Masquerade for Murder

Chapter Seven

Tudor City, between Grand Central and the United Nations, was an island of apartment buildings within the island of Manhattan. In the heart of midtown, the cluster of apartments had everything — two lovely parks, great shopping, swell dining. Also the rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment where Lt. Casey Shannon had lived for twenty years, ever since his wife divorced him and he’d moved here from Queens.

The apartment had everything, too — hardwood floors, a separate foyer, a good-size living room, a full kitchen, a bathroom with windows (on the quiet north side of the building) and its one bedroom was damn near as big as the living room. One of a hundred-and-fifty apartments in a building built in 1929 (before the Crash), with a doorman and a laundry room, these digs had it all.

Everything but a living occupant.

Shannon was sitting on the floor with his head slumped, his back against the couch that had stopped his fall. He was in white blue-flecked pajamas under a maroon robe and wearing slippers; his chest looked sunken, a terrible blow of some kind having created a crater that sucked in the fabric of its garments, twisting the cloth like the striations of a spent bullet.

A big damn spent bullet.

But there was no firearm involved in this homicide. And for that ghastly indentation to have been the work of a fist, or even two fists, it would require an Andre-the-Giant-size killer.

When Pat, hat in hand, looming over the grisly corpse, said quietly, “Shit,” it was more like a prayer than a curse.

The windows were already up, to air out the smell of death, the job not yet done.

I said, “I didn’t know Casey as well as you, buddy. I mostly go back to when he was working with you ten, fifteen years ago. But I knew him enough to know he was a hell of a cop.”

“The best.” Pat gave me a hard look. “This one’s mine, Mike.”

“The case you mean? Or the kill?”

“Both.”

I shook my head. “No promises, pal. If I get my hands on who did this, I’ll take him out. You know I will.”

The gray-blue eyes were ice cold. “I’m asking you a favor on this one, Mike. This time it’s my friend some son of a bitch slaughtered. This is my Jack Williams.”

Jack had stepped in front of a Jap bayonet and it cost him an arm but saved my ass. Back here at home in the glorious post-war world, a cold-blooded murderer cut Jack down. And I had taken my revenge by way of delivering a slug in the killer’s belly, just the way Jack got it. It hadn’t been pretty and I still revisited it in my nightmares, but I could do it again. Easily.

“I’ll try, Pat. If I get there before you, I’ll save the bastard for you. But you’re not me. You don’t have the stomach for it that I do.”

“Oh, I won’t kill who did this,” he said. “With the death penalty gone, what I want is to watch him squirm in court, suffer public shame and humiliation, his every evil act dragged out and shoved in his face, then spend the rest of his sorry life behind bars, being some animal’s bitch.”

I shrugged. “To each his own.”

We had the place to ourselves for the moment. Two uniforms were in the hall on the door and the forensics team wasn’t there yet. I prowled the place, like I was walking point in the jungle.

It was in some ways a typical bachelor pad. Lots of guys are slobs and live in a mess of a place where a woman’s touch would have made it habitable. Casey was a thorough and meticulous cop and that had been the way he lived. This pad was neat as the proverbial pin, and whether he vacuumed and dusted himself or had a cleaning woman in, the result was a glimpse into the orderly mind of a top-notch investigator.

A Yuppie with a little dough would have salivated at the very thought of getting this place at twice the rent Shannon had been paying. Their interior decoration would have been far different, however — Casey had clearly furnished the place when he moved in a couple decades ago, raiding the showroom at J.C. Penney or Sears. The pictures on the walls were infrequent and were either hunting scenes or photos of his two grown children and four grandchildren. President Reagan’s picture beamed over a vintage wooden file cabinet.

This was a living room that got lived in, or it had been before the murder — TV with lounger opposite, a bookcase with bestsellers (The Fountainhead, Something of Value, Anatomy of a Murder), an old scarred-up desk consuming one corner. His phone was on it and a blotter, and a row of reference books; but no stacked papers or files or anything. I knelt for a look at the three desk drawers. No sign that any one of them had been pried open.

Pat was checking out the kitchen and I was tempted to go through that desk and those drawers, using a handkerchief so as not to leave prints; but that search was rightly Pat’s bailiwick — him and the lab boys.

