Known to Evil (6 page)

"One moment," she said, as if I were put on earth to irk her. And then, "We have no Mr. Strange in residence."

"Really? He told me that I could call him there at any time. Maybe you have another number for him?"

"Please wait," she said, managing to insinuate her agitation in the sound of the click that put me on hold.

Forty seconds later she was back. "Mr. Strange checked out this morning. He left no messages."

I paused there, wondering what this wrinkle meant for my involvement in Rinaldo's business.

"Is that quite all?" the woman asked.

"Aren't you supposed to be polite or something?"

The lady hung up.

I SHOULD HAVE FELT relief at Strange's departure. If he was gone, didn't that mean the investigation, whatever it was about, was over?

But when working around Rinaldo, loose ends were never a good thing.

I logged on to the New York news engine that the computer whiz Tiny "Bug" Bateman had written for me. This customized piece of software allows me to connect various newswire accounts of specific crimes and criminals--it even taps a special police website using keywords from newspaper and wire accounts.

Wanda Soa had been a cocktail waitress and student at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The man found stabbed to death in Wanda's apartment carried no identification and the police had yet to identify him. No one heard the shot that killed the woman, but the door had been left wide open and a passing neighbor got worried and called the super--a woman named Dorothy Harding. Police were asking for anyone with information to come forward.

There was no mention of the name Tara Lear.

The crime made very little sense. It was unlikely that Wanda stabbed the button man before he shot her, and she certainly couldn't have done it with half her face gone. From what I remembered, the door hadn't been broken open, so someone had probably let the killer, or killers, in.

And what was I doing there? That was my existential question, in hindsight.

A buzzer that I'd never heard before sounded--quite loudly. I nearly jumped out of my chair.

"Mr. McGill?" bodiless Mardi Bitterman said.

It took me a moment to remember the intercom box on my desk. I hadn't used it in the twenty- one months I'd had the office.

Pressing a button, I said, "Yes?"

"There's a man out here who says that he's the new financial officer for the building. He wants to talk with you."

I remembered the guards at the front desk telling me that there was a new bookkeeper who was going through everyone's overtime. They didn't like him, and I still had enough of my union-organizing father's background to side with the working class.

"Send him in, Mardi. Tell him to follow the hall to the far end."

10

T
here are no straight lines in the life or labors of the private detective.

In gumshoe fiction, the PI gets on the case at about page six and follows it through without a pause or distraction from his, or her, personal life. He certainly doesn't have to deal with accountants who have been charged by their bosses with the ouster of a suspect tenant: me.

At least he knocked.

"Come in."

Though I had not seen his face clearly, I knew Aura's lover by his height and weight, pinstriped suit, and oxblood briefcase.

The only hint revealing my murderous heart was a momentary flutter of my eyelashes.

"Mr. McGill?" he asked.

I nodded and started counting breaths again.

"My name is George Toller," he said. "I'm the new chief financial officer of the Tesla."

"Oh? I thought CFOs ran corporations," I said.

"May I have a seat?"

I gestured toward one of the blue and chrome visitor's chairs, and Toller sat down.

"You are correct, of course. I run the entire company for Hyman and Schultz. They own nearly three dozen New York properties--thirty-three, to be exact. They have sent me here to clear up some messes left by the previous owners and their representatives."

That was another thing about mystery novels: at the end of the story the crime is solved and that's that. The crook is caught, or maybe just found out. But, regardless, the crime is never carried on to the next book in the series. You rarely find the stalwart and self-possessed dick looking for a perpetrator from the previous story.

I wasn't so lucky. The crimes I dealt with lagged on for years, sometimes decades.

And in this case Toller was the investigator and I was the elusive criminal.

The previous manager of the Tesla, Terry Swain, had embezzled a large sum of money over twenty-some years. The new owners looked a little closer than the previous ones and tumbled to the misappropriations. Around the same time, I was between offices and had found out that there was a beautiful suite recently vacated on the seventy-second floor. I offered to muddy the waters of the investigation for a rock-bottom price on a fifteen-year lease. Terry leapt at the deal and I got him off, even saved his retirement fund for him.

