Northcoast Shakedown

by James R. Winter

JAMES R. WINTER made his bones in 2001 with the Plots With Guns story “A Walk in the Rain.” Since that time, he has penned stories that have appeared in Judas, Nefarious, Shred of Evidence, Hardluck Stories, Futures Mysterious, and Thrilling Detective. Northcoast Shakedown is slated for a January, 2005, release. He lives in Cincinnati with his wife Diane.
Contact James

CHAPTER 1

Sandy Lapinsky stared back at me from her bed, a small hole in her forehead. I reached over and felt her neck. She had no pulse. Her skin felt cool, though it could have been from the air conditioning.

She lay there naked, undignified. Violated. I resisted the urge to throw a blanket over her, to close her eyes. The crime scene techs would want everything as close to pristine as possible when they came.

As far as I could tell, Sandy had been dead since about 9:00 that morning. That's when I figured a slug from a .22 drilled her forehead. Death had locked her eyes open. The hole hardly bled. Professional job, I guessed, though I hadn't inspected the lock. Upon finding her door ajar, I was just a tad more concerned about her. You get funny that way when you've broken and entered a few times or been shot at for being a cop, both public and private.

I didn't take her pulse or listen to her breathing or anything else one did when finding a gunshot victim. The only thing I'd touched was the front door knob. She was dead, and had been for a couple of hours.

The door to the apartment creaked open. I spun, crouched, and drew my Browning Hi-Power. Nothing. I waited at the edge of the door to Sandy's room. I could hear someone moving around, clothes rustling despite attempts to remain silent. I kept my thumb on the safety, getting ready to slide it as soon as Sandy's surprise visitor appeared.

"Sandy?"

Shit! I knew the man's voice. I thumbed off the safety and slowly stepped around the doorframe.

"Freeze!" I held the gun at him in a pose beaten into me at the police academy.

The man nearly jumped out of his Armani. Tall, with thick brown hair, he looked like the Second Coming of Bobby Kennedy. He had his hands up, shaking. "Don't shoot! Who are you?"

"I work for your wife, Mr. Ryan. My name is Kepler; I'm a private investigator. I know all about Sandy." With my left hand, I unclipped my cell phone and dialed 911. "You just walked into a murder scene. Want to tell me about it, or do you want to tell the police?"

"Murder?"

I cocked my head back toward the bedroom. "Your girlfriend's in there with a .22 bullet in her skull. I found her about five minutes ago."

His eyes narrowed, as he looked at me, then the gun. "How do I know you didn't kill her?"

"This is a nine millimeter. If I'd have shot her, her brains would be all over the headboard."

He moved toward me. I held the gun on him, but he kept coming, pushing past me. I turned to watch his reaction to seeing Sandy's dead stare. "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, Christ!"

He started to bend down toward her.

"Don't!"

He stiffened, turned, and glared at me. "You sonofabitch! What have you done?"

"Nothing, but when the cops see that bullet hole, they'll know it wasn't mine. But you? Why is one of Cleveland's most powerful attorneys visiting the apartment of a hooker?" I hit call and put the phone to my ear.

"911 emergency," the dispatcher said in that clinical tone that keeps them detached from the hell breaking loose on the other end of the line.

"I have a homicide victim here," I said. "Gunshot to the head. Small caliber." I gave the address. "White, female, early twenties. Her name is Sandy Lapinsky."

"Is the victim still breathing?"

"The victim is dead, ma'am."

"Have you checked for a pulse?"

Of course I checked, idiot! I wanted to say. Instead I said, "Yes. No pulse, no breathing."

"Who shot the victim?"

"I don't know. She appears to have been dead for less than a couple of hours. I just found her a couple minutes ago."

"Hold one moment, sir."

During the brief silence in the conversation, I heard the dispatcher tapping on keys. "Sir, EMT is on its way. Berea Police have been notified. Can you tell me if there's any sign of forced entry?"

"No, the door was open when I arrived here."

"Berea Police are two minutes out. EMT is three minutes. Please do not touch the body or move anything."
Well, I sure as hell wasn't going to pick her up and start dancing with her. Then again, the dispatcher had to assume I was massively ignorant.

I closed my phone and looked up at Ryan. "Two minutes. You'd better have a good story for the cops."

Ryan looked down at my gun. "It wasn't what you think, Mr. Kepler."

I sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. "Don’t bullshit me, Ryan. I snapped photos of you escorting her into a room at the Pearl Inn. You're in deep shit right now."

Ryan nodded. "So are you, if you're not careful."

"Are you threatening me, Mr. Ryan?"

He shook his head. "Warning you." He glanced down at Sandy Lapinsky's body. "Although it looks like I'm too late."

