The defense claimed that drug gangs had broken in and killed her. Or, as an alternative, that Sarah had gone senile and went off by herself on a bus or train.
Juries hate lame excuses and it took the Lieberman panel all of four hours to convict. The two were sentenced to life imprisonment. The farewell in the courtroom—mother and son embracing like spouses—made for one real queasy photograph.
Carmel now said to Eddie Caruso, “I kept hoping the police would find her remains, you know?”
John’s car had been spotted several days before Sarah disappeared in New Jersey, where he was reportedly looking at real property for one of his big business deals, none of which ever progressed past the daydreaming phase. It was assumed the body had been dumped there.
Carmel continued, “I don’t know about her religion, the Jewish one, but I’m sure it’s important to be buried and have a gravestone and have people say some words over you. To have people come and see you. Don’t you think, Mr. Caruso?”
He himself didn’t think that was important but he now nodded.
“The problem is, see, this is a simple death.”
“Simple?” The woman sat forward, brows furrowing a bit.
“Not to make little of it, understand me,” Caruso added quickly, seeing the dismay on her face. “It’s just that it’s open and shut, you know? Nasty perps, good evidence. No love children, no hidden treasure that was never recovered, no conspiracy theories. Fast conviction. With a simple death, people lose interest. The leads go cold real fast. I’m saying, it could be expensive for me to take on the case.”
“I could pay you three thousand dollars. Not more than that.”
“That’d buy you about twenty-five hours of my time.” On impulse he decided to waive expenses, which he marked up and made a profit on.
Before he went further, though, Caruso asked, “Have you thought this through?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it was a terrible crime but justice’s been done. If I start searching, I may have to ask you things--you’ll have to relive the incident. And, well, sometimes when people look into the past, they find things they wish they hadn’t.”
“What could that be?”
“Maybe there’d be no way to recover the body, even if I find it. Maybe it was… let’s say disrespected when it was disposed of.”
Carmel had not considered this, he could tell. Clients rarely did. But she said, “I want to say a prayer at her grave, wherever it is. I don’t care about anything else.”
Caruso nodded and pulled a retainer agreement from his credenza. They both signed it. Also, on whim, he penned in a discounted hourly rate. He’d seen pictures of her three children when she’d opened her purse to get her driver’s license number for the agreement. They were teenagers and the parents were surely facing the horror of college expenses.
You’re a goddamn softy, he told himself.
“All right,” he said to her. “Let me keep these and I’ll get to work. Give me your home and mobile numbers.”
A hesitation. “Email please. Only email.” She wrote it down.
“Sure. Not call?”
“No, please don’t. See, I mentioned to my husband I was thinking about doing this and he said it wasn’t a good idea.”
“Why?”
She nodded at the news clippings. “It’s in there somewhere. There was a man maybe working for the Westerfields, the police think. Daniel’s worried he’d find out if we started looking for the body. He’s probably dangerous.”
Glad you mentioned it, Caruso thought wryly. “Okay, I’ll email.” He rose.
Carmel Rodriguez stepped forward and actually hugged him, tears in her eyes.
Caruso mentally bumped his fee down another twenty-five, just to buy her a little more of his time.
When she’d gone he booted up the iPad just to see what he’d missed sportswise. The match was over. Senegal had won five zip.
Five?
A BBC announcer, beset by very un-BBC enthusiasm, was gushing, “Some of the most spectacular scoring I have ever seen in all my years—”
Caruso shut the device off. He pulled the stack of clippings closer, to take more notes—and to read up in particular on the Westerfields’ possible accomplice.
He was reflecting that in all his years as a privately investigating security consultant, he’d been in one pushing match that lasted ten seconds. Not one real fight. Caruso did have a license to carry a pistol and he owned one but he hadn’t touched his in about five years. He believed the bullets had turned green.
He wondered if he would in fact be in danger.
Then decided, so be it. Game had to come with a little risk. Otherwise it wasn’t Game.
# # #
Senior NYPD detective Lon Sellitto dropped into his chair in his Major Cases office, One Police Plaza. Dropped, not sat. Rumpled—the adjective applied to both the gray suit and the human it encased—he looked with longing affection at a large bag from Baja Express he’d set on his excessively cluttered desk. Then at his visitor. “You want a taco?”
“No, thanks,” Caruso said.
The portly cop said, “I don’t get the cheese or the beans. It cuts the calories way down.”
Eddie Caruso had known Sellitto for years. The detective was an all right guy, who didn’t bust the chops of private cops, as long as they didn’t throw their weight around and sneak behind the back of the real Boys in Blue. Caruso didn’t. He was respectful.
But not sycophantic.
“You’ll guarantee that?” Caruso asked.
“What?”
“No beans, so you’re not going to fart. I don’t want to be here if you’re gonna fart.”
“I meant I don’t get the refried beans. I get the regular beans, black beans or whatever the hell they are. They’re lot less calories. ‘Fried’ by itself is not a good word when you’re losing weight. ‘Refried’? Think how fucking bad that is. But black beans’re okay. Good fiber, tasty. But, yeah, I fart when I eat ‘em. Like any Tom, Dick and Harry. Everybody does.”
“Can we finish business before you indulge?”
Sellitto nodded at a slim, limp NYPD case file. “We will, ‘cause sorry to say, the quote business ain’t going to take that long. The case is over and done with and it wasn’t much to start with.”
Out the window you could catch a glimpse of the harbor and Governor’s Island. Caruso loved the view down here. He’d thought from time to time about relocating but then figured the only real estate he could afford in this ‘hood would come with a view even worse than his present one in Midtown, which was a few trees and a lot of sunlight, secondhand--bounced off that Times Square high-rise.
The detective shoved the file Caruso’s way. The Sarah Lieberman homicide investigation. “That was one fucked-up twosome, the perps.” Sellitto winced. “They ick me out. Mother and son, with one bed in the townhouse. Think about it.”
Caruso would rather not.
Sellitto continued. “So your client wants to know where the Dysfunctional Family dumped the body?”
“Yep, she’s religious. You know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“I don’t either. But that’s the way of it.”
“I looked through it fast.” Sellitto offered a nod toward the file. “But the best bet for the corpse is Jersey.”
“I read that in the Daily News. But there were no specifics.”
Sellitto grumbled, “It’s in the file. Somewhere near Kearny Marsh.”