The Shadow of Your Smile

  On Tuesday morning Tony Garcia, filled with anticipation, was in the waiting room of Dr. Clayton Hadley’s office. When I called yesterday, he couldn’t have been nicer, Tony thought. I explained that I’d like to buy Ms. Morrow’s car and he asked if I realized it was ten years old. Then I offered to pay him the book value in cash and he said that would be fine.

  “The doctor will be right with you, sir,” the receptionist said, with a friendly smile at the young man in a chauffeur’s uniform who was obviously uneasy sitting with a well-dressed couple who were also waiting to see the doctor.

  “Thanks very much,” Tony said. I still can’t believe how lucky I am, he thought. Yesterday, when I asked the doctor if I could possibly get the car right away, even before the ownership transfer papers could be completed, I never thought he’d be so nice. I guess it was because I explained that we could have been killed in an accident when our old car stopped short in traffic. But he did say that it’s near the end of the month and there was no use wasting money from the estate paying the garage bill in Ms. Morrow’s apartment building.

  “You can go in now, Mr. Garcia,” the receptionist told him. “The doctor will see you in the second room on the right.”

  Tony jumped up. “Oh, thank you,” he said, as the receptionist assured the couple in the waiting room that the doctor would be with them in a few minutes.

  With quick steps, Tony, following instructions, entered the private office of Dr. Clay Hadley. He’s pretty fat for a cardiologist, was Tony’s first thought, but it passed quickly from his mind. “Dr. Hadley, thanks so much. This means so much to me and my family. I can’t tell you how scared I was when all of a sudden my car stopped in traffic. But I won’t take your time. I brought the money in cash. My brother-in-law lent it to me. He’s a prince.”

  After the phone call from Sophie Rutkowski the day before, Clay Hadley had been terrified. I panicked, he thought. I should have told her I was having the pillowcase laundered. Did she notice the bloodstain on the pillow itself? I can’t ask her that. It will only bring her attention to it.

  Take the damn car, he thought, impatiently, as, forcing a smile, he watched Tony offer him six rubber-banded packs of ten one-hundred-dollar bills. “Six thousand dollars in all,” Tony said. “Doctor, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your letting me take the car right away. My wife Rosalie’s grandmother lives in New Jersey, and she looks forward so much to Rosie visiting her. Without a car it would be impossible.”

  Clay Hadley raised his hand. “Tony, I have your phone number. I’ll give you a call when we can complete the paperwork. My secretary has called the garage. They’re expecting you to pick up the car this morning. They looked through it, but there was nothing personal in it. The insurance card and registration are in the glove compartment. Of course, once we officially transfer ownership to you and give you the title, you get your own registration and insurance. Here is a receipt for the payment now.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. Thank you so much.” Tony started for the door, got as far as the receptionist’s desk, then hesitated and turned around. I wonder if that bag Ms. Morrow asked me to put under the blanket in the trunk is still there? he thought. I shoved it pretty far back. The garage attendants may have missed it. Maybe I should tell the doctor about it?

  The receptionist had seen him turn. “Mr. Garcia,” she said firmly, “I’m afraid that I can’t keep the doctor’s patients waiting any longer. I’m sure he’s on his way to the examining room now.”

  Embarrassed, Tony murmured, “Of course. I’m sorry.” As he made his way through the reception area, he thought, if that file is there, I’ll just mail it back to Dr. Hadley.

  I should have known better than to try to bother him with it now.

  68

  On Tuesday morning, Detectives Barry Tucker and Dennis Flynn were sitting in the private office of Department Chief Jack Stanton, sipping coffee and reviewing the case with him. It had been five days since Renée Carter’s body had been found.

  “Some of this just doesn’t add up,” Tucker told the chief. “Gannon had the motive, the opportunity, and a very convenient memory blackout. Not to mention the hundred thousand bucks hidden in the drawer in his office.”

  “What doesn’t add up?” Stanton asked.

