Michael Baden

by Skeleton Justice

  Jake kicked the box he’d just moved. “I never said that! I just cautioned her not to eagerly accept what may turn out to be an unwinnable case for anyone.”

  “Ah, caution. You’re good at that, aren’t you, Jake? As I recall, you cautioned me against traveling cross-country on my motorcycle, climbing Mount McKinley, and touring the world with the Pacifists for Peace Rugby Club.”

  “I didn’t want you to get hurt. And I hoped you would focus.”

  “OMmmmmmmmm.” Sam started to chant, drowning out Jake’s paternal explanations before launching into his response. “I didn’t get hurt. I succeeded, and I had a hell of a good time along the way. And I learned. So will Manny. Trust me. Trust her.”

  Jake opened his mouth, then clamped it shut again. Sam had never been married, had never even had a serious relationship, at least not with anyone he’d ever bothered to introduce to his family, but he felt free to dispense love advice like a regular Dr. Phil. And yet his brother, as feckless and carefree as he seemed to be, had a core of common sense, a rock-solid emotional stability that Jake envied. It seemed he’d always been that way, maybe because Sam had been too young to remember when their father abandoned them, while seven-year-old Jake had reacted so uncontrollably that their mother had finally sought help from a Jewish charity. Jake had been sent to a reform school for troubled kids, until he learned that the surest way out was to repress his emotions and pour all the energy required for anger into the study of science.

  Jake extracted a Thai take-out menu from the clutter on an end table and tossed it to Sam. “Order us some dinner. I’ll go call Manny.”

  Half an hour later, the pork with basil sauce and the lemongrass chicken had arrived, and Jake, Sam, Manny, and Mycroft sat around (and under) the dining room table, dissecting the case between fiery bites. Jake had been unable to bring himself to actually apologize for warning Manny off the Preppy Terrorist case, so he had simply issued the invitation to dinner as if nothing had happened. Manny had accepted readily enough, but it wasn’t lost on Jake that she had breezed right past him when he opened the front door, heading straight for Sam and the food.

  “Apparently, Travis Heaton is a brainiac kid with no street smarts whatsoever and an inconvenient interest in Islamic culture.” Manny waved her fork for emphasis, sending a piece of chicken sailing off the tines. Mycroft leaped and caught it in midair. “Did you see that? Good dog, Mikey!”

  “Have you ever heard of teaching your dog manners?”

  “Have you ever heard of Rin Tin Tin, Lassie, Clifford the Big Red Dog? That was a trick Mycroft learned after hours of study.”

  “Is he earning a graduate degree at that doggy day-care place you send him to every day?” Jake asked.

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Jake wished he could have reeled them back in. A few days ago, he’d been teasing Manny about enrolling Mycroft in some goofy place called Little Paws, but that was before the blowup in the restaurant. He saw her smile replaced by a scowl and knew he’d just dug himself deeper into a hole.

  “Actually, Mycroft is no longer attending Little Paws. He was”—she paused for a breath—“expelled.”

  Even Jake knew better than to laugh, and he kicked Sam sharply to head off any hilarity from that side of the table. “Expelled?”

  Manny dismissed his inquiry with a wave. “It’s too complicated to get into now. I want to tell you about Travis. Where was I?”

  “Smart but no street smarts, studying Islam,” Sam prompted.

  “Right. He’s at Monet on a scholarship,” Manny continued. “His mom is a widow who works as a nurse at New York-Presbyterian. She knocked herself out getting him into private school because she thought the public schools were too dangerous for him. Now she’s finding out kids can fall into bad company no matter how much tuition you pay.”

  Sam nodded. “Yeah, at Boys High School, where Jake and I went, all we had to worry about was pot and the occasional knife fight. Prep school exposes you to designer drugs and international terrorism. A much better class of criminal.”

  Jake refilled all the wineglasses. “So, do you think your client’s telling you the complete truth about what happened that night?”

  “No. Criminal clients always lie to you about something. Travis already lied about the apple by not telling me the whole story. And he said the book in his backpack was for a class, conveniently forgetting about the shelfful of books on Islam he had at home. Maybe he thinks leaving things out is not really lying, but I think it shows a certain amount of cunning.”

