A Killing Gift

Thirty-one

At eight-fifteen Cherry Packer was full of bile, and Mike was there for her dramatic display of pique.

"Just wait a little minute, will you? What's your freaking hurry?" She parked herself in the interview room of the Sixth Precinct, pulled a bunch of cosmetics out of her purse, then calmly began putting on her makeup in the mirrored viewing window as if this were something she did all the time.

"Drag a lady out of her home before she's put together," she grumbled, casting a furious glance at Marcus, who sat next to her at the table. "What's your problem?"

Marcus twiddled his thumbs and paid no attention, so she turned to Mike. "He pulled a freaking gun on me. I should put in a complaint on him. Police brutality. Your name's Beame, right?"

Marcus snorted comfortably.

Mike smiled at her. "You look great. A woman like you doesn't need makeup. I'm sorry you were inconvenienced.''

"That's putting it mildly."

"We appreciate your coming in," Mike tried to soothe her.

"Fuck you." Cherry eyed him from top to toe. "You're a nice-looking guy. What's your problem?"

Mike straightened his tie. It was one of his many silver ones. He wore it over a dark gray shirt. Over that was a black-and-white tweed sports jacket. On his feet he had new black snakeskin cowboy boots. April preferred colors, but he liked a jazzed-up black-and-gray look. "My problem is I got a dead person to take care of," he said. "And that dead person is your boyfriend's ex-partner."

"Jesus. That's not my fault." She squirmed a little in her chair as if her pants were too tight, then made a big show of putting her makeup back in her purse.

She was quite a sight, pretty much what Mike would have expected in a girlfriend of Harry's. Cherry was a big blowsy blond with a bad haircut and a terrible dye job. She was built like a brick from shoulder to hip, with a shelf of bosom in front like two pillows on a four-poster bed, but her legs were as long and trim as those of the colts she supposedly trained. She definitely made an impression.

"Mrs. Packer, what is your relationship with Harry Weinstein?" Mike asked.

"He's a business associate." She pulled herself together on an expected question, extracted a pack of Marlboros out of her purse, and held it up. "Do you mind if I smoke?"

"Yes. Do you always sleep with your business associates?"

She dropped the cigarettes on the table. "Look, don't make a big deal out of this. I've known Harry for a long time, like fifteen years, okay? Totally on the up and up. He helped me out when my husband died."

"How?"

Cherry's crumbling was a subtle thing, like a fault line in the earth that doesn't show on the outside until the earthquake strikes. She was not as tough as she looked. She put the cigarettes away and dug around in her purse for her glasses. When she could see, she made a horrified face. "What's that?"

"Video camera," Mike told her.

"Is it on?" she demanded.

"No."

"Are you sure?" She regarded it suspiciously.

"Yeah. How did Harry help you?"

"It's a long, boring story." She took the glasses off and twirled them around her finger.

"Well, I got time." Mike checked his watch. "Let's hear it."

"Fine. My husband had gambling debts. He got in some trouble. You know…" She jerked her head toward the ceiling, as if the trouble were up there.

"He got beat up." Mike finished her sentence.

She nodded, clamping teeth onto her bottom lip. "Harry's been a good friend."

"How did you meet him?"

"We met at the track. Saratoga." A little smile came to her face. "We used to run a lot of horses up there… We had a good business." She lifted a shoulder. "You know how it goes."

"No, how does it go?"

"Things change," she said wearily.

Mike guessed her husband had his weaknesses. Gambling and drinking kind of went together. "So how did Harry help you?"

Up came the shoulder again. Cherry heaved a sigh, deep into nostalgia. "He talked to the guys. He fixed it for us." Clearly she was proud to have a friend who could do that.

"The guys who beat Bobby? Or the guys he owed money to?"

Cherry looked surprised that he knew her husband's name. "Whatever."

Mike stroked his mustache, then started tapping two fingers on the table. This was an irritating habit he'd developed recently. He wasn't as patient as he used to be. He figured Harry was a gambler, so he'd probably known all the players. A cop, even one from down in New York City, could help out his friends. Maybe Harry had been involved in the gambling himself. He'd probably always had the hots for Cherry. And she must have looked a lot better fifteen years ago. But who didn't? He got the picture and nodded, then glanced at Marcus.