  “We tracked down three of the patrons who were in the bar where Carter and Gannon met. Two of them remembered hearing them arguing but didn’t know what it was about. Both of them noticed Carter leaving the bar with Gannon right behind her.”

  “The third guy we spoke to is the one who’s most important,” Dennis Flynn said. “He claimed that he had left the bar less than a minute later, and that he saw a man he’s pretty sure was Gannon walking down York Avenue alone.”

  “Which is consistent with what Gannon claimed,” Tucker said. “This guy swears he didn’t see Carter, that she was already gone.”

  “How reliable is this witness?” Stanton demanded.

  “He’s an engineer. A one-drink-only regular customer. No connection to anyone involved. No axe to grind. Even though he’s not a hundred percent sure it was Gannon that he saw, put him on the witness stand and it’s more than enough to give the jury reasonable doubt.” Barry Tucker stared into his coffee cup, wishing he had not put so much sugar in it. “If this guy is right, Carter must have gotten into a car,” he said. “But what car? Whose car? Peter Gannon’s BMW hasn’t been out of his garage in a week. We checked the garage records. On top of that, we’ve gone over the car with a fine-tooth comb. There’s no trace of Carter ever having been in it.”

  “She had that heavy shopping bag,” Flynn pointed out to his boss. “Odds are if Gannon did walk away from her, she got into a cab or one of those cruising limos. We’ve checked out all the licensed cabs and none of them picked her up. If she got into one of those gypsy limos, what did the guy who was driving see? A good-looking, well-dressed babe, who according to the babysitter was wearing some decent jewelry. We both know what may have happened next.”

  “Her jewelry was gone. Her purse was gone. Let’s suppose our mystery limo driver killed her,” Tucker suggested. “How does he end up going to Gannon’s office and hiding all that cash? Why would he put that kind of money back? How would he get into the office in the first place? And where does he stash the body for more than twenty-four hours before he wraps it in a garbage bag and stuffs it under a park bench? None of it makes sense.”

  Stanton leaned back in his chair. “Let’s look at this scenario. Somebody was parked near that bar because he knew Gannon was meeting Carter there. After Gannon stumbled off, that person offered Carter a ride. She wasn’t dumb. She probably wouldn’t have gotten into a car, other than one of those gypsy limos, with someone she didn’t know.”

  Tucker nodded. “That’s where I’ve been going. And think about this. Peter Gannon’s fingerprints were all over the cash and the shopping bag, but there were no fingerprints in the false bottom of the drawer where the money was hidden. Was he smart enough, or drunk enough, to put on gloves to hide the money, but dumb enough to dump the shopping bag into the wastepaper basket where anyone could see it?”

  Tucker’s phone rang. He glanced at the ID of the caller. “It’s the lab,” he said, as he answered. “What’s up? Oh. Thanks for the rush job.” He snapped the phone closed. “The lab has finished going over the clothing that Gannon was wearing that night and the clothing that Renée Carter was found in. There is no trace of Carter’s blood or hair or fibers from her clothes on anything he was wearing, and there’s nothing on her clothing that came from him.”

  The chief had been reading the Gannon file before Tucker and Flynn arrived at his office. He turned to a page and reread it. “According to the statement Peter Gannon gave, he had, only a few days earlier, requested a loan of one million dollars from the Gannon family foundation to pay off Renée Carter, but the most the board members would advance him was one hundred thousand dollars. That means that whoever is on the board knew about Renée and her demands
. We both know that some of these family foundations are pretty shaky. I would say your next move is to talk to those people and see what you can find.”

  Tucker nodded, stood up, and stretched. “I’m beginning to think I should get a job working for the Gannon defense team,” he said. “Because that’s just about what we may be doing now.”

  As he and Flynn made their way through the cluttered outer office to their desks, a young detective passed them. “Barry, you looked real good on page three of the News,” he commented. “My girlfriend says she likes your crooked smile.”

  “So does my wife,” Barry retorted. “But the way this case is going, she’s not going to get much chance to enjoy it for a while.”

