Authors: David Stukas
Biceps Of Death (19 page)
“Robert, I would kill to be in your position. The only thing I have to choose between is my vibrators. Hmm, the Tornado or Earth Mover?” she said, weighing the aforementioned devices in her hands like scales of pleasure. “Robert, I have tried to stay out of your situation because I’m sure you will make the right decision, but I will give you one piece of advice.”
“And that is?”
“Just let things play out. Sometimes, you don’t have to make the decision—the decision is often made for you. Just give it time and enjoy yourself. Remember, life is not a dress rehearsal.”
I walked up to her and gave her a hug that lasted a long, long time. Just then, we heard Michael’s key in the door. Being mechanically inept, it took Michael close to a minute of struggling, rattling of keys, followed by a volley of cussing before he was able to open the two locks protecting him from the outside world.
Monette released her hug on me, then quickly relayed a few words of caution from McMillan. “He asked us not to tell anyone about solving the case just yet. He’s got to get a court order to put a wiretap on Bekkman—he wants to get the whole gang in one fell swoop. So not a word to anyone, especially big-mouth Michael.”
“I promise, Monette.”
“One other thing, Robert. I wasn’t going to tell you this, but McMillan said he had an important question to ask you tonight.”
Marriage. I knew it! He was going to force me into a decision tonight.
“Are you two finished looking at your dirty pictures?” Michael said when he entered his apartment, taking off his expensive leather jacket and heaving it across the room in a high arc. It landed carelessly on the floor, a crumpled piece of two-thousand-dollar animal hide that would be given away the moment the new fall collections of menswear hit the racks at Barney’s.
“Yes, we’re finished. We’re going out to dinner tonight with Detective McMillan to discuss the details of the case,” I blurted out, trying to make our night sound as boring as I could. I didn’t want Michael tagging along on this, of all nights. “Just routine stuff.”
“Sounds
fascinating
,” Michael said sarcastically.
fascinating
,” Michael said sarcastically.
“Michael, I would think that dinner with a
real
cop would be something you would dive at,” I slid in.
real
cop would be something you would dive at,” I slid in.
“See, that’s the thing that separates you from me, Robert. I wouldn’t waste time with dinner. I’d get him in the sack right away, and I’d tell him to bring his gun, leave his leather search gloves on, and we could spend the evening doing some cavity searches. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go get ready for my date,” Michael said as he sauntered down the hall to his bedroom, George Clooney, Bluebeard the Pirate, and Mae West all rolled into one.
“That’s Michael for you,” I remarked to Monette. “A Ruger .357 magnum in his pants and it’s always loaded.”
We had a drink, talked a little, then got our coats on to go out to dinner.
“Wait,” Michael said, appearing out of nowhere. “I’ll ride down with you two.”
We made Michael turn on the alarm and lock both locks, then we got into the elevator and descended down to the lobby, where the doorman was reading a magazine, barely looking up to see us leave the building. We could’ve been carrying out a television set and a stereo and rolling a rack of fur coats and leather jackets and the doorman wouldn’t have noticed a thing.
McMillan was waiting at the curb for Monette and me. Michael was going to take off on his
date
without even acknowledging the detective, but I grabbed hold of his jacket and at least made him say hi to Luke.
date
without even acknowledging the detective, but I grabbed hold of his jacket and at least made him say hi to Luke.
“Michael Stark, this is Luke McMillan,” I said proudly.
“Nice to meet you, Detective ... hey, I remember you ... from a long time ago.”
“I don’t see when,” McMillan said through the open passenger-side window.
“Yes, we met before!” Michael said adamantly.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. It was too good to be true. Here is a man who’s madly in love with me and I find out the night he’s going to pop the question that Michael has already slept with him.
“No, remember when that fucking creep-of-a-boyfriend of mine stole my Matisse and made off with it? You came to my apartment and snooped around, remember?”
I was somewhat relieved, but it still didn’t mean that Michael hadn’t porked the guy.
“Michael,” I said, suddenly remembering the details of that incident, “that wasn’t McMillan. The detective’s name was Rickles.”
Michael, who couldn’t remember a man’s name five minutes after he’d had his way with him, kept on, determined to wreck my budding relationship with Luke.
“I wasn’t talking about Rickles. I remember you were a cop working under Rickles in that special forces department that deals with artworks theft.”
“I don’t remember that, Michael. I handle over two hundred cases a year. It’s all a haze in my head.”
“I’m sure it was you!” Michael continued. “I tried to cruise you, but you weren’t interested because you were trying to do your job. Such a shame. All work and no play ...” Michael trailed off, cruising my potential new boyfriend right in front of my face. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“Uh, Michael, we’ve got to go now. Have fun on your date!” I said, pushing Michael down the sidewalk and away from the car.
“And you have fun on yours,” Michael responded, the words slithering out of his mouth and snaking up the detective’s pant leg.
“Sorry,” I apologized to McMillan as we got into the squad car, me getting in the front and Monette into the back. “Michael will come on to anyone,” I said, dealing McMillan an unintentional insult. “I, I didn’t mean it the way it came out.”
McMillan laughed, pushing his metal clipboard notebook aside so I could sit closer to him. The damn thing was so big, I couldn’t fit it on the other side of me, so I held it in my lap, caressing the official equipment in my sweaty hands. He eased the car into traffic and pointed the car in the direction of his offices downtown.
“Don’t worry about Michael, Robert,” he said. “I get cruised by all kinds of people in my job. Men, women, even teenage daughters. It must be the badge or something. Or the uniform.”
“But you don’t wear a uniform anymore,” I replied. “Although I would like to see you in one ... someday.”
