Authors: Lou Manfredo
Rizzo tapped his pen against the note pad. “You know, Mrs. Carbone, your obligation to Robbie is to help us out here. We can’t be pullin’ teeth on every little detail. You’ve gotta help us find out who killed him, not protect secrets that died with him. Anything from his personal life could be relevant if he was killed deliberately and not by a random burglar. I been doin’ this a long time, Mrs. Carbone, and even I can’t guess what may or may not be important. So please, don’t you try. Just answer our questions as fully as you can. Okay?”
“Of course,” she said. “I understand. But Robbie told no one about his writing. Only me. It was a very personal thing for him, a secret.”
Priscilla spoke warmly, trying to establish a bond of trust with the woman. “Well, that speaks highly for you. I know how private a thing like that can be. Believe me. He must have respected you a great deal to confide in you like he did.”
“I’m not sure about that, Detective Jackson,” Carbone said with a sad smile. “Robbie liked me, of course, and in his own way, maybe he loved me. I was really his only relative. No one else in the family has seen or spoken to him in years, except for the occasional holiday when they may have seen him at my house.”
“Well, believe me,” Priscilla said, “if he let you in on his writing, he had to think you were very special.”
Carbone dipped her head from side to side. “Personally, Detective Jackson, I think it was more about storage space than anything else.”
“Oh?” Rizzo asked. “What do you mean?”
“Well, Robbie needed a place to safeguard his manuscripts. See, in addition to his other idiosyncrasies, he was a little paranoid, always worrying that his apartment might burn down and his writings would be destroyed. So he’d bring copies of his works here. For safekeeping. That’s probably the only reason he told me about his writing.”
Priscilla spoke. “So you have some of his belongings here, in the house?”
“Well, not really belongings. Just manuscripts, stories, stuff like that.” She looked from one cop to the other. “They’re in the garage. In an old suitcase.”
After a moment of silence, Mrs. Carbone continued. “It’s so sad,” she said, her eyes welling up again. “Robbie wasn’t a bad guy, just odd. But he was family.” She looked from Rizzo to Jackson. “And that’s what’s important, you know.”
They nodded at her, remaining silent.
“My kids called him uncle. Uncle Robbie. He liked that. Even my husband, who doesn’t trust anybody, was comfortable with Robbie being around the kids. You know, these days . . . sometimes with relatives . . . But Robbie was just a big, dopey, gentle guy who didn’t want anything out of life except to see his name on the cover of a book someday.
“You know,” she said sheepishly, “I have to admit, I was curious and I went out to the garage one day. I read some of Robbie’s stories.” She shrugged. “I’m not much of a reader, I’d rather see a movie or what ever, but I have to say they seemed pretty good to me. I don’t know, maybe if he had had some guidance . . . I think he just didn’t know how to go about it. Getting himself published, I mean. Maybe if someone had helped him . . . Who knows.”
With a sigh, she went on. “Or maybe he just aimed too high. Imagine? The guy couldn’t even hold a menial job for more than a year or two at a time. And he aimed too high.” Resignation came to her eyes. “Imagine that?”
AFTER NEARLY
an hour of further questioning Carbone and her newly arrived husband, the two detectives made their way down the concrete driveway toward the detached garage. Wispy snowflakes floated before their eyes, the sky growing darker, the air crisper.
“Last winter was bad enough,” Rizzo said. “Now it’s gonna start snowin’ before Thanksgiving?”
“They’re just flurries, Joe, relax. But I gotta ask, why are we checking out here? We already saw this stuff, in his apartment. These are just copies.”
Rizzo glanced at her as they reached the garage. He raised the borrowed key, unlocking the weathered doors.
“Remember Tucci, Cil? That kid who got shot in the foot? Remember him?” he asked, swinging one hinged door open.
“Yeah, I remember,” she answered. “What?”
Rizzo reached into the garage, throwing a switch and flooding the musty interior with bright, buzzing fluorescent light.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “We were all set to call out the cavalry, pushin’ Vince to get a sketch artist, remember? Then Vince tells us to talk to the vic first, get the whole story before we start draftin’ help. And what happened next? The vic turned us on to that dental angle, we followed it up and made the case.”
“Okay,” Priscilla said with a nod. “And this is like that how?”
Rizzo looked around the garage. No car was present on the worn, oil-stained concrete floor, the parking area surrounded by sundry family items and outdoor furniture stored for winter.
