Trouble in Mind: The Collected Stories - 3 Page 9

  On the surface, round Daniel Rodriguez was a harmless, cheerful man, who seemed to joke a lot and seemed to get along with the construction crews he worked with. Eddie Caruso had expected--and half hoped--to find him selling crack to schoolkids. If that had been the case, it would have been easier to report him to the police.

  And easier to break the news to his wife and daughters? Caruso wondered. No. Nothing could relieve the sting of that.

  Daniel returned home to his small but well-kept house in Queens. Caruso cruised past slowly, parked up the block and stepped outside, making his way to a park across the street, dressed like anybody else in the casual, residential neighborhood--shorts and an Izod shirt, along with sunglasses and a baseball cap. He found a bench and plopped down, pretending to read his iPad, but actually observing the family through the device's video camera.

  Apple had revolutionized the PI business.

  The weather was nice and the Rodriguez family cooked out, with Daniel the chef and Carmel and their daughters his assistants. Several neighbors joined them. Daniel seemed to be a good father. Caruso wasn't recording his words but much of what he said made the whole family laugh.

  A look of pure love passed between husband and wife.

  Shit, Caruso thought, sometimes I hate this job.

  After the barbecue and after the family had been shuffled off to the house, Daniel remained outside.

  And something set off an alarm within Caruso: Daniel Rodriguez was scrubbing a grill that no longer needed scrubbing.

  Which meant he was stalling. On instinct, Caruso rose and ducked into some dog-piss-scented city bushes. It was good he did. The handyman looked around piercingly, making certain no one was watching. He casually--too casually--disappeared into the garage and came out a short time later, locking the door.

  That mission, whatever it was, smelled funky to Caruso. He gave it two hours, for dark to descend and quiet to lull the neighborhood. Then he pulled on latex gloves and broke into the garage with a set of lock-picking tools, having as he often did at moments like this an imaginary conversation with the arresting officer. No, sir, I'm not committing burglary--which is breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony. I'm committing trespass only--breaking and entering with intent to find the truth.

  Not exactly a defense under the New York State penal code.

  Caruso surveyed the jam-packed garage. A systematic search could take hours, or days. The man was a carpenter and handyman so he had literally tons of wood and plasterboard and cables and dozens of tool chests. Those seemed like natural hiding places but they'd also be the first things stolen if anybody broke in, so Caruso ignored them.

  He stood in one place and turned in circles, like a slow-motion radar antenna, looking from shelf to shelf, relying on the fuzzy illumination of the streetlight. He had a flashlight but he was too close to the house to use it.

  Finally he decided: The likeliest place one would hide something was in the distant, dusty corner, in paint cans marred with dried drips of color. Nobody'd steal used paint.

  And bingo.

  In the third and fourth he found what he suspected he would: stacks and stacks of twenties. Also two diamond bracelets.

  All, undoubtedly, from Sarah's safe-deposit box. This was his payment from the Westerfields for disposing of the body. They hadn't mentioned him, of course, at trial because he had enough evidence to sink them even deeper--probably enough to get them the death penalty.

  Caruso took pictures of the money and jewelry with a low-light camera. He didn't end his search there, though, but continued to search through all the cans. Most of them contained paint. But not all. One, on the floor in the corner, held exactly what he needed to figure out Sarah Lieberman's last resting place.

  *

  "COME IN, COME IN," Eddie said to Carmel Rodriguez, shutting off the TV.

  The woman entered his office and glanced around, squinting, as if he'd just decorated the walls with the sports pictures that had been there forever. "My daughter, Rosa, she plays soccer."

  "That's my favorite, too." Eddie sat down, gesturing her into a seat across from the desk. She eased cautiously into it.

  "You said you found something."

  The PI nodded solemnly.

  Most of Eddie Caruso's work involved finding runaways, running pre-employment checks and outing personal injury lawsuit fakers, but he handled domestics, too. He'd had to deliver news about betrayal and learned there were generally three different reactions: explosive anger, wailing sorrow or weary acceptance, the last of which was usually accompanied by the eeriest smile of resignation on the face of the earth.

