Speak of the Devil

20

I MET ELIZABETH SCOTT FOR LUNCH AT OUEST. SHE WAS SITTING AT A table in the back room, next to the window, working on a Bloody Mary. She looked fuzzy. Her hair. Her eyes. Even the set of her clothes. I told her so. She’s my half sister, we can lay things out fairly straight.

“You look fuzzy.”

“Very perceptive, Fritz. That’s exactly how I’m feeling.”

“Rough night?”

“I’ve had rougher.”

I took a seat. “How are the Bloodies?”

“Soothing. Stingy.”

The waitress appeared. Her blond ponytail danced as if it were on a spring. I pointed at Elizabeth’s glass. “One of those.”

The waitress took off. Elizabeth’s eyes followed as she took another sip of her drink.

“She’s cute,” I said.

Elizabeth cocked an eyebrow. “You want to arm-wrestle for her?”

“Take her,” I said. “I’m loyal to the court of Princess Margo.”

“Of course you are. So what’s the scrabble there, anyway? Are you ever going to make an honest woman of that girl?”

“Maybe yes, maybe no.”

“She’s not pushing for it?”

“Her mother married a private eye. She doesn’t want to be her mother.”

Elizabeth made a face. “Who does?”

“I don’t think you really have to worry about that,” I said.

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“Where would you like me to start?”

She put a finger to her lips. “Let’s see. Phyllis starves herself so she looks like Audrey Hepburn, while I like a nice bloody steak every once in a while?”

“Okay. That works.”

“She took a perfectly nice Jewish nose and had it whittled down to an afterthought, while I happen to be rather fond of my own lovely battering ram?”

“You exaggerate.”

My Bloody Mary arrived. Elizabeth reached across the table and tapped my glass. “May the wind always blow you down. Or whatever that is.”

I took a sip. Soothing. Stingy. Just like the lady said.

The brunch menu included a salmon-and-goat-cheese omelet. I ordered it along with a side of toast. The food arrived in under five minutes. Elizabeth took two bites of her eggs Benedict and moved on to my toast.

“I can call the cute waitress back and order some more toast,” I said.

“Fritz, do I look like a girl with any flirt left in her this morning?”

“It’s afternoon,” I reminded her.

“Oy.”

“Just trying to be helpful.”

The restaurant was full, but unlike a lot of places, it handled sound well. An acceptable level of murmuring and occasional laughter. High ceilings, that was a lot of it. Except for the window tables, most of the seating was large plush red banquettes. It was a relatively new restaurant in the relatively restaurant-starved Upper West Side. The room was warm; the window next to me was dappled with moisture up to the table line. It brought a thin chill to my leg.

While we ate, we shot the breeze. Elizabeth shoots it better than most, even when she’s nursing a hangover. As I finished my omelet, she was doodling a face with her finger in the moisture on the window.

I asked, “Anyone I know?”

“My du jour du jour.”

“Not bad.”

“No,” she said, smiling prettily. “Not at all.”

“Okay,” I said, draining my Bloody Mary. “Let’s get to it. What the hell do we know about what’s going on with Paul? His wife and his mother think it’s an affair. Does his sister?”

“Honestly, Fritz, why do you bother?”

“Phyllis says someone beat him up.”

“So his affair is with a married woman, and the hubby got wise. Don’t you watch your soap operas?”

“I told your mother I’d snoop. She seems worried. Don’t ask me why, but I’ve always trusted Phyllis’s instincts. So what can you tell me? Is it a rocky marriage? Linda has been like a ghost to me the few times I’ve met her. I don’t get a reading.”

“Linda doesn’t exactly set the world on fire. But then neither does Paul. Should be a perfect couple, right?”

“Are they?”

“I honestly don’t know. Maybe they’ve been having some troubles. It seems like every marriage does. Paul wouldn’t exactly confide that sort of thing to me even if it was happening.”

“Any idea who he might confide it to?”

“Not Le Phyllis, that’s for sure.”

“So what do we have? Two kids. Nice apartment in Murray Hill. I assume there’re no major money problems.”

“God love a trust fund.”

“What’s Paul’s latest job venture?”

“The vocation-phobic Paul? Let’s see. This week I believe it’s fund-raising. Unless I’m already behind.”

“Fund-raising for what?”

“It’s a company you hire to help you with your fund-raising. I guess they write grant proposals, help organize parties, shake down corporations for contributions. Paul’s managed to get himself on the boards of a couple of nonprofits around the city. He likes that sort of thing. He’s a prestige freak, as you know.”

“As I know.”

“He hits me up for contributions. He hits up our mother. He hits up her friends. I guess it makes him think he’s a real pro at fund-raising. Who knows, maybe he is. Maybe he’s finally found his calling. High-end handouts. Though it’s not the sort of thing that would have made Daddy proud: It’s not what he would have considered manly work. I guess Paul is doomed to never figure that one out.”

