Manhattan Noir - Lawrence Block [33]
Schaeffer froze.
“Relax,” the guy said, laughing at the cop’s expression. “Everything’s cool.” He extracted his hand from the bag. No gun. He was holding a raisin scone. He took a bite. “I’m not who you think I am.”
“Then who the fuck are you?”
“You don’t need my name. I’m a private eye. That’ll do. Now listen, we’ve got a business proposition for you.” The PI looked up and waved. To Schaeffer he said, “I want to introduce you to some folks.”
A middle-aged couple, also carrying coffee, walked outside. In shock, Schaeffer realized that the man was Shelby, the tourist they’d scammed a few days ago. The woman with him seemed familiar too. But he couldn’t place her.
“Detective,” the man said with a cold smile.
The woman’s gaze was chill too, but no smile was involved.
“Whatta you want?” the cop snapped to the private eye.
“I’ll let them explain that.” He took a large bite of scone.
Shelby’s eyes locked onto Schaeffer’s face with a ballsy confidence that was a lot different from the timid, defeated look he’d had in the cheap hotel, sitting next to Darla, the used-to-be-a-guy hooker. “Detective, here’s the deal: A few months ago my son was on vacation here with some friends from college. He was dancing in a club near Broadway and your associates T.G. Reilly and Ricky Kelleher slipped some drugs into his pocket. Then you came in and busted him for possession. Just like with me, you set him up and told him you’d let him go if he paid you off. Only Michael decided you weren’t going to get away with it. He took a swing at you and was going to call 911. But you and T.G. Reilly dragged him into the alley and beat him so badly he’s got permanent brain damage and is going to be in therapy for years.”
Schaeffer remembered the college kid, yeah. It’d been a bad beating. But he said, “I don’t know what you’re—”
“Shhhhh,” the private eye said. “The Shelbys hired me to find out what happened to their son. I’ve spent two months in Hell’s Kitchen, learning everything there is to know about you and those two pricks you worked with.” A nod toward the tourist. “Back to you.” The PI ate some more scone.
The husband said, “We decided you were going to pay for what you did. Only we couldn’t go to the police—who knew how many of them were working with you? So my wife and I and our other son—Michael’s brother—came up with an idea. We decided to let you assholes do the work for us; you were going to double-cross each other.”
“This is bullshit. You—”
The woman snapped, “Shut up and listen.” She explained: They set up a sting in Hanny’s bar. The private eye pretended to be a scam artist from Florida selling stolen boats and their older son played a young guy from Jersey who’d been duped out of his money. This got Ricky’s attention, and he talked his way into the phony boat scam. Staring at Schaeffer, she said, “We knew you liked boats, so it made sense that Ricky’d try to set you up.”
The husband added, “Only we needed some serious cash on the table, a bunch of it—to give you losers some real incentive to betray each other.”
So he went to T.G.’s hangout and asked about a hooker, figuring that the three of them would set up an extortion scam.
He chuckled. “I kept hoping you’d keep raising the bidding when you were blackmailing me. I wanted at least six figures in the pot.”
T.G. was their first target. That afternoon the private eye pretended to be a hit man hired by T.G. to kill Schaeffer so he’d get all the money.
“You!” the detective whispered, staring at the wife. “You’re the woman who screamed.”
Shelby said, “We needed to give you the chance to escape—so you’d go straight to T.G.’s place and take care of him.”
Oh lord. The hit, the fake Internal Affairs cop … It was all a setup!
“Then Ricky took you to Hanrahan’s, where he was going to introduce you to the boat dealer from Florida.”
The private eye wiped his mouth and leaned froward. “Hello,” he said in a deeper voice. “This’s Malone from Homicide. ”
“Oh fuck,” Schaeffer spat out. “You let me know that Ricky’d set me up. So …” His voice faded.
The PI whispered, “You’d take