Queens Ransom (Sofie Metropolis) (7 page)

Ten

‘What happened to you?’

While I was out and about, Eugene Waters called my cell and I met up with the five-foot-nothing African-American who probably weighed as much as Muffy on a good day outside a motel on Queens Boulevard, his newly adopted hairstyle of retro-Afro making him look like a burnt matchstick, his single gold tooth flashing in the light of the neon ‘Vacancy’ sign. It felt late, but I knew it was only around five thirty. Early by anyone’s standards. Except when it came to my stomach, which was reminding me I hadn’t eaten anything but a couple of gritty bites of the moussaka I had during my non-date with David Hunter.

‘Aw, this?’ He motioned absently to his face, which even the dim light revealed his right eye was nearly swollen shut. ‘One of my ho’s decided to get uppity with a niggah. Ain’t that some shit?’

I had a hard time hiding my answering laugh, amused that his ‘fro wasn’t the only retro item he’d recently adopted; his language also emerged like something out of a seventies movie.

‘One of your ho’s, huh?’

‘Uh huh. Bitch had the gull to ask me for money. Too new to understand she’s the one who’s supposed to be supplying me with some green, you know what I mean?’

‘Mmm . . . indeed. More like your old lady got upset and hit you upside the head for being late for supper.’

He gave a quiet, ‘Heh heh,’ and shuffled his eight-inch platform shoes on top of the cleaned and salted sidewalk, his Caddy puffing exhaust fumes our way where he’d left it running at the curb. ‘You comin’ to know me too well. And it wasn’t for being late, it was for forgetting her mama’s birthday.’

The exchange reminded me of the first time I’d crossed paths with the wiry man. I’d been serving eviction notice papers; he’d been wearing a too-short pink women’s robe edged with feathers and matching mules . . . while a woman at least three times his height and five times his weight yelled profanity at him from a back room, and whose shout had blown my hair back when I’d come face to face with her.

Who’d have thought after that fateful first meeting we’d now be working together?

He jumped up and down. ‘Damn, it’s colder than a witch’s tit out here.’

‘I’ll take your word for it. So what do we got here?’

While I’d hired him on for process serving, he’d been so effective he’d quickly worked his way to cheating-spouse cases, which is what I was guessing this was about.

‘I followed the Menendez wife here. I hate this motel ’cause it got both a front and a back entrance and you can’t see the room doors from here.’

I merely stared at him.

‘OK, night manager don’t like me,’ he said.

‘What did you do?’

I’d found out quickly that low-paid motel and hotel clerks were a valuable resource and prided myself in cultivating relationships with them.

Eugene had been particularly good at it, too. Or at least I’d thought so.

He said something so low I could barely make it out.

‘What was that?’

‘How was I supposed to know the maid was his girlfriend?’

How, indeed.

Yeah, that would pretty much burn any resource.

If I found it ironic Eugene had cheated while working a cheating-spouse case . . . well, I wasn’t telling him that.

‘OK, let me go get you in,’ I said.

‘Just get me a back door key. I’ll take care of the rest.’

I nodded.

Within minutes I’d gone in and come back out with the card key, having slid the manager the usual twenty for the trouble.

‘Thanks.’

I crossed my arms. ‘You could have taken care of that. May have taken you another couple of bills, but that’s the price you pay, I guess. So what did you really want to see me about?’

He pointed a finger at me and smiled, sliding the card key into his front shirt pocket. ‘You good, you know that, Metro? I don’t care what they say about you. You know what you’re doing.’

Who was saying what about me?

‘I need some money.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah. I mean, I don’t like to say nothing negative about a girl, ’cause you know I’m all about the ladies, especially pretty ones, but that Rosie . . . she been something else lately.’

I agreed.

‘With it being Christmas and all, I could really use some cold hard cash, you know? My lady . . . well, she got her eye on this fur coat.’ He chuckled. ‘And you seen my woman. For one her size, I gotta fork over some major shekels.’

‘Rosie not giving you enough work?’

‘Aw, nah, she giving me enough. I was just hoping you’d throw something a little something extra a brother’s way, you know? Something maybe that pay a little better than serving and photographing people doing what nature intended.’

