Another Word for Murder (25 page)

CHAPTER 30

Having only heard Phil Gronski's deep baritone echoing from the other end of a telephone and not having met him in person, Rosco's mind had invented a brawny giant of a man: one capable of starting, and finishing, a good-sized barroom brawl all on his own. But Gronski, in the flesh, was the exact opposite. In his early forties and balding, he appeared to be five feet four inches tall at the most, and his build was slim and wiry. He looked as if he was made solely of muscle and sinew. He wore a custom-made Italian suit, a dress shirt with French cuffs and large gold and ruby cufflinks, and a matching stick pin in his glossy silk tie. Rosco wouldn't have even approached him were it not for the fact that the man looked so out of place sitting alone at the counter of Bart's Burgers on Clawson Street.

“Phil?” Rosco asked tenuously; he half expected a foreign accent instead of Gronski's blue-collar Massachusetts growl.

Gronski swiveled on the aluminum stool. His feet didn't quite reach the pockmarked and dingy fake-tile flooring. He said, “Yeah. You must be Rosco? This ain't the nicest dive in town, I gotta tell ya. Whatever you do, don't order the coffee. My wife has washed our dog in classier stuff.”

“Sorry I'm late. I got hung up in that construction on Seventh Street.” Rosco sat sat on the stool next to Phil. “To be honest, I've never been in here before; it just seemed like a good place to meet.”

Without turning around, Gronski cocked his thumb over his shoulder and said, “So, what, you think the shop across the street pinched my Beamer?”

Rosco smiled. “In a word, yes.”

“That wasn't
too
obvious,” Gronski said sarcastically. He then shook his head. “Look, I've been driving BMWs for twenty years. I've never put a scratch in one, but you ask around Newcastle and everyone's gonna tell you that if you bang up your German import—your Porsche, your Benz, whatever—or you need some mechanical work and you're out of warranty, you bring your car to Sonny's. The work in that shop is top-notch. I've even met Sonny and his missus at social events on occasion. He seems like a real good guy to me. He didn't steal no cars.”

“Would he recognize you?”

“Probably …” Gronski thought. “On the other hand, maybe not. Last time I saw him was two, three years ago at a golf club bash. I hadn't given up my toup' yet. They're dumb things, those rugs, but the wife, well, never mind…. Also I was sporting a VanDyke-type goatee back then, so I probably looked real different…. Nah, I guess Sonny wouldn't recognize me now.”

The waitress stopped by, and Rosco asked for an order of fries, taking Gronski's advice and skipping the coffee. “I've been in and out of every body shop in town,” he told Phil, “and Sonny's is the only one large enough to handle twenty-two vehicles in one night. I may be barking up the wrong tree, but I'd like you to just walk over there with me. There were four guys parking cars at Porto back in March, right? Would you recognize the one that drove off in your BMW?”

“Absolutely. He was about your size, six feet, maybe a little taller, with a real narrow mustache and a little scar over his left eye that cut through the brow, like so.” He pointed to his own eye, then chortled in a self-deprecating manner. “Unless the bozo was wearing a toupee.”

“Are you willing to go over there and see if he works for Sonny?”

Gronski thought it over for a moment, then he shrugged and said, “Sure, why not? You've got the wrong place, but why not? I'm here, right?”

Rosco went on to explain his plan of action to Phil, detailing their bogus identities, and finishing the briefing with a cautionary, “Now if you see your guy, don't do anything; and don't tell me about it until after we leave the shop. It's not up to me to arrest anyone. I don't have a gun on me, and I'm not doing any John Wayne stuff. I'll just get his name, and we'll let the cops in Robbery take it from there.”

“Hey, I'm supposed to be a Hollywood producer, right? Why would I know from a robbery in a hick burg in Massachusetts?”

It was almost four thirty when the two strolled across the street; the second they stepped onto the autobody parking lot, Sonny was out of the office and trotting over to meet them.

“Jeez,” Gronski muttered under his breath, “what's this guy do? Spend the day staring out the window? What do I do if he does recognize me?”

“Hey, what the hell is this, Rick?” Sonny called from twenty feet off. “You haven't caused me enough trouble for one day?” He seemed not to notice Gronski, or at least not to remember him.

