Sam and Lucy huddled together; she was still shaking. I stood off to the side leaning on a parked car, staring at the Michelin Man, willing him back to life after the shock from the Taser. C’mon, get up. I reminded myself that I’d had to do it. Slowly, he came around. He reflexively jerked his hands up and yanked at the bumper, but he was at a bad angle and all he succeeded in doing was whacking himself in the chin. Just then two cruisers arrived, followed by Stacy Winters, who climbed out of an unmarked car.
“Relax, Vitaly.” Winters gave the bottom of his foot a sharp kick. “You’re only embarrassing yourself.” He gave up and seemed to deflate visibly like a balloon with a slow leak.
She walked past him, shook a few Tic Tacs into her hand, then offered some to me.
“No thanks. Bad for the teeth.”
“Are you sure the only things you dig up on a regular basis are plants? Because I do believe you caught yourself one of the perpetrators,” she said, popping the mints into her mouth.
There was a tinge of grudging admiration in the remark and I couldn’t resist bragging. “There’s another one locked in the laundry room in the hotel.”
“And the head cheese?” she asked.
“Still at large.”
“Not for long. My men just went around the back of the hotel to seal off that exit. Bernie won’t get away.” She chewed on the Tic Tacs and shook out some more.
“Bernie Mishkin?”
Winters ticked off her reasons. “He had the means, the opportunity, and fifteen million motives.”
Bernie’s Chinese investor knew all about the hotel’s precarious financial situation, but his people hadn’t been able to navigate the byzantine workings of Congress and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Bernie had convinced them the Quepochas’ federal recognition was imminent. And with that would come casino gambling and busloads of tourists from New York and Boston eager to leave their money in the Nutmeg State.
“How could he promise them that? He’s not a Native American,” I said. “Is he?” I remembered what Betty had said about membership in the tribe.
“He’s not, but Daniel Smallwood is.” Winters thought the two of them had cooked up a scheme to defraud the investors. Fifteen million dollars would go a long way toward paying off the Mishkins’ bills and keeping the tribe’s case in court for years to come. It wouldn’t matter if the Quepochas were never recognized.
“Why wouldn’t Daniel Smallwood just do this on his own? Why did he need Bernie?” I asked.
“They gave each other credibility. And they convinced this Wai Hi that they could earn the cost of a new hotel’s construction with one year’s worth of gaming revenues from Bernie’s old hotel.”
“You think Nick was going to blow the whistle and one of them killed him?”
“I think they hired someone to do it.” She pointed to the Michelin Man, who was still shaking off the effects of the Taser and scratching the spot where the barbs had hit him.
“I didn’t kill nobody,” he said. “That’s not what I signed on for. I want my lawyer.”
“Maybe him, maybe Billy Crawford, we’re not there yet. But we will be soon.”
I asked her about the evidence they’d found that implicated the Crawfords. She hesitated for just a second. I could almost see her thinking, Why the hell not?
“Hair,” she said.
Sam looked up. That was all she said before walking away toward the hotel.
The cops asked me for the key to the bicycle lock. They unchained the Michelin Man, cuffed him, and read him his rights, squashing him into the cruiser, where he took up most of the backseat.
“This is police brutality. I should be in a van. I want my lawyer.”
“Shut up, Vitaly,” one of the cops said, bored. He returned the chain and lock to me and I draped it around my neck, putting the key in the lock for safekeeping.
For thirty minutes the cops interrogated us.
“We struggled. I kicked him,” Lucy said, skirting around the issue of the Taser; a good thing since none of us knew what Connecticut laws were regarding Tasers.
Remarkably, they believed the three of us managed to subdue a three-hundred-pound thug. They’d know the truth soon enough but I didn’t feel the need to volunteer that information, not just yet. If the Michelin Man was smart enough to ask for his lawyer, maybe I’d wait for mine.
