The Remake (10 page)

“What did he dump it in?”

“Plate of prosciutto.”

R.J. frowned. “There were two other people in the suite—Janine Wright and her daughter, Mary.”

“Yeah, I know. But Belcher ordered the prosciutto. Wright and the kid weren’t even eating.”

“But the killer wouldn’t have to know that. He might have just been watching for a chance.”

“And hoping he got the right one?”

“Maybe not caring which one he got.”

Angelo made a face. “Sorry, R.J. I can’t buy it. Poison is usually pretty personal.”

“Sure. Like that stuff in the Tylenol bottles a few years back.”

Angelo smiled. “That was some nut getting off on killing strangers. This is different.”

“It’s always different, Angelo. What else can you tell me?”

“I shouldn’t have told you that much, R.J. Except you plied
me with liquor.” He drained his beer glass and set it down. “I’ll tell you this, though. First, there ain’t much more to tell. And second—” He smiled again and his teeth shone in the candlelight. “—Kates wants you for this so bad he can taste it. Watch your ass, R.J.”

And that was all R.J. could get out of him. They had their excellent dinner and talked about other things—the Knicks, local politics—but that was it. A small piece of R.J.’s mind stayed on the poisoning of Murray Belcher, and he went home full of marinara sauce and dissatisfaction.

Monday morning R.J. was not feeling a whole lot better, but at least he was starting to get used to feeling bad. He woke up early and as he stared into the shaving mirror, he told himself it was time to get a grip on himself. The face that looked back at him was slack, puffy, doughy-looking.

R.J. was no yuppie, but he hated to get soft. So he did his whole series of exercises—sit-ups, push-ups, crunches—and then ran a mile downtown and back again.

As always, getting his blood going like that made him feel alive, smart, ready for anything. He almost caught himself singing in the shower.

R.J. had a quick breakfast of a bagel and orange juice and headed for his office. For once he beat Wanda there by a good quarter of an hour. She came in a few minutes before nine and almost jumped out of her skin when she saw him.

“Jesus, boss,” she said. “I thought you were a mugger.”

“I may try that if business doesn’t pick up,” he told her. He set a cup of coffee on her desk. “Here you go.”

Wanda eyed him suspiciously. “What’s this?”

“It’s coffee.”

She still seemed scared to touch the mug. “You never make coffee.”

“This morning I made coffee. Go ahead, drink the stuff.”

She picked up the mug and took a careful sip, making a face right away. “My God, boss. Now I know why you never make coffee.”

R.J. gave her a hurt look. “It’s from imported beans,” he said.

“If anybody on Ellis Island tasted this stuff, they’d deport it again,” she told him.

“That shows how much you know. They haven’t brought anybody through Ellis Island for years.”

She sipped again and made an even worse face. “This stuff tastes plenty old enough.”

But before he could fill up his lungs and hit her with a snappy comeback she flung a white paper bag at him. “It’ll probably go down easier with one of these,” she said.

R.J. opened up the bag. “Cinnamon rolls,” he said. “Doll, I just promoted you to special executive assistant.” He took a big bite and a sip of his own coffee. It tasted all right to him.

After the cinnamon roll, the coffee, and even the verbal sparring with Wanda, R.J. began to feel that this might not be a completely awful day. Okay, he was a murder suspect and Casey was gone. But life went on and he had a job to do.

A few minutes after nine he settled himself at his desk with more coffee—ignoring Wanda’s looks—and dialed Kelley’s parole officer in Connecticut.

They’d told him the party he wanted was an H. Gillam. After three rings, a bored-sounding woman answered. “Gillam,” she said.

“My name is R.J. Brooks, Ms. Gillam,” R.J. said, swallowing the last bite of cinnamon roll. “I’m a private investigator in Manhattan.”

Ms. Gillam gave a long sigh. “Okay,” she said.

