Vendetta (6 page)

“Hey, Lizzani,” someone called, poking his head out of an enormous kitchen shimmering with gold fixtures as Cat and Tess passed by. He had a receipt in his hand. “You owe ten from the pizza run.”

Cat and Tess both eyeballed the receipt as Lizzani pulled out his wallet. The pizza delivery had occurred at 11.52 a.m. That was just a little over three hours ago. They shared a tiny but significant look. Lizzani had told them that he hadn’t been here when the kidnapping had occurred, but midnight pizza suggested otherwise. The FBI contact on the phone had placed the crime at around one-thirty a.m. They’d have to do a timeline on Lizzani.

The two detectives were ushered into a room twice as spacious as the penthouse’s foyer, which was fortunate because at least twice as many men in suits surrounded an ornate gold and ebony desk. Behind the desk, an older but very buff man with jet-black hair sat in a beautifully cut charcoal-gray suit and dark blue tie. He wore a Rolex and a large gold-and-onyx ring on his left pinkie. No wedding ring.

His face was that of a soulful Italian, with dark, deep-set eyes and an aquiline nose. His mouth was turned down sharply, and as Cat and Tess held up their badges, he burst into tears. At that moment, his tough-guy image was shattered, and Cat found herself confronted with a frantic parent.

“Oh, my God, Angelo,” he said, and his shoulders heaved.

Cat and Tess remained impassive, their faces blank as Cat glanced into the mirror behind the distraught man. It was a two-way mirror. For all she knew, he was recording this meeting. A glance into the mirror at Tess, who moved her chin less than an inch. She had noticed it, too. They must tread very cautiously, dotting all their Is and crossing their Ts. Men like Tony DeMarco ate sloppy cops for breakfast if they didn’t obtain the results they desired.

“Sir, NYPD will do everything in our power to get your son back,” Tess said, while Cat caught sight of two men in the back row, wearing white dress shirts and nearly identical dark blue suits. They moved in concert toward her and Tess.

“Detectives,” the older, paler one said, holding out his hand. His mouth was turned down and he had a purple birthmark in the hollow of his left cheek. His eyes were hooded and cold. “I’m Special Agent Robertson. Glad you could make it.”

He had a snide tone that Cat didn’t appreciate, as if he were insinuating that they had taken too long to get there. She didn’t react and neither did Tess, just politely shook his hand.

“I’m Special Agent Gonzales,” the second man said, in a friendlier tone. Black eyebrows accentuated chestnut eyes, and black stubble burnished a slightly rounded chin.

“I’m Detective Chandler and this is Detective Vargas,” Cat said. “Would you mind bringing us up to date?”

“My son is missing. What more do you need to know?” DeMarco half-shouted, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his eyes.

“Mr. DeMarco, please try to remain as calm as you can. We know this is a nightmare and we’re sorry that it happened. But Detective Vargas and I have worked cases like this before and we’ve gotten results,” Cat assured him.

“There has
never
been a case like this. This is about
my
son,” DeMarco snapped, and suddenly the grieving parent was nowhere to be seen. The man was seething like lava, once more the most dangerous crime boss in all of New York City, if even one-tenth of the stories about him were true. Not someone you wanted to get on the bad side of. But Tess and Cat were officers of the law, not to be trifled with. If they were working on his case, that meant they couldn’t work someone else’s case. And the workload of a police force always exceeded manpower. So he had obligations too—to keep himself together in order to help them.

She wondered how Vincent was faring. Ten years ago, he had served his country in a war zone. Now he was serving his city—and he was just as hated and feared now as then.

“What I mean is that you will have our full attention and we will do everything we can to bring Angelo home,” Cat said.

“Whatever it takes?” He raised his chin as if daring her to say otherwise.

“Of course. Within the law, of course.” It was a relief to apply her skills and training to a complex case that didn’t throw beasts in the mix, too. But that relief was tempered by the fact that she was dealing with a powerful man who believed that laws were meant to be shattered if they stood in his way.

He smiled slowly. “Well, aren’t you a spunky lady. I like you.”

Cat didn’t smile back. She wasn’t here to be liked. She needed him to be cooperative so she could find his son, but that was all.

