Don't Close Your Eyes (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 1) (17 page)

The LIE was bumper to bumper and it was close to six when I emerged from the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.
My cell phone rang the second I hit the first traffic light.

“Stephanie Chalice, you put in your papers and didn’t tell me or something? I haven’t heard from you in days.”

“Funny, Ambler, very funny.
Whazzup?”

“I need you down here at headquarters right now. I need Lido too. Ah . . . you’re not together, are you?”

“Don’t bust balls.”

“Sorry, couldn’t help myself.” He chuckled. “Is he?”

“Yes,” I fired. “I just nailed him six times and we were on the clock the whole time. Actually, I’m just about to pick him up.”

“That’s very nice, but why the hell are you telling me?” Ambler asked. As if he didn’t know.

“I thought I’d tell you, so you wouldn’t have to spend time coaxing information out of Lido.”

“I’m tempted to tell you off, but I’ve got more important things on my mind,” Ambler huffed. “We’ve got a big development. Can’t wait to show you.” His voice was almost shaky with excitement.

“Give me a hint, Ambler.” The bastard. He had already hung up.

I picked up Lido and we hustled down Broadway. Twenty-six Federal Plaza came into view.

I stopped in the ladies’ room before meeting with Ambler. I fussed with the polyester frock, cinching the belt to make it look less frumpy. If a blind man had something to say, imagine what Ambler would come up with. I had buttoned the collar to the neck for my trip to the correctional facility. I looked in the mirror and loosened it. I had misplaced my Saint Christopher medal. Spreading the collar reminded me that I’d have to look for it when I got home.

I also took the opportunity to call Twain. I was dying to talk to him, but Ambler’s news had to come first. I told Twain that I’d call him the moment I was free. He sounded disappointed, but what could I do?

Ambler and Lido were swilling down old coffee. It smelled like something they had filched from the forensics lab. The old boy’s club was in session when I arrived. The two of them clammed up when I walked in. “You look like the cat that ate the canary.”

Ambler jumped off the desk he had been sitting on. He appeared moderately nervous, which was a sure sign of guilt. “This way,” Ambler instructed. The fact that the boys broke up their conversation so quickly only confirmed that they had been talking about yours truly. It didn’t take any great investigator to figure that out. What I wanted to know was, who had been asking the questions?

I whispered into Lido’s ear, “God help you if you and Ambler were discussing what I think you were discussing.”

“I’ll take the fifth,” he replied.

Ambler hustled us into the elevator and up to the forensics lab. It was filled with techs, gadgets, and gizmos. Two huge air scrubbers dominated the ceiling, keeping the lab odor-free. A proper-looking woman whose nametag read Doris Fuchs approached Ambler. “I’m set up in the back,” she told him. Fuchs looked like she was pushing sixty with her dyed auburn hair and clawing perfume, which, believe it or not, I placed immediately. My Aunt Connie had always worn Shalimar. She was gone, but the scent of her perfume would linger in my mind forever.

Ambler ushered us toward the back of the lab where he finally made the introductions. “Doris Fuchs, this is Detective Chalice and Detective Lido, two of New York’s finest.”

“Hello,” she replied with all the warmth of a seasoned mortician.

Ambler stood next to us. I grabbed his ear. “New York’s finest. I ought to kick your ass. What were you and Lido jawing about?”

“Pay attention to the technician, Chalice,” Ambler said. “This is much more important than your alleged puppy love conspiracy.” I snarled at Ambler and reluctantly followed his instructions.

Doris Fuchs was waiting patiently for our attention. I guess she figured quitting time was going to come around one way or another. “I’ve got two microscopes set up. I’d like you to take a peek into each of them.” With that, Fuchs stepped aside, allowing us access to her experiment.

“After you,” Lido offered. He had a playful smile on his face. I shot him a scowl as I maneuvered past him. This was far from over.

I bent over the first microscope. There were brown and gray spots on the slide. Nothing biological, just spots. The second was identical. I glanced up excitedly. “Gus, you’ve got to see this.”

Lido checked the first slide and then turned to me with a forlorn look. “What?” He shrugged.

“Nice-looking spots. This reminds me of a Daffy Duck cartoon I saw when I was a kid. You put water on those spots and they grow into Martians, right?” I looked up at Fuchs. She had no sense of humor at all.

“The point is that they’re identical,” Fuchs advised.

Got it. Next?

“Breakdown by chemical composition and spectrographic analysis confirm the same.”

“Herbert, what the hell are we looking at?” I fired.

Ambler rolled his eyes. “Thanks, Doris. I’ll take it from here.”

“Nice meeting the two of you,” she offered. I checked my watch. It was past five—Fuchs was probably late for her canasta game.

Fuchs squinted at me disdainfully before walking off. “Nice dress,” she scoffed.

Why, you . . .

“Guess you got yours,” Ambler blurted before propping himself up on a nearby windowsill.

Yeah, kiss my . . .

I could see lower Manhattan behind him. The sun had set. The evening skyline was magnificent. It helped to calm me down.

