As far as I was concerned, solving any case almost always came down to pounding the sweltering NYC pavement and examining a few rocks to see which way the moss grew, in order to find the answers.
* * *
Later that afternoon, I stopped on the corner opposite the diner and lit a cigarette. Whereas before I might have taken a seat in the restaurant opposite to watch the joint, now New York City law had chased me outside. Oh, a lot of places had smoking areas. Usually outdoors in the back surrounded by neighboring buildings and glass. But I didn’t particularly like the feeling of being walled in, put on display like a smoking turtle in a terrarium for the other diners to stare at as they ate. Which was probably a good thing, because I didn’t smoke half as much as I used to. But I wasn’t going to admit this to anyone that mattered.
I drew deeply on my cancer stick and slowly released the smoke, watching as Petra updated the chalkboard propped outside announcing the dinner specials. I had half hoped that Hermioni Abramopoulos wouldn’t come by the agency. But she had, putting down the retainer I’d asked for. Which meant I was pretty much in this till the end.
Inside the diner I could make out at least seven regulars. Whereas before I might have viewed them simply as fellow diners, now each and every one of them was a suspect.
Could a customer have been upset at his burned steak— earlier thrown out of the house by his wife, fired from his job—taking his rage out on an unsuspecting Mike? Or, in the case of the young couple holding hands in the first booth and sharing moussaka, could an argument have grown loud, causing Mike to intervene and become victim rather than mediator?
At any rate, I didn’t have many resources to dedicate to this case. Sure, Hermioni was paying me. But I was in the middle of a sticky job that commanded most of my attention.
Since Mike had been a friend of sorts, however, and a fellow Greek, I figured I could give him at least a fraction of the time I’d spent eating at his establishment.
I looked up and down the street. To my left, Ditmars Boulevard would take me toward the East River and Astoria Park, the Hellgate Bridge looming as a reminder of history in a city full of history. To my right, the street would take me to LaGuardia Airport.
But it wasn’t the river or the airport I was interested in now. I turned and walked east, crossing 31st Street, the squealing brakes of the N train announcing its arrival at Ditmars station, the last stop on the elevated line, a regular sound that blended with the din of cars and airplanes sweeping down from the northwest. I stopped and bought a fresh peach from the Top Tomato on 35th, then walked further up still, to the only spot I’d been able to find in this parking-challenged area. I climbed into my old Pontiac and pointed the car in the direction of the 114th Precinct on Astoria Boulevard at 34th Street.
A little while later, I sat opposite Detective Sergeant Tom McCurdy, who I’d learned was the guy in charge of the case after a quick call to my NYPD mate, Officer Pino Karras. If the files littering Tom’s desk were any indication, Hermioni was right: It might be some time before anyone got around to finding out who had killed her husband.
Of course, I hadn’t ruled Hermioni out as a suspect yet. Call me jaded, but there was something about the human condition that allowed some folks to believe that if they hired a private dick, it deflected suspicion away from them, no matter how damning the evidence. One of my former clients had learned the hard way that guys like me weren’t wired to look the other way. While I wasn’t a cop anymore, the basic principles that had led me in that direction were still very much intact.
Besides, I knew enough about life to know that you took order where you could find it.
Tom McCurdy finished a phone call, sighed, and then nearly dumped the contents of his coffee cup over the files covering his desk as he reached for a pen.
“Looks like you’ve got your hands full,” I remarked.
“That ain’t the half of it. That goddamn blackout has us backlogged two weeks. We’re investigating every death until we can rule out those that were heat-related.” He fingered through one pile, then began on another, pulling out the file on Abramopoulos. “I thought you might be by for this. Ugly case, this one. Steak knife to the neck. Real mess.”
I’d known Mike had been stabbed. Only I hadn’t known where or with what. “You wouldn’t happen to have handy the list of the vouchered evidence and crime scene photos, would you?”
“Probably. But you know I can’t let you see them.”
I crossed my arms over my brown tie and grinned. “I don’t think I have to remind you that you owe me.”
Tom frowned, plainly remembering the hit on a prominent Greek politician I’d helped him thwart a year ago. “I think you just did.” He squinted at me. “The widow hire you?”
I indicated she had.
He swiveled in his chair and pulled out another file. The evidence itself had been collected by the Crime Scene Unit and was probably at the NYPD lab waiting to be tested. After that, it would be sent to the prosecutor’s office, once a suspect was named. I looked over the list Tom handed me and the photos. One shot was of a steak knife, the blade coated with blood. Another showed a short-sleeved blue shirt stained with blood in a pattern I guessed was consistent with a neck wound. I squinted at the third shot.
“The knife was still in the side of his neck.” Tom tapped a spot near his left carotid artery.
“Any idea if the attacker approached from the front or the back?”
“Nah. Still waiting on the M.E. for that. But this guy was a fighter. Scooted at least ten feet toward the telephone on the wall before he blacked out. Hit the left carotid head on. There ain’t no bigger bleeder in the body.”
I nodded, my gaze catching on a small, blood-caked item featured in the third shot. A dime had been placed next to it to indicate scale.
