Death in North Beach (30 page)

‘Can't see anything,' Lang yelled out as if he were communicating with the assassins. What he wanted, hoped, no begged for, was that Thanh or Brinkman was picking up on the message. ‘Who are you and what the fuck you doing in our basement?'

‘Time's up,' the voice said.

‘You made a mistake,' Carly yelled out. ‘This makes it a standoff.'

‘We'll just come get you. If you had a gun, you'd have fired it.'

It was Scotty Markham's voice in the darkness. Lang didn't figure the guy would go this far.

‘Come on over, Scotty, see for yourself,' Lang said. He hoped someone upstairs was listening to all this and figuring it out.

‘He said “we”, didn't he? Two here, at least,' Carly said in a whisper. ‘Another outside to let them know when to take control of the elevator.'

New sounds in the darkness:
thooot
,
phut
!

‘What was that?' a voice asked. It wasn't Markham's.

‘You weenies, you're a disgrace to tough guys everywhere,' Lang said. ‘Somebody put some trash in the chute. Scared of a little trash? How are you doing with the rats? They like the dark. Crawl up your leg.'

‘Shut the fuck up,' Markham said.

‘I have to admit, I didn't think you were too bright,' Lang said, ‘but I never figured you for this. This is low.'

‘High and mighty, that it? You're about a year and a half off being me.'

‘No, Scotty. I'm not adept at snapping a man's neck.'

‘A little practice.'

‘I'd have a hard time, stabbing a woman with an ice pick. Truly cold-blooded.'

‘You sound like a high school kid majoring in dance,' Markham said.

On one hand, Lang wanted this to be over, but the fact that the other guys had guns meant he couldn't push it. He and Carly were living on a bluff.

‘What's that?' said the other voice.

‘What?' Markham said.

‘I heard something.'

‘Rats, I tell you, and not the Disney kind,' Lang said. ‘You don't believe me.'

‘I believe you're dead,' Markham said.

Lang sensed someone, something, coming closer.

There was a thud, something soft but heavy hit the floor.

‘Eddie,' Markham said. ‘Eddie!'

‘Things not going according to plan?' Carly asked.

‘I told you those rats are big,' Lang said. He whispered for her to see if the doors would close. If not she was to get down to the floor.

Lang saw Markham's face light up briefly as he tried to use his cellphone.

‘I see you,' Lang said, slipping out the elevator and to one side, and heading toward where the light was.

Markham fired in Lang's direction.

Something hard hit something soft and there was another thud.

‘Just two of them?' It was Thanh's voice.

‘Inside anyway,' Carly said.

‘Brinkman went after the post outside,' Thanh said.

The lights came on. There was a thick lump of apparel on the floor not too far from the trash dumpster beneath the chute. Carly was sure there was a human being inside. Between the boiler and the elevator was the crumpled body of Scotty Markham. Over Markham stood Thanh, in a gray pantsuit, a baseball bat in his hand.

‘You will reimburse for the dry cleaning,' Thanh said, brushing off the grime and nodding toward the dumpster and trash chute. ‘It was a dirtier, but faster ride than I thought.'

Carly called Gratelli.

Lang felt for Markham's pulse. Dead. Then the other guy. A little luckier.

When Brinkman opened the cellar door, the feral guy from the previous visit preceded the old PI into the room. Behind them came the whooping of the police sirens. Lang nodded for Thanh to leave.

Uniforms arrived first and everyone had to play nice until things were sorted out. In less than twenty minutes a perturbed Stern and an amused Rose arrived. Carly intercepted Stern who, face full of reddening anger, headed toward Lang.

‘These guys were waiting for us,' Carly told Stern. The cop nodded but his eyes were still on Lang and his body language was that of an angry dog pulling against the leash. ‘They were going to assassinate us. Had the elevator shut down . . .'

‘Yeah, yeah.' Stern was gathering calm, however slowly. His cell rang and he answered. It seemed to keep him busy for a little while.

