Pirate: A Thriller

by Ted Bell

  “Play your cards right, Ambrose, and you, too, can end up here,” the captain said as they made their way up the cracked and heaving pavement of the rest home.

  “Depressing old pile, isn’t it? It’s mob run, did you say?”

  “Yeah. Lot of grizzly goombahs in diapers playing pinochle and rehashing the good old days. Hey, you wanna hear a funny joke?”

  “Why not?”

  “These two ninety-nine-year-old geezers are sitting in their rockers on the front porch of a joint just like this, see, and one says to the other one, he says, ‘Paisano, let me get this straight. Was it you or your brother that was killed at Anzio in World War II?’”

  “Quite good.” Ambrose laughed. He climbed the sagging steps and the captain was right behind him.

  “Pisser, ain’t it? Okay, who’s doing the talking at the door? You or me?”

  “It’s my investigation, I believe,” Ambrose said, and rapped on the cracked and peeling front door. There were a few lights on downstairs and one or two on the second floor. A window tucked up under the eave was dark. After a moment, a large man in green scrubs appeared at the door. He opened it, but just barely.

  “Good evening, sir,” Ambrose said, holding up his credentials. “I’m Chief Inspector Ambrose Congreve of Scotland Yard. And this is Captain Mariucci of the New York Police Department. May we come in?”

  “What’s this all about?” the man said, closing the door a fraction.

  “I’ll tell you when we’re inside,” Congreve replied, shoving the door open and stepping over the threshold. The captain followed him inside and the three of them stood in a small hallway under the pale yellow light of a dusty ceiling fixture.

  “What you want?” the man said. “I ain’t done nothin’. I’m just the orderly here.”

  “What’s your name?” Mariucci asked.

  “I’m Lavon, sir. Lavon Greene.”

  “Is there a manager on the premises, Mr. Greene?” Ambrose asked.

  “He don’t sleep here. He leaves at eleven and goes home. I’m just the night man.”

  “I see. Where is his office?”

  “Down the hall there. Last door on the left.”

  “And the files for all the—patients? Are they kept in that office?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You have a resident here by the name of Ben Sangster?”

  “Yes, sir, there is. He’s upstairs now. Sound asleep.”

  “Good. Captain Mariucci is going to get his file for me. You’re going to show me to Mr. Sangster’s room.”

  “Yes, sir, right this way. Mr. Ben’s on the top floor. Only one up there. He’s asleep, though, like I said. He takes his meds at six. Man is lights out after that. He don’t wake up till orange juice.”

  “Captain,” Ambrose said, “I’m going to accompany this very nice gentleman upstairs and look in on Mr. Sangster. Won’t you join us once you’ve retrieved his file from the office?”

  “Certainly, Chief Inspector,” Mariucci said with a mock bow, “I’ll get on that right away, sir.” He ambled off down the dingy hallway, mumbling something under his breath. Lavon pointed to a narrow staircase across the hall and Ambrose started up ahead of him, taking the steps two at a time.

  “Is this his room?” Ambrose asked when they’d reached the top floor.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “After you,” Congreve said, and let the big man open the door and enter ahead of him.

  A sharp coppery smell assaulted Congreve’s twitching nose. He knew what he would find even as he reached for the light switch beside the door. There was fresh blood in this room. A lot of it. He turned on the light.

  “Oh, lord Jesus,” the orderly said. “Oh, sweet Jesus, how did this—”

  Ambrose looked at Lavon Greene and said, “This man was alive when you last saw him?”

  “Yes, sir! He—”

  “The last time you saw him was when you administered his medication. You gave him his medication at what time?”

  “Six. Six o’clock, is what I’m saying. Same time every day. Oh, my lord.”

  “You’re absolutely sure he was alive at six o’clock this evening?”

  “Alive as you or me. Yes, sir. He was.”

  “And you haven’t heard anything since then? No noise? No shouts or cries?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I believe you. That bloody pillow on the floor was held over his face. Could one of your patients have done this?”

  “No, sir. Ain’t none of ’em got the strength to cut a man’s head half off.”

  “Has anyone besides you and the manager been in this house tonight?”

