by John Verdon
She came into the room, frowning at the screen. “What was he just saying about you?”
“Nothing good.”
“He sounded complimentary.”
“Compliments are not always good things to get. Everything depends on the source.”
“Who was talking?”
“The loose-cannon lawyer Hardwick got for Kay Spalter.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I don’t like hearing my name advertised on TV, especially not by an egomaniac and not in that tone.”
Madeleine looked concerned. “Do you think he’s putting you in danger?”
What he was thinking, but didn’t say for fear of alarming her, was that the playing field had a precarious tilt when a murderer had your ID before you had his. He shrugged. “I don’t like publicity. I don’t like case scenarios being blabbed to the media. I don’t like wild exaggerations. And I especially don’t like loudmouthed, self-promoting lawyers.”
There was another aspect of his reaction that he didn’t mention: an underlying sense of excitement. Although his negative comments were all true, he had to admit, if only to himself, that a loose cannon like Bincher had a way of shaking things up, of provoking revealing responses from interested parties.
“You’re sure that’s all that’s bothering you?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
She gave him a long, worried, You didn’t really answer my question look.
Gurney had decided to wait until morning to call Hardwick about Bincher’s over-the-top media performance.
Now, at 8:30 a.m., he decided to wait a little longer—at least until he had his coffee. Madeleine was already at the breakfast table. He brought his cup over and sat across from her. As soon as he did, the landline phone rang. He bounced back up and went into the den to answer it.
“Gurney here.” It was his old NYPD way of identifying himself—which he thought he’d gotten over.
The hoarse, low, almost sleepy voice on the other end wasn’t familiar.
“Hello, Mr. Gurney. My name is Adonis Angelidis.” The speaker paused, as if expecting some word of recognition. When Gurney offered none, he went on. “I understand you’re working with a man named Bincher. Is that true?”
Now he had Gurney’s full attention, electrically charged by his recollection of what Kay Spalter told him about the man known as “Donny Angel.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Why do I ask? Because of that TV program he was on. Bincher mentioned your name with great prominence. You’re aware of this, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“Good. You’re an investigator, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a famous guy, right?”
“I wouldn’t know about that.”
“That’s pretty funny. ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’ I like that. Very modest man.”
“What do you want, Mr. Angelidis?”
“I don’t want nothing. I believe I can help you with things you need to know.”
“What sort of things?”
“Things that should be discussed face-to-face. I could save you a lot of trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“All the trouble in the world. And time. I could save you time. A lot of time. Time is very valuable. We only got so much of it. You know what I mean?”
“Okay, Mr. Angelidis. I need to know what this is about.”
“About? It’s about your big case. When I listened to Bincher on the TV, I said to myself, ‘This is bullshit, they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.’ Some of the shit he said, it’s gonna waste your time, make you crazy. So I want to do you a favor, set you straight.”
“Set me straight about what?”
“About who killed Carl Spalter. You want to know that, right?”
Chapter 25
Fat Gus
Gurney made his planned call to Hardwick, leaving out any assault on Bincher’s personal style. After all, he was going to have a meeting with Donny Angel at two o’clock that afternoon in a Long Falls restaurant—a meeting that could change everything—and it had obviously been motivated by Bincher’s performance.
After listening to Gurney’s summary of the phone call from Angel, Hardwick asked without much enthusiasm if he wanted some backup or if he wanted to be wired—just in case things in the restaurant started going south.
Gurney turned down both offers. “He’ll assume the possibility of backup, and the assumption is as good as the reality. As for the wire, he’ll assume that too and take whatever precautions he needs to.”
“You get any sense of what his game is?”
“Only that he’s upset by the direction he thinks we’re taking and he wants to head it off.”
Hardwick cleared his throat. “An obvious concern would be Lex’s suggestion that Carl might have been whacked because of a falling-out with someone in the mob.”
“Speaking of which, his shotgun approach to the case seems a hell of a lot broader than your ‘focus, focus, focus’ advice to me.”
“Fuck you, Sherlock. You’re purposely not getting the point. The point is, he’s bringing up scenarios that Klemper should have explored but failed to. Everything Lex said goes to the point of a dishonest, incompetent, prejudiced investigation. That’s it. That’s the point of the appeal. He’s not saying that you should start digging into all the crap he’s mentioning—only that Klemper didn’t.”
“Okay, Jack. New subject. Your friend in BCI—Esti Moreno? Can she get a look at the autopsy report on Mary Spalter?”
Hardwick hesitated. “What do you expect it to say?”
“It’ll say the cause of death was consistent with an accidental fall, but I’ll bet that the description of bone and tissue damage is also consistent with the blunt force trauma you’d expect if someone grabbed her by the hair and bashed her head against the edge of the bathtub.”
“Which won’t prove that it wasn’t just a hard fall. So what then?”
“Then I’ll just keep following the string.”
After ending the call to Hardwick, Gurney checked the time and saw that he had a couple of free hours before he’d have to leave for Long Falls. Feeling he should take some action on the chicken coop project, he put on a pair of rubber gardening boots and went out the side door to the area that he’d started measuring the previous day.
