by Blake Banner
She turned the key. The big engine growled and we took off down Morris Park Avenue like she was after the kid who just took her baby brother’s lunch money. I gave her a moment and said, tentatively, “You want me to tell you…”
“No.”
“Come on, Dehan. Don’t get mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
“Your face is mad.”
“Thanks.”
We drove in silence for a couple of minutes. Eventually, I said, “You’re my partner, Dehan. I have to tell you my theory,” and regretted it immediately.
Her face flushed and her eyes went bright. She glared at me. “No kidding!”
“Eyes on the road.”
“Well, I don’t want to know your theory! I will work it out for myself!”
“That is childish.”
“Just keep going, buster.”
She turned left into White Plains Road, over the bridge and left again onto East Tremont. A couple more savage turns put her onto the East 177th access to the I-95, headed west.
“Are we really going to have a fight over this?”
“No.”
“Can I tell you my theory then?”
“No. You wanted to keep it all to yourself. You keep it all to yourself.”
“Watson wasn’t like this,” I said, and gave her a tentative smile.
“I, for your information, Mr. Stone, am not Watson!”
“OK, you made your point. I apologize. It was vain and stupid of me. I just wanted to get the evidence before I committed to it.”
“I am your partner. Aside from being your wife, I am your partner. We share our thoughts. That is what partners do. I am not some damned foil for your admittedly brilliant mind. Partner. Comprende?”
“Comprendo. I will strive to correct this flaw in my character. Now can I tell you?”
“Apology accepted. No, you can’t. I am going to work this out for myself to prove to you that I am not Dr. John Stupid Watson.”
I sighed. “Fine…” After a while I grinned. “It really is very, very subtle.”
She looked at me with hooded eyes and said nothing. I followed her lead.
Thirty minutes later, we turned into Madison Street, found a spot in the high fifties, parked and went to ring the doorbell. When Melanie opened the door, Dehan gave me a look which involved arching her eyebrows high on her forehead. Melanie was pretty, of medium height and build, with long, blonde hair. She could have been Sue’s younger sister.
Dehan smiled. “Melanie? We spoke on the phone about an hour ago?”
Melanie beamed. “Oh, sure!” She smiled at me and winked. “Happy birthday, birthday boy! Come on in.”
We stepped over the threshold into a small entrance hall. Before she could close the door, I said, “Melanie, there is something I need to tell you before we go any further.”
She paused with her hand on the door and looked worried. “What?”
I pulled out my badge and showed it to her. “I am Detective John Stone, and this is my partner, Detective Carmen Dehan. We need to talk to you.”
She kind of sagged against the door. “Oh, man…”
It was Dehan who answered. “The good news is we’re not vice, this is not our patch and this is not a bust. We’re from the 43rd in the Bronx.”
Melanie frowned. “So what do you want, a freebie?”
I laughed. “No, thank you. We just want to ask you some questions. Talk to us and in ten minutes we’ll be gone.”
She sighed and closed the door. “Let’s go up to my boudoir.” As she climbed the stairs ahead of us, she said, “Bronx? I sure hope this ain’t nothin’ to do with that Fernando. I ain’t gonna testify against that son of a bitch.”
She led us into a small room with a sofa, a couple of brown vinyl chairs and a huge TV on the wall. Dehan sat with her back to the door and Melanie draped herself on the sofa, facing Dehan. I took the other chair and let Dehan do the talking.
“Melanie, we are not asking you to testify. We are investigating a murder: the murder of a young woman who was very much like you. At the moment, all we are doing is putting the pieces together to try and get a picture of what happened the night she was killed. Now, what you can tell us could make all the difference between a killer going free, and killing again, or that killer being put away for life, where he can never hurt another woman. Or it could save an innocent man from going to prison. So it is really important, Melanie, that you be really honest with us and tell us exactly what happened between you and Fernando. You don’t need to testify, and he will never know you spoke to us. Deal?”
