Leader of the Pack (Andy Carpenter)

by David Rosenfelt

  Laurie orders first, a house salad and then the grilled salmon. She has a couple of additions and special requests, but nothing too complicated. Danny just repeats everything she says, smiling as he pretends to successfully commit it to memory.

  “And for you, sir?”

  “I’ll start with the special salad. But I don’t want the cheese, and maybe half as many croutons as normally would be served.”

  He’s still nodding.

  “I’d like kalamata olives instead of black ones, pitted, and let’s add cherry tomatoes, shaved carrots, and red onions.”

  Still nodding.

  “Is there oregano on the special salad?” I can see Laurie rolling her eyes, but I can’t stop now.

  He shrugs. “I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask the chef.”

  I nod. “Please do. I’m violently allergic to oregano,” I lie. “I can get oregano poisoning and go into spasm. You can substitute basil.”

  “Basil doesn’t make him spasm,” Laurie adds.

  “Right, basil,” I say. “No, on second thought make it thyme. In fact, the chef can throw in parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.”

  “What kind of dressing do you have?” I ask, and he reels off about ten of them. “See if the chef will mix the balsamic and lemon vinaigrettes. And I’ll have that on the side.”

  I torture him even more on the main course, Mediterranean chicken, changing everything about it except the shape of the plate it comes on. Even with all that, I can’t get him to cave and write things down.

  When he leaves, Laurie says, “That was quite a performance. What are you going to do if he gets it wrong?”

  “I’m going to be really annoyed.”

  “What if he gets it right?”

  “I’ll be even more annoyed. All I really wanted was onion soup and a hamburger.”

  She laughs. “You could use some serious mental therapy.”

  “Maybe I’ll have Tara come visit me,” I say. “Which brings me to Nicky Fats.”

  I tell her everything that has transpired. Laurie had worked on the original case with me; it was one of our first times working together, and preceded our romantic involvement.

  She had left the police force just a few months before working with me on the case, and definitely retained a pro-prosecution attitude. If someone was arrested, she felt it was probably for a good reason. I think deep down she still has that feeling, though it has lessened considerably. Especially since she herself was once wrongly arrested and subjected to a murder trial.

  I’m sure she believed Joey to be guilty at the time, though I don’t think she ever verbalized it. So I’m surprised when I finish my spiel and she says, “I’ll help you look into it, Andy.”

  “You think there could be something to it?”

  “I doubt it,” she says. “But we really never dug into Solarno’s life.”

  I nod. “I know. That’s been bothering me.”

  “We had very little time,” she says. “We had to make choices, and we made the logical ones. But that doesn’t mean we were right. So we make up for it now. But Nicky’s death doesn’t figure to tie into this.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you were alone with him, and he was dead before you told anyone what he said. It seems unlikely that with his shaky mind he called someone in and said, ‘You’ll never guess what I just told Andy Carpenter.’ And even less likely that the person killed him for it.”

  “You’re right,” I say, “but it still bothers me.”

  “Because of the apparent coincidence.”

  I nod. “Yes, that. But one other thing. It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, and Nicky is sitting there watching television. I doubt that he’d left that place in a month. He had crusted sauce on his shirt that looked like it was there since the Capone era.”

  “So?”

  “So all of a sudden he decides to take a shower? Was he getting ready for a date? Where was he going, the senior prom?”

  “I’m not sure the ‘why would he take a shower’ defense would work on appeal. We might need something more.”

  “That’s why I chose to live with a crack investigator.”

  Richard Solarno’s company wasn’t Richard Solarno’s company.

  I didn’t know that at the time of the trial, but it takes Laurie about four minutes to find it out now.

  It was an easy mistake to make, since the company was called Solarno Shrimp Corporation. And according to Laurie, Solarno and his brother, Alex, had started the company almost twenty years ago, but sold it a year before the murder to a private equity company.

  Since both companies were private, the terms of the sale were not disclosed, but Laurie uncovers some of the relevant information. Alex Solarno and Richard sold their company to Capital Equity, run by a man named Edward Young. The terms of the agreement called for Richard to stay on in a management capacity for three years, but he only made it through one before he took a bullet in the chest. Alex did not stay on, but left with his very hefty payout.

  I vaguely remember an employee of Richard’s testifying to his character in the penalty phase of Joey’s trial, so I head to the transcript for some memory refreshment. His name was Larry Callahan, and he was a longtime employee of the company.

  All witnesses fill out contact information, and Callahan’s showed him having a home in Manhasset, Long Island. I call the listed number, and a woman answers.

  “Is this Larry Callahan’s residence?” I ask.

  The woman’s voice is hesitant. “Who’s calling?”

  “My name is Andy Carpenter. I’m an attorney.”

  That was probably a mistake; most people who seem to be talking tentatively generally don’t suddenly open up when they find out the other party is a lawyer. “Why do you want Larry?” she asks.

  I put on my nonchalant voice. “I just wanted to talk to him about someone he used to work with.”

  “Who?”

  This is one protective lady. “Richard Solarno.”

