Cook's Night Out

by Joanne Pence

  He walked with an easy, loose-limbed swagger, and had combed his hair so that the front flopped onto his forehead. What was funny about this, he thought, was how little disguised he truly was. He had grown up on these streets, dressed much like this. At times, it seemed that dressing up each day to play Mr. Homicide Inspector was the disguise and this was his reality…or should have been.

  He stopped at an alleyway just outside a dive called El Torero. Slowly, he lifted a cigarette from his shirt pocket and, taking his sweet time, lit it.

  He paid no attention to the cigarette, though. The few people on the street continued on their way without a backward glance at him, no car drove by more than once, and there wasn’t the least flutter in the curtains and shades covering the windows above the streetlevel shops.

  He took a couple more drags of the cigarette, then let himself be swallowed up by the darkness of the alley.

  Leaning against a cobblestone wall and facing the street, he waited. The wait wasn’t very long.

  “Hey, my man,” a voice said.

  Paavo dropped the cigarette, crushed it out, and glanced back. A youthful black man stood behind him, nervously bouncing from one foot to the other.

  “Glad you made it, Snake Belly,” Paavo said.

  “I always do. Smooth, slick, and deadly, that’s me,” he said, his voice vibrating in rhythm with his feet. “So, what you need me for, big man?”

  A couple of years ago Paavo had worked hard to prove that Snake Belly, aka Jerome Walker, was innocent after some so-called friends set him up to be the fall guy for killing a rival gang member. The real killers went to jail, and Snake Belly, hardly a model citizen himself, promised to help Paavo whenever he could. It didn’t do either man’s reputation any good to let others know about their little deal, however.

  Paavo stepped to the side so that, like Snake Belly, he could keep a sharp eye on the alley’s entrance. “Something’s going on in the city, and it’s causing trouble—deaths. It involves gambling.”

  “So what else is new?” Snake Belly was clearly unimpressed.

  “In particular, numbers.”

  “Ah, yes.” His bored expression changed completely and a wry smiled appeared. “Now I’m beginning to comprehend, my good man. Yes, sir. There is some mean shit going on there. You got that right.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Nobody’s saying nothing. Leastways, not yet. But some big money is on the street, probably Vegas money. And all of a sudden numbers is hot.”

  “Who’s behind the Vegas money?” Paavo asked. “The mob?”

  “Don’t seem to be. The mob would be smoother, more connected, you know? Whoever this is, they’re making waves. Some bad waves, too. They’re some real bad dudes.”

  Paavo handed him two twenties. “See what you can find out. Two nights? Same place?”

  “I’ll be here,” Snake responded.

  Snake Belly left and Paavo was alone. Suddenly he was walking down Third Street again, Ray-Bans shielding his eyes, a cocky sway to his step, and an attitude that said keep clear.

  The next afternoon at the mission, Angie assisted the volunteer in charge of Auction Central, Mary Ellen Hitchcock. An apple-faced, brown-haired woman, with little makeup and frumpy albeit expensive clothes, Mary Ellen was in her thirties, with two children in private school, and on her second husband—this one a lawyer, instead of the schmuck doctor, as she called him, whom she’d been married to the first time around.

  Mary Ellen confessed to Angie that once upon a time she had spent her days like a lost soul, volunteering time and services at one charitable organization after another. Then one day, after picking up her prescription for Prozac (which she’d grown to rely on more and more), she walked out of the drugstore and bumped into Reverend Hodge. They began talking, and he invited her to come to the mission to help. Now she worked here exclusively, and as often as she could. She didn’t need medication any longer, not even an aspirin.

  There was something about the reverend, she said, that just made you want to help him. “How could you not trust a face like his?”

  Mary Ellen showed Angie how to log in donations and give the donor a receipt with the highest possible donation value shown on it for tax deduction purposes.

  Angie watched more than one donor’s face light up when someone would bring in, for example, a Waterford bud vase that the giver valued at three hundred dollars and Mary Ellen would cry out, “You’re too modest. This is worth at least four hundred. Let’s make it four-fifty to be safe.”

