Ukulele of Death, page 23
Ken was already dealing with him, holding the man’s arms behind his back with one hand and smacking him upside the head with the other. The guy never stood a chance. He dropped to the concrete like a ton of … well, a ton of anything weighs two thousand pounds, so fill in your commodity.
I thought that would leave us with just Elroy to subdue but Ken yelled, ‘Frannie!’ and pointed as he ran toward me.
The woman had gotten up and was charging at me again, this time on one blade (she was really good), still wielding the syringe. Even as she skated I saw her push the air out of the syringe. She wasn’t kidding.
Because I’m faster than the average … well, any human, to be honest, I had just enough time to pick up the nearest large chunk of loose asphalt, which admittedly I had made just a little more loose, from the pavement. I flung it hard right at the rollerblader’s front wheel.
She couldn’t react quickly enough and bumped hard on the rock, falling headfirst and rolling when she hit the ground. Ken got there in time to step on the hand that held the syringe and crush it. The woman yelped a bit with his foot on her hand.
I got to his side while I looked around. Elroy had vanished into the evening, leaving not so much as a pheromone in his wake. It figured.
All we had, then, was the rollerblader. ‘Let up off her hand,’ I said to Ken. He looked a little disappointed but I reached down for her other arm and when he removed his stupid giant foot (the one that had probably just helped save me from another abduction) I pulled her to her feet by the arm that probably didn’t hurt quite as much.
‘Nice to meet you, Myra,’ I said to her. ‘Why don’t we go someplace where we can talk?’
THIRTY-THREE
‘I don’t know anything,’ Myra said.
‘Oh, don’t sell yourself short,’ Ken told her. ‘I’m sure you know some things.’ That’s Ken being witty.
We were sitting in a minuscule coffee shop three blocks from the park. I hadn’t wanted to let Myra assess escape routes for too long during transit, but I also didn’t want to be so near the scene of our little brouhaha (which had attracted a grand total of no interest from the gathered populace, other than an iPhone video of me throwing the rock in Myra’s path, which would surface on YouTube later that night) that Elroy, wherever he’d slithered off to, would be able to find us and exact his revenge. Yeah, you read that right. Exact his revenge.
We’d taken the only booth in the place and Ken had sat to Myra’s right, ensuring she couldn’t slip away. She’d have an easier time sneaking around the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art than my brother in a diner booth.
‘You know who hired you and what your instructions were,’ I said, ignoring my brother’s hilarious comment. ‘Let’s start with those.’
‘Do you think that’s how this works?’ Myra said, staring straight into my eyes despite her having an iced coffee on the table before her. I’d ordered another of those for myself and my brother had gotten a vanilla milkshake because Ken. ‘You think you beat me in a fight so the only option I have is to tell you everything you want to know?’
‘That’s how it works in the movies,’ Ken muttered. He’s not so much for questioning and tends to let me handle anything that requires, you know, words.
We had managed to disarm Myra, who’d been equipped with two more filled syringes and a straight razor. Her hand wasn’t broken but had a nasty bruise, so when I was patting her down (because there was no way I was going to let Ken do it) she hadn’t offered much resistance. We’d found a cell phone, which I’d pocketed, and a small wallet with two credit cards issued to ‘Kristen Washington,’ a made-up name if ever I’d read one. Ken had taken everything but the phone because he had actual pockets that you can fit things into. I want an explanation, fashion industry, even though I know it’s about dudes wanting to see the curve of woman’s hips in tight pants. I reminded myself to take on the patriarchy one of these days. Maybe I could get Mank to help me.
‘That’s not how it works in real life,’ Myra snapped at Ken. ‘If you’re not going to kill me – and you’re not – you have no leverage. So I can sit here and not answer you until you get tired of the whole thing and let me go.’
I needed to take control of the conversation. ‘We know you hired Elroy to abduct me, and when the attempt this afternoon didn’t work you decided to take matters into your own hands. That’s actually enough.’
