Mystery Writers of America Presents the Prosecution Rests

by Inc. Mystery Writers of America

  There were three drawers, labeled Current, Successful, and Un. Current was packed full of what looked like a hundred yellow folders, organized alphabetically. City Hall, Corning, China Airlines, David’s Cleaners, Dixon’s Coffee Shop… and there it was, after a three-inch-thick McDonald’s file: Mega Office.

  I sat down and flipped through a chronological series of letters. The first was to the Mega store manager, informing him that the deliveryman, one Alfred Fratelli, had cursed Dad after Dad refused to accept the ream of conventional paper Fratelli had carried up three flights of stairs (Dad had ordered recycled). Dad asked for an apology. Mega manager apologized. Dad didn’t want an apology from Mega; he wanted Fratelli to apologize. Mega management wrote back that they would discipline Fratelli. Fratelli then wrote to Dad, a foul letter full of bad English and F words, which Dad copied and sent to Mega management. Two days later, Dad received another letter from Fratelli telling him he intended to cut off his nuts before he killed him. This time Dad sent a copy to the Mega CEO, asking for damages in the form of a contribution to the Humane Society spay and neuter program. The CEO replied that Fratelli had been fired and enclosed a copy of a check to the Humane Society for $10,000. Dad wrote a courteous letter of thanks. After that, there was nothing from Mega, but there were eight letters from Fratelli, describing what he intended to do to Dad. A graphic photo of a corpse was enclosed with the last letter. Then a copy of a police report Dad made, dated last week, and a background check on Fratelli that Benny ran for Dad on Friday. Fratelli had a long rap sheet, everything from simple assault to suspicion of murder. He also had a dozen domestic charges that were dropped by his common-law wife, Arlene Raposa. Dad had circled “Raposa” and put a question mark next to it.

  Crap, double crap. I reached for my tuna sandwich. The plate was empty. Jaws energetically washed his paws.

  The file burned in my hands. I am an officer of the court; nevertheless, family trumps ethics. The police would eventually get copies of the letters from Mega, anyway. I put the file in my purse on the floor next to my chair.

  And then it occurred to me that investigators would be all over this place like Jaws on a sandwich. The prosecutor would offer all of Dad’s dispute files as proof of his extreme combative nature, which they would claim had escalated to murder. But if all the files were gone…

  I opened Dad’s living-room closet, hauled out the water purification system, iodine tablets, and solar radios, and there it was, Dad’s collapsible handcart. I took off my business-suit jacket and tried to load the files directly onto the handcart. They slid off. I found green (environmental, not the color) garbage bags, stuffed in the files, and tied the first load to the handcart. I rolled it out onto the landing. Fudge crap, if I bumped it down the stairs, someone was bound to wake up. I carefully lifted the cart and set it down on each descending step. Forty-four, including the stairs that led to the basement, where Dad had a storage locker. There the files would be safe.

  But would they? A subpoena would include the locker. I dragged the handcart back up the stairs and out the door. I wheeled the first bag halfway down the block and hid it under a pile of a neighbor’s garbage, which would be picked up at dawn. Four loads later, my DKNY blouse was soaked with sweat. My arms ached. I rolled the handcart back into the apartment and realized that the file cabinet stood empty. Anyone who searched the apartment would know that the files it held were missing. It had to go.

  I wrapped each drawer, plus the frame, in blankets, loaded them onto the handcart, and hauled them out onto the street. The final load with the empty cabinet frame nearly did me in. Plus, it ripped my blouse. I could hardly make it up the stairs and back into the apartment. Water. Water. I needed water.

  I was standing at the sink when I heard a key in the front door lock. What the hell? I grabbed a kitchen knife.

  A short, compact woman with shiny black hair dressed in a pink jogging suit and carrying a matching pink bag tiptoed into the living room.

  I came out of the kitchen with my knife. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Maria López. Who the hell are you?”

  “His daughter.” I lowered my knife. “What the fudging crap are you doing here? And why do you have a key?”

  She looked around the living room. “Where’s the file cabinet?”

  “What file cabinet?”

