Authors: William Lashner
There are hosts of people
you don’t want to hear from late on a Sunday night. Your oncologist, maybe, or the girl you had sex with six months ago and haven’t called back since, definitely, or the highway patrol, or the marines, or your mother…well, my mother. But a homicide detective might just be tops on the list.
Detective McDeiss of the Philadelphia Police Department Homicide Unit had directed me to a street on the south edge of the Great Northeast, not far from the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge and just a few blocks east of the Kalakos house. The location itself offered a clue as to what it was all about, which was more than McDeiss had given me. McDeiss was a big man with a small capacity for trust when it came to me, which made some sense, since his job was to bang away my clients and my job was to frustrate him at every turn. He hadn’t given me any details, just the address, but once I found the street, it wasn’t hard to pick out the right house, what with the crowd, the cops, the flashing lights and yellow tape, the satellite trucks parked with the reporters waiting for their close-ups. I was surprised they weren’t selling T-shirts.
I parked two blocks down the street from the carnival. I had slipped on a suit—nothing more faceless than a guy in a plain blue suit—and slowly made my way toward the center of all the activity, a nondescript brick row house with an open cement porch and a small plot of scraggly grass. In front of the house, I spotted the coroner’s van, the back doors open, something dark and shapeless on a gurney inside. As I approached, the doors slammed shut. I let out a sigh of relief as the van drove off. I’d been to enough crime scenes by now to know that my
stomach much prefers I show up after the corpse is taken away to the morgue.
At the edge of the yellow tape, I subtly gestured one of the uniforms over. I leaned toward him when he arrived and pitched my voice as low as I could while still being heard. “McDeiss asked me to come on by.”
“Are you the lawyer we were told to look out for?” he said a little too loudly.
“Can we keep this quiet? No need for the press to find out I’m here.”
“Sure, I understand,” he said softly, with a wink.
“I’m the lawyer, yes. Victor Carl.”
“Go on in.”
“Thanks.”
I ducked under the tape as unobtrusively as I could. Just as I reached the second step of the stoop, I heard something harsh and loud from behind me.
“Yo, Joe,” hollered the uniform. “Tell McDeiss that creep Victor Carl, you know, the scumbucket lawyer what we were told to look out for? Tell McDeiss he finally showed.”
Instinctively I turned toward the crowd of press. Flashbulbs popped. My name was called out, questions were shouted, questions about Charlie and Rembrandt and whether the murder here was somehow connected to the sudden emergence of the painting. So much for slipping in unnoticed.
I turned to the uniform. “Thanks, pal.”
“We aim to serve,” he said with a grin.
I turned again toward the pack of press and spotted a flash of red hair surrounding a pale freckled face before I ignored the shouting and headed into the house.
It was a crime scene, all right. Cops were wandering around with notepads out, technicians were testing, walls and doorknobs were being dusted, photographs were being snapped, jokes were being laughed at, hoagies were being eaten.
I started into the living room and was stopped by a uniform and told to wait while he found McDeiss.
The house was one of those places that had been decorated decades before and then left to age. I suppose if you lived there day by day you
didn’t notice it so much, but coming in fresh you could see the unalloyed weight of time on the décor and the lives inside. The walls were dark where they had once been bright, the furniture was greasy, the rug was worn, and everything had a tinge of brown to it and smelled as if it had been marinating in nicotine for an untold number of years. And there was another smell, something repulsive yet faintly familiar, like rot and decay and death, like pestilence itself. It took me a moment to make the connection. It smelled like Mrs. Kalakos’s breath. And with good reason. Littered across the rug were little placards with numbers on them, next to circles drawn in chalk. And there, on the edge of the rug, in front of a fully stocked liquor cart, was the taped outline of a sprawled figure and an ugly dark stain.
Across the living room and through the dining room, I could see the doorway to the bright lights of the kitchen. McDeiss, large and round, with his brown suit and black hat, was in the kitchen talking with K. Lawrence Slocum. As the uniform approached the two of them, their heads swiveled at the same moment to stare. McDeiss shook his head at me in that way he had, in the manner of the parent of a problem child, as if my ending up in the middle of a god-awful mess was a disappointment but not a surprise. Slocum stared for just a moment before looking away in disgust.
“Who is it?” I said, when the three of us were cliqued together.
“A man by the name of Ciulla,” said McDeiss.
“Do I know him?”
“I expect you do,” he said, “seeing as your card was in his wallet.”
“Oh.” I suddenly remembered now where I’d heard that name before. Old Mrs. Kalakos had given it to me. “Is the victim perhaps a Ralph Ciulla?”
“There you go, Carl,” said McDeiss. “I knew you’d come up with it.”
“How did he get it?”
“One in the knee, two in the head.”
