Nice Place for a Murder (11 page)

We stopped at thirty-nine, thirty-one and twenty-seven. At each floor the doors opened but nobody was there, despite the fact that it was lunchtime, a period when elevators are normally in demand. There are people in this world who push buttons to make elevators stop, just for the sheer hell of it. 

The rest of the ride was an express. When the doors finally opened in the building lobby, my friendly translator scurried away without looking back, obviously pleased to escape from me. How long had it taken, this ride with its unscheduled detour and false stops? Was Sosenko still on his way down, or already out one of the doors and now three blocks away? Was it possible he took the elevator route and had even more delays than I did? Maybe his elevator had to stop at every floor. Or maybe he’s still in the stairwell. Many possibilities.

Ah-so.

I looked around me. Elevators were opening, and passengers hurrying out. I thought if I stood where I was, in front of the elevators and within sight of the stairwell exit, Sosenko just might pass by on his way to the Park Avenue doors. Then I would — what? Slug him? Shoot him? I’d deal with that. Find him first.

Trouble was, these weren’t the only elevators. This bank serviced just the top floors, twenty-three through forty-two. Those that went from the ground to twenty-two were across the lobby, on the other side of a marble partition. What if Sosenko had cut out of the stairwell and taken an elevator at a lower floor? Then he’d most likely leave through the Forty-Eighth Street exit. If I stood where I was, I’d never see him. There was no vantage point where I could watch it all at once. The lobby was simply too big.

I decided to play the odds and stay put. Watching the stairwell exit plus a bank of elevators was a better bet than watching a bank of elevators alone. Nice reasoning, but sorry, no payoff. Ten minutes and hundreds of people passed, but not one of them was Hick Sosenko.

It didn’t look as though today was my day to grab a piece of Sosenko, or get to feel just a little bit worthy of the
fifty thousand dollars in my pocket. But I glanced out toward Park Avenue and all that changed.

There he was, standing just outside the Park exit looking in, distorted through the curved glass of the revolving door enclosures. But it was Sosenko, no question. The brazen son-of-a-bitch stood there holding the big portfolio case, as if waiting for me to spot him, daring me to chase him.

I headed for the door. He waited till I was halfway there, as though he was giving me a handicap, before he walked off to the right, down Park toward the Helmsley Building. He wasn’t running from me. He was taunting me, staying just ahead of me, defying me to follow him.

Which I did, willing myself to run the first few steps down Park until my constricting arteries screamed an order to stop, which I considered, then disobeyed. Instead, I made what I thought was a necessary compromise, and slowed to a walk. I couldn’t go any faster, but I refused to stop. Best I could do.

Some chase. Sosenko dancing around up ahead, turning every ten seconds to make sure I was still there, and me dragging myself doggedly along after him, hoping this wouldn’t end with giving him the satisfaction of watching me expire on a crowded New York sidewalk, without a shot being fired.

He crossed Forty-Sixth Street and entered one of the open pedestrian arcades that runs through the Helmsley Building. I followed, stiff-legged and wobbly, my arms swinging wide in an effort to maintain what little momentum I had, breathing heavily through my wide open mouth, perspiration pouring off my face. People were gaping at me. You don’t see something every day as grotesque as I was.

By the time I emerged through the arcade onto Forty-Fifth, Sosenko was entering the Met Life Building across the street, holding a door open and waiting for me to get closer before he slipped inside and let the door shut behind him. Drawing me on, the bastard, hoping I’d cave in. Fat chance. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

But how did he know he could play this game with me? Did he take a look at me and figure I was too old and fat to give him any serious competition? Or did somebody who knew tip him off about my little cardiac problem? And why would he take the trouble to goad me, anyway? Maybe for the same reason malicious little boys pull the wings off of flies.

