I went.
Cates snapped right back to the briefing. “For those of you who haven’t met her, Jordan’s new partner is Detective Kylie MacDonald. She’s on temporary assignment—”
Temporary assignment.
It’s the last thing I heard before I got to the door, but I no longer had any idea how I felt about that.
Chapter 7
THE REGENCY WAS only five minutes away from the precinct.
“I can’t believe Cates threw me a homicide on Day One,” Kylie said as soon as we got in the car.
“Possible homicide,” I said. “And I can’t believe we invited all these Hollywood heavyweights to New York and one of them is dead before lunch.”
“What did Cates want when she called you in to her office?”
“Nothing important.”
“Cates is too busy to call you in for nothing important,” Kylie said. “If you don’t want to tell me, don’t tell me, but don’t dodge the question.”
“She wanted an update on Omar. I gave it to her.” It was a lie, and a pretty lame one at that.
Kylie didn’t buy it. “Zach, I’m on trial here. Cates wants to know if I’m going to cut it. The best way she can do that is to tell you to keep tabs on me and report in to her.”
“That’s bullshit,” I said. “Cates makes all her own decisions.”
“Yeah, but you’re going to be with me twelve, fourteen hours a day. She’s going to want your input.”
Which is exactly why Cates called me in to her office.
We caught a red light at 63rd and Park, and I turned to Kylie. “I hope you’re not going to spend twelve, fourteen hours a day overthinking shit like this.”
“Look, you don’t have to tell me anything. If she did ask you, she probably told you not to tell me anything. And if it makes you feel any better, I hope she did ask you.”
“Why?”
“You already know I’m a better cop than you are, so I don’t care if you get a vote.” She laughed. “As long as she doesn’t ask my husband. Spence is dead set against me getting this job on a permanent basis.”
The committee inside my head called an emergency meeting. Spence knows you never got over Kylie. You’re a threat. He doesn’t want you spending sixty hours a week with his wife.
As far as I was concerned, the answer was clear, but I needed to hear it for myself. “What’s Spence’s problem with this assignment?” I asked.
“He wants me to get pregnant,” she said. “I was just about ready, but when Red came along I told him it was my dream job, and if I got it full-time, we’d have to put the baby on hold for a few years.”
The committee regrouped. Spence isn’t in competition with you. He’s in competition with the job. If she stays on as your partner, she doesn’t get pregnant. Now what are we going to tell Cates?
There was a line of limos parked in the No Parking zone in front of the hotel. I had to hit the siren three times before the driver at the front of the line even looked at me, and twice more before he reluctantly gave up his spot.
We got out of the car.
“What’s the drill?” Kylie said. “You’re the senior. You want me to stay in the background, or jump in with both feet?”
“There are no senior partners or junior partners,” I said. “You’re here because you’re a good cop. Besides, Cates said the vic was a Hollywood producer, and you have the extra bonus of being married to a guy in the biz, so you understand what makes these people tick.”
Kylie shook her head. “I’ve got news for you, Six. Nobody knows what in the hell makes these people tick.”
Chapter 8
“SETTLE DOWN, PEOPLE,” the assistant director bellowed. “Picture is up. Roll sound.”
Henry Muhlenberg took a deep breath. He was finally back in control. Thirty feet away, looking elegant in a vintage Casablanca black shawl-collar tuxedo, The Chameleon had the same thought.
“Speed.”
The clapboard snapped shut, and the assistant director called out, “Background action.”
The Chameleon and ninety-nine other wedding guests slid into character, chatting, laughing, drinking, all without making a sound.
“And action,” Muhlenberg called.
The bride and groom, Devon Whitaker and Ian Stewart, stepped onto the dance floor, and the assembled guests stopped pretending to talk and pretended to be enthralled as the happy couple began to dance.
The band pretended to play. The music would be added to the sound track in postproduction. Ian and Devon twirled around the room.
“Dancing, dancing, dancing,” Muhlenberg called out, waiting for the couple to hit their marks. “And now!”
Edie Coburn stepped into the scene wearing a pair of wide-legged, high-waisted Katharine Hepburn trousers and a loose-fitting chocolate brown silk blouse.
“Well, well, well!” she screamed, pointing a nine-millimeter SIG Pro at the couple. “The former Mrs. Minetti finally gets to meet the current Mrs. Minetti.”
The crowd reacted with appropriate horror. Muhlenberg looked at the video monitor on the close-up camera. Edie Coburn was calm and cold on the outside, but seething with rage on the inside. Hardly a stretch for her to play the jealous ex-wife, Muhlenberg thought, but still, she was brilliant.
Ian turned to her, his eyes filled more with anger than fear. “Put the gun down, Carla. If this is another one of your stupid melodramatic—”
Edie fired at the bride. Once. Twice. Blood stained the lace front of the wedding gown, and Devon collapsed to the floor. Ian let out a wail and charged toward Edie. She fired again. Blood spread across his white shirt. He staggered, and she fired again. Arterial spray spurted across the dance floor, and Ian fell down hard.
It was a spectacular film death, and Henry had it covered with four cameras. “And cut!” he yelled. “Brilliant.”
