the only thing I really liked at Indian restaurants and if not for Yolanda and now Connie, I’d never have occasion to enter one. But being a New Yorican, I could always eat rice, and Indian cuisine always came with a side of rice.

  The wood smoke smell that permeated the Manhattan air in the winter was a comforting presence on my walk; it calmed me and helped dissipate the anger that had built inside me against Sam Epstein. I could imagine myself at home, sacked out on the couch, the TV on but muted, Latin jazz on the radio, the fire roaring, as I waited for Connie’s call. She always called on her late nights, to let me know she’d arrived home safely. We’d talk while she unwound and released the stress of the day, and there was plenty of it since she counseled the victims of various forms of sexual trauma and abuse, and when we hung up, I’d always drop immediately off to sleep. So warmed was I by my fantasy that I almost forgot to be damn near frozen from the fifteen-block walk to the Indian restaurant, so when the scream of sirens split the air close enough to hurt my ears, I was quickly slapped back into reality. Immediately I noticed that the smoke smell was heavier, denser, and more acrid, and that the energy on the sidewalk had shifted. People were on alert, on guard. There was a fire, and it was nearby. I allowed myself to be carried by the crowd’s energy along the sidewalk toward whatever was happening, my gloved hands hard against my ears in a futile attempt to protect against the undulating wail of the sirens.

  The crowd suddenly halted, and so did I, behind a police barricade. Thick black smoke rose rapidly. I looked where everybody else was looking and saw sky-bound flames, heard the fire roar and crac
kle like an angry living thing, and I knew that the arson investigators had a long night ahead of them. A quick break in the crowd provided me with a glimpse of the fire. It took a couple of seconds for what I’d glimpsed to register, and I pushed and shoved my way to the front. The Taste of India was, in fire department parlance, fully involved. Like most businesses in this part of town, stores and restaurants were ground level, with residences above. The flames from the Taste of India had penetrated the restaurant ceiling and invaded the apartment above. Ladders from two trucks were extended toward the upper floors even as the powerful streams of water were aimed at the equally powerful flames. I, like everybody in the crowd, was mesmerized by what was unfolding before us. I had been a New York City cop for four years before turning private, so I felt comfortable saying that cops could call themselves the City’s Finest all they wanted. Firefighters truly were this city’s—any city’s—bravest. Most cops, myself included, would rather face a fool with a gun any day than rush head first—and deliberately—into a burning building. I could see them inside the restaurant now, and inside the upstairs apartments, resembling hulking movie monsters in their masks and protective gear. I said a silent prayer that no life would be lost tonight, especially not fifteen-year-old Frankie’s, then I forced my way back through the crowd. I didn’t want or need to watch further.

  The crowd closed itself behind me, leaving me exposed to the night air. The combination of the heat from the fire and the heat from the crowd had protected me from the cold, and suddenly I was shivering, but I knew the temperature wasn’t to blame. I didn’t want to voice the thought but it hopscotched around my head anyway, and wouldn’t be quiet: Sam Epstein had torched the Taste of India. I didn’t want to think that or believe that, but I couldn’t stop myself. Until an hour ago, if someone had said to me, “Hey, you know Sam Epstein from the dry cleaners? Well, he just torched a restaurant at the height of the dinner hour,” I’d have said, “No way. I know Epstein. He might fly off the handle but he’d never do something like that.” But an hour ago, that man had asked me to hurt a boy, and now that boy’s family’s restaurant was burning to the ground on a frigid March night. Maybe the people who’d been eating dinner were burning, too. Maybe the people who worked in the restaurant were burning, too. Maybe the people who lived in the apartments above the restaurant were burning, too. Maybe Sam Epstein and I needed to talk.