Quick & Dirty
Page 13
“No, of course not,” Stone replied. “If he returns the picture at once, he will get a thousand-dollar reward.”
Margaretta began to recover herself. “Please,” she said, taking her phone from her apron pocket, “let me call him so he won’t be frightened.”
“All right,” Stone said, “but please speak English.”
Margaretta blew her nose, then pressed a button.
“Yeah?”
“Manolo, it’s Mama. I have good news.”
“Mama, I’m busy right now.”
“Could you use a thousand dollars?”
A brief silence. “What are you talking about?”
“If you bring home the picture, you will get a thousand dollars.”
Stone rubbed his thumb against his fingers.
“Cash,” she said.
“A thousand dollars?”
“Yes, truly, but you have to bring the picture home now.”
“Mama, I already sold the picture. I got a hundred dollars for it.”
Stone said a silent “Who?”—exaggerating his lip movement.
“Who did you sell it to, Manolo?”
“I can’t tell you, Mama. He would hurt me. I gotta go now.” He hung up.
“What can I do?” Margaretta asked. “You heard.”
“Margaretta,” Stone said, “please leave it to me. We’ll find Manolo and learn who bought the picture, and your son will not be hurt, I promise. And he may still get the thousand dollars.”
Margaretta looked at Morgan for confirmation.
Morgan nodded vigorously. “Now you can go back to work, Margaretta. Everything will be all right.”
“Oh, Margaretta?” Stone said.
She turned. “Yes, sir?”
“Do you have a photograph of Manolo?”
She fished in her other apron pocket and came up with a wallet. She found it and handed it to Stone.
“Thank you, Margaretta,” he said. “I’ll see that it’s returned to you.” She went to the kitchen, and he looked at the picture: it was a school photo, taken when the kid must have been sixteen or so. He was angelically beautiful.
“Now what?” Morgan asked.
Stone motioned for them to go out onto the terrace, pointing at his ear. When they had closed the doors behind them, he said, “I’ll take care of this.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Find Manolo, for a start.”
“How are you going to find a junkie in Spanish Harlem?” she demanded.
“Please, Morgan, go inside.”
Reluctantly, she went inside and closed the doors behind her.
Stone called Dino and got sent directly to voice mail. Stone left an urgent message, then went inside, where Morgan stood, hands on hips.
“What did you do?”
“I left someone a message.”
“Dino?”
“Yes.”
“What can he do?”
“Morgan, Dino is the commissioner of police. Now I’m going to go home and try to get some work done. I’ll call you when we have some results.” He kissed her, retrieved his jacket, and left.
• • •
ALL THE WAY home in the cab, Stone thought about what had to be done. This was not good. Morgan’s question was appropriate: How was he going to find a junkie in Spanish Harlem? All he had was a cell number, and he hoped it was enough.
• • •
BACK IN HIS OFFICE, Stone checked and Dino had not yet returned his call. He called Dino’s secretary, and it went straight to voice mail. In desperation, he called Viv.
“Hello, Stone.”
“Good morning, Viv. I’m having trouble reaching Dino. Do you know where he is?”
“Yes, he’s at a policeman’s funeral, a patrolman who was shot last week.”
Stone remembered the news report. “When am I likely to be able to reach him?”
“Oh, God, it could take half the day or longer. There’s a parade, then a very long funeral service, then the wake—the boy was Irish—and you know how that can go. Did you leave him a message?”
“Yes.”
“Well, stop calling him, he’ll get back to you as soon as he can.”
“Right,” Stone said. “I’ll wait for his call. Bye.” He hung up and called Art Masi.
“This is Lieutenant Masi. I’m attending a police funeral. Leave a message, and I’ll call you back later in the day.”
Stone sighed and called Bob Cantor.
“Hey, Stone.”
“Listen, Bob, I’ve got to locate a guy, and all I have is a cell phone number.”
“Give it to me. Let me fire up my cell search engine,” Cantor said. “I’ll call you back.”
Stone waited impatiently; ten minutes later, Joan buzzed him. “Bob Cantor on one.”
He grabbed the phone. “Yes, Bob.”
“I’ve got your guy,” Cantor said. “He’s in Spanish Harlem.”
“I figured. Can you put him at an address?”
“He’s moving, in a car or a cab. No, wait, he’s stopped. He’s on the street. Hang on, I’ll superimpose my street map. I’ve got him going into a building near the corner of Fifth Avenue. He’s still moving, he must be climbing stairs.”
“Give me the address, Bob.”
Cantor recited it. “Hang on, he’s moving funny.”
“What do you mean, funny?”
“It’s like he’s dancing.”
“Dancing?”
“Short, choppy movements. Hang on.”
“What’s going on, Bob?”
“He seems to be on the sidewalk again. Oh, shit, I think he went off the building.”
“How can you tell that?”
“It’s like he was scuffling with somebody, and he lost the fight. He was on an upper floor, maybe the roof. Now he’s on the sidewalk.”
“I’d better get up there,” Stone said.
“He’s not moving,” Cantor said. “You’d be better off calling nine-one-one.”
