The CD/DVD slot on my laptop rang like a spent Glock clip as I fumbled with Scott’s “Insurance” DVD. I managed not to break it in my haste to get it started.
Maybe Scott had gotten the spelling wrong, I thought after a minute of watching the screen intently.
This wasn’t insurance.
It was surveillance.
Vintage surveillance identified by the helpful 10:30 AM, July 22 prominently displayed in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.
The star of the film was a soft-looking, middle-aged Hispanic man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and strolling along a city street, seemingly without a care in the world.
I deduced the setting was New York City when the Latino gentleman stopped to eat lunch by himself at an outdoor restaurant across from Union Square Park.
And that the subject had some expendable income as the film quickly cut to him getting out of a taxi and entering the Ralph Lauren flagship store on the corner of 72nd and Madison.
Was this guy a drug dealer? Considering the tape’s source, and the fact that the camera seemed to be rolling from the side porthole window of a van, I sure didn’t think he was a Telemundo weatherman.
Next, the tape showed the man leaving the upscale clothing store, brimming with expensive-looking bags, and entering another taxi. The time in the corner flipped forward half an hour to show the subject exiting the cab and entering the grand front entrance of the Four Seasons hotel on East 57th Street. Everything was coming up first class.
Then the camera’s vantage point suddenly changed from street level to the dizzying ledge of a thirty- or forty-story high-rise. The camera panned forward and then down and the time in the corner read 6:10 PM, July 22.
It skimmed past the roof of the Four Seasons until one of the balconies on the 58th Street side of the hotel came sharply into focus.
After a few minutes more of silent surveillance, the camera panned down, down, down, to the street, until it zeroed in on a homeless woman on the corner of Park.
“. . . the wages of sin, my Jesus. Oh, my Jehovah, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” came in clearly, as well as the rattle of her change-filled coffee cup.
Somebody must have turned on the shotgun microphone, I figured.
As the camera panned back up and stayed on the penthouse balcony, the ambient sounds of the city could be heard. The dull roar of traffic. A far-off siren. New York, New York.
Twenty long minutes of that riveting documentary coverage later, there was another cut. At first, I thought maybe the DVD had blanked out, but then I noticed that the time in the corner had jumped forward seven hours to 1:28 AM, July 23.
The DVD hadn’t gone blank, I realized. It had just gone from day to night.
There still wasn’t much to see. For two minutes, other than the faint sheen from the streetlight on the metal railing of the balcony being observed, it was pitch-black.
Then, suddenly, there was a bright flash, and the entire balcony was flooded with a strange, greenish light.
The surveillance team had started filming in infrared, I realized. Those guys sure had access to some really neat toys.
Did Scott’s task force think the pudgy Hispanic man was going to do a big drug deal out on his hotel balcony? Maybe they were hoping he would crack the sliding glass door, and they’d be able to overhear something?
I actually never got the chance to find out.
Because after fifteen more minutes of empty balcony in infrared, there was a very intrusive banging sound, and the camera panned upward about ten feet until it showed the hotel’s roof.
A portly man in a tuxedo and a young woman hanging more out than in a gold-sequined party dress emerged from a service door next to the elevator housing. The camera closed in on them as they started kissing and groping passionately against an air-conditioning unit.
You could see the woman’s mouth moving, and then there was a shriek as the shotgun mike was adjusted and she could be heard up close and personal.
“Wait a second,” she said.
Then she pulled her shimmering party dress over her head. She must have been really smashed, because it would have been easier to let it fall. Underneath, she was wearing just a G-string.
What the —? I thought, watching in shock.
Chapter 74
“AH, THAT’S MUCH BETTER,” the girl on the screen said, twirling around to show off her attributes, which were impressive, I had to admit.
She finally stopped and kissed the man hard on the mouth. She grabbed his outstretched hand and ran it down her body. “Abracadabra! I’ve made my dress disappear.”
The man laughed.
