Rizzo's Fire

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ON WEDNESDAY, RIZZO AND JACKSON spent most of their tour continuing to search through the fragments of Robert Lauria’s life, using names and numbers culled from the worn, black address book retrieved from the murder scene. Other than family members already spoken to, the few remaining entries consisted of former landlords, employers, doctors, dentists, and the occasional tradesman or business number. Nothing pointed them in a meaningful direction.

Robert Lauria had been as isolated and unconnected as any person living in modern-day New York City could possibly be.

By late in the tour, both detectives were convinced.

“Joe,” Priscilla said as they sat at Rizzo’s desk sipping coffee from paper cups, “Lauria may have been murdered by Mallard, or somebody connected to Mallard, but this guy definitely had no one close enough who’d whack Mallard for revenge.”

“Yeah, it sure looks that way. I think we’ve invested enough time on this. We checked everything we could. There ain’t no best buddy here, no lover, no outraged relative. Whoever killed Lauria, alone or with Mallard, that same guy wound up killin’ Mallard, too. It couldn’t be any clearer.”

She nodded. “Over the play. Somehow, it all comes back to the play.”

“I still can’t get over how similar they are,” he said. “Mallard’s play had the love interest with that rich dame screwin’ both brothers, and Lauria’s didn’t. But everything else-the old man, the mother, the family history, the friggin’ dialogue, everything; it’s one play in two slightly different versions.”

“Never any doubt in my mind from when I first read it,” Priscilla agreed.

Rizzo’s phone rang, and he reached for it absentmindedly.

“Six-Two squad, Rizzo,” he said.

“Joe? Mike.”

Rizzo smiled, gesturing for Priscilla’s attention.

“Hey, Mikey, what’s new?”

“I’ve got something for you,” McQueen said. “I can leave work a little early today, maybe about three-thirty, three forty-five. I’ll swing by your house and give it to you, if you want.”

“That’d be great, Mike,” Rizzo said, “but I can meet you somewheres, maybe in the city. I hate for you to…”

McQueen cut him off. “It’s no trouble. I can say hello to Jen.”

“Okay, kiddo,” Rizzo said. “Plan on staying for dinner.”

“No thanks, I can’t to night. Another time. Why don’t I meet you at the house around four-thirty or so. Will you be home by then?”

“Sure thing, I’ll make it my business to be there.”

“Bring Cil along,” Mike said. “I’d like to see her.”

“Okay, I’ll ask her. See you then.”

He hung up and smiled at Priscilla.

“Mike’s got the file,” he said. “The Mallard investigation. Probably ran a complete dupe off the computer.”

She frowned. “You’re gonna see him this afternoon?”

“Yeah, my house. Around four-thirty. He wants you to come along.”

“Okay, only I gotta be outta there no later than five. I’m meeting that agent for a drink to night.”

“The one your writing teacher turned you on to? The one that liked your stuff?”

Priscilla’s smile lit her entire face. “That’s the one. Robin Miller. She called me last night and said she sold one of my stories.”

Rizzo reached out and they slapped palms. “Good for you, Cil, good for you. That was pretty friggin’ fast, it must be some good story.”

“Well, good enough for this la-di-freakin’-da literary magazine nobody actually reads. And it may seem fast to you, but I’ve been tryin’ to sell a story for ten years.”

“Well, then, it’s about time, that’s great.” Lowering his voice, he asked, “Is it SOP to go out for drinks after a sale, or is Miller lookin’ for a little somethin’ else?”

“There you go again, Joe, back in lesbian fantasy heaven. No, it ain’t SOP, but, no, she’s not on the make. Far as I know, she’s as straight as you are. She said she wants to discuss some ideas about my book. Imagine that? This chick figures I can sell a freakin’ book.”

“If she’s a pro, Cil, she’s probably right. Hear her out.”

“I intend to, Partner. The money I’m getting for this short story’ll barely cover the drinks to night. I hope they’re on her.”

“Maybe you should just buy your own booze. Go Dutch, it’ll be safer that way.”

Priscilla stood, waving a dismissive hand. “Relax, I’m tellin’ you, nothing going on here with this chick. Hell, I’m thinkin’ of bringing Karen along.”

“Might not be a bad idea,” he said.

“Well, I’m gonna go follow up on that prescription case, call over to the Eight-Four. See if our lead panned out.”

“Okay,” Rizzo said. “Cil-I keep forgettin’ to ask you-how’d that weather check turn out?”

“On October thirtieth, it rained all day and all night. Stopped around midnight in Bensonhurst, later in the city.”

“So maybe that raincoat wasn’t just a prop,” Rizzo said. “Our killer’s a dapper fucker, ain’t he?”

“Hell,” she said, “if it’s a dapper fucker we’re after, maybe we oughta ask Mike where he was on the night of October thirtieth.”

