Scorpio Rising

  He shook his head. “I got it out of my system years ago.”

  “You mean, at the family reunion when you told me – in front of everyone – that I was Walt’s intellectual inferior, and the only thing I had to offer was a piece of well-worn pussy?”

  “I don’t remember quite those words.”

  “You remember my recommending a good surgeon to remove the stick from your ass?”

  “I do remember that.”

  “At least now I won’t have to attend any more Cassidy family functions.”

  “You never fit in anyway.”

  “I just had too much personality for you guys.”

  “You’re pushy, that’s your problem.”

  “If it weren’t for me, Walt would still be an associate professor of computer science at the same no-name university you work for, where the highlight of your year is the annual budget review.”

  “At least he’d still be alive.”

  Carrie dropped her cigarillo and ground it under her heel. William looked at a couple of women who’d entered the courtyard. Carrie opened her purse, took out a Beretta with a silencer and aimed it from under the table. She pulled the trigger and the gun coughed. William dropped his Coke and clutched his gut as blood gushed between his fingers. He looked at her in astonishment. She put the gun in her purse and stood.

  “Are you coming back?” He held out his empty can. “Can you get me another Coke?”

  That was the problem with being a writer. Reality was never as sweet as fiction. She walked away without a backward look. She preferred to remember him the way she’d imagined.

  Chapter 48

  New York

  Axel Crowe hailed a taxi. Promising to keep her name out of the police investigation if possible, he dropped Katrina off at her Riverside condo and continued to the Midtown North precinct. In the Homicide squad room he found Levinson hunched at his desk, marking documents with a highlighter. A nearby fax machine cranked out incoming transmissions. At the adjacent desk, Rossimoff had a phone in one hand and a souvlaki in the other as he issued directives with his mouth full.

  “That’s right, your guest registry for the last forty-eight hours, preferably a spreadsheet. I need it ASAP, so here’s my email…”

  Levinson looked up and beckoned Crowe to take a seat. He took another fistful of paper from the busy fax machine.

  “Making any progress?” Crowe said.

  “We concentrated our search around Sixth and 58th.” Levinson indicated the wall map on which Mid-Town North was outlined. Roughly two dozen yellow stickpins were scattered between Central Park and 51st Street. “These hotels have responded thus far. To date, we’ve got over six hundred guests originating from the Southwest, meaning California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. Almost fifty women registered solo.”

  “How many checked out yesterday?”

  “About a dozen.”

  Rossimoff put his phone down. “What if this broad was with her husband and they registered under his name?”

  “Let’s continue to assume she was on her own,” Crowe said. “At least it helps narrow your focus. If it doesn’t pan out, you can always expand your search to couples.”

  Rossimoff’s expression reflected his skepticism. “How are we supposed to know which of these women were intellectuals?”

  “Check their hotel phone records. You must have access to a reverse directory. Look for calls to literary and theatrical agents, book and magazine publishers, production companies and TV studios. Even speaker’s bureaus and universities.”

  “We can do that,” Levinson said.

  “I’d also suggest taking prints from every hotel room whose guest fits the profile.”

  “Are you nuts?” Rossimoff said. “Dust dozens of rooms on speculation? Maid service would’ve wiped up most prints by now anyway.”

  “Except for bathrooms, housekeeping isn’t that meticulous,” Crowe said. “There’re a lot of places – like the desk, bedside tables and dresser – where so long as it isn’t visibly dirty, the chambermaid may not even pass a rag over it. It’s a long shot but it’s only twenty-four hours since yesterday’s checkout. Sooner it’s done, the better.”

  Rossimoff looked doubtful. “That calls for more CSUs than we have available.”

  Crowe indicated the cluster of yellow stickpins around the south end of Central Park. “You barbecue an elephant one slab at a time. Only a dozen women from the Southwest registered under their own names and checked out yesterday? Start with them.”

