Hurt Machine (21 page)

Esme did not turn her head. She did not move her legs. She did not answer him. “Please leave, now.”

I took another sip of Zin. “But I haven’t finished my wine.”

With that, Esme’s right arm shot forward, toppling my untouched glass of sparkling water into my lap, soaking my pants and jacket. “I am terribly sorry, sir,” she said, not looking or sounding the least bit sorry. “Please accept the wine as an apology. You will find towels in the men’s room.”

When I came out of the men’s room, Esme was gone. I asked after her.

“She quit,” said the hostess, glaring at me. “I don’t know what you said to upset her, but she was beside herself when she left.”

I threw her a curve. “Can I speak to Chef Liu, please?”

The hostess didn’t like that. “Why, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Because I want to see if I can get him to quit too.”

Ten minutes later I was in a hot, cramped little office off the kitchen with Chef Liu. He remembered me as well and was still buying into me as a cop. He was polite, if a bit confused about what I’d done to make his bartender quit. I explained that my asking about Robert Tillman’s death had really seemed to upset Esme. That only confused him further.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Esme did not see what happened. She did not even see Robert’s body. Why should she be so upset?”

Why indeed?
“I can’t say. The last time I was here, you said Mr. Tillman had only been working here for a brief time and that he had skills in the kitchen.”

“A week, yes. He was a fine prep cook.”

“What does a prep cook do exactly?”

“It is a silly name, really. A prep cook does very little cooking. He does all the dicing and slicing of raw ingredients. Any cooking he would do would be limited to maybe skimming stocks, reheating sauces, things of that nature. It is hard, tedious work.”

“Did you like him? Did the kitchen staff like him?”

“I never thought about it. I am running a restaurant, not a social club. I was pleased to have a good prep cook who spoke good English. Most prep cooks these days are Hispanic and my Spanish is terrible.”

“Can I look at his job application, do you think?”

Chef Liu screwed up his face. “Why are the police so interested in Robert? The man died of an aneurism.”

“We’re just making sure we didn’t miss anything before.”

He liked that answer about as much as Esme had liked my answers. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m just following my orders, Chef Liu. Gimme a break, okay?”

“Okay, but there is no job application. It’s all word of mouth here. Somebody knows someone else. Like that.”

“Who brought Robert Tillman to your attention?”

“Tino.”

“Tino?”

“Tino Escobar. He’s no longer here. And no, I don’t know where he went. Now, if you don’t mind, I have—”

“One last question, then I’m outta here. Do you remember the restaurant Robert worked at before he came here. I mean, you didn’t just hire him on Tino’s word, right?”

“Kid Charlemagne’s on 2nd Avenue and 7th.”

Chef Liu gestured that we were leaving and he shut off the office lights in case I was thinking of another question.

Back on the street, I punched in Maya Watson’s number. Voicemail again. I was apparently at the top of her shit list. This time, I didn’t bother leaving a message.

The phone vibrated in my hand. Assuming it was Maya Watson calling me right back, I didn’t check the number and picked up.

“Hey, Moe.” It wasn’t Maya Watson, but Nick Roussis. “How’d that intel I got you on Delgado work out?”

“Yeah, Nicky, I meant to thank you for that. First real lead in the case.”

“Not a problem. So did he do it? Did Delgado kill that EMT?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means maybe. Some evidence points his way and some doesn’t. Besides, I’m looking into other possibilities too.”

He sounded disappointed. “Whatever you say, but let me know how it works out, okay?”

“You got it, Nicky. And thanks again. I won’t forget your going out of your way for me.”

Frankly, I was with Nick. I was disappointed too, but nothing is ever easy or uncomplicated. Nothing, at least where I’m concerned.

THIRTY-TWO

Man, Robert Tillman had really gotten under Esme’s skin. The problem was that it wasn’t particularly obvious why or how he’d done it. Chef Liu hadn’t shed much light on the subject and given that I’d already cost him his day bartender, I somehow didn’t think the time was right to start questioning any of his other employees. My initial inclination was to rush right over to Kid Charlemagne’s, but I decided that would be a mistake. I wanted to find out a little bit more about Tillman before I went stumbling around the way I was prone to do.

As I got to my car, it hit me for the first time that no one had mentioned Robert Tillman’s family filing a lawsuit. That seemed very peculiar in a city where litigation was everyone’s second favorite sport and where there were as many lawyers as cockroaches. Don’t get me wrong, those same lawyers and their evil big brothers, the insurance companies, kept Prager & Melendez Investigations, Inc. in the black until the day we closed our doors. The thing was, the case was such a total slam dunk;
I
could have tried it and won or gotten a huge settlement. With a guaranteed multimillion dollar judgment just sitting out there for the taking, I couldn’t understand how some enterprising lawyer hadn’t hooked up with a greedy member of the Tillman clan. I aimed my car toward the Brooklyn Bridge because there was someone I knew on the other side of the bridge who might be able to clarify things for me.

I walked through the lobby of 40 Court Street for the first time in many years. This building had been the longtime home of Prager & Melendez Investigations, Inc. It was also home to most of the major criminal law and personal injury firms in Brooklyn. Given that Brooklyn Borough Hall and the courts were across the street, Brooklyn Law School was a few blocks away, and the Brooklyn House of Detention was a short walk away on Atlantic Avenue, it was all very convenient or, if you were more cynically minded, very incestuous. To my way of thinking, it was both.

The firm of Pettibone, Kinder, Hart, and Wang were Brooklyn’s kings of torts and they had been Prager & Melendez’s most lucrative account. They worked big money cases: major product liability, aircraft disasters, class actions. Cheesy TV ads weren’t their style. They didn’t beg for clients. Clients begged for them. They were the type of hired guns that insurance companies either loved or loathed depending upon which table they were paid to sit at. If anyone could explain to me how a case as ripe as Tillman’s was still unpicked on the vine, Harper Pettibone Jr. could do it.

