by Barbara Paul
She flared. “You said this wasn’t about me!”
“And it’s not. It’s about the source of your money. We want the man who financed your laundromat, but we don’t want him for financing you. What we want him for is murder.”
“Murder?” Her face changed. “Holy Mother of God.” She thought that over but then shook her head. “I can’t help you.”
“You don’t have to testify. Your name won’t even come into it.”
“That’s not it. I don’t know who sent me the money.”
Marian sat back in her chair. “What?!”
“I’m tellin’ you true. Some man called and said he’d set me up with my own laundromat on two conditions. First, I had to quit my job with Maids-in-a-Row right away, like, the next day. And second, I had to get out of town, open the laundromat somewheres except New York. He didn’t say how far out of town, so I just crossed the river and set up here.”
“Did you ask his name?”
“Course I did. He said I didn’t need to know that.”
“And you didn’t smell anything fishy?”
“I smelled a lot fishy. But I figured it was none of my business.”
And you wanted your laundromat. “What about the voice on the phone? Did it sound familiar?”
She shook her head. “It sounded mechanical, like. Like he was using an amplifier or something.”
Not an amplifier, but Marian knew what she meant. “How was payment made?”
“In cash. He sent some guy with a briefcase full of money. Dint even ask for a receipt.”
“You’re sure it was a different guy?”
“Yeah. Guy on the phone sounded educated, like. The delivery guy talked like a kindergarten dropout.”
Marian opened a folder she’d brought with her and placed the computer-generated pictures of Nick Atlay and the pseudonymous Consuela Palmero on Annie’s desk.
“That’s him!” she said excitedly. “That’s the guy what brought the money!”
“You’re sure?”
“Oh yeah. See that big lower lip? Made him look like a pouty little boy in a man’s body. Who’s the woman?”
“She took your place at Maids-in-a-Row. Annie, both of these people are dead now. They were killed by the man who sent you the cash.”
She jumped out of her chair. “Jesus Christ!”
“Take it easy,” Marian said. “They were killed because they could identify him. You, on the other hand, never saw his face and you don’t know his name.”
Annie slumped back down in her chair. “Still.”
“Yes. It’s best that you know the kind of man he is. Have you heard from him since you made the deal?”
“Nope. And I don’t wanna hear from him.”
Marian thought a moment. “How did he know you wanted a laundromat in the first place?”
Annie snorted. “That’s easy. Everybody who knows me knows how much I wanted my own laundromat. It’s all I been talking about for the past ten years.”
“And he heard you. So you could have cleaned this man’s home at one time?”
She shrugged. “I could have.”
“How many homes have you cleaned in the past thirty years?”
Another shrug. “Hundreds.”
Marian handed her one of her cards. “If he calls again, let me know immediately. I don’t think you’ll be hearing from him, though. He wants as little to do with you as you do with him.”
“That suits me just fine,” Annie said emphatically.
Marian stopped for a bite to eat before heading for the Lincoln Tunnel. She fought the Friday afternoon traffic all the way to West Thirty-fifth Street, wishing—as she always did when she drove—that there was a shorter way from here to there. When she reached her office, she found a fax on her desk. The spying cleaning woman’s prints had been on file and had yielded a quick identification.
Her real name was Julia Ortega, and she was a licensed private investigator.
Whoo. Marian sat down to read. Ortega had been thirty-eight years old, a native New Yorker, and a cop in Brooklyn for nine years. She’d retired from the force four years ago and had received her private investigator’s license shortly after that.
Back to the NYNEX Yellow Pages. No Julia Ortega listed, so she was working for someone else.
Marian went out to Sergeant Buchanan’s desk in the squadroom. He was talking on the phone but covered the mouthpiece and looked a question at her. “I need two men,” she said.
“Take Walker and Dowd—they just wrapped up a case.”
“Right.” She looked over toward Walker’s desk: no one there.
“They’re on their way in.”
