And Come Day's End: A Michael MacKaybees Mystery

By Gabriel F.W. Koch

Lenny Oliver's secrets ended his life-lies he dressed up in detailed and occasionally elaborate finery. But only the secret holder is fooled in the long run, as Lenny discovered in a dark alley in the Wall Street neighborhood. Michael McKaybees is a private investigator working in New York's five boroughs. He specializes in money crimes like insurance fraud, with the occasional cheating spouse (his partner's favorite since she thinks all cheaters should be flogged in public). Now, however, he has been forced to expand his investigative work to include homicide. Implicated in his best friend Lenny's death, Michael finds himself entangled in a web carefully woven by someone who wants to destroy him-and there's no doubt he's up to his neck in shit. Then there's his father, Marlowe Black, who has decided now is the right time to show up after an absence of more than three decades. Hell, Michael didn't even know he was still alive. Marlowe's reputation as a combat-hardened PI is well-known among the City's criminal element, making him a hated man. And he, too, is a suspect in Lenny's murder. When McKaybees discovers the body of Lenny's wife, Jill-Michael's childhood sweetheart-hidden in his apartment, murder becomes seriously personal and the need for vengeance demanding.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Oct 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781977205582

Gabriel F.W. Koch

Gabriel F.W. Koch is a 2004 winner of the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Award, a 2016 winner of the CIPA EVVY Award for Fiction/Science Fiction, Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist Science Fiction, Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist Mystery, a 2017 CIPA EVVY nominee, and a 2018 CIPA EVVY Merit Award Winner. Koch is the second-place winner of the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year award, as well as an award-winning photographer.

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Prologue

1:45 a.m. Financial District, New York City

I t’ll work out if you stay calm and don’t let him know what you’ve got. This is only a first meeting, so relax, dude, Lenny Oliver muttered nervously as he turned into an alley in lower Manhattan.

His lights slashed a battered green dumpster. Three cats jumped from inside, balanced on its rim, and then waited for him to leave.

At first glance, he saw their eyes, and then their tiger stripe markings. The cats continued staring like Giza goddesses.

Oliver switched off the lights and blinked against the afterimage.

Shit, they’re bolder than rats, he thought with a nervous chuckle, and wiped sweat from his forehead with the edge of his sleeve. He pressed the window button, which let in odors of trash from the small seafood restaurant in the building to his right.

Damn stupid location for a clandestine meeting, he muttered as his bravado buckled when he heard the crunch of footsteps. His heart jumped in his chest, swelled in his throat when the door latch behind him clicked.

The rear dome light flooded the car, but Oliver didn’t turn to look back. As a condition for the meeting, his visitor had insisted he didn’t want a face-to-face.

He listened to the seat give under the man’s weight, smelled musk aftershave. A scent of cognac carried the accented words Good evening, Mister Oliver. I appreciate your promptness.

He fought what he felt was an irrational urge to open the door and run like hell down the alley as bile scorched the back of his tongue. Unable to stop himself, he glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a round, sallow face with black-shadowed blue eyes under dark blond eyebrows. The man’s shoulders seemed extraordinarily wide, his face gripped with a lack of compassion as if he never considered the need to pause and consider the consequences of his decisions.

Rovich, the man’s boss, demanded complete anonymity before agreeing to meet. His orders stated, Do not request a name, and don’t talk unless asked a question.

Oliver nodded, placed both hands on the top of the steering wheel, and noticed they shook. He squeezed the wheel, which whitened his knuckles.

The cats started fighting, howling, and banging in the dumpster as if a pit bull had suddenly joined their gathering.

You know why we asked to meet with you.

You asked? Oliver thought, and then wondered, Did you mean that as a question? He decided it was a question, found his voice refused to work, and then nodded several times.

Good. Where are the flash drives and the papers?

I don’t have them with me. Oliver cleared his throat hard.

You were told to bring them, Mr. Oliver. The voice was flat and too quiet.

Oliver spoke too rapidly. I…we…need to make a deal first. They’re extremely well hidden where you’ll never find them if something happens to me. He turned his head, stopped when he heard the movement of cloth, as if his visitor had reached under his jacket, and his voice cracked on the plea, We can make a deal. Both of us can get what we need.