Ambler cleared his throat before he began. “The slides were made from residual material found with the footprints that were lifted from the tramcar and—” Ambler raised his eyebrows, heightening his sense of the dramatic.

“Come on, Ambler,” Lido shot. “Spit it out.”

“Party poopers. The other set of prints were taken at the Hilary Glenn fundraiser.”

Lido and I looked at each other. “No shit!” came out of our mouths simultaneously.

“Wow. Good going,” Lido offered.

Ever the ham, Ambler, took a bow. “There’s more,” he announced. “These are paint samples. They consist of PSN-12 and GE-40. They’re lead-lock paint inhibitors.”

“And I’ll bet you’re about to tell us the significance of that, aren’t you?” I can be such a pistol.

“These are industrial materials, not exactly the kind of stuff you find at Home Depot. Our boys didn’t think much of it when they found it on the tram and dismissed it out of hand. There’s certainly a call for its use in that instance, but when they found it in the middle of the dance floor at the fundraiser, it hit us like a ton of bricks.”

“Ergo, it’s traceable. We find out who’s working with this stuff and we’ve got a good lead on Clovin.”

“Exactly, Stephanie. These materials are used for encasement. They’re used in the refurbishing of old construction and such. They power-spray it over rusting iron and flaky delaminating lead-based paint. There are a finite number of projects going on. This is the break we’ve been waiting for.”

“Have you come up with the number of projects this lead-lock paint stuff is being used on yet?” I asked.

“The computers are still processing the request and my team is still checking out leads, but I don’t think that it’ll take very long. I should have a preliminary list in no time at all. It won’t be fully comprehensive, but it’ll give us a good, solid start.”

I would make sure that it did. But hey, what about Clovin, our pressure-spraying painter of a perp? He had just vaulted the dung pile to become one of the most wanted men in America. He was certainly the most wanted man on my list. I had the feeling we would soon cross paths.

Lido huddled just within the loading dock bay at United Encasement Systems.
A light rain had begun to fall. Lido looked out into the night. Irradiated by the light of the sodium lamps, the rain droplets glistened like falling diamonds before a sapphire sky. A multitude of white commercial vehicles were distributed at fixed positions around the parking field: large material transports, panel vans, and economy passenger cars. Each was stenciled with the company logo: red letters UES within a hunter-green oval.

He had spent the last two hours combing through case upon case of employment records. Clovin’s name had not surfaced.

UES was the largest encasement firm on the East Coast and the principal user of the industrial paint compounds PSN-12 and GE-40. There were several smaller regional firms using these materials. Each would have to be checked out individually if, and it seemed likely, nothing was found at UES.

Herbert Ambler approached Lido and handed him a coffee cup. “How much longer?” Lido inquired.

Ambler put his foot up on a sealed five-gallon pail of paint and began sipping coffee. “All night if necessary.” He winked at Lido. “Getting lonely?”

Lido tried the coffee and grimaced. “Kiss my butt.”

“Is that a bribe?”

“Don’t you ever give up?”

“I’ve put in eighteen years as a Fed. Does that answer your question? If I didn’t have a sense of humor, I’d be as tight-assed as everyone else at Twenty-six Federal Plaza.”

Lido poured the contents of his coffee cup on the ground outside the loading bay. “What do you want to know?”

“Excuse me?” Ambler scrunched up his nose.

“Come on, Ambler. You’ve been bugging the shit out of me for days. So tell me what’s on your mind and let’s get it over with. You want to know if we’re doing it, or if she’s good? Come on, spit it out.”

“I’ve known Stephanie since she was in grade school. Chalice’s dad and I knew each other forever. He’d be on the job now if his health hadn’t taken a turn for the worse.” Ambler took his foot off the pail, crushed the coffee cup in his hand and stepped up to the plate. He was shorter than Lido, but he looked directly into his eyes, no more than six inches away. “I’ve been part of her family since I was a wet-behind-the-ears investigator. So, Gus Lido, what I really want to know is, do you care for this girl, or is this just hot sex? It may be none of my business, but I figure I owe it to my old friend to find out.”

Lido wrinkled his forehead and pursed his lips momentarily, uncertain of how to respond. “Not that it’s any of your business, but it’s beyond physical, Herb, way beyond.”

Ambler gave Lido a playful slap on the cheek. “That’s what I thought . . . and don’t worry about what you told me. I’ve cracked tougher eggs than you. I won’t say a thing,” Ambler said gleefully and then backed away.

“I don’t believe you. That was it?”

“The whole enchilada, kid. I needed to know what kind of guy you are.”

“Amazing.”

Ambler grinned. “Why don’t we go back upstairs and see if we can wrap up for the night? It’s after ten. These people are getting pretty testy and I don’t know that I blame them.”

Lido walked alongside Ambler. “I’m glad that Stephanie’s as important to you as she is,” Lido said. He put his hand on Ambler’s shoulder. “Stephanie told me you were all right.”

“Just keeping my eyes open, Lido. She’d do the same for me.”

