Beyond Blue (10 page)

“No such luck, sugar. It's Ruby.”

“Ruby? Do I know someone by that name?” Gorman asked.

“You know, your illegitimate daughter by the house slave. Remember, Mr. Gorman?”

“Oh, Ms. Sanchez,” Gorman said. “Are you at work today?”

“Yeah and it's weird.”

“That's what you should expect from overnight dates,” Gorman said sourly.

“It wasn't like that,” Ruby said. “In fact, Rafe took me home without even asking to come in. And he picked me up this morning for another date. We're at the Bronx Zoo now.”

“The zoo?”

Gorman was pleasantly surprised, not so much by Ruby as by the little plate Patsy was handing him. As he accepted the sliver of cheesecake, his wife bent to whisper in his ear, “Don't be a grouch. If you play nice, I'll give you another sweet surprise when you get off the phone.” She bent just a little lower, displaying her ample décolletage just inches from his face.

“Well, that sounds quite wonderful,” Gorman said, partly into the phone. He put the first forkful of cheesecake into his mouth.

“Yeah, not what you expect from a drug smuggler,” Ruby said. “But I don't know about the company he keeps. He sneaked away from me to go talk to one of the trainers in Tiger Mountain. I think they did an exchange or something. Would they be hiding drugs here?”

Gorman sat up slowly, his eyes fixed on some point on the wall in front of him. Bach was rising to a crescendo and the cheesecake was perfectly smooth and sweet on his tongue.

“You think he took something in, or out?”

“Don't know about what he might have gave up, but I sure saw him take something from the zoo dude. A small package or bag.”

“Tiger shit!” Gorman said.

“No, really, I saw him myself.”

“No, no. Ms. Sanchez, do they have Siberian tigers in that habitat?” Gorman asked, pulling his feet out of Patsy's hands and putting them flat on the floor.

“Sure. Me and this one big cat, we kind of connected. Siberian. Yeah.”

“It's their feces,” Gorman said, breaking into a grin. “Good work, girl.”

“Thanks,” Ruby said warily. “Mr. Gorman, you okay?”

“That's the problem with your dogs at the airport,” Gorman went on. “The feces of Siberian tigers completely disguises the scent of cocaine, heroin, even marijuana. But it doesn't make the dogs react like there's a bad smell. In fact, they wouldn't react at all.”

Patsy, hearing just his side of the conversation, put a hand to her forehead. “How in the world does he know this kind of stuff.”

Ruby was more direct. “Damn, boss. You sure know your shit.”

“Well, that still leaves the question of how to bust this guy so that it appears to be the work of our client. Hey! What's that beeping noise?”

“I don't hear nothing,” Ruby said.

Patsy took the phone and listened for a second. “That's your call waiting, dear. Ruby, hon, we have another call coming in. I'm going to hang up and let Paul call you back, okay?”

“Sure thing, Patsy. Good to know somebody in that house has some manners.”

Patsy pushed buttons and listened briefly before handing the phone over again. “Chastity.”

“Ms. Chiba?” Gorman asked when he took the phone.

“Sorry to disturb your Saturday, G,” Chastity said, “but I thought you'd want to know.”

“Is that a siren I hear?” Gorman asked.

“Yes, sir. I'm following an ambulance toward the downtown Brooklyn Hospital Center on deKalb Ave. Alex Brooks just tried to commit suicide.”

Samuel “Stone” Mason wondered how he had gotten himself in such a situation. He had more than a dozen years of police experience and several more years as a private detective. All those years he had been a good husband to his wife, Sherry, a good friend to his partner Rico Steele, and even a good owner to his dog, Champ.

So why was he hunched over a toilet on a Saturday afternoon, applying all his strength to a plunger?

“So this is why they call this place Flushing,” Rico said from the bathroom doorway.

“You see? This is why I don't have kids,” Stone said, freeing the plug with a final hard yank.

“He put the dog's ball down there? Got to remember that for the next time I want to create a diversion,” Rico said.

“Now, don't go blaming little Danny,” Sherry said from beside Rico. “He's just a little guy and doesn't know any better.”

