Phantom Angel (18 page)

Right away, I was on alert.

Our street door doesn't have the world's most secure lock. A seasoned pro can pick it in less than ten seconds.

This one needed less than five.

I heard the door swing open on its rusty hinges and click shut. Then I heard someone coming up the stairs. I jumped out of bed and darted across the office, gun in hand. There's a tall filing cabinet in the outer office right next to the hallway door. I crouched behind it, leveling my Chief's Special at the door when I heard the footsteps stop there. I heard the door handle jiggle. A click as the door was unlocked. Saw a light from the hallway as the door swung open. A hand reached inside. Then a light came on and …

It was Rita.

She was standing there in the doorway wearing a skintight silver minidress, high-heeled sandals and a shocked expression. I couldn't blame her. I was standing there in my tighty whities pointing a loaded handgun at her.

“Jesus, Benji! What are you doing?”

“What are
you
doing? It's the middle of the night!”

She closed the door and flung her shoulder bag onto her desk. “I had some work to catch up on. Did the AC in your bedroom crap out again?”

“No, we have an overnight guest. There've been some developments.” I noticed now that her smooth, lovely face was etched with strain. “What's happened, Rita?”

She ran her hands through her mane of flaming red hair, kicked off her sandals and padded barefoot into Mom's office, where she flicked on the desk lamp and worked the combination on the big Wells Fargo safe. She opened it and pulled out the bottle of Courvoisier that a satisfied client gave us last Christmas. Found us a couple of glasses in the credenza next to Mom's desk and poured us two stiff jolts while I put on my T-shirt and rumpled madras shorts.

Rita took a sip of hers, then she sat down on my makeshift bed and stretched her incredibly long, incredibly shapely legs out on the coffee table.

“Myron dumped me tonight,” she informed me quietly.

“What do you mean, he dumped you?”

“I mean we had a lovely dinner at a French restaurant on First Avenue. Drank a nice bottle of wine. Then strolled back to his place, where he sat me down on the sofa, poured me a large cognac and very politely told me that he didn't see a future for us. He said he was sorry but that he can't afford to invest any more time in a relationship that's not going to yield long-term benefits.”

“Is this guy looking for a soul mate or a dependable mutual fund?”

She sipped her cognac in hurt silence, her eyes welling up with tears.

“Would you like me to talk to Myron for you?”

“And tell him what?”

“That he's making a huge mistake and he's going to be sorry for the rest of his life.”

Rita mustered a smile. “My little knight in shining armor. Thank you, but Myron is very decisive. If he says it's over then it's over.”

“Then in that case, I say good riddance. He obviously didn't cherish you enough to deserve you. Forget about him. Move on.”

“Tell me something, will you, little lamb?” Her eyes locked on to mine. “You always know the right thing to say to me. You adore me just the way I am. No one has ever made me happier than you. So why on earth couldn't you be a measly fifteen years older?”

“You'd have to talk to Mom about that. I had no say in the matter.”

We sipped our cognacs in guarded silence. Did I find myself staring at those beautiful legs of hers? Yes. Did she notice me staring at them? Oh, yes. Was anything going to happen between us right now on that makeshift bed? Oh, no. That was over and done.

Rita took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I'll be okay about Myron. I just really didn't feel like going home. I thought if I came in and got some work done that maybe…” She trailed off, frowning at me. “
What
developments?”

“A joint FBI-OCCB task force raided the Crown Towers tonight. They busted everyone in the place. Everyone, that is, except for the person who was our link to the Morrie Frankel case.”

“Your little webcam hottie?”

“Boso was conveniently AWOL when the place got raided. The Minettas have got to be thinking she cut a deal behind their back.”

Rita peered at me over her glass. “So she's asleep in your bed right now?”

I nodded my head. “Unless she's awake.”

“Kindly explain something to me. She's frightened. She's alone. She has
the
most perfect bod you're ever going to run across…”

“Second most perfect.”

“Seriously, Benji, what on earth are you doing down here?”

“My job.”

