by Joanne Pence
“I don’t know, boss. No more cabs come along. By the time I got one, they was gone. I had the driver take me back to my car.”
As Richie fumed, Lenny swore he never saw two people who could walk and talk so damn much. “They got my corns acting up,” he said, kicking off his shoes and reaching for a two-holed stocking foot to rub.
“You. Lost. Her.” Richie’s head was ready to explode.
Lenny looked scared. “I did my best, boss. Really. I tried! I went to the spot where the Inspector left her SUV, and it was gone. So either it got stole, or they took the cab back there and maybe she got in her car and went home. Or maybe followed him to his place. I don’t know.”
Soon after that, Richie’s friend Vito showed up at the club. Richie suspected someone had called him to come and drive Richie home. None of his employees were willing to try to tell him what he could and couldn’t do—such as, he couldn’t drive his car after getting shit-faced thinking about Rebecca Mayfield hanging out with a charismatic, handsome, and probably deviant, psycho psychic.
Vito, however, could do it. Vito Grasioso, one of Richie’s closest friends, was brawny and square-shaped, except for his head which was smaller at the top than along his jaw, where rolls of fat had sunk. He had receding black hair, hang-dog eyes, and always wore a tan car coat with bulging pockets. No one, including Richie, was sure what he carried in them.
Richie tried arguing with Vito, but quickly realized he was in no shape to do anything but obey his friend’s advice to accept a ride home. And to try to forget about Rebecca Mayfield.
CHAPTER SIX
At Homicide the next morning, Rebecca picked up a folder on one of her cases, but all she could think about was Sandy Geller. Sure, he might be a crook, but he was also a fount of information. The subject, real or not, had her hooked, and she wasn’t too sure that was a good thing.
“Morning,” Lieutenant James Philip Eastwood, chief of the Homicide bureau, said as he passed her desk, jarring her out of her reverie. He was impeccable, as always, his shirt starched to a seemingly uncomfortable level, and his thick silver-colored hair formed into a small pomp above his forehead.
“Good morning, sir,” she said, then hunched low over the open folder.
Only seven hours to go before she left work to meet Sandy. She couldn’t deny excitement at seeing a haunted house with a psychic medium.
She had just begun to grow interested in the case folder in front of her when Homicide’s secretary, Elizabeth, called to tell her she had a visitor in the front office.
That was odd, Rebecca thought, as she headed that way.
Standing in the office was a tall blond fellow, probably in his mid-thirties. The cut of his hair, his suit, and his stance told Rebecca one thing: FBI.
“I’m Inspector Mayfield,” she said.
“Brandon Seymour, FBI.” He showed his badge and they shook hands. “Can we talk in private?”
“What’s this about?” she asked.
“I don’t want to meet in an interview room,” he said. “I think you’d prefer more privacy.”
He obviously knew that mirrors in interview rooms were one-way glass, and that conversations could be piped into other rooms, but his comment still baffled her. “I might want privacy?”
He didn’t answer.
“This way.” She led him to a small unused conference room. He sat on one side of the long table, Rebecca on the other. “Now, what’s going on?”
“Do you know this woman?” he showed her a photo of the red-haired woman she saw at Richie’s car the other night after Geller’s theater performance.
“No.”
“Have you ever seen her before?”
“The hair makes her look like someone I may have seen.”
“Where?”
“I’m not sure.”
He had the typical flat expressionless style of FBI agents. She wondered if it was beaten into them at Quantico. Crack a smile and get bamboo slivers shoved under your fingernails.
“The only reason you noticed her was that she was waiting by Richard Amalfi’s car when he was with you.”
“Oh, really? Does the FBI do mind reading now?”
“You saw Amalfi signal her to leave.”
“What the hell is going on?” she demanded.
“Her name is Claire Baxter. She’s an art dealer, and lately she’s been selling gold jewelry that came from Nimrud.”
“From where?”
“Nimrud,” he repeated louder, as if that would help. “It was a city in northern Iraq some twenty-eight hundred years ago. After it was excavated by archeologists, the artwork and materials found there were sent to museums around the world. Gold jewelry from tombs of some queens of Assyria were stored in Baghdad, and when the museum there was looted after the fall of Iraq in 2003, it was feared lost. But then, in 2006, over six hundred pieces of gold jewelry, precious stones and ornaments were found in a vault in the central bank. We’ve now learned that a number of those artifacts have since fallen into the hands of the Islamic State, ISIS, as museums have been looted by them and others throughout the region. According to briefings I’ve had from antiquities experts, the plunder and sale of ancient artifacts from Syria and Iraq has become big business and has helped create a seven billion dollar black market.”
“Seven billion? That’s incredible.”
“But true. We’ve now received word that someone is trying to sell eight of the gold pieces. Claire Baxter is that seller.”
“How do you know that she’s selling this ‘Nimrud’ gold?” Rebecca asked. “Or that the pieces are even legitimate? I’ve heard a lot of fakes are also flooding the market.”
“We’ve got proof the pieces aren’t fakes. The irony is, it’s Europeans and Americans who are buying this stuff, sending our money to fund terrorists.”
