Hard Case Crime: Songs of Innocence by Aleas Richard

Author:Aleas, Richard [Aleas, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hard Case Crime
Published: 2011-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

I flagged down a taxi, blew my last twenty on the trip home. I paid the driver at the corner, folded the few bucks change, and walked the rest of the way to my building. I hadn’t been home since...when? It had been more than a day. Not since I was trying to guess Dorrie’s password. It felt like a very long time ago.

I climbed up the stairs to my apartment, unlocked the door. The curtains were open and blowing in the breeze, but the place stank. Enough light was coming in through the window for me to see an odd bulk on top of my bed. I felt for the light switch, flipped it on.

Miklos’ words came back to me: Go home. He makes you a present of this one.

I stood there with my finger on the light switch and looked at my bed, where Jorge Ramos’ corpse lay.

His throat had been cut. There was blood everywhere, even on the ceiling.

The smell was very strong; only the air flowing through the open window kept it from being stronger.

I swallowed heavily, checked the door behind me. It was closed.

My mind raced. How had they gotten him in here? Unlike Dorrie I did have a fire escape, but could you carry a struggling man Ramos’ size up the outside of a building? Miklos and Ardo were both big men themselves, but that was asking a lot. Then I realized how they must’ve done it: one of them would have climbed up the fire escape, broken in, and unlocked the door from the inside, while the other lured or forced Ramos to my apartment and brought him in the conventional way.

I thought of Ardo and his cavernous grin. They’d spent hours on this, tracking Ramos down and setting him up just so. Just so what? Apparently so I could take the heat for killing him. Two birds with one stone. Sure, maybe I’d tell the cops that Ardo had done it, but would they believe me when I had the dead man’s blood on my shirt, his bloody wallet in my pocket, and his bloody corpse, throat slit from ear to ear, in my bed? But officer, it wasn’t me, Black Ardo did it! Sure he did, son. Sure he did.

Enough. I had to concentrate. I thought about what I needed to do. My first instinct was to get rid of the body somehow, but that was hopeless. Carting a dead body down five flights unnoticed wasn’t a lot easier than carting a live one up. Not when he weighed more than I did. My next thought was to call the police. But I knew how that would go. Maybe I’d beat the rap at trial—maybe—but that would be months from now and until then I’d be locked up. That left one option: run.

I pulled open my shirt, my fingers fumbling with the buttons. One button popped off and went springing along the carpet. I ignored it. I pulled a new

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