The Woman In Blue (Nick O'Brien Case Files)

by David G. Johnson

  Jimmy flashes his buzzer.

  “I’m ADA O’Brien. Who is the officer in charge?”

  The large officer is suddenly the picture of helpfulness. Jimmy’s ID works so much better than mine does when it comes to gaining cooperation.

  “Uh, that’d be Lieutenant McGregor. He’s inside.” The patrolman steps aside and motions us into the warehouse.

  Angus McGregor. Oh, boy, this ought to be a bucket full of daisies.

  McGregor is one of the orneriest Scots it has ever been my sad displeasure to work with. McGregor and I were on the force together in Midtown years ago. I’d heard he took the detective exam and applied for a lieutenant’s position in Brooklyn. Just my luck it had to be the docks. He’s an honest cop, one of the few, but word is the boys in blue call him the Brooklyn Bulldog, and for good reason.

  Angus, a short, broad-shouldered redhead in a long black coat and dark gray fedora, stands at the back of the warehouse barking orders in a thick Scottish brogue. The fat cigar hanging from the corner of his mouth looks to have been snuffed. It is a dancing, smokeless stump jumping with every word, threatening to soar free from its perch but never fulfilling that threat.

  “And just what in blazes are you two doin’ trampin’ up my crime scene?” Jimmy isn’t intimidated and flashes his buzzer once again.

  “I’m ADA O’Brien and the DA thinks your crime scene may be related to a body we found in the bay this morning. He sent me here to see it firsthand. This is my brother, Nick O’Brien, who is consulting for the DA’s office on the case.”

  “Oh, you don’t hav’ to introduce me to Nick O’Brien. Why the whole world knows the big war hero, now don’t they? So, Nicky, you come down here to show us poor boys in blue how to do our jobs now hav’ you?”

  “Hiya Mac. I’m just along for the ride on this one. If you don’t mind, could you show us what you’ve got? We’ll be out of your hair quick enough.”

  I learned years ago the best way to win an argument with Angus McGregor is to not let him start one. You take the Bulldog’s bait, and you’re in for a tussle for sure.

  “All right, hero. Well the warehouse owner, a Mr. James Finnegan, shows up this mornin’ and sees someone’s brok’n in. He calls the precinct. We show up and find blood stains on the concrete back here and a bullet lodged in one of the crates. We call it in to the crime lab boys. They’ve been here half the mornin’ combin’ the place.”

  “Mac, any idea on the make of the heater?”

  “No. The slug they found’s pretty messed up. Looks like only one got away. Must have been a revolver. Didnae find any shell casin’s. We did find a burnt match and some ash.”

  “Is that odd?”

  “You bet your buttons it’s odd! Don’t you see what they made me do to a perfectly good cigar? These are s’pposed to be bonded warehouses. No smoking in ‘em.”

  I look around the place. Wooden crates are piled two and three high all around the place and the boys in white coats are digging around in one behind a dark spot on the concrete floor. I’ve seen that color too many times. No matter how much you scrub, there are little pocks in concrete that just won’t let go of blood. From the darkness of it, this stain has been here several days. Lines up with the time Tommy went missing.

  There is a storm drain not far from where the large stain is, and one tentacle of the stain seems to be reaching out toward the drain. I take out my Colt 1911 and pop the clip. Using my thumb to free one of the bullets from the magazine I step toward the dark stain and drop the shell onto the concrete. Angus, Jimmy, and I watch as the bullet bounces a few times before settling into a roll straight toward the storm drain. It drops into a hole in the grate.

  “Hey, give me that crowbar,” I bark to one of the blueshirts over near the open crates where the lab boys are working.

  After a quick nod from Angus, he strolls over and hands me the crowbar. I hook it into the grate and with a bit of elbow grease I pop the grate free of the drain. There, staring up at me from the muck at the bend in the drain which sits right below the grate, are two shiny brass cylinders. One is my live round, and the other is an empty shell casing.

  “Hey, one of you white coats may want to bag this. Might be something you want to hold on to.”

  Angus claps a meaty hand on my shoulder.

