It Takes Two to Strangle (22 page)

Damon stepped inside. The floor hadn’t been swept and Damon felt grit crunch between his shoes and the linoleum. Alcohol bottles lined the shelves of two narrow aisles and a selection of inexpensive wines filled a third. The back of the store was reserved for commercial refrigerators stocked with malt liquor and beer. Security cameras hung from the ceiling, and a clear cage of bullet-resistant glass fronted a cashier who was perched behind a tiny counter. Damon couldn’t fathom spending eight to ten hours a day in there, sliding money back and forth in a tray like a bank teller. The store was empty but for Damon and the cashier.

Damon approached him. “I was wondering if you know someone who lives around here.”

The young Middle Eastern man behind the glass looked up from his crossword puzzle. “Who?”

“Toma Ljubic. He lives on Greenmount a few blocks down from here and he’s a liquor distributor.”

The man behind the glass surveyed Damon. “You don’t look like you’re with the police.”

“Come again?” He had thrown Damon off guard.

“The police. They were in here the minute I opened up and asked the same question. I’ll tell you the same thing I told them. I know who the guy is, but he doesn’t sell here or to any of the liquor stores, just to restaurants and bars. He comes in and buys beer or wine every once in a while. What did he do?”

“What makes you think he did something?” Damon asked and realized the absurdity of the question before he finished speaking.

“The police come looking for the guy and less than an hour later you show up asking questions. What am I supposed to think?”

“Okay, sorry. Listen, I can’t say what he may have done, but I need to find him.”

“You need to find him before the police do?” the cashier asked, looking more interested.

Damon disappointed him. “No, I’m working with the police.” It wasn’t quite accurate but was closer to the truth than the alternative.

“Well, I haven’t seen him in a little over a week. Try the local dives. I think he services most of them.”

Damon muttered a thank you and exited. He retraced his steps back to the Saab and cruised the neighborhood, taking mental notes of the bars and restaurants, most of which opened at noon.

Once the lunch hour hit, Damon spent a solid two hours under a relentless sun ducking in and out of taverns, clubs and other eating and drinking establishments, peppering hostesses and bartenders with inquiries. The responses were mind-numbingly similar. They knew Toma, but just as a salesperson, and hadn’t seen him all day. Damon was careful to avoid a set of uniformed Baltimore City police officers asking similar questions. Even so, he envisioned the officers entering bar after bar and being told by countless wait staff that a tall clean-shaven man in a tan polo shirt had been asking similar questions only minutes earlier.

In an Irish pub he noticed a photocopied sketch of Toma left by the police lying on the rough wooden bar. He deftly swept it up and folded it into his front jeans pocket.

Three bars later, he hit an outer edge of Toma’s route. A black-bearded bartender with a Medusa-inspired tattoo bulging beneath the taut rim of a shirt sleeve had never heard of Toma. A quick glance at the drawing didn’t change his answer.

Damon decided to break there for lunch. It was after two in the afternoon, but the place was busy with late lunch-goers and a sprinkling of early drinkers. He spread out in a booth and ordered a French dip with curly fries and a soda.

Ten minutes into his meal, a teenage boy in a dirty busboy apron slid in across from Damon. “I overheard you talking to Jason at the bar about a guy named Toma,” said the lanky dark-skinned kid without introduction.

Damon stopped chewing and swallowed hard. “Do you know him?”

“Let me see the picture you showed Jason.”

Damon removed the wadded up sketch from his pocket and unfolded it on the table.

“I know him all right. His name’s Toma but we all call him ‘Grigor.’ I’m not sure why. Some of the guys just started calling him that.”

“What guys would those be?” Damon asked.

“Kids hanging around the block up near my house.”

“Where’s that?”

The teen stopped and eyed Damon more closely. “Are you a cop or something?”

“No. I just need to find Toma.”

“How much is it worth to you?” he asked without lowering his voice.

“If you know where he is, you better tell me now. I’m not with the police, but the police are investigating him.”

“Ah,” he said. “So the cops are looking for him. I don’t know exactly where he is, but unless he hopped a bus or train he can’t be far.”

Damon looked at the boy closely. He wasn’t yanking Damon’s chain. “Why do you say that? He has a car. I know he drove to the Washington, D.C., area just over a week ago.”

“Either he just bought a car or that was a rental. My man Grigor goes everywhere on his bicycle. But he sold that last week, so the guy’s on foot now.”

Damon processed the information quickly. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. It was bulging with two months’ worth of cash register receipts. He had fifty three dollars in cash. Damon handed every bill to the busboy. “How do you know he sold his bicycle last week?”

The kid stuffed the wad of cash into the pocket of his apron. “Because I asked him and he told me. Grigor, I mean Toma, lives on the same block as me and some of my boys. He’s an old guy, but we’re all cool with him. Toma buys the hard stuff in bulk then he turns around and sells it at a mark-up.”

The kid picked up three French fries from Damon’s plate, dipped them in au jus and crammed them into his mouth. “Here’s the thing,” he said between chewing and swallowing. “The guy is lazy. He doesn’t even pick up the bottles or deliver them. He has a buddy with a truck who does that. Toma says he has a warehouse somewhere in town, but he takes the bus when he needs to go there. The liquor companies deliver big shipments to his warehouse. Then his buddy takes a few bottles from each of the different companies, loads them in his truck and delivers them.”

“Toma doesn’t help?”

“Toma makes the deals. He talks to the liquor companies on the phone and goes to the bars and restaurants on his bicycle. I don’t think he’s at the warehouse too often because he’s always hanging around on the streets. He drinks a lot, too.”

“His own liquor?”

“Mostly. He gets it in bulk so it’s pretty cheap. I think the only time he goes to the warehouse is to snag a few bottles for himself.”