Gonzales cleared his throat. “I’ll debrief you. Mr. DeMarco is far too upset. At approximately one-ten p.m. the power went out in the DeMarco building. The backup generator system did not turn on, as it was designed to do, until one of Mr. DeMarco’s people physically went down into the basement to reset it.”

“We’d like to talk to that person,” Tess said.

“The next thing that failed was the backup for the security system.”

“Wow,” Tess said.

“You don’t need to be broadcasting that,” Mr. DeMarco snapped. “There’s still a blackout, right? I don’t need my business rivals thinking I can’t protect what’s mine. It’s been fixed. All of it. We don’t have any problems.”

“Who’s in charge of that system?” Cat asked Gonzales.

“We’ve already debriefed him,” Robertson insisted.

Tess stayed cool. “Maybe he’ll remember a few new details by restating their story to a new interviewer.” Allowing other departments who were working on a case to interview key subjects was Investigation 101, no matter who you worked for. Robertson was just being a jerk.

“All you need to do is look for Angelo,” Mr. DeMarco said. “You’re NYPD. You know the city.”

The FBI had twelve hundred agents in New York City. They knew the lay of the land as well as the police department.

“The more we know about
how
he was taken, the closer we get to who may have taken him, and where,” Cat said. Surely he knew this. “I respect your need for privacy, and I’m sorry you have to permit strangers into your home.”

“Strangers who can take what they learn and use it
later
,” he said. He pointed a finger at them. “You can bet it’ll be changed up, so don’t bothering taking a lot of notes.”

“If it’s going to be changed up,” Tess ventured, “then it won’t matter if we talk to the people who put the current system together.”

DeMarco blinked at her. Then he actually smiled. “You’ve got moxie. Both you ladies.” He looked at Robertson. “They can talk to Bailey.”

“Okay.”

Cat could tell by Tess’s carefully neutral expression that she was finding this conversation just as odd as she was. DeMarco was dictating the terms of the investigation to an FBI agent. It spoke volumes about how powerful he was—and suggested that Robertson, at least, was content to let him take the lead.

“Okay, I see that your ERU is keeping busy. What do you have so far?” Cat asked briskly. FBI might have jurisdiction, but that didn’t mean that the NYPD was somehow a lesser entity or a junior partner. If they were going to assist, they needed facts, information.

An evidence tech approached carrying a dark-blue plastic bin. “Here’s the ransom note,” said Special Agent Gonzales, reaching inside the bin. The tech set the box down on DeMarco’s desk. Gonzales held up a clear plastic evidence bag for Tess and Cat to see. It would have been nice if they could have examined the note before it had been bagged. They had their own gloves; they wouldn’t have contaminated the evidence.

“We bagged it a bit prematurely, perhaps,” Gonzales added.

Cat wondered if his apology was genuine. Some FBI agents were remote and intimidating, like Robertson, but the FBI was in the business of intelligence gathering—extracting information, making connections, figuring things out. Her dad—her
real
dad, not her biological father—loved to say that you caught more flies with honey than with vinegar. Ergo, it made sense for agents to cultivate trust in the individuals they dealt with, on all levels, from criminals to colleagues from other agencies. To be a “people person,” in other words… or to be able to act like one. All that “just the facts, ma’am” you saw on TV? More often, agents were friendly and encouraged chatter.

Inside the bag was a handwritten note on a piece of plain copy paper. It said,
We have your son. He will receive insulin when we receive money. Be ready.

“Insulin,” Cat said, and Special Agent Gonzales handed her another evidence bag from the bin, this one made of brown paper, like a lunch sack. Bags such as these were used for pieces of evidence that were moist, since being encased in plastic could promote molds or other bacterial growth that could compromise the item. Cat set down the bag and put on a pair of blue latex evidence gloves. Tess did the same. Then Cat reached in and carefully retrieved a small plastic box with a digital screen and a plastic tube attached to it.

“Angelo DeMarco has juvenile diabetes. It’s been difficult to manage because he doesn’t deal with it very well. Mrs. DeMarco has corroborated that this is most likely Angelo’s insulin pump,” Robertson said. “We’ve taken DNA samples off it. We’ll have them analyzed.”

“Is Angelo DeMarco’s DNA in the system?” Cat asked.

Robertson shrugged. “We can use his medical records. He’s been to the doctor about a thousand times.” Medical records were protected information, but looking at them would be easily accomplished with a subpoena.