He was surprised to find Madeleine already there, holding the metal tape measure. She had one end of it hooked over the low retaining wall of the asparagus bed and was slowly backing up toward the apple tree. When she was nearly there, the end came loose and the tape went skittering along the ground, rewinding itself into the case in her hand.
“Damn!” she said. “Third time that’s happened.”
Gurney walked over, picked up the end, and pulled it back to the bed wall. “Is this where you want it?” he asked.
She nodded, looking relieved. “Thank you.”
For the next hour and a half he assisted with measurements for the coop and the run, helped hammer in corner stakes, squared the diagonals, and only once in the course of this work did he question one of Madeleine’s decisions. It was when she laid out the position of the run in a way that would result in a large forsythia bush being inside the fence instead of outside. He thought it was a mistake to let a bush take up so much of the fenced space. But she said that the chickens would like having a bush in their run because although they loved being outside, they were also fond of shade and shelter. It made them feel secure.
As she was explaining this, he could sense how much she cared about it. He felt a little envious of this remarkable ability of hers to focus on and care deeply about whatever was in front of her. So many different things seemed to matter to her. He had the rather silly-sounding thought that perhaps what mattered in life was that things mattered—a lot of things. There was something almost surreal in this thought, which he attributed partly to the odd weather. It was distinctly cool for August, w
ith an autumnal haze in the air and an earthy fragrance rising from the wet grass. It made what was happening for that brief moment seem more like a soft-edged dream than the prickly reality of daily life.
Aegean Odyssey, the restaurant where he was meeting Adonis “Donny Angel” Angelidis, was on Axton Avenue, less than three blocks from the apartment building on which the investigation had centered. The two-hour drive from Walnut Crossing had been uneventful. Parking, as on his previous visit, was no problem. He found a spot within fifty feet of the restaurant door. He was exactly on time: two p.m.
It was quiet inside, and almost empty. Only one of the twenty or so tables was occupied, and that by a solitary old man reading a Greek newspaper. The interior decor featured the typical Greek blues and whites. The walls were accented with colorful ceramic tiles. There was a mixed aroma of oregano, marjoram, roast lamb, strong coffee.
A young waiter with dark eyes approached him. “Can I help you?”
“My name is Gurney. I’m meeting Mr. Angelidis.”
“Of course. Please.” He led the way to a partitioned area at the back of the room. Then he stepped aside and gestured toward a booth that could have accommodated six people but had only one occupant—a heavyset man with a large head and coarse gray hair.
The man had the flat, crooked nose of a boxer. His thick shoulders suggested he had once been quite powerful, perhaps still was. The expression on his face was dominated by deeply etched lines of sourness and distrust. He held a fat stack of dollar bills and was counting them out onto a neat pile on the table. There was a gold Rolex on his wrist. He looked up. His mouth smiled without losing any of its sourness.
“Thank you for coming. I’m Adonis Angelidis.” His voice was low and hoarse, as if there were calluses on his vocal chords from a lifetime of shouting. “Forgive me for not rising to greet you, Mr. Gurney. My back is … not so good. Please sit.” Despite his hoarseness, his articulation was oddly precise, as if he was choosing each syllable with care.
Gurney sat directly across from him. There were several plates of food on the table.
“The kitchen is closed, but I asked them to make special a few things, so you could choose. All very good. You know Greek food?”
“Moussaka, souvlaki, baklava. That’s about it.”
“Ah. Well. Let me explain.” He laid his stack of bills on the table and began pointing at and describing in detail the contents of each dish—spanakopita, salata melitzanes, kalamaria tiganita, arni yahni, garithes me feta. There was also a small bowl of cured olives, a basket of crusty sliced bread, and a large bowl of fresh purple figs.
“I invite you to pick whatever appeals to you, or take a bit from each. All very good.”
“Thank you. I’ll try a fig.” Gurney took one and bit into it.
Angelidis watched him with interest.
Gurney nodded his approval. “You’re right. It’s very good.”
“Of course. You take your time. Relax. We talk when you are ready.”
“We can talk now.”
“Okay. I must ask you something. Somebody told me about you. You are an expert at murders. This is true? I mean, of course, solving murders, not doing them.” The mouth smiled again. The heavily lidded eyes remained watchful. “This is what you care about?”
“Yes.”
“Good. No Organized Crime Task Force bullshit, right?”
“My focus is homicide. I try not to let other issues get in the way.”
“Good. Very good. We have common ground maybe. Maybe ground for cooperation. You think so, Mr. Gurney?”
“I hope so.”
“So. You want to know about Carl?”
“Yes.”
“You know Greek tragedy?”
“Excuse me?”
“Sophocles. You know Sophocles?”
“To some extent. Only what I remember from college.”
Angelidis leaned forward, resting his heavy forearms on the table. “Greek tragedy had a simple idea. A great truth: A man’s strength is also his weakness. This is most brilliant. Do you agree?”
“I can see how it could be true.”
“Good. Because this truth is what killed Carl.” He paused, gazing hard into Gurney’s eyes. “You wonder what the hell am I talking about, right?”
