NYPD Red 4

Chapter 21

It was the kind of crime scene that nerds like Chuck Dryden live for. A dead murder suspect with a bullet in his brain, a second bullet embedded in the pockmarked plaster on the opposite side of the room, and a wall covered with bright red high-velocity blood spatters that were the clues to the dirty little details of Raymond Davis’s last moments on earth. For Chuck it was the equivalent of forensic porn.

Kylie and I left him to his fun and went out to canvass the area.

We went back to the bloody trail that had led us to the apartment and followed it down the stairs, out the front door, and onto the street. A half block from the building it ended abruptly.

“He must have figured out he was leaving bread crumbs,” Kylie said. “You think Teddy Ryder is our bleeder?”

“I doubt if he’s our shooter,” I said. “These guys were BFFs.”

“It wouldn’t be the first relationship that was dissolved by a bullet.”

“But Teddy is gun-shy. His parents were con artists. In their line of work the only reason to carry a piece is if you’re hoping for a stiffer sentence when you get busted. Besides, we know that Raymond was trolling the bars, looking for a buyer.”

“I guess he found one,” Kylie said. “So, two shots fired in apartment 3A. How many of the tenants do you think heard anything?”

I laughed. New Yorkers in general are reluctant to come forward and get involved — especially in a crime of violence. And I was willing to bet that Raymond Davis’s neighbors would be even less inclined to talk to the cops. With twelve apartments in the building, at least somebody would have to have heard the two gunshots. And yet no one had called 911. We went through the motions anyway and knocked on every door in the building. As expected, nobody heard a thing.

We went back to the apartment, where Chuck was waiting to give us his top line impressions.

“Be careful where you sit,” he said as soon as we got through the door.

“Gosh, thanks, Dr. Dryden,” Kylie said, “but they taught us crime scene etiquette back at the academy.”

“I’m sorry, Detective MacDonald,” Dryden said. “Let me rephrase that. This place is riddled with bedbugs. Be careful where you sit.”

We stood.

Dryden went through his usual series of disclaimers reminding us that some of his conclusions were not yet scientifically chiseled in stone. Then he launched into the scenario the way he saw it.

“If you two are correct, and Davis and his partner killed Elena Travers and stole an eight-million-dollar necklace, then this is where they tried to unload it. But, as you well know, there is no honor among thieves. Davis was dropped where he stood, but his partner managed to get out with what is most likely a flesh wound. The slug that caught him was in the wall. It’s a .38.”

“And where’s the necklace?” Kylie asked.

Dryden smiled. “Where indeed?”

“But you searched the place.”

“Top to bottom.”

“Did you find anything?”

“Yes, I did,” he said, his expression totally deadpan. “Bedbugs.”

Kylie rewarded him with a smile. “Let me rephrase that,” she said. “Did you find anything that might help us in our investigation?”

“Possibly,” he said. “Mr. Davis had a gun. He didn’t get to use it tonight, but it’s a 9mm — the same caliber as the murder weapon that killed Elena Travers. I’ll run it through ballistics and get back to you tomorrow.”

I looked at my watch. “It’s already tomorrow,” I said.

“Oh, good. In that case, I’ll have it for you today.”

“Last question,” Kylie said. “Do you have anything on the shooter? A partial print? Hairs? Fibers? Anything?”

“Sorry. He was either very good or very lucky, but I’ve got nothing except for the two .38 slugs he left behind.”

“Then there’s only one way we’re going to catch him,” Kylie said, looking at me.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Find Teddy Ryder.”

Chapter 22

I called the office and asked the desk sergeant to get out a BOLO on Teddy Ryder. “And I need a hospital check,” I said. “He took a bullet.”

Within minutes, Ryder’s picture would be distributed city-wide, and every precinct would send out a team to check the local hospitals for a gunshot victim.

Then I called Q. I thanked him for leading us to Davis and asked if he knew where we could find Ryder’s mother.

“Sorry, Zach,” he said. “You know how grifters are. Annie Ryder is like a gypsy. She could be in any one of fifty states, although I’d probably eliminate Alaska and Hawaii.”

It wasn’t what I was hoping to hear, but at the same time, I was relieved. If Q had an address, Kylie and I would have had to follow up on it immediately. When the case is this hot, sleep is not an option.

“Here’s a thought for you, Zach,” Q said. “Try running her name through NCIC.”

The National Crime Information Center is an electronic clearinghouse of crime data that can be tapped into by any criminal justice agency in the U.S. Q’s advice was the cop equivalent of telling a civilian to Google it.

“Thanks a heap,” I said. “I just thought I’d try you first. I figured you had a better database.”

I hung up and walked over to Kylie, who was still talking to Dryden.

“Good news,” I said. “Q has no idea where to find the mom. We can punch out now.”

I didn’t have to tell her twice. We said good night to Dryden and left the apartment.

We were halfway down the stairs when Kylie stopped and tapped her forehead.

“Son of a bitch,” she said.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“Remember what Gregg Hutchings told us about those hidden security cameras at the hospital? Look up.”

I tipped my head toward the stairwell ceiling. I saw it immediately. There were two smoke detectors mounted on the cracked plaster. One was centered directly over the stairs just the way the building code required. The other was tucked into a corner.

“This second smoke detector is too close to the wall to be effective as a smoke detector,” I said. “But it’s a damn good place for a camera.”

“And I’ll bet it’s not the only one,” Kylie said.

We walked the building from the lobby to the roof and found three more.

“All wireless,” Kylie said. “The question is, whose apartment is the signal going to?”

“There’s probably a sophisticated high-tech way to find out without waking up the whole building,” I said.

Kylie grinned. “But sophistication has never been our strong suit. Let’s rattle all their cages,” she said, banging on the door of apartment 5A.

The same tenants who weren’t happy to see us the first time we canvassed the building were even less happy this time around. Especially since Kylie confronted every bleary-eyed one of them with a bad-to-the-bone snarl and a few choice words. “We found your surveillance cameras. Show us the monitor. Now!”

The standard responses ranged from dumbfounded stares to an angry “What the fuck are you talking about?”

We pissed off everyone on the fifth floor and two people on the fourth, but the next apartment was the charm.

Chapter 23

Elliott Moritz, the tenant in 4C, was about sixty, mild mannered, and by far the least confrontational of all the tenants we had met. He quickly admitted that the cameras were his.

“And who authorized you to install them?” Kylie said.

“They’re not exactly authorized,” Moritz said, backing up a step. “I sort of have unwritten permission from the landlord.”

“Unwritten permission won’t hold up in court, Elliott,” Kylie said.

“Court? Wait a minute, officer, I’m not the criminal here,” Moritz said. “It’s the woman in 5B. She’s a flight attendant. She sublets her apartment whenever she’s out of town, and the people she rents to are noisy and dirty, and you can smell the marijuana through the air vents. So I complained to the building management. They said they can’t evict her without proof. So I said I would get some, and they said okay.”

“You’re right, Elliott,” Kylie said. “What she’s doing is illegal. But so is spying on your neighbors. If this were any other night, I’d arrest you, but I’ve got a homicide to deal with, and you may be able to help, so I’m going to let you decide how we handle this. Option one: I wake up a judge, get a warrant to impound your equipment, and book you on charges of video voyeurism. Option two: you show me and my partner your video feed, and I’ll give you the name and cell number of an inspector in the city’s Buildings Department who hates illegal subletters even more than you do.”

Moritz wisely chose option two.

He had a quad monitor with one camera pointed at the flight attendant’s apartment on the fifth floor. The other three only covered the stairwells. At 9:37 a man had trudged up the stairs to the third floor.

“That’s our guy,” Kylie said when he didn’t show up on the fourth-floor camera.

There was no audio track, so we didn’t get to hear the gunshots, but at 9:44, Teddy Ryder stumbled down the stairs, bleeding. A minute later, the man who had lumbered up the stairs raced down. The image was poor quality, but we could tell that our suspect was white, about six feet tall, and no more than thirty-five years old. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

Kylie downloaded the video onto her cell phone. We took it back to the precinct, found a tech to pull some screenshots, and got them out to every cop in the city.

It was almost two a.m. when Kylie dropped me off at my apartment. Angel, my favorite doorman, was on duty.

“You look beat, Detective,” he said.

“Fighting crime isn’t as glamorous as it looks,” I said.

He laughed and said good night. I got in the elevator. It had been hours since I’d walked out on Cheryl without saying a word, and I wondered if she’d still be there when I got upstairs.

Angel probably knew. But I was too embarrassed to ask him if my new live-in girlfriend had moved out with all her stuff while I was away.

Chapter 24

Annie Ryder was a night owl. As her husband, Buddy, loved to say, “Annie never goes to sleep on the same day she wakes up.” So when her cell rang at ten minutes after midnight, she didn’t panic. She just figured it was one of her insomniac neighbors who wanted to stop by for a cup of tea and an earful of gossip.

The screen on her iPhone said Private Caller, but that didn’t bother Annie either. Caller ID was a two-way street, and since she always blocked her name and number from popping up, she couldn’t fault anyone else. She muted the TV and answered the phone with a crisp “Hello. Who’s this?”

“Ma,” a weak voice on the other end said.

She stood up and pressed the phone to her ear. “Teddy, are you all right? What’s wrong?”

“I got shot.”

“Oh Jesus. Where?”

“In my apartment, but I’m not there now. I ran like hell.”

“Teddy, no — not where were you when you got shot. Where did the bullet hit you?”

“Oh. He shot me in the stomach.”

Annie was good in emergencies, but this was a crisis. She instinctively moved over to the sideboard and rested her hand on Buddy’s urn for strength.

“Listen to me,” she said. “Get yourself to a hospital. Now.”

“Ma, are you crazy? I go to the hospital with a gunshot wound, and they call the cops.”

“Teddy, I’d rather visit you in jail than identify your body at the morgue. A bullet to the abdomen can be lethal. God knows how many of your organs got torn up. Get your ass to an ER before you bleed to death internally.”

