A Killing Gift (26 page)

M
ike wasn't too happy when she reached him on his cell. "Where the hell are you?" he demanded.

"I have a name on the guy with the dog."

"Querida,
whatever happened to communication?"

"How about a thanks?"

"I'm the primary on this, okay? I need to know where everybody is. Get back here right now."

"You're welcome. His name is Rick Leaky. L as in 'love,' E as in 'ever,' A as in 'after,' K as in 'kiss,' Y as in 'you.' "

"Very nice,
querida.
Leaky as in 'faucet,' " Mike said. "Where are you?"

"I'm outside an all-white, all-guy gym called Professional Prepare. Frayme goes there. Leaky goes there. It's quite a place; the members like to hurt each other. There's been some kind of trouble there, but I don't know what."

"S and M?" Mike asked.

"Only the karate kind."

"How did you find it?"

"Frayme has an a.k.a. It's Alberts. Al Alberts is his father's name."

"Get back here right now." There was some pretty heavy tension in Mike's voice.

"Okay, boss. I'm on my way to Devereaux's. I've got a photo to show him. He has a flight to catch.

Look, I got your a.k.a. I got your witness. What's your beef?"

"What ever happened to teamwork?" Mike was seriously pissed.

"Look, we've got this down really well,
mi amor.
You're doing the team. I'm doing the work." She heard his intake of breath at the smart remark. To anybody else he would say, "Fuck you."

"Do you have an address on Leaky?" he asked angrily.

"No. How about your team does that?"

"What about the dog?"

"It's a mastiff."

"Okay, get right back here and bring us the photo. And I mean now."

April checked her watch. "I'll be back at twelve-thirty, one," she promised, a little miffed at his lack of enthusiasm for her initiative.

At eleven forty-five Woody pulled up behind the limo waiting in front of Jack Devereaux's building. It was a busy Saturday in Greenwich Village. The car was idling in a no-standing-anytime zone, but no traffic cop was around to give the driver grief. April got out.

"I'll be right back," she told Woody.

This time she was able to identify the plainclothes cop sitting in a Corvette in front of the limo, also in a no-parking place. But she didn't take the time to stop and talk to him. She hurried across to the building's entrance and stabbed the intercom button. She stared at the officer in the Corvette until he raised one finger off the wheel to acknowledge her. The buzzer sounded. She pushed the door open and took the stairs two at a time.

When she reached Jack's floor, he was holding his door open and looking cheerful for a change. He was wearing khakis and a lightweight V-necked sweater. French blue, April's favorite color. His arm was still in its cast, and he hadn't shaved in ten days, but he looked as if he was finally getting a grip on his life. Lisa came to the door, and she was smiling, too.

"I hope this won't take long. We have to go," she said.

"I'm just going to stay for a moment. I just want to show you something."

April stepped around a pile of luggage to follow them into the living room, where the light was better. "What made you decide to get out of town?"

"You did." Lisa brushed her dark hair back. "Last night when Al called after you let him go, Jack looked at me and said, 'I must be crazy. What am I doing still here, still talking to a killer?' "

Jack nodded. "It's time to move on. Nothing like a life-threatening event to goose a person into reality. This is my life now. I have to deal. We're on standby on US Air. If we don't get on, we're taking the shuttle to Boston, then driving down to the ferry. When are you going to arrest him?"

"Probably today. We have a few things to clear up."

"Yeah, well, let me know when it's over. This has been…" He sat on the sofa, shaking his head. Lisa perched on the arm of the sofa. "We have to go," she reminded him.

April pulled the photo of Rick Leaky and his dog out of her pocket.

"And guess what-he called me again this morning." Jack couldn't quite let go. "It's so fucking creepy."

"Oh, yeah? What's he want now?"

"Same thing. He wanted to make sure I was coming to the reunion next week."

"What day is that, Jack?"

"Helloooo, it's Wednesday."

"Okay, Wednesday isn't a good day for either of us."

"No, and he asked about you."

"What?" April felt a little stab of concern. "Me cop?"
Or me victim?
she didn't ask.

"He recognized your picture in the paper. You'd better watch out."

April's tongue darted to the corner of her mouth.
Never underestimate an opponent,
she thought. "I have people with me," she said. And she was in a car, had a gun, was a cop.

"He's already killed a cop." Jack read her mind. "He's crazy. He thinks you're after him."

"Well, he's right. And I'm going to get him, too. Don't worry; we know where he is. He's not going to hurt anyone else." Still, she felt a second prickle of anxiety. Hell, she was furious, and worried. A second later she brushed off the fear. He wasn't Superman. He was just a crazy squirrel with a friend who got off on hurting people, seeing people hurt. Two nuts who probably egged each other on and weren't even smart. She'd found them, and they couldn't find her.