“We’re doin’ it by the book, Cil. Bein’ thorough. Just because Carbone told us there’s nothing here but copies of manuscripts don’t necessarily make it so. Let’s take a look and make sure.”
He turned to face her. “Thoroughness,” he said. “Ga-peesha?”
“Yeah, Joe,” she said. “I ga-peesh.”
Minutes later, the two detectives were seated on the cold concrete floor, another old suitcase open before them. They leafed slowly through its contents.
Rizzo thumbed through a thin, weathered manuscript, the pages stapled together. He knitted his brows.
“Hey, Cil,” he said. “In that other suitcase, the one we found at Lauria’s place, were there any plays?”
Priscilla looked up from the book-length manuscript she was examining, a duplicate of one she had seen at Lauria’s.
She shook her head. “No. Why?”
Rizzo held the pages in his hand out to her. “Look at this,” he said. “It’s a play Lauria wrote. I didn’t see anything like this in his closet.”
Priscilla took the script from him and skimmed through some pages. Minutes later, she whistled softly and raised her eyes.
“Jesus,” she said. “This is strange.”
“What?” Rizzo asked, looking up from another manuscript.
“This play, the play that wasn’t in the suitcase in Lauria’s apartment.” She held it out to him.
Rizzo dropped the papers he’d been examining onto the floor and took the play back from Priscilla and began to read.
“What about it?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. Give me a few minutes, let me read this from page one.”
“Knock yourself out,” Rizzo replied, shrugging. “I’ll write up my notes on the Carbone interview while you read.” He handed the stack of pages back to Priscilla.
After twenty minutes, Priscilla called to him, her dark eyes wide and sparkling in the bright light of the small garage.
“Remember I told you me and Karen saw that Broadway play, the last play Avery Mallard wrote? The Pulitzer Prize winner who was murdered eleven, twelve days ago?”
Rizzo’s eyes narrowed. He dropped his gaze from Priscilla and looked down to the pages in her hand.
“Yeah, I remember that.”
Priscilla laid a hand on his forearm. She leaned in closer.
“This is the fuckin’ play,” she said. “The same play me and Karen saw on Broadway.”
She pointed to the top page of the script. “Look at the date, Joe.”
Rizzo looked to the inscription in what he recognized to be Lauria’s handwriting, then raised his eyes to meet hers. “Over three years ago,” he said.
“I’m almost sure of this,” she said. “The characters have different names, there’s no love interest like the Mallard play has, and it’s set in New York, not Atlanta. But it’s the same story, the same conflicts, the same ending. Hell, even a lot of the same dialogue.” She handed it to Rizzo. “That in your hand is
Mallard’s
play, Joe.”
Rizzo fingered the pages. “Or, if you’re right, Mallard’s play is Lauria’s.” His eyes narrowed. “What the fuck, Cil?” he asked.
“I don’t know. But I’ve read about Mallard. He came off a long dry spell with this play. He told Charlie Rose he wrote it over a two-month span while he was in the Hamptons, maybe two years ago. Those pages in your hand are dated a year earlier than that. Shit, the play’s only been runnin’ a couple of months, three at the most.”
Rizzo scratched his head, then rubbed at his right eye to soothe the nervous tic as he spoke.
“Coincidence? One play. Two separate murders within a few days of each other. Maybe both vics tied to the play.”
He touched lightly at Priscilla’s cheek.
“There ain’t no coincidences like that, Partner,” he said.
Then, reaching for the last of his cigarettes, he dropped the play back into the open suitcase.
“No fuckin’ way,” he said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
RIZZO AND JACKSON GAZED THROUGH
the windshield at the choppy, white-capped waters of Jamaica Bay. The Impala sat parked in the sprawling, nearly deserted parking area of the Canarsie Pier. Rizzo had sat silently as Priscilla Jackson gave the play a fast, careful reread.
Having given the reluctantly cooperative Mrs. Carbone a written receipt, they had removed the suitcase from the garage, and it was now secured in the Impala’s trunk.
The car’s heater blew warm air against their legs, chilling winds howled softly outside the tightly closed windows. Light snow flurries danced across the gray hood.
“Now I’m sure of it,” Priscilla said quietly, coming to the last page and resting the manuscript on the steering wheel. “With a few changes this is the play I saw on Broadway. What are the possibilities here, Joe?”
