Trial and Terror Page 4

  Frank finished reading and put the letter down.

  “You know,” Joe said, “a crazy fan could have attacked Karen Lee. It’s been known to happen. And this guy goes a little overboard.”

  Frank studied the envelope. “Somehow this guy got Lee’s home address,” Frank said. “Which means he knows where she lives.”

  “And we know where he lives,” Joe said, pointing to a return address on the envelope. It was a New York City address.

  When the Hardys finished dinner, the waiter brought the check and two fortune cookies. Joe cracked open his cookie, pulled out a slip of paper, and read, “ ‘You make your family very proud.’ ”

  “What a rip-off,” Joe said, showing Frank the fortune. “Aren’t these supposed to predict things?”

  Frank cracked open his cookie and read the slip of paper. “Maybe you were expecting something more like this,” he said, handing the paper to Joe.

  The fortune read: Beware—you will find much danger in the big city.

  “Yeah,” Joe said. “I think something along those lines.”

  • • •

  As Joe drove the van uptown, he saw as many people on the streets at night as he had in the daytime. They were in Times Square, the liveliest part of town at night. Several wide streets crisscrossed here, each of them jam-packed with theaters, shops, restaurants, video arcades, traffic, and plenty of people. Everywhere colored lights flashed and twinkled, and overhead gigantic advertising signs blazed big and bright.

  “I bet there’s enough electricity here to power Bayport for a month,” Frank said, glancing around.

  “This town is amazing,” Joe declared as he stopped the van for a red light. “There’s just so much of . . . well, everything.”

  “Especially people,” Frank added. “I think about eight million people live here. And, boy, they’ve got every conceivable type.”

  “And out of all those people,” Joe said, “we have to find the one who attacked Karen Lee on the night of August fourteenth.”

  Traveling north for another ten minutes, the Hardys came to a quieter section of the city and parked on a residential block. After a short walk, they found the ten-story apartment building where Nick lived.

  Using the keys Bernie gave them, the Hardys entered Nick’s apartment, which was on the top floor. The place was messy, and Frank wondered if this was because the police had searched the apartment or because Nick was hauled off to jail without warning.

  Frank and Joe looked out the living room windows and then did the same in the bedroom. “There’s no fire escape directly leading to this apartment,” Joe said when they were done. “If someone came in here to plant evidence, my guess is they had keys. They could have picked the locks, but not many people know how to do that. Present company excepted, of course.”

  “And this makes those missing keys look all the more suspicious,” Frank said, glancing at the bed where the ski mask and gloves had been found. “That’s good for the case. The culprit would—”

  “Shhh,” Joe said. “I think I heard something.”

  Frank briefly heard footsteps and then the front door of the apartment closing.

  “Yep,” Frank said, “that was definitely something. Somebody was just in the apartment.”

  The Hardys dashed into the living room and then out of the apartment. At the end of the hallway, they saw a door close. They rushed to the door, which opened into a stairwell, and heard footsteps clattering up the steps. As Frank and Joe ran up the steps, they heard a door above open, then slam shut.

  “The roof,” the two brothers said in unison, and they knew it meant only one thing—the person was getting away.

  The Hardys passed through the second door. A blast of fresh air hit them, and they found themselves on the building’s asphalt rooftop. Below, streetlamps and apartment windows shone with light, but up on the roof it was pitch dark.

  Neither Frank nor Joe saw anyone around.

  The buildings on the block were crammed up against one another, and Frank realized the person could get to the end of the block merely by running along the rooftops.

  “This certainly makes New York a convenient place for burglars,” he said to Joe. “Let’s split up,” he said, gesturing toward the river.

  Joe went east, and Frank went west.

  Frank peered through the darkness as he moved along the asphalt. Soon he took a small step down onto the roof of a neighboring building.

  Then there was a dark blur of motion, and Frank glimpsed a figure rushing toward him. Frank backpedaled, but the figure gave him a rough shove, which sent him staggering farther backward.

