The Oxygen Murder

by Camille Minichino

  “Last year the building went co-op, and Karla was able to help them buy their place,” Rose said. “They’re so proud of her success as a lawyer, as we are, too, of course.”

  “She makes a very good living,” Frank said. “I guess divorce is lucrative for attorneys, if not for the clients involved.” He paused. “I guess you could say that for me and Robert, too, about the mortuary business.”

  Matt and I laughed. Rose gave him a strange look.

  “Karla’s due in New York herself later in the week,” Rose said.

  “To spend the holiday?” Matt asked.

  “As close to Christmas as she can get,” Frank said. “William is at that age where he doesn’t want to leave all his friends while they’re on school vacation. So Karla will do an early celebration with her parents, then be home in Revere for the big dinners.”

  “Can’t miss the big dinners,” I said.

  “Too bad we’re not going to overlap here,” Rose said. “We’ll be long gone from New York.”

  “Maybe not,” I said, all too aware that we had return tickets to Boston for Tuesday morning. Matt’s conference ended tomorrow, Monday afternoon, and we’d allowed ourselves one extra night for enjoying the city together.

  Heads turned; forks and knives were silenced.

  “Huh,” Matt said, in his Really? tone, perhaps the least stunned by my remark.

  “Well, there’s Lori to take care of. And the police did ask me to stay around.”

  “Indefinitely?” Rose asked, her eyes wide.

  “To investigate?” Matt asked.

  Frank laughed. Then we all did.

  “Well, what do you say?” I asked, swinging my head to encompass everyone at the table.

  “I think I’ll head back Tuesday as planned,” Frank said. “I talked to Robert this afternoon, and we’ve got every parlor filled.”

  I pictured them all: the main Parlors A and B off the foyer of the Galigani Mortuary. Parlor C at the back, a smaller, makeshift area for busy times. For so many months, my home had been the small apartment on the uppermost floor of the building, topping off the stack that comprised the embalming room in the basement, the parlors and Frank’s office at street level, and Rose’s office above that.

  “Hmmm,” Rose said.

  I knew the look and the hesitation. Rose needed to hear from me that I wanted her to stay on with me.

  I didn’t.

  I needed unencumbered sleuthing time, not the special museum exhibits and Broadway shows that were the highlight of Rose’s New York vacations. I couldn’t let her know that, though.

  “I hope you can stay, Rose,” I said, with as convincing a smile as I could manage.

  “Okay,” she said.

  I doubted that I fooled her with my forced enthusiasm, but the special communication of a long friendship was at work. I knew she was pleased.

  The three of us looked at Matt, who’d been drumming his fingers on the table next to his bright blue bottle of sparkling water. “Honey?” I asked, in falsetto.

  Rose and Frank laughed, a sign that the word hadn’t quite run its course for this trip.

  Matt stopped drumming and made a half-and-half motion with his hand. “Can’t deny my bride,” he said. “And I’ve always wanted to see Rikers Island.”

  It was all funny enough to cause Rose to drop her multivitamin into her water.

  I thought about asking our waiter what the specials were for the rest of the week.

  CHAPTER IVE

  Lori clutched her purse in front of her and stepped onto the N train. Monday morning commute time. No seats. She wrapped her arm around a pole and adopted the familiar position for reading a newspaper standing up while traveling fifty miles an hour. Although she hadn’t taken the subway much since moving into the midtown loft, she’d had enough experience reading and doing homework underground during her college years at Columbia.

  She folded the Times arts section lengthwise and tried to focus on a review of a play she’d been wanting to see, but all she could think of was her last fight with Amber yesterday morning. She didn’t know either of them was capable of such angry words.

  “You have to stop this, or I’ll turn you in,” she’d told Amber. What did that mean? In to what? To Amber’s PI boss? Or was Lori going to storm into the nearest police precinct and tell them that her colleague was a blackmailer?

  If she did that, she’d have to tell them she was a blackmailer herself.

