Nice Place for a Murder (20 page)

“What are you telling me, Dr. Waldrup? Are you going to help Dr. Giannone?”

“You have to understand that I have certain constraints,” he said. “Not exactly sure what the hospital’s exposure might be here, but we’re inclined to be kinda conservative in these matters. Besides, Jim’s been on the move. I doubt he’s still at the address we have for him.” Now the climate started to thaw again. “I do want to help him, of course. I think we owe the boy that. Tell you what. He has a sister, you know.”

“Didn’t know that,” I said. Waldrup was going to give me something.

“If Jim’s sister knows where he is, she may choose to tell you. That would be her decision, of course. We have a New York address and phone number for her. It’s three years old, but she may still be there. I’ll try to call her and see if she wants to talk to you, and call you back after I reach her. I’ll do that much for you, Mr. Seidenberg. ”

Her name was Jane O’Connell, and she lived in Queens in one of those beehive apartment buildings lined up, mile after mile, along Roosevelt Boulevard. The place was clean and presentable, but everything looked old and worn and in need of replacement. The elevator was scratched and dented everywhere, and the hallway that led to her apartment on the sixteenth floor had a badly tattered carpet, and smelled like Chinese take-out.

Jane O’Connell was forty or so, a timid, soft-spoken woman who sat absolutely still with her hands folded in her lap. I had no way of knowing what she was thinking, but her eyes told me she was one of those innocents who trust people, probably not always wisely. I told her what I knew — the call I got from her brother, the unsettling meeting in the train station, the phone conversation with Waldrup. My point to her was that if her brother had information damaging to Julian Communications, and tried to approach them directly, he’d be putting himself at risk. Especially because he seemed to be — I put it as delicately as I knew how — unsteady.  “I can insulate him from any action they might take,” I told her. “I’ll protect him.”

“I still don’t understand. Why would anyone want to harm Jimmy?” She was confused and fearful. Her brow wrinkled as she peered at me.

“I’m not altogether sure,” I said. “All I know is that something big is being played out. There’s a great deal of money at stake, and two people have already been killed because of it. One of them was a friend of mine, a man I liked a great deal. If your brother jumps into this, he’ll be complicating a situation that’s already dangerous. Somebody’s going to want him out of the way. I have to find out what Jim knows and what he wants, and I’ll keep him them away from him.”

“What about you? If you get involved, won’t they try to, well, to get you out of the way, too?”

“I’m involved already. I don’t want to be, but I am,” I said. “Anyhow, I’m not an easy person to get out of the way.” I settled back in my chair. “Tell me about your brother, Miss O’Connell. Or is it Mrs.?” I could never bring myself to say miz. Miz is not a word.

“It’s Mrs. I’m a widow. My husband Al was a fireman. He was killed when a roof collapsed. A fire in a supermarket. In the Bronx.”

“When?” I asked.

“Thirteen years ago. Fourteen, in February. Valentines Day, it was.”

“I’m sorry,” I told her.

“They said it was arson, but they never found out who did it. Al and I, we’d only been married five weeks. Still had a little of our tans left from our honeymoon in Jamaica.” There was a faraway look about her now. She was playing it all in her head, thirteen years after the fact. “Jimmy, he helped me through it. Little brother always there for me. He’s a sweet boy, really. Impulsive, reckless sometimes. But decent, you know.”

“What happened to him in Utica? Why did he leave the hospital?”

“They took away his residency,” she said. “They said he’d stolen drugs from the hospital pharmacy. They said he was an addict, that he was high when an old woman under his care died. He should have been able to save her, they said, but he didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Was it true?”

“The old woman dying because of him? I don’t know. She was well into her eighties, and terribly sick. The family couldn’t prove it, and they didn’t take it to court. But the drugs thing, the addiction, those he couldn’t deny. The pressure, the long hours, they got to him. He was always the nervous type, on edge. I guess he looked for an escape, turned to drugs.” She sat there rubbing her hands together, slowly, for no reason I could see.

