Ukulele of Death, page 11
I was going to have Robert Van Houten, the Pacific Northwest’s answer to Bruce Wayne, act as an operative for my agency? ‘That sounds pretty good to me, Rob. I appreciate your offering to do it.’
‘Not at all. It should be fun. Shake a few of these rich geezers up to suggest they might have a child they don’t know about.’ The chuckle was back. ‘It’s been nice talking to you, Fran. I can find you at this number?’
‘Day or night.’
‘Perfect. Give me a couple of days.’
Hell, take a week if you want, Rob. ‘I really do appreciate it,’ I said.
‘Happy to do it.’ And then he hung up. We’d concluded our business and that was it. But I felt like I’d made progress even if Van Houten couldn’t find out anything, or wouldn’t tell me what he did find out. I’d made a new, valuable friend.
I’ve always had trouble making friends for a lot of reasons. One was that I have always been, to put it mildly, noticeable in a crowd. I tower over a lot of people, and in school that meant I seemed intimidating and different (which, let’s face it, I am). Those aren’t popular qualities.
Once I was in college I’d already built emotional walls around myself. Nobody was ever going to understand what it was like to be me, not even Ken. Being enormous and noticeable are very popular qualities for boys. Every year the school would want Ken to go out for the football team and every year Aunt Margie would forbid it, fearing that a broken bone would lead to X-rays, which would possibly lead to questions when that USB port in Ken’s left side was discovered. Nobody wanted that.
OK, somebody did. Probably the FBI or a related agency. But we were dedicated to their not finding out about us, so that was kind of an issue.
Anyway, Ken didn’t play football, but girls liked him – a lot – and the boys liked him because girls liked him. Ken doesn’t have the same problems I do with getting to know people so it’s difficult for me to talk to him about it.
I have, over the years, managed to cultivate a few friendships. With Mank, for example, although that was threatening to turn into something way scarier. But there was when I was studying for my master’s at Fordham I met Shelly Kroft and we’d hit it off, being the only two women in the program at the time. (There have been more since then.) I call Shelly when I need to remind myself that not everyone I meet thinks I’m a freak of nature, even if I’m a freak not so much of nature. Shelly is six feet tall and loves it.
Right now I felt the urge to call and I didn’t resist it.
‘Fran!’ Shelly always sounds happy to hear from me and I always think that’s surprising. Yeah, I know I should be in therapy but there are things I really can’t tell anybody. ‘How’s the finding-people’s-parents business?’ Shelly stayed with the law enforcement end and is now a U.S. Marshal working in Portland, Oregon.
‘It’s more the looking-for-people’s-parents-and-hoping-you’ll-find-them business,’ I pointed out. ‘What’s new in kicking down doors?’
‘It’s hell on my stiletto heels. Seriously, how are you?’
‘I’m good.’
There was a pause. ‘Are you?’
‘I’m in a moment,’ I said. ‘I had a case go sideways on me and I’m blaming myself and Ken’s being Ken.’
Shelly chuckled. ‘I can’t help you with your brother, Fran. He’s a force of nature. But the case. How bad?’
‘My client got killed.’
I could hear her digest that information. ‘OK, that’s pretty bad. What happened?’
I recounted pretty much everything about the Evelyn Bannister case except the name Evelyn Bannister, since it might not have been real anyway and I have this obsession with protecting my clients’ privacy even when they’re dead. While I was doing all that recounting I started straightening up the living room because it seemed we were going to be having company for dinner the next night. Just to spite Ken I decided to invite Aunt Margie along too.
‘So your client is dead, it’s not your fault, you’re not being paid, and you’re still investigating this because, why?’ Shelly has a very practical sense of life and besides, she’s on a full-time government salary and is probably one of the last fifteen people in the country who still has a pension plan.
‘I took her money to find her dad,’ I said. ‘I haven’t done what I’m contracted to do. So I’m doing it.’
‘Who are you gonna tell when you’ve done it?’ she asked.
‘Ken,’ I said. The living room was straightened up and didn’t look that much better.