They were interrupted by a uniformed officer assigned to the squad room.

“Hey, Cil, this just came in for you and Joe,” he said, handing her a fax from Plaza Legal.

It was the follow-up report Rizzo had requisitioned on Lauria’s home telephone activity for the two-month period predating the one Detective Dellosso had obtained. Priscilla scanned it quickly.

“Do you have that other telephone record Bobby Dee got for us?” she asked.

Rizzo rummaged around on his desk, finding the dog-eared fax and nodding. “Right here,” he said. “Why?”

Priscilla took the first report from his hands. “I don’t seem to remember any calls to a two-one-two area code, do you?” she asked.

Interest came to Rizzo’s eyes, and he leaned forward, scanning the two reports she held. “No,” he said. “There weren’t any calls to Manhattan. Every call comin’ in or goin’ out was in the seven-one-eight code.”

Priscilla smiled, pointing her finger to an entry appearing on the newly arrived fax. “Well, check this out.”

Rizzo’s eyes followed her finger, then returned to her face. Intrigued, he said, “Get a make on that, Cil. I’m thinkin’ it comes back to someone we’re gonna want to talk to.”

Priscilla went to one of the squad computers and sat, working quickly. The number showing on Lauria’s record belonged to the Samuel Kellerman Literary Agency located on Irving Place in Manhattan. She pulled up the agency’s Web site and clicked on “Clients.”

“Ready for this?” she said, returning to Rizzo’s desk. “The number belongs to Mallard’s agent.”

“Well, whaddaya know?” Rizzo said happily. “Our first murder suspect.”

“Let’s go talk to the guy, Joe.”

He held up a calming hand. “Take it easy, relax. We gotta think this through. Mike said Manhattan South was pretty convinced Mallard’s killer was a burglar, but they would still have had to check out his life, so you gotta figure they already talked to the agent.”

“Sure, but they don’t know the play angle,” she said, her dark eyes glistening with excitement. “We know that’s the key here, the freakin’ play.”

“Yeah, we definitely need to talk to the guy, and we will. But first let’s take a look at that file Mike is givin’ us. See what the agent told Manhattan South. We need to move slow here, Cil. Be real careful. We only get one shot at this before Manhattan South catches our scent and leans on us. Remember your gut feeling on this-obstruction, official misconduct, accessory to murder-like that. We need to use our heads.”

Rizzo saw her frustration and said, “Trust me here, kid. One step at a time.”

He took the fax into his hand, looking again at the 212 number. Then he slowly raised his eyes to meet Priscilla’s. “Our first suspect,” he repeated. “Don’t that make you feel all warm and fuzzy?”

SEATED AT the metal desk in his basement home office, Rizzo frowned across to Priscilla, then Mike McQueen.

“Manhattan South confirmed the agent was in Paris the night Mallard was killed. He flew outta Kennedy on Monday, October twenty-seventh, returned Tuesday, November fourth. That alibis him for both homicides.”

He tossed the thick computer-generated file onto his desk. “Real convenient for him, don’t you think?”

Mike shrugged. “There’s a ton of stuff in that case file, Joe; I looked it over pretty carefully. The task force working the Mallard case is pretty convinced it was a break-in. From what’s in the file, you can’t blame them. That play of Lauria’s is a key piece of evidence they’re not aware of. We’re all sitting on dynamite here.”

“Hell, Mike, relax,” Rizzo said. “If Cil hadn’t seen Mallard’s play on Broadway, we’d never even have made a connection here. No one can pin anything shady on us, believe me. Later, after we poke around a little in the city, maybe then they’ll catch on. And we’ll just say we were fishin’, just on a hunch, what ever, then hand them the play angle. So relax.”

“Yeah, Mike, relax,” Priscilla said. “Worst this old man can do is get us all locked up for twenty fuckin’ years.”

“Yeah,” Mike said uneasily. “I basically stole this file from the Plaza’s database.”

“How exactly did you handle that anyway?” Rizzo asked.

“Very carefully,” McQueen said. “I pulled up the Lauria hom icide, then I hit the files for a pattern match. Any similar crime committed anywhere in the city, based on method, scene, age, race and sex of victim. The computer spit out a half dozen cases, Mallard’s one of them. Then I piggybacked Mallard onto Lauria and ran it through under the Lauria case number. It won’t stand up to a close look, but it won’t catch anybody’s eye, either. As long as no one goes looking for a problem, we’ll be okay.”

Rizzo nodded. “Good. Tomorrow, after I go through this file, me and Cil will start on the Manhattan end. With the agent, probably. Size up the guy.”

“We found a box full of rejection slips in Lauria’s closet,” Priscilla told Mike. “We confiscated it along with the manuscripts. When we got the hit on Kellerman’s telephone number, we checked through the box. Lauria’s play was rejected by three agencies, but none of ’em was Kellerman.”

