Killer Look

SEVEN

“Are we starting with what you know, Chapman, or what you don’t know?” Jeremy Mayers asked, after escorting the three Savitskys out of the conference room. “Which list is longer?”

“Like it’s my fault for not putting Velvel together with the Wolfman?” Mike asked. “I have trouble with my English, and now you expect me to interpret Yiddish for you?”

“Are you really taking this case over, Mike,” Jeremy said, “even though you’re Manhattan North?”

“The police commissioner wants all hands on deck. The deceased has a huge profile, and I’m the guy who has experience with this kind of case. Scully’s also afraid the first crew might have missed something at the scene,” Mike said. “The press is going to be all over this sucker.”

“Tell us about the scene,” I said. “Explain the significance of the whole tenth floor being registered to Savage himself.”

“You, Ms. Cooper, are here on background only,” Mike said.

“Yeah, Alex, why are you here at all?” Jeremy asked. “Nobody was raped.”

He obviously didn’t know that everyone sane in the criminal justice system was holding me at arm’s length.

“Mike wouldn’t be doing this either if I hadn’t stuck my nose in,” I said. “Lily was an acquaintance of mine when we were in high school. She called the office this morning. I had no idea Wolf Savage was her father.”

“Here’s the deal,” Mike said. “During Mayor Bloomberg’s administration, a whole bunch of boutique hotels were built in the Garment District. Part of the movement to preserve some part of the business where it’s always been.”

“What do you mean?” Jeremy said.

“There was a time not that long ago that ninety-five percent of the clothing made in the USA was produced in that little swatch of Midtown Manhattan,” Mike said. “Now it’s down to three percent. That’s what the manager of the Silver Needle Hotel told me this morning. So in order to keep the high-end executives staying in this area, instead of elsewhere in town-because all the rest of the stuff from buttons to trimmings is still done right there-the mayor had the idea to use some of the land to build these fancy little hotels.”

“But where did Wolf Savage live?” Jeremy asked.

“Suburban mansion in Greenwich. Penthouse loft in Tribeca. Big properties in cities around the world. What’s the diff?”

“Well, because why a whole floor full of rooms in a Garment District hotel?”

“According to the manager, almost all the big fashion houses keep a block of suites like this,” Mike said. “They’re constantly entertaining their backers from overseas, buyers from stores around the country, models and stylists working the big shows or late hours, and no matter how many homes they have it seems to be an emergency place for the executives to rest their heads rather than take a car service to the burbs.”

“I guess,” Jeremy said.

“The manager added that Wolf Savage was a player-no surprise-and always liked to have a suite at the ready. Kept a few suits and shirts and socks in this room, which were all there yesterday.”

“So what did the first guys on the scene miss?” I asked.

“It was one of the housekeepers who found the body,” Mike said. “She had standing orders never to go into the Savage suite till after one P.M. Seems some of the ladies who frequented the tenth floor were late risers.”

“She screams,” I said.

“Security and the manager arrive. He’s the guy who calls 911. It takes the first cops a while to remember that suicide falls under our umbrella,” Mike said. “The south gets there and combs the place pretty thoroughly.”

“What did they miss?” I asked.

“I’ll go over everything that was at the scene with you later, Coop.”

“What did the note say?” Jeremy jumped in.

“Something like, ‘I’m sick,’” Mike said. “You guys want to know about the tenth-floor rooms or what?”

“Yeah,” I said. “The rooms.”

“Hold on,” Jeremy said. “Sick with what? None of the relatives mentioned he was ill.”

“Maybe no one knew,” I said.

“Focus on the rooms, will you? I’ll be doubling back on all the rest of that stuff,” Mike said.

“Fast enough so that I can make my decision on the autopsy?” Jeremy asked.

“Stat,” Mike said.

“That will help. So about the rooms?”

“The hotel has security cameras, of course. They’re on a twenty-four-hour reel. The guys got on it right away and watched the videos from the time Wolf Savage slipped his card into the lock for 1008 on Monday night, about ten P.M., till the time the housekeeper went in and let out enough shrieks to wake the dead. Well, except for the guy in the room. About two fifteen in the afternoon.”

“So?” Jeremy said.

“Solo. Nobody dancing with the Wolf. Nobody else in or out of the room the entire night and morning,” Mike said. “The cops see the bag over his head and the color of his skin. They get the hookup to the helium canisters and spot a two- or three-word note on the dining-room table. An empty vial of oxy, which would have made him more mellow to turn on the gas. They watch a little closed-circuit TV. That’s all cops do now, by the way. There are more surveillance cameras on the street and inside buildings than there are perps. Done. Suicide. No overtime. Off-duty and headed for cocktails.”

“Not unreasonable,” I said.

“You’ve been in more hotel rooms, Coop, than Gideon’s Bible,” Mike said. “You know those extra doors, they’re usually like on the side wall in the living-room suite?”

“The kind I’m always hoping is another closet?” I said. “Then you open it and it simply faces another room. Locked from your side.”

“Exactly what I mean.”

“Yeah. I’m always afraid that door is going to be how Norman Bates slips into the room while I’m out and about and gets into my shower to wait for me,” I said.

“See?” Mike said. “And some people think your paranoia is a new thing.”

“I wouldn’t leave home without it,” I said, smiling at Mike.

“So the purpose of those doors, as you might guess, is in case the guest wants to expand his suite. Buy a few rooms for the family and unlock all those doors.”

“And the tenth floor at the Silver Needle?” Jeremy asked.

“The entire floor belonged to Wolf Savage, rented in his doppelgänger name for a year at a time. Turns out that he only locked the ones adjacent to 1008 when he was entertaining someone. When he was having a slumber party.”

“So it’s possible that someone could have slipped in or out of his room after he entered it?” I asked. “And back out again, after he was dead?”

“Someone could even have been waiting for him when he got there,” Mike said.

“And you’re saying the cops never checked the video feed for the other rooms on the tenth floor, in or out? Before or after?”

“The whole strip is interconnected-and internally unlocked-from 1000 to 1012. The only camera they interrogated was the one to 1008.”

“And now the other films have all been rerecorded,” Jeremy said. “Just looped over and over again.”

“I got detectives double-checking them now,” Mike said, “but I expect that all they’re going to see on what’s left of the tape are cops from the precinct and the Crime Scene Unit and the Homicide Squad stumbling over other cops going in and out of the room.”

“So you believe Lily? That her father’s death might be a homicide?” I asked.

“This is a damn near perfect way to kill somebody, Coop. I found that out four months ago, in a case I had on the Upper West Side.”

“What do you mean?”

“Pick the gentlest means of committing suicide, so everybody feels sorry for the dead man. It only takes one person-this time it could be Lily-to tell you he had everything to live for, while the rest of the family is rushing to put him six feet under,” Mike said. “That’s when I start looking for someone with a motive to murder him.”

“You got to give me something more than this, Chapman,” Jeremy said.

“Keep Wolf on ice for forty-eight hours,” Mike said. “Don’t slice and dice yet, okay? The commissioner has made this case his top priority. You find out what doc was treating him and what kind of disease caused him to do this to himself, if there’s any truth to that theory. In the meantime, I’ll find out why the other housekeeper who works that floor thinks there was a guest in Room 1010 who never registered at the front desk.”