Separate Cases, page 2
“Yes, he was,” she said, but she said it without any enthusiasm. “What case was that?”
“It was just last year,” I said, relating the details to her. It had been a kidnapping case where the father and mother were separated. McWilliams was hired by the father, and I was hired by the mother. The father had been better-off financially than the mother, which explained their choices pretty well.
“Andy was very impressed with you, but he didn’t pronounce your name the way you do.”
“Few people do,” I said. The accent is on the “Jack”, and not the “co.” It’s “Jack-uh-bee.”
“He said that for someone as relatively inexperienced as you were, you showed good instincts.”
Relatively inexperienced. Just then I was glad that she hadn’t been in court last month when Dicky Hilary was tearing me apart.
“Thank you,” I said. “That’s very nice to know.”
Before the conversation could progress any further, Stuart came over with the Paulies and a phone message.
“From Binky,” he said, handing me a piece of paper on which he’d written the message.
“I didn’t hear the phone ring.”
He looked at Caroline, who was tasting the beer right from the bottle, and said, “I can see why.”
“Thanks, Stuart.”
I looked at the piece of paper and saw that there was an address written on it for a hotel in Alphabet City.
“Mrs. McWilliams, I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
“Wait!”
I got to my feet and said, “I don’t really think I can help you. Your husband . . . Andy’s been dead five months and it’s a pretty cold trail. Besides, the police experts are sure it was the Backshooter.”
“But it wasn’t—”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really have to go.”
I headed for the bar and heard her chair scrape back as she rose to follow me.
“Stuart, can I borrow the phone?”
“Sure,” he said, handing me the cordless.
I gave Heck a quick call and got his answering machine.
Obviously both he and his secretary, Missy, were out of the office. I left a message that I had a line of Two-John’s whereabouts and that I’d get back to him as soon as I knew something. I handed the phone back to Stuart, waved, and went out the door with Caroline McWilliams close behind.
“Mr. Jacoby—”
“Miles.”
She had a long-legged stride that made it easy for her to keep up with me.
“Miles, I have to come with you.”
“No way.”
“We haven’t finished talking.”
“I’m afraid we have—”
“Listen!” she said sharply, grabbing my arm. “Andy mentioned you a couple of times. He really was impressed with you.”
“With me,” I repeated.
“Yes. He said you had more on the ball than most people.”
I stared at her, wondering how high the bullshit was going to pile before she quit.
“Andy didn’t like many people—”
“All, right, all right,” I said, cutting her off. If I stood here all day arguing with her Two-John would get away—and I might drown. “Let’s get a cab . . .”
3
The hotel was on Fourteenth Street between Avenues A and B. When we got there I put five bucks on the counter for the clerk to salivate over and asked for Jenny Wheeler.
“Jenny who?”
“Wheeler,” I said, adding a second five, “Two-John Wheeler.”
“Oh, Two-John,” he said, taking the fives. “Room 304.”
“Thanks.”
“But she ain’t there,” he added as we headed for the stairs.
“What?”
“She cleared out last night.”
“Did she say where she was going?”
“Nope.”
“Let me have the key to the room.”
“I can’t—”
“For ten bucks you can—and don’t tell me it was cleaned. I might laugh in your face.”
He shrugged and gave me the key. As we went up the stairs I caught a glimpse of him watching Caroline’s legs. I didn’t blame him, they were well-worth watching.
I opened the door to 304 and suddenly a lamp exploded against the wall next to my head.
Caroline screamed and I shouted, “Jesus!” and fell into a crouch. The guy who had thrown the lamp went out the window onto the fire escape.
“Take the stairs to the lobby!” I shouted at Caroline, then took off after him, hoping she’d react correctly.
When I hit the fire escape it was still quivering and seemed to be clinging precariously to the wall. I hoped if it fell I’d at least land on the guy I was chasing.
I heard him clamoring down the metal steps, and then I drowned him out with some clamoring of my own. Naturally he reached the alley below at least a floor ahead of me and took off in a dead run. He was in good shape and moving fast, so that’s why it surprised me to see Caroline enter the alley ahead of him. I guess her long legs were good for more than just looking at. Unfortunately, once she came into the alley she didn’t know exactly what to do. As the man reached her she put her hands out in front of her, anticipating the collision, but that didn’t keep her from being knocked ass over tea kettle.
I hit the pavement and took off after him, but he was long gone by the time I got out of the alley. I went back to see how Caroline was.
I helped her up and she started apologizing right away.
“I’m sorry, but—”
“Forget it,” I said. “As long as you’re all right.”
“I . . . I didn’t know how to stop him,” she said helplessly, trying to clean the dirt off her skirt.
“Next time drop to all fours and let him trip over you. Come on, let’s check the room.”
“But that man—”
“We interrupted him. Maybe there’s something he didn’t find.”
