ONE OF HER BIG, BLUE EYES—the left one—was gazing directly at me. But that haunted look I’d seen in those eyes was gone now. It had been replaced by a shocked, unblinking stare. And her right eye wasn’t even there anymore. The bullet took it out before it went straight through her brain and blew out the back of her head.
She was lying on her back on the steamy tar roof with the hot sun beating down on her. Her arms were spread wide, palms facing the sky. Her tanned legs had splayed rather awkwardly as she fell. It was not her best look. Even so, a crime scene photographer stood over her shooting her from this angle and that for one final pictorial gallery. She was still an object of fascination. The camera loved her.
“I—I told her, stay off the roof,” Rita sobbed as Mom and I stood there trying to console her. “After we worked out together in your apartment, I told her do not come up here.”
“I told her the very same thing, Rita.” I put my arms around her and hugged her. She towered over me in her high-heeled sandals. “It’s not your fault.”
“It’s not your fault,” Mom echoed softly.
“She kept telling me h-how much she hated being cooped up. She wanted to see the sky.”
“She liked to be able to see the sky,” I said. “You didn’t hear the shot?”
Mom shook her head. “Not over all of our street noise. Not with my AC on.”
“I should have stayed there with her,” Rita went on. “I shouldn’t have left her by herself.”
“Rita, you had no way of knowing what would happen.”
“Bunny’s right, Rita.”
“She wasn’t a bad kid,” Rita sniffled.
“Boso was a good kid,” Mom agreed. “And she was smart. She would have made something of herself.”
“It’s going to be okay, Rita.”
Rita breathed in and out raggedly. “No, it’s not. It’s never going to be okay.”
Legs stood over near Boso’s body with his face drawn into a tight grimace. All of the bluster had gone out of Gino Cimoli. He looked quite ill. Jack Dytman looked defeated and glum. Sue Herrera just looked pissed off. The roof was crowded with people. An EMS crew was still there. So were a half-dozen cops, the crime scene technicians and the photographer. I wondered if our building’s tired old roof could handle so much weight. I wondered if we’d all go crashing down into my apartment below. It wouldn’t be such a bad thing, really. The fall might kill me and put me out of my misery.
“What a damned shame,” Dytman said, shaking his head.
Legs said, “I swear to God, Cimoli. If I find out that you leaked this to Cricket O’Shea I’ll—”
“I didn’t,” Cimoli insisted. “It wasn’t me.”
Dytman craned his itchy neck. “What a damned shame.”
“If you say that one more time,” Sue informed him, “I will throw you off this roof.”
“How did the shooter get here so fast?” I asked Legs. “He took her out, what, forty minutes after Cricket posted it on her site?”
“The Minettas wanted this girl gone,” Legs said, thumbing his goatee. “My guess? They had shooters who were cruising different parts of the city just waiting to be green-lighted.” He looked around at the high-rise apartment buildings that surrounded us on Broadway and on West 103rd Street. “I’m seeing at least eight buildings he could have shot her from. Judging by those entry and exit wounds in her head I’d say he used an M4 sniper rifle. It fires a 5.56 NATO, by way of the .223 Remington. Your standard Special Forces sniper weapon. We can study the angle of the wounds and calculate the trajectory. We’ll locate where the shot came from. But I guarantee you he left no trace evidence behind. No shell casing. No fingerprints. No nothing. And no one will remember seeing him. He probably showed up wearing maintenance overalls, his weapon stuffed in a duffel bag. Found himself a nice, quiet hallway window. Or maybe the roof. Was out of there sixty seconds after he took her down. He’ll be halfway to Philadelphia or Providence by now—unless he lives in the ’burbs and has a perfectly respectable cover identity.” He glanced at me, his knee jiggling, jiggling. “This is how a pro operates.”
“As opposed to the Morrie Frankel shooting, you mean?”
“Exactly.”
“So you think it’s a different shooter?”
“I don’t think it. I know it.” Legs looked over at Rita. She’d burst into tears again. Mom had her arms around her. “How’s she doing?”
“Not so good.”
“She’s lucky that Boso came up here, you know. So’s Abby. He would have gone for a window shot if she hadn’t. You could have lost more than just her.”
“No need to tell me that,” I said quietly. I knew perfectly well how close I’d come to losing the two people in the world who I cared about the most.
Legs motioned for me to follow him away from the others. Then he put his hands on my shoulders and said, “Are you okay?”
“Legs, she’d still be alive if I hadn’t butted in . She’d be up on credit card fraud charges with the others but she’d be alive. But no, I had to drag her away from that place and play the white knight. I got her killed.”
