The Beast (15 page)

“More like he’s tweaking period.” Marge rubbed her hands. As the sun went down, fog came in, the chill seeping into her bones. “We’ve got the warrant. It’s a done deal.”

“I told him we’re going inside with or without his help, that it’s a
murder case and we’re scrutinizing everyone. I guess he got nervous. That’s when he told me that the apartment is leased to a corporation: The Last Hurrah—a perfect epithet for how Hobart Penny died.”

“Did you look up the corporation?”

“I found this information out five minutes ago. I don’t have Internet on my phone.”

Marge took out her smartphone and entered the name. “Nothing jumps out.”

Oliver said, “A dummy corporation.”

Marge said, “If it’s part of Hobart Penny’s empire, why go through all this rigmarole to hide it?”

“Lawsuits maybe,” Decker said. “If Penny was hiding exotic animals and one of them escaped and killed someone, he could use the corporation to protect his money.”

“Doesn’t he have personal money that could be attached to damages?”

“Don’t know a thing about his finances other than he’s wealthy. The whole thing is weird. Rich people are weird.”

Oliver said, “You’d think that other tenants might have heard or smelled something if there were other animals.”

“Snakes are silent,” Marge said. “And they can go a while without eating.” A pause. “Or maybe Penny used the place for other kinds of female wild animals.”

“Did you follow up on the Saratoga address?” Decker asked.

“The address is there,” Oliver said. “The tenants are not. Place was cleaned out.”

“Okay . . .” In an effort to get warm, Decker folded his arms across his chest. “Find anything left behind?”

“Three handwritten credit card receipts,” Marge said. “We’ll check them out. Maybe they’ll know something about Bruce Havert and Casey’s Massage and Escort. So far we’ve got nothing to link the place to Hobart Penny.”

“So what’s the current plan?” Oliver asked. “Do we even have a plan?”

“We do,” Decker said. “I’m waiting for Ryan Wilner to give me the go-ahead. He’s at the apartment, scoping out the place. I think he’s drilling a hole right now to peek inside. Once he’s sure the place is devoid of critters, we’ll enter. So far, no one has heard any roaring. If anything is in there, it’s the strong and silent type . . . or dead.”

Oliver cupped his hands over his mouth and blew out hot air. “It’s getting a little damp outside. I noticed a 7-Eleven a block away. Anyone for coffee?”

Marge said, “I’ll take a large.”

“Ditto,” Decker said. “I’m undecided about the caffeine. If it’s all-night, I’ll need it. If it’s less than two hours of work, I’ll want to be able to sleep tonight.”

“You need to commit, Rabbi.”

“Okay. Give me caffeine.”

“Not feeling too positive.”

“Undetermined. If I am lucky enough to go home, I’ll just balance the caffeine with a couple of glasses of Kiddush wine.”

DRESSED IN BROWNS,
Ryan Wilner came down thirty minutes later, shaking his head. Decker finished the last of his coffee. “You don’t look happy.”

“We need snake buckets. About forty of them.”

“Good Lord!” Marge said. “Any of them loose?”

“From what I could see inside a peephole, they seem to be in cages, but I can’t make out the entire apartment. Snakes hide in tight places. I don’t know what kind of snakes he had or if they’re venomous. We’ll just have to wait until we get the buckets and the tongs and picks and boots and gloves. Should I be looking at any more apartments, or is that it?”

“I have no idea,” Decker said. “There may be other apartments.”

“It would be helpful if we could do this all at once.”

“I realize that, but we could only manage a warrant for one because it had access to Penny’s apartment. But now that you found
snakes, I’m going to have a very serious talk with the apartment manager.” Decker was livid. “We not only have a murder investigation, we’ve got an immediate safety issue!”

Wilner’s cell rang and he took the call. “Someone’s bringing over the buckets. Shouldn’t be too long.”

Oliver asked, “How much time will it take to extract all the snakes?”

“At least a couple of hours. We have to make sure the apartment is completely clear before anyone else can come inside.”