  In a split second, Frank realized the worst possible thing was happening. He was toppling over the edge of the rooftop.

  6 The Seventy-ninth Floor

  * * *

  Falling through empty space, Frank reached out for something—anything—to grab on to.

  Frank’s body jerked to a stop.

  His right hand had grasped a rubber cable line that ran down the side of the building. Quickly Frank grabbed the line with his other hand, then he hung on for dear life. He could see he had grabbed the cable one story down from the roof. That meant the ground was still a good nine stories away.

  “Joe!” Frank shouted. “Over here!”

  Frank’s heart was racing wildly, and he feared his brother would be out of hearing range by now, in search of the mysterious figure.

  Then Frank felt the line slip. His weight was too much. The line was pulling out of its connection to the roof.

  Far below, Frank heard a car passing and a few people talking on the street. Even if someone down there could hear his call, Frank figured, they probably would not get to the roof in time.

  The line slipped further.

  Then Joe’s blond head appeared over the side of the building. Joe reached for Frank but could not quite make it. Using his left hand, then right, then left again, Frank eased higher up the line.

  “Gotcha!” Joe said, grabbing Frank’s left wrist just before Frank plunged downward. Then, using the powerful muscles of his upper arms, Joe managed to haul his brother back up to the rooftop just as the line snapped.

  “I think that fortune cookie is turning out to be right,” Frank said, grateful to be on solid ground.

  “What happened?” Joe asked.

  “That person just sprang out of nowhere and gave me a good shove,” Frank replied.

  “What did the person look like?” Joe asked.

  “I didn’t get much of a look,” Frank said, straining to remember the figure. “But I thought I saw some frizzy red hair sticking through a baseball cap. You know whose hair it looked like?”

  “That pushy reporter we saw this afternoon?” Joe said. “She had frizzy red hair.”

  “Right,” Frank said. “I think Nellie said her name was Lisa Velloni.”

  “Hmm, maybe she was snooping for information to help with her story,” Joe figured.

  “Maybe,” Frank said. “But if it was her, how did she get in? And why was she so eager to get me out of the way? We should make a point of talking to her tomorrow.”

  Back at street level, the Hardys headed for the van, each brother lost in thought about the case. A siren whined on the avenue several blocks away.

  “You know, I’m working up a theory about this guy John Q.,” Joe said. “Let’s assume he’s obsessed with Karen Lee. He said he feels ‘fated’ to be with her. Maybe he learned she was engaged to Nick from one of those soap magazines or something, and maybe he never heard about them calling it off. Maybe it really burned him up that she was going to marry someone else.”

  “Even if he didn’t know her?” Frank asked.

  “People can get possessive about celebrities,” Joe pointed out. “They think they know them just because they see them on TV all the time.”

  “So what are you saying?” Frank said. “That John Q. may have tried to kill Karen Lee?”

  “Maybe he didn’t intend to kill her,�
�� Joe said. “Maybe he just staged it to look that way.”

  “But why?” Frank asked.

  “So he could frame Nick and get him out of the picture,” Joe said. “He planted the ski mask and gloves in Nick’s apartment and got some strands of Nick’s hair, say from a comb, and put them in the mask. Nick gets sent off to prison for a long time, and John Q. believes he can have Lee all to himself.”

  “Well, I guess it’s possible,” Frank said.

  “And, remember, possibilities are all we need,” Joe said. “So now we have two suspects to pursue. Fred Garfein and John Q. Not bad for a day’s work.”

  “But, like Bernie told us,” Frank said, “we still have to find some real evidence that could in some way link one of them to the crime.”

  When the Hardys reached their van, Frank found a slip of paper attached to the windshield. “Don’t tell me it’s a ticket,” Joe said with a groan.

  “Okay, I won’t tell you,” Frank said, stuffing the ticket in Joe’s coat pocket.