Don’t be stupid, Mister Oliver. There is no deal to be made.

The pressure on the base of his skull came quick, cold, and completely unexpected. Oliver knew, without attempting to see, that he felt the barrel of a handgun. He knew he’d never smell the acrid stench of burned cordite should the trigger be pulled.

Then he thought of his wife. And as if the man could read those thoughts, Oliver heard, Did you leave them with your wife? I certainly hope you did. For several nights, I’ve watched her in your home. She leaves the bedroom blinds open. I’ll very much enjoy interrogating Mrs. Oliver after completing my task here with you, unless you want to tell me where I can find what I came here for.

I can’t… Please don’t hurt her. She doesn’t know anything about this. His voice jammed against the back of his tongue. Oliver forced sound out in a hissed appeal. Please, sir.

I suspect you’re not being truthful, Mr. Oliver. However, I’ll learn the truth at the appropriate time from your lovely wife.

It’s too late, Oliver understood with sphincter-releasing clarity, felt hot urine pool between his thighs as an icy cleat of terror ripped up the length of his spine and twisted like a razor-sharp scythe into his chest.

The back door closed and the overhead light extinguished.

Oliver opened his mouth to release the scream wedged in his chest. His final plea, You know I’d never tell anyone, failed to temper the cool anger pulsing from the man behind him.

He inhaled deeply, eyes filming with tears, pictured his wife, and thought, Sorry, Jill, I love you, I’m so sorry I got you into this mess!

He heard her laughter, as if for the first time; desperately grasped the wheel to turn and fight, heard a loud metallic clack, felt his head slammed against the steering wheel, and died before he finished the desperate inhalation he drew to finally tell his visitor what he wanted to know.

The gunman stuck the small handgun in his pocket after firing two additional shots into Oliver’s skull. He leaned into the front of the car. His gloved hands searched the corpse, and stopped when his fingers clasped an iPhone. He sat back and slowly scrolled through files until he located the address in New Jersey he’d heard Oliver recite to his wife when he’d said, Stay at Michael’s apartment in Hoboken tonight, before Oliver left their house in Queens an hour earlier.

He shut off the phone and slipped it into his jacket, arranged a few items in and around the car after squeezing Oliver’s dead fingers on them to leave prints. Then he walked casually from the alley, pulled off the surgical gloves he wore, blended with foot traffic, and stepped into the neon promise of a tomorrow Leonard Oliver once assured himself would be his to enjoy forever.

2:03 a.m. Lower Eastside of Manhattan

The grinding noise from a truck’s engine on the off-ramp from the Williamsburg Bridge distracted undercover detective Isaac Robinson. The sound drew his attention from the distant support column holding up the roadway to the right of where he stood, across the FDR Drive.

For the last two weeks, Robinson had done surveillance on a stockbroker and his wife, who, he suspected, had strong ties to a powerful Ukrainian gang based in Brooklyn. A phone tip from a snitch alerted him to the availability of new information regarding the stockbroker’s activities.

He wasn’t surprised when his snitch told him to meet her alone at 2 a.m. After all, he’d thought, what informer in her right mind wants her identity as a snitch on the streets in this town?

He’d parked his car a block south of Delancey as she’d recommended. Before leaving the unmarked, Robinson contacted his superior, Lieutenant Dokker, and told her he’d left his post in Queens to meet an informant.

What the hell do you think you’re doing? she demanded. Dokker had sounded highly pissed off.

Listen, Lieutenant…my snitch is a hundred percent. I’ll meet her and then I’ll get back to my post. Nothing’s happening out this way anyhow.

I don’t like the feel of this. He could hear the frown in her voice. Give me the location, Sergeant. I’ll meet you there.

He had wanted to advise her, This woman’s gonna bolt if she hears you approach. At the last second, he relented, not because Dokker had ordered him to, but more because of an unprecedented gut feeling suddenly banging through his torso like a fire alarm.

Robinson leaned his back against the car door, closed it quietly, and walked to meet his snitch. When he discovered he was alone, he felt icy trepidation flush through his gut. He hesitated at the sight of a short, narrow-shouldered man stepping from the fence around the base of the nearest bridge support. The stranger stood wrapped in a nightmare of moving shadows.

