Second Shot, page 22
He crept forward, listening at one door, then another. Hearing nothing.
Could she have escaped somehow? A fire escape, or the more dramatic tying of linens to a bed to lower herself. But no, he had a feeling she was at her endgame as well. She was playing one last game, not unlike her father and uncle had their entire lives. Maybe it was genetic. He would find her. Disable her until Selfridge arrived.
Jimmy came to the last door down the hallway. It reminded him of the bedroom Brenden had taken him to the night of the dinner party. When Brenden had sucked Jimmy off, a seduction that seemed to come with ulterior motives. Had Brenden been covering for his sister? A night of calculation, when all involved were either victims or props. Jimmy turned the knob on the door, and what he saw before him surprised him but really it shouldn’t have.
“Hello, Brenden.”
“Jimmy.
“Hello, Amanda.”
“Jimmy.”
They were at least consistent in their greetings. Twin greetings.
“Selfridge is on his way,” Jimmy said.
“You screwed it all up,” Amanda said. “With Baz dead, we got the money. But no, you had to catch him after I pushed him. Such a fool. Streb would have got his commission, your sister gets her job back because Brenden doesn’t need it, and you keep getting work from that fucking firm, and of course, Brenden and I leave the country with a fortune.”
“So you were both in on it together. Why hire me?”
“Oh, that was easy,” Brenden said. “In our talks in hiring you, Mallory let it slip that you were vulnerable when it came to relationships, so it just made it easier to further our agenda. Look, Jimmy, you were hot, and pretty great in bed. I had a good time. But I wanted the money more. Men are a dime a dozen. Inheritances not so. Amanda and I got a bum deal in the parental department, lied to our entire lives. Our mutual fathers, even if we know which one was which, Rebecca was the guilty party. There was no way she was going to win.”
“Except, in the end, Baz wins. He gets the inheritance in a week’s time after all. Brenden, you lied again, claiming you were next in line to inherit. And pushing Baz down the stairs, poetic justice. Just as you’d done with Chaz.”
“They both deserved to die.”
“As did Rebecca. Eliminate all and collect the inheritance.”
“You don’t know anything about our lives, our upbringing, Jimmy,” Amanda said.
“I’m listening.”
“To not know who you are. To have your mother manipulate you. For your father to maybe be your father but maybe it’s his twin brother. It’s twisted. It had to end. So if you think you know what we’ve been through, then you’re a hypocrite. We know what happened with your father and your lifelong obsession with finding his killer. This was the same. It was about finding yourself.”
Those words hit Jimmy hard. A punch to the heart. But he knew they were wrong.
“Big difference,” he said, “I didn’t have to kill anyone to get what I wanted.”
Brenden sniffed. “Really? What you did to the Dean family? Father and mother dead.”
“I didn’t pull the trigger.”
“You forced their hand.”
“So that’s your justification of using me? Because I was morally compromised?”
“You said it, Jimmy,” Brenden said. His voice held such contempt.
Jimmy got up, ready to leave.
“Not so fast,” Amanda said, and that’s when she produced a gun. Small, lady-like, But still deadly. Especially pointed at him.
“You have quite the arsenal,” Jimmy said. “Knives, guns, pushing people down the stairs. Got any poison on you? Where’s the tablecloth? The one with blood stains all over it?”
That last comment enraged her. She thrust her arm forward, the gun aimed closer to him. “I pull this trigger, no one knows what you know.”
He decided for this last reveal to see what result it produced. “Not true. I’ve had my phone on the entire time. Detective Selfridge has heard everything.”
Anger filled her eyes. Like blood had seeped into them.
That’s when the shot was fired. The blast filling the room, a ricochet of sound and cordite, of sudden death.
Jimmy looked up. Shocked. Trying to absorb what had happened. His gun still stuffed into the small of his back. He hadn’t fired. He hadn’t heard the door open. He saw Baz standing there, the smoke from his own gun still drifting in the air. Amanda was slumped over, blood pouring out of her chest. It had been a direct hit. Brenden went to her, even though it was too late. He stared at the man who might have been his father.
