Phantom Angel (25 page)

“How did you feel about that?” I asked her.

“My first reaction was shock. I couldn't believe he hadn't let me know what he was doing. And then, when I realized
why
he hadn't, I got furious. I said to him, ‘Morrie, you lied to my face about Farnell so you could scam me out of my money, didn't you?' He said, ‘Leah, I'm in the deepest hole I've ever been in. I'm just trying to dig my way out.' I said, ‘So why didn't you just
ask
me for the money?' And he said, ‘Because if you knew the truth you wouldn't have given it to me.'” Leah shook her head at us in amazement. “Do you have
any
idea how many offers I had to leave him and produce my own shows? See my own name up there on the marquee?
Dozens
. But I always turned them down. Because we were a team. Because I was loyal to that man. And this was how he repaid me. By treating me with the same contempt he treated everyone else. After everything we'd been through together Morrie
used
me. I was just another sucker to him. There was no
us
. There was only
him
. You can't even begin to comprehend how devastated I was. Let me put it to you this way—when I found out that my husband, Phil, had taken up with another woman? That was a paper cut compared to what Morrie did to me. I had to go in the bathroom and throw up. After I came out I told Morrie how angry I was. And do you know what he did? He laughed at me and said, ‘What's gotten into you today? Did you forget to take your estrogen or whatever the hell it is that you—you…?'” Leah broke off, her chest rising and falling. “I couldn't stop stewing about it when I got home that night. The more I stewed the angrier I got. Morrie was the center of my universe. I gave my life to that man. And he betrayed that. He destroyed it.”

Legs studied her curiously. “So you decided to destroy him?”

“I had to,” she said quietly. “I simply could not let him get away with it. Are you sure I can't offer you gentlemen anything? A soda?”

Legs shook his head. So did I. I can't speak for Legs but I was thinking that Leah Shimmel had to be the most polite killer I'd ever come across.

“Mind you, I remained the good little soldier,” she pointed out. “I followed his orders. He said, ‘This stays between us. Don't show Benji your cards.' And so I didn't.”

“Meaning you were playacting when I showed up here and confronted Morrie about Farnell,” I said. “You weren't shocked at all to find that he didn't exist. You already knew.”

“I did. I'm sorry about the charade, Benji.”

“That's okay, you were following orders. And you're a pretty good actress, Leah.”

“I'm a
damned
good actress. Better than half of those flighty airheads with dirty hair who I've auditioned over the years. And I had no problem doing what Morrie asked me to, because by then I'd already figured out how I was going to pay him back. Charlie and I had it all planned out.”

“You recruited Charlie to help you?”

“I asked him to do me a favor. After all of the scrapes I've gotten Charlie out of he owed me one. And he was happy to help. Charlie never liked Morrie. He thought he was a nasty prick who didn't respect me. Which, as it happens, was entirely true. The basic plan was Charlie's. I can't take any credit. I simply told him that I couldn't do anything to Morrie while we were here at the office together. That would have made me the only suspect, wouldn't it?”

“Most likely,” Legs acknowledged.

“So Charlie came up with what hoodlums refer to as a ‘drive-by.' Lieutenant, are you…?”

“I'm acquainted with the term,” Legs assured her, nodding.

“The only complication Charlie foresaw was that the ‘drive-by' would probably take place while Morrie was out walking on the street somewhere. That meant there'd be innocent bystanders. Therefore, I'd have to hop out of the car, shoot him at close range and then hop back in. After all, I couldn't risk hitting other people with stray bullets, could I?”

“No, you couldn't,” I agreed.

“Charlie purchased the hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants for me at a sporting goods store. Also a good pair of binoculars. He got me those big sunglasses at a Duane Reade. The gun he already owned. He purchased it illegally several months ago. Charlie sells drugs from time to time on a very modest scale and he needs it for his personal protection.”

“Had you fired a nine-mil before?” Legs asked her.

“Charlie showed me how,” Leah responded. “Not that there was much to learn. You point and you shoot. Believe me, I found it a whole lot easier to use than my new iPhone.”

