Crooked (2 page)

He beelined for the coal grate at the far end of the blackness. He managed to avoid stepping on any rats, though one brushed his leg, perhaps a coy test of his resolve.

As he drew near, he could see cracks of light from sidewalk cellar doors to the right of the coal chute, and the steps leading up to them. His ears rang with the clicking of palm-sized roaches scattering as he climbed the steps. A padlock sealed the cellar doors.

Nicholas spied the shadow of another stairway hunkering mid-basement, as well as the dark forms of rats trundling from his path as he headed for it. He heard a roach flying toward his head and batted it away. Having once tangled with giant bird-eating Colombian spiders, roaches were nothing to him now.

Dull amber light spread from under a door at the top of the stairs. Reasoning that this door probably opened to the building’s lobby, under the Fritz Lang staircase, Nicholas listened intently. All he could hear was creaking, several floors above.

A quick study of the door revealed that it was secured with an eyehook latch on the other side. A credit card easily flipped it. Nicholas slid the door open and scanned the empty hallway. He grinned.

Composing himself, he exited the cellar with a whistle on his lips, a song in his heart, and a roach on his lapel. He jettisoned the latter, maintained the former.

Emerging onto the stoop from the vestibule, Nicholas was confronted by a cop leaning on her patrol car. Clearly one had gone upstairs, while his partner kept an eye out downstairs. At least it had stopped raining.

Ditching any sign of alarm, Nicholas whistled tunelessly and smiled.

“Evening, Officer.”

She watched him plod down the steps and turn toward the flow of pink plastic shopping bags on Canal Street.

“Sir…”

He kept whistling and walking as if he didn’t hear. Just an ordinary gent out for a stroll.

“Sir. Hey, you. Mister, stop.”

Behind him a snap snapped and leather flapped—the unmistakable sound of her holster at the ready. Damn. It was the cue that he had to turn. When the gun leaves the holster, a cop stops listening and starts cuffing. No talking your way out then.

Nicholas glanced back, did a double take, and then turned around, flashing his most charming smile—his patented “Who, me?” move.

“Yes, Officer?”

She approached, her hips’ sway made huge and ducklike by the citation binder, flashlight, handcuffs, and radio stuffed in her trousers.

“Where you comin’ from?” She sniffed, chewing hard on her gum, looking him up and down. The dark eyes under the brim of her hat settled on his face. His smile wasn’t returned. But she put a hand to check her hair just the same.

“Me?” He let slip a sly grin, as though she were approaching him in a bar.

“Yeah.” She considered him sidelong, eyes guarded. “You.”

Sometimes Nicholas overestimated his charms. She’d seen his moves before, and whether from some discotheque lothario or street hustler, she knew his sly grin was a con.

It was the beginning of a long night that would turn into a longer day.

C h a p t e r                           2

 
B
eatrice Belarus paced before the gargantuan windows of her new palatial SoHo loft like a captain on a quarterdeck, her energetic crew working feverishly around her. Painters rolled eggshell latex on one wall, tapers sanded plaster on another, and electricians drilled anchors into the ceiling for track lighting. Beatrice had a finger in one ear and a flip phone clamped over the other. She ducked beneath scaffolding from which two men carefully filled the outlined letters “B. Belarus. Gallery. Representation” onto the glass.

Her man in Hong Kong finally picked up.

“Tin Oo, I’ve been
trying
to reach you all morning. Shut up. Did I ask what time of day it was there? Did I say whether I cared? Listen to me, Tin Oo. I’m only going to say this once. You’re dismissed.”

Beatrice brushed some Sheetrock dust from her lapel and smiled down at the throngs across Broadway flushing in and out of Bean & LeMocca Gourmet. She listened a moment.

“Tell me why I didn’t just throw this phone right out the window. I should have. I don’t need people like you, people who care more about food or sleep or dying mothers than about dealing. There are plenty of people, Tin Oo, who want only one thing in this world and will do anything for it.”

Beatrice’s obsidian eyes went soft, and her voice turned to a melodic whisper.

“I don’t need agents who know art. I need agents who know money.” Her thumb disconnected Tin Oo. She stood serenely and waited for his inevitable callback. Her phone chirped and Beatrice disconnected the ex-associate with another wave of her thumb. Her index finger pecked a long series of numbers buttons.

