Whispers of the Dead (Tom Gabriel #2) Page 18

  With that in mind, he walked down Riedel Avenue to Tysens Lane and went into the Alpine Dry Cleaners shop on the corner. The bell above the door was twice as loud as the Liberty Bell. There were no other customers in the shop.

  A Chinese woman was standing behind the counter. ‘Got a ticket?’

  ‘No, but I have a question.’

  ‘Make it quick. Very busy.’

  ‘Did Joseph Fowler work here?’

  ‘Never heard of him. You got any clothes for cleaning?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Shut door on way out.’

  ‘Thanks.’ As he turned to leave, he noticed a light-blue dry-cleaning tag on the counter with the number: 5763/4 and his heart skipped a beat. He picked the tag up and stared at it.

  ‘You still here, Mister?’

  ‘Do you have a leaflet with your services and charges on it?’

  She bent, took something from beneath the counter and slapped it in front of him. ‘We good cleaners.’

  He glanced inside the ADC brochure, and saw that the business had been in the Stern family for three generations and the current owner was Maurice Stern. Indicating the blue tag he said, ‘Do you put these on every item of clothing you dry clean?’

  ‘You asking strange questions, Mister.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He showed his ID. ‘I’m a Private Investigator from Florida. I found some of these dry-cleaning tags in a dead man’s suitcase.’

  ‘Dry cleaning no kill people.’

  He smiled involuntarily at the thought. ‘No, I don’t suppose so. If I gave you the numbers on those tags, would you be able to identify who the dry cleaning was for?’

  ‘You think I got nothing else better to do?’

  He took out his wallet.

  ‘A hundred and I look.’

  ‘Twenty-five?’

  ‘Seventy-five.’

  ‘Fifty.’

  ‘You got deal, Mister.’ She pocketed the fifty and pulled a thick book from under the counter. ‘What numbers?’

  ‘1171/7, 4393/3, 3053/1.’

  ‘Colours?’

  ‘Pink, green, blue.’

  She rifled through the pages. ‘First one is duvet for Mrs Cohen at 7654 Amber Street; next is dress for Mrs Agosto who live in Apartment 12c at Wiley Place; and last one is black suit for old Mister Ebner who is professional mourner at Sunshine Funeral Home.’

  His shoulders dropped. He thought he was onto something, but John Doe obviously hadn’t got his clothes dry cleaned here. ‘Thanks anyway,’ he said.

  ‘No good?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We have other shops.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Twenty-seven all over island.’ She laughed like a demented hyena under a full moon. ‘Dry cleaning dirty big business.’

  He grunted. ‘Do they all use these tags?’

  She shrugged and pulled a face. ‘Don’t know. Maybe. Book of tags sold everywhere.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘That’s what I say.’

  ‘Do you think other dry-cleaning businesses use these tags?’

  ‘I no fortune cookie, Mister.’

  ‘Okay, thanks.’ John Doe’s tags could have come from anywhere. It seemed that Lillian Taylor was right – they were nothing more than dry-cleaning tags.

  So, Mister Maurice Stern ran a dry-cleaning business. What else was he involved in? Had he ordered Fowler’s death? Why? What was it that Fowler hadn’t been going to tell another living soul about?

  It crossed his mind to call Detective Gerry McCullough, but that would mean dropping Horty in the middle of it all, and he wasn’t prepared to do that. He’d just have to find out about Mr Maurice Stern and Alpine Dry Cleaning all by himself – or at least ask Mary Lou to do it for him on Monday.

  He decided to leave the three suspects until the morning and call in at The Tequila Tavern to eat, and while he was there to ask them what they knew about Joseph Fowler.

  ***

  She parked her Beetle in the car park outside 97 Kirby Street. It was a five-storey apartment block painted a pinkish-brown with balconies overhanging the main entrance. The elevator was on the ground floor. She opened the doors, stepped inside and pressed the button for the third floor. It was small and airless, and smelled of urine.

  Apartment 16 was two doors along on the left.

  She knocked.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I’ve come for the book.’

  The door opened.

  An attractive man with curly black hair, a six-pack and a face that looked as though it had just been sculpted from a block of Italian marble was standing there with a bath sheet knotted around his waist looking like someone out of a film about Greek Gods.

  Otto Rubik whistled. ‘Hey! Nobody said you were a babe.’

  ‘And you didn’t tell me you were a moron. Are you going to leave me standing out here in the corridor?’

  ‘I have strict rules about people not wearing any clothes in my apartment.’

  She barged past him. ‘I enjoy breaking the rules whenever I get the opportunity. Well, where’s the book?’

  ‘I told you on the phone – it’s in the trunk of my cab downstairs.’

  ‘Why are we up here then?’

  ‘Money first.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I have the money. Put some clothes on and let’s go down and get the book. Then I’ll give you the money.’

  Letting the bath sheet drop to the floor he said, ‘You’re sure you want me to put my clothes on? We could go to my bedroom and talk about the possibility of a payment in kind.’

  He was definitely well-endowed, but she could imagine that it would all be about him in bed – a selfish lover. ‘If you think I’m a hooker, then you’ll be paying me.’

  ‘How much do you charge?’

