Where Nobody Dies

by Carolyn Wheat

  “A new victim?” I thought of the Lucentis. The election argument, if it held up, might apply to them too, but there was the move to Washington. It seemed a safe bet that Linda had gotten the job through blackmail, and maybe she’d been concentrating on Art instead of her other victims.

  “But wait a minute,” I said, thinking aloud. “Even if your wife is on the school board, wouldn’t she still be hurt if it came out that you took bribes?”

  “It would hurt her personally,” he admitted, “and the news media would be all over her. But she really couldn’t be removed from office for something I’d done, whereas before the election, a lot of people would just have changed their votes and there’d be nothing she could do about it. No,” he said, shaking his head. “If Linda had really wanted to destroy Dory, she’d have gone public before the second week in November.”

  “And if you’d thought she was going to do that?”

  “I’d have killed her,” he said simply. “Then. Not now.”

  9

  The orange cube, I reminded myself as I stepped out of the Fulton Street subway station into a surging flood of humanity. I was meeting Elliott Pilcher, the mystery civil servant, at an orange cube in front of a black glass office building on Broadway. He’d whispered the directions over the phone with the hushed anticipation of a practiced conspirator.

  I plunged into the chaotic flow of traffic like a pioneer fording a spring-swollen river, and reviewed what I knew about Elliott Pilcher. As I crossed Nassau Street going toward Broadway, I came face-to-face with just how little that was. Hell, I recalled, I still didn’t know where he worked, let alone what he’d done for Todd Lessek to earn his limited partnership in the waterfront deal. I cursed the phone company for promoting direct lines; I’d expected Elliott’s phone to be answered by a helpful secretary who would announce the name of the agency as a matter of routine.

  I turned south on Broadway and saw the cube in a people-filled plaza in front one of those faceless black-box office buildings that seem to be taking over Manhattan. It was a popular meeting-place; at least twenty people stood by the cube and scanned the crowd, searching for their lunch dates. I tried to guess which one was Pilcher, then decided I was too early. The uneasy feeling that I didn’t have enough information to run a decent bluff began to grow on me. The one thing I could be sure of, I thought wryly, was that wherever Elliott Pilcher worked, it was nowhere near the black-clad building with the orange cube.

  Bellfield burned buildings. Pitt covered up. Todd Lessek bought the burned-out hulks and turned them into co-ops with boutiques where the butcher shop used to be. What did Pilcher do? Lessek, I knew, had gotten city-backed loans and tax incentives for his renovations. It seemed likely that Pilcher made sure that the public trough was open whenever Lessek cared to drink from it, in which case he probably worked for HPD, the city’s umbrella housing agency. But was “probably” going to be good enough? Wasn’t my best bet to stay as silent as possible and let Pilcher think I knew more than I did?

  “Funny”—a voice in my ear punctured my thoughts—“you don’t look like a blackmailer.” The tone was faintly aggrieved, a near-whine. I turned and saw a pudgy, oatmeal-faced man with colorless eyes behind thick glasses, mousy, thinning hair, and a sulky expression around the mouth. On the other hand, I decided, nobody looks his best when he’s being blackmailed.

  “Elliott Pilcher, I presume,” I said affably. “I don’t suppose you want to talk here. Where shall we eat?”

  He grimaced. “Much as I hate the thought of breaking bread with you,” he intoned, “I suppose I ought to eat something. There’s a dairy restaurant up this way.” He turned on his heel and plunged into the crowd, walking swiftly in the direction of City Hall, leaving me to follow as best I could.

  The place was called the Dairy Planet, which gave me what I assumed would be the only laugh of the lunch hour. Inside it were aluminum-clad walls and traditional Jewish dishes—as if Molly Goldberg had been the cook aboard “Star Trek”’s Enterprise.

  If you ask me, too many people have seen the scene in Five Easy Pieces where Jack Nicholson dumps his lunch on the floor because the waitress won’t serve him what he wants. Elliott had obviously enjoyed that part.

  “… and some iced coffee.” He completed his order and folded the huge menu with a flourish.

  “It’s January,” the elderly waitress answered in a Bronx accent that could cut glass.

