The faded blue eyes popped. “By all means! I just... when I heard you were on the premises, I assumed you must have come to see me. To bring me up to speed.”
“If that Ferrari had been up to speed,” I said, “I doubt your son would be alive. Those babies do nearly 200 miles per hour.”
“Disturbing. Disturbing.”
I nodded toward the door. “Where is your son, by the way? I notice he isn’t in his office.”
“Psychiatrist. Every day, for now at least. He had a bad one last night. Blew up at me again.”
“What set him off?”
He flipped a hand. “I suggested he take a leave of absence. Just for a few weeks or at most months... until his psychiatrist and physician give him a clean bill of health.”
Clean bill of mental health.
I finished my brandy. Stood. “Thank you, Mr. Colby. I’m glad to have a chance to touch bases with you... but these are early days.”
He stood, frowning a little. “Will this take days?”
“Figure of speech. But it could take days, yes. My advice is put this out of your mind. Help your son as best you can, and meanwhile I’ll find that Ferrari and its driver for you.”
A smile blossomed under the skimpy mustache. “You do that, Mr. Hammer, and there will be a handsome bonus in it for you!”
“And I’ll accept it.”
We shook hands and I went out.
The brunette with the mannish glasses gave me a smile as I passed, nothing icy about her now, though she still had a certain regal air.
But I already had a good-looking brunette in my life for a secretary. And being greedy only got a guy in trouble.
Lower Manhattan was home to plenty of desolate, half-dead business districts like this, rife with crumbling, neglected buildings waiting for gentrification to catch up with them, the street-level storefronts housing dingy shops dealing in junk, out-of-date crap or surplus goods.
I’d been to this particular stretch of small business purgatory before, just a few months ago. The tire-recapping place continued to ooze its bouquet of Butyl rubber into the atmosphere, an open-back truck piled with used casings parked out front, unattended. The tool-and-die shop still wore a CLOSED sign that could mean for the moment but more likely forever, the plate-glass shop had somehow managed to stay above water, and that tune-up and auto repair garage that had just opened for business on my last visit remained a beacon of optimism among a graveyard of empty storefronts.
What the hell would a Ferrari F40 be doing down here?
The wind fluttered the bottom of my trenchcoat and my hat needed to be well-snugged or it would fly away on me. I’d parked half a block down from the address I was checking out — I didn’t care to leave my heap too far away, not being as trusting as the tire-recapping boys.
The building on the corner had once been a gas station, probably dating back to the days when the term “service station” was still in use and guys in crisp uniforms and caps came running out to clean your windshields and check your tires, water, battery, oil. That was in the days when the idea of filling your own tank seemed absurd. What were we, farmers? Now the structure was a ghost of that curved ’50s architecture that said the future was here — well, it was... a future with its windows painted out, black, giving no view onto the space where once you paid for your gas with cash more often than credit card, and bought candy bars and chewing gum before helping yourself to free road maps.
One of those blacked-out windows had white lettering saying KRAFT AUTOMOTIVE — APPT. ONLY with a phone number. I tried the door and found it unlocked. Just barely ajar. Cracked it further, hollered, “Hello!” and got no response. I pushed it open and stepped inside.
No counter remained in a gutted sales area that was now an office with a metal desk, several filing cabinets and old shelves used to stack automotive catalogues and instruction manuals where cans of oil and other supplies had once lined up like military. Closed doors at left and right still said MEN and WOMEN.
I moved into what had once been the service area, and still was to some degree, with two car lifts, workbenches along the walls, tools on pegboards and the smell of oil. But the garage was clean, almost surgically so, cement floor included. Behind the lifts, and in front of the back workbench, a black full-car cover shrouded a shape that, with the distinctive half-showing star-shaped hubcaps, told a story.
I pulled off the car cover and the red Ferrari said hello. My mouth dropped. I was looking at the fastest, most powerful, and for that matter most expensive car Ferrari ever made.
I checked the passenger side of the vehicle for signs of exterior damage, but there were none. I’d driven stock cars in my reckless youth, but sports cars were out of my league, and that midget with the newsstand knew a hell of a lot more about them than I did. Still, my eyes told me that maybe — maybe — some bodywork had been done around the front right headlight.
Back in the office, I did what any self-respecting private detective would do in a place of interest whose front door was left unlocked. I snooped, starting with the filing cabinets, which held old invoices in their upper drawers and nothing in the lower ones.
On to the desk.
There, the usual business junk shared space with a few surprises, like the .38 Police Special in the right-hand drawer, and a box of ammo in the drawer beneath. Well, a small businessman had the right to protect himself, didn’t he? Of more interest, and much more suggestive, were three items in the bottom left drawer — the only items in that drawer.
A false dark-brown beard. A small bottle of yellow liquid labeled “Spirit Gum.” A dark long-haired wig with a pony tail.
I shut the drawer, glanced around. Only two places left to check. The MEN was unoccupied. The same couldn’t be said for the WOMEN.
A male figure, slumped, hunched over with head hanging, was seated on the toilet, its lid down, his pants up. Even sitting, he was obviously a big man, easily as big as me, burly not fat. His head was shaved. Arms hung limp. Feet, in rubber-soled work boots, were askew. He wore the navy-blue coveralls of the mechanic he was. Or had been.
Carefully, using his ears, I used both hands to lift his head back. His eyes were open and rolled back and filmed-over, dull with death; his tongue-lolling mouth was open, as if seeking breath or sustenance or perhaps an ability to speak, all of which would be forever denied to him. His face was blue with need of a shave, which would be up to his mortician now.
None of that was what was the most disturbing thing. That distinction was left to his upper torso, which was caved in so deep that the top half of his jumpsuit was puckered. He might have taken a cannonball to his chest cavity.
I took a look at the floor leading into the WOMEN and could see the trail of dark rubber from his heels as he’d been dragged, already dead, into the cubicle. In this black-windowed room, next to this desk, someone had somehow shoved this man’s chest in.
A squad car preceded Pat Chambers only by a few minutes. I gave the pair of blues the basics, but waited for Pat to give out chapter and verse. He went around taking it all in, from the dead mechanic in the WOMEN’s room to the Ferrari, the black cover to which I had not replaced.
“Sorry about my prints,” I said.
We were standing outside now. The crime scene guys were in there shooting their pictures and collecting their evidence. We were just two guys who had both quit cigarettes a long time ago whose breath was smoking in the cold nonetheless.
He shrugged. “You had no way to know.”
His unmarked Chevy Caprice was parked on the cement apron of the place where three gas pumps had once sprouted. His radio on the dash squawked for his attention. He went over to it, climbed in, grabbed the mike and, sitting there with the car door open, listened and talked a while. I rocked on my heels and waited. Pat had called R & I to run Roger Kraft through and this appeared to be the callback.