“My organs are fine,” Teddy said. “You’re thinking like I got shot in the belly button. That’s not what happened. It’s more like the bullet went through the fat parts that hang off the side.”

“Love handles?” Annie said.

“Yeah. That’s not so bad, right?”

“Of course it’s bad. You want to get an infection and die of sepsis? We have to treat it right away. Where are you?”

“I just got off the subway. I’m standing outside the station.”

Annie gritted her teeth. The subway. The station. Teddy had never mastered the art of spelling out details. “Which station?” she demanded.

“Yours, Ma. I took the N train to Astoria Boulevard. I’m right here under the el by the Pizza Palace on 31st Street.”

“Jesus, you’re right around the corner?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t want to just come up to the apartment in case the cops are watching it.”

“Smart thinking, kiddo,” she said.

The catchphrase was a throwback to Teddy’s grade-school days, when he was a permanent fixture in the slow learners’ class.

Early on, Buddy came up with a plan. “The kid may not be too bright,” he said, “but we can’t be the ones to reinforce it. Our job is to con him into thinking he’s smarter than he is.”

From that day forward, whenever Teddy did or said something that would be normal for an average kid, Annie and Buddy rewarded him, sometimes with a sweet treat, sometimes a little gift. But the positive feedback that always made Teddy the happiest was those three little words: Smart thinking, kiddo.

It still worked. “Thanks, Ma,” Teddy said. “So what do I do now?”

“I’ll come for you,” she said, lifting the lid of the trunk where Buddy had kept the tricks of his trade. “First I’ve got to find something for you to wear so nobody recognizes you. Now just promise me you’ll stay out of sight till I get there.”

“I’m starved.”

“Promise, damn it.”

“Okay, okay, I promise.”

She hung up the phone. “The boy is in deep shit this time, Buddy,” she called out to the urn containing the ashes of her dead husband as she rifled through the wigs, props, and collection of uniforms that had helped the con man pass as anything from a meter reader to an airline pilot.

Two minutes later, she had what she needed, raced out of the apartment, and then checked every parked car on Hoyt Avenue. Twenty-four minutes after that, Teddy Ryder walked through the front door of his mother’s building in plain sight.

Annie was positive that there were no cops watching, but even if there were, she doubted they’d realize that the man with shoulder-length blond hair wearing a bright orange safety vest and carrying a red insulated pizza bag was the one every cop in the city was looking for.

Chapter 25

Teddy put the pizza box on the kitchen counter, pulled out a slice, and grabbed a can of Bud from the refrigerator.

“Alcohol dehydrates you,” Annie said, snatching the beer out of his hand and dumping it into the sink. She opened one of the bottles of orange Gatorade she’d brought home from the Pizza Palace and handed it to him.

Teddy inhaled half the slice and took a swig of the neon-colored drink. “You ever patch up a bullet wound when you were a nurse?” he asked.

“Nurse? I was a candy striper. I learned a few things from watching the nurses, but mostly I stole morphine ampoules to sell to the junkies in my neighborhood. Now take off that stupid wig and strip down to your shorts. I’m going next door to borrow a few medical supplies.”

She took a tote bag from the hall closet and left. By the time she got back, Teddy was three slices into the pie, and his jeans and shirt were on the floor.

“That’s the beauty of living in a building full of old people,” Annie said, setting down the tote bag. “It’s like an all-night pharmacy. They have everything you need for a do-it-yourself gunshot wound repair kit.”

She handed him a bottle of pills. “Amoxicillin,” she said. “Take four now, and then we’ll space them out, four a day.”

Teddy didn’t argue. He popped four of the antibiotics and washed them down with Gatorade. Annie spread a sheet on the sofa and pulled a bottle of Smirnoff vodka from the tote bag. “It’s not the pricey stuff,” she said, “but it’ll do.”

“I thought you said no alcohol,” Teddy said.

“This isn’t for drinking. Lie down so I can see where you got hit.”

Teddy stretched out on the sofa, and Annie studied his bloodied left side. “You’re lucky,” she said. “It’s a clean shot. The bullet went in the front and out the back, but I’m sure it dragged pieces of fabric from your dirty shirt along with it. We have to kill the bacteria before it spreads. Bite down on that throw pillow.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s going to hurt like hell, and I don’t want you to wake up the neighbors when you start screaming.”

“Ma, I’m not going to scre—”

She poured the eighty-proof Smirnoff disinfectant on the wound, and Teddy let out a piercing shriek that he managed to stifle with the pillow.

“Next time maybe you’ll listen to your mother,” Annie said, dabbing his skin with a soft cloth. “When I tell you it’s going to hurt, it’s going to hurt. And when I told you Raymond Davis was no good for you, I was right. But no, you had to wait for him to shoot you before you took my word for it.”

“Don’t talk bad about Raymond, Ma. He didn’t shoot me. He’s dead. The guy who shot me shot him first.”

“Jesus, Teddy. What the hell were you two involved in that someone would want to kill you?”

“This guy Jeremy hired us to steal some shit, so we did, and then when it was time to pay us off, he decided to kill us instead.”

Annie reached into her tote bag and took out a box of adult diapers. She opened one and placed the absorbent fabric so it covered both sides of the wound. “Stand up and hold this so I can wrap it,” she said.

Teddy did as he was told.

“What did you steal?” Annie asked as she began wrapping an ACE bandage around Teddy’s waist.

“A diamond necklace.”

“I can’t believe it. You robbed a jewelry store?”

“No,” Teddy said, his head down. “A limo. There was this actress in the back, and Jeremy knew she’d be wearing this expensive necklace, and—”

“Oh my God. Elena Travers?”

Teddy didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

“You killed Elena Travers?” Annie said.

“I didn’t shoot her, Ma. Honest. Raymond did.”

“But you had a gun.”

“Yeah.”

“And what’s the one cardinal rule that your father taught you?”

“No guns.”

“And now that poor actress is dead, and you’re facing life in prison. Who is this Jeremy, anyway? What’s his last name?”

“I don’t know. Raymond did all the up-front work. Tonight was the first time I saw him. He was supposed to give us ninety thousand for the necklace, but Raymond didn’t trust him, so when Jeremy shows up, Raymond tells him we’re not giving him the necklace until he hands over his gun.”

“And of course he did,” Annie said. “No arguments.”

“Right. So then I go and get the necklace and put it on the coffee table.”

“And just like that,” Annie said, “Jeremy pulls out a second gun that he had tucked in the back of his pants.”

“It was an ankle holster. He drilled Raymond right between the eyes. He turned on me, and I head-butted him just as he pulled the trigger. He went down hard, and I ran for my life.”

“The cops will be looking for you. Sooner or later, they’re going to be knocking on my door. You can’t stay here.”

“Ma, I’ve got no place else to go.”

“I’m cat-sitting for the couple next door while they’re on a cruise. You can stay there for the next ten days.”

She taped down the ends of the ACE bandage. Then she picked up his shirt and helped him into it. “You can put your pants on by yourself,” she said.

Teddy stepped into his jeans, buttoned the fly, and cinched the belt. “Hey, Ma,” he said, digging his hand into his pocket. “I brought you a present.”

He pulled out the diamond and emerald necklace and handed it to her.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Teddy, it’s... it’s exquisite. I thought Jeremy took this.”

“He did, but when I knocked him down, he hit his head. He was kind of groggy, so I figured I’d grab the necklace while I could, and maybe one day you and me could find a buyer on our own.”

Annie Ryder stood there, watching the light refract off the eight million dollars’ worth of stolen jewelry in the palm of her hand. At first she was dumbfounded, unable to speak. And then she found the words that always brought joy to the face of her slow-witted but good-natured son.

“Smart thinking, kiddo.”

Chapter 26

I opened the door to my apartment. It was pitch-black. I’m from the school of “I’ll leave a light on in the window for you,” so this was not a good sign. I tapped the switch on the wall and breathed a sigh of relief. Cheryl’s purse, keys, and department ID were sitting on the hall table.

I made my way to the dining room, flipped on a light, and there it sat: the romantic dinner for two was exactly where it was when I walked out. Still on the table, untouched, and, by now, incredibly unromantic.

I didn’t have to wonder how Cheryl felt. Nothing says “You’re not getting laid tonight” like cold clotted lasagna and rock-hard garlic bread.

But in case I had any doubts, the bedroom door was shut, and my blanket and pillow had been dumped on the sofa.

I carried the perfect dinner out to the incinerator room, cleaned the kitchen, then tossed and turned on the sofa until five forty-five. The bedroom door was still shut, and I knew I’d be smarter to leave and shower at the precinct.

But first I stopped at the diner to talk to my therapist.

“The doctor is in,” Gerri said, bringing me coffee and a bagel, then sliding into the booth across from me. “What the hell did you do wrong now?”

“That’s the thing,” I said. “I’m not sure I did anything wrong.”

I filled her in on the details of last night. She didn’t say a word till I was finished.

“Let me start with a question,” she said. “Do you really want this relationship with Cheryl to work out?”

I didn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

“Then why would you leave her and go up to Harlem to be with Kylie?”

“Wait a minute — I didn’t leave her to be with Kylie. Kylie needed help. That’s the nature of who I am. When there’s a damsel in distress, I—”

Gerri erupted. “Damsel in distress? Kylie? News flash, Zach: Kylie MacDonald is a pistol-packing, ass-kicking, ball-busting hellcat. The day she’s a damsel in distress is the day I’ll be on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.”

“Okay, okay, you’re right. Damsel in distress was a poor choice of terms.”

“More like a profoundly stupid choice of terms.”

“What I should have said was, Kylie is a loose cannon. She went up to Harlem — on her own, without backup — an off-duty cop on a harebrained mission to find her husband’s drug dealer and then strong-arm him into telling her how to find Spence.”

“So to sum it all up, you made a choice. You chose Kylie over Cheryl.”

“You’re oversimplifying.”

