A Spill of Blood Ch. 04

"I can hear the captain's press conference the next morning." I let my voice go phony. "'You're right, Mr. Reporter, inmate-on-inmate violence is a growing problem. Gangs, the decline in funding, and populations rising all exacerbate the situation. We're putting together a committee to study it and doing everything we can in the meantime. Unfortunately, that came too late for Mr. Morgan.'"

"I get what you're sayin', but that puts me in a bind."

"I know it does. So, I'm asking you to be straight with me about what you feel you need to do about it. If you tell me you gotta take me in, I'll tell you where the body is, but then I disappear as best I can until this is over. I'll come see you after. If you tell me that you're after the bigger fish and this situation can wait, then I'll share what else I know. I'll still come in when it's over. Either way, walking into a police station to talk to you right now is inadvisable because that's where the Bradys are."

"And if I lie to you and say the second but do the first?"

"Then you don't get a Christmas card."

That got me a snort along with one of his sighs.

"I guess I'm capable of acting on an anonymous tip for the moment."

I rattled off the building's address and an apartment number. "You can decide how much time you want to save CSI. Time of death was four thirty-two, give or take. He died on his back in the doorway and was dragged about six feet in.

"Three rounds from a suppressed.22 coming from outside the doorway toward someone opening it from the inside. Two are in the walls or furniture somewhere, one in the ceiling when I objected. Another round out in the corridor to the right as you face the elevators.

"The last one went through his throat during the struggle, causing him to bleed out. I didn't touch the gun, but I probably missed a print or two in the apartment and maybe on the rain jacket he was wearing. Oh, and the damage on the back of his head? Yeah, that was me introducing him to my tag-team partner, the corridor floor."

"Name a place. It better have decent coffee and you're buying."

• • •

The brown eyes turned bleaker as my story continued. Over good coffee and a better Danish, I gave Murray everything except where Sydney was now. He asked about that.

"Safe," I said. He accepted it with ill grace. Cops like to know where they can lay their hands on a material witness.

"So," he said when I was done, "we've got one of ours working as muscle for someone who ripped off a guy rich enough and nasty enough to do something about it." He sounded as if he believed me.

"Yep. And Brady?" I prompted.

"Carson Brady has a reputation for employing what he jokingly refers to as 'advanced interrogation techniques' with perps and CIs. Nobody's willing to make a statement, but that's the word. He is also rumored to occasionally forget to check things into the evidence room. Just rumors, mind you, but my own powers of observation note that he drives a 'Vette while I'm driving a Hyundai."

"Things like cash or maybe somebody's stash of oxy?"

Murray shrugged. "Could be."

"Or a box cutter with some banger's prints on it?"

The second shrug was enough of an answer.

"Brady's partner?"

"Manny Santiago... same story. And the guy I talked to, I had to lean on him a bit. That was my first clue that you weren't just an asshole, by the way." The eyes were slightly friendlier, or maybe I was mistaking neutral for friendly. By comparison to most of the guys I'd talked to lately, neutral was friendly.

"He said it could be bad for his health to be talking about Brady, which tells me a whole bunch of things. One, that Brady and Santiago aren't above going after a fellow cop." I could almost see the smoke coming out of his ears. "That maybe there are more involved, or at least, some who'd talk to them. And lastly, that maybe someone higher up the food chain's looking out for those two because more than one person knows about them but they're still on the job."

"I'm guessing Santiago wasn't the guy in the apartment?"

"No. They're running those prints through IAFIS." I wondered if the real answer would come back or if someone would step on it. If it came back "No Match," I had a copy on a glass coaster stashed at Uncle Jimmy's. I'd take them to my dad's old captain. Even though retired, he had to know someone in the FBI, and they owned that database.

"What else?" I asked.

"That's it. You give me one solid piece to work on other than the say-so of a guy implicated at the scene of two bodies who's listed as 'unknown fugitive' for one of them, and I'll go to IA. Short of that, they'll laugh at me. So, you tell me what next."

"Damfino. I just want someone to know everything in case the next time you see me, it's taking a nap over on First."

He knew what I meant. The city morgue.

The brown eyes studied mine. "Morgan, when you get me that piece, this goes to IA, not some vigilante shit."