"What did you want me to look at?" Jack asked.

She passed the photo of Leaky and his mastiff called June. "Have you ever seen this guy before?"

Lisa and Jack studied the man and dog for a long minute. Lisa shook her head. "Who is it?"

"Someone who works out in a gym around here," April said vaguely.

"That's some powerful-looking dog. What is it?" Jack asked.

"She's a mastiff. Her name is June; have you seen her?"

"Maybe." He covered the man's red hair with his hand.

"Maybe isn't good enough. It's an unusual dog."

Lisa pointed at her watch. It was five to twelve.

April didn't move. She wasn't hurrying through this. What was time to them now?

"Okay, I have seen him, but not with the hair," Jack said finally.

"The night of the murder?"

"No, I saw him before that."

April's heartbeat spiked. "When?"

"I saw him with Al, a couple of weeks ago, maybe the Saturday before. Yeah, I remember. It was a Saturday. The press was still following me around, taking pictures wherever I went. There are a lot of pictures of me and Lisa with Sheba around. I wouldn't be surprised if someone took a picture of us. I was with Sheba. This guy was with Junie. Yeah, I remember. He was wearing a Yankees cap and called her Junie. Al introduced us. Those two looked very connected. Are they a couple?"

April shook her head. "Just the karate thing. Were they in the square the night of the attack?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe Sheba would know." Jack cracked a smile.

"Where is Sheba?" April asked.

"She's with my girlfriend Sharon. Can we go now?" Lisa asked.

"There's a guy in a Corvette downstairs. He's going to follow you to the airport and make sure you get on the plane. Do you have a number where you can be reached?"

Lisa wrote it down and gave it to her. Then she jumped up and did something unexpected. She reached out and gave April a hug. "Thanks. You saved our lives. I guess you're one of those heroes they write about."

"No, no." April shook her head. She hadn't saved anybody. Bernardino and Birdie Bassett were still dead. Al Frayme and his buddy were still walking around. "Get out of here, and have a nice flight," she told them.

M
ike exhaled noisily as he examined the photo of Rick Leaky. "We got them now. This puts Leaky at the scene of Bernardino's murder. You sure this is the guy you saw,
querida?"

"Where's my medal?" April burst into a grin. She figured she'd done most of the work here, and now she wanted to be there for Frayme's arrest. "When are you moving?"

Mike shook his head. "You're something of a management problem," he said angrily. "Why did you take off like that?"

"I don't know what your problem is. I had to pee. When I was finished peeing, I had messages. We wanted Devereaux safe. Well, he was leaving town, so I had to see him before he went."

"How about consulting with me?" Mike didn't like these answers. His fuse was getting shorter.

April delicately lifted a shoulder. "I was downstairs. You were busy. You didn't pick up on your cell."
Thank you, Beame,
she thought. "Be reasonable."

Mike's fingers drummed on the desk. He wasn't buying the excuse. He was looking like Lieutenant Iriarte, April's boss from Midtown North, accusing her just because he could. It was a familiar scene in her life, a superior who happened to be her fiancé, chewing her out in the CO's office.

"Excuse me; you left something out," he fumed.

"Well, I already had the name of the gym. I got Frayme's a.k.a. It would have been a waste of time not going over there." He had her on the defensive big-time, and she didn't like it one bit. What was his problem?

"Look, we have a plan going here; you messed us up," Mike said sharply. "I'm the boss here."

"Well, you have no concept of time," she snapped back, surprised at her vehemence in telling the truth. It was taking time. Everything had to be done just so, and everything took forever, preparing the search warrants, waiting for rulings from the judges on the warrants, serving the warrants, doing the searches. The hours and hours of back-and-forth with the DAs, chewing, chewing over every little detail. Dotting the Is, crossing the Ts, and all the time the suspect was free.

April glared back. Only she seemed to be in a hurry. How could he expect her to sit there while they played with themselves hour after hour? She'd saved them a couple of days at least. Messed them up! How about broke the case? Her face froze into a Chinese wall of (number forty-two) silence as she tallied all the days of this case when she'd been up hours earlier than Mike, doing the kind of grunt work that he didn't do anymore. She was the one who had cross-checked the phone lists and the names and found Frayme in the first place. She was the one who had ordered the dog book, who had located likely karate studios, who was on the phone with Kathy and Bill and Beame and Hagedorn.

