Читать книгу The Silver Chariot Killer - Richard A. Lupoff - Страница 10

CHAPTER FIVE

Lindsey shoveled the remains of his Hearty-Man frozen dinner back into the grocery bag and shoved it in the corner of the bathroom. He didn’t know if Berry’s deal with the building included trash service; if not, he’d dispose of the detritus himself. He’d overestimated his appetite and underestimated his fatigue. You were supposed to get jet-lag when you traveled east-to-west, not west-to-east, but somehow his body was still confused and he ached all over.

He sat in Cletus Berry’s swivel chair and watched a few soft flakes falling outside the office window. He wasn’t sure that staying in Berry’s secret little home-away-from-home was such a good idea, but it would do for the time being.

Had he learned anything useful from his visit to Ester Lazarini Berry? A lecture on the history of the Jews of Rome. Well, he hadn’t known that Berry’s wife was Jewish. He’d inferred that she was white—there couldn’t be that many black Italians—but he’d expected her to be Christian.

But did her background have anything to do with her husband’s murder? It was a fact, but did it have any bearing? He didn’t know, and he’d learned precious little else from his interview.

After Zaffira and Anna Maria returned from walking the little dog, Lindsey had thought it was time to leave. He’d intruded on their grief long enough. Ester had asked him to stay for dinner, but that was obviously a bad idea. The household was in a state of disarray. The family needed to renew their mutual bonds; friends and family might help, but the presence of an outsider—really a stranger—would only add to their stress.

So he’d left, intending to eat his dinner at a restaurant, but instead he’d stopped at a mom ’n’ pop grocery and bought a few supplies and taken a cab back to West 58th Street.

The Torrington Tower was officially closed for the day when he got back. The street entrance was locked and one of the Bermúdez brothers was guarding the lobby. He was reading Civil Procedure of the State of New York, Revised. Right. This had to be Benjamino, then, the Clarence Darrow of tomorrow.

Lindsey put his few groceries away, then set up Cletus Berry’s TV and turned on the local news while he nuked the frozen dinner. There was controversy over Randolph Amoroso’s rally in Times Square. The Congressman’s opponent in the race for Senate, the previously obscure Oliver Shea, got screen time to accuse the Mayor of the City of New York of playing politics with the taxpayers’ money and at the taxpayers’ inconvenience.

Shea was a squatty, jowly man who favored a broad-brimmed black hat and a rumpled manner. “How dare the Mayor shut down Times Square to stage a partisan political rally?” he demanded. “How many police officers were diverted from the vital job of fighting crime and protecting our good citizens, to act as ushers for this sleazy playlet? As the mayor of a city myself, I can tell you that it cost a pretty penny. I demand that hizzonner the Mayor provide an accounting, down to the last copper penny, and bill my opponent’s campaign for the full amount!”

The camera cut from Shea to a spokesperson for the Mayor. All the while the Mayor’s representative was speaking, Lindsey kept wondering who Shea reminded him of. Finally he realized—Fiorello La Guardia, the onetime Mayor of New York, famous for reading the Sunday funnies over the radio during a long-ago newspaper strike. Lindsey had seen ancient newsreels of the event, and Cletus Berry had told the story with relish, even though he couldn’t possibly have remembered it.

Lindsey had almost missed the official response to Oliver Shea’s blast, but he caught the tail end. The Mayor and his family, it turned out, were conveniently out of town, attending a concert of sacred music composed by the late Duke Ellington, in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Following the concert they expected to fly to Puerto Rico for a brief holiday.

No, the spokesperson explained, there was nothing political about the mayor’s absence and nothing political about his choice of Puerto Rico for his vacation. And if there was anything irregular about the Amoroso rally in Times Square, the spokesperson was certain that hizzonner the Mayor would look into as soon as he returned to his desk in the New Year, and hizzonner took this opportunity to wish all New Yorkers a healthy, happy, and prosperous holiday season and blah-blah-blah and.…

Lindsey jerked awake. He’d set the timer and dozed off. Now the microwave signal was sounding. His dinner was ready, and he was too sleepy to do more than pick at it.

Once he’d disposed of the tray and the uneaten food, he washed up and climbed into Cletus Berry’s futon. There were times when Lindsey had done some of his best thinking lying in bed at night, staring at the ceiling and reviewing the day’s events. There were other times when he’d found comfort in the presence of Marvia Plum.

But tonight Marvia was almost 2,000 miles away, and there was no comfort for Lindsey in that.

And as for thinking—he fell asleep thinking about thinking.

Not an idea, not an image or a hint of a dream. Just the watery December sunlight waking him again. He put on a pair of socks to keep his feet warm, even though Berry had furnished the office with a carpet. He made himself a cup of instant coffee in the nuker and sat at Cletus Berry’s desk to drink it.

