Nice Place for a Murder Read online

  Arthur Brody folded his hands on the desk in front of him. “Yes. You can and you will. I know you’re only involved in this because Roger Teague has pressured you to do it. The best you’ll get from Teague is that he pays up what he owes you. I think it’s only fair that we, how do they say? sweeten the pot for you. You, personally, that is, not Empire Security.” He opened a drawer in his desk, took out an envelope and pushed it across to me. “This is fifty thousand dollars. All cash. It’s a partial payment on your fee of one hundred thousand dollars for special security consulting. You’ll receive the fifty thousand balance when Sosenko is caught. Or killed, if that’s the way it turns out.”

  “Killed? You expect me to kill Sosenko for you?”

  “Of course not. But, as you say, he’s a brutal son-of-a-bitch with a gun. And you are armed too, are you not?”

  “And push could come to shove, is that it?”

  “There’s always that possibility.”

  “I don’t think I want to do this,” I said. “Got the feeling I’ll end up in jail, or very cold on a gurney. Anyway, I’m an investigator — retired — not an assassin.”

  “You might want to think this through a bit more clearly, Mr. Seidenberg.”

  “Oh?”

  “Just consider, if you abandon the case, Julian Communications fires Empire as its security agency, and then Teague writes you off. So you lose. But if you bring this case to a quiet conclusion, Empire stays, Teague pays you what he owes you, and we give you an extra fifty thousand that Teague knows nothing about. You win.” He came around the desk and stood there in front of me, perfectly composed, every hair in place. “Take the envelope."

  “Only if you understand I’m not going to hunt Sosenko down and kill him for you. My line is security, that’s all.”

  “Understood.” With the forefinger of one hand, he carefully pushed the envelope to the edge of the desk, closer to me. I took it and tucked it into my breast pocket.

  I grew uneasy having Brody look down at me, so I stood to face him. “Does Ingo Julian know about this?”

  “Why do you ask?” he said.

  “Word is you two don’t talk much anymore. If you have a problem with each other, I don’t want to be in the middle of it.”

  “We have some serious differences of opinion. But not on this. We’re agreed that this IPO has to happen. It will make Ingo very, very rich.”

  “And you?”

  “It will only make me very rich.” He held out his hand and I shook it. “Stay connected to Hector,” he said. “Let him know everything.”

  I stepped into the corridor wondering whether to somehow start tracking Sosenko or to grab a taxi to JFK airport and get on a plane for Sri Lanka. In just a few days I’d gone from contented fisherman to the object of a no-way-out manipulation, squeezed first by Roger Teague and now by Arthur Brody. Teague was on his way to meet me at the library right now, to buy me a hot dog and pump me for information. Should I tell him about Brody?

  I had very little time to ponder these issues. Because I spied Sosenko’s dirty jeans as soon as I entered the waiting area. He was sitting near the elevators, the only person in an island of leather chairs and glass coffee tables. I couldn’t see his face or upper body because he held a newspaper up in front of himself, but you couldn’t miss the tattoos. Tilted against the chair in which he sat was a large black portfolio case.

  Big enough to hold a rifle, I thought.

  I approached him slowly, feeling under my jacket for the gun at my hip. He sensed me coming. He looked over the top of his paper, then threw it aside and rose in an instant. He grabbed the portfolio case, ran to the exit sign at the far end of the waiting area, opened the fire door and disappeared through it, all before I could free my gun from its holster.

  I made an awkward run after him and pulled the door open. He was gone from my view, but I could hear his footsteps echoing down the stairwell.

  Couldn’t stop now. My heart threatening to make trouble. And thirty-five floors to the street.

  CHAPTER X

  It took me only two labored flights of stairs to confirm that a fifty-six-year-old with angina didn’t have a chance of catching a forty-one-year-old who was fit, determined and mean. There was no question who would win this sprint down to the ground floor. Already Sosenko’s clattering on the stairs grew fainter as he pulled away from me. In another minute it would be a runaway for him.