Decker looked at his watch, then at his detectives. “Two hours should be enough time to vacate the floor. Start knocking on doors.” He took a deep breath. Anger wasn’t going to help the situation. “I’m going to talk to Leprechaun and it ain’t gonna be about a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

HE WALKED OVER
to Paxton. “We need to talk.”

“I’m not talking without a lawyer.”

“I haven’t arrested you yet, but I’ll tell you right now, buddy, I certainly have a whole bunch of reasons to justify incarceration. Even in the best case scenario where no one gets hurt, do you have any idea how much this is costing us in manpower?”

The little man turned white. “I didn’t know anything about a tiger!” A plea of desperation. “What do you
want
from me?”

Decker said, “One apartment with a tiger is enough to make my skin crawl. Now animal control is sending a crew with forty buckets to catch forty
snakes
! You rented that space to Penny knowing full well what his plans were—”

“I swear I didn’t—”

“Are you out of your mind, Paxton? A venomous snake is a lethal weapon. It’s the same as if you were storing a stash of guns.”

Paxton blanched. “I . . . I want to talk to a lawyer.”

“You want a lawyer, buddy, you get a lawyer.” Decker moved into his space until they were nose to nose—which required some height adjustment. “But before you make a single, solitary phone
call, you’re going to tell me every single apartment that Penny or Last Harrah corporation or any
other
corporation rented, so we can clear the place of very dangerous menaces and ensure that no one gets hurt.”

“I didn’t know—”

“Because if you don’t tell me right now and something goes terribly wrong—like a death—you’re going down for murder—”

“I didn’t know . . .” He waved his hands in the air. “I didn’t know—”

“Paxton, right now I’m not interested if you knew or not. I’m not even interested if you got kickback or not, although I suspect you did. Right now, all I want to do is clear the apartment building of dangerous animals.
Get it
? Now how many apartments did Hobart Penny rent?”

The apartment manager was speechless.

“Okay, now I’m going to arrest you,” Decker said.

“Wait, wait . . .” He started hyperventilating. “Please!”

Decker said, “Let’s move this to somewhere private, okay.” He thought about his own car, but there wasn’t a protective grate separating the front from the back. Instead, he opted for a cruiser from one of the uniforms. Decker opened the back door.

“Inside.” Paxton slid in and Decker sat next to him, crowding his space. He took out his notebook. “Now how
many
apartments do I have to check out, George?”

His voice was small. “Four.”

“
Four
?”

“I mean two . . . two not counting the one he lived in and the one above him. I swear I didn’t know a thing about the tiger or the snakes!” He was white. “I thought he was using them as you know . . .”

“No, I don’t know!”

“Love nests.” A pause. “I thought he was using them for women.”

“We’ll get back to that in a moment.” Decker finally caught his breath. “I need the keys to the other two apartments.”

“I don’t have them—”

“Where are they?”

“In my office.”

“Where’s your office?”

“About ten minutes from here.”

“I will follow you to your office. We’ll go in together to fetch the keys. But before we go, I need to know the other two apartments that he leased so I can inform animal control.”

“Last Harrah also rents the apartments on either side of Penny.” Paxton regained a tinge of color. “I don’t know what’s inside. I swear that’s the truth!”

“This isn’t about you, it’s about public safety,” Decker said. “You are referring to the two apartments on the same floor as Penny, on his left and right sides.”

“Yes.”

“What are the apartment numbers?” Paxton recited the numerals. Decker wrote them down. “What about the apartment below him?”

“It’s vacant.”

“You’re positive that Penny never rented it?”

“He did rent it. It’s currently vacant. I know because I cleaned it out two weeks ago.”

“What was in there?”

“Nothing. By cleaning it out, I meant just painting it. It was spotless when he gave me back the keys.” Paxton’s bald head was sweating. “I remember thinking how empty it was. Usually tenants leave something. But that made sense. He wasn’t really moving, just getting rid of one of his apartments.”

“Wait here. I have to make some calls.” Decker got out of the cruiser and took out his cell. When Marge answered, he said, “We’ve got two more apartments that need to be checked out.”