  ‘More than you make in a year. Can we just go down and get the book? I’ll give you the money, and then I’ll be on my way.’

  ‘You’ll never know what you missed.’

  ‘I think I have a reasonable idea.’

  He picked up the bath sheet and disappeared into another room.

  She looked around the apartment. It was reasonably tidy. Over in the left-hand corner stood a multigym with weights and a full-length mirror propped up against the wall. Otto Rubik seemed to be self-obsessed.

  ‘Okay. If you’re sure you want to pass on the opportunity of a lifetime, then let’s go.’

  He wore a pair of knee-length shorts, flip-flops and a t-shirt that must have been twelve sizes too small for him with a message on the front that he obviously picked just for her:

  Feel Safe at Night

  Sleep with a Weightlifter

  She followed him out of the apartment, into the lift and out to the car park where he opened the trunk of a yellow cab.

  He found the book in amongst a stack of rubbish and passed it to her.

  She put it in her rucksack, took out the money that she’d put into an envelope earlier and passed it to him.

  ‘I don’t have to count it, do I?’

  ‘Are you sure you can count that high?’

  ‘I guess that concludes our business,’ he said. ‘Unless . . . ?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’ve got your number – okay if I ring you sometime?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She walked to her car, unlocked the door and wriggled inside. She wanted to look at the book, but she restrained herself. Otto Rubik was standing in the entrance to the building watching her, so she switched the engine on . . . or she would have done, but the only sound that came from the engine in the rear of the car was a series of clicking sounds. She tried again – click, click, click.

  There was a banging on the window.

  Otto Rubik was standing there flexing his muscles.

  She wound the window down. ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’ll run the battery flat if you keep trying to get it to start.’

  ‘Are you a mechanic now?’
/>
  ‘No, but being a cab driver you have to know something about cars.’

  ‘Can you fix it?’

  ‘I can take a look at it for you.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘There’s a cost involved.’

  ‘You’re not still under the dangerous illusion that I’m a hooker, are you?’

  He grinned. ‘No, don’t worry – I can see you’re not a hooker, but I’d like us to go out one time. If you’re not impressed after our first date . . .’ He shrugged. ‘We both walk away.’

  She thought about his proposal. One time wouldn’t hurt, and maybe she was wrong about him. ‘You can call me.’

  ‘Good enough.’ He moved to the back of the car, dropped the Beetle’s hood and said, ‘Turn the key.’

  She did as he instructed, but it continued clicking

  ‘Okay,’ he called to her.

  He was quiet for a handful of minutes. ‘Try it again.’

  She turned the key and the engine coughed into life.

  He banged the hood closed and walked back to where she was sitting. ‘Spark plug lead had come loose. What about next Friday?’

  ‘I thought you were going to call me?’

  ‘I will call you, but we could agree on next Friday in principle, so that I could arrange my busy schedule accordingly.’

  She shifted the gearstick into first gear. ‘Call me,’ she said, pulling forward. In her rear-view mirror she could see him smiling and posing like Arnold Schwarzenegger on steroids. Maybe she could give him a trial run. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been out with anyone. And as for sex . . .

  Before she reached the 207 she pulled into the car park of a shopping mall, locked up the Beetle and found a Papa John’s where she ordered a Medium Stuffed Hot Pepper Passion Pizza and a Diet Pepsi.

  At last, she took the book out of her rucksack and began examining it. Otto was right – it was old. She wondered how much it was worth. Whatever it had been worth was diminished by the torn last page. This was certainly the book from which the phrase Tamám Shud had been torn. “It is finished” made sense on the last page. But why would John Doe tear that particular phrase out of the book? And – more confusingly – why would he then roll the piece of paper up and sew it into a secret pocket of his trousers? It made no sense.

  The waitress brought her pizza and drink. ‘Enjoy.’

  As she ate, she began looking more closely at each page – careful not to put greasy fingerprints all over the book. She found nothing until she reached the last page again. With the exception of the phrase “Tamám Shud”, which had been torn from the page leaving an oblong hole, both sides were blank. Or, that was her first impression. When she moved the book, and the light bounced off the page, she could see faint indentations in the paper as if someone had written something on another sheet of paper that had made a legible impression underneath it.

  She found a soft-leaded 3B pencil in her bag and gently ran the tip over the indentations to reveal a string of letters with some crossing out:

  WRGOABABD

  M LIAOI

  WTBIMPANETP

  X

  MLIABOAIAQC

  ITTMTSAMSTGAB

  What did it mean? Did it mean anything? Why did everything have to be so complicated? Something else she would have to send to Lillian Taylor.

  There was also the indentation of a telephone number, and that wasn’t complicated at all.

  She rang Tom.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘It’s me. What are you doing?’

  ‘Walking towards a place called The Tequila Tavern so that I can get some lunch.’

  ‘I don’t know how you’re not a gazillion stone.’

  ‘When I said, “Ring me later”, I meant later, not . . .’

  ‘Do you want to know about the book?’

  ‘You’ve got the book?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘This is definitely the book from which Tamám Shud was torn – there’s a hole in the last page of about the right size.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘But that’s not all.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I also found some indentations on the last page, which I went over with a pencil. It revealed a string of letters with some crossing out.’

