Alex Archer - The Pretender's Gambit

Bart shook his head in ill-concealed disgust. “The man is dead. He put a roof over your heads and kept the two of you in enough cash to mostly keep you out of trouble. Have some respect.” He headed for the door and Annja fell in behind him.

“Not all the weed we could smoke, bro,” Demyan said softly. “We coulda smoked a lot more weed.”

Annja put a hand on Bart’s shoulder and kept him moving.

Outside in the hall, Bart walked over to Officer Falcone, a young brunette with dark hair and eyes.

“Something I can do for you, Detective?”

“I can do something for you, Officer Falcone.” Bart hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “There are warrants out on those idiots in that apartment.”

“I didn’t know that. We didn’t background them. I was just told they were the dead man’s nephews and we were supposed to hold them for you.”

“Well, I’m telling you now they’ve got warrants out for them. Grab your partner and take those two imbeciles downtown. There’s an FTA on the little one and traffic holds on the big one. That’ll give you guys a couple small collars and a reason to get in out of the cold tonight.”

Falcone smiled. “Thank you, Detective.”

Bart waved the thanks away. “Don’t mention it. Take your time booking those two clowns. I want to be able to find them if I need to for the next forty-eight hours.”

* * *

CALAPEZ SPOONED THE last of the Greek yogurt from the plastic container while Pousao watched the building on the other side of the street. Finished with his meal, he glanced at his watch and discovered it was 4:14 a.m. They had been in the dead man’s apartment for over four hours. The morning coming, they would have to move soon. He could already hear neighbors moving around in the other apartments. Early morning activity, footsteps and snatches of hurried conversation, sounded out in the hallway.

Pousao stood and shifted slightly, then pushed his chin toward the window. “Hey. That woman, Annja Creed, she’s leaving the building with one of the cops.”

Calapez crossed the room and gestured for the binoculars the younger man held. When Calapez had them, he trained his view on to the street, picking up the archaeologist instantly. She stood out in the crowd. She and the detective pushed through the reporters outside the perimeter set up by the police officers.

“Do they have the elephant?” Pousao asked.

“I don’t know.” Feeling more tense now because he knew Sequeira would not accept losing the object, Calapez watched as Annja Creed and the detective entered a small diner.

“They are not going far.” Pousao rotated his head on his shoulders and the effort produced cracks. “What do we do?”

“What we’re doing now. We wait. We watch. Going back to Sequeira without the elephant would not be good business.” Calapez handed the binoculars over to his young associate, then went back to raid the dead man’s refrigerator again. He opened the door and peered inside. Nothing looked good. The deceased obviously didn’t dine in much. Frustrated, he closed the door again. “I will go over to the diner and bring us back something to eat. Maybe I will find out what they are talking about, or where the elephant is. While I am there, you keep watch.”

Pousao nodded and returned to his vigil.

Calapez waited at the door till he heard silence, then let himself out. If the police did not have the elephant, he had to figure out where it had gone—soon.

Chapter 5

Hours later, Annja stifled a yawn and looked through bleary vision at the list of storage units and buyers she had compiled. The sorting program on the software made building that list easier, but there were still a lot of names. Benyovszky had been in business for himself for eleven years.

The diner was low-key and welcoming, worn and lived-in, filled with lots of younger regulars who worked on tablets or talked on the phone while they ate their breakfast. They wore business attire and were the smallest group in the diner. Most of the clientele was older and spoke in Russian or heavily accented English. They gathered as couples or small groups. All of them looked pensive and distracted, and Annja wouldn’t need a second guess to know what the topic of conversation was.

“Can I get you a refill?”

Annja looked up at the young waitress and nodded. Annja slid over her nearly empty coffee cup, did the same with Bart’s, and told the young woman thanks after she’d poured the fresh-brewed coffee. Annja added cream and sugar to both coffees, turning the hot liquid the color of caramel.

Bart was talking on the phone, listening mostly, and the one-sided conversation didn’t give Annja much to work with. Curiosity grew in her as she waited. Finally, Bart put the phone away and returned his attention to her.

“That was Broadhurst. He says the ME released a prelim based on the scene.”

Through the large plate-glass window behind Bart, Annja could see the reflection of the apartment building across the street. The ME’s long black vehicle had eased into the collection of police cars and crime-scene vans. Morning light filtered through the dregs of the night, bringing a sense of the new day. Traffic had increased, both vehicular and pedestrian. Passersby stopped only briefly to find out what was going on, then they got back to their day. Murder was nothing new in the metro area.

Even though she had seen such casual acceptance of murder and death before, in New York as well as countries around the globe, Annja still refused to think people could just keep moving without being touched by the tragedy.

She put those thoughts away and concentrated on Bart. “What does the ME say?”

“The victim had no defensive wounds. Looks like whoever killed Benyovszky hit him from behind with a hammer, or a similar weapon. The ME won’t commit as to what the weapon was, but she thinks death was instantaneous. At least the old guy didn’t suffer.” Bart picked up his coffee, blew on it and took a sip.

“If the first blow killed Benyovszky, why keep hitting him?”

Bart shook his head. “Anger? Frustration? Maybe fear, if the murderer was afraid Benyovszky would get back up. Don’t know. But whoever did it was thorough.”

“You said there were no defensive wounds?”

“Yeah.” Bart sipped his coffee. “Could mean that Benyovszky knew his murderer. Let the person into the apartment.”

“Then why was the lock shattered?”

Bart frowned. “I don’t have an answer for that one yet. You’re right. If Benyovszky let his killer into the apartment, that person didn’t need to break in.”

“And if the killer had broken in, Benyovszky would have had defensive wounds because he wouldn’t have trusted whoever came through that door.”

“Yeah. That line of thinking leaves us two options.” Bart counted them off on his fingers. “One, whoever killed Benyovszky panicked and left something behind, then had to break back in to get it. Or two, someone else broke into the apartment after Benyovszky was dead.”

“How much time passed between the murder and the discovery of the body?”

“ME says maybe an hour. It’s a tight window, but it’s there.”

Annja considered that, not enjoying the fact that she didn’t have answers, or at least a better idea of what had gone on in that apartment. Including where the elephant statue was and what it meant.

Lying on the table, Bart’s phone began to ring. He picked it up and glanced at the screen. “There’s only one person I almost know in Idaho.” He clicked the phone on. “This is Detective Bart McGilley of the New York City Police Department.” He turned the phone outward and leaned toward Annja.

Annja leaned forward, too.

“This is Charles Prosch. You left a message on my machine, Detective McGilley. Asking me to call you?” The speaker’s voice was old and hoarse, but held a quiet strength in the Western twang. “I don’t usually get phone calls from New York police detectives, and I haven’t been there or the East Coast in years, so you can understand how I’m curious.”