Full Contact

by Robert J. Randisi

“I . . . don’t . . . know exactly what Wood would do,” she said, haltingly.

  “You’re afraid he’d go after Piper?”

  “Yes.”

  “And kill him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Lee, do you think Wood killed Cross?”

  “No, of course not!”

  “But you are afraid he would have killed Piper if you had told him what happened?”

  “I told you, I don’t know!”

  “All right, Lee, all right. Have you seen or spoken to Piper since then?”

  “No.”

  “Did he leave you a number or something so you could get in touch with him if you changed your mind?”

  “Yes, but I threw it away.”

  “And you don’t remember it?”

  She hesitated, then said, “No.”

  “Do you think you could? If he’s a bookie, he’d want his customers to be able to remember his phone number, and it would probably be an easy number to remember.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Okay. If it comes to you, give me a call.”

  “I will.”

  There was a long silence, and then she broke it. “Jack, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right, Lee. Just don’t . . . hold anything back from now on, okay?”

  “Sure. Did you talk to Mr. Delgado about Piper?”

  “Yeah. He’s of the opinion that we need a little more, so my next step is still to find him.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Lee, I won’t tell Wood. There’s no reason to.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “’Bye.”

  I hung up, feeling more confused than ever.

  On one hand, Lee was insistent that Wood couldn’t have killed Alan Cross, yet on the other hand she was worried that Wood would kill Piper—or at least do something violent—if he ever found out that Piper had approached her with an offer when he wasn’t around.

  In addition to that, she’d muddied the waters even more by coming up with a perfectly good motive for Wood to kill Piper.

  Now all I had to do was hope that Piper didn’t turn up dead.

  Somebody turned up dead, all right, but it wasn’t Leo Piper.

  When I returned to Bogie’s, Billy was working behind the bar, but when he saw me he dropped everything and came rushing out to meet me.

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “I was in my office for a while, and then I went walking, to do some think—”

  “Hocus has been trying to get in touch with you for hours,” he said, interrupting me.

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know. All he’d tell me was that it was urgent, and that you should call him at Bellevue.”

  “Bellevue? What the hell is at Bellevue?”

  “The emergency room.”

  “And the morgue.”

  “No, he said for you to call him in the emergency room, or his office if he wasn’t there anymore.”

  “And he didn’t say what it was about?” I asked, starting for the pay phone in the back of the room.

  “No, not a word,” he said. Hurrying behind the bar, he palmed the bar phone and said, “Here.”

  I altered my course, took a bar stool, and accepted the phone from him.

  “Uh, Bellevue’s number—”

  “Here,” he said, pushing a napkin over. I read the number written on it and dialed it. When the voice answering the phone said, “Bellevue emergency,” I asked for Detective Hocus.

  “Jacoby?” Hocus said, almost shouting into the phone. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Never mind. What’s happened?”

  “Your friend Po—”

  “Is he dead?”

  “No, not dead, but he’s in pretty bad shape.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Somebody beat him up pretty bad, Jack.”

  “Did he say who?”

  “I told you he was in pretty bad shape,” he reminded me. “He hasn’t regained consciousness yet.”

  “You mean he could die?”

  “The doctor says it could go either way, Jack,” Hocus said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “There’s one more thing.”

  “What now?”

  “You had Po looking for that girl for you, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right. Why?”

  “He found her.”

  “He found her? Where?”

  “She’s here, too,” Hocus said, gravely. “In the morgue.”

  Eighteen

  I was still in shock when I got out of my cab and met Hocus in front of the hospital.

  “You want to see the girl?” he asked as we entered side by side.

  “If she’s dead,” I snarled, “she’s not going anywhere.”

  “Up then,” he said as we reached the elevator bank. “They finally got a room for him.”

  “Shit,” I said as we entered the elevator and Hocus pressed the button.

  I was angry, more angry than I could remember having been in some time. I was angry because Hank had gotten hurt, because Melanie Saberhagen was dead—and I was still hoping that was a mistake—but most of all I was angry at myself for bringing Po into it.

  “This way,” Hocus said, leading the way as we got off the elevator on the second floor.

  “Yeah.”

  I followed him to a door that he opened to let me go through first.

  It was a semiprivate room, but only one bed was occupied, and that by Henry Po. I became even angrier that it had taken them so long to put him in an otherwise empty room.

  “They kept him in emergency so long because they couldn’t find any insurance info on him, or any next of kin.”

  “How’d they get to you?”

  “They found my name and number on him and finally called.”

  Hank was hooked up to an intravenous feed, and his head was swathed in bandages. His face was the same color as everything else in the place, hospital white.

  “How bad?”

  “He’s got a concussion and some broken ribs. They did a CAT scan and took all kinds of X-rays. They’re still checking him out. I told them someone would take care of the bill, and they took me at my word.”

  I looked at him and he added, “I said it real loud.”

