Live Bait

23

Gino and Magozzi caught the last half of the ten o’clock news from a dark booth in the back of the Sports Bar with No Name. Gino was eating an enchilada the size of a baseball bat, drenched in hot sauce; Magozzi was eating a bowl of chicken noodle soup. His stomach was a mess.

On the overhead screen they watched a saccharine five-minute segment on Morey Gilbert’s funeral that was a blatant plug for their upcoming focus piece, St Gilbert of Uptown, then location shots of Ben Schuler’s house that bled into a close-up of Magozzi, giving the standard ambiguous statement: They had no suspects in custody, they were pursuing all possible leads, and no, they had not confirmed a definitive connection between the murders of Morey Gilbert, Rose Kleber and Ben Schuler. At that point the shrill voice of Kristen Keller, Channel Ten’s blonde Barbie doll, called out from somewhere off-camera, ‘Detective Magozzi! All three murder victims were concentration camp survivors. That certainly looks like a definitive connection from where I’m standing.’

‘Look at that.’ Gino jabbed his fork at the screen. ‘Straight to commercial after she kicks us in the balls. Goddamnit I hate that woman. You know what we ought to do? Catch her in a dark alley some night and shave her head. That’d keep her off the air for a while. What blows me away is how they found out Schuler had been in the camps that fast.’

‘Neighbors, probably,’ Magozzi said, dipping into his soup. ‘Jimmy said the camera crews were knocking on doors for thirty minutes before we came out.’

‘Malcherson ain’t gonna like that interview.’

Magozzi put down his spoon. ‘You have any Tums?’

It was almost eleven o’clock by the time Gino and Magozzi slogged up the steps to City Hall. Their suits were rumpled, their ties loosened, and remnants of Lily Gilbert’s cooking and the more recent enchilada decorated Gino’s once-white shirt. The wide corridor that led to Homicide was deserted, the lights were on dim, and the building was so quiet they could hear Johnny McLaren’s voice before they opened the office door.

He was talking on the phone at Gloria’s station, probably because he couldn’t find the phone under the landfill on his own desk. He gave them a grin and a wave, and they followed his thumb toward the back of the room, where Langer was daintily ripping the last flesh off a chicken wing.

‘Whoa,’ Gino said. ‘Langer’s eating barbequed chicken wings again. It’s the end of the world.’ He looked down at the decimated bones piled neatly on a napkin. ‘I thought you were a vegetarian.’

‘I was, until last night. I love these things. Want one?’ He poked the greasy white bag sitting on his blotter.

‘No thanks. What are you two doing here so late?’

Langer patted the corners of his mouth with a napkin. ‘Overseas calls to a few cops we couldn’t reach during the day. McLaren’s trying to connect with some guy in Johannesburg, if you can believe that.’

McLaren hung up the phone and walked back toward his own desk. ‘Next time we get a lull in Homicide we should all pack up and go to South Africa. Every time I try to call those guys, they’re out on another murder.’ He slapped a message slip on Langer’s desk. ‘And you are calling this one, because I do not know how to pronounce a name with no vowels. I asked for the guy, they hung up on me.’

‘What’s going on?’ Magozzi asked. ‘What’s with the overseas calls?’

McLaren’s face fell. ‘You’re kidding me. You didn’t watch the six o’clock news? Oh, man…’ He threw up his hands. ‘The one time we give a really killer press conference, you miss it. Malcherson actually let us talk this time, and I was great, even if I do say so myself. Wasn’t I, Langer?’

Langer rolled his eyes up to Magozzi. ‘He wore the madras jacket.’

Magozzi winced.

‘They tried to trip us up, of course’ – McLaren’s waggled his eyebrows – ‘especially that dipshit new guy with the permed hair who does the late news. But we were rocks. Cool, tough, kind of your basic hero types. I got a tape…’

‘So what the hell happened?’ Gino asked, one arm diving deep into the chicken wing bag. ‘Something break on the train track guy?’

‘Oh yeah, did it ever,’ McLaren grinned. ‘Seems the.45 that damn near took off Arlen Fischer’s arm is one hot piece. Got a shitload of hits on that gun from Interpol. Let’s see, there was Johannesburg, London, Paris, Prague… and a couple of others.’

‘Milan and Geneva,’ Langer reminded him.

‘Right. Anyway, Channel Three has a source in the FBI who caught the Interpol connection, and the press went nuts. International intrigue in the heartland, that kind of stuff.’

‘So what are you thinking?’ Magozzi asked.

Langer shrugged. ‘Interpol’s always had them pegged as contract killings. They’ve got six murders spread out over fifteen years – seven, counting Arlen Fischer – and it looks like the same shooter using the same gun. In and out clean, no witnesses, no forensics, single shot to the head.’

‘Except Arlen Fischer wasn’t shot in the head,’ Magozzi reminded him.

‘That’s the best part. There’s always a chance the gun traveled without the shooter, of course – maybe he dumped it after the last hit and it ended up over here in someone else’s hands – but what Interpol’s hoping is that it’s the same killer, and that the Arlen Fischer hit was personal. Contract killers don’t usually torture strangers.’

