“How’s that?”
“Completely against my will.”
2
“GEM, YOU’RE A HOTTIE,” Dario said late that night as he tossed back a shot of whiskey, drinking from the bottle. He’d showered in a cramped stall down an unlit hallway, deciding against using a tub in the empty apartments upstairs, then he’d put on briefs, gotten into bed and opened the file, mostly so he could look at Gem’s picture again.
Her finger was crooked and her mouth was pulled into a sexy pout. She would have looked frivolous, but her eyes held too much awareness. Pain, maybe. Something that hinted at emotional depth. According to his information, she’d survived a famine and fled her country. She’d crossed the Atlantic, only to find herself in one of the world’s worst slums, but she’d made a decent life, anyway.
Dario felt a magnetic pull, a sense of impending fate. Plain old lust, too. Or else maybe he’d just had too much to drink. Whatever the case, he was fantasizing about playing out the age-old cliché about hookers and cops. It had been a long night, and he was desperate for release. Pat had called about another arson case, and although Dario was supposed to be laying low, he’d visited the scene. Then, because Beppe’s tenants had waylaid him to air their grievances as he was leaving court, Dario had wound up hauling in surveillance equipment to appease them.
Now cameras were arranged strategically around the premises. At least, by the end of the week, Dario would be able to prove his pop’s building wasn’t haunted. When he glanced at the tripod-mounted camera placed discretely in a corner, his lips stretched into a slow grin.
With this camera, he was going to catch a woman, not a ghost. As soon as he’d called and told Sheila about the history of Angel’s Cloud, apologizing since he’d be busy and unable to meet her this week, she’d said she’d never had sex in a haunted house and wanted in on the action.
“It’s different,” Dario had assured playfully. “And not something I can just tell you about. You’ll have to come over and experience it yourself.”
“See you at eight,” she’d said.
But eight had come and gone. Typical Sheila. Punctuality wasn’t her strong point. It was nearly midnight, and anticipation had left Dario as horny as the men who used to patronize the room where he was about to sleep.
To keep his mind occupied, he’d interviewed tenants. There was a middle-aged woman who ran an Italian ice stand, Carmella Liotella, and Chinese sisters, Zu and Ling, who shared an apartment on the otherwise vacant third floor. Brice, whose law office was around the corner, lived in the attic. Rosie, a liberal-looking single mom, was on the first floor, just beneath Carmella and opposite the apartment where Dario had set up camp. She had a crush on Brice, and an alarmingly flirtatious thirteen-year-old, Theresa, who’d been wearing skintight jeans, a midriff exposing a fake tattoo, and enough makeup that she could have been applying for a job as a madam herself.
Dario had moved in opposite them because everybody said that’s where the noise was coming from. The previous tenant had left in a hurry—supposedly due to the haunting—which meant the apartment had ramshackle furnishings. Shirts were still in the closet. The tenant had been a big guy, almost Dario’s size, so it was hard to believe he’d been scared off.
There were nine empty units, three per floor, discounting the attic where Brice lived—and that seemed weird, too, since Beppe was a soft touch and the rent was low. Ghost sightings increased whenever he made moves to sell, but Dario had always figured people would lodge complaints, no matter how absurd, to discourage the building’s ownership from changing hands.
Still, people had left despite having rent-stabilized leases, when they’d have difficulty finding similar bargains, and the place was creepier than Dario remembered. While in the basement, putting out environmentally friendly mouse traps Eliana insisted he buy, he could have sworn the air temperature dropped abruptly. Shrugging off the event, he’d spent an hour trying to fix the boiler before realizing he’d have to buy a new one. The whole time, he’d felt as if somebody were watching him. Most disturbing, the tenants seemed genuinely scared.
“The sounds started about two weeks ago,” Zu had reported. “We hadn’t heard anything in a long time, about six months, but then all of a sudden…”
“Gem O’Shea is walking the halls at night again,” Ling had added in a hushed tone. “Luther Matthews came by. He has a key to the place, you know. And he told us about Gem O’Shea. That she was murdered. I’m sure she’s haunting us.”
“Maybe trying to tell us who killed her,” said Rosie.
“The music’s, like, really loud,” added Theresa.
“Here,” Brice had added angrily, coming from the attic, and dumping a box of papers at Dario’s feet. “This is everything I was able to find out about the place. Something fishy’s going on. You should take a look.”
And Dario had. Apparently, these old walls had absorbed plenty of lovers’ whispered secrets, and many illicit backroom deals. The old news clippings collected by Brice jibed with records Dario had found in cold-case files at the precinct, as well as family materials related to the property that Beppe had kept, and that Dario had brought with him. A sheet in the police file indicated Gem had stashed jewelry in the house; an inventory list had been submitted in case of theft.
Definitely, the tenants hadn’t lied about the shoddy workmanship. It was Dario’s grandfather’s fault, since he’d hired bad contractors. The original bar, which had been about fifteen feet long, was still in Zu and Ling’s apartment. Someone had renovated it as a kitchen island. Brice’s shower stall was in his kitchen, and because his wiring was inadequate, he’d run an extension cord to an outlet in the hallway.
Outside, Dario had stood on the sidewalk, surveying the exterior, and something had niggled, but he didn’t know why. The building was tall and skinny, with a sharply graded roof and louvered windows. The bricks crawled with ivy, and a downstairs back door led into unkept gardens. The rear building, where Gem had lived, had been torn down long ago.
His cell rang. He clicked on. “Yeah?”
“Sorry I’m late.”
Sheila sounded tipsy, a good sign. “Are you coming now?”
“There’s more than one way to take that.”
“Not once you get here.”
“On my way,” she said, giggling. “Keep the bed warm.”
“I’m getting sleepy,” he returned with mock grouchiness. “Are you sure you’re going to show?”
“Put a key under the mat, sailor, and let Gem O’Shea wake you up.”
Not a bad idea. “Done. Two pots on the porch are planted with ivy. The key to the lobby doors will be in the one on the right. I’m the first door on the left—I’ll leave it ajar.” Maybe that wasn’t the brightest thing to do, but the neighborhood was relatively safe nowadays, and besides, he’d put his gun under the bed.
“Given what I’m going to do to you,” she was saying, “you’ll think you’re dreaming.”
“So you have plans for the bawdy house?”
“Just call me Gem O’Shea.”
She ended the call, and he grinned. “My kind of girl.”
Yawning, he thrust his legs into jeans, took the key to the planter and returned. Then he found a pen, scrawled “I’m in here, babe,” and taped it to the door, drawing an arrow toward the bed. The tenants were tucked in for the night and wouldn’t see it. Absently scratching his chest, he stared into the open folder before transferring it to the floor, suddenly glad Eliana had reminded him to bring sheets, a blanket and towels. Without a boiler, the steam heat hadn’t come on.
Where the hell was Sheila? He could sure use