Nature intended?

I wasn’t going to argue the point. After catching my ex-groom with his pants around his ankles on the day of our wedding, I’d argued it enough with myself to last a lifetime.

But considering his little problem with the night manager, I was hoping maybe he might have learned a personal lesson.

Apparently, he hadn’t.

Another point I wasn’t up to arguing just then.

While I’d used Waters a couple of times outside normal parameters, I’d stopped about a month ago. Back when he’d called me from a dark alley downtown one night, swearing bats were chasing him, then essentially abandoned me when I went to rescue him – ending up with a huge block of time for which I couldn’t account, resulting from a sort of trance mumbo-jumbo the neighborhood vampire’s creepy nephew had put me under – I really hadn’t used him since.

Hey, you couldn’t blame me, could you?

I looked toward Lucille parked at the curb to find Muffy practically licking the inside of the driver’s window in a bid for freedom. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if his saliva could freeze the glass and a simple tap from his paw could shatter it. It was that cold.

And the day was working out that odd.

Before I’d taken Eugene’s call, I’d stopped by my parents’ house, figuring I’d better pick up that
saranta
token and whatever bland, undesirable food my mother had prepared that day that I’d pretend to eat.

But she hadn’t been home.

And my sister Efi said she’d pretty much been AWOL all day.

Hunh.

Where could my mother have been all day without pelting me with messages designed to make me feel guilty?

‘Actually,’ I said to Eugene now. ‘I’m working a big case now. Let me see what I can throw your way, OK?’

‘Cool. Cool. I’ll take anything. No matter how dirty.’

‘Now would I give you something dirty?’

‘You haven’t yet. But I keep hoping.’

A car rolled by on the street next to us, slow enough to catch my attention.

The Crown Vic.

OK, now this was getting downright creepy.

‘All right. I’ll be in touch. Once you get the pics, go home and make good with your wife.’

‘Nah. Think I’m gonna let her stew a little.’ He sniffed and straightened the lapels of his tan leather jacket that was probably as effective in battling the cold as my own brown one. ‘Let her miss me.’

‘OK. I can only hope I don’t see you with a matching black eye tomorrow.’

I watched him strut back to his Caddy, presumably to get his camera equipment, and then headed back toward mine. Peripherally, movement caught my attention. I turned my head and gaped at an unfamiliar sight on Queens Boulevard. Hell, in all of New York City, period.

A deer.

More specifically, a reindeer.

Rudy!

What were the chances?

I hadn’t even thought about Mrs Claus and her missing reindeer since she’d given me a photo I really hadn’t needed the day before. Yet here he was, large as life and twice as impressive, standing across the street looking back at me.

What a majestic creature. For just a moment it was easy to imagine he was standing in the snow of some rugged mountainside, the cars a fast-running stream, the buildings behind him rocky outcrops.

How did one go about catching a reindeer?

I didn’t know, but I figured now would be a good time to figure it out.

I quickly opened the car door, prepared to give chase . . . and Muffy zoomed out, heading straight for the Santa standing outside a half a block up ringing a bell outside a drugstore, his collection pot left untouched for as long as I’d been there.

‘Muffy!’

Too late. I watched in abstract horror as he lifted his leg and released a stream worthy of Guinness attention on the unsuspecting Santa.

When I looked back across the street, Rudy was gone.

A while later I trudged up the stairs of my apartment building, an unrepentant Muffy in tow.

My apartment building. Amazed me to think how easy it was now to view the three-story structure in those terms. It had been given to me as a wedding gift by my parents, and while by rights I should have given it back, I hadn’t. Like the unopened gifts still piled against my bedroom wall, time had entered into a warp of sorts when it came to that part of my life.

Besides, since everyone – including my mother, probably – had known about Thomas’ extra-curricular activities, I figured it was only right I take a while to figure things out.

So I’d moved into the apartment upstairs, taken the job at my uncle’s, and moved through the hours, days, weeks and months until I stood where I was now.

Which was where, exactly?

Muffy barked, his little body a coil of tension where I held him tightly in my arms lest the need to raise his leg on someone or something else he shouldn’t take hold. Although I was pretty sure there was nothing left in his bladder, given the puddle he’d left dripping from the drugstore Santa’s pants leg.

