Phantom Angel (24 page)

“As opposed to the Morrie Frankel shooting, you mean?”

“Exactly.”

“So you think it's a different shooter?”

“I don't think it. I know it.” Legs looked over at Rita. She'd burst into tears again. Mom had her arms around her. “How's she doing?”

“Not so good.”

“She's lucky that Boso came up here, you know. So's Abby. He would have gone for a window shot if she hadn't. You could have lost more than just her.”

“No need to tell me that,” I said quietly. I knew perfectly well how close I'd come to losing the two people in the world who I cared about the most.

Legs motioned for me to follow him away from the others. Then he put his hands on my shoulders and said, “Are you okay?”

“Legs, she'd still be alive if I hadn't butted in . She'd be up on credit card fraud charges with the others but she'd be alive. But no, I had to drag her away from that place and play the white knight. I got her killed.”

“She got herself killed. You were doing a job. You were paid to find her. You found her. What happened after that isn't on you. Hell, if you're looking for someone to blame then blame me. I knew you were holding out on me when you swore you had no idea where she was. I could have grabbed you by the scruff of the neck and forced the truth out of you.”

“So why didn't you?”

“Because your dad taught me that you've got to let a man do things his own way.”

“I should have just left her alone.”

“You could have,” he acknowledged. “But that would have made you a heartless schmuck, and you're not. You're one of the good guys, little bud.”

“If I'm one of the good guys then how come my client
and
the girl who he hired me to find are both dead?”

“You tried. Listen to what I'm saying, because if your dad was standing here right now he'd tell you the exact same thing. It didn't work out but you tried. That's all you can do. You drag yourself out of bed every morning and you try. So don't get down on yourself, okay? I'll take over from here. You're all done now.”

I stared at him long and hard before I said, “No, I'm not.”

*   *   *

IT TOOK ME
A WHILE
to find her.

First I tried the offices of a couple of big time producers where I knew she liked to hang out during business hours. Then I tried Joe Allen's. Then Bruno Anthony's. Then I began working my way up and down West 45th Street, my eyes flicking this way and that. When I finally spotted her in her pink T-shirt, black jeans and white go-go boots she was bopping her way across Shubert Alley, yapping into one iPhone while she thumbed out a tweet on the other, so absorbed in what she was doing that she didn't even notice me.

Not until I grabbed her by her pale arms and slammed her against the wall of the Booth Theatre.

“Ow, Benji, that hurt! And since when do you like it rough?”

“Who tipped you off?”

“Let me call you back,” she said into the phone before she rang off, grinning at me impishly. “I'm liking this new beastie-boy thing you've got going on. You were always a little too gentle, if you want to know the truth.”

“Who told you, Cricket?”

“Told me what, cutie?”

“That Boso was hiding out at our office.”

“Why are you asking?”

“Because a sniper just shot her right through the eye. It was a professional hit. And it wasn't pretty. And it was
your
fault. You tipped them off. Who told you where she was?”

Cricket gulped. “Jonquil Beausoleil is dead?”

“Severely dead.”

“Unfucking real…” Her little thumbs promptly went to work on one of her phones. “Hang with me for just one sec because I have
got
to put this out there.”

I wrenched both phones from her grasp and hurled them out into the middle of West 45th Street, where they were instantly run over by cabs.

“Benji, that was my whole office!” she cried out.

“Who's your source?”

“You know I can't give up my source. I'd be violating my ethics.”

“Cricket, I've known you since we were freshmen together. You don't have any ethics.”

“That was an awful thing to say to me, Benji. I know you're upset, but that was just totally mean. Besides, it was a nothing one-liner. A throwaway. I must post a hundred of them a day.”

“Yeah? Well, this one got a girl killed. The Minetta family thought she ratted them out. I was trying to get her into protective custody before they could find her. They didn't know where she was. Not until you told them. And then they shot her dead. You don't get it, do you? You're like a kid playing in a sandbox. Except these people aren't playing. They use real ammo. And that girl is really dead. Boso doesn't live here anymore. Tell me who tipped you off.”

She shook her head at me. “No can do. Sorry.”