I met the gaze steadily. "If they allow that option, no problem. But that guy in the apartment didn't."

• • •

It wasn't the first time I'd been in Jess's apartment, but I didn't come here often. She dealt with me enough during the week. She didn't need her personal life cramped by the boss any more than the odd hours we kept forced.

It was small, of course. This was New York and Jess wasn't rich. But it was immaculate, done in a '50s retro with enough taste that it stopped short of kitsch. It fit her. It fit me in a different way. I found it damn comfortable to sprawl back on that couch with a cup of coffee in my hand and just exhale for a moment without the office to remind me of all the crap on my plate. Jess settled across from me in an armchair with a pad of notes.

"Okay, you asked first about Lindqvist. He was the toughest, because he's kinda private and I don't speak Swedish, so I had to rely on Google to understand stuff. He owns a shipping company. It's not the biggest in Sweden and it's not the smallest. He built it up himself; his father worked on a commercial fishing boat and his mother was at home.

"His company seems to specialize in smaller general cargo vessels around twenty, thirty thousand tons, all dry goods, no tankers. It looks like he focused on taking older vessels, giving them some reno, and putting them back into service handling smaller ports. They're mostly located in the Atlantic and the northern Indian Ocean... western Africa over to southeast Asia."

"Any here now?"

"Your tracker paid off. That helicopter went two places before coming back. The first was an airport in New Haven, Connecticut. I found this site called FleetMon. It allows you to track commercial freighters. The LL Namibian is at the Port of New Haven, registered to Lindqvist Logistik AB. She arrived from Castellón, Spain via Tangier late Saturday night." She grinned like she was getting to the meat. "But after that, they flew to Calverton Airpark out in Suffolk County."

She paused, obviously waiting for me to comment. I couldn't think of a thing.

"A trip to the Hamptons to hobnob with other rich people maybe?"

She shook her head. "They'd have flown to Gabreski. It's much closer to the Hamptons. And he's in the shipping business." Again, she sat there, grinning at me.

I thought about what I knew of eastern Long Island. "The New York commercial ports aren't out there. They're in Brooklyn, Staten Island, across the river in Jersey."

I fell into the pit she'd dug.

"That's where you're wrong! There's a port out there, the United Riverhead Terminal. It just doesn't have piers." She enjoyed my puzzled expression, I'm sure. "The ships dock at an offshore platform. Huge ships, things they call Suezmaxs. And get this, they're all tanker ships because United Riverhead Terminal is a storage facility for crude and gasoline."

I sat back to think about that. Why would the owner of a company specializing in small, dry-goods freighters be visiting a facility for super-tankers? Then I noticed the grin getting wider. "I'll bite. What?"

"I took a run out there yesterday afternoon and spoke to the harbormaster like I was doing a puff piece for a local glossy. I gave him my best gushing-idiot girl voice and a shot of cleavage and found out that the Namibian anchored off their lanes Friday night before proceeding to New Haven the next day."

I forced the image out of my brain—it was far too distracting—and concentrated on the facts. "Why?"

Her grin dimmed. "He didn't know. But it's got to be significant, Harry."

"Yeah, you're right. Even if we don't know what it means, it's something. I wouldn't have made that jump from the helicopter landing there. I'm glad you're part of this."

That tickled her, though she stuffed it away behind peering at her notes. "Okay, next up, Larry Beck. Or maybe I should call him Bwana Beck." She didn't say that like it was a compliment. "You already know his company does cement and gravel. But he doesn't spend a whole lot of time there because there's always something that needs killing in his eyes. Bear, cougar here in the States. A lion in Africa. Wild pig, even a tiger, in Asia." The slightly clipped tone had given way to outright anger.

I knew she hated hunting for sport. It had come up some time back when we were hanging around the office, bored. "I don't mind hunting if you're gonna eat it, Harry," she'd told me. "That would be hypocritical since I'm not a vegetarian. But hanging a head on the wall just to show how big your dick is makes you an asshole." Clearly this was after she got comfortable swearing in front of her boss.

Now she followed that up. "Watch yourself with that one if you go after him. When he's not banging away at kitty cats around the world... or I guess banging away at a different type of kitty here... he's banging away at a local gun club. I found a picture of him accepting some award there."