We went back into the hotel by the front entrance. The clerk didn’t give us a second look. I decided to let go the fact that he knew somebody was already up there when he let us up. After all, I’d waved money in front of him. How could he say no?
“Who was that man?” she asked as we went up the stairs.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t get a good look at him. Did you?”
“No, I’m sorry—”
“Stop saying that!”
“I’m sorry . . .” I looked back at her and she said, “I’m sorry,” again real quickly, and then clamped her hands over her mouth.
We entered the room and I gave it a quick once over. You couldn’t tell anyone had ever been there. I was sure that the man ahead of us had found nothing either.
“She was here,” Caroline said.
“How do you know?”
She showed me some red stained cotton balls she’d taken out of the waste basket in the bathroom.
“Blood?”
“No. She may be hiding out, but she still took the time to do her nails.”
“Shit,” I said. “I’m going to wring Binky’s neck. Come on.”
She dropped the cotton balls to the floor and we left.
Outside I said, “Well, I guess that’s it, Caroline. Let’s get a couple of cabs—”
“What do you mean?”
“Now we go our separate ways.”
“Look, Miles, since Andy was impressed with your abilities you must be pretty good.”
Yeah, I thought, an “expert.” Just ask Dicky Hilary. “Thanks.”
“I’m not just handing out compliments. Let’s work together on this.”
“On what, Caroline?”
“Andy’s murder!”
“I work alone, Caroline. I told you, even though your husband and I once worked on the same case, we went our own ways.” Wryly I added, “He always managed to be two steps ahead of me anyway.”
“He said one.”
“Fine, but I work my own way, and I work alone.”
“It’s because I’m a woman, right?”
It might have been, but I didn’t want to admit that to her. Neither did I want to admit that my confidence was at an all-time low. Maybe I didn’t want her around to see that. After all, she’d been married to Andy McWilliams.
“You’ve been in the business what, five months?” I asked.
“And what about you?” she shot back, lifting her chin defiantly. “A couple of years?”
Actually, I’d had my license for almost three years, but I didn’t bother correcting her.
“I’ve had my license almost six years—” she began, but I cut her off before she could go any further.
“That’s fine,” I said, “but I’m sorry.” I started walking away and she tagged along behind me like a kid, only she wasn’t a kid. If I’m any judge of a woman’s age, Caroline was in her mid-thirties, but she was hanging on my tail like she was twelve. And on top of everything else, she’d had her license longer than I’d had mine—which was just a technicality, but an annoying one.
“Miles, please, I need help! I can’t do it alone!” Her tone had gone from plaintive to agonized. “I’ve been trying for five months and I’m not getting anywhere. Dammit,” she said viciously, grabbing my arm and turning me around with surprising strength, “whatever happened to professional courtesy?”
She stopped following me then, but I only took a few more steps before turning and looking back at her. She looked harried and desperate. She had been in over her head for the past five months trying to make a murder out of something the police were calling a random killing and she was about to go under for the final time.
A cab came by then and I whistled it to a stop. She just stood and watched as I opened the back door.
“Get in,” I told her.
“Oh, Miles,” she said, gushing, “I can’t tell you—”
“Just get in the cab, Caroline.”
The first stop was Caroline’s Madison Avenue office.
“What do you want from here?” she asked as she fitted the key into the door, which said MCWILLIAMS INVESTIGATIONS. She hadn’t even had to change the sign when she reopened the office.
“Your file.”
“Which one?”
“On Andy’s case. You did keep a file, didn’t you? You’ve been keeping it up to date, haven’t you?”
“Oh, of course,” she answered, a little too halfheartedly for my money.
She opened the door and we entered.
“This place looks like it’s been searched.”
She shut the door and her face took on a sheepish expression.
“It always looks like this.”
“What?”
“I never claimed I was neat.”
I was almost afraid to see what shape the files were in, but I forced myself to ask again for the one on Andy.
“It’s in the cabinet—there.”
I went to the cabinet she indicated and asked, “Which drawer?”
“The, uh, top one.”
I opened the top drawer. It looked as if someone had emptied a waste basket in there.
“Caroline, all these scraps of paper—it looks like you’re making confetti for a parade. How much of it has to do with Andy’s case?”
“Um . . . all of it?”
“All of it?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Christ.
“Okay, look,” I told her, picking up the waste basket and dumping the contents on the floor, “take this and fill it with whatever papers you have on Andy’s case. We’ll sort it out at my place.”
“Your place?” she asked, taking the waste basket from me. She looked funny standing there with it in her hands, her eyes wide and staring at me as if I’d just threatened her virtue.
“I meant my office.” I didn’t bother explaining that my office doubled as a restaurant—or vice versa.
I looked over her desk while she filled the can, but I knew I wouldn’t find anything in that room. She had understated the fact when she said she wasn’t neat.
“1 should explain something to you,” she said, setting the can down the desk.
“What?”