‘I don't know if either of Markham's cohorts know anything,' Lang said to Gratelli as the older inspector came in. Gratelli looked the place over, medics now working on the second guy, CSI working with Markham's corpse, while the third member of the gang, the feral guy, was handcuffed and cowering in a dark corner. Rose was talking to him, but that seemed to be the way it was. Rose was talking. The feral guy wasn't.

‘And we can track Markham back to Chiu?' Gratelli asked.

‘Yep. Nothing more than they talked after Markham learned Mickey Warfield wasn't going to get an inheritance. And on top of that he was missing.'

‘Worried him a lot,' Gratelli said.

Carly thought the inspector may have smiled.

‘Warfield's body is found and Markham goes homicidal on you guys.' Gratelli raised his eyebrows. ‘Why?'

‘We're getting close,' Lang said.

‘Why did the girl have to die? The alibi? Why would Markham care?'

‘Maybe Markham didn't care about the alibi. She wanted to tell me something else, remember? Maybe about Chiu.'

Gratelli nodded. ‘You know, all we have to do is sit back. Just let them kill each other and the killer will be the last one standing.'

‘Can I ask you a favor?' Carly asked.

Gratelli nodded.

‘You know the list? Get the last two months' financials. Checking, savings.'

‘What do you have?'

‘Nothing yet. Not sure what I'm looking for.'

‘Yeah, you do.' This time Gratelli's smile was unmistakable. ‘I've got some of them. You need all of them?'

‘Please,' Carly asked.

‘You'll let me in on it, won't you?' Gratelli asked.

‘I will. Thanks. If there's anything there, I'll definitely get you involved. It wouldn't work otherwise.'

Carly, Lang and Brinkman spent thirty minutes answering more questions, most of them the same questions phrased differently. The police found the identities of both surviving attackers and both had records – one for armed robbery and the other several arrests for beating up people, including his wife.

While Stern may have liked to lay something on Lang, the crime scene was pretty clear. It was consistent with the consistent stories told by the two intended victims. The only people using bullets were the attackers. Who actually bought the bullets seemed to trouble Lang more than it did the police. And the two attackers said that Markham had invited them along for backup. Their weapons told a different story.

As Stern passed by Lang, he shook his head.

‘Do you believe the fucking luck?' he said to the air.

On the stairway going up to their offices – Brinkman stubbornly waiting for the elevator to be put back in service – Carly asked Lang, ‘Why did you have Thanh sneak out?'

‘We want to keep his superhero status secret.'

‘Can you ever be serious?'

‘If we acknowledge his special powers, we'll have to pay him more.'

‘Cut it out, will you.'

‘Seriously, think about it, he's kind of a secret weapon. And any undue attention by the authorities, especially our favorite detective Stern, might complicate his life – and ours.' They were quiet for a while, but as they entered the office, Lang pulled Carly aside.

‘We've got to put an end to all of this, don't we? You have any idea how we can do that?'

‘I do,' she said. ‘Let's have lunch.'

‘We just had lunch.'

‘Let's have a coffee break.'

‘North Beach?'

‘Yep.'

‘Let me have a few minutes with Thanh first.'

Carly headed down the hall to the restroom.

Lang found Thanh at the reception desk, head in hands. He looked up, eyes searching Lang for news.

‘How bad were they hurt?' Thanh asked.

Lang would have lied, but the truth would be in tomorrow's newspaper.

‘Markham didn't make it,' Lang said.

Thanh nodded. If killing Markham bothered him, he didn't show it.

‘You want me to stick around?' Lang asked.

‘You can if you want, but I'm going home to shower and change.'

Thanh smiled. It was faint, barely noticeable. But it was a smile.

Thirty-One

Coffee in North Beach, Lang knew, was likely to be good, wherever they went. There was Graffeo, maybe the best in the city, but they didn't serve it in cups, just beans in a bag. There was the famous – and not just for the coffee – Caffe Trieste. It was often wonderfully loud and one might hear an aria or two. But for a quiet spot with in-house roasting Carly and Lang settled on Caffe Roma.

