Richard Aleas - Little Girl Lost

“I’m letting them, I’m just pointing a few things out.”

“If there’s something to find, we’ll find it,” Lyons said.

The plainclothes cop came forward. “I’ll watch him, Lyons. You can go check out the body.”

Lyons looked like he wasn’t sure he wanted to let go of me, but the tone in the plainclothes man’s voice suggested he wasn’t just making an offer. Lyons released my arm and went to join his partner in the bedroom.

“Blake, you’re in deep shit. Leo filled me in.”

His voice had sounded familiar, and now I placed it. “Kirsch?”

He nodded. “I don’t have jurisdiction here, but if I can tie this in with Sugarman, maybe they’ll let us take it over.”

“Oh, you can tie it in with Sugarman all right. That I promise you.”

Leo had followed Lyons to the bedroom and now he came back. “What a mess.” I couldn’t tell whether he was talking about the scene in the bedroom or the situation as a whole. Both, probably. “Kirby, what are the odds they’ll let you book him in Manhattan?”

“Zero to none,” Kirsch said. “Best we can hope for is Monday morning they’ll let us move him.”

“Monday morning?” I said.

“Look at it this way,” Kirsch said. “You’re going to spend a weekend in jail, would you rather do it in Flushing or at Midtown South?”

“I’d rather spend it in my own apartment,” I said, “or better yet, working on this case, which I can’t do if I’m in jail. Look at this. Look.” I bent my head forward. “How could I do that to myself?” I pulled him toward the bedroom. “Look at the rug. Someone pulled a trunk through here. If I did it, where’s the trunk?”

Lyons’ partner was talking into a walkie-talkie the size of a hero roll. Lyons looked up from Lenz’s body. “Sir, please calm down.”

“I’m calm. I’m just telling you you’re arresting me for something I didn’t do.”

“If you didn’t do it, that will come out and you’ll be released. In the meantime, we’ve got you at the scene of a murder with a gun you say is the murder weapon and you’re telling us we’re going to find your prints on it. Ask the lieutenant there what would happen to us if we didn’t book you.”

I looked to Kirsch for support and then to Leo, but both knew Lyons was right, and I knew it, too.

“Look, Blake,” Kirsch said. “If your story checks out, maybe Monday we can get you cleared.”

“That’s great, but in the meantime whoever did this has a chance to get away.”

Lyons got up and took hold of my arm again. “Let us worry about that, Mr. Blake.” He steered me toward the front door.

“Do we have to wait till Monday?” I said. “Doesn’t anyone work Saturdays?”

“A Queens judge? On a Saturday?” Kirsch said. “That would take more pull than we’ve got.”

Booking me took the better part of an hour, and then they took me to an infirmary where a police surgeon washed the back of my head, smeared on some antibiotic ointment, and told me I didn’t need stitches. I didn’t argue. I had bigger things to worry about than a scar on the back of my head.

They put me in a holding cell with stacked bunks along two walls. One of the bunks was occupied by a man who was shivering. It wasn’t cold. The others were empty and I sat on the nearest one.

I wasn’t dazed anymore, but I still felt the soreness. It was worse when I lay down, but then I couldn’t have slept anyway, not with so much to sort out.

I’d been assuming that Lenz and Miranda had worked alone – or more precisely that they had worked with no one else other than the two burglars Miranda had recruited at the Wildman. But someone had been in Lenz’s apartment, had hidden in the bedroom when I’d knocked, and had come out swinging when I’d started pressing Lenz for answers. In principle it didn’t have to be someone who’d been in on the robbery – it could just have been a friend who’d jumped to Lenz’s defense when it looked like I might shoot him. Except that jumping to someone’s defense generally doesn’t involve leaving him dead on the floor and walking out with his stash of stolen money.

And the timing was suspicious, too: I didn’t get attacked right away, only after Lenz had offered to split the money with me. He hadn’t been serious, just desperate – but the friend in the bedroom might have thought Lenz was serious, might at least have thought he was going to talk. This certainly suggested someone with something to hide, someone whose face had gone as pale when I’d threatened to go to Murco as Lenz’s had.

Obviously, it had to be someone who knew about the money. Someone Lenz trusted, though he shouldn’t have. I thought immediately of Roy – Lenz had presumably been behind it each of the three times Roy came after me, and if Roy was willing to break into a man’s apartment on Lenz’s say-so, there was obviously more going on there than a simple manager/bouncer relationship. And God knows Roy would be capable of murder. But Roy wouldn’t have needed to smash me in the head with a piece of sculpture – a fist would have done fine. And Roy wouldn’t have left me alone once I was unconscious. Even if he needed me alive to take the fall for Lenz’s murder, he would have gotten in a kick or two.

So who? If I weren’t stuck in this cell, I might be able to find out.

“Coffee?”

A cop stood at the bars holding a cardboard deli tray in one hand. I reached through the bars and took one of the cups.

“Think he wants one?” The cop nodded toward my cellmate, who was still twitching in his sleep.

“Not unless you’ve spiked it with bourbon.”

I took the cup back to my bunk. It was barely warm. Hell, it was barely coffee. I couldn’t help comparing how the day had started and how it was ending. The smell of fresh-brewed coffee, the feel of Susan’s arms around me, her head on my chest – how had I gone from that to this cell stinking of Lysol and sweat? I had a murder charge hanging over my head, a killer slipping further away by the minute, and this cup of brown water that tasted like nothing but would probably keep me up all night if my aching head didn’t.

I poured the coffee down the cell’s sink, left the cup on the rim, and sat down again. I’d get out. Somehow. But by the time I did, would it be too late? Would Lenz’s killer have vanished? Probably. Would I ever find out what had really happened on that rooftop on New Year’s Eve? The odds were dropping by the minute.

Come on, Leo, I thought. You can get me out of here.

“You’ve got a visitor.”

It was the same cop who’d brought me the coffee the previous night, looking bleary and eager to get to the end of his shift. But he kept a firm grip on my arm as he led me out of the cell and down the long corridor to one of the station’s interview rooms.

I figured it would be Leo, or possibly Susan, or maybe a lawyer Leo had managed to get to come in on a Saturday morning. Or maybe my mother, carrying a cake with a file baked into it. It wasn’t.

“Good morning, Mr. Blake,” Murco said.

He was by himself, though I imagined the son was probably not far away, maybe waiting in the car outside. He’d dressed for the occasion in a double-breasted suit with a narrow chalk stripe, a shirt with French cuffs, even a handkerchief in the pocket. Classic overcompensation, I thought. The man’s trying very hard to show he doesn’t belong in here.

His voice didn’t suggest any discomfort, though. He spoke quietly and calmly in his hoarse whisper, periodically glancing up over my shoulder through the chicken wire-laced glass at the cop waiting on the other side of the door. “You made the morning news shows,” he said. “The papers haven’t got it yet, but by tonight they will.”