  What I needed most was help, somebody waiting in the lobby to grab him when he finally appeared. But there was no help. It was just me chasing Sosenko in a high building, as in a bad dream. With the instant clarity that comes with desperation, I saw that my only chance to nail him was to make it to the lobby before he did. If he got there first, he’d be out the door onto Park, or maybe Forty-Eighth.

  That meant my taking the elevator, and trying to get to the bottom while he was still dashing down the stairs. I had no way of knowing whether he’d short circuit me by taking the elevator route, too, but he hadn’t yet, because I continued to hear him in the stairwell below me.

  OK, new game plan. A poor chance, but better than none. Not that I really had a choice any more. Every breath was a struggle, and continuing the chase on foot was no longer an option.

  The sign on the stairwell door said I was at the thirty-second floor. I pulled the door open and stepped from the dim light into a multi-colored expanse of Tokyo that had somehow been transplanted into midtown Manhattan. There was neon everywhere, reflected in polished chrome panels. The largest spelled out Doi Electronics in blue and white. An adjacent wall was made up entirely of TV monitors, floor to ceiling, with images of electronic devices and abstract shapes shifting in changing patterns to music. This waiting area was beyond dazzling, but the men waiting in it couldn’t have been drearier, all in their dark suits, with attaché cases close at hand, staring patiently ahead. All were Asian, Japanese, I thought. Two more Japanese men stood waiting for an elevator, scanning the floor indicators above the six sets of doors.

  I suspected the gun in my hand might be misunderstood, so I tucked it away. I hurried toward the bank of elevators, while my heart continued to issue serious warnings, and joined the two men who were waiting. I saw that both the up and the down call buttons were lit, and said a silent prayer that the down elevator would come first.

  Which it did. An elevator arrived and the down button went dark. All three of us stepped inside, making me wonder, if we were all going down, who had pushed the up button? Instantly one of my elevator companions, a short man with a narrow, doleful face, began hammering with his closed hand on the destination button for the forty-first floor. The door to our car closed, then opened, then closed again. And the car began to rise.

  The short man’s face wrinkled into an unattractive smile. The little shit was beaming because he’d outwitted the control system, and made a down elevator go up, instead. I felt a strong inclination to take out my gun and stick it in his nose, but I knew that while it would make me feel better, it wouldn’t get me to the ground floor any faster. Instead, I made my angriest face and said, “I have to go down. Down, not up.”

  The man smiled again and said something in Japanese. The other man stepped in to translate. “He says thank you for being patient. He must get to important meeting.”

  “Tell him to go fuck himself.”

  The translator was horrified. “I cannot tell him that.”

  “Why not? You didn’t want to go up, either, did you?” The frustration wasn’t doing my arteries any good.

  “That is not a reason to be impolite,” he said. “One must have patience.”

  Yeah, right. Patience is my middle name. What floor was Sosenko passing now, I wondered as the door to our car opened on forty-one and the little shit got out, then turned and made a barely perceptible bow toward us.

  “You see,” the translator said, as the door closed and we began to descend, “he honors us for helping him.”

  “In that case, you did right by not telling hi
m to go fuck himself,” I said. I massaged my chest and took a deep breath, hoping I could somehow coax my circulatory system back to some shade of normal before we got to the ground floor. The process didn’t seem to work.

  We stopped at thirty-nine, thirty-one and twenty-seven. At each floor the doors opened but nobody was there, despite the fact that it was lunchtime, a period when elevators are normally in demand. There are people in this world who push buttons to make elevators stop, just for the sheer hell of it.

  The rest of the ride was an express. When the doors finally opened in the building lobby, my friendly translator scurried away without looking back, obviously pleased to escape from me. How long had it taken, this ride with its unscheduled detour and false stops? Was Sosenko still on his way down, or already out one of the doors and now three blocks away? Was it possible he took the elevator route and had even more delays than I did? Maybe his elevator had to stop at every floor. Or maybe he’s still in the stairwell. Many possibilities.

  Ah-so.