While we were outside answering questions, we could hear Amanda’s goth party still going strong. The corpse flower was a huge success; somewhere Fran Mishkin must have been smiling. I doubted whether any of the students even noticed a scrawny, twitchy guy being freed from the hotel’s laundry room and brought out in cuffs to join his fleshy friend on the way to jail in the back of a second police cruiser. Minutes later, Bernie and Rachel were led out of their hotel, Bernie, in cuffs covered by a jacket, blubbering on about the newspapers, and Rachel, two steps behind, as usual.
Hector Ruiz stood in the doorway and assured them he had the situation under control and all publicity was good publicity. I wasn’t sure that adage extended as far as an accusation of murder, but what did I know-Hector was a pretty sharp cookie.
Sam, Lucy, and I watched them all drive off until we were alone in the parking lot.
“I don’t know about anyone else, but I could use a drink,” Lucy said. She marched ahead of us into the crowded lobby.
Sam passed. He’d been sober for four hours and said he was shooting for five. Then six. One hour at a time, then one day at a time. He wouldn’t take any money. “I bought a few Powerball tickets with that twenty you left for me. I never got a chance to thank you.”
“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Sam. Take care of yourself.” I didn’t know what else to say. “If you ever want any part-time landscaping work, give me a call, okay?” I wished him luck and leaned in for the double back pat-friendlier than a handshake but not as intimate as a kiss.
“You look good, baby,” Sam whispered.
I said a quick prayer that the night wouldn’t get any weirder than it had already been. Granted, Sam had cleaned up pretty good and I didn’t like to think of myself as a snob, but was this an appropriate time for a pass? I froze and said nothing. I hoped I wasn’t wincing at what I thought was an untimely suggestion.
“Billy brought me a jacket that night. We met on the loading dock.” That might be why Billy’s hair was found at the scene. “We heard someone coming. Billy wasn’t supposed to be there, so we hid behind the Dumpster. I couldn’t really see; Billy was closer. But I heard them. You look good, baby. That’s what Nick said to the woman right before she shot him.” Then Sam disappeared again behind the hedges.
I walked through the party, into the bar, stunned. If Sam was right and the killer was a woman, there was a short list of suspects. And the one at the top of the list used to work for Sergei and was last seen wearing my black quilted jacket.
“What’s the matter?” Lucy said. “You look pale. Oh, wait, we all look pale.” There were already two rings on the bar in front of her and she called the bartender over to order a drink for me.
I didn’t recognize the girl behind the bar but she stared as if she knew us. “Is one of you Paula?” she asked, with a faint accent. I toyed with the idea of saying no; after all, one of us wasn’t.
“That would be me,” I said, exhausted, holding up my hand.
“I have something for you.” My whole body tensed. I hoped it wasn’t a shot to the face. Being half-Italian, my family was big on open caskets.
She pulled a plastic drugstore shopping bag out from under the bar. “Oksana left this for you.” It was my quilted jacket.
I let out a nervous laugh. “Hey, old friend, I never thought I’d see you again.” I put the jacket on, turned up the collar, and dug my hands in the pockets, modeling it, QVC style. In one of the pockets I found a note. I unfolded the slip of paper and read it out loud.
Dear Paula,
If you are reading this I hope it means that you and your friend are okay. Billy and I are going away to someplace where Sergei cannot find us. Where we can start fresh. It wasn’t Sergei’s fault. It was that woman. He never would have needed so much money if she hadn’t talked him into buying that damn Zamboni. Wish us luck.
Oksana
Lucy nearly coughed up an olive. “Holy shit. Well, she finally found someone to look after her. But what the hell is a Zamboni? It sounds like an Italian pastry-leave the gun, take the Zamboni.”
“It’s a very expensive machine used to clean and smooth the ice at a skating rink,” I said, putting two and two together.
“Are there many skaters around here?” she asked.
I knew of two, Viktor Petrenko, the former Olympic gold medalist, and Jackie Connelly, who blew a double axel at a high school competition twenty-four years ago and was comforted by an athlete from a school two thousand miles away. Something told me Petrenko wasn’t involved.