‘But we’re not going to let you go.’ Ken was eyeing, of all things, the plate of French fries that the people at the table next to us had just received. There are times you have to wonder. ‘We need to know some things. You know those things. That’s how this does work. Because right now you can’t call anyone, you know you can’t beat us physically, and I can sit here blocking your path for days if I have to.’
Myra was not petty enough to point out that at some point he’d have to use the restroom, largely because she knew I’d take Ken’s place and keep her in check just as efficiently. I had, after all, flung her into another person, whom we’d left bleeding and at the very least stunned in Washington Square Park.
‘Elroy will be looking for me,’ she said. ‘He probably followed us here. He’ll be getting me out because he knows how valuable I am and he can order up seventeen guys to fight you off if he wants to.’
I didn’t sneer because that’s just not me. I’m more a Seriously? blank-look sort of woman. And I used it on Myra right now. ‘If Elroy could get seventeen guys capable of fighting us, why’d he send the two – no, three bozos – we beat the hell out of today? No, you’re on your own, Myra, and frankly, I don’t see why you’re staying loyal to the people who hung you out to dry and failed in every attempt to do whatever it is you’re trying to do. So why not answer those two simple questions: Who hired you and what were your instructions? Because otherwise we can walk you over to a police precinct where we have friends and wait for the YouTube video of you trying to sedate me to surface.’
She flattened out her mouth as she realized (incorrectly) that she had no way out. The fact was that we’d never have taken her to the police for fear that too much information about us would come out. Mank already wanted to have a serious talk with me and I hadn’t even started to make up my answers yet. But we also aren’t in the business of arresting people. We were in the business of finding birth parents. For other people. And identifying Caroline Seberg’s killer. That was something of a side hustle at this point.
‘Here’s what I can tell you,’ she said, staring at her iced coffee as if it were her father confessor. ‘There are people I don’t know who want you taken alive. I don’t know what they’re going to do with you once they get you. That’s not my end of the deal.’
‘What people?’ I demanded. ‘I’m tired of playing games. Who, exactly?’
Myra seemed to take a long time to think that over, but that was in my view. In her own mind it probably felt like a second. ‘The main guy is named Bob,’ she said. ‘I didn’t get a last name, but I saw him once. He’s kind of short and has gray hair. No beard.’
‘Does he wear a dark trench coat?’ I asked.
Myra looked at me like I’d asked if Bob was a tentacled visitor from the planet Orbach. ‘It’s, like, a hundred degrees out,’ she said after a moment.
So maybe The Voice hadn’t been tailing me in front of Mank’s precinct window. That was useful, even if I didn’t know how right at this moment.
‘OK.’ Ken decided to take over because I was being insane. ‘Bob is an older guy, not tall and he’s in charge of the project to kidnap us?’
Myra shook her head. ‘Oh, not you,’ she said to Ken. She pointed in my direction. ‘Just her.’
It took us a moment to absorb that. ‘Just me?’ I said. Granted, it wasn’t my wittiest comeback but I didn’t understand what I was being told. ‘Why?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t get that kind of information,’ she said.
Ken, seeming insulted that the nefarious Bob didn’t want to grab him, was recovering faster than me. ‘So this guy Bob wants to kidnap my sister. How much was he paying you to do it?’
Myra looked up. ‘I don’t discuss that,’ she answered.
Ken is very protective of me. Any threat will be met with his full fury and believe me, that’s not something you want to receive. He spoke through clenched teeth. ‘How. Much.’
Myra got the message. ‘Three hundred.’
My eyes felt like they’d opened up about a foot. ‘Three hundred dollars? All this for three hundred dollars? Were you and the Pips splitting it three ways, or was it a full three large apiece? Hell, I’ll give you four hundred to leave me alone!’ I didn’t have the money in my purse but I started rummaging around in there for effect.
Ken was grinning and Myra, who probably had not grinned since she got a gold star in kindergarten, shook her head at me. ‘No, you don’t understand. They’re paying three hundred thousand to bring you in.’
I sat back. ‘Oh.’
‘And this Bob guy,’ Ken was amused but the whole full-fury thing was still on his agenda if necessary. ‘He’s been after my sister all this time? Like that’s his full-time job?’
