Tower of Babel

by Michael Sears

  Duran looked out onto the street. Seconds passed before he spoke. “Fine. We need backup. We need someone in the courthouse to find Clavette and warn her.”

  Ted agreed. “Inside the courthouse is the safest place to be. I can’t go, because Nicky knows me. And he’ll pick you two out for cops from a hundred yards away.”

  “She’ll bolt,” Kasabian said. “We want her, too.”

  And there it was. The price. Ted wanted Richie’s killer. Kasabian wanted it all.

  Ted looked to Duran. If Ted could sell him on letting Jackie go, Kasabian would have no choice but to go along. “You don’t need her. She’s no danger to anyone. If you try to be too clever, someone’s going to get hurt.” How much was his promise to Jill influencing him? Jackie deserved punishment. What responsibility did he have to see her brought to justice? Did keeping Jackie safe mean keeping her free? One question at a time, he thought. Keeping her alive was first priority. “For the moment, can we settle for getting a serial murderer off the streets?”

  Duran gave his partner a quick look. “He’s right. We can’t even call for backup until we know Nikitopoulos is really here, and by that time it will be too late. We keep it small, and we keep it simple. We get the Reisner shooter.”

  “And Richie Rubiano’s killer,” Ted said.

  Duran shook his head. “We looked at him hard. I would’ve loved to put him away for that. But there was no evidence. No motive. And she alibied him.”

  “She knows he did it,” Ted said.

  “She was very convincing.”

  “Well, that’s genetic. I don’t think she can help herself. All she ever cared about was the money. If Richie could get it, she was going to go with him. When he turned up dead, she hired me. But when I pointed out to her that the money was tied to the LBC project, she freaked. Anybody pulling on that loose thread was soon going to come up with Reisner, Pak, cash bribes, and her. The tower was coming down on all their heads.”

  “She had to know that Stavros did Richie,” Duran said. He was leaning in, arms on the table and thoroughly engaged. Ted had him.

  “Not at first,” Ted said. “It was only afterwards that she started thinking it through. Once she had that connection, she must have realized that very few people could have put all the pieces together. One of them was dead, and one of them was Nicky. Lover boy. Then she got really scared.”

  “When was this?”

  “By the next time I saw her on Sunday, she knew. That’s when she fired me.”

  “That’s when she told us Nicky was with her the night Richie got whacked.”

  “And you believed her,” Ted said.

  “Nicky had no motive. He had the girl. Why knock off her ex-husband? He’d won already.” Duran was arguing but Ted could tell his heart wasn’t in it. He was coming around.

  “Because he was scared.”

  “Nicky Greco?” Duran said. “I don’t think so.”

  “No, listen to him,” Kasabian said.

  “Scared of losing her to an ex-husband who showed up with a story about making scads of money,” Ted said. “He wasn’t worried about being in competition with Richie. But he was worried about Cheryl seeing dollar signs.”

  Duran was nodding. “It’s a good story; too bad no jury will ever hear it.”

  “There must be evidence. DNA? Can’t you match the gun or something?”

  Duran smiled grimly. “Nicky uses a revolver, so he leaves no brass at the scene. And he fires soft-nose .22 shorts. They mangle on contact, so there’s no markings. You can’t trace the bullet to a gun. They don’t have the stopping power of a bigger bullet, but they can be just as deadly. And they’re quiet. Outside of war zones, .22s are the bestselling bullets in the world.”

  “Would you mind if I ask a question?” Lester said. He took one of the last two dumplings and dipped it in the soy sauce. “Are we all sitting here waiting for me to volunteer?” He popped it in his mouth and spoke around it. “Time’s wasting.”

  “I’m with you,” Kasabian said.

  -76-

  Ted watched Lester wind his way through the barely moving traffic, crossing the boulevard in hops and stops. The afternoon sun was strong, and the air seemed to shimmer off the pale plaza across the street. There were few pedestrians over there, most people taking advantage of the shade on the west side of the street. Kasabian trailed him, slower, more deliberate, using his bulk and authority to keep drivers from running into him.

