Cold Hit (31 page)

“Absolutely.”

“I’ll swing by and pick you up, since I’m so close to your office,” Mike said. “Then I can bring you back here to the hospital tonight. The D.A.’s Squad can take over your chauffeuring duties from that point on.”

I called the Special Victims Unit to see who would inherit the day-to-day work on the West Side rapist matter and was relieved to hear it was in the capable hands of two veteran detectives who had worked with Mercer for years.

Then I stopped at Rose Malone’s desk so that she could see that I was physically unharmed and tell Battaglia that Mercer’s shooting had not unhinged me completely. Now that I was an eyewitness to the attempted murder of a police officer, I knew that the district attorney would assign another prosecutor to take over at least that part of the inquiry, just in case the crime was unrelated to our probe of Denise Caxton’s killing.

“Would you ask Paul to let me have a say in who McKinney assigns to Mercer’s shooting?” I asked Rose when she told me that Battaglia had just gone to lunch.

“Sure. I know he won’t get to it today. He’s got to polish up a speech he’s giving tonight, and I don’t think he’ll have time to speak to Pat McKinney,” she said, looking through the crammed schedule sheet that she kept on top of her desk.

“Great. If he wants me for anything, I’ll be up at Manhattan North.”

When I reached Laura’s office to pick up my case folder and wait for Chapman, she told me to call Marjie Fishman, my counterpart in the Queens District Attorney’s Office.

“Are you okay?” Marjie began the conversation.

I assured her that I was and gave her the update on Mercer’s condition.

“You don’t have any racetracks in Manhattan, do you?”

“No.” I waved Mike in when I saw him standing with Laura outside my room.

“Well, we’ve finally got a situation that you haven’t seen yet.”

“Try me.” There were days when my colleagues and I were sure there was nothing left that one human being could do to another that could shock us. And then, without fail, something else came along to prove us wrong.

“Last Monday, out at Aqueduct, a cop patrolling the stables in the middle of the night came upon, shall we say, an intimate encounter between one of the grooms and a horse. The defendant’s name is Angel Garcia. The officer heard a loud thud, which was the sound made by the naked Garcia falling off the plastic bucket he’d been standing on.”

“How’s the horse?”

“The vet says she’s fine. If you pass an OTB office on your way uptown, tell Mike to put some money on Saratoga Capers. Last Friday, after a thorough examination and clean bill of health, our horse came in third. That’s her best start in weeks.”

I hung up shaking my head in amusement, although I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the poor creature. Fortunately, there were laws against inhumane treatment of animals, and Marjie’s Special Victims Unit was prosecuting Garcia for abusing Saratoga Capers. Mike laughed out loud when he heard the story.

“Just feature sharing a jail cell with Angel Garcia,” Mike said. “Every other prisoner has pictures of Cindy Crawford or Julia Roberts or
Penthouse
centerfolds on the wall. Meanwhile, Angel’s got giant-size pinups of Trigger and Mr. Ed. Go figure. C’mon, blondie. Let’s blow this joint.”

“Wait a minute. Has anybody explored that part of Omar Sheffield’s background?”

“Whaddaya mean? Horseplay?” Mike asked.

“Cell mates — just what you were joking about. When Omar was in the can doing time upstate, who did he share a cell with? Do we have any names?”

Mike stopped and double-backed to my desk to use the phone. “I don’t think I asked that question. I’m not sure anybody did.” He dialed the squad and reached Jimmy Halloran, a baby-faced cop who’d been on the Homicide Squad for more than a decade but looked like he was still in high school. Jimmy had been added to the Caxton team last night, after Mercer was injured. He bristled every time Mike called him by the nickname he’d been given by his team — Kid Detective.

“Hey, K.D.,” Chapman said. “Squirrel around on the lieutenant’s desk. See if you can find the paperwork on Omar Sheffield. You know, the bad boy who forgot his mother told him not to play on the tracks. See if anyone checked the names of his roommates in state prison. Coop and I are on our way uptown. If you don’t find anything in the file, call up to the warden at Coxsackie and get some answers. And if they need a subpoena, call Cooper’s secretary and she’ll crank one out for us and fax it up for her signature. Make yourself useful.” He hung up the phone.

