Die for You (30 page)

They approached Shane from behind, pushing through a throng of salivating weirdoes. They each put an arm on him and he spun from the stage. His face registered surprise and alarm, then he bent at the waist and knocked through them, causing Jez to stumble back hard into the stage. He saw her knock her head. But they both gave chase, the crowd parting. Someone started to scream at the site of the gun Crowe drew from his hip. Not that you could legally shoot a fleeing suspect in New York State. Still, it tended to stop people in their tracks.

Not Shane. He threw a terrified glance behind him, and at the sight of the gun seemed to pick up speed toward the door. Crowe reached out a hand and was just inches away from having Shane by the collar, when he felt the ground come up to meet him fast, and then he was on knees and elbows on the floor. He lost his grip on his Glock and the thing skittered away from him between the feet and ankles of the crowd gathered round. Someone had tripped him. He looked behind and saw one of the goons smiling.

He retrieved his gun and was about to get to his feet when Jez scrambled over him. He looked up at the door to see Shane exit and Jez follow. He was on his feet and out the door quickly, in time to see Jez disappear into an alleyway.

She was flying and he was already breathing hard. Luckily, he didn’t have far to run. By the time he reached them, Shane was on his face in a puddle of black filth, sputtering and yelling. Jez was on his back, with his arm twisted up behind him.

“You.
Stupid
. Mother
fucker,”
she was yelling, adrenaline and anger making her red and loud. She tugged on his arm and he released a girlish scream.

“Okay, easy,” he said, coming up on them, pulling the cuffs from his waist. He grabbed Shane’s other arm and cuffed him. He pulled Jez to her feet and kept a heavy foot on Shane’s back. He pulled the cell phone from his pocket and called Dispatch for backup. They were
so
closing that shithole down for a few hours.

He saw that Jez’s eye was red and the skin split and bleeding at the cheekbone. There was going to be a huge shiner; he could tell by the way the skin was already bluing beneath the red.

“He hit me,” she said, incredulous. “He got a hit in on me. That out-of-shape old man.”

“Okay, Kung Fu Mama. Breathe. Relax.”

“I don’t believe it. I turned the corner and he was waiting for me. I ran right into his fist.”

“But who’s on the ground now in a puddle of piss? You win.”

She nodded, walked a breathless circle, hands on hips.

“I want a fucking lawyer!” screamed Shane as Grady recited his rights. “Unnecessary force!”

“Shut up, Shane,” said Grady calmly, pushing hard with his shoe on Shane’s back. “Really. Please shut up.”

The wail of sirens was sudden and loud, seeming to come from nowhere, drowning out the sound of Shane screaming about injustice and the violation of his various rights.

“On his way,” Grady lied. “If that’s the way you want to go. I’ll tell you what, though. In spite of the list of charges—obstruction of justice, fleeing custody, assaulting an officer—we’re just not that interested in you. You’re more or less worthless to us.”

Shane didn’t look up and didn’t respond, but Grady could tell he was listening.

“We’re interested in the man you knew as Marcus Raine.”

Grady thought he saw Shane jump a little at the sound of the name but he couldn’t be sure.

“Did you know there are security cameras in the lobby of your building?” Jez lied. “We know you let people in to trash the Raines’ apartment. You tell us who those people are? And you’ll have your face back in underage tits before the sun comes up.”

Without his crisp uniform and smart cap, with a five o’clock shadow, reeking of booze and cigarettes, Shane seemed to have aged fifteen years since they saw him at the Raines’ building. Grady saw that his hands were covered in angry patches of raw, red skin, that his scalp was peeling, his nose red from regular boozing. His knee was pumping like a jackhammer; he was scared. Good news for them. Grady cobbled together a little story from the information they got from Isabel Raine. Some of it was true, some of it made up, like all good fiction. He’d see where it got them.

“At this point we know quite a bit. We know that Marcus Raine was really a man named Kristof Ragan. We now believe this man killed the real Marcus Raine, stealing his money and his identity. We know about Kristof’s brother, Ivan Ragan, a man with a criminal history, involved with the Albanian and Russian Mob. We suspect Ivan helped his brother in the commission of the crime. According to our research, Ivan Ragan was arrested on unrelated charges, about a week after Marcus Raine disappeared. He was recently released, serving a sentence for gun possession.

