A Killing Fair (9 page)

 

Chapter 10: Will Power

I
t's a goddamn outrage, that's what it is.” Louie Luciano was shouting so loud I had to hold the phone three inches away from my ear. “The son of a bitch must have tricked Pops or blackmailed him somehow. There's something crooked going on here. I know damn well there is.”

“Well, there's murder for one thing,” I said. “Is Vito capable of that?” I had started my day by calling Louie for a reaction and I was getting an accusatory blast that would require a bit of editing for publication.

“That old bastard is capable of anything,” Louie said. “I'm not saying Vito killed Pops, but I sure as hell think he did something dirty to get Pops to change his will.”

“You mentioned blackmail. How could your dad be black­mailed?”

“Plenty of ways. You've got no idea what goes on behind the scenes in the restaurant business.”

“Such as?”

“Persuasive offers to inspectors for one thing. Under-the-table cash deals with suppliers for another.”

This was getting better and better. “By ‘persuasive offers to inspectors' do you mean bribes?” I said.

Louie was silent for a moment. “I ain't taking this any farther with you,” he said in a quieter tone. “If you print anything about inspectors I'll deny I ever said it.”

“Okay, let's go off the record for a minute. If I promise not to quote you in the paper, will you tell me what you mean by persuasive offers?”

Louie paused again before he said, “I mean crossing the inspectors' palms with cash to get them to look the other way if they find a minor violation or two. I ain't saying Pops ever did that, but it can be done.”

“How would Vito know if Vinnie did that?” I asked.

“He worked at King Vinnie's for five years,” Louie said. “And I bet you anything he kept tabs on what Pops was doing there even after Pops kicked his ass out.” Again he was shouting and I moved the phone away from my ear.

“Okay, back on the record. When did your dad change his will?”

“Not even two months ago. The new one is dated June 10th.”

“So what are you going to do about the will?”

“Me and my brother and sister are going to meet with a lawyer today to talk about contesting the goddamn thing. The son of a bitch ain't getting away this shit.”

I choked back my response to his grammar and said, “What time are you meeting the lawyer?”

“Four o'clock. Why?”

“I plan to call you to find out what you decide,” I said. “Or can I count on you to call me?”

“I guess I can call you,” Louie said. “Unless the lawyer thinks I shouldn't.”

“If I was your lawyer I'd want the public to know about the lawsuit.”

“Well, you ain't my lawyer so I'll see what he has to say about it.”

I gave Louie the numbers for my office phone, cell phone and home phone, and wished him the best of luck.

When I put the phone down I realized my head was throbbing, probably from being subjected to Louie's high-volume remarks. Confident that the headache would go away quickly, I walked over to Don O'Rourke's desk and told him what I had coming for a story.

“About time you got something worth printing,” Don said. “Make it sing.”

Before starting to write, I called the Falcon Heights PD to get a comment from Detective K.G. Barnes. I was told Detective Barnes was not available at this time. Surprise, surprise. I left a message saying I was looking for her comment on Vinnie Luciano's will.

The return call from KGB came less than a minute later. This actually was a surprise.

“What about the will?” she asked without wasting time identifying herself.

“Is this Detective K.G. Barnes?” I said.

“You know it is. What about the will?”

“Do you think it has a bearing on Vinnie's murder?” I said.

“We don't know anything about the will,” she said, using that damn royal “we” again. “Why should it have anything to do with the killing?”

So the tight-lipped detective of Falcon Heights hadn't been told about the will. I was tempted to play her game and invite her to read about it in the paper. But I wanted her reaction, so I explained that Vito Luciano had recently replaced Vinnie's children as inheritor of Vinnie's Steakhouse.

“Are you sure of that?” KGB said.

“As sure as I am that walleyes poop in the river,” I said.

“That's disgusting.”

“What, that Vinnie cut the kids out of the restaurant?”

“No, your gross comment about the walleyes.”

“Didn't mean to shock you,” I said. “Just trying to clearly illustrate a point.”

“The illustration is very clear and very disgusting,” she said. “Now tell us how you think Vito getting the restaurant affects the murder investigation?”

I wondered if she was being deliberately obtuse or if she was as dumb as that sounded. “Don't you think that gives Vito a motive for murder?” I said. “And isn't the timing—only about seven weeks after the will was revised—just a little bit suspicious?”

“We think that's a pretty long stretch.”

