LAURA LEE (ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES Book 2) Read online

  They made a stunning couple. Her tireless community and charitable work was an asset in an election year. I had spotted her several times at various functions at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and always noticed how effortlessly she dominated the room. Tonight, however, she looked a bit out of sorts. Beautiful, still, but wound up. Perhaps she didn’t like baseball. From past conversations I knew her husband could care less about the game and was only in attendance to be seen. He probably dragged her along.

  “Alice, I hope you will be at the Mancuso’s Saturday,” Sharon Sullivan said, brightening a bit.

  “Oh, yes. I wouldn’t miss it,” Alice responded. “It sounds like a lot of fun. Thanks so much for inviting me. I know Alton is also looking forward to it.”

  Mike Sullivan gave me his best “gotcha” smile. I had almost forgotten about the Mancuso gig, one of many pre-election campaign cocktail parties his supporters were throwing. It was the quid pro quo for my dragging Alice to the ball game. Although now that she had revealed her knowledge of baseball and fondness for cold beer it was apparent I’d been had. The women started chatting in the aisle and Sullivan sat next to me.

  “I hear you’re going to prosecute the Denton case yourself, Mike. How come?”

  I already knew the reason. John Denton was a prominent local banker who had been allegedly shot dead almost a year earlier by his mistress, Elizabeth Olsen. The “allegedly” was being used by everyone with a wink, since the Olsen woman was found at the scene holding the murder weapon with gunshot residue on her hand. It was a high-profile slam dunk, ready made for an election year. The case was scheduled to go to trial in October, fast-tracked to be completed in time for the November election.

  “John Denton was an important member of this community,” Sullivan said. “North Shore Savings is one of our finest institutions. I feel it’s my responsibility to see justice done.”

  Pure hogwash, I knew. The bank certainly had a strong reputation in the community. In fact, the bank’s ads were plastered all over the stadium in which we sat. On opening day there had even been a moment of silence in Denton’s honor. But among the cognoscenti the reputation of the bank’s dead chairman was less than stellar. John Denton was a notorious womanizer with lounge-lizard looks, and had not the Olsen woman been caught red-handed the potential suspects would have filled the ballpark. There had also been rumors that North Shore Savings had drawn the attention of regulators over some of its mortgage practices.

  “Of course,” I said. “But surely Olsen is going to plead out. I’m surprised she hasn’t already. You can’t get first-degree in a crime of passion. She’ll deal.”

  Plea bargaining was a cancer in the borough’s judicial system. Fully 95 percent of all criminal cases on Staten Island resulted in plea bargains. It was a scandal, of course, but nothing much had changed since the days when John Gotti, just then rising to prominence in the mob, was allowed to cop to attempted manslaughter after gunning down a Staten Island mobster in full view of a dozen witnesses in a local tavern.

  “Who says it’s a crime of passion? She obliterated his face with five shots, point-blank.”

  “We both know how Denton treated his women,” I said. “And how vain he was about his looks. That’s what a scorned mistress would probably do, Mike. Hell, you’ll be lucky if Long goes with passion.” Elizabeth Olsen’s lawyer, J. Steven Long, was considered the best criminal defense attorney in the borough, with a citywide reputation. He didn’t come cheap, but the Olsen family, which owned one of the largest real estate development and construction companies in the tri-state area, could easily afford him. “He’s probably dusting off an insanity defense. Or abuse. Maybe burning bed. Or in Denton’s case, burning couch. Don’t rule out alien abduction. What was his first offer, jaywalking? And why do you want to stick it to the Olsens?”

  My implication was clear. Konrad Olsen, the suspect’s father, had clout. Until recently there had been an Olsen advertisement on the same outfield wall where the bank ads were. It had been replaced by a car dealership sign. But Olsen money still flowed into Borough Hall, whose current occupant would approve a real estate deal backed by al-Qaeda. Sullivan smiled.