Gurney said nothing, took another bite of the fig, held Angelidis’s gaze, and waited.
“A simple thing. A tragic thing. Carl’s great strength was the speed of his mind reaching a conclusion and his willingness to act. You understand what I say? Very fast, no fear. A great strength. A man like that achieves many things, great things. But this strength was also his weakness. Why? Because this great strength has no patience. This strength must eliminate obstruction immediately. You understand?”
“Carl wanted something. Somebody got in his way. What happened then?”
“He decided, of course, to eliminate the obstruction. This was his way.”
“What did he do?”
“I heard that he wanted to put out a contract through a certain individual to have the obstruction eliminated. I tell him he should wait, take smaller steps. I ask if there is anything I can do. I ask this like a father to a son. He tells me no, the problem is outside my … my area of business … and I shouldn’t be involved.”
“You’re telling me he wanted to have someone killed, but not by you?”
“According to the rumor, he went to a man who arranges things like that.”
“Did the man have a name?”
“Gus Gurikos.”
“A professional?”
“A manager. A talent agent. You understand? You tell Fat Gus what you want, you agree on the price, you give him information he needs, he takes it from there. No more problem for you. He manages everything, hires the best talent—you don’t need to know nothing. Better that way. Lot of funny stories about Fat Gus. Someday I tell you.”
Gurney had heard enough funny stories about mob guys to last a lifetime. “So Carl Spalter paid Fat Gus to hire the appropriate talent to remove someone who got in his way?”
“That’s the rumor.”
“Very interesting, Mr. Angelidis. How does the story end?”
“Carl was too fast. And Fat Gus wasn’t fast enough.”
“Meaning what?”
“Only one thing could have happened. The guy Carl was in such a rush to have removed must have found out about the contract before Gus passed it on to the hitter. And he took action first. Preemptive strike, right? Gets rid of Carl before Carl gets rid of him.”
“What does your friend Gus say about this?”
“Gus don’t say shit. Gus can’t say shit. Gus got hit too—that Friday, same day as Carl.”
This was a big piece of news. “You’re saying the target found out that Carl hired Gus to set up a hit, but before Gus could make it happen, the target turns around and hits them both?”
“You got it. Preemptive strike.”
Gurney nodded slowly. It was certainly a possibility. He took another bite out of the fig.
Angelidis continued with some enthusiasm. “So this makes your job real simple. Just find out who Carl wanted hit, and you got the guy who turned around and hit Carl.”
“Would you have any idea who that might be?”
“No. This is important for you to know. So you listen to me now. What happened to Carl got nothing to do with me. Got nothing to do with my business interests.”
“How do you know that?”
“I knew Carl pretty good. If it was something I could take care of, he would have come to me. Point is, he went to Fat Gus. So it was a personal thing for him, nothing to do with me. Nothing to do with my business.”
“Fat Gus didn’t work for you?”
“Didn’t work for nobody. Fat Gus was independent. Provided services to various customers. Better that way.”
“So you have absolutely no idea who—”
“No idea.” Angelidis gave Gurney a long, straight look. “If knew, I would tell you.”
“Why would you tell me?”
“Whoever hit Carl fucked things up for me. I don’t like when people fuck things up for me. Makes me want to fuck things up for them. You understand?”
Gurney smiled. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, right?”
Angelidis’s expression sharpened. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
The question and its intensity surprised him. “It’s a verse from the Bible, a way to achieve justice by matching—”
“I know the fucking saying. But why did you say it?”
“You asked me if I understood your desire to get even with whoever killed Carl and Gus.”
He seemed to be thinking about this. “You don’t know nothing about the hit on Gus?”
“No. Why?”
He was silent for several seconds, watching Gurney intently. “Very sick shit. You didn’t hear nothing about that?”
“Zero. Didn’t know the man existed, didn’t know he died.”
Angelidis nodded slowly. “Okay. I’ll tell you this, because maybe it helps. There was a Friday-night poker game Gus always held at his house. The Friday Carl got hit, the guys show up, nobody answers the door. They ring, knock. Nobody comes. This never happens. They think maybe Gus is taking a crap. They wait. Ring, knock—no Gus. They try the door. Door’s unlocked. Go in. Find Gus.” He paused, looked like he was tasting something unpleasant. “I don’t like talking about this. It’s sick shit, you know? I believe that all business should be reasonable. Not like this crazy shit.” He shook his head and adjusted the position of some of the dishes on the table. “Gus is sitting in his underwear in front of his TV. Got a nice bottle of retsina on the coffee table, half-full wineglass, a little bread, taramasalata in a bowl. Nice lunch. But …”
“But he was dead?” Gurney prompted.
“Dead? He was real dead. Dead with a fucking four-inch nail hammered into each eye, into each ear, right into his fucking brain, and a fifth one through his fucking throat. Five fucking nails.” He paused, studying Gurney’s face. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m wondering why none of this made it into the news.”
“Organized Crime Task Force.” Angelidis looked like the words were making him want to spit. “OCTF dropped down on it like a pile of shit. No obituary, no funeral notice, no nothing. Kept all the details to themselves. Can you believe that? You know why they keep this stuff secret?”