  Jackie wouldn’t know either of them, but then they might not be able to recognize her either. Ted googled Jackie on his phone and found a picture. The image was small and crowded, but Lester and the detectives had some idea of what she looked like.

  “It’s late Friday afternoon on a beautiful spring day. How many people do you think are in the basement of the courthouse checking out files in the records room? Look for the woman scotch-taping pages together,” Ted had offered.

  “Wonderful,” Lester had said.

  “Or you could stand at the door and call out, ‘Jackie,’” Ted had said. “The woman who scowls at you is the one.”

  They were crossing the nearly empty plaza, Lester two steps in the lead. Kasabian’s head swiveled as he scanned the area for any sign of the giant. The shadow from the subway-token sculpture reached halfway up the steps. As Lester passed it, the main door opened, and Jacqueline Clavette stepped out, briefcase swinging.

  “Ah, shit,” Ted said.

  “That her?” Duran whispered though there was no need for quiet.

  “Yes, dammit.”

  Lester continued up the steps, passing the lawyer seemingly without looking at her. Jackie came down, head high and alert. She noticed and dismissed Lester in a split second. Ted could read the tension in her body. Was she aware of the potential danger out there? It was hard to tell, he thought. She always looked like she had a stick up her ass.

  Kasabian slowed as he approached her. He called something to Lester.

  Lester’s head whipped around. He stopped, turned, and called.

  It was too far for Ted to hear him, but Jackie’s scowl made it clear what he had said. She whirled, head cocked to one side.

  Lester put up both hands in a mollifying gesture and jogged down to confront her.

  “Get her inside,” Duran said to himself, more a prayer than an order.

  Lester was selling it hard, but Jackie wasn’t buying. Body language told the story. He was a master at gaining people’s trust, but his magic wasn’t working on her. She said something quite final and turned away.

  Kasabian showed his shield. Jackie looked startled, then angry.

  Lester reached out and took her arm.

  The briefcase came up fast, a roundhouse swing that any two-handed man could have deflected. But Lester had one hand on Jackie’s arm and the other in a sling. He ducked his head, taking the blow on his shoulder. She was a big woman in excellent shape. And though he had twenty or thirty pounds on her, he was shorter, frailer, and barely recovered from a ferocious beating. He staggered and went down. The fall probably saved his life.

  “This is going south,” Duran said. “I can’t wait for backup.” He was out the door, gun in hand, before Ted could take it all in. Without a thought, he followed.

  -77-

  In motion Stavros Nikitopoulos had both the size and the nimble grace of a fullback. And the speed. He burst out of the pizza parlor down the block. The traffic on Sutphin did not slow him down. He was crossing the plaza before Ted cleared the door. Ted saw his arm come up holding a long-barreled revolver.

  “Gun! Gun!” Duran yelled, running in a crouch across the sidewalk and into the street.

  Kasabian heard him and turned to face the threat. “Police!” His weapon in one hand, gold shield in the other, he yelled louder, “Police! Clear the way.” Pedestrians on both sides of the street scattered, but Ted thought this
was in response more to the sight of the guns than to the sight of the badge.

  There were at least a dozen people on the sidewalk and two lanes of traffic. Neither cop would risk a first shot. But the giant would and did.

  He shot twice at Jackie and she fell.

  Ted screamed, “No!” A shaft of despair pierced his heart. And where was Lester? Had he been hit, too? Ted kept running toward the scene, fear for his own safety buried under a blinding anxiety.

  Nicky swung around and fired four more times—a subdued smack, smack, like the slamming of a book on a table. It surprised Ted. How could something so deadly sound so innocuous?

  It was a long shot for a small handgun, across half the plaza, but more than one bullet found its mark. Kasabian staggered, hit somewhere that Ted couldn’t see. Ahead of him Duran plunged into the traffic. Immediately behind Ted an older Asian woman with a wheeled laundry cart cried out and sagged to the sidewalk, blood blossoming on the front of her sack-like housecoat. A single shoe—a shearling moccasin—stood guard on the bags of laundry.

  A motorist, panicked by the sight of guns to either side, revved his engine and plowed into the car ahead of him. Another driver abandoned his car and ran.

