Read FACETS (JAKE SCARNE THRILLERS Book 6) Online
Authors: Lawrence De Maria
Scarne slept until almost 9 AM the next morning, and woke with a headache and a mouth that tasted like two-day-old roadkill. He put on gym shorts and an old Providence College sweatshirt and went to his kitchen, where he washed down three aspirins with half a bottle of Gatorade — destroying, he was sure, whatever lining was left in his stomach. Then, fighting an almost visceral urge to go back to bed, he called his office to say he would be “delayed”, set the timer on a pot of coffee and left his apartment. He took the elevator to the basement. An elderly couple that shared his ride stared at him, probably wondering how a vagrant got into their building.
The rudimentary basement gym, with its old-style weight benches and barbells, jump ropes, stretching pulleys and heavy punching bag was deserted, as it usually was. Most residents, with memberships in upscale health clubs, wouldn’t sully their $400 track suits in the room, with its dirty floor mats, and pungent odor, a combination of sweat, mold and liniment. Scarne, who also belonged to health clubs and had carte blanch at N.Y.P.D. facilities, used this gym for catharsis, and penance for whenever he poisoned his body as he had the previous night.
An hour later, soaked in sweat but feeling almost human, he took the stairs two at a time and returned to his apartment. After a long shower and a shave, he ate a modest breakfast of orange juice, coffee and two poached eggs.
***
After stopping by his office to tell Noah and Evelyn what he’d be doing, Scarne took a cab to the address he had for Luke Willet on McClellan Street in the Bronx, which would have been a quick drive from Columbia. The address turned out to be a run-down three-story apartment building three blocks from the new Yankee Stadium. From the looks of McClellan Street, Scarne doubted if many of its residents ever attended a game at the stadium, where the cheapest tickets were more than $60 and the average ticket ran more than $500, despite the fact that the Yankees received $1.8 billion in taxpayer subsidies to build their new sports coliseum. Scarne was a Yankee fan, but that did not prevent him from feeling guilty about it.
The door to Willet’s building was next to a bodega. On the corner a group of men and boys stood outside a bar smoking. They all looked over when Scarne got out of the cab. Two of the men put their heads together, then shrugged. Scarne looked like a cop, but cops don’t take cabs. Everyone soon lost interest.
It did not appear to be the kind of neighborhood where finding a cab would be easy, so Scarne told his driver to wait. The turbaned man did not seem too happy with the idea, so Scarne gave him $20 “for your trouble”. He heard the taxi’s doors lock when he walked away. The buzzers in the small vestibule all had paper name tags. All the names appeared to be Spanish, except one that was blank for apartment 2C and appeared new. There was no “Willet”. Scarne started pressing buzzers until a woman’s metallic voice came through the speaker.
“Quién es? Qué quieres?”
Scarne’s Spanish was rudimentary, but he gave it a shot.
“Busco señor Willet. Lucas Willet.”
“Él movió.”
The man was at the movies? No, he moved, Scarne realized before he made an ass of himself.
“Where did he … I mean, dónde mueven?”
“No lo sé. Pregunte al superintendente. En la bodega.”
***
The man behind the counter in the bodega thankfully spoke English, and yes, he was the superintendent of the building next door. No, señor Willet does not live in 2C anymore.
“He move out last week.”
“Did he leave a forwarding address.”
“No.”
“Are you sure? Maybe with the landlord?”
“I am also the landlord.”
“You own this place, too?”
“Si.”
“How long did Willet live next door?”
“Oh, maybe two years. He taught at the college, you know?”
The man seemed proud that one of his tenants was apparently a college professor. Scarne decided not to explain what an adjunct was.
“Yes, Columbia.”
The man looked confused.
“Not Columbia. Bronx Community College.”
Scarne did not correct him. No reason Willet couldn’t have more than one teaching gig. The apartment was conveniently located near both schools.
An elderly woman using a walker came in the bodega and bought some lottery tickets. They were probably the only sure way out of the neighborhood. When she left, Scarne held the door for her. He went back to the counter.
“You said he left recently. Was it sudden? Did he have a lease?”
“Why you asking about the professor? You a cop?”
“Private.”
“He in trouble?”
“Not that I know. But I’m trying to get a line on one of his students. Thought he might be able to help me.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. He had a two-year lease but that ran out couple months ago. So he stayed month-to-month. OK with me, but I told him that if I got someone who wanted a lease I’d ask him to leave. He said no problem. He was planning to leave the city soon anyway. Said he hoped to give me a month’s notice, but said if he had to go sooner, I could keep his security deposit.”
