Saratoga Payback Page 12

  Next, Charlie drove to Mickey’s apartment on Grove Street, which occupied the second floor of a house built at the turn of the nineteenth century. Charlie had never been inside, but he knew the building, admired the slate roof and the single turret on the southeast corner.

  Mickey’s apartment had its own entrance, a door right off the driveway that opened onto a set of stairs to the second floor. But as Charlie walked along the driveway, he saw the yellow police tape and a police seal on Mickey’s door. As he studied it, he considered what he’d need to do to break in. The thought shocked him, not because of the danger of being found out, but because of how quickly his mind had turned to the illegal and foolish. As he walked back to his car, he thought of talking to Mickey’s landlord, a man he knew slightly and had seen at the Y. But he knew there was a line he couldn’t cross. It was one thing to talk to Joan Miller, but it would be hard to justify his conversation with Mrs. Penfield. If he talked to Mickey’s two landlords, then Hutch and Chief Novak would, as they had told him with one of their favorite clichés, “come down on him like a ton of bricks.”

  So Charlie went home. It was getting late anyway, he told himself. Janey and Emma would be home and there was dinner to think of.

  Victor Plotz’s old Mercedes diesel was parked in front of Charlie’s house, half blocking the driveway. Its original cream color had turned to a jaundiced yellow mixed with rust, while black smudges on the trunk attested to billowing diesel exhaust; because Victor didn’t simply drive away, he vanished in a cloud of smoke.

  Entering the front door, Charlie heard Victor’s laughter, followed by Emma’s. Charlie hung up his wet coat and then went into the kitchen to find Victor with a glass of milk and a plate of oatmeal cookies that Emma had just baked. This was not uncommon. Victor often enjoyed a range of snacks at Charlie’s that the Queen of Softness didn’t let him eat at home. Soon Charlie joined them with a smaller glass of milk and a single cookie. He glanced at it with a touch of regret. Would James Bond eat oatmeal cookies? Then he wondered how many pleasures he reduced with second thoughts, like adding a teaspoon of salt to a bowl of ice cream.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  Emma laughed again. She was sixteen, had short blond hair and the lanky body of a long-distance runner. “Victor was saying how Mickey Martin was buried in one place and his tongue must be buried someplace else.”

  “Like turkey parts,” said Victor. “You buy a turkey and get the body, but the neck, liver, heart and lungs belong to other birds. It’s the opposite of twins being separated at birth; it’s turkeys separated at death. Like Mickey. Who knows where his tongue wound up? And Parlucci and that old guy, for that matter.”

  Charlie nodded. He wasn’t sure how he felt about Victor corrupting his stepdaughter with black humor.

  “Is there any news about the snake?” asked Emma, still laughing.

  “Nervous sightings,” said Victor. “There’ve been so many you’d think there’d been fifty snakes.”

  They continued to talk about snakes. Then Charlie told Emma that he’d have to order new calling cards. “That phrase ‘Consultant, Legal and Otherwise’ is going to get me in trouble.”

  Victor and Emma remained amused. “What about ‘Charlie Bradshaw, A Good Guy’?” said Victor.

  “Or ‘Charles Bradshaw: Friend to the People,’” suggested Emma.

  Charlie got to his feet, leaving his cookie half eaten. It was obvious he could expect no serious advice. Sugar rush, he said to himself.

  As he stepped away from the table, his cell phone began to play the Mickey Mouse march. Again there was laughter. Charlie dug the phone out of his pocket.

  His caller was Joan Miller; she spoke with breathy excitement. “I’ve just heard from Mickey’s lawyer. I’m going to inherit about seventy-five thousand dollars. And that’s after the bills have been paid. Maybe I should have bought him a better stone.”

  Nine

  It was Charlie’s intention to sleep late that Sunday morning, but when he got up at five thirty to take his second pee of the night, he’d been unable to fall back to dreamy unconsciousness. This he blamed on what he called “nervous brain syndrome,” which had begun when he asked himself, Where did Mickey get all the money? Once the question was lodged in his head, he could kiss his pillow good-bye.

