Killer Look

NINE

Mike and I left the Medical Examiner’s Office shortly before five P.M.

“I’ll shoot you home,” he said. “I’ll just be a few hours and then we can grab some dinner.”

“Doctor’s orders, Mike. You heard Emma tell you to keep me close,” I said. “Aren’t you going to the hotel?”

“Yeah.”

“One more look around? Check out the suite the housekeeper said someone had used?” I asked. “C’mon. It’s the kind of thing I’m useful for. An extra pair of trained eyes is always good.”

“Got my extras, Coop,” Mike said. “Mercer’s meeting me there.”

“It’s not his case either. Not even in the same ballpark.”

“Yeah, but he’s the man on the job I trust more than anyone. He’s got the bones for this kind of detail work.”

Mercer and Mike had partnered together in the elite Homicide Squad about a decade ago. Both of them loved working painstaking investigations, but while Mike especially enjoyed the fact that homicide victims didn’t need handholding, Mercer craved supportive human interaction. So he transferred to the Special Victims Squad, where he savored the emotionally charged work and the task of restoring dignity to a surviving crime victim as much as I did.

“I thought you said that if I stayed sober, I could hang with you.”

Mike looked at his watch. “I guess two extra pairs of eyes don’t hurt.”

We were in Mike’s car for only a minute before I got a text from Lily Savitsky and read it to him. “‘Thanks for taking me seriously. I really need to talk to you as soon as possible.’”

“Tell her you’re done. The only conversation she’s having is with me.”

I texted that message back to her, along with Mike’s cell number.

“It’s you I need to talk to,” Lily responded, and I repeated it aloud. “And I need the name of a good lawyer.”

Mike threw the car into park and asked me for Lily’s number. “Ms. Savitsky? Mike Chapman here. It’s my case now, do you understand that?”

He paused and waited for an answer.

“Alex Cooper is off-limits. Understand that? She’s not allowed to recommend lawyers for you and she’s not authorized to take information about this investigation if that’s what you’ve got. She’s not anchoring your swim team any longer, okay?” Mike said. “You call her or text her again and I’ll consider that to be harassment.”

“Thanks for dealing with her for me,” I said. “You think she’s looking for a lawyer on the estate issue, about Wolf’s will? Or a criminal lawyer?”

“That’s one of your not-so-good questions, Coop, in case Dr. Parker is interested. There’s no angle of Lily Savitsky’s life that should be of interest to you now, okay?”

I couldn’t help thinking about Lily-how she had reconnected with me though there was only the slimmest thread that linked our lives twenty years back, that she had come to get to know her father, or think she had, only recently, and that now she was tangled in the unhappiness of how he came to die.

It was a short drive across Thirty-Fourth Street, then north to get to Thirty-Ninth Street, halfway down the block between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. We parked across from the Silver Needle Hotel. The small shops that lined the sidewalk were closing for the evening.

Even though the manufacturing of fine garments had been driven offshore, all the businesses on these blocks still reflected the long history of a neighborhood that was centered on that trade. These were the storefronts where all the trimmings and notions, buttons and zippers, lace veils and ribbons that gave each outfit a unique look were concentrated and sold.

“Window-shopping?” Mike asked as I waited for him in front of one of the stores while he reported in to the lieutenant about our conversation at the ME’s Office.

“I can’t count the number of times I used to come into the city with my grandmother,” I said, “taking the train to Grand Central Terminal from the suburbs, to walk over here to the Garment District so she could get the special things she needed to make my clothes.”

“Give me a break,” Mike said. “You and homemade dresses?”

My mother was the child of Finnish immigrants who had come to America in the early part of the twentieth century and settled on a farm in New England, which mimicked the landscape of their Scandinavian home. I remembered everything about it from visits-the two-seater outhouse wallpapered in old LIFE magazine covers, the rich aromas of the wood-burning fireplace, the sauna that was heated up on Saturday nights only-and ended with a running jump into the frigid waters of Billy Ward Pond.

“You know the story, Mike. Long before my father became successful, my maternal grandmother moved in with us when she was widowed. She brought a lifetime of her practices with her,” I said, pointing at the colorful spools of thread that lined the shelves inside the front door, “and making clothes for my mother and for me was one of them. She’d get her silver needles and thread from a shop like this, then grosgrain ribbon down the street to trim my holiday outfits, and lace from around the corner to make collars for my party dresses.”

“Sweet thought,” Mike said, turning around to cross the street. “You should take up a craft like that. Calm your nerves.”

The young man at the front desk of the Silver Needle called the manager, who was expecting Mike. They had met the night before.

Charles Wetherly asked Mike where he wanted to begin. The answer was the room in which Wolf Savage had died.

“Mercer will be here any minute,” Mike said to me as we stepped off the elevator on the tenth floor.