“When?”
“A few hours ago.”
“Who did it?”
“If we knew that, we wouldn’t need you, now, would we?”
“Big Ralph.”
“He was big, all right.”
“Can I have a minute, guys?”
“I didn’t think it was possible for you to get any paler,” said McDeiss, “but once again I am proven wrong.”
“Just a minute,” I said as I heaved myself over to a big old easy chair and plopped down into it, put my head in my hands. It took me a while to catch my breath, a longer while to settle the fear that rippled through my stomach like a bout of gastrointestinal distress. Big Ralph, murdered, just a few hours after we had a beer together at the Hollywood Tavern. Whatever was really going on in the Charlie Kalakos case, it had just taken a turn. I peered through my fingers onto the darkened carpet. Between my shoes was a placard with the number seven on it, and a circle of chalk, and in the middle of the circle a dark black stain. Somehow that didn’t help.
I glanced up at McDeiss and Slocum. The two were ignoring me as they tried to piece together what had happened. They would have questions, and they’d want some answers. Some things I was forbidden by law to disclose, and some things could get in the way of what I had once thought to be an easy payday. As I considered my options, the pile of jewels and gold ensconced in my desk drawer dissolved in my mind’s eye. But along with that fading image was another, the shapeless sack of flesh and bones I had glimpsed in the coroner’s van. A man was dead, murdered in the coldest of blood, and something needed to be done.
I started thinking about who might have killed Ralph Ciulla. There were probably a lot of guys over the years who had wanted to pop Big Ralph, not that old and not that sweet, had said my father, but the timing was pretty damn definitive. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Ralph and Joey had thrust themselves into the middle of Charlie’s case and immediately thereafter Ralph had ended up dead. But who would have known about Ralph’s interest? Lavender Hill, who had made him a fartoo-generous offer for the painting? Joey Pride, who was his partner in the endeavor? Mrs. Kalakos with her big gun, whom the two men had gone to first before approaching my dad? Or even Charlie Kalakos, clued about his old friend’s intentions by his witch of a mother. All of them yes, and so all of them were possibilities, but not possibilities that made much sense.
From the chair I said, “So how do you fellows figure it happened?”
“You ready to talk?” said McDeiss.
“I’m ready to listen,” I said. “And then I’ll talk.”
McDeiss shook his head in exasperation, but Slocum gave him a nod.
“This Ralph Ciulla had been married twice, divorced twice,” said McDeiss. “His mother died five years ago, and after that he lived here alone. He apparently let the shooter inside, closed the door behind him. Best we could tell, there was no struggle. The shooter was standing there, the victim was here. The victim turned toward the liquor cart, maybe to fix some drinks. First shot went into the knee from behind, shattered it. A lot of bleeding. None of the neighbors heard the shot, so it was probably an automatic with a silencer, though no shells were found. Ballistics will tell us the caliber, but it looked medium-sized, like a thirty-eight. After he was on the ground, the shooter put two in the right side of the skull.”
“Left-handed?”
“That would be my guess.”
“How long between the knee shot and the head shots?” I said.
“Impossible to tell. Maybe the coroner can give an estimate. But the knee was wrapped with a towel from the kitchen, which was a little strange.”
“Was there a trail of blood into the kitchen?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then the shooter wrapped the wound,” I said.
“That’s what we figure,” said McDeiss. “Maybe he was looking for something and hoped the victim would tell him where it was. That’s why we were so intrigued when we found your card. We hoped you could tell us what might have been going on with the victim.”
“Who called the murder in?”
“A 911 call from a pay phone not far from here. Panicky voice, didn’t identify himself, but he knew the victim’s name.”
“The shooter?”
“Whoever did this doesn’t seem the panicky type. In any event we dusted the handset and the change in the box for prints.”
“Anybody see anything?”
“We have a squad going door-to-door. Nothing yet.”
“Anything taken?”
“Doesn’t look like it. A valuable ring still on his finger, a watch, and his wallet was still in his pocket, with your card inside and a credit card, but no cash.”
“What about his money clip?”
“A money clip?”
I lifted up my head, looked out a window onto the street, thought I saw a flash of yellow slipping by. “That’s what he had on him today,” I said. “Gold, with some sort of a medallion on it, clipped around a pretty thick wad.”
McDeiss looked at Slocum, who shrugged.
“You were with this Ralph Ciulla today?” said McDeiss.
“I was.”
“What were you boys talking about?”
I stood up from the chair, closed my eyes for a moment, fought to regain my stomach.
“Go ahead, Victor,” said Slocum.
“Ralph Ciulla was an old friend of Charlie Kalakos,” I said.
Slocum didn’t even blink, he already knew.