32
STONE CALLED 911 and reported the incident, then he ran outside, got into a cab, and headed uptown.
• • •
IT WAS A GOOD twenty minutes before Stone arrived at the scene. A patrol car and an ambulance had one side of 125th Street blocked, and a small crowd lingered, hoping for a look at the body, which was a lump under a sheet. A supervising sergeant had arrived and was standing next to the lump, taking notes from a conversation with one of his officers.
Stone waited for them to finish, then approached the officer and showed him his retirement badge. “Sarge, do you mind if I have a look at the body? It’s about another case.”
The sergeant looked at him narrowly. “Are you Barrington?”
“Yep.”
“Yeah, I remember you from the One Niner. What case?”
“Art theft. The kid stole a valuable picture, then sold it, and I have to find out who to.”
“Awright,” the cop said, turning his back on the corpse. “Be quick about it.”
Stone pulled back the sheet and saw that the angelic good looks of the sixteen-year-old had fled him. He was scrawny and unshaven and his hands and fingernails were filthy; his head rested in a pool of drying blood. Stone pushed up his sleeves and found fresh track marks. He checked his pockets and found a wad of bills, something over fifty dollars, and a business card from a bar, with a phone number written on the back of it. He palmed the card and returned the cash to the pockets. “Thanks, Sarge,” he said. “Did he go out a window or off the roof?”
“The roof. We got a couple of witnesses to that.”
“Anybody see who threw him off?”
“Of course not. You get what you needed?”
“Not much to get,” Stone replied.
Stone departed the scene and walked down 125th Street. He had a look at the card: Sam Spain’s Bar, maybe a block down the street. His cell phone buzzed.
“Yes?”
“It’s Dino. I’m at a wake. What do you need?”
“I needed to locate a junkie, but I got there too late.”
“A particular junkie?”
“The son of Morgan’s maid. He stole something, and I was trying to get it back, but he’s already sold it.”
“Any idea where?”
“Not really, but there was a business card from a bar in his pocket. I thought I’d check it out.”
“What bar?”
“Sam Spain’s on 125th Street.”
“Don’t you go in there alone,” Dino said. “I mean it. On any given day there are half a dozen people in there with a reason to knife you.”
“You want to join me?”
“I’m tied up here for another hour, then I’ve got to spend the rest of the day catching up on what I didn’t get done during the funeral. Meet me at Clarke’s at seven, and we’ll figure it out.”
“Okay.”
“But, Stone, don’t go into that bar alone!”
“Got it. See you at seven.” He hung up.
By now, Stone was across the street from Sam Spain’s. It looked very ordinary: big neon sign, a Schaefer Beer sign in the window, also neon, also saying OPEN. Schaefer Beer, an old-time New York brewery dating back to the nineteenth century, had gone out of business, what, twenty, thirty years ago? A man approached the place on the bar’s side of the street, a familiar face. But who? Stone couldn’t remember.
His phone rang again.
“Yes?”
“It’s Art Masi. Something up? Talk fast, I’m at a wake.”
“I’ve got a lead on the picture. Margaretta Fernandez, Filipino lady, Mrs. Tillman’s maid, received the FedEx box, took the picture home with her, and hung it on her living room wall, from where her son, a junkie, stole it and sold it.”
“Have you caught up with him?”
“No, but somebody did about half an hour ago, tossed him off a roof on 125th Street.”
“Swell.”
“The cop let me go through his pockets, and I found a card from Sam Spain’s Bar, just down 125th. I’m standing across the street from it now.”
“I wouldn’t go into that bar alone if I were you,” Art said.
“You’re an art cop,” Stone replied. “What do you know from dangerous bars?”
“Sam Spain is a fence. I know from fences. If you go in there you’ll come out with a knife between your ribs.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“I’m tied up for another couple of hours,” Masi said. “When can we meet?”
“P. J. Clarke’s at seven. The commissioner will be there, too.”
“Okay, I’ll hang on while you find a cab.”
“Art, I’m fine.”
“Are you carrying?”
“No.”
“I’ll hang on while you find a cab.”
“Oh, all right.” It took only a couple of minutes to flag down a cab. “Okay, Art, I’m in a cab.”
“See you at seven,” Masi said, and hung up.
Stone gave the driver the address.
“You had me worried for a minute,” the driver said. “You looked like you were thinking about going across the street into Sam Spain’s.”
“I was thinking about it.”
“You don’t want to go in that place without an armed escort, pal,” the driver said.
“Gee, everybody’s looking out for my welfare today,” Stone said.
“You look like you could use some looking out for. You go into Sam’s dressed like that, and it’s like wearing a sign on your back that says, ‘Please knife me and take my wallet.’” He turned down Fifth Avenue.
“Dressed like what?”
“Ain’t that a cashmere jacket?”
“Oh, yeah, I guess so. I get your point. How did Sam Spain’s get such a lousy reputation?”
“They worked at it. I went to high school with Sam’s daughter, who would fuck anything that moved, but if Sam found out about it, the fucker got dead in a hurry, and nobody would go near the fuckee. I felt sorry for her.”
“Is Sam mobbed up?”
