Night Work (27 page)

“It's serious, Alice. The money's important to them, but just as important is showing that people cannot steal from them. If they even think you did it, they'll come after you.”

“I didn't take it. If I'd taken it, why would I come to New York? I knew that they come here. I would have disappeared. I've always wanted to go to France. I bet you could live a pretty good life in Paris on half a million.” Her face was open, her manner direct. She showed none of the liars'
tells
he had learned over hundreds of interrogations.

“Who else, then? Tell me about that night.”

“Well, let's see. You saw us leave the Tropicana. I was with Joe Stassi. We drove downtown to a couple of places and one of the guys from the front seat would go inside for a few minutes, and then we'd go on. There were people in the streets shouting and dancing. Men firing guns in the air. That was pretty wild. It made Stassi nervous, so after a while we drove back to his house. Everybody met there. Men kept showing up with bags and boxes full of money. They'd take it into the dining room and they had a couple of men counting it and putting it in suitcases.”

“Were you in the room?”

“No. The women were all in the kitchen making sandwiches and stuff. Doreen, Marsha, a couple of others. Peggy. One, I never got her name, a bottle blonde with one of those overbites men find so sexy.”

“So how did you see the money?”

“Oh. Okay. I took a plate of sandwiches into them, but they chased me right out.”

“Then what?” Cassidy poured wine into her glass and took some for himself. She smiled in thanks.

“Then what? Let's see. I don't like to sit around doing nothing, so Joe came into the kitchen and I told him I was going to get a cab back to the hotel and pack my things. He didn't want me to go. He said it could be dangerous, that he'd buy me new stuff in Miami, but you know what? I know how that goes.
Here you are, honey. Here's a hundred bucks. See you around.
Uh-uh. I had some nice things back at the hotel, and I wasn't going to leave them. I figured, how dangerous could it be? They weren't shooting women down in the streets, were they? So I went back down there, and the front-desk guy liked me, and he called someone at The Tropicana about the plane the next morning, and there you were.” She lit a cigarette and took a sip of the wine and waited for Cassidy.

“Okay.”

“You believe me.”

“Yes, I do.”

She smiled in relief. “Thanks.”

“I'll talk to Frank.” Would that be enough? He didn't know. How much influence did Frank still have? He was getting out of the rackets. Other men were moving in to fill the power vacuum. They would be the ones who made the decisions on this.

 

15

When Cassidy rang the bell at the big limestone house on 73rd Street, the red setter came scrabbling down the marble-tiled hall and stood looking at him through the glass. Moments later a man appeared carrying a coffee cup. He opened the door and stepped into the vestibule and looked at Cassidy through the bars and glass of the big exterior door. The red setter followed him and stood at his knee. The man was in his early forties, tall, thin, already losing his sandy hair. He had a bony, patrician face and looked at the world through gold-rimmed glasses. He wore suit pants held up by dark green suspenders with embroidered silver whales, and a crisp white shirt with gold cuff links. He did not look like a man who had carried a two-hundred-pound corpse a couple of blocks to the park. He raised his eyebrows in question, and then nodded when Cassidy showed him his badge. When he opened the door, the red setter pushed its head through and sniffed Cassidy's knee.

“Come here, Lucky, that's enough,” the man said and pulled him back by his collar. “Can I help you, Officer? I'm afraid I've already given to the fund. The precinct sent someone around about a month ago.” He had a soft, reedy voice and a mild, accommodating manner.

“Are you Robert Hopkins?”

“I am.”

“Do you recognize this man?” Cassidy passed him the photograph of the dead man from the park.

“Yes. Of course. Casey Allen. He's been doing some renovation work here at the house. Why? What has he done, Officer?”

“Detective Cassidy. When was the last time you saw him?”

“About a week ago. He was supposed to finish up the work he was doing, but he didn't show up. Very unlike him. He's usually very reliable. If he can't be here he calls. Then my wife and I went away for a few days. Casey has a key to the back door, and I assumed he would come in and finish up while we were gone, but when we got back last night, it was clear that he was never here. What exactly is the problem with him? Why are you asking about him?”

