The Kills

24

I was probably the happiest prisoner in history.

"I've got the money to pay the fare," I told the officer, knowing it was a story he had probably heard every day that he was on duty.

"It's a free ride, lady. That's not the problem."

"No, no. I mean I realize that I jumped the-"

"Guess you haven't been on board since ninety-seven. The token's been eliminated. You're not in trouble for beating the fare."

I didn't even mind that there was no reason for me to be in cuffs, in the safe hands of PO Guido Cappetti.

"Assault on a peace officer," he said to me. "I saw you shove that guy right out of the way."

"I'm not going to argue with you," I said. "That's exactly what I did. But it's only because I was being chased by a man who attacked me."

"I didn't see nobody doing nothin' to you."

"I kicked the guy after he smacked me with an umbrella. He'd been chasing me up and down Whitehall."

Cappetti got on his radio and called ahead for a patrol car. "Possible 730."

"You're gonna psycho me?"

He was surprised I recognized the designation. "You been before?"

"No. Actually, I'm a prosecutor. Manhattan DA's office."

"Here we go, sweetheart. And I'm the commissioner."

"Do I get a phone call?"

"Back at the house."

"I was waiting for a New York City detective when I was attacked. I can give you my cell phone. If you call him, he can come meet me. Verify what I'm saying."

Cappetti listened to me for a few minutes, took the phone from my pocket, and dialed the number I gave him. "You Mercer Wallace?" he paused, then asked a few more questions, establishing to his satisfaction the fact that Mercer was, in fact, on the job, a real New York City cop. "I'm with Alexandra Cooper. She tells me she's an assistant DA." Another pause. "Really?" And then, "Is that right?"

Mercer told Cappetti to keep me with him when the boat landed at the St. George Terminal on Staten Island. For the next fifteen minutes, I sat side by side with Cappetti, who had liberated me from my restraints, leaving me to stare back at the sweeping vista of the great New York Harbor gleaming through the mist. The burning torch in the outstretched arm of Lady Liberty, the wide mouth of the Hudson River, the office towers of Lower Manhattan, and the spidery, weblike cables of the Brooklyn Bridge occupied my imagination while I kneaded my shoulder and tried to figure out who my assailant had been.

Together, Cappetti and I waited almost an hour until Mercer made his way out through Bay Ridge and across the Verrazano Bridge.

Mercer found us in the terminal police station, wrapping me in an embrace.

"Let go before you get yourself covered in this filth," I warned him.

"Your prisoner free to leave, Cappetti?"

"Yeah."

"Did I hurt the ferry guy when I shoved him? I'd like to apologize to him."

"Nah," Cappetti answered. "We get loonies all the time. Maybe you had a good reason tonight."

"Why don't you go inside the rest room and wash up?" Mercer said.

It was stupid of me to be nervous about it, but I had handled too many assaults that had occurred in public bathrooms. He picked up on my hesitation.

"C'mon. I'll check it out and stand at the door."

I went into the grim ladies' room, with its faded yellow tiles, exposed lightbulbs, and paperless towel holders. I avoided the mirror, stooping to wash my face and hands, letting them drip dry. I knew Mercer needed five minutes alone with Cappetti, to see whether there was anyone to corroborate my strange encounter.

It was almost eleven o'clock when we got in the car to drive back over the Verrazano, one of the longest suspension bridges in the world. The fog was now so thick that the skyline had been lost from sight altogether, and the immense tower at the far end of the span was barely visible.

"Buy you a drink?" Mercer asked.

I nodded my head.

"Mike's sitting at the bar at Lumi's," Mercer said, referring to one of my favorite restaurants, just a block from home. Warm and quiet, with a superb kitchen, the restaurant owner would have a fire burning in the small hearth right inside the front door.

"You've told him already?"

"You know how he hates surprises, Alex. Might as well get his thoughts on it, too."

While we drove to Manhattan's Upper East Side, I told Mercer exactly what had happened. We parked at the fire hydrant in front of the restaurant.