“I’m normally very competent,” she said. “I can plan and execute dinner parties, I can balance my own checkbook, I can play softball, and I shoot a mean game of pool.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I don’t want you to judge me by the way this office looks,” she said. “I’m the first to admit I’m out of my element here. I can’t file or do office work, and my investigative abilities are small.”
“Then why do this?”
“Because I have to find out who killed Andy,” she said, “even if it means that I have to stumble around to do it. Can you understand that?”
I studied her for a moment and then said, “Sure, I can understand it, Caroline.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s late,” I said, picking up the can. “I’ll take this home with me and look it over. You can go home and get some sleep and I’ll call you in the morning.”
“What will we do tomorrow?”
“I’m not sure yet. I want to talk to Heck Delgado, the attorney I’m working for, and I want to find the guy that sent me to Alphabet City, but beyond that I don’t know yet. We can discuss that tomorrow.”
Her apartment was on Eighty-second between York and First Avenues, and we rode all the way in silence. I was trying to figure out how to let her down easily, because working with her just didn’t seem feasible. She may well have been competent in all other aspects of her life, but I only envisioned her getting in the way in this matter.
The cab stopped outside her apartment building. Before she got out of the car she said, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help, Miles.”
I smiled and said, “Just call it professional courtesy.”
She got out, started to close the door, then stopped and poked her head back in.
“Here’s my card with my home number,” she said, handing it to me. “If you need help deciphering any of my notes, don’t hesitate to call.”
I stared after her as she entered the building, then looked at the number. I could barely decipher that.
4
After dropping Caroline off, I stopped at the Chelsea Club, left the notes in my locker, and started my unscheduled practice.
I fired off six rounds and figured that was enough for one day.
“Finished?” Dan asked, coming up behind me.
“Yes,” I said, ejecting the empties and reloading the gun. I shoved it in my shoulder holster, a rig I was still not comfortable with. Dan had suggested it in lieu of the belt holster I had used on the occasions when I did carry a gun.
“Harder to lose,” he’d said, “sitting on a bus.”
But uncomfortable as hell.
“You did real fine today, Jack. Been practicing somewhere else?” he asked.
“No,” I said, “Just concentrating more, I guess.”
Sure, I thought, concentrating on seeing D.A. Dicky Hilary’s face on every target. That made them real easy to hit. The paint job he’d done on me was a month old, but it was still churning my guts.
“See you next time then, Jack,” he said, and went over to Mr. Andros, who had just missed his target with all six shots.
I reminded myself never to offer Mr. Andros a partnership.
Alison Hamer had helped me move into my new apartment, which was on Thirteenth Street and University Place, across the street from a deli and directly over a Pancake House.
Alison is twenty-six, and is cute and pretty, although she hates it when I call her cute. She has dark hair, pert (she hates that word, too) breasts, and the shapely-but-firm legs of a runner—which she is. She worked as a waitress at Bogie’s, which was where we met, and we became friends— although not “close” friends. We were both a bit wary about that because I’d had my problems in the past, and I assumed she had as well, although she didn’t talk about it much. We were friends, on our way to something else—but it was slow going.
Yes, we slept together on occasion, but a shared bed doesn’t automatically make two people “close.”
After my original apartment had been blown up in an attempt on my life—an attempt that killed my brother instead of me—I had moved into the back room of Bogie’s, at Billy and Karen Palmer’s invitation. When I finally found an apartment I had no sooner moved in when new owners bought the building and it went co-op. It had taken nearly five months to find another one I could afford. Because I’d had to give up Eddie Waters’s old office—I couldn’t afford that, either—I had also been using Bogie’s back room as an office. Now that I had my apartment over the Pancake House, I was out of the back room for good, easing my guilt about mooching off of the Palmers.
When I got back to my apartment Alison wasn’t there, but the place was clean, so I knew she had been. I put Caroline’s “files” aside for the moment, stowed the gun and rig in the closet, and dialed Alison’s number.
“Hi,” I said when she picked it up. “Thanks for cleaning up.”
“It’s all yours now,” she said. “Everything is unpacked and in its place. Good luck.”
“Thanks. When did you leave?”
“Actually, I just got home.”
She lived within walking distance, on Horatio Street. It was a building I would have liked to see her get out of, but I guess I didn’t want it badly enough to ask her to move in with me. I wasn’t ready for that and, to be honest, I didn’t think she was, either.
“I could come back,” she offered.
“I’m really beat,” I said.
“It’s just as well. I start my new job tomorrow.”
“That’s right,” I said, my memory jarred. No longer would she be waiting tables at Bogie’s. She’d gotten a job at a TriBeCa art gallery that had its name printed on the window in lower case lettering, and she was very happy about it. She loved art and she knew it well. Since she couldn’t paint, selling it was the next best thing.
“Talk about good luck,” I said. “Break a leg.”
“That only works in the theater, silly.”
