Primed for Murder (16 page)

On one wall hung an oil portrait of the little boy he’d seen in photographs. “How old is your son?” Toby asked to make conversation.

She paused after four thousand to look fondly at the painting. “Art’s twelve now. Already in seventh grade.”

“You must have been pretty young when he was born.”

“Seventeen.” Her cheeks flushed. “Now you know how old I am.”

“I’ll never tell. You could still pass for a teenager.”

“Flatterer.” She seemed pleased.

“Your son’s a nice-looking young fellow.”

“I think so.”

“Takes after his mother.”

She smiled with motherly pride. “Do you have children, Toby?”

Toby smiled back at her. “Not married.”

“You didn’t answer the question.” Her eyes were playful.

“No, no children.” Toby glanced at the painting again. “You said his name was Art. Short for Arthur?”

“Arturo, actually. Same thing.” She smiled. “When you’re Italian like me and my ‘better half’”—there was a hint of sarcasm in the last two words—“you can’t have a Tom, Dick or Harry. It’s got to be Guido, Carlo, or Vito.” She made an aimless gesture. “He’s named after his father but hates being called ‘Junior.’ We call him Art because my husband goes by Artie.” Dezi started counting out green bills again.

“Your husband’s named Artie?” Toby blurted. His lips suddenly felt numb. The hair on his arms stood up and it felt like spiders were walking on his skin. Could that be the same man who was with Leo? The man at the Puterbaugh’s who killed the Mexican? By photos, Dezi’s husband wasn’t much taller than his wife but built like Hercules. He was dark-haired with spaniel’s eyes, like lots of men in Syracuse. How many were named Artie? Toby wondered what this particular Artie looked like from the back, running away, as viewed at a distance, say from the top of a ladder.

“Arturo Giovanni Colangelo.” Dezi smiled. “A real mouthful. But I’m a fine one to talk. My maiden name was Desdemona Ofelia Giambi.”

Giambi? This just gets better and better, Toby thought.

Mrs. Colangelo read something in his eyes. “Maybe you’ve heard of my father? Roberto Giambi?”

His worst fears confirmed, Toby had trouble keeping a straight face. “Don’t know—what’s he do?” His voice squeaked as if he’d suddenly hit puberty again.

“He’s semi-retired now. He once ran a number of businesses: real estate, warehouses and factories. I don’t know what-all.” Like extortion or loan-sharking, Toby thought, smuggling and contract murder.

Dezi shrugged. “Now other people, like my older brothers and Artie are in charge. But Daddy still pulls the strings.”

“Your hubby works for your dad? Doing what?”

A frown marred Dezi’s marble-smooth brow. “Artie is a manager or something. I don’t pay much attention.” She sounded peeved. “Giambi men have never allowed women to take part in their commerce.”

Dezi waved her husband out of the picture. “Artie comes and goes on business trips all the time. He often leaves in a hurry and doesn’t tell me much. He’s gone now, I don’t know where and I don’t really care. Little Art’s at camp till school starts. Seems a perfect time to paint the house.”

“Will you be here while I’m working?”

“Part of the time. I have to go out of town for a while and I’d like to unwind at the family home on the lake. But I’ll be here until you call.”

They agreed that Toby would start in two days. He’d rent a steamer for the wallpaper, then buy tape, mud and paint. She’d arrange to have furniture moved or covered before he came back.

Then Mrs. Colangelo held out a thick stack of bills. He hesitated, reconsidering the wisdom of sticking his head in the noose this job might represent. But he did what he knew all along he’d do: he’d live dangerously. Toby took the money. The cash would come in handy if he had to leave town fast.

Dezi insisted he count the bills. He did, with trembling fingers, and the count went on and on. It was all there: seventy-five hundred. The most cash he’d ever held all at once, with the same amount to come again in a few weeks. Somebody up there must like him. Or was it a trap? There was only one way to find out. Toby promised to call before he came over in two days.

He practically skipped down the steps to his truck, stripped off the coveralls and threw them in the cab. With a fist-sized roll of money lumping his pocket, Toby drove away, uncertain of his next destination. Should he go to the bank to open up a checking account or resuscitate his meager savings? Better to hang onto the money for now. He’d get a cash discount when he bought paint and supplies for the Colangelo job from his friendly neighborhood retailer. Besides, that wad of green felt damn good against his thigh.