She left notes on Walker’s and Dowd’s desks; Perlmutter and O’Toole ought to be getting back soon as well. Enough time to fill Captain Murtaugh in, though.
He was sitting on the edge of his desk, arms folded, long legs stuck out in front of him, staring at nothing at all. Thinking about Bradford Ushton?
“We have an ID on the fake cleaning woman,” Marian said. “She was a private detective.”
Murtaugh looked up and focused on her. “Now, that is interesting. Hired to do exactly what?”
“That’s the part I can’t figure. Why would the killer need to check into Rita Galloway’s financial records? It makes no sense. He seems to have hired Nick Atlay as a general dogsbody. Atlay delivered the cash to pay Annie Plaxton for quitting her job at Maids-in-a-Row, he tried to abduct Bobby, and he probably threw the gasoline bomb into Rita’s house. We got positive IDs on two of those—the attempted kidnapping and paying off Annie.”
“This killer,” Murtaugh said with a scowl, “why didn’t he kill Annie too? Cheaper than setting her up in business.”
“He hadn’t crossed the line yet, Jim. He bought off Annie weeks before the kidnapping went sour and Atlay became a liability instead of a helpful errand runner. The killer was still trying to do everything with money then.”
“Which tells us he isn’t hurting for cash. Still think it’s a kidnap for ransom?”
She raised her arms to the side, let them drop. “Nobody ever has enough money. But maybe it isn’t ransom. The problem of why he went after the Galloway boy twice instead of looking for a child not so well guarded … maybe, well, maybe he just wants Bobby.”
Murtaugh looked at her, hard. “You mean Brad Ushton.”
She was uncomfortable. “You know we have to consider that. It is a possibility.”
He sighed unhappily. “Who’d you put on Ushton?”
“Campos. And I’m putting Walker and Dowd on Ortega. Will you authorize overtime?”
“Absolutely,” Murtaugh said. “Don’t let this case drag out. Nail it down, dammit.”
“Yessir.” Dammit.
“I hope you’re not averse to earning some extra money this month,” Marian told the four men crowded into her office. “Because you’re working through the weekend on this one.”
Only Dowd groaned.
Dowd and Walker had been brought up to date on what had happened so far. Perlmutter and O’Toole had returned with the lists of possible suspects drawn up by Rita and Hugh Galloway, and Marian found it interesting that both had listed Bradford Ushton. “We’re leaving Ushton to Campos and his team for the time being. If they can bring him in on a child molestation charge, then we’ll have a go at him about the killings. But right now we’re going to concentrate on Nick Atlay and Julia Ortega. Last known addresses, associates, and especially recent contacts.”
Walker asked, “Do we know what agency Ortega was with?”
“No. That’s the first thing you’ll need to find out. Then contact the owner and see what cases she was working on.”
Dowd groaned again. “We’re going to have to call every private in the city!”
“No, we won’t,” Walker said. “Ortega’s friends or family can tell us. Someone will know where she worked.”
Marian nodded. “Ortega will be easy. It’s Atlay who’s going to cause difficu
lties. Perlmutter, have you talked to Buchanan?”
He had. “He gave us a list of those Atlay associates he could remember. But Lieutenant, these are people Atlay hung with four, five years ago. They may not have even have seen him since then.”
“Yeah, that’s true. Do you have a better suggestion?”
He pursed his lips. “No.”
“Another thing. One of you ask Rita Galloway if her brother had ever met her husband’s attorney.”
Perlmutter said, “Why not ask the brother?”
“He might lie.”
He thought that over. “You mean Fairchild may have hung that picture knowing it was Bradford Ushton? Why?”
“I don’t know. Find out from Rita—it may be a blind alley.” She looked at the fourth detective in the room. “O’Toole, you’re being mighty quiet.”
“Thinking,” he said. “How would Rita ever find someone like dumb bunny Nick Atlay to do her dirty work for her? Where’d they meet?”
“Rita isn’t the killer,” Perlmutter said disgustedly.