“Don't you think it's worth questioning him?”

“We've already questioned Vito.”

“Really? As a family member or a person of interest?”

“As we told you previously, we're not identifying anyone as anything at this time. Now if you have no more questions, we'll say goodbye and have a nice day.”

“I didn't say I have no more questions,” I said.

“Goodbye and have a nice day,” said KGB.

When I put down the phone, the headache was still there. If anything, it was more intense. Talking to KGB had that effect on me.

“Bitch!” I said.

“Stonewalled again?” said Corinne Ramey.

“Not completely,” I said. “This time she did drop me a pebble.”

“Maybe next time she'll give you a rock.”

“Only if she can bounce it off my head.”

When I'd finished writing my story, my head still felt like a rock the size of a Buick really had bounced off it, so I hunted through the jumble in my desk drawers for a bottle of aspirin that had to be there somewhere. The hunt proved as futile as a pack of hounds pursuing a fox with a rocket on its tail. Apparently I had consumed the last pill and forgotten to renew the supply. I told Don about my problem and asked if I had time to visit the drug store on Kellogg Boulevard, about three blocks away, before my next assignment.

“We can probably live without your butt in your chair for twenty minutes,” Don said. “While you're out, take a run up to Candyland and bring back a bag of caramel corn.” Candyland, which produces the world's sweetest and tastiest caramel corn, is a couple of blocks farther up Kellogg.

“That'll take at least another ten minutes,” I said.

“We'll suffer through it. Bring a big bag.” He dug out a ten-dollar bill and thrust it toward me.

“Can I keep the change as a tip?”

“My tip would be to remember that I'm your boss,” Don said.

“Good tip,” I said.

The painkiller display was at the rear of the drug store, close to the pharmacy counter. As I plucked a bottle of the cheapest aspirin off the shelf I heard a male voice from behind the counter say, “Hey, Mr. Mitchell, how ya doing today?”

The owner of the voice had an oversupply of flesh on his belly and a shortage of hair on his forehead. He looked familiar, but a lot of people look familiar to me, and I couldn't quite place him. “Hi,” I said. “I'm, uh, doing fine.”

The man laughed. “I'll bet you don't know me with my clothes on,” he said.

“Would I know you with them off?” I asked.

“You'd know me in square dance clothes. We met at the State Fair the other day. I'm Erik Erickson, president of the Oles and Lenas. Remember?”

I did remember. I also remembered seeing his wife having dinner with his club's caller in a dark and distant dining room a few nights previous. “Oh, yeah, sorry,” I said. “You do you look different without the red-and-white getup.”

“Yeah, well this is my day job. I try to make enough here to cover what I'm losing with Parkside Players.”

“I hope you'll get to where you're breaking even. My fiancée and I are doing our best to help. We're coming to see your show tomorrow night.”

“Great. You know, there's a bar upstairs from the theater. Maybe you'd like to join me and my wife for a drink afterward.”

“Maybe,” I said. “There'll be four of us. Al, the photographer you saw at the fairgrounds, and his wife will be with us.” Had I really heard this educated man say “me and my wife?”

“We'll have a party. Just hang around in your seats until I get things squared away after the show. You can keep Joyce company while she waits.”

She didn't need additional company a week ago, I thought. I thanked Erik for the invitation and said we'd see him then. As I walked up Kellogg toward Candyland, I wondered if Joyce would recognize Martha and me as fellow Saturday night diners.

 

* * *

 

The workday was done and I was sitting next to Martha ready to watch the 5:30 news when I realized the Luciano family had not called about their meeting with their lawyer, which should have been finished by this time. I took my cell phone into the kitchen and punched in Louie's number.

The woman who answered told me that her dad was away at a meeting.

“Do you know where I can reach him?” I asked.

“Probably in O'Halloran's bar,” she said. “That's where they usually meet.” She gave me Louie's cell phone number, and I thanked her, signed off and called the number.

“Yeah?” said the voice that answered.

“Louie?” I said.

“Who else would answer this phone?”

“Good point. This is Mitch Mitchell at the Daily Dispatch. What did your family decide about contesting the will?”

“We're suing his ass,” Louie said. “We're gonna get our restaurant back from that thieving bastard.”

“Who is your lawyer?” I asked.

“The Bulldog.”

“Doug Riley?”