The assistant director helped the bloodied bride to her feet. “Ian, you need help?” he asked.
Ian Stewart didn’t answer. He gasped for air and let out a groan that turned into a full-throated wet gurgle as blood gushed from his windpipe and onto the parquet floor.
The special effects guy was the first to figure it out. The blood squibs on the wedding gown had exploded right on cue, but the blood pouring out of Ian Stewart was very real.
“Live fire!” he shouted as he barreled his way onto the set, grabbed Edie Coburn’s arm, and wrestled the gun from her hand.
Henry Muhlenberg was right behind him. He dropped to the floor and lifted the actor’s head. The blood had slowed to a trickle. Ian’s face was contorted, mouth agape, eyes wide open, seeing nothing.
“Get a doctor!” Muhlenberg screamed, knowing it was futile.
The extras were on their feet, some stunned, some crying, some shoving their way to the front to get a better look.
The Chameleon stood in their midst, motionless, just another horrified face blending in with the crowd.
Chapter 9
KYLIE AND I entered the lobby of the Regency Hotel, and three men pounced on us. The general manager, the executive chef, and some guy from corporate. The manager informed us that one of their guests had suffered a heart attack, and Mr. Corporate said they were there to help in any way they possibly could.
In another era, the lead detective would have squared off with them and said, “Bullshit—you want the cops and the dead guy out of your dining room as soon as possible so you can get on with lunch and pretend this never happened.”
Today’s NYPD is different. We practice CPR—Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect. I thanked them for their help, exchanged business cards, and politely asked for their indulgence while my partner and I took a look at the deceased.
“We have a defibrillator on hand,” the manager said, like this was a dry run for the insurance investigation. “But it appears to be one of those sudden but deadly coronaries. There was no time to save him.”
The corporate guy, who was probably the vice president in charge of covering shit up, sai
d, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a heavy smoker.” Then he assured us that all the resources of the hotel were at our disposal to help resolve this tragedy in a timely fashion.
Short of tossing the body on a baggage cart and tucking it out of sight behind the bell desk, I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what resources he had in mind.
I have no idea how they describe the Regency dining room in their brochures, but I’d call it Old Money Posh. Thick carpeting, heavy drapes, silky fabric on the walls, and upholstered chairs, all in various shades of gold.
In stark contrast to all those golden hues was a brownish red puddle and the splayed body of a man who was definitely not flying back to LA first-class.
“His name is Sidney Roth, Bel Air, California, age fifty-three.”
It was Chuck Dryden, a crime scene investigator with a keen eye, remarkable instincts, and zero personality. With Chuck, there’s never any of the usual how’s-it-going cop banter. They call him Cut And Dryden because he gets straight to the point, without any mirth, without any chin-wagging.
I introduced him to Kylie, which I’m sure was a total waste of six seconds of his time.
“What’s the COD?” I said. “The hotel brass are pushing heart attack, but I’m sure they’ll be happy with any God-given untimely death that indemnifies them.”
“Heart attack victims don’t usually crap their pants,” Dryden said. “I think he was poisoned, but we won’t know for sure till we do an autopsy and a tox screen.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Chuck nodded and went back to work.
“Did you hear that?” Kylie said. “He said poison.”
“He said he thinks it was poison.”
“I hope he’s right,” she said. “I’ve never worked a poison homicide before.”
“In that case, can I give you a little free advice?”
“Sure.”
“A lot of people are watching us. Try not to look quite so happy about it.”
Chapter 10
NOTHING CLEARS A crowded restaurant like a bleeding corpse. We were told that someone yelled “Call 911!” when Roth hit the floor. After that, everybody yelled out “Check!”
By the time the two uniformed first responders showed up, most of the witnesses had left the building. Luckily, this was the Regency and not a Starbucks, and Philippe, the very buttoned-up and genuinely helpful maître d’, assured us he could refer to his seating chart and reconstruct the entire population of the dining room from the minute it opened to the minute Roth died.
“Mr. Roth was at table twelve with four others,” Philippe said. “Two of them are still here.”
He pointed to two men in their early thirties sitting at a table in the corner, a silver carafe and two coffee cups between them.
I looked up, and one of the men grinned and started waving.
“He seems to be taking Roth’s death rather well,” I said to Kylie. “What the hell is he waving at?”
“Me,” she said. “I know him. He’s a friend of Spence’s.”
We walked over, and the man stood up. “Kylie,” he said. “I knew you were a cop, but what are the odds?”
“This is my partner, Detective Zach Jordan,” she said. “Zach, this is Harold Scott.”
“My friends call me Scotty,” he said, shaking my hand.
He introduced us to the other man. “This is Randy Pisane. We were having breakfast with Sid Roth when he died.”
“Thanks for staying,” I said. “Can you tell us what happened?”
“One minute Roth is fine. He’s telling us war stories. I mean this guy worked with everybody—Eastwood, Newman, Brando—the biggest of the big. I’ve got to tell you, even if half of that shit was true—”
“Scotty,” Kylie said. “What actually happened?”
“Anyway, to make a long story short, all of a sudden, bam—he’s standing up, puking, having some kind of a seizure, and then down he goes. Smashed his head open, bled all over everything. It was gruesome. I mean, you see a lot worse on film, but in real life, it’s—I don’t know—it’s real. It sucks.”