“Don’t know what in the hell that is yet,” Tom said. “Maybe after the guys scrape the blood off we’ll get a better clue.”
I already had a good idea what it was.
“What’s your take on who did it?” I asked.
“Cash register emptied, hour late. Robbery gone bad, is my best guess.”
“That’s what I figured you’d say.”
I again looked through the photos that had been printed out on regular paper. Not very good detail. But with digital cameras and computers nowadays, there was very little need for hard photos, unless you wanted to make a point with a jury. Needed to know something? You used a computer to zoom in on it.
While originally I had been reluctant to add the new technology to my inventory, in the past few years I’d become quite proficient, updating my software every year and a half or so to make sure I had the latest.
I held up a photo. “Prints on the knife?”
“Only those of the victim. Probably he tried to take it out. Made a real mess of things. Which is why he bled out.”
“How about footprints in the blood?”
“Only those of the victim.”
“Was the knife clean or dirty?”
Tom grimaced. “Do you mean, did someone use it to cut a steak or something before burying it in Abramopoulos’s neck?” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
I eyed a shot of the entire diner and then handed him back the photos. “Thanks.”
“That’s it?”
“I’ll be in touch,” I said over my shoulder, heading for the door.
I sat back in my office chair, staring at the notes I’d made. Was Tom right? The killing the product of a robbery gone bad? Mike was the kind to resist.
Hermioni had provided me with a list of the staff—names and Social Security numbers; I’d checked them out. Nothing but minor traffic violations. Hermioni had also told me about a customer Mike had argued with the morning before he was killed, but she didn’t have a name, so I’d have to ask around if I was to pursue that lead.
I personally knew of other strange regulars who kept to themselves. But to spotlight them was like shining an unflattering light on myself
.
Was Mike the victim of some psycho agitated by soaring temperatures and the blackout? No, I didn’t think so. The problem with that as the scenario was that while Astoria—the entire city of New York, for that matter—hadn’t always been safe, now it was a nice place to raise a family, the Manhattan skyline near enough to appreciate across the East River, but far enough away to escape the problems of too many people crammed into small spaces.
Yet the real reason I rejected all the theories was because I was pretty sure I knew what had gone down that night in the Acropolis Diner.
I grabbed my notepad, purposely leaving my pen behind, and decided it was time for dinner.
* * *
Mayor Bloomberg and I didn’t agree on much, but our take on Greek diners was in sync. He’d said in a recent interview in the Times that if he had to eat at only one New York restaurant for the rest of his life, it would be a Greek diner, because the variety of food was impressive and the ingredients fresh.
I concurred. And it wasn’t just because I was Greek. Having been single for the better part of my life, I’d come to appreciate the range my compatriots offered up. While tonight I’d ordered only yemista—rice-stuffed tomatoes—that could rival my own mother’s, since I ate at diners every day I often mixed it up with meatloaf and fried chicken. While none of the meals would win any awards, they were pretty close to what Mom would make, if, indeed, Mom made these dishes.
My mother had been living with my younger brother Pericles and his wife Thalia ever since the old man had cashed in his lottery ticket for a big exclusive condo in the sky. She still cooked, but rare were the times when I got to enjoy it. Call me a coward, but I didn’t like the way she looked at me across the table even as she told me about some distant cousin or other from the Old Country who she could fix me up with.
Of course, my life probably would have been a whole hell of a lot simpler had I just taken her advice from the beginning. Instead, I’d married two American women who had thought me exciting and exotic in the beginning, plodding and boring at the end.
The topic of marriage brought my brother Pericles’s oldest daughter, Sofie, to mind. She’d just announced her engagement to a good Greek boy, much to the family’s delight. She’d done some odd jobs for me on and off over the years whenever she got fed up with working in my brother’s restaurant or her maternal grandfather’s café, both on Broadway. I remember thinking she would make a good P.I. That is, if wedding cakes, color swatches, booking good bouzouki bands, and trying to be a good Greek girl weren’t what currently populated her list of priorities.
Personally, I thought she could do better.
I finished my food and pushed my plate away, craving a post-meal cigarette. But I just sat back and waited for the waitress to take my plate and offer me coffee.
When she popped up like clockwork, I motioned toward the empty seat across from me. “Sit with me a minute, please, Petra.”
Her movements slowed and her expression was pinched. She glanced around as if seeking an excuse to refuse my request. But I’d purposely come into the diner just before closing, so there were no other customers to be waited on, aside from an old man at the far end of the counter who was reading a newspaper and nursing the same cup of coffee he had been for the past hour.
Petra reluctantly sat down.
“You know that Mrs. Abramopoulos hired me, don’t you?”
She looked down at where she had her hands tightly clasped on the table in front of her, then nodded.
I took out my wirebound pad and pretended to consult notes that didn’t exist even as I looked in my pockets for a pen that wasn’t there.
Petra removed a pen from her apron pocket and held it out to me with her right hand. Her wrist was not only minus the Greek evil-eye charm that had been covered with blood in the crime scene photo, but the bracelet that had held it too.
“Did you lose your bracelet?” I asked, taking the pen.
Her face burned bright red. She nodded again.
