Killer Look

THIRTY-ONE

“Sorry I’ve offended you, Ms. Cooper,” Hal Savage said.

“I’m not-”

“Your expression gives you away. Good thing Mr. Chapman’s only got five minutes before I show him to the door.”

I wasn’t as appalled by his words and manner as I was speeding ahead and connecting the dots. Josie, the housekeeper in the Silver Needle who had done a disappearing act on us, was completely into voodoo. Could that be a link to Tanya Root’s mother? And Mercer had talked to Wolf’s fourth wife. She was also a former model, living in New Orleans, who remembered that another ex-girlfriend of Wolf’s lived there. This gave us two more leads to follow.

Mike was on the same page as I was. “There’s this housekeeper at the hotel where your brother died. Her name is Josie. Do you know her at all?”

Hal thought about answering for a few seconds. “Josie? Yeah, she’s still hanging around.”

“Your brother recommended her for the job at the Silver Needle,” Mike said. “What did she have on him?”

“You’ve really been digging in the dirt, Detective, haven’t you?”

“You go where your victim leads you,” Mike said. “This one feels like I’m in mud right up to my nostrils. Suits pigs better than it suits me, frankly.”

Hal clasped his fingers at the back of his head. “Wolf might have liked you, Chapman. He liked attitude.”

“Haitian voodoo and Louisiana voodoo-what’s the hook between them?” Mike asked abruptly.

“They’re close enough,” Hal said, avoiding Mike’s question. “Tanya’s mother dropped the news on Wolf that she was having a baby. It was months after she left New York,” Hal said. “My brother sent her money and kept sending her money for years, until he got sick of sending her money.”

“What happened when he stopped?”

“Tanya showed up at the office one day. Seventeen years old, almost eighteen. Her mother put her on a bus all the way up here from New Orleans.”

“How’d that appearance go?” Mike asked.

“Not well, Detective. Scared the shit out of my brother, plain and simple.”

“What happened?”

“Tanya started out nice enough. Wolf told me they talked and talked for hours. After all,” Hal said, “none of this was the kid’s fault.”

“What was Tanya like?” I asked. I was thinking, too, of her plastic surgery and whether she really could have been a model.

“I only met her twice. I’m getting to that part,” he said. “Wolf thought she was a decent kid. Poor thing looked like Wolf, not her mother. He might have put her on a runway if she could have made that work, but she had a build more like her father’s than like a model.”

“Did she ask him for money?” Mike said.

“You bet. But he had to stop somewhere, so he kept putting her off. I know he got her a room in a hotel.”

“The Silver Needle?”

“That first time? I don’t think it even existed then. And he didn’t want her around here, in the Garment District.”

“Don’t you remember where it was?” I asked. Maybe it was a place she came back to on later trips, and even the one that ended with her death.

“She wanted to be uptown. That’s all that comes to me. She knew a guy who moved up here from New Orleans to play in a jazz club in Harlem. Gentrified Harlem. Tanya wanted to hang out with him. So Hal put her up for a few weeks-had her taken care of.”

That could focus our search. If the hotel she stayed in then was still in the same hands, it could fit with the location where Tanya’s body was found in the East River.

“She claimed her mother was dying and that she needed a bundle of money to care for her,” Hal said. “The girl didn’t want to stay in New York. So Wolf had his lawyer draw up papers. He told Tanya to come to our offices the day before she was leaving, and he’d give her a check to cover some of the medical expenses.”

“She showed up, of course,” Mike said.

“Yeah. That’s when I met her. Tanya-I don’t remember her last name, but it wasn’t Root at the time. Wolf wanted me to witness the meeting, since he didn’t trust anyone else with the family secret.”

“Did she take the check?”

Hal laughed. “She wanted the check but she balked when it came to signing the document.”

“Why?” Mike said. “What was it?”

“It was a release that neither she nor her mother would ever get another nickel from Wolf Savage after she turned eighteen.”

“But wasn’t her mother dying?” I asked. It seemed like an awfully cold plan to me.

“I’m sure Wolf hired a private dick to find out about that. I really don’t think it was the truth. I seem to recall it was all about the kid and what she wanted from him.”

“What did Tanya do?” Mike said.

“She tore the check in half,” Hal said. “Cursed at both of us in some creole patois and stormed out of the offices.”

“That was the end of it?” Mike said.

“Hardly. Tanya called my brother the next morning. She asked if she could come by at the end of the day to apologize. She was willing to sign the release and take the check. I can’t remember the amount, but it was at least twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“How’d that go?”

