No Pain, No Gaine

by Edwina Franklin

  “You used your investigative skills, Alessandra, as I should have expected you to do. Please don’t apologize for that.”

  He said this in such a calm, reasonable voice that for an instant she had the urge to smack him. Why had she bothered to say anything? she wondered. How was it that nothing she did seemed to be able to touch him inside, and virtually everything he did sent her into emotional paroxysms?

  The car was sitting in the sun. Even with the windows rolled down, it was hot as the desert inside. As she impatiently shifted position, Sandy could feel her blouse clinging damply to her back.

  “All right, here’s the situation,” Gaine went on. “So far we have evidence that you’ve been targeted by two individuals. The second one, in spite of my wishful conjecturing just now, is probably Mr. Vanish. As for the first one, if I didn’t know better, I’d guess that you must have ruffled some feathers when you wrote about the James and Parmentier murders. I don’t really see how you could have, though, since the details of those crimes never made it into the published article and you didn’t go digging for your information. You told me you got your facts from a source who sought you out, right?”

  Reluctantly, she shook her head. “I didn’t have to dig, but I did have to corroborate, Sergeant. Paul is a stickler for that—two independent sources per published fact. I talked to a number of people who were mentioned as witnesses in each case.”

  “You spoke to witnesses?” Gaine straightened in his seat as though a puppeteer had yanked a string attached to the back of his neck. Pulling a spiral notepad out of his shirt pocket, he flipped to a blank page and demanded, “Who were they, Alessandra? I want names. The Parmentier case first, then the James case.”

  Sandy hesitated a moment, then came to a decision. They were partners in an investigation. If they were to make any progress at all, she would have to cooperate to the fullest extent permitted by her professional code.

  “I’ll give you more than that, Sergeant,” she told him. “I’ll make you a copy of all the information my source gave me and deliver it to Investigative Services as soon as I can. Bert saw a connection between the Parmentier case and Mr. Vanish, and that phone call I received Sunday night seems to confirm it. So whether you want me to be or not, I guess I’m involved in your murder investigation. Why are you staring at me like that?”

  His lips curved briefly upward and his eyes glinted with amusement as he said, “I’m trying to decide whether you’re incredibly brave or incredibly foolish. What we’re doing now represents quite a stretch for someone whose most dangerous story of the past six years concerned the hazards of inhaling fumes from certain kinds of furniture polishes.”

  Her eyes widened. “You’ve been checking up on me,” she exclaimed.

  “Just curious about my new partner. I’ve been wondering what quirk in your character to blame for the spot you’re in right now. Is there a gene for risk taking? Was Evel Knievel your biological father, by some chance?”

  Involuntarily, she smiled. “I could ask you the same question,” she pointed out. “What makes a man want to put his life on the line tracking down killers?”

  “Homicide isn’t that dangerous, Alessandra. By the time they call us in, the excitement is usually over. Believe it or not, I’m more at risk of getting a hernia from carrying around all the paperwork than I am of getting shot or stabbed,” he said.

  “I’ll bet your family is happy about that.”

  He shrugged uncomfortably inside his suit jacket. “I don’t have a family. My wife and I were divorced a couple of years ago.”

  Sandy immediately felt foolish. “I’m sorry, Sergeant. I didn’t mean to stir up unpleas—”

  Suddenly there was a hiss of static as a radio that Sandy hadn’t noticed before came on. “Sergeant Gaine, call Dispatch,” said a woman’s flat, nasal voice, slicing through their privacy like a dull knife. At the same instant, an insistent beeping sound began emanating from one of Gaine’s pockets. With a muttered curse, he pulled the paging device out and silenced it.

  “I’ll have to call in,” he told her. “Buckle up. There’s a pay phone at the gas station on the next block.”

  It had to be an urgent call for them to be summoning him on both the radio and the pager, Sandy thought, and the grim expression on Gaine’s face as he hung up the receiver and returned to the car confirmed her suspicion.

  “There’s been a murder,” she said softly.

