Murder Off the Page

by Con Lehane

  “I know how to duck already,” McNulty told them. “I’m a bartender.” He asked for a cigarette.

  “I didn’t know he smoked,” Adele said.

  “He doesn’t.”

  McNulty wouldn’t show it, but Ambler knew the bartender wasn’t any more ready to die than he was. When McNulty was outfitted and stood back from the cops who’d been outfitting him, Adele and Ambler walked over.

  McNulty looked at the cigarette in his hand. “I stopped smoking twenty years ago. I liked smoking. I stopped because I had a kid. So I told myself then if I was ever sentenced to the electric chair, I’d start smoking again.” He looked at the fashionable house in front of him. “This is close enough.”

  “Whatever you need,” Ambler said.

  “I need a drink.” He smile sheepishly and nodded toward the response team. “Those guys know what they’re doing. All I got to do is get this jerk near a window before he shoots me and stay out of the way when they shoot him.” He glanced from Ambler to Adele and smiled. “What could go wrong?”

  Adele burst into tears and lunged for McNulty. She threw her arms around his neck and buried her face in his chest. Or tried to until she clunked against the vest. Snipers took up positions near windows on three sides of the house. Another sniper was on the roof of a house across the street from the front door. Now that Cosgrove was out of the house, Dean could move about freely and had become a moving target. A hostage negotiator worked out the details of the release of Andrea and Carolyn with him over the phone. The negotiator told him a car was waiting and that he and McNulty had safe passage.

  Everyone bought into the charade, though everyone knew, and Ambler figured Dean knew, too, he wasn’t coming out of the house alive. The question was whether McNulty would.

  The late afternoon sun was low in the sky behind the houses on the far side of the street—a good thing. It was behind the police as they faced the front door, with Dean looking into it, not the police or McNulty looking into it. Two officers from the response unit, one on either side of McNulty, walked with him to the front door. They were there to make sure he made it through the door and the hostages made it out. The sniper on the roof across the street watched for an opening. If he could get a bead on Dean without endangering the hostages or McNulty, it would end there.

  Ambler and Adele watched from the street clutching each other like storybook children lost in the woods. Ambler didn’t breathe. He’d never wanted to watch someone get shot. But he did this time. He blamed himself. He’d been too slow putting everything together. There should be no hostage and Simon Dean should be in a jail cell.

  The door opened. Andrea and Carolyn appeared in the doorway and then on the walk. Hunched over, they ran with the two officers from the response unit who covered Andrea and Carolyn with their bodies and backed toward the street, their powerful rifles trained on the door. McNulty went in. The door closed.

  Others from the response unit ran toward Carolyn and Andrea. Ambler’s eyes were glued to the door. Adele’s fingers dug into his arm. Ambler pictured himself running to the door. Bursting in. The element of surprise. Two of them, he and McNulty, could take Dean. He listened for the report of the sniper’s rifle. He listened. He waited. There was a report, a gunshot but from inside.

  The air was electric.

  The door opened. McNulty walked out. Ambler’s heart sank as he saw in his mind’s eye his friend taking a few steps and falling, clutching his chest. But McNulty kept walking. The response team rushed, some to him, the rest into the house. Hordes of them. Adele and Ambler rushed toward McNulty until the police stopped them. The response team guys embraced McNulty. They laughed, pounded him on the back, whooped and cheered like he just scored the Super Bowl winning touchdown.

  After a couple of moments, McNulty worked his way through the cops and over to Ambler and Adele. Adele reached for him with her arms and clutched him. He’d taken another cigarette from the response team and held it up away from her over her head while he looked at Ambler and then at the cigarette. “My last one.”

  “What happened?”

  “Let’s go somewhere and get a drink.”

  Chapter 39

  McNulty couldn’t get a drink for hours, tied up in debriefings with the police. By the time he did get the drink, with Ambler and Adele, at an upscale steakhouse, which he insisted was the only place in Greenwich that would know how to make a martini, he’d told his story a half-dozen times. “You need a bartender born before 1960 for a decent martini,” he told them.

  “I was supposed to get him near a window and duck. I didn’t see any windows in that doorway and I was looking down the barrel of a gun as big around as a manhole. Dean closed the door and ducked away from it. I expect he thought, correctly, someone would shoot him if he didn’t. I was sorry someone didn’t.

  “For a moment, while he did that, he took his eyes off me. I saw a baseball bat leaning against the wall.” McNulty gazed at the ceiling. “God must have put it there. I bent, grabbed it with two hands, and swung with one motion. Dean had turned toward me with the gun pointed at me. But he hadn’t planned to pull the trigger yet. He wasn’t ready to shoot because he was trying to say something to me. I didn’t think we had anything to talk about. I caught him under the right ear.