  “So you do think he tried to kill the judge?” Sam asked.

  Manny shook her head. “My gut feeling is that he’s telling me the truth about his lack of involvement in blowing up the mailbox. When I went back to ask him about the apple, he claimed that he and this Zeke character both swiped apples on the way out of the deli, and that it was Zeke the deli man saw take a bite and toss the rest. But Travis can’t remember what happened to his apple.”

  “What about the books?” Sam asked.

  “His mother claims it’s just a phase he’s going through. Apparently, he’s always had a compulsive streak. When he was four, it was trains; seven, dinosaurs; ten, medieval weaponry. He’s just that kind of—”

  “Dweeb,” Sam said, completing the sentence as he handed his brother a beer. “Jake was like that when he was a kid. Remember your obsession with asteroids and meteors?”

  Jake laughed. “I had our great-aunt Flo so worried about rocks falling out of the sky, she carried an umbrella everywhere she went.”

  “Yeah, and he wouldn’t shut up on the subject,” Sam said. “As I recall, we got excluded from the Passover seder that year because no one in the family wanted to listen to you.”

  Manny picked up Mycroft and held him on her lap. “That’s a small price to pay for pursuing your passions. I’m afraid Travis is truly being persecuted for having this interest. We have to prove he wasn’t involved in a conspiracy with those other guys.”

  She turned to Sam. “That’s why it’s vital that we find them. They definitely have something to do with this, but I can’t tell if Travis knew them before or not.”

  “What about Paco, the diplomat’s kid?” Jake asked.

  “I’m trying to get hold of him, but the school and his family and the embassy have closed ranks around him. I can’t wait for Paco; I’m requesting a reconsideration of bail, so I can tear apart the forensic evidence on this apple.”

  Jake paused with a forkful of food halfway to his mouth. “But I thought you just said you weren’t sure whether or not your client was telling you the truth about the apple?”

  Manny shook her head pityingly. “You’re such a scientist, always worrying about what’s ‘true,’ so sure that true and false can always be quantified. I worry about what’s just. And an eighteen-year-old kid with no criminal record being held without bail for a crime in which the state can’t prove a link between the suspect and the victim is not just. An eighteen-year-old kid who, at the very worst, pulled a stupid stunt on a dare being held as a terrorist so the Department of Homeland Security can hold a press conference announcing how effectively they’re protecting us is not just. And the fact that the government is using a freakin’ apple to make its case is even more unjust.” Manny raked her slender fingers through her hair as she talked, ruining all the effort she put into keeping her wild red mane under control. “So, yes, Jake, I’m going to go into court and argue against that apple even if my client did bite into it. You got a problem with that?”

  Jake’s eyes hadn’t left Manny since she started talking. When he saw her like this—eyes shining, hands waving, hair flying—his heart started pounding, and he sincerely wished his brother wasn’t sitting at the same table. He got up, put his hands on her shoulders, and buried his face in the hair next to her ear, breathing in the scent of very expensive shampoo. “No, I don’t have a problem with that.”

  Manny twisted around to look him in the eye. “Oh, fine. You’r
e forgiven. You’d think a man with such an exalted vocabulary would be familiar with the words I’m sorry, but apparently not.”

  “He didn’t know them when he was a kid, either, Manny,” Sam chimed in. “I don’t know how he managed to get such a high score on his SATs.”

  “I hope you two are enjoying yourselves.” Jake massaged Manny’s shoulders.

  “I am.” She leaned back and smiled. “Now, tell us what’s happening with your case. Is this woman who was murdered in midtown really a victim of the Vampire?”

  Jake’s elation at being back in Manny’s good graces evaporated as soon as she mentioned the Vampire. He dropped his hands from her shoulders and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know. The MO is totally different. No sign that he pushed into the apartment—she appears to have let him in. And then the torture—why has he suddenly turned so violent? I don’t think it’s a copycat. The only link is the puncture on her arm, where blood was obviously drawn, and the use of ether.”

  “What was the time of death?”

  “Sometime between noon and five yesterday.”

