Scorpio Rising

  Inside the three-bedroom ranch house, built in the seventies and extensively remodeled, four Los Alamos security officers searched the place with all the zeal of DEA agents looking for an elusive ounce of banned substance to justify a property invasion. But these agents didn’t need a warrant because the fine print in Dr. Walter Cassidy’s employment contract stated that such incursions “to retrieve intellectual property in the interests of national security” were warranted on the say-so of the Security Office of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, under the command of Mack Horton.

  In the living room, Agent Black used a cell phone to make an encrypted call to Horton back in Los Alamos. As the phone rang at the other end, Agent Black stepped aside to let Agent Green pass, carrying two cardboard file boxes to one of the Explorers parked out front. In Cassidy’s office Agent Blue disconnected the cables from a desktop computer.

  “Speak to me,” Horton answered.

  “We’re almost finished,” Agent Black told his commander. “We’ve purged his filing cabinet. He seems to have been pretty upright. Most of it’s personal stuff, him and the wife. Damned little here that’s work-related and what we’ve seen isn’t sensitive, more like stuff you could get off the net or a good library if you knew where to look.”

  “You’re sure he hasn’t squirreled anything away?” Horton said. Some of these guys, and the brainier they were, the more they had that anti-establishment rogue gene in their systems, liked to ‘archive’ vital elements of their projects. It was a perverse job-security gambit, like taking a boss’s kid for hostage as insurance against getting fired.

  “We’ve been here for hours and found nothing.” While Agents Black and Blue had tackled the obvious stuff – computer and paper files – Red and Green had gone through the house infrastructure, tapping walls, tugging loose carpet, shining flashlights into crawl spaces. They’d emptied cabinets, poked holes in box springs, checked toolboxes and suitcases and a hundred little hiding places where clever people thought they could hide something from Uncle Sam. And all Uncle Sam had found was a little stash of weed, a licensed handgun and a knobby battery-powered marital aid called The Throbber.

  “How’s his wife taking this?”

  “I don’t know,” Black said. “We haven’t seen her. You tried to contact her, right?”

  “I phoned the house as soon as it happened and tried her cell phone several times too,” Horton said. “Never got an answer so all I could do was leave messages.”

  “You think maybe somebody got to her same time as him?”

  “I don’t know what to think at this point. I’ll call the Santa Fe Police, get them to canvass the neighbors, see if anyone knows her whereabouts.”

  “What about the State troopers here?”

  “Tell them to stand down. We’ll let the city cops handle the canvass. Once you’re finished there, wrap it up and bring it on home.”

  “Out of here in an hour, I reckon. You’ll still be in the office when we get back?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Horton told Black about his conference call with Bueller and Gann. “I’ll be sleeping under my desk until this is all wrapped up in a pretty little package and delivered to Washington.”

  Chapter 15

  New York

  Shift change at Manhattan’s Mid-Town North precinct on 42nd Street was in full swing at midnight. Patrol officers horsed around in the locker room, the bachelors planning to decompress in local cop hangouts, the married ones anxious to head for the Lincoln Tunnel and home to Jersey. In the squad rooms, watch commanders briefed incoming shift officers on the state of affairs in their precinct, bounded by Lexington Avenue and the Hudson River in one direction, Park Avenue South to 43rd Street in the other.

  Most everyone who worked out of the MTN precinct relished the jurisdiction, even if only because they didn’t have to deal with the Times Square and Port Authority scumbags of their neighboring precinct, Mid-Town South. Still, although the genteel theatre district was smack in the middle of their territory, even drama queens occasionally killed someone in a hissy-fit, so it wasn’t like the Homicide squad had nothing better to do than sit around solving crossword and sudoku puzzles.

  Detective Jake Levinson hunched over a desk with several active case files, one of which he’d opened just minutes ago. Thirty-six years old, Levinson was at a typical crossroads in life, divorced two years ago but now with a steady girlfriend whose regular hints of marriage and mommy-hood were a test of his wavering commitment. Personal stuff aside, he was doing okay, had never been shot, had only once been obliged to kill a perp, and had accumulated an excellent track record for solving cases that fell to him. With luck and maybe another five to ten years, he might make lieutenant.