“Why?” Brenden asked.
An answer wasn’t forthcoming. Instead, Baz aimed the gun at Brenden. Jimmy watched as his finger went for the trigger, as though it was all being done in slow motion. The blast went fast, though, time sped up. Jimmy jumped. Brenden looked on in horror, expecting impact. Yet the bullet went wide, missing its target. That’s when Jimmy took advantage of the moment, and he made an aggressive run at Baz. The man retreated, but he was slow on his feet, not as young as the rest of them. Jimmy hoped he was more panicked about his survival than those he wished to eliminate.
In the distance, sirens could be heard. The cavalry was on the way. Selfridge and his team of officers.
But right now, this had all come down to Jimmy and Baz.
Jimmy ran down the hallway, closing in on Baz.
“It’s over, Baz. There’s no escape.”
Jimmy heard a shot, the whiz of a bullet going past him. Good, desperation produced bad aim. Still, he rolled to the floor in case another bullet was coming. Just how many rounds did Baz have left? No time to count, just time to act. Jimmy got up and edged close to the staircase. Baz stood at its edge. Only a short while ago Jimmy had saved this man from being pushed down them by Amanda, who might have been his daughter.
Both men stared at each other, like life was on the precipice.
Jimmy asked a simple question. “Why? It can’t all have been about the money.”
“You don’t get to ask that question.”
That’s when Jimmy heard footsteps behind him. Brenden, blood covering him. That of his maybe half-sister. Because after all of this, the secrets of the Portnoy family were still unknown. Jimmy cautioned Brenden to step back. Baz still held his gun, even though it was pointed toward the floor. One quick move could alter that. Could alter all of their lives.
“But I can ask that question,” Brenden said. “As Jimmy said, why?”
“For years, my brother and I played our game. Almost from birth, certainly at school. It was fun for us. No one could tell us apart. Except as we got older. I met Rebecca, and I fell in love with her. One night she thought Chaz was me, I was out of town, and they slept together. Amanda was the result. Another time, Brenden was the result. Then she left, and only recently resurfaced. She’d heard about the money and wanted her two children to claim their inheritance.”
“But why the killing?” Jimmy asked. “There was plenty…there is plenty, to go around.”
“Because neither Brenden nor Amanda are Chaz’s children.”
“But you just said…” Brenden said. “So, that means you’re my father…”
“No. Because we discovered years ago we were both sterile. Twins share a lot. DNA, health issues, and once we learned of our condition, we sent Rebecca packing. Because she’d obviously been cheating to have gotten pregnant—twice. We only took her back in the last two years because we wanted to tease her with a possible fortune. She betrayed us all.” Baz sighed. “The game ended when Chaz fell down the stairs. He had no chance of recovery. I mourned him, I felt a part of me had died. And now, the rest of me will.”
He raised the gun and put it to his temple.
“Don’t do it, it’s not worth it.”
Brenden was the one who acted. He grabbed for the gun before it went off, and the two men struggled. Jimmy wanted to intervene, even as he heard the police sirens growing louder. The cops would be here in a moment, hopefully putting a stop to this family madness. Except the end came sooner. Brenden had hold of the gun. Pointing it at Baz.
“You killed my sister. You tried to kill me.”
“Goodbye,” was all Baz said.
And then he tumbled backward, his body taking to the porcelain steps. Rolling, rolling, finally landing at the foot of the stairs. Blood seeped out of him. There was no way he’d survived. No medically induced coma necessary here. Baz Portnoy, though, had died the same way his twin had. Jimmy supposed he’d planned it this way. One last game. A deadly one.
The door to the house opened, Selfridge appearing, four uniformed cops behind him. He saw the body before he looked up and saw Jimmy and Brenden. Jimmy watched as the detective checked for a pulse. There wasn’t one. It was evident on his face.
That’s when he looked up.
“I heard it all,” Selfridge said.