Shelly takes me at face value and is one of the few women I know who can look me in the face, even if at the moment she was almost three thousand miles away. She took a long time to respond. ‘And you think that the name she gave you was fake, she probably wasn’t looking for her birth father, she might not even have been adopted, and on top of all that she’s dead. Am I sizing this up about right?’
‘You’ve hit it on the head,’ I admitted.
‘OK, then. What can the U.S. Marshals Service do for you?’ That’s a friend.
‘Honest, Shell, I wasn’t calling to ask you for a favor. I just needed a friendly ear.’ Immediately I felt guilty, thinking Shelly would assume I saw her just as a source of aid and information and not as a friend.
‘I know that,’ she said. ‘If I thought you were just using me I wouldn’t have picked up the phone when I saw it was you. So what can I do to help you?’
‘You can see if there have been any reported thefts in the country of a Gibson Poinsettia ukulele,’ I said. ‘I know there haven’t been any in New York but I don’t have access to records outside the city and officially, I don’t have access inside the city, either.’
‘I’ll say this for you, Fran. It’s never boring when you call.’ I could hear Shelly scribbling down the information. ‘I’ll take a look and get back to you. Because now I’m on ukulele patrol.’
‘Somebody has to be,’ I said.
SEVENTEEN
‘Thai. For sure this time,’ Rich Mankiewicz said.
‘I can’t tonight,’ I told him. ‘I’m having company for dinner.’ Of course that was true but I didn’t see any reason to explain to Mank exactly why a clinical biologist named Eve Kendall was visiting my apartment tonight for a dinner of roast chicken and risotto, which probably didn’t go together. Since when was I a master chef?
Mank didn’t react, which was good. We weren’t a couple and in my mind we weren’t officially dating. Jealousy at this point (because he didn’t know it was a middle-aged female biologist showing up at my apartment tonight) would have been overstepping by a long stride. ‘How’s Sunday night, then?’ he asked. ‘My next night off.’
‘I’ll check my calendar.’ I wasn’t sure about this whole thing and now, standing in the squad room at Mank’s with Bendix in earshot I really didn’t want to discuss it.
‘Your calendar’s in your phone,’ Mank noted.
I didn’t answer him. Enough of this witty banter; I had a purpose in this room. Now. What was it?
Oh, yeah. ‘What do you know about Detective Bernard Miller of Midtown North?’ I asked Mank. I’d tried calling Miller on the number he’d given me and gotten his voicemail seven times. I was starting to think Miller didn’t want to talk to me again and figured I should find out if it was my breath or something.
Mank shook his head. ‘Never heard of the guy,’ he said. Then without prompting he looked over at Bendix. ‘Hey, Meal.’ They call Bendix ‘Meal’ because his first name is Emil, and because he looks like he’s always just finished one. ‘You know a guy at the 19th named Miller?’
Bendix, for him, looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe. Who wants to know?’ Like I wasn’t standing right there where – let’s face it – he could definitely see me.
Mankiewicz indicated in my direction and then spread his hands in front of him toward Bendix, essentially telling me with one gesture that if I wasn’t going to answer him about dinner I could deal with the man myself. It was cruel but fair, so I walked over to Bendix.
‘I do,’ I said. ‘He’s investigating a crime that’s connected to a case of mine and he won’t answer my calls. I’m trying to figure out why.’
‘Geez, Gargantua, did the mean policeman hurt your feelings?’ Bendix probably can’t figure out why women don’t like him. Everyone else on the planet can. ‘You can’t just go up there and ask him yourself?’
I took a step closer so I could loom over Bendix a little bit more. If Shelly Kroft thought height could be an advantage I was in no position to argue. The problem was that leaning in too far would put Bendix’s chin within a few inches of my cleavage and that was the absolute last thing I needed.
‘I would, but the guy’s like you and that means he’s afraid of strong women,’ I said. ‘I could ask him all I wanted but he wouldn’t tell me anything. But if you’d prefer for me to think that you don’t know anything about it I can do that and walk away. It’s been a laugh and a half, Bendix.’ With that zinger delivered I turned to head back to Mank, who looked like he couldn’t open his mouth for fear of the gales of laughter that would undoubtedly result.