“You’re crazy,” he said. “And shameless. I like that in a woman.”
“Now it’s your turn,” the woman said. “Let’s see what you have to offer.”
“I don’t know,” the man said skeptically. I couldn’t see his face because his back was to the camera. “All these windows. Somebody might see.”
“How? You can’t even see your hand in front of your face,” the young female exhibitionist said. “C’mon, John. Have some balls for once in your life. Have some fun!”
“I’ll think about it,” the man said. “I just have a little business to attend to first.”
Turning around, the man lowered his large head, and then there was a loud, snorting sound.
“Hey, save some for me, will ya?” the woman said, coming over. “You sound like a Piggy Wiggy.”
There was another snort.
“This shit is sweet,” the man named John said. “Not like that other crap you brought last time. My nose was bleeding for a week. I had to tell my wife it was dry sinuses.”
“Another word about your wife,” the girl said, “and I’ll go downstairs to your room right now and wake her sorry ass up. Now, I snort and you strip.”
“What the beautiful lady wants,” the man said as he pulled off his jacket, “the beautiful lady gets.”
I cringed, hovering the cursor over the “fast forward” button as the man unbuckled his belt. He fell over as he was trying to pull his pants and underwear over his shoes. His pale flanks would have probably shone without the infrared as he unsuccessfully tried to right himself.
Then he turned, and the camera did a quick close-up on his face.
And I clicked on the media player’s “pause” button so hard I nearly cracked the mouse.
It was Bronx district attorney John Meade.
I sat there, trying not to hyperventilate, as the significance of everything dawned on me. I already knew Scott was a bad cop. Had he been stealing money from raids? Robbing drug dealers? Whatever. It didn’t matter. He was definitely not doing what he was supposed to.
And here, on this particular surveillance, he’d stumbled upon a real, unexpected bonus.
I looked at the important lawyer, his bare sack-of-meal belly, the red eyes above his doped-up half smile.
By accident, or maybe not, Scott had captured the one man most capable of hurting him — the district attorney for the borough where he worked and stole. In the most compromising position imaginable. Having an affair and doing coke.
You couldn’t get this kind of backup insurance from Aflac, I thought.
I listened to the rumble of traffic on the highway behind me.
I couldn’t believe it. Lies. Dirty money. Now blackmail. Scott hadn’t been Batman after all. He’d been Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant.
The dirt just kept on coming.
I closed the lid of my laptop as I started my car.
I was in this up to my neck.
Chapter 75
THE NEXT MORNING, I woke up with the surprising and somewhat bizarre idea that it was a good time to take a week of saved-up vacation.
And starting Monday, that is exactly what I did. In spite of everything, I actually had a fairly good time. Instead of sex, lies, and videotape, it was sex, food, and jogging, mostly in the reverse order.
I divided my mornings and after
noons between spending quality time with the crane at Tibbetts Brook Park and learning how to cook like Julia Child again. Every night, I made sure Paul came home to a new, knock-his-socks-off homemade meal: red wine pot roast with porcini, roasted duck breast with black truffles, and his personal favorite, grilled dry-aged porterhouse with twice-baked potatoes.
And it wasn’t just his socks that were knocked off usually. Our life in the bedroom was back on track, and maybe even better than ever. Honestly, we couldn’t get enough of each other.
While we hugged in the dark afterward, a kind of fugue would settle over me, and everything — the dark past, the uncertain future — would suddenly go away.
Then the ax finally fell on Thursday of my vacation week.
It came in the form of a phone call out of the blue. It was ten o’clock and I was unlacing my Reeboks when I noticed the blinking message light.
No news had meant good news for so long.
So, who was calling me at home on my vacation? I pressed the message button to find out.
“Detective Stillwell, this is assistant district attorney Jeffrey Fisher from the Bronx County Office. I know you’re on vacation, but we’re going to need you to come in and tie up a few loose ends on the Thayer case. Tomorrow at ten will be good for us. Bronx County Courthouse, second floor.”