“Where did he go when he left Utica? Another hospital?”

“No. Couldn’t,” she said. “The hospital in Utica reported Jimmy to the state medical people, and they told him he can’t be a doctor anymore. Can you imagine? After college, medical school, internship and a year of residency. He was lost, desperate. Finally he got a job at a medical lab in Chicago, but it didn’t last, because he couldn’t give up the drugs. He had nowhere to go, so he came to me. Slept on the sofa. He had no money, and —“ Her soft voice began to crack. “ — and he was having periods when he talked to people who weren’t there, saw things that weren’t there. Animals.”

“Ferrets?”

“I think so,” she said. “Sometimes he was all right. Just sometimes. He stayed here in the apartment, mostly. Only went out to buy drugs. I don’t know how he found them around here, but he did. Out on the streets somewhere.”

“You said he had no money.”

“He’d take my money.”

“Steal from you, you mean?”

“Yes, steal.” She said it with a flicker of guilt, as though she had done it, not her brother. “There was some cash I kept in my bedroom, you know, for emergencies. A few hundred dollars. He found it when I was out at work. When that was gone, he’d take what I had in my purse when I was asleep. Once he got hold of my checkbook, forged some checks and cashed them. We had a bitter fight about it. I don’t have that kind of money. Just Al’s pension from the city, and what I make running the office for an orthodontist in Manhattan. It’s not that much, even together. It didn’t take long before I was in debt. Wasn’t sure I could keep paying the rent.

“One day I came home from work and Jimmy was gone. He left a note. Said he couldn’t go on letting himself ruin my life. Said he’d have to make his way on his own. Oh God, I was so worried. Where would he live? Who would take care of him? I was sure something terrible would happen to him. But what could I do? I had no idea where he went.

“Weeks went by, and no word from him. Then one night he called. He was at a church shelter in Manhattan, he said. He was trying to straighten himself out. He sounded better. Almost — “ She stopped to search for a word.

“Lucid?” I volunteered.

“Yes, lucid,” she said. “I told him I’d come in and see him, but he said no, he wasn’t staying there. He had a job, sort of. A warehouse in a building near the old docks, you know, on the West Side. He said they gave him a space there, a room to live, in exchange for watching the place at night. And a little money, too, off the books. So that’s where he is.”

“Have you been there?” I asked.

“No. Every time I say I’ll come see him, he tells me no, he wants to be straightened out first. He won’t let me come. But I don’t think he’s getting better. Because he isn’t so — lucid — any more. I know he’s spending the money they give him on drugs. He calls sometimes, but he says strange things. I cry when he hangs up. It’s so awfully sad.”

“Mrs. O’Connell, let me see if I can help. Tell me where he is. I’ll get to him and do my best to keep him safe.” I leaned forward and took her hand. “I promise you.”

Jane O’Connell looked at me for a long moment. Then she wrote down an address on a small pad, tore off the page and handed it to me.

CHAPTER XXII

The building looked out over the West Side Highway and across the Hudson River, for an unobstructed view of the least attractive waterfront features of Weehawken, New Jersey. And that only if you could find a clean window to look through. At ground level, fronting the street, was a murky and sinister hamburger joint, a tiny shoe repair shop and a no-name store that apparently sold used office furniture. Upstairs were full-story loft spaces, accessible by riding an open elevator that trembled its way up at a pace so slow it made me begin to wish I’d brought a bite to eat.

The slip of paper Giannone’s sister had given me said I could find him at Lucky Imports, Ltd., which turned out to be a distributor of made-in-Asia novelties, on the sixth floor. It was a vast space almost entirely filled with boxes stacked on wooden pallets, and so dimly lit that the far end seemed to bleed off into blackness. Maybe it would appear less forbidding, I dared to hope, when my eyes got used to the gloom.

