212 LP: A Novel (26 page)

6:15 P.M.

A
s promised, Tony Carenza was on the southwest corner of Union Square Park. The narcotics officer wore a fitted plaid western shirt, tight white jeans, and cowboy boots. His long dark hair was slicked back in waves across the crown of his head.

Ellie was four steps away when she heard him pawning his wares.

“Smoke, smoke, smoke.”

“Take a break for a second?”

He looked both directions. “Yeah, but follow me like we’re making a deal.”

She did her best to look nervous as she walked south with him across Fourth Street onto McDougal.

“What kind of luck do I have? Two times I see you this week, and both times I’m dressed like a cowboy trannie. More UC shit. Doing some pot sales here, but later on I’ll hit the clubs and get some felony busts.”

That first meeting with Carenza seemed like a year ago. Before Megan and Katie were killed. Before Tanya disappeared. Before she’d ever heard of Prestige Parties. Wednesday morning in court, Sparks’s attorney had argued that Mancini could have been killed in a home invasion gone bad. He’d known about the knock-and-talk at the
apartment next door. But when Carenza assured them the neighbor was chump change, they’d moved on to other theories. They had failed to ask the important follow-up question.

“When my partner and I first talked to you about Sparks’s neighbor at the 212, there’s something I never asked you.”

“Ask away.”

She’d wanted to have this conversation in person in case Carenza was uncooperative, but now she wondered if the trip downtown had been necessary.

“You said you told Nick Dillon about your knock-and-talk because you knew Sparks owned the apartment across the hallway?”

“Yeah. I thought Dillon would get a kick out of the two old ladies downstairs, so sure they’d found a drug dealer on the premises. Sorry if I stepped on any toes mentioning it to him, but I figured he’d been on the job and all.”

“When did you mention it to him?”

“A while ago, I guess.”

“How long a while ago?”

He shrugged. “I don’t really remember. Before the knock-and-talk, because I hadn’t gone to the building yet. We were still keeping the old birds busy writing down all their notes.”

She had first learned of the investigation across the hall just that week, when Sparks’s lawyer, Ramon Guerrero, had brought it up in court. And Guerrero said he had just learned about it himself. They had simply assumed that the knowledge was new to Sam Sparks as well.

“How much earlier than the knock-and-talk?” Ellie pressed.

“Way before. Maybe just a couple of weeks after the ladies came into the precinct complaining about the guy. Why?”

The neighbors had first complained in March. If Carenza mentioned their suspicions prior to the murder, and Dillon had relayed them to Sparks, Sparks could have staged Mancini’s killing to look like a home invasion, knowing that a pending narcotics investigation across the hallway would bolster that theory of the crime.

She felt a buzzing at her waist. A new text message:

The message stopped mid-sentence. Had Stacy simply hit the send key prematurely? Or was Ellie’s quickening pulse confirming her worst fears?

She hit the call button on her phone, grateful that Stacy’d had the piece of mind to identify herself in her message. It rang four times before going to voice mail. She tried again. Another four rings. She tried again. This time the call went directly to voice mail, as if someone had turned off the phone’s power.

“I’ve got to go.”

She heard Carenza ask her if everything was all right as she jogged east.

The first call was to Rogan. He didn’t bother with hello.

“You ready to switch?”

“Where’s Sparks?” she asked.

“Right here.”

“Where’s
here
?”

“I’m parked outside Ouest.”

“West what?”

“It’s a restaurant. O-U-E-S-T. Broadway at Eighty-fourth. He went inside about twenty minutes ago.”

A restaurant Rogan knew, and she didn’t. Definitely expensive. “Can you still see him?”

“Not at the moment, but I’m watching the only door.”

“Do me a favor, please? Go inside? Make sure you can see him?”

“If I do that, he’ll make me. He might not hate me as much as you, but he’ll recognize me.”

“I don’t care. Go check. Please.”

“What’s going on?”

“There’s no time. Just make sure.”

She hung up and placed the next call to Paul Bandon’s chambers. Given the hour, she was surprised when a secretary answered.

“This is Ellie Hatcher from the NYPD. Is Judge Bandon available?”

“I’m sorry, Detective, but he’s not in chambers right now. May I take a message?”

“Where is he?”

“Pardon me?”

“When did he leave?”

“Well, he didn’t. He’s on the bench. We’re all hoping he’ll call it a day any minute now.”

“But you’re sure he’s there?” Ellie asked.

“Of course. I’m still here, aren’t I?”

“I know this sounds crazy, but can you literally see him from your desk?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Can you please do me a favor and make sure he’s physically in his courtroom?”

“Is something wrong, Detective?”

