The Dutch: A Milan Jacovich Mystery (#12)

The Dutch: A Milan Jacovich Mystery (#12)

#12 in the Milan Jacovich mystery series … “Brilliantly plotted, with a powerhouse climax.” — Booklist When Ellen Carnine’s broken body is found 150 feet below the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge in downtown Cleveland, everyone thinks it’s suicide. A terse, sad suicide note has been left on the screen of her home computer. But her grieving father asks private eye Milan Jacovich (pronounced MY-lan YOCK-ovitch) to figure out why a bright and successful dot-com executive like Ellen took her own life. Milan is introduced to a different reality by Ellen’s four best female friends, an old lover, her employers, and some of the lowlifes from Cleveland’s meanest streets. The search for the truth leads Milan into the unfamiliar territory of Internet chat rooms, where he learns a great deal about the faceless people who live part of their lives behind a screen, becoming best friends—or bitter enemies—without actually meeting. Milan pushes too far—and uncovers the most brutal and heinous crime he’s ever faced. Brilliantly plotted, with a powerhouse climax. ― Booklist Published On: 2001-01-01 Les Roberts is the author of 16 mystery novels featuring Cleveland detective Milan Jacovich, as well as 11 other books of fiction. The past president of both the Private Eye Writers of America and the American Crime Writer’s League, he came to mystery writing after a 24-year career in Hollywood. He was the first producer and head writer of the Hollywood Squares and wrote for The Andy Griffith Show, The Jackie Gleason Show, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., among others. He has been a professional actor, a singer, a jazz musician, a teacher, and a film critic. In 2003 he received the Sherwood Anderson Literary Award. A native of Chicago, he now lives in Northeast Ohio. Chapter One The dark space under the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge is, I think, a singularly lousy place to die. The bridge, with its four landmark pylons in the shape of giants, “Titans of Transportation,” holding in their huge hands various modes of travel like buses and trucks and streetcars, stretches across the Cuyahoga River and connects the two avenues for which it is named, and is one of the primary arteries between the east and west sides of Cleveland. A few years back it was officially rechristened the Hope Memorial Bridge, after the father of local favorite son Bob Hope; the elder Hope worked as a stonemason during its construction. But no real Clevelander ever calls it that, just as New Yorkers still say “Sixth Avenue” instead of the newer “Avenue of the Americas,” even after fifty years. The bridge is less than a mile from my office on the west bank of the river in the industrial area known as the Flats. I wasn’t anywhere near it, though, but home asleep when Ellen Carnine plunged one hundred and forty-some feet over the concrete balustrade, smashing her skull, breaking her neck and fracturing most of the other bones in her body when she landed. The coroner estimated that the time of death was around four o’clock in the morning, but I didn’t know about it until just before nine, when I was driving to work down Cedar Hill from my apartment in Cleveland Heights, sipping a go-cup of the last of my morning coffee and listening to the news and the laughs on the John Lanigan and Jimmy Malone Show on WMJI radio. I winced a little when newsman Chip Kullik read the report―jumping off a bridge had to be one of the worst ways to go―and felt sad for a moment that a woman had taken her own life, but after that I didn’t give it much thought. Bad things happen to nice people every day, and while poet John Donne had a valid point when he wrote that each man’s death diminishes us, the fact is that the death of a complete stranger doesn’t diminish us very much. Practically speaking, we can’t allow it to. We all have our own lives and our own concerns, and we couldn’t even function if we went around feeling diminished every time somebody succumbs to old age or takes a notion to do a half-gainer off a bridge. Ellen Carnine died on a Tuesday. A cool Tuesday in spring, the first week in May. After a long and dreary winter the Midwest was struggling through its annual rebirth. Lawns and trees were greening again, and the early spring flowers that bordered the houses of suburban Shaker Heights and Lakewood and Rocky River were gaily proclaiming that the season was finally turning and we could at last be almost certain that the snows were gone for the duration. Of course in Cleveland, you never really know about snow, even in May. By the time the following week rolled around, the cool Tuesday had given way to a warm Monday, and I had switched from my wools and tweeds to a lightweight linen sports jacket over tan chinos and a dark blue shirt without a tie, and when I parked my car in front of the old warehouse-turned-office building that I had bought several years earlier I took a moment to stroll down to the riverbank and enjoy the view across the water to Tower City and Jacobs Field and the great