  “Well bless my eyes, hero, if you ain’t the smart one. I got a warehouse full o’ cops and not one of ‘em gave a second thought to tha’ drain, including me. You’re all right, Nicky, even if you did ditch us for the private life.”

  “Thanks, Mac. Look, if the body they fished out this morning is our guy, and this is where they did him, I want to see you get them just as bad as you do. I’m not looking for headlines, I just want to get to the bottom of this thing.”

  As the lab boys are pulling the brass out of the drain I remark, “That live one is mine, the empty probably belongs to whoever made that mess on the concrete. Looks like an odd shell. Let me see it.” I examine the shell. “Sure enough, this is an 8mm. Not a lot of guns use this size ammo. This is definitely a custom job. I don’t know of any gun shops that carry 8mm ammo regularly.”

  “Right you are, Nicky.” Turning to one of his bluecoats, Angus slips back into bulldog mode. “You! Get back to the precinct and start pullin’ a list together of every gun shop in New York that makes custom ammo.”

  “B-but lieutenant, that’ll take weeks.”

  “Well it’s a good thing you slept yesterday then. Get started now b’fore I bust you back so far you’ll have to look forward to see your own arse!”

  The patrolman beats a hasty exit. Jimmy, his face looking deeply thoughtful, speaks up.

  “Lieutenant McGregor, I believe we have what we need. If you could have the lab boys let me know anything else they turn up, I would appreciate it. Also, if your boys hit anything solid on the 8mm ammo, please let my office know right away. Here is my card.”

  “Yeah, sure thing. Anythin’ I can do to help. Just promise me, O’Brien, if we do find and bust whoever did this, you boys in the DA’s office will try to hold onto them longer than a day or two.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  As we leave the warehouse and climb into the car for the ride back to Jimmy’s office, I can’t help but echo McGregor’s thoughts. The corruption in the system and the judges on the mafia payroll generally mean if someone connected did this, the chances of them doing any real time is next to nil. It was exactly that frustration that drove me out of my blue coat and into the world of private investigator. Unfortunately, that is not the most bothersome thing swimming around in my head at the moment.

  “Jimmy, I’m afraid that with all we saw today, I’m back to square one.”

  “What are you talking about, Nicky? We have a body that is very likely DeLanz, a slug from a crime scene that has all the makings of a murder site, and thanks to you we have a pristine shell casing. What’s not to like?”

  “My suspects. Lupo’s jacket says he doesn’t like guns. He likes getting up close and personal. Prefers clubs, knives, baseball bats or even his own fists. I guess guns are too quick and he doesn’t get the chance to get his message across. The other possibility is Miss Rosario, but she’s got an even bigger aversion to guns than Lupo has. If this is where Tommy DeLanz took his last breath, then my two best ideas of who might have snuffed him just flew away like feathers on the wind.”

  “Yeah, well don’t get too down, Nicky. Something will come to you. It always does. I got the education, but you’ve always had the smarts where it counts.”

  “You get any sweeter, Jimmy, and I’m going to go into sugar shock. Looks like I need to have another conversation with Marjorie.”

  A sly look crosses Jimmy’s face.

  “Yeah, about getting paid, right?”

  You know better. Never could get one past you.

  “Yeah, and to bring her up to speed on the case. I need to let her know they may have fished Tommy out of the river. I think she’s going to take that hard, r
eal hard.”

  Jimmy nods. Suddenly I remember the reason I came to see him this morning in the first place.

  “In all the fuss I almost forgot. You get anywhere on that insurance angle? Did Abrams have the rocks covered?”

  “I called the Boston DA’s office yesterday evening after I got back to the office and apparently he did. They grilled him for days, as did the insurance boys. They figured he might have had the jewels stolen himself rather than trying to sell them. They didn’t find enough to put it together, so the insurance is planning to pay it off.”

  “That closes another loop, but even if Abrams isn’t behind the heist, that doesn’t mean he still might not have sent Lupo down looking for that double dip. Looks like I may be taking a trip to Beantown soon. You think you can talk to the Boston DA and get me a meeting with Abrams?”

  “Well it’s Saturday, so I doubt I can reach him before Monday, but come by my office first thing Monday and I’ll make the call. It should be no problem. The Boston DA’s a standup guy and seems eager to help.”