  “Middle of the afternoon and no one saw or heard anything?” “The police spent all day reviewing the security tapes. There’s only one person who entered the building during that time frame who can’t be accounted for. A woman wearing oversize sunglasses and a baseball cap, carrying a big purse. The concierge remembers that she spoke with an accent of some kind. He said he announced her to apartment 50E. The lady in 50E says she approved the visitor because she was expecting her masseuse. But then no one showed at her door. She was just getting ready to call down when the concierge buzzed her again, and the masseuse arrived. She thought it was a little screwy at the time, but she didn’t complain.”

  “So this mystery woman is obviously your Vampire! Can they get a good description of her by studying the tape?”

  Jake shook his head. “Hat, glasses, and coat cover every identifiable feature. She could be any medium-height woman—or man, for that matter—in the city. This is not a woman’s crime. A woman doesn’t sexually torture an old lady. It just doesn’t add up.”

  “So what’s your next step?”

  Sam and Manny were looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to pull a rabbit out of a hat. He knew they wouldn’t be impressed with what he had to offer.

  “Research. I plan to spend tomorrow calling colleagues here and abroad and trolling through databases and medical journal articles until I figure out just what caused that unique burn pattern. If I know what the Vampire used, maybe I can figure out why he—or she—used it.”

  Sam parked Manny’s Porsche Cabriolet at the curb, pulling in between a jacked-up Trans Am and an ancient Honda Accord. His drive down Wilkens Street, on the west side of Kearny, New Jersey, had been monitored by two slavering pit bulls behind a chain-link fence and several gimlet-eyed statues of the Virgin Mary in front-yard shrines. Glancing at the small yellow house fortified with wrought-iron window grates overlooking his parking spot, he noticed a curtain flick back into place. Alert, alert! Stranger spotted on the street!

  As Manny had predicted, the IDs produced by the remaining young men who had been with Travis and Paco on the night of the bombing bore the addresses of nonexistent buildings or unknown streets in the metropolitan area. The fact that these guys had been carrying fake IDs raised no suspicions among the police. No sir, they had their bomber, Travis Andrew Heaton, and damned if they were going to let suspicious behavior by the other people present that night get in the way of their case. So, no need to track them down, uh-uh.

  That was Sam’s job. The previous night, after Jake and Manny had slunk off to the bedroom to kiss and make up, he had headed across the river to hang out at Club Epoch. Despite being fifteen years older than most of the people on the dance floor, Sam had managed to insinuate himself in a group of regulars. It had taken him until nearly four o’clock in the morning to tease out the identity and possible location of one Benjamin “Boo” Hravek, thought to reside in Kearny, known to hang out at Big Mike’s Gateway Inn in that fair city.

  After returning to Jake’s brownstone and encountering Manny and Jake at the breakfast table, both dressed in business suits and sporting disapproving stares, Sam had crawled into bed for a few hours’ sleep, and then pulled into Kearny in time to have a late lunch at the Gateway Inn.

  He strolled down the block, heading for a windowless building covered in gray asphalt shingles. Nowhere did the name Big Mike’s or Gateway Inn appear. If you had to ask, you weren’t welcome. But his search of liquor licenses held in Kearny had revealed that the license granted for 440 Wilkens Street was held by Lawrence M. Egli, DBA the Gateway Inn.

  As he drew closer, Sam revised his approach. “Lookin’ for Boo Hravek, an old buddy of mine” would never fly here. In Kearny, everyone knew one another from the moment of conception—old friends didn’t appear out of the woodwork.

  He thought about the girl who had told him last night, after five Cosmos, where to find Boo. Today, if she was able to remember their conversation, she would be regretting it. Telling strangers about the neighborhood boys was not the done thing, not even when the stranger was nicer than you were used to.

  Sam took a second to get the appropriate expression fixed on his face, then opened the door to the Gateway Inn. Momentarily blinded by the sudden switch from the bright sunshine of the sidewalk to the dim interior illuminated only by the glow of the TV above the bar, Sam paused on the threshold.

  “Shut the fuckin’ door,” a disembodied voice rang out.