  “The one that was here last night, the one full of disputes, including his dispute with Mega Office, whose deliveryman is de nada. I need that folder.”

  “The file cabinet’s gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “Bye-bye. Aloha. Adios.” I set the knife down on the side table next to the empty tuna sandwich plate. “I can’t say any more.”

  It took her five seconds to get the picture. “Did you, ah, get a chance to take a look at the Mega file before it, ah, disappeared?”

  I don’t know why I lied. “No.”

  “Too bad,” she said. “If your dad didn’t do it, someone else did. There might be something in that file that would give us a clue who killed Fratelli.” She looked at me.

  I felt like I was in a Dashiell Hammett novel. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “Change your clothes. I’ll make us some Yerba Maté.” God, she was bossy.

  ____

  BY THE TIME I’d changed to jeans and a sweatshirt, Maria had set my cup of tea on the table next to the chair. The empty tuna sandwich plate and kitchen knife were gone.

  “You didn’t have to clean up,” I said.

  “De nada,” she said. She lifted her cup of Maté. “My folks are from Peru. I drank this growing up.”

  Evidently Maria was close enough to Dad to keep her stash of Yerba Maté in Dad’s kitchen. Dad, Dad, Dad. I sighed. “Dad’s not guilty.”

  “Of course not,” she said. She sipped. “He talks a lot about you and the cat. I thought you were clerking.”

  “Benny called me.” I sipped. The tea was four times stronger than what I’d made. I tried not to gag. “I came on the first flight.”

  “Pay full fare for walk-up ticket?” I nodded. “Bastards,” she said. “They always nail the walk-ups.”

  “One of Dad’s complaints.”

  She leaned forward. “Don’t you ever get tired of your dad’s disputes? I do.”

  “Dad is what he is.” Outside the window, I could see the sky getting lighter. Fatigue washed over me.

  Maria stuck out her hand. Her grip was strong; her hands callused. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours, drive you to the station. Get some sleep.”

  ____

  THE 87TH WAS a cinder-block building circa 1950. The green asbestos linoleum was cracked and gouged, waiting for a class-action lawsuit. It smelled like piss and French fries. Maria seemed to know the desk sergeant.

  “Hey, Paco,” she said. “What’s the Fratelli situation?”

  “We charged him. Murder two,” he said. “Arraignment at eleven.”

  “This is the daughter,” Maria said. “She needs to see him.”

  “Attorneys only,” he said.

  I flashed my New York Bar Association card. “I’m an attorney.”

  “I’ll put the old man in a room,” he said. He looked at my handbag. “You can’t take that in there,” he said. “Gimme.”

  Maria started to follow. He turned to her. “You can’t come.”

  She flipped him the bird, then turned to me. “Tell him I need to be there.”

  “Actually, it’s best if you don’t,” I said. “Whatever he says isn’t privileged if you’re there.”

  ____

  MY DAD, THE prisoner, had traded in his shorts for an orange jumpsuit. He looked depressed. I gave him a hug.

  “I told Maria not to call you,” he said. “She’s getting on my nerves.”

  “It was Benny who called me,” I said. “He’s going to arrange bail.”

  “I don’t want bail. I was falsely arrested. I didn’t do it. They have no right to arrest an innocent man. I’m not go
ing anywhere. I’m staying right here until they apologize and let me go.”

  “Dad, I want you out of here,” I said.

  “I’m making a statement on behalf of innocent prisoners everywhere.”

  It was pointless to argue. “Tell me what happened.”

  “Well, it’s actually quite simple,” he said. “It started when I ordered recycled paper from Mega Office.”

  I cut him off at the pass. “I read the file,” I said. “Get to yesterday.”

  ____

  DAD HAD ACTUALLY been working on the phone trying to figure a work-around for his company’s defective chip that had already been installed in a million cell phones. He was just saying good-bye when call waiting buzzed. He toggled to the incoming call.

  It was a woman who said she was Mrs. Fratelli. She was crying. She said her life had been hell since her husband had started acting like a jackass. She told her husband she was leaving him unless he apologized to Dad. Her husband finally agreed. She’d fixed spaghetti Bolognese. Would Dad come to lunch and they could sit down, just the three of them, and talk it through? Make things right. Dad agreed and offered to bring an Italian Barolo. Come right over, she said, 314 Carroll Street, apartment A.

