Out in the hall, Boyle did not pause, rather kept walking, toward the lobby, Caine falling in alongside him, as they put some distance between themselves and the noise of the lounge.
Halfway down the hall, the boyishly handsome hotel manager turned to Caine and paused. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”
A couple, walking hand in hand, moved past them.
“Could we use your office?” Caine asked.
“Why not?”
Caine followed Boyle across the lobby, past the front desk, and through a door marked PRIVATE. Boyle let him inside the non-spacious office, then closed the door before circling the long way around his cherry desk, a wing extending from the left side with a computer monitor atop it.
Behind the desk, on the wall, hung a large color photo of the Conquistador circa 1955, a large neon conquistador head standing sentry, the name in red script arching around his helmet. Another disembodied head, Caine noted. The picture hung just a little crooked.
Boyle motioned for Caine to have a seat, which he did.
“I assume you’re here to update me on the investigation,” Boyle said. “Do you have a suspect yet?”
“Yes,” Caine said.
“Really. Who?”
“You.”
Boyle almost seemed to lose his balance in the chair; quickly recovering, he said, “Why would I be a suspect? You know that I have an airtight alibi—”
“Funny thing,” Caine said, “just about the only people who use that phrase—kind of antiquated, B-movie phrase, don’t you think, ‘airtight alibi’?—are murderers.”
“If you’re going to charge me—”
“Oh no. I don’t have a case against you. Yet.”
“Then why do you suspect me, for God’s sake?”
“Because, Daniel…may I call you Daniel? Because you insist on lying to me.”
The hotel manager swallowed thickly; his expression took on a wounded quality. “I have—I did lie about my feelings about Tom. I was just trying to…keep family business, you know…private.”
“Private. As in, private investigator?”
That caught Boyle by surprise; his mouth dropped open. “You know about that?”
“I heard secondhand. But you’ve finally confirmed it. You hired one to try to get the goods on your stepfather. His cheating on your mom.”
“That’s right. Not here—it was on the Vegas end.”
“Did you share this with the Las Vegas authorities? They arrested your stepfather on a murder charge—they believed he’d murdered a woman he was sleeping with. Anything your investigator found—”
“But that’s just it. My stepfather was discreet. The investigator didn’t find anything.”
“Just the same, I’ll need his name and contact information.” Caine would pass this along to Catherine Willows.
“No problem,” Boyle said, rather contritely. He went to his Rolodex and found the name and was writing it down on a memo pad when Caine spoke again.
“What else have you held back, Mr. Boyle?”
Boyle looked up, deer in the headlights; thought about it, really seemed to be considering the answer. “I can’t think of anything that would help you.”
Caine had come here to rattle the man and shake something loose; Boyle seemed rattled enough, but nothing was falling out. The CSI decided to go a step further.
“Let’s talk about Gino Forlani,” Caine said, “and the Cappelletti brothers.”
“Shit,” Boyle said, his face whitening. “You’re not going to drag my…my friends into this?”
“Your friends who have organized-crime connections, you mean? Your stepfather’s murder has all the earmarks of a mob hit. Did you think we wouldn’t notice your associations?”
“They’re just…acquaintances, that’s all. Friendly acquaintances. We, you know, play some golf together. Once in a while. Now and then.”
“Once in a while.” Caine crossed his arms. “Now and then. I thought you weren’t going to lie to me anymore.”
Boyle’s head drooped. “All right. You caught me in another, uh…”
“Lie. Want to try again?”
Boyle rubbed his forehead with his fingertips, as if trying to scrape the flesh off his skull. Finally, he exhaled, endlessly. “I…I owe them some money.”
Uncrossing his arms and leaning forward, Caine said, “See? Isn’t it a relief to tell the truth?”
The hotel manager just glared at him.
“And why do you owe them money, Daniel?”
“…Gambling debts.”
“Be more specific?”
Shrugging, Boyle said, “Basketball, football, horses, whatever season it is, that’s what I bet…. What can I say, I’m a sports fan.”
“How much are you into them for?”
“Not that much.”
“How much, Daniel?”
“Really—only ten g’s. Nothing.”
Caine frowned. “Why don’t you just pay them off, then?”
Boyle sighed. “I really don’t have that kind of money. My mother has cut me off, where gambling debts are concerned; and I’m on salary here. I get paid just like everybody else.”
“I doubt that it’s like everybody else.”
“I make money commensurate with just about any hotel manager in Miami Beach.”
Caine nodded. “And you live in the family home. Not much overhead, Daniel.”
“Fine. The truth is, I piss most of it away. I’ve been gambling for years, since college, and always done all right; but this basketball season is killing me. My reserve’s gone and I can only pay Gino and the Cappellettis a little at a time. I’m barely covering the vig as it is.”
Caine looked hard at the man. “You understand, Daniel, this is not clearing you. It’s only making you a better suspect.”
Boyle held up surrendering hands. “I’m trying to be honest with you.”
“And I’d just find out anyway.”
“You’d just find out anyway.”
Caine mulled. Then: “Gino going to back your story?”
Boyle snorted a laugh. “He’s a fucking mob guy! You think he’s going to tell you the truth?”
