A Spill of Blood Ch. 07

Well, finally ... Covid, a bad concussion from a fall related to that, and some attendant issues thereafter notwithstanding. I apologize for the wait, but Life got in the way of Hobby.

So, we left off with Mitchell dead and Richard Bertram gloating that Harry was too slow. Then Rachel Bertram called and said she'd provide a place to start ...

—C

"I shot him," Jess said.

"Yeah, you did." I wasn't going to treat her like some delicate damsel and sugarcoat it.

It wasn't easy to view her as just another buddy. The way she was sitting half-leaned against my shoulder, a glance down past the dark hair, past the nose wrinkled in distaste against the bite of High West Double Rye, went directly into a neckline. Jess was slender, but that slenderness set off the curves swelling into a lacey edge to deliver the message to my hindbrain: Woman Here.

I pushed that not-even-a-thought away. It wasn't easy to view her as just another buddy, but treating her as fragile was insulting. I told her the truth.

"You didn't kill him. I did that. But you put one through his side into a lung. Probably not fatal, but serious and it hurt him enough that I could finish the job." Then I gave her the other piece of the truth. "He'd have killed me for sure if you hadn't."

She shook her head. "I don't regret it!" Her tone was fierce. "Not even a little bit. It's just ..." She searched. "It's just some kind of, you know, some kind of afterwards reaction. That, and I realize now that I hadn't been sure ... those times when I was at the range ... I hadn't been sure I could actually shoot someone ... pull the trigger and shoot at something that wasn't paper."

She was repeating herself a little, not something she normally did. It was the whiskey. I'd driven her home. I didn't like her taking public transportation given the situation, and she refused to hang with Sydney in the hotel even though I was paying. She'd been agitated during the car ride and when we got upstairs.

"I need a drink," she'd declared and pulled out a tall, thin bottle with its familiar wood-and-cork stopper. "I got this in case you ever wanted one while you were here. I should learn to like this stuff."

"I thought you disapproved of my drinking?"

"I disapprove of you drinking yourself into oblivion over the bitch who used to be your wife. She wasn't worth it."

Without waiting for my response, she'd splashed a finger into each of two glasses and pushed one my way. Her first went down in a gulp. "Fuck! This stuff's like paint remover." The second pour had been twice as much. "But they say it becomes an acquired taste."

"Maybe if you slow down."

"Yeah." She'd flopped down on the couch next to me and pulled a comforter over her legs against the slight chill. We'd talked through the craziness of the last few weeks, re-testing conclusions and searching for anything we weren't considering. The gulps turned to sips; the facial expressions got less disgusted.

"Fucking heat sucks in this place," she'd said and pulled the comforter over both our legs even though I wasn't cold. Slowly, she'd settled back with her shoulder pressing into mine, but I knew she wasn't relaxed. Something was eating at her.

And then, out of the blue, "I shot him," and I knew what was going on.

"When the time came, you did what you had to do," I said. "Don't ever beat yourself up for what you have to do."

She jerked her head in a nod. "He was going to kill you and then maybe me."

"No, not you. We were both going down." I remembered the slow-motion clarity of that moment, knowing that I had him, and his round wasn't going to jerk me into death before my finger exerted the simple five pounds necessary ... just as my shot wouldn't interrupt him doing the same to me.

She twisted to look up at my face. "I saw where your two shots hit him, and he was moving when you did it. You're a better shot than I guess I realized."

"Practice pretending popup silhouettes were Amber," I repeated what I'd said to Mitchell as he slumped, dying.

Jess gave a fierce little grin. "Fuck your ex. And fuck him." She peered at the glass she was holding. "It's just after-shock. Another of these. They don't suck so much after your taste buds go numb. Yeah, fuck him."

A half an hour later, I shooed an inebriated woman toward her bedroom and headed to the hotel for a little of that myself. Different meaning to the word.

There was a knock on the door of Sydney's room. I checked through the peephole and then opened it to find Murray with his arms full of two banker's boxes.

"The stuff that was on the hooker's—" He broke off, seeing Sydney sitting there. "Uh, the Gowin woman's body."

Her eyes held a weary amusement. "It's okay, Darryl. I've been called worse." After a second, she added. "And I'm retired, anyway."

