Stuart Kaminsky - Dead of Winter

"It's going to be a busy day," said Danny. "What about Laudano, the Jockey?"

"Flack is on it," she said.

"He should be in bed," said Danny.

"He should be in the hospital," said Stella, "but he's not. He's on the street. Let's go."

"Since we're on the subject of hospitals," he said. "You're not looking any better."

"I'm fine."

"Your face is red," he said. "You have a fever."

She ignored his comment and put the computer in sleep mode, dropped a small stack of reports in a file folder, and stood up.

"The Jockey," Danny said almost to himself. "Who would have thought? It makes no sense."

"Why not?" asked Stella, leading the way out of the lab.

"A crooked union boss with mob connections hires a circus act to murder a witness? A strong man and a…" Don asked.

"Little person," Stella completed.

"Why?" asked Danny. "They were sure to be noticed."

Stella picked up her kit in one hand and her file folder in the other. Danny took her place at the computer.

"Maybe we're supposed to think it's a circus act," she said.

"Red herring?" asked Danny.

"It smells fishy," she said with a smile.

Danny groaned.

Stella left the lab, went to the elevator, and pushed the button for the lobby. Stella coughed, a raspy cough.

"Why?" said Louisa Cormier's agent, Michelle King, a twitchy woman in her late forties. Like Louisa she was well groomed, thin, and dressed for business in a black suit and white blouse. She did not have her client's good looks, but she made up for it with a handsome, confident severity. The room smelled of cigarettes and a flowered spray scent.

Aiden sat in one chair of King's office on Madison Avenue. King played with a pencil, tapping it impatiently against the top of her mahogany desk.

"Why?" Michelle King asked again.

Mac looked at her for ten seconds and said, "We can go to our offices and discuss this. I don't think you'd like it there. Dead bodies and evidence from things people don't like to touch or even see."

"I did advise Louisa to get a gun and keep it loaded in her apartment," Michelle King said, reaching for a cigarette in a packet in one of her desk drawers.

"You mind?" she asked, unsteadily holding up the cigarette.

"We won't arrest you for it, if that's what you're asking," Mac said. Smoking was illegal in New York City buildings. "Besides, many of the people we have to deal with smoke," Mac said. "We accept it. One of the hazards of the job."

"Second-hand smoke?" Michelle King asked lighting up with a silver-plated lighter. "It's a myth created by anti-smoking fanatics who have nothing better to do."

"And first-hand murder," said Mac. "Is that a myth?"

The agent looked at Aiden, who said nothing, which seemed to unnerve King more than Mac's questions.

"All right," King said. "I advised her to get a gun, even suggested the kind she might get, one just like mine."

"Can we look at yours?" asked Mac.

"You think I shot that man?" she asked, blowing out a plume of smoke and pausing in her pencil tapping.

"We know he's dead," said Mac.

"Why on earth would Louisa or I want to kill this man, whoever he was?"

"His name was Charles Lutnikov," said Aiden. "He was a writer."

"Never heard of him," King said, putting out her cigarette.

"Your name and phone number were in his address book," said Mac.

"My-?" King said.

"He called your office three times last week," said Aiden. "It's in his phone records."

"I never spoke to him," King insisted.

"Your secretary?" asked Mac.

"Wait, the name does ring a bell," said King. "I think that may have been the name of the person who kept leaving his number. The message from Amy, my assistant, was that he said he had something important to tell me."

"But you didn't call him back?"

She shrugged.

"Amy said he sounded nervous, was very insistent and… well, I'm an agent. I've got lots of oddballs wanting to talk to me about their ideas for books. One of Amy's jobs is to keep them away from me."

"But this oddball lived in the same apartment building as one of your biggest clients," said Aiden.

"My biggest client," King corrected. "I was unaware of that."

She reached into her desk drawer suddenly and came up with a small gun which she pointed at Aiden. Neither detective flinched.

"My gun," King said, handing it across her desk.

Mac took it and handed it to Aiden who examined it and said, "Never been fired."

"Not even loaded," said King. "It's like a chenille blanket I had when I was a little girl. I keep it around for comfort and a sense of security, which I delude myself is real."

"What happens to the manuscripts of Louisa Cormier's books after she gives them to you?" Mac asked.

"She doesn't give me manuscripts," said King. "She E-mails me her manuscripts as attachments. I read them and send them on to her editor. Louisa's work requires very little editing by me or the publisher."

King picked up the pencil again, considered tapping it, changed her mind, and put it down.

"What about the first three books," said Mac.

King looked at him warily.

"The first three books were… a little rough," King said. "They needed work. How did you know?"

"I read them last night, as well as the fourth and fifth," said Mac. "Something changed."

"With experience and confidence, Louisa's work, I'm pleased to say, has steadily improved," said King.

"Do you keep her books on your hard drive?" asked Mac.

"I have hard copies made in addition to disk copies of all Louisa's books," King said.

"We'd like to borrow the disks," Mac said.

"I'll have Amy make copies for you," she said, "but why would you- "

"We won't take any more of your time right now," said Mac, rising.

Aiden got up too.

King remained seated.

"We'll be in touch," said Mac, going to the door.

"I sincerely hope not," said King, reaching for her cigarettes.

When they got past the reception area and into the hall, Aiden said, "She's lying."

"About?"

"Those first books," said Aiden.

Mac nodded.

"You noticed," she said.

"She's protecting her golden calf," said Mac.

"So?" asked Aiden.

"Let's go see Louisa Cormier."

Stella saw the red, amoeba-shaped splotch of blood on a low snowbank on the sidewalk next to a black plastic garbage bag.

The driver, a Nigerian named George Apappa, had taken her to the spot where he had dropped the man who had bled on his backseat. George had noticed the blood as soon as he got to his home in Jackson Heights. He couldn't miss the blood. The man had left a small puddle on the floor and a dark, still-moist streak on the seat.

It had taken George almost an hour to clean the bloodstains. He got into bed with his wife at two in the morning and the phone rang at six- his dispatcher, telling him to get into the garage immediately. He told Stella all this with the sound of a man who had planned to sleep until noon, but instead had dragged himself out of bed, half expecting to be told he was fired when he got to the garage. Stella had a feeling the twenty she slipped him would help him get over his lack of sleep.

Stella could feel him watching her from the car as she wiped her nose and took a picture of the mound of snow, then scooped up some of the snow with a shovel and dropped it in a plastic bag.

She started to move slowly along the sidewalk, pausing every few steps to take another photograph. The trail of blood was reasonably easy to follow, frozen in place. Few pedestrians had yet trampled the icy sidewalk.

Stella put the back of her left hand against her forehead and felt both moisture and fever. She had a thermometer in her kit, but it was reserved for the dead. She had taken three aspirin back at the lab along with a glass of orange juice. She had no hope for this remedy.