Robinson thought he saw a pair of homeless men closing in on a trash barrel alongside the road where he’d parked.

Ignoring them, he shook off the distraction of the truck roaring overhead and the worm of panic burrowing in his chest.

Where’s Cassie? She’s supposed to be here. He lifted his service revolver from the holster clipped to his belt.

The stranger, a boy who Robinson thought could not be older than sixteen, walked over to him. Robinson turned his head and leaned, thinking the boy might be afraid that he’d be overheard.

A thin whisper of steel slicing across steel filled his mind as an odd whistle shivered the air. He felt a hot liquid spray his face and run down his neck.

Robinson’s hands flew up, fingers fumbling to pinch off the severed arteries. His eyes widened with the horror he felt as he stared at the boy’s calm, lifeless features and thought, My God, he’s too young to even shave yet.

The punch of a knife entered his chest below the sternum, twisted painfully upward and into his heart. Robinson collapsed, dead before he hit the ground.

Tires bit pavement, screeching as the car slalomed around a corner. A shower of roof lights and headlights startled the boy. He straightened and stepped back from Robinson’s body. Filmed with warm blood, he screamed what sounded like Russian, snatched up Robinson’s gun, and ran to attack the woman who jumped from the blue-and-white.

He fired one shot that hit the car’s roof, and was greeted by a burst of flame from the weapon clutched in her right fist. He spun as the first round punched his left shoulder and died when the fourth shattered his skull.

Lieutenant Elizabeth Dokker ran to Robinson, dropped to her knees, and pressed her hands against the sides of his neck.

No! Goddamn it to hell! No, damn you, don’t you dare die on me, Isaac! She struggled against the tears burning her eyes and shook off the hand of the cop who’d accompanied her. She knelt alongside Robinson’s body until the EMS arrived, as if awaiting a priest to offer Last Rites, shuddered as she watched them cover Robinson’s corpse, and then walked slowly to the squad car.

Chapter One

5:11 a.m. Madison, New Jersey

A steady staccato sound, like feet pounding through an abandoned building, jarred me awake. Drenched in sweat, I coughed into my fist and concentrated on the noise.

Knotting a sheet around my waist, I stumbled across the room, left the lights off, threw back the deadbolt, and yanked open the front door.

Liz Dokker, previously my commanding officer in Kuwait, now my police liaison and frequent adversary—once, briefly, a live-in lover—brushed past without invitation.

It’s too early for you to be here, I grunted, and caught a faint whiff of blood.

With a deliberate movement, she switched on a table lamp. She looked me over from head to feet as she paced the living room.

Don’t say another word, Michael. She radiated the wrong kind of energy, and emotions I couldn’t define.

Liz had a lithe, well-muscled body. Her dark brown hair, cut shoulder length, hung in complete disarray, yet framed a face I always found attractive. Her eyes were closer to ice-blue in color than the steel-gray they occasionally looked. The sensuous mouth that, when she was disturbed, hooked into decipherable anger, right then expressed very tense self-control.

Without looking outside, I closed the door quietly.

Liz pivoted sharply in the center of the room and waved a hand at the bed pillow on the sofa.

What the hell? You live in this room now?

I rubbed my face. Was sleeping here until you tried to kick in the door. I spoke quietly and then tossed the pillow on an armchair.

She wore white jogging shoes with three red stripes on each side, new denim jeans, and a loose-fitting white T-shirt streaked, I realized, with the dark crimson of dried blood. Printed on the front of the shirt, I read: Hi, I don’t care. Thanks.

She brushed the sofa’s armrest and perched on it as if she didn’t plan on getting comfortable. A flat, humorless smile worried her face when she looked at me.

You remember a cop named Isaac Robinson?

He was a friend of my business partner. They’d dated for a couple of years while Martha wore an NYPD uniform.

What about him? I still smelled the lingering odor of blood.

Got killed last night…sliced and diced as you like to say. Sarcasm gnawed angrily at her words.

You haven’t heard me say that in years. I sounded defensive.

Seems longer to me, she mumbled, leaned forward as if to stand, shifted her weight, raised her right ankle, and put her calf on her left knee. The movement exposed an S&W .32 automatic in an ankle holster.

When’d he die? I studied her, struggling to read her expression.

