Seven ways to die

7

Cal Bergman was still intent on the black book he had found in Handley’s briefcase. He was seated sideways on the sofa in the hallway with the case opened beside him, a forefinger sliding down a page in the book as he dictated information into his headset.

It was not a little book. It was custom-made black leather, six inches wide by eight inches long, with a twenty-four-carat gold lock flap. It was indexed with colored dividers and was about four inches thick. He snapped around, startled, as Cody left Amelie Cluett’s apartment.

Cody laughed. “A little jumpy, aren’t you there, cowboy?”

Cal laughed along with him.

“Nothing wrong with having fast reflexes, Cal,” Cody said approaching the sofa. “And one of the reasons we picked you for liaison was your ability to focus. You were as focused on that page as a pitcher zoning on a catcher’s glove.”

“There’s a lot to zone on.”

“No laptop? Blackberry? Cell phone?”

“Nope. There are slots for them, though. But the book is amazing. This is an autobiography of Handley’s life in shorthand. Other than this…” He held up a baggie into which he had placed several receipts, “the cupboard is bare. Some personal photographs and other stuff but the book and the receipts are a gold mine.”

“Bag the book and the receipts and close the case.”

“Right. There is one other thing.” He held up a baggie with a black Halloween mask in it. “This was in the briefcase.”

“I’ll be damned,” Cody said. “Bring it along.”

Cody heard a vacuum cleaner at work in Handley’s apartment. He opened the door and leaned into the apartment.

“Wolf?”

The pathologist stuck his head around the corner of the library. He was suited out and had a surgical mask covering his nose and mouth.

“You and the kid made a pretty clean entry,” Wolfsheim said. Then added, “You may have missed a thing or two.”

“Such as?”

“I’m busy,” was his muffled reply. “We’ll get to that later. What do you want? We got work to do.”

Cody took the briefcase from Bergman and sat it on the floor inside the apartment.

“You’ll probably want to check this out. And you might be looking for a laptop, and a Blackberry. They weren’t in the case. We’re taking these.” Cody held up the bagged book, receipts, and the mask.”

“Just make sure they’re dusted before you go messing around with them.”

Cody chuckled and snapped his fingers. “Gee whiz,” he said. “I never would’ve thought of that.”

“Don’t be a smart ass.”

Wolf walked back into the library. As he did, he said over his shoulder. “We need to get that maid back here.”

“Frank took her home,” Cody said to the empty library entrance. “My guess is she’s probably napping by now. She was hot-wired.”

“Well, if she was as meticulous as I hear, we need her back here.”

“Looking for a trophy?”

“Didn’t you?”

“Yup.”

“Get her highness back as soon as we clean this mess up. This wasn’t a robbery. I want to know if anything strange is missing or was left behind.”

“Well, while you’re sweeping the apartment you might keep an eye out for a safe.”

“No kidding,” Wolf replied.

“Any ideas about the blood?”

“Yeah. I don’t think whoever whacked this guy was planning on selling it to the Red Cross.”

“Let’s get back to the loft,” Cody said to Bergman, closing the door. “Or the chateau as he calls it.”

“Wolf’s a little grumpy today.”

“Are you kidding? He was born grumpy,” Cody answered. “He growled at the nurse when she cut his umbilical cord.”

As they started down the stairs, Bergman said, “Ms. Cluett’s still peeping at us.”

“Yup.”

“All she had to do was walk across the hall, if she had a key.”

“Yup.”

“Would you consider her a suspect?”

“Why not? So’s the maid at this point,”

“Just asking.”

“Until somebody makes a proper I.D., we can’t discuss the case with, or give up the victim’s name to, anyone but the crew. From what I gathered all Cluett understands is, Handley’s dead. No details. Right now, the maid knows more about the scene of the crime than anybody but us-and the killer.”

They peeled off their gloves, left the house and put their satchels in the back seat of Cal’s cruiser.

“Let’s get a few blocks down Lex before we put the red light on,” Cody said, taking out his cell. “Then we’ll have some fun wiggling through morning traffic.”

Bergman smiled. “My favorite thing,” he said.

Cody dialed Rizzo.

“Here I am,” came Rizzo’s answer. “Wilma’s got her friend from next door sitting with her. She took a sleeping pill and was dead to the world when I left.”

“She and her friend understand to keep mum.”

“Of course. I’m approaching the garage as we speak.”