“Well then…”
His eyes painfully earnest, Boyle sat forward.
“Honest to Christ, Lieutenant—I’ve got no idea who killed Tom. Yeah, I hated him…but for what he was doing to my mother. She loved him, still does. I would never have hurt him, not physically—his death’s practically killing my mother. And I would never do anything to hurt her, if I could help it.”
“You’d never hire a private detective, for example, to follow her husband around?”
Boyle looked stricken. “You wouldn’t tell her about that, would you?”
Caine didn’t answer, instead asking, “How is your mother doing?”
He sighed again. “I just put her on a plane back to Vegas—sedated to the gills. She’s going to make funeral arrangements. When are you going to release the remains…such as they are?”
“Not for a while. Could be a week. Could be more.”
“Well, would you have the coroner contact me, Lieutenant, so I can make arrangements to get the—whatever—back to Vegas? I’ll need to go back for the funeral, myself. I mean, if I’m a suspect, can I…?”
“We could allow that, I think.”
“Thanks for that much, anyway.” He laughed, bitterly. “I could always take Tom home in a duffel bag. I do get two carry-on’s.”
Caine rose. Smiled. “You might not want to share that one with your mom, Daniel.”
And the CSI left the hotel manager there, to ponder that.
8
Minor Discovery
AS HORATIO CAINE approached Biscayne Bay, Mt. Sinai Hospital rose out of the night like a contemporary Stonehenge; these modern megaliths, however, had windows, many of which had lights shining within, hundreds of beacons in the darkness.
He could use a beacon or two about now.
After weaving through the
maze of South Beach campus buildings, Caine pulled up to the emergency-room entrance and parked in a spot reserved for the police.
Inside, his first stop was at the check-in nurse’s desk next to the triage station in the emergency room. He showed his badge, ID, and a smile to the check-in nurse—a blunt-featured, blue-eyed blonde about twenty-five who exuded brusque competence—and sat in the chair across from her. A placard on her desk read: JENNIFER BLAIR.
“Sorry to have to bother you, Jennifer,” Caine said, keeping the smile going, but not forcing it. “I’m looking for information on a patient brought in on Monday night. A heart attack—Abraham Lipnick.”
A frown dug creases in her forehead and the blue eyes all but vanished into slits in her face. “You know better than that, Lieutenant. I can’t give out information about patients.”
He nodded. “It’s a murder investigation, Jennifer, and it would be no problem getting court permission.”
“Then I’m afraid you’d need to do that. I’m not trying to be difficult—”
“I know you’re not.” He drew a breath, took a slightly different tack. “I’m not after specific information about this patient; it has to do with the friends who brought him to the ER.”
The check-in nurse thought that over; then she nodded.
He asked, “Do you happen to remember Mr. Lipnick?”
She was shaking her head even as she typed the man’s name into her computer. She frowned at the screen. “Monday, did you say?”
“Monday night, yes.”
Scrolling with her mouse, she said, “We were pretty busy for a Monday. They just kept coming, but that is an unusual name”—it must have popped up on the screen because the check-in nurse paused for a long moment before finally completing the thought—“yes.”
“So you do remember him? Good.”
She smiled. “I remember typing in ‘Lipstick,’ before I caught the mistake…. Yes, Mr. Lipnick was in quite a bit of pain and he coded right there where you’re sitting.”
“Paramedics didn’t bring him in?”
She shook her head. “It was like you said—friends.”
“How many?”
“…Two.”
“Do you remember them?”
“Well, one was a good-looking older man. Very well groomed, gray hair. Well preserved. Could he have had an East Coast accent?”
“Yes,” Caine said. Ciccolini. “What did the other man look like?”
“Not so good-looking. Short, bald, with one of those funny beards.”
“A goatee?”
“Yes. Not so well groomed as his friend. Or so well preserved.”
Caine shifted in the seat and raised an eyebrow. “Jennifer, I’m impressed.”
She smiled, and it was a nice smile; the professionalism remained, but some humanity was easing through.
“And they were both here, at all times? The well-preserved one and the not-so-well-preserved one?”
The check-in nurse thought about that for a long moment. “The nice-looking one checked in Mr. Lipnick. He mentioned his friend was parking the car. I did see him, in the waiting area…enough to get an impression of him.”
“When exactly did you notice him?”
Jennifer shrugged elaborately. “Like I said, it was brutal that night and Mr. Lipnick coded, so he got taken back immediately.”
“Can you tell me what time that was?”
She looked at the chart on the computer screen. “Almost one-thirty in the morning.”
“And the name of the doctor that treated him?”
“Dr. Rina Sarkar. And to answer your next question, she’s not here. She left to do a month-long tour with Doctors Without Borders.”
Caine nodded. “What about nurses?”
Looking at Lipnick’s chart one more time, she said, “Nancy Blanco. Now, she is on tonight.”
“Could you…?”
She made a call, arranging for Blanco to come down.
“Thanks, Jennifer.”
“Just doing my job.”
“Obviously, you do it well.”
