First Class Killing

Chapter 23

HARVEY STOOD NEXT TO ME, LAYING THE crime-scene photos of Robin Sevitch on his desk one at a time, pausing after each one for emphasis. It was his subtle way of saying “I told you so.”

They were hard to look at. In the wider angles, you could see the position of the body, the way it slumped against the wall of what the police described as a concrete drainage canal. Her left hand was caught behind her back, but the other lay on the concrete at her side, palm up, with fingers curled in. She looked as if she were beckoning for help. Or showing her nails-torn, split, and painted with the brownish tint of her own dried blood.

When he got to the close-ups of her face, I reached up and touched the bruises on my throat. Her nose was broken, and she had a gash that looked as if she’d bitten through her lower lip. One eye was pinched shut by the cauliflowered mass around it, but the other gazed out from behind dark and bruised tissue.

“ Harvey…”

“She died of a broken neck.” He continued with the parade of grotesque images.

That her spine had been snapped at its most vulnerable point was obvious from the awkward way her head hung from her shoulders. An unbroken arc of pale skin pressed against the smooth curve of muscles and tendons that ran from the base of her left ear to the hollow of her throat. Absent blood and bruises, it gleamed under the camera’s flash, obscenely undamaged to be hiding such a catastrophic rupture beneath. My heart shuddered against its vulnerability, this last part of her that still looked like her, offered up by the exaggerated tilt of her head, undefended by arms that lay still at her sides.

I reached over and stopped him from putting any more down. “ Harvey, enough.”

He stared down at me, looking more vigorous than I had ever seen him. His strength was fueled by his anger. I had waited until I had flown back to Boston from Chicago to give him the news of my attack, thinking it might go better in person. I might have been wrong about that.

“How could you not tell me? How could you keep this from me? Why did you not call me right away?”

“I didn’t want to upset you.”

“A large man attacked you in your hotel room in a strange city and tried to kill you. Why would that upset me? I told you your plan was too risky.”

I wanted to pull my feet up in the chair and curl myself around my legs. This day had already been difficult enough. I had worked my trip home as scheduled, moving through a world of strangers like a big, raw nerve, wondering which of them might, without warning, raise a hand or a weapon and try to hurt me. It had taken a lot of energy. I wasn’t sure I had enough in reserve to properly defend my incautious and possibly stupid behavior.

“You told me the fake date was too risky. This was something different. Besides, he wasn’t trying to kill me.”

“Alex, please.” He took a step back to lean against his desk. “Even you cannot be this obtuse.”

“There was something odd about this whole thing. He left me on the bed, Harvey. After I passed out-”

“After he choked you to unconsciousness.”

“-he put me on my bed with my head on a pillow, and he left a glass of water for me on the nightstand.”

“How gracious. A turndown service to go with the strangling.”

“He was there to deliver a message, one that made no sense to me. He said he wanted me to leave someone alone, a guy named Arthur Margolies, and to destroy the videos. I looked up Arthur Margolies. He’s a big frequent flier on OrangeAir out of Chicago.”

“So?”

“I think he was after Monica and not me.”

“What? Why?”

“I think he’s a client of the hooker ring-of Monica’s, specifically-and I think she’s trying to extort him using videos. Probably sex videos.” I looked up at him. “That’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“None of this makes sense.”

“Maybe not, but I have to try to make sense of it so I can continue to function. I don’t think this guy was after me, which means I don’t think he will come after me. That’s important.”

He crossed his arms and hunched his shoulders. He didn’t look to be in the mood for new theories. He liked the one where we all stayed locked in our houses afraid for our lives, because that was more or less what he did every day anyway. “You believe the last-minute switch confused your attacker?”

“I believe he was set up on the trick, the man who was supposed to be hiring Monica for the evening. How, I don’t know. Maybe he had inside information that Reverend Cole was her scheduled date. It would have been easy enough for someone to check his reservation and see what hotel he’d booked. The big guy saw me come out, followed me to my hotel, and attacked me-by mistake. I got a message that was supposed to be for Monica.”

He reached down and began kneading the muscles in his thigh. “What does Monica say?”

“Good question. She was supposed to work the trip home with us, but suddenly she’s on emergency leave. I’m pretty sure he was after her and not me, and she knows it.”

“Do you think she switched dates on purpose?”