Ever since that time the owners have had it in for me. First they sent Aura to get me evicted but instead we became lovers. Now they sent my ex-lover's lover.

There had to be some kind of meaning to that.

"How can I help you, Mr. Toller?"

"You could pack your things and move out," he said. "I'd be happy to tear up your lease."

He smiled without showing any teeth.

It struck me that he had no idea about the relationship between me and Aura.

"I couldn't give up this view," I confessed.

"Eight rooms and only one employee? Mr. McGill, this is a waste of space."

We hated each other without having ever met. What was interesting to me was that our reasons were so far apart. His sense of propriety was bent out of shape by my shadowy dealings with his masters' property. College had taught him contempt for me. Conversely, my abhorrence for him had a genetic basis. This man had stolen my woman. I wanted to cut out his heart right there on my African-wood table.

I wondered if there were wars between nations that had begun like this, if whole peoples slaughtered each other without even being able to agree on what they were fighting about.

"Is that all?" I asked pleasantly.

"I've taken an office on the forty-second floor," he replied. "My primary purpose here is to negate your contract and to have you evicted, maybe even incarcerated."

Toller was not a day over forty-five but he carried himself like a man of seventy. He was one of those men who came into the world with the weight of years on his shoulders. I could tell by the timbre of his voice and the cast of his eye that he felt he was being threatening. I expected that he could imagine the fear I felt at his words.

I smiled.

"Do they pay you well, Mr. Toller?"

"I do all right."

" 'All right'? That's a lot of money to try and nullify a good-faith contract. Listen to me, man, these empty rooms are mine, just like the little place thirty floors down is yours. I'm not leaving, and you're not taking or sending me anywhere. Okay?"

Finally--a frown.

"I'm very good at my job, Mr. McGill. I have a background in forensic accounting."

And I have a pistol in my top drawer.

The image of Toller kissing Aura came back to me. I could feel the fingernails digging into my palms.

"I haven't broken any laws, Mr. Toller," I lied. "So you can take your red case and your blue suit and do whatever it is a CFO forensic bookkeeper does. I'm staying right here."

"I don't think you understand the seriousness of your situation," he replied.

"What a man don't know," I quoted, "he just don't know."

Something about the phrase inflamed the prig's aesthetic. His left nostril flared and he rose to his feet, hugging the briefcase under his arm like a pet piglet.

"You'll be hearing from me" were his last words before leaving.

THE IDEA OF TOLLER'S investigation didn't intimidate me. I was vulnerable, of course--all people are. Innocent or not, anyone can be made to look bad. And I had enough skeletons in my closet to make a death row inmate seem angelic. But I wasn't worried--not about Toller--just overwhelmed by the circumstances of my life.

Any good boxer can tell you that if you have a sound strategy, and stick to it, you always have a shot at winning the fight. And even if you don't win, you can make it through to the final bell, throwing at least some doubt on your opponent's claim to victory.

What beats a fighter with a good plan isn't power or a lucky punch, not usually; no, what beats a journeyman pugilist is the onslaught of an implacable attack. If your opponent throws so much at you that you get confused, you will necessarily be drawn away from your game plan and defeated by the complexity of your own (mis)perceptions.

I had a lot on my mind: everything from murder to the unexpected bouquet of wildflowers that Katrina had placed in our dining room.

I resolved to ignore any new information until I had answered at least one question.

At that moment the buzzer sounded again. I decided to have that wire disconnected.

"Yes, Mardi?"

"A Mr. Alphonse Rinaldo to see you, Mr. McGill."

11

S
how him in," I said, stunned by the impact of the soft words. Alphonse Rinaldo.

I had never seen him outside his downtown offices. The Big Man didn't come to you; he never went anywhere, as far as I knew.