“So, he’s paid up through the end of the month.”
“Si.”
“No notice?”
“No, just stopped by to drop off the keys.”
“What about furniture?”
“Most of it is mine. He added some small stuff. Told me to sell it if I wanted. But I think I’ll leave it.”
Two boys who probably should have been in school walked into the store and started fingering items on shelves.
“Listen, that’s all I know,” the bodega owner said, eyeing the kids suspiciously. “Try the college. Willet may be there if he didn’t leave town. It’s open all year round.”
“Thanks.”
Scarne was halfway to the door when the man said, “Listen, you find him, maybe you ask him what I should do with the stuff he left.”
“What stuff?”
“Looks like mierde, crap, that was lying around. Papers, books, mostly. I put it in a box. Nothing to sell.”
“I’ll take it. Give it to him when I see him.”
The man looked cagey.
“I don’t know. It’s his, you know.”
“You just told me you were going to throw it out.”
“Still ….”
Scarne took out some bills.
“I’ll get the box,” the man said. “You keep an eye on those kids so they don’t steal me blind.”
He turned to the boys and pointed at Scarne.
“Ver a este hombre? Él es un policía. Con una pistola.”
As the man left, one of the boys grabbed his crotch and yelled after him, “Chuparme la polla, imbécil!”
Great, Scarne thought, I’ve just been assigned to bodega security. He took out his phone and called Bronx Community College. He asked for Luke Willet, explaining that he was probably an adjunct teaching English. Amazingly, he was switched to the right department. A very nice lady told him that Mr. Willet had called in sick and probably was not coming back to finish the semester. It was the answer Scarne was half expecting.
The bodega owner returned with a large box with an Amazon logo. Nothing in it looked particularly promising, but Scarne thanked him and left. As the door shut behind him, he could hear the man yelling at the two boys.
***
When Scarne got back to the office it was empty. Evelyn had asked for the afternoon off for a doctor’s appointment and there was a note from Noah, saying that he’d gotten a line on a possible love nest used by a man whose wife needed evidence in a divorce case. He would be staking it out. Scarne had a tuna sandwich sent up from a nearby deli and sat down to go through the contents of Willet’s box.
It was, as he expected, mostly junk: receipts and menus from various Chinese and Sri Lankan restaurants; solicitation letters to “resident”, some opened, some not, from insurance agents and financial planners; paper clips, pens and pencils; two old New Yorker magazines; a half-used box of tissues; an acrylic paperweight with a Columbia University logo, several notepads with both Columbia and Bronx Community College imprints, and three Clive Cussler paperbacks. Scarne, who liked Cussler’s nautical thrillers, didn’t recognize the titles, so after riffling through the pages to make sure there was nothing stuck between them or written in the margins, put them aside. He flipped through each notepad as well. All the pages were blank. Then he traced a pencil lightly across the first page of each pad. On TV or in the movies, detectives who did that always uncovered the impression of a phone number or a clue. As usual, Scarne didn’t, and, as usual, he felt like an idiot.
He left the solicitation letters for last, throwing the unopened ones in his trash bucket after making sure nothing was written on the outside. He scanned the opened fliers and one-by-one they also went into the trash. Then he started checking the envelopes they came in. One of them had a phone number written in pencil on its flap, with the name “Barry Hine” next to it. Scarne copied it down. All the other envelopes were pristine. He dumped everything but the paperbacks into his wastebasket and called the phone number he’d copied. He got a generic answering message. After the beep, he said, “My name is Jake Scarne. I’m a friend of Luke Willet. I need to speak to him. It is important.”
Scarne finished his sandwich and poured himself another cup of coffee. Then he called Regina Russell at Barnard. Her secretary, whose name he remembered as Shana, seemed happy to hear from him.
“I’ll put you right through, Mr. Scarne.”
The dean was in her office talking to the school Provost on the phone when Shana stuck her head in the door.
“You have a call,” Shana said.
Russell was surprised. She’d told Shana to hold her calls. But before she could say anything, Shana said, “It’s Jake Scarne. I’m putting him through.”
“Leslie, can I call you right back,” Russell said into the phone.
As soon as she hung up on the Provost, her phone buzzed.
“Mr. Scarne, how nice to hear from you. Have you made progress on what we talked about?”
“In a manner of speaking. But that is not why I called. I know it is short notice, but will you have dinner with me tonight?”