McQueen nodded. “So no direct connection.”

“Other than the phone call itself, no,” Rizzo said. “But there’s a connection all right, we just need to find it.”

Priscilla glanced at her wristwatch and stood. “Speakin’ of agents,” she said, “I gotta get going. Sorry I missed Jennifer, Joe, I’ll meet her on Thanksgiving.”

Rizzo nodded, moving to show her out. “Yeah, sorry about that. I forgot it was open school night.”

Priscilla bent to kiss Mike’s cheek, waving at Rizzo. “Sit,” she said. “I can find my way out.”

LATER THAT night, Rizzo sat back in his desk chair, the Mallard file spread before him. He rubbed at his tired eyes. The only sound he could hear was the humming of the basement’s fluorescent light above him. Jennifer and Jessica had long since retired for the night.

Rizzo opened a package of Nicorette, a fleeting image of the Chesterfields, hidden in the gray Impala’s glove compartment, appearing before him. Sighing, he put a piece of gum into his mouth and began chewing.

One of the task force cops had printed out an online encyclopedia biography of Avery Mallard, and Rizzo now knew more about the man than he had ever known about any literary figure.

After graduating from New York’s Fordham University, Mallard had set out for Los Angeles, attempting a career in television and screenwriting. After six long years of failure, he returned to New York City, supporting himself as a copywriter at a well-known publishing house. It was through connections there that he met Samuel Kellerman, an up-and-coming agent specializing in literary novels and stage plays. Soon afterward, Kellerman represented Mallard on a novel he’d written while in California. The book eventually sold, receiving wide critical acclaim but little commercial success.

Then, when he was thirty, largely due to Kellerman’s efforts, Mallard’s life had flared into the bright, dizzying heights of success. A play he had scripted appeared off-Broadway, where it was seen by a powerful producer and ultimately restaged at Broadway’s Cort Theatre. The play was a huge success, earning Mallard great sums and garnering the first of his many prestigious awards, including the Tony and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award.

Mallard’s first marriage dissolved as a result of his sensationalized affair with the play’s leading lady, a Hollywood starlet rarely seen on Broadway. After a quick Las Vegas wedding, their marriage lasted only two years, also ending in divorce. Mallard would suffer two more failed marriages before his untimely and violent death at age sixty-one.

Except for his six years in Hollywood, Mallard had been a lifelong resident of New York City. He often appeared in the news for his flamboyant and opinionated political pursuits and passionate social activism.

Rizzo picked up the printout of the man’s biography.

“Pain in the ass, this guy was,” he thought, then tossed the paper back down on his desk.

Rizzo ran the details of the slaying through his mind again, committing them to memory. He grudgingly acknowledged the professional and thorough job Manhattan South and Major Case had done so far.

But results had been scant.

Rizzo had reviewed all the reports, DD-5s, and photographs. Everything about the case was eerily similar to Lauria’s, right down to the relative security of Mallard’s rear yard, thus making his home an unlikely target for a random break-in. All prints at the scene were accounted for, no physical evidence had been found. Rizzo dismissed a passing thought: how nice it would have been if a stray fiber from a blue raincoat had been found on Mallard’s body.

The playwright had been largely inactive in recent years. Rizzo learned from the file that Mallard had been involved in small venue revivals of his former works in other cities, even adapting two of his old plays for television specials. But An Atlanta Landscape represented his only original work in nearly a de cade. The task force had investigated those idle years but came up dry. They had interviewed Mallard’s ex-wives, a number of former girlfriends and all his poker buddies, as well as fellow writers and various literary hangers-on.

It had only led them back to their original theory, a random burglary gone awry.

Rizzo contemplated his advantage. He and Jackson could now simply discount any and all relationships Mallard might have had except those connecting him to Lauria and both writers to the play itself, the seemingly plagiarized version of Lauria’s A Solitary Vessel.

A distinct advantage if played correctly, but an advantage wrought with great peril.

Rizzo understood that Priscilla’s fears were grounded in cold, hard fact: it was a very dangerous game they were playing.

If a third murder were to occur, their roles in it would be hard to ascertain. Rizzo knew the procedural requirements were clear. He, as the senior detective in charge of the Lauria case, was under an absolute mandate to report the existence of any possible link between it and the Mallard murder. If anything went wrong with either case, he and Priscilla would be hard pressed if confronted for explanations.

In fact, the only vaguely exculpable excuse they could formulate was one of mere stupidity. Rizzo would have to look some boss straight in the eye and say, “Sorry, I just never saw the connection.”

He stood, switching off the desk lamp and stretching out his tired back muscles. He shook his disquieting thoughts away and squared the file off, then slipped it into the large, non-police issue manila folder.

Rizzo left the basement, quietly retiring to bed, a nervous excitement simmering beneath his fatigue.

He looked forward to the morning and what ever the new day would bring.