by Blake Banner
“I know what you were both feeling. All you wanted was to be together and to be left in peace. But you had the immense, invincible power of Nelson’s gang on the one side, and Mick and the law on the other. Your choices had all been taken away.” I turned to Sam. “Your mother told me you were a real mensch, with a big pair of balls. I’d say she’s right. What you did took real courage. You committed suicide, so that nobody would ever look for you again. Actually, you blew away one of Nelson’s men. I should arrest you for that, but frankly I can’t prove it and I don’t care enough to try.”
Maria was watching me, and there was real gratitude in her eyes. “And you—boy! You had the Triads, the Mob, the Sureños, and the NYPD all scratching their heads. But it was simple, really, wasn’t it? You blew their minds. You had an apartment full of dope, and they all had you down as a submissive, obedient slave. How wrong they were. What did you do? Mix H in with their whiskey?
“I don’t know if you had the shotgun there or if Sam took it over to you. I imagine it was already there as part of Nelson’s arsenal. They were so damned stoned after you spiked their drinks, you could take your time and shoot each one of them, one after the other, at your leisure. Naturally, everybody assumed it was a hit squad who stormed in and had the job done in seconds. But it wasn’t. It was you, taking your time.
“Some people break and go to pieces when you humiliate and abuse them. Others find a way to fight back. And that was you. And the message…” I turned to Dehan. “You said it was a message right from the start, remember? The message, when you castrated and beheaded him, was, ‘this is a punishment killing. You try to dehumanize me, I will destroy you.’”
I heaved a big sigh and thought for a moment. “I am not sure if that was you or Sam. In a sense it was both of you. But I think Sam had gone directly to Texas. Because this was the real genius of your plan. Allow Mick to think that you were falling for him. He had told you that he was scamming the Triads and the Mob and that he had arranged for them to hit Nelson that night. You weren’t even supposed to be there, were you? You were supposed to be at his place, waiting for him.
“How did it go? Mick and Pro were both screwing the Mob. They arranged to have the Mob and the Triads run into each other at Nelson’s. Start a war between the gangs so the cops would assume the killing was part of gang warfare. Mick gets paid by the Mob straight into his account, and Pro collects his, in cash, from Nelson’s apartment.” I smiled and shook my head. “But when Pro turned up, his cash was gone. Because you had taken it.”
She had that same impassive, expressionless look on her face. Sam’s was the same. It was a technique they had mastered over the years, a way of dealing with what they had had to do in order to survive. I went on.
“Somewhere between New York and Shamrock you banked the money, because you had managed to persuade Mick to give you the details of his numbered account. Was it Sam’s idea to have two accounts? So if ever there was an investigation into Mick’s crimes, it would stop at his unnumbered account, while the bulk of his money was in the numbered one?
“It struck me when the Feds found the account in Belize, that the amount of money in it was just enough to be convincing, but well below the estimates I’d heard of how much he had got away with.” I paused. “Tell me about Shamrock.”
She shrugged. “What’s to tell? He thought he controlled the world. Really, he was so stupid he was like a puppet. I had arranged with Sam that we would meet at Shamrock. I told Mick I wanted to go out to eat, and he was naturally all for that. I kept making snide remarks about how the Irish were supposed to be big drinkers, but the people in this town just drank milk. I goaded him. When he started mouthing off and getting violent, I appealed to those nice people at the restaurant to call the sheriff.”
“And while he was in the slammer,” I said, “you hired a truck from old Ted. You left it near the Palo Duro Canyon, had Ted drive you back, and when Mick came out of jail with a huge hangover, you told him you wanted to get out of that place. You offered to drive, said you wanted to. Did you dope him?”
She nodded. “I had kept a dose of heroin and a syringe. I persuaded him to let me drive, and as we were heading out of town, I simply took the syringe from my bag. He had his eyes closed. I stuck him in the neck and rammed the plunger home. He convulsed. He would probably have died anyway from the overdose. But when we got to the site, I shot him in the belly with his own gun.”
I said, “I hadn’t noticed till I reviewed the case, after we got back from Texas, but of course you, Sam, were a medical student. It would have been easy for you to get hold of a woman’s skull and a few bones. You met Maria at the site and left the bones in the car. You picked up the SUV you’d rented from Ted and headed out to start a new life in San Francisco.”
Sam said, with some defiance in his voice, “What would you have done, Detective?”
I shrugged and stood. “It’s irrelevant. You did what you did. The important thing, as far as I am concerned—” I turned to Dehan, who was watching me with her eyebrows arched. “—and I think Detective Dehan will agree, is that the criminals are all either dead or in custody, and you are free to care for your children and raise a good family.”
Maria smiled, Sam frowned, and they both said simultaneously, “Thank you.”
“I just ask one thing,”
Maria looked up at me. “What’s that?”
Dehan answered for me. “Pick up the phone, Maria. Call your brother. He needs to be rescued. And call your mother, she misses you. That goes for you too, Sam.”
