Cold Hit (44 page)

“Can you make it down?”

“I hate heights.” I gave them as much of a smile as I could muster, not able to explain to them what it had taken for me to be poised on the edge of the railing when Wrenley had come at me just a little while ago.

“Nothing to it. I’ll be one rung below you, guiding you down. Harry’ll stay on top and load you on. Just close your eyes and trust me.”

When I opened them again, I was on the street. The ad on the billboard plastered above my head was visible for the first time. It was a six-foot-tall vodka bottle in the shape of the fuselage of a jet airplane, with words beneath it in bold yellow paint: Absolut Escape.

The cluster of uniforms around me, all meaning to be helpful, was stifling. Police and firemen were having a cordial turf battle over who would take me into their care — cops as first on the scene, or firemen as my rescuers.

I pulled Brigid Brannigan aside. “Tell them I’d like to ride with you.”

“Will you go to Saint Vincent’s so they can check you out?”

“Yes. I think I’d like a tetanus shot.” I wasn’t sure what my knees and hands had been raked against. “But I want to make a stop on the way there.”

She explained to the others that I was going with her. I got in the front seat of the RMP. Someone handed me my bag, which I had dropped in the gallery. The beeper was going off, so I removed it and saw that it was my office number. Brannigan began driving up Tenth Avenue, about to turn east to loop around downtown to the hospital. “Would you just go straight a few blocks, to the corner of Twenty-first Street?”

I called Laura from Brannigan’s cell phone. She sounded concerned. “Mike’s been beeping you. He’s probably through the tunnel now, back in Manhattan. Says he hasn’t been able to find you. Are you okay?”

“I guess I didn’t hear it. Would you call him back and tell him to meet me in Chelsea, the northwest corner of Twenty-first and Tenth, okay? I’ll wait for him till he gets there.” She’d know the rest of the details soon enough.

The car came to a stop just past the traffic light. “Here?”

“Yes.”

Brannigan looked at the small graceful building that I had noticed when we circled the block earlier today. “Want me to come in with you?”

“No thanks. I just want to wait there for Chapman. Think anyone would mind?”

She smiled back at me and simply said, “No.”

I got out and walked up the four steps of the Church of the Guardian Angel. Its lovely Romanesque facade is bordered by two slim columns and a round stained-glass window. I pulled on the wooden door and walked inside, sitting down in the cool silence. I didn’t know where the nearest synagogue was, but I needed to be in a place where I could be alone and pray. Somehow the name of this lovely church lent itself to the circumstances of the day.

Twenty minutes later I heard the door open and close, and the noise of a pair of footsteps walking toward me. I didn’t turn my head.

Mike Chapman slipped into the pew beside me and looked at me, grimacing as he shook his head back and forth. He started to say something.

“Not right now.”

He put his arm around my shoulder instead. I closed my eyes and rested my head against him until I was ready to leave.

Mike was singing background for Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias — “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” — when Jake and I walked through the door at Rao’s a week later. He got off the bar stool when he saw us come in. “They’re playing my song. Best jukebox in the world.”

Joey Palomino came out of the kitchen to greet us. “You got the first booth, Jake. Good to see you. Nice to have you back, Alex.”

The tiny restaurant on the corner of 114th Street and Pleasant Avenue was like a private club. An unknown caller might hope for a reservation six months ahead, but the handful of tables were filled by regulars who came on a steady basis when Joey gave them their dates. Once in, since there is no second seating, you could sit for the night and feast on luscious Italian food and wine for hours, to the accompaniment of great music from the fifties and sixties. Mike and I had been guests there a couple of times over the years, but Jake had worked his way up to a weekly berth after he hit the national news desk. Mike had asked Jake to set up a dinner to get me out of my dismal mood and to mark Mercer’s move from intensive care to a regular hospital room. It looked like he’d be released in another ten days.

We settled into the booth as Vic, the bartender, came over with the first round of drinks. He forgot names from time to time, but never faces or beverage favorites. “
Salute
.”

“To Mercer’s recovery,” Jake said, clicking glasses with us.

“So now you know why Caxton was packing up,” Mike began.

“Let’s not talk about the case tonight, please?” I looked from one to the other.