  “Well that’s good news. Maybe the only break I’m going to catch on this one.”

  Chapter Eleven – Bullet Ballet

  The sparkling white tiles and spiffy white uniforms of the waitresses at Childs Restaurant are a stark contrast to the dark brooding mood which has wormed its way into my gut. Today came the biggest break in the DeLanz case so far, and I am further behind on solving it than I was the first day Marjorie walked into my office. While I want to fan and protect any real spark that might be there between us just in case I’m not being played, I have to pull the kid gloves off a bit more.

  She knows more than she’s saying, that’s for certain. The question is how to get it out of her without putting her through the whole third-degree and ruining any chance that something might come of this once we clear things up about Tommy.

  I notice she looks a bit fidgety. Maybe this place is a bit too low-brow for a society dame like Marjorie, but tonight’s dinner is on my dime, and my dimes are few and far between, so Childs’s clean, cheap and easy cuisine is the right place.

  “You okay, doll? You look a bit out of sorts.” She seems to snap back to herself from wherever her mind had just been vacationing.

  “Oh, yes Nick, I’m all right. But Tommy might be dead? The possibility hadn’t really occurred to me until now.”

  The eyes. It’s always the eyes.

  “I’m sorry to have to break it to you, but you knew Tommy was in with some dangerous folks. It only makes sense he may have wound up on the wrong side of things eventually. We should know for sure in a few days, once the coroner is done and the lab boys find out what they can about the bullet and shell casing we found. Maybe we will get lucky. Maybe it ain’t Tommy after all.”

  “Perhaps, though I have this dreadful feeling that it is.”

  So do I.

  “Listen, Marjorie, I’m going to be incurring some extra expenses on the case. I haven’t really sweated you for any of the smaller stuff, or asked for another advance, but fact is you paid up through this past Thursday, and tomorrow is Sunday. I’ve got to take a trip to Boston Monday to follow up on a couple of things, so I’m afraid I will have to ask you to bring us current at least through tomorrow, plus the cost of the train ticket.”

  She shifts nervously in her chair and her eyes look at my collar, but won’t look into my eyes.

  “Boston? Whatever for? I told you Tommy was here before he disappeared. Why would you need to go to Boston?”

  “Look, Marjorie, I’m going to give it to you straight. Best I can figure, Tommy lifted some diamonds from some powerful people up in Boston and returned to New York to fence them. Looks like somebody found out and he got crossed up either with the Boston mobsters or the families here in New York. Either somebody killed Tommy and took the diamonds, or he stashed them somewhere and when he wouldn’t tell them where he hid them, somebody offed him. It’s not a pretty picture, but from the pieces I have put together those are my best guesses. Either way, the clues point to Boston, and that’s where I need to go to get another piece or two of the puzzle.”

  The glaze creeps over her eyes in preparation for what is sure to be an award winning waterworks show. Her face shows signs of a donnybrook about to blow from the inside. She clearly is struggling to know how to form a thought after what I just told her.

  “But, Nick, why Boston? If you already think you know what happened, then why do you need to go there? I’m terribly afraid if you get around those mobsters they might do something to you. And I couldn’t bear to lose you. I just couldn’t.”

  Nice angle.

  She don’t want me in Boston, but it ain’t because she’s afraid some Boston Brunos are going to fill me full of sunlight. She’s still hiding something, so maybe it’s time to see what I can shake loose.

  “Well you see, Marjorie, I found a picture while we were going through some old newspaper archives of Tommy in Boston. There is also a woman in the picture, but I can’t make her face out. Might that have been you?”

  The eyes.

  “I couldn’t possibly know unless I see the picture. I have seen my brother on and off both in New York and Boston, so depending on where and when the photo was taken, I suppose it might have been me. Do you have the photo?”

  Never ask a question you don’t want to know the answer to.

  “As a matter of fact, I do. You see,” I continue as I take the newspaper clipping out of my coat pocket and show it to Marjorie. “It was taken in January at the funeral of the major Jewish mafia boss, Charles ‘King’ Solomon. There’s Tommy, right there, and the woman beside him looks about your height and build, but I can’t make out the face. So is that you?”