Marcus had told Mike that Cherry had been hiding out in a crummy apartment in White Plains. He'd gone up there early this morning to get her. He didn't say who'd told him, and Mike didn't want to know. Marcus reported that she'd been sleeping when he knocked on the door and had tried hard not to let him in. Apparently they'd had some harsh words. Clearly Harry had his reasons for keeping his honey out of sight. Marcus was flush with accomplishing his mission under deadline.

"How did your husband die, Mrs. Packer?" Mike asked.

"You can call me Cherry; everyone else does." Cherry sniffed.

"How did Bobby die?"

"He had a heart attack," she said flatly. "They killed him anyway."

"He had the attack at the time of his beating?"

"No, about a month later."

"That's too bad. When was that?"

"Five years ago." She teared up and reached for a tissue.

"All right, so Bobby died. Then what happened?"

"Look, I didn't kill anybody. I don't even know who died. What does he have to do with me?"

"Do you know what an accessory is, Cherry?"

"Yeah, hat, bag, belt. Necklace." She laughed at her own joke.

"No, the other kind, when you help someone who committed a crime. You don't tell the cops something important because you don't want to hurt someone who helped you out a long time ago."

"I don't know anything, and that's the truth. I don't know why you want to talk to me. I have nothing to say."

"You know, if you're an accessory to a crime, you can go to jail for almost as long as the guy who did the crime. The law says you're a crook, too." Mike tapped his fingers.

"Harry's a good guy," she said softly. "He wouldn't kill anybody. He told me that."

"Then what were you doing in White Plains, honey bee? Why did Harry call you and tell you to get out of your house?"

"He didn't. I went to visit friends."

"Oh, yeah, what friends?"

"Her brother got sick. He had to go to the emergency room." Cherry looked at herself in the viewing-window mirror, not at Mike.

"What are you talking about? You're not making sense. Come on, you're heading into the racing season, and you left your horses to visit imaginary friends in a run-down dump? Nobody shows any respect for my intelligence."

"It was tough. We'd already lost a lot of business. We had a few horses left. I wanted to keep the stables."

Mike frowned. Where was she going now? "Whose stables?"

"Mine. Well, they were my dad's. He passed on in 'sixty-eight. They've been mine since then." She heaved another sigh.

"Cherry, you're digressing." Mike checked his watch again.

"I'm not undressing," she said angrily. She didn't have much of a vocabulary. Mike suppressed a smile.

"Harry gave you some money." He tried to lead her back.

"He didn't give me any money. He invested in a very promising three-year-old," she said defensively. "He's going to get it back in spades."

"I'll bet. Did Harry tell you how he got the money?"

Cherry squirmed a little. "No, of course not."

"Oh, come on. He's been your close friend for fifteen years. He's helped you out of trouble-I'm guessing here-over and over these past fifteen years."

She lifted a shoulder.

"Then suddenly out of nowhere he comes up with the money to buy one of your horses and doesn't tell you where he got it? Harry, who's always a little short himself? Come on, you can go to jail for lying to me."

"Look, he told me a friend won the lottery."

"Cherry, that friend was murdered last week. Your boyfriend is linked. We need answers to tie him in or let him go, understand?"

She nodded. "I do. But Harry didn't give me the money last week. He gave it to me a month ago, before Harry's friend died."

"A month ago?" Mike was flabbergasted. If that checked out, then Harry was telling the truth. A first!

"Yeah. What's the matter?"

"How about some breakfast, huh? Marcus here will get you whatever you want, okay? See you later."

Mike was out the door before she could say another word. A month ago. The money had changed hands almost as soon as it had come in. That meant Bernardino had given it to his friend, but why? The rest of the day April and Mike worked on Harry and Cherry, trying to get at why so they could eliminate Harry as a suspect, but Harry and Cherry weren't saying. With Bill still the prime suspect, maybe the why didn't matter. Maybe it was just one of those things: Bernardino got generous; Harry got lucky. End of story. April didn't believe it. Mike didn't believe it either.