Seven ways to die

10

“Yeah?” Cody said.

It was Hue. “Sorry to bother you, Cap, but we got a hit.”

“Where?”

“On Handley. Both ends. The limo driver.”

“Very good.”

“Also Wolf is finished at the scene and on his way back with Handley. And get this: They threw a blanket over Handley and carried him and the chair out. He said not to worry, he’ll give the chair back.”

Cody chuckled. “I won’t even try to guess what that’s all about. You ready?”

“Ready to rock. Look at the big board.”

Small red stars were blinking on the huge Manhattan map at all three addresses. He moved his glance to the running clock on top of the board. It told him they were two hours and ten minutes into the show.

“Showtime in five.”

“Gotcha.”

He hung up the phone and snapped his fingers, looking at Kate.

“I’ll run the cast by you real fast, we’ll worry about introductions after the briefing.

He pointed to the staff as he named them:

“Lt. Frank Rizzo ex-homicide. An old timer, first cop I asked to join the squad. A book guy, as good as they come. A widower.

“I’m sure you know Max Wolfsheim. He’s next door, got his own lab. He’s doing his magic with his current assistant, Annie Rothschild. Annie’s got a Ph. D. in chemistry, speaks Russian. How she ended up here is a book in itself.”

“Calvin Bergman. Newest member of the squad, active liaison with the rest of NYPD. Rich kid who quit med school and joined the force. His family disowned him. Next to Hue, the highest IQ on the team and loves RR. Also speaks French and Swedish. He made the catch this morning and I made the entry with him.

“Vinnie Hue you know, but there’s a lot you don’t know.

“The black guy with the dreadlocks is Sgt. Jonee Ansa. Ex-vice, homicide, bunko. Name it, he’s done it. He knows this town better than anyone on the crew but Larry Simon.

“Wow DeMarco is Hispanic and an ex-Crip. That was a long time ago. I don’t know where he picked up the nickname Wow. He’s never said. I think his first name is Horatio but he’s never mentioned that either.

“Butch Ryan is a one-time Westie. Brother’s a NY Fireman, straightened him out. Been a cop for twenty years. Incidentally Butch is his given name. I think his mother had the hots for Paul Newman. He’s also deaf in one ear.”

She looked stunned. “How does he pass the physical?”

Cody grinned. “We have a compassionate doctor,” he said and went on. “And finally there’s Larry Simon. A very special little man. I’ll tell you more about him later.

“And there’s you,” she said.

“Yup. Your desk is right there.”

He pointed to the empty desk closest to his office. There was a headset and a cell phone on it and a briefcase sitting beside it.

“Bring your own lamp and chair. Phil took hers with her. The briefcase has all your goodies in it. The. 38 is registered to you but I hope you never have to take it out. The headset is on intercom so you just press the button when you have a question or something to say.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “you all know Kate Winters. She was crazy enough to accept our invitation to become the new ADA. Get sociable later. Hue, it’s yours.”

Winters was immediately entranced by the briefing itself and a format that was as swift and detailed as Cody’s introduction to the TAZ.

Hue started by zooming into the brownstone scene pointing out that there was a ten-foot alley between it and the apartment west of it. A narrow fire escape led from the kitchen door of Handley’s apartment to the ground with a short landing at the back door of the vacant apartment.

The big screen dissolved to a couple of shots of the labeled footprints on the carpeting, and Cody’s analysis that someone else had entered the apartment between the time Wilma had straightened it up in the afternoon and Handley’s entrance later that night. He held up the baggie containing the mask.

“This was also in his briefcase,” Cody said, “We’ll get to it later.” He nodded to Hue.

Finally: The shot of Handley’s naked corpse, handcuffed to the chair, his mouth agape with the handball stuffed in it, eyes half-opened and terrified, the deadly gash in his throat. No blood.

Somebody in the room muttered, “Holy Christ!” Otherwise there was no response.

Cody paused at that point leaving the photo on the board. “I’m sure Wolf will have an interesting explanation of that enigma,” he said.

Then he promptly did a flashback: a shot copied from a photograph of Handley in the bedroom showing a handsome man in suit and tie smiling into the camera.