  “I think I’ve had enough of the big city for now,” Joe said with a sigh. “What do you say we head back to nice, peaceful Bayport?”

  “Fine with me,” Frank said, unlocking the van.

  • • •

  The Hardys slept well that night. By eight-thirty the next morning, they were following a parade of cars over a suspension bridge that led back to the island of Manhattan. Across the bridge, hundreds of skyscrapers stood shoulder-to-shoulder against the clouds.

  Joe parked the van in the same parking lot as the day before, but this time the Hardys planned to leave it there. “No tickets or traffic today,” Joe said, shutting down the van engine. “From now on we travel the way most New Yorkers do.”

  The morning was cold, and the Hardys wasted no time finding stairs that led them down into the subway station and the underground network of trains that covered most of New York City.

  It was rush hour, and the platform was packed with people on their way to work. Soon two headlights appeared, a rumbling was heard, then a glistening silver train rushed through a dark tunnel and slowed to a stop at the platform.

  Doors slid open on each of the train’s many cars, and people poured in and out of the car. When the doors closed, Frank and Joe were jammed together like sardines in a tin can. “Could you give me a little more room?” Joe asked Frank.

  “Sure,” Frank said. “I’ll just tell the other ten thousand people to move over.”

  It was a relief to both Hardys when the doors finally opened at their stop uptown. Frank and Joe climbed a flight of steps and stood at the corner of Thirty-fourth Street and Sixth Avenue. The intersection was filled with people and cars, and across the street Frank spotted Macy’s, the world’s largest department store.

  After walking a block and passing through a revolving door, the Hardys entered a lobby gleaming with polished black marble. This was the Empire State Building, but Frank and Joe were not there for sightseeing. The night before, they had learned from the telephone directory that this was where Fred Garfein’s office was located.

  The brothers rode a fast elevator to the seventy-ninth floor and entered a reception area. Frank told a secretary he and Joe wanted to speak with Garfein as part of a high school journalism project. The secretary spoke into an intercom box, a voice answered, then the secretary pointed at a door.

  Beyond the door the Hardys found themselves in an office where vast windows showed a panoramic view of the city below. Fred Garfein was a middle-aged man with gray hair who looked tiny in comparison to the massive mahogany desk he sat behind.

  “I don’t understand what it is you kids want,” Garfein said gruffly, “but since I’m a nice guy, I’ll give you five minutes of my valuable time.”

  “We understand,” Frank said, taking a seat across from Garfein, “that you’ve been trying to evict some of the tenants at four seventy-two West Twenty-second Street. So you can renovate the apartments and charge higher rents.”

  “Everybody thinks us landlords are such villains,” Garfein said. “But let me tell you what’s not fair. The city’s rent regulations.”

  “In what way?” Frank asked.

  “The city says you can only raise the rent a small percent every time a tenant renews a lease,” Garfein explained. “As a result, you’ve got all these old people who have been living in their apartments for twenty, thirty years, and they’re paying rents way below the market value. That means the landlord loses money on those apartments.”

  “But—” Frank started.

  “Wait until I’m finished,” Garfein said, waving a hand. “In any other business a businessman has a right to charge whatever he wants. If a person is selling toys or gourmet food or dental floss, he can charge whatever the market will bear. That’s the way this country is supposed to work. But the city won’t let you do the same thing with apartments. And that, my friends, is not fair.”

  “The difference is—” Frank tried to say.

  “And,” Garfein continued, “if I’m forced to charge low rents on some of my apartments, that means I have to charge extra high rents on the other apartments in my fifteen buildings. So not only are these laws unfair to landlords, they’re also unfair to the tenants who end up paying outrageously high rents.”

  “Except—” Frank said.

  “And if I can’t get people to pay those outrageously high rents,” Garfein kept on, “that means I have to sell a building to cut my losses. But let me tell you something. That building on Twenty-second Street is prime real estate that I worked hard to buy, and I have no intention of selling it!”