She sounded like a kindly mother talking to a troubled child. I turned to look at Melanie. She was fiddling with the hem of her blouse. She raised her eyes to meet Dehan’s.
“You better believe I am not going to testify. You put me in court and I will say he is the kindest, gentlest man on Earth.”
“I understand that. What happened?”
“About six months ago, it was in the summer, he was over here with some pals of his. I was working at the Unholy Chapel, the nightclub on Chapel Street? I was serving tables, keeping company with the patrons, you know the kind of thing.” She opened her eyes wide and laughed. “It’s damn good money, I can tell you that for nothin’! And Tony? The boss? People say he’s, like, an animal? But actually I think he’s a real sweet guy. He never done nothin’ to me, ’cept give me a chance to get on, and make some money.”
“So Fernando was at the club that night?”
“Uh-huh, him and some friends of his. They was there having fun, spending a lot of money, and so Tony says to me to go over, keep them company and see what they’re about.”
Dehan frowned. “What did he mean, see what they’re about?”
“Well, they were Mexican? And they had a lot of money. So this is like Tony’s kind of area. It’s like it belongs to him. He looks after people, if they have problems they go to him…”
Dehan nodded. “He’s with the Mob and this is his patch.”
“Yeah, I guess you could put it that way.”
“And he wanted to know if Fernando was trying to move in.”
“I guess.”
“So what happened?”
“It was nothing like that. They were just out having a night on the town. And at first Fernando was real nice and cute, and when Tony knew they was OK, he came over and had a drink, and we, you know…” She grinned and giggled. “We did a little coke and I said why didn’t we go back to their place and have a party, you know, like you do. But Fernando and his friend said no, they wasn’t local, why didn’t we go to my place? Then two of his pals took off, they had a flight to catch or somethin’, and I said, well my place ain’t a palace…” She gestured around. “You can see! I’m saving for somethin’ better, you know? I ain’t gonna be in the game all my life.”
“That’s admirable. What happened?”
“So I says, well, OK, let’s invite another chick from the club and go back to my place. But Fernando and this other guy, I can’t remember his name, they say no, just me and them.” She shrugged. “Well, OK, I’m into that. So we come back here. We do a bit of coke to, you know, get in the mood, like…”
Dehan asked: “Who provided the coke, Melanie?”
“They did. They was real generous. They had plenty. Anyhow, I put on some music and start dancing, and I tells Fernando to come and dance with me. Meanwhile his friend is just sitting and watching. So when Fernando gets up to dance with me, I ask him, you know, like, being courteous, what does he want to do with his friend? And then, everything changed.”
“Changed how?”
“All of a sudden…” She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, blew her nose and dabbed her eyes. When she spoke, her voice was nasal and a bit squeaky. “All of a sudden he calls me a whore and a bitch, and slaps me across the face. He hit me so hard I fell down. I asked him what I done, what was wrong, but he just kept hitting me and calling me horrible names. Meanwhile, his pal just sat there and watched. I be
gged him to stop, begged his friend to make him stop, but he wouldn’t. The son of a bitch put me in hospital and I couldn’t work for four months.”
I spoke for the first time and she had to crane around to see me. “Did Tony take care of you?”
“Uh-huh.” She turned back to Dehan. “He was real good. He paid my rent, made sure I had food, my medical bills. Everything. He said if I would have called him that night, he would have killed them, but they was out of his juris… jury…”
“Jurisdiction.”
“Uh-huh, there was nothing he could do unless they come back.”
Dehan asked: “Had you ever seen these men before?”
“Uh-uh, never. And I never seen them since. They know what they’s gonna get if they come back. Tony will take care of them. For sure.”
Dehan scratched her head and after a moment she said, “Melanie, I know this is horrible for you, but we are nearly done and this is really helpful for us. After he had beaten you, did Fernando or the other man rape you?”
Melanie looked blank for a moment. “Well, I never thought of it like that till now. I mean, like, they paid, right? But I guess by then I didn’t wanna do it, so yeah, I guess in that sense they did.”