  He nodded. “Someone found a body behind the Lucky Shot Video Arcade.”

  Sandy could feel the color drain out of her face. “Do they know who it is?”

  “Not yet. We just got the call. I’ll drop you off at the magazine first—or would you rather go home?”

  “What? No, I’m staying with you.”

  He made an exasperated sound. “Alessandra, it’s the Parmentier case you’re helping with, remember?”

  “Sergeant, please! My Uncle Hugo manages the Lucky Shot Video Arcade. He’s old and he’s not well. He could even be—” Unable to bring herself to say the word, she turned beseeching eyes toward him.

  Gaine had gone a little pale himself. “Your uncle? Good grief, maybe there is a gene that attracts trouble. All right, Alessandra, by all means. Accompany me. I’ll get a constable to drive you back to work later. Or home. Wherever.”

  It was just half-past noon, but the alley behind the Lucky Shot was dim and, without the canned rock music blaring through all the doors of the arcade, eerily quiet.

  Gaine’s car pulled to a stop across the south end of the alleyway. As Sandy swung herself out of the front seat, she saw two other police cars, both marked, their lights flashing, and a dozen or more curious onlookers—none of them her uncle—crowding the waist-high police barriers that blocked off the scene of the crime. Quickly she glanced around, fear for Hugo lodging in her chest like a heavy stone.

  “This officer will drive you back,” said Gaine, as a grave-faced young constable separated himself from the others and came to stand quietly at Sandy’s right elbow. Then, with scarcely a glance at either of them, the sergeant stepped through to join his partner.

  Altogether, Sandy saw three uniformed officers and the two plainclothes detectives inside the restricted area. They were conducting a close search of the alley, poking around in the tall grass that hugged the chain-link fence on the east side, carefully examining the area behind and around the large green garbage bin, and apparently ignoring the murder victim, who lay sprawled against a thicket of weeds at the far end of the alley and had—dio grazie!—dark hair instead of white.

  Sandy shivered with relief as her worst fear was laid to rest. Uncle Hugo wasn’t the murder victim. But he also wasn’t among the spectators hanging over the police barriers. Where could he be?

  Turning, she uttered a startled gasp as she bumped into the young constable who had been standing silently just behind her. “Do you have to shadow me like that?” she asked impatiently.

  “I’m afraid so, Miss,” he replied.

  “Once I’ve found my uncle, I’ll let you drive me to work, honest,” she assured him. “I’m not going to sneak away and take the subway instead.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss, but I have orders from Sergeant Gaine.”

  Sandy shot an exasperated look in the sergeant’s direction. Suddenly her eyes were drawn back to the murder victim. There was something familiar about that hair, about the shape of the head… She leaned sideways a little, for a better look.

  It was Vito. Somebody had murdered Vito.

  And Tommy had run away from home. Dio, she’d been so wrapped up in her own problems that it hadn’t even occurred to her…! Sandy whirled blindly and pushed her way past the startled constable, through the crowd and onto the street. Hugo had to be inside the arcade. He had to. He wasn’t a well man. He was probably lying down. As she ran toward the nearest doorway, she finally caught sight of Hugo’s sh
ock of white hair—in the back seat of an idling patrol car parked on the side street.

  It was even worse than she’d feared—he was under arrest!

  Feeling as though a large cold fist were closing around her heart, Sandy dodged the young constable and the uniformed officer who was apparently guarding the prisoner, and slid into the back seat of the patrol car to comfort her uncle.

  Immediately there was a commotion.

  “Wait a minute, Miss—you can’t get in there,” protested the officer, and he reached in to pull her out of the car.

  But Sandy wouldn’t let him. She warded off his hands with stinging slaps and yelled at him to leave her alone. Couldn’t he see that Hugo needed her?

  “My orders are to drive Mr. Savarini, alone, to the Dundas Street Station. Ow! Stop that, Miss, or I’ll have to arrest you.”

