A Jeff Resnick Six Pack Read online

  We waited for a break, then jumped back into the long line of walkers and continued on our way. It felt like I’d accomplished some monumental feat by not having a meltdown. The wound from that experience had finally scabbed over and was starting to heal. I felt pretty good about that—and after what I’d been through just an hour or so before, it seemed like progress.

  As we approached the cross street, I could already see that the bar I had once loved must have changed hands, as the name above the bank of beveled glass windows was different. It was now called Lady Liberty, with a picture of the Lady of the Harbor as their icon.

  We paused at the curb, waiting for the light to change.

  “That’s your old neighborhood bar?” Richard asked skeptically.

  “No, it’s not. It used to be an Irish pub.”

  “No shepherd’s pie or bangers-and-mash for lunch,” Richard predicted.

  The light changed and we crossed the street.

  We strode to the front of the bar and I plunged ahead, opening the door and entering. Once inside, I stopped dead as at least twenty women turned to glare at me and Richard, and I quickly realized we’d just invaded a lesbian haven.

  “We’re not in Kansas anymore,” Richard muttered only loud enough for me to hear.

  “Welcome, gentlemen. What can we do for you?” asked the woman behind the bar. Her dusky red hair had been shorn in what used to be called a brush cut. Her forearms were decorated with tattoos, and her ears and nose were pierced more than once. She proudly wore a Syracuse University sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up.

  “Hi,” I said, walking up to the old oak bar I used to know so well, but the rest of the décor had radically changed. The place used to be dark, with lots of golden oak wood and splashes of green, along with horse brass, Celtic crosses, and the occasional shamrock. All that had been obliterated and the walls were now a stark white with a plethora of black-and-white photos of women of substance decorating the walls: Susan B. Anthony, Betty Freidan, Gloria Steinham, and even Elizabeth Warren. “Got any Canadian on tap?”

  The woman shook her head. “Sorry. Sam Adams?” she offered.

  “That’ll do,” I said.

  “Make that two,” Richard chimed in.

  She drew two brews as we commandeered a couple of seats at the bar.

  “Let me guess,” the bartender said. The nametag she wore or her shirt said Maggie. How apropos. “You used to come here when this place was O’Shea’s.”

  “Damn straight.”

  She laughed. “You’re not the first.”

  “What happened?” I asked, taking out a twenty and laying it on the bar.

  “The way I hear it, one of the waitresses got deported.”

  “Annie?” I guessed.

  She nodded. “The owner was so bummed he closed the joint and followed her back to Dublin.”

  “That’s nice,” I said and smiled. “Did they get married?”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea.” She made change, set it before me, and turned back to her regular patrons.

  “Who was Annie?” Richard asked, taking a sip of his beer.

  A warm smile of remembrance crept onto my lips. “She was special. A real sweetheart. I wanted to date her—and she was receptive—but I was broke. I was too timid to court her when it was a stretch for me to pay for a couple of beers for myself every week. If she ended up with Ian, she couldn’t have found anyone better.”

  “And now you’ve got your own Maggie in your corner.”

  I leveled an inquiring look his way. “Sometimes I’m not so sure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You tell me. Every time I mention her name, you look away. Obviously something is going on that she’s told Brenda, who told you. I sure wish somebody would let me in on the secret.”

  Richard looked into the depths of his beer.

  “Maggie isn’t sick or anything, is she?” I asked with sudden worry.

  “Oh, no,” he quickly reassured me.

  “Then what’s going on?”

  “I’ve been sworn to secrecy,” Richard said gravely.

  “Do I have anything to worry about?” I asked, almost afraid to hear his answer.

  He shook his head. “Not with Maggie.”

  I exhaled a mental breath. She had cheated on me before—but for some reason I had faith that would never happen again.

  “It’s Holly,” Richard said.

  “Holly?” Maggie’s golden retriever. I’d never had a pet until I’d adopted my late father’s cat, Herschel, but I’d also come to love Maggie’s gentle soul of a dog, too. “What’s wrong?”

