by Dan Willis
“Okay,” Alex said, resisting the urge to take a step back. “I’ll call Tiffany and—”
“Tiffany?” Sorsha growled, her eyes jumping up from glowing to blazing.
“I’ll call Mrs. Young,” Alex corrected hastily, “and let her know about the secretary and the letter.”
Sorsha’s eyes dimmed, and a disquieting smile crawled across her face.
“Oh, no you don’t,” she said. “You call that harlot, and you tell her that you are off the case.” She stepped closer and stabbed her finger into Alex’s chest. “That’s what you tell her.”
“All right,” Alex said, putting up his hands in a placating gesture.
“I swear, Alex Lockerby,” she said, her voice going suddenly calm, “if you mess this up for me,” she reached out and smoothed his tie. “If you interfere and I lose my job at the FBI, I will…I will turn you into the weasel you are.”
Alex was pretty sure she was bluffing about that, but he didn’t want to take stupid chances just in case.
“All right, you win,” he said. “I’m off the case. It’s already solved, so there is no case anyway.”
Sorsha looked up at him for a long moment, then the glow in her eyes faded and she leaned against him once more.
“Thank you, Alex,” she mumbled into his chest.
“You should have told me about the newspaper stories,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I could have had Billy Tasker write something flattering about you; he owes me.”
Sorsha leaned back far enough to look up at him.
“That’s actually a pretty good idea,” she said.
“See,” he chuckled, “you do need me.” That earned him a stern look.
“You’re not funny,” she said.
“It was a little funny,” he said. “Since your case is solved, how about I take you to lunch, or maybe dinner tonight?”
“No,” Sorsha said, somewhat emphatically. “Until this case is officially finished we cannot be seen together. That news rag will say I’m consulting with you on the side.”
“Well no one can see us here,” he suggested. “I’ll have Julian send up something and you can hide out here until that secretary wakes up.”
Sorsha pushed away from him with narrowed eyes and an amused expression.
“None of that,” she said. “I need to stay focused on this case. It might not be as cut and dried as we believe. And you…you need to call Mrs. Young and tell her you’re going back to New York.”
“You’re no fun at all,” Alex said, only half kidding.
“I promise when I get back to the city, I’ll make you a priority,” she said. “Now kiss me before I go.”
Alex did as he was told and a far too short time later, he saw Sorsha out. As he relocked the door, he saw the tabloid on the side table. Picking it up, he read the name, Simon Edwards, on the banner over the story about him being called in to work the Senator’s murder. Since Alex wasn’t going to be working that case after all, maybe he’d make time to look up Mr. Edwards.
“First things first,” he said aloud.
Walking to the phone on the desk, Alex set the papers aside.
“I need to speak to Julian,” he told the hotel operator. A moment later the concierge’s voice came on the line. “I need the number for Tiffany Young,” he said.
“I’ll have that sent up immediately,” Julian said. “Would you like me to connect you now?”
Of course he knows her, that’s how she got in here in the first place.
“Yes please,” he said.
After a moment, Tiffany answered, and Alex explained about the note left by the secretary.
“So it looks like you’re off the hook,” he concluded. “I didn’t really do anything but make a few inquiries, so you don’t owe me anything.”
“Maybe not yet,” Tiffany said, “but this case isn’t over.”
“What do you mean? It sounds like as soon as the secretary wakes up, the feds will have their killer.”
“You don’t understand, Alex,” she said. “That story about Hellen, it’s just not possible.”
“According to the note this Hellen got jealous; it happens,” Alex said, assuming Hellen was the secretary.
“As I told you, Alex, the people my husband had rendezvous with wanted something he could provide,” Tiffany said, clearly unwilling to let this go. “It was a mutual exchange, not a promise of a relationship. Helen wanted to become a legal assistant for one of the city’s law firms, one with several young, single, and very marriageable partners. Paul was going to make that happen for her.”
Alex felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“So she had no reason to kill your husband, did she?”
“No, Alex. She did not.”
“I was afraid of that,” he sighed. “All right, I’ll keep looking.”
“Thank you, Alex.”
“You’re welcome, Mrs. Young,” he replied, wondering just what he was going to tell Sorsha.
6
Clubs
Alex sat at the little writing desk in his hotel suite, staring at the telephone as if it were the cause of his troubles. He took out his cigarette case and pulled one out, then tossed the case on top of the desk. There was no sense putting it away until he figured out what to do.
Lighting the cigarette, he took a long drag and considered his position. He needed to be done with the case of Paul Young’s murder. Sorsha had made that abundantly clear. She wasn’t his wife or his boss, and he didn’t take orders from her, but he didn’t want her to lose her job on his account. She was a good investigator, with good instincts, despite what the tabloids were saying.
It made him sick to his stomach to think that someone was using him against her.
On the other hand, Tiffany was right. Someone had killed her husband and now it looked like they were trying to pin it on a patsy. That fact alone told Alex there was much more to Paul Young’s death than met the eye.
Ordinarily a cover up would be reason for further investigation all by itself, but this victim had been a US Senator. Whoever killed Paul might be playing a much larger game, one that could have national or even international implications. Alex simply couldn’t let this go.
