The Finishing School

33

MELANIE WAS way too busy and preoccupied to waste any more time thinking about Dan O’Reilly.

Shortly after she got back to her office, the telephone rang. It was Linda, sobbing so hysterically that Melanie could barely understand her.

“What is it? Is it Mom?” Melanie asked with her heart in her throat.

Linda wailed something incomprehensible.

“Please, Lin. I can’t hear what you’re saying. Are you okay?”

“It’s Fab D. He’s dead!” Linda cried.

Melanie went cold and quiet.

“How did it happen?” she asked Linda after a moment.

“I should’ve stayed with him, Mel. It’s all my fault! He told me he was gonna do it.”

“Do what? Slow down, okay? Did you see what happened? Was it Expo?”

“No. Expo? What are you talking about? D was looking for some action. He told me. I didn’t take him seriously enough.”

“What kind of action?”

“Sex! He said he was desperate, that he was planning to pay for it. I thought he was joking.” Linda began sobbing again.

“I don’t understand. Was he sick? How did he die?” Deon had looked perfectly healthy yesterday.

“He got beat to death. They found him in an alley this morning, frozen solid,” Linda said.

“And you think-”

“I know. A friend of mine saw Fab D at the bar just minutes after he told me that, talking to some rent boy. I could’ve stopped him, Mel! I never should’ve left him alone in that crazy mood. I know how he gets.”

“It’s not your fault, sweetie. It may not even have been about that. I need to nail down what really happened, to make sure there’s no connection to Expo. I want you to be careful. Stay in your apartment and don’t open the door to anybody until I tell you it’s cool, understand?”

“No way. I can’t do that. I have tickets to Cabo with Teresa. We’re going to that new resort. Fab D would never want me to cancel.”

TO MELANIE’S SURPRISE, the story about the male prostitute checked out. Manhattan South Homicide had caught the case, and Melanie spoke directly to the lead detective. Several witnesses had indeed seen Fabulous Deon pick up a provocatively dressed young man at Screen the previous night and leave the bar with him. An individual matching the young man’s description had been videotaped withdrawing cash with Deon’s ATM card at a bank two blocks from Screen at eleven-thirty last night. That, combined with the fact that Deon’s wallet was not found with his body, suggested that robbery was the likely motive. The detectives were now in the process of cross-checking the photo taken by the ATM machine against mug shots of male prostitutes arrested in the five boroughs in the past year. They expected to have a name shortly.

One fact troubled Melanie greatly, however. When Deon and the prostitute left the bar, they headed straight for the tunnel where Expo had taken Melanie. Nobody else seemed to think this was of much significance, but she did. The murder case wasn’t under her jurisdiction, though, so the best she could do was fill the detective in on her own encounter with Esposito and make him promise to call her if he came up with any connections.

Melanie had an appointment at six o’clock at the Elite Narcotics Task Force to deliver a required lecture on wiretap regulations. She was attempting to review her lecture script, but she was so upset by Fabulous Deon’s murder that she couldn’t concentrate. She knew she should turn her mind to her work, build her case against Esposito brick by brick, get him off the street before he did any more harm. That was the way to vindicate Deon. But the words of the script blurred before her eyes. You are entitled to intercept only criminal conversations. Shut down the recording device if the defendant is talking about something other than criminal activity. Shut it down if he’s talking to his lawyer, doctor, or priest. If he’s having phone sex with his girlfriend or asking his mother to fix him dinner. But you can listen if he’s talking to his girlfriend or his mother about selling drugs. Blah, blah, blah. And yet it was relevant. If they could intercept Expo talking on the telephone about Friday’s heroin shipment and stake him out running some new drug mules back from Puerto Rico, they’d have enough to charge him in the Holbrooke girls’ deaths. If they were lucky, maybe they’d come up with something tying him to Deon’s death. If they were really, really lucky, maybe they’d even find Carmen Reyes in the process. They’d better, because Melanie couldn’t handle another innocent person’s dying on her watch. If it hadn’t happened already-if Carmen was even still alive.

Melanie felt useless to the point of suffocation, sitting at her desk while Carmen was out there somewhere, needing her help. She had a couple of hours before the lecture, and even though the team had covered the bases according to the missing-persons protocol, she worried they weren’t doing enough. There had to be something more, some lead not fully plumbed, some neglected rock that could be turned over, its teeming underside examined and reexamined.

She’d go back to square one and start over, on the principle that where a young girl’s life was at stake, you could never do enough.