The bathroom was the size of a closet and nothing much larger than a water bug could have hidden in there. The small bedroom was even more empty than the other rooms. It was totally barren except for cobwebs and the window was shut tight. No one had set foot in the room for weeks. The uncorrupted layer of dust on the floor told me as much. Stepping back toward the last unexplored room in the house, I caught another rush of air. Now I knew what that other scent was hiding behind the humid musk of the storm: blood.
“I’m coming in there, motherfucker!” I screamed like a madman and kicked the door above the knob. The door flew away and I ran in blind, fueled by fear and weeks of frustration. Crazy Charlie would have been proud of me. Not five feet through the door I tripped over something and crashed to the floor. Looking back, I saw what had taken my feet out from under me. This time, it wasn’t a fawn.
When I crawled over to the kid, my hand slid in a pool of what I supposed was his blood. It wasn’t warm, exactly, but it was fresh. I held my bloody palm up near my face. In the dimness, the blood almost looked like chocolate syrup. I put my other hand over the kid’s heart and got nothing. He was still warm, as warm as he would ever again be. I found his neck. There was no pulse to feel. As I stood up, lightning flashed and I caught a glimpse of the kid. I didn’t have to see him clearly to know he was dead. I found the light switch.
The kid’s shirtless body lay so that his open eyes seemed to be looking straight through the ceiling, through the roof, into infinity. How’s the view, kid? There wasn’t a lot of blood anywhere except around his body, but the only visible wound was a long, diagonal gash across his liver. The blood that had seeped out of it was thick and dark. Yet as grisly as the gash was, I couldn’t believe it could account for all the blood puddled on the floor. My bet was the detectives would find some nasty wounds in his back when they rolled him over. I dialed 911 and listened to myself talk to the operator as if from another room.
I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. I was frozen, as incapable of movement as the kid. He did indeed resemble Patrick, but from here, in the stark light, it was clear he was no twin. He even looked a little different from that morning. I suppose getting murdered will do that to you. I knew he wasn’t Patrick, not my Patrick, but his death dredged it all up again and the past twenty-two years-the lies, the secrets, and deceptions-came crashing down around me. Only this time it came down all at once. I tried distracting myself, gazing around the room at anything but the body.
There was an unfurled sleeping bag, a few pairs of jeans, some rock t-shirts from bands I never heard of, and two pair of those stupid Shinjo Olympians. The window was wide open and I thought I could already hear sirens, an army of sirens, coming my way. The wail of the sirens unfroze me and I stepped into the living room to wait. Living room. The phrase took on new meaning. Outside rain fell in solid sheets.
I must have been hallucinating about the sirens, because it took ten minutes for the first unit to arrive. The two uniforms were named Kurtz and Fong. Kurtz was nearly as old as me, too old to still be in a uniform without stripes, and Fong was a fresh-faced Asian kid trying hard to act blase. By the time they came in, I had sufficiently recovered my wits and had since called Carmella and Brian and filled them in. I told them to stay away as the situation was going to get complicated enough without involving them. I did ask Carmella to give one of our lawyer contacts a heads-up.
I had my old badge out to show the uniforms. Neither Kurtz nor Fong were much impressed. After they patted me down, removing my. 38 from its holster, checking out my wallet and credentials, we got to know each other a little. I didn’t bother going into great detail about the reasons for my being at 69 Manhattan Court. I was a licensed PI working a case. Blah, blah, blah… They seemed satisfied I hadn’t killed the kid. Yeah, Prager, whatever… Besides, making the case wasn’t their headache.
“Hey,” I said, “what took you guys so long to get here? I thought I heard sirens almost immediately after I called.”
Both uniforms turned to each other and laughed. I must have missed the joke.
“Aren’t there any fucking chairs in this place for a man to sit down?” Kurtz whined, rubbing his lower back.
“Nope.”
“You did hear sirens,” he said, still unhappy about the lack of chairs.
“We were right around the corner. You notice how wet we are?” Fong asked.
“Now that you mention it.”
The bottoms of their trousers were dark with rain and beads of water covered the bills of their caps.
Kurtz shook his head. “My partner’s not exaggerating. We had a traffic fatality at Avenue Y and Ocean Parkway. A guy ran right out into the traffic and got launched. When he came down he skidded and then got pancaked by like four other vehicles. It was ugly.”
“Sounds it.”
“Yeah, ugly,” Fong agreed with his partner’s assessment. “And really too bad. The guy was a cop.”
That got my attention. “A cop?”
Kurtz sneered. “Yeah, if you consider them glorified, overpaid motherfuckin’ meter maids in Suffolk County cops.”
My heart was doing that jumping into my throat thing again. “A Suffolk cop?”
“A sergeant,” said Fong.
“Was his name Ray Martello?”
Both Fong and Kurtz looked at me like Jesus walking on water. Lightning flashed again. If thunder followed the lightning, I didn’t hear it. I thought I heard the rain falling.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I sat with Paul Dukelsky in an interrogation room at the Six-One precinct on Coney Island Avenue. The Duke, as he was known around the city’s courthouses, was one of the best criminal defense attorneys in New York. Dukelsky was a shark with a square jaw, green eyes, and a good heart. For every rich scumbag he defended, there were two or three wrongly convicted men now walking the streets. We had done some work for his firm, but not enough to warrant his driving in from the Hamptons to play my white knight. That was Carmella’s doing. Like most straight men with a pulse and a libido, he had a thing for my partner. Good looks and confidence are magnetic qualities in any woman, but when she carries a gun and can probably kick your ass… well, then, that’s something else.
“So, Moe, let’s go over this again,” the Duke instructed, looking down at his wrist. I wasn’t sure if he was checking the time or his tan. I did know he hadn’t gotten his watch from Charlie Rolex.
“No.”
“No?”
“No. Between you and the cops, I’ve been over this twenty times. The details aren’t going to change. Ray Martello killed the kid, not me. Call Sheriff Vandervoort in Janus. Call my wife’s doctors, for chrissakes! They’ll tell you what’s been going on. I’ve had it. It’s what, like seven in the morn-”
“Eight-ten,” Dukelsky corrected me.
“I’m exhausted and hungry and I’m not doing this anymore.”
“As your attorney, I must insist you-”
“Go take Carmella out for breakfast or something and leave me the fuck alone.”
He flushed red. I’d hit a nerve. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything, Moe. I’m not here to discuss Carmella and me.”
“I didn’t know there was a Carmella and you.”
He bowed his head, clearly trying to regroup. It never failed. Beauty and desire cut through the bullshit. For all the trappings of success, the Duke was, on the inside, like every other man I knew: an insecure fifteen-year-old boy who wanted to sleep with the prettiest girl in school.
“Listen, Moe…I wanted to talk to you about-”