But Bendix surprised me. ‘I’m not afraid of strong women,’ he said. That part didn’t surprise me, because that’s what all men who are afraid of strong (or to be honest, any) women say. Then he added, ‘But Miller is. He’s not, you know, woke.’ Now it would be necessary for me to suppress the urge to laugh. ‘Get your buddy Mankiewicz to call him and you’ll find out more.’
Mank held up his hands like he was surrendering to a bank robber in Dodge City and turned back toward his desk. He sat down and pretended to be madly absorbed in his computer screen. He leaned in so hard I couldn’t see his face, probably because the hilarity he’d been holding back could no longer be denied.
I looked around, trying to determine how I had come to a point in my life where I had to rely upon Emil Bendix for assistance in something that was important to me. Lord, this place was depressing! The NYPD seemed to feel it was best if the people who worked for them never had so much as a sliver of sunlight or hope. Maybe that was a motivator.
Deflecting? Me? Perish the thought.
I walked over to Bendix and did not loom. ‘Would you help me please, Sergeant?’ I said as sweetly as possible, which wasn’t very sweetly at all.
‘Me? A man who hates strong women?’ Bendix was enjoying this and I had to overlook it. Or I could go home, remember that I had no living client and move on to the next thing, which as I recalled had to do with finding the birth mother of a man in his sixties because of course she’d be living and desperate to know how his life had turned out. ‘I don’t think you’d want me to step in for you.’
‘I didn’t say “hate,” Bendix.’ It was better not to reiterate what I had said, which wasn’t much better. ‘I just hoped you would be able to make a call to your friend at the 19th and ask about a case. You don’t have to mention my name at all.’ In fact, it would be better if he didn’t, but I wasn’t about to say that.
Bendix took a long look at me, but not in the leering way he usually did. That was probably due to the fact that I have a long reach and could easily have decked him, Evelyn or no Evelyn, if he’d sized me up with a glint in his eye. ‘I can do that, Gargantua. You just had to ask nicely.’
In this case, ‘nicely’ included not clocking him upside the head, so I didn’t do that. ‘Thank you,’ I managed through clenched teeth. I really didn’t want to see Mank right now, and he didn’t want me to see him if he ever wanted to kiss me again.
Since I wasn’t about to get down on my knees and genuflect, Bendix took what he’d gotten and walked over to the phone on his desk. These newfangled mobile phones were OK for some people, but not Emil Bendix.
He dialed away for a while. It was like he was calling Belgium and not an affiliated precinct maybe four miles away. Eventually the button pushing ended and Bendix waited a few moments. ‘Detective Miller,’ he said to whoever had answered the phone.
‘Barney?’ I guessed it was Miller himself who had picked up, and that meant Bendix had already made a tiny fool of himself, something I could expect only to escalate as the conversation went on, if previous experience was any indicator. ‘Oh. Sorry. Bernie. Yeah, it’s Emil Bendix from the 13th. Bendix. B-E-N … that’s right.’
Mankiewicz was holding a piece of paper up in front of his face, pretending to read it. It was shaking.
‘Yeah, I’m calling to ask about a case you’re working,’ Bendix continued, unbowed by the tidal waves of disrespect coming at him from around the room. He checked the slip of paper I’d given him with the one significant detail on it. ‘Evelyn Barrister,’ he said. Then he listened for a second. ‘Yes. Bannister. Just checking on it because we have some interest in it here in the precinct.’
All of a sudden Bendix looked stumped. ‘Why?’ he said. ‘We’re cops.’
The paper in front of Mankiewicz’s face shook harder. I scribbled something down on another piece of scrap paper from Bendix’s desk and handed it to him while a light chuckle from nearby cubicles filled the air. Bendix looked down at the paper.
‘We have a similar case and we’re trying to figure whether it’s a copycat or the same perp,’ he said, reading in a tone that a fourth-grader might have used in a school play about why racism is bad. Which, for the record, it really, really is. ‘No, it hasn’t hit the system yet. We’re not really sure. Wanted to check on yours first.’
