Phantom Angel (23 page)

“Like I said, you'd have to hear it from her.”

“I'm going to play devil's advocate here,” Dytman said, craning his neck. “Why should we go out of our way to cut this one particular webcam girl a deal? We're already flipping all of the other girls. They're more than eager to tell us everything they know. What reason do we have to believe that Miss Beausoleil knows more than they do?”

“How about because she was the only one who happened to be working a side scam with my murder victim?” Legs said. “How about because it was Joe Minetta himself who put her and my murder victim together? That girl is the one and only link between Minetta and Morrie Frankel. It seems to me you'd be mighty interested in what she has to say. I sure am.”

“Makes sense to me,” Sue Herrera murmured, tapping away at her laptop.

“And there's more,” I said. “Her life is currently in danger. Boso was the only girl who wasn't home when you raided the Crown Towers. Really unfortunate timing on her part because now the Minettas have got to be thinking that she ratted them out. They're looking for her.”

Cimoli stuck out his lower lip. “I'm going to be candid with you, Ben. That particular argument carries a lot less weight with me. This is a girl who masturbates on camera for a living. She chose this life.”

Sue glared across the table at him. “Please tell me you did
not
just say that.”

He reddened instantly. “All I meant was—”

“We have a responsibility to protect her,” Sue stated firmly. “Whether we like how she earns her money or not.”

“I didn't say that we didn't. What I meant was that this girl—”

“Her name is Jonquil Beausoleil. Friends call her Boso. And I'm out of here.” I got up and started for the door.

“Wait, where are you going?” Cimoli demanded. “Calm down, will you? Tell him to calm down, Lieutenant Diamond.”

“He seems perfectly calm to me,” Legs said.

“I was just venting,” Cimoli said defensively. “Can't a guy vent? I promise you that if Miss Jonquil Beausoleil is ready to help us then we're ready to help her. You have my word. Now sit back down like a person, will you?”

I sat back down like a person. “What are you prepared to offer her?”

“For now? Protective custody.”

“What about immunity from prosecution?”

“Ben, we've got her dead to rights on credit card fraud.”

“You didn't answer my question.”

“Fine,” he huffed. “Immunity's on the table.”

“Are you prepared to put her in the Witness Protection Program?”

“Depends on what she's got to say. Don't ask me to promise you anything more right now because I can't. But it's not out of the question
if
she can put Big Joe behind bars. Can she?”

“I honestly don't know. But the only way you'll find out is if you keep her alive.”

“What do we know about Miss Beausoleil's whereabouts at the time of the Morrie Frankel shooting?” Dytman asked Legs.

“I'm told she was at the Ralph Lauren store on Madison Avenue. Their security cams will clear her if that's the case. We're checking them.”

Cimoli frowned at him. “Who told you that?”

“That would be me,” I said.

“So you've been in contact with her?”

“I never said I hadn't been.”

“Do you know where she is right now?”

“Yes, I do. Lieutenant Diamond doesn't, but I do.”

“I don't believe this shit,” Cimoli fumed. “Where is she?”

“I'm not prepared to tell you that yet. I still have one more question I want to ask.”

He crossed his arms in front of his chest, glaring at me. “Ask away.”

“Who leaked her identity to Cricket O'Shea?”

“What are you looking at me for? I didn't out her.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I'm a sworn officer of the court,” Cimoli shot back. “You have got some balls coming here and accusing me of leaking confidential information to a gossip blogger.”

“Somebody who has intimate knowledge of the case leaked it to her,” Legs pointed out. “Somebody who knew her age, her place of birth. It wasn't me. It wasn't Benji. And it—”

“Hold on a sec…” Cimoli glowered at me balefully. “What makes you so sure it wasn't him?”

“Because I know him. I know Sue, too.” Legs raised his goateed chin at Cimoli. “But I don't know you.”

“You don't know Agent Dytman either. Why are you putting this on me?”

“Because it isn't Agent Dytman's face that I see every time I turn on the TV. You like attention, Cimoli. People who like attention know how to go about getting it—by feeding the beast.”