  A fifty percent increase was the norm.

  “I can’t get over the quality of the items that have been donated,” Angie said.

  “This is nothing. Take a look in the back room.”

  Angie opened the door to the room. “Oh, my God!” She walked up to a dress hanging on a rack. “This is an original Dior. From the sixties, I’d say. A classic. It’s worth more today than it cost originally.” She held up the short, glittery black dress with a pouf of netting flaring out from about midthigh to knee. “Though I’m not sure anyone would wear it. Maybe a museum will want it? Or a vintage clothier?”

  “You’ve got a good eye, Angie,” Mary Ellen said, following her into the room. “Excellent, in fact. Here, you’ll appreciate this. A ruby necklace once worn by Elizabeth Taylor.”

  “You’re kidding!” Angie hung up the dress and took the necklace. She studied it. “If Liz wore it, she was wearing red glass.”

  “Very good!” Mary Ellen cried. “Actually, she once owned the real one, and this was just a paste job to fool thieves. Here’s a photo of La Taylor with the necklace. The souvenir value should make it worth several hundred dollars, perhaps more.”

  “These are real,” Angie said, lifting up one Rolex watch after another. Five watches lay in a cardboard box sitting on a two-shelf bookcase.

  “Yes. We’ll have to find a decent way to display them. But Angie, here’s a photo of our pièce de resistance.” She handed Angie a snapshot of a Picasso charcoal sketch of a woman holding a guitar.

  Angie’s breath caught. “Is it genuine?”

  “Quite. He did many studies of this model. Not all are in museums. Reverend Hodge has it safely hidden away somewhere or I’d show it to you. This was an early study, but still, we expect this work might go for as much as a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “My God!”

  “We have vintage wines, antique vases including a Ming, furs, jewelry. If people are feeling generous, we might bring in close to a million dollars.”

  Angie was speechless.

  “It’s going to be an outstanding auction, Angie. I can’t tell you how happy I am to be a part of it. Sheila Chatsworth and I have carried most of the responsibilities. She might seem a bit pompous, but she’s got a good heart and she can really get people to come through with huge donations. She’d grown a bit too friendly with the cook’s sherry before meeting the reverend. Then, suddenly, she quit—cold turkey.”

  “Good for her.”

  “Isn’t it? The other volunteers tend to come and go at will. We can’t count on them too much, but you seem different. You’re a take-charge person.”

  “I try to help.”

  “You do. I hope you too will come to feel truly blessed,” Mary Ellen continued, “to work for the reverend and his benefactor.”

  Angie had wondered about the mysterious benefactor. “The reverend mentioned that someone had given him money to start up the mission, but he didn’t say any more about the man….” Her voice trailed off in hopes of encouraging Mary Ellen to fill her in.

  Not much encouragement was needed. “He’s incredibly sexy. And mysterious!” Mary Ellen said as she stepped back into the main room. “Even though he lives right upstairs, we rarely see him. But if you ever do see him, you’ll know it. He’s got a stare that’s to die for.”

  “The reverend’s benefactor is sexy?” Angie could scarcely imagine such a thing. “I expected him to be some rich old gentleman.”
<
br />   “Odd, isn’t it?” Mary Ellen mused. “Two men opposite in every way. They met in Las Vegas and Reverend Hodge apparently saved the man’s soul.”

  “Las Vegas? Don’t you mean Minnesota?”

  “Believe me, he is not a Minnesota-type guy.” She breathed deeply. “He has the look of a man who needed saving. Oh, dear, look at the time! I’ve got to go over to the café and help serve the lunch crowd.”

  Angie’s head was swimming. “You work next door as well as volunteer here?”

  “I volunteer there, too. The mission gets a cut of the profits.”

  As Angie watched Mary Ellen—she always thought of jams and jellies—head for the café, she realized she was quite curious about the mysterious, sexy benefactor—and the fact that despite all this talk about charity and good deeds, she still hadn’t seen a single needy person at the mission.

