Slow Burn (13 page)

Carmichael clipped me in the jaw with a quick left hand that I didn’t see coming. I bit off the tail end of my cigarette and swallowed it, while the lit end tumbled off somewhere. My hat landed on the couch just before I did. I almost rolled onto the floor, but I managed to steady myself.

“You smug little son of a bitch,” Carmichael yelled down at me. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? This is a kidnapping case, for Christ’s sake. A federal case — and now you’ve got Van Dorn close to telling them to stay out of it.”

I was already down on the couch, but Carmichael shoved me again anyway. “Do you know the position you’ve put the department in? The position you’ve put me in?”

I shook the cobwebs from my eyes, only to find Loomis on the couch opposite me, looking pretty damned scared. I couldn’t blame him. My jaw hurt like hell, but I still managed to say, “Sorry if I was too busy doing my job to worry about your goddamned career, Andy. You’ve always done a good enough job of that yourself, so I figured...”

Carmichael went for me again, but Flynn scrambled in front of him. “Easy, Chief. Easy. Charlie’s an old friend, remember? An old friend.”

“Friend, my ass,” Carmichael said. “He’s a goddamned grandstander, that’s all. The fucking chiseler is trying to put himself in good with the Van Dorns and stick it to the department in the bargain.”

A dull ringing in my ears started as I sat up, but I talked over it. “How the hell am I sticking it to the department? I got a line on where the Van Dorn kid might be, and I ran it down. That’s all.” I wouldn’t tell him about Rachel, the notebook or the matchbooks I’d found. If I was getting bounced off this case, let him find out about them on his own.

Flynn scurried out of the way while Carmichael crouched down and yelled directly into my ear. “And just why in the hell are you running down leads in a kidnapping case when everyone knows that kidnapping’s a federal beef now, not ours? Let the Bureau of Investigation boys take the shit when this whole thing goes south.”

Carmichael’s yelling made my head hurt worse. I kept my voice even, mostly to keep from throwing up. “Because there’s no proof that Jack’s dead, and he doesn’t have time to wait around while you and the Feds set up shop.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Carmichael spat as he stood up and stepped back toward his spot by the mantel. “That kid’s probably been dead for a couple of days by now, and you know it. And if he wasn’t dead already, they killed him right after they plugged the sister for the ransom money.”

The ringing in my ears was beginning to die down, but I was still nauseous. “I don’t think —”

“No, you don’t think, Charlie,” Carmichael yelled. “You never did. That’s the root of all your fucking problems. All balls, no brains.”

I dropped my head into my hands and tried to rub some blood back into my skull. My jaw was beginning to tighten up, but I took another run at making my point. “I’ve got reason to believe that Jack Van Dorn is—”

“Don’t give me that shit. This isn’t about the Van Dorn punk. It’s about revenge. Revenge for all those shitty assignments you’ve pulled the past year or so.”

I held up two fingers. “Two years, Chief.”

Carmichael snatched me by the collar and jerked me back. “You thought that was bad? Well, let me tell you something, fucko…”

I still couldn’t see straight, but I did my best to look Carmichael in the eye while I said what I’d been trying to say. The one fact that Carmichael’s punch in the head had jarred loose in my mind:

“I know Jack Van Dorn is still alive.”

“What was that?” Flynn perked up. “What did you just say?”

Loomis looked more scared now than when Carmichael hit me.

The genie was already out of the bottle, so I repeated it. “Jack Van Dorn is still alive.” Flynn and Carmichael traded looks. Flynn looked damned near joyful. Carmichael looked more amused than anything else.

“That so?” The Chief let me go with a shove as he went over and sat on the arm of Loomis’s couch. “And what evidence have you uncovered that has brought you to that conclusion, Detective?”

“Because they need more ransom money.” Flynn’s joyful look faded fast. “But they already have the fifty thousand in cash that the girl brought them.”

“Her name was Jessica. And fifty grand isn’t enough now that they’ve got blood on their hands. They know we’ll look for them harder than ever now, so they’ll need more money. And they’ll have to prove Jack’s alive before we pay them, and they can’t prove it if he’s dead.”

