The Stranger Beside You (10 page)

Todd pushed the shot glass aside.  “Enough magic potion for you, Cinderella.”

We migrated to a table and they surrounded me.  Ramón worked on a steak, while Todd picked at a tiny salad.  Karly drank her lunch.  My appetite had vanished.

“I know a great private detective,” Todd was rambling.  “I think he’s straight, but don’t hold that against him.”

“Good to know,” I nodded. 

“Those feds are morons,” Ramón said.  “Tom was a boy scout.”

“I saw the photo.  He had his tongue halfway down that woman’s throat.”

“I don’t care,” Todd objected.  “That man adored you.”

I was craving another shot of Wild Turkey.

“Why would he step out on you?  Your sex life was great.”

“And how would you know?”

Todd’s eyes twinkled.  “Nevermind.”

“Have you told the boys?”

I glanced away and exhaled slowly.  “No.”

“What about his parents?” Ramón asked.

I shook my head.  That was another conversation I dreaded.  Tom’s parents both suffered from Alzheimer’s and lived in an assisted living home on Long Island. Neither had recognized their only son in at least five years.  I’d be a stranger walking in telling them about the death of a person they wouldn’t remember, and then they’d forget me the instant I left the room.  At some point in the weeks to come I’d give my father a call.  He lived in Paris with his new wife.  My mom was killed by a drunk driver my first year of college.  Dad had moved on.  He called me on my birthday but only if he remembered.  

“Have you planned the funeral?” Todd asked.

“I want to keep it small and private with just a few friends.  I’ll make some calls, see if I can track down Tom’s sister.”

“Where does she live now?”

“Seattle, I think.”

Tom’s only sibling, Belinda, was a bit of a hippie.  Tom was everything she wasn’t.  She burned through men and had a taste for bad boys.  She and Tom had never been close.  Belinda was a few years older but very immature.  She drifted.  Tom would get a postcard every couple of years, usually postmarked from Asia or Eastern Europe.  He had never talked about her much.

“Will she show up?”

“No.”

“Why waste the call?”  Todd said.

“Because she should know her brother is dead.”

“Let me hook you up with my florist.  The best in the city.”

I nodded.  “Thanks, but let’s keep it simple.  Quiet and simple.  I don’t need a bunch of people standing around his casket gossiping.  I’ll get up and offer a few words, have a priest say the Lord’s Prayer, they’ll stick him in the ground, and then we can all get drunk.”

Ramón scooted his chair close to mine and reached over and took my hand.  He has incredible green eyes.  “It’s okay to hurt, but don’t confuse the facts with hearsay.  Remember, the FBI can tell you anything they want because Tom isn’t here to defend himself.  Whatever they told you, and whatever they showed you, take it with a grain of salt.”

“He kissed another woman.” My voice quivered.

“So they say.”

“I know what I saw.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re willing to throw away twelve years on the basis of a single photograph?”

It was a good question.  “I don’t know yet.”

Ramón said, “If I were you, I’d give Tom the benefit of the doubt.”

I didn’t know if I could.

•  •  •

The apartment was on the top floor of a four-level walkup in Chelsea.  The plaster walls were crumbling and the roaches made no attempt to scurry away or hide when federal agents came trundling up the stairwell with flashlights.  A 911 call from a neighbor had summoned the NYPD because gunshots had been fired.  When the drugs were found, the case was quickly escalated to the FBI.

Special Agent Chapman was winded by the time they reached the fourth floor.  Special Agent Price was already at the top of the stairs.  He turned to wait for his partner.  Chapman glanced up at him and signaled him to go on.  The narrow space echoed with the sounds of radio chatter.  Chapman flashed his badge at a cop in uniform.  The cop lifted the police tape for Chapman to duck under.

The apartment was like a scene from a nightmare.  The walls were stripped bare with cracks in the brittle plaster spreading in a thousand directions like a spider web.  Obscene graffiti covered nearly every square inch of the walls and ceiling.  The ceiling sagged under its own weight, weakened by decades of mildew.  The odor from the threadbare carpet was too awful for description.  All appliances in the tiny kitchenette had been ripped out long ago leaving in the allotted spaces nothing but empty electrical outlets.  A crime-scene tech handed Chapman a dust mask. 

“You don’t want to breathe this stuff.”

