“There was a shooting,” I said. “Your daughter, Erica, was killed. She died instantly. I’m terribly sorry.”
Henry’s mouth and eyes seemed to triple in size. He stared at me, confused, as he stumbled back against the edge of a mod-looking mohair club chair. His wife sank, dumbfounded, onto an antique chaise.
“What about the girls?” Henry said softly. “I haven’t seen them in years. They must be grown now. Do they know?”
“Jessica and Rebecca were murdered, too,” I had to tell him. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”
His wife gasped, her eyes filling with tears. Henry brought his hand up as if to say something, then lowered it.
“I’m afraid it gets worse still,” I said, dropping the third and final bomb in my arsenal of grief—getting it over with as quickly as I could. “We believe they were shot by your son-in-law, Thomas Gladstone. And that he’s also responsible for the string of killings that have been going on around the city.”
Mrs. Blanchette’s tears stopped like a faucet, and now I could see nothing in her face except rage.
“I told you so!” she screamed at her husband. “I told you marrying that trash would be . . .” She collapsed again, unable to continue.
The billionaire hung his head, staring into the Oriental carpet between his sneakers as if trying to read something in the pattern.
“We had a falling-out,” he said.
He seemed to be talking to himself.
Chapter 64
“IT’S NOT FAIR, Henry,” Mrs. Blanchette wailed. “After all my. . . . What did we do to deserve this?”
I had a hard time believing what I heard. But people handle grief in strange ways.
“Is there someplace where your son-in-law could be hiding out?” I said. “Another apartment in the city? A vacation house, perhaps?”
“Another apartment! Do you have any idea how much we paid for the Locust Valley house we bought Erica?”
In her mind, clearly, somebody like me wouldn’t have an inkling about that sort of thing. I turned to her husband.
“What was the nature of the falling-out?” I asked.
Mrs. Blanchette rose from her chair like a boxer after the bell. “What possible business is that of yours?” she said, glaring at me.
“As you can see, my wife’s quite upset, Detective,” Mr. Blanchette said, without lifting his eyes from the carpet. “We both are. Could you question us later? Maybe after we’ve had a little while to . . .”
“Of course,” I said, leaving my card on the sideboard. “If you think of something that might help, or you want more information—anything I can do—please call, okay?”
As I stepped out of the elevator downstairs, I spotted the green-uniformed doorman talking Spanish with one of the maids, laughing and probably flirting.
They got quiet as I walked over to them and showed him my shield again.
“Detective Bennett, remember?” I said. “Can I ask you a few questions? Won’t take a minute.”
The maid edged away, and the doorman shrugged. “Sure. I’m Petie. What can I do for you?”
“You know Erica Gladstone?” I said.
“Ever since she was a little girl.”
“What happened between her and her parents?”
Petie suddenly looked as green as his jacket. “Ah, I never heard nothin’ about that, amigo,” he said. “You’d have to ask them, you know? I just work here.”
I put a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Look, I understand the secret code—don’t talk about the tenants. Relax. I don’t need you to testify in open court. I need you to help me nail this nut job who’s going around shooting everybody. We think it’s Erica’s husband, Thomas Gladstone.”
“Chingao!” the doorman said, his eyes widening in shock. “Oh, my God! For real?”
“For real. Come on, Petie. Let’s get this guy.”
“Yeah, yeah, you bet,” he said. “Erica, okay, let’s see. She was a wild kid. Real wild. Drugs. A couple of rehabs. We’re talking before her sweet sixteen. When she’d come home from Sarah Lawrence, we had standing orders not to let her in if nobody else was home.
“Then she seemed to straighten out. She married some blue-blood kid from her daddy’s firm, had a couple of daughters. But all of a sudden, she got divorced and took up with the second husband, the Gladstone guy. He was the pilot on the father’s corporate jet, was what I heard. The parents went ballistic, especially the Lady of the Manor, as we call her. She got Gladstone fired, and cut Erica off at the root.” The doorman shook his head knowingly. “Shooting smack when you’re thirteen is one thing, but, by God, you sleep with the help, you’re dead meat.”