“I see,” she said with a grimace.
He nodded in agreement. “Fortunately, we have some people, known collectors, who care more about preserving the artwork than in increasing their own collections. One of them, a wealthy Iraqi who lives in San Francisco, saw two Nimrud bracelets and a necklace. He alerted Interpol, and they contacted our field office in San Francisco. I’ve been watching Baxter. She’s keeping low. Too low. In fact, the only person I’ve seen her spend any time with is Amalfi. He’s also hard to get close to. But then I saw you with him. When I tracked you down, I learned you’re probably the last person we’d ever have to worry about being involved in anything like antiquities smuggling. So I’m hoping you can help us.”
“I don’t see how,” she said. “And I can’t believe Richie’s involved in anything like that.”
“‘Richie,’ is it?”
“That’s what he uses.”
Seymour allowed his mouth to wrinkle ever so slightly. “From what I’ve heard, ‘Dick’ would be more accurate.”
She said nothing.
He cleared his throat. “We want you to find out everything Richie knows about all this.”
“That’s a waste of time,” she said firmly. “He’s not interested in art—illegal or otherwise.” Or was he? Claire Baxter was an attractive woman …
“You sound pretty sure of that,” Seymour said.
She shook off her prior thought. “I know him and some of his family.”
“Are you in a relationship with him?” Seymour looked a bit surprised even as he asked.
She pursed her lips. “God, no. Nothing like that. I’m not sure you’d even call us friends.”
Seymour nodded. “Acquaintances. That makes more sense. That’s what I assumed looking at your profiles.”
“And?” she asked.
“We want to know what Claire Baxter and Amalfi are up to. And we think you’re the best person to find out for us.”
She had asked Richie time and again what he did to make money before taking over Big Caesar’s nightclub, but he never told her. Her voice went as flat as Seymour’s. “Is there any proof Richie is involved in something illegal?”
“We haven’t come up with anything like that—not yet, anyway.” She felt relief until he added, “But with guys like him, sooner or later, they make a mistake. Then, we’ll be ready to step in.”
She felt sick in the pit of her stomach. Had he really managed to fool her so completely?
Seymour gave her a strange look. “As far as we can tell, he’s never crossed over the line in his dealings with people like Claire Baxter. But I’m sure you know he made his first million long before he took over the nightclub.”
First million? “Right,” she said. “He’s talked about making money in real estate.”
Seymour gave her a cold stare. “Maybe so, but the real money comes from his other line of work. He’s a fixer.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Richie awoke to his doorbell ringing at ten o’clock that same morning. He had a raging headache. No, a hangover.
Now, awakened by the ringing and pounding on his door, he vaguely remembered Vito dropping him off at home last night. He blinked a couple of times. Looking around, he saw that he had managed to take off his shoes, but that was it, before collapsing face down on the bed. Apparently, he hadn’t moved all night.
He stumbled out to the front door and opened it.
His other closest friend stood there. Shay was about as different from Vito as anyone could be. He was at least a half-foot taller, blond and aristocratic. He even dressed like some English lord, preferring a wardrobe of mostly what Richie learned were “heather” colored sport jackets—what the hell kind of color was heather?—and with it, he usually wore a cravat (another word from Shay) tucked into a white shirt.
On top of that, women claimed the guy was movie-star handsome. The first time Mayfield saw him, she’d looked like a victim of lockjaw the way her mouth gaped open. But then she got to know him, and he didn’t look so hot to her anymore.
Shay didn’t date. Not women or men. Richie had no idea what was up with that, and the one time he asked about it, he got such a cold stare he thought his liver would turn into a block of ice and he’d drop dead on the spot. He never asked again.
“What the hell happened to you?” Shay asked as he walked into the house.
Richie just shook his head and went off to the bathroom.
After a hot shower and clean clothes, he felt a little more human except for the headache. He went out to his kitchen, a bright—too bright this morning—good-size room with granite counter tops and all the latest appliances in stainless steel. Shay had already turned on the espresso machine and made him a triple shot Americano.
Richie sat at the table, a bottle of Motrin at his side and coffee in hand. Shay had the good sense not to say a word until both kicked in.
After a second cup of coffee, Richie was able to talk to him. “What did you find out?”
Shay leaned back in the kitchen chair and studied Richie before speaking. Richie hated it when Shay did that. “Before I tell you what I found,” Shay said, “what went down with you last night?”
Shay and Vito had been the two guys who pulled Richie out of his depression, including too much drinking and screwing around, after his fiancée was killed in an auto accident some four years earlier. “What happened last night was a big mistake, nothing else,” Richie mumbled. “I was acting stupid. It won’t happen again. That’s a promise, okay? Now, what did you find?”
“First, Claire Baxter. Not only has the FBI talked to her a couple of times, they’ve started leaning on people who’ve worked with her over the years. It could get ugly. She’s going to have to come clean with them, or leave. She can’t keep playing both sides.”
Richie nodded. He didn’t really want to deal with Claire or her problems. He had enough of his own. “Okay. I’ll talk to her. What else?”