I ignored the edgy tone and filed that warning under the heading of "Good To Know."

"I checked out what I could about his two homes. Get this, both are up for sale. I called the realtor for the one out on the island, pretending I wanted to make an appointment. She told me, 'It's open for showing anytime.' I figure that means he's not living there. I tried the same thing for the place here in the city, but they asked me to pick a day and they'd get back to me, so I don't know if we can assume anything about that one."

"When did they go on the market?"

"MLS says early September."

"Before Regan's party," I said thoughtfully. "The question is whether that means he was preparing to disappear or just relocating. I'm not sure he'd have known in advance about those certificates being left in a drawer."

"Do you like him for this?" Jess asked.

"No, not really. His whereabouts are vouched for all evening. The fact that he disappears when Emerald gets killed and tells Nikki he wants nothing to do with her right now even though she's his dominatrix suggests that—"

"What!"

"Oh, yeah. Sydney let slip that that's Beck's thing, and he's totally infatuated with Nikki."

"When did you learn this?"

"This morning."

"Ah."

There was a world of meaning in that syllable. I figured it said, So two of them weren't enough to teach you. I debated arguing with her, correcting the misapprehension about where I'd spent the night, telling her Sydney had realized she needed a new line of work. But I decided it wasn't worth the effort. For whatever reason, Sydney was tarred with a very black brush in Jess's mind. That puzzled me because we'd had a client once who was a working girl and Jess hadn't blinked an eye. She'd been friendly, in fact. But it was what it was, and protests weren't going to change it. They hadn't with Lexie. I went back to answering.

"I figure he's scared because Emerald died, and then Nikki probably told him they tried for Sydney. Now Charlie Everett's dead. Beck's probably digging a hole and pulling it in after him. The question is, where's that hole?"

"Then who do you like?"

"Kimi for the actual theft. She did a runner almost immediately. I've talked myself into an accomplice, somebody who knew about the bonds and got her to act for him. Lindqvist seems like the best bet. I met him and I tell you, Jess, he's a pretty cool customer. Regan figures he's too new to have done it. I figure new means he's got no loyalties built up. Neither one of those two are accounted for in the late evening."

"So, find Kimi, maybe find the bonds. Or..." She looked thoughtful. "Or search the Namibian and find the bonds? I mean, it seems silly to think he'd put them there when he could just get a safe deposit box at some bank and no one would know, but the ship being there and him going out there has to mean something, right?"

"Yeah. But what?"

We sat there in stumped silence for a while. Then Jess's phone rang.

She listened for a second. "One moment, please." I saw her thumb the mute button. "Rollover from the office. It's for you." She held it out.

"Harry Morgan? It's Larry Beck. Nikki says we have to meet. I pick the time and the place."

"Okay."

"Meet me at—" He broke off as if thinking. I waited. "I have to have some stuff I left at Nikki's before I disappear until this is over. I'm not going to show my face there. Go pick it up then meet me at a bar called Stuyvesant's. It's a block down and a little toward First. Leave her building out the side and cut through. The only way anyone could follow you would be if they come out that door too. Don't come here if they do. Call and I'll meet you someplace else."

I ignored the tone—like I said, the rich think the world operates at their convenience—and addressed the problem that came to mind. It wasn't much past eleven.

"I'm told she sleeps late and doesn't answer. She may not buzz me up. And if she's not alone, she definitely won't."

"I'll call her and tell her to get up and let you in."

"Out of curiosity, do you know anything?"

"Oh, yeah."

• • •

There was no guarantee they were still watching her place, but something told me they were. I scanned around what I could see of the street. Nothing suspicious leapt out, but that didn't shake the presentiment. I didn't get out of my car. Something was bothering me, but I couldn't put my finger on it. It was something that had started not-quite-whispering in Jess's apartment.

I needed to do something soon. It was eleven forty-five. Beck said he'd tell Nikki to expect me before noon.

I wasn't looking forward to this. Even if I was wrong that someone was watching, I didn't expect the same pleasant welcome I'd gotten last time. Being dragged out of bed—alone in it or otherwise—hours before normal waking time wasn't going to make for a happy Nikki. I glanced at the gun I'd just checked to make sure it had one in the chamber and snorted.