  “Maggie was going to tell you on Saturday, until you told her about our trip. She found a lump on Holly’s back on Thursday. The dog was scheduled for surgery this morning.”

  “Oh, man. My poor Maggs must be beside herself.”

  “She knew how important it was for you to put all this crap behind you. She didn’t want to add to your problems.”

  I shook my head. “That dog means the world to her.”

  “Yeah. We’re pretty fond of her, too,” Richard said. Holly had stayed with Richard and Brenda for a week the year before when someone was stalking Brenda. Only it was me she’d saved when a guy came at me with a knife.

  “The thing is, it could be nothing. When quizzed, she told me the mass moved. I’m pretty sure it’s just a cyst, but Maggie’s terrified she’s going to lose her girl.”

  “Did you tell her what you think?”

  “Yeah, but in this case, I’m just a doctor—not a vet—so I’m not sure my opinion counts.”

  “Will Holly have to stay at the vet overnight?”

  He shook his head. “She should be home tonight. But Maggie won’t get the pathology report until at least Wednesday. Do you think we’ll be going home by then?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on what I learn tomorrow.”

  “What did you learn today?” he asked, taking another sip of his beer.

  “I don’t connect with Detective Baldwin, but I get the feeling he knows who killed Shelley but doesn’t have enough evidence to move forward.”

  “That video we saw was certainly inconclusive,” Richard commented. “So how did you know the guy was Russian?”

  I explained, and he nodded.

  “The Russian mafia had a substantial presence here in the city back in the nineteen nineties, but they’re pretty much history these days.”

  “So the guy who killed Shelley was some kind of rogue?” Richard asked.

  “Rogue, yes. But not just some nobody.”

  “And that means?” Richard asked.

  “I have no idea. I hope I’ll have a better understanding tomorrow.”

  “What if you don’t?”

  “I don’t know. But there’s one thing I’m sure of. I can’t go back home by plane.”

  “I kind of figured that,” Richard said and polished off the last of his beer. “That leaves going home by train or car. I don’t know about you, but I’m not up for a nine- or ten-hour drive.”

  “It could take even longer by train. And the thing is, you don’t have to babysit me. I could take a Greyhound back to Buffalo.”

  “And arrive a week later? I don’t think so.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “And you know because you’ve done it so many times?” he asked.

  I shook my head. I’d also never taken a train trip. Used the subway? Yeah. Hundreds—if not thousands—of times before, but I’d never been on a passenger train.

  “I’ve never been on a train,” Richard admitted, too.

  So, we were even on that count.

  “It might be kind of fun,” he said.

  “Ya think?” I asked. “Aren’t you in a hurry to get back to Brenda and Betsy?”

  “Yeah, but before I ever knew Brenda—before we even thought we’d have a child—I had you.”

  I shook my head at the irony of his comment. “Not anything you ever wanted or expec
ted.”

  “No, but there you were. And I did a piss-poor job of being your guardian.”

  No way did I want to get into that discussion.

  “So, I’m thinking that a train ride home might be kind of fun.”

  “Rich,” I said, deadly serious, “have you ever had fun in your entire life?”

  “Well … no,” he admitted. “But I’m willing to try.”

  Again, I shook my head. “Me, too. And thanks.”

  Richard nodded. “So, do we have lunch here, or do we go somewhere else?”

  I looked around the room at the clientele. They weren’t hostile, and we hadn’t been dissed, but we weren’t exactly kindred spirits, either. “We can go somewhere else. Coming back here lets me put certain things to rest. I feel good about that.”

  “Good. Have you got another place you want to visit?”

  I shook my head. “I’m pretty much done with Manhattan. Except for what we might learn tomorrow or Wednesday, I’m good to go back home to Buffalo.”

  “Home?” Richard asked.