Stone held the plunger in the tub to rinse it off. “Do the kids you teach do this kind of thing at school?”

“They wouldn't dare.” Sherry entered the room to crouch and give her husband a soft kiss. “You're a dear for taking care of that poor girl and her son.”

“No, you are, for putting up with the intrusion. And now I need to go find out how we can get her back out on her own.”

Sherry had put up with a great deal over the years, Stone reflected on his way to the dining room. He was sure
they didn't make women like that anymore. Sherry wore a conservative, belted navy dress that day, which only accented her robust figure. Her auburn hair was recently styled in gentle waves that caressed her face nicely. She was not as dark as he, her skin reminding him still of Tina Turner's. Except, of course, that she was a whole lot prettier.

Linda was at the dining room table when Stone and Rico arrived. She had changed to a tee shirt and Capri pants, which seemed to suit her small body. Her mousy brown hair and soft features gave her a gentle, almost helpless look. Stone and Steele joined her at the table.

“Okay, so you guys want to talk business?” Linda asked. “Let's get to it while Danny's watching TV. Who are you guys, why are you after my boss, and what do you want from me?”

“I think we'll ask the questions today,” Stone said. His briefcase was leaning against the buffet behind him. He pulled it to him, opened it, and drew out a note pad. He realized that he and Steele were a bit less intimidating in knit shirts and jeans than they were in suits the day before, but he wanted to control the conversation if he could.

“Please,” Linda said, rolling her eyes. “I appreciate all you've done, Mr. Mason, to keep me out of danger and all. And your wife is a doll and I sure appreciate how kind she's been to me and Danny. But I know I'm here because you need something from me just as much as I needed help from you. But I need to know the deal before I just start running my mouth about my boss, you know?”

“We think your boss is mixed up in some pretty nasty stuff, Linda,” Stone said. “Maybe you're in it too.”

Linda leaned forward, elbows on the table, arms crossed. “Can it. If you thought I was dirty I'd be in jail now. Sure, if I go back to work I know what's in store for me. But they're not going to look too hard for a gal who they think screwed up and left an office door unlocked. What's to stop me from just taking my kid and grabbing a Greyhound for
Vegas?”

“They will be looking for you,” Stone said. “They'll hunt you down, because they probably think you've got this.”

Stone pulled the thin green ledger from his briefcase and dropped it on the maple tabletop. He could not miss the change that his casual action caused in Linda. She sat back, as if he had placed a tarantula in front of her. Her eyes grew to silver dollars and her mouth fell slightly open.

“You took the ledger,” she said in hushed tones, and her skin flushed a hot pink.

“Yes, and at first look, this looks pretty incriminating,” Stone said with a smug expression. “All the writing is in a very feminine hand. Should we have a handwriting analyst see if it matches yours?”

“Yeah, it's all me,” Linda said. “But hang on here. Cops sure don't take stuff like that away from a place when they had no warrant to get in. Now I really got to know who you guys are. A rival gang, maybe?”

Rico Steele pushed the heel of his left palm against Stone's temple, giving his partner a playful push that tipped him to the side a bit. “Why you want to be a hard ass about this, Stone? We need her cooperation, so let's just bring her in.”

“In to what?” Linda asked. “What am I mixed up in here? Who the hell are you guys?”

With a broad smile Rico leaned an elbow on the table himself. “Look, we're private investigators. We don't worry about what the cops will do, and don't care much about organized crime as such. We work for an agency that cares about cops. Your boss seems to be in the unpleasant habit of doing bad things to cops in court.”

“Yeah, he's really got a hard on for the police,” Linda said, and then looked up like a guilty child. “I mean, he's got something against them. He only seems to work defending the bad guys, and I think he may have falsified evidence and testimony and stuff.”

Steele chuckled. “Yeah, I get it. Anyhow, we want to put
him out of business. If it hurts the mob at the same time, well, so much the better. And it will be a lot easier to put Jerome down for good with your insider knowledge of the operation.”

Linda had curled her lips in, making her “I'm thinking” face, when Sherry entered carrying a tray. In addition to the sugar bowl and creamer Stone noticed steam rising from four cups of coffee, not three. As Sherry set the tray beside the ledger book, she said, “You want to help them, dear. They're the good guys. Really.”