“Corresponding with his release, someone caught on that the man everyone knew as Marcus Raine was not who he said he was. So Kristof Ragan started pulling in his lines—cleaning out bank accounts, arranging for equipment to be stolen, then collecting the insurance check, taking money from his brother-in-law. Then he walked out of the life he’d made. A cleanup crew came in, trashed his office and his home, killing witnesses—four people dead so far. They destroyed or removed every possible piece of evidence. With your help.”

Charlie kept his head down, still no eye contact. But Grady watched as a bead of sweat dripped from the old man’s head and fell to the table between them. They’d managed to find some photographs—an Interpol photograph of Ivan Ragan and a picture of the woman Isabel Raine only knew as S from the Services Unlimited Web site.

Jez handed the shots to Grady and he laid them out on the table in front of Charlie Shane. Still he didn’t glance up, didn’t say a word.

“So either you were just a bit player who took a big tip to let in the cleanup crew, in which case you’ll take the line we’re offering here and tell us what you know. Or you know so much that you’re more afraid of them than you are of us, in which case we’re at an impasse and I’ll have to charge you with conspiracy.”

Charlie Shane looked up quickly. Grady suppressed a smile; he didn’t know how much of what he’d said was true—some of it, maybe a lot of it. But he thought it sounded pretty good. He was proud of himself.

“I don’t know anything,” said Shane. “Mr. Raine asked me to let some friends of his in to move some files from his home to his office, and I did that. He gave me a hundred dollars to do so, and not mention it no matter who asked. How was I supposed to know there was anything criminal going on? I’m the doorman. I do what I’m asked.”

“He asked you not to mention it, if asked. Gave you a hundred-dollar tip? That wasn’t a clue that something unsavory was transpiring?”

Shane shrugged.

“Did you know any of the people you let in?”

“Of course not.”

“Can you describe them? Would you recognize them again if you saw them?”

“Don’t you have a video? You know, from those surveillance cameras in the lobby?” He gave Grady a nasty, yellow smile. Grady hadn’t quite expected to fool him with his bit about the cameras; just introduce a shadow of doubt.

“That’s it,” said Jez. She’d been standing in the corner, silent, brooding. In spite of the ice, her eye was started to swell badly. She moved quickly to the table. Grady could see that she was pissed, wanted reason to put her hands on Charlie Shane. He thought he was going to have to intervene. But she backed away, moved toward the door. “Too much conversation. Let’s get the paperwork started.”

“Wait,” said Shane, lifting a hand. Jez paused at the door but didn’t turn around.

“Start with how you knew Camilla Novak,” said Jez.

Grady placed the only picture they had of Camilla, the one he’d found on the Internet, in front of him. Shane shook his head.

“We found her dead body in her apartment today,” Grady said. “She had a stamp on her hand from the Topaz Room, where we found you just a few hours ago. You were the doorman in the building of the man who more than probably killed her boyfriend and stole his identity. You knew her.”

More silence. Jez turned the knob and opened the door.

“I knew her,” he said quickly. “I knew her.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Jez closed the door and turned around.

“More than a few weeks ago—maybe closer to two months—I was covering Teaford’s shift and I heard yelling out on the street. It was after midnight. A woman, screaming.”

He released a deep breath, rubbed at his temples.

“I left my post and went out to the street and saw Miss Novak yelling at Mr. Raine.”

“What was she saying?”

“She was saying, ‘You love her, you love her. You weren’t supposed to love her.’”

“And what was Raine doing?”

“He was trying to calm her down, speaking in low tones. She screamed, ‘I betrayed him for you. I thought we were going to be together. I have blood on my hands for nothing.’ Something like that.” He waved a hand. “I don’t remember her exact words.”

His leg was still pumping and he was sweating as if he’d just spent an hour working out hard in the gym.

“Mr. Raine said, ‘Be patient. It’s almost through.’ He tried to walk away but she followed, yelling, ‘You liar, you liar. I’m going to burn it down. All of it.’ She grabbed hold of his arm. But he slapped her hard and she went reeling back. He saw me standing there then. ‘Call the police if she follows me,’ he told me. I was stunned. ‘Charlie, I know I can count on your discretion.’ He left her weeping on the street.”