  “Yeah. It’s my home. That’s where you, and Brenda, and Betsy, and Maggie are. And it’s a pretty nice place.” I thought better of it. “Except for winter. That still sucks.”

  “It sure does. Maybe next year we can go south for a few weeks.”

  “I wish. Maggie’s got a job—and come to think of it, so do I. But until Betsy goes to school, you could get away from winter for a few months.”

  “And leave you? I don’t think so.”

  “You may one day eat your words,” I told him, quoting what he’d told me on an earlier occasion.

  “We’ll see,” he said.

  I left a generous tip on the bar and we got up and headed for the exit.

  “Thanks for visiting,” Maggie the bartender called.

  We gave her a wave and headed out the door.

  “What are you in the mood for?” Richard asked.

  “Nothing exotic.”

  “Then we could probably duck into any place with a menu that strikes our fancy.”

  “And then we’d somehow find our way to Tiffany’s?”

  My brother looked sheepish. “Only if it’s convenient. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

  I didn’t, but only because I knew I could never afford to buy baubles for Maggie there. “Why not? I’ve never been there before.”

  Richard said nothing. Obviously he had been there.

  We continued to walk and stopped at a couple of restaurants until we hit a place that pleased Richard. He wanted steak. I’d be happy with just a burger. The place served both.

  The rest of the day yawned before us.

  “What do you want to do next?” Richard asked me once we’d finished eating and he’d paid the check.

  “I didn’t see a chessboard back at the apartment,” I said as we started walking back to our home-away-from-home.

  “We could get one.”

  “Why don’t we?” I said.

  He smiled. “And how about dinner?”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d rather get take-out and eat in.”

  “We could do that. Or maybe hit a grocery store.”

  “Either or. It makes no difference to me.”

  Here we were in a city of millions. In a city with tons of things to see and do, and we were content just to spend a few hours of quality time together.

  I don’t know when I’d felt more content.

  #

  We never made it to a toy store. Baldwin called me after six that evening, asking us to meet him at Riker’s Island the next morning at ten. An inmate, named Gary King, was supposed to know about the guy who killed Shelley.

  Richard spent nearly an hour on a face-to-face chat with Brenda, while I called Maggie. I played dumb about her dog and she didn’t mention it, but I could tell by the timber of her voice that she was upset and felt like a heel for not pressing her on it. But that was the way she wanted it, and I didn’t want to rat out Richard for saying anything.

  Richard booked a cab and we arrived at the prison the next morning at 9:55.

  Baldwin was waiting. He led us through the security checkpoint and then to yet another interrogation room.

  “Have you talked to the guy?” I asked as I sat down behind yet another steel-and-Formica table.

  “Yeah.”

  “So you know what he’s got to say?”

  “Essentially,” Baldwin admitted.

  I shifted my gaze to Richard, who shrugged.

  We waited. And waited. And waited some more. We’d been there more than twenty minutes, with not much to say to one another, before a black inmate, probably in his late thirties, in an orange jumpsuit, his hands shackled at his waist, was brought into the room.

  Baldwin made the introductions. “Shelley Resnick—the woman killed in Grand Central—was Mr. Resnick’s wife.”

  “Sorry for your loss,” King muttered, not meeting my gaze.

  His condolences were unexpected.

  “Thanks,” I said, and meant it.

  “So,” Baldwin began, his gaze fixed on King. “You said you knew about the murder.”

  “She was one of my girls,” King said.

  Her pimp? Goddamn. My beautiful Shelley had acquired a stinking pimp? He probably cashed in on her—lived off her and God knows how many others. But weren’t pimps supposed to keep their girls safe? Unless maybe she’d ripped him off, too.

  “So you set her up with a john and then she was killed,” Baldwin said.

  “Fucking nasty Russian. I took care of my girls—but that fucker was crazy. I didn’t know that when I set things up the first time.”

  “So, you’re saying that when Shelley was killed you had nothing to do with her meeting with the Russian that night?” I asked.

