Trump Tower (40 page)

Belasco answered, “She was here Friday.”

Riordan looked at Rebecca. “Is that correct? The last time you saw the office was Friday? And everything was all right?”

She nodded, “Yes.”

He told Harry, “Go back to Thursday, close of business. Every elevator stop
on nineteen. Check the stairwell, too. I want to identify everybody who's been on the floor since Thursday night.” He hung up. “We'll find him. But we need to bring in the police.”

Rebecca shook her head, “I don't know.”

“You must,” Belasco said.

“Mrs. Battelli . . .” Riordan spoke softly and slowly, “I can tell you from experience that whoever did this to you is very angry. I can tell you from experience that it was more than one person. Probably two.”

“Please . . .” She tried to wave him off. “Maybe tomorrow . . .”

He continued. “I can tell you from experience that nothing will be missing, unless you had cash hidden somewhere and these people found it. And that if you don't let the police handle this . . . and we will work with them, and we will be here for you . . . but if you don't let the police handle this, these people will be back.”

“No . . . please . . .” she begged “I think I want to go home now.”

“They may not come here,” Riordan wanted her to understand, “but they will strike again. They may come to your home. They may try to do you some physical harm. For your own safety . . .”

“Rebecca,” Belasco said, “listen to him.”

“No,” she said. “I know who did it. He won't harm me. It's my husband's cousin. Johnny. All he wants is for me to give him this business.”

Riordan was insistent. “Mrs. Battelli . . . a crime has been committed in Trump Tower. We have a responsibility to you. But we also have a responsibility to our other tenants. We need to protect you . . . and them. You say you know who did it, and whether or not you want to cooperate with the police is up to you . . . but we don't have a choice. If you don't want to bring the police in, that's your decision. We have to.”

Folding her arms across her chest, she stepped over the debris on the floor and looked into her office . . . the one that had been her husband's.

The couch was turned upside down, and every desk drawer was spilled onto the floor. Shelves were tipped over. And there was glass on the floor.

Glass? She looked at the little bookcase sitting in front of the window. The top shelf was empty. In a panic, she started pushing furniture aside.

“Mrs. Battelli . . .” Riordan was right there. “Please don't touch anything. Don't disturb anything.”

She ignored him and continued shoving things out of the way until she found a silver picture frame, crushed on the floor.

The photo was gone.

Frantically, she started looking everywhere for it.

She found the bottom half sitting in the feed of her shredder.

Someone had deliberately shredded the top half.

It was a photo from her honeymoon. She and Mark were in Italy, holding hands and smiling at each other, leaning to the left in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which was tilted to the right.

It always made her laugh.

And there were no other copies of it.

“Bastard,” she screamed, and turned to Riordan. “Call the police. Yes, please, call the police.”

T
WO OF
Riordan's people showed up with a video camera and started filming. Then two uniformed NYPD officers arrived, followed by two detectives.

Belasco suggested that if the officers needed a place to talk to Mrs. Battelli, they were welcome to use his office. Riordan said no, it would be easier if they all sat down in the small conference room upstairs next to his office.

So while Riordan's two men documented the scene, and the two uniformed officers stayed there to protect it, Rebecca went with Riordan and the detectives upstairs.

They did not invite Belasco to come along.

I
N HIS
own office, he sat down to write an incident report, which he sent to Donald Trump and Anthony Gallicano and copied to his department heads.

A little while later, he remembered the appointment with his accountant and phoned Ronnie Rose to cancel. “We'll try again for later this week. Sorry about this, but . . . it's not a good time, right now.”

He also postponed his appointment with the lawyer, Carole Ann Mendelsohn, to talk about Mrs. Essenbach. “Can we do this tomorrow, please. Something's come up.”

Now what?
He asked himself. And the only thing he really wanted to do was go upstairs to find Rebecca.

She was sitting in the CCTV monitoring room with Riordan, the detectives, and Riordan's guy Harry. They were running through the camera footage from the nineteenth floor. But now there was a young woman standing next to Rebecca, holding her hand.

“This is my daughter, Gabriella.”

She was around twenty, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, with long hair. She looked like her mother.

“I'm very glad to meet you,” Belasco said.

“We may have something,” Riordan told Harry. “Run it back.”

Gabriella nodded politely, shook Belasco's hand, then took her mother's hand again.

“There,” Riordan pointed to a monitor.

The view was from one of the cameras in the Tower lobby. Two men
walked in from Fifth Avenue—wearing raincoats—and went to the elevators. The security officer looked toward them, and one of the men appeared to flash him a pass.

“What's wrong with this picture?” Riordan asked, then answered his own question. “This is last night around eleven. They're wearing raincoats.”

Belasco didn't get it. “So?”

“So?” Riordan said. “It didn't rain last night.”

The two men stepped into the elevator.

The shot on the monitor changed to inside the elevator, where the two men, their faces now clearly visible, stood not speaking.

“It didn't rain at all yesterday,” one of the detectives picked up on Riordan's explanation, “and the reason that's significant is because the raincoats are there to hide whatever it is they're carrying.”

Belasco asked, “Like what?”

“Like burglar tools?” Riordan said. “Like weapons? Or, they're not carrying anything in, but expect to carry something out.”

