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Gabriel Storm must find the answer to two questions and find two types of Angels, if he wants to find his best friend’s killer:  Was it one of the Broadway financiers backing Scotty Granger’s newest play; or, was it the predator who abducted Scotty’s eight year old sister over a quarter century before.

Excerpt: Chapter Three

The Westside Diner was slow.  A half dozen people sat at the counter drinking coffee.  Two booths had people in them, counting me.  The diner was a throwback from the forties.  You know the type, all chrome and vinyl with a checkerboard black and white floor.  Old and faded pictures of New York lined the walls.  It was a cholesterol heaven of pies, muffins and greasy donuts heaped in scratched plastic covered trays on the counter.  Five big chrome coffee urns, like missile silos, were lined against one wall.  A rectangular cut-out separated the dining room from the kitchen.  Every sound made in the kitchen reached the eating area.

No music played now, the jukebox in the back, a Wurlitzer, a dinosaur from the fifties, still worked, offered a mélange of music from the forties to today.  As I looked at my watch, the door opened and Chris strode through.
Chris is an inch taller and ten pounds heavier than me.  His dark hair was neat but his face was pale and drained.  He was a good-looking guy with an easy way, which too many criminals had mistaken for being soft.  They never made that mistake twice.

I glanced at the coffee before me.  I had yet to take my first sip.  He reached the booth and slipped in across from me.  He didn’t say anything: he didn’t have to.  I nodded and we waited for a count of ten. 

Martha materialized at our table:  The waitress had been a fixture at the Westside for the last three decades.  Her grey hair was piled in a sloppy upsweep; her large ankles were swollen, the skin hanging over the straps of her low cut sneakers.  The beige uniform, complete with white apron, was stained from the breakfast crowd.  But no matter what she looked like, she was Martha:  she was a part of this place.  “Morning Chris, coffee?”
Chris nodded and I said, “I’ll take a fresh one.”

“Sure thing Gabe.”

She picked up my cup and walked away, her sneakers squeaking a rhythm of their own on the vinyl floor.  “Did you find anything?”
Chris shook his head.  A small clump of hair slipped onto his forehead in an exaggerated comma.  I closed my eyes for a second as Scotty’s words from years ago popped into my head.  ‘Jeez, Chris, you look like Superman when your hair falls like that.’

And he did, he looked exactly like Christopher Reeves in the original Superman movies.  But not today – today he looked like a cop who had seen too much.

“Are you going to question the theatre company?” 

His reaction was a quick tightening of his mouth.  “Why?” 
“Someone may have information.”

His sapphire eyes darkened to midnight as they probed my face.  “It was a robbery Gabe.  I know how you feel.  Christ, Gabe, he was my friend too.”

“It doesn’t feel right.”  I couldn’t keep the anger out of my voice.  My head was pounding because of Scotty’s pointless death.

Martha returned with the two cups of coffee and set them on the table, looked at me and at Chris, and left without a word. 

Chris picked up the coffee, blew across the top and took a sip.  “It was a robbery,” he repeated.

I know Chris well and something in his voice didn’t fit.  Was he holding back?  I closed my eyes and pictured the apartment as it had been minutes ago.  “No, he’s lived in the city all his life: if it was a robbery, he wouldn’t have resisted.  He would have let them take whatever they wanted.”

“We don’t know if it was a him, a her, or a them.  We don’t know if he resisted.  The shooter may be a crazy.”

“It wasn’t just a robbery turned bad!  You saw the body, he was trying to get away, but whoever killed him wanted to make sure he was dead and stood over him until he was!  It was a big caliber, maybe a forty-four magnum.  And the bullets ripped him apart ─ how many burglars use a weapon like that?”

“Gabe…” his voice was low and calm, “it’s not the way the crime scene coats read the scene.  But,” he added, holding up a hand to stop me from speaking, “when the autopsy is done, and if there’s any useful information, we’ll be able to move forward.”

“They won’t find anything,” I said.  “It was made to look like a burglary, but it wasn’t.”

“Damn it, Gabe, you don’t know shit, but you want it to be your way so you can go charging around on your white horse!”