  The two detectives exchanged looks. “It’s worth a try,” Levinson said.

  ~~~

  Crowe went down two floors and found the CSU section. He asked for Tracey Lovegrove and the receptionist paged her. He flipped through a copy of Guns & Ammo. Tracey appeared in a white smock, a pair of safety goggles atop her head. They left the building and went around the corner to New World Bean for coffee.

  “I sent last night’s photos to a friend at One Police Plaza,” she told him. “There’s a backlog at the FBI so he ran them through the NYPD’s face recognition database first. One picture couldn’t generate a match but the other did. A guy called Darin Guff.”

  “Any criminal record?”

  “Not yet. Guff was bonded by a security company but got fired six months ago for performance reasons.”

  “What company?”

  “An outfit called Phalanx. They service the banking and insurance industry.”

  “Is it possible to get a list of their clients?”

  “I did. One of their clients is Centurion Bank.”

  “Stockwell’s employer.”

  “I know. I looked at his file.”

  “I don’t get it. Stockwell and I just met yesterday afternoon.” Crowe told Tracey about his conversation with Stockwell and his domestic. “I asked him if he and his wife had any connections in the Southwest. And I asked his domestic if he had a mistress.”

  “Maybe he didn’t like your invading his privacy.”

  “Asking questions is one thing. Throwing a scare into someone for asking is like something out of a Mafia movie.”

  “Maybe you touched a nerve.”

  “Any idea as to the whereabouts of Mr. Guff?”

  “A squad car visited his last known address. No longer lives there, and no forwarding address. There’s an assault warrant out on him so we’ll see what happens.”

  Crowe checked his watch. “I’ve got to run. I promised I’d meet my client end-of-day, give him an update.”

  “Will I see you tonight?”

  “I don’t know. This case might take me out of town. In the meantime, stay away from The Whammy Bar. If someone’s put a contract on me, I don’t want you becoming collateral damage.”

  “Is that just your oblique way of saying you like me?”

  “No, this is my way.” He leaned over and kissed her. They left the coffee shop and said goodbye with a parting hug. Crowe hailed a cab to take him uptown.

  Chapter 49

  San Rafael

  Detective Jim Starrett was driving to work when a kid on a skateboard flew through the intersection at C Street. Starrett hit the brakes and his coffee slopped all over his right leg. Cursing, he leaned on the horn as the skateboarder, middle finger held high in parting salute, disappeared around the corner. Obviously a kid who’d had too much sugar in his morning cereal.

  In the office, Starrett went to the squad room’s coffee machine and poured himself a cup of second-rate brew. Hutchins looked up from his paperwork.

  “Late night?”

  “Didn’t get to bed until three.”

  “Home alone, or over in Castro?” Hutchins teased.

  Starrett gripped his crotch. “Bite me.”

  “I bet that’s what you tell all the guys.”

  “Last time I give you and your bum knee a break,” Starrett scowled as he lowered himself into his swivel chair. “Situation like this comes up again, I’m all out of pity.”

  ??
?I thought I won that flip fair and square.”

  “Using my trick nickel.”

  Hutchins laughed and said no more, giving Starrett time to scan the morning sheets and message notes on his desk. Manny Cantata had a line on a new witness, someone who might have heard a couple of Diablos plotting to whack the Merguez brothers. Starrett made a quick call to set up a meeting with Manny and the snitch.

  “How’d you make out last night?” Hutchins asked. “Or what happens in Castro stays in Castro?”

  Starrett opened his desk drawer and took out his piece of rope. He passed one end around his left wrist and tied a one-handed bowline hitch with his right.

  “Contrary to what Munson told me, Lang wasn’t into rough trade at all. He was into trannies.” Starrett told Hutchins about Bobbi Chang. “More to the point, Lang was pretty much stuck on Bobbi. They’d been seeing each other for almost a year.”

  “Exclusively?”

  “Well, not from Bobbi’s perspective, but apparently Lang was getting serious. He’d discussed buying Bobbi a condo or having her, him, whatever, move to San Rafael.”

  “Sounds like love to me.”

  “According to Bobbi, Lang was a romantic. Their typical date was dinner theatre, cabaret, that sort of thing. He was a great dancer, knew all the classic ballroom numbers. One reason he and Bobbi got on so well, he could take her to dance clubs and pass as a regular couple.”