“Is Mrs. Hopkins here?”

“She is.”

“I'd like to speak to her.”

“Is that necessary?” A bit of steel showing through the soft exterior.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He's dead. We're trying to discover how and why.”

“Dead. I see.” But if he was surprised, he covered it well. “I'll go speak with her and see if she's available.”

“She has no choice.”

Hopkins raised his eyebrows. “Yes, she does. She has a choice about when she speaks to you and who is with her when it happens. If you'd like, I can call our lawyer and he can clarify her rights for you.” More steel. Cassidy admired him for it even though it checked him, kept him from what he needed to know.

“Does she have something to conceal?” Cassidy asked.

Hopkins smiled and shook his head. “Oh, that's a cheap ploy, Detective. If she doesn't speak to you it's because she's hiding something.” He laughed at the absurdity. “Jane is not hiding something. She's protecting something, her rights, her constitutional rights. You do remember those, don't you? We have not yet become a jackbooted country where the police have the rights and the citizens have none. If you suspect her of a crime, state it, and we will get on with that. If you just want to speak to her about Casey Allen, there are better ways of approaching it than barging in here at eight in the morning demanding a meeting.” The red setter barked twice, upset by his master's agitation.

“All right. Let's take a step back here,” Cassidy said. “You're absolutely right. There is no need to bother Mrs. Hopkins right now. I can come back at a more convenient time.”

“Please call first.”

“Of course. Why don't you give me your phone number here and at your office, and I'll need Mr. Allen's phone and address as well.”

“Fine. Come in, and I'll go write them down for you.” He opened the inner door, and Cassidy followed him into the front hall. The setter went with them. “I'll be right back.” Hopkins went down the hall and into another room.

The front hall was two stories high. Its wide floor was laid with black-and-white marble tiles like the ones in Leah's apartment. A marble staircase with a dark red runner held by brass rods led to the upper floors. A large mirror in a carved gilt frame hung over a delicate cherry wood side table, one last look to see if the tie was straight, the hair combed, the lipstick on right before going out to face the world. Cassidy looked into the large living room off the hall. The fireplace was surrounded by a marble mantel. The furniture was expensive and comfortable. He recognized some of the paintings on the walls, a Picasso, a Matisse, a small oil of fruits in a bowl that he was pretty sure was a Cézanne. The house had been rubbed with money until it glowed.

When he went back into the hall, the setter came to him carrying a leash in his mouth and sat down and looked at him expectantly. “Not me, boy. I'd like to, but you're going to have to ask someone else.”

“Ask about what?” Robert Hopkins came toward him carrying a piece of paper.

“The dog and I were talking about going for a walk. I told him I couldn't.”

“I see.” No smile. Hopkins was impatient to see him go. “Here are the numbers. My office, the house, Casey Allen's number and address.”

“Do you walk the dog?”

“On weekends. Jane walks him during the week. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm already late for work.”

Cassidy took his dismissal and left. He crossed Fifth Avenue and found a place in the shadow of a big tree that grew near the wall to the park that gave him a view of the front of the Hopkins house. He looked at the piece of paper Hopkins had given him. It was a letterhead from Brown Brothers Harriman. Robert Hopkins, Vice President, was circled with a pen. The circle included his private number. Brown Brothers, Cassidy knew, was one of the largest private banks in America, and its officers were masters of the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington. Averell Harriman, the founding father, had been Franklin Roosevelt's personal envoy to Winston Churchill during World War II, and had run unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952.

Was Hopkins trying to tell Cassidy that he was too well connected to fuck with? Probably. But the fucking with was unavoidable, because Hopkins had forgotten to ask one question. He had forgotten to ask how Casey Allen died. Did he not care, or did he already know?

Casey Allen's address and phone number were written in a tight, round, neat hand at the bottom of the page. He had lived in Queens.