  It had seemed so innocent at first, collecting a few extra bucks for a good cause—and Pizzano Productions was certainly a worthy recipient of a little money from people who would hardly miss it. All Lori’s videos had important social consequences. Not that she was in the Fog of War category yet, but someday maybe. Her piece on charter schools had aired on public television, and she’d done films on the lake cleanup, the right of gay couples to adopt, the sad state of nursing homes, the dwindling resources for at-risk children. All of them meaningful.

  She’d have to except that one short piece during her internship, on the homes and gardens of New Hyde Park, Long Island, undertaken only because Professor Simms, who lived there, had insisted.

  It was Amber who’d nearly destroyed Lori’s dreams. “Think of this little scheme as collecting grant money or donations,” Amber had said in her speech about why blackmailing was nothing to feel guilty about. “You know, like on PBS, when they say ‘viewers like you.’ ” Her laugh was cynical, unbecoming a lovely twenty-nine-year-old Columbia journalism grad.

  Lori thought back to when Amber first took the job with the private investigator, Tina Miller. The gig was to be temporary, just a few cases, to pay off her student loans and get a little ahead. Amber’s assignments were usually low-key, like doing background checks for employers, following up on insurance claims, or taking a telltale photo here and there. Lori had agreed to let Amber use the equipment in her studio for a small fee.

  Then Amber made Lori another offer. Instead of paying for studio time, Amber would cut her in on some special deals. Lori still wasn’t exactly sure why Amber didn’t continue to work solo. Maybe she needed to let someone else know about her exciting life, the risks she was taking. Amber had never been one to keep things to herself. More than once she’d called Lori immediately after a date to report on every detail, steamy or otherwise.

  Amber had made her blackmailing scam seem almost part of her job. Whenever she learned that one of Tina’s clients was a high roller with a lot to lose, Amber would move in: She’d withhold incriminating evidence from Tina and the client and sell it directly to the mark. Lori had let Amber talk her into taking a piece of the action, though everything in her said it was wrong and could never end well. All Lori had to do was look the other way while the occasional roll of film was being developed or a videotape processed or a digital camera memory card slipped into one of Lori’s computers. No big deal. Besides, it would be just until Amber could afford a place and equipment of her own.

  “Eventually I’ll have nothing but the best, like my new direct-to-DVD camera, and you’ll be welcome to use it,” Amber had told Lori with a grin that struck her as sinister.

  Amber loved to show Lori photos from her little sideline. A prominent councilman parked on a known hooker corner, his window rolled down, apparently setting up a fun night. A well-known married businessman slipping into a gay bar. Another married man with a cute young thing on his arm in a Lower East Side bistro. Harmless amusement. Until Amber arrived with her thumbnail contact sheet.

  Then Saturday night—the last straw. Amber showed Lori a set of pictures she’d snapped while she was following a married woman who took her six- or seven-year-old son with her to a motel to meet her lover.

  “I shot through the window of the room,” Amber had said. “Nearly fell into some thorny bushes.” She paused, as if waiting for applause for her heroism in the line of duty or sympathy for the scratches she exhibited on her arm. “Look at this photo. You can see the little boy working at his PlayStation
while his mother—”

  “Don’t show me any more of these,” Lori had said.

  “Okay, if you just want the money, fine with me.”

  Talk about calling a spade a spade.

  Lori wanted out, and she had meant simply to reason with Amber on Sunday morning, not fight with her. Now Amber was dead, and Lori couldn’t even get into her own apartment. She wondered how thoroughly the police would search the place. Would they check each and every file? She thought of sneaking back in, but it might already be too late.

  They might already have found the evidence.

  Uncle Matt would do anything for her, but not even a homicide detective could get her out of this.

  Lori felt deep pain in her hand and realized she was clutching the N train pole so tightly her fingers hurt.