“Top of my head? Mallard somehow plagiarizes the play from Lauria. Lauria calls him on it, and Mallard goes to Lauria’s place, strangles him, searches the apartment, and takes every copy of the play he finds.”
“So you honestly figure this Pulitzer Prize winner was capable of strangling somebody to death?” Priscilla asked.
Rizzo laughed. “Yeah, well, think about this. Yasser Arafat won a fuckin’ Nobel Peace Prize.” He paused. “You think maybe he had any blood on his hands, Partner?”
“Okay, so then who kills Mallard?”
Rizzo shrugged. “Somebody who knew the situation, somebody who knew about the play and figured Mallard whacked Lauria. Somebody close to Lauria.”
She shook her head. “There
was
nobody close to Lauria, ’cept Carbone. You can’t figure her for a murderer. She just wasn’t the type.”
“Yeah, well, Carbone’s husband looked clean, too. Maybe this brother she claims is in Kuwait.” He shook his head. “That’s unlikely, though. It would have to be somebody else, somebody we don’t know exists yet. Everybody’s got
somebody
. Maybe even this guy Lauria.”
“I don’t know, Joe,” she said. “Sounds pretty freakin’ weak to me.”
“Don’t it, though?” said Rizzo, reaching for a Nicorette. “But you never know. We gotta dig deeper into the vic’s life. Turn up an old buddy, maybe a butt-buddy, or some screwy writer Lauria hung around with. Somebody.”
Priscilla wrinkled her brow. “How ’bout this?” she speculated. “Lauria was frustrated and bitter from years of failure. He sees Mallard’s play, writes almost a carbon copy, changing it just enough to make it look legit. He types it on some old paper, dates it three years ago. Then he tries to run a swindle on Mallard, says Mallard plagiarized
his
play. Tries to get Mallard to use his connections and get Lauria published somehow.”
Rizzo followed through. “Yeah, they have an argument and Mallard kills the guy. Okay. But then who kills Mallard?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Your phantom butt-buddy, I guess.”
Rizzo placed the gum in his mouth, chewing it slowly before responding.
“Or maybe it
is
just some coincidence—not the murders, the plays. Maybe each guy wrote his play in de pen dent of the other, but Lauria figured Mallard stole his idea, and it all led to the murders.”
“No way,” Priscilla said. “The two plays are absolutely the same. I’m tellin’ you, not in a million years could two strangers write two such similar works. No freakin’ way.”
Rizzo nodded. “Okay, so maybe they weren’t strangers to each other. We gotta look at Avery Mallard’s life. See where it intersects with Lauria’s. Look for someone they both knew.”
“
If
their lives intersect,” she said. “Do you remember any of the details of Mallard’s murder, Joe?”
“Not really. I only read one news article about it. I’m pretty sure it happened in his apartment. And, now that I think about it, it mighta been a stranglin’.”
Priscilla sat back, facing Rizzo, her shoulders against the driver’s window.
“Jesus Christ, Joe, if that’s true, and the murders
are
connected, we got us some doozy here—and just one killer.”
Rizzo smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “A real doozy.”
“We can check online for the articles. Get more info on the Mallard case.”
“Fuck online. You forget we got us a pal over at the Plaza? Pretty Boy McQueen? Mike could run inside access computer checks and pull up the whole Mallard investigation. We can look over Manhattan South’s shoulder, see what the college boys and girls been doin’ with the case. Get all the contact info we need.”
Priscilla’s lips compressed tightly before she spoke again.
“Yeah. I forgot about Manhattan South.” She paused. “What’s the protocol here? Are we supposed to tell them about this Lauria angle?”
Rizzo shrugged. “Probably. If we develop it any further, definitely.”
“Shit,” she said dejectedly. “They’ll grab the two cases and send us both out for coffee.”
Rizzo raised his brow. “Not if I don’t let ’em, they won’t.”
“What you got in mind, Partner?” Priscilla questioned.
He reached out and gently patted her arm. “Makin’ you a star, kiddo—and me, too. If this Lauria case is related to Avery Mallard’s murder, we can run with this ball pretty far before we gotta worry about any ‘protocol.’ Pretty damn far.”
“How smart is that?” she asked.
“Well, you know it could backfire, bite us real bad if we fucked it up. But we’re too sharp to fuck it up.”
“It can do more than bite us, Joe,” she said. “We sit on this link and get found out, we could be looking at an obstruction charge. That’s no joke.”