Belasco turned to Rebecca, “Do you recognize either of those men?”

The monitor showed them getting off the elevator on the nineteenth floor, then disappearing down the hall, out of the camera's range.

“No,” she said. “I don't.”

Harry sped up the playback, then slowed it down when the men reappeared.

“This is eighteen and a half minutes later,” Riordan said.

The cameras followed the men into the elevator, down and out through the lobby to Fifth Avenue.

“So you've got your suspects,” Belasco said.

“What we've got,” the second detective decided, “are two persons of interest.”

“Are you sure you don't know them?” Belasco asked Rebecca again.

She shook her head. “I'm sure.”

“What about your husband's cousin? You said that . . .”

“Johnny Battelli,” the detective said. “Florida. We checked. Been there all week.”

Belasco thought out loud, “If it's not him . . .”

Riordan cut in, “Just because he isn't in town doesn't mean he isn't involved. Remember our little talk about means, motive and opportunity?”

“Except that he didn't have the opportunity. He's in Florida.”

“According to Mrs. Battelli, he has a motive. And because they got into the building with a pass, and got into the office with a key, at least it looks like that, maybe he gifted them the opportunity.”

“Does he have a building pass?”

Riordan leaned back to hand Belasco an index card–sized copy of a security pass. “Apparently he does.”

“These two guys . . .” Belasco looked at the detectives. “You can find them, right?”

One of them answered, “How would you suggest we start?”

“You've got their faces.”

“Then what?”

“Then . . . don't you check them against other people's faces? What do they say on television . . . find out if they're in the system.”

“Let's say for the sake of argument,” the other detective proposed, “that these two guys were hired to trash Mrs. Battelli's office. So go back to why they were wearing raincoats when it wasn't raining.”

Belasco thought about that for a moment. “I suppose . . . as Bill said . . . to bring something into the building. Or to carry something out. They wore raincoats because they didn't want to be seen doing that.”

“By who?” Riordan quizzed him. “Who are they hiding something from?”

“Your people . . . or anyone else.”

“When you say, anyone else, you mean the CCTV cameras?”

“Okay,” Belasco said, “the CCTV cameras.”

Now the first detective asked, “If these guys are involved with this in some way, then how come they don't care who sees their faces? How come they don't care about the CCTV cameras?”

“Because . . .” Belasco offered, “they didn't know there are cameras?”

“Most criminals are dumb,” the detective went on. “But very few are that dumb. They know there are CCTV cameras everywhere in a place like Trump Tower. The reason they don't care about their faces is because they know we won't recognize them.”

“Why not?”

“They're not from here. They flew in on Monday afternoon and they flew out Monday night or Tuesday morning.”

“What do they do when they leave Trump Tower?”

Riordan said, “Camera shows them walking out to Fifth Avenue, turning right, and disappearing up the block.”

Belasco thought for a moment. “Okay, say they flew in . . .”

“Or came in by train,” the detective said.

“Or by bus,” Riordan said.

“Okay . . . by plane or train or bus. There are CCTV cameras at the airports and at Penn Station and at Grand Central and at the bus terminal.”

“Sir?” The first detective stared at him. “Do you know how many people come into New York City every day?”

Belasco conceded, “I guess it's asking too much.”

“Believe me,” the detective said, “we're trying the best we can with what we've got.”

“Have you got fingerprints?”

“They wore gloves.”

“How do you know?”

“Sir,” the detective leaned forward, “I don't know exactly what it is you do for a living, but this is what my partner and I do for a living. If they don't care about their faces it's because we won't recognize them. But they do care about what we can recognize, which is their fingerprints. I guarantee they wore gloves.”

“There must be something you can do,” Belasco said. “There must be some way of finding them.”

“Pierre,” Riordan shook his head. “You don't understand how these things work. No one's been hurt. There's been no physical violence. It may not even technically qualify as a burglary because unless we can identify something that was taken . . .”

The other detective chimed in, “As a favor to Lieutenant Riordan, we'll go ten yards beyond the extra ten yards. But the world you see on television, that's not the real world of the NYPD.”

“They make a report,” Riordan continued, “and the case stays open. Leads get followed up if there are leads. But right now . . .”

“Of course, we'll try to find out if anyone knows those two guys,” the first detective promised. “We'll get Mrs. Battelli's cousin-in-law on the phone and talk to him at length. If we need to, when he comes back up north, we'll sit down with him, face to face. And, yeah, we'll put out the pictures of these two . . .” he motioned toward the monitors . . . “as persons of interest. Maybe we'll get lucky.”

“Your best shot is luck?” Belasco was dismayed.

“In this case,” the detective agreed, “‘fraid so.”

Belasco looked at Rebecca who was still looking away. “May I speak to Mrs. Battelli and her daughter for a moment, please . . . alone?”

Riordan said, “Be my guest.”

The three of them walked out of the monitor room and into the conference room. Belasco shut the door. “I'm really sorry they're not being more helpful.”

Rebecca shook her head. “I suppose they're doing the best they can.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Go home,” she said. “Go away. Fall off the face of the earth.”

“You've got to stop it,” Gabriella said to her mother, then said to Belasco, “I want her to fight back.”