“Ow! Get off me, dick!”
Jack tightened his grip on the young man’s arms. He wailed in pain.
“All right, all right,” he moaned. “What do you want?”
“First . . . apologize to the lady,” said Jack. And when Lubrano hesitated, he tightened his grip once more.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”
Jack loosened his grip, but only a fraction. “Good boy. Now listen to me and listen good. I’ve found incriminating evidence in your place—”
“What evidence?” spat Lubrano.
“A box of photos. Photos of a naked woman in lewd poses. Photos of a woman that Emily Stendall claims you blackmailed for money and then murdered. Now, after I found those photos, I could have slipped out of here and gone to my client with them—and we both could have gone to the police just like she wanted. But I took a very close look at them, and I’m guessing you have something to tell me, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Lubrano.
“Fine, then I’ll haul you out of here and we’ll talk it over at the nearest precinct—the one that apparently missed these photos on their first search of your place. How about that?”
“No! I don’t want to do that,” said Lubrano. “Look, this is all wrong . . . you need to know the whole story.”
“Good. And you need to know that after I let you go, I’ll be covering you with my rod, so don’t try any funny stuff or I’ll pump you so full of lead the Parks Department will designate you a metal sculpture. Got it?”
Lubrano quickly nodded.
“Okay, nice and slow,” said Jack, smoothly releasing Joey while simultaneously reaching for the gun in his shoulder holster.
“Jack,” I whispered after Joey rose and Jack had waved him over to the lumpy sofa. “Why didn’t the police find the photos the first time?”
“Baby, didn’t you learn anything back at the Comfy-Time Motel? Badges don’t always find everything they should—especially when they’re not motivated to look very hard. Joey here kept this shoebox under a loose board beneath a throw rug in his bedroom. A good trick, but not an original one.”
Joey sat down heavily on the old sofa, rubbing his bruised wrists.
“Okay,” said Jack. “Let’s take it from the top.”
Joey spilled it all. How Emily Stendall had been the one with whom he’d been carrying on an affair. How she’d come up with a plan to extort a great deal of money from her sister, Sarah Nolan. The two women looked a lot alike—they were both about the same height and weight, both had delicate features and pale skin. The biggest difference was that Emily’s hair was blonde and Sarah’s was jet black.
So one weekend when the Nolans were away, Emily concocted a story for Benny, the routinely half-inebriated doorman, convincing him that the Nolans had left her a key to water her plants, but she’d lost it.
Once inside, Emily shooed Benny away and slipped Joey in. Lubrano took a series of racy photos of Emily—while she was wearing a black wig styled exactly like Sarah’s hair. The shots were out of focus on the face, but clearly showed that the photos had been of a dark-haired woman of Sarah’s build, in Sarah’s bedroom, wearing Sarah’s jewelry, and stripping out of her private clothes and under-things.
Then, one night, while Sarah’s husband was away on one of his long business trips, Joey charmed his way into Sarah’s apartment and actually did sleep with her.
“It was Emily’s idea that I sleep with Mrs. Nolan,” confessed Lubrano. “She said Mrs. Nolan would feel guilty about it afterward. Then that would give us leverage. She’d be more inclined to pay up because she’d know she wouldn’t be able to lie to her husband and claim she’d never slept with me—when she had.”
Joey showed up with the photos the next night, demanding a cool two hundred fifty thousand, which would clean out Mrs. Nolan’s trust fund. Sarah Nolan broke down and agreed to get the money if he’d just give up the photos and negatives.
“We arranged a night for me to come to her apartment and make the trade,” Lubrano explained. “Then Emily and I were supposed to beat it out of town for Miami. That was our plan all along. The money would let us get married and start living the good life.”
“But it didn’t work out, did it Joey?” said Jack.
Lubrano sighed, shook his head. “The night before we were supposed to do the trade-off, Mrs. Nolan ended up dead. I don’t know what happened, but I had nothing to do with it.”
“I know,” said Jack. “I talked to enough cops that saw you at McSorley’s, making bets on dart throws.”
“Damn right. I was innocent . . . but Emily was furious. Said it was all screwed up now, that Mrs. Nolan probably offed herself, but we deserved our money and we’d get it, too.”
“By blackmailing her husband?” prompted Jack.
“Exactly. But I was scared and wouldn’t go for it,” said Joey, “I still had the photos and Emily demanded I give them up, but I wouldn’t. I told her we should just go to Miami anyways, me and her, but she got nasty and said she wasn’t going anywhere with a rube who had no cash and no future and unless I agreed to her plan she’d get even with me good.”
“What did you do?” prompted Jack.
“I told her to take a hike, that’s what. That broad was good in the sack, but she was all bad out of it, and I’d had it with her.”
Jack nodded. “That’s why Miss Stendall needed me. She wanted me to get those photos back from you so she could go through with the second phase of the blackmailing scheme—to blackmail Sarah Nolan’s husband. And at the same time, she needed to incriminate you.”
Joey’s eyes narrowed. He leaned forward on the sofa. “Doesn’t she know I’d turn on her? The police didn’t believe her once, but if they ever did, and I knew for sure I was going down, I’d take her with me. I’d tell all the stuff about her sleeping with me and posing for the photos and our planning the blackmailing together.”
“She’d never give you that chance. That’s also why she needed me. My bet is she’s about to stage a situation between us where I’ll kill you.”
Joey blinked, confused. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying Emily Stendall played us. And now it’s our turn to play her.”
Jack turned suddenly and winked at me. “Any questions, doll?”
My eyes widened. “At least a dozen.”
“Let’s take P.I. school somewhere else, then,” he said, rising. “Excuse us, Joey.”
Jack grabbed my hand and kissed it. In an instant, we were no longer in a shabby, two-room walk-up flat. Above us, the chandeliers of Manhattan’s elegant Plaza Hotel shimmered. Jack offered his arm and I took it. We glided across the carpet to a small candle-lit marble table in a remote part of the palm-filled lobby.
As we stepped past a gilded mirror, I saw my attire had become decidedly more feminine—my gray linen suit had been exchanged for a deep-green satin dress with a turned-up collar, daring neckline, and matching pumps. My auburn hair was down, falling in perfect waves around my face and looking sleeker than I’d ever been able to style it in my life.
We sat down at the small marble table, and Jack ordered champagne. It arrived in a silver bucket, poured by a white-gloved, black-jacketed waiter into shallow crystal glasses.
“Okay, shoot,” he said, after enjoying a long swallow. “Not literally, baby.” He winked. “Just ask me what you want to know.”
“First, finish the story. What happened to you and Joey and Emily?”
“I brought Emily Stendall some but not all of the photos. Remember, baby, holding on to some of the evidence is smart insurance in case something goes wrong—like that bullet in Johnny’s car.”
I nodded silently, the champagne going far too easily down my throat.