“Both of them?”
“Uh-huh. First Fernando and then his pal.”
“What did his pal look like, Melanie, can you describe him?”
“Mexican, ’bout five-ten, five-eleven. I remember he had real strong hands. Well built, probably in his late forties, curly hair going gray, big Mexican moustache. And he had a funny smell. It was strange, but it was kind’a nice.”
“Like paint?”
“Yeah, like paint, and kind of pepper? Jeez, I wish I could remember his name. It didn’t sound Mexican, it was more like Russian…”
I said, “Gregor?”
She craned around and shook her head.
“Stephan?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Boris?”
“No…”
“Giorgio?”
“That’s it!” She snapped her fingers. “It’s like Italian? But there’s a city in Russia called Georgia, ain’t there?”
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s actually a country. And also a state in the U.S.A.”
“No kidding?”
“Go figure.”
I looked at Dehan. She nodded and we stood. “Thanks for your time, Melanie. That’s all we needed to know.”
“Is that it?” She looked almost disappointed. “You don’t wanna, you know… Your birthday an’ all?”
I shook my head. “No, Melanie, thanks all the same.” At the door I stopped. “What are you going to do when you quit the game?”
She was still sitting on the sofa, watching us leave. “I thought I’d buy a ranch in Texas. Tony says he’ll help me out.”
I nodded. “You take care, Melanie. Make smart choices.”
We let ourselves out and stood a moment, staring at the car. She handed me the keys and went to the passenger door. “Let’s get some lunch. I need to eat and think.”
I drove back via Market Street to the New Jersey Turnpike, and then headed north. On the way, Dehan spoke.
“I think you’re right. This is all about a kind of weird, Freudian relationship. I don’t know what your exact idea is, because you won’t tell me. Shut up.” I shrugged with my eyebrows but she ignored me and went on. “But here is how I see it.
“I read somewhere, or maybe you told me, that only seven percent of communication is words, right? Which means that ninety-three percent is subliminal, non-verbal. So what does that mean for our case?”
I glanced at her. Her face told me it was a rhetorical question and not to answer it.
“It means,” she went on, “that Cyril learnt from a very early age to be a victim! And wherever Cyril went, and whatever Cyril did, he was sending out subliminal, non-verbal communication to everybody around him saying, ‘Look at me, I am a victim.’ He’s sitting in the corner, not talking, not participating, looking at his shoes, with his shoulders hunched and his knees together. In non-verbal language he is shouting, ‘I am a victim!’”
I nodded. “Interesting.”
“Shut up! Now, if ninety-three percent of communication is non-verbal and subliminal, that means that somehow we are tuned, like radios, to pick up those subliminal messages, right? And just as some people have good hearing and others are deaf, some people, like Fernando, are really good at picking up those messages. And the minute he saw Cyril, his radar went crazy and he thought, ‘Aha! Here is a victim,’ because Fernando, contrary to what we have been told, is a son of a bitch, a bully and a sadist.”
“Strong words, but I agree.”
“Now, we need to think, Stone, what was going on, what was the scene, before Cyril showed up at the art classes? We have these two sons of bitches, these two animals, probably using the classes as a hunting ground, where they can select victims to prey on. And into that hunting ground comes Sue Benedict, who fits Fernando’s model to a T, if Melanie is anything to go by. So Fernando thinks it will be good sport to bring Cyril into the group, make him fall in love with Sue, and then have Sue fall in love with him or Giorgio, and watch Cyril go to pieces.”
“That’s an awful lot of assumptions there, Dehan.”
“Wait. Now, Fernando sets about his game, constantly pushing Cyril onto Sue, and Sue onto Cyril, sometimes literally, physically, getting her to sit on his lap, or give him hugs, who knows what?
“What he doesn’t count on is what we discussed before, that Sue and Cyril actually start becoming friends. Now, here is a question for you: according to both Fernando and Giorgio, Sue was flirting like crazy that night. She was wild, coming on to both Fernando and Giorgio, getting drunk, stoned, the works, right?”