“Did Roth grab his chest or his arm or his shoulder?” Kylie asked.
Scotty shrugged. “I don’t know. It was kind of fast, and I was pretty grossed out by all the vomiting.”
“You mean did he grab his chest like he was having a heart attack?” Pisane asked.
“Yes.”
“No, there was none of that,” Pisane said. “Look, I’m no doctor, but I wrote for CSI: Miami for two seasons, and what happened to Roth played out like an episode we shot where the guy was poisoned.”
“You mean like food poisoning?” I said.
He looked at me like I was stupid. “No! Poison, like murder. Don’t you watch CSI: Miami?”
“So you’re talking about a homicide,” I said. “Do you know if Mr. Roth had any enemies?”
Both men laughed.
“It would be a lot easier if you asked if he had any friends,” Scotty said.
“Scotty’s right,” Pisane said. “Google him. He was a ruthless son of a bitch, but everybody wanted to work with him because he made a bitchload of money.”
We thanked them and found Dryden, who was still busy photographing table twelve.
“One of the witnesses corroborates your theory,” I said. “He says that the symptoms Roth displayed just before he died make it look like he was poisoned.”
“Is he a doctor?” Dryden said.
“A writer for CSI: Miami.”
“It’s crap. Never watch it.”
Philippe had had the good sense not to clear Roth’s table. There were still five plates, five coffee cups, five waters, and one empty juice glass sitting on the table.
“This is Rafe,” Philippe said. “He was Mr. Roth’s waiter.”
“Where was Roth sitting?” I asked.
Rafe pointed toward the juice glass.
I turned to Dryden. “Chuck, you can bag and tag it all, but do me a favor, when you run it through the lab, start with the glass.”
“And you might want to test everything in the kitchen,” Kylie said. “Just in case someone was targeting the whole dining room and Roth was the first to drink the Kool-Aid.”
Chuck moved his head imperceptibly in something that looked like agreement.
“Rafe,” I said, “did you bring Mr. Roth the juice?”
“No. There was a busboy—a new guy, Latino. I asked him to top off the coffee. When he got to the table, Roth asked him for the tomato juice, and he brought it.”
“What’s this busboy’s name?”
“I don’t know,” Rafe said. “Like I told you, he was new.”
“Where is he now?”
Rafe shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s not here. He’s not in the kitchen. He probably went home.”
I turned to Philippe.
He shook his head. “We don’t have any new busboys today. This is a busy week. I have all my regulars—nobody new. The one who brought the juice—I don’t know who he is.”
My cell phone rang. It was Cates.
“Give me an update,” she said.
“We’re at the Regency. The Possible Homicide is looking more like a Probable Murder One, but we have to give the lab rats time to dust and dissect. We’re going to head back to the precinct.”
“Don’t,” Cates said. “I need you at Silvercup Studios. There’s another body. Ian Stewart, the actor.”
“What went down?” I asked.
“He was shot,” Cates said.
“Anybody see anything?”
“There were about a hundred witnesses,” Cates said, “and if none of them are any help, we’ve got the whole thing on film.”
Chapter 11
I GAVE PHILIPPE my email address and told him to send me a list of everyone who was in the dining room. “And put the two guys who had breakfast with Roth and bolted before the cops got here at the top of the list.”
I thought about asking Rafe the waiter to sit with a
police artist and come up with a sketch of the busboy, but I know a waste of time when I see one. No sense circulating a picture of a generic male Puerto Rican who looks like half a million guys from East Williamsburg to Spanish Harlem.
I thanked Philippe and motioned Kylie toward the exit. As expected, the Regency’s unholy trinity was waiting in the doorway.
“Do you have any surveillance cameras in the dining room?” I asked.
The manager looked at me like I’d asked if they had peepholes in the guests’ bathrooms.
“This is the Regency,” he said. “Our clients come here for discretion and privacy.”
“How about the back of the house? Do you keep an eye on the kitchen staff?”
“We did, but…” He looked at the executive chef. “Etienne had the cameras removed when he came here two years ago.”
The burly chef gave a wave of his hand to let me know that he had no regrets. “I find them offensive, distracting,” he said.
The old me would have said something like Makes it easier to spit in somebody’s bouillabaisse if they piss you off, but my sensitivity training kicked in and I went with, “We’ll need a list of everyone who worked here this morning.”
“Fine,” Chef Etienne said.
Not so fine with the guy from corporate. “Detective, is that really necessary? It’s a heart attack.”
“It’s a police investigation,” I said. “My partner and I have to go. We’ll be talking to you.”
“Wait!” It was le chef. “We have to set up for lunch. How long before that, that…” He pointed at the dead man on the dining room carpet, which I’m sure he found offensive and distracting.
“I’m sorry it’s taking so long,” I said. “He’ll be out in a few minutes. Thank you for being so patient.” It was the classic bullshit response waiters are trained to give customers when the dinner they ordered an hour ago still hasn’t come out of the kitchen.
I seriously doubt if Chef Etienne appreciated the irony.
Chapter 12