"For her? For you? Too late for who, Ryan?"

He let out a humorless chuckle. "All of us, Mr. Kepler."

Men have heart attacks every day. I figured one loomed on my horizon in the next decade, despite exercise. A couple of days before I found Sandy Lapinsky's body, a heart attack rescued me from gridlock on I-77 in Independence. A tractor-trailer had overturned, blocking the southbound lanes and keeping me from reaching a workers' comp cheat out in Twinsburg.

Excuse me, I meant to say alleged workers' comp cheat. I'd been on my way to snap photos of the poor, injured autoworker when the accident happened. Right about the time the hazmat crews arrived to clean up the mess, my phone rang. It was Albert Polnacek III, Senior Vice President of Underwriting, Terminal Tower Life & Annuity, or TTG Life for short.

Don't ask. I had no idea why TTG didn't drop the word "Terminal" from the life division's name. In fact, I never did figure out why they kept the name "Terminal Tower," since the company had moved out of the venerable Cleveland landmark in 1968. It wasn't my place to ask. I got free office space, the services of a secretary, and plenty of insurance work from TTG's property/casualty divisions. For that deal, they could call themselves Bloodsucker Fire & Life, and I'd be just as happy.

I felt grateful to Polnacek until I learned about the heart attack. I'd run five blocks through the hot, humid morning to Landmark Building on Prospect only to find out that Polnacek's call wasn't exactly an emergency, not to Life's claims manager, anyway. No, Polnacek had disrupted my day over a clear-cut death from natural causes. Had I made it to Twinsburg to shoot pictures, I'd have really been upset. As it stood, I was only mildly ticked.

On my way back to the office, I stopped in at the Sidebar for a quick lunch. The Sidebar is lawyer central in Cleveland, sitting across St. Clair Avenue from the Justice Center. It was also up the street from my office. I usually stopped in two or three times a week to work the legal crowd for business.

"Mr. Kepler." The voice, deep, very throaty, came from behind.

I turned to see a tall man in a black pinstripe Brooks Brothers suit. He had short salt-and-pepper hair with matching mustache. He wore a thick gold wedding band, and a Rolex watch. He was either a lawyer or a TTG executive. "Yes?"

The man reached out to me. "Ken Giamatti. I manage the workers' comp program for TTG."

A Commercial Lines exec, I mused. I shook hands, always eager to please them that wrote my retainer checks. "Nick Kepler, investigative consultant. I take it I'm working for you at the moment, or was trying to this morning."

"For me...? Oh, the claim in Twinsburg. You haven't snapped any photos yet?"

"Some guy in an overturned truck had other ideas."

"I see. How does your afternoon look right now?"

I didn't have my planner on me, nor had I checked in with Elaine. "As far as I know, it's clear. I get lot of last minute skip traces, though, and sometimes the Sheriff will send over a stack of papers to serve. Do you need me to keep that time open?"

"If you can. A friend of mine would like to talk to you about a problem."

"A friend? What about?"
"Domestic crisis. She'll fill you in. Says your lawyer recommended you. Can I tell her about two?"

"Sure. You know my secretary?"

"Our secretary, Mr. Kepler. Ms. Kelnik assists you as a courtesy, not as an employee."

I grinned. "Tell that to her." When he didn't so much as smile, let alone laugh, I added, "Ask Elaine to clear my schedule around two. She'll run interference with the sheriff and bail bondsmen until then."

"Thank you, Mr. Kepler. I promise you my friend will make it worth your while."

"Referrals are always worth my while, Mr. Giamatti."

Giamatti spun on his heel and left. I downed the last of my coffee and walked back to my office.

"It's the odd things," Carla Ryan told me that afternoon in my office on St. Clair Avenue. "Large cash withdrawals from our checking account with no receipts. Court dates in his planner he never met."

As I scribbled notes on a legal pad, I watched my new client. Brunette, in her late thirties, she moved her hands as though she were conducting an orchestra playing behind Deep Purple or Metallica. A Virginia Slim, which she frequently puffed without really inhaling, burned in her hand.

Occasionally, I let my eyes drift down to her legs before forcing myself to look at either my notes or her face. They were nice legs, but their owner was far from my type. She seemed a tad distant for my tastes. "And you say Patrick works late hours. He is a trial attorney, after all."

"I understand that," she said, sucking in and releasing more smoke without it reaching her lungs. "I understand a lot of things about his profession and the hours and the pressure." She tapped ash into a Terminal Tower Group Auto coffee mug I'd given her as an ashtray. "If he wants to make love to his secretary in his office on his lunch hour, fine. That's the price one pays for being a political wife."