“Take it easy, Sonny.” Rosco held up his hands, indicating that he came in peace. He then pointed at his companion. “This is Phil Taylor. He's the producer
of Back Bay D.A.”

Gronski grinned. “My man Rick here has told me good things about you.” He extended his hand to Sonny.

The autobody shop owner declined the handshake as he studied the new visitor. “Have we met somewhere?”

Without missing a beat, Phil said, “Ya ever been to the Polo Lounge in L.A.?”

Sonny shook his head, so Gronski continued in a lofty insider's tone: “That's where I conduct my business. At the Polo. Poolside, mostly. I was the first guy in L.A. with a mobile phone. Ya ain't been there, ya don't know me. I travel with a very select crowd. I don't often—”

“Well, anyway,” Rosco interrupted before Gronski could continue hamming up his performance. “We came back out here to apologize. I didn't mean to get the cops involved…. See, I was scouting out their station house for a possible location, and they were talking about this missing Explorer, and well, one thing led to another, and next thing you know, they're making me show them where I saw the car.”

“Yeah,” Phil added, “That's why I figured, since I'm the producer and all, I should be makin' with the ‘I'm sorries,' myself. You know, stop by the shop, do it all personal and whatnot. Why leave it to a scrub like Ricky here?” He gave “Ricky” a small poke in the arm and then looked beyond Sonny and let out with a slow whistle. “Man, this is some operation you got.” He then returned his attention to “Ricky.” “I don't know, Rick-man, I think I like this place better than than the one you picked out.”

“No can do, Phil,” Rosco answered on cue, “Sonny says his mother put the nix on it.”

“Sonny … Sonny … Sonny,” Gronski said, “let me talk to your mom. I've never met the woman who could say no to me. Never. And I mean
never
. I wouldn't be a producer worth beans otherwise.” He walked past Sonny toward the shop doors.

“She's not here,” Sonny called after him. “She's gone for the day.” He trotted up alongside Phil. “Besides, she doesn't talk to anyone. I do all the negotiating here, but she said, ‘No TV shows,' so that's what it is.”

Gronski looked at Rosco. “What'd you offer these people, Ricky-boy?”

“Thirty-five hundred a day.”

Phil moved around Sonny once again, speaking as he walked. “I'll tell ya what I'm gonna do for ya, Sonny; I'm gonna double that. How's that? I'm the guy with the money. And I do the talkin'. How's seven grand sound to you? Huh? Let me just take a quick peek at the inner workings here to be sure I like what I see. You think it over and get back to me tomorrow morning. Your mom still says no … so be it. No hard feelings. We move on. I don't want to get between you and your mom. What do ya say?”

“I don't know…. ”

“Sonny, Sonny, Sonny, what are we talkin' here? Three, four minutes? I walk to the end of your shop, turn around, and come back out again? Where's the harm?”

“Seven thousand a day?”

“Seven thousand a day. U.S. dollars; clean and crisp. Plus”—he turned and looked Sonny up and down—”you ever do any acting?” He then glanced at Rosco, nodding his head as though in thought. “Ya know Sonny here would be perfect in the part of Stryker; the guy with the three babes in the Benz convertible? What do you say, Sonny?”

Sonny considered the offer, and eventually said, “Okay. But I have to walk around the place with you.”

“Sure, sure, whatever.”

The three men strolled through the large entryway. Most of the workers were preparing to quit for the day. At a large utility sink just to the left of the office door, six mechanics were stripping off latex gloves and washing up using an industrial hand cleanser. They'd been telling jokes, but when they noticed Rosco their behavior turned serious and they stopped talking altogether. Rosco watched as Gronski and Sonny strolled in front of him. He became aware that “the producer,” with his expensive suit and slight build, probably looked much the same as he had the night he lost his BMW. And if the man who stole the car was present, he could well recognize Gronski before Phil had time to identify him—and then quietly slip out the back door.

But Rosco needn't have worried, because the moment Gronski passed the mechanics' lifts and entered the collision repair section of the shop, he shouted an outraged, “That's the clown! That's the S.O.B who drove off in my BMW!”