“I didn't leak the Beausoleil girl's name to Cricket O'Shea,” Cimoli insisted. “I don't even know the stupid bitch.”

“She's not stupid,” I said. “And she's not a bitch.”

He looked at me in amazement. “I don't get it. Me you disrespect up, down and sideways, yet Cricket O'Shea you're defending?”

“Cricket and I go back a few years. We went to school together.”

Cimoli's eyes narrowed. “Is that right? Then I think we know what happened here.”

“We do?”

“
You
leaked it to her, obviously.”

“Obviously. Except I didn't.”

“Obviously,” Legs agreed.

“You know what? I've had it up to here with you two assholes!” Cimoli roared. “Who the fuck do you think you are? A poverty-row PI and a hipster homicide detective who's going to be on traffic detail in Ozone Park by nightfall if I have anything to say about it. And, trust me, I do!”

“It seems to me,” Dytman put in soothingly, “that the purpose of this meeting is to establish the Beausoleil girl's whereabouts and arrange protective custody for her. We're all on the same side. We all want the same thing. Who cares if Cricket O'Shea has cultivated a source close to our investigation? All she's put out there is the girl's identity. It's not as if the Minettas have any idea where she is.”

“Yes, they do…” Sue was staring at her laptop's screen.

“What are you talking about?” I asked her.

“Listen to her latest posting: ‘Why doesn't some bright boy tighten up his brain and go look for Jonquil Beausoleil at the offices of Golden Legal Services?'”

I felt my stomach clench. “When did Cricket post that?”

“Twenty-five minutes ago. Is that where she is, Benji?”

I nodded my head.

Legs grabbed his cell phone and called it in. “I want that building flooded with men,” he said in a hard, commanding voice. “I want bodies surrounding that girl. And the entire intersection secured. I am talking full perimeter protection, got it? And I mean
now
!” He rang off, his jaw muscles clenching. “They'll be there in less than five minutes.”

I reached for my own phone and called the office. It was Rita who answered.

“Hey, there,” I said, keeping my own voice extremely calm. There are times when I'm grateful for my acting training. “How's our guest doing?”

“That little kitty is a stone freak,” Rita answered. “She was getting bored, okay? So she decided to go up to your place for her
second
aerobic workout of the day. She invited me to join her, okay? Let me tell you—within ten minutes I was ready to pass out. She made me feel seventy years old. And I'm in good shape, Benji.”

“You're in great shape, Rita. Listen, I don't want to alarm you but they know she's there.”

“How…?”

“Cricket found out.”

I heard voices from her end now. Male voices. And heard Mom say, “May I help you, gentlemen?”

“Two cops in uniform just barged in here,” Rita informed me.

“Good. Legs sent them. And more are on their way. But, listen, just to play it safe you'd better ask for—”

“I'll need to see your photo ID, please,” I heard Mom say to them. She is nobody's fool. “Thank you, gentlemen. Allow me to show you the way.”

“Rita, tell them to take the stairs. They're liable to get stuck in that damned elevator for three hours.”

“Not to worry, little lamb. Abby's way ahead of you. And two plainclothesmen just got here. She's checking their ID, too. It's all good. Boso will be fine.”

“Excellent. We'll be there as soon as we can. Oh, hey, Rita? Do me one small favor, will you?”

“Sure, what is it?”

“Keep away from the windows.”

Legs and I headed out of the conference room now, moving briskly toward the elevator with the others trailing along behind us. When we got there Legs pushed the button once, twice, three times.

“Why did you do it?” I asked Cimoli as we stood there waiting for the elevator. “Why did you tip Cricket off?”

“I didn't tip her off, you little shit!”

“I don't believe you. And if you call me a little shit again I'm going to slug you.”

“I'm all done talking about this, understand? We'll extract the girl from your building and we'll put her in protective custody at an undisclosed location.”

“Until Cricket discloses it, you mean.”

“Listen, you little—!”

“If you boys don't knock it off,” Sue warned us, “I'm going to slug
both
of you.”