I stopped scribbling and looked up from my notes. "Political?"

She nodded. "Patrick has his eye on the County Prosecutor's job. Mary Scofield wants to turn the reigns over to him so she can concentrate on her run for state attorney general."

Great. I made it a hard fast rule not to get involved in politically oriented cases. I wasn't a "dust buster." I couldn't stomach rummaging through some candidate's garbage for dirt so some scumbag could hold on to his job. "You didn't mention your husband's political connections."

"I didn't think you'd take the job," she said, after a quick puff. "Besides, you're the first person I've told since he got the news."

"Tell me, Mrs. Ryan, would you be here if your husband were just another trial attorney settling lawsuits and taking the occasional criminal case?"

She smiled, but sadness had crept into her eyes. "Patrick is a powerful attorney right now. I have an almost equally powerful job as a management consultant. Our marriage is a business arrangement." She tapped more ash into the coffee mug. "Oh, we're friends. We live together, sleep together, do everything couples do, but it's also an open marriage."

Open for whom? I wanted to ask. Instead, I asked, "So have the rules changed?"

She nodded.

"Do you want me to confirm his infidelity? Get you names? What?"

She crushed out her cigarette and leaned forward. "What I want, Mr. Kepler, is for you to tell me if he's being discreet. That's all. As I said, if it's just his secretary on his desk at lunchtime, I don't care. I just want to make sure the press is not going to come after him when he takes over as prosecutor."

"I see. So you want to see if he's doing cheap motels or sneaking off to someone's house."

"Exactly." She leaned over and pulled her briefcase into her lap. She opened the briefcase and handed me a check. "I'll give you five thousand dollars to follow him around and catch him in the act. If he's caught, I'll give you a..."

I shook my head. "I don't take bonuses like that anymore, not on domestics. If you want someone found or a missing item returned, that's fine, but..."

She smiled. "Don't worry, Mr. Kepler. I can hide that bonus for you. You might be glad you took it."

I didn't bother pondering her meaning. "I have two open cases, neither of which require too much of my time. I should be able to give your husband the proper attention."

She reached into her briefcase and handed me a thick file folder. "You'll want to go over this."

I opened the folder. Inside, she had taped her husband's business card and her own to the cover sheet. "What is all this?"

"I've photocopied his planner for the rest of the week," she said, lighting another cigarette. "I've also attached bills we received from a company called FMK Associates. I have no idea who they are or what they do."

I pulled a bill out. It wasn't much, just your average copier paper run through a laser printer. The letterhead read "FMK Associates: Confidential Consulting." It had no address on it, only a PO box with an Ohio City zip code. No phone number, either. It had only one line item, "Services Rendered," with the amount of two hundred dollars. I frowned. "Not very informative, is it?"

Carla Ryan shook her head. "I'm afraid not. I can't track it down myself. Don't have the time."

I looked at her business card. She worked for Delta-V Management Consultants, a block over in the Key Tower. I'd heard of them. Absolutely ruthless, I knew, and Carla Ryan was one of the senior carnivores. "Guess your job keeps you busy, too."

She smiled. "It's good training for a political life."

"I'll bet it is."

She leaned back and studied me. "John Micelli says you are to be trusted implicitly."

"Working with John, I have to be. Otherwise, Irene'll kill him."

"I know all about John's... distractions. Still, you put Virgil Pescik on the 6:00 news."

"That I did."

"Pointing a hidden camera right where I'm sitting now, then giving the tape to your girlfriend." She leaned forward, her cold brown eyes boring into me. "I won't have to worry about you exposing my husband to Margo Westphal at six and eleven."

"First off, Margo lives in Boston now. You also have to understand Virgil Pescik tricked me into committing a felony. When I realized what he was doing, his right to confidentiality evaporated."

"And so did his life, apparently."

"The Cleveland Police aren't exactly crying over his death, not when it netted them half the Youngstown mob."

She jabbed her finger into my desk. "I want your word of absolute discretion in this matter. You don't go to Ms. Westphal's former employers, and you use as few operatives as possible. Otherwise, I'll shut you down."

I rolled my eyes. "Did John also tell you I don't react well to the bad-ass routine?"

She stared intently at me, her expression unchanged. "I still want your word, Mr. Kepler. Absolute discretion."

"As long as you don't threaten me again, that's fine."

Slowly, she smiled. It was a predatory smile. She reached her hand across to me. "Very well, Mr. Kepler. Consider yourself hired."

I shook her hand. "And if your husband really is being careless?"

"I'll do what I have to do. Don't worry, Mr. Kepler. You won't get your hands dirty."

I hated when people told me that. They were usually lying.

Or deluded.

###

Copyright © 2004 James R. Winter