I knew the phone was about to ring.
It did.
The woman on the other end of the line asked me to describe what she was wearing.
I did so in vivid detail, then said, “Enough of the party games, I know why you called.”
“You do? Oh, you do, don’t you?” was her confused reply.
“Yes,” I said.
It was a gray, musty, sunny, spring day, the kind of day that can only occur in New York City. Gray, musty, and sunny all at once. I was in my second-floor office, in an older brick relic a stone’s throw from the Flatiron Building. From my window I had a terrific view of all the solid citizens and laughing lunatics on the street. I was busy tapping a pencil on my desktop and thinking about how the island of Manhattan had been sold to the Dutch for beads and trinkets. The place was based on crooked deals from the start.
I knew there was about to be a knock on my door. A moment later, there was. A large hulk of a man entered, a man of few words and even fewer expressions. I knew the Big Guy was a mid-level hit man and had notched more than a dozen kills in the tri-state area. But he wasn’t armed, and I wasn’t a target. The Big Guy had other things on his mind. He was about to sit on the small wooden chair I kept in front of my desk for daintier clientele.
“Over there,” I said, motioning to the couch with a deep dent in its center.
He would’ve broken the chair.
I knew what the Big Guy was going to say, but I let him go ahead and say it. I had plenty of time, even though he didn’t. I lit a cigarette, leaned back, watched wisps of smoke swirl up at the grey-green ceiling, creating its own weather system. His story was fairly common in my business. It was a well-worn tale, but always new to the sucker it happened to. He suspected his voluptuous young wife of fooling around behind his sizable back.
“And what you want me to do is find out who she’s been sleeping with, so you can clobber him.”
“So, what I wants you to do, is to find out who she’s been doing it with, so’s I can…yeah, that’s right.”
The poor guy had it bad, and he was going to get it good.
The Big Guy lumbered out of my office and into a shaft of dirty sunlight. I listened until his footsteps disappeared into the distant ding of the elevator. My phone wouldn’t ring for another twenty minutes, so I had another smoke, and a shot from a bottle of Jack Daniels I kept in my desk drawer. I slowly reached a state of mind somewhere between fuzzy and discombobulated when my phone rang. Right on schedule. Life can be like that.
“Clairvoyant P.I., your business is mine,” I said.
There was a sneaky type of silence on the other end of the line.
“OK, lady, I know you’re the Big Guy’s wife.”
More silence. Even sneakier.
I didn’t say a word. Neither did she.
We listened to our eerie silences having a battle of wills on each side on the phone line.
Finally, I could tell she was about to sneeze. I said, “gesundheit” and hung up.
She wondered why I’d broken the silence with that particular word, and then sneezed.
I got up and put on my coat and hat. When I leaned over to pick up a quarter from the cracked linoleum floor, a bullet zinged in through the open window behind me and drilled into the plaster, missing me by at least two feet. The bullet was shot from a 38 snub-nosed unregistered handgun, bought on the street approximately 44 hours prior from an arms dealer in Newark known as Carlos the Shark. He usually dealt halfway good merchandise, but this piece was definitely inferior. So, even if I hadn’t known I was about to be shot at, he’d have missed anyway. Sometimes it was too easy.
Down in the lobby, I stopped at the newsstand for the afternoon edition of The Daily News. Emblazoned on the front page was the headline: BIG GUY FOUND MURDERED IN MIDTOWN HOTEL ROOM. I picked one up, tossed the man a buck, and spun through the revolving door, pushing my way onto the sidewalk loaded with crazies, and dove into the backseat of a gypsy cab as it slowed for the light. The cabbie blinked at me in the rearview, then asked “Where to, Buddy?” I held up the front page of the paper and he stepped on the accelerator. We were there in under 10 minutes. I tossed him a 20-spot and waded through the sea of businessmen, hookers, pickpockets, bellmen, tourists from Duluth, creatures from the moon, and assorted con men of every stripe – the colorful citizens and tourists who fill the lobbies of Manhattan’s finest hotels. When I arrived at the crime scene, they hadn’t removed his ample corpse yet. The room was swarming with the boys in blue and the men in black suits. One of them I recognized.
“What’s the story, Detective O’Malley?”
“Clairvoyant P.I., how’s tricks?”
“Oh, things are peachy today, just peachy. At last count one client has been murdered. And I’ve only been shot at once.”
O’Malley nodded his head toward the substantial form lying on the blood-stained carpet with a bullet hole smack dab between the eyes. “The Big Guy was your client?”
“Came to my office this morning.”
O’Malley eyed me from beneath his shaggy dog eyebrows. “And?”