  I was incredulous. “It didn’t seem odd to you that someone whose husband sent you a picture of a corpse now wanted to sit down over spaghetti and apologize?”

  “No. It was the right thing for him to do.

  “I bought the Barolo and called a car service.” When he got there, a yellow sticky note on the buzzer box said Out of Order. Come in. The door was wedged open with grocery fliers. Dad went in, found apartment A, and knocked. The door opened. “The next thing I knew, I was laying on the floor with a gun in my hand, next to a dead man.”

  “How did you know he was dead?”

  “The top of his head was gone,” he said. “I ran out to get help. I was on the stoop when a police car rolled up. They pointed their guns and told me to drop the gun and get down on the ground. I didn’t even know I’d carried the gun out. I did what they said. They handcuffed me, and here I am. Oh, and they charged me with second-degree murder.”

  I held up my hand before he could rattle off the flash-card definition of second-degree murder. “When the door opened, did you see anything?”

  “No.”

  “When you ran out, was the yellow sticky note still on the buzzer box?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You have a mind like a steel trap. It’s there somewhere, memorized.”

  He closed his eyes for thirty seconds. Opened them. “No,” he said. “No yellow sticky note.”

  ____

  I TOLD DAD I’d see him at arraignment. I was walking down the hall when my cell phone rang. It was Jessica.

  “Got your text message,” she said. “You know Dixon’s? Across from the courthouse, three doors down from my dad’s office?” Dixon’s. Wasn’t that one of Dad’s files? “Meet you there in fifteen.”

  “Let’s get a bite to eat,” Maria said as we walked back to her car. I shook my head. “I’m meeting Jessica,” I said. “She’s going to represent Dad at arraignment.”

  “I thought you were representing him.”

  “I work for a federal appeals judge,” I said. “I can’t represent clients, give advice, or practice law while I’m clerking. Nothing remotely related. I could lose my license.”

  “And we don’t want that, do we?” She beep-beeped her key ring. “Well, between Jessica and me, we’ll get him off.”

  I slid into the passenger seat. “Maria, I appreciate your affection for Dad, and your eagerness to vindicate him, but you can’t be involved in these meetings or the prosecution can subpoena you and make you tell what was said.”

  Maria was silent all the way to the coffee shop.

  “See you in a few minutes, at arraignment,” I said. She did not answer. I closed the door. She drove away.

  I downed three cups of coffee while waiting for Jessica. She rushed in, ordered more coffee. I briefed her while she drank. She looked at her watch.

  “The arraignment is in two minutes.” She waved frantically for more coffee.

  “By the way,” I said, “Dixon’s seems like a nice enough little shop.”

  “One of your dad’s favorites.”

  I pondered that while we rushed across the street to the courthouse. On the steps she stopped. “I need to see the Mega file,” she said.

  I reached into my bag.

  The file was gone.

  ____

  DAD ACTUALLY LOOKED cheerful when the bailiff led him in. Jessica had to explain three times to the judge that her client wanted remand. No bail. Dad flashed a V-for-Victory sign when they led him away.

  Benny, in the front row, was the one who looked depressed. “First time I ever met anyone who refused bail,” he said.

  “It’s a statement,” I said.

  “He’s better off there while we sort this out,” Jessica said. She turned to me. “Drinks at six? Blue Fin?”

  “I heard the beers there are fifteen bucks a pop,” Benny said. “Can I come?”

  Jessica kissed him on the cheek. “No, Dad,” she said. “I’ll take you for pizza and beer at Sponzini’s on Saturday night. Besides, we’re going to talk about you.”

  ____

  JESSICA RUSHED OFF to a meeting. I hailed a taxi. “Prospect Heights,” I said.

  I thought about the missing file. I’d put it into my bag last night in the living room. Maria could have taken it while I was changing. But why? On the other hand, Paco at the 87th had had my purse while I was visiting Dad.

  “Changed my mind,” I said to the driver. “Eighty-seventh Precinct.”