“You got it,” he said. Doug Riley was known as the Bulldog because when he got a grip on a case he didn't let go until he'd won at least a piece of what he was after.

“Is he there with you?” I asked.

“Yeah, we're all getting shit-faced together.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“Why not? He's just coming out of the john. I'll hand him the phone.”

“Hey, Mitch, how are ya?” Riley said. “Hang on a second while I finish zipping up my fly.” Riley was as smooth as olive oil in court but not so much in person.

I quizzed the lawyer long enough to confirm the family would be contesting Vinnie's will and to get the details on when they were filing. When we finished, I said, “Will you do me one favor?”

“What's that?” the Bulldog asked.

“Don't call the TV stations.”

“Why would I call those morons?”

“Good point. Thanks for your time.”

I walked back into the living room and sat down next to Martha. “Why do you have that cat-who-swallowed-the-canary smile on your face?” she asked.

“I just got a fresh lead for tomorrow's Vinnie Luciano story,” I said. “And I'm the only reporter who's got it.”

 

Chapter 11: New Lease on Life

M
y plan to interview Vito Luciano Saturday morning went down the drain when Augie Augustine again called in sick. Apparently he'd had a really rousing Friday night party with his buddy Jim Beam and was paying for his fun with a headache and nausea. I was called upon to co-pay for his binge by filling his chair at the police station.

The best story in the reports file involved a bank robber who really treasured his Milwaukee Brewers baseball cap. Posing as a polite customer, he took off his Brewers cap and laid it on the counter when he greeted the female teller. The robber left the bank with a sack full of money in his hand and nothing on his head, but he returned to pick up the cap long after the teller had hit the alarm. The forgetful Brewers fan was still adjusting his cap when two cops with weapons at the ready blocked his second exit. You can't make this stuff up.

Before I wrote the police stories, I knocked out a piece about Vinnie Luciano's family suing to contest his will. Eddy Gambrell, who sat in Don O'Rourke's chair on Saturday, was delighted to get something fresh on the Luciano story. “I hear the Falcon Heights cops aren't giving you much to work with,” Eddy said.

“Their investigation seems to be moving with the speed of a glacier,” I said. “If they don't turn up something pretty soon they'll have to put Vinnie's murder in their cold case file.”

My work day ended at one o'clock, and my real day started an hour later when Martha and I approached a two-story brick duplex on Lexington Avenue. We were scheduled to meet the rental agent, Rosie Reynolds, who was going to show us the vacant side of the duplex and, if we decided to take the unit, introduce us to the resident on the other side.

“Looks nice,” I said as we waited for Rosie. A porch with a wooden rail ran all the way across the front. The white paint on the rail was clean and fresh and the gray paint on the porch floor wasn't chipped or scuffed. The white doors and window casings also appeared to have been painted recently, as did a gray wooden handicapped ramp beside the porch steps.

“What's with the ramp?” I asked.

“Don't know,” said Martha. “Rosie didn't mention that.”

“Maybe ADA requires it for all rental units. You're a lawyer, you should know.”

“You're a reporter, you should find out.”

A few minutes later, we were sitting on the porch steps, half dozing in the eighty-something heat, when a black BMW pulled up behind my blue Honda Civic. A short, plump woman who I guessed to be in her early fifties stepped out and joined us at the foot of the steps. She was dressed for the weather in a scoop neck dress made of almost see-through material.

“Mitch, this is Rosie,” Martha said. “Rosie, this is my fiancé, Mitch.”

“You write for the paper, don't you?” Rosie said as she gave my hand a vigorous shake. I confessed that I did.

“Who do you think killed that guy at the fair?” she said. “There hasn't been much about it in the paper since the day it happened.”

“That's because we haven't found out much about it,” I said. “I don't have any idea who did the killing and the Falcon Heights cops don't either.”

“It's scary,” Rosie said. “Makes you think twice every time you bite into something on a stick out there.”

“The Pronto Pups are safe. At least the dozen I've sampled so far this year were.”

“You eat those things? The grease they fry'em in is older than I am.”

“That's what gives them their unique flavor,” I said. “Your plain old corn dog cooked in fresh oil can't compete with a real honest-to-god Pronto Pup.”

“Could we look at the house please?” said my vegetarian fiancée. “Listening to comparisons of cooking grease has my stomach rolling like a cement mixer.”

“My opinion is cast in concrete,” I said.

