Entombed

40

"You're late," Laura said, following me into my office. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was ten thirty-five.

"I didn't get home until almost two. Just couldn't move myself this morning," I said, reaching for the message slip in her hand.

"I think your body is trying to tell your brain to take-"

"Check the personals, Laura. My brain wants to rent new space. A body with a lower metabolism, no stress, one that moves at a slower rate of speed. Sluggish would be good for a couple of months. Maybe there's someone in appeals who wants to get on this treadmill for a while. Judge Tarnower?" I stared at the message on the pink slip of paper. "Did he tell you what it's about?"

The chief administrative judge rarely dealt with anyone other than Battaglia. I was afraid I'd gotten into his crosshairs over the lockup of the phlebotomist at the Midtown Community Court a week earlier, but Paul Battaglia hadn't warned me about any effort by Tarnower at interference.

"Only that it's urgent. I told him you were on your way in."

I dialed the number and waited for his secretary to patch him through. Ellen Gunsher walked into my office and I held up a finger to suggest that she wait till I finished the conversation.

"Judge Tarnower? Alex Cooper, returning your call." I used my right hand to flip through yellow-back complaints to find the file on the phlebotomist's case.

"How've you been, Alex?"

"Fine, thanks."

"I'm calling to try to save you a bit of embarrassment. You and Battaglia."

That was about as likely as me signing up for a gynecological exam with Pierre Foster, the defendant in the case. "Always nice when someone's looking out for me, Judge. Whose toes did I step on?"

He chuckled, and we seemed to be vying to see whose voice sounded less sincere. "No damage done yet. Any publicity in the pipeline on your matter?"

"Pierre Foster won't be arraigned on the indictment until next week. I'm sure the district attorney will prepare a press release. It's likely there are other-"

"Who's Foster? That's not what I'm talking about. It's the fellow they're holding out at the airport. He's halfway home, Alex. Why can't you just let go?"

I turned my back on Ellen Gunsher. "May I ask, Your Honor, who got to you on this?"

"Got to me? That's a hell of a way to put it, young lady. Nobody got to me. We're talking about diplomatic immunity, the Vienna Convention. The ambassador and his family are immune from all criminal prosecution."

"Not if the State Department asks the Dahlakian government to waive immunity. Any publicity in the pipeline is what you want to know? If the DNA matches my case samples, as I expect it will, we're talking one of the biggest serial cases in the city in years."

"I have an assurance from the premier's office, Alex, that if the Maswana kid is the perp, he'll be taken care of by the authorities in his own country. It may even be a more appropriate kind of sentence, if you get my drift. Hell, I've never been to Dahlakia, but they may still believe in public castration in the town square."

What was this man thinking? "I'd rather have a life sentence without parole, Judge, and so would all of my witnesses. A long, miserable life upstate."

"You know how expensive it will be to mount a trial like this, and then pay for sixty years of prison time?"

"The way I figure, Judge, is that the mayor eliminated the long-time exemption for diplomatic parking plates last year, so the thousands of dollars the city gets in fines from the UN neighborhood and all the consulates around town can pay for Mr. Maswana's bologna sandwiches till he croaks."

Tarnower was silent. "Can you forward me to Battaglia?"

"Sure."

"And Alex? Foster-that guy you were talking about-he's the one at the Midtown Community Court, right? I wouldn't spend too much time on that press release. The Dumpster your cops took all their evidence from is MCC property. They should have thought to get a warrant. Your case against him might go right out the window."

The judge cut me off before I could forward his call to the district attorney. I hung up and sat down in my chair as Ellen approached me.

"Rumor has it you guys made a big score last night."

No point asking how she knew. Battaglia had undoubtedly told Pat McKinney about Maswana, who was incapable of keeping professional secrets from his main squeeze.

"Fingers crossed. As soon as the lab has a preliminary read on the DNA, we'll know," I said.

"I tried calling you at home around nine o'clock."