  He had no idea how Carmel would respond to what she was about to learn.

  But there was no point in speculating. It was time to let her know.

  "This is going to be troubling, Carmel. But--"

  She interrupted. "You told me there might be things you found that I might not like."

  He nodded and rose, walking to his other door. He opened it and gestured.

  She frowned as her husband walked into the room.

  The man gave her a sheepish grin and then looked back at the carpet as he sat next to her.

  "Daniel! Why are you here?"

  Caruso sat back in his office chair, which was starting to develop the mouse squeak that seemed to return once a month no matter how much WD-40 was involved. He whispered, "Go ahead, Daniel. Tell her."

  He said nothing for a minute and Carmel asked pointedly, "Is this about Mrs. Sarah? Is this about what happened to her?"

  The round-faced man nodded. "Okay, honey, Carmel--"

  "Tell me," the housekeeper said briskly.

  "I haven't been honest with you." Eyes whipping toward her, then away. "You remember last year you told me the Westerfields wanted you to find Mrs. Sarah's papers?"

  "Yes. And when I said no they threatened, sort of threatened our daughter."

  "They did the same to me. They said they couldn't trust you, you were too good. They wanted me to help them."

  "You?" she whispered.

  "Yes, baby. Me! Only it wasn't just find the papers. They..."

  "What? What did they want?"

  "Miriam told me Sarah didn't have long to live anyway."

  "'Anyway.' What do you mean 'anyway'?"

  "She said Sarah had cancer."

  "She wasn't sick! She was healthier than that bitch Miriam," Carmel spit out.

  "But they said she was. And she'd told them she'd cut us out of her will. We'd get nothing. They said, if I help them now, if she died now, they could make sure we had lots of money."

  "Helped them out." Carmel eyed her husband coolly. "You mean, helped them kill her."

  "They said she was greedy. Why should she have so much and people like them, and us, have nothing? It was unfair."

  "And you didn't tell me? You didn't tell anybody they were dangerous?"

  "I did tell somebody."

  "Who? Not the police, you didn't."

  Daniel looked at Eddie Caruso, who picked up the remote control and hit ON.

  The TV, on which a webcam sat, came to life with a Skype streaming image.

  On the screen an elderly woman's face gazed confidently and with some humor at the couple in the chairs and Eddie Caruso. "Hello, Carmel," Sarah Lieberman said. "It's been a long time."

  *

  WHAT EDDIE CARUSO HAD FOUND in the last paint can in the Rodriguezes' garage was a letter from Sarah to Daniel with details of where she'd be spending the rest of her life--a small town near Middleburg, Virginia, with her widower nephew Frederick. Information about how to get in touch with her if need be, where she would be buried and the name of certain discreet jewelers whom he could contact to sell the bracelets Sarah had given him, along with suggestions about how to carefully invest the cash she'd provided, too.

  He'd confronted the handyman this morning and while the letter seemed plausible, Caruso had insisted they both contact Sarah Lieberman this morning. She'd told them what h
ad happened and was now telling the same story to her housekeeper.

  The simple death he'd described to Carmel Rodriguez was anything but.

  "I'm so sorry, Carmel...I'm sorry I couldn't tell you. You remember that day in July, just a year ago? I was going to take the phone Freddy gave me and record them?"

  "Yes, Mrs. Sarah."

  "After you left, I started to go down there. But I met Daniel on the stairs." Her gaze shifted slightly, taking in the handyman. "He had me come back to my apartment and he told me what they'd just said--that the Beasts wanted him to help kill me. He said they had it all planned. There was nothing anybody could do to stop them."

  "Why not go to the police?" Carmel demanded.

  Sarah replied, "Because at worst they'd get a few years in jail for conspiracy. And then they'd be out again, after somebody else. I started thinking about what I told you. Remember the moth?"

  "The big moth you and your husband saw in Malaysia. With the wings that look like a snake."

  "That's right. But I decided: One way to protect yourself is to disguise yourself as a snake. The other way is to be the snake itself. I fight back. I couldn't kill them but I could make it look like they killed me. I didn't ask Daniel to help me but he wanted to."