  “I didn’t ask you for the time,” Elliott replied with exaggerated patience, “I asked you for iced coffee.”

  “We don’t serve iced coffee in the winter,” the waitress replied. “We don’t have it made up.”

  “Let me make this easy for you,” Elliott persisted, going into his Nicholson impersonation. “You have coffee, right? And I presume you have ice as well? Good. Then a glass—you have glasses? Put the ice into the glass and pour coffee over it. Then bring it to me. Is that too hard for you, or do you think you can handle it?”

  The waitress pursed her lips but said nothing. I had the feeling she knew Elliott would make maximum trouble for her if she said another word. I would have liked to apologize, but I settled for giving my own order. Blintzes, red, white, and blue (cherry, cheese, and blueberry); a trip to the moon on gossamer wings.

  “You know,” I said when the waitress left, “all you’re going to get is coffee-flavored water. The hot coffee will melt the ice and weaken the coffee. That’s all she was trying to tell you, that there was no coffee already cooled.”

  “But I wanted iced coffee,” Elliott replied petulantly. “I don’t like stupid people telling me what I can’t have.” The stubborn look on his face reduced him to babyhood; I wondered if he would have held his breath had the conversation lasted another ten seconds.

  “What makes you think she’s stupid?” Having no handle on Elliott the employee, I decided to try for one on Elliott the person.

  He glanced disdainfully at the waitress, who was hauling a heavy tray to a table of Orthodox Jewish businessmen. “She works here, doesn’t she?” he sniggered. “Hardly a job for a mental giant.”

  “Intelligence is very important to you, then?” I asked noncommittally.

  Elliott smirked. “When I was eight years old,” he said, “I realized that I was smarter than everybody I knew—including my parents.”

  And you haven’t met anybody since? I thought it; I didn’t say it. Goading Elliott wasn’t the game plan at this point. I had him pegged now; Mama’s bright little boy all grown up and unable to accept the fact that a lot of people in the world had also been their mama’s bright little boys and girls. He still wanted to show the grown-ups he could tie his shoes all by himself. He still wanted the gold star and the big red A on top of his paper. It was a good bet that working for the City of New York as a faceless bureaucrat had not been the height of his ambition.

  “With your brains,” I said, hoping the soap wasn’t too obviously soft, “I’m surprised you stay in the public sector. There must be a lot more money in private enterprise for someone like you.”

  “Oh, I’ve thought about it,” he said airily. “But there are advantages to working for the government.”

  “I’m sure there are. Especially,” I added dryly, “if you’re working for Lessek at the same time.”

  I got a smug smile. “If those idiots I work with ever knew,” he gloated. “They think I’m a loser like them, putting in my time, kissing the boss’s ass, just waiting for my gold watch and pension.… If they knew,” he chuckled, savoring the thought.

  “If they knew, you’d be canned,” I cut in. “Which is why you killed Linda,” I said, finishing my onion roll.

  “A lot of good it would have done me if I had,” Elliott retorted sourly. “The blackmailer is dead; long live the blackmailer.”

  I had come to lunch fully intending to disabuse Elliott of the notion that I was Linda’s successor; now was not the time. “Face it, Elliott,” I said, “there are people smarter than you. I’m one of them
. Linda was another.”

  “Linda?” Elliott almost squeaked the name. “Smart? That little gum-snapping high-school dropout! That secretary! That mental as well as physical midget—”

  “That ‘mental midget’ had you dancing on her string like a puppet, Elliott,” I pointed out. “What do you call that, stupid? She gave the orders and you obeyed. She called the tune and you—”

  “Just because she had something on me, that makes her intelligent?”

  “Elliott,” I asked softly, teasingly, “how did she know?”

  I let him consider that proposition as the waitress deposited our lunch on the table. I couldn’t look at her, still conscious of Elliott’s tantrum, but he wasn’t embarrassed to ask for more apple sauce for his potato pancakes. We ate in silence; even the oppressive atmosphere at our table couldn’t dull my enjoyment of the heavenly blintzes. As I sipped my second cup of coffee, I said, “At the risk of repeating myself, Elliott, just how did little old dumb high-school dropout Linda Ritchie get the goods on brilliant Elliott Pilcher?”