“Here’s a good headshot of Angelo,” Gonzales said, handing each of them an eight-by-ten glossy of a young man who resembled Tony DeMarco, but whose features were less sharp. Big, dark eyes, heavy eyebrows, but a softer nose and plumper lips. He wasn’t smiling, and he looked as if something was weighing heavily on his mind. Haunted. “I’ll email it to your phones as well.”

“When was this picture taken?” Tess asked.

“About three months ago. It was for DeMarco Industries’ annual report,” DeMarco said. “Angelo is on the board.” He gave his head a shake. “Not that he ever makes the meetings. See, that’s the problem if you grow up rich.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Tess murmured, so softly that Cat, who standing the closest to her, barely heard her. Good thing, too. They didn’t want to antagonize DeMarco.

“We could help you question the security and housekeeping staff,” Cat said to Robertson.

“On it,” he said. “Agents are taking statements in some of the guest rooms as we speak.”

“Looks like you have everything well in hand,” Cat said with a trace of asperity.

“We do,” he responded.

It was evident that the two men resented her and Tess’s presence. It didn’t matter. A young man with a medical condition was missing. Finding him was their mandate.

“Maybe it’s time to speak to Bailey,” Cat said.

“I’ll arrange that,” Robertson said. He pulled out a radiophone and began speaking into it as he walked off.

“Take them to Hallie while Bailey gets ready,” Mr. DeMarco told Gonzales. “I’m not sure how much help she’ll be. You know how women are.” He inclined his head. “Except for beautiful lady cops, of course.”

Bleargh
, Cat thought.

Gonzales gestured for them to follow him out. They left the office and followed the two agents back through the foyer to a cavernous space filled with suits of armor. A large shield with a yellow-and-black coat of arms hung on the wall. demarco, it read.

There was one woman in the crowd of security people. In her early fifties, she had short, feathered red hair and she was dressed in a black suit with a skirt, low black heels, and the most foreboding “don’t screw with me” expression in the apartment thus far. She was on a radiophone and when she saw Cat and Tess, she walked into a room off the hall and shut the door as if for privacy. There were a few head nods in their direction as they walked the gauntlet of strangers, but for the most part they were pretty much ignored.

Then Gonzales opened a door on the right and Cat stepped through first. She found herself on a carved marble staircase that spiraled upward, and Gonzales indicated that she should go up.

Behind Cat, Tess murmured, “Oh, boy, more stairs,” and Gonzales smiled.

“We were running a pool on whether or not you two would actually climb sixty flights of stairs,” he said.

“Damn straight,” Tess replied, and his smile broke into a big grin.

“I had my money on you, Detective Vargas. You’re in shape.” His gaze strayed toward her butt.

“Can we cut the chatter?” Robertson snapped.

Tess flashed him a quick evil eye out of his range of vision and Cat stayed silent as they ascended the stairs. Their footsteps rang out.

“Would the kidnappers have used this route?” she asked.

“That’s something we don’t know,” Gonzales said. “I mean, you can hear how noisy this stairwell is. It was built that way on purpose. It’s one way Mr. DeMarco kept tabs on his son. Or tried to. Somehow, Angelo still snuck in and out.”

“He’s twenty, right? I mean, can’t he come and go as he pleases?” Tess asked, and Robertson’s mouth set into a rigid line.

“Mr. DeMarco is correct to be so protective of his son. Angelo has trouble accepting that the wealth and privilege he was born into makes him a target for exactly this situation. If he was more cautious, his father would be less… watchful.”

Poor little rich boy
, Cat thought. She was forming a profile of Angelo DeMarco: restricted and rebellious. A volatile combination. She could remember having spats with her mom over curfews and the company she kept.

But not when I was twenty. My mom was already dead.

“The security cameras must have backup batteries,” Cat said, combining two questions into one: that they
had
cameras, and that they’d been on.

“The cameras leading into Angelo’s quarters were disabled,” Gonzales reported. “That’s not unusual. Angelo hacked them himself on a regular basis. Said he didn’t want to be spied on.” He gave her a weary look as if to say,
You begin to see the problem.

The stairs ended on a landing decorated with a signed guitar in a glass case. The case stood in the direct pathway of a security camera. None of the status lights at the base of the camera was on.