  Paavo sat down at Joe Nablonski’s desk. Years ago, they’d been patrol cops together at the Richmond station. Nablonski had always wanted to be a homicide inspector. The top dogs in the Bureau of Inspection, homicide inspectors were the highest level of inspector, the position the best and the brightest aspired to—and once in a while made. Nablonski did all he could in Vice to show Homicide he was ready to join them.

  “I’m trying to find out about numbers running in the city,” Paavo said after all the usual how-ya-doing’s were dispensed with.

  “Numbers?” Joe sat back in his chair, his hands folded across his large stomach. “Funny you should ask.”

  “Is it?”

  “We never had numbers in this city worth speaking of—it was always strictly East Coast stuff—until recently. All of a sudden, we’re up to our eyeballs in it. We even busted a mom-and-pop grocery for gambling. Not that we went looking for them. They put a sign in the window, advertising. Would you believe it? They thought since the state lotto was legal, a private lotto was okay, too. We look the other way sometimes, but you can’t let them rub your face in it.”

  Paavo leaned forward. “You’re saying numbers is being played, but no one cares much? Is that it?”

  “What I’m saying is, sometimes we leave it alone. Like, few things give a vice squad a black eye faster than busting a poker game at a senior citizens center, you know?”

  He knew. He’d seen it done and had winced along with everyone else.

  “But we’re not sure what’s going on with numbers in the city,” Joe continued. “A couple old-time bookies are missing. We heard they both started running numbers and then—pfft—they’re gone. Nobody even admits to knowing them. Then, you know, Patrick Devlin was killed, and it looked like a professional hit. I think everybody’s scared. But I don’t know exactly why.”

  “What leads do you have?”

  Joe stared out the grimy office window, his lips working silently, as if his next word was the last thing he wanted to admit. Finally he answered, “None.”

  Paavo showed no reaction, but Joe hurriedly explained anyway. “I’m not giving up. We’re still looking. Something’s got to break. Things are out of kilter. People are nervous. It won’t stay like this for long. Something—someone—will snap. I just hope when it happens, it doesn’t take too many with it.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  On Twenty-fifth Avenue just past Clement, patrol cars with flashing lights blocked the street, and cops on foot kept away passersby.

  As Paavo and Yosh approached, they could see the victim slumped over the steering wheel of his green Jeep Cherokee, blood and torn flesh where his face should have been. The driver’s-side window had been shattered.

  “Do we know who he is?” Paavo asked Officer Lorraine Fong after introducing himself.

  “The people who live around here,” Fong replied, “all say the dead man is Dennis O’Leary, owner of the pub on the corner, A Kiss of the Blarney.”

  “Any witnesses?” Yosh asked.

  “Those folks sitting on the doorstep saw it.” Fong pointed at a middle-aged couple. “They said it was a drive-by.”

  “Thanks,” Paavo said. “We’ll talk to them.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out here.” Yosh put on his latex gloves. He tried to open the car door, but it was locked. “Great start.” He pulled a jimmy out of the small satchel he carried—crime scene bag of tricks, he called it. In two seconds, he popped the door lock.

  A wallet and registration showed the victim to be O’Leary. Yosh went through the car’s glove compartment and the victim’s pockets while Paavo took a statement from the witnesses. The husband and wife had an apartment over the pub and had been eating breakfast by the window when they saw O’Leary pull into the parking space. Seconds later, a full-size beige Chevy sedan pulled alongside. They heard a loud bang, then the Chevy sped away. They told themselves it was a backfire, but both ran downstairs to see if O’Leary was all right. He wasn’t.

  As Paavo finished obtaining the statement the coroner’s team arrived. “Grab O’Leary’s keys, Yosh,” Paavo said. “We may as well go inside the pub and see what we can learn in there.”

  They entered a pub filled with knickknacks and wall plaques extolling the virtues of Ireland. The two walked around, checking all the little treasures in the room, their steps echoing in the large empty space. The hollow aura of death surrounded them.