“I don’t know. I plan to ask her.”

I looked over and saw that his leg was beginning to shake. It started quietly but quickly turned into a jack-hammer. He gripped his balky quadriceps with both hands. I jumped up and tried to give him the closest seat-mine-but he wanted to go around to his desk chair. I helped him around the desk and held his chair so it wouldn’t swivel as he sat down in it.

“Are you all right?”

He nodded, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and mopped his forehead. I went back to my seat, and the two of us sat in silence. The only sound was the sharp ticking of the old mantel clock that kept perfect time because Harvey wound it religiously. His great-grandfather, a clockmaker, had brought it from Poland.

“This man,” he said quietly, “he could have done worse to you.”

“But he didn’t. I’m fine.”

“Alex.” He folded his handkerchief, looking more bereft than angry. “Am I so little comfort to you?”

I sank back into my seat and closed my eyes. I was mentally, physically, emotionally, and every other possible way exhausted. Did he really want to talk about this now?

“Please,” he insisted. “Say what you are thinking.”

I had to work hard to figure out what I was thinking and how much of it I could say. “I care about you, Harvey, and I hate seeing you this way. I didn’t call you because I didn’t want you sitting here by yourself in the dark…worrying.”

“You were afraid you would make me sick?” His eyes blinked rapidly, and I could tell by the way he tried to hold himself that his body was still in turmoil. “My disease causes my symptoms, not you. Let me make my small contribution, even if it is only to sit in my house by the phone and worry about you.”

“That’s not your only contribution.” It was hard for me to look at him. He was trying in his clumsy way to talk about something important, to sort out our roles and what we were to each other and maybe what we should be. It made me want to be truthful. “I didn’t call anyone, Harvey.”

“You didn’t?”

“No. I never do. When I’m in trouble, I deal with it myself. It’s not you. It has nothing to do with you being sick. I’m just not someone who takes comfort easily from anyone. I’ve always been that way. I can give it, but I never learned how to take it.” I wanted again to pull my feet up into the chair. This time I did it. “It’s one reason I’m still alone.”

He let out a sigh that seemed to calm him. “I suppose we have that in common, then.”

I hadn’t thought about it that way, but he was right. Harvey bristled at the thought of accepting help from anyone. “You are important to this case,” I said. “You are important to me. While I’m out there, I’m always asking myself, what would Harvey think? Mostly it’s in the sense of ‘ Harvey will kill me if I do this.’ ” That elicited a hesitant grin. “I don’t take direction well, and I always think I’m right about everything, but that doesn’t mean I’m not listening.”

He seemed all right with that. I waited a few moments to make sure. Sometimes it took him a few minutes to get his thoughts out. He was still; he wasn’t shaking anymore, and his breathing was steady. The subject seemed to be closed. Thank goodness.

I pulled one of Robin’s pictures back in front of me. “What’s the story with this? I thought it was a homeless man.”

“The official story was that Robin Sevitch went out for a long walk, roamed too close to a dangerous area, and was beaten to death by this homeless man. He was convicted.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “There are doubts in some quarters, however, that he was, indeed, the guilty party.”

“Really?” I put my feet down on the floor and sat up straight. “What did you find out?”

“I told you I had a hard time getting anyone to talk to me.”

“Right, right. Civic black eye and all that. How did you get the file?”

“The gentleman who was the lead detective on the case is now a private investigator. He kept his own file. He suspected Miss Sevitch was murdered by someone she knew. He thinks it was a trick, but he was pressured heavily to go with the homeless theory, and ultimately the man confessed.”

“Who pressured him?”

“It was never clear to him where it came from. He went to great lengths to impress upon me that the Omaha PD is a conscientious and professional organization. This was not a case of incompetence.”

“Was she robbed?”

“All of her money and identification was in her hotel room.”

“Was she raped?”

“It did not appear so.”

“This homeless man, what was supposed to be his motive?”

“He is a man with a low IQ, borderline schizophrenic. He had no motive, none that he could give, anyway.”

I flipped through the pictures. It was certainly possible one person could beat a perfect stranger that savagely for no good reason. “Did this homeless man have a history of violence?”

“No.”

“Okay, so that makes no sense at all. Let’s try the trick theory. Was there any sign of struggle in her hotel room?”

“No.”

