by David Wind
Finishing with the wall unit, I looked around the room. There was nothing else out of place. I studied the couch. The cushions were undisturbed. I spent another minute in the living room then moved on.
The bedroom was a bigger mess. The drawers of the night tables, on each side of the king size platform bed, had been dumped onto the bed. The chaos spoke to me. The dresser draws hung open; each had been searched. There was no starting point and no ending point; it told me nothing had been found. The odds were against the possibility of whatever the shooter was looking for being in the last drawer he’d searched. The bed had been made, which showed Scotty had been up for a while, which fit because he liked to write early.
The walk-in closet was open. The shelves above the racks of clothing were jumbled, every shelf disturbed. The floor was piled with clothing. The more I looked the more I was convinced the search had been done to throw the cops off and make it look like a robbery. And it had all been done fast as well. It was more than my gut telling me there had only been ten minutes from the time of the shooting until the cops had arrived. There was no way enough time would be left to search through everything dumped and scattered around the apartment.
My next stop was the bathroom, which was untouched. I went down the short hall to the second bedroom Scotty used as an office. There, I found the same disarray as in the living room and bedroom. Like the bedroom, there was no starting point and no ending point. The file drawers were open and rummaged, but at least they hadn’t been dumped out onto the floor. His desk was messed up, and the shelves above it looked like a tornado had struck.
His Mac Book Pro laptop stood amidst the havoc, strong evidence the burglary scenario was bogus: No self-respecting thief would leave a three thousand dollar laptop behind.
I hit the space bar on the laptop. The screen came alive with lines of text. I thought of how Scotty looked when I’d walked into the apartment this morning. He’d been wearing a robe and a pair of Jockeys. Scotty wrote two times a day. He would work from five or six in the morning until noon; and, from nine at night until midnight. He was a creature of habit. When he wrote in the morning, he wore his lucky robe and a pair of briefs, and always played Led Zeppelin. The lines on the screen told me he’d been hard at work. I looked at the stereo. It was on and the CD had finished playing.
If someone had broken in, he wouldn’t have heard him; but, if someone had broken in, the police would have seen marks on the door, which they hadn’t. Next to the computer was Scotty’s cell phone.
I opened an explorer window and looked at the directory for the work he was doing. I noted the time he’d saved the file last. It was at five-forty-five. I closed the window and looked at the file. He had been working on the second scene. I started at the beginning and read every line. Then I searched through the mess on the desk, picked up a hard copy of the script, and opened it to the same scene. Fifteen minutes later, I closed the script and saved the file. Scotty had finished the rewrite, and it was brilliant.
I opened his email program, set up an email to myself, attached the file, and sent it on. From the corner of my eye, I saw the cop framed in the doorway.
“Find anything?”
I shook my head. “It looks like he was working on his play when the shooter came in.”
I glanced around the office one more time, dragging up the vision of what it had looked like last week. The mess was just that, a mess. “You hear anything off line?”
The kid shook his head. “I got posted here at eleven. All I know is someone broke in and wasted the guy. Nothing else.”
I went into the kitchen with the cop tagging behind like a puppy. Like the bathroom, everything was neat and clean. The shooter hadn’t bothered in here either. I moved to the telephone, which was one of those telephone answering machine combos and saw it was set to answer immediately. I was puzzled. Why would Scotty set the machine so he wouldn’t hear it ring? It was unlike Scotty, but now I knew why he hadn’t heard the phone when I’d called.
I thanked the rookie, walked twenty feet down the hallway to Scotty’s neighbor’s apartment, and knocked on the door. It took a half minute before the door was opened by a woman in her mid-seventies, with short gray hair and a lot of lines on her face. Her dark brown eyes were magnified by steel-rimmed glasses. I’d met her several times over the last few years, when visiting Scotty.
"Mrs. Shapiro, I don’t know if you remember me, my name is Gabriel Storm."