  “The gun went off and he dropped it. I was going to whack him again … and again after that. For what he did. For Sandi … and then I didn’t. She wouldn’t want me to, so it wouldn’t be right to splatter him.”

  “You saved Sandra’s daughter,” Adele said. “That’s what she’d have wanted you to do.”

  McNulty looked at her. His eyes were liquid. “Sandi was too sensitive, too gentle. You couldn’t do something brutal in her memory. She wouldn’t want that.”

  * * *

  The next evening, Ambler, Adele, and Mike Cosgrove had dinner at a French bistro back in the city on Madison Avenue not far from Ambler’s apartment, a favorite of Mike’s. McNulty was visiting his pop and retrieving his cat. He’d taken Johnny with him.

  “We’re getting old,” Mike said. “Both of us got this one wrong.”

  “Because Simon Dean was so convincing,” Adele said. “And McNulty was such a good suspect. And Simon convinced everyone Sandra was a wanton woman.”

  “A damaged woman,” Ambler said.

  “Men are ready to believe a woman who betrays a man is depraved, not the other way around,” Adele said. “That’s why you thought of that murdered man—”

  “Ted Doyle.”

  “—as someone Sandra seduced. If you paid attention to his being a private detective, you’d have found out what he was investigating much sooner.”

  Cosgrove listened attentively. “All of the men she wrote about, except that one asshole, spent just one night with her. Still, they were half in love with her. They didn’t want to let her go. And her husband…” Cosgrove shook his head.

  “Simon had twisted ideas about sex. Who knows what went on in his head? He convinced Sandra she was a slut. She was ashamed of herself. Telling her that was cruel. A woman’s sexuality can be fragile.” Adele looked at Cosgrove and then Ambler. “Does a man ever wonder if he’s a slut?”

  Neither man answered. Adele slid closer to Ambler along the banquette until her thigh pressed against his. “And then Sandra started to see what Simon was doing and realized she wasn’t so bad. Simon needed her to feel ashamed. It was how he controlled her. Simon was evil.

  “When I talked with Andrea after the standoff was over, she told me Simon tried to explain what went wrong while they were cooped up in that house. He told her he was sorry about Sandra. He didn’t mean for this to happen. When he discovered her unfaithfulness, he started monitoring her emails. He thought since she was a wanton woman, she couldn’t help herself, so he said he forgave her. But he didn’t forgive her. He hated her for being that wanton woman. He found out from the emails about the private investigator her mother hired that Sandi had a hotel room in New York under a fake name. He knew about
McNulty, too.

  “He knew they wouldn’t be far away,” Adele said. “I think Sandra might have told him where they were anyway. Andrea said what happened in the hotel in New York—at least what Simon said happened—was he went there to confront the private investigator. He brought his gun to scare the investigator and to scare Sandra. He snuck up on the man. When they got in the hotel room, he put the gun to the guy’s head. The man did something and the gun went off.”

  “A bullet through Ted Doyle’s head.” Mike said.

  “Dean ran. Sandra ran. When Sandra called him the next day, he didn’t believe she’d forgiven him and wanted to come home. He knew what she was up to. He knew she wanted Carolyn and once she had her daughter, she would leave him and go with McNulty. He played along with her and made a plan to kill her and blame both murders on McNulty.”

  Mike held out his arms expansively. He was halfway through a Manhattan, a cocktail before dinner unusual for him. “She thought her lies convinced her husband she was coming home. His lies convinced her he wanted her to come home. She didn’t know he was lying. He knew she was lying. In a way, that was her fatal flaw. Getting men to want her was too easy for her. So when he said he wanted her, she believed him when she shouldn’t have.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” Adele shot him a withering glance.

  Cosgrove looked puzzled for a moment and then turned to the menu. “I suggest either the crab and avocado napoleon or the escargot appetizer.”

  * * *

  That night, Ambler called Andrea Eagan. He didn’t know if she’d want to talk to him and wasn’t sure why he called. Her husband answered her phone. Ambler told him who he was. The man wasn’t unfriendly or impolite. He told Ambler he was screening Andrea’s calls because the press kept calling and she didn’t want to talk to them anymore. Ambler said he’d call back another time. Bob, her husband, told him to wait.

  The next thing he heard was Andrea’s voice.

  “I don’t know where to start,” Ambler said. “I’m sorry about everything. Your friend, your brother, putting you in danger. I also want to thank you. Without you—”

  “I’m exhausted,” she said. “I’m not even sure I realize what happened. I’m numb. Yet, I’m safe. Carolyn is safe. We’re here with a man who loves both of us. Terrible things happened. Now they’ve stopped happening. So I’m okay. We’re okay.” She laughed. He hoped it wasn’t hysteria.