  “Listening at keyholes, probably,” he sneered. “How smart do you have to be for that?”

  “In other words, you don’t know. Elliott”—again I went into a soft, insinuating tone—“don’t you think someone with real brains would have found out how she knew? Don’t you think a really clever man would have figured a way to get Linda off his back? It hardly takes a genius to pay up week after week, does it?”

  “I had plans,” he replied truculently. “I had ideas.”

  “Of course you did, Elliott,” I said in a soothing voice, calculated to drive him up the wall. “I’m sure you could have done something very smart—but only after you’d found the blackmail papers. Am I right?”

  He nodded.

  “Otherwise, she’d be dead, but you’d be in hot water.”

  “Right,” he agreed. “And then fate stepped in and made it all unnecessary.”

  “You mean, someone killed her.”

  “I mean, her husband killed her.”

  I shook my head, a teacher despairing of a pupil she’d thought was finally showing some brains. “No, Elliott, you don’t really believe that nonsense, do you? The police just arrested him as a smokescreen while they investigate the blackmail angle.”

  Elliott thought about it. His petulant face was screwed up with the effort. But he wasn’t as dumb as I’d hoped. He put his finger on the problem right away.

  “If the police know all this,” Elliott said suspiciously, “why haven’t they been to see me?”

  “They will, Elliott, they will,” I said confidently. “But you have nothing to lose by answering my question. Who killed Linda? I’m convinced her death was motivated by the blackmail, so which of her other victims got mad enough to do the job? If not you, how about your boss? How about Lessek?”

  “Let me tell you something, Miss Smartass.” Elliott pointed a shaking finger at me. “I don’t believe your phony story for a minute. If the cops knew what you said they knew, they’d be all over me. You’re pulling some cheap little hustle on your own, and I know it. But hear one thing, lady, you play this little game with Mr. Lessek and you’ll be sorry.”

  “Oh?” I raised my eyebrows. “Will he do to me what he did to Linda?”

  “He’s got ways of taking care of business,” Elliott bragged. He was like the fat kid at camp who taunts the others and then hides behind his best friend—the camp bully. I suddenly had a strong desire to meet Todd Lessek face-to-face. The prospect even reconciled me to paying the check after Elliott walked out, ostentatiously leaving me with it.

  I stopped in a plant store on the way back to the office. I bought a giant hanging fuchsia for Vince and Jenny Marchese, who were buying a co-op on Amity Street. I’d have to schedule my visit to Lessek around the formalities. I smiled at the thought; somehow I didn’t recall Philip Marlowe postponing an investigation in order to do a closing.

  10

  When I saw the red Ferrari, I knew I was in the right place. Amid the gray warehouses and deserted streets of Brooklyn’s waterfront, it shone like a rose. A neon sign, flashing “Lessek is here!”

  I looked up. The warehouse was a cast-iron beauty, all spindly columns and newly cleaned window panes. Perched on top of the building like a flashcube sat a little widow’s walk. Todd Lessek, King of the Waterfront, had appropriated it for his headquarters and raved to the newspapers about his spectacular skyline view of Manhattan. What he’d failed to add was that at street level all you saw were other warehouses—and, of course, Lessek’s Ferrari.

  The elevator was still the creaking, clanking freight job that had hauled sewing machines up to the small businesses that used to occupy the premises. I’d seen their faded logos in the lobby—Royal Baseball Cap Company, Pearl Ribbons and Trimmings, Del-Mar Sportswear. I wondered idly what had become of them, and of the people they’d employed for so many years.

  The building itself might have been put up in the 1880s, but Todd Lessek’s office was strictly 1980s. The elevator doors opened to reveal a high-tech paradise, with office supplies lined up neatly on open shelves, streamlined chrome chairs, black desk accessories; even the staplers had won design awards. The only thing of beauty was the panorama, visible on three sides, of Lower Manhattan, the bridges, and, finally, the Empire State and Chrysler buildings. When I could tear my eyes away, I had to admit I’d finally seen a justification for the aridity of high-tech. It was the only possible backdrop for that incredible view.