  69

  Mentally and physically exhausted, Peter Gannon slept soundly Monday night. On Tuesday morning, feeling alert and clearheaded for the first time in days, he showered, shaved, then dressed in khakis and searched in his closet for a long-sleeved sport shirt that he hoped would conceal the electronic bracelet.

  Feeling quite hungry, he prepared scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee. As he was about to sit down, he opened the door to get the newspapers, which were usually delivered by seven A.M. They were not there and he dialed the concierge to have them sent up.

  The man was apologetic. “Mr. Gannon, we weren’t aware that you were home.”

  Meaning out of jail, Peter thought.

  “We’ll send them right up, sir.”

  I wonder what they’ll be writing about me today? Peter asked himself. But when the papers arrived and he opened the Post, the entire front page was a picture of a wistful baby girl standing in a crib. PETER GANNON’S ABANDONED LOVE CHILD was the headline.

  Peter slumped into a chair and for long minutes stared at the picture. The wide, solemn eyes of his daughter seemed to look accusingly at him. He forced himself to read the story, which reviewed in lurid details the finding of Renée’s body, his arrest, the fact that Renée had no known relatives, and that already there had been dozens of calls from people begging to adopt little Sally.

  “They’re not going to get her,” Peter said aloud, slamming down the paper. “Nobody is going to get her.” There was only one person he could turn to for help. He dialed Susan’s cell phone and reached her at her office. “Susan, have you seen the picture of the baby on the cover of the Post?”

  “I’ve done more than that,” she said quietly. “I’ve seen the baby. Peter, I’m going into a meeting. I can run over to your apartment in a couple of hours. I’ve got to talk to you.”

  While he waited, Peter resumed the task that had been occupying him when he was arrested on Saturday morning. He replaced the contents of the drawers that had been spilled in the living room, finished putting the paintings back on the wall, straightened out the closets, and put the furniture back where it belonged. When he and Susan divorced, he had lived with Renée in a suite in the Pierre for two years, another wild extravagance. After they split, he had bought this place and left it to a decorator to furnish it.

  But I didn’t go hog wild, he thought. I gave her a budget. At least in some ways I was starting to get practical.

  Get practical. And then I produced two absolutely disastrous musicals, with other people’s money.

  It was almost noon when he was satisfied that the apartment was orderly again. Too restless to sit, he stood at the window and looked down into the busy intersection below. What do I do now? Do I point the finger at Greg? Do I tell the police that he had a motive to kill Renée Carter? If I say that he may have found out that I told Renée that he was involved in insider trading, I not only put the federal prosecutors on his case, but I make him a suspect in her murder.

  Greg would not kill Renée any more than I would. I can’t try to save myself by exposing him. My big brother. The guy who wanted me to succeed in the theatre. The guy who said okay whenever I looked to get grants for my theatre projects. There has to be another way for me to prove my innocence without destroying Greg.

  I did walk back to the office that night, Peter thought. I wanted the fresh air. I knew I was drunk. There was a car across the street from the bar. I can now see it clearly in my mind. And I know whose it was: it was Greg’s car.

  And what do I do about that?

  The house bell rang. “Mrs. Gannon is here,” the doorman announced.

  “Send her right up,” Peter said, as he hurried to open the door.

  70

  Detectives Carl Forrest and Jim Whelan agreed on one of three possibilities. The first scenario was that if Scott Alterman had hired Sammy Barber to kill or injure Dr. Monica Farrell, he had been tipped off by Barber and had fled. The second possibility was that Sammy Barber had gotten one of his fellow goons to get rid of Alterman, to make sure that if Alterman were ever arrested himself, he could never give up Sammy. A third possibility was that having hired Sammy, and in fear of disgrace and imprisonment, Alterman had committed suicide.

  On Tuesday morning, Forrest and Whelan went to Scott Alterman’s apartment and learned to their chagrin that he had not been seen there since Saturday evening, when, dressed in a business suit and tie, he had walked out of his apartment building.

