CHAPTER TWO
Ava now had a name to assign to her husband’s killer: Jim Spurlock.
For a while, she’d had something of a trail on him. She’d been following him, waiting for him to slip up so that she could bust him within reason and not just under speculation that he’d murdered Clarence. But in the midst of her trailing him, a few things had happened. A case had come up and she and Frank had gotten much closer. As a result, she’d shared her pursuit of Spurlock with Frank, and though it had caused a bit of tension between them, they seemed to have worked it out.
But then the trail went cold. Where Ava had been able to find and follow Spurlock with ease three weeks ago, the man seemed to have vanished. It was almost as if he knew Ava was on to him. And because the infamous Ava Gold was often in the papers and gossiped about on the New York City streets like some sort of fable, Ava supposed that might be exactly what had happened. He may have heard he was being tailed and had switched up his routines.
It was irritating, sure, but there was also an easy fix for it. Instead of focusing on Spurlock, she turned her attention to two different men she’d seen him spending time with over the course of the weeks she’d followed him. One of those men was a fifty-year-old bricklayer named Harlan Moody. He worked in the factory for a small, up-and-coming contractor, helping on the masonry side of things. That said, he was more of a brick maker than a brick layer.
Regardless of what he did for his employer, his routine schedule made him predictable. So at exactly 5:02 in the afternoon, Ava watched him come out of the factory. He had his lunch pail in his hand—a lunch pail she’d seen him use in the past to store special packages that Jim Spurlock and a few of his other criminal friends handed him. She hadn’t seen Moody meet up with Spurlock lately, though—not since Spurlock seemed to have disappeared. She supposed Moody was a little too predictable. It was best not to spend time with creatures of habit when the police were after you.
Ava watched from across the street, sitting on a bench in front of a seamstress shop and pretending to read the newspaper. The city buzzed with life around her. The putter of car engines, the faraway hammering and hollering as another building was going up despite the terrifying financial crisis that had befallen the city. People moving in all directions, business being conducted…the literal heart of the city beating harder as it had more people and responsibility to support on a daily basis. She wondered if New York City would ever stop growing. There were some days where she thought it might very well take over the entire northern point of the country.
When Moody was half a block ahead of her, his back completely away from her, she set the newspaper down and crossed the street. She was getting very good at tailing people, a skill she’d honed thanks in part to following after Spurlock.
After another two blocks, Moody stopped and entered a deli. Ava waited outside for him and when he stepped out five minutes later, she approached him. She did so without any great fanfare or drama. She simply walked up to him and fell in by his side.
“Hello, Mr. Moody,” she said.
He turned to her and looked confused at first. It wasn’t every day a pretty young woman fell in beside him on his evening walk home. “Hello to you as well, dear,” he said. “Do I know you?”
“Oh, I imagine you’ve at least heard of me,” she said. “My name is Ava Gold. I’m a detective with the NYPD.”
The recognition was instant, even before she identified herself as a detective. She saw the flicker of worry on his face and then of confusion as he tried to determine how to address her. “Oh, I see. And how can I help you, Detective?”
“I’m curious to know if you have any idea where your friend Jim Spurlock has gone off to.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know anyone by that n—”
“If you lie to me, it’s going to make things much harder for both of us, Mr. Moody.” They walked along as if they were fond acquaintances, crossing the street together as Harlan Moody made his way home. “I’ve seen you with him at least five times in the past five weeks or so. I see him hand you little packages which you stash away in the very same lunch pail you’re carrying with you right now. Now, I can press you pretty hard about what’s in those packages or you can stop lying to me. You choose.”
Moody’s face was filled with anger as he glared at her. He knew he’d been caught, and it was clearly so much worse to be trapped in public as hundreds of people walked the streets. When he spoke again, it was in a completely different tone. His words were harsh and compressed; he barely opened his mouth at all.
“I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen him in almost two weeks.”
“No calls or messages delivered by others, either?”
“No.”
“Come on now, Mr. Moody. You both seemed very friendly with one another. You have to know something. Does he have any place he likes to escape to?”
“I’m sure he does, but he never tells me things like that. Jim and I only get together to play poker and do…well, a bit of drinking, if you must know.”
“Well now, if you’re talking about drinking alcohol, that’s illegal, Mr. Moody. It also makes me wonder what sorts of things Jim Spurlock hands off to you that goes into that lunch pail of yours.”
When Moody stopped walking and wheeled around on her, she saw that worry and panic had replaced his anger. It was enough to make her wonder if there might be something incriminating in the lunch pail right now. She nearly asked, but figured she needed to play her cards right and not push him beyond the point of reasoning with her.
“What do you need from me to just stop asking questions?” he asked. “What is it you want?”
“I told you. I need to know where Jim Spurlock has gone to. Help me out in that regard and I’ll be on my merry way. I mean, think about it, Mr. Moody. I could go after that bootlegger you’re buying from, make it real clear where I found the lead. I imagine that would make him pretty mad. Could be a lot of trouble for you. More trouble than giving me an answer.”
“I told you, I don’t know.” But he was scared now, which made her think he really didn’t know. What she did think, though, was that Moody might be the kind of man who would happily throw someone else to the wolves if it meant getting the heat off of him. So she tried a different tactic.
“Do you perhaps know of someone who would know?” she asked.
Moody’s eyes wandered a bit and he seemed to realize the awkward expression had given him away. He sighed and sagged his shoulders in defeat when he said, “Kenny Sanderson. That’s the only person that I know well that is close to Jim. The only problem with that is that Kenny was busted for bootlegging and busting up two cops last weekend. From what I understand, he’s locked up over on Welfare Island.”
She recognized the name, as she’d come by it a few times while digging through police reports looking to find links and connections for Spurlock. She didn’t, however, recall any instances where his name had been connected with Spurlock. But given the rate of crime in the city and the secrecy among the mob and those close to them, this was really not much of a surprise.