Deadline for Lenny Stern by Peter Marabell (beautiful books to read TXT) 📕

talk to first?” Henri said.

“At Gloucester?”

Henri nodded.

“Tina Lawson.”

“You already knew her?” I said.

“Yeah. I met her a few years ago,” Lenny said, “in Chicago. At a retirement party for my editor at the Tribune. She’d heard about the case, has crime writers as clients. She seemed the logical person to ask.”

“Did you tell your old editor,” I said, “the one who retired?”

“Never had the chance,” Lenny said. “He died six weeks later. Cancer.”

“I assume Tina thought you were onto something?” Sandy said.

Lenny nodded. “Murder and the mob in Chicago. It may not be a New York Times bestseller, but that’s good enough to sell books in the Windy City.”

“What happened after you approached Tina?”

“She wanted a proposal, told me how to put it together, so I did.”

“You give the proposal to Tina?” I asked.

Lenny nodded.

“Who’d she give it to?”

“Don’t know for sure,” he said, “but Bigelow gave the project a green light.”

“Back to Bigelow again,” Henri said. “That guy bothers me, and I haven’t even met him.”

“Hell, Henri, he bothers everybody. He’s an insufferable snob, but apparently he knows the business of books.”

“That might sell books,” Henri said. “Doesn’t make me less cautious.”

“Tell me again,” I said, shifting the subject, “who’s seen the documents besides you.”

“Tina and Kate Hubbell,” Lenny said. “She edited the book.”

“That’s it?” I said.

“Yep.”

I looked over at Henri, and he nodded slowly.

“Either of them been threatened?” Henri said. “Or anything odd happen to either of them? You know, they think they’re being followed, stuff like that?”

Lenny shook his head. “I would have heard,” he said, “especially after I got beat up.”

Lenny glanced at Henri, then at me. “Do you think they’re in danger?”

“Can’t be sure,” I said. “We’ll assume the answer’s yes for now.”

“Listen, Russo,” Lenny said, looking at his watch, “I’m on a deadline. I have to write up an interview. What do you need from me?”

“Two things,” I said. “I want to review the death threats with you and Tina, and we have to talk over how the tour’s going to play out.”

“I figured we’d get to that sooner or later,” Lenny said.

I nodded. “Had to happen, Lenny, had to happen.”

Lenny shrugged and took his coat from the hall tree. “All right. How about my office in the morning? That work?”

I looked over at Sandy.

“You’re clear, boss.”

“Henri?”

“I’m clear, too, boss,” he said, and laughed.

“How about Tina?” I said.

“She can be there,” Lenny said.

“How about Hubbell, the editor?”

Lenny shook his head. “In Chicago. But I’ll make sure she’s kept in the loop.”

“Does Hubbell have plans to be on the tour?”

Lenny nodded. “Just the first stop at the Carnegie Library and the Chicago events at the end. Okay to go now?” he said.

“I’ll be outside when you leave work,” Henri said, “follow you home.”

“And now it begins,” Lenny said and left the office.

We were silent for a moment.

“What do you think?” I said.

“We don’t know enough,” Henri said.

“That happens a lot in this office,” I said.

“We have the death threats,” Sandy said. “Let’s start there.”

“Okay,” I said. “You’re up to bat, have at it.”

“All of us,” Sandy gestured with her hand in a big circle. “Us, Lenny, Maury Weston, even the dude from Gloucester Publishing, we all assume the Mafia’s pissed off about Lenny’s book.”

“Lenny writes about a mob killing, the mob is pissed,” I said. “Politicians implicated want the book to go away, Lenny is beat up, threatened. It’s the logical assumption.”

“Unless it’s wrong,” Sandy said, leaning forward. “Just suppose it’s not the Mafia. Suppose it’s not Joey DeMio who concocted a plan to stop publication of the book or try to kill Lenny.”

“Then who?” I said. “Who else would put together a plan like this?”

Sandy shook her head. “I don’t know. You guys are the detectives.”

“He’s the detective,” Henri said, pointing at me. “I’m just along for the ride.”

I pushed my chair back from the desk and swiveled around. The sun was up there, waves of heat shimmered up from the tarmac in the parking lot.

“Sandy’s got a point,” Henri said. “Maybe we should consider someone else is behind the threats.”

“Our job’s tougher if it’s someone else,” I said.

“How so?” Sandy said.

“The mob is fairly predictable. They always do things the way they’ve always done things. They’re not very creative when it comes to intimidation and murder.”

“Worth thinking about, Russo,” Henri said. “And there’s one man who’d know.”

“Joey DeMio himself,” I said.

Henri pointed his forefinger at me and pulled an imaginary trigger.

The DeMios — Joey and his father, Carmine, now retired — were from Chicago. They owned a perfectly legitimate enterprise, the Marquette Park Hotel on Mackinac Island. Carmine also owned a restored Victorian cottage on the island’s East Bluff. The hotel provided cover for the family’s more criminal operations in northern Michigan and Ontario.

“Well, if you decide to go ask him,” Henri said, “I have breaking news about Mackinac Island’s favorite mob family.”

“What’s that?”

“‘Trouble right here in River City.’ Remember Ristorante Bella?”

The highly regarded Italian eatery a block down Lake Street put its tablecloths in mothballs two years back.

“Uh-huh.”

“New owners. Want to guess?”

“DeMio wants a base in Petoskey?”

“It opened last week,” Henri said.

“You know anything?” I said.

Henri got that look, like I’d asked a dumb question.

“It’s a legitimate move.”

“Seriously?” Sandy said.

Henri nodded. “Paperwork checks out. The official owner is the same corporation that owns his hotel on Mackinac.”

“Is Joey using the restaurant as a cover, too?” I said.

“Too soon to tell. I suppose it’s possible a move to Emmet County is separate from his more traditional business practices.”

“That’ll be the day,” I said.

“Maybe he just wanted good pasta,” Henri said.

“Funny,” Sandy said.

“The Don renamed the place, too. ‘Ristorante Enzo.’”

“Well,” I said. “When it’s time to see the man, walking down the street’s easier than catching a ferry to Mackinac.”

5

I swung the chair around and put my feet on the window ledge. Small whitecaps slid along the blue water of Little Traverse Bay. I spotted two single-mast sailboats moving smartly on the other side of the breakwater.

I texted AJ, “Dinner?” and put the phone