Russell did not know what to say. Not because she did not want to have dinner with Scarne, but because she was not sure how anxious she should be. As if understanding her reluctance, he sweetened the pot.
“We could talk about the case, if you like,” he said.
“Well, then, I will cancel my plans,” she said lamely. “Yes, dinner would be very nice.”
“Wonderful. How do you feel about Marchi’s? I haven’t been there in a while, but they rarely disappoint.”
“I love Marchi’s,” she said, “and it’s not far from my apartment. Walking distance, actually. I could meet you there.”
They agreed to meet at 7 PM.
Scarne looked at his watch. He’d have plenty of time to go home and get ready for his date with Regina Russell. He found himself very much looking forward to seeing her. His on-again-off-again relationship with Emma Shields, now immersed in basically running the Shields media empire, was mostly off. The other women he really cared about, Sharon Ross and Kate Ellenson (whose married name was Vallance, but since she was now a widow, Scarne always thought of her as he first knew her) lived far away, in Florida and Illinois, respectively. More recently, Scarne had confined himself to brief, and rather unsatisfactory, affairs with two well-off divorced women his firm represented. They were well-off primarily because of what Scarne discovered about their husbands, and were properly grateful.
He decided to put the now-empty Amazon box on Evelyn’s desk. Fastidious as she was, she never liked to throw anything out that could be stored, and liked small boxes for that purpose. Scarne, who had dumped Willet’s pens, pencils and other detritus in the garbage, hoped Evelyn wouldn’t notice. But as he picked it up, it occurred to him that the box might not have belonged to the bodega owner. Maybe it was just lying around Willet’s apartment and came in handy.
Scarne looked at the shipping label, which said “Psychofreak”. That sounded like a video game. Maybe Willet was a gamer. But Scarne sat down at his laptop and Googled the word anyway.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said when the description came up on the screen.
“Psychofreak” was a trade name for a wet suit favored by expert scuba divers.
***
At Barnard, Shana was again standing at her boss’s door, laughing.
“I will cancel my plans! What? You won’t see any more
Castle
or
N.C.I.S.
reruns?”
Russell also laughed.
“I’ll have you know that it’s
Shark Week
on the Discovery Channel. Now, I’ll have to catch tonight’s episode On Demand.”
CHAPTER 18 - REGINA
He got to Marchi’s with 20 minutes to spare and was sitting at the bar arguing the relative merits of vodka and gin martinis with a young couple from White Plains when Regina Russell came through the front door. He was glad he opted for the tie because she was dressed to the nines, in a sleeveless blue cocktail dress with a flowered lace overlay. On her feet were a pair of two-strap high heels. She wore no jewelry except a pair of pearl-and-sapphire drop earrings. She walked over to Scarne and held out her hand as he stood.
“You look terrific,” he said, realizing that they had dressed up for each other.
“I’ll say,” the woman next to Scarne said.
He introduced Regina to the young couple, and asked Regina what she wanted to drink.
“Perfect Manhattan, with Jack Daniels, please.”
Another plus in her favor, Scarne thought, as the women started chatting about clothes. The other man rolled his eyes at Scarne and said, “How about them Knicks?”
Ten minutes later, the men were rescued when the maitre d' told Scarne his table was ready. He and Regina said a quick goodbye to the other couple and followed the man to their table. Scarne was pleased to note that many people they passed turned their heads. He knew they weren’t looking at him.
Marchi’s was the type of restaurant where you were basically told what to eat. Tonight, the chef was featuring a five-course meal featuring both fish, fowl and veal, and plenty of vegetables.
“Ordinarily when I eat Italian,” Scarne said, “I order a good, bold chianti, especially if there will be a lot of red sauce and heavy meats. But, unless we want to drink wine by the glass and switch with every course, and hope for the best, I suggest we opt for a good Pinot Noir. It should complement everything they are liable to throw at us.”
“I don’t know that much about wines,” Regina said. “I’ll leave it in your hands.”
Scarne went over the wine list and chose a 2010 Fess Parker Ashley Pinot Noir from California.
“I didn’t know Davy Crockett was Italian,” Regina commented.
“I think he shot one of the meat courses.”
“It’s veal.”
“So much for American icons.”
They were started off with a platter of cold antipasto arranged in a floral design. This was followed by the house lasagna with its “secret family sauce.” By the time they finished the third course, a crisp, deep-fried flounder surrounded by cold beets and string beans, Scarne and Regina Russell were fast friends who realized they were well on the way to becoming something else. They both agreed that they couldn’t eat another thing.