I crossed Forty-Fifth and stumbled into the packed Met Life lobby. The building was emptying out for lunch, and the foot traffic was against me. I thought I saw Sosenko bobbing up ahead as he bucked the traffic, too, but when I finally reached the back end of the lobby, and the crowd began to clear, I couldn’t find him. Only one place he could be now, down one of the escalators into Grand Central Station. Yes, and there he was, already standing at the bottom, on the edge of Grand Central’s cavernous main concourse, looking up, waiting for me. I stepped on an escalator filled with people, watching Sosenko as I descended. He actually grinned at me, pointing first one way, then another, then another. Which way should we go now? No way you can catch me, but keep on trying. Till you drop.

He was on the move again. By the time I stepped off the escalator, he was starting down a stairway that led to the lower concourse.

What now? A tour of Grand Central? Out onto Lexington Avenue? Uptown to the Museum of Modern Art? Was he betting the chase would do me in, or was he deliberately leading me to a convenient place to kill me himself?

Sosenko could keep up this craziness a lot longer than I could. And even if I did manage to catch up to him, what could I do? Pull my gun and make a citizen’s arrest? He’d open that portfolio case, take out the rifle I knew was in it, and we’d have our own private war on the East Side of Manhattan.

I couldn’t stay with him much longer. My legs weighed three hundred pounds. Each. My fingers tingled. My eyes hurt. And there was a sense of dread I’d never felt before. If I cashed in right here, right now, it wouldn’t be for lack of my body’s warnings.

I stopped. I told myself discretion was the better part of valor. I told myself I’d like to go back to Long Island and make love to Alicia. I told myself I’d get Sosenko soon, anyway. Let him go.

I turned and got on an up escalator, drained but relieved, feeling the knots inside me begin to ease, just a little. My watch told me it was 1:25. Which meant that Teague had been pacing in front of the library, watching for me, for nearly a half hour. By now he would be, as Wally Prager liked to say, red-faced and bug-eyed.

Tough.

Back through the Met Life lobby and out onto Forty-Fifth, then west to Fifth Avenue. Walking slowly, breathing deeply.

He’d doubled back and followed me. I felt his hand on my shoulder when I stopped for a red light at Fifth and Forty-Third. “Hey, fat-ass, don’t you want to play no more?” Sosenko said, his voice higher than a man who looked like that should have. “You’re pitiful, you know that? Gonna put you outta your fuckin misery. Pretty soon, now.” He didn’t just look dirty, he smelled dirty.

“We know who you are,” I said. “We know what you’re doing. We’re going to track you down and you just might make me kill you.”

“Well, I’m standin next to you right now, old man. Your big fuckin chance. Why don’t you take out your piece and blow me away?” Another surprise:  his laugh was a kind of juvenile giggle, high-pitched and discordant. “Better lock your doors,” he said. He made a face, and turned back up Fifth Avenue. I walked on, quite certain now that I didn’t know half of this story yet.

I could see Teague standing in front of the library with his fists on his hips. “Forty-five minutes I’ve been standing here,” he announced while I was just barely within shouting distance. “You really go out of your way to piss me off, Seidenberg.”

Just what I needed.

CHAPTER XI

It’s not easy to tell when Roger Teague is truly angry, because even when he isn’t exploding, he looks as if he’s going to. His face is florid all the time, and you can see the veins at his temples. It’s as though everything inside him is under great pressure. You get the notion that blood could easily spurt from around his eyes, though I’ve never actually seen it happen. Being near him is like walking through a minefield. There’s always the sense that something terrible is going to happen.

I suspected that right now he was truly angry, though. I think it was the way he beat the air with his closed fists to punctuate what he said. “Forty-five minutes marching back and forth in front of the New York Public Library while you, what? take your goddamn time strolling down Fifth Avenue. I saw you. Couldn’t move your ass much slower, could you?”

“You saw me coming?” I said.

“Crawling along. Let Teague wait, right? What you thought?”

“You saw me talking to that grimy guy with the black portfolio case, then.”

“Got time to talk to every bum while you keep me waiting. Yeah, I saw. So what?”

