The Finishing School

56

MELANIE WASN’T one to stand still for long. After Ray-Ray dropped her off, she packed her suitcase, checked out, and took a cab to the airport. There was a seat available on a 7:00 A.M. Delta flight that got into JFK before lunch, so she handed over her credit card. Sitting in the airplane waiting to take off, she left a voice mail for Dan telling him where she was going, and why.

About five hours later, she stood in the harsh light of the baggage-claim area at JFK waiting to collect her suitcase. Supposedly a blizzard was on the way, and the woman next to her said the airport was closing in half an hour. So much for the prospect of reinforcements for whatever it was she hoped to accomplish here. The rest of the team would be stranded in San Juan. Lucky them. She shivered for fifteen minutes straight standing in the taxi line. On the ride in, New York City did its best impression of hell, with decaying highways, steam rising from enormous fissures in the roads, garbage and graffiti everywhere.

She checked her voice mail from the cab. A message from Detective Frank Leary prompted her to go straight to Noir, Jay Esposito’s club in the Flatiron District. The taxi let her out in front of an industrial-looking brick building on a cramped side street. She hauled her suitcase into the dark nightclub, breathing in cigarettes and stale beer, and found Detective Leary at the bar finishing an interview. When he was done, he escorted her back through the club, past the coat check and restrooms, toward Jay Esposito’s office.

“Apparent suicide. I’m all ready to slap cuffs on the asshole, and he goes and offs himself. Whaddaya gonna do?” Leary shrugged. He was a burly Irishman in his thirties, with a pleasant face and a receding hairline.

“I hate that. You’re just about to arrest somebody and they die. I always feel like I should do the case anyway,” Melanie said.

“Good news is, we think we found the murder weapon from the Deon Green case. Prick used his golf club, you believe that? We got the nine-iron with hair and blood still on it. Sent it to the lab for testing, but it matches up perfect with the bludgeoning MO in the Green case.”

“What makes you think Esposito killed himself?” Melanie asked as they entered the office, which was crowded with cops.

“I got maybe ten, fifteen witnesses saw Esposito come in here alone at eleven-thirty last night. Me and my partner show up around one, find him with a gun in his hand and his brains splattered all over that wall there. M.E. hauled off the body already, but you can see the debris.”

A nauseating amount of chunky tissue and clotted blood adhered to the concrete wall behind Esposito’s desk. Someone had drawn a large circle around it with red Magic Marker.

“I see,” Melanie said, swallowing hard, turning away.

“Found him slumped in the chair. Looks from the trajectory like he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

“I have to tell you, Detective, based on what I know about Jay Esposito, he’d never kill himself.”

“Maybe he figured he was going down and he couldn’t stomach the thought of the inside. Some guys can’t,” Leary said.

“Esposito would just hire a big-name lawyer in a two-thousand-dollar suit and try to beat the charges. He wouldn’t go without a fight. I’m sure of it.”

“What are you saying? You think he was murdered and the shooter faked a suicide?”

“Maybe. Who knows?” She paused, thinking about all the evidence that Esposito was being framed by somebody, then said more firmly, “Yes, I do.”

“Got any suspects?”

“Esposito was running a string of heroin mules between San Juan and New York. The suppliers were Colombians. A deal scheduled for last night went south in a big way.”

“That’ll do it. Colombians’ll whack ya as easy as they’ll say hello, and if you fuck with their transactions, forget about it,” Leary said.

“Or it could be somebody else we just haven’t identified yet. Esposito had a lot of enemies. What I’m saying is, I wouldn’t take anything for granted.”

“Don’t worry, we’re not. Crime Scene guys’ve been here for hours already, processing the place just like it was a murder.”

“Have they found anything?”

“They’re still working. So far the only item of interest besides the gun is a key they found, like, hangin’ out of Esposito’s jacket pocket. It was just kind of in a funny position, you know? Half in, half out, not natural. Like maybe somebody went through his pockets looking for something and knocked it out by accident.”

“Hmm. Do we know what the key is for?”

“Yeah, actually, that was weird, too. It had a tag with an address in Williamsburg. Not too often you find a key with the address actually written on it, right?”

“Maybe somebody wanted us to find it.”

“Huh. Interesting thought,” Leary said, looking at Melanie with enhanced respect. “Anyways, I dispatched a squad car a little while ago to check the place out. I’m waiting to hear.”

“I’d like to talk to the Crime Scene detectives.”

“Sure thing. Yo, Butch,” Leary called.

Butch Brennan from the Crime Scene team came over to them.