Toby headed straight to Danzer’s Restaurant. He celebrated his good fortune with a mug of beer and a Reuben on slabs of pumpernickel as thick and wide as both his palms. Flushed with largesse, he bought a couple rounds and was repaid in kind. Pleasantly full and with a mild glow—but in reasonable control of his faculties—when he left four hours later, Toby drove to the Puterbaugh’s neighborhood. He purposely parked several streets away, on the same block as the night before.

The compact sedan he’d noticed still sat there, wearing its coat of dust. In daylight the car was beige, a match for the dead man’s suit. A sheaf of parking ticket mail-in envelopes was held to the windshield by the driver’s wiper. All were signed with a flourish: Officer T. Grady. They were all for the same non-moving violation: failure to comply with alternate-side parking. Usually, such rules, instituted for street sweeping or winter snow removal, were relaxed in warm weather. T. Grady, whoever he—or she—was, must be particularly officious or behind on the quota. Or maybe it was because the sedan was out-of-state: it had Texas plates framed by metal holders imprinted with the name of a car-rental agency in Brownsville. The driver’s-side door was unlocked and Toby was tempted to inspect the interior to see if his instincts were correct. But that could wait until dark. Too many people in the area were taking advantage of nice weather to do yard work or build on their tans for him to prowl the vehicle unseen now. He’d come back tonight.

As he walked towards the Puterbaugh’s a couple fire engines screamed by a half-dozen blocks away. Their sirens trailed away east. Toby felt a pang of pity for the poor people who owned the flaming home.

The Puterbaugh house seemed quiet, blinds drawn, windows closed tight. Not sure what he would say if someone happened to be home, Toby knocked. But there was no answer and after a minute he gave it up. It didn’t look good for Mr. and Mrs. P. He sauntered back to his truck, giving the beige car another quick glance.

A block after he turned onto James, just three blocks from home, he confronted a barricade of two police cars parked front-to-front across the road. Beyond an officer who approached, flashing lights swirled. Helmeted and slicker-covered figures disappeared into a thick cloud of billowing smoke. “What’s happening?” Toby asked the cop, a young blond fellow with the beginnings of a donut gut.

“House fire.” His tone said,
Are you blind?

“Which one? I live down that way.”

“Couldn’t say. But you’ll have to keep out of the area until they get it under control or the place burns down.” He waved Toby to the left.

The firemen had a three-block radius cordoned against vehicular traffic. Toby found a parking space and hurried on foot, along with rubbernecks drawn from all directions, towards the fire. Nearer the source of smoke, he glimpsed flames that, through haze, looked as though they were behind translucent glass.

He slowed and other spectators rushed past. No doubt about it now: Toby recognized all the familiar landmarks. The fire was consuming his home.

Chapter 13

The flames were fierce, dancing through the apartment house roof fifty feet into the air when Toby drew close enough to feel heat. He traversed the opposite sidewalk, watching the destruction. Thick, dark smoke funneled upward like a tornado against china-blue sky. The whole upper half and much of the lower floor of the big house were ablaze. Part of the roof had already collapsed. The twisted, buckled metal staircase leading to Toby’s rooms ascended into a crackling inferno. Through a choking pall rent by glowing trails of drifting debris, dim shapes of firemen in neon yellow-trimmed gear and breathing apparatus moved against the fiery backdrop, spraying water from different positions. It wasn’t doing much good: the fire was too far along. Houses on either side were widely spaced and in no immediate danger but they were being wetted down anyway. An ambulance, lights flashing, was parked near a fire engine. Beyond the ambulance sat a local TV news van with a gaudy logo. A slick-looking sports-jacketed man with a mike was interviewing a white-haired man in fire chief’s uniform while a skinny fellow in cutoffs and T-shirt videotaped them both.

Farther down the sidewalk, Toby ran into four of his neighbors huddled together, their eyes fixed on the conflagration and their mouths agape in horror. One of the downstairs girls—Sylvia or Jean, Toby didn’t know which—spotted him first from fifty feet away and charged. Her hair was wet, partly in curlers. Her pink fluffy slippers slapped the concrete and her robe flashed open as she ran, revealing bare legs. Her roommate sprinted over too, followed by the two men.

“Oh, Tobeee, I’m so happy to see you,” Jean or Sylvia squealed. She threw herself against him. Her eyes were wet but it was impossible to tell if the tears were caused by emotion or smoke irritation. In either case, her mascara was a mess. “We didn’t know if you got out,” she murmured against his chest. The other woman, in sweaty T-shirt and jogging shorts, hugged them both, sobbing. Toby returned the embrace.

