Death Will Get You Sober: A New York Mystery; Bruce Kohler #1 (Bruce Kohler Series) (18 page)

The little private rest room contained nothing but a toilet. Couldn’t hide there. If he needed to take a leak, I’d be busted. And that door opened outward. There was only one option left. As the door to the office opened, I slid behind the burgundy velvet drapes. Luckily, they were generously cut and fell to the floor. The fact that they were pulled back was in my favor. The bunched effect disguised my bulk. At least I hoped it would. I breathed through my nose as shallowly as I could.

I sensed rather than heard his footsteps on the even thicker carpet in his office. He checked, exclaimed, picked up the case. Even clicking his tongue, the guy managed to sound pompous. I heard faint chinking sounds from his desk. Straightening his pens. He started out, then changed his mind. He did need to take a leak. Didn’t bother to close the bathroom door. Why should he? There wasn’t anyone there. The guy’s bladder must be a magnum. The fountain sound effects went on and on.

Finally, the sound stopped. There was a pause, during which I assumed he was giving his dick a shake. Zip. I heard the bathroom door close. He started out again. Stopped. Uttered another of those wordless exclamations. Headed, oh shit, in my direction. With dread, I heard him pull the cord. The heavy curtains started to move slowly inward. I held my breath.

If he closed the drapes all the way, he couldn’t possibly miss my shape bulging out behind them. I did my best to flatten myself against the wall without actually moving any part of my body. Now I had to piss. Power of suggestion. The plush velvet fabric caressed my face as it passed slowly by. My nose twitched. I couldn’t hold my breath much longer. I didn’t have the faintest idea how I was going to get out of this. When the drapes reached a point precisely halfway closed, they stopped.

“Hah!” This time the wordless little noise sounded satisfied. If Chuckie wasn’t a diagnosable obsessive compulsive, he was enough of a neat freak to be pleased when he got the curtains exactly the way he left them every night, precisely halfway across. I waited behind the curtain for at least five minutes after he left, sweating but grateful to be undiscovered and very glad to breathe. Then I got my ass out of there. I did not pass Go, I did not collect two hundred dollars, and I did not risk visiting his bathroom. I actually used the men’s room in the subway station, which if you know New York just goes to show how desperate I was. I was pissing copiously and with gratitude when I realized I had never turned off the laptop. With any luck, the battery would run down before he opened the case again. Next time he used it, chances were he’d plug it in. He’d never know.

*

That night, Barbara convened another council of war. She made Jimmy come out from behind the computer, brought in a pot of coffee, and settled us on the couch. She curled up in an armchair, facing us, with a lined yellow pad and a determined expression.

“So. What have we got?” Evidently the question was rhetorical. “I’ve got it all divided into categories. One, his family. Two, people he knew from the program. Three, staff and clients in detox.” Her face fell. “And four, everybody else in the world that he might have known, might have seen, and we have no idea who they are. Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s crazy for us even to be doing this.”

Jimmy got up, sat on the arm of her chair, and put his arm around her.

“No, pumpkin, it’s great. You’re doing fine.” He gave me a say-something-encouraging glare.

“Go on,” I said. “Even if we never find out what happened, I’d rather feel as if we’re doing something. Really.” As I said it, I realized with some surprise that it was true. We might be floundering around. We might even be the world’s most aimless amateur detectives. But trying to draw the threads of God’s life together was helping me get past his death. Tracking down people who’d known him, asking questions, it all gave it a kind of structure. It made the flatness of reality without a drink or drug a little more bearable. I imagined running into some old acquaintance who would ask what I was doing these days. “Staying clean and sober one day at a time.” Yuck. “Working as a temp.” Blech. “Trying to track down a murderer.” Hmm. Tolerable. I tuned back in to Barbara.

“We know that everyone in the family gains financially by God’s death. We know that Emmie and her kids saw him that last day and that something could have been slipped into the tea he drank there. I can’t believe Emmie would have hurt him, though. She was the one that loved him and had such a hard time not enabling him. Besides, I’ve gotten to know her a bit, and I’ve heard her share at meetings. She’s so—sincere. It sounds awful, but she really is. Can you imagine a sincere murderer?”

Jimmy and I dutifully shook our heads.

“Let’s not forget Emmie’s husband, the plastic surgeon.”