His words hit hard.  Yeah, the knight in tarnished armor was a scene I’ve played before, but this was different.  I knew I was right.  There are hunches and instinct and sometimes there’s a special sense telling you what happened, or didn’t happen.  This was one of those times where my special sense made itself felt.

I stayed silent, watching Chris cradle the cup between his palms.  “I don’t want you going off on this.”

I held his gaze.  “Not me.”

“Bullshit.  Gabe, let us… let me handle this.  If anything shows up, I will tell you first.  But let me handle it.”

“Don’t even think about stopping me.  You know damned well I can get to people you can’t even find.  And I will.”  My anger spiked.  No one would stop me from doing what I do best.
“If you go off on this on your own, you’ll be just that, on your own.”

My anger made me ignore his statement.  “How was this reported?”

“A neighbor called it in a little after six.  She’s in the next apartment.  She said there were several loud explosions which sounded like gunshots.  The first on the scene were two uniforms.  They got there within ten minutes of the call.  They took one look and called it in to homicide.  Sonny Marks caught the case.  He knew Scotty and I were friends.  He called me.”

I knew then he was holding back.  “You don’t think it was a robbery either.  What burglar in his right mind breaks into an apartment at six in the morning when everyone is getting up for work?  No way, amigo.  You’re going to talk to the people in the play, right?”

“Back off, Gabe.  Let me do my job before you go off on one of your half-cocked quests and screw everything up.  No, it doesn’t look like a regular burglary,” he reluctantly admitted, “and until we have something telling us different, that’s the way it will be played.”

“By the book,” I said, the words coming out more like a sneer than a statement.

Chris’s eyes softened.  “Gabe, I know how much Scotty meant to you.  I loved him too damn it!  I won’t let this become another dead end case.  You know me better than that.  I’ll use everything the department has to find the killer.”

“Do what you have to.”  I stood, dropped a five on the table and started out.

“Gabe,” Chris called from behind me.  I turned to look at him.  “Let’s talk tonight when I have more.  Come to the house for dinner.  Be there at seven.”  He paused, his voice went thoughtful   “Why just the people involved in the play?  Why not one of the predators Scotty exposed?  And don’t forget those pimps he’s pissed off by rescuing kids from them.” 

“I don’t forget anything,” I reminded him.  “I’m going over to Scotty’s apartment later, to catalog it.  Make sure they know.”  I pushed the glass door open.  The heat hit me fast.  I breathed it in and kept walking west.  When I reached the Hudson River, I stopped.  To my right was the renovated USS Intrepid, the permanently docked Navy museum.  The waiting line of tourists standing in the bright sun, stretched for a half block.  I walked until I was alone and could stare out at the river. 

Sadness leached away my anger.  Scotty was gone and I had to accept that.  When Chris had said he loved Scotty, I knew how he felt.  But the word love didn’t cover what I felt.  Very few people understand what unconditional love is.  I did, so did Scotty and Chris.  In the two and a half years I had spent behind bars, both in Riker’s and at the state’s maximum facility in Ossining, Scotty had never been far from me.  He’d sat behind me every day in the courtroom, and he’d visited me at least once a week, no matter what was happening in his life.  He and Chris had devoted thirty months of their lives to keeping me sane and to proving my innocence.  I would never have made it without them. 

When I got out of prison, Scotty gave me a job as the assistant director of his second play.  And although the job, and the ghosts of the past who had come with it, had shown me I couldn’t pick up where I’d left off three years earlier, it was another example of Scotty’s friendship and love. 

Now he was gone.  I shook my head.  The tears came before I could gain any control, so I let them flow and, leaning over the railing, watched them fall into the Hudson.  What happened wasn’t right, and I would be damned if I’d let anything stop me from finding out who killed my friend.  And when I found out who it was, I would make him pay the price!

I wiped my eyes with a thumb and forefinger then looked at the water.  Sunlight scampered across the choppy waves. 

I stood still until my emotions settled and until I knew there was just one thing for me to do – go to work.

{Used with permission; © David Wind}