  Nicky calmly watched Kasabian sink to the sidewalk, then opened the revolver, emptied the spent cartridges onto the ground, and reloaded with a device he removed from his suit pocket. His movements were quick but careful. He could have been preparing to brush his teeth or replacing the battery in the television remote.

  “Drop the weapon!” Duran yelled, now across the street but with a parked car between himself and the shooter. Ted scrambled behind him, desperate to see to Jackie or Lester, willing to risk his own life to save theirs but powerless to do anything but watch and keep close.

  Nicky looked mildly surprised but unconcerned to see the cop so close. Expressionless, he raised the revolver and squeezed off another few rounds. Ted was directly behind Duran. Each explosion flashed straight at him, blinding and loud, a succession of high-pitched, earsplitting cracks.

  Duran fired a split second later, and the deeper boom of his weapon was a coda to the whole exchange. A double tap to the chest. The giant toppled over backward, landing on the pavement like a sack of cement. His heart pumped a geyser of blood into the air. Once. Twice. And once more. And stopped. It was over.

  Almost over. Ted rushed forward, dimly aware of a burning pain in his right shoulder. There was a snail’s trail of smeared blood on the steps ahead. Jackie was alive—moving—but her actions seemed spastic. As he headed toward her, Ted caught movement to his left. Lester rose from behind the big bronze sculpture.

  “You’re all right. Thank God.” Ted was suddenly feeling winded, as if he’d sprinted a few hundred yards.

  “You’re bleeding,” Lester said. His voice barely registered through the ringing in Ted’s ears.

  The pain in Ted’s shoulder coalesced into a single burning lance. He looked at it. Blood was coursing down his sleeve. The world was pulling away and he sat down. Or fell.

  -78-

  “Your dad tells me they want to move you out of the ICU. They need the bed.” Ted was sitting on a metal folding chair facing Kenzie. The padded visitor chairs made it too hard to keep his arm and shoulder tucked to his side and immobile. The pain pills worked, but he could feel the staples pull every time he moved, and that set off another bout of dizziness. “That’s modern medicine. I didn’t even rate an overnight. I’m recovering at the Marriott. They advertise a free breakfast, but it’s basically a waffle machine and a Keurig.”

  Kenzie didn’t crack a smile. He would have been ecstatic at any reaction.

  “I’d like to see you get out of here altogether,” he said. “And the best way to do that is to open your eyes and tell them you want to go home.” He sighed. “Which, no doubt, you will get around to doing soon enough. Meanwhile, resting is good.”

  Kenzie did not open her eyes, but she occasionally made sounds and small movements. The nurses all expected an imminent recovery; even the doctor was mildly optimistic. Ted was hell-bent on remaining positive, upbeat, and with her, no matter what.

  “Lester and I are going up to Connecticut tomorrow to see Barbara Miller. She’s in Greenwich. I’m told the nursing home is quite luxurious, as these places go. Nice address, at any rate.”

  Someone—a woman—was crying softly from a room down the hall. It was an oddly comforting sound.

  “You’ve probably heard the news—we were the top story on CNN last night—but I’ll fill in a few of the details, if that’s okay.”

  She didn’t say no.

  “They’ve agreed to close the Richie Rubiano case. Everybody knows Stavros Nikitopoulos— I had to practice to say that. Anyway, everyone knows he did it, but now they don’t have to prove it. With all the mayhem that this guy let loose—murdering two and putting another four in the hospital, one of whom is a cop—the DA is okay to clear one more murder case. Both Duran and his partner will get commendations.”

  Kenzie sighed.

  Ted did too. The sigh escaped him before he could stop it. Hope is hard to maintain. It requires constant maintenance. “The longer I stayed with this thing, the more I wanted to see Richie’s killer in court. I wanted justice. I wanted to hear the gavel come down on a thirty-year sentence. Now that it’s over, I find I don’t care. I’m going to miss Richie. He wasn’t my friend, or my partner, or even somebody I can say I was proud to know. But I think he loved Cheryl.”