“So what? So what is, his name is Hick Sosenko,” I told him. “He’s the sweet guy who killed David Newalis. Pulled him under water and drowned him, right in front of Ingo Julian’s house on Shelter Island. Since then he took a shot at Lisa Harper, one of Ingo’s inner circle. Been stalking Arthur Brody. Oh, and incidentally, tried to take me out a couple of times. ”

“What? And you were just standing there chatting with him?”

“I wouldn’t say chatting, exactly. I was telling him I’d have to kill him.”

“But you what? let him walk away?

“I know I should have shot him right there on the corner, Teague. But there were too many witnesses.”

“The hell’s the matter with you?” he said. God, he looked tacky. Gold all over him, big ring, chain bracelet, heavy necklace lying against the tufts of chest hair peeking out of his open white shirt. I never looked like that when I ran the company. Maybe I should have. Maybe that’s how clients want an investigator to look.

“I’m hungry, that’s my problem,” I said.

“And I’m running late now. Don’t have time to watch you eat. Just tell me what I need to know.”

I stared at him. “For all I care, you don’t need to know anything. You are not my concern. My concern is me. My body has been close to shutting down today, and the day is only half over. I need food, and if I don’t get it right now, I’m not saying another word to you. Not one single, solitary, fucking word. You prick.”

Time was, he’d go livid when I called him a prick. Now he was inured to it. I’d worn it out through overuse. I should really come up with something new.

Teague looked to the sky and shook his head. Finally he dug into his pocket for his wallet and walked to a hot dog pushcart. I followed.

“Two,” I told the vendor, who had enough dirt under his fingernails to plant potatoes in, as my sainted mother used to say. “Mustard and sauerkraut. And an orange soda.” I looked at Teague. “Pay the man.”

We found a spot to sit among the lunch crowd taking the October sun on the steps of the library, and while I put away my hot dogs and soda, I gave Teague a quick history of the past three days. Plus I told him why the big shots at Julian Communications insisted on keeping the Sosenko matter under wraps, and why they didn’t want anyone but me on the case right now. I thought it best to leave out the part about Brody’s deal to me, and the envelope filled with money in my pocket.

“I can’t believe they’re being such assholes about this,” Teague said. “If you don’t nail this Sosenko right away, he’s going to kill somebody else. Maybe a lot of people. Tell them.”

“Are you paying attention, Teague? Watch my lips. I have to play it their way, or they’ll dump Empire.” I wiped some mustard off my shirt. “The thing I can’t get out of anybody is why the big chill between Ingo Julian and Arthur Brody,” I said. “Any thoughts on that?”

“I don’t know. New development. Big surprise to me. Ever since the plane crash, Ingo hasn’t done a thing without running it past Brody. Brody’s been the key guy in everything. Ingo wouldn’t wipe his ass without Brody handing him the paper. Smart move on Ingo’s part.”

“Why smart?” I said.

“Because once he made Brody president, and started listening to him, the company took off. Before, they were just another mediocre communications group. Nothing happening. Along comes Brody, and they acquire what look like shaky companies — magazines, radio stations — at bargain basement prices. They fire everybody, put in new lean-and-mean managements, and turn losers into big-time winners. I mean, stand back. The word is, it was Brody saw the potential. Why do you think they’re so anxious to go public now? They have a hot growth curve and a phenomenal bottom line. This is the time to cash in. But communications has big ups and downs. The good times might not what? might not last forever.”

“Seems like Ingo and Brody ought to be tighter than ever now,” I said.

“Seems like.”

I finished the last of my soda. It had all the taste of a melted Popsicle, but I liked it because it made me feel like a kid again, slurping down that orangey sweetness. “What about Lisa Harper? I don’t know how she fits into all this. But it’s clear she’s Ingo’s person. Out there on Shelter Island for a strategy session. In her itsy-bitsy bathing suit.”

“Think he’s banging her?” Teague said. “So what? Just part of her game plan. She wouldn’t be the first broad who what? slept her way to the top.”