“It’s BB. Give me Irwin.” The sun had topped the east side of Broadway, dimmed by remnants of the previous night’s rain clouds. The morning glow illuminated Beatrice’s reflection on the glass as she took a quick inventory of her whipcord suit, cashmere turtleneck, and designer crocodile shoes. Turning a profile, she checked the pitch of her shiny black ponytail, fancying her severe sex appeal.

“Irwin, do you like money? I said:
Do you like money?
Good. I’m going to give you some. Yes, give you. If you really like money, then this is your day, because for doing very little you’re going to make a lot more than you make most months in that ‘gallery’ of yours…I’m talking about you being my man in Hong Kong…Tin Oo? He’s dead…Dead from a lack of avarice. You see, I have some very important jazz rattling and he was out of touch. Now, Irwin, you do have a phone with you at all times? Very good response, Irwin, I like that, very good. Now here’s what’s going to happen. Get dressed, go to your shop. I’m going to fax you a contract and you’ll sign it and you’ll messenger it to my Hong Kong attorney—his name and number will be on the cover sheet. He’s probably home asleep, but you’ll find his address in the book. I’ll call ahead. He’ll fax me a copy of the signed agreement, tell me we’re square. Are you getting all this? Next, I want you to look up Casper Rautford, and…Yes, C. S. Rautford. Give him a ring…Irwin, Casper told me personally to call him day or night. Just tell his people you represent me and he’ll get out of bed to talk to you. Tell him we have a Moolman he’s interested in, and to be ready to wire two point five million to Chase Manhattan Bank, BRT 021001022, account number 00163052, my name, the day after tomorrow. Meanwhile I’ll have a courier on the”—Beatrice held up her Fendi watch—“damn, it’ll have to be the afternoon flight—to hook up with the Lufthansa red-eye. Arrange to meet and personally transport the messenger and the jazz up the hill to Casper. In other words, the item will be in his hot little hands the day after tomorrow.

“Before you give the jazz to Casper, remove the protective print…Yes, a protective print…Why? I’ll tell you why, Irwin. Because this is a very valuable painting and I don’t want it ripped off, that’s why. Besides, I always ship with the original canvass protected, as an added measure…Look, Irwin, the people at customs are going to screw this deal up with their red tape if they know it’s a Moolman…Yes, they might even think it’s that one, the stolen one, so let’s just play it cool and get you your twenty-five thousand dollars, OK?”

BB bit her lip nervously, then sighed away her anxieties.

“OK, you still with me here, Irwin? Good. So, when he’s satisfied with the painting, witness the wire transaction, personally of course, write down the confirmation number, and call me immediately from Casper’s. I’ll check with Chase. When I confirm it here, leave him the painting and take the messenger back to the airport. At that point the messenger will hand you a certified check for twenty-five thousand dollars. You got all that, Irwin?”

Beatrice listened impatiently.

“Irwin, Casper will like the painting. No, he doesn’t need to know what painting…Neither do you. Tick tock, Irwin, the clock is running.” Beatrice’s thumb squashed the connection.

“’Scuse, p’ease.” One of the little Ecuadorian window painters smiled apologetically, as though hoping he might escape a flogging. Beatrice edged back from the window so he could put some newspaper on the floor where a drip had already fallen.

Beatrice switched ears, plugging a finger in one, clasping the cell phone to the other. She punched a button without looking and wandered back to the window, crocodile-clad toes tapping the edge of the newspaper.

“Karen, reserve a flight and priority cargo for Olbeter, an afternoon flight to Hong Kong. Get a limo on its way to the Empire State Building and have it wait at the Fifth Avenue entrance for Olbeter. Get a certified check for twenty-five thousand dollars…”

Beatrice flushed.

“OK, Karen, OK. Then get on the horn and liquidate the International Funds—break the bank, transfer all funds to the Chase Account and get the twenty-five-thousand-dollar check in my hand at the downtown studio by twelve thirty, even if you have to put your life’s savings into it…Look, I don’t want to hear that, Karen. It’s a leveraged buyout, sweetie. We’re running up the Jolly Roger. Just do it. Now.” Beatrice’s thumb squashed the end button, her finger pecking out another number. As she waited for the call to go through, she stared blankly down at the pages of that morning’s
Daily News
spread out on the floor. Her black eyes focused, and she crouched to tear off the corner of the tabloid. Color bloomed on her cheeks.

