Nice Place for a Murder (18 page)

Only one person hesitated as he reached the ground level. He was a stocky, unshaven man, maybe 50 years old, bundled up far more heavily than the mild October day seemed to require, in a padded winter jacket, with a long green scarf wound around his neck, and a tweed cap pulled down tightly on his head.  He appeared confused, looking around uncertainly, taking a few steps in one direction, then stopping and moving off the opposite way, and stopping again. I saw his lips moving. He was talking to himself, his face an anxious grimace. Then, looking around fitfully, he set off almost at a run for the station building. Pulling open a door, he rushed inside. I could see him through the doors, brushing against waiting passengers as he hurried to a bench near the ticket window and sat, his hands thrust deep into his jacket pockets.

Clearly, he had come alone. And he was waiting at the appointed place. I unzipped my jacket to make my gun more available and walked deliberately into the station building. He stared at me as I approached and sat on the bench next to him. “Doctor Giannone?” I said.

He sat up straight, his eyes searching me up and down. He opened his mouth but said nothing.

“I’m Ben Seidenberg, the man you called.” I tried to touch his arm, to calm him, but he pulled away to the end of the bench. “I’m here about Julian Communications. You asked me to come.” Still no answer. After all this trouble to get me here, why was he shrinking away from me now? “Are you James Giannone?”

Now he was genuinely panicked, shaking his head in fright.

The voice came from behind me. “He doesn’t speak English. He can’t understand you. You should be able to figure that out, Mr. Seidenberg.”

I turned to see a tall stoop-shouldered man in a gray raincoat that had a large stains on both shoulders. His cheeks were sunken into unhealthy hollows, and the whites of his eyes had that jaundiced yellow tint that made you want to back away. “He’s not James Giannone. Does he look like a –- look like a physician to you? I mean, use your head, Seidenberg. Me, I’m Giannone. Right here.”

The man on the bench stood and sidestepped away eagerly, happy to escape from me. Giannone sat down. I could see holes in the blue suit he wore under his raincoat, and the frayed collar of his open white shirt. He gave the impression of being a worn-out man in the remnants of a worn-out wardrobe. And he smelled sour, as though he’d lain in dirty, wet places.

“You’re not very good for –- for, you know -- an investigator.” He cast wicked looks around the station, catching the eye of one person, then another, then back to me. “You were followed, you know, even though I warned you –- specifically cautioned you, more than once –- not to let that happen.”

“Nobody followed me,” I said. “How did you get in here from the train.”

“How would anybody do it? Down the stairs and in the door.” He rubbed his eyes and gave a private laugh that seemed to be only for his own amusement. “I waited, you see, to come down the stairs. I avoid moving about in crowds of people. It’s dangerous to let them get close. The ferrets.”

“Ferrets, you said?”

“Ferrets, ferrets,” he said impatiently. “You --- you don’t pay attention. Look at that man over there.” Giannone gestured with his head. “A ferret. He’s the one that followed you.”

I looked. A man in a down vest stood reading a magazine. He spotted me looking at him, and gave me a self-conscious smile.

“He’ll change back,” Giannone said. “But not while you’re watching.” He looked down at the floor. “Give me eight dollars,” he said.

“What for?” I asked him.

“So I can get back to the city. Son-of-a-bitch in Penn Station wouldn’t --- wouldn’t give me a round trip ticket. Some ferret got to him, made him ask me --- ask me for more money.”

“You mean you didn’t have enough money for a round-trip ticket?” I said.

“That’s not what I said, goddamn it. It was a --- just as I told you.” Suddenly loud and angry, he punctuated his words with chopping motions of his hands. People were staring now. The man with the magazine moved outside. “Give me eight dollars,” Giannone insisted.

I removed a bill from my wallet and held it out to him. “Here’s ten. Two extra, in case you want a candy bar.” He took it and tucked it away without a word of thanks, or anything else.

A young man in sneakers and blue jeans entered and hugged the man I’d mistaken for Giannone. They left together, talking cheerfully in Polish. So much for my insights into identity and human characteristics.

