Polterheist(22)

"I'm helping Santa," I said. "And paying rent."

"Okay."

"Is this why you turned up on the fourth floor today while I was being strangled by a tree?"

He nodded. "After my meeting with the Fensters, I came down here to look for you, so I could ask you about this."

"Am I going to be grilled by your colleagues?"

"No. You're not under suspicion of anything. You were a witness to a hit, not a criminal accomplice."

Apparently not wanting to rake up old arguments, Lopez tactfully avoided mentioning my friendship with certain members of the Gambello family. Nor did he mention my involvement, of which he had vehemently disapproved at the time, in exposing the culprits in that murder investigation.

He continued, "But if Gambello soldiers are the hijackers, then your connection to a previous Gambello case means that I need to know what you're doing here, and I need to be able to explain it to my lieutenant and the other investigators."

"Oh. All right." I definitely preferred being asked this by Lopez to being questioned formally by his colleagues, so I nodded. "Fair enough. Um, is that the end of the interview?"

"Pretty much." Seeming more relaxed now that he'd gotten an explanation from me which he could credibly share with OCCB, he leaned back in his chair, trying (without success, I suspected) to get comfortable. "Unless, that is, you've seen something unusual around here that you can tell me about?"

I wouldn't pick up that cue for all the Ben and Jerry's ice cream in the world.

Lopez had stubbornly conventional views about mystical matters. Although he liked me and cared about me, he thought I was a crackpot for believing in supernatural phenomena, let alone for attributing various mysterious, disturbing, and criminal events to paranormally empowered perpetrators.

I found his attitude frustratingly rigid for someone who was, after all, a fairly religious Catholic. I didn't know the extent of his faith, but I knew he'd been raised in the Church and still attended Mass regularly. And it's not as if religion is a bastion of logic and consistency, after all, or as if spiritual faith is based on reason and evidence.

Then again, human nature is rarely founded in logic and consistency, either. And Lopez's dismissive attitude about the supernatural was a common position, after all. Besides, it wasn't as if he'd witnessed the sort of undeniably magical acts and events that had made me a believer. There were certainly times when I wished he would just take my word for something; but I wouldn't have taken anyone's word for it, after all, if I hadn't experienced powerful mystical phenomena myself, up close and personal.

Lopez's conventional beliefs about this sort of thing were also a big factor in his ambivalence (on a good day) about Max. Which was pretty ironic, since Max thought that Lopez might be gifted with mystical power of which he was unaware. By now, I had started to think that Max's suspicions about this had merit. I wasn't sure, of course; and neither was Max. We certainly wondered, though . . . But Lopez himself clearly hadn't the faintest notion of any such thing, and I knew he would (depending on his mood) just be exasperated, bemused, or amused if we suggested it to him.

So there was no way I was going to tell him that Evil was haunting Fenster's. I knew from experience that it wouldn't get us anywhere. And I couldn't think of anything I'd seen or heard here that might be relevant to the hijacking case.

So I said, "Unusual? Hmm, do you mean something like-oh, for example-an enchanted tree attacking me?"

"That was a pretty disturbing experience." His expression changed and he looked concerned again. "I think I should get a police car to take you home now."

Since I didn't intend to go home, I shook my head. I also didn't want to explain to Lopez why I urgently needed to go down to Greenwich Village now to see Max, so I said, "I don't need a ride. It's an easy trip to my place from here." And that was perfectly true, in fact. Fenster & Co. was in the West Fifties, a couple of blocks south of Central Park; I lived in a shabbily comfortable rent-controlled apartment in the West Thirties, which was very convenient from here by subway.

Lopez was familiar with my apartment and knew this, but he still seemed concerned. So I added, "Look, it's not as if I'm afraid the tree will follow me home. I'll be fine."

"Hm."

I could practically see his thoughts in subtitles as he gazed at me, wondering whether he should insist on an escort or just drop the subject. We'd had conversations in the past that followed this route, and the scenery was getting familiar.