That realization made him grind his teeth. If he ran around investigating Senator Young’s death, someone official was bound to notice and that would inevitably get back to Sorsha. If he tried to work with her, she could keep the locals off his back, but that would raise more questions about her ability to do her job. Questions like that could get her fired.
She’d never speak to me again, he thought. Or turn me into a weasel for her own amusement.
What he needed was a way to keep investigating without tipping anyone off. The way Tiffany had described the case made it sound like the local police were handling it, but if Sorsha was here, that meant the FBI was involved as well. Which made sense, with a Senator dead. The story in the paper had said the case was now in the hands of the FBI, but the Capital Dispatch wasn’t exactly a bastion of good journalism. Alex knew from experience that locals resented it when the Feds showed up and started interfering with their cases. Based on what Sorsha had said, everyone was waiting for the poisoned secretary to recover. Once they had her story, the Feds would either take the case outright if they thought there was something to it, or, if not, they’d back off and let the locals handle it.
So, until Senator Young’s secretary recovers enough to give a statement, each agency will be waiting in Limbo.
If it turned out there was something nefarious to the case, each side would want their people on it. Each side would want the credit.
Alex could work with that.
He crushed out his cigarette and stood, a plan finally forming in his mind. With a little finesse on top of a fair dose of luck, he might be able to find a detective in the D.C. office with ambition. Such a man might be willing to partner with an unknown factor, like an out-of-town P.I., and work the case on the sly.
Right now it was the best idea he had; in reality it was the only idea he had. So, pushing his trepidations aside, Alex closed his vault, donned his overcoat, and headed for the elevator. As he rode down, he checked to be sure he had one of his climate runes in his book. The weather had been unseasonably warm, but it was definitely the tail end of a long Indian Summer. If the weather turned cold, he might need more than just his coat. Once Sorsha found out he was still on the Paul Young case, he might really need a climate rune.
Once outside the hotel, Alex looked for a taxi. There weren’t as many cabs on the street as there were in Manhattan, so Alex stood on the curb for a few minutes waiting. He’d finally spotted one coming his way when a long, black car rolled to a stop in front of the hotel. The rear window came down, but rather than someone getting out, Alex saw the nose of a pistol pointing squarely at him.
The front passenger door of the car opened and a man got out. He wasn’t as tall as Alex, but he had the beefy, muscular frame of a nightclub bouncer.
“Get in the car, Mr. Lockerby,” he said. His voice was a deep, basso growl, but he enunciated his words as if it were a polite request rather than a threat.
Alex thought about running back into the hotel. He had his shield runes in place, of course, but that would only stop five bullets and he knew from experience that the pistol held up to eight. The odds were probably in his favor, but his curiosity was piqued. Who even knew he was in the city, and what could they possibly want?
His moment of indecision made the choice for him as the big man grabbed his elbow and started him toward the rear door of the car. The pistol pulled back as the man holding it slid over to make room. Alex opened the door and got in, sliding into the middle as the bouncer squeezed in on the other side.
The man with the pistol had a broad flat face with a Roman nose and close-set blue eyes. He was clean shaven but already had a fair five-o’clock shadow coming in. As the car began to move, he kept the pistol pointed at Alex’s ribs.
“So, where are we going?” he asked when no one spoke.
“Mr. Casetti would like a word,” the man with the pistol said. “Now shut up.”
Alex felt a chill go down his back at the name. Anthony Casetti was also known as Lucky Tony and he’d run the Rosono crime family for decades, ever since the actual Rosonos ‘mysteriously’ disappeared. He’d risen to power and wealth during Prohibition where he’d been the beer king of the West Side. He also had a very highly placed mole in the D.A.’s office — in fact it was the D.A. himself, one Addison “Tiger” Smith. Alex knew this because he and Danny had exposed Tiger, costing him his freedom and costing Lucky Tony his inside man.
It had been ten years since that case, and Alex hadn’t heard a whisper from Lucky Tony in all that time. He’d been worried at first, but nothing had happened, so he’d gradually forgotten about it.
Apparently Lucky Tony had not.
Alex felt himself start to sweat. He had his shield runes if it came to that, but Lucky Tony wasn’t some thug with a pistol and a vendetta. He was an educated man, one ruthless enough to seize the reins of a major crime family and run it successfully for years. He knew Alex was a runewright and he might have taken precautions. A man of Lucky Tony’s power would likely know the limit on how many shield runes any one person could have.
Worse was Alex’s lack of an escape rune. He’d used the last one he’d made a few months ago and he hadn’t put in the time to write a new one. If he made it back to New York in one piece, he vowed to make that a priority. Right now, that prospect wasn’t looking good.
The car had headed north after picking up Alex, and twenty minutes later it felt like they’d left the city. A vast wooded wilderness stretched out on the left side of the road with only a few houses and buildings off to the right. The woods looked like the kind of place a mobster might go to put a bullet into the head of an annoying private detective.
