I wondered what “within reason” was in a club where you could get your ashes hauled in a booth and then share a mirror of cocaine with your sweetie-pie.
I asked, “How well did you know Lt. Shannon?”
“We were friendly,” Vincent said with a shrug. “At least… superficially. I suspect that he suspected me.”
“In that secretary’s death?”
“Yes. I’d…well, I’d seen Victoria a few times. That was her name, Victoria Dorn. As I say, she and I’d gone out. I’d stayed over a few times.” He glanced at Sheila. “Sorry, honey. That was way before us.” To me he added, “But the lieutenant never found anything, ’cause there was nothing to find.”
“What about the other death?”
“Paul Matthews? He was just a broker out on the floor. I didn’t know him well. But that was an accident.”
I grunted a laugh. “What, like your ‘accident’ outside Pete’s? Vincent—it’s no accident when a car has worked up enough speed in a parking ramp to run somebody down.”
“That’s not true, Mr. Hammer! Think about it—we’ve all seen people come roaring around corners in parking garages, and said, ‘That’s guy’s crazy!’ Maybe not often, but it happens.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“Look,” he said, and swallowed, “I’m getting scared. I don’t mind admitting it. Somebody’s killing people, and if it wasn’t for me being a target myself, I’d say whoever it is, is trying to lay blame on me!”
“Frame you,” I said.
He nodded. “It sure feels like it. Sure looks like it.”
“I thought you wanted me to stay out of this.”
He shook his head slowly. “I was wrong, Mr. Hammer. I was way out of line at Dad’s office. I’m trying to work on this, this… temper of mine, flaring up like it does. I really can’t control it yet. I am getting help. You know that.”
Sheila hugged his arm. “He’s trying. He really is.”
“I gather that,” I said.
His chin went up slightly. “Mr. Hammer, I want your help. I need your help. And I’ll cooperate in any way I can.”
“You can start by telling me whether you think Shannon was still zeroing in on you.”
A sigh. “I can’t really say. We were friendly at the gym. But you know, I felt he got a membership there just to…watch me. Get close to me. I got a ‘Columbo’ vibe off him. You know, he’d spot me when I was working on a machine or lifting weights. Helpful, interested. Just too damn nice.”
“It does appear,” I said, “that he was still working on the case, even though he’d retired. Shannon seems to have lied to his partner, Chris Peters, saying he was leaving for a few weeks for some R & R in Florida.”
“Why would he do that?” Vincent asked.
“Good question,” I said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
After two days of getting nowhere chasing down leads Chris Peters provided, a morning workout seemed in order.
The Solstice Fitness Center, on Broadway between East 19th and 20th, had little in common with my gym of choice, Bing’s, where boxers and businessmen in sweats worked the bag and wore out machines. At Bing’s you got a high-school phys ed feel and equipment often in worse shape than you were; you could rent a stained towel with holes for a buck, and endure lockers so small that you soon learned to arrive already in your sweats, unless you didn’t mind going straight to the dry cleaners for a post-workout press of your incredibly wrinkled suit.