“And I’ll bet, you get the smart guys in ballistics to compare the bullet lodged in his brain with the one lodged in the southwest corner wall of my office, and you’ll get a perfect match.”
“Sounds like you know more than you’re telling me,” O’Malley pointed out.
“Always,” I said.
I told O’Malley I had important business to attend to, and slipped out of the hotel room. It had been an eventful day and I needed to clear my head. So I hoofed it downtown instead of traveling by taxi. The taxi would’ve been driven by one of those nitwits who presume every fare they pick up is from out of town, and what they most desire is a scenic tour of Manhattan, when they’re only going a couple of blocks. I reached my destination at least 25 minutes sooner than if I’d taken the cab. It was a smoky dive in Chelsea called The Black Rose. In two more months, the owners would torch it for the insurance money, but when I stepped into its darkened interior the air conditioning made it feel like springtime in the Yukon Territory. I headed directly for a booth in the back, where a striking blonde who looked to be waiting for someone sat alone. Her eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, most of her hair was covered with a flower print scarf, and her shapely legs were crossed under the wooden booth’s tabletop. I sat down across from her. An odor of spilled beer permanently ingrained in the wood wafted into my nostrils.
She glanced up from her drink.
“Who told you I’d be here?”
“No one,” I said. “No one had to.”
She leaned over and sharply drew in her breath.
“Then you must be…”
“Yes,” I said.
“The Big Guy, is he, I mean will he…?”
“No,” I said. “He got one in the head. Turned out his lights for good.”
“That’s too bad,” she said.
“For him, it was the worst.”
A barmaid with black bangs, cut Cleopatra-style, wearing a form-fitting black skirt and dark circles under her eyes, came to our table. I asked for a Jack Daniels on the rocks and a gin and tonic with a twist of lemon for my new friend. It was her usual drink. The barmaid in black slinked over to the bar, whispered our drink order to the bartender like it was a state secret, then perched on a barstool in the shape of a bird of prey, and picked up a paperback copy of Anna Karenina.
I already knew the blonde in dark glasses across the table from me wasn’t the deceased Big Guy’s wife, but played along with the scene about to be acted out. Exactly when I’d expected, the black widow of a barmaid pulled out a revolver, spun on her heel and fired three quick shots at the phony wife and I. Seconds before, I’d slid under the table and pulled the blonde underneath it by gripping her around the ankles. The shots caromed above our heads like haphazard throws in an incredibly inebriated dart game. The barmaid pulled off the wig to reveal another head of blonde hair, then flung it on the floor and ran out into the crowded street. She’d left behind a cheap wig, the smell of cordite and sulfur hanging in the air, a rather shook-up smattering of aging barflies, a beat-up paperback edition of Anna Karenina, and a few more bullet holes in the woodwork.
The blonde pretending to be The Big Guy’s widow removed her sunglasses. She made with the waterworks, which were half real and half for show. I urged and she spilled. Said she was an out of work actress who’d been hired by the Big Guy’s wife. She was told she’d be playing a harmless gag, on who, was an ex-husband. I knew she was lying through her pearly whites, but acted as if her every word shone with the wondrous light of truth. She asked me who I really was, and I told her. She didn’t believe me about as much as I didn’t believe her, but I was used to it. Wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last. In fact, it would happen approximately 8,347 more times in my lifetime. I got up, dropped a crisp twenty on the table, nodded to her.
She whispered, “See you later?”
I stepped out into the city’s neon glow and hailed a cab.
I knew the phone would wake me out of a sound sleep at precisely 1:45 a.m. So when I got home I slipped between the sheets and drifted off to dreamland. I dreamed of blondes with black roots, guns with lovely legs instead of handles, taxi drivers from faraway planets, vultures reading Russian novelists, and police detectives with the heads of Bloodhounds. I was wondering why the Bloodhound’s whiskers didn’t catch fire from the cigar he was smoking, when the phone rang.
“O’Malley, what’ve you got?” I asked.
“Suppose you tell me, Clairvoyant P. I.”
