Cold Hit (41 page)

She got in the car laughing and started to talk about her rookie adventures with some of the hairbags — the stiff oldtimers who never made it out of uniform — that she’d encountered in the four years she’d been on the force.

“Why don’t you take the Sixty-sixth Street drive through the park and head down Ninth Avenue? I’m going to a gallery called Caxton Due, on Twenty-second Street, between Tenth and Eleventh.”

Brigid continued to amuse me with her anecdotes while her partner weaved in and out of the midafternoon traffic on the approach to the Lincoln Tunnel. Once that cleared, Lazarro drove down to Twenty-first Street and came up Tenth Avenue, about to make the turn into the one-way westbound block on which the gallery entrance was located.

We could all see that it would be impossible to drive into the narrow street. In addition to the cars parked at meters on each side, there were three enormous trucks lined up in a row right in the middle of the pavement. Wooden stanchions were spread from the north corner of the curb to the south.

There didn’t seem to be anyone directing this operation. Officer Lazarro gave off a few whelps, and two men in T-shirts and jeans poked their heads out of the cab of one of the trucks. Since they weren’t moving, Brannigan got out of the car and walked over to them.

She came back and leaned in the window. “They’ve got a permit to block the street off for the afternoon. There’s a place farther down the way called the Dia Center for the Arts. They’re installing a major exhibition today, so this is legal while they’re unloading sculpture for the new show. Want me to walk you into your gallery?”

“This might work even better. There’s a rear door on Twenty-third Street, through the warehouse of the gallery. We saw the sign for it, like a service entrance, the first day we came here. Maybe Daughtry’ll let me in that way. As Chapman said then, Daughtry might even prefer we use it.” Again, I checked the time. “Chapman should be calling soon. C’mon, let’s go around the corner.”

We drove up to Twenty-third and Lazarro signaled left, then made a U-turn to pull up to the curb in front of the spot I pointed out as the garage entrance to Deni’s gallery. Brigid got out of the car when I did and walked with me over to the rusty-colored door frame, which had an intercom system with two buzzers next to a small enamel plate. One was marked caxton due — service, and the other said caxton due — gallery .

I pressed the second bell and waited a couple of minutes.

“Any idea how long we’ll be here?” Brigid asked.

“With some luck, if he lets me poke around the warehouse, I might be an hour or more. If Chapman turns up anything important, be ready to fly out of here with me, okay?”

The gray haze seemed to be lifting, as the forecasters had promised, and the sun was beginning to filter through. I was hot and looked forward to being received in the cool of the airconditioned art display space.

We both heard the sound of the intercom click.

“Yes?” Judging from the crackling quality of its sound, the system was as old as the building.

“Alexandra Cooper. From the District Attorney’s Office,” I identified myself to Daughtry.

“I’ll buzz you in. Come on up — is not — but I’ll — top—”

The entrance led directly up an old iron staircase, which bypassed the storage area to lead into the gallery itself. Before the door swung shut behind us, I heard Lazarro calling Brigid’s name.

“Sergeant Danz wants to talk to you. Needs an idea of how long we’re going be tied up here. Wanna take it?”

Brigid looked at me. “Do you mind?”

“Of course not. I do the same thing when my boss calls.”

“Can you wait down here a few minutes while I report in? The sergeant’s gonna have to get permission for us to work over the end of the shift at three thirty.”

I pointed up. “You know right where I am. I’ll be out as soon as Chapman calls.”

As I climbed the steps, I could see scores of paintings arrayed in bins beneath, most of them covered in bubble wrap or kraft paper, and all labeled by the artist’s name and some kind of numerical code. They varied in size from tiny objects, not larger than four by six inches, to giant canvases that were best suited for museum walls.

I rang at the door at the top of the stairs and the buzzer sounded to unlock the way into the small lift, which descended to this ground floor area to take me up to the top of the atrium, where Daughtry awaited my arrival. When the door slid back, I was again overwhelmed by the beauty of the open atrium space. Emerging from the elevator on the north side of the building, I was facing the glass wall of the southern exposure and its great view of the city sky.