  Was there any chance that Mickey had come upon the money legally? Charlie would swear on a stack of Bibles that he hadn’t. But if the net amount to be given to Joan Miller was seventy-five thousand dollars, then the gross must have been huge. And who knew who else, if anyone, had received money. “A healthy chunk of change,” Victor would say. Where did Mickey get it and how come it was so much? Charlie had heard nothing about Mickey’s good fortune or sudden change of lifestyle, and this indicated that he wanted to keep the money secret, either because he had obtained it illegally or to hide it from the IRS, or both. On the other hand, Mickey wasn’t someone to offer information. He was secretive by nature. It was in his genes, an overdeveloped secretive gene.

  Charlie eased himself out of bed so as not to wake Janey, tried to find socks, shoes and clothes in the darkness, then quietly made his way to the hall. Here he discovered he’d picked up mismatched shoes and a bright red shirt, so he tiptoed back into the bedroom.

  “Are you wandering around for any good reason?” asked Janey sleepily.

  “Shoes don’t match.”

  There was a long silence and Charlie thought she’d gone back to sleep. Then he heard a whisper, “Go barefoot.”

  Once dressed, Charlie drove out to Rosemary’s diner to organize his thoughts with the help of his notebook and a stack of blueberry pancakes. It was still dark when he arrived, but the parking lot was nearly full. Several semis hummed peacefully at the far end. Glancing upward, he could see no stars.

  Rosemary sat in her usual place behind the register with her large breasts looming above the cash drawer. She wore a lavender silk blouse and her red hair had been recently hennaed. Thick golden hoops dangled from her substantial lobes. Though definitely large and soft, she gave no sense of being overweight; rather, she called to mind a great pink peony just beginning to turn.

  Rosemary slowly batted her eyelashes at him. “How’s my number two boy?”

  “Ready for some pancakes.”

  “You want ’em, we got ’em.”

  Charlie made his way through the crowded tables to a semicircular booth with golden plastic. Rosemary always kept the booth available for special friends, and a small “Reserved” sign stood on the table. That and his private locker at the Y were about the only perks in Charlie’s life and he appreciated both. A waitress brought him coffee.

  Charlie had decided to drive up to the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls as soon as the museum opened and talk to Lizzie Whitaker. Perhaps she knew something about Mickey’s money and where it came from. He guessed that, wherever it had come from, Mickey probably had nothing to fear from the IRS, since it had been Mickey’s lawyer who called Joan Miller. No way was the lawyer going to risk an accessory charge. So either he had gotten it legally or it had been laundered.

  Taking a notebook from his back pocket, he began to jot down the sequence of events and what he knew. The very act of writing seemed to validate his thoughts. This, he suspected, was a placebo effect. It gave him credibility, or ersatz credibility, in his own eyes. But the more he wrote, the more he felt he was hitting a dead end. No matter where Mickey’s money had come from, Charlie doubted it had anything to do with his murder. The connection to Parlucci and Milo Rutkowski suggested the cause was something that happened before Mickey moved to Saratoga and it was that event, or events, that had led Mickey to Charlie’s house Monday night or early Tuesday morning. Maybe Mickey’s parole officer could give him a lead, but there was absolutely no reason the parole officer should talk to him. In any case, Hutchins had surely talked to him already.

  Charlie was hal
fway through his stack of blueberry pancakes when Rosemary slipped into the booth beside him. Her perfume struck him like a blast from an open furnace. “Are you bored?” she asked.

  “No, of course not, why do you say that?”

  “You have a wonderful wife and daughter, a nice house and money in your pocket and you’re bored.”

  “Why d’you keep saying that? I’m not bored at all.” Am I bored? Charlie asked himself.

  “Victor says you’ve gone back to being a private detective even though you could end up in jail. You wouldn’t like jail, Charlie.”