This was exactly what happened with commanding officers! They thought just being the head was enough. But the head of a snake couldn't move without the tail, and the head of a man couldn't think without a beating heart. And she was the beating heart of this case. Her heart hammered out her resentment, and also warned her to keep her mouth shut. The tongue was the enemy of the neck. And she didn't want her head to roll.

"We have a team here. An ABC kind of schedule going," Mike said slowly.

April concentrated on her actions. She'd shortened the lead time. What was the fault in that?

"You've lost your perspective here. You're too personally involved. The chief was right."

April kept her mouth shut.

"You're acting out. You're acting as if you're alone in this. And you're wrong not to step back."

He was pushing all her buttons. Her face was shut down. She inhaled through her nose, exhaled through her nose, letting
chi
reinfuse her body with all the vitality Mike was trying to strip away.

"Oh, Jesus," he said. Not Chinese spirit breathing.

She breathed. He swore some more.

"You've had it," he said. "You're too personally involved. And you're my wife. You'll have to go home now. I can't put it any softer than that. We can't have it like this."

His wife! She was not his wife. She finished breathing and felt much better. "What's going on here? What's your real problem?"

"I told you. I wouldn't put up with this with anybody else."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You mishandled this from the beginning. You didn't go by the book. You almost got killed. After that, you disobeyed me. You wouldn't take no for an answer. You never back off. So stubborn. You had to be on the team. I trusted you, and now you've drawn attention to yourself. Again. You make me nervous, April. I don't like you out there on your own. And that thing you always said. You were right: Couples can't work together."

April's features unfroze. He got her where it hurt, and he was right. "You work too slow," she said meekly.

"It doesn't matter. In this I have to be the boss." He put his foot down.

"I can't make the arrest?"

"No."

"I can't even be there?"

He shook his head.

"Is this a punishment?"

"No,
querida.
This is right. You don't want to be in the paper. You don't want to stick out in any way. You'll have to testify in court. Okay, you're going home, right?"

April swallowed hard, then nodded. At least she'd get to testify in court.

"I'll have Woody take you home. If he doesn't take you there, he's fired, okay?"

April nodded again. She felt like a kid called on the carpet. Her cheeks were flaming. She was busted. "You have everything you need to know?" she asked.

"I think we're just fine. Thanks." His eyes softened, but only a little. "Ciao."

A
pril trudged back downstairs and got into the car without looking at or saying anything to anyone-not to the uniforms enjoying a break in the sunshine in front of the precinct or the detectives heading in from lunch. She wasn't talking. Lucky for her no press was around to see her banished. Not that anyone would know, she told herself. No one on the task force, not even the primary, was allowed to comment on the case. So all the reporters were camped in the press room at headquarters, waiting for news. No one else knew she was out. It was her burden to carry.
Shit.
As far as she knew, the only good thing right now was that the crucial info she'd supplied about Frayme and Leaky was still secure. Politics was the only real constant in life. At that moment she wasn't looking around, wasn't vigilant, and didn't feel she needed to be. Who else was going to stab her in the back but her own people? She brooded as she waited for Woody to return from receiving his instructions from Mike.
Son of a bitch.
Everything she'd always warned him about couples working together-and that he'd always pooh poohed-was coming true. The female always got screwed in the end. It was a fact of life. Woody was
her
person, from
her
precinct, and Mike was giving him orders. She and Mike had driven in together this morning in his car. She didn't even have her own car to drive home. So many mistakes every step of the way.

Nothing about what was happening now felt right. The only really positive thing coming out of this was that nobody had even once hinted at the possibility of using Jack Devereaux as bait to catch Frayme. She had to hand it to Mike for that. Soon Jack would be safe on Martha's Vineyard, learning how to be a gracious prince.

Her head turned and her eyes scanned people walking on the sidewalk. Nobody but cops around. She was jiggy for no reason. A little paranoid. By then it was way past lunchtime, almost two p.m. Maybe it was the fact that she wasn't a team player, so she hadn't been invited to lunch with the team. Pushed out of the action, she had no choice about being a good sport. Oh, she was feeling paranoid.

She shifted uncomfortably in the warming vehicle. The window was open, but it was hot in there anyway. And it was taking Woody way too long to come back. She felt like killing him for keeping her waiting. Angrily, she flipped open her cell to see what was going on there. She was surprised to find a bunch of new messages. Jason Frank. Oh, God, she felt bad about him, too. After putting him to work on the case, it was only fair that she call him right away to thank him and let him know they were both off it now. Kathy Bernardino had left two messages. What could she say to Kathy?

This is the story, Kathy. Al Frayme may have killed your father; just a little mission killing, nothing personal. But
-
either your brother stole your dad's money, Harry Weinstein stole it, or your dad hid it very well.
April didn't think any of that would go down well. Another call she wasn't going to make.