  She takes about twenty seconds before responding, and that feels like a long time to maintain telephone silence. “Larry passed away,” she finally says.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Did that happen recently?’

  “No.”

  “Are you Mrs. Callahan?”

  “I was.”

  The famed Carpenter charm does not seem to be having its usual effect. “Did you know Richard Solarno?”

  “I met him. I’ve got to go now.”

  Click.

  That didn’t go that well, but I am undaunted, or at least only partially daunted. I call Sam Willis, my accountant, who also doubles as a member of my investigative team, during those infrequent occasions when I need a team.

  “I’m working on it, Andy. They keep changing the rules on 501 c’s.”

  Sam thinks I’m calling to ask for the income tax return he’s working on for the Tara Foundation. It’s a dog rescue organization that my former client Willie Miller and I founded and run, although he and his wife, Sondra, do a lot more of the “running” than I do. It’s a nonprofit operation. In fact, it’s about as “nonprofit” an operation as there could possibly be.

  “It’s not about that, Sam. I need some help on a case.”

  I can just about see him light up through the phone. Sam is a top-notch accountant, and a computer-hacking genius, but that is not how he sees himself. He sees himself as Mannix.

  I explain that I want a list of employees who worked for the Solarno Shrimp Corporation at the time of Richard’s murder. He’s disappointed in that; if he’s going to be called into a case he would at least want a chance to shoot someone.

  He promises to get me the information right away, and then asks, “You going out on the street?”

  “I have to in order to get home. I haven’t figured out how to beam myself there.”

  “You know what I mean,” he says. “Because I’ve got some free time on my hands.”

  Sam wants to go out on
“the street” to do hands-on investigating. “That won’t be necessary,” I say. “But if you have all that time, I also want to know how Larry Callahan died. He worked at Solarno’s company. And tell me how I can get in touch with Alex Solarno, Richard’s brother. And if you still have time after that, maybe you can do the tax return.”

  “Just call me if anything is going down.”

  “I will,” I say. “I’m making a note to myself. Call Sam if things go down.”

  “Wiseass,” he snarls. “You think I can’t handle myself? Because I’m the guy you want in the foxhole next to you.”

  “You would definitely be my first foxhole choice,” I say. “Unless we include women, in which case I’d go with Laurie.”

  “Makes sense,” he says.

  Solarno’s shrimping boats were spread out all over the East Coast, as well as the Gulf of Mexico. For that reason, not many of the employees lived in the New York / New Jersey area. One who does is Luther Karlsson, who was not an executive in the company but one of the shrimpers on a boat.

  I’m interested in talking to him for two reasons. First of all, I have nobody else to talk to, certainly not within driving distance. Second, Sam told me that Karlsson had quit the company a few weeks before Solarno’s murder. It may turn out to be irrelevant to my investigation, but it strikes me as interesting.

  Karlsson lives in Belmar, which in a perfect world is about an hour from my house down the Garden State Parkway. Unfortunately, no one has ever confused New Jersey with a perfect world, and with traffic I’m allowing two hours to get there.

  I called Karlsson first, and about all I discovered is that his Swedish accent is so thick I could only understand about every fourth word he said. I think he agreed to see me, but it’s not a conversation I’m looking forward to, since the only Swedish I know is “Yaah, sssuuurre.”

  It turns out that Karlsson lives in what seems to be a boardinghouse, and the woman manager of the place directs me to a refreshment stand adjacent to the beach. I head over there, wishing that I had brought a heavier jacket with me, and wishing even more that I wasn’t here at all.

  There are small tables by the refreshment stand, and only one person sits there. He looks to be in his late sixties, maybe even older, but it’s difficult to be sure because his face literally looks like leather. I’ve seen better-looking catcher’s mitts.

  He’s sitting on a bench, sort of leaning over. It’s hard to tell, but if he unfolded he’d probably be at least six foot four. He’s the outdoor, powerful type, and I’m sure he could someday get off his deathbed to kick my ass.

  “Mr. Karlsson?” I ask.

  He nods. “Yup.”

  “My name’s Andy Carpenter. I called you about your work with Solarno.”

  “Yup. You want some coffee?”

  “Yes.”

  He nods. “Me too.”

  I buy us both coffees, and he surprises me by adding a lot of milk and two sugars; I would have bet my life he was the black coffee type. Seeing him add the milk and sugar would be like watching Jack Palance in City Slickers take out an iPad to watch Steel Magnolias.

  Karlsson turns out to be much easier to understand in person, even with frozen ears. We start to chitchat about the area; I used to come down to Belmar and Asbury Park as a teenager, although the girls here were no more interested in me than the ones in Paterson.

  He has lived here for forty-one years, ever since his arrival in this country from Sweden. I have to admit he looks perfectly at home here; his face was made for this weather, or more likely this weather created his face.

  “Did you know Richard Solarno?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Never met him. Don’t know anything about him.”

  My next question should be, “Then what the hell am I doing here?” but I don’t verbalize it.

  “What about Larry Callahan?”