Epilogue
We were sitting in a place called the Epic Steakhouse, looking through the window at the Golden Gate Bridge. Dehan was sitting across the table from me getting intense about the best steak she had ever eaten in her life. I was wondering if I had died and gone to Valhalla. I was also wondering if I would have to mortgage my house to be able to pay for the wine. But if I did, I didn’t mind. Things didn’t get this good all that often in life.
She didn’t look at me—she was too busy looking at her steak—but she stabbed her fork in my direction and said with her mouth full, “When did you realize it was Maria?”
I smacked my lips and leaned back.
“In the car, driving to Texas. I kept going over and over the same question. It had to be one of three people, but it wasn’t either one of them. So it had to be that other, invisible person. That other person in the apartment was Maria. But how the hell could gentle, sweet Maria kill five guys with a shotgun before they even reached for their weapons? Then it dawned on me—they would be doped. And the apartment was full of dope. You know the old adage, poison is a woman’s weapon. Once you accepted that, everything else just fell into place.”
I chewed and sipped and smiled.
Dehan nodded quietly, then said, “So if Jennifer wasn’t talking to Pro, who was—still is?”
“One of two people. We’ll have to wait and see.”
She grunted, then waved a steak knife at me and said, “You said that Maria was dead. But you knew she wasn’t. You said Sam had killed her, but you knew he hadn’t.”
I sipped and smiled again.
“I was struggling with my conscience, Dehan. I trusted you implicitly. But it was not my secret to tell. It was theirs. So I spoke metaphorically and hoped that you would see the meaning of the metaphor. He, Sam, had killed her and himself so that they could be reborn in San Francisco. He’s a smart guy.” I gestured at her with my hand. “And you did get it, you being a subtle, intelligent, intense kind of person.”
“Whatever. What you mean is you are vain and wanted to reveal it all at the end to show off.”
“Perhaps. I have a certain…”
“Intellectual vanity. Yeah, I know.”
“You followed me out to Frisco and stalked me.”
“I knew you were holding out on me, and I knew you were going to get into trouble. I had to be there to bail you out.” She smiled and winked.
I raised an eyebrow
at her. “You were lucky I didn’t nail you in the bedroom.”
“Excuse me?”
“When you shot the guy Pro sent to kill me. I thought you were a second hit man.”
“Oh.” She chewed for a moment. Then said, “The way you were falling over yourself in the dark, I never felt I was in any danger of getting nailed by you.”
“Thanks.”
“So who was this psychoanalyst?”
I shook my head. “Just a very confused woman.”
We smiled and raised our glasses. She said, “Cheers, Stone.”
“Cheers, Dehan!”
And we drank deep.
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EXCERPT OF BOOK TWO...
One
It was autumn in New York. Or, to be more accurate, it had been autumn in New York. Now it was November, and lovers who blessed the dark did so in their apartments where it was warmer and drier than Central Park. The leaves that had made picturesque, russet drifts just a week earlier were now turning to sludge, and the branches that had held them and released them gently onto the sidewalks now reached bare, skeletal, and cold toward heavy, gray skies.
I held Dehan’s coffee in both hands, and the warmth made me shudder. Through the windshield I saw her step out of her apartment block. A gust of damp wind caught her hair and whipped it across her face. She scowled and ran toward me as a few fat drops of rain splatted on the glass. It was that kind of day.
She climbed in and slammed the door, making cold, shuddering noises. I handed her her coffee, and as she hunched over it I, reached around to the back seat and dropped a folder onto her lap. She sipped and eyed me.
“Want to tell me about it while I warm up?”
I pulled out into the traffic and sighed deeply.
“My parents never really understood me. I felt very isolated as a child, which made it hard to relate as an adult. I think that’s why I broke up with my fifth wife…” She was staring at me with hooded eyes. I grinned. “Oh, you meant the case?”
“Funny. How can you be funny at eight in the morning in November?”
“And a Monday. Kind of guy I am. This is the case of the two arms found in a lockup in an alley between Revere Avenue and Calhoun Avenue.”
“Throggs Neck. Barkley Avenue. 45th Precinct is right there on the corner.”
“That’s the one.”
“Gotcha. So, is that true?”
“That two arms were found there? Sure.”
“No, that your parents didn’t understand you and you were married five times.”
“No, of course not. My parents thought I was the neighbors’ youngest kid. They used to feed me because they thought I looked hungry and neglected. Pay attention, Dehan. There’s a double row of self-storage units. It is eight units long, and each unit is about fifteen foot deep by ten foot wide. Monday, December, 5, 2005 Peter Smith opens up his lockup and finds, lying on top of a stack of boxes, two female arms, severed, with some skill, through the shoulder joint.”
She sipped, then asked, “Were the arms bare, or dressed?”
“Excellent question. The arms were not dressed. They were bare. In fact, the investigation ground to a halt after no more than a week because there was zero forensic evidence other than, obviously, her fingerprints and DNA. The only witness was Peter, and he had an alibi. He was with his wife. So, there was nowhere left to go with the case.”
She blinked out of the windshield for a while, hunched over her coffee, watching the wet, gray procession of people and vehicles. The only sounds were the listless squeak and thud of the wipers.
“No forensics evidence and no witnesses?”
“Nope.”
“What’s your plan. You know somebody who can read tea leaves?”