Myra bobbed her head a bit, yeah, sort of. ‘Pretty much. Except he had to take a couple days off maybe a week and a half ago.’
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Was there someone else he needed to kidnap?’
‘No, from what I heard he had to go to London.’
Oh, wouldn’t that just figure. ‘Don’t tell me,’ I said. ‘He went to an auction.’
‘Yeah, of a ukulele. Can you believe it?’
THIRTY-FOUR
We ‘dropped Myra off’ at the 14th Street subway station and saw to it that she got on the 5 train and that she didn’t get off before it left. Even if she decided to bolt at the next stop we still had enough time to head in the other direction and go home with no concerns that she might be able to pick up our trail. I mean, they knew where we lived but it was the principle of the thing. I guess.
If we had been really ruthless operatives, I suppose we would have seen to it that Myra was incapacitated somehow. We could have killed her, I guess, but that’s so not what we do. Besides, murderers really shouldn’t date cops. It’s sort of a professional conflict of interest on both sides.
Neither one of us spoke for a while as we walked. There was a lot to process. I had a thousand loose ends and I’d never learned to crochet. On the one hand, I finally had the connection to use on my list that joined The Voice to Caroline Seberg’s murder. But somehow gaining that information had just made the whole picture more cloudy, not less.
The problem was, the connection didn’t make sense. Ken and me being the way we are had nothing to do with Caroline as far as I could tell. She was just the unlucky crooked auction dealer who had somehow crossed the wrong buyer and paid a really steep price for it. If she hadn’t contacted the K&F Stein agency, she’d probably still be dead as far as I could tell.
But it seemed like someone was truly desperate for us to notice Caroline’s murder and to investigate it. And it was looking more and more like that person was Augustus Bennett. Except that at five foot nine, Gus was only fairly short. Myra had been very clear about that: The Voice (Bob) was a smaller man. Could Gus be Bob?
Of course, maybe her idea of short and mine were two different things. I was dating a man whose gaze barely made it to my shoulders. And yet he was a really good kisser. Sometimes you just can’t figure life.
My mind wasn’t wandering so much as it was flitting from idea to idea and never landing on any of them, like a moth in search of a bright light to bother. Dad was dead. Probably. Aunt Margie would be home any minute and I’d have to tell her. The killer, if it was indeed Bob, had hit Caroline Seberg with a heavy candlestick. Caroline, back when she was Evelyn Bannister, was tall. If Bob was indeed as short as Myra suggested, would that have been an efficient way to knock her out? Would he have had to stand on something to reach?
Sometimes really strong heat makes my battery run out faster. I needed a charge. That was why we’d diverted our paths and not gone straight to Grand Central. I had to get back to the apartment and Ken was uncomfortable leaving me alone what with all the syringes floating around New York and Elroy still on the loose.
‘None of it makes sense,’ I said to Ken when we were about three blocks from the apartment. ‘None of it adds up. It’s just random facts that don’t seem to relate to each other.’
My brother looked straight ahead as he walked. ‘There’s a guy who’s following us and it’s not Elroy,’ he said.
I tried not to show any surprise. ‘Is he wearing a dark trench coat?’
Ken bit his lip so as not to turn his head and sneer at me. ‘It’s ninety-five degrees. No.’
‘What does he look like?’ Two blocks. Should we veer off to avoid leading someone to our front door?
‘I only got a couple of quick glimpses. Medium height, dark hair, mustache.’ That wasn’t awful for a couple of quick glimpses.
‘Wearing?’ I asked.
‘Shorts and a polo. If he was wearing a woven belt and white New Balance shoes he’d be the model of a suburban dad.’
‘You sure he’s following us and not looking for a great frozen yogurt place?’ I said.
‘Stop.’ Ken moved out of the flow of traffic and reached down to tie his shoe. ‘He’s all of a sudden really interested in that wig store. I think he’s following us all right.’
I ventured a peek at the man. He was indeed in his fifties, maybe. No paunch, which was refreshing. ‘That’s not a mustache. That’s the shadow from the visor of his baseball cap,’ I told Ken.