“Did Gladstone and Erica ever come here?” I said.
I could tell from his face that he wasn’t happy about answering this one, but he looked down at the gleaming marble chessboard lobby tile and nodded.
“One Thanksgiving. I don’t know, maybe three years ago. Them and the daughters showed up, dressed to kill—bottles of champagne, big smiles. I figured they’d been invited and I sent them on up. But five minutes later, they came back down again, and the girls were crying like babies. Then that old witch actually tried to get me written up because I didn’t call first. Yeah, sorry. My bad for thinking you’d maybe want to see your only daughter and grandchildren on Thanksgiving.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Petie,” I said. “You just told me what I wanted to know.”
This was the next place that Gladstone would hit, I could feel it. He’d been saving the Blanchettes, especially the mother. He was going to pay her back, make damn sure she realized he existed.
I was nervous about even having the thought, for fear of a jinx, but I was pretty sure I’d finally done it—finally gotten one step ahead of our shooter.
Outside, I called Beth Peters on my cell.
“Good news,” I said. “Get hold of the ESU, and everybody haul ass over here to Eleven-seventeen Fifth. It’s stakeout time.”
Chapter 65
AS THE TEACHER WALKED along Tenth Avenue looking for a taxi, he passed a bar that had a fake wagon wheel out front and a row of Harleys parked beside it. The sad old Irish song “The Streets of New York” was spilling out from its doorway into the street. Still feeling his own grief after the “funeral,” he decided to step inside.
Maybe that was just what he needed—a drink.
The young woman behind the scarred pinewood bar had the arms of a football player and metal rings piercing various parts of her face.
The Teacher ordered a Bud with a shot of Canadian Club, and nodded to a group of ironworkers having a retirement party in the shadowed backroom.
When his whiskey came, he knocked it back. Here’s to you, buddy, he thought, fighting another round of tears.
He was on his second shot and Bud when news of the spree killer came on the TV. He thought about asking the bartender to turn it up, but then decided no. Attracting unneeded attention was a bad idea.
“Fucking cops,” a gruff voice suddenly said beside him. The Teacher turned to see a monstrous ironworker, with eyes as red as his long, Viking hair. “Here’s an idea, flatfoots. How ’bout taking your heads out of your fat, doughnut-padded asses and just catch the sick son of a bitch already.”
“Sick?” the Teacher said. “Ballsy, is what I say. He’s only offing rich, yuppie assholes. He’s like a vigilante. Doing this city a favor. What’s the big deal?”
“Vigilante? What are you? His PR guy?” the tattooed welder said, glaring malevolently. “Friggin’ goddamned freak. I’ll rearrange your face. I swear to God, I will. You must be as sick as he is.”
“Jesus, what the hell am I saying?” the Teacher said, clapping his hands to his face in chagrin. “I just came from a funeral. I guess I’m still all fucked up about it. You’re right. I’m really sorry. It’s wrong to even joke about the tragedy that’s going on. Let me buy you a beer.”
“A funeral, huh? That’s tough,” the big guy said, softening.
&nb
sp; The Teacher motioned to the Lordess of the Rings for two more. When the drinks arrived and he set one in front of the welder, he seemed to trip clumsily and sent a barstool crashing to the floor.
“Oh, no,” the Teacher moaned. “Sorry. I guess I’ve had a couple too many.”
“Yeah, you better start taking it easy, pal,” the welder said, and bent down to pick up the fallen stool.
The Teacher broke one bottle over the back of his head, driving him to the floor, and the second across his stunned face. The bleeding man hardly had time to groan as the Teacher stretched his forearm across the tarnished brass footrail and broke it with a ferocious stomp. It sounded like two pool balls knocking together.
So much for not attracting attention, he thought as he backed for the exit.
“Repeat after me, carrottop,” he called from the doorway. “Not sick, just ballsy.”
Chapter 66
IT TOOK FIVE MINUTES for the Emergency Service Unit guys to get to the Blanchettes’ building. After Steve Reno and I walked through the exits and entrances, we decided to suit up a cop as a doorman, put another in the lobby’s coatroom, and station a team of commandos in an unmarked surveillance van across the street beside the park.