  “Just the dish man.”

  “Dish man? A cook?”

  “No, sir. Man who came to fix the dish on the roof.”

  “Ah, that dish. What time was this?”

  “Around seven, I guess. Everybody who ain’t bedridden was down in the lounge watching the TV and suddenly the picture went out. Man showed up here about ten minutes later said he was here to fix the dish. Had to go up on the roof, he said.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He was a little guy. Big smile on his face. A Chinaman.”

  “A Chinaman. That’s very interesting. I want you to go downstairs right now and ask Captain Mariucci to come up here immediately. Can you do that, Mr. Greene? Run down there, now.”

  “Ain’t nothing like this ever happened here before this. Never.”

  “Go.”

  The late Benny Sangster lay faceup in his blood-soaked bed. His throat had been slashed down to the spinal column and the wound was gaping like a second red mouth under his chin. Approaching the bed, Congreve could see the blood was partially congealed. That’s when the second wound caught his eye.

  There was also a gash in the center of the chest. In Ambrose’s experience, this meant organs had been removed. From the size and location of the wound, he would guess the heart.

  Someone had known Congreve was coming to New York and why. That someone had beaten him to the punch, had gotten to Benny Sangster before Ambrose could. Congreve heard Mariucci’s heavy tread racing up the stairs.

  “Captain!” Congreve shouted over his shoulder, “Where the bloody hell is Coney Island?”

  “What are you, a tourist? It’s in Brooklyn, for crissakes. The southernmost—Aw, shit,” Captain Mariucci said. He was standing in the doorway staring at what was left of Benny Sangster.

  “Joe Bones is next,” Congreve said, “Let’s go.”

  “He’s next, all right,” the captain said, “and whoever did Benny here is thinking the same goddamn thing. Let’s get outta here.”

  Traffic was light for a Friday night. The uniform had the Impala cruiser doing at least one hundred on the Belt Parkway, weaving in and out of the lanes.

  “He’s a cannibal,” Ambrose remarked, gazing out the window at the blur of Brooklyn.

  “What? Who is?” Mariucci said.

  “The killer. The Chinaman who murdered Sangster.”

  “Fuck you talking about, Ambrose?”

  “Eating the heart of one’s enemy. An act of psychological brutality. The killer ate Sangster’s heart. At least he removed it. Assuming it would be cumbersome to transport, especially if he’s planning a second murder tonight, I believe he ate it while standing over the corpse.”

  “Jesus.”

  “The Chinese are not as squeamish as we are, Captain.”

  “You saying this is understandable behavior?”

  “I’m saying the taboo against cannibalism is weaker there than it is in the West. In wartime, many starving Chinese acquired a taste for human flesh. And there are many stories of workers in morgues or crematoriums slicing off the buttocks or breasts of female corpses and taking them home for supper. Stuffing for dumplings, you see.”

  “Can you stop? Please?” Mariucci begged. “Now!”

  The uniform up front turned around. “Here?” he asked, dumb-founded.

  “Not you, him,”
Mariucci said.

  At Exit 6, the cop driving the cruiser went up on two wheels taking the turn. He then went south on Cropsey Avenue, taking that all the way down to Surf. At the corner of Surf and West Tenth Street, he screeched to a halt and the captain and the Scotland Yard man scrambled out of the backseat.

  Joe Bones, Mariucci had learned tonight, worked at Coney now. Ever since his retirement from family-related activities, he’d been the night man at the Wheel. Since it was a Friday night and not quite midnight, Mariucci figured his best chance of finding Joey was at Coney. The rides closed at midnight, so he was probably still here. He’d got on his cell and called in the homicide as they ran down the stairs of the rest home. The meat wagon was already en route to Bide-a-Wee. He figured Lavon wasn’t going anywhere. The big man was still standing over the corpse and weeping when they ran out of the room.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Bad Reichenbach

  FRAU IRMA WORE JACKBOOTS UNDER HER LONG BLACK skirt, Stoke was pretty sure. Shiny black ones, right up to her chubby, pink little knees. She wasn’t the prettiest girl in Bavaria. She had her wispy grey-blonde hair pinned up in two big doughnuts on each side of her head. She had a square, flat face with a beaky nose right in the middle of it. She wore some kind of heavy white face powder, although she was already quite white enough, in Stoke’s humble opinion. She had a short, compact body, and one good thing you could say about her, she looked very strong for a woman.