Chapman held it over his nose and mouth.

The rest of the apartment was outfitted with familiar equipment.  Chapman immediately recognized the scene as a methamphetamine lab, and from the look of things, someone had been busy cooking.  A closet door stood open to reveal two barrels of chemicals standing side by side where clothes should have hung.  There was a mattress in one corner and a thin sheet. 

Chapman was drawn to the activity at the bathroom.  The door was off its hinges.  He glanced inside and saw a body was lying facedown on the peeling linoleum.  Price was kneeling next to the head of the deceased.  Chapman turned away because he’d seen enough.

He was still thinking about Tom Nelson. 

Most crimes were cut and dry, but the Nelson case bothered him.  The Gmail account user ID belonging to the anonymous source had been TandD141717.  He had originally thought the first email was a prank but his attitude changed when they pulled Fleming’s body from the cold black water.  The creatures of the aquatic ecosystem had already feasted on the exposed soft flesh, eating her face down to the bone. She was unrecognizable.  Only when the dental records came back did they have confirmation that the body was indeed that of Special Agent Fleming.  After they recovered the body, he responded to the original message, hoping TandD141717 was out there listening and might be receptive to opening a dialogue.  That didn’t happen. 

The second email showed up two weeks later.  The digital photo was beautiful.  At last the killer had a face.  Now all they had needed was a name.  They ran the man’s face from the photo through the federal database and asked Interpol to run it through their system also.  Neither database produced a match. 

Then the third email arrived and TandD141717 told him where to find the murder weapon.  They found it wrapped in a green garbage bag, dropped inside the holding tank of a portable toilet at a construction site.  They drained the toilet and fished out the bag and found a gun with five rounds still loaded in the cylinder.  They ran a trace and found it registered to a resident of New Jersey named Tom Nelson.

“It’s amazing the lengths people will go to make a quick buck,” Price said, sidling up next to Chapman.  He tugged his mask down to his chin.  “This is the life their willing to live to avoid getting a job.  Freaks.”

Chapman could smell the fumes from the chemicals.  He glanced around at the restroom, the corpse with its legs splayed, the bare feet, the long, twisted hair caked with brain matter a shade darker than mashed strawberries. 

Price grinned.  “He took it at the base of the skull.  Probably a forty-five.  Took his jaw off.  Lots of love in there.”

“Is there a roommate?”

Price shook his head no.  “Not according to the neighbor, but after the gunshot she peeked out the door and saw somebody taking the stairs two at a time.  Said it was a big fat guy.” 

Chapman didn’t care.  He was uninterested in some fat meth freak hoofing it through an alley.

“Sounds to me like our boy Senior Arroyo is back in town, eh, making a genuine effort to thin out his competition.”  Special Agent Price snapped the mask back over his face.

Chapman had missed his partner’s comment entirely.  His mind had wandered. TandD141717 still filled his imagination.  What he had no way of knowing, though, was that the next message from TandD141717 had already been sent.  But it was not waiting in his email inbox because it had been delivered to someone else.

17

I didn’t stop after the first shot of whiskey.

I ordered another at the bar.  My lunch companions protested, but no one was going to stop me.  Drunk was where I needed to be.  It took the three of them to pour me back into the Porsche.  Todd and Ramón followed in a taxi.

They hauled me up to Karly’s apartment.  I was still far from completely wasted but my legs didn’t appear to be on the same team as the rest of my body.  Left to myself, I would have probably wound up somewhere in Queens.  Karly’s place was always well stocked with booze and I found it in a hurry.  I latched onto a bottle of vodka and dove right in.

Todd put on an old Indigo Girls CD and sang along.  His voice is tragic.  He was destroying a song about Galileo.  I wobbled to a couch and propped my feet up.  My sense of urgency was gone.  I no longer felt the need for answers.  What I sought was escape.

The sun moved across the windows and eventually dipped from view.  I worked the vodka hard.  I fell asleep sprawled on the couch and when I awoke it was dark outside.  I had no memory of them removing the bottle from my grip or covering me with a blanket.  My vision was blurred and I had no concept of time.  The music was still going.  I smelled pasta.  Ramón had his feet on an ottoman Karly had brought home from Egypt.  He was having a beer, watching a rerun of Gray’s Anatomy on cable. 