  “Sandra, stop fighting,” said Hugo weakly. “The man is just doing his job. I’ll be fine, cara.”

  Sandy turned and studied her uncle’s face. It was flushed and weary-looking, but no worse than she’d seen on Sunday. “Are you sure?” she insisted.

  He nodded and patted her hand. “Go, please, before you get in trouble.”

  It took a moment before she calmed down, but finally Sandy got out of the car. “I demand to know what you’re charging him with,” she said coldly.

  “He’s not being charged with anything,” came Sergeant Gaine’s disgruntled voice over her shoulder.

  The detective looked tired and rumpled rather than angry. He’d been down on one knee in the alleyway, evidenced by the dusty patch on his trouser leg.

  “He’s not being charged?” she repeated uncertainly.

  “Mr. Savarini was the one who found the body, Miss,” the officer explained. “We just have to take him to the station to get his statement. It’s standard procedure.”

  Flanked by Ted Gaine and the young constable, Sandy watched the other officer get behind the wheel and drive away with her uncle.

  “He’ll be home in a couple of hours,” Gaine reassured her. “Now let’s talk about you. Constable Browne here says you bolted when you saw the body. What’s the story, Alessandra? Did you know that kid?”

  “Well, no, not exactly,” she replied, and shifted her weight uneasily from one foot to the other. “I knew who he was.”

  As she watched with growing anxiety, Sergeant Gaine assumed his official police expression, pulled his pen and spiral notebook out of his shirt pocket, and turned to a clean page.

  “Victim’s full name?”

  “I don’t know. I just heard him being called Vito.”

  He paused, then jotted the single word in his notebook. “And how do you happen to know Vito?”

  Sandy shrugged, searching her mind for a safe version of the truth. “I’ve been at the arcade when Vito and Dooley were there. I got a look at them.”

  Gaine muttered to himself as he scribbled rapidly in his notebook. “Dooley. Is that a first or a last name?”

  “I… Last name, I think.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  Sandy struggled to separate what she’d seen and heard that one Saturday morning from what Tommy had told her earlier about Dooley, and what Dooley had told her about himself later on. “Uh, about my height, curly blond hair, blue eyes. His voice was very strained and raspy.”

  “Did they speak to you?”

  “No, to someone else. I didn’t hear exactly what was said,” she explained.

  “Then how did you know who you were looking at?”

  He was watching her carefully, watching her teeter on the brink of his trap. Too late, she realized there was no safe version of the truth.

  Sandy tried to swallow and nearly choked. “By the jackets they were wearing,” she managed.

  “Describe the jackets,” he commanded sternly.

  “Black leather, windbreaker style, with lettering on the back. Knights of the Night, they said.”

  “Alessandra, how did you know they would be wearing those jackets?”

  Sandy’s heart dropped. “My brother told me about them,” she murmured, feeling sick inside. She had to force herself not to glance over Sergeant Gaine’s shoulder toward the body. According to Tommy, Vito always wore his jacket, winter or summer. But there was no jacket on the murder victim in the alley.

  “And how did your brother know Vito?” persisted the detective.

  She sighed. “Vito was some guy Tommy brought home after school one day. My mother took one look at him and threw him out of the apartment. Tommy rebelled, began spending more time with Vito instead of less, and…that’s it. I only saw him a couple of times, at the arcade.”

  “What kinds of things did they do together, Vito and your brother?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” said Sandy, licking her lips nervously. “They hung out.”

  “I see. Any connections with organized crime that you know of?”

  “No.”

  “Any drugs? Extortion? Blackmail?”

  While Gaine waited patiently for her answer, Sandy shifted her weight back and forth and struggled to collect her scattered thoughts.

  “I don’t know. He could have been doing any of those things,” she said at last.

  “Okay, how do I get in touch with your brother, Alessandra?”

  Sandy’s breath turned to dust in her throat. The whole point of her bargain with Dooley had been to protect Tommy from the fallout of a situation like this. And now, not only was her brother involved, but Sandy herself had betrayed him.