She considered revisiting the missing-cash possibilities and decided that Harry most certainly knew where the money was. Getting him to give it up was another story. Maybe he was waiting for everything to blow over to retrieve it for himself. But how could she get to him now that surveillance on him had been lifted? She debated driving out to Westchester to check out that house again. Maybe she and Kathy could come up with something no one else had thought of.
I'm smart,
she thought.
I
cracked this case. I can crack that one.
She pondered the number four million-minus a quarter. She didn't want to go home. She wanted to accomplish something.

She was feeling really whipped when Woody climbed in beside her. "Where to, boss?" he said.

She shook her head at herself. No, she was definitely not up to telling Kathy that she'd landed in the same boat as Bill. In exile, excluded. And four was a problem number, not a lucky number to the Chinese. Chinese lucky numbers were three, five, seven, uneven numbers. She wouldn't look at Woody. Her impulse was to smack him for following orders of the enemy, her former almost husband. The best she could do was ignore him for a moment longer. Oh, well, she decided she needed an ally. And what the hell, she was hungry. She'd go home and get some food. Skinny Dragon would be happy to see her. "Astoria," she said.

"Yes, ma'am."

For once Woody had the good sense not to share his feelings. He drove in silence without automatically cutting off all the other drivers on the road whose cars he didn't like. Or even a bus or two just for fun. He took First Avenue and cruised almost slowly up to the bridge. Then he took the upper level, which was flowing pretty freely outbound at this time of the day. Off the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge ramp, he followed the signs to Northern Boulevard. Nice and quiet and smooth as could be. April didn't feel any less jiggy out of Manhattan, though. In fact, she felt worse the farther away they got.

The Woo house was a few blocks south of Hoyt Avenue, the Queens-side exit of the Triborough Bridge. Woody turned into her block and everything was copacetic here, too. But why not-Queens didn't have a lot of crime, like sections of Brooklyn and the Bronx. There were plenty of stores and commercial enterprises in Queens and both airports, but essentially it was a residential area. April's
qi
was as low as it got. She'd done good, but Mike was angry at her. Her ego and dignity were wounded. She didn't know which was worse, hearing his disapproval for her taking independent action, or feeling hurt at being kicked out like a cowboy cop. Frankly, she wasn't sure how they could recover from this.

Out of habit she checked the street for trouble. Saturday afternoon was quiet. She didn't know why people didn't sit outside around here, but they didn't, certainly not in the front yards of their houses. Nobody was gardening, hauling groceries inside. There were plenty of parking spaces and no sign of anything wrong anywhere.

Woody knew which house it was because he'd taken her there before when she'd been stranded without a car. Blood-red azalea bushes lined the walk to the front door. They'd burst into bloom since April's last visit. An arch of purple wisteria around the front door was blooming, too. The botanical display was a nice touch for a family that wouldn't upgrade the plumbing. But it didn't cheer her up. She couldn't banish the feeling of paranoia. Something was wrong.

"What?"

"Nothing." April's heart hammered out a warning.

"You okay?"

She frowned. Her street looked normal, but her house did not. Skinny Dragon was like a dog that knew at least an hour before its owner showed up that the master was on the way. Skinny had yelled at April to be there at three. It was after two-thirty now, and her mother's frizzy-haired head was not framed in the window. Where was she? April shrugged off the feeling that something was wrong. There could be a million explanations. Skinny could be in the bathroom, the kitchen, even the backyard. April got out of the car.

"You want me to take you somewhere?" Woody asked.

April considered the shopping trip to Flushing her mother had requested. She considered asking Woody to drive her over to Forest Hills to get her car. Why hadn't she thought of that on the way? She needed the car. What was wrong with her? She shook her head.

"You sure?"

Something was bothering her. Maybe it was the way Mel didn't know where Rick Leaky was. Maybe it was the fact that everyone was so casual about Frayme's status. She wished she could make sure that Lisa and Jack Devereaux had gotten on that plane and were gone. She wanted to call Mike and make sure-absolutely sure-that Albert Frayme was exactly where they thought he was: pinned down in his office on the second floor of the York U administration building. If she were in charge, she'd make sure, but she wasn't in charge.

It wasn't her problem. Mike was the head of the team, and it wasn't up to her to second-guess him. Skinny would say her
qi
was low, all yin and nervous for no reason. And she was not used to the feeling. She could have told Woody to wait, to drive her and her mother anywhere they wished. But she was demoralized and just wanted to go home.

"Thanks for the ride," she said.

"No problem, boss." And Woody drove off.