“I hate this show,” he told me.  “But I can’t look away.  I’m addicted.”

“Think I’m gonna puke,” I said.

“You will.”

“How much did I drink?”

“Enough to embarrass yourself.”

I nodded.  “What time is it?”

“Ten-thirty.”

“Wow.”

“You had a nice little nap.”

I peeled the blanket off and managed to sit up. 

“Do you want to know what I heard you say in your sleep?”

I was nauseous.  The room was tilting.  I pushed my hands through my hair.  “Sure,” I said.

“Tom, you’re a bastard.  You said it over and over,” Ramón smiled.  “Kinda made me laugh.”

Todd ducked his head around the corner.

“Oh my God,” he said.  “It’s the crypt keeper!”

I tried to grin but it hurt my face.  “Thanks.”

Karly put on some coffee.  

Todd handed me a bottle of water.  “Drink it.”

I unscrewed the cap and took a swallow.

Todd glanced conspiratorially at Ramón.  “You tell her about the bastard thing?”

Ramón nodded.  “Yeah.”

Todd looked back at me and snorted.  “Laughed my ass off.”

“Good times,” I said.

“We figured you’d be out for a week.”

I walked to the window.  There was a party across the street.  Lights from traffic moved up and down the block.  People streamed in and out of the video store on the corner. 

“If Tom was a cheat and a killer, anything is possible in the world.”  I don’t know where it came from or why I said it.  I returned to the couch and curled into the fetal position.  My eyes were closed.  “Tom, you’re a bastard,” I said for the benefit of my friends.

There was awkward laughter, but I meant every word.

•  •  •

On a country road an hour outside of Miami, Scotty Sheldon sat in the darkness of his car with the windows rolled down and the engine turned off.  The road was gravel.  The night sky was clear and a billion stars spread out above him.  He listened to the night sounds that saturated the countryside.  There was no breeze.

He unfolded a city map against the dash.  He lit a marijuana joint and sucked hard on it.  The weed was needed for his nerves.  He hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours.  Maybe he could get an hour or two in the car tonight, but unless the weed helped to mellow him significantly, he wouldn’t be able to relax enough to drift off.  The stress was unbearable.  It would require desperate measures to save his family.

He clicked on the overhead light.  The suburbs outside the next city started a few miles down the road.  He did lots of business there.  He set a phone book on his lap and opened it to the Yellow Pages.

The humidity was fierce.  Sweat pasted his shirt to his back.  He could smell his body odor.  Sheldon traced his fingertip down the page.  When he found what he was looking for, he circled the address on the page and circled the corresponding location on the wrinkled city map.

He finished the joint and folded the map in half, then halved it again and let it fall to the floorboard on the passenger side.  He stood with his door open, facing into the foreboding darkness beyond the rear of the car.  He couldn’t believe he’d left his family in the hands of those monsters.  The clock was ticking.  His deadline was fast approaching.  He only had a day and a half.   

He vomited into the tall grass on the side of the road.

He followed a paved county road to a sleepy intersection with a 24-hour Shell station on one corner.  With the engine off he could hear traffic on the overpass two-tenths of a mile ahead.  The overnight attendant was sitting on the edge of the sidewalk wearing a green apron and burning a Virginia Slim.  She had stringy hair and looked like a skeleton.  Sheldon noticed the kids in the pickup truck at the opposite end of the building.  Neither looked a day over twenty-one.   

There was no other traffic and no one at the pumps.  The pickup sat at the edge of a weedy lot.  The lights were off and it looked like they had been there awhile.  Sheldon had five hundred dollars cash in an envelope stuffed in his shirt.  The two punks eyed him suspiciously.

“You a cop?” the kid with peach fuzz on his chin said.

“No.”

“What do you want?”

“I need a gun.”

The two boys exchanged a look.  The kid holding a can of beer grinned.

“You got money?”

Sheldon nodded.

Peach Fuzz glanced around, then he shrugged.  “Come with me.”  

•  •  •

Mr. Z and a goon named Finch had landed at Newark on the last flight of the day.  Pierre had been left to deal with Scotty Sheldon.  They rented a car and drove to a motel.  Mr. Z called Garcia for the latest update on Brynn Nelson.  The death of Tom Nelson had completely blindsided him.  It changed everything completely.