  She is back to the donnybrook. She bites her lower lip as her eyes dart back and forth. Suddenly she grabs my hand as the waterworks start.

  “Yes, Nick, that is Tommy and me at Solomon’s funeral.”

  She pauses and I am not sure whether or not she intends to explain further. Funny, I might have gone with “That picture is so blurry you can’t even tell who it is”, but then again people have the internal driving need to confess, so maybe she is finally going to clear the air.

  “So what are you and Tommy doing at a funeral for a Boston mob boss?”

  Her teeth release the death-grip they had on her lower lip, and through her gentle sobs and flowing eyes she explains.

  “All right, Nick, you caught me. My father wasn’t the upstanding man I made him out to be. He had quite a few business dealings with Solomon. Tommy went to work for Solomon after dad died. I warned him not to, and reminded him that father always wanted us to stay away from Solomon, but Tommy didn’t listen. So there you have it, Nick. That explains what we are doing in the photo, so now you don’t need to go to Boston.”

  The eyes disagree.

  “Well, doll, I can tell you this worries me for your safety. Solomon’s people knew Tommy and they knew you. Suppose they are here because they think Tommy heisted the jewels? Whether he did or not, they might figure you would be someone Tommy might have trusted with them. If I was one of Abrams’s goons, it wouldn’t be long before I’d set my sights on you.”

  “Oh, Nick, they wouldn’t come after me. They know Tommy and I disagreed about him working for Solomon, and none of that has anything to do with Abrams. When Solomon’s business dealings got split between Hyman Abrams and Joseph Linsey, most of my father’s dealings went to Linsey. I have nothing to do with Abrams.”

  “Still and all, kiddo, I’m worried about you. I’m going to see you back to the New Yorker, but you stay put and don’t go outside the hotel alone. My good friend, Chauncey Little, is one of the senior house-detectives for the New Yorker. I’ll ask Chauncey to keep an eye on you. If you come across anything strange in the hotel, you get to Chauncey. He’s a good egg, and you can trust him.”

  The cab ride back to the New Yorker Hotel is quiet and wet. The clear weather has broken and another spring shower is drenching t
he city outside. Thanks to Marjorie it is also raining inside. She grabs ahold of me like she is on the Titanic and my arm is the last life preserver. Her tears have soaked the shoulder of my trench coat thoroughly by the time the cab pulls up at the corner near the New Yorker.

  With the traffic and the rain, the cabbie can’t get any closer, and I’m anxious to get Marjorie back inside the hotel, so I tell the cabbie to let us off at the corner and we will make the sodden stroll to the hotel doors. As I fish in my pocket for the fare, I realize that with all the questions and waterworks, Marjorie still hasn’t caught us up on my fees.

  As we quick-step from the corner toward the hotel entrance, with Marjorie using her clutch as a makeshift but woefully inadequate umbrella, a black Buick Model 57 peels itself out of the rest of the traffic and starts to slow down as it pulls up closer to us.

  The windows are down in this downpour? Holy…

  I shove Marjorie to the ground behind a car stopped at the curb and dive for cover myself just as blazing muzzle-blasts and the all-too-familiar rat-a-tat-tat of Tommy guns erupt from the open windows of the Buick. Aside from slaying some shrubbery, peppering the wall of the New Yorker in hot lead, and shattering the windows in several cars, the triggermen miss their marks. As they start to speed off, I yank my Colt from its shoulder holster, roll into the street, and blast the car, demolishing the rear window. Not quite sure I draw any more blood than they did, but at least I marked the car.

  As the Buick pulls off into the dark and stormy night, I snap my attention to the rear of the car through the dank and rainy streets to catch a glimpse of the license plate. I can’t make it all out, but the first three spots are without a doubt 4S1. It seems like I’ve seen that before. September fourth, just like my birthday.

  I drag my drenched body out of the street and head for where I dumped Marjorie. She is shaken up, and a bit skinned on her left palm and left knee, but otherwise is all right.

  “Yeah, doll, I’m sure there is nobody who’d want to hurt you. Let’s get inside, quick.”