Lumi was entertaining Mike when we came in. "Holy shit," Mike said, getting off the stool, holding up two fingers in the sign of the cross, as though warding off a vampire. "You're really rushing the season on Halloween, aren't you, kid?"

Lumi kissed me on both cheeks and took me into her office, handing me a pullover sweater of hers, a hairbrush, and a tube of lipstick, closing the door so that I could repair some of the water damage.

"You're still shivering, Alex," she said when I returned to the bar. "Are you hungry, too?"

I warmed my hands in front of the fire. "It's gotten so raw out there. No thanks. Maybe when I defrost."

"I'll nibble on some osso buco," Mike said. "And an artichoke dip to start. Mercer?"

"Vickee fed me at home. It's all yours."

Lumi went into the kitchen to place the order while we talked.

"So what did he look like?"

"I can't say."

"Didn't you see him?"

"His face? Never."

"Well, was he white or black or-"

"I don't know."

"Don't give me that color-blind crap," Mike said. "I hate when my victims do that."

Mercer laughed. "She never saw his face."

"How about his hands?"

"Gloves."

"I gave you a damn umbrella. Why the hell didn't you hit him first?"

"Because I thought that he was just a drunken bum who had gotten too close to me by accident. Or that he was going to ask me for money."

"You should have taken the point of it, shoved it in his butt, pressed the button to open it, and sent him flying like Mary Poppins. What a waste of a weapon."

"Tell him about the pants and shoes," Mercer said, prompting me.

"That's when I realized he wasn't a bum. Navy wool gabardine, nicely center pleated uniform pants. And department-issue shoes."

"You're talking cop?"

"Or fireman. Or any uniform force in the city, except the Brownies."

"You do anything lately to piss anybody off? You're like our poster girl, Coop."

"I feel more like a poster girl for the Salvation Army. The only thing I can think of is that I just gave the go-ahead to lock up a sergeant in Correction. Impregnated a female prisoner over at Bayview."

"Give us his name and we'll get on it."

"The victim says at least five of the guards are involved. They take turns looking out for each other, divvying up the new inmates, charging for protection."

Mercer had another thought. "Mrs. Gatts got any relatives on the job?"

I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head. "I don't know anything about her."

"Well, let's do a little digging."

"You got a lot of balls in the air, Coop, and some of them are loaded with dynamite."

"I'll tell you what," I said. "If the Tripping plea actually goes down on Wednesday, I'm going up to the Vineyard to sit out the storm. Roaring fire, lobster dinner-"

"Jake?" Mike asked.

"Or no Jake. You're all invited."

"You'd fly in this weather?" Mike asked, revealing one of his few phobias.

"If the pilots go, I go with them. When they know enough to stop, I'm grounded. I've got to close up the house. My caretaker's going off-island, to his brother's wedding, and I can make sure the house is all tight. Think about it, guys. We could start off the fall season with a country weekend together." It would relax me to be there even in foul weather.

"Talk among yourselves," Mike said, digging into the veal.

"First," said Mercer, "we've got to figure whether this little encounter of yours is related to Paige Vallis-"

"Or Queenie," Mike said.

"Or one of my endless stream of attractive miscreants. It's a big fan club."

"Did you notice whether the guy was in the church during Paige's service?"

"No. I didn't see him until I came out onto the street. Actually, all I can say is that I didn't see anyone dressed like him."

Mike was picking at the marrow in the bone shank with a tiny fork. "Maybe he followed you downtown from the courthouse."

"She would have noticed."

"Coop? She wouldn't have had a clue if some mope was walking behind her on a rainy night while she's got her head stuck under a big fat golf umbrella. If he followed her from Centre Street, it explains the uniform pants, and why someone would have known where to wait for her," Mike said.

I chewed on a breadstick and sipped my scotch. Lumi had brought out a small bowl of risotto and I was making a dent in it, giving in to my emerging hunger pangs. "You know what I'm going to do tomorrow? I'm going to get Battaglia to sign off on a FOIA request to the CIA."