Cassidy was on his second Lucky Strike when a black Lincoln Town Car stopped in front of the Hopkins house. Cassidy made a note of the company name stenciled on the trunk. Robert Hopkins came out armored in a pinstripe suit, got into the car, and went off to tend the money fields. Fifteen minutes later Mrs. Robert Hopkins was pulled out of the house by an eager Lucky, who dragged her to the nearest tree, lifted his leg, and sighed. She and the dog walked to the corner, waited for the light to change, and then crossed Fifth Avenue to the broad sidewalk that ran along the park. Lucky, maybe out of habit, turned south toward the nearest entrance, but she pulled him back and turned north, away from where Casey Allen had been found dead on a kitchen chair.

Cassidy followed.

Jane Hopkins was a tall, slim woman in her mid-thirties, a few years younger than her husband. She had shoulder-length honey-colored hair held in place by a black velvet headband. She wore tailored, high-waisted charcoal gray slacks that emphasized the length of her legs, black leather boots, and a green-and-black jacket with a high, Chinese collar. She walked fast and went into the park at the entrance on 76th Street, and he followed her till the dog stopped her at a particularly interesting smell near the Conservatory Waters boat basin.

“Mrs. Hopkins, I'd like to talk to you for a minute.”

She looked up, startled from the cigarette she was lighting, and then her face cleared. “Michael, how nice to see you. What are you doing here?”

That threw him, and she recognized his confusion.

“Jane Hopkins. We met at Leah's party before Christmas. You told me a very funny story about working on a ranch in Mexico when you were sixteen. Don't tell me you don't remember.”

A vague memory poking up through the mist of holiday booze. A good-looking woman, flirtatious, one of those women who touches you while she talks, a hand on the arm, a nudge, a finger on the chest, leaning in for a moment at the punch line.

“You don't know how devastating it is to a woman's ego when an attractive man forgets her.”

“Jane, of course. I didn't forget you, I just didn't put it together this far out of that context.”

“Hmmm, not a bad recovery. I've heard better, but not bad. But what are you doing here, and approaching me as Mrs. Hopkins with that very serious tone of voice?”

She was a woman who was used to being admired by men, used to disarming them with her looks and her charm.

“I want to talk to you about Casey Allen.”

That checked her. “Oh,” Then, “Oh, my god, were you the cop downstairs grilling Bob earlier? He was very pissed off, going on about invasion of privacy, and the nerve of this and the nerve of that. Secretaries and junior partners are going to suffer today.” It was delivered with a practiced breeziness, but there was something brittle and strained just below the surface. “Poor Casey Allen. Bob told me he was dead. What happened?” At least she asked.

“He was shot.”

“Shot? Who did it? Was it a robbery? That's awful.” Her eyes were wide in surprise.

“We don't know yet. I'd like to ask you some questions about him. Do you mind?”

“No, not at all. Bob thinks I should have three or four lawyers hovering, but then he didn't realize you were Leah's brother and Mark Buckman's brother-in-law. He's done quite a bit of business with Mark.” What she meant was that they were all in the same club, as if, therefore, there could be no rudeness, no friction, no unpleasantness. “Do you mind if we walk while we talk?” She gestured to the dog tugging at the end of the leash.

They walked past the newly planted flowerbeds near the boat pond, the earth turned up dark and rich, the plants vibrant, hopeful green. “Tell me about Casey Allen,” Cassidy said. What would she volunteer, what would she leave out?

“We brought him in to do some work in the house. We had water damage upstairs, a burst pipe. We'd been talking about knocking down a wall, making our bathroom bigger and giving me a proper dressing room, and since we were going to have workers in anyway, we decided this was the time to do it. Casey was recommended to us by the Millikens. You know them, don't you? He's with Sullivan and Cromwell. Anyway, Casey was exactly what we wanted. He was prompt, efficient, he did most of the work himself, so we weren't tripping over people. If he needed help, he brought in his brother-in-law or someone else.”

“What was he like? What did you know about him?”

“Not much. He was one of those cheerful Irishmen. Always a smile on his face. Whistled while he worked, if you can believe it.” She laughed and touched Cassidy on the arm, a fleeting brush of fingers, but still a gesture of intimacy.