“Ralph was trying to inject himself in the negotiations for the missing Rembrandt. He and another old friend, Joey Pride, believed they could sell the painting to some high roller, and they met with me in an attempt to get Charlie to go along.”
“How’d they get in touch with you?” said Slocum.
“By phone.”
“Where did you meet?”
“Hollywood Tavern.”
“That’s near where your father lives, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“When did you meet?”
“About two.”
“Anyone else?”
“Just Ralph and Joey Pride and myself.”
“You know where this Joey Pride lives?”
“Nope.”
“What he looks like?”
“Same age as Ralph. Thin, nervous, talks a lot. African-American. Drives a Yellow Cab. That’s it.”
“If he gets in touch with you, you’ll get in touch with us?”
“Count on it.”
“They say who the high roller is who wants to buy the painting?”
“No, but Ralph showed me a couple hundred-dollar bills he received up front. That’s how I knew about the money clip.”
“And now they’re gone. What did you tell them?”
“I told them the painting legally belonged to the museum.”
“And?”
“And I wasn’t going to be involved in anything illegal.”
Slocum looked at me impassively, withholding judgment as to whether I was being only partially insincere or was flat-out lying.
“Spare us the act,” said McDeiss, not withholding anything. “We’ve both known you too long.”
“How’d they take your rejection of their deal?” said Slocum.
“Not so well.”
“But you gave him your card,” said McDeiss.
“I’m a businessman,” I said. “I give my card out to panhandlers and delivery boys, to babies in strollers.”
“Why did this Ralph Ciulla fellow and that Joey Pride think they had the right to get a piece of that painting?” said McDeiss.
“From what they told me, it was because they were in on the theft.”
Slocum and McDeiss turned toward each other, as if the theory had already been discussed.
“What does your client say about it?” said Slocum.
“Whatever he says is privileged,” I said.
“But as far as you know, the only people who knew about the hundreds were you, the guy who gave them to Ciulla, and this Joey Pride.”
“Do you really think Ralph was killed for a couple hundred bucks?”
“You been in this job as long as I have, Carl, you’d be amazed at how cheap a life can be measured by a guy on the trigger side of a gun.”
“We’d like to talk to your client,” said Slocum.
“You want to talk to my client, you get Hathaway to get off of her high white horse. It’s getting dangerous here, and she’s not helping.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“Good.”
“What are you going to tell Charlie?” said Slocum.
“When I get hold of him finally,” I said, “I’m going to tell him the truth. That things have escalated in a very bad way, that murder is afoot, and maybe his best bet is to bury the damn painting and stay the hell out of Dodge.”
She was waiting for
us by the front door, long and lean, pretty and hard, blond hair, black roots, hoop earrings dangling, bracelets jangling, lips painted bright red, the darting, vicious eyes of a middle linebacker. Her portfolio was brown leather, her heels were black and high, her silver Escalade was parked out front. When she saw us approach, she glanced at her watch and tapped her toe, and she terrified the hell out of me, just standing there. But of course she did.
She was a Realtor.
“I think you’ll adore this one, Beth,” she said in a tight, energized voice as we climbed the cement steps in front of the narrow row house. “I know it was a little sudden, but I wanted to get a jump on some other buyers who are coming to look this afternoon. The interest in this house is through the roof. It won’t be available much longer.”
“Thanks, Sheila,” said Beth.
“And is this your boyfriend?”
“Just my partner, Victor,” said Beth.
“Just,” I said.
“Nice to meet you, Victor. Are you life partners or something like that? It’s so hard to keep the nomenclature straight.”
“Legal partners,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, placing a hand lightly on my forearm. She smelled edgy and dangerous, like she had doused herself in a new perfume from Revlon called Barracuda. “It’s nice of you to come and provide support. So are we ready?”
“I think,” said Beth.
“Now, use your imagination, Beth,” said Sheila as she fiddled with her keys. “The buyers haven’t prepped it for sale, so it will look a little dingy, but that’s to our advantage, because it will keep the price down. You have to envision it with fresh paint, sanded floors, new fixtures throughout, especially the sconces.”
“The sconces?” I said.
“Oh, the things they have now are simply beastly. But with something a little art deco and bright, maybe some frosted glass, the walls will look fabulous.” She found a key that fit, twisted it, shouldered open the door. “Let’s take a look.”
A blast of must hit us from the open door, as if the place hadn’t been inhabited in years. I was ready to duck in case a bat flew out.
Sheila the Realtor walked in with authority, switched on the lights, opened a window. Beth and I followed warily, stepping directly into a living room. There was a ridge running across the dirty wooden floor, the walls were scuffed, the fixtures hung by frayed wires, the windowsills were rotting, the ceiling had a great crack tearing through it.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” said Sheila. “Isn’t it thrilling? Varnished floors, maybe some flocked wallpaper. A leather couch, something bright on the wall. The potential here is outrageous. And you should see the kitchen—it’s bigger than some condos I sell.”
