A Killing Gift

Forty

By evening, NYPD brass had been informed of the York U connection between the two murder victims, but it was one of only a few facts they had under wraps about the cases. The talking heads were all over the Washington Square chop murders. Connie Chung, Larry King, and the rest of the gang were deep into their ritual prime-time dance with people in the know. Just under twenty-four hours after Birdie Bassett's death, her mother was on TV talking about the tragic loss of her daughter, Martha. The police commissioner appeared live to make some general remarks about beefed-up security in the Washington Square area. When pressed for more information on the two murders, he hedged.

On the TV in the war room, Mike, Chief Avise, and some other important bigwigs watched their boss do business as usual. They thought the PC did pretty well until he was followed by former LA medical examiner Henry Lao. Lao always made everyone in law enforcement from coast to coast foam at the mouth with his pronouncements about high-profile cases he knew nothing about. Tonight, from three thousand miles away, Lao spoke authoritatively about retired lieutenant Bernardino's and Birdie Bassett's cause of death from karate blows. The detail with which he described what happened to the two victims happened to precede the New York City medical examiner's preliminary report on Birdie Bassett, and made both the detectives on the cases and the PC look like idiots. In fact, in the case of Bernardino, he was dead wrong. Birdie had been choked and chopped, but Lao didn't know that.

Compounding the problem, Larry King followed Lao with karate master Ding Ho, who demonstrated the one-punch-one-kill method by breaking a brick and a two-by-four with the side of his hand. This party trick hadn't been a subject of interest on TV for quite some time and further infuriated the detectives. New York City was topping the charts for the freak-of-the-week crime story.

Lightning had struck twice in the same place in the same unusual way. Now everyone in the entire world knew about it, and everyone from the PC on down was embarrassed. Embarrassment on top always passed the gas along to the ranks below. When April met Mike at his car in the garage of headquarters, his face was gray. She'd been with Jason and didn't know about the TV fiascos.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Henry Lao was on Larry King right after the PC. Made him look like an asshole."

"Oh."

"How did you make out?" He gave her a distracted kiss.

"Good," she said, and hugged him back hard. "What did he say?"

"Lao? He talked karate chops. Then someone came on to break bricks with his pinkie. After the PC had refused to talk cause of death, it was humiliating," Mike told her.

"You okay?"

"Oh, yeah. A lot of asses on the line, but not mine. Or yours. You got some points for the York U connection." He gave her a quick smile, then drove up and out of the garage, waved at the uniforms on guard around the barricades that kept civilian cars and vans far from the building, and took his first easy breath in sixteen hours.

April took a breath herself and settled down. It was a clear, clear night. A beautiful spring night with the kind of low humidity that gave a piercing clarity to the air and made the lights on the Brooklyn Bridge look like sparklers. Some New Yorkers had long since finished dinner and were easing toward sleep. Others were just on their way out on the town or heading to work.

"Jason and April and Emma are fine," she said slowly. "He knew Max Bassett well, Birdie not at all. Birdie was Max's secretary before she became his wife. She didn't get along with the stepchildren. They're older than she. Seems they clung to Daddy. The son never married. His father thought he was a poof. Those two are quite the pair. They were busy looting the place when Woody and I got there and probably continued after we left. Woody checked out the son's alibi. Burton was drinking at Player's Club last night. A lot of people remember him. Nothing on the daughter. She's very thin."

"How does that pertain?" Mike asked.

"Doesn't. I just like to count the anorexics. It seems the richer they are the thinner they get. Makes me glad to be poor."

"You're not poor, querida; you're rich in love. And her name is Martha," Mike added.

"Birdie's?"

"Uh-huh. Martha Mandelbaum. I saw her mother on TV."

"No kidding. Martha Mandelbaum." The name was no poem, but Birdie Bassett wasn't much better. The whole family was full of Bs. It was a B case. Everywhere Bs-what was the probability of that?

"What's the mother like?" she asked.

"A mother." Mike was noncommittal about mothers. "What else?" he asked.

"Martha's late husband was a big giver at Jason's institute. When he called her last week to set up a meeting, she told him she thought her husband had been murdered."

"What did Jason have to say about that?"

"Nothing at the time. Late this afternoon he checked with Max's doctor, Paul Perry. Dr. Perry said there was nothing to his suspicion. Max was eighty-one. He had a massive stroke."

Mike stopped at a red light. The car was making a lot of noise. He tried to ignore it. "What about the apartment?"

"It's a museum. So much stuff there you wouldn't believe it. The vic had gorgeous clothes, beautiful jewelry, but she couldn't sleep at night. I'll check with her doctor tomorrow. There was Xanax, Valium, a whole pharmacy in there. She also liked enemas. There were dozens of them in the vanity under her sink. Some people do that to diet," she said softly.

Unlike Woody, Mike chose not to make any smart remarks.

"I listened to her messages, but who knows if any were erased by the stepchildren before I got there. I have her calendar and address book," she finished.

"What was on her schedule?"

"I haven't had time to study it… What do you think are the odds of two offspring killing a parent the same way in the same place a week apart?" she asked.

"Oh, about two hundred and fifty million to one."

"About the same odds as winning the lottery, probably. But think about it. In the lottery, someone's number always comes up."

Mike groaned. "Oh, don't start with the numerology."

"I'm not kidding. What about the odds of Jack Devereaux's being in that square at the moment I ran in chasing Bernardino's killer?"

"Oh, that's an easy one. Jack was in the square every night. There was a hundred-to-one chance that he would be there."

"His father died three weeks ago."

"So?"

"Mike, we have a killer who's murdered two heirs on the thirty-day anniversary of the wealth holder's death. Is that a coincidence, or what?"

"Oh, give me a break." Mike came off the Brooklyn Bridge and hung a left on the ramp for the BQE.

"You picked it up, though, didn't you?"

"Yeah. I did, and Harry got his money the day after Lorna's funeral. Numerologist, how does that add up?"

Mike put some speed on the Camaro, and the tires squealed as he understeered around a turn. He didn't say anything the rest of the way home.