Trump Tower (67 page)

No one ever called him this early on a Sunday morning.

He took his phone out of his pocket and saw that a text message had come in.

Oh my God . . . dear Jesus . . .

He crossed himself, hurried out of the church, found a cab right away, and told the driver, “Trump Tower.”

T
WO PATROL CARS
and several unmarked police cars were parked on Fifty-Sixth Street in front of the residents' lobby.

Jumping out of the taxi, Belasco went to the front door, where a uniformed officer stopped him. “Sir?”

“It's all right,” David the relief doorman said, “he's the boss.”

Inside, four men in suits, each with a gold detective's shield hanging on a lanyard, were standing in the lobby.

“I'm Pierre Belasco,” he said to them. “General manager of Trump Tower.”

Two of the men looked at each other—one was short and heavyset, the other was not much taller but shaved his head—and it was the short heavyset man who asked, “Is there some place we can talk?”

“My office.” Belasco brought them in.

“Detective Lazaro,” he introduced himself. “My partner . . .” the one who shaved his head, “. . . Detective Stoyanov.”

Neither offered to shake hands.

“Yesterday afternoon,” Lazaro reported, “a body was found in Central Park. Victim was shot once through the head. Nine-millimeter automatic pistol. Close range. Shot through the right temple. Coroner only got around to identifying the body this morning. Name is . . .” he looked at his notepad, “Katarina Laszlo Bartok Essenbach?”

“This is terrible,” Belasco said. “I can't believe it.”

“How long has she lived here?”

“Many years. I don't know exactly. At least twenty, maybe twenty-two, something like that. I can get you the exact dates. She has the entire forty-second floor and half of the forty-first.”

“Was she well liked?”

He shook his head. “Quite the opposite. I think it's fair to say that she was universally disliked.”

“So she had enemies.”

He thought about that. “I don't know that you could call them enemies. But she didn't have . . . as far as I know . . . many friends.”

“What about her husband?”

“There was a strange incident last week. They must have had a fight about something, because she threw him out in his underwear.”

Lazaro glanced at Stoyanov.

“We have CCTV footage,” Belasco volunteered. “I can get it for you. Our head of security, Mr. Riordan . . .”

“He's on his way in,” Lazaro said. “I presume that there are plenty of CCTV cameras around here. A place like this . . .”

“Yes,” Belasco assured him. “Security is very tight. It's Fort Knox. I'm sure you can understand why.”

“So there will be footage of her leaving the building?”

“Yes.”

“And people coming in?” He pointed to the lobby. “Camera out there? What about front doors? Elevators? On each floor? We'll need to see whatever you've got.”

“We'll make everything available to you.”

Now, Stoyanov spoke for the first time. “How did you and the victim get along? What was your relationship with her like?”

“Relationship?” He told them the truth, “Strictly business but contentious.”

“And when was the last time you saw her?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“Where?”

“Here. In the lobby. Early afternoon.”

“Are you always in the office on Saturdays?”

“Not always . . . but often. I came in yesterday because one of our commercial clients has a problem and I wanted to check on her. I bumped into Mrs. Essenbach when I came back downstairs. She was on her way out.”

“Thank you. We appreciate your help,” Lazaro said. “We'd like you to come upstairs with us.” He motioned for Belasco to follow him. “Please.”

The three men got into the elevator and went to the forty-second floor where a uniformed officer was guarding Mrs. Essenbach's front door. He opened it and they stepped inside.

Another detective came to greet them.

“This is Mr. Belasco,” Lazaro said to him.

“I'm Detective Wytola . . . I recognize you.”

Belasco wanted to know, “From where?”

“Follow me and I'll show you.” Wytola led Belasco and the other two men around to the rear of the apartment and into a windowless laundry room where there was an industrial-sized washing machine and equally large dryer, a huge sink, a folding table, and two ironing boards.

And taped on the walls were dozens of photographs of Belasco.

He was speechless.

Taken clandestinely, they showed him walking down the street, in the lobby, in neighborhood shops, in the atrium and in the main entrance to Trump Tower. There were also photos of him taken secretly in front of his apartment in the Village, and in various places around his neighborhood. There was even one taken of him sitting in church.

“This is . . . beyond bizarre. It's . . .” He couldn't find the words.

“Let's talk about this photo right here,” Wytola pointed.

Black and white, blown up and grainy, obviously taken from a hidden camera high up in Mrs. Essenbach's study, it showed her sprawled out across the couch, wearing a fur dressing gown and Belasco pouring her a glass of champagne.

B
Y THE TIME
Bill Riordan arrived at Trump Tower, Belasco was back in his office with Lazaro and Stoyanov.

They briefed Riordan on what had happened to Mrs. Essenbach. He and two other detectives then went to the CCTV monitoring room to begin reviewing footage.

Now Lazaro wanted to know, “On Saturday, after you met Mrs. Essenbach in the lobby and she left the building, what did you do?”

“I came here to my office.”

“How long did you stay?”

“Not long.”

“Where did you go from here? Specifically, where were you between, say, noon and five o'clock yesterday?”

Suddenly, his offhanded remark to Carole Ann Mendelsohn flew into his head.

How about if someone throws her off the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge
?