I could’ve sworn that Flynn popped up on his tiptoes as my words sank in. “How do you know that, Charlie? And how do you know it’s more than just one man doing this?”

For a political hack, Flynn asked some damned good questions. I wasn’t so sure myself, but I started repeating a lot of the bits that had been rattling around in my head all morning. I just hoped they’d lead me somewhere other than walking a beat on the ass end of Staten Island.

“Because of the way Jessica Van Dorn was killed.”

“She got her throat slit in a hotel room,” Carmichael said. “That’s not a two-man job.”

“Sure it is,” I said. “Considering who they killed. And where they killed her.” The more I was talking, the more it began to make sense.

Carmichael reddened. “You’ve got exactly one minute to quit babbling and start making sense, because I swear to Christ—”

“Jessica was a nice little rich girl, wandering the streets with a bag of money. Times being what they are, it’s a miracle she wasn’t mugged by a stranger. Whoever called Van Dorn said she’d be watched along the way, but she’d never know when. That kind of planning is easier when you’ve got one person watching Jack, someone else watching the girl, and someone else waiting for her at The Chauncey Arms.”

“Unless Jack was already dead,” Flynn said. “Then all you’d need is one guy doing everything.”

I had that beat. “Then why lead her to The Chauncey Arms at all? Why not just lure her into an alley, knife her and run off with the ransom money? It would’ve been a whole lot cleaner. Easier, too. It could’ve been a day or so before we figured out who she really was. Probably longer, which would’ve given them more time to get away.”

The look on Carmichael’s face told me I hadn’t lost him yet, so I kept going. “But they didn’t do that, did they, Chief? No, they brought her to a hotel room instead.”

Carmichael didn’t look amused anymore. He was putting it together for himself. “Tell me why.”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, “but it proves they didn’t plan on killing her from the beginning. They probably weren’t planning on blood at all. That means Jack was probably still alive when they called in the ransom demand. And that means something went wrong while she was in that room. Something that got her throat cut.”

“Maybe there was a struggle,” Carmichael said. “Maybe she refused to give them the money until she saw her brother. Maybe—”

“She didn’t have a bruise or a scratch on her, Andy. Hell, her fingernails weren’t even damaged. The only wound she had was the gash in her throat. It was very quick. Sudden.” All the scattered pieces that I knew about what had happened in that room rushed together and began to make sense to me. I was damned close, just not close enough. Or smart enough. “Whatever happened in that room happened fast.”

Carmichael got up from the arm of the couch and slowly walked back over to the mantel. “I’ll admit you’ve laid out a compelling case, but this isn’t about compelling cases. It’s about jurisdiction, and the Feds have it. We want them to have it. We can’t afford to be holding the bag when pictures of this kid’s corpse turn up on the front page of every newspaper in the country.”

I wasn’t ready to let it go that easy. “This is still a murder investigation, Andy, and murder’s not a federal crime. We can still—”

Carmichael shook his head. “This city is already on edge as it is. I’ve got Hoovervilles springing up on the banks of both rivers, not to mention right next door in Central Park. I’ve got labor marches in the garment district, and rent strikes up in the Bronx that get more violent every week. I’ve got breadlines that stretch for blocks and soup kitchens that are busting at the seams, not to mention the fucking Commies holding marches all over the city, getting people riled up. We’re stretched thin enough as it is, and the department can’t afford to be blamed if this thing goes south. The Feds will want this case, and I want them to take it.”

“But I don’t think —”

Carmichael wasn’t done. “You saw what the press did to the New Jersey State cops when the Lindbergh baby turned up with its skull caved in. What do you think they’ll do to us if the same thing happens here? We can’t afford that kind of thing, especially right now.”

I’ll admit that I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but I’d never had to think about those things before. “Then the mayor will handle it, like he’s always handled everything else. Jimmy’s had the press eating out of his hands for years, no matter how bad the news. Let the Feds in on this if you have to, but that doesn’t mean—”

The way Carmichael and Flynn looked at each other told me that something was wrong.