“Uncle Sam,” I said.

Barbara made a face. “I still haven’t forgiven him for reaming out that poor Marlene.”

“Don’t forget the nephew,” I said. “It looks like Chuckie paid God off when he showed up drunk before Christmas. Whatever Chuckie gave him he spent on booze and drugs. And got sick enough to end up in detox.”

“When God came back after New Year’s, Chuckie sent him up to Sam. Sam gave him two thousand dollars. We do agree on that?”

“It sure sounded like it.” Jimmy frowned. His fingers, which could never keep still and were usually playing over a computer keyboard, twiddled with the tassels on a cushion. “The day after New Year’s, Sam and Chuckie told each other they had to do something about God. They didn’t want him coming back to the well every few days. But we don’t know if they simply paid him to go away or egged each other on to do something drastic.”

Barbara shook her head. “If you were going to kill one of your relatives, would you tell your nephew?”

“I don’t have a nephew.”

“Bruce!” She made it two exasperated syllables.

“Well, I don’t,” I said. “But no. If I planned to kill somebody, I wouldn’t tell a soul.”

“I have nephews.” Jimmy moved restlessly back to the computer. “And no.”

“Suppose God was getting in the way,” I said. “Some family business scheme. Something he wouldn’t sign or change. Like not letting Lucinda sell her house.” He had sounded gleefully vindictive that last day.

“But Lucinda wasn’t the one who paid him off.”

“Maybe the trust owns all their assets. I’ll see what I can find out.” Jimmy made a note, his fingers flying on the keyboard. “The more money involved, the more just throwing him a few thousand bucks to get out of town would not have been enough.”

“When did God see Sam?” Barbara asked. “You say the nephew sent him up there. When he visited Emmie, Sam wasn’t there. She would have said.”

“Before or after,” I said. “Does it matter? He must have known they didn’t talk to each other, at least about him. He could have stopped by to see Sam, gotten what he could out of him, and simply not mentioned it when he went on upstairs to see his sister and the kids. He wasn’t about to say, ‘Oh, by the way, sis, I just extorted two grand from your husband.’”

Barbara nodded. “And Emmie wouldn’t have told him God had visited, because he had ordered her not to let him anywhere near the kids.”

“What was that about?” Jimmy asked.

“Sam being controlling,” Barbara suggested.

“I wonder.”

“Follow the money,” I said. It was great advice, the kind I frequently wished I’d taken in my own life.

“So what happened to the money?” Barbara asked. “If he had two thousand on him when he got back to detox, where did it go after he died?”

“Good question. They had a problem with a sneak thief.” I had forgotten all about it. “They gave us The Talk. You know, about the code of the streets not applying in recovery.”

“Charmaine mentioned it to me,” said Barbara. “She worried because the men might be feeling sensitive about being accused.”

“None of the guys I talked to admitted knowing anything about it. But yes, a patient could have taken that money.”

“You two know the staff,” Jimmy said. “What about them?”

Barbara and I looked at each other. Simultaneously, we said, “Darryl.”

“Who’s he?”

“One of the counselors. Used to be a dealer.”

“A sleazebucket,” I told him. “And he hated God.”

“I didn’t know that,” Barbara said.

“Yeah, they had a nasty little head butt in group, and things went downhill from there.”

“What if God caught him taking it?”

I thought about that. The code of the streets had sure as hell not applied to the relationship between God and Darryl. No loyalty there.

“If Darryl was the thief, it would have been a lot easier to take the money from God’s pockets after he died. Especially if he already knew it was there.”

“Would Darryl kill for two thousand bucks?”

“People kill for a pair of Nikes or a Mets jacket.”

“Kids,” Barbara objected, as if that made more sense. Killer kids. What a world.

“Ask yourself if he’d kill not to be exposed and prosecuted for theft. Or not to lose his job, if he was using it as a cover for dealing drugs.”

“And a nice little market,” Barbara added. “I hate to think that might be happening there. Some of those guys are trying so hard to get clean.”

“Darryl was a repeat offender,” I pointed out. “If he gets in any kind of trouble, it’s big trouble.”

“Anyone else you’d suspect?” Jimmy asked. “Counselors? The Russian guy? Security guard?”

“Security guard would have to wake up first.”