Lido and Ambler took the stairs two at a time. They stopped outside the company’s executive offices. “You think there’s a decent place to eat around here? I’m absolutely famished.” Lido rubbed his belly to demonstrate.

“Matter of fact, there is. Let’s see where we stand and I’ll take you out for a fat, juicy steak,” Ambler replied.

“What happened to the all-night-if-necessary attitude?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I want Clovin as badly as anyone, but have you ever read the file on Hilary Glenn?”

“No. What’s up with her?”

Ambler pushed air past his sealed lips. “Let’s put it this way. We’re sworn to serve and protect, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, between you and me, we won’t be serving or protecting anyone by finding Hilary Glenn. Getting her back and setting her safely on the path to the Senate will be the worst thing that ever happened to the people of New York.” Ambler cleared his throat. “Remember the gas shortages of the seventies?”

“Vaguely. I was just a kid.”

“Well, guess how the young Ms. Hilary Glenn got promoted to the CEO spot at Vycon Petroleum?”

“Let’s hear it.”

“She was only in her twenties, for God’s sake.” Ambler rubbed his nose. “Anyway, her father the charming Roger Glenn was a ne’er-do-well Connecticut, white bread WASP who didn’t have two nickels to rub together until he married Samia Farouki, Hillary’s mother. She calls herself Samantha Glenn now but the Farouki family controls two thirds of the oil production in Saudi Arabia.”

“So you’re telling me that Hillary is the self-serving type and the Senate seat just puts her in position to help her family become even richer.”

“That and a bag of chips.”

“Okay, she’s an opportunist but it sounds like you missed your refresher class in motivation. Where’s that rah, rah, go-getter spirit you Feds are famous for?”

Ambler pursed his lips. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

Lido nodded. “Good. Let’s get this over with.”

Tara Hughes cringed when she saw Ambler and Lido in her doorway. “I’ve gotta go,” she said in dismay. She was shaking her head from side to side as she spoke into the phone. “Yes, eat without me. I’ll be home when I can. Love you too. Bye.” She made no attempt to conceal her irritation. “Yes, gentlemen. What is it now?”

Lido and Ambler invited themselves in and sat down in the chairs positioned in front of Hughes’ desk.

“We’ve come up empty,” Ambler explained.

“As I was sure you would,” Hughes blurted. UES’s VP of Human Resources was worn to the point of combustion. “I’d like to send my staff home. They’re tired and hungry.”

“Me too,” Lido added, unmoved by the complaint. “This goes beyond dollars and cents, Ms. Hughes. “Lives are at stake, very important lives. So what we do in a case like this is start all over again so that we’re absolutely sure we haven’t missed anything.”

“Oh, dear Lord,” Hughes moaned. “I’ve had it,” she said, throwing her hands in the air. “We’re leaving. You can sleep here if you like. You’ve been through everything. There’s nothing here!” She stood up and yanked her drawer open. She grabbed a handful of the drawer’s contents and threw it on the table. “Here!” she bellowed. “Look all you want. The computers are on and the files are unlocked. Help yourself.”

Ambler and Lido looked at each other. Ambler turned to Hughes. “Better sit down. I want to go through the payroll for the last two years one more time.”

“Why?” Hughes asked indignantly. “The printout hasn’t changed. What do you think you’re going to find?”

“You never make out any manual checks?” Lido asked.

“Not for payroll. All full-time employees are on the computer. ADP pays them every other week. The only one with a regular checkbook is Lloyd Bochner, the comptroller.”

Lido and Ambler stood. “Get him down here!” Ambler demanded.

~~~

Tara Hughes was glad to hand them off to the comptroller. “I’m leaving,” she told Bochner.

“Edward wants you to help these men as long as they need it. Call him if there

are any problems.”

Lloyd Bochner acknowledged the instructions she had relayed from UES’s president. “Will do.”

“I’ll make this short and sweet,” Lido announced. “We want to see any manual checks that have been cut for part-timers, outside contractors or freelancers for the last two years.”

Bochner’s expression froze. “You’re kidding, right?”

“The FBI doesn’t kid,” Ambler replied. “Is that your way of telling us there are more than a couple?”

Bochner reached for the phone. “I’ll have to call—”

Lido grabbed his hand. “No, you don’t. We made a simple request. Take care of it.”

Bochner didn’t reply. He stared at his desk blotter, searching for a solution that wasn’t there.”

“Oh, for the love of God, we’re not the goddamn IRS,” Ambler blurted. He turned to Lido. “Son of a bitch is afraid of getting pinched for cheating on the payroll taxes.”

Ambler turned to Bochner. Sweat was pouring from the comptroller’s forehead. “So, what’s it going to be? We’re looking for a man named Zachary Clovin. Now, is he hidden away in your dirty little file or isn’t he?”

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Bochner nodded.

Ambler slammed his fist down on Bochner’s desk. “Goddamn it. You son of a bitch, you cost us two hours. Why, I ought to tear your throat out.” He turned back to Lido with a knowing expression on his face. “All right, Lido, here we go.”