Harper was about my age, but still had an athletic build. He had been a club champion squash player and had obviously kept at it. Squash. No one in Coney Island played fucking squash. Then again, no one in Coney Island had a name like Harper Pettibone Jr. I used to bust his chops about his upbringing all the time. I think maybe that’s why we got along. I wasn’t big on kneeling to kiss anybody’s ring and he liked that about me. He also liked that we did good work for him without padding our invoices.

“Moses Prager!” He put his arm around my shoulder when he stepped out of his office. “God, you look awful,” he said with a laugh in his voice, but his soft blue eyes weren’t smiling. “How are you, my friend?” Harper didn’t wait for an answer. “Come in. Come in.” He looked at his watch and turned to his secretary. “No calls for fifteen minutes, please.”

Fifteen minutes. I’d hate to see how much time he gave people he didn’t like.

We moved into his office. It was much the same as it had been the last time I saw it. Very classic. Very old school. One wall of floor-to-ceiling bookcases, walnut paneling, a brown leather sofa, two green leather wing chairs, a big-assed desk, and a properly stuffy portrait of his late father and his partners.

“You’re a blended scotch man, if I remember correctly,” he said as he fiddled at the little dry bar in a cabinet to the right of his desk. “Sit.”

I settled into a chair across from his desk. “Nothing for me, thanks.”

Harper twisted his lips in disappointment. “Well, I never did enjoy drinking alone.” He closed the cabinet and sat behind his desk. “What can I do for you, Moe?”

I began to remind him about the circumstances of Robert Tillman’s death, but I didn’t get very far. Harper was well familiar with the case and with Alta Conseco’s subsequent homicide.

“But what’s all this to do with you?” he asked.

“Alta Conseco, the EMT who was murdered, she was Carmella’s older sister.”

Harper shook his head. “How awful.”

“The cops haven’t gotten very far with finding her killer and Carm asked me to try my luck with it.”

“But you two are—”

“—divorced. Yeah, I know. There was too much history there for me to say no.”

“I understand that. I do indeed. But how can I help?”

“Harper, if I told you that no one in Robert Tillman’s family has filed suit, what would you say?”

“I would say his relatives are either very foolish or very dead because the case is a walk in the park, basically unlosable. My secretary could try the case. And we’re talking about a multimillion dollar judgment, but the city would never let it go to trial. They would settle this one as quietly and as quickly as possible and be done with it. But you are a shrewd enough man to have known that before you walked through my door and if all you wanted was confirmation, you would have called. So, what is it I can do for you, really?”

“Can you find out if any of your brethren have tried reaching out to the family?”

I could see he was thinking about giving me his lecture on ethics, but decided against it. He knew better than to waste the time. Even the biggest firms did some form of ambulance chasing, only they tended to think of it as working through referrals. Carmella and I had made a nice chunk of change referring cases their way. Of course, we never felt like we were steering people in the wrong direction. It was in our best interests to think that, I suppose. Like most rationalizations, it helps you sleep at night.

Harper stood, holding out his hand. My time was up. “For you, I will have some people ask around.”

We shook and I gave him my card. “Thanks, Harper.”

“You’re welcome, sir.” He walked me to the door of his office. “Are you sure you are feeling quite well, Moe?”

“Fine. Just a little stressed. Sarah’s getting married up in Vermont soon and you know how it is.”

“I do. My congratulations to them and to you. I will be in touch.”

With that I was out of his office, nodding goodbye to his secretary, and back out in the hallway. I was tempted to go look at our old offices, to see who had taken them over, but I rode the elevator down to the lobby. Too much of my life was anchored in the past. I guess that’s true of anyone over fifty. I felt it was especially true for me. I couldn’t afford to waste any of the time I had left looking back.

THIRTY-THREE

I woke up late the next day, close to noon, with no brilliant insights or fresh ideas. I’d spent a frustrating evening with my computer and the ghost of Robert Tillman. Several more computer searches had netted zilch. I couldn’t even manage to find a picture of the guy, which, in this day and age, was really saying something. In fact, it was saying something, and rather loudly too. I just couldn’t decipher what was being said or what it meant, not yet.

After some coffee and yogurt, I tried Maya Watson’s number one more time. Nothing doing. If I wanted to talk to her again, it was going to mean a trip back out to Queens. I wasn’t up for that. Before I confronted her, I needed more than amorphous suspicions. Besides, I was weary of her playing the role of the wronged party. Robert Tillman—slippery and anonymous as he was proving to be—was the wronged party here, not Maya, not Alta. I had to remember that. I couldn’t let my sympathy for Maya’s plight or my understanding Carm’s estrangement blind me. I thought about calling Carmella, but decided I was still pissed off at her on several counts, not the least of which was her hiding Alta’s personal effects from me. And though I had tried to bury the old pain, seeing Israel brought it all back. No, she was going to have to come to me and not halfway, either.

The house phone rang.

“I’m done with my case.” It was Pam. “Come on up here for a few days.”

I almost said no. I didn’t. I didn’t say yes, but I didn’t say no. I took a long breath and remembered being at 40 Court Street and how I didn’t go look at the old offices. I thought about why I hadn’t looked. I thought about being mad at Carmella and about how she was my living past and not the happiest part of it. I thought about the case and how it was often better not to work things to death, that cases, like good red wine, sometimes needed to breathe. That there were things in the world that couldn’t be willed or forced to happen. I thought about the tumor in my stomach. I thought about how good Pam had been for me, how good we’d been for each other. Okay, I thought, so there was no drama between us the way there would always be drama with Carm. So what?