"There were no messages on my-"

"I hung up after three rings. Silly to bother you when you weren't available."

"About what?"

She smiled at me. "Gino Guidi. He's coming around a bit."

"How do you mean?"

"He'll be here any minute. I pushed his lawyer to give us more, just like you asked me to."

I returned Ellen's smile. "Nice work. Conditions?"

"You know there always are, Alex. Sort of a queen-for-a-day," she said, referring to a deal prosecutors often dangled before targets of criminal investigations. A onetime offer of the opportunity to come in and tell what they know, with the guarantee nothing they say can be used against them in the courtroom.

"What do you figure he's got to hide?"

"Kirby says only his morbid fear of publicity. He thinks if Guidi can point us in some useful direction, you won't need to involve him if you wind up with someone to charge in any of these crimes. I tried calling Chapman when I couldn't reach you."

"You won't get through to him, Ellen. He's withdrawn from all of us."

"Oh? Maybe I assumed something I shouldn't have. I thought Mike would have told you about this by now. He got right back to me early this morning."

I couldn't conceal my surprise. "Mike?"

"Yeah. I mean, I understand he took off for the week, but he reached out to Scotty Taren for me. I feel so badly for him," Ellen said. "We obviously want a detective in on this meeting, so Scotty's here in my office. And I reserved the conference room down the hall. All this okay with you?"

I was still stuck on the fact that Mike had returned Ellen Gunsher's messages but wouldn't respond to any of mine.

"Alex?"

"What?"

"You ready to have another go at Gino Guidi?"

"Sure. Did you say we're doing it in your office?"

"No. He and Roy Kirby are in the conference room."

"Give me a few minutes, okay?" I asked.

Ellen walked out and I dialed Mike's home number. I left a message on the machine, telling him that if it was too difficult to discuss personal things, I wanted to give him the good news about Maswana and get some direction in dealing with Guidi. Then I beeped him and tapped in my number, followed by 911 to tell him it was urgent.

"I'll be in a meeting with Ellen," I said to Laura. "Hold everything-except Mike or the boss."

The three men got to their feet when I entered the room. Guidi and Kirby were seated together on one side of the rectangular table, facing Ellen Gunsher and Scotty Taren. I took my place at the far end and let Kirby go through the usual spiel about how forthcoming his client really wanted to be but how little he had to contribute.

"Here's a list we've prepared of some other people who were in the SABA program at the same time as Mr. Guidi," Kirby said, passing each of us a photocopy. "Mind you, Ms. Cooper, these are nicknames. There are only two with complete surnames."

"They were guys I ran into later on. The others I never saw again."

"Did you keep a journal at that time?" I asked.

"Well, not exactly a-"

"He's struggled to remember what he can," Kirby said, interrupting his client when he realized I was going to ask for the original paperwork-apparently more than Kirby wanted me to see.

Scotty was taking notes. Guidi had something in writing that his lawyer was holding back and we would angle a way to get it.

"You want to flesh out something about these people for us?"

Guidi's answers were bland and fuzzy. I'd bet that the two SABA members identified specifically led lives cleaner than hounds-teeth by now or he wouldn't have put them forward. The ones who might be more useful-and potentially more embarrassing to him-remained obscure and would be impossible to find.

"Let's go back to Washington Square. The guy from your program who sat next to you on the park bench-Monty-that time he confessed to you that he killed a girl," I said. "You told us last week you didn't know he was referring to Aurora Tait then, is that right?"

"Absolutely. I had no reason to then."

"But when, exactly when, did that occur to you?"

"Oh, I don't know, Ms. Cooper. I hadn't thought about Aurora in years, until I read the story and saw those initials in the newspaper. The approximate time of her disappearance, the fact that the building where the skeleton was found was owned by the university-and frankly, it reminded me of Monty's story-another addict, another rich boy like me who'd screwed up his life."

"You mentioned he talked about boarding school in some of your sessions. Do you remember where? What school or even what part of the country?" I asked.