“Cricket, I want you to look into my eyes, okay? I want you to understand that I am being totally serious. Tell me who your source is right now or I swear to you that I will devote the rest of my life to making sure that you are toast in this city. You'll have no career. You'll have no friends. You'll be a dead woman walking.” My eyes locked on to hers and held them tight. “Tell me who tipped you off. Tell me right fucking now or so help me I'll destroy you. I mean it. Tell me, Cricket.”

Cricket told me.

*   *   *

“WHEN YOUR CHILD GETS INTO TROUBLE
you don't stop loving him. You love him more, because he needs you more.” She was boxing up all of those framed, autographed photos of pimply-faced Morrie standing backstage with Broadway's biggest stars of yesteryear. She was very calm and composed in her trimly cut pale yellow linen dress. She had politely offered me a cup of coffee. I had politely declined. “Charlie is hoping to be a chef someday. He's taking classes. He tries. He really does. But he gets so frustrated by little setbacks. And he's had substance abuse problems. Practically every penny I've made has gone toward trying to keep him out of trouble and clean. He used to tend bar at Barrymore's, that nice little restaurant that was on West 44th Street. Do you remember it?”

“Yes, I do.”

“One of his coworkers, a waitress, claimed that Charlie tried to rape her in the kitchen one night after closing. She was going to go to the police. I convinced her to take ten thousand dollars from me instead, and Charlie went into drug rehab. It was all handled very quietly. But your friend Cricket got wind of it because the girl was one of those ambitious young actresses who are always talking to her, hoping to get a nice mention. You know how that works.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Cricket was planning to run an item about it,” Leah said as she removed more of Morrie's photos from the living room wall, leaving one sooty outline after another behind. They'd been hanging there forever. “When she called me for a comment I begged her not to run it. I told her she'd be ruining the life of a decent young man who was trying so very, very hard. Charlie's not a sexual predator, Benji. He's just weak. Cricket agreed to sit on the story
if
I agreed to feed her choice morsels of information that I happen to hear about. I did agree, for Charlie's sake, and she's been holding it over me ever since. If I hear something, I'm supposed to call her—or else. And so I do. I'm the one who told her that Morrie and Henderson got into a lover's quarrel over Matthew Puntigam. She got that story from me after Morrie came to me with tears streaming down his face. And I told her what you said to me on the phone this morning—that Jonquil Beausoleil was in safe hands and that I didn't have to worry about her.”

“So you were doing Cricket's legwork for her when you called me.”

“Yes, I was,” Leah admitted. “And I regret it terribly. But she leaves me no choice, Benji. I had no idea what would happen to that poor girl. She was so young, and none of this was her fault.”

“Let's not talk about her, okay? I didn't tell you where she was, Leah. How did Cricket figure out that she was stashed at my place?”

“Because Cricket knows you. She called you a softy and a sap and a number of other names that led me to believe that you two have a history together.” Leah looked at me searchingly. “Were you and Cricket romantically involved?”

“Let's not talk about her either. Let's talk about you. Why don't you have a seat, Leah?”

“All right.” She sat down on a sofa, her bony, translucent hands folded in her lap. “What would you like to know?”

There was a knock at the door.

“That'll be for me.” I went to the door and opened it.

Legs stood there in the hallway with an intense, feral look on his face. “What's so urgent?” he demanded.

“Come on in.”

He came on in, clenching and unclenching his jaw.

“Why, good afternoon, Lieutenant,” Leah said to him pleasantly.

“I asked the lieutenant to join us, Leah. You don't mind if he's here while we talk, do you?”

“Of course not. Why would I mind? Would you like some coffee, Lieutenant? I can make a fresh pot.”

“No, thanks.”

“Your timing was excellent, Legs. Leah was just about to tell me why she did it.”

“Did what?”

“Kill Morrie.”

Leah looked up at me like a panicked animal, then down at the worn rug. “What on earth are you talking about?”