Until the fourth course arrived, consisting of roasted chicken and moist, tender slices of roasted veal accompanied by a bowl of tossed salad and a platter of cooked fresh mushrooms.
“Well, say what you will, Davy could shoot,” Scarne said, and ordered another bottle of the same wine.
As they ate the delicious meal, they spoke of each other’s lives. Scarne told her about the loss of his parents in a wilderness plane crash in which he barely survived, and his subsequent Montana upbringing by his grandparents, mainly his grandfather, an ex-Sicilian U-Boat commander interned in the Western U.S. who came back to marry a part-Cheyenne American girl after the war.”
“My God, what a story. How did you become a private detective?”
“Private investigator. The cops frown on people using the word detective. Although I’ll use it if I think it will scare someone or open a door. Anyway, I was a detective once, here in New York, on the D.A.’s squad. Specialized in civic corruption. Was a bit too good at it and was politely asked to leave.”
“They fired you.”
“Well, that’s one way to put it.”
Regina Russell took a sip of wine and laughed.
“Shana, that’s my assistant, Googled you. She said you were fired by the Police Commissioner himself. She said that was another reason I should go out with you. She has a problem with authority.”
“You needed Shana’s permission?”
Regina blushed.
“No, no. She did it without asking me. If you must know, if you didn’t call me when you did, I was going to call you. Oh, Jesus. I can’t believe I said that. It must be the wine.”
Scarne laughed and put his hand on hers.
“Does it matter?”
‘No, I guess not.”
Their waiters came and started clearing and Scarne took his hand away.
“You seem to have made up with the Commissioner,” Regina said. “In some of the stories about your cases, he says nice things about you.”
“Dick is one of my biggest fans,” Scarne said, smiling. “Especially since he found out I can get things done that he can’t. Inside the force, I was a pain in the ass. Outside, I’m an asset.”
The final course came, a bowl of seasonal fruits accompanied by d'Aosta, one of the oldest Italian cheeses, known for its denseness and delicate honey-and nut flavor.
Then came the obvious questions about marriage or romantic attachments.
“I’m between catastrophic relationships,” Scarne gibed.
“I’m serious,” Regina said.
“I’m sorry. I tend to be glib at moments like these.”
“What kind of moment is it?”
“The kind that does not call for smart-ass remarks. I am, in fact, not involved with anyone at the moment. I’ve never been married, although I came close, many years ago. Now, since I’m supposed to be the detective, er, investigator, what about you?”
“I was married young,” Russell said. “High school sweetheart in Dayton. That’s where I’m from. It didn’t take. I was crushed. I thought high school sweethearts lasted forever, not three years.”
“High school is high school. It bears no relation to reality.”
“Tell me about it. Anyway, I graduated from Ohio State and joined the Peace Corps. I spent two years in South Africa. One of my roommates knew someone at Columbia and I was accepted in one of their graduate programs. I eventually got my Ph.D. in Political Science, and started teaching at Barnard.”
“Aren’t you young to be a Dean?”
“Somebody died.”
“They must all be dead over at Barnard and Columbia if you are still unattached, Regina. You are a very beautiful woman.”
She smiled at the compliment.
“There are many nice men at both schools, Jake. But, I don’t know, they aren’t my type. I know it sounds crazy, but they are, how shall I put it, too academic. I like a man, or a woman for that matter, to know something about how the world actually works.”
Scarne started looking around.
“What are you doing?”
“There must be a hidden camera.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Regina, that’s the most intelligent thing I’ve ever heard a college professor say to me.”
They were still laughing when the waiter asked them if they wanted pastries and after-dinner drinks. They declined.
“Why don’t we walk off some of this dinner?” Regina suggested.
“Where to,” Scarne said, “Toronto?”
They settled first on strolling to the East River, and then, because it was one of those perfect Manhattan evenings for it, meandered aimlessly through Kips Bay and parts of Gramercy Park before heading back in the general direction of Russell’s apartment. They talked and laughed. When Scarne admitted to liking opera, Regina said that was because of his Italian blood.
“I guess the Cheyenne blood explains why I occasionally do a rain dance,” he said.
Regina admitted she loved the Mets.
“You must be a hemophiliac.”
By the time they got to Second Avenue and passed McSwiggan's, a no-frills Irish pub offering billiards, darts and entertainment, Scarne and Regina were arm-in-arm.