  “Time will sort most of it out,” Ambler said. “It all goes somewhere. It’s still there in your head, but less of a presence.” He didn’t know if he was being comforting or alarming.

  “I hope your friend is all right. After everyone thought he was so evil, he did such a brave thing.”

  “McNulty and Sandra had a foolish romantic idea about living happily ever after. He did what he did to get Carolyn safe.”

  “And brained Simon in the process.” She laughed softly. “I wish I’d seen it. Simon is alive. I wouldn’t say he’s well. He’s under police guard in intensive care. My husband Bob talked to a lawyer friend of his who said we have a really good chance to get custody of Carolyn since Simon would be in prison for a long time and because he threatened to harm her and took her hostage. He said the lawyers might get Simon to give up his parental rights as part of a plea deal since the court would probably terminate his parental rights anyway.”

  “I hope so,” Ambler said.

  “After spending that crazy day with him,” Andrea said. “I think it should be an insanity plea, though I don’t think that’s what they meant.”

  “By the way,” Ambler said. “Whenever Carolyn wants to come to the library to see her grandmother’s papers, you’re more than—”

  Andrea started to laugh and stopped abruptly. “She never asked about her grandmother’s papers. Simon made that up. She’s happy with the parrot. He’s great; he talks.”

  “The parrot,” Ambler said. Too bad the parrot couldn’t tell them how he got out of Jayne Galloway’s house. It wouldn’t make any difference now anyway unless the Nassau police charged McNulty.

  Andrea laughed softly. “We’ll definitely be coming to the library, even if not to see the collection. We’ll want to see you again. And Adele told me the Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed animals are part of the library’s collection.”

  Ambler was bone weary but had one more call. Cosgrove told him Nassau had closed the case on Jayne Galloway. She died a natural death.

  “I don’t think so,” Ambler said. “How did the parrot get out?”

  “An unsolved mystery,” Mike said.

  One would think after solving the case and freeing McNulty, Ambler would feel triumphant. But he didn’t. He thought about Ted Doyle and Jayne Galloway and Sandra Dean in their graves, Simon Dean in the hospital, Dillard Wainwright blissfully oblivious in his cabin in the woods, his son John in prison. At least McNulty might be back. The bartenders union was trying to get him reinstated at the Library Tavern.

  It was time to walk the dog. He called Lola and Johnny. He’d hardly spoken to his grandson since he returned from Connecticut, except to tell him what happened, as little of it as he could get away with. Johnny was just glad McNulty was out of jail.

  The real autumn was underway in the city and the smell of winter rode on the chilly wind that met them at the corner. Lola jerked up her head and sniffed the air; she liked the cold. Maybe she was part husky.

  “You never told me about the Yankee game you went to with Mr. Young.”

  Johnny was animated. “It was cool. The Yanks beat the Tigers. Mr. Young is different when he’s at the stadium. He drank beer and cheered a lot. He really likes Mariano Rivera.” Johnny paused. “Maybe he’s happier when his wife’s not around.”

  Ambler smiled.

  “He bought hot dogs and said I knew a lot about baseball for someone my age. I told him you and my dad were Yankee fans.” They stopped and Lola sat down on the sidewalk and looked up. She seemed concerned. “I told him about my dad, how I visited him in the prison and he taught me about baseball and lots of other stuff.”

  “Oh?” Ambler said.

  “He said for me to ask you if you wanted to go to a ball game with us sometime.”

  “That would be interesting,” Ambler said.

  ALSO BY CON LEHANE

  THE BARTENDER BRIAN McNULTY MYSTERIES

  Beware the Solitary Drinker

  What Goes Around Comes Around

  Death at the Old Hotel

  The 42nd Street Library Mysteries

  Murder at the 42nd Street Library

  Murder in the Manuscript Room

  About the Author

  Con Lehane is a mystery writer living in Washington, DC. Murder Off the Page is the third in his series featuring Raymond Ambler, curator of the 42nd Street Library’s (fictional) crime fiction collection. He’s also the author of three novels featuring New York City bartender Brian McNulty. Over the years, he (Lehane, that is) has been a college professor, union organizer, and labor journalist, and he has tended bar at two dozen or so drinking establishments. He teaches fiction writing and mystery writing at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chap
ter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Also by Con Lehane

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  MURDER OFF THE PAGE. Copyright © 2019 by Con Lehane. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10271.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Cover design by Rowen Davis and David Baldeosingh Rotstein

  Cover photos of Bryant Park © Ty Alexander Photography/Getty Images: sky © Nikola Spasic Photography/Shutterstock.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Lehane, Cornelius, author.

  Title: Murder off the page: a 42nd Street library mystery / Con Lehane.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Minotaur Books, 2019. | Series: Identifiers: LCCN 2019029067 | ISBN 9781250317926 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250317933 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3612.E354 M89 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23