“Where are you parked?” I asked.

“Behind the courthouse, on Baxter Street.”

“Good. Let’s slide out the back door. The fewer people I have to talk to about yesterday’s events, the better off I’ll be.” We went downstairs and took the elevators from the seventh floor to the lobby, walking past the arraignment parts and the roach coach, as the building’s snack bar was affectionately dubbed. It was half an hour before the courts recessed for the afternoon lunch break, so we navigated the hallways and went out onto the street without much delay.

As we walked into the squad office, Jimmy Halloran took his feet off the desk and stood to greet us, pointing out a young man who was reading a newspaper at a desk across the room. “That’s your one o’clock. The guy from Varelli’s studio.

“And those names you wanted from the warden? He said Omar Sheffield spent some of his time in solitary.” Halloran looked down at his notes. “Had three cell mates while he was upstate. Kevin McGuire, who’s done mostly burglaries, and Jeremy Fuller, who sold heroin to an undercover cop. They’re both still in jail.”

Again, he glanced at his notepad. “Third one is named Anton Bailey. Does this stuff mean anything to you?”

The Manhattan North Homicide Squad office was virtually empty. Every man and woman, whether on duty or off, had come in to try to crack the attempt on Mercer’s life. Those who were not officially in the field were pounding the pavement, leaning on informants to try to get a lead on which to follow up. The rest were filling the lobby at Saint Vincent’s, even though it was far too soon for all but the closest friends and family to visit with him.

“Cooper and I are gonna use the lieutenant’s office for this interview. Call Albany, call whoever you’ve got to, but get every single sheet of paper that exists in this state on Anton Bailey,” Chapman told Jimmy Halloran. “And when you’re done with that, call the Gainesville, Florida, P.D. and start all over again. Use both names, Bailey and Anthony Bailor.”

“Hey, Alex, how’d he get into the system up here without them picking up the Florida case?” Halloran asked me. “How come nobody figured out that Anton Bailey and Anthony Bailor were one and the same before today, huh?”

“Just lucky, I guess.” No one could be arraigned for a felony in New York State without a fingerprint check. But every now and then, all of the automated techniques failed. In some cases, if the interstate computer system was down and the perp used an alias, the fingerprint comparison was never actually made. The fine type at the bottom of the rap sheet, if the prosecutor or judge stopped to read it, said that the results were based on a name check and not a verified latent exam.

If the prior rape conviction had been reflected on Bailey’s record, then the larceny case would have drawn a mandatory prison sentence longer than the time he served. He would not have been free to have sexually assaulted Denise Caxton and to have set in motion the chain of deaths that followed.

“You must be Don Cannon,” Mike said, shaking hands with the man sitting in the squad room. “I’m Detective Chapman, Mike Chapman. And this is Alexandra Cooper, from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Thanks for coming in.”

I guessed Cannon to be younger than I am, in his late twenties, perhaps. He was a bit shorter than I, with a serious mien and horn-rimmed glasses. He seemed no more at ease than do most civilians who find themselves in the middle of a homicide case but express a willingness to cooperate, which few mean as sincerely as he seemed to.

“Why don’t you have a seat and tell us a bit about yourself?” Chapman asked. “I’d like to know what you did for Mr. Varelli in his business. That kind of thing.”

“You probably know by now that Marco was the master, the most meticulous workman in his field. Just about every important restoration project in the last fifty years has been offered to him. Those that excited him most, he worked on himself.

“I’m from Sacramento originally. Went to UCLA, have a graduate degree in fine arts. That the kind of thing you want to know?” He looked from Mike’s face to mine, tentatively, to see whether he was proceeding in the right direction. We both nodded.

“One of my professors had worked with Varelli on
Guernica
, back in the eighties. Do you remember, that was the Picasso that was defaced at the Museum of Modern Art by some deranged fanatic?”

“Yes, of course. Our office handled the case.”

“The professor knew that I wanted to work in restoration, that I hoped to develop a career, go back to the West Coast, and set up shop at the Getty or one of the other museums. To apprentice to Marco Varelli, well, there’s simply nothing better to prepare to learn this business, and no finer credential on a résumé.”

“When did you start to work for him?” I asked.