“Maybe, maybe not.”
Marian said, “But it’s a pertinent point. How did the killer initiate contact? Remember, Atlay may have been working as a janitor. If we could find the building where he worked last, that would give us a real lead.”
Dowd asked, “When does our overtime start?”
“Right now. The man Julia Ortega worked for—find him tonight if you can. He takes precedence. Okay, anything else?” No one had any other suggestions. “All right, then, let’s get started. Call in as soon as you have something. They’ll page me, wherever I am.”
When they’d left, Marian settled down to a job she’d neglected for the last few days. The rest of the detectives under her command hadn’t been sitting on their hands while she was working the Galloway case; a stack of reports awaited her attention. She got to work.
It was eight-thirty before she started her car for the drive to her place. She was tired, and her fatigue had created an ache in her neck and between her shoulder blades; she’d ask Holland for a massage tonight. He’d done it before, on other nights she’d worked until she ached. The thought of those strong hands caressing her tense body into a state of complete relaxation made her press down on the accelerator a little harder.
But when she reached her floor of the building, she uneasily noticed the smell of smoke in the hallway … a smell that grew stronger as she approached her own apartment. The thought of the firebomb in Rita Galloway’s house flashed through her mind. Alarmed, she unlocked the door.
And was faced with a thick cloud of smoke that made her start coughing. “Holland!” she cried. “Holland!”
He came out of the kitchen, wearing only the briefest of black silk briefs. His eyes were streaming. “Don’t worry, it’s under control. I have the ventilator going.”
“But … what happened?”
“Oh, I was frying some peppers and had the fire too high. Grease fire, no damage beyond some black streaks on the wall. And I turned off the smoke detectors before someone called the Fire Department. The smoke will clear out in time.”
Marian’s own eyes were watering. “Oh, this is awful. What are you doing eating fried peppers anyway? Those things will kill you.”
“Then why did you buy so many of them when you stocked the refrigerator?”
“I don’t know. Because they looked nice? Holland, I can’t take much more of this.”
“No, we’ll have to stay at my place until the smoke clears. Let’s go now.”
“Yes, let’s. But put some clothes on, stud. You’ll get arrested if you go out like that.”
“Just living up to my role of kept man.” He dressed hastily and they hurried out, locking the door behind them with relief. The smell of smoke still lingered in the hallway.
“My neighbors are going to love me,” Marian muttered.
“Do you know your neighbors?”
“No, but that’s not the point. Dammit, Holland! What a mess.”
He placed the back of his hand against his forehead and proclaimed, theatrically, “Alas, I am guilty! Guilty, I say! I confess! Chain me to the wall! Bring out the whip!”
“Dern. I left the whips and chains at the office.”
“Are you very mad at me?”
She smiled at him. “No.”
They drove to his place separately, as Marian would most likely be needing her car the next day. The first thing they did when they got there was take a long, sudsy shower; Holland especially wanted to get the smell of smoke out of his hair.
Then, at last, Marian got her massage.
13
Marian had to go back to her apartment Saturday morning, to get some clothes. The night before she hadn’t thought of her now empty closet at Holland’s place; then, all she’d been concerned about was getting out of that smoky apartment. She left the ventilator running in the kitchen; the smoke had cleared, but the smell still lingered. Marian’s sinuses were burning as she gathered up what she needed.
Back at Holland’s, she hung her clothes out on the balcony to air. “Promise me you’ll never fry peppers again,” she said.
“I give you my word,” he replied with a shudder.
“If you really wanted to come back here that badly, you didn’t have to stink up my place to do it.”
“Well, now. Let us examine the sequence of events. If you had done your laundry here as I suggested, you would not have returned to that other apartment. If you had not returned, you wouldn’t have needed to stock the refrigerator. If you hadn’t stocked the refrigerator, I wouldn’t have been tempted by the peppers. And if I—”
“So it’s all my fault?”