He covered his discomfort by turning to Jess. "Hey."

She waved a greeting, her mouth full of the pizza she'd arrived with just moments before. We were steering clear of the office for a while.

"The other box has papers and a laptop taken from Everett's place," he continued. "I couldn't get anything from the Beck apartment. IA's got that stuff on lockdown because cops are involved. Can't keep this stuff long. Maybe a day or so before someone asks."

We started sifting through the contents. Jess picked up an evidence bag and read the label. "Emerald's phone."

So much had happened; it seemed like an eternity ago that I'd gotten a phone call from a red-headed woman I'd met only in death. "I think of her as Cara now," I said gently.

Jess met my gaze and her eyes softened. "You're right. Cara. I'm sorry. It's a long shot, but maybe there's something on there that we can use as leverage." She pressed the button. "Almost dead. I'll put it on a charger."

"You don't happen to know what her passcode is, do you?" I asked Sydney.

She shook her head. "We were friends, but not close friends, you know?"

"Does your lab have something to crack it?" I asked Murray.

He shook his head. "Not without a warrant. Even then, on one this new, I dunno if the tools they have would work."

"I could start guessing numbers," Sydney said, reaching for the phone.

"No!" Jess snapped, jerking it out of reach. "After ten attempts, the phone will erase its data."

"No," I said more mildly. "We can try human engineering." Their expressions turned puzzled. "If she's like most people, she uses similar passwords for things."

"But the phone uses face recognition or a number," Sydney protested.

"But her cloud account won't, and it's worth the gamble she had cloud backup on for pictures. You," I said, turning to Murray, "play the police card."

He nodded, his thoughts syncing with mine. "Call the family. Tell them we're looking for evidence ... that's not a lie at all ... about the person who did this, and see if they can help us out with it. If she had a sister, that's the best bet. I'm on it."

"Jess, any progress on your end?"

We knew about Bertram's Upper East Side brownstone, but a fake food delivery had yielded no answer at the door, and a stakeout had shown no lights in the place either early morning or in the evening. We knew about the Connecticut house, but Rachel Bertram had made it clear he wasn't there. There was some third place.

"Not so far. I intercepted his mail one day and—"

"What!"

Her grin was a mile wide. "I made a note of what time the mailman came. When he was a couple of doors down, I got busy rearranging bags of garbage in the cans in that little bin thing by Bertram's stairs. Then I just smiled at him and said, 'Not all bills for us, I hope?' He smiled back and handed me the packet."

We all laughed. "Wait," I said. "There was garbage in the cans?"

"Nope. I brought my own. But I made sure there was nothing with my name or address on it in them. Just stuff from the kitchen and used cleaning stuff."

"Anything useful in his mail?"

"Nada. It was just junk and bills. Maybe he'll get a bunch of late fees 'cause I dumped them all in a city can."

That got another laugh.

"Why aren't we just asking Mrs. Bertram?" Sydney asked.

"Because she's made it clear that she's not going to give us anything like that. She's okay with us trying to find the missing artwork I lied about, but she's not tossing her husband under a bus. As far as she's concerned, we bypass him and go for whoever ended up with the goods. And speaking of her, I'm meeting her Friday to get that list of shipping dates."

"I haven't given up, though. I'm still working on him," Jess said.

I nodded and turned to Sydney. "Coco?"

"I've asked around, but nothing. There are girls who use the name Coco, but so far, none seem right when I ask more about them. She might not even have used that name in the past. 'White girl, dark hair, goes both ways,' and some guesses about measurements don't exactly narrow things down too much."

"Did you try Luiza?"

"She's gone." She glanced at Jess as she said it. Jess picked up.

"Sydney didn't want to go out since Bertram might be hunting witnesses. Smart of her."

I knew Jess pretty well. There was the merest hint of something in her voice, something so tiny that I doubt either of the other two heard it. Something that said: Smart of her, but so what? ... grow a pair. These two would never be BFFs. Why couldn't I have two women in my life who actually got along?

"So I went over," she continued. "The super said Luiza broke her lease, told him to keep the deposit. A van showed up the next day and she was gone. No forwarding address."

"Bad luck for us, but good for her." I meant it. One person who made it out of the kill zone. "You should go too," I said to Sydney.