  “Don’t worry, someone will,” I said. “Either me or his boss.”

  “He wasn’t working for his boss when he got trashed.”

  “They’re friends,” I said, the remark fueling my anger.

  I walked closer to the bed to get a better look, but it didn’t get any better.

  “What happened?”

  “Somebody did a number on him, Jack—maybe like somebody tried to do on you the other night?”

  I looked at Hocus and then said, “Let’s talk in the hall.”

  We went outside and Hocus said, “What do you think?”

  “If she was just missing, I’d say I don’t know.”

  “She’s dead, though.”

  “Let me go down and see for myself.”

  He nodded, and led the way.

  We took the elevator down to the morgue, where Dr. Mahbee was waiting for us. Mahbee was the medical examiner Hocus took perverse pleasure in calling “Dr. Maybe.” Mahbee was an East Indian gent, tall, handsome, in his forties.

  “This way,” he said. He took us into a cool room filled with body drawers and opened one for us. A filing system for bodies, I thought sardonically.

  “That her?” Hocus asked.

  “Jesus,” I said, “how can I tell?”

  The face resembled a lump of clay, the features all flowing into one another. Sure she was blond, probably young, and about the same size. . . .

  “Looks like the same girl to me, Jack,” Hocus said, “but we’ll have to wait on her old man for a positive I.D.”

  He took out the two pictures Saberhagen had given me and returned them to me. Her
father had said she’d changed since the pictures, but he didn’t know the half of it . . . and I was the one who was going to have to tell him.

  “Close it up,” Hocus told Mahbee.

  We followed Mahbee to his office and I asked, “What did she have on her?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “She was found floating naked in the Hudson a couple of days ago,” Mahbee said.

  “You should have kept checking in with the morgue,” Hocus told me. “Po did, and he found her. He called me and we were supposed to meet, but he didn’t show up. Some cabbie found him underneath the West Side Highway and brought him.”

  “West Side Highway?” I asked. I’d been in a fight once beneath the highway and had been stabbed. I knew how frightening it must have been for Hank.

  “Yeah, in the upper fifties.”

  I looked at Mahbee and said, “How long?”

  “How long has she been dead? Hard to tell. She was in the water a long time, maybe over a week. Dead at least that long. She was weighted down, but sloppily.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Whatever the killer weighed her down with, he only tied it around one foot.”

  “So?”

  “That foot is . . . gone. When it was eaten away, or torn loose, she floated to the surface.”

  I felt sick, for the young girl, and for my friend, who had been badly beaten while doing my job.

  “Did the hospital call Po’s boss?” I asked Hocus. “He must have been carrying his I.D.”

  “His wallet was gone.”

  “How’d they get your number?”

  “He had a small spiral notebook in his back pocket.”

  Hank’s experience again. I made my notes on napkins and on matchbook covers.

  “I’ll call his boss, then.”

  “And the girl’s father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before you leave I could use some information on the girl,” Mahbee said.

  “Sure.”

  “I’m going upstairs to arrange for a blue suit to stand by Po’s door. I want somebody there if—when he wakes up. After that I’ll go back to the precinct.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fine.”

  “Call me later and we’ll have a drink, huh?”

  “Sure.” I was being short, and Hocus deserved better than that. I looked at him and said, “Thanks.” It was all I had to offer at the moment.

  “See you later,” he said, and left.

  I stayed long enough to fill Mahbee in on the particulars concerning Melanie Saberhagen and assure him that her father would be in to claim the body as soon as he could get there from Detroit.

  Before leaving the hospital I went upstairs to Hank’s room. The cop was already on the door, but I showed him my I.D. and he let me in.

  “The detective told me you’d be up,” he said, and I nodded.

  Hank looked as if he was sleeping, but I knew that people died in their sleep all the time.

  “You sonofabitch,” I said, “you die on me and you can kiss your fucking fee goodbye!”

  I left my business phone and my number at Bogie’s with the hospital desk, and then left. I also told the cop on the door to make sure I was called the moment Po regained consciousness.

  I called Robert Saberhagen’s home as soon as I returned to Bogie’s, but there was no answer. At that time of night it made no sense to call his business phone.

  Your daughter’s dead, I thought angrily, and where are you?

  I got some ice from the bar and took it back to the office with me, then helped myself to a bottle of bourbon from Bogie’s stock. Billy had told me a long time ago that I was welcome to whatever I wanted, but this was the first time I’d taken him up on it.

  When half the bottle was gone I dialed Saberhagen’s number again, although negotiating the rotary dial through eleven digits in my condition was no easy task. When there was still no answer I cursed him out again, and poured myself another drink.

  Later I tried to dial again, but I kept getting lost after seven digits, and finally got tired of starting over. The last thing I remember about that night was getting up to get another bottle from the shelves.

  I don’t think I ever made it.

