AUGUST 2017
His world had been turned upside down over the winter. His parents, my brother and his wife, were killed in a car accident on a snowy night in Westchester County, and I gave the fifteen-year-old a choice—come live with me or go through the system for the next three years. I like to think he made the smart move. Not that living with me is a cakewalk, not by any means. I like my routine, am set in my ways, and I don’t like change of any kind.
I should mention I’m also an ex-cop, got shot off the job closing in on two years now, along with my best friend and partner, Frank “Pearl” Monroe. The guys on the job call what happened to me and Pearl “cop lotto.” Our wounds come with a three-quarter tax-free pension for life along with great health insurance that comes minus a tab. But trust me, as nice as it sounds, it’s not worth the damage done to get it. Especially not when it comes to Pearl, sentenced as he is to life in a wheelchair.
It took a while, but I put together a good life for myself, one that works for me. Sure, I miss the job, hunting down a top-tier dealer or a homicidal thug, breaking down a case, putting all the pieces together until they fit. An old cop once told me that putting on that uniform and heading out on a tour was like “being given a front-row ticket to the greatest and most exciting show on earth. There’s nothing in the world like it. You piss and moan while you’re in the middle of it and you miss it like you would a great lover when it’s taken away.” Truer words.
Chris walked toward me, basketball cradled under his right arm. He was a handsome kid, long brown hair, eyes alert and always taking everything in, an easy manner to him, at least most of the time. Teenage boys have mood swings that can make your head spin if you make any effort to keep track of them. Luckily, I don’t.
He’s a crime buff, my nephew. Watches all the shows—both the dramas and the ones on the Discovery Channel—reads the books, sees the movies, studies newspaper and magazine articles like they’re the SATs. He even belongs to an online chat group that works toward solving old cases. He’s Sherlock Holmes minus the silly hat, the pipe, and the drug habit.
He also doesn’t believe his parents’ death was an accident. He’s convinced they were murdered, set up by the accounting firm where my brother worked. Chris is a whiz with a computer, can find sites and dig up information with speed and accuracy. He did such an impressive job on his theory, piling up facts and details missing from the police, medical, and insurance reports, that it convinced me, against my sounder judgment, to look into the firm and see if they were indeed dirty.
I still catch cases every now and then, usually handed my way by Chief of Detectives Ray Connors. The two of us go back to our early days in uniform, and he’s a trusted and valued friend. He doles out a case that’s deemed too cold or throws a call my way when the department is stretched too thin, and I work it with Pearl and a team I’ve assembled in the years since I’ve been off the job. You’ll get to know them all soon enough.
This case, the one dealing with my brother, is the first time I’ve brought one to the chief’s attention. He read through my nephew’s reports and gave me the go-ahead to take a deeper look.
“Did you get a chance to read the new file?” Chris asked. His voice was in the middle of the bridge that would take him from boy to man.
I nodded. “Last night. Pretty thorough, as I expected. The accounting firm where your dad worked was no doubt cutting corners and skimming from clients. That part’s clear.”
“Which part isn’t?”
“It’s a big leap, Chris, to go from that to pinning them down for killing your father,” I said. “Cheating and stealing is one thing. Murder? That’s a whole other arena. I’m not saying they’re not capable of it. Truth is, everybody is.”
“Then what are you saying?” Chris asked.
“I need to see more,” I said. “We all do. A stronger piece of evidence would be nice. What you put together in the files you’ve worked on is enough to rouse my suspicion. The chief’s, as well. Makes it worth our while to take a look at the firm. But we’re still missing enough evidence to corner them.”
“They doctored the brakes on the car,” Chris said. “That was in the first file I gave you.”
“Somebody doctored the brakes,” I said. “I doubt any of the accounting partners got under the front end and played with the lining.”
Chris shook his head. “Everyone who worked at my dad’s firm parked in the same garage,” he said. “It’s a park-and-lock. Cars are left there all hours of the night. It doesn’t take much time to split the lining and play with the electronics system.”
“Look,” I said, “I’m not saying I don’t buy your theory. Truth is, I do. But we have to tie it together, see if one loose end connects to another. If the accounting firm did anything to lead to the death of your mom and dad, we will take them down. That I promise.”
Chris nodded, lowered his head, and flipped the basketball from one hand to the other. There are times I forget that, as sharp as he is, he’s still a kid. A kid who took a hard blow, losing both his parents and seeing the world he knew and loved left in the rearview mirror.
“I’m sorry about what happened to your mom and dad,” I said. “And I’m sorry my brother is dead. And if these bastards are the ones who killed them, then I’m going to make them sorry, very sorry, for what they did.”
“Where will you start?”
“I need to see them up close,” I said. “Get inside, get a feel for how far they’ll go to keep a good thing going. And you can only do that with a face-to-face.”
“But they’ll know by your last name that you’re connected to my dad,” Chris said. “They’ll never agree to an appointment with his brother. Especially one who used to be a cop.”
“I’m the executor of your dad’s estate,” I said. “I’ll be going in to tie up loose ends. See if there’s anything they have of your dad’s. Vacation days that should be paid out, OT he might be owed. Like that. I won’t be there long, just long enough to get a sense of who it is I’m dealing with.”
“So you’re not going in to ask them to take you on as a client?”
“Not at all,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean we leave that side of the table empty. We send somebody else for that. Somebody from our little crew that these guys will not only think has money to toss around but that he’ll be doing it with cash. The kind of cash he doesn’t want too many to know he has. They’ll know enough about him to be too nervous to mess with his dough, but they will want his business.”
“Why?”
“It opens another potentially lucrative door for them,” I said. “If they make one guy with plenty of cash happy, think how giddy they can make his friends. We don’t know for sure if these guys have blood on their hands. It looks that way, but we’re not nailed-down certain of it. But we do know they’re snakes. I’m just going to put a little mongoose in their path and see how deadly the snakes are.”