There went another twenty spot I’d never see again. And the unhappy Santa still hadn’t looked any happier.

‘Do you have any idea how much it costs to have this sucker cleaned?’ he’d asked.

I’d plucked up my crazy dog and left, thinking maybe the Santa trick had been taught to him by his previous owner and my mother’s late best friend Mrs Kapoor, who had never believed in men wearing red suits.

Of course, a lot of people didn’t. But they didn’t train their furry friends to piss all over them.

‘Bad dog,’ I said to him again, in case I hadn’t gotten my point across the other half dozen times I’d said it.

He barked again and licked my chin.

I put him down.

‘Sofie. You didn’t have to come.’

I reached the second floor to find Mrs Nebitz waiting in her doorway for me. I opened my apartment door, waited for Muffy to go inside after he did his sniffing, circling bit around the elderly neighbor’s legs – that he thankfully left urine-free – then closed the door after him, ignoring his whine of protest.

Turd.

I turned back to Mrs Nebitz. ‘I figured it’s the least I could do. Is he here?’

I’d called the plumber again to confirm the time of his visit earlier and was glad it happened to coincide with my ability to be there to oversee things.

‘Yes, yes. But it was unnecessary, really. You see, my grandson Seth is here, as well. I’m sure he’ll be able to fix it. It is only a leaky faucet, after all.’

‘Better to make sure. Are they in your kitchen?’

‘Yes, yes. Come in.’

If Mrs Nebitz appeared a little animated, I put it down to the unaccustomed activity she was being treated to, which I suspected wasn’t altogether unpleasant.

I smiled. The way I saw it, she deserved to have an unleaky faucet.

Along with the attention of two young, attractive males.

‘Hey, Joe,’ I said to the young plumber I’d inherited with the building. So far I had no complaints and I could only hope that would hold.

‘Hey, Sof,’ he said back from where he was under the sink.

‘You remember my grandson, don’t you, Sofie?’ Mrs Nebitz said.

Of course I remembered her grandson. Even if he hadn’t looked like the statue of David come to life with all that blonde hair, blue eyes and chiseled physique, there was that whole Rosie heart-stomping thing.

A little hard to forget.

Especially since mine had been the shoulder she’d soaked in tears.

Several times.

Not to mention her insufferable moods as of late.

‘Sofie,’ he said, sounding awkward.

‘Seth,’ I said back, avoiding meeting his gaze where he messed around with the faucet head.

‘Seth was just telling the nice Mr Wurzelbacher he thinks it’s the soap.’

‘The washer,’ he corrected.

Joe’s voice was slightly muted from under the sink. ‘Never hurts to check a little further.’

‘I agree.’

The room fell strangely silent considering there were four of us in there. Nothing but the sound of metal tools scratching against metal objects.

‘Sofie, would you like some knish?’ Mrs Nebitz asked. ‘Seth brought some fresh.’

‘I’d love some.’ I jumped at both the chance to leave the room and to enjoy some knish, which was, no doubt, from Knish Nosh, the best in town.

We sat together in her living room that reminded me of my mother’s, handmade doilies covering nearly every available surface along with photographs, mostly old black-and-white and sepia prints, but some new. The small television was tuned in to
Wheel of Fortune
but the volume was low, so I watched a voiceless Vanna White pretend to turn letters.

Wait a minute, Vanna was always voiceless.

OK, maybe it was the fact that she was sans bells and whistles and dings that made it seem strange somehow.

‘So,’ Mrs Nebitz said after cutting me a square of knish and handing me a plate. ‘How’re things?’

‘Things are good. How about with you? You looking forward to Hanukkah in a couple of days?’

‘Yes, yes. Things couldn’t be better.’

I found it curious she didn’t launch into a blow by blow of her coming schedule as she normally did.

Probably she was distracted by the two men in her kitchen.

Probably she wanted to stay alert in case they said something.

‘So . . . how is your friend Rosie?’

I nearly choked on my knish. Probably I was wrong.

The last thing I expected was for her to enquire after the feisty Puerto Rican who had nearly upset all of her plans by falling in love with her beloved grandson.