  "I was so mad at them and worried about you and about Rosa! John hinted that he'd been watching her, watching our daughter!"

  Sarah said, "The Westerfields were very accommodating. John already had the Taser and the tape and the garbage bags." She gave a wry laugh. "Think of all the money I'll waste at Beacon Brothers Funeral Home here--that damn expensive casket. There are so many cheaper ways to go."

  Daniel said, "We pretended to forge a contract selling the building to them and then took all of the jewelry and cash Mrs. Sarah had in the apartment. She kept some and gave me a very generous amount."

  "And in my will I left Freddy here"--Sarah glanced to the side of the sunroom she sat in, apparently where her other coconspirator, her nephew, sat--"all my personal belongings. Probate took a little while but six months later everything was delivered here. Ah, but back to the scene of the crime, eh, Daniel?"

  He winced and looked at Carmel. "When the Westerfields were out and you were shopping, we both went downstairs. I put on gloves and took one of John's hammers and Mrs. Sarah cut herself. We got her blood on it and some hairs, too. And put some duct tape on her mouth for a minute and we added some of Miriam's hairs. I rubbed her toothbrush on it, for the DNA. Sarah stuck herself with the sharp points on that Taser. We hid those things in their apartment, then I tried to hack into Mrs. Sarah's banking accounts from Miriam's computer."

  "I used to watch CSI," Sarah said. "I know how these things work."

  "I left the city permits and maps in John's office." Daniel started to laugh then reined in when he saw his wife staring at him in dismay. "I was going to say it was funny because we thought the permits would be obvious. But the police missed those entirely; they thought she had been buried in New Jersey. But they missed it; it was Mr. Caruso who figured out about the foundations."

  Sarah said, "And I took the train down here. I've had to lead a pretty quiet life--they call it staying off the grid, right, Freddy?"

  A man's voice, "That's right, Aunt Sarah."

  "But I love it in Virginia. It's so peaceful. I lived here a long time ago and I'd always thought I'd come back to spend my last years in horse country."

  Daniel now turned to Carmel. "I'm sorry, love. I couldn't tell you!" he said. "This was a crime, what Mrs. Sarah and I did. Putting those people in jail. I wanted to, I wanted to tell you a hundred times. I couldn't let you get involved."

  Carmel was regarding her husband. "And the money...You said you were opening an account for the girls' school...And you always had those fifty-dollar bills. I always wondered."

  Sarah said, "He risked a lot to save me. I was very appreciative." Her voice faded. "And now I think it's time for my nap. I'd invite you to come down but it's probably not a good idea for either of you to visit a dead woman, I'm afraid."

  "Oh, Mrs. Sarah."

  "Good-bye, Carmel."

  Both women held their hands up in waves of farewell and Eddie Caruso, a good judge of timing, clicked the TV off.

  Caruso said good-bye to the family, suspecting there would be more discussion of the events between husband and wife on the way home. He thought about lowering the bill yet more, but decided against it. After all, he'd done the job, and the case had had more or less a happy ending.

  Even if it was entirely unexpected.

  But that's another thing about Game, maybe what really defines a person or event as Game or not: You never know ahead of time how it's going to turn out.

  Speaking of which...

  Eddie Caruso propped up his iPad and typed on the keyboard. He was just in time to see Tottenham versus Everton. Fantastic.

  You could never lose with Premier League football.

  Well, soccer.

  BUMP

  HAT IN HAND.

  There was no other way to describe it.

  Aside from the flashy secretary, the middle-aged man in jeans and a sports coat was alone, surveying the glassy waiting room, which overlooked Century City's Avenue of the Stars. No, not that one, with the footprints in concrete (that was Hollywood Boulevard, about five miles from here). This street was an ordinary office park of hotels and high-rises, near an okay shopping center and a pretty-good TV network.

  Checking out the flowers (fresh), the art (originals), the secretary (a wannabe, like nine-tenths of the other help in L.A.).

  How many waiting rooms had he been in just like this, over his thirtysome years in the industry? Mike O'Connor wondered.

  He couldn't even begin to guess.

