Authors: Ken White
“Not yours, I’m sure,” I said.
“Certainly not.”
“Well, I thank you for your time, Lou,” I said, sliding off the stool. “You’ve been a big
help.”
“It was my pleasure, Mr. Welles,” he said, sticking out his hand. I shook it. Cold and just a
little clammy. “Always happy to be of service to the Area Governor’s Office.”
I nodded and turned to the bartender. “What do we owe you?”
“Please, Mr. Welles,” Carpenter said. “The drinks were on the house, of course.”
Nedelmann pulled a twenty dollar bill out of his wallet and slapped it on the bar. “For your
fine service,” he said, staring at the bartender. “Why don’t you go buy yourself a nice, sharp
knife with it.”
“Come on, Dick,” I said, pulling him off the barstool.
He shook himself free. “Nothing wrong with my legs,” he said. “Take more than little Ol’
Crow to make you carry me out of this fucking slaughterhouse.”
“Yeah,” I said, taking his arm. “Let’s get going, okay?”
Carpenter and the bartender were both watching as I led Nedelmann toward the door.
Carpenter’s friendly smile had vanished.
There were a few people in the small lobby, and I hustled Nedelmann through, hoping to
avoid a scene. When we hit the sidewalk, the chilly autumn air was like a slap in the face. I
hoped it was the same for Nedelmann, at least enough so that he’d stay upright and conscious
until I could get him home.
As I eased him into the passenger seat of the Jeep, I glanced back at Takeda’s SUV. She had
a cell phone to her ear, and her mouth was moving rapidly. Barking orders, no doubt. I gave her
a wave, went around to the driver’s side, and climbed in.
Chapter Twenty
Traffic was fairly heavy on Expedition, so the ride took a while. For most of it, Nedelmann
was silent, staring out the window at the Vees on the sidewalk and the Vees that filled the cars
around us. But as we got closer to his apartment, he looked down. It took me a few seconds to
realize that he was sobbing.
“It’s okay, Dick,” I said, not really sure what was okay. “I’ll have you home in a few
minutes.”
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” he said, his voice cracking. “I fucked it up for you.”
“No you didn’t,” I said. “Everything’s on track. We got what we needed at Carpenter’s.”
“On track my ass,” he said. “You’re trying to work on a case and I’m making an asshole of
myself, as usual.”
He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have taken that first drink.” He looked at me, his eyes wet.
“You know, I haven’t had a drink in more than a year, if you can believe that. No beer, no
booze, not even wine on Shabbat night.” He laughed, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “We use
grape juice, so I can still give thanks to God for the fruit of the vine.”
Nedelmann looked back out the window. “After the camp, I spent almost two years looking
for Channi.” Channah was Nedelmann’s daughter who’d been taken in the camp. He’d always
called her Channi.
He started pounding his fist against his chest. “Even though I knew, in my heart of hearts,
that she was gone, I kept looking. And then one day, I just...stopped. I knew she was dead, and I
was afraid I’d find out what happened.” He looked at me again, the tears rolling down his
cheeks. “Can you believe that? My own daughter and I was afraid to find out what happened to
her.”
“No point, Dick,” I said, putting my free hand on his shoulder. “Details don’t matter.”
“You’re right,” he said. “They don’t. But I got a little taste of it tonight, didn’t I. Of
course, I’m sure there wasn’t a nice silver platter and a little sharp knife with a fancy handle.
And I know she wasn’t laughing when they did it to her, either.” He shook his head. “And there
I am, sitting with that motherfucker Carpenter and all those other fucking bloodsuckers, and all I
can do is get shitfaced.”
“You’re a cop,” I said. We were a couple of blocks from his apartment. “Sometimes you
have to be neck deep in the garbage.”
“Yeah, I’m a cop,” he said. He suddenly rolled down the window and stuck his head out. I
thought he was going to puke, and it looked like he thought so too, but after a moment, he pulled
his head back in and rolled up the window. “False alarm.”