As I stepped off into the room, I felt the relief of the cold surge of air that I had anticipated. It contrasted with the unexpected brightness of the afternoon sun at the end of a gloomy day, which lit up the gallery space and beamed down on the tracks of the deserted Hi-Line Railroad.

I took my sunglasses out of my jacket pocket for the first time that day.

“Over here,” called a voice that was familiar to me, but it was not Daughtry’s.

I looked around and saw Frank Wrenley sitting on one of the couches in the exhibition area one flight below me.

“Welcome, Ms. Cooper. I’m baby-sitting the art for Bryan. He should be back anytime now. May I offer you a cold drink?”

I remembered that this morning, in my office, Wrenley had told us that Daughtry was going to allow him to look through Denise’s belongings to see whether any of his property was included there. He was holding a sheaf of papers in one hand and a tall glass in the other.

“Shall I come down?”

“Please.”

I followed the catwalk around the bend until I arrived at the metal staircase that led to the level below. I walked down, shook Wrenley’s hand, and accepted his offer to sit on the couch. I could see the documents he had laid out on the glass-topped table between us. He had a red pen and appeared to be going through lists that he was checking against his own.

“Will you join me in a Bloody Mary?”

“No thanks.”

“Ah, the constable doesn’t drink on duty, does she?”

“I’m so exhausted, Mr. Wrenley, that I’d probably curl up and take a nap if I so much as smelled a whiff of the vodka. Your inventory?”

“Bryan’s off trying to solve the mystery of Lowell Caxton’s hasty retreat. He’s been good enough to let me attempt to reconcile some of my records with Deni’s things before I return to Palm Beach.” He waved his receipts in my direction as though to convince me that he had proof of title for anything he needed. “Where’s your sidekick? I was beginning to think you and Detective Chapman were joined at the hip.”

“He’ll be along soon. We were — I was hoping to get Mr. Daughtry’s permission to look around a bit at some of Denise’s things.”

“I thought that first day I met you here you’d gone all through this place with warrants and everything short of commando troops. Bryan was sure he was going back to prison.”

I smiled at his exaggerated description. “That’s one of the problems when you do a search before you know just what it is you’re looking for.”

“But now you
do
know?”

Not really. But I saw no reason to tell that to Wrenley. We’d try again with some of the information we had picked up after Varelli’s murder and during our conversation with Don Cannon. “Do you have any idea when Mr. Daughtry is due to return?” I didn’t know whether to try to wait it out or get down to my office and face the music with McKinney.

“Pretty soon, I should think. He’s got to lock the place up for the night.”

It was now going on three hours since Mike had left the city. I reached in my bag to get the cell phone to try to beep him. When I turned it on, the failure of the three green icons to light up reminded me that the battery must have run down. I kept the charger set up on my desk at home and plugged the phone into it every evening as a matter of habit, but since I had spent the last two nights at Jake’s apartment, I had neglected to recharge it.

“Would you mind if I use the telephone for a moment?”

Wrenley pointed to the portable unit on the table next to his papers. “Help yourself.”

I picked it up and dialed Chapman’s beeper, punching in the number of the gallery as I read it off the plate on the receiver. Then I set it back down, knowing he would return the call to the unfamiliar number only when he was ready to take a break.

“I can’t give you access to the storage area, but I don’t imagine Bryan would mind if you look through the gallery and the office while you’re waiting. After all, you’ve done that once already, haven’t you?”

I was feeling even more foolish as I stood up and glanced around. There was nothing in the midst of this thoroughly modern exhibit that I could connect by my wildest stretch to the art treasures that I associated with Deni Caxton’s troubles. I started to work my way about the place, reading the descriptions and trying to make sense of the works.

Within several minutes the phone rang and I hurried back to the area where Wrenley was sitting. He had answered it by saying, “Galleria Caxton Due,” and passed it off to me when I approached the table.

Instinctively, I turned my back to him and started to walk a few steps off. I was aware that it was rude, but I also wanted whatever privacy might be necessary. “No, that was Wrenley. Frank Wrenley,” I said, responding to Mike’s question about whether the man who had spoken was Bryan Daughtry.

“Can you talk?”

“About what?”

“Never mind. You’ll explain where Daughtry is later, I guess.”

“Sure. No big deal. Is it our guy?” I whispered into the receiver.