  Nineteen

  The ringing of the telephone jarred me awake from an alcohol-induced slumber the next morning. I found myself lying on top of the bedcovers, fully dressed, and rolled off the bed in the direction of the phone. The noise I made into the receiver was unintelligible, even to me, but that didn’t seem to bother the caller.

  “Jacoby!” Hocus said harshly into the phone. “How many rings does it take to get you to answer the goddamned phone?”

  “I don’t know, how many does it take to penetrate a whole bottle of bourbon?”

  “Oh fine,” Hocus said, sounding disgusted. “Is that what you did when you got home last night?”

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said, then put one hand to my pounding head and said, “but now that I think about it—”

  “Never mind. You wanted to know when Po woke up. Well, he’s awake.”

  “How is he?”

  “Out of danger, and he says he wants to talk to you.”

  “Okay,” I said, running one hand over my face. “Let me take a quick shower and I’ll be right over.”

  “I won’t be there, but the man on the door has instructions to let you in.”

  “Did you talk to Hank already?”

  “Yeah, and I don’t need to hear it again. What I do need, however, is you in my office after you’ve spoken to him. Okay?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Did you call the girl’s father yet?”

  “Tried to last night but there was no answer. I’ll try again this morning before I leave for the hospital.”

  “I’ll see you later, then.”

  “Right.”

  I hung up and staggered into the bathroom to take a much needed shower. That done, I felt less dirty and my eyes felt less gritty, but it hadn’t done very much for the ringing in my ears. It would take time for that to fade.

  After dressing I sat at the desk and once again dialed Robert Saberhagen’s phone number. When he answered, he spoke in a bleary, sleepy voice, but several moments later he was wide awake.

  I identified myself to the cop on Po’s door, and he allowed me to enter.

  “Hey, Hank.”

  He had been staring out the window, and at the sound of my voice turned his head slowly in my direction.

  “Hello, Jack.”

  I approached the bed, feeling at a loss for what to say. “Sorry” seemed so inadequate.

  “I guess you must have heard me last night?”

  “I wasn’t hearing much of anything last night,” he said. He straightened up in bed some and grimaced. Rubbing his ribs he asked, “What did you say?”

  “I told you that if you died I wouldn’t pay your fee.”

  “Oh, was that you?” He laughed lightly.

  “Feel like telling me what happened?”

  “Might as well give you your money’s worth.”

  Hank’s first stop had been to see Bayard at the institute.

  “It took some convincing, but I guess I’ve got an honest face. He gave me Brown’s address, which he had in a back file, and he also gave me the other picture of Melanie.”

  After that, Po had gone to see each of the men from the institute, including Brown and the three whose names I had given him. He played it straight, never mentioning my name, only that he’d been hired to find Melanie Saberhagen.

  “Surprisingly, Smith and McCoy were very helpful. Foster, on the other hand, wasn’t, and Brown was downright rude. Poor fellow’s got a terrible personality.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “He had a girl in his apartment at the time, and she was pretty well banged up.”

  “He beat her up?”

  “That’
s what it looked like. In fact, I think I might have interrupted him at it.”

  “Any idea who she was?”

  “From your description, I’d say she was Fallon DeWitt.”

  I pulled a chair over and sat down next to the bed while I digested that bit of information.

  “That must be what Ginger meant about Fallon having strange taste in men.”

  “If Brown’s an example, I agree,” Hank said. “He started to get tough and I backed out only when the girl told me to leave, too. She might also have strange taste in getting her jollies.”

  I was thinking back to my conversation with Ginger.

  “Ginger also said that Fallon and Melanie didn’t get along because they had the same strange taste in men.”

  “Melanie and Brown?”

  “Maybe.”

  “How was she killed?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I was on my way to see Hocus when I got hit. I called the morgue and found out that they had a Jane Doe fitting her description. I was supposed to meet Hocus on Eighth Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street, where he was doing some business. I never got there. Next thing I knew I was under the West Side Highway getting the shit kicked out of me.”

  “By whom?”

  “It was dark, but he kicked a lot, which makes me think it was your friend from behind Bogie’s.”

  “You didn’t see him, either?”

  “No.”

  “Could it have been Brown, or one of the others?”

  “Sure, it could have been. Did you see the girl?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t find out what killed her. I was still a little shocked.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “I’m seeing Hocus later. I hope he’ll show me an autopsy report.”

  “If she was beaten to death—”

  “I’m with you there,” I said, cutting him off. “We already know that Brown likes to beat on women.”

  “It might do you some good to talk to Fallon DeWitt.”

  “Yeah, or for Hocus to.”

  “You’re not going to work on this?”

  “On the girl’s murder? I don’t know, Hank. I’ve still got Knock Wood Lee’s case to worry about, and we found the girl.”

  “I hope you don’t mind if I poke around some.”

  “In your condition?”

  “It may be few days, but I sure don’t intend to take a beating like this and let it go. Next time I want an even chance, without being hit from behind first.”