He returned and I met him at the corpse.

“So,” I said, “how do you read this?”

His hat was on now, pushed back. “No sign of a struggle. No sign anything’s been gone through. Somebody wanted Casey dead. Simple as that.”

“Simple,” I said. “Some fucker just rolled his civil war cannon in and lit the fuse and aimed at your friend’s chest.”

He ignored that. “Casey knew the killer. A friend, maybe. Or at least an acquaintance.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Oh?”

“You can rule out a stranger, because Shannon let the person in, obviously at night, and they ended up across the room. So they spoke a while. I don’t think the killer was here long — no coffee cups or beer bottles in the kitchen?”

“None.”

I shrugged. “But that doesn’t rule out somebody he knew from a case he was working. Somebody who stopped by and said he had some info for Casey and got invited in.”

Pat twitched a frown. “And did that to him, somehow.”

“Yeah.”

“But Casey was retired.”

“Casey was still looking into something having to do with Vincent Colby. For some reason, that was the case that was eating at him enough that he couldn’t let it go. Couldn’t hang it up till he resolved the damn thing to his investigative mind’s satisfaction.”

Almost to himself, Pat said, “Every cop has one of those cases.”

I walked in a small circle, my hands in the air. “But what was it? Vincent Colby’s the common denominator, but appears to just have been on the periphery of those things.”

“‘Those things,’ Mike, are called homicide investigations. And, judging by what little I know, both of those deaths are tied to Colby, Daltree & Levine.” He waggled a finger at me. “I don’t know the details, but I will very damn soon, my friend, that I promise you.”

Right on cue, Chris Peters burst in, tramping through the entryway, the badge he’d used to get past the two cops at the door still in hand.

“I heard the call in my car,” he said, breathless. The slim blond detective, who’d been Shannon’s last partner, reminded me of the young Patrick Chambers. His eyes went white all around. “Jesus! Will you look at him.”

He almost ran to his fallen colleague, then stopped short, the cop in him not wanting to disturb anything. Then he dropped to his knees, as if at a shrine.

Swallowing hard, he said, “What happened to him?”

“I don’t know,” Pat admitted, putting a hand on the detective’s shoulder. “Somehow someone crushed his chest in. The M.E. can tell us more, after the autopsy.”

Then the young man hung his head, mirroring the corpse nearby. They might have been praying together, but only one of them was crying, the other way past that.

Pat let this go on a while, then helped the boy to his feet. “We’ll find who did this. He’ll pay.”

“He or she,” I reminded them. “There’s always those two possibilities.”

I knew that too well.

Pat walked Shannon’s heartsick partner away from the body and positioned the young man and himself so that their backs were to the grim tableau. I came along.

Pat told him, “Mike is working the Colby hit-and-run.”

I said, “I’m working for the father’s client. Old man Vance Colby.”

Of course, Chris had been there that night.

“Well,” Peters said, “that whole hit-run thing threw Casey for a curve.”

“How so?”

His expression grew thoughtful. “He was at least a little suspicious of Colby’s role in those two other homicides. One was a low-level broker at the Colby firm, the other a secretary there.”

“Vincent Colby’s secretary?”

“No, not exactly. He doesn’t have a secretary, even though he’s all but running the place. They have a secretarial pool. But the young woman had been in frequent contact with him, taking dictation and such.”

As good-looking as the women at that firm seemed to be, I wondered exactly what kind of dictation she’d taken.

“Attractive girl?” I asked.

“Very. Tragic circumstances. She was found raped and strangled in her apartment. Her roommate was away for the weekend and found the body when she got back late on a Sunday night.”

Just the kind of thing that could get its claws into a detective, even one who’d seen everything — like Casey Shannon.

I said, “If I’m remembering right, the other homicide was also a hit-and-run.”

Peters nodded. “Yes. Different circumstances. The young employee was in the ramp of a parking garage where he kept his own car when he was struck down. No witnesses. Casey thought that one stunk.”

My laugh was short and harsh. “I can see why. That reads more as a murder than an accident — you don’t work up that kind of speed in a parking ramp unless you’re homicidal in one way or another.”