I played the message over and over again.
What disturbed me the most was that I had a lot of friends in the Bronx DA’s Homicide office, but I knew Fisher the least. It seemed like maybe he had drawn the short straw on a distasteful task. And what about the semicasual tone of the message? Tie up a few loose ends sounded like it wasn’t a big deal. Which didn’t really make sense when I considered the officious-sounding ordering of the where and when at the end. I’d used the same textbook-law-enforcement implication that something mandatory was voluntary in trying to get witnesses to talk to me.
Witnesses, I thought, closing my eyes.
Not to mention suspects.
For a moment I panicked, beginning to think about what might have happened, where I might have screwed up, what the DA might try to lay on me. But then I stopped myself.
I knew how this game was played, and I knew even in the worst-case scenario, I had the advantage. Because the fact was, even if the DA came out and accused me and Paul of murdering Scott, they still had to prove it. Which was going to be hard, since there were no fingerprints, and Paul had never mentioned to anyone what he had done. Not even to me.
You could know somebody did something and they could still walk. I knew that full well. You had to prove your case in a court of law, and you needed evidence just to get there.
Sitting by my phone, I tried to turn my fear into something useful. If the DA’s office wanted to play hardball, I decided, then I would be ready for them.
My hand started trembling before I could reach the “delete” button, though.
Yeah, right. Who was I kidding?
How the hell would I pull this one off?
Chapter 76
AFTER A RESTLESS AND UNNERVING NIGHT with almost zero sleep, I decided to strap my gun and badge under my favorite Armani Exchange black suit. The skirt had a side slit in it that ordinarily would disqualify it as work clothes, but this wasn’t going to be a typical day at the office, was it?
I peeled off my bandage and teased my freshly razor-cut and colored hair before sliding into a pair of Steve Madden open-toed sling backs.
My meeting at the DA’s office was going to be combat, right?
I’d need every weapon I could come up with for this encounter with the law.
I gave myself plenty of time to swing by the Bronxville Starbucks for a venti. I finished it by the time I found a parking spot in Lou Gehrig Plaza across the street from the courthouse. I stared out at Yankee Stadium at the bottom of 161st Street, hoping maybe some of the Bomber mystique would rub off on me.
Unfortunately, from where I was sitting, it was looking like two outs in the bottom of the ninth.
It was nine thirty, a full half hour before my scheduled meeting, when I located Fisher at his desk on the second floor. He was sitting with three other male assistant district attorneys.
“Hey, fellas. How’s it going?” I said, staring into their eyes, one by one.
I’d done all I could to look my best. From the head swiveling of just about every male court officer, defendant, and counselor I’d passed in the marble halls, I figured that I’d cleaned up pretty well.
I popped a button on my jacket, giving the guys a peek at my Glock in the pancake holster pressed tightly against my stomach.
If this had been a cartoon, eyeballs would have been popping out and big red hearts would have been banging in and out of the lawyers’ chests. A hot chick and a gun? Hard to beat. Men are nothing if not predictable.
“You have the right to remain silent, guys,” I said, “but this is ridiculous. Don’t you think?”
There were “gotta go’s” and “see ya, Jeff’s,” and, one by one, the lawyers moved along until it was just me and my friend Fisher in the cramped cubicle. I nearly knocked him out of his rolling chair as I slid my butt up on the side of his desk.
The key to winning any battle is to put your opponent off balance. Hit the weak spot, and don’t let up until it’s all over but the shouting. The one thing I remembered about Fisher, a balding, hangdog-looking thirty-something, was the way he had tried to look down my dress at a Piper’s Kilt retirement party the year before.
“You said you wanted to see me, Fisher?” I said.
I watched his face flush the brightest red this side of a stoplight.
“Yes, uh, well, Detective,” the ADA stammered. “I mean . . . uh, it’s probably nothing. I’m sure it is. Where did I put that file? It’ll just take a second.”