Flynn cleared his throat. “We won’t have the benefit of the mayor’s charm, Charlie. Not this time. Mayor Walker just informed me that he is resigning at the end of the month.”

For the second time that day, my gut felt like it folded in on itself. The news made the pain in the back of my head hurt all the more. “He’s… what?”

“Governor Roosevelt is forcing him to resign,” Flynn said. “It appears our Franklin has decided he’s got a decent chance at being elected president, and believes Jimmy’s flamboyant ways would be a drag on the ticket. And we all know how practical a man our mayor is, so he cut a deal. He’ll resign, make Roosevelt look like the Reformer he claims to be.”

“And what does Jimmy get in return?” I asked.

“Roosevelt promises not to prosecute Jimmy for his offenses, as long as he disappears, and disappears right now.”

Suddenly, my bright idea didn’t seem so bright anymore — and Jack Van Dorn’s chances just got a little dimmer. I’d never really appreciated the expression “wind going out of my sails” until that moment.

I looked at Carmichael, who looked more taken aback by the news than I was. He’d been Walker’s boy from the beginning. Lil’ Jimsy had promoted him to Chief of Police. Now that he was taking a powder, Carmichael’s position wasn’t as solid as it had been even five minutes before. I decided to enjoy his agony a little. “Looks like the cause of Reform has another scalp. Good thing you’ve been feathering your nest on the Good Government side of the wire, eh, Andy?”

Carmichael shot his cuffs as he looked away from me “Fuck you, Charlie.”

Flynn went on. “Looks like I’ll be running things for a while until the Board of Aldermen appoints an interim mayor. Until then, I’m afraid I’ll have to side with the Chief on this one, Charlie. The city is in no position to handle the potential negative repercussions of the tragic outcome, which is likely in this case. I’m going to recommend to Mr. Van Dorn that the Bureau of Investigation takes the lead.”

Carmichael talked to me in the same tone I used on my girls when they did something wrong. “See what happens when you do things on your own, smart guy? I’ve got all of this hanging over my head, and just when I didn’t think things could get any worse, you do your damnedest to stick this department with a loser of a case we’ve got no business running in the first place.”

Carmichael shook that big head of his at me. “You were never much of a detective, Charlie, but you used to be smarter than that.”

I didn’t like getting preached at, especially by him. “At least I’m smart enough to see how good we’ll look when we bring Jack Van Dorn home alive. Because he is alive.”

“Is that so?” Carmichael threw his head back and laughed. Really laughed. “Since when did you start playing detective?”

“Right after the graft dried up,” I said. “Right around the time you started playing chief.”

Carmichael brought his hand up to belt me again as I reached for the beaver-tail sap tucked in the back of my pants. If that hand came down, I’d break the bastard’s knee. Chief or no chief, I wouldn’t take another beating.

A voice from the back of the room froze Carmichael in mid-swing.

“I fail to see how that will help find my son, Chief Carmichael.” Mr. Van Dorn stood in the doorway.

He was in a gray, double-breasted suit, white shirt and gray tie. He still looked as tired and drawn as he had earlier that morning, but different somehow. Sharper, and maybe even relaxed.

Carmichael stepped away from me and straightened down his uniform. He went from scarlet to a deep blush. “Just admonishing Detective Doherty for a lack of professionalism in how he’s handled your son’s case, sir.”

“Really? I’ve been impressed by his zeal, and his disregard for the bureaucracy that seems to plague cases like this. My attorney agrees with me.” Mr. Van Dorn beckoned a neat, little bald man with glasses and a bow tie into the parlor. Carmichael and Flynn both sagged at the same time. They had good reason.

Mr. Van Dorn said, “I believe you all know my attorney, Mr. Gottheim.”

Arthur Gottheim and I had never been formally introduced, but we certainly knew each other by reputation. He was the man the blue-blood set turned to when they had a legal problem. Uncle Artie always knew just what to do to make it all go away. Half the people in the Social Registry were clients of his. The other half couldn’t afford him.