Pat said to Peters, “Remind me when these homicides went down.”

“The secretary over a year ago,” he said. “The other one a good two years ago. But now we have two hit-and-run incidents at the Colby firm, and Vincent is at least a peripheral figure on the two earlier homicides, and the target of the more recent one.”

I asked, “Have you been working with Casey on this?”

He shook his head. “Not since he retired. I’m partnered up with another guy and up to my ass in the usual alligators. And even before that, I was encouraging Casey to let the Colby thing drop. We weren’t getting anywhere and we had bigger fish to fry. Other fish, anyway. No shortage of homicides in Manhattan.”

“No shortage,” Pat sighed.

I asked, “Why would he tell you he was going to Florida when he was sticking around to, what? Keep digging?”

“You got me,” Peters said, throwing his hands up. “His message came in at work when I was out, so I didn’t question him about it.”

Pat said, “He knew you didn’t agree with him keeping at this thing.”

Peters was shaking his head hard, now, exasperated. “But we’re at three homicides now, and an apparent attempted murder, all tied to that same brokerage? Something’s going on.”

“Four homicides,” I said, and told him about the Kraft kill, and its identical kill MO.

The young detective listened intently, a haunted blankness gradually curdling into something else, his handsome face getting ugly; and he looked like he might start crying again. I couldn’t blame him.

Trembling with rage and sorrow, he said, “I want a piece of this, Captain Chambers.”

Pat put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “I understand. But you’re too personally involved with this one. I’m taking charge of this myself. Of course, I’ll need you to be available to me. I want to know everything you’ve got on those first two homicides.”

“Whatever you need, Captain.”

“Good. And I’ll keep you in the loop.”

“Thank you, sir. Thank you.”

Pat shooed him off and, after a pathetic look back at his dead partner, Detective Chris Peters left the crime scene.

“What a hypocrite you are,” I said, but I was smiling.

“What the hell do you mean?”

“He’s too personally involved with this one? What are you, Pat? Aren’t you the guy salivating over killing the killer’s chances whenever a parole hearing comes up? Crushing the bastard’s dreams of a life beyond prison walls?”

That made him laugh.

I was glad he hadn’t lost his sense of humor.

The Tube was one of those well-known nightspots that I’d never had a desire to frequent. That was based on what I’d read and heard. Fact was, I’d never been there at all.

On Twelfth Avenue in Chelsea, the notorious club was housed in a warehouse that was part of a onetime railroad freight terminal. The place was massive, something like eighty-thousand square feet. Train tracks from the turn of the century still ran through a sunken section of what was now a long, narrow dance floor. Railroad sidings from the Eleventh Avenue freight line of the New York Central Railroad once ran directly into the warehouses around here, transferring goods to and from freight cars ferried on barges across the Hudson from Hoboken.

Where workmen had once toiled mightily, young New Yorkers now partied with abandon. Flashing lights bounced off metal tubing along the ceiling and off iron pillars rising from old wood floors within sandblasted brick walls. New Wave and other contemporary music, courtesy of a DJ, blasted at decibel levels unknown to man from massive speakers mounted everywhere.

I moved through alone, a figure out of another era in a hat and trenchcoat, surrounded by an under-forty crowd whose clothing above the waist was loud and expensive and angularly cut, with jeans below, sometimes fashionably torn, other times crisply designer.

I had thought about bringing Velda along, and she might have got a kick out of the place. She had more interest in changing times and new fashions than me, to say the least. But she might have wanted to hang around and take it all in, whereas my intention was to get in and out. Kind of like the couple screwing in a booth near the door to a unisex bathroom. What was becoming of this generation? Didn’t they have enough dignity to go into that john and have at it?

I had been led here by Vance Colby, having called my client to say I needed to talk with his son, who I understood still lived with him. Like the late Casey Shannon, the elder Colby had a coop, but his was on Fifth Avenue with a mere twenty rooms or so, none of which held his son, at the moment — Vincent was out for the evening with a lady friend, and the likeliest place to find him was the Tube. So I’d given it a try.