I sat up and turned on the bedside table lamp. “You checked out the bullets that were lodged in the woodwork at my office with the ones found inside the Big Guy’s noggin. They matched, just as I said. Shortly afterwards, you heard about a disturbance involving some fancy gunplay at The Black Rose in Chelsea. You went down there about 8:00 p.m., spoke with a blonde bartender, and even though she was a bit sloshed on whiskey sours by that time, she was able to provide a convincing story concerning her, The Big Guy’s wife, and myself. You liked the way the story sounded, but maybe it sounded too neat. So you tailed her home, doing a fairly good job, I might add. When she reached her apartment building something clicked. It was the same address the Big Guy had resided at before his violent demise. You picked the front door lock of the building, making sure you were far enough behind her so as not to arouse suspicion. Outside her apartment, with your head bent low, you heard two nearly identical women’s voices congratulating each other on a job well done. What you found out was that The Big Guy’s wife and the fake blonde waitress rom the bar were sisters. Not just blood relations, but the worst kind of blood relations, the kind who will kill anything standing in their way when it comes to big bucks. And, the crummy thing for him was, the thing in their way was The Big Guy…”
There was a cross between a “hmm” and a horrific throat clearing noise on the other end of the line.
I continued. “Unfortunately, a helpful neighbor of the male persuasion saw you hanging around outside the sisters’ door, and shouted for a cop. Which you didn’t find particularly amusing. The two sisters heard the commotion and bolted down the fire escape. Now they’re in the wind and what you’re looking for, in order of appearance: the murder weapon, the blonde sister who pretended to be a barmaid at The Black Rose, and the Big Guy’s wife, also a blonde. In the meantime, you’ll settle for any one of the three, the gun for evidence, the blonde sister fake barmaid as an accomplice, and The Big Guy’s wife for the murder rap.
“Ah, not so fast there, Clairvoyant P.I. We do have an address for the blonde sister.”
“Yeah, that and a buck fifty will get you a ride on the subway…”
“O’Malley started to sputter out a response, but I cut him off. Told him I needed my beauty rest. Said I’d contact him when I knew more. Even though I already knew. Then I put the receiver back in its cradle, and rejoined the creatures of my dreams, which were somewhat less hostile than the human creatures in the real world. But only somewhat.
Just before 8:00 a.m. I arrived at my office with a cup of Greek diner take out coffee and a toasted onion bagel with cream cheese. I knew the phone would ring after I savored the first bite of bagel, and before I took the first sip of coffee.
I picked up the receiver on the second ring.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Can you meet me?” a woman’s voice said.
I glanced into my coffee cup. “We’ve already met.”
“In a manner of speaking,” she said.
“In fact we’ve met twice,” I said. “Yesterday, on the phone, just before the Big Guy came to my office. You wanted to tell me something, but you got cold feet. And last night, it was you I had drinks with at The Black Rose.”
“Yes, that was me,” she said. “So now what?”
“We meet, then you tell me what you know.”
She was going to ask me to rendezvous at a dive bar on the Lower East Side called The Retro Future. Two lugs with low foreheads and thick necks would’ve shoved me around a little and sprained my left wrist. I wasn’t in the mood for low-rent shenanigans.
“Nix on The Retro,” I said. “I’ll see you at 4:00 p.m., at the Central Park Zoo.”
“How did you know?” she asked. “Oh, that’s right…”
I hung up, smiled, and took a sip of coffee.
I was watching the penguins play, splashing and sunning like they hadn’t a care in the world. Fresh fish delivered three times a day, and a smooth wet rock to sleep on. A good way to go if you were a penguin. Not a bad way to go for some people.
I knew the voice on the phone belonged to the third sister. It was she who called before The Big Guy got it, without a warning, which would’ve prevented or at least delayed him from taking a long dirt nap. It was she who I’d met up with at The Black Rose. She showed up at four on the dot, like a watch telling the only time it knew how. The third sister wore a crimson wool jacket over a charcoal gray dress and black stockings. Her blonde hair was haphazardly tucked up into a black beret. She parked herself next to me on the bench and flashed a smile, as if that could make everything all better.
I got right to it.
“You could’ve warned the Big Guy,” I said. “Let him know what was in the works.”
She raised one eyebrow in my direction. “Is there a question in there?”
“How about…why didn’t you?”
She stared off into the near distance, at some badly trimmed shrubbery. “I knew my sisters were bad eggs, but I had no idea how far they’d go, once they found out…”
I almost cracked a grin, but it wasn’t time. Instead, I said, “Go on.”
“They found out about the contract on the Big Guy’s life,” she said. “Knew it was time to act, before he was hit by his business partners. My youngest sister, Frannie, the Big Guy’s wife, had tricked him into signing an insurance policy he never took the time to read, three weeks ago.”
“So they took care of him to grab the insurance money,” I said.
“Yes, and it’s not exactly what happened.”
“Why did he come to see me, if all these wheels were already in motion?”
“Time was running out,” she said. “He was protecting someone. Leading you to Frannie, without giving you the real picture.”
And as she said it, a bullet split the air and nearly hit her left shoulder. But I was able to shove her aside quickly enough. I felt the bullet graze the arm of my suit jacket. Too close for comfort, but not close enough to be deadly.