"Don't you love it when she thinks, Mercer?" Mike stopped eating and sniffed the air. "Hot little brain waves firing on all cylinders beneath those peroxide streaks while I just sit here enjoying a good meal. What are you talking about?"

"Freedom of Information Act request. There's got to be some connection among all these players that has to do with the CIA and the Middle East. We ask for the files of Victor Vallis and Harry Strait. Who knows? They might even have one on McQueen Ransome."

It made such a difference to have some kind of paper history of an individual, some written record of what he or she did to create a picture for us and retrace old paths.

"Don't think J. Edgar didn't keep Queenie's file at home. He probably had a hankering to try on some of her snazzy costumes-satin gowns, harem pants, over-the-elbow gloves," Mike said.

"And King Farouk," I said to Mercer. "You know the government must have kept some kind of dossier on him. There's got to be a way to find a nexis between these two murders."

"What other themes have come up more than once?" Mercer asked.

"Pornography. Queenie had it, Farouk collected it. And antique weapons," I said. "Farouk collected them. So does Andrew Tripping. And rare coins. Both Spike Logan and Graham Hoyt mentioned them."

"What were all those coins that we saw on the floor of Queenie's closet?" Mike asked.

"Just miscellaneous change, I think. I didn't look closely."

"Are they still there?" Mercer asked.

"After Mike and I found the inscribed first-edition Hemingway, we asked them to seal everything so the place could be inventoried."

"Yeah, well, that didn't stop Spike Logan from climbing inside."

"Tell you what," Mercer said. "Mike'll make sure you don't get re-arrested for anything before you get snug in your apartment tonight. I'll pick you up at seven, and we'll make another sweep up at Queenie's to see about those coins and anything else we might have overlooked."

We said good night to Mercer and finished our drinks. Mike's car was parked down the block, closer to my building, so we walked home and into my lobby. There was no point objecting to his plan to make sure I got safely inside and that there were no weird or threatening messages waiting for me on my machine.

I flipped on the lights and we walked in. It was obvious I had come home to an empty nest. "Nightcap?" I asked.

"Nah. You got an early wake-up call and I got somebody keeping the bed warm back at my place. You got any unhappy campers on the line?"

I checked the phone next to the bed and returned to the living room. There had not been a single caller. I dropped onto the sofa and stretched out, hoping Mike would stay and talk to me. Something about the dynamic of our relationship was changing, and I wanted to recapture the friendship that had always been so natural.

"Let me hear you turn that dead bolt when I walk out, Coop," Mike said, kissing the top of my head and walking to the door.

I got up and followed him, locking the door and putting the safety chain across. I took a long bath, then massaged my shoulder with Tiger Balm before climbing into bed, too exhausted to read or even relive the evening's chase.

The next morning Mercer and I rode up to McQueen Ransome's apartment and let ourselves in. It looked pretty much as it had when I was last there. The closet door was still ajar, wire hangers still displayed a few cotton housedresses, and dozens of silver coins were spread out over the floor.

Mercer and I put on rubber gloves. He had a pack of plastic evidence envelopes that he stacked next to us, and we both kneeled to gather the coins.

"Anything unusual about these?" I asked.

"So far, they all look American," he said, examining them front and back before bagging them. "Different denominations, but nothing too unusual, it seems to me."

"I don't know about your pile, but everything I've got is old," I said. "There's nothing here minted after 1930."

"I see what you mean. There's about ten of them here from 1907."

"We'd better take them to an expert, who can give us an idea of their value."

Mercer scooped up a handful and reached back to the floor to retrieve a small white piece of paper that looked like some kind of ticket stub. He examined it before speaking. "I know he had an appointment here with McQueen Ransome, but I hardly think that would have required him to crawl around on her closet floor-especially if it was after he'd found out she'd been killed."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

Mercer held out the piece of paper to me. "Spike Logan said he drove here from Martha's Vineyard, didn't he? Well, he must have dropped his ferry ticket stub when he was in here yesterday. Guess he wasn't too despondent to be searching for something that belonged to Queenie."