  “You want to question Tommy?” she said brokenly.

  “That’s right. You said he lives with your mother?”

  Automatically Sandy gave Sergeant Gaine her mother’s address. Then, as he closed his spiral notebook with a snap, she suddenly realized what she’d done. Her mother was going to have a fit when the police came banging on her door, wanting to question Tommy about a murder.

  “All right, Alessandra, you’ve found your uncle and I’ve got work to do,” said Gaine. “Constable Browne will drive you back to your office. After work, go straight home and stay there. I’m going to want to speak to you later.”

  Ted watched Alessandra follow the young officer to his patrol car. She looked numb, practically in shock, and for a moment he hated himself for taking advantage of her obvious emotional distress to pull information out of her. He’d had to do it, he told himself. This was a murder investigation, and drawing facts out of upset witnesses was just part of his job. Nobody had ever faulted him for doing his job—except Carol.

  Her biggest complaint was that he had stopped doing his job and simply become it. Was she right? Was this the sort of thing Carol had meant when she told him he was a cop right down to his bone marrow, that he was incapable of relating to anyone who didn’t fall neatly under the heading of suspect, witness or victim?

  If that was true, then he couldn’t help wondering…had he just turned Alessandra into a victim?

  Shortly before eight o’clock that evening, Sandy dragged herself up the stairs to her apartment, fumbled her key into the lock, and dropped wearily into the love seat facing her still-open front door.

  It had been, by all accounts, a very full and stressful day. She shouldn’t have let Paul talk her out of resigning, she thought with a moan. There would have been no way to back up and cancel out what had happened earlier in any event, but at least she wouldn’t have had to spend the entire afternoon on the phone with the reference librarian, trying to replace the three recent crimes in her third article with three equally ghastly historical ones. She’d finally had to settle for an arson-murder, an armed bank robbery and a lynching. By the time she was done Sandy, sure she had a cauliflower ear, felt like doing some lynching herself.

  Of course, her common sense cut in, because she’d been so busy she’d had no time to dwell on the scene
that had taken place beside the arcade that afternoon. She’d had no time to nurture her feeling of guilt over having betrayed Tommy, or her dislike of the tough, smart cop who had badgered her into doing it. Ted Gaine would say that he’d just been conducting a thorough investigation, no doubt.

  Dio, how she hated that little spiral notepad of his!

  “Oh, good, you’re finally home,” said a perky voice from the doorway. Sandy glanced up and saw her downstairs neighbor standing there in a flowered housedress. “You wouldn’t believe how busy it’s been around here today,” she said with a forced laugh. “First I had to let the telephone repairman into your apartment—”

  Sandy jerked upright in her seat. “You let someone in here?”

  The shocked expression on her face gave the other woman pause. “Well, yes,” she replied uncertainly. “He had a work order with your name on it, and I knew you’d been having a little trouble with your phone. Didn’t you put in a service call?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Nervously the neighbor combed her short bleached-blonde hair with her fingers. “Maybe that’s why the police officers wanted to look around. Although it did seem rather strange the way they followed right on this fellow’s heels.”

  Sandy’s jaw dropped even farther. Misinterpreting her reaction, the neighbor hastened to assure her, “I saw both their badges before I opened your door for them, Sandy. And nobody touched a thing. I was watching them like a hawk the whole time.”

  Sandy was dumbfounded. First a telephone repairman who knew her name and address but hadn’t been summoned, then two police officers—or, more likely, two men claiming to be police officers—who “wanted to look around”?

  Holding on to her fragile composure with both hands, Sandy asked, “What did the phone repairman do?”

  “He checked out your phones and phone lines. Looked at mine, too. Their computer indicated some problems. There was a power outage, and a few residences were affected.”

  “That still wouldn’t account for the other two men,” Sandy pointed out, frowning. Suddenly her apartment was full of strange footprints again, setting her stomach writhing like a trapped animal. “What did they tell you? Did they have a warrant?”