Nedelmann leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. “Only reason I came back to the
department, after the war, was cause I thought I could help people. Make sure that the same
thing that happened to Channi didn’t happen to them.” He shook his head, eyes still closed.
“What the fuck was I thinking? I can’t do a goddamn thing for anybody.”
“Not true,” I said. “You could have saved Jedron Marsch. If I’d let him go, like you
wanted, he’d probably still be alive. Not your fault. Mine.”
“Think he’s dead?”
“I don’t think he’s tending bar tonight at the Police Benevolent Association union hall, if
that’s what you mean,” I said, looking away.
“You didn’t know, Charlie. You thought you were doing the right thing.” Nedelmann was
silent for a moment, then suddenly said, “He was lying, you know.”
“Who?”
“Carpenter. When you left to talk to Takeda, I could see the looks he was giving that
asshole behind the bar. He didn’t say anything with me sitting there, but I bet him and the
bartender had a nice long talk after we left.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I wasn’t buying much of what he said.”
“Give me an hour in a room with that fucker and I’ll get everything he knows. Even the
stuff he doesn’t know he knows.”
“It may come to that,” I replied, bringing the Jeep to a stop on the street below Nedelmann’s
apartment. “And if it does, he’s all yours. Promise.” I paused. “You need a hand getting up to
your apartment?”
He shook his head. “I’ll be fine. It’s only two flights. Even if I have to crawl, it’ll only take
a couple of minutes. Listen, Charlie, don’t tell Rachel that I’ve been drinking, okay? She’s been
so proud of me not drinking this past year and I don’t want her to know that I couldn’t control
myself.”
If Nedelmann’s wife, Rachel, got downwind of him, nobody was going to need to tell her
anything. “Sure thing, Dick,” I said. “My lips are zipped.”
“You’re a pal,” he said with a drunken smile. “An asshole sometimes, but a pal. I’ll see you
at your office tomorrow night. Seven, no later than seven-thirty or so.”
“Have a good Sabbath, my friend,” I said.
He smiled and climbed out of the Jeep. I watched him until he got through the front door of
the apartment building, then pulled away from the curb and headed back to the office.
Nedelmann had been right about one thing. Carpenter had been lying to me. About what,
exactly, I wasn’t sure. The way he found Joshua’s body, Jedron Marsch, how much he knew
about the murders of the two Vees less than forty-eight hours before Joshua was killed. One
thing or everything. I’d be seeing him again, and he wouldn’t have a smile on his face when we
were done.
Sara was behind her desk when I got into the office. She looked up as I came in and smiled,
a little too wide. “Back early,” she said softly. “Miss me?”
I leaned against the door. “Sara, we need to talk,” I said. “I like you. You’re a great
secretary, you have a terrific personality, and to top it all off, you’re a good-looking woman.
Under other circumstances, I’d be all over you.”
She smiled.
I shook my head slowly. “But you know that I’m not at all comfortable about any kind of
relationship with you, and you know why. Even assuming I could get over that, the fact is that I
need to be completely focused on finding who killed Joshua. I can’t let anything or anybody
distract me from that.”
“I’m not trying to be a distraction . . .”
I held up a hand. “Hear me out. With you . . .” I shrugged. “. . . coming on to me as hard as
you’ve been, it makes it really hard to be around you. I can’t have that. I need you, Sara. I need
you to do the job you do. I don’t need to be figuring out ways to avoid you or put you off. You
understand? It used to be a little light flirting, which was fine. But you’ve got to stop pushing so
hard. If you can’t, maybe I need to get somebody else in here.”
“I miss him too, Charlie,” she said, looking away. “I know it doesn’t seem like it
sometimes, but I do. Joshua was the best boss I ever had. He was smart, funny . . .”
Her voice trailed off, and she smiled. “Just a real good boss. I want you to find the bastards
who killed him and do to them what they did to him.” She looked back at me, still smiling.