“This is our victim in better days,” he said. “You will each get a copy of the shot in your package.”

Bergman followed with background on Handley: thirty-five years old, parents both deceased; father killed in a skiing accident when Handley was a tike; raised with his sister as a ward of the State; scored a full scholarship to Princeton where he was a whiz kid; a Phi Beta Kappa hired the day he graduated by Marx, Stembler and Trexler; his steady rise to vice president of the brokerage firm and his pending marriage to Victor Stembler’s daughter, Linda.

Bergman held up the black book, which he pointed out, was a literal biography of the dead man.

“So much for the skin and bones,” Cody said. “Now let’s get to the heart of the matter.”

He described Amelie Cluett, the fact that she was in bed a scant twenty yards across the hall from where someone was butchering Handley, and played parts of his interview with her, including her sudden and voluntary autobiographical outburst, which earned a few chuckles from the crew.

Cluett: “Well, he also…uh…maybe I shouldn’t be telling some of this. You know, it’s very personal.” Cody: “Raymond’s dead, Amelie. You can’t hurt his feelings.” Cluett: “No, but there are others. Like his fiancee, Linda. She’s really sweet. I bumped into them in the hall once or twice. He’d talk about her.” Cody: “Intimate things?” Cluett: “Yes.” Cody: “Such as?” Cluett: “She wasn’t very…sexually oriented, I guess you could put it. She wasn’t into sex. Raymond was very much into sex. Raymond was a power player. Power players are always sexual people. Men and women. It’s an attitude. You can tell. I remember once he said, ‘Jesus, you’re a twice a week girl and I’m a twice a day guy.’ But he wasn’t talking to me. It was like he was having a dialogue with her. Then there were the weekends when they weren’t together and he’d talk about the clubs.” Cody: “What clubs?” Cluett: “Weird stuff.” Cody: “Weird stuff?” Cluett: “Sex clubs.” Cody: “Did he mention them by name?” Cluett: “Only once. It was really a disgusting name.” Cody: “I’m a big boy, Amelie, I’ve heard it all.” Cluett: “The Tit for Twat Club was one. I remember that because it really upset me. But he had no idea. It was like he was confessing and I wasn’t there.” Cody: “Did he ever bring people home with him?” Cluett: “Not that I know about. I’m in bed at eleven and I’m asleep before the news ends. If I start to doze? The ear plugs go in and I’m out for the night. Sometimes I TiVo Letterman and watch it the next night when there’s nothing good on.” Cody: “Did he mention anyone by name?” Cluett: “Made-up names. Wonder Woman. Bat Lady. Trapeze Girl.” Cody: “Trapeze girl?” Cluett: “That was another club he mentioned. The Sex Circus.” Cody: “Did he ever say where these clubs were?” Cluett: “No. But he calls one girl the Staten Island Fairy. Said she’d come if he put a hundred dollar bill under her pillow, whatever that means. Sounds like a mixed metaphor to me.” Cody: “Was he a switch hitter?” Cluett: “No. No. It was always about girls. And not all the time. I mean, maybe once a month he’d go off on one of his tantrums.”

Cody stopped the tape.

“The Staten Island Fairy?” Butch Rogers said and there were a few chuckles in the room.

Kate Winters cautiously raised her hand.

“Yes, Kate?”

“Did she know you were taping her?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” she said.

Cody smiled. “Back to the business at hand. Once everybody gets past the freak factor here let’s face the implications. We’ve got a high profile victim, V.P. of a prestigious brokerage firm with offices across the street from the Stock Exchange and engaged to the boss’s daughter. He had a sex jones and was murdered in what looks like an S amp;M game that was set up for the purpose of smoking him. This case is going to be on front pages and will resonate all over this squad when it does break. What you just heard stays in this room. I know the stuff about the Staten Island Fairy is juicy gossip over a drink but we have to handle this one very tenderly. Kabish?”

“Is the Cluett woman a suspect?” Larry Simon asked.