Legs' phone rang while we were still waiting there for the elevator. He took the call. Listened. Listened some more. Then rang off and said, “We're too late. We lost her.”

I stared at him. “What do you mean we lost her?”

“I mean she's dead.”

 

CHAPTER TEN

ONE OF HER BIG, BLUE EYES
—the left one—was gazing directly at me. But that haunted look I'd seen in those eyes was gone now. It had been replaced by a shocked, unblinking stare. And her right eye wasn't even there anymore. The bullet took it out before it went straight through her brain and blew out the back of her head.

She was lying on her back on the steamy tar roof with the hot sun beating down on her. Her arms were spread wide, palms facing the sky. Her tanned legs had splayed rather awkwardly as she fell. It was not her best look. Even so, a crime scene photographer stood over her shooting her from this angle and that for one final pictorial gallery. She was still an object of fascination. The camera loved her.

“I—I told her, stay off the roof,” Rita sobbed as Mom and I stood there trying to console her. “After we worked out together in your apartment, I told her do
not
come up here.”

“I told her the very same thing, Rita.” I put my arms around her and hugged her. She towered over me in her high-heeled sandals. “It's not your fault.”

“It's not your fault,” Mom echoed softly.

“She kept telling me h-how much she hated being cooped up. She wanted to see the sky.”

“She liked to be able to see the sky,” I said. “You didn't hear the shot?”

Mom shook her head. “Not over all of our street noise. Not with my AC on.”

“I should have stayed there with her,” Rita went on. “I shouldn't have left her by herself.”

“Rita, you had no way of knowing what would happen.”

“Bunny's right, Rita.”

“She wasn't a bad kid,” Rita sniffled.

“Boso was a good kid,” Mom agreed. “And she was smart. She would have made something of herself.”

“It's going to be okay, Rita.”

Rita breathed in and out raggedly. “No, it's not. It's never going to be okay.”

Legs stood over near Boso's body with his face drawn into a tight grimace. All of the bluster had gone out of Gino Cimoli. He looked quite ill. Jack Dytman looked defeated and glum. Sue Herrera just looked pissed off. The roof was crowded with people. An EMS crew was still there. So were a half-dozen cops, the crime scene technicians and the photographer. I wondered if our building's tired old roof could handle so much weight. I wondered if we'd all go crashing down into my apartment below. It wouldn't be such a bad thing, really. The fall might kill me and put me out of my misery.

“What a damned shame,” Dytman said, shaking his head.

Legs said, “I swear to God, Cimoli. If I find out that you leaked this to Cricket O'Shea I'll—”

“I didn't,” Cimoli insisted. “It wasn't me.”

Dytman craned his itchy neck. “What a damned shame.”

“If you say that one more time,” Sue informed him, “I will throw you off this roof.”

“How did the shooter get here so fast?” I asked Legs. “He took her out, what, forty minutes after Cricket posted it on her site?”

“The Minettas wanted this girl gone,” Legs said, thumbing his goatee. “My guess? They had shooters who were cruising different parts of the city just waiting to be green-lighted.” He looked around at the high-rise apartment buildings that surrounded us on Broadway and on West 103rd Street. “I'm seeing at least eight buildings he could have shot her from. Judging by those entry and exit wounds in her head I'd say he used an M4 sniper rifle. It fires a 5.56 NATO, by way of the .223 Remington. Your standard Special Forces sniper weapon. We can study the angle of the wounds and calculate the trajectory. We'll locate where the shot came from. But I guarantee you he left no trace evidence behind. No shell casing. No fingerprints. No nothing. And no one will remember seeing him. He probably showed up wearing maintenance overalls, his weapon stuffed in a duffel bag. Found himself a nice, quiet hallway window. Or maybe the roof. Was out of there sixty seconds after he took her down. He'll be halfway to Philadelphia or Providence by now—unless he lives in the 'burbs and has a perfectly respectable cover identity.” He glanced at me, his knee jiggling, jiggling. “
This
is how a pro operates.”