The backs of her hands bore splotches of powder from protective gloves. She rubbed the powder on her jeans and glanced at her watch.

About three hours ago.

What’s the time? I wanted to say something more meaningful. Any idea who killed him?

Sure. I shot the little prick bastard in the fucking head.

You gonna clue me in as to who the little prick bastard was while living?

Got coffee?

I noted her stressed posture and was certain she’d not driven to Madison, New Jersey, to inform me about a solved case or to get a mug of coffee.

In the kitchen. You can wash up in the sink while I get it ready for you.

She examined her hands. One thumbnail was torn ragged to the quick where blood caked its edge. Her jaw muscles clenched and relaxed, and I knew she ground her back teeth silently.

The bedsheet slithered behind as I walked the oak floor.

Our brief romantic history, hers and mine, had long ago flared into charred ruin without, I thought at the time, hope of revival. We’d attempted to live together only to discover after two weeks that an 1,850-square-foot renovated Gothic carriage house couldn’t provide sufficient space for two personalities too often in conflict over the way life should be lived and every other damn thing not nailed down.

However, as I understood the problem, it centered on a brief discussion of marriage and children. She’d showed frustration and exasperation as if I’d made unreasonable demands and finally said one night, with a distinct February chill in her voice, I’m a cop. I love being a cop. I worked goddamn hard to get to where I am, overcame a shitload of male bull-crap. Now, you think I should give that up for a freakin’ white picket fence, a cluster of fucking rosebushes, and screaming fucking babies with shit-covered diapers?

At the time, I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or shout back. I did neither, but left the house instead.

For me, the breakup went down as if I’d swallowed molten lead. I’d masked my feelings with the happy-go-lucky bullshit everyone seemed to expect from me.

Yet we remained good friends, often talked politics, religion, and problems like her new male friend, an assistant DA with a cowlick in a five-hundred-dollar suit.

Outside, I heard the guys on the recycle truck empty a barrel of cans and bottles. One of them shouted, Go! The roar of the engine blasted the air as they pulled to the next driveway.

I nuked two mugs of water and, when the micro beeped, dumped in mounded teaspoons of Starbucks instant. Liz drank hers black. I set the hot mug on the table and watched her stir. She did it as noisily as possible.

After a throat-scorching gulp, she turned to the sink. She gazed around the kitchen as she scrubbed her hands.

Well at least you keep this room clean. Don’t use it much now, I guess. She dried her hands, dragged a chair into the room, and sat with her legs in the open, as if she suspected she might need to leave in a hurry.

I eat out a lot. Then, unwilling to wait another second, I demanded, Why did you wake me? News about Robinson could’ve waited until later.

She didn’t answer.

Who killed him? We faced each other, but I couldn’t hold her unsteady gaze.

A gang-banger, some freaking young Russian immigrant. She sipped coffee and then said thoughtfully, as if a new idea had filled her mind, He was yelling at me and didn’t speak a word of English, sounded like Russian. She paused, staring into her mug, and then nodded. Robinson’s snitch didn’t show. The boy? She shrugged one shoulder. Don’t know why Robinson met with the boy instead.

Drugs maybe?

No. This kid was a runner for the latest mutant fucking mobsters.

Kranies? They’re ruthless bastards. Why do you think Robinson walked into an ambush?

Robinson was working surveillance out in Queens.

On who?

The down-the-street neighbor’s Rottweiler barked a greeting to the recycle crew. Someone shouted, Shut the hell up! The dog’s bark grew frenzied.

Someone should shoot that fucking dog. Liz frowned, ignoring my question. He got careless and pulled his weapon. The kid carried a pair of gravity knives and moved too fast for Robinson to react. Her voice trailed off with a sigh of sorrow. I knew she felt something bad she wouldn’t verbalize.

Did Robinson draw his weapon before or after the kid showed his knives?

Before, according to witnesses.

Why would Robinson pull a weapon unprovoked?

Don’t know…didn’t get to hear their conversation.

If there was any. Maybe Robinson recognized him and got scared.

Liz stared grimly into her mug as if she might discover a solution etched into the black liquid. She wrapped her hands around it and drank slowly.

You taking heat for his death? I sounded sarcastic. I thought her captain was an ass, but Liz wouldn’t listen to his crap.