“Then let me undersimplify. Let’s say I have magic powers, and with one wave of my hand, I can guarantee you a happy life with the woman of your choice. Who’s it going to be?”

“Cheryl.”

“You know that for sure?”

“Yes.”

“Does she know that for sure?”

“Cheryl knows that I love her, and hopefully she understands why I bailed on dinner last night.”

“Zach, I’m not sure you understand why you did what you did last night.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” She stood up. “I’m a short-order cook, not a shrink. I’m sorry I said that.”

“Well, it’s too late to unsay it. What do you mean, I don’t understand what I did last night?”

She sat down. “When my daughter Rachel was nineteen, she had an affair with a married man who was thirty-six. A year later, he got divorced, and a few months after that, he asked Rachel to marry him. I told her I was against it.”

“Because of their age difference?” I said.

“No. Because the guy cheated on his wife. I said to Rachel, ‘If he’ll do it with you, he’ll do it to you.’ She married him anyway. Five years later, she caught him in bed with another woman. She was devastated. She left him and moved back home with me. I felt terrible for her, but deep down inside, a little piece of me felt vindicated... justified. I told her that he was no good for her, and I was right. So here’s my final question of the day, Zach. Did you go up to Harlem to protect Kylie from getting in trouble, or did you go to help her pick up the pieces of a marriage you’ve been hoping would crash and burn?”

I didn’t answer because I didn’t know the answer.

Gerri stood up again. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but I think I may need a second opinion.”

“Good idea,” she said. “Try the Metro Diner on Broadway. Even if you’re not impressed with the therapy, you’ll love the mac and cheese.”

Chapter 27

I walked around the corner to the One Nine and headed straight for the locker room. I looked like a man who hadn’t spent the night in his own bed, and the last thing I needed was for Kylie to see me and badger me for an explanation.

I showered, shaved, put on clean clothes, and walked into the office looking as fresh as a gangbanger wearing a brand-new suit to his court date.

“I’ve been trying to call you for the last fifteen minutes,” Kylie said, not remotely interested in my appearance. “Let’s go.”

“Let’s pretend we’re equal partners, and I get a vote,” I said as I chased her down the stairs. “Where are we running off to?”

“Murray Hill Medical Center. They got hit last night.”

“What’d they steal this time? Bedpans? Kylie, we’ve got a double homicide on our hands. Why don’t we send Betancourt and Torres to take statements so we can focus on the Travers case?”

“Because our new best friend, Howard Sykes, called to inform us that an already delicate situation just became even more delicate. He’s at Murray Hill now waiting for his two star cops to show up and handle the situation with the utmost diplomacy.”

I followed her outside. “I don’t get it. We’ve been keeping this case under wraps since we started. What got stolen that makes it even more delicate?”

“It’s not what got stolen. It’s who witnessed the crime.”

“We have a witness?”

“Two. But I doubt if they’re going to cooperate. Get in the car. I’ll fill you in on all the ugly politics on the way over.”

I got in the car.

“The room where the equipment was stored had a keypad lock on it, but the perps knew the key code,” she said as we headed south on Lexington. “Guess what they found inside when they opened the door.”

I shrugged. “Unless it’s Teddy Ryder, I’m not sure I care.”

“A doctor shagging a nurse,” she said.

“Okay, I care.”

“And he’s not just some randy intern. This doc generated over two million for Murray Hill last year.”

I’ve been attached to Red long enough to figure out why Howard wanted us at the scene. “So it’s politics over police work,” I said. “Howard expects us to keep the doctor’s name out of the investigation.”

“As Howard put it, he’s a witness, not a criminal,” she said. Five minutes later, we pulled up to the hospital entrance on East 33rd Street. One of the mayor’s aides escorted us to an office in the admin section, where Howard Sykes was waiting for us with our reluctant witness.

“This is Dr. Richard,” Sykes said.

“Detectives, I seem to be in a spot of bother here, but Howard assures me I can rely on your discretion,” he said in that proper British accent that immediately cloaks the speaker with an aura of erudition and culture.

He was fiftyish, tall, trim, with silvering hair and what the Brits call bearing. Having spent a lot of my time with men of means, I calculated that his worsted wool Armani suit and his Gucci ostrich-skin loafers would run me at least a month’s salary. There was a gold band on the fourth finger of his left hand.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Tell us what happened.”

“Unbeknownst to me, there is a band of brazen thieves stealing hospital equipment,” he said. “Had I been aware of the crime wave, I would not have been so quick to choose the room where the new spirometry equipment is being housed. I’m rather mortified to admit that I was in there for a late-night dalliance with a member of the nursing staff, whose name I shall not reveal unless I am remanded to do so by the courts.”

“I assure you that won’t happen,” Howard said, speaking on behalf of the entire criminal justice system. “Just tell the detectives what you can.”

“It was shortly after midnight. They opened the door, and I must say, they were as surprised to see the two of us as we were to see the four of them. They were all wearing scrubs, so I assumed they were staff, but then one of them pulled out a gun.”

“Did you see their faces?” Kylie asked.

“Yes, and my first thought was, Now that I can identify them, they’re going to kill me. But upon closer inspection, I could see that they were wearing masks. Not your typical Halloween fare, but skintight Hollywood-quality silicone. Ingenious disguise, actually.”

“And then what?” I asked.

“The one with the gun spoke. He was very calm, very polite — had a bit of a Texas accent, a little like Tommy Lee Jones. He assured us that we wouldn’t be hurt if we complied. Then two of them bound our hands and feet and covered our mouths with duct tape while the other two put the equipment on a gurney and covered it with a sheet. They were in and out in less than two minutes, but it was six in the morning before my companion and I were found.”

Lucky for us, someone found him. If he had managed to get out on his own, we wouldn’t have had a witness. We thanked him, and he left in a hurry.

“Even though they wore masks,” I said to Howard, “we’d like to check the security footage to see what vehicles they used.”

“There is no security footage,” he said. “They wiped the hard drive.”

“These guys are ninjas,” Kylie said. “Do you know if the hospital backs up their video to the cloud?”

“I’m afraid they don’t. From what I understand, an upgrade is scheduled for next fiscal year, but I’m not on the board here. I only stepped in because the mayor and I are personal friends of the doctor and his wife.”

“Do you want to tell us Dr. Richard’s real name?” Kylie asked.

Howard smiled. “No. Like they used to say on Dragnet, the names have been changed to protect the innocent.”

“Is there any chance we could get to interview his companion, this member of the nursing staff?” Kylie said.

“I certainly can’t help you there, Detective,” Howard said. “I don’t even know her name.”

“Based on the doc’s choice of words and his avoidance of pronouns,” Kylie said, “I don’t even know if it’s a her.”

Chapter 28

“So who do you think wound up with the necklace?” Kylie said as soon as she started the car. “Teddy or our phantom buyer?”

It was a simple enough question, but something about the offhand way she asked it set me off.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are we back on our primary case now? Because my head is still jammed up with this drop-everything hospital mission you decided was so critical, and I’m having trouble keeping up every time you change gears. It would really help me if you handed out a schedule first thing in the morning to let me know how you plan to orchestrate my day.”

She turned off the engine and swiveled her body around to square off with mine. “You got a problem with me, Zach?”

I hardly ever get in Kylie’s face, and with her husband running wild, this was definitely not the best time to vent. But it was too late. I lost it.

“Yeah. You’re not my boss. You’re my partner. I understand you can’t always say no to city hall, but next time, check in with me before you say ‘I’ll be right there’ and then drag me along like I’m your pack mule.”

“I did try to call you, partner, but you were too busy licking your wounds, so I made a judgment call.”

“What wounds?”

“Oh please. I walked by the diner this morning, and there you were, wearing last night’s rumpled clothes, pouring your heart out to Gerri. I figured you had a major blowup with Cheryl when you got home. And then a half hour later, you walked into the office looking fresh as a daisy. Did you think I wouldn’t pick up on it? You and I went at it pretty heavy back in the day, so I know what you smell like after you shave and shower, I know that’s the backup shirt you keep in your locker, and I know when you’re pissy because your love life is off the tracks. Plus, I’m a detective with New York’s Finest. A little credit, okay?”

“Fine,” I said, doing my best to spin the word so that it sounded more like “Go fuck yourself.”

She slid back behind the wheel and started the car.

“You want to tell me where we’re going?” I said.

“We’re driving to the Bassett brothers’ to see if they recognize Raymond Davis or Teddy Ryder from their mug shots,” she said. “And if we’re really lucky, maybe they can ID the guy who chased Ryder down the stairs. Does that meet with your approval, Detective—”

“Teddy!” I said.

“Teddy what?”

“Teddy has the necklace.”

“Fifty-fifty chance that you’re right, but how come you sound so sure?”

“You just said it. ‘The guy who chased Ryder down the stairs.’ I think if our mystery man had the necklace, he’d have left the building nice and casual so as not to attract any attention. But this guy went tear-assing down the steps. He was after Teddy, and my best guess is that he never caught him, or we’d have gotten a call informing us that our double homicide has been upgraded to a triple.”

She thought about it for a few seconds. “Y’know,” she said, “you’re pretty smart for a pack mule.”

“We still have to nail both of them,” I said, “but we have a better shot at finding Teddy. Any word from NCIC on Annie Ryder?”

“As of an hour ago, they haven’t yet come up with a viable hit on her. She has a three-year-old Maryland license with a Baltimore address, but she hasn’t lived there in more than two years. Since then, she got a speeding ticket in Nashville and another one on the Jersey Turnpike. She’s not easy to pin down.”

“For all we know she got those tickets on purpose, just to throw the bloodhounds off the scent,” I said. “Q was right. She doesn’t want to be found.”

“Oh, we’ll find her,” Kylie said. “In the meantime, let’s go see if Leo Bassett has had the cocktail sauce removed from his jacket and the broom removed from his ass.”

Chapter 29

On the way downtown, I got a text from Chuck Dryden.