“I got into Neda Fourman’s bank records. It’s weird. She did have money to start with. Over forty thousand dollars. Hardly a fortune, but enough, especially coupled with Social Security and her nurse’s pension, to keep her in her own apartment and living well in her old age. But then, soon after Geller showed up in San Francisco, she started writing out checks to him. They were small to start with, but after she joined the Sandoristas, her checks grew in size—often, for five hundred dollars. Some months she wrote out two such checks to Geller. By last year, most of the forty grand was gone.”
“Any indication that anyone tried to stop her, or helped her take care of her money?”
“None.”
“What about her other expenses? Did they go up, down, anything?”
“Down. Way down. By the end, she was doing little but paying bills and seeing Geller. Even her grocery bills went really low, as if she couldn’t have been eating much or eating right.”
“I can’t get over the fact that nobody seemed to care,” Richie said. “No one tried to stop her or help her.”
“Well, that’s where it got really odd,” Shay said. “Somebody did. Sandy Geller. After most of her own money was gone, he started sending her five-hundred dollars a month. It was the difference between her having to leave her apartment and being able to cover her basic expenses.”
Richie nodded. “I’ve heard that before about him. I don’t get it. First, he gladly took a grand a month from a little old lady, and then the pillar of society gave her back five hundred? That bastard is all heart, isn’t he?”
“How many con men pay their marks back anything?” Shay asked.
“Good question.” Richie rubbed his temples. “Damn, but it just doesn’t make sense. Is it that he’s got a conscience after all? Didn’t want to see her thrown out on the street? Or are we missing something? Actually, if she was thrown out, the city’s social services or somebody might have questioned where her money went. And if she told them, they might have come down on Geller like flies on shit, which is exactly what he is.”
“There’s more to it than that.” Shay looked like the cat that swallowed the canary.
This, Richie knew, was the money shot—the part of the story Shay had been itching to tell. “Shoot,” he said.
“I was so curious about Geller, I hacked into his bank accounts. The guy’s loaded; close to seven million in Swiss banks. But it wasn’t until I looked at the money in this country, the three or so million he leaves here, that things got really interesting.”
“Okay.”
“He’s sending monthly payments to eight other people—both men and women—who at one time had sent money, tens of thousands of dollars in every case, to him.”
That was the last thing Richie was expecting to hear. “Eight? What is he, some friggin’ Robin Hood?”
“One lives in Denver where Geller was located before he went to Los Angeles, two in LA, and the rest in San Francisco.”
Richie just shook his head.
“And one of the women who’s been paying him quite a bit of money recently is your mother’s friend Geri.”
“So I’ve heard,” Richie said glumly.
Then Shay’s voice turned low and quiet as he added, “Your mother’s now seeing him, too. To the tune last month of one thousand dollars.”
Richie’s mouth dropped open. “Christ almighty!”
o0o
“Richie, what’s wrong with you? You aren’t yourself.”
Richie had been so horrified by Shay’s news, he drove straight to his mother’s home. She lived on the top floor of a three-story building on Russian Hill. Richie had bought the building for her a few years earlier. She rented out the flat below her, and also rented the garage since she didn’t drive.
Judging from the way his mother was studying him, coming here might have been a mistake. Carmela was in her early sixties, short, and a little overweight. Richie guessed she was still considered attractive because when men around her age saw her, they inevitably stood a little taller and sucked in their gut—not that he didn’t find it kind of gross to think of anyone checking out his mother.
“There’s nothing wrong,” he said. He couldn’t just start questioning her about
what she and Geri were up to. Her hackles would rise and he’d get nowhere. Instead, he had to ease into the conversation, slowly.
They were sitting at the kitchen table. Although the kitchen had state of the art appliances and new cream-colored cabinetry, it still had a cozy, old-fashioned look. Carmela poured them each a cup of coffee, and then put a plate of home-made cookies within Richie’s easy reach.
“You want some lunch?” She opened the refrigerator to see what she could offer him.
“No.”
“See, I told you.” Carmela shut the refrigerator door and then stared at him as if she were considering calling a priest to give him last rites.
“I’ve got to watch my weight,” he said gently. “It goes on too easy.”
She sat across the table from him. “It’s the age. You’re getting up there, Richie.” She added a half-teaspoon of sugar to her coffee and stirred it. “You got to get married before you get fat and lose your hair. I hope you take after your father’s side. They all had such hair, wavy, like yours is now. On my side, the men all look like cue balls by the time they’re fifty.”
“I’m not getting married because I might lose my hair.”
“You’re too old to mess around.”
“What’s all this about my age?” he cried.
“You heard me. You think I don’t know why you’re not eating?” She had dark brown eyes, and short copper-colored hair that was styled every week and then so heavily sprayed it didn’t move a single strand until she went back to the hairdresser. Right now, her eyes turned beady as they bored into him.
“Because I’m not hungry?”
“Because you’re still thinking too much about her.”
“Her?”
“The cop! Who else?”
“Christ, Ma! I’m not thinking about anybody. Give me a break!”
“I can see it.” She stared at him hard. “These are a mother’s eyes. They know when her son is getting ready to have his heart ripped out and torn into little pieces.”
“My heart’s just fine.”