Linda squeezed Sherry's hand, and Sherry sat at the end of the table. While everyone fixed their coffee the way they wanted it, Linda said, “I'm not worried about me. I can take care of myself. But I worry about little Danny. I know the police couldn't protect him. Can you guys keep him safe?”

“I personally guarantee it,” Stone said in a solemn voice. “For P.I.s we maintain a pretty low profile, and we have safe houses and other operatives who can create our own temporary witness protection program.”

“And you saw what we did to those freaks in Jerome's office,” Steele added.

“Yeah,” Linda said. “You guys can sure kick ass, I'll give you that.” Her eyes went to Sherry, and she ducked her head again, as if caught swearing by her teacher. That guilt ran pretty deep.

“Catholic school?” Stone asked.

“Yeah. How did you…?”

“Not important,” Stone said, flipping the cover of the ledger with a finger. “What can you tell us about what's in here?”

“Not all that much to tell,” Linda said, pointing at the pages. “These entries are payments made by these companies. This column is checks deposited for services. As you can see, a lot of them are regular amounts. That's retainers. That means…”

“We know what a retainer is,” Steele said, elbowing his
partner. “That's money you get whether you do any work or not.”

“Right. I guess P.I.s work that way too. This column is cash payments. He never declares any of that income, of course.”

“P.I.'s don't work that way,” Stone said. He listened to the Power Rangers playing on his living room television in the background and briefly considered the big-screen TV he'd have in the den if he and Steele were willing to accept under-the-table work. “I see some sizeable payments there. I'd guess that's money for the cases when the evidence was stacked against Jerome's client. Do you make these deposits?”

“Nope,” Linda said, shaking her head. “I never even see the cash. Don't know where it goes, but it sure isn't put in any account I know about.”

“That'll make it tougher,” Steele said, sipping his coffee.

“You got that right,” Stone said. He leaned in close, smelling the musty paper scent of the book as his eyes scanned a page thoroughly, then a second and a third. “I don't see any mention of Jerome anywhere on this ledger. We've got a few known mob fronts listed in here, and some other businesses that the cops should probably watch a lot more closely, but nothing that connects this book to our favorite legal eagle.” Then he looked up at Linda. “Except you.”

“Yeah, like anybody's going to take my word for it. Make no mistake, guys, just cause he's in with a bad crowd don't change the fact that Irv Jerome is one hell of a lawyer. You can bet there's no connecting him to the ledger, and he'd make me look like an idiot on the witness stand.”

“We've seen what he does to cops in court,” Steele said. “Wouldn't want to do that to you.”

Stone was still staring at the ledger pages. “There's a letter code here, in the column next to a lot of the cash payments. Actually looks like Elvin runes or something, like in
Lord of the Rings
.”

“Oh, I love those movies. Anyhow, that's how he knows which case that money was paid against,” Linda said, sounding eager to be helpful. “Each of those symbols signifies a particular client.”

Stone looked up, wearing his first real smile of the day. “The case connection. Now that's what we need, to reel this guy in,”

Linda sat back, her straight brown locks flipping up from her forehead. “What part of
code
didn't you get? Those marks are just gibberish without the code key.”

“You used that code key to make all these entries?” Sherry asked. “That's quite a sophisticated system.”

“Sorry, ma'am, but I don't remember any of it. It's complicated. That's why I have to use the key.”

“Which is where?” Stone pressed.

“It's hidden in the office,” Linda said. Her voice slowed, as if she sensed where this was all going.

“Armed with that code key we can put this guy out of business for good,” Stone said to Rico, “and make it so no one would ever dream of touching Linda.”

“But that would mean putting her at risk now,” Sherry said, her eyes going from Stone's face to Steele's, and back to Stone. “You can't ask her to go back into that office after all that's happened.”

Just then Danny appeared at the dining room entrance. He had his mother's big, dark eyes and her hair, only a bit longer so it hung nearly to his eyes. He brushed his hair away from his forehead before he spoke.