“Just to be straight about this,” Legs said. “Was Charlie aware that you intended to kill Morrie?”

“I told him I was going to pay Morrie back. I didn't specifically say I'd shoot him.”

“But he provided you with a gun and showed you how to use it.”

“Well, yes,” she admitted. “And he did offer to ‘blow away that fat bastard' for me, but I wouldn't let him. Morrie was
my
demon. Besides, Charlie's already been in enough trouble with the law. You'll go easy on him, won't you, Lieutenant?”

Legs thumbed his goatee for a moment. “I don't see how we can. My guess is he'll be charged as an accessory to first-degree murder. And you'll be charged with that first-degree murder.”

“I'm prepared to accept the consequences for what I've done,” Leah said. “I have no regrets. None. I pulled the trigger. And I handled the details. That's what I do. I take care of details. I suggested that Charlie get up early in the morning, take the subway a good distance from Williamsburg and steal the first good-sized vehicle he could find that had tinted windows. So he rode the No. 7 train out to Flushing and—”

“Stole the Navigator from a Waldbaum's parking lot,” Legs said, nodding his head. “We tracked it coming into Manhattan through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel at seven minutes after ten. What did he do after that?”

“Circled around midtown until I called him. I was just waiting for Morrie to go somewhere, anywhere, so we could set our plan in motion. I needed for him to leave. Only he didn't. And then Benji showed up here to tell him that he'd discovered the truth about Farnell.” Leah arched an eyebrow at me. “It was really quite remarkable the way you told Morrie off, you know. Most people didn't talk to him like that. And you look like such a little nebbish, too. After you took off, Morrie paced around here for at least another hour, making one phone call after another. He was desperately trying to raise more money from his roster of angels. But he got nowhere, which meant he had to ask Joe Minetta for it. He phoned Joe and arranged to meet him in Bryant Park. That's when I knew I had my chance. As soon as Morrie went out the door I called Charlie and told him to meet me on the corner of 42nd Street and Sixth. Then I changed into my costume and I took off.”

“My people questioned the hotel's doorman,” Legs said. “How did you get out of the building without him seeing you?”

“I rode the elevator down to the basement and went out the service entrance that's used by the chambermaids and kitchen staff. And not just by them. The Morley has seen better times, sad to say. Some of its rooms these days are booked by lovers for noonday trysts. They don't necessarily want to be seen going in and out of a midtown hotel at that hour, so they slip out the service entrance. The kitchen workers are paid to look the other way. When I got up to the street I spotted Morrie halfway down the block heading toward Sixth. And I spotted you, Benji. You were following him, too.”

“The job left a bad taste in my mouth. I wanted to see what his next move was.” I looked at Leah curiously. “I can usually tell when I have a tail, but I didn't feel you. I wonder why.”

“Possibly because I wasn't tailing you. I was tailing Morrie. And I wouldn't second-guess myself if I were you, Benji. I'm really a very efficient person when I set my mind to a specific task. Charlie was waiting for me on the corner as planned, gun in hand. I got in and we idled there, waiting for Morrie to finish his chat with Joe. I kept watch on the entrances through the binoculars. Morrie wasn't hard to spot when he came waddling out of the park. Not in that horrid green jumpsuit of his. Charlie floored it and pulled up alongside of him and I…” Leah paused, her mouth tightening. “I wasn't sure I'd have the nerve to do it. Shoot him, I mean. But I did. It was astonishingly easy, in fact. Because it was the right thing to do. It's never hard to do something when it's the right thing to do. Or so I've learned in my sixty-two years of living. Then I jumped back in the Navigator and we took off.”

“Our security cams tracked you going down Fifth Avenue to West 37th Street,” Legs said. “You made a right turn there and headed toward Sixth.”

“That's correct. When we got to Sixth, Charlie went up one block to West 38th Street, pulled over and let me out.”

“Were you still wearing your costume?” I asked.

