Free Murder in Greenwich Village by Lee Harris

the other cabins and they were just being neighborly.”
    â€œWhat did he look like?”
    â€œA man, I don’t know.”
    â€œWas he black or white?”
    â€œWhite, thinner than Sal, not much hair.”
    â€œYou ever see him before?”
    â€œI don’t
know
. He was just a man through the trees.”
    â€œStay here. I’m going downstairs. Don’t touch that lamp.” She went down to the street and wrote down the plate numbers of the cars parked on both sides. Then she went into the dry cleaner across the street and asked if they’d noticed two or three men getting into a car or van in the last half hour.
    â€œThere was a blue van parked illegally across the street for a while,” the woman said. “I noticed it because a car was honking at it to move. They should know better but they never do. Then I looked over and it was gone.”
    â€œAny lettering on the side?” Jane asked.
    â€œNothing. Just blue. Could’ve used a paint job.”
    â€œThanks.” She dashed back, went upstairs, and rang the bell to Philip Sklar’s apartment.
    â€œYou,” he said. “Didn’t I just talk to you a little while ago?”
    â€œMr. Sklar, did you see anyone go in or out of the Franklin apartment this afternoon?”
    â€œI didn’t see but I heard. Remember you asked about men’s voices ten years ago? I don’t know about ten years ago but this afternoon, just a little while ago, I heard them, men’s voices. How do you like that?”
    â€œHow many voices did you hear?”
    â€œTwo anyway. And people going downstairs. But I didn’t look out so I can’t tell you who it was.”
    â€œThanks.”
    She banged on Franklin’s door and, once inside, made a careful search of the apartment, checking her watch as she moved. Time was passing too quickly and she had accomplished little. Aside from the lamp, nothing else seemed awry. She asked Franklin several times if things were correctly placed and she said yes each time.
    â€œYou’re sure nothing’s missing? Sal’s suitcase is here?”
    â€œI’ll look again.” Franklin went to the master bedroom. “It’s here,” she called. “It’s in the closet. Mine’s on the bed where I left it.”
    A blue van parked illegally. That meant another person in addition to Sal. He knocks on the door, Defino stands back and lets Sal answer while Defino watches. The other man—or two men—come in, enough to overpower Defino, who might not have had his weapon out, as he wasn’t expecting trouble.
    How did they get him to go downstairs without making the kind of racket that would motivate Phillip Sklar to call 911?
    â€œHis raincoat’s gone.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œSal’s raincoat. He walked in the apartment with his suitcase and went into the bedroom to take off his raincoat. It was on the bed the last I saw it, and now it’s gone. Maybe he put it on when he left with the other detective.”
    Or maybe they threw it over Defino while they took him down the stairs, and told him they’d kill him if he made a sound. Jane looked at her watch again. They could be in any of the five boroughs by now, in New Jersey through the tunnel, or on their way to Long Island. She pulled out her cell phone to call McElroy when the phone rang.
    â€œLieutenant McElroy. What’s going on?”
    â€œHe hasn’t been seen in the station house. The store across the street saw a blue van parked in front of this building about the time Gordon disappeared. No ID on it. A man’s black raincoat is missing from this apartment.”
    â€œI see. Describe the building.”
    She told him it was a brownstone, two apartments on a floor, Franklin’s on three. She described her search of the premises, and the lack of any message except the lamp lying across the sofa.
    â€œOK. I think it’s time to call in the