  So had Nicky Greco, for that matter. Was it still love if you murdered someone? Or was it obsession? Did it matter? Both Nicky and Richie were dead, and Ted doubted very much that Cheryl had ever loved either of them back.

  Ted smoothed an errant hair from Kenzie’s face. The movement made him wince, and his stomach did a somersault. He took a few deep breaths before continuing.

  “Lester says hi, by the way. He says he’s rooting for you, but he’s going to wait until you’re up and talking before coming to visit. I think he’s oversensitive.”

  Ted brought out an iPad and set it up on the wheeled cart next to her bed.

  “I brought you a surprise. Think you’re up for it?”

  No response.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  The aroma of bland chicken soup filtered into the room. Lunch was being served for those capable of eating. Ted thought Kenzie wasn’t missing much.

  “I know. I’m leaving things out. I guess I’m trying not to upset you. But, yes, you’re right. You’re tough. Tougher than me. So, yeah, you heard right. Two murders. Young Reisner and a little old lady. She was heading home from the laundry and got hit by a stray shot.”

  He paused for a moment, preparing for the hard part. Saying the old woman’s name out loud cost him something each time. “Her name was Woo. Mrs. Woo.” A sudden twinge in his shoulder made him wince, and he took a few more deep breaths.

  “No. I don’t know if she had any family.” He found he needed to clear his throat. “And Jacqueline Clavette is alive. She took one bullet to the head. They rushed her to NewYork-Presbyterian for surgery. I don’t know any more than that, but I doubt Jill will welcome a condolence call from me. I was supposed to keep Jackie safe.” He paused again. This was the hardest part of all. “I don’t feel good about it, but maybe I make promises to Jill too easily. I’m going to have to think on that.”

  He stared at the far wall for a long time. Minutes. Long minutes.

  “Right. Is it time for that surprise? No? Ah. You want to know about how I’m doing. Well, I’m going to have to learn how to sign my name left-handed for the next few weeks, but otherwise I’m cleared for all normal activity. No skydiving, bungee jumping, or competition ballroom dancing, but all else is a go. Now is it time?”

  Again, he took her silence for assent. He opened a file on the iPad.

  “I thought a diversion might be just th
e thing for a long night. I will now introduce you to some of my favorite old movies. That way we can talk about them when you’re feeling up to talking. Shall we begin?”

  Her face moved. Was it a smile or a twitch? A smile. Definitely a smile. He took her hand.

  “So? Thin Man or Maltese Falcon? Considering the fact that we’re both feeling a bit bedraggled, I’m going to suggest the first. It’s not as dark. And the love story is a lot less complicated. Ready?”

  -79-

  Paulie McGirk was singing softly, something by Jackson Browne, Ted thought, though he wasn’t a fan and so couldn’t be sure. Meanwhile, Lili was listening to satellite radio, the afternoon DJ playing a series of Stax and Atlantic hits from the sixties and seventies. She had recently discovered Otis Redding and cranked up the volume whenever “Shake” came on. The television was muted. There was no one paying attention to the talking heads on a sleepy Friday afternoon.

  “Andy Love,” Lester said as he handed Ted another file folder. Lester had spent some money on his teeth and his wardrobe. He looked good—prosperous and proud of it.

  “Hmm?” Ted asked. He already had three thick folders and hours of work in front of him.

  “The Memphis Horns,” Lester said. “Andrew Love played sax.”

  Ted put down the file and listened. He wasn’t sure what to say. He supposed he had heard these sounds from time to time his whole life and never paid attention. Or maybe he didn’t have the right ear for them. “Nice,” he said.

  “Nice?” Lester guffawed. “The man played with everyone from Otis and Aretha to U2 and Willie Nelson.”

  “Like I said. Nice. Show me why you think this case is going to work.”

  They continued to wade through the files, Ted alternately making notes and giving advice on how to track down potential clients. They’d arrived at a workable partnership, Lester putting in the most hours and Ted providing the guidance and legal expertise. The fifty-fifty split provided a comfortable income for both, but more importantly for Ted, the arrangement freed up his time, which he now devoted to his revived legal career.