She shook her head. "Not alone." We were back to that.

"I've got nothing else to do," she said.

"Help Jess go through the stuff and see if there's anything."

"I'm okay. I have a system," Jess said quickly. "No offense."

Yeah, Harry, don't make stupid suggestions. If only they'd get along ... if, if, if. Well, if frogs had wings, they wouldn't bump their asses so much.

Tuesday seemed to bring us nothing new. Well, at least nothing that helped us find Bertram. It did bring a visit from Special Agent Samuel Dutter. I didn't like him from the moment he walked his suit-clad self into the room, just minutes after the others arrived.

I've got nothing against suits per se. I wore one when I was visiting a corporate office. I went to school with guys who had a couple of Brooks Brothers hanging in the closet as a matter of course, and it never occurred to me to judge. But the thing is, it's a matter of tone.

Special Agent Samuel Dutter wasn't wearing a suit as a sign of respect. And it wasn't because of some dress code. Contrary to what the movies show you, agents wear them about five percent of the time. The rest of the time, they dress to fit in with the people around them. You don't fit into a room of people who are wearing chinos or jeans, flannel shirts, and holiday sweaters in a suit ... even if one of the women's jeans had the Guess triangle and cost a cool $400 a pair.

No, Special Agent Samuel Dutter wore his suit as a badge. Or maybe a barrier. One that said, "I'm on this side of the line. You're on the other ... the side with hookers, two-bit gumshoes, and over-the-hill cops."

He wasn't happy at that last. "This is federal now, Officer Murray."

The calm brown eyes regarded the man in front of him for a long beat. "Well, first of all, Special Agent, it's Detective Murray. Second of all, while trafficking is federal, murder is not. So, you go ahead and ask your questions, and then I'll get back to what I came for."

I could see our man didn't like that.

"It's all part and parcel," Dutter said. "I think you'll find out that it'll be joined together when the bosses get done talking." In other words, you're gonna be out, Murray, and I'm gonna be in charge of it all.

Murray didn't rise to the bait. "When I hear it from my captain," he said mildly.

Sydney gave me a pleading look when Dutter asked to speak to her in the other room privately. Before I could respond, Dutter said, "Protocol, miss. We only talk to the subject. If you don't want to do it here, we can take you over to Javits and do it there."

I didn't like the way he referred to her. Subject. It depersonalized her just one step short of Beck's "product."

The bland gaze from his sidekick, a woman who was some indefinable touch more personable, said he was in charge and she wasn't going to step in. But Dutter was right about the way interviews were done, and I didn't bother to argue the point.

"I'll be right out here."

When Sydney came out, she looked a little shaken. And then it was my turn. I gave him everything up to and including my adventure on the Namibian. I stopped there.

"And then this man, Thomas Mitchell, made an attempt on your life and that of Miss Savard."

So, Harry, one mystery resolved. It was his last name. I felt a little satisfaction at ticking off one question, however minuscule.

"Didn't we just establish that murder's the NYPD's jurisdiction for now?"

Sonny-boy didn't like that. He pulled open the door to the outer room. "Detective Murray"—all punctilious—"would you mind stepping in here a moment?" When Darryl came in, "Do you have any objection to Mr. Morgan describing the attempt on his life by Thomas Mitchell?"

"Nope. He's free to do that."

Dutter digested what I had to say about that day. I expected him to pursue that phone call from Richard Bertram. I didn't even consider mentioning my visit to Rachel Bertram or any of our speculations about Coco or even our hunt for her. Anything from Rachel was a long shot that was mine and mine alone. Well, mine and Murray's. And Jess's. And Sydney's, in a way.

On one hand, cooperating with law enforcement was something I believed in. On the other, this prick rubbed me the wrong way. He seemed to sense that I was holding something back and his questions got more aggressive. After I claimed for the fourth time I had nothing else to impart, Dutter took the conversation in an unexpected direction.

"This woman at the party, Coco, she's unaccounted for. From your investigations, what would you say her role was?"

"I don't follow."

"Was she just one of the escorts at the party, or have you considered that her role might be more?"

That was uncomfortably close to our thinking. In fairness, they didn't hire idiots for the Department of Justice.

Stick to the truth, Harry. Don't get yourself in a twist with lies.