Ellie could tell from the secretary’s tone that she was worried about the potential of a threat against the judge. Ellie saw no need to disabuse her of that impression.

“It’s very important. Please. Just make sure he’s in one piece and accounted for.”

The secretary returned to the line thirty seconds later. “Yes, he’s still there with the lawyers. Do I need to worry—”

Ellie hung up and dialed Rogan again. He picked up on the third ring.

“Got him,” he said. “Pretty sure he spotted me, but—”

“Who was he with?”

“He’s with some couple and an absolutely gorgeous woman.”

“Not Stacy Schechter?”

“Hello? I think I’d recognize Stacy. What’s going on?”

Ellie was crossing Second Avenue. She was almost there. She looked again at the text message:
Saw guy in photo. Tried to meet me.

Sparks and Bandon were both accounted for. Maybe Stacy had seen one of them earlier in the day and only just got around to texting her. Maybe there was an innocent explanation for the cut-off text message, the turned-off phone.

But then Ellie realized that Sparks and Bandon were not the only men in the photos.

“Forget Sparks. Meet me at Stacy’s place. She’s missing. We have to find her. And we have to find Nick Dillon.”

6:45 P.M.

S
tacy’s apartment was empty.

They had squandered fifteen minutes tracking down the building super to unlock the door, and all they had to show for it was an empty apartment. No break-in. No signs of a struggle. And no Stacy.

Ellie tried her cell again, but once again the call bounced directly to voice mail.

“She was smart enough to text you,” Rogan said. “She should know that if her phone was on, we could use the signal to locate her.”

Ellie tried to ignore the tormented face of Katie Battle, staring at her from the canvas in the center of the room as if Ellie had failed not only Stacy, but her as well. “I have no doubt Stacy knows that. And so does Nick Dillon. That’s why her phone’s turned off.”

They had already called in to have patrol officers check Nick Dillon’s house in Riverdale. She called the dispatcher and asked for a progress report. The car that had caught the call had not yet reported on scene.

“Okay,” Ellie said. “I also need to issue BOLOs for two subjects: Nick Dillon and Stacy Schecter.” She recited the basic identifying
information and waited while the dispatcher pulled up the plate information for Sparks’s black Infiniti sedan.

“Better be some major crime wave up in the Bronx tonight,” she said, flipping her phone shut. “They’re slow as molasses getting to Dillon’s place.”

“You don’t think you jumped the gun with that BOLO?” A be-on-the-lookout request would go out to every area precinct. “Man’s got a lot of friends on the job. We better be right about this.”

“We are.” Stacy’s text said that one of the men in the pictures Ellie had shown her had tried to meet with her. Sparks and Bandon were accounted for, but in the photograph of Sparks, Nick Dillon had been standing directly behind him with an umbrella. He was the only other man in the snapshots. “He’s got her. If he’d been anyone but a former cop, we would’ve looked harder at him. He’s the one who knew Narcotics was looking at the apartment across the hall from Sparks’s. He’s the friend who could’ve lined Mancini up with a girl from Prestige Parties, made sure he’d be at the apartment that night.”

“And now he’s going after Stacy to find Tanya Abbott?”

“That’s got to be it. He’s still trying to find the woman who was hiding in the bathroom cabinet that night. She’s his one loose end.”

As prominent as Tanya Abbott’s photograph had been in newspapers and televisions that week, they had never publicly released her connection to the Mancini murder.

“Or maybe he’s known who she is all along. If he saw something of hers at the apartment—her purse, maybe, her ID—he could have assumed at the time she’d left it behind. He could’ve staged the attack at Megan’s, and now he’s gone after Katie and Stacy, assuming they know how to find her.”

Ellie shook her head. “Still doesn’t explain those threats on Campus Juice.”

“Unless he posted those, too,” Rogan said.

“Look. All we know is Stacy’s missing, and I’m telling you, Nick Dillon has her.”

“So let’s do better than a BOLO,” Rogan said. “Let’s see if we can get a warrant.”

She flipped open her cell the second it buzzed. “Hatcher.”

It was the dispatcher relaying a message from the officers at Nick Dillon’s house.

“I’ve got a UTL on your two subjects at the address you requested.”

Unable to locate.

“Did you tell those officers this guy probably doesn’t want to be located? How hard did they look for him?”

She heard the dispatcher radioing to the reporting officer at the other end of the call.

“They’re saying they knocked on the door. No one answered. No sounds inside. No lights.”

“What about the Infiniti?”

“UTL.”

“Did they look in the garage?”

More crosstalk. “The only window’s in the back. They’d have to jump a fence to look inside.”