After he’d taken a few sips he got up and shuffled to the closet, warming his feet with the friction. He pulled the button and pamphlet that he’d bought at the Amoroso rally the day before, from his overcoat pocket. He returned to the desk and laid them in front of Berry’s computer, swallowed another sip of coffee and opened the pamphlet.

The coffee was drinkable—barely—but grocery store instant was a far cry from the Jamaican Blue that Marvia Plum used to brew. For a moment he tried to imagine himself facing Marvia across a breakfast table in a cozy apartment, maybe with Jamie in colorful pajamas sitting in another chair, then shook away the image. That was not to be.

He focused on the pamphlet.

The front page featured a photo of Congressman Amoroso in what might have been a vaguely imperial pose, the familiar horse-and-chariot logo ghosted in behind him. The headline read AMERICA NEEDS AMOROSO and the body type—actually pretty minimal—touched on a series of hot buttons. Apparently Amoroso was a reformer. In fact, his solution to every problem seemed simple and emphatic. One word. Reform.

Tax Reform!

Budget Reform!

Welfare Reform!

Education Reform!

Immigration Reform!

Law Enforcement Reform!

The centerfold of the pamphlet consisted of a review of Amoroso’s brilliant career and endorsement statements from leading citizens, all superimposed on that ghostly chariot image.

Lindsey picked up the shiny button. Yep, there it was again, in glossy silver ink on an imperial purple background, and the word AMOROSO in glaring yellow letters.

Back to the pamphlet. Lindsey shook his head. He was learning more about Randolph Amoroso than he really cared to know…and next to nothing about Cletus Berry. Even so, it was all information, and he’d been surprised more than once when seemingly unconnected facts had suddenly fallen into place to clarify a previously puzzling picture.

Back to the pamphlet.

The last page was topped by the chariot image, not ghosted this time, and a couple of paragraphs about its history, connecting it with the great men of history including Julius Caesar and the greatness that was Rome.

Lindsey shoved the pamphlet and button into a coat pocket; he was ready to forget about the Amoroso rally and the whole senatorial race. It had nothing to do with Cletus Berry, he kept telling himself. The trouble was, so far nothing had to do with Berry.

He phoned Marcie Sokolov at Midtown North. She was not happy to take his call and she had nothing new to tell him. She made it clear that she was a very busy police officer and that she didn’t have time to chat with every amateur sleuth and detective wannabe who happened to take an interest in a strictly routine murder.

After that rebuff Lindsey climbed into a sweater and woolen slacks, pulled on a warm coat and rode down in the elevator. Traffic in the lobby was light. Lou Halter sat at his desk wearing his gray guard’s uniform, blue sergeant’s stripes on the sleeve, his holster strapped to his hip, coffee cup and Daily News in front of him. He looked up and nodded to Lindsey.

“Lou,” Lindsey said, “if you don’t mind—how many hours do you work? Is there a guard here around the clock?”

Halter said, “Regular eight-hour shift. Me and the Bermúdez boys. Rodrigo and Benjamino. We swing through weekends, double shifts, so we can get a day off. Boss brings in temps for days like Christmas and Easter. I’d take the extra shift myself, it’s golden time, but he won’t go for it.”

He folded his newspaper carefully and stifled a yawn. “The work isn’t really too hard, see. I’m on Social Security, got nothin’ else to do, this gives me a place to go, keeps me out of trouble—heh—and I get some nice pocket money. Send it to my kids and grandkids. I don’t need it. Nope. Rigo an’ Mino, they’re a couple of go-getters. Came here, studyin’ hard, the two of ’em. They’re going places, believe you me.”

Lindsey gestured at the tabloid, and asked if there was anything new on the Berry case.

Halter turned to a black headline on an inside page. “Just finished reading about that, Mr. Lindsey. Not a peep about Mr. Berry. But they’ve got some stuff here on Frankie the Four-flusher.”

He tapped a photo with one blunt fingernail. “See that? I guess he knew his way around a little.” He turned the paper so Lindsey could see the photo.

It was a file shot. Lindsey recognized Frankie Fulton from the corpse photo in the previous morning’s News. This picture showed Fulton in better days, posing with a prosperous-looking older man and a lightly-clad showgirl. The scene was apparently a nightclub, and the clothing and hair-styles looked like something ten or fifteen years out of date.

The cut-line identified Fulton as a “Onetime mob enforcer and café society habitué.” As for the showgirl with him—she was spectacular, there was no denying that, and she did not make any effort to conceal her charms. The cutline identified her as Millicent Martin, “Photographed shortly before her still unsolved gangland-style slaying.”

The older man was identified as “Prominent antique dealer Alcide Castellini.”

Lindsey blinked. He was not surprised to recognize Fulton. But the second man—the older man—looked oddly familiar, too. Who was he? Lindsey tried to visualize him in living color instead of static monochrome.