Hell no. She put her mug down and wiped her face with both hands as if suddenly exhausted. She rested her elbows on the table and placed her chin on her palms.

Robinson called me and said he got a good lead. I tried to get to his location before shit happened. When I got there, she hitched one sob and spoke rapidly, he’d bled out before I could… Goddamn fucking kid sliced both arteries in his neck. Looked like Robinson tried to stop the bleeding. Then the little prick jammed a blade through his heart.

You saw that? I didn’t like the picture her words created.

Only the end. I told you we found witnesses. They said the killer spoke something other than English. I heard it too before I blew the top of his head into the river. Like I said, sounded like Russian, mustn’t’ve been unable to understand English. Her hands shook, not violently, more like a vibration of despair.

We ran prints and discovered he had a string of arrests, but no convictions, was a wannabe enforcer. Christ sake, the little bastard did hits, ran drugs, dealt, you name the crime he’d perform it. Sixteen years old. She rubbed her eyes with the side of her fists.

Versatile. I knew Robinson’s death wasn’t why she’d visited. You still haven’t told me why you’re here. Only ’cause you need to talk?

She glanced up. Her eyes filled with something indefinable that seemed to writhe in her pupils. The little bastard had your name on a piece of paper in his pocket. I have your attention now, Michael? And there’s more.

I didn’t want to hear more, and inhaled slowly, knowing she really wasn’t finished.

You’re kidding, right?

She lifted the brown faux-leather purse she always carried—her K-Mart special—and dropped it on the table. She opened the handbag, rifled the contents, and fished out a Xerox copy of a note that appeared torn from a sheet of lined paper.

From the shadowed outline created during copying, the fragment appeared to be about the size of a quarter sheet. Neat, architectural block lettering spelled out my name, and my father’s name.

I’m not unknown. Like it or not, I’ve made the papers a few times, but only a handful of people I seriously trusted had a clue what my biological father’s name was.

If the old bastard’s still alive, I thought.

I’d been told that to some cops, my father’s reputation conjured up memories of the need for punishment; while others thought he was the kind of guy we needed on the streets now more than ever. I didn’t want anything to do with him. Nevertheless, that seemed to be about to change for the worse.

I understand how you feel. Repulsed, I poked the paper with a forefinger. Are you familiar with Cyrillic? I didn’t give her time to answer. If the kid, like you suggested, was English illiterate, how could he write this? And don’t tell me this is the reason you dropped in at… I glanced at the clock and groaned, five in the morning to get me the hell out of bed. A phone call or lunch would’ve sufficed.

Morning people ought to be isolated from the rest of us until noon.

Jesus, Michael. She stretched. One reason, she tapped the copy too, but harder, is the other name…your goddamn father’s name? She spoke with the same contempt I felt for him, and jammed the copy in her purse.

Don’t do it, Liz. Don’t speak his goddamn name aloud.

I’m not here to talk about him. She drained her mug and set it down almost gently. You might not be able to avoid a confrontation with your badly tattered past much longer. But hey, however you handle your lack of a relationship with your father isn’t my problem. I’ve read his file, and the writing on the note looks like his. But otherwise, I don’t give a damn. She paused and flashed me a tight-lipped grin. More coffee?

After I handed her the refilled mug, I sat and decided the moment had come to cut through the crap.

What the hell do you want from me? I asked and decided to ignore the idea my old man could’ve written the note. That sounded like Hollaway bullshit.

Robinson’s wasn’t the only murder last night. She let the words run into a pause, the way a person with bad news does to prepare the recipient.

What the hell, it’s New York. I drank coffee and studied her over the rim of the mug. Who else died? And suddenly I wasn’t certain I wanted to know.

Twist.

The armored side of the M1 Abrams battle tank from my recurring Gulf War nightmare popped from memory, Twist ducking and dodging bullets. I could smell the sand; the odor rounds leave behind after flattening on steel, the fumes from burning oil wells; heard the wail of the call to prayer. I longed for the feel of my ARM-15 assault weapon.

After nearly dropping the mug, I fumbled splashes of coffee on the table and placed the mug in the spreading brown puddle.

Twist? I hadn’t seen him in over a year. His name was Leonard Oliver. He and I knew each other since day one. Lenny was a tall, lanky,