“Tell them to jump the fence.”

“The detective’s requesting that you check the garage…. Detective, I’ve got the officer telling me to remind you of the Fourth Amendment. They’re reporting clear on the call.”

“Do
not
let them leave the premises.”

More crosstalk, and this time Ellie thought the dispatcher had placed a palm over the microphone. “Detective, they’re outside the house and will watch until further notice.”

“Damnit,” she said, flipping the phone shut. “Dillon’s obviously got buddies up there in Riverdale. They probably think this is some spat between him and a girlfriend, and they’re not doing shit to look for him.”

“Can’t jump a fence without a warrant.”

“Or exigent circumstances. Don’t tell me for a second that those same assholes don’t claim exigency whenever they don’t feel like bothering with a warrant.”

“I’ll go up there myself,” Rogan said. “You get to work on the warrant?”

The image of Katie Battle looked out at her from the canvas.

“No, I’ll go.”

She could tell he was thinking about arguing, but he must have realized the futility. “Okay.”

“Call Max to help. And call Tucker. This is going to crush her, but she needs to know.”

“You want to stay here and make all those calls, woman? If not, you better stop telling me what to do and get the hell out that door right now.”

She spotted the cruiser around the corner from Dillon’s house, just yards from where she’d parked the previous night as Tucker had kissed Dillon on his front porch. She pulled parallel to the marked car and rolled down the passenger-side window. The uni in the driver’s seat gave her a how-you-doin’ smile, then did a double take at the fleet vehicle and lowered his window.

“You here about Nick Dillon’s place?”

“You know him?” Ellie asked.

The officer shrugged. “Just to say hi to. He was on the job, you know.”

His partner leaned her way from the passenger seat. “Pulled his full twenty.”

The uni in the driver’s seat looked away from her. “We about set? It’s busy out there tonight. Already heard from some wiseasses accusing us of cooping up here.” Cops were always looking for a place to nap in their parked cars.

“Don’t suppose you knocked on any doors to check if the neighbors have seen Dillon tonight?”

“No one asked us to do that, Detective.”

She nodded in silence, knowing full well what she was dealing with. Dillon was an ex-cop and therefore came with a strong presumption of being stand-up. Without the luxury of time to burst
their loyal bubbles, she backed her car against the curb behind theirs. She rested her hand on the open driver’s side window of the cruiser.

“If I’m not back in fifteen, call for backup. Shield 27990. Hatcher. They’ll have me down as Elsa.”

She ignored the driver’s chuckle and made her way down Dillon’s block, cutting through front yards to keep out of view from his windows. As she approached the perimeter of his property, she ducked low, grateful that the sun had begun its descent. She made her way first across his lawn, over his unoccupied driveway, and then to the outer edge of his garage.

Just as the dispatcher had relayed earlier, the solid brick along the side of the garage prevented her from peering inside. She leaned over an adjacent four-foot-high fence and spotted a window in the garage’s rear wall. She braced her hands on the fence top and jumped, wincing at the weight of her body against the pointed boards of the picket fence. If she was wrong about this, no one would ever know she peeked. If she was right, she’d save Stacy Schecter’s life and figure out a way to justify it later.

Through the dusty glass of the back window, she spotted Dillon’s black Infiniti sedan parked in the spot closest to the interior door leading into the house. The other half of the two-car garage was empty. Sam Sparks had parked his Maybach there last night. Dillon’s date, Robin Tucker, had not. She had parked on the street, the way most visitors did.

Not Sparks. He had parked not on the street, nor even in the driveway. He had pulled into the garage. Like a man who was comfortable here. Like a man who stayed overnight. Like a man who practically lived here.

She pressed her ear against the glass. No sounds of a cooling engine, but it had been nearly an hour since Stacy’s page. The motor could be long cold.

She worked her way along the glass toward the attached house. The blinds were all drawn. She leaned against the back wall of the house and closed her eyes. A dog barked somewhere down the block. A car started and left. Total silence.

The fence at the other side of the property was higher, too high to jump. She worked her way along the back of the house the same way she’d come. As she passed the garage, she peered inside again. This time, she caught sight of an object just beneath the passenger’s side of the Infiniti.

She looked for a way to open the garage window, but it was a solid piece of glass, strictly for light, not air. She craned her neck for a better look, squinting to focus her eyes on the object beneath the car. She finally made sense of the dark shape. It was the stiletto heel of a woman’s shoe.

She looked at her watch. Only four minutes since she’d told the uniforms to call for backup in fifteen. She sprinted to the front of Dillon’s house, across his front yard, and down the street to the corner where she had parked.

The cruiser was gone.