“Good news,” I said to Kylie. “We’ve got ballistics back on Raymond Davis’s Walther. It’s a 100 percent match with the gun that killed Elena. Of course, there’s no way we can prove that Raymond was the shooter.”

“No, but on the plus side,” Kylie said, “we don’t have to bring him to trial.”

West 21st Street was back to normal. The media vans and the paparazzi were gone, most likely in hot pursuit of the crime du jour.

Leo buzzed us in and was anxiously waiting for us when the elevator doors opened. “Detectives,” he said. “I’m so glad you’re back. I must apologize for my little hissy fit the other night, but I was beyond distraught about Elena.”

“We understand perfectly,” Kylie said. “There have been some developments in the case, and we have some pictures we’d like to show you.”

“What kind of developments?”

“First, we’d like you and your brother to look at some photos.”

“Suspects?” he said, tapping his fingertips together as if he were applauding.

“Persons of interest,” I said.

“Oh, I love that term,” he said. “Let’s do it. I’ll get Max.”

We sat down at the dining room table with both of them and laid out six mug shots, two of which were Teddy and Raymond.

“I’ve never seen any of them in my life,” Max said immediately.

Leo took his time. He picked up one of the pictures and stared at it. “Oh, of course,” he said.

“You recognize him?” I asked.

“I thought I did, and then I finally figured it out. He looks like a young Richard Widmark.”

“The actor?” I said.

“Yes, but the early years. Like when he played Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death,” he said. “I’m sure this is absolutely no help at all, but at least I’m taking a few minutes to put a name to the face.”

“I didn’t need a few minutes,” Max said, looking directly at me, although the dig was clearly aimed at his brother. “I’ve never seen any of them. Leo said you had some developments in the case. What are they?”

“There was a shooting on the Lower East Side last night. This man is dead, and this one is wounded and on the run.” I pointed to Raymond’s mug shot, then to Teddy’s. “We have good reason to believe they stopped the limo and killed Elena Travers.”

“Who are they?” Max said.

“Raymond Davis and Teddy Ryder. Do either of those names ring a bell?”

They both shook their heads.

“They’re career felons, but this crime is way above their pay grade,” I said. “They may have been turning over the necklace to the person who hired them when the shooting went down.”

“Did you recover the necklace?” Max said.

“No, but we were hoping you might be able to identify the probable shooter.”

I handed Max the fuzzy surveillance screenshot we pulled out of Elliott Moritz’s security video.

He studied it. “The lighting is terrible. It could be anybody. It’s certainly nobody I recognize... from life or the movies,” he added as he handed the screenshot to Leo.

Leo looked at it and shook his head. “Can you get us a better picture? A different angle? Or maybe do some of those crazy computer tricks to make it less blurry, like they do on the TV shows?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Bassett,” I said. “It is what it is. We knew it was a long shot, but we had to ask.”

“What do we do now?” Leo asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “We just wanted to touch base with you and let you know we’re making progress. We’ll get back to you soon.”

Leo escorted us to the elevator, and Kylie and I rode down without saying a word. Only when we were back in the car and out of range of their security cameras did Kylie break the silence.

“What’s your take on those two?” she said.

“Max is a coldhearted bastard who cares more about the missing necklace than about the dead woman who was wearing it. And Leo, who doesn’t understand the difference between the movies and real life, acts like he’s starring in a jewelry heist film, and the two of us are extras who play cops. What’s your take?”

“You know me, Zach. I suspect everybody of everything. The problem is, Max seems too smart to hire a couple of bozos like Teddy and Raymond, and Leo seems too dumb to put an operation like this together. So based on what we know about them, it’s hard to connect them to the crime.”

“Then maybe the real problem is, we don’t know enough about them,” I said, taking out my phone. “Yet.”

Chapter 30

Leo Bassett stood behind the drapes, peeked out the window at West 21st Street, and watched as Detectives Jordan and MacDonald drove off.

“They’re gone,” he said.

“They’ll be back,” his brother said.

“Two or three more times, maybe,” Leo said with a toss of his hand. “The last time around the cops barely bothered to talk to us. Don’t worry. These two will give up soon enough. They always do.”

They always do. Max closed his eyes and marveled at how blissfully ignorant his brother could be.

Over the past twenty-two years, the Bassetts had been the victims of three previous robberies. Each one had been flawlessly planned by Max and executed by professionals. None of the cases had been solved, and the claims, each one filed with a different insurance company, were paid in full — a total of nineteen million dollars. Max then recut the stolen gems and sold them as loose stones.

“Leo,” Max said patiently, “these two cops will not give up. They will be back again, and again, and again. You want to know why?”

Leo shrugged.

Max exploded. “Because they’ve got a dead fucking movie star on their plate. I told you this was a bad idea from the get-go. Banta and Burkhardt are in prison for the next thirty years, and what did I say to you? I said let’s not press our luck. Let’s not try this with somebody new. But no: you swore that Jeremy could pull it off, and he’d bring in two top-notch replacements. Top-notch? One is dead, the other is on the run, and the cops have a surveillance picture of your boy toy. You better find Jeremy and our necklace before they do, or we’re in deep shit. I don’t know why I let you talk me into this.”

“Talk you into it? Don’t lay this on me. What choice did we have? We’re hemorrhaging money. Do you know how much you’ve spent on your over-the-top African safaris and your insane deep-sea expeditions?” Leo demanded. “And God knows how many millions you’ve poured into the lake house.”

“While you, on the other hand, are as frugal as a church mouse on a pension.”

“I’ve worked hard all my life, Max. I’ve earned my little taste of la dolce vita.”

Max snorted. “Little taste? You are the most narcissistic, hedonistic person on the planet. You flew thirty people to Paris in September, put them up in a five-star hotel for four days, paid for their food, their wine, their—”

“Shut up!” Leo screamed. “It was my sixtieth birthday, and yes, I spent a lot of money, and no, I have no regrets. Non, je ne regrette rien, mon frère. I’m spending my money now, while I’m alive, and if I don’t have enough, I will go out and get more.”

“You want more money, Leo? All you have to do is sign the goddamn contract with Precio Mundo, and you’ll have all the money you ever need to feed your face until the day you die.”

“Never! Leo Bassett is a jeweler to the stars, not a flunky for a bunch of cut-rate, low-rent, bargain-basement Mexican whores.”

“Flunky? You’d be in a partnership with one of the wealthiest corporations in the world. And they’re not cut-rate. They’re mass-market. Which means half a million women could be wearing our jewelry instead of one dead actress.”

Leo took a step back. “What are you implying, Max?”

“I’m not implying anything. I am flat-out saying that it’s your fault she’s dead. You were supposed to be in the backseat with her. You were supposed to keep her calm and get her to hand over the necklace without an argument. It may have been the single most important thing you’ve ever had to do in your life, Leo, and you blew it off because you didn’t want to walk down the red carpet smelling like a fish stick.”

“I’m sorry about Elena, but stealing the necklace was the right call.”

“Why don’t you put that in a little handwritten note to Elena’s parents? ‘Dear Mom and Dad. Sorry about your daughter, but I needed the money. Signed, Leo Bassett, jeweler to the stars.’”

Maxwell Bassett knew where his brother’s buttons were, and he knew this was the last one he had to push.

Leo threw him the finger, turned, and stormed out of the room.

Poor Leo, Max thought. Did you really think I would let you and Jeremy be in charge of stealing an eight-million-dollar necklace?

He smiled. This was going better than he’d planned.

“The same goes for me, Leo,” he whispered softly. “Non, je ne regrette rien, mon frère.”

Chapter 31

“One dead perp is a good start,” Captain Cates said after we brought her up to speed on the Travers murder, “but it’s been almost forty-eight hours. Elena was an international star. Half the world is waiting for answers.”

“Then you might want to tell half the world that we’d have more answers if we didn’t get sidetracked every time another body-probe machine went missing.”

“I feel your pain, Jordan,” Cates said, “but this is NYPD Red, and nothing is redder than whatever is troubling Mayor Sykes and/or her husband. I gave you a backup team, but you two are still on the front line till these hospital robberies are solved.”

“Even if it takes time away from our primary case?” I said.

“You have two primary cases, Detective. What you don’t have is a personal life. Do I have to say ‘That’s an order’? Because if I do, consider it said. Now, is there anything else I need to know?”

“We did a quiet background check on the Bassett brothers,” Kylie said. “This is the fourth time they’ve been robbed in twenty-two years.”

“The bodega in my neighborhood has been robbed four times since July,” Cates said. “Give me a perspective.”

“The JSA stats say there were about fifteen hundred jewelry robberies last year — about four a day,” Kylie said. “So for the Bassetts to get hit four times in twenty-two years isn’t enough to put up a red flag. But this robbery smacks of being an inside job, and since Leo and Max are as inside as you can get, we wanted to know more about them.”

“I’ve met them,” Cates said. “Leo is a charming old queen. Dumb with a capital Duh. He was caught in a compromising position in a men’s room at a movie theater a few years ago, but that’s the extent of his criminal history. If you ask me, Max is the real felon.”

“His name didn’t pop up in the database,” I said.

“That’s because our penal code turns a blind eye to what he does. Max Bassett spends millions of dollars to hunt in private compounds where exotic animals are bred so they can be legally slaughtered. African elephants, lions, rhinos, polar bears — the man has a trophy room filled with the heads and carcasses of some of the world’s most endangered species.”

“That’s disgusting,” Kylie said.

“And expensive,” Cates said. “Max may be wealthy, but he doesn’t have unlimited resources. If he’s addicted to killing rare animals, stealing an eight-million-dollar necklace would pay for more than a few safaris.”

“It sounds like a motive, boss, but Zach and I interviewed someone today who told us the Bassett brothers are about to get very, very rich very, very soon.”

“Who told you that?”

“Lavinia Begbie.”

“The gossip columnist?”

Kylie’s phone rang. She checked the caller ID. “I think this is the call we’ve been waiting for. Let me take it at my desk. Zach, tell the captain what Lavinia told us.”