“I waited with Wolf till almost eight o’clock. I cut a new check and we started all over again,” Hal said. “Tanya? Came in sweet as could be. Signed the release, pocketed the check-and then she went berserk. I mean you’ve-never-seen-anything-like-it berserk.”

He was on his feet, waving his arms around.

“Here comes the voodoo,” Mercer said.

“Right in this very office. The two of us-grown men-we were shaking in our boots, like we were made of jelly. A hex, Detective. Have you ever had anyone put a hex on you?”

“Not lately,” Mike said.

“Tanya had a bag with her. Like a cheap plastic tote that she sat on top of Wolf’s desk. Here,” he said pointing. “Right here.”

We all pushed our chairs back while he moved around, imitating her movements as he told his story. “Then she pulled a hammer out of the tote, just an ordinary claw hammer, and she started whacking at the bag, cursing the whole time. Pounding at whatever was in the bag-we had no idea-until she pulverized it.”

He stopped to catch his breath. “I tried to pick up the phone to call security in the lobby of the building, but she reached out and smashed the phone. She nearly nailed my hand to the desktop with the hammer.”

“Chicken bones,” Mercer said. “Tanya was giving you the Bones of Anger hex.”

Hal Savage pointed at Mercer. “How’d you know? How’d you know about it?”

“My wife has family in Baton Rouge. Let’s leave it at that,” Mercer said. “You want your hex to be potent, you make sure you’ve got dry chicken bones, and then you just work yourself up into a frenzy of anger and hatred.”

“I hope your people aren’t as insane as this one was,” Hal said.

He took his imaginary tote bag and started circling the room, pretending to be sprinkling the contents of the bag all around on the floor.

He was chanting at the same time, trying to remember words from all those years ago. “Bones of anger,” he said, “and something about bones to dust. ‘With these bones your soul I crush, make my enemy turn to dust.’”

He walked back to the desk. “I picked up Tanya’s hammer and ran out to my office. I figured my brother could handle the kid and the broken chicken bones. That’s when I called security,” Hal said. “Then I remembered about Josie.”

“Josie LaPorte?” I asked. “The housekeeper at the Silver Needle?”

“Exactly. Only back then, she was on the janitorial staff of this building. Worked the night shift, cleaning offices. She used to make Wolf crazy, mumbling all kinds of things that had to do with voodoo and hexes and spells. I told security to find her-wherever she was and whatever she was doing-and get her to our offices stat.”

“Tanya was still there when security arrived?” Mike said.

“There was enough chicken dust in that tote bag to keep her busy sprinkling it all over the place for another hour,” Hal said. “Fortunately, security came and, shall we say, restrained her. Wolf didn’t want her locked up. We never called your department. He just wanted her on the first morning bus back home. He paid Josie to sit with her all night in one of the offices. That’s when he bonded with Josie.”

“It didn’t matter that Haitian voodoo and Louisiana voodoo aren’t the same?”

“Trust me, those two communicated just fine. Josie went with the two security guards in the morning to the Port Authority Bus Terminal to see Tanya off-with her twenty-five-thousand-dollar check.”

“So she knows that Tanya was Wolf’s daughter,” I said.

“Yeah. She even promised my brother she could reverse the hex. Something with a magic mirror and black salt and a photograph of Tanya. I didn’t stick around for that ceremony, but Josie did it.”

“What did she get in exchange?” Mike asked.

“Night janitorial jobs in commercial offices? They’re the worst. Cleaning up after everybody’s crap, including all the stinking food that’s left around. Plus, it’s when the roaches and the mice come out to play. You don’t want to be here at two A.M. Trust me. All Josie wanted was a housekeeping job in a fancy hotel. Daytime preferred. That’s what she asked my brother to help her with, and he did. It was like going from being Cinderella to the Duchess of Windsor. First at some boutique hotel nearby that went out of business a few years ago, and then Wolf got her placed at the Silver Needle-working on his floor-which was empty most of the time anyway.”

“Did they stay in touch?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Hal said. “Every time my brother heard from Tanya, he asked Josie for help. I’d say there was an eight-year period when all was quiet. Then two or three years ago, Tanya started to call again.”

“Did she ever show up here, in the office?”

“No. At least, not that I know of. The first I learned she was anywhere near New York was from the medical examiner. If she was breathing down my brother’s neck, he didn’t tell me about it.”

“So Josie’s the one to ask,” I said. “If Tanya was bothering him.”

“That’s a good idea,” Hal said. “Josie was always telling Wolf that one of Tanya’s revenge spells-that’s what she calls those hexes-that one of those spells was going to bring him down. Be the end of him.”

