Murder at the Opera - Margaret Truman [120]
“I was—”
“Careful,” Willie said. “You flunk as a liar, so you might as well start telling the truth. Where were you?”
“Home. At the apartment. I—”
“Chris,” Johnson said softly, “we know you visited Ms. Baltsa at midnight at the Hotel Rouge. We’ve got a positive ID on you, and your prints are all over the hotel room
“I forgot
The slap of Willie’s ham-hock hand on the table jarred both Warren and Johnson, and sent the small tape recorder an inch into the air.
“Look, my man,” Willie said, “you don’t seem to get it. You say you forgot going to see her at midnight last night. You forget stickin’ her in the chest with a knife, too?”
“Oh, no,” Warren said, jumping up from his chair and going to the room’s only window.
“Sit down,” Willie said.
“She’s dead?” Warren moaned from where he stood.
“Yes, she’s dead,” Johnson confirmed. “Now, why don’t you sit down and tell us all about it.”
• • •
Philip Melincamp vomited in a men’s room at U.S. Air at Reagan National Airport before boarding a shuttle to New York City. He felt faint for most of the flight, his plight noticed by a flight attendant, who asked, “Are you all right, sir? Is there something I can get you?”
“No, no, nothing. Thank you. It’s just a cold, maybe the flu
She kept a wary eye on him for the duration of the short flight to New York’s LaGuardia Airport. She kept a wary eye on everyone.
At LaGuardia Airport, he stepped in front of other passengers waiting in a taxi line, ignoring their shouts of protest, and gave the driver an address on Steinway Street, in the Astoria section of Queens, an area known as “Little Egypt.” After some wrong turns that took them past dozens of Middle Eastern grocery stores, restaurants, and clubs, the cab pulled up in front of a café whose sign boasted AUTHENTIC ARAB CUISINE AND HOOKAH. He paid the driver, overtipping him, and dragged his two small, wheeled suitcases behind him into the restaurant. A short, swarthy man looked up from where he’d been counting money. “Can I help you, sir?”
Melincamp looked to the back of the long, narrow room, where four men sat drawing in shisha, fruit-flavored tobacco, through the water pipes known as hookahs, the smoke shrouding their faces and creating swirling patterns as it gravitated to recessed lighting fixtures in the low ceiling. “I came to see someone back there,” Melincamp said, shoving his luggage into a corner of the entryway and walking to the rear. A young Arab man removed the pipe from his mouth and frowned up at Melincamp.
“Can we talk?” Melincamp said, aware of sweat running down his cheeks.
Without responding, the Arab placed the pipe in its holder and went to a door leading from the hookah room to an alley. Melincamp followed. They climbed a wooden set of exterior stairs to an apartment above the café, where another Arab male, considerably taller and heavier than the first, sat at a scarred, yellow kitchen table, an Arabic newspaper open in front of him. His swarthy face was deeply pitted from acne. He wore a traditional male Arab headdress—a keffiyeh—in a black-and-red pattern and secured by an egal, a thin rope circlet.
“Why do you come here?” the man at the table asked.
Melincamp turned to the man who’d led him upstairs. “Joseph said to come here if there was trouble
“Is there trouble?” the man at the table asked.
“Yes
Another large man stepped from behind curtains separating the small kitchen from another portion of the apartment.
“I can explain,” Melincamp said.
“I am listening,” said the man, who closed the newspaper and glared at Melincamp in a way that drained blood from the talent agent’s face and turned his legs to jelly.
Melincamp grabbed hold of the back of a chair to support himself. He saw a glass half filled with water on the table. “Please,” he said, “could I have some water?”
The man picked up the glass and threw its contents into Melincamp’s face. Melincamp collapsed into the chair.
“It is too late for trouble,” the man said. “The