  “A real straight arrow.”

  “Moderate drinker, only smoked a little pot, wasn’t into heavy drugs. Far as Bobbi knew, Lang didn’t gamble. All in all, nothing about the guy suggests association with anyone from the wrong side of the law.”

  “Except for his housemate.”

  “You mean Munson’s fourteen-year old trafficking felony?” Starrett tied a quick slip knot, then jerked it so hard the rope twanged.

  “Yeah.”

  “Despite that brief stint as a guest of Alameda County, Manny says Munson’s got no criminal associates of that sort.”

  “What about that sixty grand Lang withdrew a few months ago? If it wasn’t some kind of payoff, what was it?”

  “I asked Bobbi if Lang ever loaned her any money. Bobbi said no.”

  “Back to Munson.”

  “He’s hiding something.”

  “Anyone did time, they tend to develop a non-cooperative attitude.”

  “I still think he’s got something to do with this. He had motive. Bobbi said Lang was going to talk to a lawyer about revising his will. If Munson suspected Lang was going to dump him, maybe he’d want to take the money and run. If he had withdrawn sixty grand, dollars to doughnuts it’d be money for a hit.”

  Hutchins shook his head. “We can’t connect Munson to the money. And we don’t know who ran down Lang. All we know, it wasn’t Munson, since he was in Albuquerque that day.”

  “And your alternate-reality theory?”

  “Maybe Bobbi and Munson knew each other. Bobbi gave Munson a heads-up as to what was coming. Munson knew Lang’s routines. But because he’s in the will, he had to be out of town. Bobbi hot-wired the car and ran down Lang.”

  “There’re so many things wrong with that, I don’t know where to start. First, I think Bobbi really loved Lang and, if she let things just take their course, she’d have soon been in Lang’s house, if not in his will. Scratch off motive.”

  “Where was she at the time of the crime?”

  “Up in Napa shooting hardcore in a vineyard with a crew of muscled Hispanic boys. So no opportunity either.”

  “You confirm that?

  “Yep. Bobbi gave me the director’s number. I called and it checks out.”

  “So maybe they only planned it together. Somehow one or the other borrowed the money from Lang and, ironically, paid for a hit man.”

  “Whom we still don’t know either.”

  Hutchins shrugged. “You’ve met Munson. Is he the type to plan a hit like this?”

  Starrett shook his head. “Sort of a low-voltage intellect, know what I mean? One of those flakes whose brain cells went up in smoke.”

  “You see a lot of that in Marin.”

  “You see a lot of that everywhere.”

  Hutchins was silent for a bit, sipping his coffee. “Maybe Bobbi supplied the brains.”

  “Maybe brains, but not the heart for something like this.”

  “You think you know her that well?”

  “I don’t think she’s got a mean bone in her body. I think she’s just a hopeless romantic.”

  “Yeah, you and me and the Governor.”

  Starrett stared into space and sipped from his coffee, now growing cold and bitter, somewhat like his ex-wives.

  “Maybe we’re all wrong on this,” Hutchins said. “Sometimes, even low-lifes come into a legitimate inheritance.”

  “Sure,” Starrett said, no more convinced than Hutchins.

  “So, how do you want to work it?”

  “I’ll ride the desk today.” Starrett twirled a lasso over his head. “Why don’t you spend a little time looking over Munson’s shoulder, see what he’s up to?”

  Chapter 50

  New York

  At five in the afternoon, Central Park South lay in the shadow of hotels, high-rise condos and office towers ranged along 59th Street. Axel Crowe sat on a bench, the Pond at his back, Grand Army Plaza to his left. A breeze carried the scent of horses from the hansom rentals that stood in a tired line along the curb of the nearby plaza.

  He took out his phone and asked himself, what next? Opening his astrology app, he studied the horary chart for answers. Mercury, lord of the Virgo ascendant, was in the last degree of Aries in the eighth house. Mercury represented him, the investigator in the house of death. It would change signs in three or four hours, implying he was about to make a move.

  His quarry, the seventh lord Jupiter, was debilitated in the fifth house with Rahu, one of the eclipse-makers. Was the killer drunk, stoned, blind or delusional? Crowe recalled Jeb Stockwell’s face, a portrait of stress and substance abuse. Three planets occupied the seventh house – Moon, Venus and Mars in Pisces. Three planets in a water sign, and Pisces symbolized oceans. Crowe thought of boats and sailors... but how did that connect with Stockwell?