"We haven't been able to locate her. Why? Do you think she's not just entertainment?" Turn the question back on him.

He shrugged. "A girl gets sucked in. Then to make things better for herself, she brings in another, and so on. Pretty soon she's a bottom."

I didn't understand that last. How did who was pitching and who was catching, or who was in charge and who wasn't, come into this? My confusion must have shown.

"It's the term in trafficking circles for a woman who supervises the other women and reports rule infractions." It was the first I'd heard his partner speak. "They often work on recruiting and instructing the new victims."

"A kapo then."

She shrugged an uncomfortable agreement.

"Well, I have nothing to go on. You'd probably get more out of Sydney. She was there." That wasn't throwing Sydney under the bus. I had no illusions he hadn't asked her that question already.

"She had no opinion. But in an organization as big as this one seems to be, there's bound to be some. We have to consider everyone. For the record, that includes Miss Collins. She knew everybody at that party. What is your assessment of her?"

I saw Murray look up sharply. Not because the idea caught his imagination. Because he knew Special Agent Shitface was a hair's breadth away from a knuckle sandwich.

"Special Agent," he said quickly. "We have no indication that Miss Collins is anything but a victim herself. Now, I was in the middle of an interview with these people. If you have nothing more than some innuendo, then maybe I could get back to what I was doing?"

Dutter didn't like that, someone telling him what to do. So, he took me back through my entire story again, and then a third time just so we'd know who was in charge. I put on a pleasant expression throughout the whole thing.

Ask Jess what that expression meant. She'd seen it on me once or twice. It was the expression I'd had whenever I dealt with Amber during the divorce process. It was the "I pray my chance to fuck you over comes someday" expression.

I got the "Don't go anywhere we can't find you" and the "If you learn anything, you will call us immediately" speeches, the "or else" on the latter implicit. When the pair finally left, I turned to Murray.

"Thanks. I was about two seconds from an assault charge."

"I could tell." We shared a grin. "Anyway, I didn't just stop by because I like your pretty face." He reached into a backpack he'd brought and pulled out an evidence bag. "This is yours."

I drew out the softly gleaming hunk of aluminum and stainless steel. I felt absurdly tickled to have the pistol my father had left me in my hands again. I thumbed the cylinder release and reloaded it with the rounds that were in a small baggie. I pulled up my pants leg and exchanged them, dropping the small Sig into a jacket pocket and slotting the Smith & Wesson into place.

Murray watched in silence. He wasn't laughing at me or judging. His eyes said he understood.

"I burned a real favor to get that. How 'bout something in return?"

"What?"

"You don't tell him shit until after the fact. We keep it with us."

I considered it ... and him ... expressionlessly. "I don't know whether they could charge obstruction or not, but it's definitely going to cause waves for you if it comes out," I said finally.

"So call him ... just maybe a little later than sooner. As long as we don't step too far off the reservation, the heat's worth it."

"Why? For all that he's an asshole, he's the law too."

He stared off into space for a long moment. Then, "Maybe because there are dirty cops involved, and that makes the 'law' not so on the side of angels. Maybe because I'm tired of rich guys figuring the law can't touch them ... and being right about that most of the time." He turned back to face me. "Maybe because I saw the pictures."

I didn't know if he was talking about the scene photos from Icaria of Beck and Nikki, or the pictures of the cages inside of the Namibian. In a way, I guess it didn't matter. They were two facets of the same horror.

I'd heard the unsaid thing in what he said about rich guys. I met his eyes, reading them, then I nodded.

After all the craziness, there was one of those hiatuses where everything is pending. I wasn't meeting Rachel Bertram until Friday. Jess was making no progress on finding Richard Bertram. Ditto Sydney finding Coco. Murray was busy with his day job because we couldn't figure out what else to do, and it let him keep an ear on what other groups might be finding out. It left me time to think about what Sydney had said. "Maybe we could find some way to get the money Larry left."

I'm not some ascetic. It's nice to have enough money to get by without worrying about where the next meal ... or even the next bottle of my favorite libation ... was coming from. But my life was pretty simple. I knew me, and a Porsche would bring a momentary thrill followed by years of cursing that stiff suspension on Manhattan potholes and worrying about it getting stolen from a parking garage. It would be baggage bought with dirty money.