Crime-scene tape dangled from the doorknob of Suite 1008. Wetherly unlocked the door and we all entered the suite.

“Detectives came back early this afternoon,” Wetherly said, looking around the large sitting-room area. “They dusted for fingerprints, just like you ordered.”

We avoided objects and arm rests with black dust and each found a place to sit.

“Have you had a chance to look more closely at the hotel register, Mr. Wetherly?” Mike asked him.

“I told the officers who came first thing yesterday that there had been no other guests checked in to rooms on this floor. Not for days. No reservations, no guests.”

“But you didn’t mention that every room on this floor was registered to Wolf Savage.”

“Excuse me, Detective. They’re all registered to Velvel Savitsky, like I told you,” Wetherly said. “And I have no idea who that is. Or had none, I should say. Not until your men informed me.”

“Don’t you think it’s unusual that one guy had an entire floor?”

“Not at all.” Charles Wetherly was flushed, clearly nervous about being questioned. “It’s very common in this business, Detective. We’re half a block from Fashion Avenue.”

The “Fashion Avenue” name had been added to lampposts as signage in the Garment District all up and down Seventh Avenue back in the 1970s. That’s how the thousands of people who worked in the industry knew the street.

“When Oscar de la Renta was alive, he kept the top two floors for his design staff when they worked late and for his models-they often came here to relax, be made up, and have their hair done for events. Most of them didn’t even stay in the rooms overnight.”

Charles Wetherly listed a who’s who of prominent designers who kept blocks of rooms in the Silver Needle and neighboring hotels. Each floor of this one was named for a fashion magazine. There were VOGUE, GLAMOUR, and ELLE suites, while others were ESQUIRE, VOGUE HOMME, and GENTLEMAN’S QUARTERLY. The walls of the lobby and the hallways were covered in a blue pinstripe fabric, like an elegant suit.

“Do you have a practice?” Mike asked. “Do you require these companies to make reservations, or to give you the names of the people who’ll occupy the suites?”

“Of course we do. First of all, we have to let housekeeping know what to prepare for and clean up after. We have to restock the minibars, change the key cards, replace the flower arrangements, let security know what’s happening on every floor,” Wetherly said. “Every department has to be notified-day and night-about who’s under our roof.”

“Who’s ultimately in charge of all that?”

Charles Wetherly cleared his throat. “It’s my responsibility, of course. I share it with the head of security, who happens to be a retired detective.”

Mike put on a pair of vinyl gloves and pushed back the door to the next room. He was studying it from the threshold, and knowing his style, he was scrutinizing the death scene for any details the men might have missed the day before.

“Did Savage use this suite often?” he asked.

“Quite a lot, Detective. Usually his secretary would call ahead to ask us to get the room ready, if it was for an evening. Peonies were his favorite flowers, no matter what the season. We knew what wines he preferred, and that he liked small-batch bourbons.”

“That’s for evenings,” Mike said. “Did he use it during the day?”

“That, too,” Wetherly said. “In those instances, the secretary never called. Never. It was Mr. Savage himself who phoned the desk.”

“Those were business appointments, or sexual assignations, would you guess? The nooners, I mean.”

“I can’t answer that, Detective. We wouldn’t be in business very long if we traded in that kind of gossip.”

“It’s not gossip anymore, Mr. Wetherly. It’s actually evidence now.”

“Evidence of what, Mr. Chapman? The man killed himself. You might consider letting him rest in peace.”

“You must have known him fairly well,” Mike said. “You sound very-well-protective of him.”

“I became acquainted with him over the years,” Wetherly said. “He was a good customer. Very gracious to me.”

“He was a player, too, am I right?”

“I wasn’t supposed to be quoted on that,” Wetherly said, looking to me to intervene.

“It seems pretty obvious from a glance through the pages of the New York Social Diary, even beyond just counting the number of failed marriages,” I said. “Look, how many of the other major designers who kept suites here used them in the afternoon?”

Charles Wetherly was the soul of discretion. Or trying to be. He wouldn’t name names.

“Oscar de la Renta?” I asked.

“I never had the honor of meeting Mr. de la Renta, ma’am. He was generous to his staff and his guests, putting them up here, but he never set foot in this hotel.”

“Donna Karan?”

“A lot of her models stay here during Fashion Week twice a year. But no, she doesn’t use the hotel.”

We threw back as many names at him as he had listed to us, but none seemed to have used the Silver Needle for afternoon affairs.

Mike backed away from the bedroom without going in. He turned and walked over to the door on the opposite side of the room.

“Where does this lead?” Mike asked.

We both knew the answer. He was testing Wetherly.

“This suite, where Mr. Savage died, is 1008,” the manager said. “That door would open into 1009.”