  O'Connor was now examining a purple orchid, trying to shake the thought: Here I am begging, hat in hand.

  But he couldn't.

  Nor could he ditch the adjunct thought: This is your last goddamn chance.

  A faint buzz from somewhere on the woman's desk. She was blond and O'Connor, who tended to judge women by a very high standard, his wife, thought she was attractive enough. Though, this being Hollywood, attractive enough for what? was a legitimate question and sadly the answer to that was: not enough for leading roles. A pretty character actress, walk-ons. We're in the toughest business on the face of the earth, baby, he thought to her.

  She put down the phone. "He'll see you now, Mr. O'Connor." She rose to get the door for him.

  "That's okay. I'll get it...Good luck." He'd seen her reading a script.

  She didn't know what he meant.

  O'Connor closed the door behind him and Aaron Felter, a fit man in his early thirties, wearing expensive slacks and a dark gray shirt without a tie, rose to greet him.

  "Mike. My God, it's been two years."

  "Your dad's funeral."

  "Right."

  "How's your mom doing?"

  "Scandal. She's dating! A production designer over on the Universal lot. At least he's only five years younger. But he wears an earring."

  "Give her my best."

  "Will do."

  Felter's father had been a director of photography for a time on O'Connor's TV show in the eighties. He'd been a talented man and wily...and a voice of reason in the chaotic world of weekly television.

  They carried on a bit of conversation about their own families--neither particularly interested, but such was the protocol of business throughout the world.

  Then because this wasn't just business, it was Hollywood, the moment soon arrived when it was okay to cut to the chase.

  Felter tapped the packet of material O'Connor had sent. "I read it, Mike. It's a real interesting concept. Tell me a little more."

  O'Connor knew the difference between "it's interesting" and "I'm interested." But he continued to describe the proposal for a new TV series in more depth.

  Michael O'Connor had been hot in the late seventies and eighties. He'd starred in several prime-time dramas--featuring a l
aw firm, an EMT facility and, most successfully, the famous Homicide Detail. The show lasted for seven seasons, which was a huge success.

  It had been a great time. O'Connor, a UCLA film grad, had always been serious about acting and Homicide Detail was cutting-edge TV. It was gritty, was shot with handheld cameras and the writers (O'Connor cowrote scripts from time to time) weren't afraid to blow away a main character occasionally or let the bad guy get off. An LAPD detective, who became a good friend of O'Connor's, was the show consultant and he worked them hard to get the details right. The shows dealt with religion, abortion, race, terrorism, sex, anything. "Cutting-edge storytelling, creativity on steroids" was the New York Times's assessment of the show and those few words meant more to O'Connor than the Emmy nomination (he lost to an actor from Law & Order, a thoroughly noble defeat).

  But then the series folded and it was drought time.

  He couldn't get work--not the kind of work that was inspired and challenging. His agent sent him scripts with absurd premises or that were hackneyed rip-offs of his own show or sitcoms, which he had no patience or talent for. And O'Connor collected his residual checks (and signed most of them over to the Ivy League schools his daughters attended) and kept trying to survive in a town where he'd actually heard someone say of Richard III, "You mean it was a play, too?"

  But O'Connor was interested in more than acting. He had a vision. There's a joke in Hollywood that, when looking for a project to turn into a film or series, producers want something that's completely original and yet has been wildly successful in the past. There is, however, some truth to that irony. And for years O'Connor had it in mind to do a project that was fresh but still was rooted in television history: each week a different story, with new characters. Like TV from the 1950s and '60s: Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Playhouse 90, The Twilight Zone. Sometimes drama, sometimes comedy, sometimes science fiction.

  He'd written a proposal and the pilot script and then shopped Stories all over Hollywood and to the BBC, Sky and Channel 4 in England, as well--but everyone passed. The only major producer he hadn't contacted was Aaron Felter, since the man's dad and O'Connor had been friends and he hadn't wanted to unfairly pressure him. Besides, Felter wasn't exactly in the stratosphere himself. His various production companies had backed some losing TV and film projects recently and he couldn't afford to take any risks.