“Nyeah…no. I think we can do a little better than tea leaves. Sometimes, little grasshopper, people just ask the wrong questions.”
“And you are going to ask the right questions.”
“I hope so.”
“We just passed the turnoff for the station house, so I guess we’re going to Revere Avenue.”
“Yup.”
We pulled up outside Peter Smith’s at eight thirty a.m. It was a large, Dutch-style redbrick with a small front lawn and six steps up to a white front door. I rang the bell and waited. Nothing happened and I glanced up and down the road. Across the way I saw a man open his front door and stand staring at me. He was in his mid to late thirties, medium build with dark hair. He called over, “Good morning! Pete and Jenny have taken the kids to school. They should be back in twenty minutes or half an hour.”
His house was smaller, detached, with a white fence and gate. He stood watching us, smiling. We crossed the road, and I showed him my badge as we pushed through the gate.
“Detectives Stone and Dehan…”
“I kind of figured.”
I frowned. Dehan said, “Yeah? How’s that?”
He pointed at us both with both his index fingers and spoke as though he were asking questions. “Your physical interactions? The way you relate to each other? You’re obviously not a couple. You’re kind of purposeful? On a mission? Most likely cops.” He pointed at his front door. “You want to wait inside? It’s awful cold.”
I nodded. “Thanks. That’d be great.”
He held out his hand. “Bob, Bob Luff.””
We shook and he led us inside.
It was an open-plan living room, dining room, kitchen with a big bow window that gave a clear view of the Smiths’ house across the way. I glanced into the kitchen, saw two mugs and two plates by the sink. He was making his way to the kettle.
Dehan asked him, “Been here long, Bob?”
“About fifteen years. We moved in a year before Pete and Jenny. We’re the vets! Coffee?” I told him we’d just had some. He made himself a mug. He was frowning. “Pete okay?”
I smiled. “Yeah. Just some routine questions about a cold case. If you were here twelve years ago, you may remember it.”
His eyebrows rose. “Oh?” He pointed at the chairs and sofa. “Sit. My wife will be back soon,” he added, as though that made it okay to sit. “Twelve years ago…”
Dehan said, “George Bush was president, Chris Brown was in the charts with ‘Run It,’ Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was a hit at the box office, it was your third year in this house…”
He watched her say all this with a slack smile. She sat and he sat too. I sat where I could see the Smiths’ house. I added, “And Peter found two arms in his lockup.”
He kind of jerked upright and sighed with closed eyes. “Oh, my goodness! That was twelve years ago.” He glanced at Dehan. There was something reproving about his expression. “Somewhat more memorable that Chris Brown! I remember it well. Poor Jenny was distraught. As was Pete! Imagine! You open your lockup, garage, whatever, and there, staring at you, two arms! It doesn’t bear thinking about. It’s sort of… It always makes me think of Schrödinger’s cat.”
“Schrödinger’s cat?”
He smiled at me. “Well, according to the Copenhagen Interpretation, as illustrated by Schrödinger’s cat, until the box is opened, the cat is both alive and dead.” I frowned. He sighed. “The mystery was never solved, then?”
I pulled a face. “Sometimes we look so hard at the essential facts that we miss crucial evidence that is not immediately obvious. Thinking back to that time, Bob, does anything stand out in your memory? Anything that at the time struck you as unusual, remarkable…�
�� I shrugged. “Even if it doesn’t seem relevant. You never know how things are going to link up.”
He sighed again and gazed out at the gray sky. The trees were bowing and tossing, and the odd fusillade of raindrops strafed the glass in the window.
“My wife will be more use to you than I. She has an elephantine memory. Remembers everything, in minute detail, and she notices things. What sticks out for me from that time is that Pete was away a lot. He was a rep for his company, and he’d spend one or two weeks away at a time. That was hard for Jenny.” He suddenly looked scandalized at what we might have thought and waved both hands at us, like he was trying to rub out what he’d said. “Not that she… in any way at all! She was and is an exemplary wife!” He settled down. “It was just hard for her, you know?”
I could feel Dehan’s irritation from where I was sitting. I smiled at her. She asked him, “Did you happen to notice any people in the area who seemed out of place, strange behavior… anything of that sort?”
He gave a small, humorless laugh. “Well, this is the Bronx, but within the usual bunch of crazies and weirdos, no, nothing stands out in my memory. Nothing that made me stop and think, ‘Hello! What are they up to?’”
Across the road I saw a car pull up, and almost immediately afterward, a second car pulled into Bob’s drive. I stood. “I think that’s the Smiths, and your wife.”
He stood, peering out. “Oh, yes indeed.”
He hurried to the door and opened it to his wife. She was large and comfortable, the way a sofa would be large and comfortable if it could cook chocolate brownies. She looked at us in surprise while her husband explained our presence, and seemed distressed that we were leaving.
“Do come again,” she said, “if you think we can be of any help. I’ll see what I can remember!”
Outside, Jenny was going through the door. Peter had stopped on the steps, with the listless drizzle speckling his face. He watched us approach, frowning. I guess he had also noticed our lack of physical interaction. We showed him our badges, and he said, “What’s this about?”
