Buddy didn’t respond.
“Thirty cents? Twenty-five?”
Her palms warmed when she got to fifteen. They tingled when she got to twelve.
“So if he’s getting a million out of the deal, what should my cut be?”
She ran through some numbers again until the two of them zeroed in on 17½ percent.
Then they talked. Mostly about Teddy, because he was always their biggest issue, and finally she apologized for not keeping her promise. Buddy had asked her to spread his ashes up and down the Strip in Vegas, and Annie had agreed. She just hadn’t said when.
“There’ll be plenty of time for Teddy to spread us both. In the meantime, I need you around.”
She sat there for ten more minutes, the urn cradled in her hands, until the phone rang. She put it on speaker so Buddy could hear.
“Mrs. Ryder. It’s Jeremy. Look, I’m sorry. We got off on the wrong foot. Can we talk?”
“You can talk,” Annie said. “I can listen.”
“I originally hired Teddy and Raymond for fifty thousand. Then I upped it to ninety. I’ll give you one and a quarter.”
“One seventy-five,” Annie said. “Take it or—”
“I’ll take it,” Jeremy said. “But I need time to pull the money together. How about if I come over tomorrow around noon?”
“Good idea. Bring some chloroform and an empty trunk. What am I, stupid? This either goes down in a public place or it doesn’t go down at all.”
“Okay, okay. What about Central Park?”
“Jeremy, old ladies without any jewelry get mugged in Central Park. Meet me at 205 East Houston Street at noon.”
He repeated the address. “What’s there?” he asked.
“Your necklace,” she said, hanging up.
She removed it from around her neck, wrapped it in an empty plastic bag from CVS, took the top off the urn, and dropped the bag inside.
“Keep an eye on this for me, Buddy,” she said. “You’re the only one I trust.”
CHAPTER 38
“It looked like you connected with Cheryl after our meeting with Cates,” Kylie said, navigating the car through the usual Third Avenue rush hour logjam. We were on our way to talk to Howard Sykes at Gracie Mansion. “Did you two lovebirds finally cement the relationship?”
“Connected would be an overstatement,” I said. “We had a brief encounter, like two ships in the night, only we were two cops on a stairwell. Cement is an even bigger stretch. Right now, our relationship is being held together by static cling. As for lovebirds…”
“I get it, I get it,” Kylie said, hanging a right on 88th Street. “I’m sorry I asked.”
“Don’t apologize. I’m happy to have someone to dump it on. You were right this morning about me licking my wounds. By the time I got home last night, I was relegated to the sofa, and I didn’t get to see Cheryl till this afternoon. And you can’t do what I have to do in a house full of nosy cops, so I’m going to try to make reparations tonight over dinner at Paola’s.”
“And are you telling me all this because you think I’m hooked on the soap opera you call your love life? Or is it your not-so-subtle way of telling me not to call you tonight because you’re busy doing damage control?”
“What do you think, Detective?” I said.
“My finely tuned detective instincts tell me that if you’re wining and dining Cheryl at Paola’s, she definitely won’t break up with you before dinner.”
We crossed East End Avenue, pulled into the mayor’s driveway, and ID’d ourselves at the guardhouse. An aide escorted us into Howard’s study. I cut straight to the chase.
“Sir,” I said, “we have thirty-five thousand cops at our disposal. That’s more than enough manpower to station a unit at every single hospital in the five boroughs and wait for this gang to strike again. But…” I let it hang there.
“But,” he said, filling in the blank, “you can’t mobilize that many people and still expect to keep a crime wave of this magnitude under wraps.”
“Exactly.”
“I’ve worked with you two long enough to know you didn’t come here to ask me to take the lid off this operation,” he said. “You have a plan, don’t you?”
“Actually,” Kylie said, “our department shrink, Dr. Cheryl Robinson, came up with it. Zach and I like it, but we can’t pull it off without a lot of help from you.”
“What can I do?”