  “Still the wiseass, Alton. But in this case you’re wrong. Long says she doesn’t want any deal. Says that his client swears she’s innocent. Found the body and picked up the gun by reflex when she heard someone. Panicked and fired at a shape in the dark.” Sullivan smiled at the ludicrousness of the defense. “He says she won’t budge from her story. He thinks she’s crazy but he’s got his marching orders. The Olsens don’t own my office. We’re going to trial.”

  “Well, let me know if you need help finding the courtroom.”

  Sullivan took the jibe well. The women were saying their goodbyes and he got up to leave.

  “You have mustard on your shirt,” he said.

  Alice and I left during the seventh-inning stretch. The Baby Bombers had rallied and were up 4-1. Yamaguchi had been lifted by then, draining much of the drama from the game. He wouldn’t be drilling the guy who hit the homer after all.

  “I didn’t realize Sharon Sullivan was behind the invite Saturday night,” I said as I walked Alice to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal a few blocks away. She is a philosophy professor and swim coach at Wagner College on Staten Island’s Grymes Hill but lives in Greenwich Village. I had hoped she had different plans for the night, but I wasn’t all that surprised she was going home. After all, I had basically run her previous boyfriend out of town on a rail not long ago. She knew I had done her a favor, but it was probably still a hard pill for her to swallow.

  “I’m on one of her committees at the Harbor,” she said. “I really like her. She’s not phony.”

  “You mean, like her husband?”

  “Yes, he is a bit of a tool, isn’t he? But he can’t be all bad to love her like he does. And vice versa. They really adore each other. Everyone knows it.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” I admitted. “He’s a decent enough guy. And a damn sight better than the idiot running against him. I’ll vote for him.”

  “Who’s the, ah, idiot?”

  “Guy named Connor Costello. Bagman lawyer even his supporters won’t make a judge, so they keep putting him up as a sacrificial lamb.”

  “It sounds like his father was Italian.”

  “No, Costello is also an Irish name. He’s full-blooded, if a half-wit. He’s so disliked that even being Irish in a borough where he might get Italian votes from people who are confused by his name doesn’t help. He gets fewer votes than one of those ballot propositions that nobody can understand. It’s pretty pathetic to come in third behind a sewer bond issue.”

  Alice laughed. She had a good, deep laugh.

  “But you’re still not crazy about Sullivan. Are you angry I roped you into a party for him?”

  “Oh, hell. He’s too slick for my taste, but we get along pretty well now.”

  I didn’t explain that Sullivan, who in the past was dismissive of me – and my profession – was showing more respect since the Carlucci case, in which I had found a man in witness protection. An unheard of accomplishment which, to protect everyone involved on both sides of the law, was supposed to remain unheard. But certain people with their own agendas, mostly criminal, had leaked my involvement. It was good for their business. And, obviously, mine.

  We reached the terminal. I waited with Alice for the ferry.

  “I think I saw you admiring Sharon’s legs,” she said.

  “There is much to admire. Besides I’m a detective. I notice everything.”

  “Dancer’s legs. She was a Rockette, you know.”

  “Yes. Would you believe I was thinking about Christmas?”

  “No. But just remember, Rockettes aren’t the only girls who know how to kick.”

  She gave me a long, languorous kiss, which drew some friendly whistles and a “get a room” from a group of young Coast Guardsmen heading into Manhattan. Above the roar in my ears I heard the clanging b
ell announcing the doors to the ferry opening. I gave the Coasties a thumbs up as Alice walked to her boat. She looked as good from the rear as she did from any other angle. I read somewhere that through the miracle of evolution the female hip sway is tied to pelvic shape and its relation to fertility and child-bearing, and has also been structured to stimulate the male libido. I believe in evolution, but there’s no denying it’s a very intelligent design.

  Political cocktail party torture or no, I was looking forward to Saturday night. Perhaps Alice would skip the ferry ride home.