She stepped out of the room.

“We talked to Lavinia Begbie because she was at the Bassett brothers’ cocktail party the night of the murder,” I said. “Leo was supposed to be in the limo with Elena, but he bailed out at the last minute, which seemed a little convenient to us. But Begbie said that Leo tripped over her dog, took a header into the buffet table, wound up covered with goop, and was in no shape to make a public appearance.”

“So his alibi for not being in the limo holds up,” Cates said, “but I’m much more interested in the part about the Bassetts coming into big money.”

“Begbie said they’re about to make a zillion-dollar deal with Precio Mundo to mass-market their brand.”

“I didn’t go to business school,” Cates said, “but that sounds to me like winning the ultimate big-box-store lottery.”

“Exactly. So why would they risk it all to steal a necklace?”

Kylie came bursting through the door. “Good news, Captain. NCIC has a lead on Annie Ryder. Zach and I have to run.”

“Go,” Cates said. “Keep me posted.”

For the second time that day, I chased Kylie down the stairs and out the door, but this time we weren’t heading off to another hospital. I was convinced that Annie Ryder was the linchpin to cracking the Travers case, and I was psyched.

“Where is Annie holed up?” I asked Kylie as I got into the car.

She put it in gear and pulled out. “I have no idea.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“That wasn’t NCIC who called me. It was Shelley Trager. His cleaning lady showed up at the corporate apartment and found Spence smoking crack with two other men.”

“That phone call was about Spence? But you told Cates we just got a major break in our biggest case. Are you out of your mind?”

“Oh, I’m definitely out of my mind, Zach,” she said, nearly running down a pedestrian in case I had any doubts.

“How in God’s name could you lie to our boss like that?”

“Zach, she just put a freeze on personal time. How in God’s name could I tell her the truth?”

“And did you think about telling me the truth before you dragged me into this train wreck?”

“I didn’t exactly have time to come up with an elaborate game plan, Zach,” she said, zipping through another red light. “Besides, you would have tried to talk me out of it, and I don’t have time for that either. I need to do this, and I need you with me.”

“For what?”

“You’re the only one I can trust to help me talk some sense into my drug-addled husband.”

“Spence’s counselor specifically told you — you have to let the man hit rock bottom. You can’t save him, Kylie.”

Kylie almost never cries, but I could see that she was fighting to hold back the tears behind that strong MacDonald wall of resolve. She almost never curses either, but she wheeled around and hurled an f-bomb at me.

“Fuck Spence’s counselor! I’m his wife. I’m also a detective first grade with the most elite police unit in this city, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit around and watch my husband pull a ten-year stretch for crack possession.”

Chapter 32

Shelley’s apartment was only a five-minute drive from the precinct. With Kylie behind the wheel, I figured I had half that time to bring her down from DEFCON 1 to a more manageable state of hothead with a short fuse.

“Do you have a plan?” I asked.

“You know me, Zach. I’m methodical to a fault. That’s why they call me the queen of departmental procedure.”

“Listen to me,” I said. “You’re a cop. You can’t just storm into the apartment—”

“I’m not storming. Shelley left me a key. What he should have done was change the lock after he put the place off limits, but he trusted Spence to play by the rules. Big mistake to trust a junkie. Spence had a key, the doormen all knew him, so he apparently just waltzed right in with Marco and Seth.”

“You know his drug buddies?”

“I’ve seen them around Silvercup. Marco works for the catering company that services Spence’s productions. He’s a decent guy — married, goes to meetings when he’s clean — but he relapsed about a year ago and never bounced back. Seth is a total asshole. He’s a kid, maybe twenty-four, went to NYU film school, works on and off as a production assistant, acts like he knows it all, and when he’s hopped up, he knows even more. Neither of those two guys has enough money to feed his habit, which is why they glommed on to Spence.”

“Let me repeat the question,” I said as she pulled up to the building on East End Avenue. “Do you have a plan?”

“No. Do you?”

I didn’t answer. My only plan was to keep her from going ballistic.

The concierge at the front desk barely looked at us. He handed Kylie a set of keys, then busied himself with paperwork. Clearly he’d spoken to Shelley.

I’ve been to crack houses, but never to one on the tenth floor of a luxury building with a magnificent view of the East River. The smell hit us as soon as Kylie opened the door, and while the place hadn’t been destroyed like the studio sets, it looked like the aftermath of a frat party. No wonder the cleaning lady bolted. Spence had turned Shelley’s multimillion-dollar corporate apartment into a three-bedroom, three-bathroom drug den.

There were two men in the living room, one sprawled on the sofa, one on the floor, neither of them Spence. Kylie and I searched the place. He was gone.

We went back to the living room. The man on the floor had managed to pull himself to a sitting position, his back against a coffee table littered with drug paraphernalia, his legs stretched out on the rug.

“You got a warrant, Detective Harrington?” he said. “Or are you just not familiar with the Fourth Amendment?”

“It’s Detective MacDonald, Seth, and I’m here because the owner of this apartment reported a break-in.”

“And I’m here because your crackhead husband was having a boys’ night out, and he invited me over.”

“I’m going to make this easy on you, Seth,” Kylie said, standing over him. “Tell me where to find Spence, and I’ll let you walk.”

“Let me walk? I can walk anytime I want to. You busted in here without cause. But if you want to haul me in, fine. I’ll tell the DA that the cop who arrested me is married to my drug dealer.”

“I’m trying hard to be nice to you,” she said, her voice calm and composed. “Last chance, Seth. Where’s Spence?”

“You want to know where Spence is? Sure thing,” he said, looking up at her and spreading his legs even wider. “But first, suck my dick.”

And that was all it took for the woman without a plan to come up with a brilliant strategy. She kicked him right in the balls.

Seth curled up into himself, screaming in the kind of excruciating pain that only some men have ever experienced, but all men dread.

I grabbed her just in case she thought she hadn’t made her point, and for the next three minutes we watched Seth writhing on the floor, gasping for air, and fouling Shelley’s hand-knotted one-of-a-kind Persian rug with vomit.

Relief came eventually, and Seth finally settled into a teary whimper.

“Marco,” Kylie said to the man on the sofa, her voice barely above a whisper. “Did you see what just happened? Your friend here said, ‘I can walk anytime I want to.’ Does it look like he can walk?”

Marco shook his head, his eyes wide with fear. He sat up, knees pressed tight against each other, hands cupped over his nuts. “I swear on my daughter’s life, I don’t know where Spence went. Him and me, we’re friends. I don’t have a lot of money, but I always know where to get the good shit, so we make a good team.”

My phone rang. I picked up.

“Did you find Annie Ryder yet?” It was Q.

“NCIC is still working on it.”

“Then you were right,” Q said. “I do have a better database than they do. Annie’s back in New York. She’s got a place in Astoria.”

He gave me an address on Hoyt Avenue. I hung up and nodded at Kylie. “We’ve got a twenty on Annie.”

“We’re done here,” she said to Marco. “Take this worthless piece of shit with you.”

Marco dragged Seth to his feet and practically carried him out the door.

Kylie locked up and texted Shelley to send for a cleaning crew and a locksmith.

“Thanks,” she said once we were back in the car. “I was pretty crazy when we left Cates’s office. Having you there helped calm me down.”

I smiled. All things considered, she had been pretty calm. But I doubted if Seth would agree.

Chapter 33

“Ed Koch or Robert F. Kennedy?” Kylie asked before we pulled out into traffic.

I laughed out loud. Annie Ryder lived in Queens, and we were in Manhattan, on the opposite side of the East River. There were two ways to get across, neither of them any faster than the other. But having butted heads with me about her need to run the show, she was now turning the next critical decision over to me: which bridge to take.

“Haven’t you busted enough balls for one day?” I said. “Just get me there alive.”

We took the RFK.

Ryder lived on the seventh floor of a newly constructed fifteen-story tower that had been designated as affordable housing for seniors. Kylie rang the bell in the lobby.

“Ms. Ryder,” she said. “NYPD. Can we ask you a few questions?”

“Only if you have identification,” the voice came back. “I can’t open the door unless you show me proof that you really are the police.”

Kylie gave me a grin. Annie was playing the little old lady afraid to open the door for muggers. The charade continued outside her apartment until we proved that we were legit, and she finally let us in.

Annie had been charged twice with fraud, and even though nothing stuck, her picture was still in our database. But the person who opened the door looked nothing like the steely-eyed, stern-jawed, fiftysomething grifter whose mug shot I’d studied. This Annie was twenty years older, and with her gray hair pulled back in a bun and a warm crinkly smile on her face, she looked like the woman you’d cast to play the farmhouse granny in a Hallmark commercial.

“How can I help you, officers?” she asked.

“We’re looking for your son, Teddy,” I said.

“Then you should get in touch with his parole officer. That fella always knows where Teddy is better than his own mother,” she said, capping it off with a roll of her eyes that looked like it had been lifted from a fifties sitcom.

“When did you last see him?” Kylie asked.

Annie tapped her chin and thought about it for a bit. “Oh, I remember,” she said. “He came here for dinner Monday night. I made a meat loaf. Then the two of us watched TV while we had our dessert.”

“What was on that night?” Kylie said, asking the standard cop follow-up question.

“Well, I love to watch the celebrities get all dolled up, so we turned on the show where they were doing live coverage of a Hollywood premiere. It was horrible. Here’s me and Teddy, just sitting there eating our Chunky Monkey ice cream, watching to see who’s the next one to walk down the red carpet, and all of a sudden, this limo crashes and out tumbles that poor actress who got shot.”

We hadn’t asked her for Teddy’s alibi for Monday night, but she’d decided to get it on the record. Her bogus story had just the right amount of detail, and she wrapped it up by gracing us with a warm grandmotherly smile, which I’m sure was the exact same one she’d lay on the jury when she perjured herself on her son’s behalf.