Rosie gave me a long look and groaned before taking a key from her purse, unlocking the door and waving us in. “We'll take the tour and then stop in next door to meet the neighbor,” she said. The bit about meeting the neighbor raised a question in my mind. Would we have to past muster with this person in order to rent the place?

Entering the broad, high-ceilinged foyer was like walking into a steaming swamp. As previously noted, the outdoor temperature was at least eighty degrees. The air trapped inside the closed up duplex must have been close to a hundred.

“Does this place have central air?” I asked as I wiped a sudden outbreak of sweat off my forehead.

“No, but it has window units on both floors,” Rosie said. “Obviously we don't run them when the house is empty.”

“Obviously,” I said.

Rosie led us through the house, pointing out the beauty of the oak woodwork and the number of tall windows that allowed a lot of light to enter. And, I thought, a lot of cold air to enter in the winter. On the first floor were a living room with beige wall-to-wall carpeting, and a kitchen, a dining room and a half-bath with beige linoleum floors. Upstairs were two pale-blue-carpeted bedrooms that shared a tiled bathroom, where the temperature was several degrees hotter. I saw air conditioners in the windows of only the dining room and the larger bedroom.

When we returned to the first floor, Rosie asked if we wanted to see the basement.

“Is it cooler there?” I asked.

“It always is,” Rosie said.

“Let's go.” We descended the stairs and found the basement to be both cool and damp. It contained a water heater and a furnace, both fueled by natural gas, and a scattering of trash that hadn't been swept up after the previous renter's departure. Rosie saw me eyeing the trash and promised to get it cleaned up before we moved in.

“Both the water heater and the furnace are practically brand new,” Rosie said. “They were installed between renters three years ago.” I grunted my approval.

We climbed the stairs to the main floor and again were immersed in a sea of hot, stale air.

“Does the air conditioner in the dining room cool this whole floor?” I asked.

“Pretty much,” Rosie said. “Please don't be obsessed with the temperature. Remember you're in St. Paul where it's winter most of the year.”

I mopped my dripping face again and said, “Well, this isn't winter and I am obsessed with the temperature.”

“You know it cools off right after Labor Day, and if we take this place we can't move in until October,” Martha said. “Next summer we can put fans in the kitchen and the living room. The big question is: do we take it?”

“Can we go out on the porch to discuss that?” I said. A drop of sweat was tickling the tip of my nose and my shirt was as soggy as a long-haired dog in a dunk tank.

“We can,” Rosie said.

Out on the porch, I could almost feel my sweat glands relaxing and my pores closing to their normal eighty-degree circumference.

“Any questions?” Rosie said.

We already knew that the rent didn't include the cost of either heat or electricity, and we'd guessed at the amount of the required deposit. Including the estimated additional expenses of heat and electricity, the total was at the tip-top of our housing budget, but we had decided we could afford it without having to steal tidbits out of Sherlock's bowl for breakfast.

“What about the walls?” Martha asked.

“What about them?” Rosie said.

“They're all white. Can we paint them?”

“I believe you can at your own expense.”

“Fine,” Martha said. “I like to paint.” She turned to me. “Do you want to go home and talk about it or do you want to grab it?”

“If you like it, let's grab it,” I said. I was reasonably pleased with what we'd seen and I knew how tired she was of house hunting. “As long as you'll do the painting—”

“We'll take it,” Martha said.

“Wonderful,” said Rosie. “I'm sure you'll be very happy here. Now, why don't we go next door and meet your new neighbor?”

What was this obsession with the neighbor? Meeting him or her seemed to be a standard part of the house tour. Oh, well, what the hell? We followed Rosie to the other front door and stood beside her as she rang the bell.

Several minutes passed with no response, but Rosie stood patiently without ringing the bell again. I was about to suggest that nobody was home when the door opened halfway and a deep voice said, “Afternoon, Rosie.”

The voice came from waist level, so I looked down, expecting to see an unusually short man, a dwarf maybe. What I did see was a woman looking up at us from a motorized wheelchair. Her skin was the darkest I'd ever seen on an African-American face, her coal black hair billowed in an elegant Afro, and her upper body looked sturdy and erect. She wore a pale green sleeveless blouse that revealed a pair of well-muscled arms, which were folded across her chest. Her facial expression made it plain she was wondering why we were bothering her.