  “Zo,” Irma said to Jet, looking down at her registration book, “we had no idea you were coming.”

  “We’re hiking,” Jet said, repeating what she’d already said twice when they were still standing outside, hot and thirsty in the blazing sun at the front door. The Frau was obviously very surprised to see Jet without her boyfriend the baron. And when Jet had introduced Stokely Jones as her personal trainer, she’d looked at him as if he were some giant alien specimen of another life-form. Stoke had smiled and said Guten Tag, but she didn’t seem to understand his German too well. GOO-ten TOG. Had to work on that one.

  “Ach. Hiking,” Frau Irma Winterwald said, but not in a warm, welcoming way. The way she said it, Stoke thought maybe hiking was strictly prohibited in these mountains. The gasthaus, Zum Wilden Hund, was a little spooky inside. Thick velvet drapes kept out most of the sunlight. The carved furniture was heavy and dark and there were a lot of shaggy heads with beady glass eyes mounted high up on the walls. Dead stags and deer and bears all staring down at the huge man in hiking shorts as if it were him who should be up on the wall and not them.

  The guest house, Stoke decided, was a Bavarian version of the Bates Motel.

  Another weird thing was the music. There was very loud piano music coming from a great big grand piano at the far end of the room. The guy playing, Herr Winterwald, was too old to be Irma’s husband so Stoke figured it must be her father. He was blind and wore dark glasses and a dark green felt jacket with buttons made out of bone. His white hair stuck straight out from his head as if he were permanently undergoing electrocution. The music he was now playing sounded like new-wave Nazi marching tunes, if there was any such thing.

  Irma noticed Stoke staring at the guy and said, “He is a genius, no?”

  “Yes,” Stoke said, “I mean, no.”

  “Zo,” Irma was saying, “It will just be for the one night, ja?”

  “One night,” Jet said with her best actress smile.

  “Und, ein Zimmer? You will need only one room?” the frau was looking not at Jet but at Stoke when she said this. She gave him her most suggestive look. Lascivious was the word. Stoke gave her his biggest smile and held up two fingers.

  “No,” Jet said, “We will need two rooms, Frau Winterwald.” Stoke could tell it was taking all of Jet’s considerable acting skills not to jump over the counter and rip this ugly toad of a woman’s head right off. You can tell when two women don’t like each other much. It’s not pretty.

  “Zo, zwei Zimmer. One for Fräulein Jet, und one for Mr.—”

  “Jones,” Stoke said and she wrote it down with her big fat ink pen. Real ink, Stoke noticed. These people didn’t mess around.

  “Jones,” she repeated, drawing the word out as she wrote it. “Such an American name, ja?”

  “I’m an American,” Stoke said, shrugging his shoulders. Jet gave him a quick wink.

  “Zo, alles gut. No luggage at all?” Irma asked. She stood on tiptoes and peered over the desk as if luggage was about to magically appear. She had fishy eyes, Stoke noticed, man-eating fish eyes.

  “No luggage,” Jet said.

  “Still no luggage,” Stoke said, unable to stop himself.

  “Und, tell me, how is Baron von Draxis, dear girl? We have not seen him much since the skiing is over,” Irma said. “Have we, Viktor?”

  Viktor shook his head and kept playing his piano. It suddenly hit Stoke who he looked like. Albert Einstein. Just goes to show you that a bad haircut can make anyone look dumb.

  “He is very well,” Jet said. “He and I have been traveling in the Mediterranean aboard Valkyrie. You’ve heard perhaps, Frau Winterwald, that Baron von Draxis and I are getting married in September?”

  It was a very different Frau Irma Winterwald who looked up and answered that question. “Nein, my child, I had no idea! How splendid! I am delighted for you, dear girl. He is the most marvelous man! And so rich! What a catch, you lucky girl! Would you and your friend like to have lunch in the garden?”