“What did you do at that point?” asked Jez.

“I couldn’t just leave her there. After he went upstairs, I brought her into the lobby, gave her some ice for her mouth, asked if I could call her a taxi.”

“Where’d you get the ice?” asked Jez with a frown.

“What?” asked Shane. It must have seemed like a stupid question, apropos of nothing. But Grady knew why Jez had asked it. Lies lived in the little things, the details people threw in to make their stories sound truer.

“From a cooler I bring my meals in. I use an ice pack to keep things cold.”

She nodded, satisfied. Shane stared at the wall in front of him. “She seemed very fragile to me, unwell. I felt sorry for her. We talked awhile. I asked her what it was all about, the argument. Who had she betrayed? She said that she’d betrayed herself—over and over until she didn’t even remember who she was or what she wanted anymore. I told her that she wasn’t so different from anyone. We all betray ourselves one way or another. She said, ‘Not like this. Someone loved me, really loved me. And I betrayed him for a life I thought was in my reach.’ She wouldn’t tell me more.”

He paused a second. “She was beautiful, you know. But she seemed like a bird or a butterfly. You couldn’t catch her or touch her. Just look.”

“But you touched her, didn’t you?” Jez had returned to her corner; she was partially hidden in shadow. “A lot of people touched her. She was a call girl, right?”

He nodded reluctantly. “We made an arrangement.”

“You kept an eye on Raine, told her anything you saw suspicious or out of the ordinary, his comings and goings? And she gave herself to you in exchange?”

He gave a weak shrug. “Herself, once. Then passes to the Topaz Room. Other girls there.”

“But why would she want to know that? What was she looking for in particular?”

“She wanted to know things like how often the Raines went out, did they look happy, did he bring her flowers. She wanted to know if he stayed out late, brought any other women back to the apartment when Mrs. Raine was out of town. Things like that—jealous girlfriend things.”

“And what about Raine? Did he mention the incident again?”

Shane nodded. “On the way out to work the next morning, he gave me a hundred dollars, asked that I keep what happened the night before to myself. I agreed, of course. He said he’d continue to appreciate my discretion. And he did—with money, once tickets to a play once a nice bottle of scotch.”

“So you played them both.”

He bristled. “I
obliged
them both. Gave them both what they wanted.”

“Like any good doorman.”

“That’s right, sir.” But his chin dropped to his chest, shoulders lost their square.

“And this woman?” Grady tapped the photo of S.

Shane nodded. “She was one of the women I let into the apartment. There were four of them. Two women, two men. I let them in and out through the service door behind the building. They came with big empty sacks. When they left, they were all full. I didn’t ask any questions or say a word to any of them. Of course, I had no idea people had been murdered, that crimes had been committed. Until you came that night, I didn’t understand what I had done. I was afraid then. I ran.”

“Was he one of them?” Grady asked, pointing to the photograph of Ivan Ragan.

Shane shook his head. “No. Him—I’ve never seen.”

Isabel Raine had given them a lot of information—the photographs from the thumb drive in Camilla Novak’s purse, addresses, Web sites, names. She’d even drawn a few connections. Authors didn’t make bad detectives, it turned out.

“What else, Shane? What else do you have for us?”

Shane shook his head. “I am paid to be of service. And I did that for the Raines. It’s not my job to ask questions or pass judgment. I just hold open the door.”

Grady just stared at him for a minute. Shane was an oddity he didn’t quite understand. Grady couldn’t
stop
asking questions; finding the answers drove him. Analyzing, extrapolating meaning, finding connections—it was his job, his life. Maybe he had it all wrong.

“Camilla was a good girl, I think,” Shane said. “She made mistakes, had problems. But she wanted to be good.” He was just thinking out loud, Grady thought. Shane was tired, sinking into the depression that follows too much alcohol.

“Wanting to be good doesn’t make you good,” said Jez quietly, maybe a little sadly. She was looking down at her feet. Grady thought she should spring for a new pair of shoes.