As I watched him flail around over his desk, I had the feeling I’d already won this round. Interrogations were power struggles. Up until a moment before, with his cryptic message left on my machine, Jeffrey Fisher thought that he was in charge. But not anymore.
ADAs have a built-in inferiority complex when it comes to Homicide cops. The fact that Fisher was probably attracted to me kind of sealed the deal.
He would tread lightly. Whatever inconsistency he brought up, I would deny, and he would accept it. What had I been worrying about? I owned this meeting. Who was Fisher? Some nine-to-five schlep lawyer who was afraid to set foot on the dangerous streets of the Bronx? I would walk out of here blameless and free. I could feel it.
But then, out of nowhere, like some horrible apparition, Fisher’s boss, Jeff Buslik, appeared. Buslik didn’t look tongue-tied. In fact, he seemed extremely calm and collected. Malevolently calm. He didn’t even seem impressed with my outfit. He kissed me chastely on the cheek like I was his sister.
“Lauren, how’s it going?” he said. “Actually, I called the meeting. Why don’t we head into my office?”
Oh, no, I thought.
Oh fucking no!
Chapter 77
I FOLLOWED JEFF. His bureau chief’s office was a corner one, facing the stadium. You could see the Yankees right-field seats out the copper-rimmed window.
“Hey, you can spy on the bleacher creatures from here,” I said.
“How do you think I clear my fugitives’ docket?” Jeff joked. He looked down at his desk pensively, as if searching for the right words.
“Listen, Lauren. I like you. I really do. You’re a terrific cop and . . .”
“I’m married, Jeff,” I said with a grin.
“I know that. Okay. I guess I’ll just come out and ask. Did you have anything to do with the death of Scott Thayer?”
There it was. The bomb blast I’d been hoping would never come. I felt deaf for a second. I could almost feel my shadow burn into the wall behind me.
As I fought to gain back my breath, I wondered if they could process me right here in the courthouse. Send me out with the other prisoners in the van to Rikers Island.
“Of course,??
? I said after a long beat. I was smiling to let him know I thought he was joking. “I was the Homicide investigator in charge of his case.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Jeff said quietly.
I looked into the prosecutor’s eyes. What could I say now? What could I do?
Do something, a voice told me.
Fight. Or die.
“Yeah, well, what the hell do you mean, Jeff? What is this? Scott’s case is closed. I remember because the lid almost took my head off when it slammed. Has IAB called you? Is that what this is all about?”
“Three days ago, this office was contacted by the attorney of one Mr. Ignacio Morales,” Jeff said. “He was a bouncer at the club Wonderland, where you went to apprehend the Ordonez brothers.”
Oh, crap.
“Yeah, I remember Mr. Morales,” I said. “Did Mr. Morales happen to mention that he was about to rape me in the club’s basement?”
Jeff held up his hand as if to swat away that minor detail.
“He claims that the gun they found on Victor Ordonez’s body was removed from your handbag in a routine security search at the nightclub.”
I made my eyes bulge to project my outrage. I think Nicole Kidman would have been envious.
“And you believed this?” I said.
“Well, actually no,” Jeff said. “I trust that drug-pushing vermin about as far as I could bench-press him.”
Jeff reached into his drawer and took out a piece of paper.
“But then I saw this.”
It was Scott’s LUDs. Had my partner sent them to him? Even in my panic, I didn’t believe that. Ever-efficient, never-miss-a-thing genius Jeff must have asked for his own copy.
I’d been somewhat expecting this to come up. So I came out the only way I had left to me — swinging.
“So what?” I said. “So I knew Scott. We talked on the phone. Our relationship was nobody’s business, so I never mentioned it. There a crime in protecting my privacy?”
Instead of answering, Jeff took out another sheet of paper and pushed it across his desk.
It was a photocopy of a parking ticket for a motorcycle. It was really nice of him to allow me the time to thoroughly read the highlighted date and the address.