  ‘Someone had written something on another sheet of paper on top of the page?’

  ‘Yes, but none of it makes sense. I’ll have to send it to Lillian Taylor.’

  ‘She’s earning a fortune from us.’

  ‘Do you want me to send you a copy?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Yeah, you’d probably never be able to find it or open it anyway. That’s not all though.’

  ‘There’s more?’

  ‘A telephone number.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘And it’s the unlisted number belonging to Rosalind Winter.’

  He didn’t respond.

  ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes. I wasn’t expecting that. I’m thinking.’

  ‘I thought I could hear rusty cogs trying to turn.’

  ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’

  ‘John Doe is connected to Harrison’s disappearance?’

  ‘Possibly, but he’s definitely connected to Rosalind Winter.’

  ‘I’ll have to . . .’

  ‘No you won’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Stay away from Rosalind Winter, and don’t write anything about her or the connection you’ve just found in your serialisation.’

  ‘I have a responsibility to my readers.’

  ‘And I have a responsibility to keep you alive.’

  ‘Keep me alive! I don’t see . . .’

  ‘Do you trust me?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Then listen to what I’m saying. You know I’m in Staten Island?’

  ‘So you tell me.’

  ‘I’m looking into the death of Joseph Fowler. He’s the name that Sally gave me . . .’

  ‘About the children?’

  ‘Yes. Well, I’ve just been into a dry cleaning shop that uses the same tags as those we found on John Doe’s clothing.’

  ‘I’m confused. How . . . ?’

  ‘I think there’s a connection between Joseph Fowler and John Doe.’

  This time, as the pathways of her brain tried to converge on the idea that it might all be connected like a spider’s web, it was she who remained quiet. Eventually she said, ‘I hope you’re not saying what I think you’re saying?’

  ‘The only thing I’m saying is don’t write anything about Joseph Fowler or Rosalind Winter in your serialisation – can you do that?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Wait until I get back tomorrow, and we’ve had a chance to examine the implications. Then, we’ll have an idea of what we’re dealing with. There have been four unexplained deaths . . .’

  ‘Four?’

  ‘Your father, Doc Ratchett, Joseph Fowler and John Doe, and I don’t want your name to be added to that list.’

  ‘Neither do I. Okay, I won’t write about any of that, but I can write about the book, can’t I?’

  ‘I suppose so, but don’t mention the telephone number.’

  ‘You should get a job at the Board of Censorship.’

  ***

  The Tequila Tavern was busy, but not overcrowded. He sat in an empty booth, and when the waitress appeared he ordered the Steak Fajita Burrito with onions, bell peppers, Spanish sauce and melted cheese.

  ‘Anything to drink?’ She was pretty, young with her hair tied back and the light of hope still shining in her eyes. He had only seen a flicker in Sara’s eyes, and he was sure that Curtis Polk had beaten Misty’s bright shining light out of her a long time ago. It made him angry just thinking about it.

  ‘A Bud, please.’

  ‘Coming right up.’

  He was still trying to wrap his brain around what Rae had found in the book. Was it p
ossible that all of it was connected? The missing children? Senator Raeburn and Doc Ratchett? John Doe? The disappearance of Roger Harrison? Rosalind Winter? And now Joseph Fowler? He was a visual type of person, and what he needed was a whiteboard so that he could start mapping out the connections, but he didn’t have one, so he’d just have to wait until Monday.

  The waitress came back with his Bud. ‘Anything else I can get you?’

  ‘Isobel,’ he said, nodding at her badge. ‘That’s a nice name.’

  She gave a laugh, and her eyes sparkled like diamonds. ‘Did somebody pay you to say that?’

  He smiled, took a swig of his beer and said, ‘I’m looking for a guy called Joe Fowler.’

  ‘Joe? Yeah, I knew Joe. Used to come in here regularly.’

  ‘Used to?’

  ‘Somebody shot him about three weeks ago.’

  He looked suitably shocked. ‘That’s terrible. Do the police know who killed him?’

  ‘Haven’t heard, but I don’t think so.’

  ‘Did Joe have any friends who I could talk to?’

  The barman shouted, ‘Izzy.’

  She threw a glance over her shoulder. ‘I have to work now, but I’ll come back a bit later.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Isobel brought his meal about ten minutes later and said, ‘I don’t know whether he was a friend or not, but Joe used to come in now and again with a man called Tony Dreyfus.’

  ‘What can you tell me about him?’

  ‘Nothing really. He was always well-dressed and tipped real good – that’s all I know.’

  He slipped her a twenty. ‘Thanks for the excellent service, Isobel.’

  The note disappeared. ‘Have a nice day, Mister.’

  He was just about to take a bite of his burrito when Sally Stackhouse appeared on the seat next to him.

  ‘Hello, Mister.’

  He hid his mouth behind his hand. He didn’t want people thinking he had an imaginary friend. ‘Hello yourself, Sally.’

  ‘How you doin’?’

  He picked up his drink, and held that in front of his mouth as if he was deciding about whether to take a drink or not. ‘I’m doing just fine. What about you?’