by L H Thomson
Ah, geez. Ricky knew how to pour on the melodrama. “First of all, you’re probably wrong. Second, it’s complicated, okay?”
He snorted. “Not complicated for her, baby. Whenever you’re looking at me, she’s looking at you, and she’s got that freaky, spacy, dreamy look some women get….”
“Ah, you’re nuts. We go way back. I mean, she’s … well, this might be hard for you to see…”
He rolled his eyes at me. “I’m gay, Liam baby, I ain’t blind. She’s just lovely.”
“Yeah.”
“And she’s crazy about you, man.”
I eyed him over. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
He nodded.
Perfect timing. Nora made her return, hair brushed slightly back, immaculate. “You two almost done your sandwiches? I got to get back to work,” she said, adding, “I shouldn’t have had the peppers. I’m going to be gassy tonight.”
I looked at Ricky and shook my head. “Swing and a miss.”
He waved a hand absently at me. “No baby, that’s totally romantic. It’s all in how you see it.”
Nora squinted and peered at each of us in turn. “You’ve lost me,” she said.
Ricky laughed. “Not yet.”
“What’s he talking about?” she asked me.
“Long story,” I said. “Long Ricky story.”
“So…. better to leave well enough alone then,” said Nora.
Ricky sighed. “I’m so underappreciated.”
I dropped Nora back at the museum and Ricky at his apartment. I figured I needed to get in touch with Danny and check on his stakeout, as well as call his cousin in Florida.
Before I could, my phone rang. “Hello?”
“Mr. Quinn?”
The voice was familiar, accented. “Mrs. Amapikwe?”
“Please,” she suggested, “call me Charity.”
“How can I help you, ma’am?”
“I called to apologize, on behalf of Francois. He told me what happened when you were leaving. I … I am quite embarrassed that he was so overprotective.”
“I guess Patrick is his meal ticket,” I said.
“I suppose,” she said, “although it’s deeper than that. He’s a very old family friend. A very dear friend.”
I’d seen how “friendly” they were. She was understating matters. “He seemed intent on making a point physically.”
“That’s his way.” No further explanation was offered.
“Yeah, well, as long as he knows the next time won’t go any better for him, we’ll get along just fine.”
She changed the subject. “Patrick really likes you. It’s a good sign. He has not made many friends here, I am afraid.”
“Tough fitting in at his age. He seems to have seen some bad things.”
“Absolutely. Aside from football – soccer, as you say here – he has always been a very serious boy. He does not have much in common with the other children.”
“That’s not going to get easier when he goes professional,” I said.
“We are aware of the many pitfalls,” she said resolutely.
“You’re son’s probably going to be offered a lot of money. If there was some aspect of that deal that someone wanted to be kept secret, it might be a motive for murder.”
She sounded incredulous. “Surely you’re not suggesting Patrick or I…”
“No, but as I’ve said, you’re friend Francois seems to have some anger issues.”
“But this is absurd!”
“Really? He was there the night of the murder, right after your boy had an argument with David B. Davidson.”
“David has done much for us, but I sometimes wonder whether he is acting for my son or for himself.”
“Oh?”
“Patrick told me that he told you about Mr. Davidson going against our wishes with respect to the contract demands.”
I said, “Yeah, he said something about it.”
“We made it quite clear that our many immediate demands, including helping our family in Africa, necessitated the largest signing bonus possible, and that only clubs in Europe would be willing to, as you say here, ‘put up or shut up’.”
“And he went for the local deal that was longer-term, with a bigger cut for him.”
“Yes,” she said. “I have begun to lose trust for this man, Mr. Quinn. I suggest perhaps, if you are looking for the kind of person who could commit such an act, that you talk to David B. Davidson.”
“Uh huh.”
“Absolutely. I believe you would find it quite revealing.”
“Is there anything else I can help you with, Mrs. Amapikwe?” I said, hiding my annoyance at her clumsy attempt to pin the blame on the agent.
“I shall call you immediately if I think of anything,” she said with great certainty.
“You do that, Mrs. Amapikwe.”
“Please…. it’s Charity,” she said.
I stopped at the Philadelphia Mutual building to use the company’s phones. Calls to Florida aren’t cheap, and my budget was stretched these days.
The beast slid into the space next to Ramon Garcia de Soria’s Porsche Boxster, a source of no end of amusement and ribbing at the hands of Mrs. de Soria. I cut the engine and she choked and sputtered for a moment before going silent. The door creaked ominously when I climbed out.
Ten minutes later I was listening to a dial tone.
“Hello?”
“Alistair Evans? It’s Liam Quinn calling – Danny Saint’s friend?”
“Ah, Mr. Quinn! Glad to hear from you!” His accent was clipped and British, upper crust. “Daniel did mention that you’d be calling.”
I had to ask. “If you don’t mind me bringing it up, how does Danny end up with an English cousin?”
“Simple really: I was his second agent. I’d been lucky with my first client, a young soccer player from here in Florida, and Danny saw big dollar signs. But I was really quite awful at it. He did, however, introduce me to his cousin Marta, whom I married.”