Guidi shrugged and held his hands in the air, palms up. The sun gleamed off the gold on his cuff links. "Maybe New England. Either Andover or Exeter. Could have been St. Paul's. In the boonies, it was. I remember he talked about how he liked being near the woods and the peacefulness of the more remote countryside."

"He was orphaned, you told us. Do you know how or when? Any details about his family that would help us figure out who he is?"

Guidi looked at me. "That's mostly what he talked about in the meetings. Typical junkie's denial, blaming all his problems on everyone else. He never knew his father. I think his mother had a menial job, working as a servant-maybe even the housekeeper- for the scion of an old industrial family. When she died-some blood disease, it was-he was still a kid, taken in by the fat cat who'd been her employer. Richest man in town, that's who sent him off to boarding school and paid for his education."

"This man who adopted him, didn't Monty talk about him at all?"

"That was part of his resentment. He was never adopted."

Neither was Edgar Poe, I remembered. The Allans wouldn't give him their name. I had to wonder whether Monty knew the parallels between his own life and the tormented poet's.

"Was he bitter about it?" I asked.

Guidi checked with Kirby, who must have given him a green light to keep talking.

"Remember when I said that Monty told me he had killed a girl for betraying him?"

Ellen and I both said, "Yes."

"I-uh-I guess after I left the station house last week I began to think more about it. I thought of a few other things I-uh, I guess I asked him at the time. Sorry I didn't press myself a little harder that night." He tried to muster an earnest smile.

"That's all right, Mr. Guidi," Ellen said. "Anything you give us now will be helpful."

I wanted to kick her under the table to keep the pressure on him rather than try to use her short supply of charm to stroke him, but I restrained myself.

"I know I asked what he meant by betrayal, by what this girl had done to him to make him fantasize about killing her," Guidi said, focusing his attention back on me. "You must understand that at the time I heard his story, Ms. Cooper, I assumed it was a fantasy, a product of his dope-induced hallucinations. We all had them."

I looked away from his face and while he continued to talk, gesturing to me with his left hand, I noticed the thin shape of a rifle barrel forged out of gleaming eighteen-karat gold in the fold of his French cuffs.

"He knew I came from a wealthy family. For me, starting over after I screwed myself up meant getting a job in a mail room in a fancy firm, as I think I mentioned. For Monty, it was out on the street doing physical labor, some kind of construction work. Here was this guy who came to every meeting with a book of poetry jammed in his back pocket, quoting everything from the classics to Philip Larkin and James Wright-but meanwhile his hands looked like he'd been sentenced to dig ditches ten years earlier."

"But the girl," I asked, "Aurora-what did she do to him?"

"Monty's benefactor had given him one last chance. He'd flunked out of boarding school, managed to get into college from public school, but then hit the skids with drugs and booze once he got here to the city. When Aurora found out who had been supporting Monty, who had enabled his lifestyle-not knowing all the money was going down the toilet-she got on a bus and went up to his home, wherever that was, and spilled the beans."

"Why?"

"To try to shake down the old man. She'd guessed wrong, was the problem. She thought if she told him the truth about Monty's addiction, she could score enough money-pretending it would go for private rehab and readmission to school-that she could take off and leave Monty in the dust," Guidi said. "With the rest of us."

"The straw that broke the camel's back?" Ellen asked.

"Exactly. The old guy had been threatening to disinherit Monty anyway. Even though he had never adopted the kid, he had pledged the dying mother that he'd secure her son's financial future. As a result of what Aurora told him, he wrote Monty out of his will- not a single cent of inheritance-and before Monty could clean himself up and plead for another chance, the fat cat had a stroke and died a day or two later. Revenge," Guidi said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

"What did you say?" I asked.

"Revenge, Ms. Cooper. That's why Aurora Tait wound up in a brick coffin. I might not have been as creative in disposing of her, but more than a few of us who crossed her path would have been only too happy to have had our revenge. I'm sure that's what Monty had in mind."