“Olbeter, drop everything, grab your passport: you’re headed to Hong Kong this afternoon. A car will be waiting at the Fifth Avenue entrance. Swing by here, pick up the jazz, and be on your way. You’ll get the usual seven thou when you return, in cash…Yes, that’s right…Wait, Olbeter: you know a fellow named Nicholas Palihnic? Yes, I thought the name sounded familiar. Hmm, well, a bit in the paper says he murdered someone last night. You happen to know what he was working on?”

C h a p t e r                           3

 
T
he two detectives told Nicholas he was going up the river. They had him cold, carrying a rubber hose. Looked like he’d thwacked Bagby, then injected him—zinc phosphide, a rodenticide. Rat poison. Fingerprints taken from the underside of the fire escape railing matched Nicholas’s.

“You’re history, Palihnic,” the hatchet-faced one said.

“So why’d you do it?” the roly-poly one said.

Nicholas didn’t make a peep.

The wimpy public defender arrived and sagely confided, “It doesn’t look good.”

Nicholas turned to the attending ADA and said, “Get this guy outta here. I want a real lawyer.” He asked for his wallet, from whence he produced a card for Mr. Patel, an attorney he’d met a while back at an FBI hangout called Pig & Thistle over on Greenwich. That’s when Hatchet Face and Roly-Poly had him moved from the precinct over to the holding cell at the Centre Street courthouse for arraignment.

Around ten the next morning Patel showed up, a portly badger-eyed Pakistani who claimed to know all the angles. They talked, got the story “rephrased,” and then went in with the ADA for more Q&A.

Nicholas told his tale. He’d tracked a guy interested in brokering the return of a stolen Moolman, a guy who called himself Dr. Bagby, to the building on Mott Street. The door was opened for Nicholas by a neighbor, and he went upstairs. From Bagby’s voice on the phone, Nicholas had guessed he wasn’t Asian, and therefore assumed the apartment with no Confucian icon was the one he wanted. The door was unlocked. The man seemed recently dead. The painting, clearly, was gone. What with the window open, Nicholas figured maybe the murderer and the painting escaped out that way. So he went out after him. The next thing Nicholas knew, a cop outside was arresting him. End of story.

That afternoon there was an arraignment, in the middle of which Thules “Slick” Fick, celebrity mob lawyer, barged in, conferred with Patel, and Patel bowed out. Fick suddenly became Nicholas’s mouthpiece, a tall, pin-striped, silver-haired champion of the legal joust. With aplomb, Fick posited that the charges against Nicholas were entirely circumstantial and unfounded. The unnerved ADA dismissed this, but then one of Fick’s paralegals rushed in with an advance transcription of the medical examiner’s preliminary autopsy report. A classic Slick Fick bit of magic—it was anyone’s guess how he’d gotten it so fast. The gist was that there was no way Dr. Bagby had been hit with a rubber hose. The weapon was hard, perhaps wood, and probably cylindrical. Whatever it was, it was engraved with a symbol that left an indentation on Bagby’s neck—what appeared to be a small crown or a
W
. Not only that, but photocopies of photographs taken at the scene and evidence inventories showed no such object in the apartment. And none had been found on Nicholas’s person.

The ADA complained that the weapon might have been discarded when Nicholas fled.

Fick countered with Nicholas’s rap sheet—blank. No priors. A model citizen, an insurance investigator, not even a carry permit, no outstanding parking tickets.

“Your Honor,” Fick continued, a sparkle in his eye, “I ask that my client be released so that the actual culprit might not escape.”

The judge asked whether the District Attorney’s Office had any other compelling evidence against the accused. The ADA stammered something about flight risk as he flipped through the medical examiner’s notes.

Magic. Before Nicholas could ask Fick who sent him, the ADA pulled Nicholas aside and gave him some crap about not leaving town. Court officers guided Nicholas to a desk where he picked up his things, signed for them, and zoom—a veritable bum’s rush out the front door.

All of this on his thirty-ninth birthday. Nicholas wasn’t sentimental about such things. Hadn’t gotten a card or gift on his birthday in…well, couldn’t remember when. Took pride in being isolated. What fool said no man is an island? Just a matter of not letting any tourist land and spoil the place.

