Nice Place for a Murder by Bruce Jay Bloom Page A

the mirror only once every six months, you’d know you’d changed.
    As I walked from Penn Station to the Julian Communications offices at Forty-Eighth Street and Park Avenue, it was like that. I hadn’t been in New York in six months, and all those little changes to the midtown area had added up. There was a new Korean greengrocer on Avenue of the Americas, with boxes of perfect fruits and vegetables displayed outside on the sidewalk. An old building on Madison Avenue had had an all-glass face-lift, and looked brand new. A busy lunchroom that had been on Forty-Seventh Street forever was now a jewelry store. The midtown that had always been so familiar to me was alien and unfriendly this morning. I couldn’t help but think I’d rather be fishing.
    I started out briskly at Penn Station, feeling confident that my coronary system was prepared for some walking. Mistake. By the time I reached Fifth Avenue I had slowed to a stroll, and when I finally got to Park and Forty-Eighth, I was experiencing what I knew as moderate distress — including the strong desire to sit down on the curb. But I remained upright, leaning on the handrail that led up the stairs into the building, trying to look as though I was in control, while I considered whether to take a nitroglycerin pill or not. I decided not, because I could feel myself beginning to stabilize. After five minutes of quiet standing, I made my way, shaky but resolute, up the stairs, through the lobby and into an elevator. I stepped out onto the thirty-sixth floor ten minutes late. Couldn’t be helped. Sorry.
    This was the topmost of the four complete floors Julian Communications occupied in this building. While there were units of Julian elsewhere in New York, and in a half dozen other cities across the country, it was from here that the Julian brass administered the complex of companies. Here on the thirty-sixth floor was where the big wheels turned, where Ingo and Brody and their staffs sent directives to the floors below, and from there out into the world. Here at the top it was all deep carpets and teak and marble and rich, muted colors.
    And intrigue. Which I was sure was about to swallow me whole.
    Hector came around his desk and closed his office door behind me as soon as I came in. “You look drained,” he said, motioning me into an armchair. “Something happen to you?”
    “Yeah. My father had a bum circulatory system, and he passed it on to me.”
    “What?”
    “Nothing. I’m dealing with it,” I said. “Did you get a computer hit on Hick Sosenko?”
    “Yes.” He pulled an armchair next to mine and sat. That was Hector’s style, to sit next to you rather than behind his desk. Put himself on your side right away, instead of putting a barrier between the two of you. “He used to work for us, at one of our companies.” He reached over to the desk and picked up a file folder, then handed it to me. “It’s all in here, but I can tell you the whole story in two minutes. Sosenko — his name is Herman Sosenko, by the way — worked as a warehouse grunt at Rainbow Graphics, a big printing shop on Long Island. We acquired Rainbow eight years ago to print our women’s magazines. Sosenko’s employee evaluation sheet says he was a horror story from the day he showed up. He fought about everything, threatened people, scared the hell out of every woman came near him. Finally his supervisor said no more of this, and told Sosenko he was fired. Sosenko went nuts, threw the supervisor off the loading dock, jumped down after him and beat on him with a hammer. Broke his collar bone and two ribs.”
    “That’s our boy. Fits with everything else I’ve heard about him,” I said.
    “There’s more,” Hector said. “At first the company didn’t want to make a big thing out of it. You know, don’t shake up the troops, just let it blow away. Even the supervisor finally agreed that the important thing was that the guy was out of the company.”
    Hector paused to take a