The bearded tenant who’d just moved in shuffled over. He mumbled a greeting, his eyes on the blaze. Todd patted Toby’s shoulder. “What happened?” Toby asked anybody. “How’d the fire get started?”

The bearded man, in a voice with a lot of nose, said, “It was already going when I got home from work.” He spoke as though afraid of being accused of the crime. He wore a gray suit and held a brushed aluminum case of the type made popular by drug dealers. He ran fingers through his hair and then wandered distractedly down the sidewalk.

“I wasn’t here, either.” Todd gave his alibi. “The bus dropped me—” he glanced at a fancy large-dial, multiple-button watch strapped to his bony wrist—“seven minutes, twelve seconds ago, to be precise.” Todd turned to study the fire as if it was a classroom experiment gone awry.

“I was jogging,” said the woman in the running outfit. Her voice was shaky and her whole body trembled. She didn’t want to turn loose of Toby. It was okay with him.

“I was here,” the wet-haired one said. She kept arms locked around Toby’s neck. Tears streamed down her cheeks, dragging dark makeup along for the ride. “I just got out of the shower, when BOOM!”

“Probably a faulty gas pipe,” Todd noted, his eyes still on the flames. “These old houses are seldom up to code.” He uttered a soft cooing sound when a section of blazing roof caved in.

“It sounded like the whole building was coming down on my head,” the woman in curlers wailed. “I had just time to grab my robe and run before flames began eating through the ceiling.” Her face collapsed and she sagged against Toby’s chest. “I could have been killed!”

“An explosion?” Toby stroked a curler. He tried “Jean?” and hit a bull’s-eye.

Jean let go and swiped at her eyes, further smearing makeup. “Sounded like it to me. The whole building shook. The bathroom ceiling cracked. When I got outside, your apartment was just…gone, Toby.”

“Now everything’s gone,” said the one who had to be Sylvia, her sweaty, pleasantly smelly body still tight against him. She stared at the fire. “All our clothes.”

“All our books,” Jean said. “Cell phones. Cosmetics.”

“CDs and computers.”

“Photos and cameras.”

“Plants and dishes.”

“Ditto,” said Toby.

They had a group hug. Toby had been lucky. He hadn’t lost much. What was gone could be replaced with the money in his pants, except for the tenor sax, a pawnshop Selmer with nice tone and good action. “Where’s Joe?”

“At work,” Sylvia said. “He doesn’t get off till eight.”

“How about Bart?” Nobody knew. Nobody seemed to care much.

Toby and the two women lolled together on somebody’s lawn across the street while firemen battled the blaze. Somewhere inside the burning house, glass shattered.

“What’ll we do now?” Sylvia asked. “Where’ll we go? Where will stay tonight?”

“I don’t know.” Jean’s eyes lit up with reflected flames. “All my money was in there. Cash, checks, credit cards, everything.”

“Mine, too,” Sylvia said.

“I won’t go live with my folks again.” Jean’s lips pinched. “I won’t.”

“Me neither,” Sylvia said. “I hate Binghamton.”

“Do you have family in the area, Toby?” Jean asked.

“Nope.”

“What are you going to do?” Sylvia asked.

“Find a new place, buy new clothes, and settle into my rut again.”

“You have any money, Toby?” the two women asked together.

He thought about lying, crying poverty too. But he so seldom got the chance to play moneybags. “Matter of fact, I’m loaded.” He discreetly flashed the wad. “Just got paid in advance for a painting job. Could I interest you ladies in a loan?”

Jean and Sylvia shrieked in delight at his openhandedness. There were more hugs and a few kisses. He promised to spring for a motel room and a meal that night.

They lounged amiably as the fire raged, making plans, oohing as a window burst, aahing as a wall caved in. After discussing various options, they agreed to check into the Upstater Motel in North Syracuse. Sylvia had stayed there once and proclaimed it “nice.” They’d have dinner together that night.

That settled, they chatted about house hunting together for a more permanent residence. By pooling incomes, they could afford a better place for the three of them, maybe in the suburbs. Just a straight business arrangement, of course, no hanky-panky implied or intended. It shouldn’t be difficult, in these liberated times, to find someone willing to rent to their mixed but gainfully employed group. They’d start looking tomorrow.