"I can certainly understand that. You can't fight those odds." I offered.
"Gershom was no quitter," she said defensively. "He went out that afternoon to a local pool hall and offered three high school drop outs twenty bucks a piece to walk to school with him the next day. He got all the way to the school grounds before he encountered his attackers from the previous days. Without saying anything, he pointed to the kids who had attacked him and his newly hired bodyguards paid them back with a sound beating, right there on the school grounds in front of everybody. When he dismissed the bodyguards one of them asked how he knew that they wouldn't have just taken the money and left him to the attackers."
"It's a good question," I observed.
"He looked the guy right in the eye and said 'Because I can always find three guys even bigger than you and pay them fifty dollars to take care of you. And if they don't work out I'll find three bigger guys and pay a hundred dollars apiece to have them taken care of. Money means nothing to me. As long as you have more to loose than I do, you will do as I say. If you don't wish to follow my instructions then don't accept my money. ' The point was well made. Whenever Gershom needed a little muscle, all he needed to do was show up at the pool hall with some cash. He learned two lessons that day. First, if you have money you can find people to do your dirty work. Second, impressions are more important than reality. If you are going to flex your muscles, timing and the right audience are everything."
I thought about all the rumors and stories about Oxenstein and began to wonder if it wasn't all just a very cleverly constructed persona. I also getting a little too comfortable in that overstuffed leather chair. A few more scotch ales and I would be spending the night in that chair. I wanted to hear more of this story. But I also wanted to get to the bottom of things and I didn't think I was making progress.
"Alright, D.J.," I said in a tone of voice I saved for taking control of situations. "You and Gershom are both wonderful noble people who took the hard roads in life through no fault of your own. You are misunderstood and probably judged unfairly. When you found each other you were kindred spirits and decided to live in the sunshine rather than in the damp sewers of life. My heart goes out to both of you, but we still have a murder to solve and several million dollars of cash to account for. I don't mean to be insensitive here, but we've got to get over the warm fuzzies and down to some facts."
I swirled the last of my scotch ale in my glass and then tossed it down my throat. She did not offer to get me another one. As I looked up, however, I noticed a crooked smile creeping across her face. People who have clawed their way up always have a deep appreciation for a 'cut the bullshit' attitude. Her smile widened and became a warm engaging smile. Unfortunately, I wasn't really good enough at this to tell if I had connected with her or if I was just being patronized.
"Alright," she said. "Let's get down to some facts. The money they found in Gershom's apartment was my money. Gershom was a shrewd operator working both sides of Legal Street, but you'll find that all of his investments come from legitimate businesses and that there is a paper trail for all of his money."
"So he was strictly legitimate," I asked doubtfully, hoping for clarification.
"I didn't say that," she replied with some emphasis. "I said that there is a legitimate paper trail for all his investments."
The subtlety was not lost on me.
She continued. "Unfortunately, I was not as smart as he was. I had accumulated a large amount of cash and needed to get it into legitimate circulation. I asked him to help me launder it, which is why all those bags of money were at his place. He set up some phony businesses to work the money into circulation, but it was taking too long. So he worked out a deal with this small time con artist that I mentioned earlier and they were going to launder the money somehow."
"You mean this guy," I asked holding out the picture of McNulty.
"Yeah, that's him." She said barely glancing at the picture.
"His name is Brian Ryan McNulty," I said feeling like I was finally contributing something to the case.
"Yeah, Brian Ryan or Ryan Brian, I never did get that straight." She continued, "and I'll never understand why anyone would give their kid two names that sound so much alike."
I didn't have an answer for that so I just went on.
"The records we got off Gershom's computer showed a lot of payments to this McNulty guy but no money coming back. My guess is that he was just pulling another con. He took money from Gershom without any intention of laundering it and then just killed him when he got suspicious."
"I thought of that too, but wouldn't that make it too obvious who the killer was?" she asked. "They find a series of payments to some con man. Next thing you know Gershom is dead. It doesn't take a genius to figure out who the most likely suspect is."
"Yeah," I agreed. "Unless this con man was hoping that the police wouldn't investigate too thoroughly."
"I don't know," said D.J. thoughtfully. She didn't believe that theory and neither did I. But for now it was all we had to go on.
I looked at my watch and it was nearly ten o'clock. I had no idea where the evening had gone but I was suddenly gripped with a fear of being in this neighborhood so late. I had meant to leave while it was still light but the stories and the ales meant differently.
"I've got to get going. It's getting late." I said as I got up. "But before I go, I have to ask, aren't you afraid of somebody breaking into your apartment in this neighborhood?"
She laughed. "I have twenty four hour security. You might have seen a guy hanging around outside when you came in. What I pay those guys is a lot less than I would ever pay in insurance. And they take cash."
I looked around at the beautiful décor and the picture of the Celtic warrior. I wanted to ask if the stories were really true, but I didn't. It didn't matter either way. She was a client. She had hired me to do a job and I had agreed to do it. As long as I stayed on the right side of the law, it was not up to me to judge her.
I walked out of her forest clearing back into the stench of the urine and vomit that haunted the stairway outside her apartment. It was very warm in the hallway and the air was close. I followed the route through the walkway back out side. The sky was clear but the moon was only at one quarter and it was very dark. I didn't see the nondescript black man so I figured that he had gone home or was taking a break. There were streetlights, but only one was working. Using the dim light cast by the one working street light I found my way down the sidewalk. About four car lengths before I reached my car a door opened from a beat up old pickup truck and out stepped and huge man in bib overalls. He was wearing work boots, a flannel shirt and a painter's hat. One of the buttons on the bib was unbuttoned leaving only one suspender to hold up the overalls. His face was chubby and his beard was sparse and curly. Out of the driver's side stepped a smaller man dressed in a similar outfit. The big man stepped in front of me blocking the entire sidewalk.