But with the strobing lights in this dark industrial tunnel-like space with its packed dance floor — with three stories of open wrought-iron walkways looming on either side, other patrons hanging over the railings with drinks and joints in hand — I was having no luck spotting my client’s son.

The bar was a squared-off sheet-metal oasis in the middle that I managed to reach and was able to order a rye and ginger from a girl with spiky green hair, a face powdered white and very red lipstick. Her breasts spilled out of the top of her black-and-red bustier like cantaloupes from the back of a produce truck. These kids today.

“Are you Mike Hammer?” a voice said, which clearly had come to terms with a way to be heard over the deafening crap that Velda had told me as was called techno music.

I turned and the guy standing there was handsome in a sharp-featured way, in a gray sports jacket that probably cost a grand and a white t-shirt that cost a couple bucks and dock pants that cost who gives a shit, an ensemble set off by a black eye-patch that screamed for a parrot on his shoulder.

“Parker Beigen,” I said, not quite yelling. “I read about you in the papers. Congratulations on your success.”

“I read about you in the papers, too... as a kid!”

Hadn’t everybody? Me and Flash Gordon.

“Word of advice?” I said.

“Sure!”

I nodded toward the couple sitting a few squared-off metal stools down from me who were sharing a coke-lined mirror, employing a use for a hundred-dollar bill that I’d never tried.

He grinned. He winked with the visible eye. “You disapprove!”

“I don’t give a damn what people do,” I said, though that wasn’t entirely true. At the old Club 52 I had once flushed a pile of coke down the john and got criticized for it. I was more a live-and-let-live guy now.

He seemed amused, his smile as wry as my drink. “Then what’s the problem, Mike? If I may?”

“You may. It’s just too wide open. It’ll catch up with you.”

He shrugged. “I pay handsomely for the privilege.”

“Someday you’ll run into an honest copper or an administration less corrupt than most, and you’ll be finished. A little friendly advice from an old soldier.”

“Appreciated.” He gestured grandly. “I just don’t like to rain on people’s parades.”

“I hear you. Look, I’m trying to find Vincent Colby.”

He frowned just a little.

I said, “Not to bother him. He’s in no trouble. I work for his old man. Consider me a friend of the family.”

The techno crapola stopped and a song I recognized came on — “Heart of Glass,” Blondie. Kind of liked that one, besides which the singer was a foxy little thing. But that song was an oldie, for this place anyway. Like me.

My host said, “Well, Vincent’s here. Out on the dance floor somewhere, I’d expect. I could probably find him for you... unless he’s up in the Dungeon. That’s his favorite of our special rooms, and I’d hate to bother him.”

The fabled S & M Room. Every boy needs a hobby.

I said, “I’d appreciate you trying.”

He patted me on the back. “Listen, Mike. You’re welcome here any time. I don’t believe those crazy rumors about you flushing a fortune in coke down the drain.”

“Yeah! You’re right not to believe everything you hear. But why do you want my business?”

He grinned big. “I don’t want your business. I want your presence.” Another wink. “I’ll put you on the list.”

“Most of the lists I’m on start with the letter ‘s.’ What’s this one about?”

“It’s about you not paying for drinks or food or any damn thing under this roof, including a cover charge. Celebrities are what keep this place going.”

“I haven’t been a celebrity in a long time.”

“Sure you are! You have great camp value!”

I had a feeling he wasn’t talking about me being an Eagle Scout back in Brooklyn.

He patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll find Vincent for you!”

He headed into the crowd and turned colors with the flashing lights. When people saw him, the way parted like the Red Sea for Moses. Then the Blue Sea, then the Green Sea...

Within two minutes, Vincent Colby and Sheila Ryan, hand in hand, emerged from the frantic crush of dancers and stood before me where I sat at the bar. Like I was the principal and this was my office.

The couple was indistinguishable from the other revelers — wild tops, blue jeans, him in Reeboks, her in Mary Janes.

“Vincent,” I said with a nod. “Ms. Ryan.”

The curvy redhead nodded back, but her date looked a little sick.

“Mr. Hammer,” Vincent said, also skilled at working his words above the noise. He seemed embarrassed. “I’m afraid I was rude to you the other day. I hope we can start over.”

“Sure. Is there anywhere in this place where we can talk without yelling?”