“Can you tell me what’s going on that you want to talk to Teddy?” Annie said. “He’s made some mistakes, but he served his time, and now he’s back on the straight and narrow.”

Normally, it’s not a question we’d answer, but she already knew why we were there. “We’re investigating a homicide,” I said. “A man named Raymond Davis was shot in his apartment.”

Annie covered her mouth with both hands, reeling from the horror of it all. “I hope you don’t suspect Teddy. He and Raymond were best of friends. Besides, my son would never, ever hurt a soul,” she said, her eyes watery. “It’s how he was raised.”

“Did Teddy ever talk to you about Raymond?” I asked. “Like, do you know if anyone had a grudge against him?”

“I wish I could help, but you know how boys are. Teddy never tells me anything. Always confides in his father. They had a long talk Monday night while I was fixing dinner.”

Bingo. We’d finally caught her in a lie. Q had told us that Buddy Ryder was dead, and NCIC had confirmed it.

“Then maybe his father can help us out,” I said. “Can we talk to him?”

She put her hand on my arm and led me over to a sideboard. “You can talk to him all you want,” she said, pointing to a bronze cremation urn with Buddy Ryder’s name engraved on it. “Just don’t expect him to talk back.”

Game, set, match.

“The envelope, please,” Kylie said as soon as we got in the elevator.

“I tried,” I said. “Did I even get nominated?”

“No. She played you like a grand piano. The old girl could have done her victory lap right after the Chunky Monkey ice cream and ‘that poor actress who got shot.’”

“I know. She had all the right answers before we even asked the questions.”

“Mothers lie, Zach. And Annie Ryder does it better than most.”

Chapter 34

We got back to the precinct three hours after we left Cates’s office pretending to be in hot pursuit of Annie Ryder.

“The captain is probably wondering why we’ve been gone so long,” Kylie said, giving me an impish grin.

Our side trip to Shelley’s apartment and Kylie’s throw-down with Spence’s stoner buddies had wasted a serious chunk of time, and the grin was to let me know that she didn’t care.

“I need five minutes before we go to her office,” I said, heading up the stairs.

“What’s more important than debriefing Cates?”

“Salvaging my relationship with Cheryl.”

“Bad idea. Cates put a freeze on personal time,” she said, giving me another grin.

I gave her the finger and double-timed my way up the stairs to Cheryl’s office. She wasn’t in. I bounded up another flight of stairs and got to Cates’s office just a few steps behind Kylie.

Cates was in the middle of a meeting, but she dropped everything as soon as she saw us. I’m sure she said something, but I didn’t process a single word. I just stood in the doorway staring at the three other people sitting in the room. Our backup team, Betancourt and Torres, and, next to them, Cheryl.

She gave me half a smile. On closer inspection, it looked more like half a frown. I eased my way into the room as Kylie gave Cates a top line summary of our visit to Annie Ryder.

“She definitely knows where Teddy is,” Kylie said, “but she’s too smart to lead us to him.”

“I’ll post a team outside her apartment anyway,” Cates said. “Any intel is better than nothing at all.”

“Thanks,” Kylie said.

“Glad you got here,” Cates said. “We’ve been running down where we are on the hospital robberies. Torres, catch them up.”

“Lynn Lyon hasn’t been anywhere near a hospital since we started tailing her,” Torres said. “She’s onto us.”

“She’s not onto us,” Betancourt corrected. “She knows that her cover is blown, and whoever she’s working for knows it. Her scouting days are over.”

“So now what?” Kylie said. “We can’t wait for them to hit another hospital and hope they trip up.”

“We are going to wait for them to hit another hospital,” Cates said. “But we’re going to be inside the hospital waiting for them to show up.”

“There are over a hundred major medical facilities in the five boroughs,” Kylie said. “We can’t cover all of them.”

“We only have to be at one, and Cheryl has an idea on how to zero in on the right one. I’ll let her spell it out for you.”

It was a sting, and a damn good one. It took Cheryl less than a minute to lay it out.

“I love it,” Kylie said, “but we can’t do it without Howard Sykes on board.”

“Then talk to him and get back to me,” Cates said. “This meeting is over.”

The group broke up, and Cheryl walked past me and down the hall.

I followed. “Cheryl, can we talk?”

She let one hand sweep across the wide-open squad room filled with cop eyes and cop ears. “This is not the right place for a conversation, Zach.”

“I just need to say six words.”

“Fine.” She gestured for me to follow her. She opened the door and started down the stairs. I thought we were going to her office, but after half a flight, she stopped, and the two of us stood in the empty stairwell. This was as much privacy as I was going to get.

“Six words,” she said.

I took a deep breath and looked into her eyes. “I’m wrong. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

My father had taught me those words when I was seventeen, after I’d had a huge argument with my girlfriend the day before our senior prom. It had worked like gangbusters on my prom date, but it definitely wasn’t flying with Cheryl.

“Is that it?” she said.

“No. An apology is just the beginning. I want to talk about what happened and then prove to you that it won’t happen again.”

“We can’t exactly do that here,” she said, pointing at the grimy gray stairs and the city-mandated fire hose hanging on the wall.

“I was thinking dinner.”

“I hope you don’t expect me to cook,” she said.

“No, I thought I could nuke us something nice.”

She cracked a smile.

“Or Gerri’s Diner,” I said.

The smile got wider.

“Okay. My last shot: Paola’s,” I said, throwing out the name of her favorite restaurant. “I can call Stefano and ask them to bake me a humble pie for dessert.”

The smile exploded into an eye-rolling, this-guy-is-incorrigible laugh.

“Seven o’clock,” she said. “Pick me up in my office.”

She headed down to the second floor, and I went back up to the third. I wouldn’t be sleeping on the sofa tonight.

Chapter 35

Jeremy Nevins had never killed anyone before, but shooting Raymond Davis didn’t faze him a bit. The arrogant bastard had it coming. First he’d botched Jeremy’s biggest score, and then he’d had the balls to demand more money.

Jeremy was at a table in the Recovery Room, a plate of half-eaten Buffalo chicken wings and an untouched mug of Stella Artois in front of him. He wasn’t hungry, but he needed the real estate and the Wi-Fi, and no place was deader than a sports bar at three in the afternoon. Correction, he thought, looking down at his eighty-thousand-dollar Audemars Piguet watch: 3:01.

The watch had been a gift — more like a signing bonus. But with an eight-million-dollar pot of diamonds at the end of the rainbow, Jeremy would have signed on for a Timex.

The plan had been perfect until Leo, his self-obsessed partner in crime, decided not to get in the limo because he didn’t look right.

So now Elena was dead, the necklace was in the wind, and Jeremy was on his own, trying to formulate plan B.

He didn’t know where the necklace was, but he was pretty sure he knew who had it: Teddy Ryder’s mother. He’d never met Teddy until last night, but he knew all about him. The man had never had an original thought in his life, and now that he was wounded and scared, he’d go running home to Mama.

And Jeremy knew exactly where to find her. When you plan a crime with a scumbag like Raymond Davis, you hedge your bets. Jeremy had attached a GPS tracker to the underside of Raymond’s Honda Civic just in case he decided to take the necklace and drive off with it.

But the GPS had paid off even sooner. In the week leading up to the robbery, the car made two round-trips from Teddy’s apartment to Hoyt Avenue in Astoria. Jeremy’s antennae went up, so on the third day he tailed the Honda to Annie Ryder’s doorstep.

He knew the old con woman’s history, and he knew that pulling a gun on her wouldn’t produce the necklace. The only way to get it was to cut her a deal, and then get Leo to pay her price.

He tapped on his cell phone and searched Google News. There was nothing on the shooting of Raymond Davis. Either the cops made him for just another crime statistic not worth the ink, or they figured out the connection to Elena Travers and put a lid on it.

The phone vibrated in his hand, and he flinched. It was Sonia Chen. He had no desire to talk to her, but she was too connected to the Bassetts: he couldn’t ignore the call.

“Hey, baby,” he whispered into the phone. “How’s the world’s sexiest publicist?”

“Terrible. Come on over to my apartment.”

“Honey, I’m busy.”

“Just for an hour. Please.”

“Sonia, I’m horny too, but—”

“Don’t be an asshole, Jeremy. I didn’t say horny. I’m scared. I’m lonely. I can’t sleep. I’ve never been involved in anything like this. Elena’s dead, and I keep thinking maybe if I made Leo go in the car with her—”

“Sonia, I’m sorry. But don’t blame yourself. What happened is sad, but it wasn’t your fault. It just happened.”

He waited for a response. Nothing.

“Sonia... does that help, baby?”

“It would help a lot more if you came over here and said it in person,” she said, capping the plea with a loud sigh. “Just for a little while. I really don’t want to be alone. Please.”

Without Sonia Chen, Jeremy never would have met Leo Bassett. He didn’t need her anymore, but if there’s one thing he’d learned stalking prey in the valley of the rich and gullible, it was to never, ever burn bridges.

He looked at his watch. How pathetic that your wrist is worth a fortune, it said, but the rest of you still isn’t worth shit.

“Of course I’ll be there, baby,” he said. “I’ll be right over.”

His face-to-face with Annie Ryder would have to wait.

Chapter 36

Any woman who tells a man she wants to be cuddled and not fucked is either lying to herself or to the guy, or both, Jeremy thought after he’d brought Sonia to her third frenzied orgasm in an hour and a half.

The first one had left her in tears, and he held her in his arms while she sobbed for the dead actress. The second one was much more joyful, like a good old-fashioned, no-strings-attached romp in the sack. The final one was slower, more tender at first. He took his time, teasing her with his tongue, lulling her with gentle kisses, sliding her down onto his lap, and keeping up with her gentle undulating rhythm.

And just as she began to slow down, he lifted her up, and with her legs wrapped tightly around him, he pressed her against a wall with deep, hard, unremitting thrusts until the moans of “Don’t stop” exploded into cries of surrender.