‘Team?’
‘Mets.’
‘So, Long Island.’ Ken stood up straight and we continued walking. I could only picture the man behind us picking up his pace again. ‘Should we run for it?’
‘He’s a middle-aged suburban dad and we’re two genetically perfect superbeings,’ I hissed at him. ‘I think we can take him. Should we divert or keep heading home? I need to plug in some time in the next ten minutes.’
‘Keep heading home. It’s quieter on our street.’
We turned the corner on to our street (I’m not telling you our address either) and actually slowed our pace as we approached the building. Ken didn’t exactly lean over to whisper to me but made certain his voice was not audible from more than a couple of feet away. ‘On my mark we turn and confront, before we get to our building. Yes?’
‘Yes.’ I was actually looking forward to it. Finally I could get some answers about what was going on and why. ‘But you’re going to have to do most of the confronting.’
‘OK.’ Ken walked a little more heavily, which for a guy his size makes a pretty noticeable noise. ‘On three.’ He meant steps. ‘So one, two …’
We both stopped and turned at the same moment. Ken said, ‘OK, buddy, what’s the …’
But the man was gone.
There wasn’t so much as a hint of him. Not a scent of aftershave, Ken informed me. Nothing.
‘What the hell was that about?’ My brother sounded just as frustrated as I felt.
‘Worst intimidation tactic ever?’ I attempted.
‘Let’s get inside. We have a remarkably inefficient air conditioner upstairs.’
We walked up the flights and unlocked the apartment door. Nobody had been home since dinner and we’d been foolish enough to turn off the air conditioning before we’d left for the meeting with Elroy. The place felt like it had been abandoned for seven years. I made a beeline for the air conditioner in the living-room window (it’s actually attached by a hose to the window and stands on wheels because we have bars on our windows that won’t allow for a unit to be installed) and turned it on.
I sat there on the sofa right next to the air conditioner for a moment. I needed a charge more than I’d realized, but something was nagging at me. ‘The Voice is named Bob,’ I said to Ken.
He flopped down on the easy chair, annoyed that he was farther away from the cool air than I was. Tough. ‘I believe we’ve established that,’ he said.
‘We also believe that Augustus Bennett, in the guise of Gus the super, killed Caroline Seberg, in the guise of Evelyn Bannister,’ I went on. It was for my benefit, not Ken’s, that I was talking anyway. That was better because he was just going to be a brother and that wasn’t what I needed right now. ‘But we know Bob went to London for the auction.’
‘Riding on a pony.’ Ken sat back as the cool air reached him secondhand and closed his eyes. ‘You should plug in.’
‘Was there enough time for Gus to plan my abduction, take a break and go to London, and then come back and poison Caroline after bashing her on the head?’
‘Sure,’ Ken said. ‘She made it back here in time to be bashed.’
‘Caroline didn’t go to London,’ I reminded him. ‘She was orchestrating the bidding online from her apartment, or one of her apartments, in New York. By the time we knew the auction had taken place, she was already dead. It’s possible Bob made it back but he’d have left Sotheby’s, gotten on a plane and gone straight to Caroline’s to put on his Gus suit. Not to mention, Gus is not a small man. You saw him.’
‘I saw him,’ Ken’s eyes remained closed.
‘He wasn’t small. Myra said Bob is a fairly short man. Either Bob didn’t kill Caroline, or Gus isn’t Bob.’
‘I dunno … third base!’ my brother said. He sounded groggier than I felt but I knew he’d charged up this very morning. He was just in a mood.
‘Bob,’ I said. ‘Robert. Rob.’ It made hideous sense. ‘Kenny. Rob.’
‘Rob who? And of what?’ He amuses himself. It’s half the game. Sometimes all the game.
‘Rob Van Houten.’ He’d been the one to tell me about Gus Bennett. He’d given me the idea that Dad’s name had been used for the anonymous bidder on the Gibson. My buddy Rob the billionaire had been playing me this whole time, and then – if I could get any sense of his height or lack thereof – had me kidnapped and strapped me to a hospital gurney.