“We need you to help us set up the next robbery.”
“You…you want me to help you rob a hospital?”
“No, sir. We want you to help them rob a hospital, but we’ll be there waiting for them.”
“Jesus,” he said. “Maybe I watch too many crime shows on TV, but I thought I’d tell you detectives the problem, you’d dig up some clues, and then you’d track these bastards down.”
“These bastards don’t leave a lot of clues,” I said.
“And which of our city’s fine medical institutions have you selected to be the designated victim?”
“If you can convince them,” I said, “Hudson Hospital.”
“How’d they get so lucky?”
“Two reasons. First, there’s the safety factor. These thugs are well armed. So far they haven’t used their guns, but if they walk into a trap and they’re faced with a SWAT team, they may not give up without a fight. Hudson is in the middle of a renovation, and we can contain the operation to the two floors where there are no patients or staff.”
“And the other reason?”
“We think Hudson has something they want,” Kylie said.
“They’ve stolen anything and everything,” Howard said. “Their philosophy seems to be, if it’s not nailed down, take it. How could you possibly know what they want?”
“Dr. Robinson did an analysis, and they’re being much more selective than we originally thought. They’ve never stolen the same equipment twice.”
He shrugged. “So? Stealing is stealing.”
“There are nuances,” Kylie said. “If somebody breaks into a department store and steals a rack of fifty fur coats, odds are those coats are going to wind up on the black market. But what if he breaks into the same store and takes two coats, six dresses, a few pantsuits, five pair of shoes—”
“It sounds like he’s shopping for his wife,” Howard said.
“Exactly. These guys are taking two of these, three of those, one of this. Dr. Robinson’s theory is that they are slowly collecting inventory for a single medical facility.”
“Jesus,” he said. “You think they’re stocking their own hospital?”
“Yes, but they still don’t have everything they need.”
“What do you think they’ll be shopping for?”
“Dr. Robinson calculated that based on the medical needs of a large percentage of the population, and based on the prohibitive cost of the diagnostic equipment, they would be very tempted to go after a state-of-the-art mobile mammogram machine,” Kylie said.
“And Hudson Hospital just bought two of them,” I said.
“I know their CEO, Phil Landsberg,” Howard said.
“And we know their head of security, Frank Cavallaro,” I said.
Howard Sykes sat back in his chair and rubbed his temples with his fingertips. He closed his eyes for at least fifteen seconds and finally looked up. “Do you think you can actually pull this off?”
“Not without you on board,” I said. “What do you think, sir? Can you help us?”
“What do I think? I think it’s nuts. Totally, certifiably crazy,” he said. “But I’ll call Phil Landsberg in the morning and see if I can convince him to join us in our insanity.”
CHAPTER 39
Jeremy Nevins, wearing nothing but a pair of black bikini briefs, padded across the room and explored the contents of the hotel minibar. “Do you believe the prices on this shit?” he said. “A jar of macadamia nuts and a bottle of Heineken cost more than my first car.”
Leo Bassett, lying naked under the she
ets, laughed and stared at the sinewy, sculpted, perfect thirty-two-year-old body standing only ten feet away.
Spending Wednesday nights in the penthouse suite at Morgans with Jeremy had become a tradition, their private little escape from the rest of the world. And with Elena’s death, the robbery gone bad, and Max’s craziness about selling the company name, Leo had more to escape from than usual.
“What are you thinking?” Jeremy said, popping the cap on the beer.
“How much I love you, and how much I hate Max.”
“I love you too. And Max isn’t so bad.”
“He’s insane. He wants to sell our soul to the devil. He’s going to turn the Bassett brand into McDonald’s.”
“That would be terrible,” Jeremy said. He took a macadamia nut out of the jar and seductively set it onto his tongue before easing it into his mouth. “And think of the fallout. You’d make jillions of dollars. Maybe zillions. I don’t know. I’m not good at math.”
