Slugfest db-4 Page 12

  The impromptu eulogy was a tough act to follow. We stood there for what seemed like minutes but was probably just seconds. My shoeless feet were freezing and the rest of me was catching up.

  “Maybe we should take this outside,” I said. “It’s warmer in the hallway and we’ll be able to see better.” Plus it seemed less confrontational than this standoff in the cold blue light of an empty, hangar-sized room.

  We filed outside and, as I suspected, the stress level of the conversation lessened simply by walking into the light. Anthony stuck around until he made sure we were all right. We assured him that we would be. If Lauryn Peete trusted Jamal, I did, too. Besides, if we had to, Rolanda and I could probably take him.

  “I’ll be poking out of each of these opened doors every five or ten minutes, punching in, so if you ladies need me, I won’t be far. Even if you don’t see me, I’ll be here.” He and Jamal understood each other.

  “We’ll be okay.”

  “By the way, miss, that’s a fine party dress you got on.”

  (Note to self: permanently borrow red dress from Lucy. I will never be lonely as long as I’m wearing this. How did I get to be this age without knowing that every woman needs a red dress?)

  Anthony resumed his rounds. Jamal, Rolanda, and I sat outside the exhibit floor on chairs that only hours before had been occupied by rich old men in tuxedos and woman who, like Connie Anzalone, had agonized over what dress to wear.

  “How did you know Otis?” I asked. Jamal looked at Rolanda, then at me. He started to recount the story. Then it sunk in.

  “What do you mean did?”

  He could have been faking it, but I didn’t think so. His surprise seemed genuine and was soon replaced by a flicker of panic when Rolanda told him what had happened.

  “Oh, man. Now I’m really screwed.”

  “I’m sure Otis is sorry to have inconvenienced you by dropping dead,” Rolanda said.

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I was outside the members’ lounge. Some mean old lady wouldn’t let me in. Garland saw me reading a book. One of Toni Kelner’s.”

  “So you did know him.”

  “I never saw him before that day. He introduced himself. Said he’d read all Kelner’s stuff. Me, too. He asked if I could get him into the show.”

  “Did Garland tell you why he wanted to get in so badly?”

  “He had to get in touch with one of the exhibitors who owed him something. He also said he left a bag somewhere and needed to pick it up. I told him I could get it and bring it out for him after my break, but he had to leave to meet his girlfriend. I told him I could sneak him in after dark.”

  Rolanda was incensed. “What made you think you could?”

  “Ain’t no thing,” he said, smiling shyly, getting a little of his attitude back.

  He knew he could because he’d been doing it every night since setup began about a week earlier. “Two cans of Colt for the man downstairs.”

  Rolanda was pissed she’d sprung for the much more expensive Rémy.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I wanted to make sure no one messed with our garden. Ms. Peete went out on a limb for us. People think we’re the ones messing with people’s stuff, but it’s not true. I saw two other men here. A couple of times. Skinny dudes. Creepy.”

  That sounded like Fat Frank and his partner again.

  “Garland and I split up not long after we got into the building. I was cold, so he gave me his jacket to thank me. He told me he’d be heading to someplace warm anyway and wouldn’t need it.”

  “Then I saw you wearing the jacket in the diner and later when you heard Garland was dead, you worried I’d think you killed him. So you skipped the show and sneaked back tonight to talk to Otis Randolph.”

  “Mr. Randolph saw us together. That’s why I wanted to talk to him.”

  “Or maybe Otis saw you and Bleimeister arguing, so you cracked him on the head and threw him down the stairs to finish the job.” Rolanda was going to make an excellent policewoman: she already had the bad cop part down pat.

  “Why would I come back if I knew he was dead?”

  Good point. Rolanda had to think.

  “’Cause you left some incriminating piece of evidence or wanted to make sure your fingerprints weren’t someplace they shouldn’t be.”

  More good points. Except by now there must have been thousands of prints on and around the escalator and the garden shed, where poor Otis had dragged himself with his last ounce of strength.

  “We’re just talking here,” I said. “We’re not the police. In fact, you should go to the police.”