“Yes, I was. And, my lord, was it hot to be wearing a hooded sweatshirt. But I didn't think it would be safe to get out of the car wearing my regular clothes. I might be observed, after all. There was an outfit waiting for me in the Navigator, folded inside a shoulder bag. I took the bag with me when I got out. Charlie headed east on West 38th Street, took the Midtown Tunnel back to Queens and ditched the Navigator somewhere. He made sure to wipe it clean of fingerprints. Then he took the subway home. He tossed the gun in a trash can somewhere along the way.”

“And what did you do?”

“I strolled my way up Sixth Avenue, as planned. There are a couple of discount dress shops next to each other on Sixth just below West 40th Street. One is called Kara New York. The other is called Steps. They have racks and racks of cheap, brightly colored summer dresses. Do a very good business with young secretaries and tourists. I went in Kara New York and tried on a dress. I didn't buy it, but this gave me the opportunity to change into my own outfit unobserved. They're not allowed to have security cameras inside the dressing stalls, as I'm sure you know, Lieutenant. I stowed my costume and sunglasses in the shoulder bag and tossed it in a trashcan as I walked back here to the hotel. When the doorman greeted me he no doubt figured I'd been out running an errand. I wasn't gone very long. And I was back here in plenty of time to receive you two when you arrived with the sad news about Morrie.”

“At which point you treated us to more playacting,” I said. “You were very convincing in the role of the loyal assistant who was devastated by her boss's brutal murder.”

“That wasn't entirely playacting, Benji. That was quite an emotional ordeal I'd just been through. And the reality was starting to sink in that Morrie was gone. Really, really gone.”

“Were you feeling any regrets?” Legs asked her.

“Not a one,” she answered bluntly. “I was at peace. I still am. Morrie got what he deserved. And the plan that I drew up worked to perfection.”

“I have to disagree with you,” Legs said. “The part about your plan working to perfection, I mean. Because it didn't, ma'am. It took Benji almost no time at all to figure out that you were Morrie's killer because, well, Benji is Meyer Golden's son. The rest of us plodding mortals would have been on to you in another day, tops. We tracked the Navigator until it made that right turn onto West 37th Street. We've been checking that whole block and it turns out there's a Marriott Fairfield Inn midway between Fifth and Sixth. Their security cam nailed you driving by. There are cameras on Sixth that no doubt filmed Charlie dropping you off and filmed you walking into that dress shop, coming out of that dress shop and tossing your costume in the trash. We would have followed you every step of the way right back here to the Morley. Speaking of which, the Morley's own security cams will show you leaving the building by way of the service stairs. It's no good. You were never going to get away with it, don't you understand?”

Leah studied him with her alert brown eyes. “You're the one who doesn't seem to understand, Lieutenant. I don't care about what happens to me. I don't care about anything anymore.”

“Not even Charlie? You roped him into helping you commit murder.”

“He was happy to help. He felt useful.”

“But he'll be spending a long time in jail now, thanks to you.”

She looked at Legs curiously. “Have you ever met Charlie?”

“No, I haven't had the privilege yet.”

“Trust me, he's much better off in prison than he is on the outside. I suppose that sounds harsh coming from his own mother. But it's the cold, hard truth. Charlie's happier on the inside. He makes friends easily. Gets plenty of exercise, has unlimited access to drugs and he doesn't have to make any decisions. Charlie does fine in prison. It's when he's on the outside that he gets into trouble.”

There was a knock on the door now.

Legs opened it. Two cops in uniform stood out there in the hall. “These gentlemen will drive you to Midtown South,” he told Leah before he formally arrested and informed her of her Miranda Rights. “I really do recommend that you get yourself a lawyer.”

“Thank you for your concern, Lieutenant.”

“Where will we find Charlie?”

Leah glanced at her watch. “At his Thai cooking class, I believe. It's above a restaurant in Williamsburg.” She gave him the address. “Please don't embarrass him in front of the others. Charlie's very sensitive. He's not a bad boy, you know. Just weak.”

“We'll do our best. Now if you'll please go with these gentlemen…”

“Of course. Just let me get my purse and … will I be coming back here?”

“I'm afraid not.”

“In that case I'd like to shut down my computer.”