“Do me a favor. Call Rick McKeown. Tell him we have a hot one. We need him to send two men to the address. One downstairs inside the front door. Tell him not to tape the outside of the apartment. We don’t want to advertise what’s going on. The other man will stand outside the apartment door. They don’t need to know anything except that nobody goes in or out until Wolf finishes. He’ll tape the crime scene only when I give the word, and the upstairs man stays until we release him.”

“Gotcha. We need a couple of Rick’s boys to canvass the neighborhood?”

Cody thought about that for a moment.

“Not yet, let’s keep it in the family until we brief the crew. Also the woman across the hall is Amelie Cluett. She’ll be going to work and that’s okay. I’ve already debriefed her.”

“Usual procedure?”

“Yup. We’re on our way back. Ring the church bell and tell everyone mass will begin when we get there.”

“Uh huh.”

“And see there’s plenty of doughnuts and coffee-good coffee, not that Starbucks shit-for all the parishioners.”

“Done.”

He hung up and turned to Bergman, eyeing the evidence bags.

“Okay, tell me about the stuff you’ve got there.”

“There are more names in the book than there are in War and Peace. Phone numbers, addresses, coded references, indexed and divided by friends, acquaintances, business associates, adversaries, favorite restaurants and hotels all over the world, you name it. Not a word about family. But, I mean, some of these names are kids he knew in grammar school.”

“Brothels?” Cody asked.

“Probably. I haven’t gotten that far into it yet. Why do you ask?”

“Our Mister Handley had a sex jones just as compulsive as his need for order.”

“That what Ms. Cluett told you?”

“Among other things.”

Bergman grinned. “Sounds like an interesting interrogation.”

“Yup.”

Cody thought for a moment, then added, “She’ll be calling back.”

“You think so?”

“She was very stressed. When she calms down she’ll remember other things. Some of them will be important. A lot of them will be just wind.”

Bergman whipped through the clogged streets, concentrating on traffic. Then he returned to the subject at hand. “The back half of the book is an hour-by-hour list of all his business appointments for the last month with tabbed reminders,” Bergman said. “And then there are the receipts.”

Cody held up the baggie containing the receipts and looked at them. “Thorough, neat, orderly.”

“Those are receipts for everything he spent for the last week, including his plane tickets to and from Cincinnati yesterday, where he had breakfast, lunch and dinner. And taxis-he didn’t hire a limo there.”

“How about the limo that picked him up when he got back.”

“No. Nor the taxi he took home from wherever he went after the limo dropped him off. Those cards are missing from the deck.”?

Bergman was the newest member of the TAZ crew, or at least half-member. He still had one foot in regular NYPD, and served as the group’s liaison with the hoi polloi of the force. He had an astronomical I.Q., had graduated from high school at sixteen and was top man in his class when he graduated, at twenty, from Harvard.

Halfway through his second year he quickly focused on two subjects that challenged and excited him: forensic pathology and criminology.

One afternoon, almost whimsically, he quit pre-med. His parents, enraged and embittered by what they considered their son’s defiance and betrayal, demanded he come to his senses.

When he refused, his father disowned him.

To Cal Bergman, experiencing the sudden rush of freedom from their stifling influence was like an aphrodisiac. He sold his car and headed for New York where he applied for and was accepted at the NYPD police academy.

He neither expected nor got any favors. He graduated top of the class and started his career as a patrolman. Bright, dependable, intuitive, eager, unassuming, professional, all defined his slow climb up the ladder where he made detective after eleven years. His sergeant was Frank Rizzo.

It took four years of careful screening and special training during which Cody and Rizzo developed the men and women whose unique qualities defined the TAZ before Rizzo brought his name up. They had been searching a month or two for one more cop to round out the crew.

“There’s this kid in the Fifth…” Rizzo began one day then stopped as he ran Bergman’s qualifications through his head.

“Yeah?” Cody said.

“Tall, good-looking guy. A real chick magnet.” Rizzo paused, staring into space as he thought some more about Bergman. He nodded. “Yeah, he was really good.”

“He couldn’t be that good if it took you four years to remember him.”

“Well, he was a quiet guy. Not pushy, you know. Not a glory hound. A very professional guy. Knew a lot about forensics. Very tough but not so’s you’d notice it. I got thinking about him last night.”

“Does this guy have a name?”

“Yeah,” Rizzo said. “Uh…Bergman. Maybe we should pull his record and see what he’s been up to.”