“She got herself killed. You were doing a job. You were paid to find her. You found her. What happened after that isn’t on you. Hell, if you’re looking for someone to blame then blame me. I knew you were holding out on me when you swore you had no idea where she was. I could have grabbed you by the scruff of the neck and forced the truth out of you.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“Because your dad taught me that you’ve got to let a man do things his own way.”
“I should have just left her alone.”
“You could have,” he acknowledged. “But that would have made you a heartless schmuck, and you’re not. You’re one of the good guys, little bud.”
“If I’m one of the good guys then how come my client and the girl who he hired me to find are both dead?”
“You tried. Listen to what I’m saying, because if your dad was standing here right now he’d tell you the exact same thing. It didn’t work out but you tried. That’s all you can do. You drag yourself out of bed every morning and you try. So don’t get down on yourself, okay? I’ll take over from here. You’re all done now.”
I stared at him long and hard before I said, “No, I’m not.”
* * *
IT TOOK ME A WHILE to find her.
First I tried the offices of a couple of big time producers where I knew she liked to hang out during business hours. Then I tried Joe Allen’s. Then Bruno Anthony’s. Then I began working my way up and down West 45th Street, my eyes flicking this way and that. When I finally spotted her in her pink T-shirt, black jeans and white go-go boots she was bopping her way across Shubert Alley, yapping into one iPhone while she thumbed out a tweet on the other, so absorbed in what she was doing that she didn’t even notice me.
Not until I grabbed her by her pale arms and slammed her against the wall of the Booth Theatre.
“Ow, Benji, that hurt! And since when do you like it rough?”
“Who tipped you off?”
“Let me call you back,” she said into the phone before she rang off, grinning at me impishly. “I’m liking this new beastie-boy thing you’ve got going on. You were always a little too gentle, if you want to know the truth.”
“Who told you, Cricket?”
“Told me what, cutie?”
“That Boso was hiding out at our office.”
“Why are you asking?”
“Because a sniper just shot her right through the eye. It was a professional hit. And it wasn’t pretty. And it was your fault. You tipped them off. Who told you where she was?”
Cricket gulped. “Jonquil Beausoleil is dead?”
“Severely dead.”
“Unfucking real…” Her little thumbs promptly went to work on one of her phones. “Hang with me for just one sec because I have got to put this out there.”
I wrenched both phones from her grasp and hurled them out into the middle of West 45th Street, where they were instantly run over by cabs.
“Benji, that was my whole office!” she cried out.
“Who’s your source?”
“You know I can’t give up my source. I’d be violating my ethics.”
“Cricket, I’ve known you since we were freshmen together. You don’t have any ethics.”
“That was an awful thing to say to me, Benji. I know you’re upset, but that was just totally mean. Besides, it was a nothing one-liner. A throwaway. I must post a hundred of them a day.”
“Yeah? Well, this one got a girl killed. The Minetta family thought she ratted them out. I was trying to get her into protective custody before they could find her. They didn’t know where she was. Not until you told them. And then they shot her dead. You don’t get it, do you? You’re like a kid playing in a sandbox. Except these people aren’t playing. They use real ammo. And that girl is really dead. Boso doesn’t live here anymore. Tell me who tipped you off.”
She shook her head at me. “No can do. Sorry.”
“Cricket, I want you to look into my eyes, okay? I want you to understand that I am being totally serious. Tell me who your source is right now or I swear to you that I will devote the rest of my life to making sure that you are toast in this city. You’ll have no career. You’ll have no friends. You’ll be a dead woman walking.” My eyes locked on to hers and held them tight. “Tell me who tipped you off. Tell me right fucking now or so help me I’ll destroy you. I mean it. Tell me, Cricket.”
Cricket told me.
* * *
“WHEN YOUR CHILD GETS INTO TROUBLE you don’t stop loving him. You love him more, because he needs you more.” She was boxing up all of those framed, autographed photos of pimply-faced Morrie standing backstage with Broadway’s biggest stars of yesteryear. She was very calm and composed in her trimly cut pale yellow linen dress. She had politely offered me a cup of coffee. I had politely declined. “Charlie is hoping to be a chef someday. He’s taking classes. He tries. He really does. But he gets so frustrated by little setbacks. And he’s had substance abuse problems. Practically every penny I’ve made has gone toward trying to keep him out of trouble and clean. He used to tend bar at Barrymore’s, that nice little restaurant that was on West 44th Street. Do you remember it?”
“Yes, I do.”