  Separated by the widths of their two desks, his partner Arnie Rossimoff rooted like a truffle pig through the remains of some Chinese take-out. Rossimoff was a walking cliché from the wrong end of the neat-cop/sloppy-cop paradigm, for which the brass had an uncanny ability to construct odd pairings. Whereas Levinson prided himself in being clean-shaven, wearing polished shoes and showing up for work in a clean shirt and a tie that didn’t need to be paisley to disguise food stains, Rossimoff was a haberdasher’s nightmare.

  Arnie looked like he’d slept in his clothes and just woken up, not necessarily in a bed. He wore dark teal pants, the sort favored by utility repairmen, heavily creased at the knees and crotch. His footwear were scuffed black Adidas walking shoes, his shirt a faded plaid, his too-wide-to-be-stylish tie a catch-all for soy and Szechuan hot sauce. Rossimoff had never been married and it wasn’t hard to figure out why. If doubts lingered, a visit to his book-cluttered studio apartment on 53rd, where the tiny bed-sit, the mini-galley kitchen and the peeling bathroom stall, all denied daylight at the bottom of an eight-storey air shaft, reminded one of life on a submarine, bereft of luxury or female association.

  “Want some more before I polish it off?” Rossimoff offered Levinson a carton in which remained several nuggets of General Tao chicken.

  “Thanks.” Levinson speared a piece of chicken with a chopstick. It was pretty good. Rossimoff had picked it up at Foo King Chinese Kitchen on 10th Avenue on his way into work. Levinson generally preferred Lucky Wok or Panda Restaurant, but was happy so long as no dishes featured Wild Deer, generally suspected to be a euphemism for garbage-fattened rodent, of which New York had many.

  “Foo-king good, right?” Rossimoff grinned, revealing a piece of no-longer-crispy spinach stuck in his teeth.

  Levinson turned his attention back to the file that lay before him, which at this point included only the patrol officers’ initial report, his own brief field notes and a few photos of the victim and the general crime scene.

  Lieutenant Pickett approached their desks. “What’s the situation on Fifty-first?”

  “Victim is Janis Stockwell, age thirty-six,” Levinson said. “Discovered by a passerby at eleven-ten. No purse or wallet on the scene, but we got an ID from a medical bracelet she wore. Broadway ticket stub in her coat pocket. Looks like she got mugged on her way home.”

  “And resisted? Most locals know better.”

  “Most crackheads are on a short fuse,” Rossimoff said. “You don’t give it up on the count of five, they’re all over you like hyenas on a sick antelope.”

  “We found her pepper spray on the scene,” Levinson said. “Not that it seems to have done her any good.”

  “Might have set the perp off,” Rossimoff speculated.

  “Cause of death?” the Lieutenant asked.

  Levinson shook his head. “Not sure. Looked like she was strangled. Visible trauma to the neck.” He handed a crime scene photo to Pickett. In the color closeup, bruising ran from windpipe to beneath her right ear. “But she’s with the ME. We should know pretty soon.”

  “You notify next-of-kin?”

  Rossimoff nodded. “Her husband was on business in Frisco, but he’s on his way home now.”

  “How’d he sound?”

  “All broke
n up.” Rossimoff sucked his teeth. “Over the top, if you ask me.” A lifelong bachelor, Rossimoff had apparently never shed a tear for a lost companion.

  “You guys worked the scene? Anything else I should know?”

  “She was found lying between two parked cars,” Levinson said. “We got the CSU to dust the adjacent vehicles for prints. They’re now running them through AFIS.”

  Rossimoff swallowed the last bit of moo-shoo pork. “We canvassed the street, couldn’t find anyone that saw anything, but we’ve put it out to the media with a request for info. Maybe some good citizen will pick up the phone.”

  “And we flagged her credit cards,” Levinson said. “Soon as they get used, we’ll pick up the trail.”

  “Okay. Keep me posted.” The Lieutenant headed back to his office.

  Levinson’s phone rang. He glanced at the call display as he answered. “Levinson. What’s up?”