“Not in the way of the traditional Italian mob,” the driver said. “Sam’s a Filipino and an expert with blades.”
“I appreciate both your concern and the information,” Stone said as the cab drew up at his corner.
“You really were gonna go in there, weren’t you?” the driver said, accepting a fat tip.
“I was thinking about it,” Stone said. He slammed the door, and suddenly he remembered who the familiar face was; he hadn’t made him without his uniform. He was Ralph Weede, the doorman from 740 Park, Margaretta’s boyfriend.
33
STONE GOT TO P. J. CLARKE’S and found Art Masi waiting for him.
“Bring me up to date,” Masi said.
“Wait until Dino gets here, I don’t want to have to do it twice.” They ordered drinks.
Dino got there half a drink later. “Let’s sit down, I’ll order at the table.”
They got a table. “Okay, now what the hell is going on?” Dino asked. “You first,” he said to Stone.
“Okay. On the day he was killed, Mark Tillman invited Pio Farina and his girlfriend, Ann Kusch, over for a drink in the early afternoon. They say he was still alive when they left, and he asked them to drop off a package at FedEx, on Second Avenue. Art tracked it down. Tillman had sent it to himself, and it was delivered on the following Wednesday.”
“The van Gogh?” Dino asked.
“As it turns out, yes. A doorman named Ralph Weede signed for the package but used his colleague’s name, then he opened it, had a look at the contents, and delivered it to the apartment, where Margaretta Fernandez, Morgan’s maid, took charge of it. She took it home, hung it on the wall, and a couple of days ago her junkie son, Manolo, stole it and sold it to somebody for a hundred bucks.”
“Good buy,” Dino said.
“I got Bob Cantor to track the kid’s cell phone. He went into a building on 125th Street, near Fifth Avenue, went up to the roof, encountered someone there who tossed him six stories onto the sidewalk. This is about a block down the street from Sam Spain’s Bar, and Manolo had their card, with a phone number written on the back, in his pocket. Come to think of it, a cell phone number, area code 917. A few minutes later I saw Ralph Weede, the doorman, walk down 125th and into the bar. I didn’t recognize him at first because he wasn’t in his uniform.”
They ordered steaks.
“So that’s where we are?” Dino asked. “Masi, you got anything to add?”
“Sam Spain has a lot of pictures on the walls of the bar,” Masi said. “Posters, stuff he got off the Internet, nothing real, but he fancies himself a collector. Manolo might have picked him for a buyer.”
“Tell you what,” Dino said, “after dinner we’ll go uptown and take a look at the art collection of Sam Spain.”
“Just the three of us?” Stone asked.
“Who else?” Dino replied.
“You and Art both made it sound like we’d need a platoon of uniforms to tackle the place.”
“You and I have walked into worse places and come out alive,” Dino reminded him.
“We were younger then, and stupid,” Stone reminded him.
“Well,” Dino said, “sometimes we’re still stupid.”
• • •
FORTIFIED WITH a couple of drinks each and a shared bottle of Cabernet, the three of them piled into Dino’s SUV.
“What’s your plan?” Stone asked.
“I thought we’d walk in there, slap Sam Spai
n around a little, then relieve him of the picture,” Dino replied.
Masi made a little groaning noise. “Let’s not do anything that might damage the picture.”
“Yeah,” Stone said, “Arthur Steele wouldn’t like that.”
• • •
IT WAS FAIRLY LATE, but it was the shank of the evening in Sam Spain’s, and everybody looked and sounded drunk. Stone let Dino take the lead, followed by Masi, and then he did what he used to do in places like this: he watched the crowd at the bar for signs of discontent. Then something happened: somebody opened an office door at the rear of the place, and for a millisecond before the door closed, Stone caught sight of a picture on the wall above the desk that was the color of sunshine.
The man who’d left the office ducked behind the bar and replaced a large, older man on the stool in front of an old cash register. The older man, who had big shoulders and a flat gut, spotted Dino and pretended to smile. He pointed his chin at Stone and said, “Hey, Dino, who’s the civilian?”
“He doesn’t look it, Sam,” Dino said, “but he’s the meanest sonofabitch you ever met, and he’s heeled.”
Sam Spain snorted. “Yeah? If you say so.”
Dino said, “You don’t mind if we have a look around the place, do you, Sam?”
“Especially in the office,” Stone said.
“You mean tear it apart and run off my customers?” Spain asked. “You’re going to need a warrant for that, and I’ll still sue your ass and the department’s when you’re done.”
“Sam,” Dino said, “you know a junkie named Manolo, don’t you?”
“I know three or four guys who match that description,” Spain replied.
“Last name Fernandez,” Stone said. “This afternoon he ended up in a puddle of his own blood on the sidewalk, just down the street, after a dive off a rooftop.”
“Oh, yeah, I know that kid. He’s always offering me stuff he’s stolen. I never want any of it.”
“Sure you do, Sam,” Dino said. “You buy stuff from everybody. Anything to turn a buck.”
“I got no objection to turning a buck, but I do it by selling booze,” Spain said, waving a hand at the array of bottles behind the bar. “Have one on the house.”