  “I’m not investigating, I’m just—”

  “Please don’t say you’re ‘poking around.’” Rosemary’s black eyelashes—surely they were false—extended from her heavy lids like a cowcatcher from a steam locomotive. “You don’t believe it and I don’t believe it. You’re investigating.”

  “Mickey was murdered on my sidewalk and I’m trying to find out why.” Despite his defense, Charlie knew he was engaged in a losing argument. “Anyway, I’m not bored.”

  Rosemary put a be-ringed hand gently on his wrist. “Charlie, do you have enough sex in your life?”

  He was just taking a sip of coffee and he spilled a little on his shirt. “Really, Rosemary, how can you expect me—”

  “Just make sure that Victor doesn’t go to jail with you. The food wouldn’t sit well with him.” With that, Rosemary slid gracefully out of the booth and returned to her cash register.

  Is everything I’m doing a lie? Charlie asked himself. Am I only trying to prove to myself that I’m not old? But he’d gone too far to stop now. Anyway, he’d already decided to talk to Lizzie, and after that he’d only talk to a few more people and then call it quits, or try to.

  —

  Lizzie Whitaker had short black hair and probably weighed one hundred pounds. She wore a gray turtleneck sweater, an ankle-length skirt of a darker gray and a black leather belt. All she needed was an iron ring to make her look like a granite hitching post, or such was Charlie’s thought. Standing behind the counter in the Hyde’s small museum shop, she had looked at Charlie with increasing alarm as he approached. Then, when he introduced himself, she’d seemed ready to sprint for the door. Skittish, he thought.

  “Have the police been to speak to you?” Charlie asked.

  “Several times.” Her voice fell between a whisper and a repressed scream.

  Lizzie avoided his eyes and Charlie wondered if she treated her customers with the same degree of apprehension. He decided to be avuncular. “Well, I bet you’re wondering why I’m disturbing you if you’ve already talked to the police.” He paused to see if she’d respond, but she continued to look away. She had pale skin and her ears looked like small porcelain shells. She wore no earrings. “That’s easy to answer,” Charlie continued. “Mickey was killed on my sidewalk. I’ve no idea why he was coming to my house, but I’ve a wife and young daughter. I’d like to make sure they’re safe. That’s why I’ve come to you. I’m worried.” Someday I’m going to be punished for this sort of folderol, thought Charlie.

  Lizzie quickly glanced at him and looked away. “I don’t see how I can help.”

  “Didn’t I see you with Mickey at Lillian’s last spring?” Charlie persisted. “He’d been drinking and was rude to you. To my mind, he was way out of line.”

  Lizzie gave him a longer look. “Yes, I remember you.” Her nervousness seemed to decrease slightly. “Mickey said awful things about you.”

  “I expect he said awful things about everyone. How long had you been dating him?” And why? Charlie wanted to add.

  “About four months. I broke it off soon after that time in Lillian’s. I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

  Charlie pursed his lips and nodded kindly. “How’d you happen to meet?”

  Lizzie hesitated and then plunged ahead. “It was an online dating service. It was the first time I’d tried it. The first and only time, I should say. I’ll never do it again. Our profiles matched.”

  “And how’d they match?” Charlie asked himself how his own profile would read: nosy and secretive, a compulsive liar.

  “We both liked books and long walks. We’d both suffered from heartache in the past. But he said he was younger than he really was, only in his midthirties. That should have warned me. But he was nice at the beginning. At least he didn’t seem unnice. He could even be charming.”

  “Did he tell you he’d been in prison?”

  “No, never.”

  “But it doesn’t surprise you?”

  “I read it in the paper in the article about his . . . passing.” She glanced up at him again, pressing her fingertips against the glass top of the display case so the tips turned white. “After I broke it off, he kept calling, saying awful things, personal things. He didn’t stop calling till I threatened to get a restraining order.”

  “He had that breath,” Charlie offered.

  The glance she gave him was almost angry. “He was very sensitive about it. He said it was the cross he had to bear. It made me quite sympathetic, at least at first. We all have crosses to bear. Some more than others.”