After triple-checking that our trap was set, I put Reno in charge and decided to quickly do something I’d been needing to do for a long time.
The sun was going down over Jersey when I pulled up my unmarked car beside Riverside Park, behind my building. I walked along a path, crossed a desolate ball field, and crouched down beside an oak sapling in a clearing that faced the Hudson. I cleaned up some cigarette butts and an Aquafina bottle at the base of the tree, tossed them into the bag I’d brought, and then sat down.
The fledgling tree was the one my kids and I had planted after my wife, Maeve, had died. She was actually buried in the Gates of Heaven Cemetery up in Westchester, but whenever I needed to speak to her, which was pretty often, I usually ended up here. Most of the time, I’d just sit, and after a while it would almost be like she was there with me—just out of sight behind me, the way she’d been on the countless picnics we’d had here with our incredibly motley crew.
When I glanced back over my shoulder at my apartment house, I could see two of my kids in the kitchen window. Fiona and Bridget, was my guess. Maybe they were missing their mom as much as I was. Wishing she was still around to take care of them, cheer them up, make things right again.
I waved up at them. They waved back.
“We’re hanging in there, babe,” I said to the wind. “By a toenail, maybe, but what can we do? I love you, though, if that’s any consolation.”
When I went up to my apartment, Mary Catherine met me at the door. Something was wrong. I could see a troubled look wavering there in her usually stoic blue eyes.
“What is it, MC?” I said.
“Seamus,” she said gravely.
I followed her into my bedroom. Seamus was beached on top of the covers. His eyes were closed and he looked even paler than usual. For a second, I honest-to-God thought he was dead. Then he let out a string of gasping coughs, his thin chest shaking beneath his Roman collar.
Oh, Lord, I thought. Really not good. He’d finally caught our flu. Which, for an eighty-plus-year-old like him, was extremely dangerous. It suddenly hit me how stupid I’d been to even let him come around. I panicked for a second. What would I do if I lost him, too?
But I would lose him anyway, one of these days, an evil little voice whispered in my ear. Wouldn’t I?
I shook off the thought, went to the kitchen, and got the bottle of Jameson’s from the cupboard. I poured a couple of fingers into a Waterford crystal tumbler and added some heated milk and sugar.
“God love ya, boy,” Seamus said to me, after taking a couple of sips. “Now give me a hand out of bed, and I’ll be on my way back to the rectory.”
“Just try to get out of here, old man,” I said. “I dare you. Lay there and finish your medicine before I call an ambulance on you.”
Chapter 67
I WAS STILL STANDING over Seamus when my oldest boy, Brian, ran in.
What now?
“Dad! Mary Catherine! In the kitchen! Quick!”
I raced after him into the hall. The kitchen had gone dark. That was all we needed right now—some kind of blackout. Damn prewar building’s wiring was falling apart just like everything else. It would probably start a fire. I sniffed for smoke in the walls and tried to remember where I’d put the fuses.
“Psych!” yelled all my kids as the light flicked on.
On the kitchen island, two plates were set up with Tombstone pizzas on them. They’d even made a salad. Trent was pouring Diet Cokes with the dish towel draped over his arm, like a three-and-a-half-foot-tall sommelier.
“Now, hold on a second. You guys are supposed to be in bed,” I said as Mary Catherine and I were ordered to sit. “And what did you do with all the dirty dishes?”
“Chill, Pops. It’s all being taken care of,” Jane said, pushing in my chair for me. “We’re feeling better now. We decided you and MC need to take a load off already. You work too hard. You guys should learn to relax a little.”
After we were done, coffee was prepared, and we were led into the living room.
What happened next was incredible. The vacuum came on. Assembly lines formed. Toys and art supplies miraculously rose from the floors and furniture and returned to their proper places. One of my little jokers started to sing “It’s the Hard-Knock Life” from Annie as he scrubbed at a puke spot with a wet paper towel, and the rest of them joined in.