“So maybe she went with this person voluntarily. Was she killed in the ditch?”

“Yes.”

“These hookers are high-class. They don’t typically have dates in drainage canals. She wasn’t raped, but had she had sex?”

“She had had sex recently, but she was a prostitute. There was no semen. The former detective believes the man wore a condom.”

“What about trace evidence and all that good stuff? Fibers and blood evidence.”

“You need something to compare to. If it was a trick, he could have boarded a plane and flown away. If he had no police record and no connection to the victim, it would be very difficult ever to find him.”

“This detective didn’t buy the homeless theory, either?”

“His biggest concern was the lack of motive.”

There was a motive. It just wasn’t his. “Was Angel in the area?”

“Unclear. If she was, she was never questioned. There was not a broad investigation. The man confessed, and that was that.”

“According to Tristan, Angel had reason to get rid of Robin Sevitch. Was it possible she could have hired this man?”

“No. There was no indication of anything like that.”

“She could have hired some pros to kill her.”

“Professionals,” he said, quite reasonably, “do not linger at the crime scene to beat their victims.”

“Is the homeless man in jail for this?”

He blew out a long and heavy sigh. “He is homeless no more. For life.”

I collected all the pictures into one pile. As I looked at them, it was hard not to feel the beating Robin had taken in my own face, in the fragile bones that would break, in the soft tissue that would bruise and swell under the pounding. Beaten to death connoted suffering. It was a brutality far more intimate than could come from the cold disgorgement of a bullet from a gun, or even from the ripping of a knife through flesh. A knife still separated killer from victim, if only by the length of its blade. Whoever murdered Robin Sevitch had walked away with blood on his hands.

Or hers.

“Can I keep these, Harvey?”

“Certainly. The photos must be returned.”

“So, where are we?” I asked. “We have less than a week before the review. We have one dead hooker, one live hooker who is possibly a blackmailer and possibly in hiding. We have a bunch of surveillance photos that prove very little. And we have Angel, who may or may not have gotten away with murder and may or may not call back, depending on whether I passed her test.”

“That is not all.” He gave me a tight little smile. “We have top swappers.”

“We do?”

“Indeed, we do. Would you care to see them?”

“Indeed, I would.”

He moved a large stack of files and reports from the corner of his desk to the middle of what was now his clean desk. He went through the stack like a blackjack dealer, laying exhibits and printouts and reports on the desk one by one. “This is a copy of the as-bid schedules for the Boston base over the past six months.” That was a particularly fat document. “This is the as-flown schedule.” Equally fat.

“You got those from Carl Wolff?”

“He had someone send them.” He put down a third document that was slender compared with the others. “This is the list of all the trips that were traded over the past six months, and these”-he laid down a single page-“are your so-called top swappers.”

“Cool.” I reached for it. “So, these are our hookers?”

He pulled it back. “These are flight attendants who do a high level of swapping during the month on average. I would hesitate to label them all prostitutes, primarily because you are on the list.”

“I am?” That was a surprise, although not really when I thought it through. It stood to reason that if I were following swappers around, I would have to do a high level of swapping myself.

“Step two, as you will recall, was to overlay the swap list with anyone who appeared to have more assets in her name than could be reasonably supported by her reported income. I used their W-2 salaries, which include all premiums.”

“That step would definitely eliminate me.”

“As it did several.” He pulled another single sheet from the file and dangled it in front of me. “This is the subset of names that resulted.”

“Thenthese are our hookers.” I snatched the page from him. There were thirty-five names on the list. Some of the names were surprises. Some weren’t. Most surprising of all were the names that weren’t there.

“Where’s Angel? Where are Sally and Ava and Claudia and Charlotte? None of them is on this list.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, why?”

“Their names come up in the financial filter, but they do not qualify on the swapper criteria. They fly the schedule, for the most part, as they bid it.”

“Why would that be?” I put the page back on the desk-it suddenly represented a major disappointment-and got up to stretch out stiff muscles and wander a bit. I ended up at Harvey ’s bookshelves, staring blankly at some of the titles. Mostly he read biographies, history, and business books, but he did have a weakness for good science fiction. I liked looking at those best, because it was a part of him that was unexpected. Also because of the cool titles.