Another satisfied customer, Jeremy thought as he showered. Everybody was good at something, and he’d been blessed with the equipment and the technique to drive a lover to insane new heights.

In the end, not all of them remembered him fondly. Some despised him. Some wished him dead. But none of them would ever forget him.

Sadly, none of that charm or sexual prowess would serve him well in his next encounter. All anyone needed to go up against Annie Ryder was cunning. And he knew enough about her to know that she had more than most.

And yet when the gray-haired woman opened the door to her apartment, Jeremy couldn’t help himself. “You’re much younger than I expected,” he said, reverting to habit.

“And you’re every bit as full of shit as I expected,” the old lady said, ushering him into the living room. “Have a seat.”

He sat down on a rose-colored sofa, and she sat next to him, practically knee to knee. “You called me,” she said. “What’s on your mind?”

“Your son has my necklace.”

“Your necklace?” Annie said. “You and I must not be on the same page, because the necklace all the TV reporters are talking about belongs to these two Bassett brothers.”

“It did. But I hired your son and his friend to procure it for me, and they reneged on their part of the deal.”

Annie smiled. “And from what I understand, according to the Book of Jeremy, the punishment for reneging is a bullet through the brain.”

“That was an unfortunate misunderstanding.”

“What about shooting my son? Was that another unfortunate misunderstanding?”

“Mrs. Ryder—”

She rested her fingers on the back of his hand. “Please... call me Annie.”

“Can we cut the crap, Annie?” he said, pulling his hand away and standing up. “I’m not one of your marks. I’m the guy who hired Raymond and Teddy to do a simple job, and they turned it into a page-one clusterfuck. Here’s the bottom line: you’ve got the hottest piece of jewelry on the planet, and there’s not a fence within three thousand miles that will handle the necklace Elena Travers died for. So unless you’re wired up to the diamond mob in Antwerp or Amsterdam, you can either sell it to me or you can wear it to your next tea party and watch the rest of the old ladies wet their—”

“Get out,” Annie said.

“What?”

“You heard me,” she said, standing. “Get out, you foul-mouthed, disrespectful little snot. Get out before I call the cops.”

“Look, I’m sorry about the language. All I want is the necklace.”

“I don’t have any necklace, and even if I did, I wouldn’t sell it to a bad-mannered, ill-bred punk.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small cylinder. “This is pepper spray. I’ve used it before, and I’ll use it again. Out.”

She opened the door and watched as Jeremy backed out. Then she locked it behind him.

Teddy came out of the bedroom. “Ma, you were awesome, but now we’re never going to sell the necklace.”

“Of course we will.”

“To who?”

“Your good buddy Jeremy. He’ll be back, and next time he shows up, he’ll show me a little more respect.”

“You think he’ll be back?”

“Not back here, but he’ll call me in less than an hour. Guaranteed.”

“You are the coolest mom in the world.”

“Thank you, sweetheart. How are you feeling? Still sore?”

“It hurts, but no big deal.”

“Can I get you anything? You want some tea?”

“Sure.”

Annie filled the teakettle and then set it on the stove. Then she went to a cabinet and took down a tin of cookies.

“Hey, Ma, can I ask you one question?” Teddy said.

“Anything.”

“Isn’t pepper spray like a weapon?”

“It’s for self-defense, but technically pepper spray can be a dangerous weapon.”

“But you have a thing about no weapons, so how come you have pepper spray in your pocket?”

Annie took out the cylinder. “You mean this?” she said, holding it up.

Teddy grinned. “I got you now, Ma. How you gonna talk your way out of this one?”

Annie pointed the cylinder directly at her face, pressed the button, and sprayed it into her mouth.

“Breath freshener,” she said. “Wintergreen. Any more questions?”

Chapter 37

“Go next door and take a nap,” Annie instructed her son after they’d finished their tea and cookies.

“Aw, Ma,” Teddy whined. “That place stinks like cat. Why can’t I just stay here?”

“Because this place stinks like cop. There were two detectives here this morning. What do I do if they come banging on my door with a warrant? Tell them to come back in five minutes so I can tidy up?”

“Fine,” Teddy said, sulking. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ve got a date,” she said, her eyes smiling. “Now get out of here while I make myself as beautiful as I possibly can, considering what I’ve got to work with.”

She opened the door, scouted the hallway, gave Teddy the high sign, and he scurried to the adjacent apartment in seconds.

Then she went to the bedroom, opened the closet, and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. She frowned. “Needs work,” she said.

So she got to work. Makeup first, hair next, and then she slipped into a seldom-worn but totally chic Carolina Herrera black cocktail dress. A pair of sensible heels, two dabs of perfume, and finally, her hands a little shaky, she put the emerald and diamond necklace around her neck.

She went back to the closet door for a second look. “Mirror, mirror on the wall,” she said. “Who looks like eight million bucks now?”

She walked to the living room and stood in front of her late husband. “What do you think, Buddy?” she said, doing a full twirl. “It normally costs three thousand, but you know what a smart shopper I am. I got it for a steal at Bergdorf’s.”

She laughed out loud, and she could practically hear him laughing with her. She took the urn from the sideboard, set it on the kitchen table, and sat down across from it.

“I’m in over my head, Buddy,” she said. “I could use some advice.”

She placed a hand on either side of the urn and closed her eyes.

“The newspaper says this little bauble is worth eight mil, but I don’t know beans about fencing jewelry. What do you think this Jeremy guy can get for it? Forty cents on the dollar?”

Buddy didn’t respond.

“Thirty cents? Twenty-five?”

Her palms warmed when she got to fifteen. They tingled when she got to twelve.

“So if he’s getting a million out of the deal, what should my cut be?”

She ran through some numbers again until the two of them zeroed in on 17½ percent.

Then they talked. Mostly about Teddy, because he was always their biggest issue, and finally she apologized for not keeping her promise. Buddy had asked her to spread his ashes up and down the Strip in Vegas, and Annie had agreed. She just hadn’t said when.

“There’ll be plenty of time for Teddy to spread us both. In the meantime, I need you around.”

She sat there for ten more minutes, the urn cradled in her hands, until the phone rang. She put it on speaker so Buddy could hear.

“Mrs. Ryder. It’s Jeremy. Look, I’m sorry. We got off on the wrong foot. Can we talk?”

“You can talk,” Annie said. “I can listen.”

“I originally hired Teddy and Raymond for fifty thousand. Then I upped it to ninety. I’ll give you one and a quarter.”

“One seventy-five,” Annie said. “Take it or—”

“I’ll take it,” Jeremy said. “But I need time to pull the money together. How about if I come over tomorrow around noon?”

“Good idea. Bring some chloroform and an empty trunk. What am I, stupid? This either goes down in a public place or it doesn’t go down at all.”

“Okay, okay. What about Central Park?”

“Jeremy, old ladies without any jewelry get mugged in Central Park. Meet me at 205 East Houston Street at noon.”

He repeated the address. “What’s there?” he asked.

“Your necklace,” she said, hanging up.

She removed it from around her neck, wrapped it in an empty plastic bag from CVS, took the top off the urn, and dropped the bag inside.

“Keep an eye on this for me, Buddy,” she said. “You’re the only one I trust.”

Chapter 38

“It looked like you connected with Cheryl after our meeting with Cates,” Kylie said, navigating the car through the usual Third Avenue rush hour logjam. We were on our way to talk to Howard Sykes at Gracie Mansion. “Did you two lovebirds finally cement the relationship?”

“Connected would be an overstatement,” I said. “We had a brief encounter, like two ships in the night, only we were two cops on a stairwell. Cement is an even bigger stretch. Right now, our relationship is being held together by static cling. As for lovebirds...”

“I get it, I get it,” Kylie said, hanging a right on 88th Street. “I’m sorry I asked.”

“Don’t apologize. I’m happy to have someone to dump it on. You were right this morning about me licking my wounds. By the time I got home last night, I was relegated to the sofa, and I didn’t get to see Cheryl till this afternoon. And you can’t do what I have to do in a house full of nosy cops, so I’m going to try to make reparations tonight over dinner at Paola’s.”

“And are you telling me all this because you think I’m hooked on the soap opera you call your love life? Or is it your not-so-subtle way of telling me not to call you tonight because you’re busy doing damage control?”

“What do you think, Detective?” I said.

“My finely tuned detective instincts tell me that if you’re wining and dining Cheryl at Paola’s, she definitely won’t break up with you before dinner.”

We crossed East End Avenue, pulled into the mayor’s driveway, and ID’d ourselves at the guardhouse. An aide escorted us into Howard’s study. I cut straight to the chase.

“Sir,” I said, “we have thirty-five thousand cops at our disposal. That’s more than enough manpower to station a unit at every single hospital in the five boroughs and wait for this gang to strike again. But...” I let it hang there.

“But,” he said, filling in the blank, “you can’t mobilize that many people and still expect to keep a crime wave of this magnitude under wraps.”

“Exactly.”

“I’ve worked with you two long enough to know you didn’t come here to ask me to take the lid off this operation,” he said. “You have a plan, don’t you?”

“Actually,” Kylie said, “our department shrink, Dr. Cheryl Robinson, came up with it. Zach and I like it, but we can’t pull it off without a lot of help from you.”

“What can I do?”

“We need you to help us set up the next robbery.”

“You... you want me to help you rob a hospital?”

“No, sir. We want you to help them rob a hospital, but we’ll be there waiting for them.”

“Jesus,” he said. “Maybe I watch too many crime shows on TV, but I thought I’d tell you detectives the problem, you’d dig up some clues, and then you’d track these bastards down.”

“These bastards don’t leave a lot of clues,” I said.

“And which of our city’s fine medical institutions have you selected to be the designated victim?”

“If you can convince them,” I said, “Hudson Hospital.”

“How’d they get so lucky?”

“Two reasons. First, there’s the safety factor. These thugs are well armed. So far they haven’t used their guns, but if they walk into a trap and they’re faced with a SWAT team, they may not give up without a fight. Hudson is in the middle of a renovation, and we can contain the operation to the two floors where there are no patients or staff.”