  Jamal wiped his nose on the forearm of Garland’s jacket. Or maybe he was wiping his eyes. “Right.”

  “When was the last time you saw Bleimeister?” I asked.

  “Hard to say. I was reading and must have dozed off in the grass shack opposite our exhibit. I figured no one would see me there, but I could still keep an eye on our display.” That was Connie’s exhibit. So much for Fat Frank and Cookie being good watchdogs—the beach garden had had a non–papier-mâché occupant and they hadn’t even noticed.

  “Something woke me at about four A.M.. By the time I stuck my head out the door, I saw two people running out of the hall, pushing a cart. I couldn’t really see, but I assumed it was Bleimeister. I thought he found his stuff and was checking out.”

  Or maybe it was the person who’d attacked Otis. I didn’t want to believe they could be the same person. Bleimeister had seemed like a decent kid. But ordinary people were pushed into extraordinary circumstances all the time. Mike O’Malley, my cop friend in Springfield, said if you eliminated politics and religion most crimes were motivated by one of three things—greed, lust, and revenge. He refers to them as the three basic food groups. And who among us didn’t occasionally feel the twinge of one of them?

  “Normal people are supposed to contact the authorities when they have information about a crime,” Rolanda said. “If you see something, say something.” She sounded like she was reciting from a placard in the subway.

  “Oh, that’s great. Fine. Call the cops. Maybe I can get a job in the prison garden. You think I committed murder for a denim jacket?”

  “I don’t,” I said. “Not even for a leather jacket, but two people are dead. You might be in danger and that jacket might hold a clue.”

  “How can it be a clue if I’ve had it for two days and he died more recently than that?”

  Jamal’s voice was rising from the strain we were all feeling. It could have been an accident, like Otis. Like Nikki. One accident I could accept—but three?

  “What else did you and Bleimeister talk about?” I said.

  “Nothing important. I was wearing a Mets shirt. Bleimeister said he was from Jersey but closer to Pennsylvania so he was a Phillies fan. He said he’d outgrown da shore and was going away once he picked up what this person owed him.” They talked some more. Books, girls, Xbox.

  “Oh, yeah, he said most people went to Atlantic City to strike it rich. He’d tried that, but it didn’t work. Instead, it looked like one of his old summer jobs might do that. That’s it. I don’t know anything else.”

  Rolanda and I were hardly experienced interrogators, but what he said had the ring of truth. Again we advised him to go to the police, not thinking for a minute he’d actually do it.

  “Can you talk to your parents about this?”

  “I live with my Grams. She’s old, diabetic. She’ll stroke out. I haven’t done anything, except for sneaking into the building. That’s no big deal—I didn’t break in.”

  “No other family?” I asked.

  “I got a cousin in North Carolina.”

  “What about Ms. Peete?” He shook his head. The mention of her name turned all his features downward. He didn’t want to disappoint the woman who’d put such faith in him.

  Jamal was surely one of the last people to see Garland Bleimeister alive and that meant he might know more than he thought he did. Just as we had,
someone else could make the same assumption, and they might not be a couple of nice ladies dressed for a night on the town. They could be the same people already responsible for two deaths. I asked Jamal if he’d be around the next day, and he shrugged.

  “Man, I don’t know what I’m doing in the next fifteen minutes.”

  “Whatever you decide, be careful. And just to be on the safe side, you might not want to wear that jacket for a while. But don’t throw it away. If Garland’s death wasn’t an accident…” I didn’t want to finish the thought. Jamal stripped off the jacket and hoodie and put them back on, this time with the zippered sweatshirt over the jacket. He jogged to the fire exit and disappeared down the stairs without another word.

  Rolanda and I watched him go. “What part of Connecticut did you say you were from?”

  “You realize you’re engaging in a form of profiling,” I said. “Just because you’re from the hood doesn’t make you Foxy Brown. Let’s go find my shoes. They’re borrowed and very expensive.”