“You gotta face the music sooner or later, blondie.”

I had avoided most discussions of the whole matter for the last week, immersing myself in the case folders that had been buried on my desktop since the evening I had learned of Denise Caxton’s death. Jake hadn’t pushed me, letting me ease back into my own apartment and assure family and friends that everything was fine.

Frankie Palomino, Joey’s son, came to sit at the table and take our order. Mike was distracted for the moment. He’d obviously been thinking about what he’d eat from the moment I told him we’d be coming here for dinner.

“I gotta have the roasted peppers, clams
oreganate
, and the seafood salad to start. For pasta I want the fusilli with sausage and cabbage. Then some lemon chicken, veal parmigiana, and whatever else Coop wants. And a bottle of red wine. Tell Vic to make it a good one.”

Mike had picked all the best things from the kitchen. Frankie laughed and asked if Jake and I wanted to add any choices of our own. The food was served family style, in portions large enough to feed half the guys back at the squad.

“Where was I? Oh, so you heard about Caxton?”

Jake looked at me and gave my hand a squeeze. “He’s right. You’ve got to deal with this.”

I played with the ice in my glass, drew in a breath, and answered Mike. “Kim McFadden called me at home this weekend, before the story broke in the papers on Monday.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office had brought down the first indictments in the auction bid–rigging case. Although Lowell Caxton was not among the defendants named, it had already been rumored that one of the dealers was cooperating and about to testify against others in the ring. Lowell had been moving his assets out of New York to some of his other properties, probably trying to get them out of the country before they could be seized by the government.

“Has Anthony Bailor talked?” Jake asked Mike.

“He’s not exactly singing. The first time I saw him at the hospital, he wouldn’t give up Wrenley for anything. Once he heard Frank was dead, he confirmed that’s who he was working for. Still won’t admit he did the hit on Deni, but we don’t need his confession. We’ve got the DNA to make that case.”

“Bailor was the guy in the garage after Alex?”

“Yeah. Seems Wrenley panicked at Mickey Diamond’s story in the paper that we were close to solving the case. He followed Alex to Lincoln Center, then called Bailor to run her down. Same for the attempt on Mercer and Alex. Wrenley was the one who hired the receptionist to freelance for him on Sunday morning. She called to leave the message, at his direction, pretending to be Marina Sette. He also paid her to let you into the gallery. Bailor was told to kill her on his way in, and then shoot both of you.”

“What does Bailor say about the paintings?” I asked.

“Back to square one. Holds to his story that he doesn’t know anything about the art. And now, with Wrenley dead, we’ll never know if he really had the Rembrandt, too.”

I knew that cops as well as F.B.I. agents had gone through Wrenley’s apartments in New York and Florida in painstaking searches. The possibility that after a decade these priceless treasures would be restored to public view again had been dashed with the murder of Denise Caxton and the death of Frank Wrenley. Both paintings were still missing. Was I responsible for the fact that Wrenley’s secret died with him in his fall from the railroad track?

“I know what you’re thinking, Coop. He was a mutt who didn’t deserve to live.”

“But if he had some of the stolen paintings, and we could have found out…”

“Hey, the friggin’ Feebies couldn’t find the stuff for ten years. They’re probably just sitting on the floor under somebody’s bed, collecting dust. Or in some storage case left in a warehouse that won’t get opened for another fifty years, and then they’ll get discovered by accident. These thieves have been scamming off each other for so long now, the art could be anywhere. A lot of dead bodies left behind for this loot.”

I thought of Marco Varelli and why the old man wasn’t allowed to die a natural death, simply because he might connect Wrenley and Caxton to the stolen Vermeer.

“The Feds got nothin’ better to do than look for counterfeit money and seize illegal Cuban cigars. This gives ’em a mission, Coop. It ain’t all bad.”

Mike was tucking his napkin into the collar of his shirt. “Hey, Jake, better stick that tie in your shirt. You get sauce on that thing it’ll ruin the design completely. What’s he got on this one, blondie? Gerbils? Wait’ll I tell Mercer you got little rodents running around on your necktie.”