  Rossimoff struck bottom in the last take-out carton, extracting limp remains of formerly crispy spinach. He tossed the cartons into his waste basket, opened a package of wipettes and swabbed his chin and hands. He was inspecting his tie for collateral damage when Levinson hung up.

  “That was the ME,” Levinson said. “Time of death now fixed at roughly ten-forty-five, give or take ten minutes. Turns out Mrs. Stockwell did indeed suffer severe neck trauma, but apparently that wasn’t what killed her.”

  “Concussion?” Rossimoff speculated. “Heart failure?”

  “Anaphylactic shock.”

  “An allergic reaction? Like shellfish or something…?”

  “Something very hot and spicy,” Levinson hinted.

  “The pepper spray!?”

  “Seems the perp emptied the canister down her throat.”

  Rossimoff coughed heavily, as if the news had left a bad taste in his own mouth.

  WEDNESDAY

  Chapter 16

  New York

  Wednesday morning, Air Canada flight 702 from Toronto arrived at LaGuardia on schedule. Among the travelers was Axel Crowe. Wearing black jeans and a charcoal-colored leather jacket, Crowe carried a single overnight bag slung over his shoulder.

  As he passed a news-stand, he saw the headlines of The New York Times, which read ‘Security Tightens for Terror Alert’. Fifty feet down the concourse, where it opened into the baggage claim area, two guards with bullet-proof vests and pistols on their hips were giving passersby a more-than-casual scrutiny.

  Bypassing the baggage carousels, he entered the Arrivals lounge, where a uniformed chauffeur was holding a sign that said ‘Axel Crowe’. Crowe identified himself.

  “May I take your bag?” the chauffeur said, reaching for it.

  Crowe followed him to the exit. At the curb, an airport security officer stood next to a white Lincoln Town Car. Crowe glanced at its vanity plates. LISA C. Every letter of the alphabet had its numerological counterpart. L and S were both 3s, I and A both 1s, and the C was a 2. Add them up and you got a 10, which reduced to 1, the number of power and royalty.

  The chauffeur pressed a folded bill into the security officer’s palm. He opened the rear door and, after Crowe had seated himself inside, put his bag in the trunk and sat behind the wheel.

  “Good morning, Mr. Crowe,” said the silver-haired and elegant woman from the other side of the plush leather rear seat. “I’m Lisa Carmichael.” She offered her hand and Crowe took it, feeling in her grip the heat and strength he’d come to associate with successful entrepreneurs. He glanced at her thumb whose upper phalange was larger than normal and graced by a broadly rounded nail. Lacquered of course in a high-quality polish, but it was the form rather than the substance of the nail that interested him, indicating she was headstrong and determined.

  “Did you have a good flight?” Carmichael asked as the Lincoln slid away from the terminal.

  “Yes, thanks. I hope it wasn’t an inconvenience, your picking me up this way.”

  “Not at all. I live in Long Beach so it’s not much out of the way.”

  Crowe had a closer look at Carmichael. He guessed her to be about fifty years old, although with the cosmetic surgery she’d had on her eyelids, she probably passed for forty among those who didn’t know better. She was otherwise a lovely specimen of a woman, the age bracket for which Crowe reserved a special fondness because they formed a significant portion of his clientele demographic. Mature, successful, smart enough to know that not everything in life could be interpreted by lawyers, accountants or trusted girlfriends.

  “Would you like some coffee or juice?” She indicated a service unit that included a steel carafe on a burner and a mini-fridge.

  After a quick survey of what was available, Crowe accepted a bottle of mango juice. Rich in anti-oxidants and glutamine acid, an important protein for concentration and memory.

  The Lincoln moved at highway speed along the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. Carmichael poured herself a coffee and turned in her seat to face her fellow passenger. She wore a dark blue business suit whose pants were belted with a silver buckle. Aside from a pair of silver-and-emerald earrings and a matching band with a larger stone on her ring finger, she showed little sign of ostentation despite her apparent wealth. Crowe had studied her birth chart a week ago when she’d called to make this appointment. He assumed correctly that she was a self-made woman who’d enjoyed great success in the fashion industry over the past seven years.

  “Kevin Blaikie spoke very highly of you, Mr. Crowe, but he never told me exactly what you do for him.”