“And the other reason?”

“We think Hudson has something they want,” Kylie said.

“They’ve stolen anything and everything,” Howard said. “Their philosophy seems to be, if it’s not nailed down, take it. How could you possibly know what they want?”

“Dr. Robinson did an analysis, and they’re being much more selective than we originally thought. They’ve never stolen the same equipment twice.”

He shrugged. “So? Stealing is stealing.”

“There are nuances,” Kylie said. “If somebody breaks into a department store and steals a rack of fifty fur coats, odds are those coats are going to wind up on the black market. But what if he breaks into the same store and takes two coats, six dresses, a few pantsuits, five pair of shoes—”

“It sounds like he’s shopping for his wife,” Howard said.

“Exactly. These guys are taking two of these, three of those, one of this. Dr. Robinson’s theory is that they are slowly collecting inventory for a single medical facility.”

“Jesus,” he said. “You think they’re stocking their own hospital?”

“Yes, but they still don’t have everything they need.”

“What do you think they’ll be shopping for?”

“Dr. Robinson calculated that based on the medical needs of a large percentage of the population, and based on the prohibitive cost of the diagnostic equipment, they would be very tempted to go after a state-of-the-art mobile mammogram machine,” Kylie said.

“And Hudson Hospital just bought two of them,” I said.

“I know their CEO, Phil Landsberg,” Howard said.

“And we know their head of security, Frank Cavallaro,” I said.

Howard Sykes sat back in his chair and rubbed his temples with his fingertips. He closed his eyes for at least fifteen seconds and finally looked up. “Do you think you can actually pull this off?”

“Not without you on board,” I said. “What do you think, sir? Can you help us?”

“What do I think? I think it’s nuts. Totally, certifiably crazy,” he said. “But I’ll call Phil Landsberg in the morning and see if I can convince him to join us in our insanity.”

Chapter 39

Jeremy Nevins, wearing nothing but a pair of black bikini briefs, padded across the room and explored the contents of the hotel minibar. “Do you believe the prices on this shit?” he said. “A jar of macadamia nuts and a bottle of Heineken cost more than my first car.”

Leo Bassett, lying naked under the sheets, laughed and stared at the sinewy, sculpted, perfect thirty-two-year-old body standing only ten feet away.

Spending Wednesday nights in the penthouse suite at Morgans with Jeremy had become a tradition, their private little escape from the rest of the world. And with Elena’s death, the robbery gone bad, and Max’s craziness about selling the company name, Leo had more to escape from than usual.

“What are you thinking?” Jeremy said, popping the cap on the beer.

“How much I love you, and how much I hate Max.”

“I love you too. And Max isn’t so bad.”

“He’s insane. He wants to sell our soul to the devil. He’s going to turn the Bassett brand into McDonald’s.”

“That would be terrible,” Jeremy said. He took a macadamia nut out of the jar and seductively set it onto his tongue before easing it into his mouth. “And think of the fallout. You’d make jillions of dollars. Maybe zillions. I don’t know. I’m not good at math.”

“I don’t care how much I can make. The name Bassett stands for the ultimate in luxury. When I introduce myself, I can see the look in people’s eyes. It’s as if I said my name is Tiffany or Bulgari. Do you have any idea how good that makes me feel?”

Jeremy gave him a boyish pout. “I thought making you feel good was my job,” he said, setting down the beer and striking a pose.

Leo squirmed under the sheets. “Yes, it is, and you’re late for work.”

Jeremy tucked two fingers into his briefs’ elastic waistband, licked his lips, and slowly, tantalizingly, lowered the front of the briefs.

Leo’s eyes were wide, and his breathing was shallow.

They all love a good show, Jeremy thought, and Leo is a better audience than most.

“But first,” Jeremy said, letting the waistband snap back into place, “we have some business to attend to. I found the necklace.”

Leo sat up. “Are you serious? Why did you wait until now to tell me?”

“I was waiting for you to be in a receptive mood, and from where I’m standing, you look pretty damn receptive.”

“Who has it?”

“The same guy who ran off with it last night — Teddy Ryder. Only he gave it to his mother, and let me tell you, Leo, this broad looks like that little old lady from The Golden Girls, but boy, can she play hardball. She negotiates like the head of the Teamsters union.”

“How much does she want?”

“A hundred and seventy-five K.”

Leo shrugged. “It’s more than we’ve paid in the past, but it’s still a drop in the bucket. We’ll collect the eight million from the insurance company, and even though Max has to cut the big stones down, they’ll still be worth five, six mil.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say, so I told her we had a deal. I have the ninety you gave me. I just need another eighty-five thousand in cash before noon tomorrow.”

“No problem,” Leo said. “Just don’t run away with it.”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. Even though you claim not to care about becoming a zillionaire, I promise I won’t run away with your money.”

He was being honest. Annie Ryder would wind up with the hundred and seventy-five thousand. All Jeremy wanted was the necklace. He didn’t need Max to recut the stones. He had a diamond cutter lined up in Belgium and was booked on a KLM flight to Brussels tomorrow night.

“What do you think?” Jeremy said. “Enough business for one night?”

“More than enough.”

Jeremy picked up the remote to the stereo, turned up the music, and spent the next five minutes artfully shedding a few ounces of nylon and spandex. When the dance was over, he stood in the middle of the room, gloriously naked and heart-stoppingly desirable.

Leo pulled back the sheets. “Come to Papa, baby.”

Jeremy crawled into bed, and the fat, pasty man pulled him close, shoved a thick tongue into his mouth, and reached down between his legs.

Jeremy moaned convincingly. It was all in a day’s work.

Chapter 40

There are three reasons why I love Paola’s restaurant. First, there’s the incomparable Italian cuisine that Paola Bottero brought to America from Rome.

Second is the unabashed hospitality that greets me every time I walk through the door. Tonight was no different. Paola’s son, Stefano, welcomed us with an enthusiastic “Buona sera, Dr. Robinson, Signor Jordan” and warm hugs that made me feel like we weren’t customers but friends invited over for dinner.

And third, it’s my go-to place to bring a date after I’ve made a fool of myself.

“You’re nothing if not predictable,” Cheryl said after we’d been seated and our wine had been poured. “Every time you and I have come here, it’s been for dinner and an apology.”

“There’s a method to my madness,” I said. “If you dump me, at least I still get a great dinner out of it.”

“I’m not going to dump you. I love being with you. I’m just not sure I can handle living with you.”

“I’m sorry. I really screwed up last night.”

“I’m not sure you screwed up. I think you were just Zach being Zach.”

“But it’s not the Zach you deserve. You planned this fantastic evening, and when the phone rang, I walked out on you.”

“Ran out.”

“In my head, I kept thinking, ‘You’re a cop. This is what cops do.’ But it wasn’t a cop call. It was...”

I stopped. This was tougher than I thought, and I was afraid I was going to make matters even worse.

“It was what?” Cheryl said.

I drank some wine. “This morning I went to the diner, and I told Gerri what I did. Her immediate reaction was, ‘Why did you walk—’ Sorry. ‘Why did you run out?’ And I said, ‘That’s what I do whenever there’s a damsel in distress.’”

Cheryl laughed.

“Well, at least you’re laughing,” I said. “Gerri went batshit. She told me Kylie was definitely not a damsel in distress. And she’s right. Kylie can handle herself. She kicked a guy in the balls today. The poor bastard probably won’t walk straight for a week.”

“I agree with Dr. Gerri. Kylie can fend for herself.”

“Anyway, I thought about it, so this afternoon, when I had five minutes, I googled ‘Men who try to rescue women.’ I’ve got what you psychologists call the White Knight Syndrome.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Zach. No, you don’t.”

“I don’t?”

“Absolutely not. Would you like my professional opinion?”

“Hell yeah.”

“Instead of googling everything that troubles you and then accepting as gospel whatever some idiot blogged about on the Internet, why don’t you talk your problems out with a shrink?”

“I’m in luck. I’ve got one right here.”

“Fat chance. You’re going to have to find one you haven’t slept with.”

“Hmm... that’s going to be a challenge.”

She dipped two fingers in her water glass and flicked it at me. “This conversation is officially over. Let’s talk about some fun stuff — like what did Howard Sykes think about my idea?”

“Nervous, but willing. Can I just say one more thing on the topic you don’t want to talk about?”

“One, and that’s it.”

“I just want you to know I’m trying. I told Kylie we were going out to dinner and not to call me. I figured if I were trying to lose weight, I wouldn’t stock the house with Oreos and Häagen-Dazs ice cream. Same principle. Out of sight, out of mind.”

She didn’t say a word. This time, the conversation was officially over.

For the next hour, we ate, we drank, we laughed, we talked — dinner was everything I could have hoped for. We were both too full to order dessert, but that didn’t stop Paola from sending a mind-blowing lemon tart to our table and then joining us for five minutes to catch up on how we were doing.

As of that moment, we were doing just fine.

And then my cell rang. I looked at the caller ID, hit Decline, and shoved the phone back into my pocket.

“Who was it?” Cheryl asked.

“It was Kylie, but I’m not accepting calls from damsels in distress this evening.”

Cheryl laughed. “Are you serious? Was it really Kylie? After you told her not to call?”

“Looks like I’m not the only one who needs a shrink,” I said.

Our waiter was just bringing me the check when Cheryl’s phone rang. She took one look at the caller ID, and her expression changed. This was a serious call. She answered.

I could only hear her side of the conversation. She didn’t say much, but the few words she did manage to get out sounded ominous.

“Oh no. Are they sure? Oh God, I am so sorry.” And finally, “Zach and I are at 92nd Street and Madison. Pick us up. We’re going with you.”

She hung up, and tears were streaming down her face. “That was Kylie,” she said. “She just got a phone call from the captain of the Four Four in the Bronx.”

“Jesus. What happened?”

“They found Spence’s body in a vacant lot. He was shot through the head.”