“So you went from being a sports agent to scouting soccer?”
Alistair’s voice was bright and cheery. He obviously loved the job. “It made more sense, really. I’d played a little myself, although just on a youth contract, before I moved over here to go to college. But once an accountant showed me how to set up a limited liability company and write off my travel costs, the chance to see a bit of the world and be involved in the game at the same time was too great to pass up.”
“Have you seen the kid up here, Patrick Amapikwe?”
“Just the same online video as everyone else. He’s quite impressive. The gentleman you asked about, on the other hand…”
“Francois.”
“Yes, but not Francois Mpenge.”
“Eh?”
“Well, you were correct about him lying about his age, as Danny relayed in your original message. But I would add with fair certainty that he’s not Francois Mpenge.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“I’ve seen a picture of the real deal, and it’s not him.”
“He’s an imposter?”
“Of a sort. Francois Mpenge also played in the ‘professional’ league, such as it is, in Sierra Leone. But a contact of mine in Africa emailed me his photograph, and he’s definitely not your man. Your man, a little further digging uncovered, is a forty-seven-year-old former defender for the same club in the same league as Francois Mpenge. However, his name is Francois Jefferson Gauthier, and he’s from Liberia originally, not Chad.”
Crck had suggested Francois might have been lying about his age, but I wondered if the coach had any idea just how much of a fraud he really was. This wasn’t just a guy worrying about a few grey hairs at the temples and lying about it.
“I wonder if the real Francois Mpenge has any idea what he’s up to.”
“Unlikely,” said Alistair.
“Why?”
“He’s been dead for three years. Heart attack. Undiagnosed condition, according to m
y contact on the ground in west Africa.”
“Makes life easier for our guy.”
“Oh, I’m not sure he would have worried too much about taking Mpenge’s identity even if he was still alive.”
“You’re kidding?”
“This kind of thing really isn’t that uncommon: older African players with phony papers, trying to extend their careers or even just get a work visa, to get into another country.”
“And this works?”
“Not very often. They usually wind up working at the airport in France or Belgium until they’re deported. But I imagine in your man’s case the principal benefit was the chance to work with Patrick and his mother.”
Alistair was astute.
“So far, that’s pretty much it,” I said. “But he’s got a real connection with Charity, so it’s going to be complicated getting their help to figure out what he’s up to.”
The line was silent for a moment.
“I know a tense pause when I hear it,” I told him.
“Yes, well… has it occurred to you that both the boy and his mother may well know Francois is a fraud? In fact, they may like having him around specifically because he’s a tough guy.”
“How do you figure?”
“They’re from Chad. Things work differently there; the threat to people who have money or the prospect of money is very real. Kidnappings happen occasionally. Certainly, if my son was about to become a fifteen-year-old millionaire, I’d want to hire someone to protect him,” Alistair said.
“Really?”
“If I grew up in Chad? Absolutely.”
I asked Alistair to check on a few more things for me, before heading back out to the Firebird and, once again, saying a little prayer of thanks when the engine turned over. I swear, as long as I had my dad’s wreck of a sports car, I didn’t have to worry about missing the odd mass.
My phone rang right after the door creaked to a close. It was Davy, down at the soccer club.
“I figured I owed you a solid tip in return after you told me about that argument. The homicide guys have arrested David B. Davidson for Junior.”
“They charge him yet?
“Nah, but it won’t be long. Murder one. They’re going to interview him in the morning.”
I prayed they weren’t just going on my tip. “Please tell me they’ve got something other than...”
“Relax, Magnum, that just got them the warrant to search his car.”
“Magnum?”
“Yeah, you know, like….”
“I got the reference. Just … not real current, is all.”
“Your criticism is duly noted and ignored. Anyway, that turned up blood in the trunk, and a second warrant on his house turned up the hammer he used to beat Junior’s head in.”
For a whole bunch of reasons, it just didn’t make sense. But I wasn’t about to blurt it out and lose any goodwill I’d managed to engender in my little brother.
“They sure he...”
“Come on!” Davy said before I could even finish the sentence. “Motive: the big fight, which Junior obviously overheard. Opportunity: they were alone together in the building after Patrick left. And we’ve got the murder weapon, recovered from his garage.”
“Locked?”
“Huh?”
“Was the garage locked?”
“I don’t know. Why? What are you getting at?”
I had to play it carefully. Davy was more than family: he was also the only beat cop talking to me these days. “Probably nothing. If it turns out to be anything I’ll let you know,” I said.
“Be sure and do that. Just don’t get in the way and fuck this up, Liam. Youse already go enough heat in the department...”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, ex-con fraud artist etc etc.”
“Hey, don’t fucking blame me,” Davy said. “You’re the one who got pinched.”
He was right, of course. Do the crime, do the time. But he was wrong about David B. Davidson; as far as I could tell, the fight with Patrick wasn’t important enough to have been worth killing anyone. Even if Patrick got his way and most of the money was upfront, Davidson still stood to make fifteen percent, likely several hundred thousand dollars per season.