“And if that means I have to control my raging passion for you, that’s what I have to do, right?”
“Right,” I said. “You okay with that?”
“Yeah, not ecstatic, but okay.”
“That’s all I ask,” I said. “So let’s get to work. You called Joshua’s clients and let them
know their cases were on hold?”
Sara nodded. “Yeah, they’d all heard what happened to Joshua, and all but one had made
other arrangements. The holdout said she’d decided to forget about divorce for now. Seems her
beloved husband had come into some money and she wanted to get her piece of it before she
gave him the boot.”
“Good. Don’t worry, after we finish this case, the clients will come back.”
“I’m not worried,” she said. “We got plenty of money in the bank.” She was silent for a
moment. “Which I guess is your money now, right? We’ll need to go over the assets some night
soon.”
“Later,” I said. “Long as we have enough for payroll, lights, the phone, and the rent, I’m
happy.”
“Rent?”
“For the office,” I said.
Sara laughed. “Charlie, Night and Day owns the Triangle Building. We collect rent, we
don’t pay it.”
“Oh,” I said. “Joshua never mentioned that. You’re right, we’ll have to sit down and go
over all this stuff so I don’t make more of a fool of myself than I already have.”
“Good thinking,” she said. “Guess that’s why you’re a detective.”
“Did Cynthia ask if you remember a case involving a client named Dowling? Would have been maybe
three months ago, according to the case log.”
“She did, and I forgot to check." She paused. "Not offhand.” She opened her drawer and went through a stack of steno
notepads. “Three months? July or August?”
“Cynthia said three months,” I replied. “You can check the case log for an exact date.”
“This is faster,” she said, pulling out one of the notepads. She flipped through the pages and
said, “Okay, here we are. Dowling. July 18
th
.” She studied the page for a moment, then nodded.
“Right, I remember the case now.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Dowling, first name Frank, known as Frankie to his friends, got himself in a jam with one
of the uptown mobs and came to Joshua for help.”
“I thought the uptown mobs had been stomped out,” I said. “That’s what I read in the paper
and heard on the news.”
“They’re like cockroaches, Charlie. You start stomping, they run away and hide in dark
holes. When the stomping’s done, they come back out.”
She smiled. “We all used to be human, just like you. Mob guys before the change were
mob guys after the change. There’s a lot of money in crime, and money is still the fuel that
makes things go. Mob guys want it, and there’s always somebody willing to help.” She paused.
“Or look the other way for a piece of the pie.”
“You know which mob Dowling was having problems with?” I asked.
Sara shook her head. “No idea. Kaiser, Gagliano, Barozie, Vinas, take your pick. I didn’t write it
down, which means that Joshua didn’t tell me.”
“Was that unusual?”
She shook her head. “Not an everyday thing, but not unusual either. All it meant was that
he had some personal contacts that he didn’t want on paper.”
“Which means he knew somebody in the mob in question?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe somebody who had pull with the mob. I wouldn’t read too
much into it, Charlie. Joshua knew a lot of people.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “So what happened with the case?”
Sara continued to study her notes. “Well, the client paid, so I guess Mr. Dowling was
satisfied with what he got.” She continued to read, then suddenly started to laugh. “Oh, okay, I
remember this now. Joshua brought in Count Chubula to make peace with whatever mob was
after Dowling.”
“Joshua brought in who?”
“I don’t remember his name,” she said, still laughing. “He was part owner of a couple of cut
joints uptown with his bloodfather. Young looking guy, little too much baby fat, if you know
what I mean, and he stuffed it into a tight, old-fashioned looking black suit. Guess he thought he
was the reincarnation of that foreign guy who played Dracula in the old black and white movies.
Slicked-black hair, extra polite, hard-to-understand phony foreign accent.” She giggled. “He
even stuck some fake fangs on his teeth. After he left, I called him Count Chubula. Joshua
thought that was pretty funny. Didn’t seem to be a lot of love lost between the two of them.”
“Bela Lugosi,” I said.