Great, R.J. thought. Nine A.M., and it’s attitude time already in Connecticut. But out loud he said, “I’m trying to confirm the whereabouts of a William Kelley.” After a short pause with no response, he added, “I was hoping you could help me.”

“Uh-huh,” said Ms. Gillam.

R.J. began to think that maybe he was wrong, maybe this really would be a terrible day after all. He didn’t know this
woman from Adam and here she was pulling the Go-Ahead-Make-My-Day crap on him. R.J. was on the point of trying something cute, like asking for her supervisor’s name, when all of a sudden Ms. Gillam giggled.

“Hello?” said R.J.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I tried to hold myself together, but this is just—” and she giggled again.

“What is?” R.J. asked. Hostility he could at least understand. It was one of the perks of his tough trade. But parole officers are supposed to be tough, too, and to have one giggle at him was disturbing. He didn’t know what to think.

“What was he really like?” Ms. Gillam asked.

R.J.’s head was spinning. Maybe there was something wrong with the coffee, he thought. “What was
who
really like? Kelley?”

“No. You know,” she said coyly.

“Uh, no. No, I don’t know.”

“Your
faa
-ther,” she bleated.

Well, thought R.J., you never know where you’re going to find one. He was only a little surprised that she had recognized him by his name alone. But it was happening more and more. As for the rest of it, well—

He’d been plagued by his father’s fans his whole life, and the most he could say about them now was that it didn’t bother him anymore. He’d gone through a phase where the mention of his father’s name made R.J. furious, then fiercely protective, then paranoid, bitter, amused, and finally tolerant. R.J. knew who he was now, and he wasn’t competing with his old man, and the only thing about the whole fan business he still found interesting was who turned out to be one. Like a Connecticut parole officer who was supposed to be tough.

“He was a great guy,” R.J. said, giving her stock answer number seven, “but he drank too much.”

“Maybe that was part of his greatness,” Gillam offered.

“Sure,” R.J. said. “Booze makes you smart, everybody knows that.”

“Because he really was great,” she went on, ignoring him. “The greatest. Unbelievable. But you know that. Whoo,” she said with another giggle, “I can’t believe I’m talking to you.”

“I’m having some trouble with it myself.”

“Because I have seen your picture in the papers over here and you look just like him, did you know that?”

“No, I never noticed that,” R.J. said. It didn’t matter; she just kept rolling.

“And I have always thought, whoo. That is one sexy man. Your father, I mean, not you.”

“Yeah, I know. Not me.”

She rattled on for another ten minutes. When she finally wound down, R.J. knew that her first name was Heidi, she was divorced with two kids, lived in Torrington, Connecticut, had a birth mark that you wouldn’t hardly notice unless, you know; she went bowling with a church group on Wednesday nights, was paying for braces for both kids, and her car was in the shop again.

R.J. also managed to get out of her, finally, that William Kelley was also living in Torrington, in a small apartment over a block of shops downtown. He had a job as a clerk in a convenience store on the edge of town and seemed to be settling down into life outside prison about as well as could be expected. “He still says he’s innocent,” Ms. Gillam told R.J.

“You think he is?”

“Aw, they all say that. They’re all innocent.”

“Well, thanks for the information,” R.J. said.

“No problem. Let me know if you get over this way. We could have lunch.”

“Sure,” said R.J., gritting his teeth. “Thanks again.”

“I mean it,” she said, but R.J. hung up before she could make dinner, or offer to do a tango for him with a rose in her teeth.

And there it was. Case solved. It was too easy. He had it all on a slip of paper in front of him: 713 Oak Street. R.J. had never lived in a town that had a street named Oak Street. Or if it did, the city fathers were just kidding. There were parts of Los Angeles that played some pretty cruel jokes with street names.

But Torrington, Connecticut, sounded like the kind of place that might really have an oak or two on Oak Street. A nice place to live. Nice place to raise a family, work, go to church, and serve out your parole.

Sure, Torrington. Maybe he’d retire there and raise dachshunds.