He gestured toward the front. “Just step outside, maybe. That work for you?”

“It does.”

I downed the rest of my drink and followed them as they moved between the dance floor and the booths.

Not many people were milling out front; it was just a sidewalk along a city street, and cold. Our breaths steamed.

Vincent slipped his arm around Sheila’s shoulder, who placed a hand on his chest — Gino who?

I said, “Casey Shannon was murdered.”

“What?” Agape, he said, “My God, what happened?”

I filled him in, including the crushed chest cavity, and told him about the similar fate that had met Roger Kraft, the mechanic used by his friend and co-worker, William Owens, on a certain Ferrari — the one that had been tentatively identified as the vehicle in the hit-and-run at Pete’s Chophouse.

Sheila looked stricken and Vincent didn’t look much better.

“This is a nightmare,” he said quietly. “A freaking nightmare.”

“We’re now at four homicides and your near-miss hit-and-run,” I said. “All connected in some fashion to the Colby brokerage... and, frankly, you.”

Alarmed, divining the accusation in that, Sheila said, “Mr. Hammer, Vincent and I have been together all day!”

I said to him, “I thought you had an appointment with your shrink.”

“With my psychiatrist’s blessing,” Vincent said, “I took a day off from work and from therapy. We went to the theater, a matinee, Cabaret, ate at the Four Seasons, spent some time at Sheila’s apartment, and came here to round the day out with a little harmless fun.”

“In the Dungeon Room?”

Sheila blushed, but all Vincent did was smile a little, saying, “It’s perfectly innocent, Mr. Hammer. Some mild spanking, whips that don’t hurt, hands tied behind the back while your partner does whatever he or she would like, within reason...”

I wondered what “within reason” was in a club where you could get your ashes hauled in a booth and then share a mirror of cocaine with your sweetie-pie.

I asked, “How well did you know Lt. Shannon?”

“We were friendly,” Vincent said with a shrug. “At least... superficially. I suspect that he suspected me.”

“In that secretary’s death?”

“Yes. I’d... well, I’d seen Victoria a few times. That was her name, Victoria Dorn. As I say, she and I’d gone out. I’d stayed over a few times.” He glanced at Sheila. “Sorry, honey. That was way before us.” To me he added, “But the lieutenant never found anything, ’cause there was nothing to find.”

“What about the other death?”

“Paul Matthews? He was just a broker out on the floor. I didn’t know him well. But that was an accident.”

I grunted a laugh. “What, like your ‘accident’ outside Pete’s? Vincent — it’s no accident when a car has worked up enough speed in a parking ramp to run somebody down.”

“That’s not true, Mr. Hammer! Think about it — we’ve all seen people come roaring around corners in parking garages, and said, ‘That’s guy’s crazy!’ Maybe not often, but it happens.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“Look,” he said, and swallowed, “I’m getting scared. I don’t mind admitting it. Somebody’s killing people, and if it wasn’t for me being a target myself, I’d say whoever it is, is trying to lay blame on me!”

“Frame you,” I said.

He nodded. “It sure feels like it. Sure looks like it.”

“I thought you wanted me to stay out of this.”

He shook his head slowly. “I was wrong, Mr. Hammer. I was way out of line at Dad’s office. I’m trying to work on this, this... temper of mine, flaring up like it does. I really can’t control it yet. I am getting help. You know that.”

Sheila hugged his arm. “He’s trying. He really is.”

“I gather that,” I said.

His chin went up slightly. “Mr. Hammer, I want your help. I need your help. And I’ll cooperate in any way I can.”

“You can start by telling me whether you think Shannon was still zeroing in on you.”

A sigh. “I can’t really say. We were friendly at the gym. But you know, I felt he got a membership there just to... watch me. Get close to me. I got a ‘Columbo’ vibe off him. You know, he’d spot me when I was working on a machine or lifting weights. Helpful, interested. Just too damn nice.”

“It does appear,” I said, “that he was still working on the case, even though he’d retired. Shannon seems to have lied to his partner, Chris Peters, saying he was leaving for a few weeks for some R & R in Florida.”

“Why would he do that?” Vincent asked.

“Good question,” I said.