And Davidson seemed to have no connection to Johnny Terrasini. I already had personal experience that the gangster was involved, somehow.
It seemed more likely whoever actually killed Junior snuck the hammer into Davidson’s garage. And that meant uncovering his killer also stood a good chance of embarrassing the local police.
Just what I needed.
Walter was sipping his scotch slowly, eyeing me suspiciously over the rim of the forest green smoked glass tumbler.
He swallowed hard. “Needed that. Now, before we even get into the specifics of it, I have to assume you need a favor.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you haven’t ordered any food yet.” It was true. The waitress was hovering nearby. “And the only time you’ll talk openly about cases with me is when you either want my help, or you want me to pick up the bill for lunch.”
The guilt trip wasn’t going to work, because for every favor he’d ever done me, I’d thrown at least a case or two his way. “I need to talk to Davidson tonight, before the cops, while we can still get him to open up.”
“Is that in my interest?”
“I think so. I don’t think he did it.”
“Hmmph…”
Did he tell you ...”
Walter shook his head quickly. “You know my policy, my boy: I never ask, unless the salient details seem to demand it. He claims the hammer was planted, and he wants to plead not guilty. That’s all I need to know, other than whom else might have done it. Everybody deserves a good defense, after all.”
“Yeah, well, I think you lucked onto the side of the saints with this one, Walter.”
“The police seem to think it’s fairly open and shut,” he said, before nodding a thank you to waitress for a replacement scotch.
“Shocker.”
“Bloody weapon, access, motive.... this scotch is terrible.”
We’re in a pizza joint. What were you expecting? “Oh sure: embarrassment made David B. Davidson beat a janitor’s head in and risk flushing hundreds of thousands down the toilet. Does that seem likely to you?”
He shook his head and smiled. “But as I said, I never ask.”
“You still owe me one for the Pat Delaney case,” I said. “You came out of that with more business than you’ll ever need and you looked great in the newspapers.”
Walter struck a mock fashion pose, hand in his jacket. “I did, didn’t I? Looked even better on the evening news.” He downed the last of his second sub-par drink. “All right, let me see what I can do.”
Two hours later we were interviewing David B. Davidson through a Plexiglas partition at the intake.
In some places, they’ve gone back to putting prisoners in striped jumpsuits, for the shame of it, and the inability to mistake the suits for anything else. But not at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, an acre of holding cells behind stark concrete northeast of the city, near Holmesburg. There, it’s still orange jumpsuits all the way down the line.
“We’ve got an appearance tomorrow morning to hear bail,” Walter said.
Davidson looked exhausted and had a welt under his left eye. “You’ve got to get me out of here, Walter,” he said. “I’m not made for this sort of thing. If I didn’t have celebrity clients and a willingness to make promises I can’t keep, I’d be somebody’s bitch by now.”
“Don’t worry. The bail might be steep but I can’t see them denying it,” said Walter. “You’re not a flight risk.”
“Are you kidding?” the frazzled agent said, leaning in towards the window for emphasis. “If I get out of here, I might not stop running until I hit the horizon.”
“I didn’t hear that,” said Walter.
“Me neither,” I said, before nodding towards the guard by the door. “Him
neither.”
The guard’s eyes strayed down and towards us momentarily from under the shady brim of his cap, then went back to pretending we weren’t there.
Davidson said, “I’m sorry, but this place scares the living crap out of me.” He lowered his voice and glanced quickly at the inmates seated to either side of him. We had partitions on our side of the glass, but on his, they were just tall stools apart from one another. His voice was tinged with panic. “I’m trying not to show them any fear, but that’s kind of like a gazelle trying to tiptoe away from a watering hole surrounded by lions.”
I needed him to focus. “Why you? Why would someone plant the weapon in your garage? Who involved in all of this has the most reason to dislike you?”
He looked blank. “I really don’t know. I’ve never made any major enemies, and I was on the verge of cutting a multi-million deal that would have made everyone involved a fair chunk of coin. You got me, Quinn, you really do. I’m the good guy here. I’m a friggin’ saint practically.”
I ignored the irony of a professional sports agent claiming sanctity. “You had a fight on the night Junior was killed, an argument with the kid?”
He took a deep breath to relieve his tension. “Well, basically, I was trying to keep a 15-year-old kid from committing financial suicide.”
“Suicide?”
“Okay, not suicide, but rank stupidity.”
“I don’t get it.”
“He wants to sign with a club in France that, admittedly in league one, is going to pay him half of what he could get in the league here. He won’t even be eligible to play for the senior team there for nearly three years.”
“And he wants the rest of the money upfront,” I said. “He told me about it.”
“Let me guess, that song and dance about sending money back home to Africa?”
That was interesting. “Song and dance?”
“I guess there’s no harm in telling you, when I signed on to represent him and helped arranged their visas, they’d already been living in the south of France for a year. That’s why the French clubs already knew about him. But his mother thought he’d have a better shot of being picked up here in the U.S., where her son would really stand out.”