  On the street, Lori kept her head down against the wind—and against making eye contact with happy-looking tourists. She resented every smiling, skipping kid, every wreath, and every red and green shopping bag. She couldn’t even think of Christmas. Cameras hanging around people’s necks reminded her of Amber the photographer; the window mannequins brought back thoughts of Amber the cool dresser; women walking happily together took her back to the days when Amber and Lori were good friends. The church with the tiny cemetery in back was a place to bury Amber.

  Lori had checked her messages on both her loft phones from Cindy’s apartment in Queens. Her private line was noticeably free of anyone looking for her, in large part because she’d been too embarrassed lately to keep up with most of her friends. On her work answering machine, on the other side of the loft, there were several messages. Besides her own business calls, there were two from Amber’s ex-boyfriend, Kevin, and one or two older-sounding guys looking for Amber, probably marks. Another thing Lori hated—that Amber gave out the studio phone number to her sideline victims.

  The message Lori cared about most was from Craig Daly, her editor and sometime soundman, with a question about footage he and Amber had taken at a welding plant. How much emphasis should he put on the welders as opposed to the product, and so on? It was nice to hear his voice. Craig’s behind-the-scenes-guy personality appealed to her. A lot. She had no idea if he thought of her as anyone more than his producer, however. As good as Lori was at flirting, she couldn’t do it with Craig. One of these days, she’d just come out with it and invite him on a date.

  The N train pulled into Forty-ninth Street, her stop. She needed to put thoughts of Craig on hold and mentally prepare for her breakfast with Uncle Matt’s new wife.

  Lori’s plan was to let Gloria go on and on about oxygen and ozone. Hopefully, the late Amber Keenan wouldn’t even come up.

  CHAPTER SX

  My plan was to get Lori talking about Amber.

  Where was she from? Who was the boyfriend she’d just broken up with? Was it a nasty split? Had anyone been bothering her lately? Maybe one of the creeps Matt’s friend Buzz talked about, someone she’d caught in a compromising situation. I had full confidence in the NYPD’s ability to investigate Amber’s death (wouldn’t they be relieved to hear that?), but guilt over my cowardly ineffectiveness during Amber’s last moments drove me to at least wish I could help find her killer.

  It would be easy enough to get information about which companies were in violation of CFC regulations and which employers were heedless of ozone exposure limits. I needed Lori to tell me about Amber.

  My morning catch-22 was, How do you find the location of an Internet café without using the Internet? It had been years since I thought of something so low-tech as yellow pages, and in fact there weren’t any in the room. Unless they were stashed under the bed. There was no other spot for them in the tiny space.

  I resorted to another old-fashioned method of information gathering: calling the front desk. From a very young woman with a heavy accent I learned there were at least four such establishments within walking distance of the hotel. I settled on Coffee And, not the closest place, but I loved the name. I remembered my father’s daily coffee and, the coffee being espresso, the and being not a doughnut or a Danish but a shot of whiskey.

  Between that tradition and the wine Marco Lamerino and my uncles made in our cellar, it was a wonder I ended up a teetotaler, and even more of a statistical wonder that I met another nondrinker in Matt.

  “I don’t have any brain cells to spare,” he’d said.

  I knew another reason was that his job brought him up close to the effects of excessive drinking. He’d often moralized about the large percentage of crimes that could be linked to alcohol—domestic violence, child abuse, vehicular homicide. Meanwhile, Rose and Frank were perfect examples of responsible wine imbibers. For years Rose had tried to tell me what I was missing in the taste of a good wine.

  “I don’t need one more thing that will add calories to my diet,” I’d told her.

  Her confused look could only come from one who had trouble keeping her weight above a hundred pounds so she could donate blood.

  Lori and I had agreed that I’d call her when I had an address for our meeting. She picked up after three rings.

  “Looking forward to talking about oxygen, CFCs, and all that cool stuff,” she said.

  “And I’m looking forward to getting to know you better,” I said.

  Losing Rose was easier than I thought it would be. She wanted to go to church with her husband.