“One of his coworkers, a waitress, claimed that Charlie tried to rape her in the kitchen one night after closing. She was going to go to the police. I convinced her to take ten thousand dollars from me instead, and Charlie went into drug rehab. It was all handled very quietly. But your friend Cricket got wind of it because the girl was one of those ambitious young actresses who are always talking to her, hoping to get a nice mention. You know how that works.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Cricket was planning to run an item about it,” Leah said as she removed more of Morrie’s photos from the living room wall, leaving one sooty outline after another behind. They’d been hanging there forever. “When she called me for a comment I begged her not to run it. I told her she’d be ruining the life of a decent young man who was trying so very, very hard. Charlie’s not a sexual predator, Benji. He’s just weak. Cricket agreed to sit on the story if I agreed to feed her choice morsels of information that I happen to hear about. I did agree, for Charlie’s sake, and she’s been holding it over me ever since. If I hear something, I’m supposed to call her—or else. And so I do. I’m the one who told her that Morrie and Henderson got into a lover’s quarrel over Matthew Puntigam. She got that story from me after Morrie came to me with tears streaming down his face. And I told her what you said to me on the phone this morning—that Jonquil Beausoleil was in safe hands and that I didn’t have to worry about her.”
“So you were doing Cricket’s legwork for her when you called me.”
“Yes, I was,” Leah admitted. “And I regret it terribly. But she leaves me no choice, Benji. I had no idea what would happen to that poor girl. She was so young, and none of this was her fault.”
“Let’s not talk about her, okay? I didn’t tell you where she was, Leah. How did Cricket figure out that she was stashed at my place?”
“Because Cricket knows you. She called you a softy and a sap and a number of other names that led me to believe that you two have a history together.” Leah looked at me searchingly. “Were you and Cricket romantically involved?”
“Let’s not talk about her either. Let’s talk about you. Why don’t you have a seat, Leah?”
“All right.” She sat down on a sofa, her bony, translucent hands folded in her lap. “What would you like to know?”
There was a knock at the door.
“That’ll be for me.” I went to the door and opened it.
Legs stood there in the hallway with an intense, feral look on his face. “What’s so urgent?” he demanded.
“Come on in.”
He came on in, clenching and unclenching his jaw.
“Why, good afternoon, Lieutenant,” Leah said to him pleasantly.
“I asked the lieutenant to join us, Leah. You don’t mind if he’s here while we talk, do you?”
“Of course not. Why would I mind? Would you like some coffee, Lieutenant? I can make a fresh pot.”
“No, thanks.”
“Your timing was excellent, Legs. Leah was just about to tell me why she did it.”
“Did what?”
“Kill Morrie.”
Leah looked up at me like a panicked animal, then down at the worn rug. “What on earth are you talking about?”
I sat on the sofa across the coffee table from her. Legs stayed on his feet, his ripped, veiny arms folded in front of his chest. “Joe Minetta is a loan shark. He wanted Morrie alive, not dead. Ira Gottfried is a cold-blooded shark, too. But he’s also a very patient man. All he had to do was wait for Morrie to implode and then pick up his leavings. He didn’t have to hire a hit man to bump him off. But the attack on Morrie wasn’t a professional job. My friend Legs here knew that right away. A professional wouldn’t have shot Morrie on 42nd Street in broad daylight in front of so many witnesses. No, Morrie’s shooting was the work of a small-time lowlife. Someone like, say, your son Charlie.”
“I ran his sheet on my way over here,” Legs said, leafing through his notepad. “Charles Nelson Shimmel has two priors. One for possession with intent to sell, the other for breaking and entering. He served eighteen months on the B and E.”
“Mind you, a good deal of careful planning did go into Morrie’s murder,” I continued. “And that points to someone with an organized mind. Someone like you, Leah. Morrie’s shooter was smallish and on the slim side. That was you in the hoody and sweats, wasn’t it? Charlie was behind the wheel. You did it together.”
Leah didn’t dispute this. Didn’t say anything at all. Just sat there on the sofa, calmly and quietly.
“Why did you do it, Leah?”
“Why?” Her lower lip began to quiver. “You’re just a kid. You don’t know a damned thing about life. You can’t possibly understand.”
“Help me to understand. I’d really like to.”