“It’s been fifteen years. There’s no Daddy to be proud or not proud about anything.”

She held up a hand. “Tell it to Paul. He’s the one stuck under the shadow. After all, he’s always saying there’s that one chance in a million that Daddy’s still out there somewhere.”

I let this pass. This was Elizabeth’s fantasy every bit as much as she was saying it was her brother’s. Which isn’t to say I haven’t woken in a full sweat myself a number of times over the years, thinking I’d just heard the old man’s voice. Or felt the presence of his shadow in my room. That’s the stuff ghosts are made of.

I pulled out my notebook. “What’s the name of this company Paul’s with?”

“It’s called Futures Now.” I jotted it down. Elizabeth asked, “Do you think he’s having an affair with someone at work?”

I shrugged. “High percentage. It’s either work, friends or from something else he does on a regular basis. That’s your standard affair pool. I don’t see him as the random-bar-pickup type.”

“No. Not our Paul.”

I put away the notebook. “I’ll nose around. I’d go right to the source and ask, but he’d just lie to me. The way Paul feels about me, I could ask him his shoe size and he’d lie. But if he’s fooling around, I’ll get the name. I’ll give it to your mother. She’ll know what to do with it.”

Elizabeth picked up her glass. “Nasty business you’re in, Brother Malone.”

I thought about a pair of severed fingers bound up in twine and delivered to a nunnery.

Nasty. To the extreme.

GABRIELLA DIAZ WAS NO LONGER GABRIELLA DIAZ. SHE WAS Gabriella Montero. Mr. and Mrs. Montero lived in a brownstone in the Kensington section of Brooklyn, off the south side of Prospect Park. Their apartment was on the first floor. No one answered the buzzer. The buzzer for the second floor said ALVAREZ. I tried it. After a few seconds, the intercom crackled. “Hello? Who’s it?”

I pulled a piece of paper from my notebook and held it close to the intercom and crumpled it.

“What? Who’s that?”

I crumpled the paper again and muttered “Mungamumma” into the intercom. The door clicked. I pushed it open.

The front hallway was dark and carried a stale minty smell. A large mirror above a covered radiator offered me a chance to look at myself, but I didn’t take it.

Up the stairs, a creaky door opened. A voice called out, “Who’s there!”

I started up the stairs. The squawky tune they played, I might have been stepping on a succession of cats. A woman with a Medusa of salt-and-pepper dreadlocks caught up in a green bandanna was standing in a doorway at the top of the stairs. The tin sounds of a television program leaked out from her apartment. She was in a flower-print muumuu with her arms crossed tightly on her chest. I stopped three steps from the top. Such was her power.

“What do you want?” The voice was dark, with an island lilt.

“You’re Mrs. Alvarez,” I said.

She scowled. “Don’t tell me what I know. Tell me what I don’t know. Who are you?”

“My name is Fritz Malone. I’m looking for Gabriella Montero.”

Some sort of voodoo pulsed in her eyes. “Get out.”

“But I’m-”

“Get out!” She pointed down the stairs. “She don’t need any more of you, Gabby don’t. You leave this girl alone. No more. She can’t be happy? You stop now. You go!”

“Mrs. Alvarez, I need to-”

“I tell you to go! No comment.” She said it a second time, wagging her finger. “Nooooo comment. She does not see the bad man for many many year. She is married again. You can leave her alone. You quote me. I say, no comment. All those beautiful souls that bad man killed. It is horrible. Get out.”

“I-”

She bent sideways and groped with her other hand just inside the doorway. As she straightened, she was joined by a long double-barreled shotgun that she hitched snugly under her large arm. The twin barrels drifted up several inches until their aim was approximately at my nose. The barrels were as dark as night. Ugly black. A grimace tugged at the sides of the woman’s mouth.

“If I am not speaking loud enough, my friend can speak louder, okay? I mean this. I got no patience with you monkeys.” She shook the gun.

I had my hands out, showing her my palms. You do it without even thinking. I kept my voice steady. “Mrs. Alvarez. Listen. I’m not with the press. I’m not a reporter.”

The black barrels traveled a small circle. “Who are you?”

“I’m here on police business,” I said. Not completely a lie.

Her eyes narrowed. “You are police?”

“Yes.” The lie.

Her dreadlocks shook. “No. The police have been here. Gabby has spoken to the police. You are a reporter. You are another hungry monkey. I know the tricks. The girl knows nothing. You make her cry.”

“I’m not a reporter, Mrs. Alvarez,” I said again. “Put the gun down. Please.”

The barrels drifted up to my eyes. “Who are you? Prove you are police.”