  “He was in a really good mood,” the doorman told the detectives. “Not a care in the world, if you know what I mean. I asked if he wanted me to call him a cab, but he said that he wasn’t going far, he could walk it.”

  Their next stop was at his new office in the prestigious law firm of Williams, Armstrong, Fiske, and Conrad. “Mr. Alterman started with us only last week,” his secretary said. “On Saturday afternoon, he left a message on my office phone telling me to remind him on Monday that he wanted me to find out anything I could about the background of an Olivia Morrow who died last week.”

  Forrest made a note of the name. “Have you any idea why he wanted you to do that?”

  “Not really,” the secretary replied. “But I think it might have had something to do with a Dr. Monica Farrell. You probably heard. She was the young woman who was almost killed by the bus.”

  “Dr. Monica Farrell.” Carl Forrest tried to keep his face impassive and his tone of voice even. “Yes, I know about her. What gives you the idea that Mr. Alterman was connected in some way to this woman Olivia Morrow who died?”

  “Last week we were talking in the office about the kind of mentally disturbed people who won’t take their medicine and then try to kill innocent people like that young doctor. Mr. Alterman said he knew Dr. Farrell, and of course we asked him more about her.”

  “What did Mr. Alterman say?” Forrest asked.

  “He said that she didn’t know she was an heiress to a fortune, but that he was going to prove it.”

  “He said what?” Forrest asked, as Jim Whelan stared at the secretary. “How did you respond to that statement?”

  “We really didn’t. We thought he was joking. Don’t forget, we really don’t know Mr. Alterman very well. He just started at the firm a week ago.”

  “Of course. Please call me immediately if you hear from him.” Forrest and Whelan went down in the elevator together. They were leaving the building when Forrest felt the slight vibration of his cell phone in his breast pocket indicating that a call was coming through. It was from headquarters.

  He answered it, listened, then said, “Okay, we’ll meet you at the morgue.” Then, standing in the inviting sunshine and crisp breeze of the October morning, he told Whelan. “A body has just been fished out of the East River. If the wallet with all the usual identification is accurate, we can stop looking for Scott Alterman.”

  71

  On Tuesday morning at five minutes of eleven, Monica Farrell, accompanied by two members of the board of directors of Greenwich Village Hospital, entered the vast lobby of the Time Warner Center and took the elevator to the floor where the Alexander Gannon Foundation and the Gannon Investment Firm shared connecting offices.

  Justin Banks, the chairman of the board, and Robert Goodwin, executive director of development, were
men in their sixties. Both of them, like Monica, were passionately dedicated to making Greenwich Village Hospital the finest medical center it could possibly become. Over the years, the hundred-year-old hospital had evolved from a small twenty-bed local clinic to the impressive award-winning facility it now was.

  As Justin Banks was fond of saying, “At least half the population of Greenwich Village first saw the light of day in our hospital.” Now there was a pressing need for a state-of-the-art pediatric center, toward which Greg and Pamela Gannon had pledged fifteen million dollars with great fanfare at a black-tie dinner a year and a half ago.

  When they arrived, a young receptionist invited them to wait in the conference room and offered them coffee. Banks and Goodwin refused, but Monica accepted. “I didn’t have my usual second cup this morning,” she explained, with a smile. “I had some early patients, and I was rushing.”

  There was another reason why she had not taken time for a second coffee. Guessing he would be up, she had called Ryan on his cell phone at seven o’clock. He had assured her he was not only up, but about to leave for the hospital. Then she said, “Ryan, I really need to apologize. I was so terribly rude to you.”

  “You were obviously mad at me,” he had said. “But I certainly understand that you don’t want to become the subject of gossip.”

  “Nor do you.” She hadn’t intended to say that.

  “Actually, I wouldn’t have minded, but there you are.”

  And I got mad again, Monica thought, as she thanked the secretary for the coffee. I said that he wasn’t being fair to his girlfriend to talk like that.

  “My girlfriend!” he had exclaimed. “What are you talking about?”

  “When I phoned you last Thursday evening to explain why I didn’t get back to my office to give you the file . . .”