“‘Your job,'” she repeated doubtfully. “If you say so. Will I be bothering you if I work at my desk for a while?”

“No more than usual. Mom was afraid we were going to lose you, you know.”

“Not a chance. Golden Legal Services is stuck with me.”

“Good, I'm glad.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I couldn't be more sure.”

Rita put the bottle back in the safe, swung the door shut and spun the combination dial. “If anyone tries to get in I'll hear them. I'll lock up when I leave. Sleep tight, little lamb.”

She flicked off the desk lamp and closed the door. I got back into bed. Gus padded around until he'd settled himself on my hip again. I lay there. But I didn't sleep. I never sleep.

*   *   *

BY
7:00
A.M.
I was out prowling the street outside our office with my Chief's Special tucked in the rear waistband of my madras shorts and a sense of profound uneasiness creeping its way through me. It was already 88 degrees out there, and the steamy morning air smelled like spoiled milk. The weather forecasters were predicting that Day Five of the Heat Wave of the Century would top the 100-degree mark yet again, with the added bonus of a slight chance of thunderstorms.

But it wasn't the weather that was making me uneasy.

Our little stretch of Upper Broadway was already plenty busy. The downtown traffic was heavy and there was a whole lot of honking going on. There always is when it's hot out. Bleary-eyed office workers were trudging their way to the subway. Hakeem, the corner grocer's son, was hosing down the sidewalk. Stavros, the fishmonger, was taking a delivery from a refrigerated truck. Starbucks was hopping. Scotty's diner had cabs lined up outside as drivers stopped to grab the famous breakfast special—a fried egg on a toasted onion bagel. I'd already had mine with two large coffees while I sat at Mom's desk and scanned New York City's three daily newspapers.

Our overnight guest was right there on the front page of the
New York Post
wearing her black velvet thong and her most inviting smile. Semi-revealing photos of Boso and several of the other webcam girls had been assembled into a titillating collage underneath a banner headline that read: “YUM-YUM!” The
Post
's chief competitor, the
New York Daily News,
had opted to go with a photo of Little Joe Minetta being led out of the Crown Towers in handcuffs with a sniveling expression on his weasely face—and a banner headline reading: “PUSSY GALORE!” The raid was juicy enough to bump the coverage of the great Morrie Frankel's shocking midtown slaying to the inside pages, where I learned nothing I didn't already know—other than that they
had
dimmed the marquee lights on Broadway last night in tribute to his passing. And a number of theatrical luminaries did step up and call him a “legend” and “the last of the great showmen.” Leah, I felt, would be pleased. Thanks to
The New York Times,
which had its story about the Crown Towers raid tucked inside on page A-18, I learned that the joint NYPD-FBI task force had also raided three different secure storage facilities not far from the Crown Towers where they'd seized an estimated $4.2 million worth of illegally purchased luxury goods.

Big Joe Minetta, who was not personally targeted by Operation Yum-Yum, had issued a statement late last night through his celebrity lawyer blasting the operation as a “witch hunt” and a “cheap publicity stunt.” He vowed to “clear the good names of these honest, hardworking American businessmen and women.”

Each and every one of those hardworking American businesswomen was mentioned by name in the news coverage, including Luze Santiago, age twenty, from Camden, New Jersey, and Eleanora Yelmas, age nineteen, from Altoona, Pennsylvania, whose professional name was Little Mutt. There was no mention that one of the webcam girls was still at large. No mention of Boso at all.

Or at least not in the newspapers.

The home page of
crickoshea.com
featured a full-frontal nude photo of Boso from that yacht gallery and a big fat question: “WHERE IS SHE?” “According to my sources,” wrote Cricket, “Jonquil Beausoleil, the sweetest of the
sweetgirls
webcam babes, was
not
picked up with the others last night. Jonquil's nickname is Boso. She's eighteen and hails from Ruston, Louisiana. My sources believe she's hiding out from both the law
and
the Minetta crime family. All I can say is: Lotsa luck, cutie.”

