Triple Threat

Eddie Caruso; it was hard to define. It meant basically the interesting, the weird, the captivating. Game was that indefinable aspect of love and business and everything else, not just sports, that kept you engaged, that got the juices flowing, that kept you off balance.
    People had Game or they didn’t. And if not, break up.
    Jobs had Game or they didn’t. And if not, quit.
    Another thing about Game. You couldn’t fake it.
    Eddie Caruso had a feeling this woman, and this case, had Game.
    She said, “A year ago, I lost someone I was close to.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    The iPad went into sleep mode. When last viewed, a winger for Senegal had been moving up through the markers, to try to score. But Caruso let the sleeping device lie. The woman was clearly distraught about her loss. Besides, Senegal wasn’t going to score.
    “Here.” Carmel opened a large purse and took out what must’ve been fifty sheets of paper, rumpled, gray, torn. Actual newspaper clippings, too, which you didn’t see much, as opposed to computer printouts, though there were some of those, too. She set them on his desk and rearranged them carefully. Pushed the stack forward.
    “What’s this?”
    “News stories about her, Sarah Lieberman. She was the one murdered.”
    Something familiar, Caruso believed. New York is a surprisingly small town when it comes to crime. News of horrific violence spreads fast, like a dot of oil on water, and the hard details seat themselves deep in citizens’ memories. The Yuppie Murderer. The Subway Avenger. The Wilding Rape. Son of Sam. The Werewolf Slasher.
    Caruso scanned the material fast. Yes, the story came back to him. Sarah Lieberman was an elderly woman killed by a bizarre couple—a mother and son pair of grifters from the Midwest. He saw another name in the stories, one of the witnesses: that of the woman sitting in front of him. Carmel had been Sarah’s housekeeper and Carmel’s husband, Daniel, the part-time maintenance man.
    She nodded toward the stack. “Read those, read that. You’ll see what I’m talking about.”
    Generally Caruso didn’t spend a lot of time in the free initial consulting session. But then it wasn’t like he had much else going on.
    Besides, as he read, he knew instinctively, this case had Game written all over it.
    # # #
    Here’s Eddie Caruso: A lean face revealing not unexpected forty-two-year-old creases, thick and carefully trimmed dark blond hair, still skinny everywhere, except for a belly that curls irritatingly over the belt hitching up Macy’s sale Chinese-made somewhat wool slacks. A dress shirt, today blue of color, light blue like the gingham that infected the state fairs Caruso worked as a boy to make money for cars and dates and eventually college.
    Rhubarb pie, cobbler, pig shows, turkey wings, dunk-the-clown.
    That was where he came from.
    And this is where he is: not the FBI agent he dreamed of being, nor the disillusioned personal injury lawyer he was, but a pretty good private investigator, which suits his edgy, ebullient, Game-addicted personality real well.
    The actual job description is “security consultant.”
    Nowadays, everybody cares about security. They don’t about investigating. Why should they? A credit card and the Internet make us all Sam Spades.
    Still, Eddie Caruso likes to think of himself as a PI.
    Caruso has a scuffed, boring, nondescript office in a building those same adjectives apply to, Forty-sixth near Eighth—decorated (office, not building) with close to twenty pictures he himself has taken with a very high-speed Canon of athletes in action. You’d think he was a sports lawyer. The building features mostly orthodontists, plastic surgeons, accountants, one-man law firms and a copy shop. That’s one great thing about New York: Even in the Theater District, the Mecca of all things artistic, people need teeth and boobs fixed up, their taxes paid and resumes exaggerated. Next door is a touristy but dependable restaurant of some nebulous Middle Eastern/Mediterranean affiliation; it excels at the grilled calamari. Caruso, who lives in Greenwich Village and who often walks the three miles to work (to banish the overhang of gut), likes the five-story bathwater-gray building, the location, too. Though if the city doesn’t stop digging up the street in front of the building Caruso may just write a letter.
    Which he’ll never get around to, of course.
    Now, Eddie Caruso finished reading the account of the murder,