She stared at Gurney, erect in her chair, full of fury. “What do you think of that? After fifteen years! The day after my husband’s funeral! An email! A goddamn, wretched, disgusting, insulting email! Your husband’s dead, now get out of here. Tell me, Detective Gurney—what kind of man does something like that?”
When it appeared that her emotion had subsided, he said softly, “That was ten months ago. I’m glad to see you’re still here.”
“I’m here because Kay Spalter did me—and everyone else in the world—a giant favor.”
“You mean Carl was shot before your sixty days were up?”
“That’s right. Which proves there’s some good in the world after all.”
“So you still work for Spalter Realty?”
“For Jonah, really. When Carl was incapacitated, full control of Spalter Realty passed to Jonah.”
“Carl’s fifty percent ownership didn’t become part of his own estate?”
“No. Believe me, Carl’s estate was big enough without it—he was involved in so many other things. But when it came to the holdings of Spalter Realty, the corporate agreement Joe made them sign included a provision that transferred everything to the surviving brother at the death of either one.”
That certainly seemed to Gurney like a fact significant enough to have made its way into the case file, but he hadn’t seen any mention of it. He made a mental note to ask Hardwick if he was aware of it.
“How do you know about this, Paulette?”
“Jonah explained it to me the day he took over. Jonah is very open. You get the impression that he really and truly has no secrets.”
Gurney nodded, tried not to look skeptical. He’d never met a man with no secrets. “I gather, then, that Jonah canceled Carl’s plan to outsource the management of Willow Rest?”
“Absolutely. Immediately. In fact, he stepped right in and offered me the same job Bob had, at the same salary. He even told me that the job and the house would be mine to keep as long as I wanted either one of them.”
“He sounds like a generous man.”
“You know those empty apartments over there across the river? He told the Spalter Realty security guard to stop chasing the homeless people out of them. He even got the electricity turned back on for them—the electricity that Carl had turned off.”
“He sounds like he cares about people.”
“Cares?” An otherworldly smile changed her expression completely. “Jonah doesn’t just care. Jonah is a saint.”
Chapter 15. A Cynical Suggestion
Less than five hundred yards from the manicured enclave of Willow Rest, Axton Avenue provided a dose of upstate economic reality. Half the street-level shops were run-down, the other half boarded up. The apartment windows above them looked forlorn if not entirely abandoned.
Gurney parked in front of a dusty-looking electronics store that, according to the case file, occupied the ground floor of the building from which the bullet had been fired. A logo showing through a poorly overpainted sign above the display window indicated it had once been a RadioShack franchise.
Next to the store, the entry door for the residential floors was a few inches ajar. Gurney pushed it open and entered a small, dingy lobby. What little light there was came from a single bulb in a caged ceiling fixture. He was greeted by the standard odor of derelict urban buildings: urine enhanced with touches of alcohol, vomit, cigarette smoke, garbage, and feces. And there were the familiar auditory inputs. Somewhere above him two male voices were arguing, hip-hop music was playing, a dog was barking, and a small child was screaming. All that was missing to turn it into a clichéd movie scene was the slam of a door and the clatter of feet on the stairs. Just then Gurney heard a shouted “Fuck you, you stupid fuck!” from an upper floor, followed by the sound of someone actually coming down the stairs. The coincidence would have made him smile if the stench of the urine wasn’t making him nauseous.
The descending footsteps grew louder, and soon a young man appeared at the top of the shadowy flight that led down into the lobby. Spotting Gurney, he hesitated for a second, then hurried down past him and out onto the street, where he stopped abruptly to light a cigarette. He was scrawny with a narrow face, sharp features, and stringy shoulder-length hair. He took two deep, desperate drags on his cigarette, then walked quickly away.
Gurney considered going down into the basement for the master key that Kay had told him was secreted behind the furnace. But he decided instead to give the building a once-over and get the key later if he needed it. For all he knew, the apartment he was most interested in might be unlocked. Or occupied by drug dealers. He was no longer routinely carrying the gun he’d kept with him during the Good Shepherd case—and he didn’t want to burst in, uninvited and unarmed, on a jumpy meth-head with an AK-47.
He climbed the two flights of stairs to the top floor quickly and quietly. Each floor had four apartments—two at the front of the building, two at the rear. On the third floor, gangsta rap was playing behind one door and a child was crying behind another. He knocked at each of the two silent doors and got no response beyond a hint of muffled voices behind one of them. When he knocked at the other two, the rap volume dropped a bit, the child continued to cry, but no one came to either door. He considered pounding on them, but quickly dismissed the notion. Gentler approaches tended to lead to a wider range of options down the road. Gurney was fond of options and wanted to keep them as numerous as possible.
He descended a flight to the second-floor hallway, which, like the others, was illuminated only by a single-bulb fixture in the middle of the ceiling. He oriented himself according to his recollection of the photo in the case file and approached the apartment from which the fatal shot had been fired. As he was putting his ear to the door, he heard a soft footstep—not in the apartment, but behind him. He turned quickly.
At the top of the flight of stairs that came up from the lobby stood a stocky, gray-haired man, motionless and alert. In one hand he carried a black metal flashlight. It was switched off—and being gripped as a weapon. Gurney recognized it as the grip taught in police academies. The man’s other hand rested on something affixed to his belt in the shadow of a dark nylon jacket. Gurney was willing to bet that SECURITY would be stenciled across the back.
There was a look in the man’s small eyes verging on hatred. However, as he scrutinized Gurney more closely—taking in the detective-on-the-job ensemble of cheap sport jacket, blue shirt, and dark pants—the look morphed into a kind of resentful curiosity. “You looking for somebody?”
Gurney had heard that exact voice—meanness and suspicion as much a part of it as the smell of urine was part of the building—from so many cops who’d gone sour over the years, he felt he knew the man personally. It wasn’t a good feeling.
“Yes, I am. Trouble is, I don’t have a name. Meantime, I’d like to get a look inside this apartment.”
“That so? ‘A look inside this apartment’? You mind telling me who the hell you are?”
“Dave Gurney. Ex-NYPD. Just like you.”
“What the hell do you know about me?”
“Doesn’t take a genius to recognize an Irish cop from New York.”