“I am reaching for my wallet,” I said. Gingerly, I reached into my jacket and pulled out my wallet. I flipped it open to my private investigator’s license. Five good seconds would tell a person that the license had nothing remotely to do with the New York City Police Department, but I didn’t give the woman the full five. Her gaze locked on to the license as I climbed the final three stairs. I held the wallet high, and as her gaze followed it, I reached out with my other hand and grabbed hold of the shotgun barrel, twisting it and yanking it from her grip.

“What!”

I dropped my wallet, broke open the shotgun and unchambered a pair of yellow shells. I picked at the end of one and turned it upside down. Fine granules drifted out. “What’s this?” I demanded.

The disarming had punctured the woman’s chutzpah. From the television inside the apartment came a burst of laughter. “Is sand,” she said dejectedly. “I will not kill you.”

“Do you have a license for this firearm?”

“It is lost. But I have it.”

I resnapped the stock and barrel and leaned the shotgun against the wall. I made a point of pocketing the shells. I picked up my wallet from the floor and put it back in my pocket. “All those beautiful souls, Mrs. Alvarez. It’s my job to find out why Gabriella’s ex-husband killed them. We want them to rest in peace now, don’t we?”

“Yes.” A six-year-old had more volume.

I gave her my best smile. “Okay. So, as you were saying. About Mrs. Montero.”

THE LITTLE GIRL WAS SHRIEKING WITH DELIGHT EACH TIME THE SWING sailed forward and up. There was no chance of her falling off; the swing seat was a black rubber diaper that came up well past her waist. The man standing behind the swing was slightly built, with black curly hair and a closely trimmed mustache. He was wearing a gray jacket, a tie loosened at the neck. He appeared to be enjoying himself as much as the little girl was. There was nothing in the child’s face to suggest that she was in any way burdened with the knowledge that three days ago her father had gunned down more than a dozen people at the Thanksgiving Day parade, killing nine of them, or that he had then been killed himself by a bullet to the head on the eighteenth floor of the Municipal Building. Nothing. Nada. The little girl was wearing white shoes, pale blue socks and a navy blue coat. Her shrieks sounded like a miniature police siren.

I stood next to the slide and watched for a few minutes. Sitting on a bench ten feet away from the swing set was Gabriella Montero. She was a small woman. She was clutching a large bouquet of flowers, her forearms resting lightly on an extremely pregnant belly. As Mrs. Alvarez had described. She was pretty. Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin, full cheeks. I’d been standing at the slide maybe half a minute when her gaze started bouncing between her daughter and me. Her eyes grew darker each time they wandered in my direction. Finally, she sent an invisible signal to her husband. He looked over at me, letting the little girl’s next back swing go by without a push. As I came forward, Hector Montero began slowly shaking his head. He left the girl to her swinging and stepped over to meet me halfway. The delighted shrieking had stopped. I spoke first.

“Mr. Montero, my name is Fritz Malone. I’m not a reporter. I’m a private investigator working with the police on the Thanksgiving Day murders. I’m sorry, but I need to speak with your wife.”

Hector Montero had sad eyes. “We’ve talked with the police. Please. Gabriella has nothing more she can say.”

“I know the police have been by. I still need to talk with her.”

“We are just from church. You can come back tomorrow.”

“I need to speak with her today.”

“But why? Roberto is dead. He will hurt no one now. Why can’t you leave us alone? This is a bad three days. Rosa… she does not know yet about her father.”

The rubber swing was slowing down. Another few passes and it would be at a full stop. The little girl was craning her neck to look in our direction. On the bench, Gabriella had lowered her head.

“Roberto Diaz wasn’t working alone,” I said. “He was working with a partner. The partner is still dangerous. I need to find out who he is.”

Montero held my gaze. “We don’t know who is the partner. Roberto was not in our life. Please.”

I pressed. “Other people could die. This man is holding a hostage. He’s extremely dangerous. I know this is painful for your wife, but you have to understand.”

“She is pregnant.”

I glanced over toward the bench. “I see that. Congratulations to you both.”

Montero reached up and stroked his small mustache. He let out a sigh. “Show me something. Do you have a badge?” I pulled out my wallet and showed him my PI license. He gave it a long look. “I will talk to her. Wait here.”

He stepped back to the swing and lifted the little girl into his arms. She threw her arms around his neck and looked over at me with a disapproving face. Montero carried her to the bench and set her down. Gabriella handed the child the flowers and shooed her away. Rosa went to a nearby picnic table and began laying the flowers out on the table, one by one. Hector Montero spoke with his wife. She listened, then nodded. Montero kissed her on the cheek and signaled me to come over. As I approached the bench, he joined the little girl at the picnic table. Gabriella Montero was struggling to stand.

“Don’t get up,” I said.

She had not gotten far. She fell back heavily on the bench and looked up at me. Her eyes were as black as the twin shotgun barrels I’d faced just a half hour earlier.

“I am in hell,” she said.