  Frank never missed a chance to stop in at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, to visit the shrine of St. Francis of Assisi, his patron saint.

  “You might say he was the world’s first environmentalist,” Frank had said at dinner, as if to entice me into devotion to St. Francis, based on his proclivity toward science. “The protector of animals and the environment, he’s called. All of God’s creatures were drawn to him. He fed the birds, wrote hymns to the sun and the moon, that kind of thing. He even had a prayer for pets. ‘May my pet continue to remind me of your power.’ Good stuff.”

  “You don’t have any pets,” I said.

  Frank shrugged. “Even so.”

  “MC may get a puppy,” Rose said, bringing her only daughter and my godchild into the conversation. She smiled and folded her arms across her chest, as if she’d just cleared everything up.

  “I’ll bet St. Francis would have been on the enlightened side of CFC issues,” Matt said. Always the one to bring us to the present, peacefully.

  “Right you are,” Frank said.

  “You don’t mind if I go with Frank, do you, Gloria?” Rose asked. “It’s not that he goes to church that often.” She poked her husband on the arm. “Only if it’s the biggest one in the country.”

  Frank reached into the pocket of his Italian silk jacket and pulled out a brochure from our hotel’s pamphlet rack. He put on his glasses and read to us, in a sermon-like tone. “The Pietà in St. Patrick’s is three times larger than the one in St. Peter’s in Rome. One of the altars was designed by Tiffany.”

  “And we know God cares about these things,” Rose said with a grin.

  We all knew that Rose, the only one of us still a practicing Catholic, prayed regularly for our souls, most often at St. Anthony’s Church in Revere.

  “You go along with Frank,” I said to Rose, magnanimous friend that I was. “I’ll just be doing some boring Internet searches.”

  She gave me a look: Right.

  I kissed Matt good-bye as he left for his conference, secretly hoping he wouldn’t get out early, and walked toward Coffee And, between Fifth and Sixth on West Fiftieth. Today’s “and” for me would be a chocolate croissant, I decided, always thinking ahead to the next sweet. The sidewalks were teeming with tourists on their way to and from the enormous Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, the lighting of which Rose watched on television, religiously, every year.

  I remembered her critique of this year’s show, aired just before we left for New York. “I don’t know many of the performers anymore,” she’d said.

  “Except for Tony Bennett,” Frank added. W
e were all glad for the familiar voice, now representing a whole past generation of Italian-American crooners.

  The brisk air, the animated pedestrians, and the noisy traffic energized me, and I reached the café fifteen minutes before Lori was due. Enough time to order breakfast, log on, and check into ozone crime in New York State. I had no problem finding a seat with a computer terminal, and near a window so I could watch for Lori.

  Not the sexiest of offenses, crimes against the environment would probably never draw television audiences of millions of people. Nevertheless, unlawful disposing of hazardous waste, the transport and illegal use of CFCs, and the transport of endangered species were crimes with widespread impact. Looking at the mass of numbers that made up NASA’s charts of data, though, I couldn’t blame the average citizen for his glazed-over look when the topic came up. We needed more simplified information and more big-picture discussion, I decided.

  Finally, I located a site with descriptions of recent violations. I was pleased to scroll through cases that resulted in criminal action.

  A White Plains businessman who made millions by selling ozone-depleting gases on the black market was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to pay three million dollars in restitution. The latter penalty meant simply that he had to forfeit his eight-thousand-square-foot mansion in Connecticut.

  The man’s accountant was also found guilty, on charges of complicity in tax evasion, and sentenced to four years and a fine of two hundred thousand dollars, which he probably covered by selling a couple of his cars.

  I thought of Lori’s “neither too much nor too little” theme: In the upper atmosphere, CFCs create a hole, and the result is too little ozone, exposing us to damaging UV radiation. At the earth’s surface, too much ozone is a respiratory irritant and harmful to health, especially the health of children and the elderly.

  I did a search for employers found in violation of ozone exposure limits in their industrial environments.