That was where he came from.
And this is where he is: not the FBI agent he dreamed of being, nor the disillusioned personal injury lawyer he was, but a pretty good private investigator, which suits his edgy, ebullient, Game-addicted personality real well.
The actual job description is “security consultant.”
Nowadays, everybody cares about security. They don’t care about investigating. Why should they? A credit card and the Internet make us all Sam Spades.
Still, Eddie Caruso likes to think of himself as a PI.
Caruso has a scuffed, boring, nondescript office in a building those same adjectives apply to, Forty-sixth near Eighth — decorated (office, not building) with close to twenty pictures he himself has taken with a very high-speed Canon of athletes in action. You’d think he was a sports lawyer. The building features mostly orthodontists, plastic surgeons, accountants, one-man law firms and a copy shop. That’s one great thing about New York: Even in the Theater District, the Mecca of all things artistic, people need teeth and boobs fixed up, their taxes paid and résumés exaggerated. Next door is a touristy but dependable restaurant of some nebulous Middle Eastern — Mediterranean affiliation; it excels at the grilled calamari. Caruso, who lives in Greenwich Village and who often walks the three miles to work (to banish the overhang of gut), likes the five-story bathwater-gray building, the location, too. Though if the city doesn’t stop digging up the street in front of the building Caruso may just write a letter.
Which he’ll never get around to, of course.
Now, Eddie Caruso finished reading the account of the murder, well, skimming the account of the murder, and pushed the material back toward Carmel.
Yep, Game…
Sarah Lieberman’s story had indeed interested Caruso, as Mrs. Rodriguez here had suggested. Sarah’s itinerant younger days, a bit of a rebel, her settling into life in New York City quite easily. She seemed to be irreverent and clever and to have no patience for the pretense that breeds in the Upper East Side like germs in a four-year-old’s nose. Caruso decided he would have liked the woman.
And he was mightily pissed off that the Westerfields had beat her to death with a hammer, wrapped the body in a garbage bag, and dumped her in an unmarked grave.
It seemed that mother and son had met Sarah at a fund-raiser and saw a chance to run a grift. They recognized her as a wealthy, elderly vulnerable woman with no family, living alone. A perfect target. They leased the apartment on the ground floor of her Upper East Side townhouse and began a relentless campaign to take control of her life. She had finally had enough and one morning in July, a year ago, tried to record them threatening her. They’d caught her in the act, though, and forced her to sign a contract selling them the townhouse for next to nothing. Then they zapped her with a Taser and bludgeoned her to death.
That afternoon Carmel returned to the townhouse from shopping and found her missing. Knowing that the Westerfields had been asking about her valuables and that Sarah was going to record them threatening her, the housekeeper suspected what had happened. She called the police. Given that — and the fact that a routine search revealed the Westerfields had a criminal history in Missouri and Kansas — officers responded immediately. They found some fresh blood in the garage. That was enough for a search warrant. Crime Scene found the Taser with Sarah’s skin in the barbs, a hammer with John’s prints and Sarah’s blood and hair, and duct tape with both Sarah’s and Miriam’s DNA. A roll of garbage bags, too, three of them missing.
The clerk from a local spy and security shop verified the Taser had been bought, with cash, by John Westerfield a week earlier. Computer forensic experts found the couple had tried to hack into Sarah’s financial accounts — without success. Investigators did, however, find insurance documents covering close to seven hundred thousand dollars in cash and jewelry kept on her premises. Two necklaces identified as Sarah’s were found in Miriam’s jewelry box. All of the valuables had been stolen.
The defense claimed that drug gangs had broken in and killed her. Or, as an alternative, that Sarah had gone senile and went off by herself on a bus or train.
Juries hate lame excuses and it took the Lieberman panel all of four hours to convict. The two were sentenced to life imprisonment. The farewell in the courtroom — mother and son embracing like spouses — made for one real queasy photograph.
Carmel now said to Eddie Caruso, “I kept hoping the police would find her remains, you know?”
John’s car had been spotted several days before Sarah disappeared in New Jersey, where he was reportedly looking at real property for one of his big business deals, none of which ever progressed past the daydreaming phase. It was assumed the body had been dumped there.
Carmel continued, “I don’t know about her religion, the Jewish one, but I’m sure it’s important to be buried and have a gravestone and have people say some words over you. To have people come and see you. Don’t you think, Mr. Caruso?”
He himself didn’t think that was important but he now nodded.
“The problem is, see, this is a simple death.”
“Simple?” The woman sat forward, brows furrowing a bit.
“Not to make little of it, understand me,” Caruso added quickly, seeing the dismay on her face. “It’s just that it’s open and shut, you know? Nasty perps, good evidence. No love children, no hidden treasure that was never recovered, no conspiracy theories. Fast conviction. With a simple death, people lose interest. The leads go cold real fast. I’m saying, it could be expensive for me to take on the case.”
“I could pay you three thousand dollars. Not more than that.”
“That’d buy you about twenty-five hours of my time.” On impulse he decided to waive expenses, which he marked up and made a profit on.
Before he went further, though, Caruso asked, “Have you thought this through?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it was a terrible crime but justice’s been done. If I start searching, I may have to ask you things — you’ll have to relive the incident. And, well, sometimes when people look into the past, they find things they wish they hadn’t.”
“What could that be?”
“Maybe there’d be no way to recover the body, even if I find it. Maybe it was…let’s say disrespected when it was disposed of.”
Carmel had not considered this, he could tell. Clients rarely did. But she said, “I want to say a prayer at her grave, wherever it is. I don’t care about anything else.”
Caruso nodded and pulled a retainer agreement from his credenza. They both signed it. Also, on whim, he penned in a discounted hourly rate. He’d seen pictures of her three children when she’d opened her purse to get her driver’s license number for the agreement. They were teenagers and the parents were surely facing the horror of college expenses.
You’re a goddamn softy, he told himself.
“All right,” he said to her. “Let me keep these and I’ll get to work. Give me your home and cell numbers.”
A hesitation. “Email please. Only email.” She wrote it down.
“Sure. Not call?”
“No, please don’t. See, I mentioned to my husband I was thinking about doing this and he said it wasn’t a good idea.”
“Why?”
She nodded at the news clippings. “It’s in there somewhere. There was a man maybe working for the Westerfields, the police think. Daniel’s worried he’d find out if we started looking for the body. He’s probably dangerous.”
Glad you mentioned it, Caruso thought wryly. “Okay, I’ll email.” He rose.
Carmel Rodriguez stepped forward and actually hugged him, tears in her eyes.
Caruso mentally bumped his fee down another twenty-five, just to buy her a little more of his time.