When he approached Centre Street, he found a limousine waiting. Just like at the airport, a driver held up a card that read “Palihnic.”

Grit from the gutter mixed with the wind and pricked the side of Nicholas’s head.

“You Palihnic?” The driver gestured at his sign with mild annoyance. A burly Greek, he was the type Nicholas expected to see serving gyro platters at a diner.

“In the flesh.” Nicholas climbed in the backseat. The door was slammed. They took off up Centre, toward Canal.

He leaned forward and rapped on the Plexiglas partition with a knuckle.

“You know who sent you?”

“I got a call, I got the name Palihnic, now I got you.” The driver shrugged.

Nicholas slumped back against the seat. The limo continued uptown, taking him to parts unknown. Well, whoever it was that had orchestrated the rescue mission, Nicholas figured his savior was owed some of his time.

Gravy’s Tavern, just off Gramercy Park, was the destination, and the Greek driver summarily dumped him there.

“We’re here. Get out.”

None too soon. It had been a long, mostly sleepless twenty-four hours. Nicholas figured his gizzard was due a little single malt. Maybe something expensive. Not a birthday present to himself, but a reward. He’d toughed out a bad situation.

He ran a hand across his stubble and pushed through the swinging doors. Gravy’s was an old New York pub, lots of cut-glass partitions, dark wood booths, and bartenders in ties. Another one of those barrooms claiming to be the oldest in Manhattan, where such-and-so wrote such-and-such with both feet in the bag. Each of these bars had bragging rights because some genius drank himself to death in their hallowed gin mill.

It was past five, and the after-work patrons had already begun to flock around troughs of free chicken wings on the bar.

Nicholas squeezed behind two women who were talking as fast as they gobbled the wings. He had a finger raised and a request on his lips, but the bartender spoke first.

“You Palihnic?” She had both the requisite white shirt/black tie and a long blond braid.

“What makes you think so?” After his encounter with the police officer, he was hesitant to proffer his sly grin, but he did it out of reflex anyway.

The bartender returned the smile and shrugged.

“Said you’d be in a tweed suit, thin tie, and maybe glasses.” Her blue eyes flashed playfully. “Said you had Pee-wee Herman hair.”

“Uh huh.” Nicholas’s eyes narrowed. There was only one person who liked to make that crack about his hair. “Where is she?”

“Upstairs, door at the end, says ‘Tammany Hall.’” The bartender pointed around to the back of the bar. “Said you should come on up.”

“Not without a Macallan. You have the twenty-five year?”

She put a hand on her hip. “Twenty bucks a glass.”

“On the rocks with a twist.”

Twenty on the bar and drink in hand, Nicholas made his way up the stairs to Tammany Hall.

He found a paneled room with a big round table centered under an ornate skylight. A woman sat alone at the far side, shuffling a well-used deck of cards. Nicholas knew her from way back. She currently headed Trident Mutual’s investigative unit.

“Nicasia, how the hell did you manage Fick? And from you—the woman who no longer returns my calls.”

“Your ass now belongs to me.” Nicasia looked like she might just cut the deck for his soul, her dark, sarcastic eyes fixed on the cards. “Sit.”

“Treating me like dirt seems to please you.” Nicholas made a point of not taking a chair. “Me, the guy that saved your life.”

He’d met Nicasia Grieg in the Peace Corps. Nicholas flipped through his mental photo album: Nicasia falling into a raging jungle river. Nicholas pulling a Tarzan, jumping in. The long hike back to the village. Making love to her under the mosquito netting. Her olive skin. Nicholas stealing a boat, then going AWOL: Averting Women, Obsession, and Love. It was only years later when he was already back in the States that he ran into her doing insurance investigation work, too. Only she worked with Trident Mutual, and had since moved up in the ranks.

“Nicholas, that card you keep playing is from the bottom of the deck.” She flipped over a joker and tossed it at him. He caught it. “I’ve paid you back tenfold on that debt just by setting you up with your first reputable job in New York, though why I even did that after the way you bailed on me…”

Had they been in love? Nicholas didn’t think so, but knew by her bitterness that she—at the very least—felt he’d stolen her heart. Yet at the same time he imagined she still admired his cool intensity and brash confidence. Not that she’d ever admit as much. Between them in a professional capacity it was all about brinkmanship filling the gap where friendship and feeling might have been.