He shook his head, “Surely, you can't think that I had anything to do with this?”

Stoyanov asked point blank. “Did you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“But you had a personal relationship with her.”

“No. Not a personal relationship. I did not. It was a strictly business relationship.”

Lazaro suggested, “Champagne says otherwise.”

“What you would see if there was videotape in her hidden camera is that I didn't take a glass of champagne for myself. I didn't stay there. She asked me to pour a glass for her, I did, then I left. I wasn't in her apartment more than five minutes total. You'll be able to see from the CCTV footage when I arrived and when I left. Not even five minutes. It was right after I left when her husband got thrown out in his underwear.”

“What sort of a relationship did you have with him?”

“Until recently, I didn't even know she had a husband.”

“Never met him?”

“Never.”

“Do you know anything about him, like where he's from?”

“No.”

“He's from Chile. Are you aware that there's a warrant out for his arrest?”

“No. What for?”

Stoyanov disregarded Belasco's question. “Are there many people living here for twenty or twenty-two years that you have never met?”

“There is at least one,” he glared at the officer. “But what is he wanted for?”

“It's political,” Lazaro said. “Did you ever see Mr. and Mrs. Essenbach together?”

“No.”

“Did she ever mention her husband?”

“No. Except that night. She said . . . I don't remember, something that included the words, my husband.”

The two detectives continued asking Belasco questions for nearly an hour, until Detective Wytola phoned and asked them to come back upstairs.

Wytola met them carrying a large carton of photos. “This woman had more closets than most people have rooms. There are even closets inside other closets.”

“Like secret closets?” Lazaro asked.

“Yeah,” Wytola answered. “Like right out of some horror movie. We dig through a closet and find a door behind it leading into another closet.”

“What's she hiding?”

“Mainly clothes. She had a lot of clothes. But then we found this.” He motioned for them to follow him, put the carton down on the big dining room table and asked Belasco, “Recognize any of these people?”

They were photos of Mrs. Essenbach, mostly standing next to or with her arms around younger men.

The first photo Belasco recognized was the same photo he'd spotted in her apartment—the snapshot that showed Mrs. Essenbach in a black leotard with her arms cozily around a bare-chested Alejandro.

“This one,” he handed it to Wytola. “He's a personal trainer in our gym.”

While Wytola looked at it, then passed it to Lazaro and Stoyanov, Belasco tried to remember her comment to him when he'd first seen it.

A mere child . . . hardly the man that you are
.

But he didn't volunteer that information to the police.

“We'll need to know his hours,” Wytola said to Belasco.

“We can get you his time sheets . . . no problem.”

“Anyone else?” Wytola asked.

Belasco continued sifting through the box until he found another one. “This man's name is Tomas Tejeda. He was an elevator operator. But he no longer works here.”

Wytola said, “We'll need an address for him.”

“Sure,” Belasco said.

Lazaro nodded toward Wytola, “Thanks . . . we'll be in Mr. Belasco's office,” and started to walk to the front door.

“Just a second,” Belasco said to him, then turned to Wytola. “These closets inside closets. Can I see them?”

Wytola looked to Lazaro for an answer.

“Why?” Lazaro asked.

Belasco asked Wytola, “You say the closets inside the other closets are filled with clothes?”

“Yeah.”

“You wouldn't happen to have found a vicuna coat, would you?”

“What's the significance of that?”

Belasco told them the story of Carlos Vela and promised that looking in the closets would only take a moment or two. Lazaro shrugged, Wytola nodded okay, and Lazaro warned Belasco, “You don't touch anything.”

“No problem,” Belasco said.

It was in the second hidden closet that he found Mrs. Essenbach's vicuna coat.

B
ACK DOWNSTAIRS
, Lazaro wanted Belasco to answer more questions.

“Where were you . . . and what did you do between . . . say, noon and five . . . yesterday?”

He responded, “I ordered lunch for some people in the food court at twelve thirty or so, then came back here, which is when I bumped into her . . . Mrs. Essenbach. She was on her way out. That might have been . . . quarter to one? I stayed here until one thirty . . . no, probably not that late . . . then walked over to Madison Avenue. I poked my head into a few galleries.”

“Which ones?”

“I don't know . . .” Belasco shrugged, “I was just walking. Up in the sixties or seventies. Then, sometime around three thirty or so I took the subway downtown to Union Square. I went to the market to buy some cheese. I usually do that on Saturdays. From there I walked home.”

“Which train and which station did you take it from?” Lazaro asked.

“The number six. I got it at Seventy-Seventh . . . I think.”

“You use a Metro Card?”

“Yes.”

“May I have it please?”

“What for?”

“Because we can use it to find out where it was used and what time it was used.”

“Seriously . . .” he looked at both the officers . . . “You can't possibly think . . .”

“If we could borrow your Metro Card please,” Stoyanov said.

Belasco reached for his wallet and looked inside. “I ah . . .” It wasn't there. “I don't seem to have it.”

Lazaro stared at him. “Do you own a gun?”

“No.”

“Have you fired a gun in the past twenty-four hours?”

“Detective, I really resent this . . .”

“Why's that?”

“Because I didn't have anything to do with this . . . and I take exception to you questioning me as if I did.”