“Hey, Melanie.”

“Hey, Butch, what’s up?”

“Ms. Vargas here thinks based on the case she’s doing there’s a chance our boy was whacked,” Leary said. “You got anything points to that?”

Butch smiled. “Funny you should mention that. C’mon outside.”

Butch opened a nearly invisible door faced in the same concrete as the wall. “We dusted the doorknob. Pretty interesting in itself. Nothing. Wiped clean,” he said.

They stepped out into a narrow back alley that was covered in a pristine carpet of fresh snow. A horde of pigeons that had been eating from a Dumpster took off with a flapping of wings.

Butch pointed out several faint indentations in the snow in a small area cordoned off with blue police barricades.

“See here? We photographed three footprints around four o’clock this morning. Right, left, right, leading away from the door. Snow’s picked up since then, so they got kinda blurry, but they were real clear when we shot ’em.”

“Could you tell what kind of shoe made them?” Melanie asked.

“I’m gonna say a male. Looks like a sneaker. More specific than that, we need to consult our footprint guy.”

“When were they made?”

“The snow wasn’t crusted or nothing, so they looked pretty fresh. I’d say late last night. But this is the interesting part. Take a look at the left print here.”

Butch knelt down, took a little handheld broom from his pocket, and began dusting at the middle impression. “Don’t worry. We already photographed it and took samples and everything.”

As Butch carefully removed the top layer of fluffy new snow, a small patch of dark purple appeared.

“Blood,” Melanie said.

“Yup. I’m betting it was the victim’s. Lab’ll confirm that. We’re photographing the black floor inside with the infrared to get a better look at any footprints in the blood spatters. There should be some. He had to pick the blood up someplace, right?”

“So the shooter stepped in Esposito’s blood when he was leaving and tracked it outside into the alley?” Leary asked.

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Butch replied.

“He’s not as smart as he thinks he is,” Melanie said, nodding enthusiastically. “We’ll get him.”

DETECTIVE LEARY WAS a nice guy. When Melanie couldn’t get a cab in the snow, he left his partner in charge at Noir and drove her back to her office so she wouldn’t have to lug her suitcase on the subway. Melanie loved that about cops. They’d drive you anywhere, at the drop of a hat.

“So you got my little cousin on this case, I understand. Bridget Mulqueen,” Leary said, maneuvering his unmarked sedan expertly down the slick avenue at top speed.

“Oh, right, Bridget’s your cousin. I forgot.”

“How’s she doing?”

Melanie looked out at the falling snow. “You know. She’s doing okay.”

“Yeah, she’s green,” he said with a smile.

“She’s all right. She has the makings of a decent cop,” Melanie said, quoting Dan.

Leary glanced over at her quizzically, like he wondered if she was bullshitting him. “Well, just so you know, the job wasn’t exactly her lifelong dream.”

“No?”

“She was a phenomenal soccer player, Bridget. Did everything you could do with it. You Google her, she still comes up as the top scorer in her division. She wanted to go semipro.”

“So what happened?”

“Her old man was against it. My Uncle Jimmy’s an A-plus guy, but he’s a ballbreaker. I can say that, ’cause I love him to death. Larger than life, Jimmy Mulqueen. Definitely the type who needs somebody to follow in his footsteps. Aunt Beattie didn’t give him no boys. Four girls, he has. Bridget’s the youngest, and he wanted her on the job.”

“Oh. I see.”

“You know how it is with girls and their fathers sometimes.”

“Yes,” Melanie said. “I definitely know that.”

“Bridget’s crazy about her dad. So she came on when maybe it’s not the ideal life for her.”

“That’s a shame.”

They pulled up in front of Melanie’s office building. Leary looked at her with mild, trusting eyes. “Listen, you’d be doing me a big favor if you could watch out for her. She’s a good kid.”

For a second, Melanie wished that she didn’t want the one thing in life that Bridget so obviously wanted, too. But there was nothing she could do about it. With every day that passed, Melanie was more convinced that she and Dan O’Reilly were born for each other. Besides, didn’t she need Dan more than Bridget did? Here was Bridget, part of a cozy NYPD family, with this and that relative looking out for her. Bridget could get along without Dan. Melanie wasn’t so sure she could say the same for herself.

“I’ll do my best. Thanks for the ride,” Melanie said, feeling a sharp stab of guilt.

“Don’t mention it. I’ll call ya if we get anything interesting off this Williamsburg warehouse thing. And be careful, okay? Whoever got to Expo’s still out there.”