“Whose place is this?” Mickey asked.
Gabe told him.
Mickey let out a slow whistle. “You got balls, Benoit,” he said.
“It was my girlfriend’s idea. Can we do it?”
“I can get as much plastic as you’ll need,” Mickey said. “What kind of detonators are we talking about?”
“I don’t know yet, so mix it up-timers, remotes, something I can set off with a trip wire. Just keep it simple and idiotproof. Remember, I’m not a pro.”
“You got a budget for all this extra stuff?”
Gabe nodded. “I got a number in mind.”
“How much?”
“What can I get for another fifteen grand?”
Mickey’s eyes widened, and he coughed up a phlegmy chuckle. “My boy, for fifteen thousand dollars more you can get one hell of a lot of noise.”
Gabriel took the three stacks of hundreds out of his backpack and set them down on the table. “This is forty-five thousand.”
Mickey picked up a bundle, fanned the bills, and put it back. “I wondered how much Jimmy Fitzhugh had in his safe.”
Gabriel stiffened. “Who said anything about Jimmy Fitzhugh?”
Mickey lit up a cigarette and blew the smoke up toward the ceiling. “Nobody said anything. It was all over the police scanner. Robbery-homicide over at one of Bob Levinson’s production trailers on the West Side. Two perps involved. James Fitzhugh, producer, shot dead. What am I-stupid? You told me you knew where to get the money, but you needed a partner. I put one and one together. So, who did you team up with?”
“Your mother. And she sucked at it,” Gabe said. “You need the work or are you more interested in meddling in my private life?”
Mickey held up a hand. “Easy there, Gaby baby. I’m not meddling. Not meddling is the first thing you learn when you’re up there in Ray Brook. I was just making small talk. Forget I asked. Let’s talk about delivery.”
“Part of the deal was you said you could deliver tomorrow,” Gabe said.
“No problem. I still can.”
“Okay, but no later,” Gabe said. “I got a crazy production schedule.”
“Tomorrow, first thing. Right here. Forty-five thousand worth of boom.”
“Actually, one of the packs is shy a hundred bucks,” Gabe said. “My girlfriend used it for groceries.”
“No problem. Tell the little woman the groceries are on me,” Mickey said. “Deal?”
Gabe didn’t hesitate. “Deal,” he said.
And they sealed it in the time-honored old-school Hollywood tradition. With a handshake.
Chapter 45
“I think we finally hit pay dirt,” Kylie said.
We had two lists-the one Shelley Trager had given us with the names of everyone who had been on the set when Ian Stewart was shot, and Mike Jackman’s printout of all the people connected to the Levinson production.
We cross-checked the names, more than four hundred in all. Twelve people were on both lists, eight of them men.
“We could get this done a lot faster if we split the list in half and gave four to another team,” I said.
“We could get it done even faster if we got seven other teams to jump in and we all took one name,” Kylie said.
“I’m guessing my quest for departmental efficiency does not sit well with you,” I said.
“Absolutely not,” Kylie said. “First of all, you and I were at both crime scenes and it would take us way too long to get another team up to speed. Second of all, I’m consumed with ruthless ambition, and I refuse to let another team steal the biggest case of my career right out from under me. Now, just tell me which one of those answers you’re more likely to buy, and I’ll do my best to ram it down your throat.”
“No need to press any harder,” I said. “I think ‘consumed with ruthless ambition’ sums it up nicely.”
“Good. Make sure you put that in your report to Captain Cates. I don’t think she’ll hold it against me.”
By midafternoon we had struck out five times. Two of the possibles had been on the Ian Stewart set since seven in the morning, which ruled them out for poisoning Sid Roth at the Regency. Two others had solid alibis for Monday night’s bombing at Radio City.
The fifth guy was black. He laughed when he figured out why we were there to question him. “Didn’t you guys watch the video of the guy who firebombed Brad Schuck’s limo? That dude was white. You may want to adjust the color on your monitor.”
We laughed along with him, apologized, and left.
“Where to next?” I asked Kylie.
“Middle Village, Queens. Furmanville Avenue off Seventy-ninth Street. I’ve got a street address, and next to that in parentheses it says ‘Paradise Garden.’”
“Sounds like a Chinese restaurant.” I said.
“Or a massage parlor. Give me a sec. Let me Google it.”
She poked at her iPhone.
“Holy shit,” she said. “This is encouraging. It’s a mental health facility.”
“That’s the funny thing about trying to hunt down a homicidal maniac,” I said. “The last place you’d ever think of looking for him is in a loony bin.”
She gave me the exact address. We were twenty minutes away, and I headed for the Long Island Expressway.
“What do we have on this guy?” I said.
“He was an extra on the set of the Ian Stewart movie yesterday, which means one of our guys would have questioned him. Then last week he worked for three days as an extra in the Levinson production, so he could have found out about the drug money Fitzhugh had stashed in the trailer.”
“What’s his name?” I said.
“Benoit. Gabriel Benoit.”
Chapter 46
That section of Furmanville Avenue in Queens was a quiet working-class neighborhood lined with small two-story homes, even smaller front yards, and a schizophrenic mix of Japanese compacts and oversized gas-guzzling SUVs. In the middle of it all was a serviceable 1960s white-brick, four-story building that strived for nondescript, but landed on ugly.
The maroon canopy in front said PARADISE GARDEN.
“It’s nice to see that the zoning laws in New York City are flexible enough to allow someone to build a funny farm right in the middle of a neighborhood filled with impressionable youth,” Kylie said.
“Don’t jump to conclusions, Detective,” I said. “Maybe the nut jobs were here first, and the happy little neighborhood just sprang up around them.”
“I’ve been to places like this before,” Kylie said. “Private clinics, nursing homes, psych hospitals. You try to ask them a few questions and they’re more defensive than a mob lawyer. Usually there’s some smarmy little weasel who really wishes he could help, then falls back on doctor-patient confidentiality and won’t tell you squat without a subpoena.”
“Maybe we could threaten to bust the smarmy little weasel for false advertising,” I said. “The sidewalk is cracked, the grass is brown, and the building is an eyesore. Paradise Garden, my ass.”
The lobby was warm and humid. If the inmates were paying for air-conditioning, they weren’t getting their money’s worth.
The receptionist was a middle-aged woman who obviously bought her red hair coloring by the gallon. She looked up and gave us a welcoming smile. We were off to an excellent start.
“Gud aftanoon. Kin I help ya?” she said in an accent that branded her as born, raised, and educated in Queens.
“NYPD,” I said, flashing my badge. “We’re looking for Gabriel Benoit.”
“Who?”
I pronounced the name slowly. Ben-oyt. B-E-N-O-I-T.
“Oh. Ben-wah,” she said, shaking her head at my lousy diction. “He’s no lawnga a resident.”
“Where can we find him?” I said.
“You’d hafta tawk to our directah, Dr. Ben-David,” she said. “Have a seat.”
The waiting area was filled with overstuffed furniture that might have been considered gracious during the Truman administration. At this point in its life cycle, the grace had turned to gloom.