I took a sip of black coffee. “There were times when you and Mike didn’t get a long all that well, weren’t there?”
Big green eyes looked up into mine.
“Yeah, I saw it. The old man making passes. The swats on the ass.” I shrugged. “Kind of hard to miss.”
“Mr. Abramopoulos was a nice man,” she said quickly.
Of course she would say that. Since I hadn’t been able to dig up much on her, I’d guess that Petra Ahmeti was illegal. Chased from a struggling homeland like the Greeks had been a generation earlier. Mike had paid her in cash, and since she was good worker, she took home good tips. Better than the other two waitresses who would just as soon dump your plate into your lap as serve you.
Maybe the night Mike was killed he had pushed things beyond an ass-swat with pretty Petra. And paid for it in spades.
A price exacted not by Petra, I was sure.
“When did you lose your bracelet, Petra?”
She began rubbing one of her thumbs hard against the other. “I didn’t. Lose it, I mean. I . . .” She appeared to be searching for the right words, as any non–native speaker might. But I guessed her hesitation grew more out of her not wanting to tell me what she had to say than her limited English.
I heard the sound of a tub of dishes being put down heavily on the table behind me.
“She gave it to me,” the busboy said. “So just leave her alone.”
Bingo.
You see, Petra had never been on my radar as a suspect. She was just too gentle. Someone had killed on her behalf. And it was a sure bet that the guy was Greek. Because while it wouldn’t be unusual for an Albanian girl to be wearing a Greek evil-eye charm on her bracelet, I’d gotten the impression from the way I’d seen her play with it that it had been a gift. From a Greek guy. And since Mike hadn’t been the gift-giving kind, that left one other Greek guy in the diner.
Stamatis came to stand next to my booth, his hands fisted at his sides. “What do you want with Petra? Why are you asking her these questions?”
I kept my gaze on Petra’s pretty face. “Sweetheart, why don’t you go in the back and see if you can scare up a piece of fresh baklava for me. Not the pieces that have been in the display all day.”
She briefly met my gaze and then scooted from the booth, disappearing into the back of the diner.
“How long you been working here, Stamatis?” I asked the kid as I peeled off a twenty from my clip.
The question was rhetorical. I already knew how long he’d been working there. Exactly eight months. Hired on the day after Petra, after the previous busboy had met with a hooded mugger in a dark alley.
Now, you might say that was just a coincidence. Then I would have to remind you of Rule #2 in the P.I. handbook: There are no coincidences. My inquiries had revealed that Petra worked at another restaurant in Jackson Heights prior to coming to the Acropolis. And so had Stamatis. And through NYCIS, that the young man also had two priors, violence-related. A name-check by my buddy McCurdy had produced that tidbit. Of course, being illegal, Stamatis had no Social Security number.
Enter Mike Abramopoulos, restaurant owner, husband, father of three, and pretty much harmless, if a bit lecherous. Being of the male persuasion myself, I knew that many of us appreciated the value of a pretty girl. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just saying that a man’s primal desire to spread his seed is, well, it is what it is.
As for the steak knife, it was an even bet that the forensics lab might discover that it had been used for its normal intended purpose—even though the photos of the entire diner post-murder had shown the tables and counter cleared of all plates, glasses, and utensils. Stamatis may have cleared the tables for some reason after using the steak knife to stab Abramopoulos.
A crime of passion, and a mundane weapon ready to hand.
Then he may have emptied the cash register to make it look like a robbery gone bad.
I noticed that Stamatis hadn’t answered my question, and his fists were st
ill clamped tight at his sides.
I pushed from the seat, tucking a copy of the Queens Tribune under my left arm. Stamatis had to either back off or make good on his unspoken threat. I wasn’t sure how he’d play it. But he blinked.
I eyed the kid. A shame, really. He was all of nineteen and had his whole life ahead of him.
A life that would now include a sojourn at Rikers before a long stretch upstate.
“Tell Petra I changed my mind about the baklava,” I said, putting the twenty on the table and heading for the door.
* * *
A little while later, I watched from the opposite corner as Sergeant Tom McCurdy and his partner pulled up in front of the diner and went in to arrest Stamatis. While no confessions had yet been extracted, nor solid evidence produced, I’d suggested to Tom on the phone that a little pressure applied just so would get him both.
The homicide detectives led the kid out in handcuffs and nodded in my direction. I nodded back and then took a long pull off the cigarette I’d just lit. I coughed, stared at the burning end, let it fall from my fingers to the pavement, and ground it out under the heel of my shoe. As I turned to head to my car, the N train squealed to a halt on the elevated tracks a half a block up on 31st. I didn’t have to hear to know that inside the train the announcement was: Last Stop, Ditmars.
And for Mihalis Abramopoulos, Ditmars had been his last stop.
I looked at the sea of people coming down the platform stairs on their way home, and others out on the warm night with families and friends, gathering in cafés and restaurants and Astoria Park. For other immigrants and locals alike, Ditmars represented a beginning . . .
PART III
FOREIGN SHORES
AVOID AGONY
BY SHAILLY AGNIHOTRI
New York City Noir Page 101