  CHAPTER 3 – ROOTING FOR NORBERTO

  I spent the next two days tailing, with varying degrees of success, Norberto Cruz, a construction worker who had fallen from a scaffold on a new townhouse project in Eltingville and was suing the general contractor. The contractor’s insurance company hired me to find out if Norberto’s disability – he claimed his excruciating back pain prevented him from working anywhere – was as real as he and his doctor claimed it was.

  Norberto sported a cane most days, unless he was due for a deposition; then he invariably used a walker. The insurance company’s doctors said they couldn’t find any serious injuries, but they might be inclined to say that about someone on life support. Since back pain is notoriously hard to diagnose or dismiss, only evidence of outright fraud could derail the suit.

  I have no love of insurance companies, but they pay well, no matter what I dig up. Personally, I was rooting for Norberto. On Thursday morning I’d been waiting just up the street from the Cruz residence, a nice two-family in Mariners Harbor, when he hobbled to his car. He was wearing slacks and a golf shirt, which didn’t prove anything, although I knew he was a fanatic about the game. But it’s not like he was carrying a bag of clubs. In fact, the inability to pursue his passion on any of Staten Island’s four golf courses was invariably brought up by his lawyer at various depositions and settlement hearings. Not only couldn’t Norberto work, he also couldn’t play. His life, in effect, was ruined.

  Norberto appeared to have real difficulty getting into the car. That also didn’t prove anything. If he was running a con, he probably assumed there was an insurance company camera behind every tree in his hometown. He drove away slowly, as a person with a bum back might.

  It’s not easy to tail someone who is barely maintaining the speed limit. Two slow cars are conspicuous. I had to drop back several vehicles and was passed frequently by annoyed drivers. Norberto drove across Staten Island to the Outerbridge Crossing. Once in New Jersey, he took off, weaving in and out of traffic until he got to the Garden State Parkway, where I lost him. His change in driving style made me suspicious. If he was trying to lose a tail, he succeeded.

  Just to be on the safe side, the next day I rented a car. Finding a vehicle more nondescript than my beat-up Malibu took some doing. My private investigation business, while not exactly booming, was picking up and it was probably time to upgrade my ride. Cormac Levine said I was running the risk of being the first person in history arrested for vagrancy while driving. Coming from the most slovenly detective on the N.Y.P.D., that hurt.

  Norberto and I resumed our same slow-motion driving routine and again wound up at the Outerbridge. As we approached the crossing, I sped up and passed him, honking my horn and giving him the finger. I cut in front of him so that he actually had to brake. He would assume I was just another typically deranged New York driver.

  I picked him up in Jersey a mile past the bridge, doing his weave job. This time I stuck with him all the way to Glenwood Country Club in Matawan. I drove past the club entrance and then circled back. His car was parked in one of the handicapped spots nearest the clubhouse. I’ve never understood the rationale for handicapped parking at golf courses, and never will.

  I entered the clubhouse wearing golf togs myself and no one paid me any notice. I ambled out to the first tee and spotted Norberto putting on his golf shoes while he chatted with three of his buddies. His clubs were already on his cart. What are friends for? I got close enough to the foursome to get some nice shots with my iPhone, which takes better pictures than my regular digital camera. But I wanted some action photos, so I went back into the clubhouse and bought a shirt and hat with the club’s logo on them. Then I went to the cart shack and gave an attendant $20 to let me use a cart “to check out the course before I join.”

  My next two hours were spent intercepting Norberto’s group on various holes. With my club attire, they took me for a ranger who was always on his iPhone. To add verisimilitude to the charade, occasionally I asked them to keep up with the group in front of them. I even made some phony calls to the starter, loud enough to be heard by Norberto and his pals. By the time I headed in, I had proof that Norberto’s expertise with a cane couldn’t hold a candle to his expertise with a 7-iron. He was a hell of a golfer. If I could get a swing like his, I’d happily fall off a scaffold. I emailed some of the best shots to the insurance company lawyers and told them I’d have a full package for them by the time of the next deposition.