  I passed on a return trip to El Quixote and hailed a cab to Lucy’s apartment. My cash and my keys were out well before the ten-minute ride was over, the cash to pay and get out fast, and the keys because that was a New York habit. As soon as the cab pulled away, another car door opened. It was on the driver’s side of the vehicle parked in front of Lucy’s brownstone. Black car, vanity plates that I couldn’t quite figure out; I imprinted the number and tried to read the make of the car in case I had to give a description later on from a hospital bed. My taxi had sped away. I was alone. For a moment I froze, then I saw a familiar hulking figure striding toward me.

  Whatever else you had to say about him, Guy Anzalone knew how to make an entrance.

  Thirty-seven

  “Did you say anything to her?”

  “And hello to you, too.”

  “Did you tell her?”

  “What’s there to tell? We shared some cashews in the lobby of a very public hotel with your wife upstairs, not five minutes away. That’s hardly the stuff of tabloid newspapers.” I was talking tough but not really feeling the part. What was he doing here? How did he even know where I was staying? Had I mentioned it and forgotten in my champagne buzz? Happily, whatever dramatic showdown Guy Anzalone had built up in his mind while waiting for me evaporated. I credited the red dress.

  “You’re getting a lot of mileage out of that outfit. Most women I know wouldn’t wear the same dress two nights in a row.” It didn’t seem to bother Guy and his eyes moved appreciatively over the spandex. “She was pretty ticked off,” he said.

  “By she, I take it you mean Connie. And that’s my fault, how? This was a big night for her. Maybe she was disappointed you weren’t there.” I was cold and hungry and wanted the conversation to end. I glanced up at J. C.’s window and terrace garden. If it had been warmer, she might have had the windows open and would have been able to hear us in case Guy got too friendly and I needed to borrow her door bar.

  “Anything else?”

  “Why are you so nasty to me? What did I ever do to you besides buy one of those crazy Lego sculptures and compliment you on your dress?”

  “I know your wife, and you’re hitting on me.”

  “First of all, I’m not necessarily hitting on you. Second, does that mean you’d say yes if you didn’t know my wife?”

  Even I had to crack a smile at that one. “Look, I’m tired and hungry, and please—no ‘bed’ or ‘I can fill you up’ comments.”

  He agreed to keep the frisky chat to a minimum and I agreed to walk around the corner with him to Carmine’s, a pizza joint he described as not half bad. Given his proclivity for understatement, I took that to mean it was one of the best in the city.

  “They still sell by the slice. I can remember when a slice and a Coke was fifty cents,” he said. Good manners kept me from asking how long ago that was.

  We sat in orange plastic chairs and I looked for a clean place on the Formica table for Lucy’s handbag and the flower show directory Rolanda and I had retrieved from the booth.

  Our slices came—pepperoni for me, two with extra cheese and a calzone chaser for him; he’d already had dinner. The waiter brought two large Diet Cokes.

  “I cut back wherever it hurts the least. I don’t want to get too big.” He ran his hands over his substantial belly in a way that perversely seemed like flirting.

  “That reminds me. I think I saw a friend of yours tonight. After hours at the convention center—Fat Frank?”

  “After hours? I’m shocked. Maybe he forgot something. You should be careful. It’s not always safe in those big buildings late at night. You could get in trouble.”

  The slice stalled inches from my lips. I put it down and wiped my hands on a wad of paper napkins.

  “C’mon. What am I saying that your mother didn’t tell you? You should just be careful, is all.”

  He’d wolfed down his two slices and waited for his calzone. “You know, I dated a girl named Calzone once. Nice girl, but too many people made fun of our names. It never would have worked out.” He picked up the directory and spun it in his hands, tapping the spine on the table each time the book made a complete revolution.

  “You catch any other suckers tonight, or am I the only one who bought something?” I assured him he was in rarefied company and none other than the famous Mrs. Moffitt had been interested in the piece that he and Connie had purchased. She had to settle for something similar but even more expensive.

  “I’m glad you didn’t show us that one. That was a little slippery of you the other night.” He wagged a finger at me. “That’s okay. She’ll be happy.”