  Fresh air was clearly not a welcome commodity here; it diluted the rarefied scent of stale beer and cigarette smoke. Smoking in New Jersey bars was now illegal, but Sam figured the law must be routinely flouted at the Gateway. Either that or so many cigarettes had been smoked here that it was going to take decades for the place to air out. Sam made his way toward the bar, feeling the soles of his shoes sticking to the residue of last night’s spilled beer.

  The bartender, a guy in his fifties in a short-sleeved white shirt, made fleeting eye contact. Sam interpreted that as the Kearny equivalent of “Hi, what can I get you?”

  “Give me a beer and the fried fish plate.” He didn’t need a menu to know that the deep-fat fryer was the only method of cooking available in the Gateway kitchen. But Sam had eaten stewed monkey in Bangkok and grilled locusts in Ghana—he enjoyed going native.

  The bartender plonked Sam’s beer down and returned to polishing glasses at the far end of the bar. The only other customer, the guy who had shouted for the door to be closed, sat a few stools away, resolutely studying the pattern of foam in his glass. Sam also sat in silence. Eventually, the bartender approached with silverware and the steaming plate of fish and fries.

  “Lookin’ for someone to do a little work for me.” Sam directed his comments to the food, not the man carrying it. “Guy in the city said Boo Hravek might be right for the job. Know where I can find him?”

  The bartender stared at him for a long moment without responding. Then he moved away, methodically wiping the already-clean bar as he went. When he got halfway down its length, he said, “What kind of work?”

  “The kind of work he’s good at.”

  “Who’d you say sent you?”

  “I didn’t.”

  The man nursing his beer suddenly roused himself. “Boo don’t work for just anyone.”

  “I know.” Sam dunked his french fry in catsup and held it suspended over his plate. “That’s why I want him.” He watched the two men exchange a glance. Apparently, he’d given a good response. He pressed his luck a little further. “There’s good money in it.” He didn’t want to name a price, since he didn’t know what Boo customarily received for doing whatever dirty deeds he specialized in.

  “Boo’ll be here in a little while. Sit tight.” The bartender disappeared into the kitchen.

  Sam returned to the mound of food before him. Not too bad, really—the cod was flaky and fresh, and that carefully aged grease gave it
a nice tang. He ate and drank and watched drag racing on ESPN, waiting for Boo. There were worse ways to spend an afternoon. This working for Manny wasn’t too bad.

  Ten minutes later, the door of the bar flew open and crashed against the wall. Two men—very big men—stood outlined by the bright sunlight at their backs. The bartender and the other patron vaporized.

  Boo had arrived.

  Carefully, Sam wiped his hands and his mouth and placed the napkin on the bar. He did not like to meet new people with grease on his fingers or catsup on his lip. Standing down from the bar stool, he nodded to the punks who had entered. “Sam Rosen.”

  The larger of the two men, early twenties but already toting a big beer belly, stepped forward and shoved Sam against the bar. “Last night, you were messin’ with Deanie. What the fuck’s up with that? What kinda bullshit you tryin’ to pull?”

  Deanie? Had that been the name of his informant at Club Epoch? Sam thought she’d been referring to herself as Teeny, which, given the size of her boobs, he’d assumed was a nickname bestowed upon her ironically. Good to have that clarified.

  Ignoring the man who had pushed him, Sam stepped away from the bar and faced his companion. From the description of Boo Hravek provided by Travis via Manny, he was pretty sure that the quieter guy was the man himself and the other one was just along for some fun—fun that Sam hoped could be avoided.

  Unlike the blockhead bodyguard, Boo Hravek had a gleam of intelligence in his eye as well as a set of pectorals that any man would envy. He was Sam’s height, but a good fifty pounds of solid muscle heavier. Sam extended his hand. “Nice to meet you, Boo. Deanie speaks very highly of you.”

  “The bitch should learn to keep her mouth shut,” the bodyguard said. Boo remained silent but took Sam’s hand and crushed it in his grip.

  Sam smiled, ignoring the pain shooting up his right arm. He watched as Boo relaxed, having established his alpha male status. It was important to Sam that his opponents not feel threatened by him. He wanted them cocksure and careless.