  They ate in a fenced-in garden on the sunny side of the house. Frau Irma, now a smiling, benevolent creature, brought them each a glass of cold white wine with their menus. Stoke ordered the Wiener schnitzel since it was the only thing he recognized and he thought he liked it. Jet, no surprise, ordered a green salad, and Frau Winterwald bowed and scraped her way back inside the house. You could hear Viktor banging out his neo-Nazi marching tunes even out here in the garden.

  “Irma La Not So Douce,” Stoke whispered to Jet after she’d disappeared back inside.

  Jet smiled. “Yes. That old bitch has always hated me. I think we’re okay, though. You did well.”

  “I’m great as long as I don’t talk. You know what’s funny? They’ve got one page of food on this menu and thirty pages of wine list.”

  “You should see the wine cellar,” Jet said, looking at him carefully. “Maybe tonight when they’ve gone to bed.”

  “I knew there had to be a reason you brought me here,” Stoke said, smiling at her. “Other than the hospitality.”

  “She reads to him after supper. They usually go to sleep at ten,” Jet said. “I’ve brought a little something to put in their tea. I’ll make sure they’re out and knock on your door sometime after midnight.”

  “They don’t keep the cellar locked?”

  “I know where she hides the key.”

  It was sometime after two in the morning when Stoke and Jet descended into the funky-smelling gloom of the gasthaus cellar. The steps leading down from Frau Irma’s kitchen were old worn stone and slippery, and he had to hold Jet’s arm to get them down without falling. He had the little Swiss army flashlight he’d put in his knapsack and he kept it aimed at Jet’s feet so she didn’t slip.

  On the wall at the bottom of the steps was an iron fixture with a candle, and Stoke found a box of matches on the shelf under it. He lit the candle and took a look around. He’d never seen so much wine in his life. The little room they were in had shelves up to the ceiling full of dusty bottles and there were corridors leading off in every direction, both walls lined with shelves full of wine.

  “Schatzi’s pride and joy,” Jet said. “The largest collection of prewar Bordeaux in Germany. Come on, it’s this way.”

  “How come you know about all this stuff?”

  “We came here. A lot. To ski. What you’re about to see is Schatzi’s favorite getaway after the boat. Like I said, the gasthaus is just a front. Only about five people know this place even exists. Believe me.”

  “Show me the money.”<
br />
  Stoke gave her the flashlight and followed her down the long dark corridor on the right. They came to a dead-end, a small circular room with an old oak table with two chairs pulled up to it in the center of the stone floor. There was a candle standing in the center and Stoke lit it. A large leatherbound book lay on the table. Jet sat down and opened it, flipping through the gold-edged pages, running down the entries scrawled there in red ink with a ballpoint pen.

  “What’s that?” Stoke asked.

  “Wine registry. You have to sign out every case with this pen. These case numbers here in the margin are the key.” Jet was adding and subtracting a series of numbers in the palm of her hand. Stoke noticed she was writing down only the last digit of the last seven entries.

  “Key to what?”

  “I’ll show you,” she said and closed the book. She stood up and said, “Help me shove this table out of the way.”

  They moved the table to one side. There was a loose stone in the floor where the table had stood. Jet pulled a small penknife from her pocket as she knelt to the floor. She inserted the tip of the blade in the crack on one side of the stone and pried it up. Stoke aimed the flashlight at the square hole revealed in the floor. There was a black steel panel with a digital readout window and a keypad. Jet looked at the numbers written on her palm and they appeared on the readout as she entered all seven. She pressed another button and the numbers began to flash.

  “They change the code every week,” Jet said. “It’s a good system.”

  “Flawless,” Stoke said as the wall of bottles started to rattle and shake, “Obviously.”

  Then the whole floor-to-ceiling wall of wine began to sink into the floor. Behind it was a stainless-steel wall. Set into the steel wall was a burnished bronze elevator door.

  “I get it. He keeps the really, really good wine on another floor, am I right?” Stoke said.

  “Pretty good,” Jet said, looking up at him and smiling.