“So would I,” Legs said. “But if you want to wait for your lawyer…”
“My lawyer is dead, Lieutenant. Morrie was my lawyer. We were a team. Do you understand what that means? It was us against the world since we were fifteen years old.” Leah’s eyes were moist now. She was fighting back tears. “Morrie trusted no one in the whole wide world except for me. And I trusted no one but him. We fought together, side by side, for forty-seven years. And, my God, we did great things together. Not so long ago we had four hit shows running at once. We ruled Broadway. And would you like to know how we pulled it off? Because of that trust we shared. It was the one thing, the only thing, we both knew for absolute certain we could count on. It was sacred, that trust. Deep down in my heart, I knew that Morrie would never, ever lie to me. He wouldn’t dare.”
I nodded my head. “Until he did.”
“Until he did,” she acknowledged bitterly. “He sat right here and he lied to my face. Told me that R. J. Farnell was a real person and then scammed me out of my last hundred thousand. You have no idea what a betrayal that was. None. How could you?” She reached for a half-empty coffee cup on the table before her and took a sip from it. “This is cold. Are you sure you don’t want me to make a fresh pot, Lieutenant? It’s no trouble.”
“Positive,” Legs said.
“Leah, when did you learn the truth about Farnell?”
“I had my doubts about him from the very beginning. As soon as Morrie started gushing on about how many millions the man was going to invest in Wuthering Heights.”
“How come?”
“He wouldn’t let me near him, that’s how come. Wouldn’t let me talk to him on the phone. Wouldn’t even give me the man’s phone number. I had no idea how to contact him. That was not the way we usually did things around here. I always took care of our angels. They were my responsibility. If they had questions, I answered them. If they wanted to bitch and moan, I patted them on the head. Yet for some reason Morrie didn’t trust me with Farnell. I didn’t understand why. I wondered if…” Leah trailed off, swallowing.
“You wondered what?” Legs pressed her.
“If maybe Farnell was an associate of Joe Minetta’s. If that was why Morrie didn’t want me involved. It was the only thing I could think of, Lieutenant. That Morrie was laundering dirty money for some hoodlum. That’s why I gave him the last of my savings. Because I was genuinely afraid for him—especially after a couple of Joe Minetta’s goons came around here. It never occurred to me that Morrie had flat-out invented Farnell. And then Farnell vanished, supposedly. And Morrie hired Benji to find his girlfriend, who I knew nothing about. I’d never heard Morrie so much as mention her name until that morning you showed up here, Benji. I didn’t understand what was going on. I found all of it so … bewildering,” she confessed, wringing her hands. “That’s why I went to see you at your office. Because I was so confused. After I got back here I confronted him. I said to him, ‘Morrie, who is this Farnell guy? What in the hell is really going on?’ And that’s when he told me the truth. That he was in so deep to Joe Minetta the only option he’d had left was to run the old phantom angel scam.”
“How did you feel about that?” I asked her.
“My first reaction was shock. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t let me know what he was doing. And then, when I realized why he hadn’t, I got furious. I said to him, ‘Morrie, you lied to my face about Farnell so you could scam me out of my money, didn’t you?’ He said, ‘Leah, I’m in the deepest hole I’ve ever been in. I’m just trying to dig my way out.’ I said, ‘So why didn’t you just ask me for the money?’ And he said, ‘Because if you knew the truth you wouldn’t have given it to me.’” Leah shook her head at us in amazement. “Do you have any idea how many offers I had to leave him and produce my own shows? See my own name up there on the marquee? Dozens. But I always turned them down. Because we were a team. Because I was loyal to that man. And this was how he repaid me. By treating me with the same contempt he treated everyone else. After everything we’d been through together Morrie used me. I was just another sucker to him. There was no us. There was only him. You can’t even begin to comprehend how devastated I was. Let me put it to you this way—when I found out that my husband, Phil, had taken up with another woman? That was a paper cut compared to what Morrie did to me. I had to go in the bathroom and throw up. After I came out I told Morrie how angry I was. And do you know what he did? He laughed at me and said, ‘What’s gotten into you today? Did you forget to take your estrogen or whatever the hell it is that you—you…?’” Leah broke off, her chest rising and falling. “I couldn’t stop stewing about it when I got home that night. The more I stewed the angrier I got. Morrie was the center of my universe. I gave my life to that man. And he betrayed that. He destroyed it.”
Legs studied her curiously. “So you decided to destroy him?”
“I had to,” she said quietly. “I simply could not let him get away with it. Are you sure I can’t offer you gentlemen anything? A soda?”
Legs shook his head. So did I. I can’t speak for Legs but I was thinking that Leah Shimmel had to be the most polite killer I’d ever come across.
“Mind you, I remained the good little soldier,” she pointed out. “I followed his orders. He said, ‘This stays between us. Don’t show Benji your cards.’ And so I didn’t.”