  “Larry? Sure. Good man.”

  “Talk to him lately?” I ask. I don’t want to be the one to tell him he died; as a general rule I refrain from saying bad things to people that frighten me.

  “Nope. Not since I left.”

  “How come you left?”

  “Everything changed. New people, new schedules. Shrimping took a backseat.”

  I’m not getting anywhere with him; the idea of trying to convince a judge that Solarno was a target because he wasn’t doing a good shrimping job is a bit of a nonstarter.

  “Do you know why they were making those changes?”

  “Didn’t know, didn’t want to know. Just knew it was time to get out.”

  I’m floundering here, and starting to think that for me it’s also “time to get out.” “So the new people were not good shrimpers?”

  “Couldn’t be.”

  “Why not?”

  “You ever try to shoot a shrimp?”

  I can’t help but laugh. “Not lately. I don’t think that would work.”

  “So why would they need a boatload of guns?”

  “You saw a boatload of guns?” I ask.

  He nods. “I wasn’t supposed to, but I did.”

  “Do you know where they were going? Or who they were for?”

  “Nah.”

  “Weren’t you curious?”

  He shakes his head. “None of my business.”

  “But you quit.”

  He nods. “Where I work is my business.”

  “Will you testify to this?” When he looks confused, I say, “In court. If it comes to that.”

  This elicits a shrug. “Why not? It’s the truth.”

  It would be incorrect to describe Simon Ryerson as worried. Concerned and annoyed, yes, but not worried. Worried would imply that there was a chance the problem could become unmanageable, that it could spin out of control.

  There was little chance of that.

  It was a mistake for Iurato to let the lawyer visit with Nicky Fats. There was no telling what the old man might say, and what he did say wound up costing him his life, or at least what was left of it.

  So the lawyer had picked up on it, and was chasing it down. That was his reputation, and he was making good on it. He was going to have to be watched now, to see whom he talked to and what he learned.

  It would likely amount to nothing; there were too many layers to get through. It is always hard to find something when you have no idea what you’re looking for, and the lawyer was completely in the dark.

  But one never knows, not even when that one is Simon Ryerson. So Simon would have the situation monitored, and that would provide ample warning of possible danger.

  The key to running a successful business was accumulating as much information as possible, analyzing that information intelligently and dispassionately, and then acting decisively. And his intelligence and decisiveness were the main reasons he was put into this position.

  If more people had to die, then more people would die.

  It was simply the cost of doing business.

  The Solarno house has had a rough time of it.

  Hosting a notorious pair of murders rarely does much for resale value, and this was no exception. It sits high up on a hill in an expensive Montclair neighborhood, and its seclusion has tended to add to the “creepiness” factor.

  It gradually fell into disrepair, and was finally purchased from the bank a few years ago. The new owners planned a major renovation, but then the housing and financial crisis hit. They neither did the renovation nor moved in, and the bank has since foreclosed on their loan.

  I, of course, laugh in the face of both danger and superstition, so I have no concern that the house could be haunted. Having said that, I invited Laurie to come with me to examine the murder scene. She’s a terrific investigator, and she carries a gun, on the off chance that we have to shoot any ghosts.

  Both Laurie and I have been in the house before, in preparation for the original trial, but neither of us is prepared for what we see. The formerly beautifully landscaped property is overrun by weeds, windows are broken, and th
e front porch seems to be rotting. I don’t think real estate agents will be holding open houses anytime soon.

  If an agent ever did get someone through the front door, that’s as far as it would go. There are actually still faded bloodstains in the carpet where Richard lost his life. It looks like someone halfheartedly tried to wash it, with limited success.

  The rest of the interior, at least from our vantage point in the front hall, looks as bad as the exterior. “I love what they’ve done with the place,” I say. “Think we should make an offer?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Never mind. Just some murder-scene humor.”

  We go upstairs, then walk down a long hallway to Karen Solarno’s room. Once again, bloodstains from the violence are still on the floor.

  “Hard to make the case that Richard was the target,” Laurie says.

  “Why?”

  “Because he was killed right near the doorway downstairs. We have to assume that Richard opened the door, and got shot almost immediately. Probably didn’t take more than a few seconds, though I suppose it’s possible they talked briefly.”

  “Agreed.” I know where she’s going, but in situations like this I find it helpful to our thought process to let her get there without interrupting.

  “So there would have been no reason to come up here and kill Karen. No reason to think she saw anything, and since her window didn’t face the front, she wouldn’t have seen him arrive.”

  “I don’t agree,” I say. “Or at least I see another alternative. I think the killer could have been covering all his bases. Assuming he had no respect for human life, and that seems a safe conclusion, then what’s the downside to killing her? Even if there’s a one percent chance that she saw him, or heard him, then why not remove that danger?”

  “It would mean spending a longer time on the scene,” she says.

  “We’re on a private, dead-end road at the top of a hill, so there’s almost no chance some other witnesses were going to wander by. He kills Karen and he pretty much removes any chance of detection.”

  “It’s cold-blooded.”