Like I said, I just jotted it down. I didn’t promise it would be brilliant.
It took a long moment for Bendix to do anything except stand there with his mouth open for no particular reason. But eventually he said, ‘Yeah. Strychnine. We haven’t gotten the screen back from the ME yet but it could be. Did you hear anything about a guy with a limp in his left leg?’ You have to trust me; I did not feed Bendix the guy with the limp in his left leg. Bendix has been on the job for decades and still thinks all criminals are in some way deformed and scary to look at. Still, it was a good way – whether he intended it to be or not – to get more information out of Miller.
‘No guy with one leg?’ Bendix pretended to sound surprised. And now his imaginary suspect had a complete leg missing. ‘What does your suspect look like?’ He nodded, like Miller could see him, and reached on to his desk blindly, holding the phone up to his face with his chin. I handed him the wad of scrap paper and a pen. How the man got dressed in the morning all by himself was something of a mystery. He immediately started scribbling madly without acknowledging me in any way. ‘How do you think they got the poison into her?’ More scribbling. ‘Uh-huh. And was anybody else in the apartment as far as you know? Yeah. No, just one last thing. There’s like a valuable guitar or a violin or something that was missing? A what? You’re kidding. So where did that end up? Any idea? OK.’ Bendix had filled about four pages of scrap paper, proving that he could write and talk at the same time. I would not have bet on that before he picked up the phone. ‘What’s that? Our guy? No, it doesn’t sound like a match. Our guy got shot.’
Mankiewicz’s head dropped down almost at a ninety-degree angle from his shoulders and he was shaking it.
‘Yeah well, thanks for the help. Feel free. Take care, Barney. Bernie. Right.’ Bendix hung up the phone.
For three desks in every direction the detectives stood up and applauded.
I turned and looked at them, mostly at Mank. ‘Yeah, go ahead,’ I said. ‘But Bendix was the only one who offered to help me.’ The cops sat down and started looking at their screens again.
Bendix, surprisingly, did not seem to appreciate my grand gesture. He glowered at me and flattened his mouth out. ‘They were applauding me,’ he said. ‘After what I did for you, I’d think you’d at least let me enjoy the moment.’
‘They were—’ I stopped myself. Let him have his delusion if it got me the information I needed. ‘Sorry, Bendix. What did Detective Miller say?’
‘I’m not sure I’m going to tell you now.’
Really? He was going to be a six-year-old? I looked back around the room. ‘Another round of applause for Meal Bendix!’ I shouted. All the cops, including Mank (who smiled at me, understanding), got up and clapped again.
This seemed to placate Our Hero and after everyone got back to whatever it was the city of New York was paying them to do he sat down behind his desk and shuffled the pieces of paper in his hands.
‘Your friend Miller says they don’t have a whole lot on the murder you’re asking about,’ he said. ‘The woman in question was probably injected with strychnine after being hit on the head and landing on the rug.’
‘I knew that already,’ I told him.
Bendix looked up, annoyed. ‘You want to hear this or not? Because I have real cases I can be working on.’
‘You’re right. Sorry.’ That was the third time I’d apologized to Bendix today, beating the record I’d had up until this day by three times. ‘Please. Tell me what you found out.’
Bendix nodded, accepting his overdue respect. ‘They’ve canvassed the victim’s floor and the ones above and below it but nobody heard or saw anything. They haven’t been able to find any survivors, and the ID in the woman’s purse didn’t check out, although it was a really good fake. You figure she just wanted to get into some bars and she wasn’t twenty-one?’
‘Evelyn Bannister – or whoever she was – was easily in her thirties, Bendix. She was carrying fake ID because she didn’t want anyone to know who she really was.’ Had I overstepped? Would Bendix now clam up and pout?
‘I knew that, Gargantua. I was being sarcastic.’ Of course he was. The man has to save face on a daily basis and keeps saving that one. It boggles the mind. ‘Anyway, they’re working on who she was. No prints in the system match hers, so she never got arrested or applied for a government job and she was never in the military. What were you doing for her?’