“Meaning you were playacting when I showed up here and confronted Morrie about Farnell,” I said. “You weren’t shocked at all to find that he didn’t exist. You already knew.”
“I did. I’m sorry about the charade, Benji.”
“That’s okay, you were following orders. And you’re a pretty good actress, Leah.”
“I’m a damned good actress. Better than half of those flighty airheads with dirty hair who I’ve auditioned over the years. And I had no problem doing what Morrie asked me to, because by then I’d already figured out how I was going to pay him back. Charlie and I had it all planned out.”
“You recruited Charlie to help you?”
“I asked him to do me a favor. After all of the scrapes I’ve gotten Charlie out of he owed me one. And he was happy to help. Charlie never liked Morrie. He thought he was a nasty prick who didn’t respect me. Which, as it happens, was entirely true. The basic plan was Charlie’s. I can’t take any credit. I simply told him that I couldn’t do anything to Morrie while we were here at the office together. That would have made me the only suspect, wouldn’t it?”
“Most likely,” Legs acknowledged.
“So Charlie came up with what hoodlums refer to as a ‘drive-by.’ Lieutenant, are you…?”
“I’m acquainted with the term,” Legs assured her, nodding.
“The only complication Charlie foresaw was that the ‘drive-by’ would probably take place while Morrie was out walking on the street somewhere. That meant there’d be innocent bystanders. Therefore, I’d have to hop out of the car, shoot him at close range and then hop back in. After all, I couldn’t risk hitting other people with stray bullets, could I?”
“No, you couldn’t,” I agreed.
“Charlie purchased the hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants for me at a sporting goods store. Also a good pair of binoculars. He got me those big sunglasses at a Duane Reade. The gun he already owned. He purchased it illegally several months ago. Charlie sells drugs from time to time on a very modest scale and he needs it for his personal protection.”
“Had you fired a nine-mil before?” Legs asked her.
“Charlie showed me how,” Leah responded. “Not that there was much to learn. You point and you shoot. Believe me, I found it a whole lot easier to use than my new iPhone.”
“Just to be straight about this,” Legs said. “Was Charlie aware that you intended to kill Morrie?”
“I told him I was going to pay Morrie back. I didn’t specifically say I’d shoot him.”
“But he provided you with a gun and showed you how to use it.”
“Well, yes,” she admitted. “And he did offer to ‘blow away that fat bastard’ for me, but I wouldn’t let him. Morrie was my demon. Besides, Charlie’s already been in enough trouble with the law. You’ll go easy on him, won’t you, Lieutenant?”
Legs thumbed his goatee for a moment. “I don’t see how we can. My guess is he’ll be charged as an accessory to first-degree murder. And you’ll be charged with that first-degree murder.”
“I’m prepared to accept the consequences for what I’ve done,” Leah said. “I have no regrets. None. I pulled the trigger. And I handled the details. That’s what I do. I take care of details. I suggested that Charlie get up early in the morning, take the subway a good distance from Williamsburg and steal the first good-sized vehicle he could find that had tinted windows. So he rode the No. 7 train out to Flushing and—”
“Stole the Navigator from a Waldbaum’s parking lot,” Legs said, nodding his head. “We tracked it coming into Manhattan through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel at seven minutes after ten. What did he do after that?”
“Circled around midtown until I called him. I was just waiting for Morrie to go somewhere, anywhere, so we could set our plan in motion. I needed for him to leave. Only he didn’t. And then Benji showed up here to tell him that he’d discovered the truth about Farnell.” Leah arched an eyebrow at me. “It was really quite remarkable the way you told Morrie off, you know. Most people didn’t talk to him like that. And you look like such a little nebbish, too. After you took off, Morrie paced around here for at least another hour, making one phone call after another. He was desperately trying to raise more money from his roster of angels. But he got nowhere, which meant he had to ask Joe Minetta for it. He phoned Joe and arranged to meet him in Bryant Park. That’s when I knew I had my chance. As soon as Morrie went out the door I called Charlie and told him to meet me on the corner of 42nd Street and Sixth. Then I changed into my costume and I took off.”
“My people questioned the hotel’s doorman,” Legs said. “How did you get out of the building without him seeing you?”
“I rode the elevator down to the basement and went out the service entrance that’s used by the chambermaids and kitchen staff. And not just by them. The Morley has seen better times, sad to say. Some of its rooms these days are booked by lovers for noonday trysts. They don’t necessarily want to be seen going in and out of a midtown hotel at that hour, so they slip out the service entrance. The kitchen workers are paid to look the other way. When I got up to the street I spotted Morrie halfway down the block heading toward Sixth. And I spotted you, Benji. You were following him, too.”