I was a creative, imaginative person (he was thinking), working in a weird and surreal place, suddenly endangered by a huge apparatus with spooky features and an audio program. I'd experienced a powerful combination of fear, adrenaline, and oxygen-deprivation in confusing and violent circumstances. All of which accounted for my high-strung behavior in the aftermath, as well as for my claiming some very peculiar things had happened during the incident.

The question in his mind now was whether I'd be all right, or whether I was more distraught than I realized.

I decided to get his mind off this question, which wouldn't lead either of to any place productive, by changing the subject. "Do you really suspect the Gambellos in these hijackings?"

He blinked, obviously having been lost in his thoughts. "Huh? Oh. Well, we're busily tearing apart their lives in an effort to find out, one way or the other. Pressure from the media and the Police Commissioner have put the family-and also OCCB-under a bright spotlight, so we're bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘thorough investigation.' By the time we've arrested someone, I'll probably know how often the Shy Don gets up to use the bathroom at night."

Victor Gambello, the Shy Don, had been the head of his crime family for decades. A contemporary of Constance Fenster's, he was now in poor health and extremely frail. We had met briefly once, after I'd helped expose a killer who was trying to start a mob war that would consume his family, and he'd declared his friendship to me.

"God knows the Fensters seem convinced the Gambellos are responsible for this," Lopez continued. "Hijacking trucks is certainly one of the Gambellos' favorite pastimes. It's sort of a family tradition with them. And they have a history with the Fensters, after all."

"They do?" I knew both families now, sort of, but hadn't had the faintest idea that they knew each other.

"Oh, sure. It goes way back. Hijacking trucks, knocking over warehouses, extortion. This all happened back when this place was still Fenster and Powell's." He paused, evidently remembering that I was from Wisconsin. "But an out-of-town girl like you probably doesn't remember that or know about the Powells."

"I've heard," I said. "Elves talk."

That made him grin. He continued, "A joint task force was assigned to the case. They made arrests, got convictions, and shut down the whole thing. So it all ended a long time ago. But because that history is there, now that someone is hijacking Fenster trucks again after all these years, the media have convinced themselves-and the public-that the Gambellos are the culprits." He added with a touch of exasperation, "Which is interfering with the investigation and which will also make prosecution a big headache, no matter who we arrest."

"So you aren't convinced it's the Gambellos?" I asked curiously.

"I'm looking for more evidence before I fall in love with a theory," he said. "But . . . I'm a little skeptical. There was a hot spotlight on them and on the hijackings by the time the third truck got taken. I think that made the heist feel . . ." He shrugged, looking for the right word. "Too daredevil for the Gambellos. Too flashy. Too risky," he added with a nod. "They're crooks, but this is business to them. And one of the reasons the Gambellos are so successful is that they know it's not good business for them to attract that much attention. So this just doesn't seem to me like the way they do things." He shook his head and concluded, "Their usual pattern would be to drop this plan like a hot rock the moment they realized every TV news camera in the city was suddenly trained on them-not to go knock over a third truck."

"So it is three trucks? Not two?"

Lopez nodded. "The media doesn't know yet about the first one, but that's bound to change any minute. And then the heat on NYPD will get even hotter, what with Fenster's being a Christmas favorite and all."

"The police kept the first heist out of the news?" I guessed.

"No, the Fensters did," Lopez said, his voice dry. "And they didn't call the cops."

"Seriously? Why?" Calling the cops struck me as a pretty self-evident thing to do after an armed robbery. Surely even someone as dim as Freddie Junior knew that?

"Esther, I just had a two hour meeting with that family and I still don't know why they didn't call the cops after the first heist," he said wearily. "Or the second one."

"They didn't tell you about the second robbery, either?" I said incredulously.

"Nope. The police found out the way everyone else did-when news of that hijacking got plastered all over the media," Lopez said, his face darkening with anger. "So we started the investigation with two trucks already hit and the media screaming blue murder that we weren't doing anything. And then the next truck got hit."