The Portnoy Case was over, a tragic tale of a family that really never was.
It was going to be a long night of questions that Jimmy wasn’t looking forward to. That’s when his phone rang.
“I’ve got to take this,” he said to Selfridge, and then answered. He listened, he nodded, he understood. Yeah, he had to spring into action. The phrase sealed his decision. “Wu-Tin is on the move. The vans have left the parking garage, our guys are following them along the FDR.
“The FDR? Where the hell are they going?”
Wu-Tin has been seen at the original Imperial Dragon. His main office.”
Jimmy put his phone away. Skeptical look defining Selfridge’s face.
“I’ve got somewhere else I need to be.”
“McSwain, I’ve got two dead bodies on my hands and two witnesses. I don’t care what else you’ve got going on, you’re not going anywhere.”
“Seems we’re at an impasse.”
“We’ve done this before, Selfridge. I can make a call where you can speak with the Deputy Commissioner of the NYPD Salvatore Frisano. Or, you can arrest me. Your choice.”
“Get the hell out of here,” Selfridge said. “But this isn’t over.”
Jimmy stole a look at Baz Portnoy’s body on the floor. He couldn’t look at Brenden. Yeah, it was over.
Chapter 16
Back to the streets of Manhattan he knew so well.
It had been a whirlwind. How was this even still the same day? It seemed to possess more hours than it had death. He supposed the twin theme was still hard at work in the universe, finishing off the Portnoy case even as the final pieces of the Wu-Tin case loomed before him. Instead of twenty-four hours, today felt like forty-eight. The time was six forty-five as he pulled into the lot on 11th Avenue and 50th. Easier to park and then subway down to Chinatown. Those congested streets near Canal were not meant for parking cars.
“Thanks, Julio,” Jimmy said.
“We’re always here for you.”
That was the thing about this neighborhood. Even strangers were family, because if you weren’t looking out for people, what was the point? The old tenement buildings might object to those fancy high rises going up, but in the end, living inside them were your friends, and neighbors and those you depended on.
As he walked along West 50th Street, he gazed north. Two blocks south, that ever-growing building; it seemed to have gained a couple more floors in the last couple of days. When the glass was added to the steel, it would truly both blur their view but also mirror it. Life was changing, he could deal with it, maybe, but he thought of Maggie, her history and heritage, all found within that apartment. Knowing she had put in an offer on an apartment in that place…was it resignation of progress or her need to find the comfort you felt when you controlled your future?
That’s when his phone rang. Almost like he was challenging her.
“Hey, Ma.”
“I don’t like hey,” she said.
“Sorry, I’m in a bit of a rush.”
“Too busy for a shift?”
It was the only thing he didn’t like. When Maggie called him to work an aisle ushering. It was honest work, and he often helped out, but tonight wasn’t the night to be called in as a sub, not last minute. The Calloway was a great old theatre, and he was looking forward to Sunday night’s, Opening Night. Probably tonight was another press preview, an important night. The Times could be there, other critics.
“Who called out?” he asked.
“Joey’s not feeling well, so Meaghan is home with him.”
Shit.
He knew Frisano was already down in Chinatown, keeping tabs on Wu-Tin’s activities, his expected escape. But the vans would still have a way to go to navigate Chinatown and pull up beside Imperial Dragon. He had time, precious little. Yet this was family, and they needed him, and even though the Wu-Tin case had a strong hold on him, that was mostly about Mallory. Right now, Maggie, Meaghan, and especially Joey, were depending on him.
“Can I be early shift?” he asked. “I’m on a case. But for you, I’ll do it.”
“Meaghan would have been, so yeah. Chief usher’s prerogative.”
“I’m two blocks away. Got a call to make.”
“You’ll be center orch, aisle two. Thankfully, no inserts. I’ll flash you off the moment the show starts.”
Jimmy loved the lingo of their part of the theatre world. On stage might get the glamour, front of house possessed the grit.