I spotted the shooter running away, a black trench coat flapping behind her, and another wig floating away in the chilly autumn breeze.
Standing up from the bench, I gripped the hand of sister number three and helped her up from the cobblestones. She brushed dirt off her dress and grimaced at the half-hearted attempt at murder.
“Now it’s personal,” she said through gritted teeth.
“You mean it wasn’t before?”
“How about more personal?”
“Personal enough for us to take a trip downtown, and you to spill to a detective I happen to know?”
“Deal me in,” she said.
O’Malley wasn’t surprised to see me, but he raised a shaggy eyebrow at sister number three, whose name I found out was Eve Bell.
He put us side by side in a comfy interrogation room. One with low lights, and an ancient wooden table and chairs to match. As a professional courtesy, O’Malley hadn’t even placed another detective on the other side of the see-through glass. Just a friendly chat with me and an attractive accomplice to murder unless she could smooth talk her way out of it.
Crossing his arms, and leaning forward over the table, O’Malley asked, “How do you fit into this not-so-pretty picture, Ms. Bell?”
“I had nothing to gain, if that’s what you mean,” Eve said. “I thought The Big Guy was an OK guy, better than my sister deserved, if you want to know.”
I turned to her. “Who put the contract out on the Big Guy?”
She rolled her shoulders back. Looked into my eyes. “My sister, Frannie, his wife. Hired a fellow who goes by the name of Rocco, Rocco Martinelli. A dealer in padded ladies undergarments and questionably sourced imported wines. He had something going with my sister, starting maybe a year ago. Wasn’t until last month that the Big Guy got wind of it.”
O’Malley asked, “What did the Big Guy do?”
She shrugged. “Did what big guy’s often do. Barreled into Martinelli’s office late one night, while he was working late when nobody was around, and gave him the heave-ho off the top of 14 stories. Needless to say, Martinelli wasn’t wearing shoes with springs built into ‘em, like in the cartoons.”
I pointed at her and posed the obvious. “Then who killed the Big Guy, if Martinelli was out of the picture?”
“You’re not going to believe it,” she said.
“Try me,” I said, already knowing the answer.
“The Big Guy killed himself.”
O’Malley jumped in, with both feet. “Oh, Hell no! I’ve heard a lot of crazy nonsense in my years, but no way he could’ve shot himself in the forehead without there being gun residue on his hands.”
She twitched her lips in amusement at O’Malley. “Let me put it this way, so you’ll get a crystal-clear picture. He had himself killed.”
“Bloody Hell!” O’Malley said.
Eve said, “He overheard Frannie making the call to have him wacked, and decided to do her one better, take himself out of the picture with his own shooter, and that way Frannie and Nora couldn’t collect, since he’d gone to a lawyer the week before and had the insurance policy amended, to include a stipulation which stated, “If it can be determined that either my wife, Frannie Guy, or her sister Nora Gramble were found to be accomplices connected to Rocco Martinelli in any way, they wouldn’t be able to collect on the life insurance policy, plus he amended it to add a new name.”
O’Malley blew out a low whistle and scratched the back of his head. “And I suppose you can tell me who the shooter The Big Guy hired is?”
“Our stepsister, Bonnie, who’s now on the lam having collected on the life insurance policy, and is ten million dollars richer. And that amount of moolah can buy a lot of wardrobe changes, wigs, and oversized sunglasses, in case you haven’t heard.”
“Do you know the whereabouts of Frannie Guy or Nora Gramble, Ms. Bell?” O’Malley asked.
A half-grin appeared on her lips. “Matter of fact I might.”
O’Malley picked up a pad of paper and pen next to his arm, and handed it to Eve. “Would you be so good, as to write it all down?”
She wrote the addresses on the legal pad, then handed it back.
“One more question,” O’Malley said. “Why’d he have a hit put out on himself, besides stipulating the money was for Bonnie Guy? He’d already killed the shooter. Probably had enough cash set aside for leaving the city in a hurry, if it came to that.”
“Had a bad ticker,” Eve said. “Knew he only had months to live, and figured it was as good a way to exit this world as any. Maybe liked the symmetry of it, especially since he’d punched so many other guy’s tickets.”
O’Malley said, “Sure, I can buy that.” He glanced at the addresses, then spoke the loveliest words one ever hears in a police station. “You’re both free to go.”
Out on the street, as the sun slid down into the Hudson River, Eve reached out and took my hand, then said, “Say, would you like to go for a walk in Central Park sometime, maybe watch the penguins at the zoo?”
I said, “It’s like you’re reading my mind.”