Mike turned the knob with his gloved hand, but it didn’t budge.

“They are individual units, detective. Mr. Savage liked to have the entire floor at his disposal. Twelve rooms. Two of them are one-bedroom suites, like this, and the rest are singles,” Wetherly said. “We’re a small hotel. A sliver building, if you will.”

“I gotta say I’d be at a loss to know what a man would do with so many rooms, Mr. Wetherly,” Mike said. “My whole apartment would fit in that marble bathroom inside. And I like my women one at a time, when I can even get that action going. Twelve bedrooms? That’s a big slumber party.”

“I’m sure I can’t give you a good reason either, Mr. Chapman. And I’m no more interested in your social life than I was in his,” Wetherly said, frowning at Mike’s last remark. “Housekeeping said the other rooms on this floor were rarely disturbed, even on the occasions that Mr. Savage used this suite. They were dusted regularly and freshened up, but there was no sign of occupancy.”

“So what did you make of that?” I asked.

“I think Wolf Savage liked his privacy respected, Miss Cooper. He didn’t want anyone else sharing the space with him. He told me that once when I tried to buy back two rooms at the end of this hallway for a week during the height of the fall buying season. He wouldn’t hear of it, no matter how high the price the prospective guests offered.”

“By ‘the space’ you mean the entire tenth floor?”

“Exactly. It was a luxury Mr. Savage could obviously afford.”

“Now, if I remember correctly,” Mike said, twisting the knob again, “this wasn’t locked yesterday.”

“That’s right, Detective,” Wetherly said.

“But Mr. Savage liked them all open, you said.”

“Entirely his decision, Mr. Chapman. Sometimes when he was entertaining in this suite, he locked the doors from inside here with his key card. Mr. Savage had a master card that worked on all the locks on this floor. Usually, they were open.”

“You responded when the housekeeper found the body, am I right?”

“With my head of security, yes, I did.”

“And the doors to the two adjacent rooms, were they locked, or unlocked?”

“I believe they were unlocked, Detective. Mr. Savage was here alone, as you know.”

Mike glanced at me. “I don’t know, Wetherly. I can’t think of any point in time I’d consider more private than when someone’s about to end his life. Might have been a good moment for Savage to engage the locks, right? Make sure no one entered accidentally.”

“I’m not an investigator, sir. I don’t know what someone in that position would be thinking,” Wetherly said. “I hope never to know.”

“But this one is locked now,” Mike said. “How about the one in the bedroom that leads out the other way?”

“They are all locked, Detective. On both sides of this suite and to the ends of the hallway,” he said. “Mr. Savage’s secretary called this morning. The company no longer wishes to keep this suite of rooms.”

“What?”

“The rental agreement was canceled today. Mr. Savage’s office has made arrangements somewhere else for the big show,” Wetherly said. “We haven’t touched this room, of course, at the direction of the NYPD. But the others are back on the market.”

“On whose authority?” Mike asked.

“I didn’t ask that, sir. I’m quite familiar with the woman who called.”

“Let me have your master key.”

“Sorry?” Wetherly said. “I can’t do that, Detective.”

“You’ll have to do it, and you’ll have to keep this entire area, including the adjacent rooms, off-limits till I tell you we’re done with our work,” Mike said. “Now, dip the card in the hole and open this door for me.”

Charles Wetherly took a few steps toward Mike. He removed the key card from his suit pocket and slipped it into the lock. Mike turned the knob and the door opened.

The room was a mirror image of the one we were standing in. Wetherly went through the doorway, followed by Mike and then me. Mike passed the manager by and crossed into the bedroom, walking toward the door that connected to 1010.

That was the room the housekeeper believed had showed signs of occupancy on the night that Wolf Savage died.

“Dip it,” Mike said again to Charles Wetherly.

“I tell you there’s nothing to see, Detective. A new code has been entered and the cards that Mr. Savage had will be useless now. No one could have accessed these rooms since the detectives were last in here, because the old code is invalid.”

The man hesitated for a few moments, then inserted the card into the hole. Mike twisted the knob and the door swung open.

Charles Wetherly gasped and stood still. There was a tall man with skin the color of ebony standing in the middle of the room, his arms folded across his broad chest.

“Who are you and how did you get in here?” Wetherly asked.

“Mercer Wallace. NYPD,” he said, flashing his blue-and-gold detective shield at the startled manager. “Housekeeping found this key card at the bottom of the laundry chute in your basement.”

Mercer passed the card to Mike with his gloved hand.

“If nobody rubbed them off,” Mercer said, “the card might still be good for prints.”

“Room 1010,” Mike said. “Better check your security system, Mr. Wetherly. Seems the old card still works like a charm. Now all we need to figure out is which one of the three bears was sleeping in this bed.”