“No wonder Josie wouldn’t go into the room where he died,” Mercer said.

“No surprise there. She always thought evil spirits surrounded Wolf, despite her best efforts to cleanse him of them, because of what Tanya did. Josie would be a million miles away if she thought Tanya had anything to do with his death.”

We had to find Josie LaPorte. Two murders were enough.

“Now, gentlemen and Ms. Cooper, maybe you can find a way to occupy the rest of your day and leave me and my team in peace,” Hal said, standing up and walking toward the door.

We all stood up, too.

“A couple more things,” Mike said. “I’m going, but-”

“You’re worse than Columbo,” Hal said, throwing up his arms. “You’ve got two questions left, which means that one of them’s a trick to make me confess to murder. I’ve seen every one of those TV shows. You think I’m a clown?”

He was mocking Mike now, never a good tactic.

“It would save us a hell of a lot of time if you confess, I’ll give you that,” Mike said. “Did your brother ever change his name? I mean go to court to have it legally changed?”

“Were you listening to me when we were with Dr. Parker the other day, Detective? I’m Herschel Savitsky, like I told her. You got me, Chapman. Was that supposed to be a tough one for me? And my brother was born and died a Savitsky, just like I told the doc. Is that the best you can do?”

“I’ll try my other one,” Mike said. “Where’s the money, Mr. Savage? You’re the company’s CFO, why don’t you tell me what happened to all the money?”

Hal Savage didn’t like that question. “Like I said, get a dirty old trench coat and you can give Columbo a run for his money.”

“It’s not a trick question,” Mike said. “I’m just trying to figure out who ran your brother’s empire into the ground. Were you asleep at the wheel?”

Hal held up his left hand and began counting on each finger with his right hand. “My brother spent a fortune on the ladies, Detective, in case you hadn’t figured that one out yet. Then there was a period of his drug addiction. A very long, difficult period. If you didn’t know about it, I’m sure some snitch will bring it up. Cocaine and prescription drugs. He was running through money like sand through a sieve. What was I going to do? Let him kill himself that way?”

“No-but…”

“Look, the company gave him an expense account-at my direction-to cover all the food and wine he spent on broads. Then we paid for his rehab, ’cause we’d probably been covering the allowance for his drugs, too. And do you have any idea how many lawsuits I had to settle for sexual harassment over the years?” he said, raising his voice louder and louder. “Do you understand how many millions went out the door to keep the stories about Wolf’s harassment of women in the business from getting out? There’s a guy around the corner who makes zippers for the industry. Understand that?”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “Your nephew told us about him.”

“Only zippers. That’s all the guy does. Well, even he couldn’t make one that locked tight enough to keep my brother’s penis in his pants. Do the math, Detective. Just try and do the math.”

Mike walked into the hallway. “I get it, Mr. Savage. First you blamed Reed for the missing corporate funds. Now you pile it on the dead man himself, putting the company he created in financial jeopardy.”

“Damn right. It sure as hell isn’t my doing.”

“I’m certain your financial records will back all that up,” Mike said.

“Take a number, Chapman. The IRS and every other agency concerned has had a shot at our records. In due time, why not you?”

“Thanks for this, Mr. Savage,” I said. “I was sort of hoping you’d blame all your problems on a dead man, even if he was a total sleaze when it came to women. It’s so much cleaner and easier than admitting that as CFO, you took it on yourself to set up offshore accounts, creating off-the-books records to hide all the WolfWear losses.”

It was just a long shot, but this was the time to take it. Prosecutors had worked through corporate records to take on the Enron scandal, the Tyco disgrace, and the collapse and bankruptcy of Dewey Ballantine-a once distinguished white-shoe law firm.

“Why you-”

“Hold your tongue, Mr. Savage,” Mike said. “All Coop’s suggesting is that maybe you cooked the books.”

“Don’t you dare-”

“But you just go on ahead with next week’s show. We’ve got plenty of time to look into that theory.”

“That’s slanderous, Detective,” Hal Savage said. “You better keep your mouth shut, accusing me of fraud. That’s totally slanderous.”

“How long did you think you could hide all that from Wolf?” Mike asked. “How far did you have to go when he realized that his global vision would be dead in the water if you’d been defrauding him for years?”

“Get out!”

“Happy to be leaving, sir. It seems to me Wolf’s in the morgue and you’re the one sitting in the catbird seat now. We’ve got to figure out who that’s good for. Is it you? Your nephew, Reed? The good folks at Kwan Enterprises? Or do I check the box that says all of the above?” Mike said. “C’mon, Coop, let’s see if we can stir us up a hex on mendacity.”