Hopefully, Harry, you won't need this to hold off a pissed-off, paddle-wielding woman. Heh, I wonder if Beck used the same tone of voice with her he used with me. How many cracks of the paddle does ordering your dominatrix around cost?

And that was the first domino that set a line of them toppling.

Something in that mental transformation of Nikki from the doe-eyed creature I'd met to a leather-clad boss-bitch, something about that while I was sitting there with my.45 still in my hand, triggered the memory of another.45. One I'd placed in a bar drawer in the apartment upstairs. A number of tiny threads came into focus. None of them were significant enough on their own, but taken together, they spelled something.

A man who feared for his life enough to carry a gun... why would he give it up? Nikki had said, "He left it here." Was she so important to him that he'd risk dying without it on the street so she could shove it deep in a sofa behind locked doors? Why not get her one of her own and keep the cannon for when he heard those footsteps in some parking garage?

The niggling, frustrating whisper in the back of my mind that started at Jess's suddenly became audible.

Jess told me this guy had a gun in his hand more often than his dick. Why would a man like that hand a weapon that big to a woman like that? One who weighed a buck fifteen soaking wet and had hands the size of a sparrow. One who'd never fired a pistol. He'd have known as well as I had that her first shot better get the job done because the rest would spray the entire borough. And that first shot? "It makes me nervous," she'd said with a tremor. Yeah, only blind luck would make that first shot count.

Hell, I thought as the third domino tipped over, when exactly did a man who cut off all communication the minute Emerald was murdered give her that gun? "He wants nothing to do with me," she'd said.

My train of thought went sideways in a leap. Why meet at a bar right near here when this was the last place he wanted to be seen? Why not some random watering hole in this city? Where was Larry Beck hiding out if he wasn't at his apartment or Long Island home? Who was the inside contact in Sydney and Nikki's building?

What if Larry Beck was here?

I pursued the thought. I'd seen every square inch of Nikki's apartment unless she'd rolled him in a ball and stuck him in a cabinet. And dominatrix or no, that seemed a bit much. But knowing I was coming over, he could have taken a ride around town for an hour or hung out in some restaurant he'd never been to before. My gaze shifted from the building's entrance to the side.

It was one of those little alleys that separate buildings built in the fire-escape era so that apartments that didn't face the street were legal. It was maybe eight feet wide. Ten-foot-tall iron gates of mesh too small for a hand to slide through and topped with outward-curving spikes blocked access—can't have it becoming a homeless haven, after all. The black iron lacery of the fire escapes and barred windows above, and the slanted basement doors painted in earth-tone primer colors below gave it the closed-in look of an urban jungle.

Tenuous worries became semi-convictions.

That's where it'll happen, I thought, not inside. I had left a dead body in that place, and okay, even the best apartment complex wasn't immune to a murder. A second within a week, though, and the police won't be so accepting of "I don't know nuthin'" responses. They'll use big shovels when they start digging. They might find a trail of paydirt leading from Sydney's apartment to Nikki's... and to anybody hiding there.

I talked myself through it: I come out that side door, turn right to head away from the street and cut through, down toward that little jog in the alley where the building ends. No windows face there. I bet someone's already tucked in a doorway, waiting patiently for the sound of footsteps. Maybe it would be something quiet like a piece of pipe; maybe it'd be two shots and they'd have time before the cops got there.

I dragged out my phone and called the last number to call me.

"Tell Nikki I'll be a few minutes late. I have something I need to do first but I'll be there."

"What the fuck? I'm not sitting in a bar waiting for someone to find me."

Yeah, sure. "Calm down. It's a few extra minutes." I hung up before he could say anything else and debated.

Murray? He's way the hell uptown in East Harlem. By the time I reach him, convince him I'm not imagining things, and get his ass down here, Beck will pull the plug. No, the Nineteenth is only a few blocks away.

I put the car in gear. If I sat there and made a bunch of phone calls, they'd know if they had eyes on the street. I pulled into a Deliveries Only spot around the corner. I made a call to Murray anyway. I had his cell now because messages at the station weren't a good idea. I still got voicemail. I left him a clipped summary of what I suspected and then dialed again.