And then he had it. The man in the photo was younger, a little thinner, and his hair was darker. His eyeglasses were different—they had black plastic rims and the ones he’d worn when Lindsey saw him were silver-rimmed. But he was the same man. He was the last man to climb from Congressman Randolph Amoroso’s limousine at the Times Square rally.

Lindsey looked up from the newspaper. “You mind if I clip this?” he asked Halter.

The guard pulled open a drawer in his desk and came up with a pair of scissors. “From my sewing kit,” he explained. “Never know when a button’s gonna come loose or—something.” He handed the scissors to Lindsey. Lindsey snipped out the photo and the accompanying story and put them in his pocket. He’d scanned the story itself. It added nothing to what he already knew.

But the photo had added two fresh players to the drama. Millicent Martin—probably a stage name, but it was a start—and Alcide Castellini. Martin had been murdered, “gangland style.” And Castellini was an antiques dealer.

What could either of them—in fact, what could any of the three—have to do with Cletus Berry?

There was no way that Millicent Martin was going to tell Lindsey anything. She was dead.

Ditto Frankie Fulton.

But Alcide Castellini.…

Lindsey found a working pay phone in a kiosk and punched for directory assistance. Apparently the vandals who had attacked pay phones for decades had finally lost interest and moved on to bigger prey, but there wasn’t a telephone book to be found.

There was no listing for Alcide Castellini.

Lindsey walked to a drugstore with an indoor phone booth. A clerk loaned him a classified directory; now that condoms were on display beside candy bars, telephone books were kept behind the counter. There were antique dealers galore, and the closest concentration seemed to be on 57th Street.

He walked the few blocks, turned the corner at the old Carnegie Hall—he’d seen that building in a thousand movies—and found a row of antique stores.

He picked one at random and walked in. The store—he hadn’t bothered to note its name—was filled with ornate gilt furniture and elaborately framed paintings of elegant French ladies. A woman in a gray woolen suit was waiting on a customer in an identical suit. The woman who was not the customer had a name tag on her jacket and the customer had a tiny hat pinned to her big coiffure; that was how Lindsey could tell them apart.

They appeared to be discussing a huge wall mirror framed in endlessly elaborated golden swirls. It was hard to tell whether a sale was actually taking place, but somehow the transaction reached its conclusion. The two women in gray suits exchanged a little hug and kissed the air beside each other’s cheeks. The one who was not a customer found the customer’s wrap and gloves and walked her to the street door, their arms around each other’s waists, their heads bobbing and little breathless words escaping as if reluctant to leave the warm air of the shop for the cold, damp, gray Manhattan day.

The door whispered shut behind the customer. Through the front window of the shop Lindsey saw a yellow cab swing to the curb and swoop away with the woman inside. Wonder Woman’s invisible airplane couldn’t have responded more obediently to her telepathic summons.

The gray-suited woman with the badge on her blouse turned back and strode up to Lindsey. The expression on her face had changed. Lindsey wasn’t certain, but he thought she hissed, “Bitch!” before she turned her smile back on for him.

Then something happened. Maybe it was the oncoming Christmas holiday. Maybe it was something about Lindsey, the loneliness he had known since Marvia Plum’s abrupt departure from his life.

“Would you believe that woman has been dickering over that mirror for six months? Six months! And you know what she just told me? Well, Howard and I have decided that we’re going to have the wonderful new muralist, oh, what in the world is his name, oh, dear, I just can’t remember it, well anyway, we’ve decided to commission him to do a whole wall in the drawing room, aren’t you just so excited for me, I’m so terribly excited, but of course then we won’t have anyplace to hang a Louis XIV mirror, don’t you see, so I’m afraid you’ll just have to sell it to somebody else. And off she goes! I’m so mad I could just—” She seemed to notice Lindsey.

“I’m so sorry.” She took a deep breath. Her face had turned bright red during her outburst. It was returning to normal. Her name-tag said, Cele Johnston. She turned on her smile still again—it hadn’t lasted long once her diatribe got rolling. “What may I show you, sir?”

Lindsey handed her an International Surety business card.

She read it and looked puzzled. “I don’t understand. I didn’t think we’d entered an insurance claim of any sort. And—why Denver?”

“No, I’m just looking for some information. This involves a death claim. A death under difficult circumstances. I’m just trying to clear up some questions about the decedent. We know that he was acquainted with an antiques dealer, and I thought you might be acquainted with him.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“The antique dealer’s name is Castellini.”

“I know him.”

“If you could put me in touch? A telephone number or address? Does he have a shop?”

Cele Johnston looked up at Lindsey. He wasn’t a very tall man, and she didn’t have to look very far. She had gray eyes and blonde hair that was starting to streak with gray. She narrowed her eyes as if she could focus them on Lindsey’s and peer directly into his brain.

“Come with me.”

She led the way past satin-covered sofas and delicate, polished, scroll-like chairs. She opened a door and said, “Joseph, don’t let any of the stock wander out. Browsers come in, be nice. If you get a live customer, call me.”