I sat on the sofa across the coffee table from her. Legs stayed on his feet, his ripped, veiny arms folded in front of his chest. “Joe Minetta is a loan shark. He wanted Morrie alive, not dead. Ira Gottfried is a cold-blooded shark, too. But he's also a very patient man. All he had to do was wait for Morrie to implode and then pick up his leavings. He didn't have to hire a hit man to bump him off. But the attack on Morrie wasn't a professional job. My friend Legs here knew that right away. A professional wouldn't have shot Morrie on 42nd Street in broad daylight in front of so many witnesses. No, Morrie's shooting was the work of a small-time lowlife. Someone like, say, your son Charlie.”

“I ran his sheet on my way over here,” Legs said, leafing through his notepad. “Charles Nelson Shimmel has two priors. One for possession with intent to sell, the other for breaking and entering. He served eighteen months on the B and E.”

“Mind you, a good deal of careful planning did go into Morrie's murder,” I continued. “And that points to someone with an organized mind. Someone like you, Leah. Morrie's shooter was smallish and on the slim side. That was you in the hoody and sweats, wasn't it? Charlie was behind the wheel. You did it together.”

Leah didn't dispute this. Didn't say anything at all. Just sat there on the sofa, calmly and quietly.

“Why did you do it, Leah?”

“Why?” Her lower lip began to quiver. “You're just a kid. You don't know a damned thing about life. You can't possibly understand.”

“Help me to understand. I'd really like to.”

“So would I,” Legs said. “But if you want to wait for your lawyer…”

“My lawyer is dead, Lieutenant.
Morrie
was my lawyer. We were a team. Do you understand what that means? It was us against the world since we were fifteen years old.” Leah's eyes were moist now. She was fighting back tears. “Morrie trusted no one in the whole wide world except for me. And I trusted no one but him. We fought together, side by side, for forty-seven years. And, my God, we did great things together. Not so long ago we had
four
hit shows running at once. We
ruled
Broadway. And would you like to know how we pulled it off? Because of that trust we shared. It was the one thing, the only thing, we both knew for absolute certain we could count on. It was sacred, that trust. Deep down in my heart, I knew that Morrie would never, ever lie to me. He wouldn't dare.”

I nodded my head. “Until he did.”

“Until he did,” she acknowledged bitterly. “He sat right here and he lied to my face. Told me that R. J. Farnell was a real person and then scammed me out of my last hundred thousand. You have no idea what a betrayal that was. None. How could you?” She reached for a half-empty coffee cup on the table before her and took a sip from it. “This is cold. Are you sure you don't want me to make a fresh pot, Lieutenant? It's no trouble.”

“Positive,” Legs said.

“Leah, when did you learn the truth about Farnell?”

“I had my doubts about him from the very beginning. As soon as Morrie started gushing on about how many millions the man was going to invest in
Wuthering Heights
.”

“How come?”

“He wouldn't let me near him, that's how come. Wouldn't let me talk to him on the phone. Wouldn't even give me the man's phone number. I had no idea how to contact him. That was
not
the way we usually did things around here. I always took care of our angels. They were my responsibility. If they had questions, I answered them. If they wanted to bitch and moan, I patted them on the head. Yet for some reason Morrie didn't trust me with Farnell. I didn't understand why. I wondered if…” Leah trailed off, swallowing.

“You wondered what?” Legs pressed her.

“If maybe Farnell was an associate of Joe Minetta's. If that was why Morrie didn't want me involved. It was the only thing I could think of, Lieutenant. That Morrie was laundering dirty money for some hoodlum. That's why I gave him the last of my savings. Because I was genuinely afraid for him—especially after a couple of Joe Minetta's goons came around here. It never occurred to me that Morrie had flat-out invented Farnell. And then Farnell vanished, supposedly. And Morrie hired Benji to find his girlfriend, who I knew nothing about. I'd never heard Morrie so much as mention her name until that morning you showed up here, Benji. I didn't understand what was going on. I found all of it so … bewildering,” she confessed, wringing her hands. “That's why I went to see you at your office. Because I was so confused. After I got back here I confronted him. I said to him, ‘Morrie, who is this Farnell guy? What in the hell is really going on?' And that's when he told me the truth. That he was in so deep to Joe Minetta the only option he'd had left was to run the old phantom angel scam.”