He smiled. “I knew you’d see reason.”
She rolled her eyes. Marian picked up a sleeve of a jacket and sniffed. “I wonder how long this will take. I don’t like wearing the same clothes two days in a row.”
“If we stay in all day, you won’t need to wear any clothes at all.”
“Fat chance. I’ll have to go into the station sometime today.”
A big sigh. “When was the last time we had a full weekend together?”
Marian laughed. “Last weekend.”
Her pager had sounded last night, just as she was drifting off to sleep. It was Detective Walker; he’d learned that Julia Ortega had worked for a detective agency in Spanish Harlem run by a man named Hector Vargas. The place had been locked up tight, but Walker said he’d try again in the morning.
She’d asked if they had a home address for Hector Vargas.
“Not yet. He’s probably in the yellow pages, but there’s no directory here where I’m calling from. I can get that in the morning too.”
“Okay. Good work, Walker.” But the detective’s uncharacteristic use of “I” instead of “we” aroused a suspicion. “Put Dowd on for a minute.”
“Uh, he’s in the men’s room.”
“I’ll wait while you go get him.” A long silence from the other end, but she could still hear Walker breathing. “He skipped out on you, didn’t he?” No answer. “All right, Walker, call it a day. We’ll settle this later.” She hung up.
“Trouble?” Holland asked sleepily.
“One of my detectives is dogging it, that’s all. Go back to sleep.”
Dowd was the first one she heard from Saturday morning; Walker had wasted no time in telling him the bad news. But at least Dowd had called her instead of skulking in the background and hoping she’d forget about him. “Look, Lieutenant,” he said in a tight voice, “I’m real sorry about last night. It was just, uh … am I in hot water?”
“Damned right you are. What do mean, ducking out on an assignment like that?”
“Well, you didn’t give us much notice, and I had this date, see—”
“Oh well, gosh. You should have told me. Your social life is more important than any puny little murder investigation.”
“Aw, Lieutenant. Is this going on my record?”
“Of course it’s going
on your record, what do you think?” She let that sink in for a moment, and then added, “Unless …”
He was quick to jump on it. “Unless what?”
“Buchanan told me you were going to take the Sergeants Exam but you weren’t going to study for it. Is that right?”
“Uh, yes. So?”
“So now you’re going to study for it. You’re going to study hard. Remember, I’ve taken that exam and I’ll have access to all the scores—so I’ll know if you’ve been dogging it again. And Dowd, that is the only way you’re going to keep a dereliction-of-duty report off your record.”
“I’ll study,” he said hastily. “I’ll ace the damned test.”
“Good. I’m sure you’ll make an outstanding sergeant.” She didn’t even try to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. Change of subject: “What are you doing now?”
“We got a home address for Hector Vargas. We’ll try there if he’s not at his agency.”
“All right. Have me paged when you’ve got something.” She hung up and noticed Holland was watching her with an amused look on his face. “What?”
“I see you’re not above a little judicial blackmail when it suits your purpose,” he said. “I can’t tell you how that delights me.”
“Yeah, well. Dowd’s a good detective when he puts his mind to it, but he tends to get lazy now and then. He’ll be on his toes now for a while. Look, as soon as my clothes are wearable, let’s go out. It’s a gorgeous day and I don’t want to stay cooped up.”
“We could go to Belmont Park. Sit in the sun and watch the horsies run.”
She considered it. “No, that’s too far. I’ve got three teams of detectives working on three different lines of investigation, and any one of them could break at any moment.”
“Three? Nick Atlay would be one, and I assume your spying cleaning woman is another. What’s the third?”
“The picture we saw at Alex Fairchild’s exhibition—the one of a man caressing a young boy’s neck in a men’s room?”
“Yes?”
“The pederast is Hugh Galloway’s attorney.”
His eyebrows rose. “Well, well. What a remarkable coincidence. And we are firm believers in coincidence, are we not?”
“Right, it’s just a little too convenient.”