“The job left a bad taste in my mouth. I wanted to see what his next move was.” I looked at Leah curiously. “I can usually tell when I have a tail, but I didn’t feel you. I wonder why.”
“Possibly because I wasn’t tailing you. I was tailing Morrie. And I wouldn’t second-guess myself if I were you, Benji. I’m really a very efficient person when I set my mind to a specific task. Charlie was waiting for me on the corner as planned, gun in hand. I got in and we idled there, waiting for Morrie to finish his chat with Joe. I kept watch on the entrances through the binoculars. Morrie wasn’t hard to spot when he came waddling out of the park. Not in that horrid green jumpsuit of his. Charlie floored it and pulled up alongside of him and I…” Leah paused, her mouth tightening. “I wasn’t sure I’d have the nerve to do it. Shoot him, I mean. But I did. It was astonishingly easy, in fact. Because it was the right thing to do. It’s never hard to do something when it’s the right thing to do. Or so I’ve learned in my sixty-two years of living. Then I jumped back in the Navigator and we took off.”
“Our security cams tracked you going down Fifth Avenue to West 37th Street,” Legs said. “You made a right turn there and headed toward Sixth.”
“That’s correct. When we got to Sixth, Charlie went up one block to West 38th Street, pulled over and let me out.”
“Were you still wearing your costume?” I asked.
“Yes, I was. And, my lord, was it hot to be wearing a hooded sweatshirt. But I didn’t think it would be safe to get out of the car wearing my regular clothes. I might be observed, after all. There was an outfit waiting for me in the Navigator, folded inside a shoulder bag. I took the bag with me when I got out. Charlie headed east on West 38th Street, took the Midtown Tunnel back to Queens and ditched the Navigator somewhere. He made sure to wipe it clean of fingerprints. Then he took the subway home. He tossed the gun in a trash can somewhere along the way.”
“And what did you do?”
“I strolled my way up Sixth Avenue, as planned. There are a couple of discount dress shops next to each other on Sixth just below West 40th Street. One is called Kara New York. The other is called Steps. They have racks and racks of cheap, brightly colored summer dresses. Do a very good business with young secretaries and tourists. I went in Kara New York and tried on a dress. I didn’t buy it, but this gave me the opportunity to change into my own outfit unobserved. They’re not allowed to have security cameras inside the dressing stalls, as I’m sure you know, Lieutenant. I stowed my costume and sunglasses in the shoulder bag and tossed it in a trashcan as I walked back here to the hotel. When the doorman greeted me he no doubt figured I’d been out running an errand. I wasn’t gone very long. And I was back here in plenty of time to receive you two when you arrived with the sad news about Morrie.”
“At which point you treated us to more playacting,” I said. “You were very convincing in the role of the loyal assistant who was devastated by her boss’s brutal murder.”
“That wasn’t entirely playacting, Benji. That was quite an emotional ordeal I’d just been through. And the reality was starting to sink in that Morrie was gone. Really, really gone.”
“Were you feeling any regrets?” Legs asked her.
“Not a one,” she answered bluntly. “I was at peace. I still am. Morrie got what he deserved. And the plan that I drew up worked to perfection.”
“I have to disagree with you,” Legs said. “The part about your plan working to perfection, I mean. Because it didn’t, ma’am. It took Benji almost no time at all to figure out that you were Morrie’s killer because, well, Benji is Meyer Golden’s son. The rest of us plodding mortals would have been on to you in another day, tops. We tracked the Navigator until it made that right turn onto West 37th Street. We’ve been checking that whole block and it turns out there’s a Marriott Fairfield Inn midway between Fifth and Sixth. Their security cam nailed you driving by. There are cameras on Sixth that no doubt filmed Charlie dropping you off and filmed you walking into that dress shop, coming out of that dress shop and tossing your costume in the trash. We would have followed you every step of the way right back here to the Morley. Speaking of which, the Morley’s own security cams will show you leaving the building by way of the service stairs. It’s no good. You were never going to get away with it, don’t you understand?”
Leah studied him with her alert brown eyes. “You’re the one who doesn’t seem to understand, Lieutenant. I don’t care about what happens to me. I don’t care about anything anymore.”
“Not even Charlie? You roped him into helping you commit murder.”
“He was happy to help. He felt useful.”
“But he’ll be spending a long time in jail now, thanks to you.”
She looked at Legs curiously. “Have you ever met Charlie?”
“No, I haven’t had the privilege yet.”