There was an archway to a small grimy dining area devoid of windows and then another arch leading to the kitchen, which was big but sparse, too, with just a few counters, a stove collapsing on itself, and a refrigerator with rounded edges that belonged in a museum. The linoleum floor, a filthy brown, was coming apart at the seams.
“Lovely, just lovely,” said Sheila, admiring the wreck of a kitchen. “It gets morning light, which is really a fabulous feature. You have enough room for an island and a breakfast nook. This is the house’s single best feature.”
“This?” I said.
“Oh, yes, Victor,” said Sheila. “I have clients in half-million-dollar homes who would kill for a kitchen like this. The possibilities are endless. And whatever you put into a kitchen, you will get out twice when you sell, especially a kitchen as big as this.”
“It does have potential,” said Beth.
“You see, Victor, Beth has vision. Beth can see beyond the current condition to what this kitchen can be. State of the art. A Viking stove, a glass-fronted refrigerator, granite countertops, walnut cabinets.”
“I like walnut,” said Beth.
“You could do the whole thing in walnut, with pin lighting from the ceiling. I could see this kitchen in
Philadelphia
magazine.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. Now, there are two floors above us. Three bedrooms on the second and a bedroom and an attic space on the third. Plus a full basement,” she said, gesturing to a door in the kitchen.
“Finished?” said Beth.
“You could,” said Sheila. “Why don’t we take a look upstairs first? I thought, for you, the third-floor bedroom could be a home office. It gets a tremendous amount of light, and there’s a view of City Hall. Oh, Beth, I think this place is perfect for you, just perfect. And I know there’s some leeway on the price.”
“You want to come up with me, Victor?” said Beth.
“In a minute.”
I stood with Sheila as Beth wandered back through the dining area and toward the stairs in the living room. As she climbed them, the stairs creaked like an arthritic old man trying to straighten his back.
“It’s a little run-down,” I said to Sheila the Realtor.
“It admittedly needs some work,” she said, the manic edge gone from her voice.
“It’s a pit.”
“Her price range was limited.”
“Are there really people coming to look at it this afternoon?”
“There are always people coming to look in the afternoon. What’s your situation, Victor?”
“Single,” I said.
She laughed, leaned back, flicked her hair. “I meant housing,” she said.
“Oh, right. I rent.”
“You could just throw your money out the window, it would be more efficient. Do you ever think of buying?”
“No, not really.”
“It’s a good time, Victor, while interest rates are still low.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“I have some places that would be perfect for you.” She whipped a card out of her portfolio, offered it to me. “If you’re interested, give me a call.”
“I don’t think I really want to buy something right now.”
“Still, give me a call. I’m sure we could work out something. Now, why don’t you go up and see how your partner’s getting along.”
I found Beth leaning on a sill, peering out a window in a small, closetlike room with a sloped ceiling on the third floor. There was enough room for a chair or a desk, maybe, but not enough room for both.
“Nice home office,” I said.
“Look at the view,” she said.
“What view?”
“If you lean forward and look left and bend your neck just so, you can see the tip of Billy Penn’s hat.”
“Oh, that view.”
“What do you think?”
“I think I don’t have the imagination for this place.”
“I like it.”
“You always had a thing for reclamation projects. That’s why you’re with me.”
“This would be quite a cozy office,” she said.
“Cozy being the operative word.”
“And did you see the rooms on the second floor? A nice master bedroom, a guest room, and then the small room that could be a nursery.”
“A nursery?”
“Paint it pale blue, put in a cradle, a nice rocking chair.”
“Doesn’t a nursery need a baby first?”
“And the kitchen is marvelous, isn’t it? You heard what Sheila said.
Philadelphia
magazine.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“I love walnut.”
“There’s not a stick of walnut in this entire house.”
“With the settlement you wheedled out of Eugene Franks and some help from my dad, I bet I can swing this.”
“Beth, do you really think this is the answer to whatever existential disquiet you’re feeling, to buy a house and saddle yourself with a thirty-year mortgage and a limitless future of home repair?”
She turned from the window and stared right at me, her lips flat with seriousness, her eyes impassive. “What would you suggest?” she said in a calm, soft voice.
I thought about it, but not for long, because the very calm of her voice let me know that she didn’t really want an answer.
“I represented a home inspector in a DUI once,” I said.
“Is he an incompetent drunk?”
“Only when he drives.”
“Perfect. Thanks, Victor,” she said, looking up to the sloped ceiling. “I think I’m going to be really happy here.”
“Can I make one piece of decorating advice?”
“Sure.”
“For the home office, get a laptop.”