Alex thought about his flash ring, but pinned in the back of the car, it wouldn’t do him any good. Even blind, the man with the gun couldn’t miss from only a few inches away. Alex would have to bide his time and look for an opening. For the second time in two days, he wished he’d taken the precaution of wearing his 1911, or at least carrying his knuckleduster.
The car slowed and turned off onto a narrow side street. Through the windshield Alex could see that the trees were thinning up ahead, opening into a large open field. As he looked, they passed a large sign that read: Rock Creek Park Golf Course.
His first thought was confusion. The middle of a public golf course wasn’t the kind of place mob bosses usually chose to have a quiet conversation. Especially not the kind that left a corpse at its conclusion. That said, it was December and there were only five cars in the dirt parking lot at the end of the drive. Alex couldn’t see anyone actually out on the course.
The driver pulled up to the first empty spot beside the parked cars. As soon as he shut the engine off, the man who had ushered Alex into the car got out, and the man with the gun gestured for him to follow.
“Strange place for a chat,” Alex said as the gunman got out behind him.
“Fewer busybodies,” he growled, then he prodded Alex in the back with the gun. “That way.”
Alex started walking out onto the golf course. He’d never played golf, but he’d seen plenty of newsreels of politicians and Hollywood actors playing to understand the basics of the game. He passed the eighth hole, designated by the red number eight on the flag sticking out of the cup, and continued down the fairway.
They were heading toward the back side of the course and Alex could clearly see more of the thick woods beyond the course. The trees were winter bare, but there were enough of them to reduce visibility significantly. If his escorts intended to take him in there, they also planned on coming back without him.
Alex wasn’t sure how effective his flash ring would be in the bright light of day, and if the second man had a gun, he didn’t have anywhere near enough shield runes. If things got desperate, he could try suddenly reversing his stride, slamming into the gunman behind him. He would fire, certainly, but with his gun at waist level, he was most likely to hit Alex’s shielded back. The move would work best going uphill, then Alex might have a chance to knock the man off his feet. Before a suitable grade presented itself, however, they passed around a little copse of trees to reveal the green of the fifteenth hole. A man stood there, dressed in a hideous golf sweater with a pattern of repeating gold and brown diamonds, dark slacks, and a flat cap. He was tall and lean, with a muscular upper body over a slim waist, and he stood with his feet crossed, leaning on a golf club. A white ball sat on the green a few yards from the cup and the man simply stared at it.
As they approached, Alex had no doubt that this was Lucky Tony Casetti himself.
“Go on ahead,” the gunman growled at Alex, then he and the other man stopped just beyond the oval of short-cropped grass that defined the green. When the man spoke, Casetti looked up from his contemplation of the golf ball. He had a broad, clean-shaven face and, much to Alex’s surprise, had the good looks of a movie actor, with bright blue eyes and straight teeth.
“Ah,” he said with a satisfied smile. “Give me just a minute.”
Alex wasn’t sure what to make of that, so he just stood there while the man who’d owned the west side of Manhattan during the prohibition years made his putt. He moved with the natural grace of an athlete and Alex remembered that he’d been on the cricket team at Columbia. He and former D.A. Addison “Tiger” Smith. Lucky Tony had helped Tiger cover up the murder of his ex-girlfriend and that had made Tiger his man for the better part of thirty years.
Right up until Alex and Danny had tied the dead girl’s murder back to Tiger and sent him to prison.
“Alex Lockerby,” Lucky Tony said as he fished his golf ball out of the cup and replaced the flag. “I’ve wanted to meet you for some time.”
The words were friendly enough, but a chill ran down Alex�
�s spine. Sure they were out in the open in a public place, but at this end of the course, there wasn’t another soul in sight.
“I’m in the book,” Alex said, putting on his most pleasant smile.
The mob boss chuckled at that.
“And you’ve got a fancy office in Empire Tower, too,” he said, replacing his club in the long narrow bag that held its brethren. “You must be quite the crackerjack detective to go from that little hole in the wall in Harlem all the way to the Core.”
After watching more than a few gangster movies, Alex expected Lucky Tony to speak with a Bronx or maybe a Jersey accent. He’d forgotten that Anthony Casetti was a graduate of Columbia, one of the most prestigious schools in the country, and his accent was one of culture and refinement.
Culture notwithstanding, Alex didn’t like the fact that Lucky Tony Casetti knew the details of his entire professional career.
“I do okay,” he said, somewhat noncommittally.
“Don’t be so modest,” Casetti said, hefting his bag over his shoulder. “Anyone who could solve a thirty-year-old murder and oust a sitting D.A. in one fell swoop has got some impressive skills. Walk with me.”
He indicated the direction of the next fairway and waited for Alex to accompany him.
“I’m a little surprised you’d find my work that impressive,” Alex said, falling into step beside the head of the Rosono crime family. “All things considered.”
Lucky Tony scoffed.
“Tiger was getting too full of himself,” he admitted. “He started thinking he should be the one calling the shots. I was going to have to do something about him anyway; you just saved me the trouble.”
That surprised Alex. He knew he should shut up and take the man at his word, but he couldn’t help himself.
“One of yours was killed during that incident.”
Lucky Tony glanced at him with a raised eyebrow.