When the door came open I stood up. Mardi entered with a smile for me and the view. She moved a little awkwardly but that was okay--I was off balance myself. Alphonse Rinaldo was the most powerful man I had ever met. Seeing him follow the child into the room was unreal. His dark-brown silk suit cost more than most cars. He was five- nine, with a perfect complexion and black, well-managed hair. He nodded and then moved gracefully to the visitor's chair.

It seemed like a travesty that such an important man should sit in the same seat that was occupied by George Toller just a while before.

"Can I get you anything, Mr. Rinaldo?" Mardi asked.

"Coffee?" he said.

"There's a Coffee Exchange in the lobby," I said. "Get me one, too, will ya, Mardi?"

I handed her a ten-dollar bill and the key ring for the front door, adding, "The silver key works on the top lock."

She smiled and backed out of the room.

"Nice place," Rinaldo said. His voice was smooth and deep like a placid lake on just the right day.

"Thank you."

I sat down and frowned again. It was becoming less and less likely that I'd make it to the final round.

Like Toller, Rinaldo was carrying a briefcase. But unlike the so-called CFO, the Special Assistant to the City of New York wasn't bringing tuna sandwiches and condoms to work.

For a moment there I imagined Toller going to the eighty-first floor and rutting with Aura on her big metal desk.

"What's wrong, Leonid?" Alphonse asked.

"You came here all by yourself?"

"Yes."

"Then you must know why I look like there's something wrong."

Instead of smiling he took a small photograph from his breast pocket and leaned across the desk, handing it to me.

It was a snapshot of a raven-haired girl, no older than twenty-five, whose look was somehow both reserved and wild. She was facing the lens but not looking into it. The shot was taken when she was unaware.

"Is this the girl you saw last night?"

"I don't get it, Mr. Rinaldo, you could get any of a hundred people to show you the crime-scene photographs. As far as I know, the NYPD is an open book to you."

"I cannot be involved." His eyebrows furrowed one-sixteenth of an inch. It wasn't much, but a man that close to being royalty didn't have to do much.

"The face on the dead girl was pretty destroyed, but she had blond hair and one blue eye."

I could tell by the waver over his lips and the slight puffing of his cheek that he sighed in relief. I couldn't actually hear the exhalation, but it was there.

"What happened to Strange?" I asked.

"I pulled him off the job," Rinaldo said. "Told him that it was over."

"But it's not."

"I need you to find this girl, Leonid. It is very important to me."

In that fight--the one where you had a plan and stuck to it--you could be thrown off balance by any change in your opponent; for instance, if he were to switch from a normal right-handed stance to southpaw. I never expected to see vulnerability in this man who, for all intents and purposes, was beyond the reaches of pain.

"Did Strange tell you my caveats?" I asked, pretending that this was a meeting between equals.

"He records every conversation he has on my behalf."

"So what do you have to say?"

"If you hadn't voiced those restrictions I wouldn't be here."

Our eyes met. Rinaldo's gaze was unwavering. Even in obvious pain and defenseless he wouldn't look away.

"Excuse me," Mardi Bitterman said.

She was carrying a cardboard box that they use for large orders at the Coffee Exchange.

"That was quick," I said.

"I called down. They have a building delivery service," she said. "I didn't ask how you wanted your coffees, so I had them bring a cup of half-and-half, some sugars, and sugar substitutes."

She put the box down in front of Rinaldo, also placing my key ring and change in the center of the desk.

"Thank you," Rinaldo said, and then he touched her elbow.

She flinched, pulling her arm away.

"Excuse me," he said.

"It's okay. I, I just don't like being touched. I'm sorry."

Mardi backed out of the room again, half-smiling and looking as if she were about to cry.

Rinaldo took his coffee black, as I did mine.

"Whatever it costs," he said. "I need to find her and make sure she's safe."

"From who?"

"I don't know. Obviously someone is trying to hurt her. She's been hiding for a few weeks now and I have no idea why."

"That's not much to go on, Mr. Rinaldo."

He brought the briefcase to the desktop and pushed it in my direction, careful not to disturb our coffee cups.