  There was something artificial about the place. It was like a movie set; the slim, glossy secretaries who bustled around bearing computer printouts were too perfect; the shrilling phones too insistent upon conveying an impression of high-powered real-estate deals conducted at breakneck speed. The young men who sat in shirtsleeves, phones cocked at an angle under their chins as they stirred coffee and doodled on notepads, were pure Central Casting. After a while, I got tired of watching the movie and drifted over to the lone wall, where a wash drawing of Lessek’s dream development occupied most of the available wall space.

  I identified the building I was in by its flashcube penthouse. It was evidently destined to become a shopping mall, with prestige stores, boutiques, and specialty shops. Next door, the windowless brick warehouse I’d passed on the way would emerge, suitably windowed, as a luxury co-op. The low-rise buildings nearer the river would house the sports complex. In the picture, well-dressed people walked along tree-lined streets (the secret of growing trees in cobblestones was not revealed) into the renovated warehouses. Colorful banners proclaimed the fanciful names Lessek had given the buildings. It was South Street Seaport by way of Faneuil Hall with a touch of Akron’s Quaker Square thrown in. A shopping mall for people who hate shopping malls.

  “Fantastic, isn’t it?” A voice as deep and rich as a David’s cookie sounded behind me. I turned to see Todd Lessek beaming at his proposed baby. “And it’ll be a reality by 1990—I guarantee it.”

  I decided against explaining that I wasn’t a potential investor; I got the feeling everyone from the garbage collector on up got the sales pitch. Lessek ushered me through the movie set to an oversized slab of ebony laid over heavy chrome struts. The effect was of an extremely elegant sawhorse. Lessek waved me to a chrome-and-velvet chair, and I sat down.

  “I’m not quite sure I understand,” he began smoothly, “just what it is you want, Ms. Jameson.”

  “Well, you know,” I answered conversationally, “I’m not sure I would have come if it hadn’t been for Elliott Pilcher’s mentioning your name.” I sat back to watch Lessek’s reaction to a name I was certain he didn’t want coupled with his.

  What I got was a slight puckering of the tanned forehead, a raising of the bush eyebrows. “Pilcher, Pilcher,” he murmured. “I meet so many people,” he said with a deprecating smile that reminded me of Tom Selleck, “and I’m ashamed to confess my memory for names is atrocious. It’s a terrible handicap for someone in my business. Just where”—he added the s
lightest touch of shrewdness narrowing his eyes—“did you come across this—Pilcher?”

  “Never mind that, Mr. Lessek,” I said crisply. “What’s really interesting about Pilcher is that when I had lunch with him and tried to ask him a few simple questions, he started threatening me, telling me all about what this friend of his would do to me if I didn’t lay off. His words,” I added with an apologetic smile.

  “And what does that have to do with me?”

  “You,” I replied, watching him carefully, “were the friend.”

  His laughter sounded almost genuine. “This Pilcher must have quite an imagination. I hope yours is a little less fanciful. You can get in a lot of trouble, believing everything you hear.”

  “That’s why I came here,” I said. “To see for myself.”

  “Did those questions you were asking,” he began, leaning back in his chair like one of the Central Casting minions, “have anything to do with the fact that you were Linda Ritchie’s lawyer?”

  “I should have known Elliott would make a complete report to his boss as soon as he left me,” I responded, hoping I sounded cooler than I was. I’d come expecting to put Lessek on the spot, not watch him do the same to me.

  “Oh, come now,” he answered, sounding genuinely annoyed. “Do you think I depend on the likes of Elliott to tell me what’s going on? I knew who you were from day one. What I don’t know is what you hope to gain by running around questioning everybody. If you want to pick up where Linda left off, just name your price and let me get back to work. I’ve got a multibillion-dollar project here.” The tone was affable in a superficial way, but there was a bite underneath that let me know he was serious. It was time to get down to cases.

  “I can’t help the timing,” I shot back. “I’m sure if she’d known it would inconvenience you, Linda would have gotten herself murdered some other time, but—”