"Of course I do, you’re Scotty’s friend, the one he got out of jail"
"Can I speak to you for a few minutes?"
She opened the doorway all the way and waved me in. I followed her into the living room, where she motioned me to an armchair and maneuvered herself onto the couch. She stared at me for several seconds, tears brimming in her eyes. "It’s a terrible thing, what happened to Scotty. He was such a nice man, always asking me if I needed anything when he went to the store. He would check on me, just to make sure I was okay."
Tears spilled onto well-wrinkled cheeks. When she wiped them away I said, "I’d like to ask you what happened this morning."
She took a shuddering breath. “It was six o’clock when I heard the explosions. I wasn’t sure what they were, but they were just too loud to come from outside. I’m not sure how I knew it was gunshots; I just did and then called the police.”
"Did you hear anything else? Any talking, yelling or arguing?"
She shook her head. "This is an old building, and it was built well. You hardly hear anything—but the shots… they were so loud."
"When was the last time you saw Scotty?"
Her mouth shifted into a small smile. "He stopped by last night; he always came by on Sunday night to check on me. We talked for a few minutes and I asked him how the play was going. He seemed very pleased and told me it was almost ready. He promised to have a ticket for me for opening night. He...he always got me tickets for plays."
"Was he alone?” When she nodded, I asked, "Do you know if anybody came by last evening?"
She shook her head again, "I don’t think so, but I went to sleep at nine."
I looked into the sad pools of her eyes and thanked her. At the front door, she took my hand in both of hers’. "Why would somebody do this?"
"I don’t know Mrs. Shapiro, but I will find out."
Chapter 6
When I got out of the cab on the corner of Fifth and Thirty-Fourth Street, I took a moment to look up at the old lady of Manhattan. I loved her: the Empire State Building reminded me of everything this city was about. It had grandeur and elegance and stood proud in this post Art Deco time. The building and I were a perfect fit. The building was a throwback to a different time, not a better time, a simpler one. Unlike the building, I had chosen to be a throwback.
Walking into the lobby was akin to slipping decades into the past; and, even the modern dress of the people moving around me or staring at the huge framed metal base relief etching of the building couldn’t stop the feeling of time having stood still in this one spot in the city. To me, it was the perfect stage setting.
I went to the bank of elevators reserved for the tenants, nodded to the security guard and stepped into one of the cabs. I got out on the twenty-seventh floor and, thirty steps later, I reached my office. The glass door’s lettering, black enamel with gold trim, read Storm Investigations.
I pushed inside, where a tall black woman with the body of a ballerina and a face deserving the cover of Vogue stood at a filing cabinet with her back to me.
This woman was my assistant ─ my girl Friday. I was twenty-five percent of Storm Investigations and she was the other seventy-five percent: She was the receptionist, secretary and case assistant. She’d spent the last two and a half years of nights, earning her PI License, which she’d gotten four months ago. She also held a bachelor’s degree in business and a graduate degree as a paralegal.
She had wanted to work as a paralegal but after a year in the law offices of a major Personal Injury firm she’d soured
on lawyers and was looking for a new career when she’d seen my ad.
When she’d called to respond, her first three words had made me sit up and take notice. Her voice had sent shivers through me: deep, husky, and filled with pure sensuality. I’d made the appointment and, two hours later had hired her. In the five years she had been with me, she had proven herself one of a kind.
Her name is Femalé Jones. She pronounces it Femalé. Yeah, I know… who names their kid Female? Her story took a bit of coaxing—close to seven months to get it all. And when I did, it turned out to be the stuff from which urban legends come.
All Femalé knows is she’s the illegitimate daughter of a young unwed mother who one morning before sunrise, left her on the steps of the New York Foundling Hospital. She had been a week old. Inside, the bureaucratic red tape began its process. The clerk who filled out the papers was a novice, and took the name they used for all cases like this, Jones, Female for girls and Smith, Male, for boys, and filled out and submitted the birth certificate instead of waiting.