A man sanding a fender on a dark green Audi straightened and stared at Gronski. He was exactly as Phil had described him: six feet tall with a pencil-thin mustache and a scar over his left eye. He recognized his accuser instantaneously, dropped his sanding equipment and began running toward the rear of the shop. Without pausing for a second, Gronski took off after him, and Rosco took off after Gronski while Sonny stood in place, dumbfounded.

Phil caught the man just as he reached the back door, slammed into him from behind, and pushed him hard into the panic-bar. Although the pursuer easily weighed half as much as the pursued, the two men tumbled through the doorway and out into the alley where they landed in a heap on the asphalt. The sprawl of bodies didn't last for long, however, as the thief immediately pushed himself clear of Phil and regained his standing position. Then Gronski also sprang to his feet and went into a low, wrestler's crouch. The position made him look as if he were only four feet tall, and his suit jacket, which was torn apart at the shoulder seams, and his trousers, which were ripped at the knees, gave him a curiously simian appearance, as if he were a trained chimp auditioning for an ad campaign or a TV spot.

The sight brought a quick chuckle from Gronski's adversary, but it lasted less than a millisecond as Phil spun on his left heel and, in a perfectly executed karate kick, brought his designer loafer straight into the man's solar plexus.

“Hey!” Rosco shouted, running over. But Gronski wasn't finished. His right fist pounded up into the man's cheek and nose, causing him to crumple unconscious onto the pavement. “I've been waiting to do that for months,” Gronski growled with a satisfied smile. Then he straightened and dusted his ruined sleeves.

Rosco looked down at the comatose body shop worker and then back at Gronski. “Your suit didn't fare too well,” he observed as he dialed 911 on his cell phone.

“I got a closet full of them. This was worth it.”

“Do you mind if I ask you what you do for a living?”

“Franks.”

“Franks?”

“Franks. Frankfurters. Hot dogs. Wieners. I manufacture Phil's Franks. You can get them at Gilbert's Groceries.”

CHAPTER 31

Rosco had no sooner returned home from the melee at Sonny's Autobody than Belle greeted him with a hyper-excited, “We have to drive up to Boston! Now! We have to leave right now!”

“Well, hello to you, too.” He leaned toward her. “I don't suppose you'd care to give your adoring husband a kiss … tell him how much you love him … or ask how I spent my afternoon.”

“I know already. You saw Elaine Vogel.”

“Wrong. She didn't show. Guess again.”

Belle tapped her foot on the wooden floor. “Rosco! Come on. You can tell me all about what you did while we're driving…. Time's a-wasting.”

“What about supper?” Rosco gave his wife a wry smile. Her enthusiasm was infectious, although it was sometimes hard to rein in.

“We'll grab something on the way. Let's go. I've been waiting for you for hours and hours and hours.” The tips of Belle's shoes all but jumped up and down in impatience.

Rosco looked at his watch. It was precisely two hours and fifty-three minutes since he'd left home. “I don't know about ‘hours and hours and hours.' I take it you've sleuthed out our invisible Frank O'Connell? Found all the missing pieces? Got the whole thing solved?”

But Belle's response was an unexpected, “Dan Tacete went to Boston last Thursday afternoon—instead of heading home as promised. And he was back here, in Newcastle, late Thursday night. So the kidnappers must have grabbed him after that.”

Rosco's eyes grew serious. “And how might you have discovered these pieces of information?”

Belle looked at her husband as if he'd just asked one of the dumbest questions known to humankind. “His credit card, of course.”

“Wait, wait, wait. We checked those cards on Friday. Nothing showed up.”

“Right, Rosco, but both gas charges were made at the full-service island. The attendant apparently uses one of those old-style imprint machines, and the charges aren't generally posted to the credit card account for forty-eight hours.”

“Ahhh … So much for the consumer's right to privacy and confidentiality.”

“Rosco! I didn't do anything illegal. After all, Karen originally supplied the necessary background information. I simply pretended to be her, that's all. Besides, it's exactly what you would have done if you'd thought of it, so don't give me a hard time…. Come on, let's go!”

Rosco shrugged and turned back toward the door through which he'd just entered. Belle grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and said, “Wait! So, where have you been if you weren't talking to Elaine Vogel all this time?”