  Joe was standing at one of the windows, watching the conversation. Far below, people hurrying along the sidewalks appeared the size of insects. Joe figured that was probably just the way Fred Garfein viewed them.

  “Does it bother you that elderly people, or artists, or people who have lost their jobs could lose their homes?” Joe asked Garfein.

  “Stop, please, you’re making me cry,” Garfein said, swinging his feet onto his desk.

  “Somehow I doubt that,” Joe said.

  “Look, I’m a businessman, not a saint,” Garfein said. “If those people don’t have a lot of money, maybe they should live in a cheaper neighborhood. And the old ones who haven’t filed for an exemption should stay with their kids or go to an old folks home. It’s not my problem.”

  “Well, I—” Joe began.

  “And I’ll tell you this,” Garfein said, picking up a telephone receiver as if to dismiss the Hardys. “One way or another, I’m going to get those old geezers out. I guarantee it. All right, your five minutes are up. Get out of my office and have a nice day.”

  “Well, he’s as charming as a shark,” Joe said when the Hardys were back in the elevator.

  “There’s no question he’s ruthless,” Frank said. “But we still don’t have any evidence . . . ” His voice trailed off.

  “What are you thinking?” Joe said.

  “Remember how cold Karen Lee’s building was?” Frank said. “Alex told us the temperature gauge was broken, but maybe Garfein instructed Alex to turn the heat off. Because he wants to freeze the older people out.”

  “Older people don’t do well in the cold,” Joe said. “A winter without heat could make at least some of them decide to move to a warmer building—or even a warmer climate.”

  “If we can prove the heat is turned off in that building,” Frank said, “that would show how desperate Garfein is to get the tenants out—enough to use illegal tactics.”

  “That would be a real link,” Joe said as the elevator opened at the lobby. “Evidence lending support to our theory that Garfein may have tried to do harm to Karen Lee. I agree with you that a big businessman like that would have hired someone for the job rather than do it himself.”

  Back in the wintry air, the brothers walked along Thirty-fourth Street. “Maybe Alex was the person Garfein hired,” Frank said. “If Alex would be willing to shut down the heat, maybe he would also be willin
g to kill Karen Lee. For a nice sum of money, of course. Which might be real attractive to a writer who has never been published.”

  “Except Alex doesn’t seem to have much money now,” Joe said, stopping on the sidewalk as the light turned red. “He’s still the super.”

  “Maybe he didn’t get paid because he bungled the attack,” Frank suggested.

  “I don’t know,” Joe said as the light changed to green. “In spite of his gory book titles, Alex doesn’t seem like a killer to me.”

  “Neither does Nick Rodriguez,” Frank said as they began to cross the street, “and you think he might be one.”

  “Good point,” Joe said. “One thing I—”

  “Look out!” Frank cried, grabbing Joe by the arm. A taxi was roaring full speed through a red light—straight for the Hardys.

  7 Members of the Press

  * * *

  Frank jerked Joe out of the way, almost throwing him onto the sidewalk.

  There was a screech of brakes and then a loud crunch of metal as the taxi hit the fender of another taxi making a turn. Both drivers stormed out of their cars and began to scream at each other in different languages. Immediately people gathered around to watch the shouting match, and a cop hurried over to break it up.

  “There’re a lot of dangerous things about this city,” Joe commented as the Hardys gingerly crossed the street. “But you know, I think the taxi drivers might be the scariest.”

  The Hardys returned to the subway station, eager to catch a train back downtown so they could check in at the trial. Waiting on the crowded platform, Joe glanced down the tunnel. In the distance he could see repairmen working on the tracks, each one wearing a bright orange vest.

  Soon a train came and rushed the Hardys downtown, where they emerged a few blocks from the courthouse. They walked along a street where some construction workers were busy tearing up the pavement to the earsplitting tune of a jackhammer.

  “Hey, let me stop in here a second,” Frank said, heading for the door of a small jewelry shop.