  I looked around me. Elevators were opening, and passengers hurrying out. I thought if I stood where I was, in front of the elevators and within sight of the stairwell exit, Sosenko just might pass by on his way to the Park Avenue doors. Then I would — what? Slug him? Shoot him? I’d deal with that. Find him first.

  Trouble was, these weren’t the only elevators. This bank serviced just the top floors, twenty-three through forty-two. Those that went from the ground to twenty-two were across the lobby, on the other side of a marble partition. What if Sosenko had cut out of the stairwell and taken an elevator at a lower floor? Then he’d most likely leave through the Forty-Eighth Street exit. If I stood where I was, I’d never see him. There was no vantage point where I could watch it all at once. The lobby was simply too big.

  I decided to play the odds and stay put. Watching the stairwell exit plus a bank of elevators was a better bet than watching a bank of elevators alone. Nice reasoning, but sorry, no payoff. Ten minutes and hundreds of people passed, but not one of them was Hick Sosenko.

  It didn’t look as though today was my day to grab a piece of Sosenko, or get to feel just a little bit worthy of the fifty thousand dollars in my pocket. But I glanced out toward Park Avenue and all that changed.

  There he was, standing just outside the Park exit looking in, distorted through the curved glass of the revolving door enclosures. But it was Sosenko, no question. The brazen son-of-a-bitch stood there holding the big portfolio case, as if waiting for me to spot him, daring me to chase him.

  I headed for the door. He waited till I was halfway there, as though he was giving me a handicap, before he walked off to the right, down Park toward the Helmsley Building. He wasn’t running from me. He was taunting me, staying just ahead of me, defying me to follow him.

  Which I did, willing myself to run the first few steps down Park until my constricting arteries screamed an order to stop, which I considered, then disobeyed. Instead, I made what I thought was a necessary compromise, and slowed to a walk. I couldn’t go any faster, but I refused to stop. Best I could do.

  Some chase. Sosenko dancing around up ahead, turning every ten seconds to make sure I was still there, and me dragging myself doggedly along after him, hoping this wouldn’t end with giving him the satisfaction of watching me expire on a crowded New York sidewalk, without a shot being fired.

  He crossed Forty-Sixth Street and entered one of the open pedestrian arcades that runs through the Helmsley Building. I followed, stiff-legged and wobbly, my arms swinging wide in an effort to maintain what little momentum I had, breathing heavily through my wide open mouth, perspiration pouring off my face. People were gaping at me. You don’t see something every day as grotesque as I was.

  By the time I emerged through the arcade onto Forty-Fifth, Sosenko was entering the Met Life Building across the street, holding a door open and waiting for me to get closer before he slipped inside and let the door shut behind him. Drawing me on, the bastard, hoping I’d cave in. Fat chance. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  But how did he know he could play this game with me? Did he take a look at me and figure I was too old and fat to give him any serious competition? Or did somebody who knew tip him off about my little cardiac problem? And why would he take the trouble to goad me, anyway? Maybe for the same reason malicious little boys pull the wings off of flies.

  I crossed Forty-Fifth and stumbled into the packed Met Life lobby. The building was emptying out for lunch, and the foot traffic was against me. I thought I saw Sosenko bobbing up ahead as he bucked the traffic, too, but when I finally reached the back end of the lobby, and the crowd began to clear, I couldn’t find him. Only one place he could be now, down one of the escalators into Grand Central Station. Yes, and there he was, already standing at the bottom, on the edge of Grand Central’s cavernous main concourse, looking up, waiting for me. I stepped on an escalator filled with people, watching Sosenko as I descended. He actually grinned at me, pointing first one way, then another, then another. Which way should we go now? No way you can catch me, but keep on trying. Till you drop.

  He was on the move again. By the time I stepped off the escalator, he was starting down a stairway that led to the lower concourse.

  What now? A tour of Grand Central? Out onto Lexington Avenue? Uptown to the Museum of Modern Art? Was he betting the chase would do me in, or was he deliberately leading me to a convenient place to kill me himself?

