Hell Gate

EIGHTEEN

“You went way too far, Mike.”

“He pressed the wrong buttons with me.”

“Your buttons are so loosely attached that anybody pressing them might get tangled in the threads,” I said. “I’m only surprised Battaglia hasn’t beeped me yet to try to rein you in.”

We were just leaving the back steps of Gracie Mansion.

“Relax. Statler will never admit to being humiliated by the likes of us. You want to see how Hal’s doing with Salma’s apartment?”

“Sure.”

“Here, Alex,” Mercer said, reaching into the pocket of his overcoat. “This should get you past the photographers without a problem.”

He handed me a black knit watch cap, and I stood at the curb, twisting my hair into a knot and pulling the hat down to cover half of my face.

“Perfect. You look like an ordinary mook,” Mike said. “Nobody’d ever make you.”

Cops had set up wooden horses to keep the paparazzi back from the entrance of the building. “Why don’t we back-door it?”

No one seemed to notice as we trekked around to the rear. Mike buzzed, and this time, with a uniformed cop at his side and the camera focused on the badge Mike held up next to his face, we were let in immediately.

When we stepped off the elevator on the tenth floor, the apartment door was ajar and Hal waved us in from the foyer. “Hey, guys. Alex. You here to get in my way?”

“Nah. Just trying to make sense of all this,” Mike said. “ESU did a great job getting the body out.”

“So I heard. My second team’s over there.”

“You alone?”

“No. Jack Egan’s beginning to work the back rooms.”

“What’s taking you so long, Hal? You’ve been here half the day.”

“Interruptions like you, pal. Explaining things to all the big-wigs.”

“Like who?”

“Like Scully. Like the mayor’s office. Like Leighton’s old man, who thinks he had a right to come in here ’cause his son paid for the pad. I’m trying to get it done, Mikey. You want to help? Gloves and booties, please.”

“Have you found anything of interest yet?” I asked as Mike passed us each another pair of latex gloves.

“Sarge called from ESU. Took a white wool blanket covered with blood out of the bottom of the well,” Hal said. “Jack found white fibers in one of the trash bins they use to take recyclables down in the service elevator.”

“We saw some of those out in back.”

“That must be how whoever did it got her out of here.”

“But she had these awful gridlike marks on her shoulders,” I said. “What do you think could have caused those? Is there any surface like that in the apartment?”

We were following Hal through the living room toward the kitchen.

“I’m not sure exactly what you mean. Nothing in here that I’ve seen.”

“I can do a sketch of it for you,” I said.

“Coop’s not content unless she’s butting into everybody’s job,” Mike said, throwing up his hands. “The ME will tell you what did that to her skin.”

Two people rarely saw the same things when they looked at a dead body. The medical examiner searched for signs of the fatal injury, cops for any clues that might offer a solution to the killer’s identity, and often I was hoping-quite unrealistically-that the corpse would tell me how its final moments were spent.

“Any word yet on your corkscrew?” Hal asked.

“Human blood. Now they’ll have what they need to compare,” Mike said.

“Isn’t it odd that the place would be in such good order but the killer would leave that behind?” I asked.

“You wanna know what I think?”

“Yes.”

Hal planted himself in the middle of the living room floor. “First of all, Salma wasn’t entertaining a stranger, right?”

“She may have started life here as a hooker,” Mike said, explaining the tattoo to Hal. “Can’t rule that out entirely.”

“This guy knows the building well enough to get himself in, and there’s nothing in the apartment to suggest a struggle.”

“So it was a blitz attack,” Mercer said.

“She’s in her nightie,” Hal went on. “Gets rid of her kid for the evening-no word on that front?”

“Nothing.”

“Sets out the vino and the glasses, and when she goes into the kitchen, bam! Her buddy gets her into a chokehold and jabs the tip of the screw right into her neck.”

“Good thinking, Hal,” Mike said. “He’s either a surgeon or a damn good wine steward, right?”

“I’d expect blood to be everywhere,” I said, holding my hand to my throat as Hal spoke.

“And it was, Counselor. And it was.”

“No, Hal, there was nothing when we got here last night except the wine opener.”

“Bleach, Alex. He bleached the kitchen floor and sink. Just took a couple of minutes to sponge it down. Might have been more blood on him than on the tile. But we picked up some spatter in there. Probably thought he’d gotten the corkscrew too. Then he sprayed air freshener to mask the smell.”

“The princess wouldn’t know from cleaning the kitchen floor. The only bleach she cares about is the kind that keeps her hair blond.”

“What does that tell you about him?” I asked. “Chance he’s an ex-con?”

We had seen lots of cases recently in which men sent to jail by DNA evidence continued their criminal ways when released, but came to crime scenes armed with condoms when they raped or prepared to destroy evidence as they departed.

“Or he watches too much TV,” Hal said. “Everybody’s an expert on TV, you know? Every lazy slob thinks he could do my job. Find this guy soon and get a warrant for his laundry bag. He’s gonna have blood all over his shirtsleeves, if I’m right about how he was holding her. And blood on his shoes. It had to drip on his shoes.”

“I should be that lucky I find him soon,” Mike said. “Or her.”

“Her?” I asked.

“Why, you think it couldn’t be a broad? You don’t figure Claire Leighton had a grudge to settle? Maybe while Salma was waiting for her date, Claire knocked on the door and the girls had a catfight.”

My stomach churned a bit. I’d never thought about Leighton’s wife as a possible suspect, but there was good reason to consider her.

I was scanning the clean white walls and stainless steel appliances, looking for any signs of blood, but there were none. “Too clean for a catfight.”

“Just like a dame to straighten up the mess.”

“Hey, Hal!” His partner was shouting for him from the other end of the apartment. “Bring your equipment and get your ass down here quick.”

Mike stepped aside so Hal could go first, stopping to pick up his camera from the living room sofa.

“Whatcha got, Jack? You find a skeleton in the closet?” Hal made his way quickly down the hall to the master bedroom.

Jack Egan was standing on a stepladder. At his feet were half a dozen cardboard shoe boxes-all designer labels-with their lids removed, and another two dozen stacked on shelves in the closet.

“Better than that,” Jack said, opening the cover of the box he was holding. “I found a gold mine.”

Like the one in Jack Egan’s hands, the boxes on the floor were filled with money. Mike crouched beside them and scooped out a fistful of bills.

“Hundred-dollar bills-Ben Franklins all,” he said, playing the edges of them as he counted the wads. “Each one of these little wrappers holds ten thousand dollars. I know Coop would just as soon have the shoes, but we’re probably looking at a million or more in cash.”

“What the hell was this broad doing with all that money?” Hal asked. “Where’d it come from, do you think?”

“You’ll be the first to know, Hal. Meanwhile, you better tell your other team to check the bottom of the well for loose change.”