They exchanged smiles and Caine met the next nurse at the Plexiglas-enclosed bench outside, set up for staff members who smoked. A thin, rather haggard thirtysomething, Blanco settled down on the wooden bench, lighted up one of those very long, too thin cigarettes marketed exclusively to women, and looked his badge and ID over so carefully she might have been checking for symptoms.
“I don’t understand why you’re here,” Nurse Blanco said.
“It’s a murder investigation.”
This did not seem to impress her. “Mr. Lipnick wasn’t murdered,” she said. “He had a heart attack.”
Caine said, “We’re aware of that—he’s not the victim. What I’m interested in is whether you saw anyone with him—when he came in, for example?”
She considered that. “Yeah, there was a guy. Nice-looking older man came in with him.”
“No one else?”
“There was a second one, but I believe he was out parking the car.”
“Did you see the second man?”
“Sure. Bald guy with a little beard. Sitting there with the old tall smoothie.”
“The bald guy—was he there the whole time?”
She sighed smoke. “I don’t really know. I walked by once and he wasn’t, and the tall guy grinned and said, just kidding, y’know, ‘You got something for the trots? My buddy’—he used his friend’s name, I think it was Tony—he said, ‘My buddy Tony’s doin’ the Argentina two-step tonight.’ Stuck with me. Thought it was kinda funny.”
“But you did see the other man.”
“Oh yeah! He was here.”
“When, exactly?”
“I couldn’t say, exactly—but Lipnick had coded, so I was pretty busy helping Dr. Sarkar try to save him.”
“It might be important.”
She took a tiny puff on her cigarette as she thought about it. “I saw the bald, bearded gent for sure, after my break at five. I saw the pair of ‘em on my way back from the cafeteria. They were standing outside. Smoking.”
“Did you see them both before that?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I’ve got no idea exactly when. Look, uh…Lieutenant Caine, right? We work on the sick ones, not the well ones. It’s the sick ones that stick with you.”
“Like Mr. Lipnick? Anything special about him?”
Another puff as she thought. “Just…he was pretty far gone when he came in. He’d had a massive heart attack and already had a checkered cardiac history. We did everything we could. Sometimes it’s just not enough.”
Caine left Mt. Sinai feeling that he had little more information than he had come in with. Perhaps more in-depth interviews with the staff might yield something, but there didn’t seem to be much else at the moment to mine here.
Daniel Boyle still seemed a far more likely suspect, or even his mother Deborah of the cheating husband (despite her denials), than three old men with no apparent ties to the case…
…except that one of them had been accused of a shooting using a gun with bullets that matched this homicide. And that was a doozy, wasn’t it?
He would tell Sevilla what he had learned and she could track down the doctor or some of the other nurses. Stick with the evidence, he thought. Follow the evidence.
The CSI got back into the Hummer and caught the Julia Tuttle Causeway back to the mainland. The night had chilled and Caine felt a little cool in only his sports coat, but he liked the sensation—it refreshed him after a long day. On the mainland, he got onto the Dolphin Expressway, heading west toward HQ.
Eric Delko was in the lab when Caine got back.
“What are you still doing here?” Caine asked.
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
Caine grunted. “I guess I am.”
Delko gave him a slight grin. “I tracked the battery we found at the beach.”
“Make me happy I came back in.”
“Do my best. Y’know, I thought
we were looking at a watch battery, but it turned out to be for a hearing aid.”
Caine’s eyes narrowed. “And we have three elderly suspects…or two, anyway.”
“Well, I knew Calleigh went out with you to the funeral home, and I checked with her. She said she got a good look at the old boys, and none of them wore hearing aids.”
“That’s true. I gave them a careful look myself.”
“You’re sure? Those hearing aids can be pretty small, and sometimes they’re built into the earpieces of glasses….”
“Eric. Observing is what I do.”
Delko patted the air in surrender. “Okay, okay…just being thorough. This includes the guy in the box, right?”
“Abraham Lipnick was not wearing a hearing aid.”
Delko arched an eyebrow. “Maybe the mortician didn’t think he needed to wear one, where he was going.”
“We’ll have Detective Sevilla check with the mortuary, and at the hospital—see if a hearing aid was among his effects.”
“It’s a lead. And we can use a few of those.”
“Yes we can.”
“And you don’t have to be a geezer to wear a hearing aid, H. What about our other suspects?”
“Thomas Lessor didn’t wear a hearing aid. Daniel Boyle, Deborah, no hearing aids either. What about Felipe, our late chauffeur?”
“Calleigh’s ahead of you on that. Talked to the family again—they say no.”
“Get any prints off the battery?”
“Just smudges. Pretty small object, to grab a decent print offa.”
Caine’s forehead tensed. “Could it have been just lying there, not part of the case?”
“Sure—it’s a big beach…and there’s a lot of old people in Miami.”
“Any traces of blood on the battery?”
“No. If there had been, we could tie it better to the case. Otherwise, darn thing could’ve just been lying there waiting to screw us up.”
Caine nodded. “Wouldn’t be the first time. Won’t be the last. Did we get any prints off the garbage bag?”
Delko shook his head. “Killers wore gloves—nothing but smears and smudges there, too.”
“Lessor’s cell phone?”
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