  Charlie wondered about her own cross. Timidity, shyness, or was it bigger? “And then what happened?”

  Lizzie pressed her fingertips more firmly against the glass. “But after we’d become . . . intimate. That’s what he became especially mean about, the sort of things he said about me. He was never gentle; I don’t think he knew how to be gentle.”

  Her eyes grew moist and Charlie was afraid she would weep. They had been talking quietly as four or five other visitors inspected the postcards and leafed through display books.

  “Mickey was known for his meanness. That and gossip.”

  “Slander is more like it.” She looked at Charlie directly, as if taking courage from her anger. “I should have stopped seeing him right away, I mean as soon as I saw what he was like. At first, the things he told me about myself, I thought they might be true. I thought things were my fault and I tried to make it up to him. That night you spoke to him, he criticized my clothes, my ‘mousiness,’ he called it. When I stopped seeing him, I decided he’d never been interested in dating. He was just looking for someone to hurt.”

  Lizzie was as slender as an adolescent boy—the very opposite of the Queen of Softness. Charlie found her pretty, in a watery sort of way, with delicate features and light blue eyes. Mickey had been good at seeing someone’s weaknesses. Once identified, he could pop a person open like an oyster. “Did Mickey talk about money or of having some sort of good fortune?”

  “He’d brag, but he wasn’t truthful. In his profile, he said he liked art and music. He said he was a retired investment banker who’d left Wall Street to pursue his own creative impulses.”

  “And what did you find out?”

  “That he sold insurance and a little real estate; that he was mean to his secretary, just as he was mean to me.”

  “So he did talk about money?”

  They were interrupted by a young man with a handful of postcards. Charlie stepped back to study a framed reproduction of a yellow painting with black lines and curves. It didn’t seem to be about anything. He decided it was unfinished.

  When the man left, Charlie returned to the counter. He wanted to ask Lizzie about the picture, but he didn’t wish to seem ignorant. Maybe he’d come back and look at it another time. He could bring Janey.

  “Money was the one thing he didn’t seem mean about,” said Lizzie when Charlie repeated his question. “Not that he liked to spend it. He liked to carry a large roll of bills and show it off. Actually, it was mostly made up of paper with a few large bills wrapped around the outside.”

  “Did he seem well-off?”

  Lizzie thought for a moment. “I don’t know. He certainly didn’t throw his money around. But he said he meant to retire soon. He wanted to move t
o the Caribbean and get away from the snow. He said he’d already been to some island to look at property. I thought it was another of his stories.”

  “Did he ever seem afraid?”

  Lizzie looked thoughtful. “Cautious, perhaps. He liked to say he had a million enemies. It was a source of pride. Really, apart from the meanness, I’ve no idea what he was like. Once I understood that he lied, then even the true things seemed untrue. Even his apartment was secretive. It could have been a room in a motel.”

  “And you moved up here after you broke up with him?”

  “I moved here in June. He wouldn’t let me alone.”

  Charlie asked her if she knew the names of any of his other girlfriends, but she didn’t. “He knew lots of people, but none that he ever said anything nice about.”

  “How did you meet his secretary?”

  “He’d broken a date and I didn’t hear from him for a week. It was during the time he was still being nice. I stopped by his office to see if he was all right, but Mrs. Penfield hadn’t seen him either. About a month later, I ran into her at the post office and we talked. By then, very little that she said about Mickey surprised me.”

  “But something did?”

  “No, nothing surprised me. She wanted to quit her job; I couldn’t blame her.”

  —

  Charlie had driven halfway back to Saratoga when he decided to call Lieutenant Hutchins. He didn’t expect to tell the lieutenant anything he didn’t know, but he hoped to get a little more information. He was “going fishing,” as Victor liked to say. After reaching the desk sergeant, Charlie had to wait about two more minutes before Hutchins came on the line. His tone was angry.

  “What’s it now, Charlie? You going to say why Mickey went to your house?”

  “I wanted to tell you that Mickey’s sister inherited a whole lot of money from her brother. I just learned about it.”