  I drove back to Staten Island, stopping at the Red Lantern in Rosebank to pick up some eggplant parmesan sandwiches for Abby Jones and myself. Abby, whose real name is Habika, normally works the security desk in the lobby of my building, which is on the waterfront in Stapleton. She wasn’t on the desk this day, however. She was upstairs in my office, where she moonlighted for me one or two days a week, depending upon her schedule with the building security firm.

  Abby had put in 20 years in the Army, retiring as a staff sergeant in the Military Police. With a daughter headed to college, she was squared away and a hard, almost obsessive, worker. Divorced, but always looking, for both of us. When I walked into my reception area, I could smell the Pine-Sol. The place looked immaculate, which it hadn’t been when I last left it. I walked through into my inner office, where Abby was rearranging my file drawers. She looked up at me.

  “I can see why you haven’t bothered with any fancy security systems, Rhode. It would take the C.I.A.’s best to figure out your filing system.”

  “Hell, I don’t have that many files.”

  “Makes this mish-mash even more impressive. So, how was your date?”

  “It wasn’t a date. We just went to a ball game.”

  “Un, huh. And Saturday night? That’s not a date, either? That girl has the hots for you.”

  “It’s an election-year cocktail party. She’s friendly with the candidate’s wife.”

  “Who’s the candidate?”

  “Sullivan.”

  “The D.A.? You’d better be on your best behavior.”

  “My best is usually not good enough. But I’ll try. Now, let’s eat.”

  I went to my small fridge and got out some sodas as Abby laid out the heroes.

  “How come you never bring me soul food?”

  “I can do that.”

  “Hey. I’m just askin’. Don’t you ever bring me that crap. I’m on a diet.”

  Abby was indeed looking a bit slimmer.

  “But eggplant parmesan is OK?”

  “No diet worth its salt eliminates a Red Lantern eggplant hero.”

  After lunch I spent the rest of the day doing paperwork and preparing my Norberto Cruz report to the insurance company. Then I went home.

  My folks left me a 100-year-old side-hall colonial on St. Austins Place in West Brighton. I parked in the back of my house and headed up the illegal deck two firemen built for me in their spare time. There was a Bengal tiger sitting on the top step. Actually, it wasn’t a tiger, but the biggest tomcat I’d ever seen. He’d been dropping by intermittently for more than a year. Nobody in the neighborhood owned him. I’m not counting, but his face seems to have a new gash every-time he shows up.

  I call him Scar, of course. His sex life was apparently better than mine, or at least more interesting. Nancy Robart, the head of the Staten Island Botanical Garden in nearby Snug Harbor Cultural Center who had been a mutual carnal outlet, had gone monogamous as she set her sights on potential husband No
. 4.

  At first I assumed Scar was auditioning for the role of pet. But he never sticks around long and was obviously not going hungry during his sometimes lengthy absences. Maybe I was the one auditioning and he has found me wanting. The thought annoyed the hell out of me.

  I stepped over the cat, who didn’t even bother to look up, and went into my kitchen. I found a can of beef broth and a couple of tins of sardines. Fixed a bowl and plate and brought them out to him. If he was grateful he managed to restrain himself.

  “I’m a dog person,” I said. “You wouldn’t be so snooty if Scruffy was still around.”

  Scruffy – in family conversations the appendage “the Wonder Dog” was always attached to the name – was a Belgian sheepdog and German shepherd mix with the best characteristics of both breeds. Smart as a whip and gentle with children, women and any animal that recognized his innate superiority, he had the bark of a Tyrannosaur. Neighbors put up with that bark and his occasional antics. He liked to jump our six-foot fence and roam the neighborhood. But once out of puppyhood he was the burglar and loiterer alarm for the entire block, treeing several ne’er-do-wells during his nighttime jaunts. I took him for a walk once when he was set upon by two larger mutts with delusions of canine grandeur. I had to rescue both of them before he turned them into Michael Vick rejects. The mangled mutts and I learned an important lesson: It’s not the size of the dog, it’s the dog. The only battle Scruffy ever lost was to old age, and half the neighborhood turned out when we buried him next to his favorite tree in our yard.