He tugged at the tip of his shirtsleeves to align them with each other and rested his clasped hands on the table.

"Do you shoot, Mr. Guidi?" I asked.

"Sorry?"

I pointed to his cuff link. He twisted his wrist to look and remind himself what he was wearing.

"Oh, these? Upper Brookville Hunt Club. It's their logo."

Ellen Gunsher found a new purpose for herself, trying to make her pathetic little firearms unit relevant. "Are you a good shot?"

"Been shooting all my life."

Scotty Taren looked puzzled. "In the Bronx? What are you, a friggin' squirrel bagger?"

"Quail, mostly. Game birds. At the club. But my first kill was back when I was a teenager, Detective, right in Van Cortlandt Park. D'you know it?"

"North Bronx, right next to the high-rent district in Riverdale."

"That's where I grew up-Bailey Avenue," Guidi said. It was still a neighborhood of large fieldstone houses that looked more like suburbia than New York City. "I was fourteen and had just gotten a new puppy for Christmas. We were in the backyard and I was throwing sticks for him to fetch. A coyote came out of the park-"

Little Miss Texas was incredulous. "A coyote?"

"There's eastern coyotes all over the state," Taren said. "Sometimes they slip down here through the woods when they get cold and hungry farther north. Real pain in the ass for Emergency Services to tranquilize them and ship 'em out before they start running in packs and attacking domestic animals-and little kids."

Guidi went on. "I thought it was a German shepherd running into the yard to play so I didn't panic at first. Then I saw that grizzled gray neck and the tail hanging down-you know the way coyotes do?-and he just snatched my puppy, a small brown Lab, and made off into the park. I went after him with one of my father's deer rifles, hanging in the garage, and dropped him before he could do any serious damage to the dog."

Ellen seemed pleased with the story's happy ending. Scotty Taren raised an eyebrow at me and moved his lips. I made out the words "Professor Tormey." Aaron Kittredge was no longer the only marksman on our list. Guidi could just as easily have been the one who shot at us that day at the Hall of Fame, and Kirby didn't know enough to stop him from telling a story of his childhood that set up his marksmanship for us.

There was a knock on the door and Laura opened it. "Excuse me, sorry to interrupt."

"It's fine," I said, getting to my feet with the expectation that she had Mike Chapman on my phone line. "I can step out."

"It's for Ellen," she said, shaking a finger at me. "Mr. McKinney needs to talk to you, dear."

There was a pause while Ellen left the room, and I decided to wait for her before going on with any more questioning.

"It's an odd set of circumstances," I said to Guidi. "Aurora's body found in the basement of the house on Third Street, and now the possibility that someone you knew bricked her up there to pay back a betrayal. Nobody in literature served up revenge better than Poe, and here we have a real-life copycat. On top of that, you're one of the most generous supporters of Poe Cottage. I don't think I've even thanked you for getting us in for a private tour last week."

"Did I do that?" he said, apparently surprised to hear it.

"Perhaps it was your secretary. Zeldin set it up for us, after we left the Botanical Gardens. I noticed your name on the plaque in the cottage."

"No coincidence there at all, Ms. Cooper. My name is on a lot of Bronx institutions. Zeldin himself can tell you that. I've donated a new magnolia garden in my mother's memory, which will open in the spring. And the two of us traipsed all over the conservatory just before the holidays. He's shameless about looking for naming opportunities, and some of us are vain enough to oblige him."

"Traipsed? What did you do with Zeldin?" The man couldn't traipse, from what I'd seen of him.

"Have you been to the conservatory since it reopened? It's spectacular. He walked me through the whole thing after hours one night."

"I didn't think he could walk," I said. "I've only seen him in a wheelchair."

Zeldin's immobility had kept him out of my main focus as a suspect.

"He only resorts to his iron buggy when his gout kicks in. That makes it too painful for him to get about very much, with the muscle deterioration condition he suffers from. But most of the time he can walk just as well as he can talk."