Cannon hesitated. “Nobody worked
for
Varelli. I mean, technical people did — laborers who picked up and delivered the paintings or arranged the studio. But he was quite a loner. Once he had established himself as the virtuoso, more than forty years ago, he was insistent on working alone. If you were fortunate enough to get his attention, and he agreed to work on your project, then he wanted the result to be only
his
handiwork.”

“What do you mean, ‘he agreed’? Didn’t people just pay him?” Chapman wanted to know.

The serious Mr. Cannon smiled wryly. “No, no, no. Mr. Varelli had more than enough to live on. He was paid handsomely for his craft. So, at a certain point in his life, it was easy for him to turn down whomever he pleased. If the painting or the artist was not one he deemed worthy of his effort, no matter what the price offered, he wouldn’t touch it.”

“How about if the ownership was cloudy?”

“Well then, Miss Cooper, there was simply no way to engage him. I can recall an instance when a collector showed up in the atelier with a Léger. The particular painting had been classified in the Pompidou Center as an R 2 P, which means that it had been seized by the Nazis during the war and later returned to France. To date, no one had been able to connect it to the original owner or his descendants. Signor Varelli refused to become involved until an effort was made to trace the lineage and try to find the owners. The more money that was offered to retain him, the more offended he became. I’m sure it’s a lot like that in the legal profession, don’t you think? I mean, with all the ethical dilemmas defense attorneys have?”

He looked over at me for an answer, which came instead from Chapman. “You’re watching too much Geraldo. I never met a defense attorney with an ethical dilemma — if the check clears, his client’s not guilty.”

“You said that no one worked for Varelli. Didn’t
you
?”

“I had the privilege of being apprenticed to him, Detective. An expensive privilege.”

“You had to pay to help him?”

“I had a grant, actually, from a private family foundation. That’s what made the experience possible for me. I certainly wouldn’t have had the means to do it otherwise. Consider it like going to the best school in the world. For close to three years I was tutored by a genius. The skills he has given me are qualities I could never have learned anywhere else.” Cannon bowed his head. “I still can’t believe he’s gone. And worst of all, murdered.” He looked up at us. “He was such a quiet, benign man. There’s not a reason I can think of for someone to hurt him.”

“Let me run some names by you. Tell us if you know any of these people, okay?”

Cannon cleared his throat and said it would be fine.

“Start with Lowell Caxton. Ever meet him?”

“Many, many times. I’d guess Marco had known him for as long as I’ve been alive. I think he was one of the few collectors whose taste Mr. Varelli admired. I’ve never been to any of Caxton’s homes, but I understand there were several generations of a great genetic eye for art. Mr. Caxton used to come by for an opinion every now and then. Do you know about the Titian — the one he gave to Marco?”

“Yes. We spent a few minutes with Mrs. Varelli at the funeral home. We expect to see her in the apartment later this week.”

“Marco adored that gift, a real jewel of a little drawing. I think his acceptance of Lowell Caxton had a lot to do with that gesture. It would be hard to dislike someone who had done such a generous thing.”

“Any conflict between them, ever?”

Cannon shrugged his shoulders. “Not that I ever witnessed. Keep in mind, I wasn’t there all the time. Mostly I was with Marco when he was actually doing the work on his projects, not when he was talking with his clients or when they dropped in for a glass of grappa and some advice about what to bid on a particular piece.

“He was very good at dismissing me. ‘Thank you so much, Mr. Cannon. And now,
per piacere
, I think we are finished for the moment.’ He’d kind of flutter his hand in my direction, and I’d know it was time to take off.”

“To…?”

“The grant covered the expenses of my study, but not an apartment in Manhattan. My girlfriend and I sublet a room in a loft in SoHo. She’s here in graduate school at NYU. When I was free to leave I’d head for the library, an art show, or a movie. But I’d get out of his hair, that much was clear.”

Chapman checked off Caxton’s name on the list he had started and went down to the next line. “Bryan Daughtry. Ever run into him?”

“Yes, he was another visitor. Not so much anymore, with the contemporary work he was trying to sell. But Marco had done ventures with him before I arrived here, which was before Daughtry went to jail. On that tax fraud, not that other thing.” Cannon looked at me to see whether I registered any reaction to his reference to the girl in the leather mask.