  Paco was at the front desk, eating French fries.

  I pounded the cracked marble top. “Did you take something out of my handbag?”

  “What?”

  “This morning. You take something out of my bag while you were holding it?”

  “You accusing me of stealing?” He stood up. French fries sprinkled the floor.

  “It was either you or Maria,” I said.

  “Vote for Maria,” Paco said. “She’s a real piece of work. Her whole family is.”

  ____

  I THOUGHT ABOUT what he’d said all the way back to the apartment. Jaws yowled for breakfast. I went into the kitchen and fried up a half-dozen free-range eggs. I scraped two into Jaws’s dish and ate four. He turned up his nose and left the room.

  “Eat that or die,” I said. I looked around the kitchen. Something wasn’t right. Something was different. I looked around again.

  The shelf that held the Yerba Maté was empty. What the crap was going on?

  I looked through the rest of the house. Everything seemed normal, except for the yellow sticky note on Dad’s pillow, next to a key.

  I can’t take these disputes no more. Good-bye. Nice welcome-home present; Dad was going to love this—if he ever came home.

  There was pounding on the door. “Police,” someone shouted. “Open up.”

  I put the note in my pocket and opened the door. A uniformed officer stood beside some bozo in a wrinkled suit, who handed me something blue and folded with his right hand and flashed a badge with his left. “Search warrant,” Wrinkled Suit said. “We’re looking for a specific file that was in your father’s possession. It’s evidence in a homicide investigation.”

  “What file?”

  Another officer came out of my old bedroom waving the Mega file. “In her suitcase.” He handed it to Wrinkled Suit.

  “What have we got here?” Wrinkled Suit said.

  “No way,” I said. “The suitcase is my property. This warrant doesn’t cover my property.”

  “Tell it to the judge.” Wrinkled Suit pointed to the door. “Come on.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then I’ll pass.”

  “We’ll be back,” he said. He and his boys filed out of the apartment, leaving the door ope
n.

  “I can hardly wait,” I shouted, and slammed the door shut. What the brimstone crap was going on?

  Maria. It had to be Maria. For whatever reason, she’d taken the file last night and put it in the suitcase this morning when she came to collect her Yerba Maté. Why?

  And then I thought of the yellow sticky notes, on the pillow and on the buzzer box. I had a bad feeling. Panic would be more like it. I had to get out of the apartment before they came back with a warrant and I found myself sitting in the cell next to Dad.

  I was down one flight of stairs before it occurred to me that Wrinkled Suit may have left someone in front of the apartment to make sure I didn’t leave. I went back inside. Jaws looked perplexed as I climbed out the kitchen window onto the fire escape.

  “Eat your eggs,” I said. I climbed down the ladder like I’d done a hundred times before, sneaking out to see a boyfriend Dad didn’t like. I hot-footed it through the backyard, through to Sterling. I walked to Flatbush, ducked into RastaMan, bought a Jamaican patty, and ate it while I called Benny.

  “Benny? Exactly what do you know about Maria López?”

  “Bossy.” He paused. “Come to think of it, I don’t know much about her, except that your dad liked her.”

  “Can you run a background check on her?” I told him about the file, Wrinkled Suit, the sticky note.

  There was a long silence. Then he whistled. “Come to the office.”

  I didn’t know how smart or motivated Wrinkled Suit was. “Make it Dixon’s.”

  ____

  I HOPPED A bus down Flatbush, got out at the Fulton Mall, and headed toward the court complex. I passed a Conway display of hoodies for $5. I bought a navy blue and a pair of baggy matching sweatpants. I paid, had the clerk cut the tags, and pulled them on over my own jeans and sweatshirt in the store.

  Benny didn’t comment on the hoodie. He had a big crap-eating grin on his face when he handed me two folded papers.

  I looked at Maria’s sheet. Bad credit, some unpaid credit cards. Married and divorced from Raymond López. Maiden name: Raposa.

  “Raposa,” I said out loud. I handed Fratelli’s rap sheet to Benny and tapped the name of his common-law wife: Arlene Raposa.

  “Bingo,” Benny said. “I’ll track down Maria’s and Arlene’s current addresses.”