  “Darts, sad Irish ballads, and drinking songs,” Yosh said. “I wish I’d known about this place earlier. It looks like it would have been fun to come here.” He stopped in front of a menu tacked on the wall. “Corned beef and cabbage twice a week. Plenty of Guinness. What more could you ask for?”

  “A live owner,” Paavo said.

  “You’re a laugh a minute, partner,” Yosh said with a shake of his head. “So, what does it look like to you?”

  “Personal. The guy was hit right outside his business. What else could it be?”

  “One other possibility to keep in mind these days.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Bad luck.”

  Paavo’s attention became fixed on a stack of hand towels by the cash register. He’d noticed them earlier, as well as the ones by the sink. Towels beside a sink made sense, but why next to a cash register? He lifted up the cash register stack and beneath them found some papers with rows and rows of columns with numbers and initials.

  “I don’t believe it,” he muttered.

  Yosh walked over to see what was in Paavo’s hand. “Shoot. Don’t tell me Dennis O’Leary was involved in numbers running, too. Just like the liquor store owner and that guy Calderon and Bo found with your phone number.”

  “Right,” Paavo said. “Patrick Devlin, Haram Sayir, and now O’Leary. I wonder if they knew each other.”

  Yosh wasn’t really listening. “Numbers…used to be called ‘policy’ back East, I understand. It’s like a throwback to the old days,” he reminisced. “Baby-face Nelson, guys like that. Did you know he was gunned down while—”

  “What the hell?” Paavo shouted.

  Yosh stared at his partner in shock. Paavo never shouted. “What’s wrong?”

  He didn’t…couldn’t…speak. He simply picked up a list of names under the numbers tally sheets and pointed to the last name on the list. Paavo Smith.

  “I hate to have to talk to you about this, Smith.”

  Paavo knew it was serious from the minute he walked into Lieutenant Hollins’s office and saw that he’d taken the cigar out of his mouth. Hollins never lit it in the office—the city’s no-smoking ordinances didn’t allow it. But he chewed, sucked, licked, and did everything just this side of obscene with a stogie in anticipation of lighting up. Watching Hollins, Paavo finally understood the old saw “A woman’s just a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.”

  Now, though, the cigar was out of sight, and Hollins—round-faced, balding, gray hair, intense hazel eyes—sat up straight and faced Paavo. “Have a seat,” he commanded.

  “Yes, sir,” Paavo said.

  “Will you explain to me what’s going on?”

  “I wish I c
ould, Chief.”

  “Do you know any of these gamblers who seem to have your name and phone number?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Any idea why your name keeps turning up?”

  “None.”

  “What did your investigations show?”

  “I’ve been investigating from two angles—internally, to figure out what happened to Peewee Clayton’s evidence, and externally, to figure out what’s going on with all the dead numbers runners. Clayton was my case, and everybody knows he was involved in gambling; now some numbers runners have my name. I assume the two are connected.”

  “But how?”

  “I don’t know yet. In particular, I can’t figure out why Clayton, who’s a small-time lowlife if ever I saw one, has the clout to be involved in so much activity.

  “That aside,” Paavo continued, “looking at our internal security here at the Hall, I found some problems. The bottom line is, if you don’t check up on what your people are doing at least once in a while, the best of them, even cops, will start to develop shortcuts, start to grow lax in little ways; that could easily add up to a major lapse of security.”

  Hollins nodded. “We used to do security reviews all the time. Not only in the Bureau of Investigations, but throughout all the departments. Throughout the Hall, in fact. But no more. The damn budget’s so tight we can’t even do what we need to, let alone what we should. But it shows that we’d better move security back onto the need-to-do list.”

  “Someone did a good job planning the switch, and had to be plenty patient besides,” Paavo said. “From all appearances, it was done by someone who knows the inner workings of the Hall. But who it was, I have no idea yet.”

  “And what about your external investigation?”

  Paavo shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “I need an explanation, Smith, and I need it soon,” Hollins warned. “Too many people are asking too many questions.”

  “I know.”

  “You understand what it could lead to if we don’t have any answers.”