“And you and your buddies,” Damon said.

“Maybe he does a little extra business on the side for some of the local kids,” the busboy responded without concern. “A year or two ago, the police started raiding the liquor stores for selling to underage kids, so Toma’s just filling a need.”

“You’re an economist?” Damon asked smiling.

“Something like that.” The boy returned a grin.

“Let’s get back to the bicycle,” Damon said.

“I have to get back to work, man.”

“I just paid you overtime. Give me five more minutes.”

“Okay, but you have to leave a big tip for the waitress. She’s starting to get lonely and is coming around to my charms.”

Damon glanced at the waitress who was at least twice the busboy’s age. Her meaty thighs weren’t built for the tight skirt she was wearing. “Fine,” he said. “How do you know Toma sold his bike, and who did he sell it to?”

“I told you, he told me he sold it. He almost always had it with him. Pretty nice looking, but I don’t know anything about bicycles. I just know it was silver with a black seat. I saw Toma yesterday at about four o’clock. He didn’t have the bike, and I hadn’t seen him riding it for about a week. That was strange because he always rode it to the bars to take orders. I can’t imagine a guy his age doing all of that on foot.”

“So you asked him about the bike?”

“I asked him if it was in the shop. He said he was done with bikes because his knees were finally going out on him. He said he’d probably get a motor scooter.”

“Did Toma say who he sold the bicycle to?” Damon asked.

“Nope. Just said he sold it.”

“You haven’t seen him around today, have you?”

“Not since yesterday afternoon when I asked him about the bike.”

Damon let the youth get back to busing dishes and dunked a handful of sandwich into cold au jus, but laid it back on the plate. He fished out his phone, called Gerry and left him a message. He’d seen several police officers in the vicinity of Toma’s row house that day, but hadn’t seen Gerry. He abandoned his lunch and left the waitress a thirty percent tip on his credit card, just in case it could actually help the busboy get lucky.

Chapter 21

The tattooed bartender Jason only knew of one nearby location that might sell bicycles—a sporting goods store two miles to the northeast. Damon walked briskly back to his Saab. A gentle breeze lightened the sting of the July heat.

The shop was a local outfit rather than a national chain. Given its confined square footage in the city, parts and clothing were available for purchase but bicycles themselves were not. Damon showed the manager and two salesgirls Toma’s picture for good measure, but all three shook their heads. The manager provided Damon with directions to a big-box sporting goods store just outside of the city, a specialty bicycle dealer and a place that bought and sold used sports equipment. The trade-in store sounded the most promising so Damon tried it first.

It was located in the urban suburb of Towson. A sizable showroom boasted new and used equipment for every athletic endeavor imaginable, but the carpet was worn to the slab and the lighting was low. In the mid-afternoon hour, customer traffic was light. Damon found his way to a section exhibiting an array of bicycles and a variety of parts and accessories that were largely unfamiliar to him.

A sprightly blond saleswoman bounded in his direction. She appraised him. “You’re in pretty good shape, but I bet I can really get your heart pumping,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.

Damon racked his brain for a witty rejoinder but couldn’t bring one to his frontal lobe.

Saving him from mumbling out a lame response, the young saleswoman placed a hand on Damon’s elbow. She guided him to wall of new bicycles mounted from floor to ceiling. “Do any of these strike your fancy, or are you looking for a used bike?”

Her cheeks glistened under light rouge, and glitter accentuated sea-green irises. She managed to make the look chic.

“I’m not looking for a bicycle,” he said. “Well, actually I am.”

The transformation of her facial expression from engaged to vacant was blatant as she presumably contemplated spending the next several minutes conversing with a meathead.

“Sorry,” Damon said, quickly recovering his composure. “What I mean is I’m trying to find a man who sold a particular bicycle.”

“Okay,” she said cautiously. “Do you know the model?”

“I don’t. I’m pretty certain it was silver with a black seat and it was sold within the past week to week and a half.”

The blond cocked her head, waiting for more.

“I have a picture of the person who sold it,” Damon said and showed her the paper bearing Toma Ljubic’s visage.

She studied the image seriously for several seconds. “Are you sure he sold it here?”

Damon admitted that he wasn’t.

She took a second look. “I don’t recall seeing this person before, and I definitely didn’t buy a used bike from him recently.”

“Is there anyone else who might have purchased it?”

“The only other person who’s authorized to buy bicycles is Teddy Vanover. And he’s not working today.”

Before Damon turned to leave, he spontaneously asked, “You wouldn’t be interested in going out to dinner with me sometime, would you?”

“Sorry, sunshine, I’m married,” she countered with a look that suggested she was pleased with herself.

She wasn’t wearing a ring, which could be a tactic to facilitate sales. Or she may have just been making up a spouse to avoid a date without wounding Damon’s ego.

He mumbled an apology and started to walk toward the exit.

She stepped quickly and caught up to him. “Hold on, you don’t happen to have that guy’s address do you?”

Damon stopped, fished Toma’s address out of his wallet and passed it to her. “Do you think you can find him with this?”

“We’ll see,” she said, taking the slip of paper and stepping over to a computer terminal. After a few seconds of clattering keystrokes, she said, “Got him.”

Damon moved closer. A primitive black screen with glowing green alphanumerics yielded basic but vital information. It listed Toma’s home address, a short description of the bicycle model and purchase price. The screen also displayed a date of sale, which corresponded to the day after Lirim’s murder. A comment read, “Shop: New chain and replace stiff brake cable.”

“Teddy bought it,” she said, pointing to his initials in a top corner of the display.

“Does ‘Shop’ mean it’s in a repair shop somewhere?”

“It sure does. It’s probably in the back right now.”

Damon whistled. “I need to see it right now, and we need to get Teddy down here,” he urged her.