"Dr. Wentworth, I presume?" he said pretentiously faking an upper class accent when the undertones indicated the he was from deep in the hills of West Virginia.
At first I thought of denying who I was, but I figured that if they found me out here, they must know who I am and any attempt to deny that would just make me look pathetic. Besides I was wobbly from the ales and didn't want to be clever.
"That's right. And who are you."
"We're the Bartlett boys," he said with great pride. He smiled a broad smile showing a mouth full of teeth that had never seen any kind of dental work. "I'm Otis at this here's Mercer." He gestured at the smaller man.
"What is it that you want," I asked although I was already pretty sure of the range of possibilities.
"We want to kill you," he said, smiling again with great satisfaction.
"Is that all," I returned with false bravado. My head was cloudy and that was the best I could do.
"No. That isn't all," he answered. "We want to kill you and make a big mess out of your body." Again he smiled that broad satisfied smile.
"Who sent you," I asked. I was stalling for time hoping against hope that a police cruiser might drive by or that the nondescript black man might come back from his break.
"We're working for the McNulties," he confessed. "No point in trying to hide it. You ain't gonna live to tell nobody about it anyway."
"Why did the McNulties hire you," I probed, again stalling for time.
"Because we work cheap and we love our work," he said. "Don't we Mercer."
At that the smaller man had a burst of giggles. "Yeah," Mercer agreed. "We love our work, specially when it gets real messy."
A car turned onto the street and the headlights raked across Otis's front. I dimly hoped that they might bring help, but in a neighborhood like that, I was just dreaming. The car parked at the far end of the street behind me, a safe distance away.
At that the huge man in front of me pulled his arm, which was hidden behind his back, around front exposing a large double edge axe.
"We're gonna cut you down to size." Otis said, and both giggled like bumpkins at a peep show. Their layers of fat jiggled like Jell-O as they giggled and the looks on their faces said - 'it doesn't get any better than this'.
Otis raised that large axe over his head ready to bring it down on me. Its funny what goes through your mind at a moment like that. I was fortified with scotch ale and wasn't afraid to die. I was just afraid that it might hurt. Instead of my life flashing before, my senses became extremely acute and time seemed to pass in slow motion.
I noticed that Otis's teeth were so coated with tarter that you couldn't see any spaces between them. He breathed out heavily from the exertion of having lifted the axe over his head. His breath was a warm, moist mixture of foul stomach gases and rotting teeth. I thought to myself "Kill me now before I have to suffer through another breath." I heard the buzzing of a June bug flying past my ear and suddenly noticed a funny red dot on Otis's forehead. "That's odd," I thought. "Why would he have a red dot in the middle of his forehead. Must be some crazy cult that he belongs to." His face turned to blank surprise and I noticed a drop oozing out of the red dot on his forehead. Then more liquid came out of the hole and he collapsed on the sidewalk.
Mercer was focused on something far down the sidewalk behind me. I turned and saw a familiar figure. It was Gita. Her feet were spread at shoulder's width and her arms were extended in front of her with a revolver between her clasped hands. She stood there like a statue until her arms moved about four inches to the left and trained the gun sight on Mercer. Mercer held his axe out to his side and then, with exaggerated surrender, let it drop from his hand. He waited about five seconds and then turned and broke into a run. Gita lowered her arms, put the gun back in its holster and began walking toward me with haste and purpose. She looked angry. When she reached me, she put one foot slightly behind her as though it were a brace. I thought she might kick my teeth out or something. Her eyes were ringed shadows and her checks were blotching. She pointed an accusing finger at me and said "I thought I told you not to come out here by yourself, you idiot! You could have gotten killed."
I couldn't think of anything that I could say to defend myself. I was going to exploit the technical definition of idiot but decided on a different strategy. "Well, I hope you didn't save me just so you could kill me." I said trying to lighten up the situation.
"I don't think it's very funny," she said. "If I had caught just one more traffic light on the way here, you would be chopped sirloin on the sidewalk."
She was breathing heavily and very angry.
"Look, don't think I don't appreciate your saving my life. But do you have to get so angry? I like you a lot better when you're being stoic." It's easy to be mouthy when you've been drinking.
She put her hand up in a pause gesture and took a few slow breaths. The shadows around her eyes faded and the blotches on her cheeks disappeared. In a few minutes she looked like she had just come from watering the garden.
"I'm sorry. You're right. I have a cardinal rule to never take a situation personally. If I got here late, you'd be dead not me. No big deal."
My ear stung a little and I wandered if that June bug had bitten me. I touched my ear with my fingers and brought them back covered in blood.
Gita took my hand, looked at my fingers and then looked at my ear. "You were wobbling," she observed, "the bullet skinned your ear."
"How did you know you wouldn't miss," I asked, now having a nervous reaction to the situation.
She shrugged. "I wouldn't have." Then, finding a balance between her anger and her stoicism, she smiled and said, "You've had a tough day. You'd better go home and get some rest. Tomorrow you can fill me in on what D.J. said and we can talk to some of Oxenstein's neighbors." With that she returned to her car and drove off. I got into my car and drove to Foggy Bottom.
It was very late when I arrived at my office, but the light was still on and the door was ajar. After the episode with the Bartlett boys I wasn't going to be put off by a cat burglar so I pushed the door open a bit and peered in. Patience and Smitty were locked in a passionate lover's embrace. The space between them could filter large molecules and I was afraid that if either one hiccuped they would swallow the other one.
"Well, I guess it's O.K. for me to use the telephone, now." I observed in another one of my failed attempts to diffuse the awkwardness of the situation through humor.
If either one of them heard me they gave no indication. I decided that whatever I had come by my office for could wait. I pulled the door shut quietly and went home. It was enough for one day.