“Right.”
“Actually, two questions. One: isn’t that a perfect description of the scene they paid for with Melanie?”
I nodded. “Yes indeed, it is.”
“Second: if she was so hot and so wild that night, why the hell did she go home at two o’clock? It is a question that has been nagging at me from the beginning. Why the hell did she go home?”
“They both said she had drunk too much. Maybe she overdid it and felt sick.”
“That is the obvious answer, but…” She held up her thumb. “One, if she was as hot and wild as they described her, she would have had to be very drunk to feel ill enough to leave the party where she was having so much fun, yet the scene Bob Smith described, that he saw through his window outside her apartment, does not fit a woman that drunk. She was coherent, unhappy, angry, but not drunk to the point of feeling ill.”
She raised her index finger. “Two, if she was so ill that she needed to leave the party where she was having so much wild, crazy fun, why did she let her visitor in? Why did she even open the door to him? If she was that ill, she should have been either throwing up in the can or comatose in bed. Fernando and Giorgio lied about her state and her behavior, Stone. And if they lied about that, we have to be asking ourselves, not ‘why?’, but, what are they trying to hide?”
Fourteen
We had collected a couple of beef sandwiches and a couple of coffees from the deli at the end of the road. Now we were sitting at our desks, eating and staring at each other. It was a habit we’d fallen into over the last couple of years. It freaked some people out and annoyed others, but it helped us think. Mo slouched past after a while and muttered, “Jeez, get a room, will ya!” Which made Dehan snigger.
I swallowed and shrugged. “We always come back to the same problem, the forensic evidence does not point to either Giorgio or Fernando.” She drew breath and I shook my head. “However clever and thorough your theory is, until we have some concrete evidence, it is just that, a theory.”
“So we pull them in, Stone. We separate them and we work on them, play them against each other until one of them breaks.”
“Pull them in on what grounds? The only thing we have them on is beating up Melanie, and s
he already told us she won’t testify.”
She grunted, sighed, chewed and stared out at the winter afternoon. Then she wagged a finger at me. “OK, Sensei, what about the cases in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona? We go through those files with a fine toothed comb.” She leaned forward with her elbows on the desk and pointed at me. “If we can link the cases, not just to Fernando but to each other, then we can threaten him with handing it over to the Feds.”
I nodded and smiled. “That’s nice. Tell him to roll on Giorgio or we hand it over to the Bureau…”
“Exactly, meanwhile we do the same to Giorgio.”
“There is something else.” I unwrapped my second sandwich and took a bite. “It’s been on my mind since the first time we visited Giorgio. He lives way above the means of a private art teacher. His furniture, the house, that’s all pretty expensive stuff. Same is true, though less so, of Fernando. Put that together with their visit to Tony’s nightclub, the way they were throwing money and coke about, and Tony’s refusal to go after them when they beat up one of his girls…”
“You’re right. That was weird. The Mob are not tolerant of that kind of thing. If they let it pass, there must be a reason.”
“The reason is coke. There was coke at the Halloween party and there was coke at Melanie’s party. I don’t doubt that Giorgio is serious about art and about teaching, but I have no doubt either that he makes his living selling coke and probably weed, and two gets you twenty part of the reason for his classes is to find customers and to distribute. This way he doesn’t attract attention and doesn’t need to challenge the gangs for a street corner.”
She grunted. “I like it. We don’t need to charge them. You go get Giorgio, I go get Fernando. We let them see each other being taken into separate interrogation rooms. Then we start to hit them: we’ve applied for a warrant to see their financial records, we’re looking at their phone records to see who they call on a regular basis, we don’t need a warrant for that, we know about Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, we are ready to hand the whole damn case over to the Feds if they don’t cooperate. Then we play them against each other, tell Giorgio Fernando’s cooperating and tell Fernando Giorgio is singing like a bird. If they are even a little guilty, they’ll crack.”