By the time they discovered the error, it was too late for a quick change. The people at the Foundling Home decided that when Female Jones came of age; she could pick whatever name she wanted. But by then she was used to the unique name and kept it.
My own thoughts were different. I believed she kept the name so if she ever found her mother, she could face her and make her realize what she had done.
But whatever her past had been, her present was perfect as far as I was concerned. Femalé was the ideal assistant and we made a good team.
“Hey,” I said, closing the door behind me.
“Hey,” she replied. She closed the file drawer and turned to me. She had deep ebony-brown and expressive eyes, and within them was concern.
“Anything up?”
She shook her head. Her stylish hair was in neat braided rows, bouncing an inch above her shoulders. “Not much. We got the final check from the Glavasern Corporation, for the job last month, and an inquiry for a domestic case I referred to Tom Haden. One of Spielberg’s people called. Tom Hanks will to star in a PI movie. They wanted to know if you’d be available to consult. It’s set to go in three months. I told them you were tied up but would call.”
Doing movie authenticity consulting was fun, but not my favorite thing. “Good.”
Her eyes went soft. “How are you, boss?”
“Not good.”
“I’m sorry, I…”
“I know,” I said, stopping her there. The last thing I needed to do was to go down into that dark sad place. I worked up a half smile and went into my office. A minute later Femalé placed a cup of coffee in front of me. Then she bent over the desk and straightened up the yellow pad and the pen off to the side.
Femalé was a neat freak. She had more than just a touch of OCD when it came to where things belonged and how to place them. I lived with it because it served me well, considering I’m just the opposite.
I picked up the coffee and caught the scent of the brandy she’d used to lace it. I took a pull and let the heat of the coffee and the bite of the brandy work around my mouth before setting the cup down. “Thanks. We have visitors coming at four.”
She raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow into a replica of the Saint Louis arch. I loved when she did that.
“The angels,” I added.
The eyebrow stayed arched in a silent request for more information.
“The show’s backers…want to talk to me.”
“I know what angels are: They going to hire us?”
“That’s my hunch.”
She shook her head. “That’s dumb. They should know you’re already on the case. Why would they?”
I smiled like a wolf ready to trounce. “That’s what I want to know. The cops haven’t even warmed up yet.”
She sat across from me. “Gabe, Scotty’s attorney called. He needs to talk to you.” She pointed a long finger capped with a manicured white enameled nail at the yellow sticky note centered on my computer screen.
I knew why he had called. Scotty’s father had died when he was fourteen, just after moving to the city. His mother had passed when I was in the joint. He had no siblings. I was the executor of his estate and I had arrangements to make.
I looked at my watch. There was a half hour left before the angels would arrive. “I need you to call Riverside, they’re on Amsterdam. Make the arrangements, please.”
"Tell me what happened, the way you saw it."
I held her eyes for several long seconds, before telling her everything from the minute I walked into Scotty’s apartment until I got into the cab after speaking with Mrs. Shapiro. I detailed the shell casing array, the blood spatter, and the way the apartment had been ransacked. Then I offered her my theory.
"It sounds like the robbery was for show. Nothing stood out?"
Femalé and I do this a lot when working on a case. We’d developed a pattern because it’s beneficial to talk out observations. I didn’t think it would help this time. "Nothing.”
“Why would Scotty have shut the phones off if he had been trying to reach you? And, Chris… why is he saying it’s a robbery?”
When I didn’t have an answer for her, Femalé rose from the chair and started out. She paused at the door to look over her shoulder. “Gabe,” she began, stopped, and instead favored me with a sad smile before leaving.
I lifted the coffee and took another sip before picking up the phone. The call was answered on the second ring.
“Dad, I’ve got some bad news.” I told my father about what had happened to Scotty. He was as upset as I’d expected and told me he’d tell my mother. When he asked for details, I told him I had none. I promised I’d call with the info on the funeral and hung up.