“Trust me, he’s much better off in prison than he is on the outside. I suppose that sounds harsh coming from his own mother. But it’s the cold, hard truth. Charlie’s happier on the inside. He makes friends easily. Gets plenty of exercise, has unlimited access to drugs and he doesn’t have to make any decisions. Charlie does fine in prison. It’s when he’s on the outside that he gets into trouble.”
There was a knock on the door now.
Legs opened it. Two cops in uniform stood out there in the hall. “These gentlemen will drive you to Midtown South,” he told Leah before he formally arrested and informed her of her Miranda Rights. “I really do recommend that you get yourself a lawyer.”
“Thank you for your concern, Lieutenant.”
“Where will we find Charlie?”
Leah glanced at her watch. “At his Thai cooking class, I believe. It’s above a restaurant in Williamsburg.” She gave him the address. “Please don’t embarrass him in front of the others. Charlie’s very sensitive. He’s not a bad boy, you know. Just weak.”
“We’ll do our best. Now if you’ll please go with these gentlemen…”
“Of course. Just let me get my purse and … will I be coming back here?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“In that case I’d like to shut down my computer.”
“I’ll give you a hand.”
He followed Leah into her office just in case she was planning to dive out a window or swallow a bottle of pills. I imagine he also went through her purse to make sure she didn’t have another gun in it. They returned a moment later, Leah carrying the purse and a lightweight sweater.
She paused there for a moment, gazing around at the living room of the dingy hotel suite where she’d worked with Morrie Frankel for her entire adult life. Her eyes fell on all of those framed photos she’d been boxing up. “You’ll call the folks at NYU for me, Benji?”
“Yes, I will. I’ll take care of it.”
“The manager can let you in. Just tell him I said it was okay.”
“Will do.”
“Thank you, Benji. You’ve been very understanding. Your mother must be extremely proud of you.” Leah took one last look around, smiled at Legs and said, “I feel much better now. In fact, I haven’t felt this good in years.”
“In that case,” he said in response, “I’m very happy for you.”
* * *
A BLUE AND WHITE was double parked out front behind Legs’ sedan. And Cricket was hanging around there on the sidewalk, looking guilty and miserable.
Legs and I stood under the Morley’s awning and watched his men help Leah into the backseat of their blue and white. Then they got in and drove off. Leah waved good-bye to us through the window, smiling. We waved back. Neither of us was smiling.
“That was solid work you did,” Legs said to me. “Your dad would have been proud.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” I said with great certainty. “And I still don’t feel like one of the good guys.”
“I know you don’t. That’s part of the deal, I’m sorry to tell you.”
“In that case I want to renegotiate.”
“You don’t get to. That’s not part of the deal.” He patted me on the shoulder like the big brother that he was. “Later, little bud.”
“Later, Legs.”
He got in his car and drove off. I started walking my way toward Sixth.
“Did Leah kill him?” Cricket hollered after me as she followed me down the block. “Is that why they’re taking her in? Hey, wait up, will you, Benji?”
I stopped so that she could catch up to me. “I have nothing to say to you, Cricket.”
“Come on, Benji. Be nice. I gave her up. I helped you.”
“You blackmailed her into being one of your sources. And you got a girl killed.”
“And I feel like shit about it. I’m incredibly sorry about what happened. It’s not like I meant for it to turn out that way. I was just doing my job.” Her eyes searched my face imploringly. “How do I make things right between us? Tell me, will you?”
“Well, if you want to do me a favor…”
“Anything. Just name it.”
“If you see me walking down the street, please cross over to the other side so we don’t bump into each other. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
Cricket gaped at me in shock. “What, just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“But, Benji, I was your first sweetie.”
“No need to remind me.”
“And we’re friends.”
“No, we’re not. Not anymore.”
She glared at me now. “You came looking for me at Zoot Alors, remember? If you’re searching for someone to blame you ought to be blaming yourself.”
“Cricket, I’m way ahead of you on that score.”
“So that’s it? That’s all you have to say to me?”
“No, I do have one other thing to say.”
“What is it?”
“Good-bye.”
* * *
“I THINK I’ll have that beer now.”
Farmer John’s face fell when he saw me. “I wondered if you’d be back,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow with a blue bandana.
“I’m back.”