Not all kickback and homey, the interior was sparkling clean with an Italian feel that was more stylishly modern than one would expect in an old Italian neighborhood. Great wines lined one wall. Art hung on other walls. Carly ordered a latte, Lang a cup of the pick of the day. As they sat, Lang noticed that while the patrons of Caffe Trieste seemed to lean toward the artistic, the clientele of Caffe Roma tended to attract the establishment types. Suits and laptops. Everyone was entitled to a taste of Bohemia, he thought.

Carly arrived at the table with her latte and a small plate of cookies, which she intended to share.

‘Kind of like recess,' she said, smiling.

‘Where I went to school, we weren't that civilized.'

‘Your school was a reform school?'

‘Yes.'

‘Oh.' She laughed. ‘It was a wild guess. Just being silly.'

‘Silly is good. You should be silly more often.'

‘Seems to be the direction I'm going, thanks to you and your friends.'

‘It's the process of decorporatization. We remove dress codes, rigid hourly expectations, competition for the boss's favor, and doing things we don't believe are right,' Lang said.

She smiled. Despite this slightly arrogant litany, Noah was right.

‘But we still have a case. Murders to solve. We should get back to business.'

Lang nodded.

Her expression was serious now. ‘What do you think? Where are we?'

‘I don't know,' Lang said. ‘Let me reiterate.' He stopped for a moment. ‘When do we iterate? Anyway, we've been operating on the assumption that this was the work of one of the people on the list.'

She nodded toward him. ‘I see. Not one, but more than one. There were a number of people who didn't want to see this book come to light.'

‘Including your client,' Lang said.

‘Our client, Noah. Why would he hire us and then try to kill us?'

‘Point taken. So we have this: Whitney Warfield was murdered. Angel LeGard was murdered. Frank Wiley was murdered. And now Mickey Warfield is murdered. And these people, generally speaking, weren't the real players.'

‘Whitney was killed to keep the book from surfacing. Angel was killed because, we think, she was pulling the alibi for Whitney's son on the night of his father's death. And possibly because she knew something else damning that had to do with the case or not. But why on earth was Wiley killed?'

‘There we are,' Lang said, taking a sip of coffee and watching a line gather in the front for coffee and cannoli.

‘More than one,' Carly repeated.

‘Which ones? I still have trouble seeing Agnes DeWitt involved in all this.'

‘Don't let your attraction to her cloud your judgment,' she said, smiling.

‘She is a charmer.'

‘I have an idea.' Carly leaned over the table. ‘Trust me?'

‘Hey, it's your case.'

‘I'll get back with you.'

Considering the events of the day, Lang was surprisingly relaxed. He would have to go through some additional police interviews at some point. Fortunately, neither he nor Carly had used a firearm, which would have raised all sorts of issues. Lang took the credit or the blame for using the baseball bat on the two victims and Brinkman had taken his shotgun out to his Buick once Lang tied his prey to some pipes.

This meant that at the moment the case, the only case they were working on at the time, was now completely in Carly's hands. It was too late in the day to go prospecting for new work. Thanh had completed all of the accounting for the month. Brinkman was at home, probably nursing a bottle of Scotch.

The evening was before him.

He gave it some thought. He could call Maura, a masseuse whom he engaged from time to time. Their occasional meetings had been going on for three years. He justified it because she worked for herself, was not part of any sex trafficking ring, and had chosen this line of work because she preferred it to others. Unfortunately, waking up beside a dead woman had destroyed what was left of his libido – at least for a little while. He had no desire to go to a bar, or even a restaurant that required him to be his formal self.

Buddha waited by the door.

‘Yes, well, here we are. No offense to you,' Lang said to the cat who had already walked toward the kitchen, expecting Lang to follow, ‘but this scares me. I'm relatively young, Buddha. I come home to a cat like, well, pardon my stereotypes, like a maiden aunt or an old guy who lost his mate.'