I'd asked Cricket to forget about her. She hadn't. She'd even managed to come up with Boso's age and place of birth. I wondered how. Just as I wondered how long it would take before the Minettas came looking for her at the offices of Golden Legal Services. On the face of it, they had no reason to suspect she was connected to us in any way. Unless, that is, you stopped to think about the what ifs. As in what if Morrie had told Joe Minetta that it was us who he'd hired to look for her. As in what if the doorman at the Crown Towers, the one who Sue Herrera told me they'd turned, was playing for both sides and had given my license plate number to Joe. As in what if someone in our neighborhood had spotted her entering our building yesterday afternoon and recognized her picture in the papers this morning. As in what if … what if …

And so I was uneasy.

My eyes took in everything as I waited for the good folks at Lucy Juicy to make Boso a breakfast smoothie. I saw no one watching our building. The street looked okay.

So far.

Smoothie in hand, I strolled back across the street, let myself into the building and grabbed my laptop. Then I rode our temperamental elevator up to the fifth floor, where I tapped on my door. I heard Boso's light, quick footsteps at once. “It's me,” I said.

She undid the bolt and flung open the door, wearing her spare tank top and spandex shorts. She looked fresh-faced and healthy. And her mouth was working just fine: “Sweet Jesus, Benji, I'm starting to feel like a danged prisoner. I worked out for an hour and I showered and now I've got nowhere to go and I mean
nothing
to do.” She was playing music on my stereo—the digitally remastered original Broadway cast recording of
West Side Story
with Carol Lawrence and Larry Kert. “And, excuse me, but do you ever rock out to anything other than Broadway show tunes from the Fifties?”

“Absolutely. I rock out to Broadway show tunes from the Forties. And good morning to you, too,” I said, bolting the door behind me. “Here's your breakfast. It has mango, wheatgrass, coconut water and a bunch of other stuff that's too horrible to say out loud.”

Boso popped the lid and took a long, grateful drink. “This is tasty.”

“As are you, sweet Cassia.” I opened my laptop on the dining table and showed her the nudie collage that was on the front page of the
New York Post
.

She let out a gasp of horror. “That's me! Did they mention me by name?”

“
They
didn't.” I tapped at the keyboard and brought up Cricket's Web site. “But
crickoshea.com
has all of your particulars—including that the Minettas are looking for you.”

Boso stared at the photo of her naked self on that yacht. “You told me I didn't have to worry about her.”

“No, I told you she was the least of your worries. And she is.”

She sat down on a dining chair with a sick look on her face. “God, this is just awful. I never expected those photos to be splashed all over the danged Internet. Now
everyone
will see them.”

“Hello, they already could.”

“Yeah, but they had to go looking for them on a specific site. This is a whole different deal, Benji. It's in your face.
I'm
in your face.”

“You mean Farmer John's face, don't you?”

“Well, how'd you like it if someone
you
knew saw your naked junk all over the Internet?”

“I wouldn't. But I'm not like you. No one pays thirty-nine dollars a month just to watch me take a shower. Speaking of which, I need to do that. My cop friend is coming to pick me up soon.”

“Am I going with you?”

“You're not going anywhere. Not until I get you a deal. You can stay right here. Or you can hang downstairs in the office with Mom and Rita if you promise to stay away from the windows. You can't go outside. Not for a walk. Not for any reason. And stay off the roof, got it?”

“But I can see the sky from up there,” she protested.

“Just stay off it.”

“Benji, I hate this.”

“I know you do. But you've gotten yourself into what's known in my trade as a shitstorm. I'm trying to help you. Promise me you'll do what I say.”

“Sure, whatever,” she said miserably.

I heard footsteps on the stairs now. Someone tapped on my door. I held a finger to my lips and went to it, pulling my Smith & Wesson from my waistband. I checked the peephole. It was Mom.

“Everything good?” I called to her.

“Good as Golden,” she replied. A quaint old family expression of ours.

I unbolted the door and let her in. “I was just going to jump in the shower. Would you mind entertaining our guest?”