Back at the Farm Project in Brownsville, where the gentle giant was sowing seeds in one of the farm’s raised beds, surrounded by kids and their moms. A couple of shirtless young black guys were pushing wheelbarrows of compost around, the sweat pouring off of them. A group of teenaged girls were sneaking looks at them, whispering to one another and giggling. It was now Day Seven of the Heat Wave of the Century. The thermometer was hovering in triple digits yet again. The air was heavy and sticky. The weathermen were really, truly promising that a cold front would really, truly blow down from Canada later that night and bring mercifully fresh, cool air with it. But they’d been promising that for the past two days. I was no longer wondering if they were lying to us. I was positive they were.
Little Joe Minetta, his cousin Petey and all the other boys and girls who’d been snared in Operation Yum-Yum were out on bail. Leah Shimmel and her son Charlie had been arraigned and officially charged with the shooting death of the great Morrie Frankel. “Girl Friday Gone Wild,” the geniuses at the New York Post had taken to calling Leah. Meanwhile, lawyers for Panorama Studios were poring over the contracts that Matthew Puntigam and Hannah Lane had signed to star in Morrie Frankel’s lavish, trouble-plagued sixty-five-million-dollar musical production of Wuthering Heights. According to an informed source, it now appeared likely that the young stars would fly to Tanzania very soon to begin filming The Son of Tarzan. They hoped to resume their quest for Broadway stardom next season in a Panorama-backed production of Wuthering Heights.
I know this because I read it on crickoshea.com.
Legs had the unhappy task of contacting Boso’s mother down in Ruston, Louisiana, to notify her of her daughter’s death. He told me that Boso’s mother took the news without emotion. He also told me that he’d had zero luck tracking down our rooftop shooter, who’d fired from the window of a vacant eighth-floor apartment across the street on Broadway. The apartment was being repainted and the building’s super had mistaken the shooter for a member of the painting crew. The super described him as a white male, about forty, medium height and build. Beyond that, Legs had nothing. Because a pro leaves nothing.
“I saw those nude photos of her in the newspapers,” Farmer John said to me, his voice hoarse with grief. “I—I couldn’t believe it was actually her. What did she get herself into?”
“I tried to pull her out of it, John. I did my best. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, Benji. Boso wasn’t a happy person. She didn’t allow herself a moment of inner peace. She’s found it now.” He stood there for a moment, blinking back his tears, then went back to sowing his seeds.
“What’s that you’re planting?”
“Our fall lettuce. Lettuce doesn’t like heat. The fall’s perfect for it if you start your seeds now and keep them moist.”
“Do you need any help?”
“You were serious about that beer?”
“Totally.”
Farmer John studied me, his big jaw stuck out. “Fair enough. You see that bed of eggplant and zucchini over there?”
“Sure thing. Want me to harvest it?”
“In your dreams. The kids do the harvesting. They love it. What they don’t love is weeding. That’s where people like you and me come in. It’s hard, painstaking work, but it’s got to be done. Come on, I’ll show you.” He led me over to the bed, pulling a trowel from the back pocket of his cut-off overalls. “If we don’t get these weeds out of here they’ll steal the soil’s nutrients away from the vegetables and eventually take over. They’re predators. Have to be taken out by the root. Dig down until you find the root, then give it a twist and pull it out. Don’t break it off. Get the whole root. Dig, twist, pull. Then toss it in that blue barrel.” He handed me the trowel. “Got it?”
“Got it.” I went to work with the trowel, feeling the hot sun beating down on the back of my neck.
He stayed and weeded with me for a moment, using his pocketknife to dig with. “Mind if I ask you something?”
“I don’t mind.”
“Did Boso say anything to you about me?”
“Yes, she did. She said that you were a great guy.”
“Was she … What I mean is, do you think she was ever going to come back to me?”
“No, she wasn’t. You were never going to see her again.”
He swallowed, blinking back his tears again. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For not bullshitting me. You’re on your own now. Just keep doing what you’re doing. When you’ve filled the blue barrel all the way to the top you’ll be in line for that beer.”
“Sounds like a deal.”
Farmer John stopped for a moment to chat with some small kids who were excitedly picking green beans. Then he went back to sowing his lettuce seeds, alone with his grief, while I worked on the weeds that were preying upon his eggplant and zucchini, removing them one by one. Dig, twist, pull. Dig, twist, pull. By now the sun was baking the skin on my back right through my T-shirt. But I paid little attention to it. Just focused on the weeds and on clearing them away from the healthy living things that were trying to grow there. I found myself liking this particular job. No one was trying to play me. No one was getting shot. It was just the weeds, the soil and me. As I worked I heard the kids playing. A little boy squirted a little girl with a hose and got chased for his trouble, laughing and laughing. I heard laughter all around me. I hadn’t heard any laughter for quite a while. Not since the last time I was here.