  “For Kevin? Typically I find witnesses who’ve gone missing, whose testimony is crucial to cases he’s handling.” Although born into wealth, Blaikie had been trained as a corporate lawyer and ran a large management consultancy that specialized in corporate malfeasance, typically involving accounting fraud and major pension irregularities. Usually there was some guilty little gnome who’d skimmed a fortune, or a whistle-blower who could identify executives in the know and on the take.

  “And convince them that testifying is worth their while?”

  “No, I’m just a finder. Kevin has persuaders to handle that other part.”

  “He can be pretty persuasive himself,” she said.

  Crowe knew what she was hinting at but said only, “I haven’t been the focus of his charm. Or maybe I’m just impervious to it.”

  “You do have an impenetrable look about you, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  Crowe shrugged. “Some people accuse me of being too business-like, but I keep my private and professional lives separate. That’s not to say I don’t occasionally develop a personal relationship with a client. It’s just not something that happens very often.”

  “I’m sure you have your reasons.”

  “It all boils down to objectivity,” Crowe said. “The kind of work I do, it’s all about making subtle judgments. It’s hard enough to make the right call based on a complex set of factors without having bias thrown in. You get too friendly with a client, next thing you know you’re subconsciously trying to put a positive spin on things when what the client really needs is the truth. Would you want your doctor, after viewing your medical test results and seeing something that made her suspect cancer, say it’s probably nothing, just a shadow, because she likes you and doesn’t want to worry you?”

  “Of course not. I want the truth, not a varnished facsimile.”

  “I’d soon be out of business if I couldn’t consistently deliver that to my clients.”

  “I appreciate that.” She sipped her coffee. “From what Kevin told me, I should think of you as a private investigator that uses – what’s the diplomatic term – esoteric techniques?”

  “Think of me as a personal advisor. And to put it bluntly, I use palmistry and astrology, but other things too depending on the situation.”

  “And most important, he says you produce results.”

  “Most of the time.”

  “Not one hundred percent?”

  “Only God gets a perfect score. The rest o
f us are just playing at His feet.”

  “Hmm. You’re quite a philosopher.” She checked his hands for a wedding band but saw only an odd ring that seemed to be made of bone, with several small deeply-set stones around its circumference. “Are you married, Mr. Crowe?”

  “Only to my guru.” Trial separation notwithstanding, Crowe reflected.

  “You don’t enjoy the company of women?” After a hesitation, she added, “Or men, perhaps? I have many lonely but attractive friends.”

  “It’s a mixed blessing, but I enjoy solitude.”

  “Wasn’t it Nabokov who said that solitude is Satan’s playground?”

  “There’s also an African proverb,” Crowe said. “Better to travel alone than with a bad companion.”

  “Are you always this cynical?”

  “Only about my personal relationships.”

  Carmichael’s phone rang. She looked at the display. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to take this call.”

  Crowe turned his gaze out the window, tuning out her conversation with some business associate, a small matter of five thousand blouses from Hong Kong being held hostage by an over-zealous customs broker in Los Angeles. The Lincoln followed the expressway as it angled west, heading for the Williamsburg Bridge.

  ~~~

  Fifteen minutes later, they were in SoHo. The chauffeur parked the Lincoln in front of a five-storey building just as Carmichael finished her phone call. The chauffeur opened the door for his employer. Crowe let himself out and joined Carmichael on the sidewalk.

  Crowe saw a black kid in a basketball jersey, number eight, on the stoop of a convenience store a few doors down, tossing popcorn to pigeons milling on the corner. One of the pigeons dragged a broken wing, the tips of its feathers frayed ragged, like a broom drearily sweeping the sidewalk.

  Crowe looked at the number over the building entrance. 845. He combined the numbers and reduced them to a single digit, eight, a routine that was second nature to him. Eight was associated with Saturn. Today was Wednesday, ruled by Mercury. The idea of foreign commerce popped into his mind. Try explaining that to a client, it made as much sense as cricket did to a Super Bowl fan, so he never bothered. But one man’s tablet of meaningless hieroglyphics was another man’s Rosetta Stone.