  Sosenko could keep up this craziness a lot longer than I could. And even if I did manage to catch up to him, what could I do? Pull my gun and make a citizen’s arrest? He’d open that portfolio case, take out the rifle I knew was in it, and we’d have our own private war on the East Side of Manhattan.

  I couldn’t stay with him much longer. My legs weighed three hundred pounds. Each. My fingers tingled. My eyes hurt. And there was a sense of dread I’d never felt before. If I cashed in right here, right now, it wouldn’t be for lack of my body’s warnings.

  I stopped. I told myself discretion was the better part of valor. I told myself I’d like to go back to Long Island and make love to Alicia. I told myself I’d get Sosenko soon, anyway. Let him go.

  I turned and got on an up escalator, drained but relieved, feeling the knots inside me begin to ease, just a little. My watch told me it was 1:25. Which meant that Teague had been pacing in front of the library, watching for me, for nearly a half hour. By now he would be, as Wally Prager liked to say, red-faced and bug-eyed.

  Tough.

  Back through the Met Life lobby and out onto Forty-Fifth, then west to Fifth Avenue. Walking slowly, breathing deeply.

  He’d doubled back and followed me. I felt his hand on my shoulder when I stopped for a red light at Fifth and Forty-Third. “Hey, fat-ass, don’t you want to play no more?” Sosenko said, his voice higher than a man who looked like that should have. “You’re pitiful, you know that? Gonna put you outta your fuckin misery. Pretty soon, now.” He didn’t just look dirty, he smelled dirty.

  “We know who you are,” I said. “We know what you’re doing. We’re going to track you down and you just might make me kill you.”

  “Well, I’m standin next to you right now, old man. Your big fuckin chance. Why don’t you take out your piece and blow me away?” Another surprise: his laugh was a kind of juvenile giggle, high-pitched and discordant. “Better lock your doors,” he said. He made a face, and turned back up Fifth Avenue. I walked on, quite certain now that I didn’t know half of this story yet.

  I could see Teague standing in front of the library with his fists on his hips. “Forty-five minutes I’ve been standing here,” he announced while I was just barely within shouting distance. “You really go out of your way to piss me off, Seidenberg.”

  Just what I needed.

  CHAPTER XI

  It’s not easy to tell when Roger Teague is truly angry, because even when he isn’t exploding, he looks as if he’s going to. His face is florid all the time, and you can see the veins at hi
s temples. It’s as though everything inside him is under great pressure. You get the notion that blood could easily spurt from around his eyes, though I’ve never actually seen it happen. Being near him is like walking through a minefield. There’s always the sense that something terrible is going to happen.

  I suspected that right now he was truly angry, though. I think it was the way he beat the air with his closed fists to punctuate what he said. “Forty-five minutes marching back and forth in front of the New York Public Library while you, what? take your goddamn time strolling down Fifth Avenue. I saw you. Couldn’t move your ass much slower, could you?”

  “You saw me coming?” I said.

  “Crawling along. Let Teague wait, right? What you thought?”

  “You saw me talking to that grimy guy with the black portfolio case, then.”

  “Got time to talk to every bum while you keep me waiting. Yeah, I saw. So what?”

  “So what? So what is, his name is Hick Sosenko,” I told him. “He’s the sweet guy who killed David Newalis. Pulled him under water and drowned him, right in front of Ingo Julian’s house on Shelter Island. Since then he took a shot at Lisa Harper, one of Ingo’s inner circle. Been stalking Arthur Brody. Oh, and incidentally, tried to take me out a couple of times. ”

  “What? And you were just standing there chatting with him?”

  “I wouldn’t say chatting, exactly. I was telling him I’d have to kill him.”

  “But you what? let him walk away?

  “I know I should have shot him right there on the corner, Teague. But there were too many witnesses.”

  “The hell’s the matter with you?” he said. God, he looked tacky. Gold all over him, big ring, chain bracelet, heavy necklace lying against the tufts of chest hair peeking out of his open white shirt. I never looked like that when I ran the company. Maybe I should have. Maybe that’s how clients want an investigator to look.