Frankie came over to make sure everything was okay. “See the group at that table for six? It’s the CEO of one of the big ad agencies, with a few of his models. One of the girls saw you on TV the other night and wants to meet you.”

I turned to look around, assuming that Frankie was talking about Jake.

“Relax, it’s not me for a change. It’s Chapman.”

The tall redhead was beaming at Mike. She must have seen him on the news, being interviewed about the close of the Caxton murder investigation.

“Tell her I’ll be over as soon as I finish my dinner, will you, Frankie?” He wiped the empty pasta bowl with a piece of bread and winked at his admirer. “So, either of you guys hear the question tonight?”

We had been in the car on our way to the restaurant when
Jeopardy
! aired. “No.”

“Easy one. Would have been a split.”

“What was the category?”

“Religion.”

“I never bet against you on that.”

“Yeah, but since you spent some time in church last week, I thought you’d give it a shot. The answer was: Seventeenth century cleric who created the most famous sparkling white wine.”

I laughed. “That religious I am. Dom Pérignon, the monk who discovered champagne.”

Mike got up from the booth and called over to the bar. “Hey, Vic, you got any champagne on ice? I’ll be back over when they bring out the chicken. I’m gonna go introduce myself to my fans. You know how that is, Mr. Tyler, don’t you?” He winked at me and put his napkin on his seat.

Jake turned to ask if I was all right. I smiled and nodded, reaching up to kiss him on the side of his neck. “Thanks for your patience. I’ll be fine.”

He held my face and pressed his mouth gently against mine. Then he sat back. “There’s a follow-up question to the one about Dom Pérignon. I feel just like that lucky old monk. Know what he said when he took his first sip of champagne?”

“I have no idea.”

“‘I’m tasting stars!’ ” Jake said, pulling me toward him and kissing me again.

I heard the sound of the cork popping out of the bottle and flying up against the ceiling. The Temptations were singing “My Girl,” Mike had come back to the booth to await the next course, and Vic was pouring champagne for everyone. The events since the night I met Mike at Spuyten Duyvil would be less raw in a few weeks, we’d catch the West Side rapist soon, and new cases would draw me back into the work I loved.

We lifted our glasses to toast our missing partner once more, with Mike extracting a promise from us to bring Mercer to dinner here as soon as he was able. We would be a team again, in spite of the devil.

For almost thirty-five years, Alexandra Denman has taught me everything there is to know about friendship. Her love, her loyalty, her humor, and her intelligence have enriched my life beyond measure. Ben Stein, Alex’s husband, is right to call her “the goddess.”

My fictional heroine draws her name as well from Alexander Cooper — artist, book lover, and devoted friend to Justin and me. This book owes much to Alex and Karen Cooper, who introduced me to the galleries of Chelsea, the brilliance of Richard Serra, and the existence of the Hi-Line Railroad. They advanced the plot over wonderful meals and lots of good wine.

Susan and Michael Goldberg give new meaning to the word “generosity.” Along with the crew of the
Twilight
— Captain Cutter, Todd, Wes, Kelly, and Stephens — they have given us a paradise to which to retreat, calm seas for sailing, and a safe haven for dreaming. Their book parties make all the lonely hours at the keyboard worthwhile.

Although my beloved pal Jane Stanton Hitchcock lives a shuttle flight away from me now, her fictional counterpart is ever present on the pages of this book. It was more reliable to research the art world capers with a phone call to Jane than through the texts.

I am deeply grateful to Vineyard friends, who help sustain and encourage me through long summer days, when writing novels seems to be the least likely way to pass the time. To Ann and Vernon Jordan, with enormous respect and boundless affection; and Louise and Henry Grunwald, with great admiration and eternal gratitude. Their morning phone calls boost my spirits and dinners together nourish my soul.

My prosecutorial patron saint remains Bob Morgenthau. I have been fortunate to have had the benefit of his guidance, his integrity, and his wisdom for a quarter of a century. The women and men of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office — and especially my devoted friends and colleagues in the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit — are the best in the business. Along with our counterparts in the New York Police Department and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, they continue to work on the side of the angels. Survivors of violent crimes who come forward with courage and fortitude, and trust our ability to do justice for them, have my profound esteem.