I knew the news hit him hard. He, like everyone else, loved Scotty. My father was sixty-six. For the last twenty plus years, he and Chris Bolt’s father had acted as surrogate fathers to Scotty. They’d had no choice since Chris and I had adopted Scotty.
I exhaled out my disgust and called Paul Gottleib. Gottleib was Scotty’s lawyer. He specialized in entertainment law, but handled many of his clients’ full legal affairs. His client list read like a who’s who of Broadway and Hollywood. Paul was a good guy of the old school and he never took advantage of his clients and always worked to better them.
Gottleib gave me his condolences before saying, “You’ll need to come in and go over the… papers. Gabe, I know this is coming at you fast, there’s a lot for you to do.”
“I understand. Tomorrow morning?”
“I’ll see you at ten,” Gottleib said before hanging up.
Closing my eyes, I sat back and tried to put things together. There had to be a motive, and I knew it wasn’t robbery; but, without something concrete, I’d end up chasing my tail in circles like an old hound dog ─ never catching it, but always seeing it near.
I turned to the computer, hit the Outlook icon and clicked on the contacts folder, found the name I was looking for got the phone number and dialed.
A thin and reedy voice answered. “How ya doing Rabbit?” Rabbit was another ex-con. He was short and wiry with hypothyroidic bugged out eyes and big ears. He, like Tarz, had earned his name with his looks. Rabbit had been a small timer in the Cantorino family before he was sent up. The crime family handled most of the prostitution and gambling on the Upper West side.
There was silence for a few seconds and then, “I figered you’d be calling. Word is out dat a friend of yours got put down.”
‘Got put down.’ The words hit hard, but I didn’t let them show in my voice. “Yeah, Rabbit. Why?”
My question startled him. “Gabe… I…”
“No, why is the word out.”
I could feel his relief through the phone. “Jeez. Someone was on da block an spotted you going into da building. He hung around and learnt dat someone famous had been iced. You got a rep, Teach, a good one, and you knows how fast da word moves when….”
“What else, Rab
bit?”
“Nothin’, Teach. Dere ain’t nothin’ else.”
If there was word on the street, Rabbit would know. “Put your ear to the ground for me. This one is real personal.”
“I’ll make sure if anyone says anyting, I’ll get da word ta you.”
“There’s something else… I ran into a guy by the name of Streeter—a pimp working Eighth Avenue. You know him?”
“Dat was you last night?”
“Yeah, Rabbit, that was me.”
“Heard he had ta get a messed wrist taken care of. He’s bad news Teach.”
“I didn’t break his wrist, just hurt it bad—I should have broken it. Rabbit, I need to know where to find him.”
“I’ll look inta it,” Rabbit said, his voice lower than before.
“Thanks, Rabbit, I owe you.” I ended the call and buzzed Femalé on the intercom. “Call Paul Gottleib back, ask him if he can get the show’s books for tomorrow’s meeting.”
I stared at the wall across from me. My office is almost a square. To my left, a big window overlooked Fifth Avenue. For me, the extra two bucks a square foot was worth the view. Against the right wall was a custom wall unit, a small bar for those clients who needed a drink to help them work things out. Next to it a locked cabinet held my two spare Sig Suer automatics; a half year worth of ammunition, and a custom built body armor vest that could barely be seen under my clothes, unless you knew what to look for. It was a hi-tech version of the body armor I’d worn as a Ranger—when I got out of Sing-Sing, and after an unsuccessful try at getting back into my old way of life, I needed to be anywhere but in New York and the Army seemed the perfect answer to starting over.
I rarely wore the vest, but the times I did, the eleven thousand it cost had more than paid for it. There were a few knickknacks on the shelves and in the center sat a small bust of yours truly done by the woman who was to have been my wife: The woman whom I had been accused and convicted of killing, and then sentenced to life in prison.