So they pulled his record. They interviewed him. And he had what Cody called “the wisdom for the job.” Only one problem: he didn’t want to lose his place at the Fifth Precinct. He was “emotionally attached” to the crew there. Go figure. But somehow Cody liked the sound of even that. It might even be a good idea to have a NYPD regular on the team, as practical-and public relations-liaison to keep the regulars’ noses from going out of joint. So Cal fit perfectly, like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Calvin Bergman became the last jewel in the crown.?

They were three blocks down Lexington when Bergman rolled down the window and put the light on the roof. He kept nudging the siren as they wound their way south.

Cody held up the bag of receipts and shook them a little.

“What do you know about Handley’s last day on earth, Cal?”

“He had three meetings in Cincinnati. His limo driver picked him up at home at about four-thirty, a.m. Handley flew American. He was traveling light. No luggage. The flight was about twenty minutes late taking off and got in about seven forty-five. Had a room at the Airport Hilton and had breakfast in the room. My guess is he wanted to freshen up and brief himself for his first meeting which was a lunch at high noon with a man named Wilkes at a German place called the Hofbrau.

“His second meeting was at a bar in the Wilkes Hotel. A woman named Christine Sykes. Got there about four and the meeting lasted an hour-and-a-half. One vodka and rocks, two Manhattans. My guess is the lady was drinking the Manhattans. It’s a lady’s drink.

“Also he had his big meeting early, at six-probably because he had an eight-fifty flight back-so he would have laid off the booze. I say big meeting because the dinner meetings usually are and the restaurant was very expensive. The Hoar’s Hound Inn. They had a bottle of Australian Malbec that cost a hundred and twenty bucks. His client was Ernst Braufmann, CEO of a very profitable statewide chain of upscale supermarkets. Self-made man who turned his father’s grocery store into a gold mine. Handley was out of there by seven forty-five, caught the flight back to New York.

“They were about fifteen minutes late landing at LaGuardia, ten-thirty. His driver picked him up and he went by his office for about twenty minutes. But he didn’t go home after that. He made a note in the book. He cut the driver loose somewhere downtown at eleven-fifty but he doesn’t say where. I’m sure the driver will remember. No taxi receipt for the last ride home.”

“You have an amazing memory, Cal.”

“But it’s short term,” Bergman laughed. “By tomorrow half of that stuff will be gone but that’s why I put it all on tape as I was going through that little black bible of his.”

“Well, between what we know from the entry plus my interrogation and your notes, we’ve got enough to wake the gang up and keep everybody busy. It’s gonna be a long day.”

“They usually are,” Bergman answered with a smile.

“And I’m guessing most of it will be in vain.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think we’re gonna find the name of whoever did that job on him in any book. And I don’t think the killer took any of his business stuff from the apartment. Or anything else for that matter.”

“That’s why he went by his office,” Bergman said. “He probably dropped off the computer, his cell, and the Blackberry there.”

“What leads you to that conclusion?”

“He was going someplace else before he went home,” Bergman said.

“Keep talking.”

“Didn’t mix business with pleasure. So he left the business stuff at his office and then went…wherever he went.”

“Then why did he take the briefcase?” Cody asked.

“Because it had the little black book in it and that was very personal.”

“Cool thinking,” Cody said. “The book’s a map of his past, Cal.”

“Also his future,” said Bergman. “All his appointments are in it.”

“They’re probably in his Blackberry and laptop. They just happened to be in that personal book, too, and he took that with him. And that mask.”

Bergman nodded. “Full of personal stuff,” he said.

“Yup.”

“Why do you suppose he took all the receipts with him?” Bergman asked.

“Force of habit. He still had one more stop to make after he signed off on the limo and he was taking the case with him anyway so he took the receipts.”

“There wasn’t a receipt for the taxi…”

“…because it was personal and he didn’t want a record of it,” Cody said, finishing the sentence.

“And the mask?” Bergman asked, dodging past a FedEx truck and taking a hard right.

“That may help explain where he went on his way home.”

“I just thought of something,” Bergman said. “His overcoat was in that closet in the bedroom.”

“Yeah?”

“It was cold last night so he was probably wearing it and stopped to put it in the closet when he came in.”

“And…”

“If he signed off for the limo the receipt may be in the pocket. We don’t want to have to check with the driver unless we have to, he’ll get curious.”

“Good idea.”

Bergman drove another block, weaving through morning traffic.

“What a weird way to live,” Bergman said, half aloud.

“Not nearly as weird as the way he died,” Cody answered. “And I have a theory about where he stopped after the office.”