  He rarely used his wife’s name but referred to her as she as if that made her somehow less real. He continued to spin the book and I worried he’d drop it on his greasy plate and I’d wind up smelling like garlic for the rest of the flower show, the way Nikki had smelled of fish fertilizer.

  “She made me take an ad in this thing. She even sicced this broad on me. Madon’, good-looking girl but wouldn’t shut up until I took the ad. And she kept harping on certain aspects of my work. I do construction, lend a little money. So what? So does Citibank. Doesn’t make me John Gotti.”

  I assumed this last she was Kristi Reynolds. Maybe all women were she to him. “You people even look at this thing?” It was a fair question. I hadn’t cracked the spine for two days and might never have if it hadn’t been for Garland Bleimeister.

  Guy leafed through the book and quickly came to the dog-eared page where coincidentally his wife’s entry was listed.

  “Look at this. It’s like she’s always there, watching me. ‘Brooklyn Beach Garden, Connie Anzalone, Brooklyn, New York,’ blah, blah, blah. She changed the name of the garden, but it was too late to fix it in the book. She changed the design, too. I made her add more stone yesterday.” He said it proudly, his contribution to the garden.

  “Nice touch,” I lied.

  “These things never tell you the real story. Newspapers neither. You gotta read between the lines.” He tossed the book on the table, narrowly missing my plate.

  Guy was right. There were six stories on those pages and one of them led to Garland Bleimeister. Someone had to read between the lines. What was Bleimeister’s hurry to get into the show before it opened? Who stole his bag and what was in it? And was that why he—and maybe even Otis Randolph—had died?

  I picked up the book and started to leave.

  “Is that it? We’re done?”

  “We’re done. Go home to your wife, Guy. Her name’s Connie. Thanks for the pizza. You should pick up a couple of calzones for Fat Frank—that man needs to put on some weight.” I pushed my chair back from the table and headed for the door. “My friend will take that order to go.”

  Thirty-eight

  I made a cup of tea and curled up on Lucy’s sofa with the show directory, which I was sure held some answers. It was packed with ads for everything from Guy’s fake stone products to tours of Irish gardens to the banks and ca
r companies that had sponsored the show.

  In fact, the directory could mislead people into thinking the show was larger than it was. That was a testament to Kristi Reynolds, who relentlessly chased down advertisers. Knee-replacement surgeons? Maybe she was a marketing genius—gardeners frequently had knee problems.

  It was no secret that Kristi wanted to give the Philadelphia Flower Show a run for its money. Allegra had said as much in a less flattering way in the ladies’ room. But Kristi would have to do better than just a glossy show directory. The Philly event had been around for close to two centuries and was the premier flower show in the country—maybe in the world—with landscape displays, floral designs, exhibits from national plant societies, and individual entries from people all over the East Coast.

  The Big Apple had dipped its toes in, but Kristi’s greatest strength was public relations, and that’s what had kept the show afloat for the two years since she’d taken over from the previous director.

  I scanned the ads and four-color images, then went back to the dog-eared page. Counting both sides, there were six entries. Six vendors or exhibitors: Bagua Designs; Bambi-no, Inc.; BioSafe Products; Brooklyn Beach Garden; Buzz Word Honeys and Soaps; and Byron Davis High School. One of them was the place Garland Bleimeister was desperate to go last Wednesday. Maybe the last place he’d ever gone—under his own steam. But as Guy Anzalone had said, their brief descriptions were just the beginning, one or two lines that said what they were selling or why they were here, but probably wouldn’t tell me what I needed to know. I’d have to dig deeper if I wanted to get the real stories behind them.

  * * *

  The next morning, a note shoved under my door invited me to breakfast anytime between 6:45 and 9:30 A.M. I didn’t remember telling J. C. Kaufman that Lucy didn’t own a coffeepot or saucepan, but maybe she’d figured it out when she and the cats had been in the nearly empty apartment when the cops had been there. I’d fallen asleep on the sofa and had dragged myself into bed a few hours earlier, so coffee—especially made by someone else—sounded good.