  “Hell, no. But that bitch—” King stopped abruptly, and looked at me in horror. “Sorry, man.”

  “It’s okay,” I assured him. “Go on.”

  “She done told one of my other girls that the Russian liked her. He was gonna give her some fine shit. She gave him her cell phone number and told him he could save a hundred bucks if he called her direct.”

  “She screwed you, too,” I said without rancor.

  “I may be a pimp, but I protect my girls,” King said adamantly. “I can’t do that when they go off on their own.”

  I almost laughed, and yet I got the sense the guy was being honest with me.

  “Come on, Gary,” Baldwin said. “You controlled your girls by giving them only enough drugs to do your bidding.”

  King’s eyes blazed. “I gave them a safe place to live. They had food on the table, cable TV, and they only had to turn a couple of tricks a day. I had me a high-class operation. My mistake was taking on that white girl. I felt sorry for her. She was in way over her head, but she was a nice little girl. She needed somebody to protect her.” He turned to glare at me.

  “Hey, man, I bailed her out time and again, tried to help her get clean. She left me. She didn’t want me. She didn’t want my help.”

  King shrugged. “Yeah. She kinda told me so.”

  “What about this Russian guy?” Richard asked. “Did you get his name? Anything on him?”

  “I saw his car. A black Lexus with diplomat plates.”

  I looked over at Baldwin. He’d heard this story before.

  “And?” I pressed.

  “And nothing. That’s all I know.”

  “No name?”

  King shook his head.

  “What did he look like?”

  “Mean. He wasn’t old, but he had a full head of silver hair. That’s all I remember.”

  “Which is jack shit,” Baldwin said.

  “How many silver-haired, commie diplomats driving a black Lexus can there be in this city?” King asked.

  “That was four years ago—forever,” Baldwin barked. “That guy could have returned to Moscow the day after the murder.

  King’s eyes narrowed. “I’m telling you what I
know. You just don’t give a shit. You don’t care about that girl.” Again he turned to glare at me. “I did when nobody else would.”

  “Thanks, man. I’m glad someone was looking out for Shelley,” I said.

  Again King shrugged. He looked at Baldwin. “Are we done?”

  “Yeah.” Baldwin nodded to the two guards who had stayed planted just inside the interrogation room’s door. King got up from his chair, and the guards moved to flank him. “You’ll get that bastard—if you want to,” he told Baldwin, and then exited the room.

  I listened as the three sets of footsteps on the concrete floor echoed and then faded before I turned and spoke to Baldwin. “Have you got the name of the guy who killed my wife?”

  “Sort of. The problem is … he’s got diplomatic immunity.”

  Oh, yeah. I knew about that. Diplomats—and the members of their staffs—had some of the worst reputations, and a lot of them committed petty crimes on a regular basis just because they could. The most common being parking infractions. I hadn’t owned a car while living in Manhattan because the cost of parking was more than a month’s rent—which wasn’t cheap even for the hovels I’d lived in. Anyone with diplomat plates parked wherever the hell they pleased at any time of the day or night because they knew there’d be no consequences—unlike the rest of us, who’d be towed in a heartbeat. And even if they committed murder, it wasn’t likely to land them in the pokey because—Geeze Louise—what if one of our guys did the same thing while in their country? So, diplomats moved around the city with impunity.

  “You’re not going to tell me the name of the man who killed my wife, are you?” I asked Baldwin.

  “You said you were psychic. Aren’t you supposed to tell me how things went down?”

  “Not really.”

  “My brother has empathic abilities,” Richard explained. The fact that he had an MD after his name gave him more credibility than if I’d uttered the same phrase. At least to some.

  “I would have to encounter the bastard, get him to think about killing Shelley—and probably touch him—before I could get anything on him. I depend on a tactile interface to get stuff on people—if I can even connect with them,” I told Baldwin.

  “Well, that’s not likely to happen.”

  “Is the guy still in town?” I asked.