Priscilla spoke. “So you have some of his belongings here, in the house?”
“Well, not really belongings. Just manuscripts, stories, stuff like that.” She looked from one cop to the other. “They’re in the garage. In an old suitcase.”
After a moment of silence, Mrs. Carbone continued. “It’s so sad,” she said, her eyes welling up again. “Robbie wasn’t a bad guy, just odd. But he was family.” She looked from Rizzo to Jackson. “And that’s what’s important, you know.”
They nodded at her, remaining silent.
“My kids called him uncle. Uncle Robbie. He liked that. Even my husband, who doesn’t trust anybody, was comfortable with Robbie being around the kids. You know, these days… sometimes with relatives. .. But Robbie was just a big, dopey, gentle guy who didn’t want anything out of life except to see his name on the cover of a book someday.
“You know,” she said sheepishly, “I have to admit, I was curious and I went out to the garage one day. I read some of Robbie’s stories.” She shrugged. “I’m not much of a reader, I’d rather see a movie or what ever, but I have to say they seemed pretty good to me. I don’t know, maybe if he had had some guidance… I think he just didn’t know how to go about it. Getting himself published, I mean. Maybe if someone had helped him… Who knows.”
With a sigh, she went on. “Or maybe he just aimed too high. Imagine? The guy couldn’t even hold a menial job for more than a year or two at a time. And he aimed too high.” Resignation came to her eyes. “Imagine that?”
After nearly an hour of further questioning Carbone and her newly arrived husband, the two detectives made their way down the concrete driveway toward the detached garage. Wispy snowflakes floated before their eyes, the sky growing darker, the air crisper.
“Last winter was bad enough,” Rizzo said. “Now it’s gonna start snowin’ before Thanksgiving?”
“They’re just flurries, Joe, relax. But I gotta ask, why are we checking out here? We already saw this stuff, in his apartment. These are just copies.”
Rizzo glanced at her as they reached the garage. He raised the borrowed key, unlocking the weathered doors.
“Remember Tucci, Cil? That kid who got shot in the foot? Remember him?” he asked, swinging one hinged door open.
“Yeah, I remember,” she answered. “What?”
Rizzo reached into the garage, throwing a switch and flooding the musty interior with bright, buzzing fluorescent light.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “We were all set to call out the cavalry, pushin’ Vince to get a sketch artist, remember? Then Vince tells us to talk to the vic first, get the whole story before we start draftin’ help. And what happened next? The vic turned us on to that dental angle, we followed it up and made the case.”
“Okay,” Priscilla said with a nod. “And this is like that how?”
Rizzo looked around the garage. No car was present on the worn, oil-stained concrete floor, the parking area surrounded by sundry family items and outdoor furniture stored for winter.
“We’re doin’ it by the book, Cil. Bein’ thorough. Just because Carbone told us there’s nothing here but copies of manuscripts don’t necessarily make it so. Let’s take a look and make sure.”
He turned to face her. “Thoroughness,” he said. “Ga-peesha?”
“Yeah, Joe,” she said. “I ga-peesh.”
Minutes later, the two detectives were seated on the cold concrete floor, another old suitcase open before them. They leafed slowly through its contents.
Rizzo thumbed through a thin, weathered manuscript, the pages stapled together. He knitted his brows.
“Hey, Cil,” he said. “In that other suitcase, the one we found at Lauria’s place, were there any plays?”
Priscilla looked up from the book-length manuscript she was examining, a duplicate of one she had seen at Lauria’s.
She shook her head. “No. Why?”
Rizzo held the pages in his hand out to her. “Look at this,” he said. “It’s a play Lauria wrote. I didn’t see anything like this in his closet.”
Priscilla took the script from him and skimmed through some pages. Minutes later, she whistled softly and raised her eyes.
“Jesus,” she said. “This is strange.”
“What?” Rizzo asked, looking up from another manuscript.
“This play, the play that wasn’t in the suitcase in Lauria’s apartment.” She held it out to him.
Rizzo dropped the papers he’d been examining onto the floor and took the play back from Priscilla and began to read.
“What about it?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. Give me a few minutes, let me read this from page one.”
“Knock yourself out,” Rizzo replied, shrugging. “I’ll write up my notes on the Carbone interview while you read.” He handed the stack of pages back to Priscilla.
After twenty minutes, Priscilla called to him, her dark eyes wide and sparkling in the bright light of the small garage.
“Remember I told you me and Karen saw that Broadway play, the last play Avery Mallard wrote? The Pulitzer Prize winner who was murdered eleven, twelve days ago?”
Rizzo’s eyes narrowed. He dropped his gaze from Priscilla and looked down to the pages in her hand.
“Yeah, I remember that.”
Priscilla laid a hand on his forearm. She leaned in closer.
“This is the fuckin’ play,” she said. “The same play me and Karen saw on Broadway.”
She pointed to the top page of the script. “Look at the date, Joe.”
Rizzo looked to the inscription in what he recognized to be Lauria’s handwriting, then raised his eyes to meet hers. “Over three years ago,” he said.
“I’m almost sure of this,” she said. “The characters have different names, there’s no love interest like the Mallard play has, and it’s set in New York, not Atlanta. But it’s the same story, the same conflicts, the same ending. Hell, even a lot of the same dialogue.” She handed it to Rizzo. “That in your hand is Mallard’s play, Joe.”
Rizzo fingered the pages. “Or, if you’re right, Mallard’s play is Lauria’s.” His eyes narrowed. “What the fuck, Cil?” he asked.
“I don’t know. But I’ve read about Mallard. He came off a long dry spell with this play. He told Charlie Rose he wrote it over a two-month span while he was in the Hamptons, maybe two years ago. Those pages in your hand are dated a year earlier than that. Shit, the play’s only been runnin’ a couple of months, three at the most.”
Rizzo scratched his head, then rubbed at his right eye to soothe the nervous tic as he spoke.
“Coincidence? One play. Two separate murders within a few days of each other. Maybe both vics tied to the play.”
He touched lightly at Priscilla’s cheek.
“There ain’t no coincidences like that, Partner,” he said.
Then, reaching for the last of his cigarettes, he dropped the play back into the open suitcase.
“No fuckin’ way,” he said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Rizzo and Jackson gazed through the windshield at the choppy, white-capped waters of Jamaica Bay. The Impala sat parked in the sprawling, nearly deserted parking area of the Canarsie Pier. Rizzo had sat silently as Priscilla Jackson gave the play a fast, careful reread.
Having given the reluctantly cooperative Mrs. Carbone a written receipt, they had removed the suitcase from the garage, and it was now secured in the Impala’s trunk.
The car’s heater blew warm air against their legs, chilling winds howled softly outside the tightly closed windows. Light snow flurries danced across the gray hood.
“Now I’m sure of it,” Priscilla said quietly, coming to the last page and resting the manuscript on the steering wheel. “With a few changes this is the play I saw on Broadway. What are the possibilities here, Joe?”
“Top of my head? Mallard somehow plagiarizes the play from Lauria. Lauria calls him on it, and Mallard goes to Lauria’s place, strangles him, searches the apartment, and takes every copy of the play he finds.”