“I don’t think so. Whoever killed Handley knew what the hell they were doing. This was a very clean homicide scene, including the absence of blood. I doubt that she would have been as frank as she was if she was implicated in any way. But…she was the closest person to him when he was killed so she’s on the list. Witness, not a suspect.”

“Funny she brought up all the sex stuff when she didn’t know how he was killed,” Hue said.

“All she knew-all I told her-was that he was dead and it wasn’t an accident. I think she got started and let it all out. But, you got a point, Vinnie. Si, run a background on her and the maid while you’re at it. She had a key to the place.”

“Already on it,” Simon answered.

“Okay, let’s finish the briefing, there’s more. Cal?”

Bergman ran the timeline:

“Handley stopped by his office on the way home for about twenty minutes. He discharged his limo driver on the east side Hudson Street, the 520 block, that’s between West 10th and Charles Street, at 11:50 p.m. The sign-off slip was in Handley’s coat pocket.”

Hue picked it up: “I talked to the dispatcher at Metro cab who says one of his cabbies was off-duty and driving south on Bleecker between 10th and Christopher when Handley waved him down. Says Handley looked well-heeled so he figured him for a good tip and picked him up. That was at 12:25 a.m. He let him out at the 73 ^ rd Street address at 12:55. Handley gave him a twenty buck tip.”

“And we know the killer was waiting for him when he got there,” Cody added. “We also know he went straight to the bedroom, undressed, showered, and walked naked to the library where his murderer was waiting for him. He apparently had a drink before the messy stuff started. The glass was on the table beside him. And he submitted to the handcuffing.

“And we have the mask.”

“Maybe he was gonna get a cup of coffee and stick up a convenience store on the way home,” Ansa said with a snicker.

“It was a full moon last night,” Wow said. “You know how crazy people get when the moon is full.” More snickers.

“Hey, next Wednesday’s Halloween. Maybe him and the Staten Island Fairy were practicing,” Butch Ryan added.

Cody smiled, accustomed to the insouciant gallows humor of the group. But he cut it off by turning to Hue. “Give us a satellite shot of that block in West Village.”

The crew watched as the satellite map moved over Greenwich Village then panned down until the block bordered by Hudson and Bleecker Streets and Charles and West 10th filled the screen.

“I’m glad you guys have a good sense of humor about this,” he said. “Let me tell you what I have. I have a self-made, thirty-five-year-old man who discharged his limo here,” he pointed at the spot on Hudson Street, “and hailed a cab here,” he pointed to spot on Bleecker where the Metro cab picked up Handley. ”That’s a block and a half. A five minute walk. I got a guy who’s wearing a three thousand dollar overcoat, a seventeen thousand dollar Tag Heuer watch, and more than a grand in his wallet. So he wasn’t taking a midnight walk in the moonlight. He went straight to somewhere to meet somebody probably to give that somebody a key to his apartment to arrange a little fun and games. And that’s what he got.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the ghoulish photo of Handley’s corpse.

“I’m open to any other cogent suggestions.”

Silence.

“Wolf’s next door by now doing the autopsy. I want to take Kate and talk to Victor Stembler. Can he make the official ID, Kate?”

She thought for a moment. “Any immediate family members nearby?”

“Stembler will know, but we’re getting that he had no family left. If we have to, we’ll call the fiancee. I think we can count on Stembler to soft peddle any details we give him.”

“Wow, you, Butch, and Jonee work the phones. You’ve all been in vice. Call any old contacts, find out everything you can about sex clubs in Manhattan until Wolf is ready to brief us on the autopsy. After that I want Jonee on RR. Wow, you and Butch take on the area in Greenwich Village. I want to know where he went. What he did. Who he saw? Any clubs in that neighborhood? If so, shake ‘em but don’t break ‘em. We’re interested in Handley’s activities, who he might have connected with during that half-hour or so. Our story is we need to talk to him about a case in progress.

“Si, start working on back stories. You know how far you can go with that.”

“Yes sir,” the little man answered.

Cody looked up at the timer.

“We’re two hours and twenty-four minutes into the show.”

“Same song, new verse,” Rizzo said.

“Maybe. But I have a feeling this is one song we’ve never heard before.”