“I don’t care how much I can make. The name Bassett stands for the ultimate in luxury. When I introduce myself, I can see the look in people’s eyes. It’s as if I said my name is Tiffany or Bulgari. Do you have any idea how good that makes me feel?”
Jeremy gave him a boyish pout. “I thought making you feel good was my job,” he said, setting down the beer and striking a pose.
Leo squirmed under the sheets. “Yes, it is, and you’re late for work.”
Jeremy tucked two fingers into his briefs’ elastic waistband, licked his lips, and slowly, tantalizingly, lowered the front of the briefs.
Leo’s eyes were wide, and his breathing was shallow.
They all love a good show, Jeremy thought, and Leo is a better audience than most.
“But first,” Jeremy said, letting the waistband snap back into place, “we have some business to attend to. I found the necklace.”
Leo sat up. “Are you serious? Why did you wait until now to tell me?”
“I was waiting for you to be in a receptive mood, and from where I’m standing, you look pretty damn receptive.”
“Who has it?”
“The same guy who ran off with it last night—Teddy Ryder. Only he gave it to his mother, and let me tell you, Leo, this broad looks like that little old lady from The Golden Girls, but boy, can she play hardball. She negotiates like the head of the Teamsters union.”
“How much does she want?”
“A hundred and seventy-five K.”
Leo shrugged. “It’s more than we’ve paid in the past, but it’s still a drop in the bucket. We’ll collect the eight million from the insurance company, and even though Max has to cut the big stones down, they’ll still be worth five, six mil.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say, so I told her we had a deal. I have the ninety you gave me. I just need another eighty-five thousand in cash before noon tomorrow.”
“No problem,” Leo said. “Just don’t run away with it.”
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. Even though you claim not to care about becoming a zillionaire, I promise I won’t run away with your money.”
He was being honest. Annie Ryder would wind up with the hundred and seventy-five thousand. All Jeremy wanted was the necklace. He didn’t need Max to recut the stones. He had a diamond cutter lined up in Belgium and was booked on a KLM flight to Brussels tomorrow night.
“What do you think?” Jeremy said. “Enough business for one night?”
“More than enough.”
Jeremy picked up the remote to the stereo, turned up the music, and spent the next five minutes artfully shedding a few ounces of nylon and spandex. When the dance was over, he stood in the middle of the room, gloriously naked and heart-stoppingly desirable.
Leo pulled back the sheets. “Come to Papa, baby.”
Jeremy crawled into bed, and the fat, pasty man pulled him close, shoved a thick tongue into his mouth, and reached down between his legs.
Jeremy moaned convincingly. It was all in a day’s work.
CHAPTER 40
There are three reasons why I love Paola’s restaurant. First, there’s the incomparable Italian cuisine that Paola Bottero brought to America from Rome.
Second is the unabashed hospitality that greets me every time I walk through the door. Tonight was no different. Paola’s son, Stefano, welcomed us with an enthusiastic “Buona sera, Dr. Robinson, Signor Jordan” and warm hugs that made me feel like we weren’t customers but friends invited over for dinner.
And third, it’s my go-to place to bring a date after I’ve made a fool of myself.
“You’re nothing if not predictable,” Cheryl said after we’d been seated and our wine had been poured. “Every time you and I have come here, it’s been for dinner and an apology.”
“There’s a method to my madness,” I said. “If you dump me, at least I still get a great dinner out of it.”
“I’m not going to dump you. I love being with you. I’m just not sure I can handle living with you.”
“I’m sorry. I really screwed up last night.”
“I’m not sure you screwed up. I think you were just Zach being Zach.”
“But it’s not the Zach you deserve. You planned this fantastic evening, and when the phone rang, I walked out on you.”
“Ran out.”
“In my head, I kept thinking, ‘You’re a cop. This is what cops do.’ But it wasn’t a cop call. It was…”
I stopped. This was tougher than I thought, and I was afraid I was going to make matters even worse.