“We’d be fools not to,” Scarne said, opening the door to the pub. “I just hope they don’t remember me.”
“Why?”
“Went to a bachelor party that ended up here once,” he said. “Groom-to-be got into his cups and started throwing darts at the waiters because the drinks weren’t coming fast enough.”
“My God, what happened?”
“Well, let’s just say that it was fortunate that Bellevue Hospital's emergency room was so convenient. Luckily, no one was too damaged. On either side. Wedding went off without a hitch.”
“The damn fool.”
“You shouldn’t talk about the city’s Chief of Detectives that way.”
“You’re joking!”
“Well, he doesn’t play darts anymore. Come on, let’s see if we can get a game. What would you like to drink?”
“When in Rome. I’ll have a beer.”
She beat him two out of three games.
***
It was a short walk from the pub to Regina Russell’s apartment building on East 28th Street. She said little on the way. When they reached the 12-story postwar building, she turned to Scarne.
“This is awkward,” she said, nervously.
Scarne prepared himself for the “I’d like to invite you up, but …” speech. He was vaguely disappointed, but after all, it was a first date.
“My next few days are crazy,” she continued. “Exams, preparing for graduation, school stuff. Then, I’m heading home to see my folks in Ohio. After that, I’m taking two weeks to travel. Europe.”
“Sounds wonderful.”
She seemed flustered and her cheeks were red.
“My point is, if we planned to see each other again, it might be a while. I haven’t been with a man in a long time. I want to have sex, but you might get hit by a bus, or shot by a miscreant on the job before I see you again. I don’t want to wait. Will you come up?”
Scarne was so startled by the speech he laughed. Her cheeks got redder.
“I’m sorry, Regina. Of course, I’ll come up. Who wouldn’t want to make love to you?”
The doorman said, “Good evening, Dr. Russell,” as they entered the spacious lobby. The greeting was repeated by a concierge behind a desk off to the side. She acknowledged both men by their first names.
In the elevator, Scarne took her hand.
“I must be old-fashioned,” Russell said, pushing the button for the fourth floor, “but I wonder what they think? I’m new to the building. I’ve never brought a man here.”
“I could shoot them when I leave,” Scarne offered. “No witnesses.”
“I’m not sure the same two will be on duty tomorrow morning.”
That’s promising, Scarne thought. She realized her faux pas and colored again, slightly.
“The offer still stands, Regina. You are certainly worth a massacre.”
“That damn second bottle of wine,” she said. “And those beers.”
He squeezed her hand.
“Miscreant. I love that. Only someone from an Ivy League school would use that word.”
“The Seven Sisters,” she corrected, squeezing his hand back.
***
She rolled on her side and looked at him.
“Would you like something to eat?”
“My God, woman, you are insatiable.”
She punched him on the arm.
“I meant for breakfast, you idiot.”
“I know what you meant. And, yes, I’m famished.”
She got up and padded naked over to a small bureau. Her buttocks were small and firm and Scarne smiled at a memory from a few hours earlier. She opened a drawer and threw on shorts and a t-shirt and headed to the kitchen. She stopped at the chair by a small writing desk where Scarne had draped his shoulder holster and gun. The remainder of his clothes, and hers, were spread on the floor in roughly a straight line that led to the bed. She didn’t bother to pick anything up and fingered the worn chamois holster. She turned back to Scarne.
“You know, I’ve never slept with a man who carried a gun.”
He sat up and put his arms behind his head.
“It did not seem to bother you.”
“No. I actually was turned on when you took it off. I found it highly erotic.”
“Good Lord. Based on your response last night, I better leave my bazooka at home.”
“I thought I saw your bazooka.”
Scarne laughed.
“I take that as a compliment.”
“That’s how it was meant. Now, how do you want your eggs?”
“Any way outside the shells is fine with me.”
She walked out of the room and Scarne went to take a quick shower. As he washed himself, he winced slightly as the hot water hit some of the places Regina’s teeth and nails had scratched, and he could not help but reflect on the night he’d just spent. Their coupling had been awkward at first, as it often is for the first time. Sex is a natural function, and hard to do badly when both partners are eager, but there are new angles to learn and first-time lovers are rarely in synch, response-wise. But it had gone well, and by the second time around Regina had lost any maidenly inhibitions she may have harbored as an allegedly proper college professor, albeit one who had already been married. She had no compunction about asking Scarne to try a position she found more stimulating. Which from her wanton cries, she did.