As he walked along Tenth Avenue, destined for 47th Street and Eighth Avenue, he hung up from Maggie and placed a fresh call. Frisano. His heart was beating fast, unsure if he’d made the right decision. What if he was handing out a Playbill while Wu-Tin was making his exit, and this time for good? Ending his criminal empire while Jimmy worked a show called And the World Goes ‘Round. It sure did.
Frisano answered fast. “Where the hell are you?”
“I just got back to the city. Something I have to do first, then I’ll be there.”
“Because criminals wait?”
“Because family matters.”
That quieted Frisano, silence between them. He knew what Jimmy had been through, he knew what mattered to him. He said, “Everyone okay?”
“Give me ninety minutes and I’ll be there. You got back up?”
“Yup. The first truck is about fifteen minutes. Our guys just radioed in. They’re getting close. Time is of the essence.”
“Curtain time is eight. I leave a minute later.”
“You’re working?”
“The show must go on. Ma comes first. I’ll explain. Later.”
“Sooner would be better.”
The call ended. Jimmy felt the conflict in him. Yeah, Wu-Tin had nearly killed him, which resulted in the ordeal Mallory had gone through. Nothing was more important in bringing this man to justice, but it all paled when his mother asked a favor. Because that’s what he did it all for, and that’s what he reminded himself of as he rounded the corner of 8th Avenue and 47th Street. The marquee of the Harold Calloway Theatre was lit with the white lights that defined Broadway, a crowd of theatregoers gathered about, anxious for the performance. He walked past the Brooks Atkinson, then crossed the street beyond the Friedman and then there was the Harold Calloway. The Barrymore just next door. Forty-seventh Street was bustling with life on this Friday night.
Jimmy bypassed the crowd, entered the lobby and waved to the box office crew. Al was on duty. He buzzed Jimmy inside and there was the Calloway house, a second, maybe third home, to him. A few of the staff were already in uniform and on the floor. He dashed downstairs to the usher’s room. Maggie was at her desk. It had been a few days since he’d seen his mother. A comfort set inside him. It gave him strength, knowing what tonight would entail. Everything for family. It just had to be done in stages.
“You look a mess,” Maggie said.
“It’s been a long day, Ma.”
“Is that blood on your shirt?”
“I’m gonna change.”
“One of these days, Jimmy, your job is gonna get the best of you.”
He kissed her cheek. “Hasn’t happened yet. You said aisle two?”
“Get to work.” But she said it with a wink.
He changed into the Calloway’s dress code, black pants and black shirt, a tie that matched the theatre’s marquee lettering. On the aisle a few minutes later, working alongside an old friend, Kevin. Playbills were set up, the curtain came down in anticipation of it going up thirty minutes from now. There was something about Broadway that produced magic. It made the outside world possible, that there was song and dance to celebrate amidst the comedy and drama of real life. As anxious as Jimmy felt, knowing Frisano was awaiting him, this usher job was good for him right now. A representation of order, a crowd of people with tickets, seating them precisely, itself like solving a puzzle. It was a shift, from the bloody mess of the Portnoy case to the hopeful conclusion of the Wu-Tin case. But connected. The intertwined worlds in which he lived.
And so Stephanie, the house manager, announced the house was open, and Joe, the Ticket Taker, sprang into action, and soon the crowd was piling into the theatre. Jimmy and Kevin were primed, programs in hand, people got seated, the two of them working in tandem to effectively make sure the job was done right. As he raced up and down the aisle, Jimmy couldn’t help but think about Frisano and how the two of them were supposed to be taking down a master criminal. And yet, here he was, saying, “Enjoy the performance.”
At last, the seating was done, the lights dimmed and Jimmy heard the first notes of “And the World Goes ‘Round,” and that’s when Maggie gave a quick flash of her light, signaling it was okay for Jimmy to depart. He ran downstairs to the usher’s room and he changed back into his street clothes, the blood stain still there, a reminder to him that he was leaving one world and going back into another.
On 47th Street, he hailed a cab, not interested in the subway now. He had to get downtown.