“I want you to meet your new neighbors,” Rosie said. “Zhou­maya, this is Martha Todd and Warren Mitchell, who have agreed to rent the other unit. Martha and Mitch, this is Zhoumaya Jones.”

The name struck me as something out of a Neil Simon farce. “Zhoumaya?” I said. “Jones?” My tone of incredulity suggested that Rosie might be pulling my leg.

“You got a problem with that?” said the deep voice from the wheelchair. Her brown eyes, sharp as chips of flint, were locked on mine.

“Oh, no,” I said. “No, no. None at all. Sorry if it sounded like that.”

Her eyes softened and the corners of her mouth turned up slightly. “Want me to spell my name for you?”

I shook my head. “Not necessary.”

“I'll do it anyway. It's J-O-N-E-S.” This was followed by a long, loud laugh.

The laughter threw me even farther off base, but I forced myself to join in. “Thanks,” I said when the hilarity ended. “I'll write that down.”

“So what's your real name?” Zhoumaya asked. “Is it Warren or is it Mitch?”

“It's both. I mean my family—my mother and my grandma—and strangers call me Warren, and my friends call me Mitch. Well, actually my grandma calls me Warnie Baby, but I don't encourage that.”

“And which should I call you?”

“I hope you'll call me Mitch.” I certainly wanted this woman to see herself as a friend.

“Mitch it is,” Zhoumaya said. She turned her face toward Martha. “And what shall I call you?”

“Just Martha,” she said. “I don't have any nicknames.”

Zhoumaya turned her attention back to me. “I've seen your name in the paper.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said. “I'm a reporter.”

“I'm not ma'am,” she said. “I'm Zhoumaya.”

“Sorry. Yes, Zhoumaya, I'm a reporter.” God, I was stumbling all over myself in front of this woman.

Zhoumaya opened the door all the way. “Why don't you come in and sit down,” she said. “I have the air on in the living room and I shouldn't be holding the door open.”

We accepted the invitation with gratitude and she spun the wheelchair l80 degrees on the spot and led us into the cool of the living room. This half of the duplex was a mirror image of the one we'd just agreed to rent. I settled into a comfortable tiger-striped armchair and surveyed my surroundings. The floor was hardwood, partially covered by a multi-colored, African-looking area rug—a vast improvement over beige carpeting. The furnishings also had an African look and the sky-blue walls were decorated with paintings of African scenes.

Zhoumaya saw me looking around like a kid in a toy store. “We came here from Liberia to get away from the fighting. My late husband owned a shipping business in Monroeville so we were able to bring most of our stuff.” She smiled and added, “His name was Doliakeh Jones.”

“Spelled J-O-N-E-S?” I said.

“That's right. You're beginning to understand Liberian names.” I was also beginning to like my new neighbor.

Naturally I was curious about her husband's death—I doubted it was from old age—but didn't feel comfortable asking about it. Zhoumaya must have sensed this because she opened the road to questions by saying, “Doliakeh became late in the same accident that took away my legs.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“We had a crazy accident with our motorcycles.” My eyebrows must have gone up because she said, “Yes, believe it or not, we began riding motorcycles many years ago. Doliakeh was on a bike when I met him, and he got me started on my own before we were married. Anyhow, we were riding out in the country north of the Cities, going along about sixty or so, when boom—a tree fell across the road in front of us. Doliakeh was in the lead and he hit the tree head-on. I skidded into it kind of sideways trying to stop. We both went flying when our bikes flipped. He was killed on the spot and I broke my back. That was on Labor day, so it will be three years next week.”

“What made the tree fall down?” Martha said. “Was it really windy?”

“There was no wind at all,” Zhoumaya said. “The tree was hollow and it just picked that time to fall down.”

“Awful,” Martha said.

“Amazing,” I said.

“Like somebody once said, timing is everything,” Zhoumaya said. “I've been in this contraption ever since.”

“You get around very well,” Rosie said.

“Hey, I've got me a racing chair with a big old red flag on it and I've been working out in it on the street. I'm looking to do a marathon—maybe Boston next spring.”

“Good for you,” Martha said.

“That's wonderful,” Rosie said.

“How are you going to work out when the winter weather hits and the street is full of snow?” I said.

“I go to Florida right after Thanksgiving and I don't come home until April Fool's day,” Zhoumaya said. “I've got a ground floor condo down there, and I can roll right out the back door onto a bicycle path.”