“I’m ready now for you to tell me about the secret you know,” I said. “What is your connection to Julian Communications?”

“It was years ago,” he said. I waited for him to go on, but he said nothing.

“How long?” I asked him, finally.

“It was before they started, of course --- before the ferrets. In Utica.”

“Utica, New York?”

“Utica General, where I was a resident. Up north. Cold in the winter,” he said. “That’s when the helicopter brought him in.” Again he stopped.

“Who? Who did they bring in?”

“Ah, Mr. Seidenberg, now that --- that is precisely the point.”

“Are you talking about the helicopter that brought Ingo Julian to the hospital after the plane crash? Is that what we’re discussing here?”

“Don’t be coy with me. You know how this story goes, don’t you? You have --- you have your suspicions. I can see that. Hear it in your voice. Well, I know the truth. I was there and I’m ---“ He sucked in his breath suddenly and shrank back on the bench. “They’re here. I told you, they --- they followed you. The ferrets.” He pointed around the station, jabbing toward one corner of the room, than another, with his forefinger. “There. And there. And there.”

“There’s nobody here but people waiting for the train,” I said. “I swear to you, there are no ferrets.”

“Don’t tell me that, you lying shit. Do you think I’m blind? They’ll chew me to pieces. I can’t stay here.” He started to rise, but I grabbed his coat and held him.

“I’m an investigator, and that means I have a gun,” I said. “You know what I’ll do if the ferrets come after you? I’ll shoot them all. I’ll never let them get you. So you’re safe, Dr. Giannone.” Just like Hector was safe, I thought

First he stiffened, then all at once he relaxed, went so limp he almost slid off the bench. I released his coat. “Your promise, then?” he said. Now he sounded beaten, pitiful. He had his ups and downs, this poor bastard.

“Absolutely. Now tell me about the hospital in Utica. Tell me about Ingo Julian”

“I want you to go to them and tell them I know their secret. Tell them I want ten thousand dollars. No --- no, not enough. A million. What’s that to them?” His eyes were flashing, darting all around. “I have to go ---“

I said, “You don’t have to go anywhere.”

“Yes, yes. To the bathroom, all right? You have to let me go now. Then I’ll tell you everything.” He stood up slowly. “It’s all right, Mr. Seidenberg. I’m going to tell you. I need money, and I need you. And I’m only crazy some of the time.”

I was afraid to let him out of my sight, this man pursued by imaginary ferrets. He knew something I needed to know, and now that I was face to face with him, I couldn’t run the risk of having him disappear on me. “I could use some of that, too,” I said. “I’ll go with you.” I walked at his side toward the sign that said rest rooms.

Now the 3:15 to New York had moved into position at the platform, and the doors were open. The station building emptied out as passengers left to board the train. Through a station window I could see the conductor leaning out to signal the engineer. As Giannone and I were about to enter the men’s room inside, the train doors closed, and I heard that sharp hiss trains make when the brakes are released.

The sound spooked Giannone. Maybe his ferrets had returned, or maybe some other kind of insanity had suddenly possessed him. He made a frightened moan, and bounded away from me. With surprising speed he was out the station door, and up the few stairs to the platform. I started after him, moving as swiftly as I dared, faster than a jog but slower than a run. And not fast enough to catch Giannone. I called to him, but he never looked back.

He clawed at the rubber strips where the sliding doors came together, got his fingers inside and managed to pull the two panels several inches apart. He put his shoulder against the edge of one and pushed with his palms against the other, forcing a bigger opening, and quickly slipped inside the car. The doors shut, and the train pulled out of the Ronkonkoma station.

Son of a bitch.

CHAPTER XX

Alicia’s day had been much better than mine. As soon as I walked into her kitchen, she started singing to me in Italian, a ballad, she explained, about the virtues of love with an older man. She was vamping me shamelessly. “This is a night you remember forever,” she said, stroking my cheek and boring right into me with those dark eyes. “This dinner will be in the history books as one of the perfect things.”