Meanwhile, he’d set up lunch with Mary Kelley. Give her the good news someplace nice.

CHAPTER 12

R.J. arranged to meet Mary Kelley at Ferrini’s. He was starting to like the place, even without Angelo around. Besides, people from out of town almost never got down to that part of Manhattan. R.J. liked the area. It was naked New York, stripped of all pretense. It was pure city that might have been Calcutta or Hong Kong but somehow managed to be completely New York.

And Mary Kelley was young enough, and West Coast enough, to enjoy the kind of atmosphere the lower East Side had so much of. R.J. liked the thought of how she might react to the area. But he also told her to be sure to take a cab. She could afford it, and he didn’t want any of the atmosphere to take a bite out of her.

A panhandler stopped R.J. outside the restaurant by shoving a hand under his nose, palm up. The guy had only part of one finger and that wasn’t in good shape. His skin was blotchy and he was missing a piece of his nose, too. R.J. dropped a buck
on the guy and backed away, trying not to breathe the same air.

The headwaiter was not Ferrini himself, who was only there at night. But he remembered R.J. as one of Angelo’s friends and seated him with a good bit of ceremony. His English wasn’t good, but he managed to let R.J. know that anybody who wasn’t crazy would try the calamari.

R.J. had just finished a couple of breadsticks and a glass of acqua m
inerale
when Mary Kelley came in. She was breathless, her face flushed red in the cheeks, and she looked about as good as a client can look. Especially a client that young. The headwaiter showed her over to R.J.’s table, looking so pleased and proud R.J. was afraid the guy might fall out of his skin. He gave R.J. a number of beautiful little winks and bowed four times getting Mary into the chair.

“Mr. Broo—I mean, R.J., um—what?” Mary said, trailing off as the headwaiter said something in melodramatic Italian with a couple hundred hand signals in case Mary was deaf.

“I’m not sure,” R.J. said, “but I think he wants to know if the beautiful lady would like a glass of vino.”

She looked pleased, then uncertain. “Oh,” she said. “I’m not sure. Would I? I mean, are you?”

“I don’t drink,” R.J. said, “but go ahead if you want to. It’ll make this guy’s day.”

“You don’t drink? But then—But don’t you mind if I have wine, then?”

“Go ahead,” R.J. said. “I like the smell.”

“All right,” she said, and turning to the headwaiter she added,
“Si, vino russo, per favore.
”

The headwaiter’s smile got so big it looked like it might stretch his face permanently. He bowed another three times and backed away, clapping his hands sharply and yelling for Giancarlo.

R.J. gave Mary a smile of his own. Not enough to cause any permanent damage. “Pretty good, kid.”

“What? The Italian? That’s nothing, I can just speak like a hundred words of it. I had an au pair from Udine. Uh, that’s in northern Italy. It was when I was twelve.” She frowned. “I had a lot of au pairs.”

She looked shyly at the table. A napkin was folded elegantly onto her plate. She poked at the napkin. It fell over.

“Um,” she said. “You said on the phone you had something to tell me…?”

“I found your old man,” R.J. told her. And the look on her face was all the payment R.J. wanted. It had been a long time since he’d made anybody that happy.

They had a pretty good lunch. The headwaiter and Giancarlo made sure of that. Mary looked so happy, and R.J. so smug, that the waiters were convinced that R.J. and Mary were in love, and Italian waiters are suckers for lovebirds. Always have been. Probably always would be.

They did try the calamari, and it was good. They munched away happily, talking about who they both knew, and places that had changed in Hollywood since R.J. had grown up there.

When the plates were cleared away R J. sat back contented, liking this girl. “Anyway, kiddo, if you want me to I’ll go over to Torrington and take a look—”

“Oh! No, that’s—I think I’d like to surprise him, if—I mean, it’s been an awfully long time.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, feeling full and almost happy. “Case closed.”

“How much do I owe you?” she said, reaching for her purse and breaking his train of thought.