As I sat there on my beat-up sectional, sipping my too-sweet coffee, something brightened in my chest. Though Maeve was gone, she had accomplished a miracle. She’d taken the best of herself—her sense of humor, her love of life, her ability to do for others—and somehow injected it into my silly kids. That part of her would never die, I realized. That could never be taken away.
“Dad, stop! This is supposed to be making you happy,” Julia said.
“What are you talking about? I’m thrilled,” I said, wiping my wet face. “It’s just the Pine-Sol. It always irritates my eyes.”
Chapter 68
IT WAS COMING ON EIGHT P.M. when I got back to the Blanchettes’ building on Fifth. I parked at a hydrant on the Central Park side, and before crossing the street I rapped a hello on the party rental van where the Emergency Service Unit guys were staked out.
My buddy Petie, the doorman, waved to me as I stepped under the awning. He had a new partner with him now. I grinned when I saw the face underneath the ridiculous green hat. It was ESU Lieutenant Steve Reno.
“Good evening, sir. May I get you a psycho?” he said, touching the hat brim with a white glove.
“I wish somebody could,” I said. “No sign, huh?”
“Not yet, but I did make ten bucks in tips. Mike, did you know these Blanchette people are holding a charity fund-raiser tonight? How does that make sense when our guy’s only joy in life is offing filthy rich New York types?”
I was stunned. “Are you kidding? A fund-raiser? Is that right, Petie?”
He nodded. “It’s been scheduled for months. Too late to cancel.”
I shook my head. I still couldn’t believe it.
“Which part of ‘your psychopathic son-in-law is coming to gun you down’ aren’t they getting, do you think?” I said as I headed for the elevator. Not to mention that they just learned that their daughter and granddaughters had been brutally murdered.
When the butler opened the penthouse door, I spotted Mrs. Blanchette out by the pool. A maid was standing beside her, and an elderly Latino man in maintenance clothes was sitting at the pool’s edge, apparently about to slide into the water.
“What’s going on out there?” I said.
“Mrs. Blanchette dropped an earring in the deep end,” the butler explained as the maintenance guy submerged himself.
“Why don’t they just drain it?” I said.
“It wou
ldn’t be refilled by the time the first guests arrive at nine, sir. Mrs. Blanchette insists on tea lights during the cocktail hour.”
“Of course,” I said. “The tea lights. What was I thinking?”
The butler’s face had a peculiar, pained expression. “Detective, perhaps you should have a word with Mr. B.,” he said. “I’ll fetch him, shall I?”
I nodded, wondering what that was about. As he hurried off, I walked out to the pool to try to talk sense to Mrs. Blanchette.
“Ma’am?” I said.
She whirled around like a sequined cobra. The contents of the big martini glass she was holding sloshed onto the maid’s dress. I could tell from her eyes and her breath that she’d already downed several of them. Maybe drinking and staying busy were her ways of working through her grief.
“Get me another one,” Mrs. Blanchette said impatiently, thrusting the glass at the cowed maid. Then she turned her attention to me.
“You again. What is it now?” she said.
“I must not have been clear about the danger you and your husband are in,” I said. “Your son-in—I mean, Thomas Gladstone—is targeting you, without question, as we speak. It’s not a good time to have people over. I’m going to have to ask you to postpone.”
“Postpone?” she said furiously. “This is the Friends of the Congo AIDS Benefit—in planning for the last year. Steven is flying in from the coast just for tonight. Sumner actually cut his vacation short. Do I have to supply last names? There’ll be no postponing anything.”
“Mrs. Blanchette, people’s lives are at stake here,” I said.
Instead of responding to me, she ripped a cell phone from her bag and flipped it open.
“Diandra? Hi, it’s Cynthia,” she said. “Could you put Morty on?”
Morty? Oh, Lord, I hoped it wasn’t the Morty I thought it was. I didn’t need that name dropped on me. Not even an ounce of it.
She stalked away, talking. The maintenance guy, up for a breath of air, stared at her back and muttered a Spanish word that was not used in polite company.