“Maybe the top women have regulars,” I said, trying the best explanation that came to me. That didn’t mean it was a good one. “Maybe they can plan their liaisons further in advance. But they would still have to do some swapping. Where do they fall on your list?”

“Who am I looking for, exactly?”

“Just look for Angel and Sally. Velesco and Prentiss.”

He took his glasses off and held his list of swappers at arm’s length. Every once in a while, he’d put it flat on the table and check something from another pile. Eventually, he had his answer. “In the top one hundred.”

“Out of six hundred fifty total at the base, right?”

“Yes, but only eight-five percent are women.”

“Would it be possible that they could get their dates to come to them? Wouldn’t that be amazing?”

I went back to my chair and settled in with my arms folded on the desk in front of me.

“You seem disappointed,” he said.

“No, not at all. More like devastated. That report only gets the soldiers, not the generals. You have to cut off the head of this snake to kill it. Angel would just hire more women.”

“You do not know that.”

“There are so many things we don’t know. If Angel and the others are hookers, why aren’t they on that report? What’s a pool girl? What was Monica up to, with this blackmail scheme, and is Angel part of that?” I glanced at the file at my elbow. “What happened to Robin Sevitch?”

Harvey leaned in and put both palms on the desktop. He looked as if he were making handprints in cement. “We have accomplished much. You have accomplished a great deal, and if we were to stop now, which I suggest we do, you can be happy with what you have done.”

“I don’t feel as if I’ve accomplished anything.” I picked up the file and climbed out of the chair. “I’m going home to bed.”

It was after three when I walked into my apartment. It seemed as if it should be much later, but only because I had been up for almost two days. It was a brisk afternoon. Since my apartment basked in the morning sun, it chilled in the afternoon shadows, so it was cool inside. I dropped today’s slug of mail on the counter, punched up the first of two phone messages, and went to open one of the radiator valves.

Za, got your message. I was thinking…I’ve been going running most mornings I’ve been up here along the river, and I was wondering…if you wanted to come…I mean, I would like for you to come with me if you can make it. If you want to.

There was a pause where he could have been thinking what I was, that it would be like old times for Jamie and me to go running together.

Anyway, if you want to meet me, I’ll be at the Dartmouth footbridge at five-thirty tomorrow morning. If you can’t, that’s cool, too. I’ll catch up with you later.

It was good to hear his voice. There was something about the case and being in Angel’s world that made me feel lonely and hungry for some kind of deeper connection, one that Harvey and I couldn’t give each other. In spite of all our ups and downs, Jamie was still the one person in the world who knew me best. When I called his cell phone, I got his voice mail. I left a message that I would meet him to go running.

I erased Jamie and punched up the next message.

Dear, whereareyou? Have you fallen from the face of the earth? I cannot find you anywhere.

The sound of Tristan’s voice was instantly guilt-inducing. I had not answered his calls to my cell phone, once because I’d been with Angel and twice when I’d been with Harvey. If I’d answered, I would have had to make up some story about where I was. I had already lied to Tristan enough.

I want to know how things went with brother Jamie. You have called him, haven’t you? Also, Barry and I are having a small dinner party tomorrow at eight. A couple of his real estate friends are coming. Irene is bringing Claire. We want you, of course, and anyone you might want to bring. Bring Jamie! It will be very extravagant. So RSVP me, dahling. Talk to you soon.There was a pause, but he didn’t hang up.I hope…is everything all right? Call me when you get this. I’m worried about you.

I picked up the phone and dialed, but it wasn’t to call Tristan. I dialed Felix in Miami.

“Hey, Miss Shanahan.”

It never failed to throw me when someone answered the phone with my name instead of hello. As far as I was concerned, caller ID had disrupted the very fabric of the universe. “Um…Felix?”

“Hi. I’m glad you called. I was just working on your stuff.”

“So, you got everything? No problem with the encryption?”

“Huh? Oh, no. Piece of cake. I’ve already figured it out.”

“Figured what out?”

“The Web site you sent me. I know exactly what he’s doing. It’s pretty cool, too. I haven’t seen this before. Not personally. I’ve read about it.”

He sounded enthused, which caused me to feel a flutter of hope as I opened the refrigerator door and stared in. Could this actually be good news? “What’s he doing?”

“Using time-limited reverse proxy servers. I think it started in Russia or Estonia or…I don’t know, one of those Eastern Bloc countries.”