Two men were moving pallets here and there, while a third, who seemed to be in charge, was keeping score with a pencil, pad and clipboard. None of them appeared Asian, even vaguely.

“I’m looking for Jim Giannone.” I said it to the clipboard guy. I believe in going right to the top.

“Why?” he asked me, without looking up.

“His sister told me to stop by,” I told him. “Jim will want to see me.”

Clipboard guy shrugged. “He’s sleeping, probably. Down at the end, the brown door.”

I made my way through a long aisle between walls of stacked boxes. The brown door was open an inch or two. I knocked, but there was no answer.

I pushed the door open slowly, and saw that clipboard guy was wrong. Giannone wasn’t sleeping at all. He was in his briefs and a tee shirt, sitting on a cot, his back against the brick wall. Even in the dim light, I could see there was sweat streaming out of him. His breathing was shallow and labored, and he swayed from side to side. The room smelled of sickness and despair. It was clear that James Giannone was suffering, the result, I felt certain, of his need for drugs. He stared at me.

“Remember me?” I said.

“You’re — Seidenberg.” His voice was a whisper. “You — you’re —you’re the one who knows Ingo Julian.”

“Yes, I know him. You asked me to meet you in Ronkonkoma, at the railroad station. Do you remember that?”

He wiped his face first on one arm, then the other. “Not much,” he said. “I went there. But then I came back. I was crazy that day. When was it — yesterday? Day before?”

“Are you crazy now?”

“Sick.”

“Do you see any ferrets?”

Giannone didn’t answer. His shoulders began to jerk forward as though he had a tic, slowly and then faster. He winced with the effort as he pulled himself off the cot and made his way into a tiny bathroom in the corner of the room. He got down on his knees in front of the toilet, with his feet sticking out the door. His dry heaves at the bowl were so excruciating, and went on for so long, I could feel the poor bastard’s pain in my own gut. Finally the heaving stopped, and he stayed there motionless for several minutes, with his head hanging in the bowl, before he could pull himself to his feet and lurch back to the cot.

“You all right?”

“Better now. I’ll get by.”

“Cold turkey?” I said

“Trying.” His voice was so faint, I could barely hear him. This wasn’t the wild-eyed maniac who gave me the slip in Ronkonkoma. Today he was a pathetic addict, sick and defeated, going through withdrawal, trying to save his own life. But reasonably rational.

“This has to be the hard way, don’t you think?” I said. “Why don’t you get some help, get into a program?”

“Did that  — three, four times. Not for me. Never stayed. I’m just — just too righteous to get down and — and grovel with those pathetic losers.”

“Because you’re better than they are?”

“Yes, I am,” he said. “I can only do this myself. Nobody watching me. I got in. I’ll get out. Or die, maybe. Either way, this will be over. But I — but I need — uh —“

“What?”

“Money. I don’t have any. Nothing. How can I get back on my feet if I can’t even afford a haircut?”

“And you want money from Julian Communications.”

“Yes.”

“Because you know something.”

“Yes. You tell them about — about the secret I know.”

“So what do you know that’s worth — how much do you want?”

“I don’t know. Let’s say — let’s say twenty-five thousand dollars. Then I could get a place, some decent clothes. And I owe money to my sister. I stole from her. Jesus, I put her money in my arm.”

“I know. That’s how I found you. Through your sister.””

He rubbed his eyes with his fists. “Twenty-five thousand, then. All right?”

“Whatever you say. What’s the big secret you know?”

Giannone forced himself to his feet, took a pair of trousers hanging over a chair, and hopping on one foot, pulled them on. “The owner comes in around this time. He thinks I’m crazy, but he knows I’ll be here. He just wants a — a warm body here at night, because people have broken into this building. I don’t let him see me when — when the ferrets — when they —. He doesn’t know about — about my problem. He’s so — incredibly dumb.” He put on a shirt and stepped into a battered pair of loafers. “Just in case he looks in, you understand.”

“I’m waiting for you to tell me what you know.”