“Perfect veal saltimbocca,” I said, trying to get into the spirit of the thing, even though the latest of my string of fiascos was sitting heavily on my shoulders.

“Yes, that. But more. Even better.” Alicia smiled her playful smile, not to be confused with her naughty smile, which was slower, more calculated, less spontaneous. “You remember, of course, my salad of the sea, which was for your birthday last year.”

“It was remarkable. With the shrimp and calamari and crabmeat.”

“And lobster, don’t forget. Fresh lobster meat,” she said. “I stop today in Braun’s fish market, everything the best. We have this salad tonight, before the veal.”

“Lobster and crabmeat and all that. You must be a rich woman.” I kissed her lightly, brushing her lips with mine.

“I am,” she said. “And you should kiss a rich woman better than that.”

“Sorry, I’m a little preoccupied. Can I try again?”

“I give you one more chance. And if you fail me this time, there will be no salad of the sea.”

I tried again. It wasn’t my best, but it was all right, because she said, “OK for now. Maybe with this dinner you will improve.”

“Is this  an occasion? Something I don’t know about?” I said.              

She opened the refrigerator and started removing packages, laying them out according to some mysterious logic on the butcher block island. “Seafood here, veal there,” she said, more to herself than to me. Then, “Yes, an occasion. Three paintings I sold today. A big floral by Moreno, you know, the Spaniard from Brooklyn who writes all over the back of the canvas. Twenty-six hundred, which is a good price for a Moreno. And two small landscapes by the Austrian, that Waldman. A man and his wife bought them as a pair. Thirty-four hundred for both. Paid cash and put them in the back seat of their Cadillac. A good day for money. The town was full of tourists, and the sun was out. People spend when the sun shines.” She gave my arm a little punch. “So what do I care about the price of lobster meat?” She took a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator and handed it to me. “Gewurtztraminer. From Lenz Winery. Has a nice bite to it. See what you think.”

She watched me as I opened the wine and poured out two drinks. We lifted our glasses in silent toasts to each other, and drank. She said, “For a man who is enjoying good wine and going to have an incredible dinner with a beautiful rich woman, you don’t show a great deal of enthusiasm. Tell me what your trouble is, so I can help.”

“My trouble is I’m losing my edge,” I told her.

“What does this mean, edge?”

I touched a package in white paper, on the butcher block. “This the veal? How can I help?”

“You remember how, I know this. Because you are very good at making this dish. Yes, that is the veal” She pushed a smaller package toward me. “And this is the prosciutto. Fine prosciutto, from Parma. You start the veal dish, and I do the seafood. And while we work you tell me everything and we drink this bottle. Good idea, you think?”

“I think, yes.” I opened the packages, placed a slice of prosciutto on each veal scallop and put the assembled pieces between sheets of plastic wrap.

“Gorgeous veal,” Alicia said. “Look how light the color, almost white.” She washed half a dozen small squid under running water, then separated the tentacles from the bodies. She filled two small pots with water, put some lemon juice and salt into each, and set the tentacles into one pot, the bodies into the other. She put both on the stove to cook.

“Why don’t you boil them together?” I asked.

“Because the color from the tentacles will get on the bodies. Calamari bodies should be beautiful white. Everybody knows this,” she told me. “Now you flatten the veal. We cook the veal after we finish the salad.” She opened a package of huge shrimp and began to shell and devein them. “Now you tell me about this edge that has been lost.”

I couldn’t get the words out right away. It’s not easy to say these things, even to the most understanding woman I’ve ever known. Alicia waited quietly, working with the shrimp. “I’ve been letting things happen,” I allowed, finally, “things that shouldn’t happen. A killer ridicules me right on the streets of New York. Hector Alzarez gets shot to death in front of me. And today, I let my best lead get away from me. I had him, as close to me as you are now, and he just ran away from me and disappeared.” I took a wooden mallet from a drawer beneath the kitchen island and began to pound the prosciutto into the veal, flattening the scallops through the plastic wrap.