“Robert, I’ll pull it out and put it on just for you,” he said, laying a hand on my leg.
His hand made my leg warm where he touched me. His touch also caused another reaction, but I won’t go into that for now. You get the idea. Since Monette was in the backseat, I didn’t want things to get smutty in front of her. She was very silent, so I tried to get her involved in the conversation. I turned around and spoke to her through the wire grid that separated me from her.
“You look like a criminal back there, Monette,” I joked.
“Don’t joke. This isn’t my first time in the backseat of one of these,” she admitted.
“Monette! You were arrested once? You never told me that!”
“It happened before I knew you, Robert. I was protesting the building of some tract home development on a frog breeding ground.”
“My, you are the ecological one, aren’t you?” I commented. “Who won?”
“The same one who always does. The developer,” she lamented with a sigh. “They ended up bulldozing the sight in the middle of the night and the fuck got away with it because money talks. The frogs got revenge in the end, however.”
“And how was that?” McMillan asked.
“It turns out that the ground was filled with hidden underground springs that didn’t show up on surveys and the whole development was unstable. All the house foundations cracked, and the houses they were able to build had to be abandoned. The whole thing is still in court and the developer went bankrupt. The end ... maybe. Detective?”
“Yes?”
“There’s one fact about this case that bothers me,” Monette said.
“Yes?”
“You said that John Bekkman had an airtight alibi?”
“Yes, but criminals can lie.”
“I guess he did,” Monette replied.
“So how did he establish an alibi?” I asked. “Did he get friends to lie for him?”
“Yes, one of his cohorts, Marshall Bryne, said he was with them hiking out of town. He’s under surveillance as we speak and we’re getting a court order to have his phone tapped. We need more than just circumstantial evidence for a strong case.”
“Excellent,” Monette agreed. “As for the bank statement that Bekkman showed you ... the one that showed a payment to Eric Bogert?”
“The one for sixty thousand?”
“Yes, that one,” Monette said. “I suppose that was a fake?”
“Oh sure. It doesn’t take much to create a fake bank statement nowadays. Anyone with a computer can create a reasonable facsimile. But remember, Monette, this guy was slick and the statement he showed me looked like the real thing. The guy has money. I’m sure he had someone make it up for him.”
“You’re right. I should have seen right through that one,” Monette replied.
“Wait a minute,” I spoke up. “Luke, you just said the payment was for sixty thousand. The other day, you said it was for forty thousand. But John Bekkman told us that he paid Eric fifty thousand dollars.”
“Did I?” McMillan said, shaking his head. “I goofed on that one ... I guess I’ve been working too hard. See what happens when you call me day and night?” He laughed.
“I guess you have been working too hard, Luke. The station is in the other direction,” I pointed out. I was about to tell him how turned around he was when I found myself staring into the barrel of a gun.
“That’s right,” Monette said from the backseat. “Our friend here is in cahoots with John Bekkman.”
I was going to say something stupid such as “NO, LUKE, NOT YOU!” but felt that the pistol pointed in my direction made that all unnecessary. Monette was being rather calm about what was happening, but I imagined that the door handles in the backseat of the police cruiser didn’t work, so there was little she could do. Unfortunately, it was all up to me. I started thinking desperately of a way to save us, but short of me zooming out of the front seat with the help of a rocket belt hidden underneath my clothing, I didn’t see a lot of alternatives.
Monette broke the tension in the car.
“I had some suspicions that you might have been involved,” she said.
“And what tipped you off?” he replied.
“The first thing was that you could be so sloppy in your investigations. If you weren’t deliberately overlooking clues, then you were covering them up.”
“Covering up?” McMillan said, taking a hard turn and heading in the direction of the docks on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. I noticed that even though he was driving a tad rapidly, his gun stayed trained on me the whole time.
“Everyone missed it, but the window latch in Robert’s apartment gave you away,” she said smugly. “Robert and I discovered how the window was drilled and pushed open, but closing it wasn’t so easy. Robert swore up and down that he had latched the window before he left that day, and if you know obsessive-compulsive Robert like I know him, he locked that window that day.”
“So what does that mean?” McMillan said with a knowing chuckle.
“The window was latched after the burglary, meaning you went up first and, while the investigation was going on, went over to the window and latched it yourself to take the focus away from the window as an entry point.”
“You are clever, Monette.”
“But why wreck Robert’s place after the burglary? To scare him?”
“You tell me,” came the reply.
“You were also the person who cut the lock on Robert’s locker at Club M and removed the original CD-ROM before Robert had a chance to give it to you. I think you were already there at the gym, waiting for Robert to arrive, knowing that if you weren’t there yet, Robert would lock his gym bag containing the CD in a locker. When Robert was on the treadmill, you slipped into the locker room, cut the lock, got your hands on the CD, and then made a big show of arriving to make Robert think you had just gotten there.”
“That’s what you think, huh?” McMillan said, remaining cagey to avoid spilling any information. The guy was going to shoot us soon probably in some warehouse in lower Manhattan, but he was still hedging his bets.
“I also surmised that you called the reporters and told them that Robert had the CD so that all the other suspects would know where Robert lived. You then waited for some of them to do what you knew they would: try and break into Robert’s apartment so that you could start implicating them as having murdered Cody Walker and Eric Bogert.”
“An interesting theory,” McMillan conceded.
I wasn’t sure whether Monette was deliberately trying to bait McMillan for some purpose to make him nervous, but to what purpose? Or was she just trying to show that the clues he had left would eventually be discovered by another investigator. In any case, I felt it was a long shot and would do us no good when we had bullets in our heads.
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