“Time-limited what?”

“Oh, it’s a new trick that hackers use to hide their identity.”

“Hide their identity?” I felt less hopeful. I closed the refrigerator and opened the freezer and discovered that I’d already eaten all my four-minute microwave meals. I would have to settle for a protein shake. I got out the blender, the protein powder, and an ice tray. “How does it work, Felix?”

“What he does is download a rogue program over the Internet to some innocent person’s PC, one with DSL, because with DSL the door is always open. He hijacks that machine and uses its high-speed connection to do his stuff, but he sets it up so that it looks like it’s coming from a big server, a master Web server. Whoever’s PC it is never even knows it’s being used as a proxy. It makes it almost impossible to track.”

“Hold on, Felix.” I hit the puree button and let the blender run until dinner was ready. Then I took my milkshake and retired to the couch. “Can’t you track back through the proxy to the server to the hacker?”

“Nuh-uh. That’s the time-limited part. What makes it work is that he uses these proxy PCs only for a few minutes at a time before rotating. By the time I identify the first proxy, he’s on to the next one. It’s a constantly moving target. It’s pretty smart. It’s what makes him almost completely anonymous, which is why I haven’t found him yet. Oh, I guess that’s, like, bad news, huh?”

“You can’t track him?”

“I can track him, but the quickest anyone has done it is in seven or eight days.” Which was too long. All I had was five days.

“So, this guy is good?”

“This guy is very good, Miss Shanahan. But,” he hastened to add, “not better than me. No. No way he’s better. I’ll find a way to track him. I promise you.”

Dueling hackers. This should be interesting. Showdown at the IT Corral.

“If you can do it in less than seven days, that would be very helpful, Felix. Did you actually get into the site?”

“I did, but there’s not much in there. Just some input screens for name, address, and flight number. Do you want me to send you a password so you can look at it?”

“Please. Send it to my partner, too, if you don’t mind.”

“You have a partner?”

I gave him Harvey ’s e-mail address and an explanation. The last time Felix and I had worked together, I had been someone between jobs looking into a friend’s death.

“Wow. So you’ll be a real private investigator with a license and everything?”

“I’m working on it.”

“You are so cool, Miss S. You’ll be so good at this.”

It was unexpectedly and deeply satisfying to feel his enthusiasm. It was exactly what I needed to hear after Harvey ’s grim and graphic scolding. “Is there anything I could get you, Felix, that might speed up the process?”

“Just send me anything you can get. You never know which piece is going to be the one, you know?”

I had another thought. I found my backpack, dragged it over, and dug out my notepad.

“Felix, I don’t know what you can do with this, but take it down.” I read him Arthur Margolies’s e-mail address, which I’d pulled out of the OrangeAir reservations system, and spelled out his name.

“Who’s this person?”

“I think he’s the victim of an extortion scheme, probably perpetrated by a hooker named Monica. Monica Russeau. She might have been sending demands through e-mail. Do you think you could get into his computer through his e-mail program?”

“I’ll check it out. If he has DSL, I might be able to get in and scope it out.”

“Look for anything from, to, or related in any way to Monica Russeau.”

“Okay. I might be able to track back to hers, too. Would that help?”

“Anything helps at this point, Felix.”

After we hung up, it was quiet. There wasn’t much going on in my building at three in the afternoon. I reached up and probed the tender areas of my throat. When I touched all the places Mr. Lemon Chiffon had squeezed so effectively, it took me back to the moments before I lost consciousness, the paralyzing fear, and the feeling of being completely overwhelmed and helpless.

Maybe Harvey was right. Maybe it wasn’t worth it. Maybe this case was already as good as it needed to get. Maybe my deepest, darkest fear was not a fear at all but a fact: I was already in way over my head.

I sat back, drank my shake, and felt at least a partial rejuvenation from the infusion of protein. I thought about what Felix had said, and another interpretation occurred to me. If, indeed, I was already in over my head, perhaps the key phrase was that I wasalready in, and the only way to get to the other side was to keep swimming.

I went to my desk, dug out my base roster, and looked up Monica Russeau’s home phone number. I didn’t expect to get an answer, and I didn’t. I hung up without leaving a message. I wasn’t about to give her fair warning. She hadn’t given any to me.