“Bottom line, Nicholas? I can’t trust you, and can’t afford to associate with you. You have a shady reputation.”

“Is my shady reputation really that expensive, considering I get results?” Nicholas waved the joker in the air.

“In terms of my credibility, yes. Your fiascoes make me and Trident Mutual look bad.” She shot him an icy grin and sipped her seltzer like it was vodka.

“Have you forgotten the eighty thou I saved you guys? All the big ones I brought in for you? Are we forgetting?” He tossed the card onto the table like he was angry. He wasn’t. “That was just last year about this time too.”

“Oh yeah, the Louis XVI ‘Liberace’ Commode,” Nicasia said flatly, slapping out cards in a game of solitaire. “Except the damages to the aircraft far exceeded the recovery cost.”

“The pilot panicked.” Nicholas produced wire-rimmed glasses from an inside pocket. Clear glass lenses. A tool: he just used them to look either innocent or authoritative.

“Nicholas, the pilot
panicked
when you knocked him cold with your sap while he was in the act of barreling the plane down the runway. I’m sorry, I should say
off the runway and into the bay
.”

“We didn’t go into the bay. Just along the pier a bit.”

“The tail ended up in Jamaica Bay.” She slapped down a card and glared at him. “They couldn’t use a crane from shore to lift it out, so they had to bring in a very expensive barge. We’ve been tangled in litigation with the Port Authority and Avionic Leasing ever since.”

“The commode was undamaged. And have you forgotten Barney? I hooked you up with Barney, didn’t I? He made you look terrific at Trident.”

Nicholas reflected on what a gold mine Barney Swires had turned out to be. Another in a long line of thieves that Nicholas had exposed. What had begun as simple investigative work had turned into a job as middleman, brokering the return of stolen art. The insurance companies didn’t make back any money sending people to prison. Paying the burglar was a lot cheaper than paying lawyers. And of course, Nicholas got his vig as “broker.” But Barney was not your garden-variety burglar. Nicholas liked his unrepentant nature, so he’d set him up working for Trident as a consultant on how to thwart burglars. But he’d had no idea Barney and Nicasia would hit it off romantically. He was tickled pink they had. Could wedding bells be far off? One more thing Nicasia owed him.

Nicasia flushed as her hands steadily laid out the cards like they were somebody else’s. And yet her chin trembled almost imperceptibly.

“Nicasia?”

He considered the ruddy veil to her face. Eyes wet and fixed on the cards. Jaw flexing.

“Nicasia?” He took off his glasses and sat across from her. “Is Barney OK?”

“They say he’s dead.”

“Dead? Who said he’s dead?”

“Newcastle.”

“Newcastle Warranty?” Everybody in the business knew Newcastle. A huge shipping insurer. “Barney go down in a boat?”

“Crocodiles. Costa Rica.” She sniffed deeply and held back tears. “They…they hired him to find an angle on some boat thefts. Felt he was the only one who could, you know…He’s a hot investigator in the industry now.”

“Crocodiles? Give me a break.” Then again, Nicholas had first met Barney when he’d had to chase Barney across Belize to catch him and get him to return a copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s
Tamerlane
. Nicholas hoped this wasn’t going to be another one of those jobs. One where he’d end up back in the jungle. He’d sworn off jungles.

“They say Barney was out with a guide, in the swamp or whatever. Ambushed by Nicaraguan pirates.”

“Oh, come on!” Nicholas hated pirates more than jungles. People thought they no longer existed, but Nicholas knew better. Bandits in boats attacking other boats had never gone out of fashion, either on the high seas or coastal backwaters. What had gone out of fashion were the cutlasses, treasure chests, square rigs, and eye patches. Today’s well-dressed pirates brandished RPG rocket launchers, jet boats, GPS tracking systems, and night-vision goggles. He’d read just the week before where a cruise ship off the coast of Somalia had narrowly escaped attack.

“Found his shoes, maybe one of his feet in a crocodile near the capsized boat.”

“Like in its stomach?”

“Yes, yes.” Nicasia glanced at him, her eyes red and wet. “They shot it, cut it open. Like that time in the Corps when the tax collector vanished.”