  Blaikie’s midnight-blue S-Class Mercedes entered the underground garage of his condo building. Crowe stood and crossed the street.

  Minutes later, they sat facing each other across the large coffee table in Blaikie’s living room. Blaikie’s tie was loosened, his jacket flung over the back of the sofa. Except for his red-rimmed eyes, his face had the colorless look of a bad painting in which the artist had failed to render a convincing flesh tone. With Scotch in hand, Blaikie was giving himself a transfusion of amber.

  “Sorry I had to skip the funeral,” Crowe said. “I had to follow up on something.”

  Blaikie stared at the ice in his drink, as if words were frozen there and he was waiting for them to thaw out. “I had more than enough company. There was a moment in the cemetery when I just wanted to walk off into the trees and be alone with my memories of Janis.” He swirled the ice in his glass. “I guess there’ll be time for that.”

  “How are your parents taking it?”

  “They’re both medicated to the gills. My father will come to terms with it in due course. My mother’s going to be a mess for a while.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” Blaikie said. “But your help gives me comfort we’ll eventually know what happened to Janis and why.” He took another drink. “Did you learn anything today?”

  Crowe told him about his conversation with Katrina Korba.

  Blaikie shook his head in disgust. “How long’s Jeb been seeing this bimbo?”

  “Almost a year. But Katrina’s not a bad girl. She was vulnerable and made a bad choice. Jeb didn’t even tell her he was married at first.”

  “What a sleazebag. I should go over there and punch his lights out. How could he do that to Janis?”

&nbs
p; “The way most men rationalize it, so long as their wives don’t know, it’s a victimless crime.”

  “Well, it’s wrong. Janis was victimized in every sense of the word. Doesn’t it seem likely he had something to do with her death?”

  “Aside from freeing himself to be with Katrina, I assume he gains financially.”

  Blaikie nodded. “When we turned thirty, Dad gave us each real estate properties worth a hundred million. Plus she had a stock portfolio... And there was no pre-nup.”

  “My guru says, the two things that most threaten the integrity of a man’s soul are lust for money and sex.”

  “The universal motives.”

  “But in this case, no opportunity. Jeb was in San Francisco.”

  “He could have hired someone. There are people who’ll kill for as little as a thousand bucks.”

  “Sure, but it’s risky. First, they’re not people we’re comfortable with. Second, there’s a chance they’ll slip up, or talk about it, or roll over to make a deal against some other felony. You see Jeb dealing with that kind of character?”

  “Up until today I couldn’t see him as an adulterer either, so what do I know?”

  “Tell me what you know about him. What’s his family background and education? How’d he meet Janis?”

  Blaikie poured a little more Scotch into his glass. “He grew up in Chicago where his father was a district manager for the Illinois Central Railway. His mother was a school teacher. I met them both at the wedding although that was the first and last time. His dad died a few years later, cirrhosis of the liver. I remember him knocking back the drinks at the wedding and it made me worry whether Jeb was a chip off the old block.”

  “You might be right.” Crowe told Blaikie about his facial diagnosis of Stockwell and the telltale signs of an overworked liver.

  Blaikie frowned. “Do you see that in my face?”

  “Your liver’s okay,” Crowe assured him. “But don’t take it for granted, okay?”

  Blaikie resumed Jeb’s biography. “Jeb was class valedictorian, got a scholarship to Northwestern where he studied Commerce. Varsity wrestling team, debating society, a well-rounded guy. But something happened in his second year, don’t ask me what, and he lost his scholarship. Kept going to school, though, worked summers in the rail yards and graduated on schedule. He spent a year in Accounting at Illinois Central, then got into an MBA program at Berkeley. Janis met him in a jazz club in San Francisco while on vacation. They hit it off and had one of those whirlwind affairs. As soon as he graduated he came to New York.”