“It was what?” Cheryl said.
I drank some wine. “This morning I went to the diner, and I told Gerri what I did. Her immediate reaction was, ‘Why did you walk—’ Sorry. ‘Why did you run out?’ And I said, ‘That’s what I do whenever there’s a damsel in distress.’”
Cheryl laughed.
“Well, at least you’re laughing,” I said. “Gerri went batshit. She told me Kylie was definitely not a damsel in distress. And she’s right. Kylie can handle herself. She kicked a guy in the balls today. The poor bastard probably won’t walk straight for a week.”
“I agree with Dr. Gerri. Kylie can fend for herself.”
“Anyway, I thought about it, so this afternoon, when I had five minutes, I googled ‘Men who try to rescue women.’ I’ve got what you psychologists call the White Knight Syndrome.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Zach. No, you don’t.”
“I don’t?”
“Absolutely not. Would you like my professional opinion?”
“Hell yeah.”
“Instead of googling everything that troubles you and then accepting as gospel whatever some idiot blogged about on the Internet, why don’t you talk your problems out with a shrink?”
“I’m in luck. I’ve got one right here.”
“Fat chance. You’re going to have to find one you haven’t slept with.”
“Hmm…that’s going to be a challenge.”
She dipped two fingers in her water glass and flicked it at me. “This conversation is officially over. Let’s talk about some fun stuff—like what did Howard Sykes think about my idea?”
“Nervous, but willing. Can I just say one more thing on the topic you don’t want to talk about?”
“One, and that’s it.”
“I just want you to know I’m trying. I told Kylie we were going out to dinner and not to call me. I figured if I were trying to lose weight, I wouldn’t stock the house with Oreos and Häagen-Dazs ice cream. Same principle. Out of sight, out of mind.”
She didn’t say a word. This time, the conversation was officially over.
For the next hour, we ate, we drank, we laughed, we talked—dinner was everything I could have hoped for. We were both too full to order dessert, but that didn’t stop Paola from sending a mind-blowing lemon tart to our table and then joining us for five minutes to catch up on how we were doing.
As of that moment, we were doing just fine.
And then my cell rang. I looked at the calle
r ID, hit Decline, and shoved the phone back into my pocket.
“Who was it?” Cheryl asked.
“It was Kylie, but I’m not accepting calls from damsels in distress this evening.”
Cheryl laughed. “Are you serious? Was it really Kylie? After you told her not to call?”
“Looks like I’m not the only one who needs a shrink,” I said.
Our waiter was just bringing me the check when Cheryl’s phone rang. She took one look at the caller ID, and her expression changed. This was a serious call. She answered.
I could only hear her side of the conversation. She didn’t say much, but the few words she did manage to get out sounded ominous.
“Oh no. Are they sure? Oh God, I am so sorry.” And finally, “Zach and I are at 92nd Street and Madison. Pick us up. We’re going with you.”
She hung up, and tears were streaming down her face. “That was Kylie,” she said. “She just got a phone call from the captain of the Four Four in the Bronx.”
“Jesus. What happened?”
“They found Spence’s body in a vacant lot. He was shot through the head.”
PART THREE
SOME DAYS ARE DIAMONDS.
SOME DAYS ARE STONES.
CHAPTER 41
“Any details?” I asked.
“Bare bones,” Cheryl said. “Anonymous tip to 911. First cop on the scene was able to ID Spence—his wallet was on the ground. No cash, but his emergency contact said ‘Wife: NYPD Detective Kylie MacDonald.’ That kicked the system into high gear. It’s like ‘officer down’ once removed. That’s all I know except that Kylie is on the way to identify the body.”
“God, I hope she’s not driving.”
“She’s not that crazy, and even if she tried, no one is crazy enough to let her.”
We were on the corner of Nine Two and Madison, and I stepped off the curb to get a better look down the avenue. Flashing lights about a mile away. No sirens, but moving fast.
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