Magozzi nodded. ‘So he knew Fischer.’

‘That’s the theory. That Fischer and his killer crossed paths at one point, and if we can find that connection, we might be able to put a name to this guy.’

‘Jeez, guys,’ Magozzi said with a bemused smile. ‘You’re going to nail an international hit man.’

‘Wouldn’t that just be roses?’ McLaren grinned. ‘But the bad part is that Interpol wants us to let the FBI in on it. They got a real hard-on for this guy. Chief Malcherson is keeping them at bay until we check out the six overseas victims, see if we can’t tie them to Fischer somehow. Speaking of which’ – McLaren handed Langer the message slip – ‘here’s Mr Consonant. I ain’t calling him, I told you.’

‘He probably speaks English, McLaren.’

‘That’s not going to do me a whole lot of good if I can’t get him on the phone because I can’t pronounce his friggin’ name.’

‘All right, all right.’ Langer took the slip and passed another one over. ‘You do Paris, then. I swear those people pretend they can’t speak English just to be irritating.’

Gino snorted. ‘Like McLaren can speak French.’

Langer smiled at him. ‘McLaren is fluent.’

‘No way.’

‘Just in the Romance languages,’ McLaren said. ‘I got them hammered down pretty well, but those Slavic dialects are a bitch.’

He trotted over to his desk and started punching in a long series of numbers. Gino and Magozzi gaped at him when he started babbling in a language neither could hope to understand.

‘Unbelievable,’ Gino murmured. ‘And all this time I thought McLaren was just another pretty face.’

‘So what are you guys doing here?’ Langer asked.

Gino and Magozzi traded gloomy expressions. They were tired, discouraged, and underneath it all, maybe a little scared, both feeling as if things were getting away from them. ‘We lost another senior,’ Magozzi said.

Langer’s face sagged. ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

‘Wish I were,’ Magozzi said grimly. ‘Eighty-seven, shot in his own house, another tattoo.’

Langer blew out a pained breath and looked off to the side, shaking his head. ‘What the hell is going on out there?’

‘The TV talking heads are starting to ask the same thing,’ Gino grumbled. ‘You got the six o’clock edition; they gave us the ten. Pretty much chewed us up and spit us out.’

‘I’m going to make the calls,’ Magozzi told Gino as he headed for his own desk. Gino nodded, but lingered behind with Langer.

‘So who’s your victim?’ Langer asked.

‘Guy called Ben Schuler. Ever hear of him?’

Langer shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well, apparently he and Morey knew each other pretty well.’

Langer’s brows peaked. ‘You found your thread.’

‘The beginnings of one, maybe, but just between Schuler and Gilbert. Rose Kleber’s still the odd man out. We talked to her family yesterday, looking for a connection between her and Morey Gilbert, but there was nothing there. Now Leo’s checking with them to see if she knew Ben Schuler. Maybe we can tie them all together that way.’ He glanced over at Magozzi. The phone was still pressed to his ear, but he was shaking his head and held one thumb down. ‘Or maybe not.’

Magozzi hung up the phone and pulled a rolling chair close to Langer’s desk. He didn’t look nearly as depressed as Gino thought he should. ‘Rose Kleber’s family never heard of Ben Schuler.’

‘Yeah, I got that.’ Gino was an unhappy man.

‘But I’ve been thinking how weird it is, we’ve got a string of killings, and now it turns out the murder Langer and McLaren are working has a string behind it…’

‘Do not go there,’ Gino warned him. ‘We’re busting our balls trying to connect three murders and now you want to bring in another one? Come on, Leo, we looked at it, then we shit-canned that idea the first day. The murders were just too different, and so were the victims.’

‘They were all old, Gino, three of them lived in the same neighborhood if you count Arlen Fischer.’

Langer was regarding Magozzi, chin in his hand. ‘Guns don’t match. Victim profiles don’t match. Yours were Jews, camp survivors; ours was a Lutheran.’

Magozzi grimaced and scratched the back of his neck. ‘Yeah, I know. You look at this thing head-on, you see four old people, all executed within a few days and a few miles of each other; but then you look at the details, and they shoot it all to hell. But it’s still weird. They’re as much alike as they are different.’

Langer frowned at him. ‘No way we could justify running this as a tandem with all the holes.’

‘Yeah, I know that. Let’s just keep the lines of communication open, okay?’

Gino was looking frighteningly shrewd, tapping a plump forefinger against his lips. ‘You know, come to think of it, I could like this a lot. Jack Gilbert, kingpin of a gang of international assassins.’

Langer laughed out loud. ‘Jack Gilbert? You’ve got to be kidding.’

‘Ah, I don’t know. Something’s just not right with that guy. When he heard Ben Schuler was shot, the blood drained out of his face so fast I thought he was going to keel right over.’

‘Well, maybe he knew him.’

‘He said he did, but it was more than that. You should have seen him, Langer. Jack Gilbert was scared to death.’