“Order a magnum of the champagne, Coop. Anthony Bailor is about to have an incurable case of gangrenous balls. He’s not talking, but he’s the man.”

“What do you mean he’s not talking?”

“He still denies everything, including his name. But I’ve got his mug shots, and the Jersey police ran his prints this morning.”

“Have you arrested him?”

“Why? You gonna give your pal Jake a scoop for the nightly news? No leaks on this one till we know who’s behind it. Bailor took the fall for someone in that last theft he was involved in. There’s got to be a link to somebody in this investigation.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I just want to know what to do next. Should I go down to the office and draw up a complaint on Deni’s homicide? You’re going to have to lodge a warrant so we can start extradition proceedings from New Jersey.”

“Take it easy. I haven’t even told the lieutenant yet. Let me see how the boss wants me to handle it and what the Jersey cops want to hold him on out here. You find out anything useful about Caxton?”

“Not a thing. Where do you want to meet?”

“I’ll call you back as soon as I sort this out. I’ll pick you up at Hogan Place and take you to Saint Vincent’s.”

I hung up and walked the phone back to Wrenley, who seemed absorbed in his checklist.

“Good news? You look a lot happier now than you did ten minutes ago.”

“Please tell Mr. Daughtry I was here. Perhaps he could give me a call tomorrow, and I’ll set up a time to see him.”

“You’ve decided not to wait?” Wrenley stood up, looking at me and shielding his eyes with his right hand. He was facing directly into the sun, which had now saturated the atrium. “Must have some new developments on the case. Have you found Lowell Caxton?”

“No, it’s another matter altogether. Nothing to do with the Caxtons. You’ll probably hear it on the news tonight — an assault in a midtown hotel. I’ve got to get some things started on that one before morning.” No point giving him any information on Anthony Bailor.

“Well, good luck with this. For Deni’s sake I sure hope you get a break soon. I’ll be back up from Florida next week, if you need me for anything.” The late-August sun was like a ball of fire, coming over the tops of the low buildings across the street and sparkling through the wall of glass. I lifted my sunglasses off the top of my head and replaced them on my nose.

My heart was pounding as my mind pieced the clues together at precisely the wrong place and time. Like Anthony Bailor, Frank Wrenley had been raised in Florida. I picked up my bag to leave and did an involuntary double take at Wrenley, who was squinting back at me without benefit of sunglasses.

“You look as if you’ve seen an apparition, Ms. Cooper.”

“Sorry, I’m just very tired. I don’t feel well. I’ll see myself out.” I was backing away from the area around the two sofas, thinking of the sunglasses that had been vouchered at the scene of Marco Varelli’s murder a week earlier. How many coincidences does it take to make a fact?

Wrenley was walking toward me. I quickened my pace, knowing that Brannigan and Lazarro were waiting for me right outside the warehouse door.

“I suppose Detective Chapman has managed to get his hands on Anthony Bailor. Is that what put you in such a good mood, Ms. Cooper?”

I was holding on to the railing now, two levels above the obsolete train tracks cutting through the center of the gallery, dizzy from the combination of vertigo and the question that Wrenley had just asked me.

He broke into a run before I did, and was upon me in a second, grabbing my free arm and spinning me around to face him. He was holding a small-caliber revolver in his right hand, the kind that was probably used to put a hole through the brain behind Marco Varelli’s ear.

“Did Anthony’s wound get worse? Is that how you found him? I couldn’t come up with a physician anywhere to treat him. He’s not exactly John Wilkes Booth. Just couldn’t find a taker. And all I needed was another day or two to tie up loose ends so I could get myself out of town for good. I didn’t want this to happen.” His grip tightened on my wrist.

“So you, Ms. Cooper, will have to be the sacrificial lamb. You might take a terrible fall, say, from the level above us.” He prodded me in the ribs with the gun.

“You can’t get out of this building without me — alive and well.” My voice must have been trembling as I tried to construct a reasonable bluff. “If you kill—” I stopped, unable to complete a sentence that held the implication of my own death. “If you try to hurt me, you won’t be able to walk out the door. There are police officers stationed in the front and back of the building. They have orders not to let anyone in or out without my approval.”