“You are
kidding
me!”

“I wish.” He gave her the numbers.

“What’s inside?”

“Paxton swears he doesn’t know.”

“Do you believe him?”

“No, but that doesn’t matter now. We’re going to have to vacate the building. Take precautions. Penny has a bad track record.”

“Right,” Marge said. “I’ll tell Wilner about the apartments.”

“Good. I’m going with Paxton to pick up the keys.”

“You know, Pete, when Oliver and I were there yesterday, we didn’t smell anything coming from those apartments.”

“Maybe we’ll be lucky and they’ll be vacant. At one time, Last Harrah had rented the apartment directly below Penny’s place. That apartment is currently empty, but we need to check it out. Paxton’s credibility isn’t high right now.”

“What’s his role in all of this?”

“I’m sure he got kickbacks for not asking too many questions. He claims he thought Penny was keeping the places for women.”

“That could be,” Marge said. “Did you ask him why he thought Penny was keeping women?”

“Haven’t gotten around to that yet.”

“I was just wondering what could be in those apartments if we didn’t smell anything.”

“More reptiles? An aquarium filled with stone fish? Maybe a deadly insect collection?”

“Yeah, that could be,” Marge said. “He definitely was an animal hoarder. A lethal version of crazy cat woman.”

WILNER GAVE DECKER
a list of the live reptiles in the cages from the apartment above Penny’s. Marge and Oliver read over his shoulder.

“At least that’s what we think the reptiles are,” Wilner said. “The rattlers I’m pretty sure of. The mamba . . . well, there are a lot of black snakes. There are also a lot of brown snakes. I’ll have the herpetologist look them over to identify them. For the time being, we put them on the venomous snake side.”

“There were two sides?” Oliver asked.

“Well not exactly two sides, but someone sorted them into venomous and nonvenomous. We also found a few dead ones. That’s probably what stank.”

Decker’s eyes were still on the list. “So most of them were alive?”

“Yeah, most of them were okay and pretty well tended. I’d say it’s been a week since the last cleaning, judging from the amount of feces.”

“Are these common snakes?” Marge asked.

“Pretty much so. Some are easy to find in the wilds. All of them are easy to buy. How old was this guy?”

“Eighty-nine.”

“Probably wasn’t a snake hunter then, just a collector.”

Oliver said, “Did you find any paraphernalia belonging to the tiger or other animals?”

“We weren’t really looking for anything else but errant snakes. Now what is this about these two other apartments?”

Decker gave him the numbers and the keys. “The manager has given us written permission for you to check the contents inside and clear them of anything dangerous. I don’t know what’s in store for you. Maybe nothing.”

“Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it,” Wilner said. “So far we’ve cleared the common hallway of any errant reptiles . . . gone over it at least twice. But I’d feel better if our agent was there with a bucket and a pair of tongs when people start coming back in.”

“So you’re going to stick around for a while?”

“You bet. Andrea will be with me. You met Andrea. She’s our reptile person.”

“Yes, I remember her, and the more help you can give us, the better. If the apartments on either side of Penny’s are vacant, how long will it take before we can start letting people back inside? I’d like to tell the crowd something.”

“I’d like another hour, even if the places are vacant. We’ve got to be sure.”

“Of course.” Decker turned to Marge and Oliver. “Is the building cleared?”

“Totally,” Marge said. “We’ve got six uniforms with a perimeter around the place. No one’s getting in.”

“Good.” Decker along with Oliver and Marge walked outside into a commotion of fog and chill and blinking lights. There was a swelling crowd of people. Undertone murmurs had transformed to overt grousing. “I’ll address the residents. They have a right to know everything that I know . . . which isn’t much.”

Marge said, “What about Paxton?”

“I’ll talk to him . . . find out why he thought Penny was keeping women.” Decker rotated his shoulders. “You two go back to the station house. Start probing into Casey’s Massage and Escort, Bruce Havert and his cohort, Randi with an
i.
I’ll call you once the place has been cleared and we’ll check out the apartments together. That may take a while.”