“And Boris is a sweetie,” Barbara added. “We still don’t know how come we saw him near Lucinda’s in the Village the other night. But as far as I can tell, that doesn’t have anything to do with anything.”

“Darryl’s the only real badass in the whole bunch.”

“That may be true,” Jimmy said, “but everybody has a vulnerable spot. If it isn’t about the stolen money, what else could have been going on?”

“Something else that wasn’t kosher, you mean?”

“Yeah. Who had a secret? Anything God might have seen or heard or made some kind of trouble about?”

“There’s Bark’s gambling,” Barbara said. “A senior counselor doesn’t make that much, and Bark is always going to Atlantic City. He won’t admit he has a problem, but I think he’s a compulsive gambler.”

“Does Boris have a green card?” I had met my share of Russian immigrants, out drinking and in AA. Getting a green card was a big deal.

“He’s going for his CASAC. You can’t get a state credential if you’re illegal.”

“He could have a fake.” I had seen plenty of forged documentation—green cards, Social Security, you name it. I knew guys with two Medicaid cards.

“Lucinda’s on the board of this Russian refugee organization. Maybe she helped him get into the States. Though as far as the credential goes, people will try anything, especially to get a job. Charmaine once told me about a guy she interviewed, sent her a great-looking resume with lots of experience in psych clinics, gave psychiatrists as references. Turned out he’d been a mental patient. He was convinced that qualified him, too.”

“What about Charmaine? Has she got a tragic secret?”

“Don’t joke! Her little girl has Down’s. It’s not a secret, but it’s a vulnerable spot. But you can’t suspect my friends!”

“Okay, keep your shirt on. Then who else? What about the other nephew?” Jimmy asked. “Miles Standish.”

“Robert. I forgot to tell you,” Barbara said. “Emmie and I were coming out of a meeting the other night, and the AA meeting was letting out at the same time. So all of a sudden Emmie lights up like a Christmas tree, gets this big grin on her face, and says, ‘Stop a moment. It’s my nephew!’ And it was Robert. Of course I didn’t let on I had heard of him. I let her introduce him to me—first name only, of course. Bobby. He’s a nice guy. And he’s been sober a while, you could tell by the way he talked about the Steps.”

“Sober doesn’t necessarily mean above suspicion,” Jimmy pointed out.

“Less likely, though,” said Barbara.

“God never said a word,” I said, “about anybody else in the family being in recovery.”

“Didn’t want to hear about recovery,” said Barbara. “I gather God was still in pretty much of an active alcoholic head, wouldn’t you say, Bruce?”

“Yeah. Maybe it would have changed. He didn’t have the time.”

Barbara was looking at me with compassion, dammit. She could spot sad at a hundred paces. The whole thing confused me—where I was at, where God was at, where he would have been, where I might be. All I knew was I didn’t know anything about anything.

“I think I’ve had enough for one night.” My tone verged on the pathetic, but I couldn’t help it.

“Fifteen minutes, sweetie,” Barbara promised. “You met those people from the meeting who knew God. If sober doesn’t equal innocent, we need to hear about them.”

I groaned. “Okay, okay. I already told you about Mo, Maureen. She was in the middle of trying to figure out her sexual orientation when they had a fling that went badly. I don’t know if she was more hurt or more angry. But since then, she’s come out. If she’s a lesbian, why would she care if God could get it up or not?”

“It doesn’t necessarily work that way,” said Barbara. “People can hold on to sexual grudges for a long time. Reason has nothing to do with it. Someone rejects you in bed, it’s a narcissistic wound.”

“If you say so. Then there’s this guy Roger who got into some sort of business venture with God and got screwed when he didn’t come through.”

“Mistake,” said Jimmy. “You should never try to do business with people from program. Too complicated. Ends badly.”

Another of the thousand and one excuses for drinking.

“He knows that now. But in the meantime, he was ready to kill the guy, or at least beat the shit out of him. It sounded like his friends were barely holding him back at the time it happened.”

“You think someone struggling with impulse control like that,” said Barbara, “would even think of poison?”

“You never know. There could be more to the story than we know about.”

“That’s the trouble with this whole thing.” Barbara looked discouraged again.

“Hey.” Jimmy ruffled her hair. “One step at a time. That’s all we can do.”

“You can talk. You don’t really care if we find out or not.”