by A. C. Fuller
“I have to ask,” the interviewer said with a sly grin, “is it true that you and Troy Murphy are dating?”
Price’s head tilted to the side and she touched the lower half of her throat. “Not at all,” she said. “Troy is a good friend and I respect the work he’s doing with Refugee International. That’s all. Find someone else to gossip about.”
Cole closed the video and opened another, a sit-down promoting a cosmetics line she had endorsed in the early 2000s, when she was still living with her husband. Nearly twenty years ago, Cole thought, and her face looked exactly the same. This time, she watched the video on mute, focusing on Price’s hands and face. Three minutes in, she saw what she was looking for. A hand to the neck. She rewound the video fifteen seconds and listened to the question.
“Mrs. Price, you’ve never endorsed a line of cosmetics, you’ve never endorsed any product at all. Why now? Why Allure Natural Cosmetics?”
“Thanks for asking, Tiffany. I endorsed Allure because I believe in the products. I use them myself every morning and evening…” her hand moved to her throat… “and they’ve simply revolutionized my daily beauty routine.”
Cole shoved her phone into the back pocket of her jeans as the taxi stopped in front of the townhouse. She didn’t know whether Margaret Price knew anything about Ambani’s murder, but she now knew how to tell when she was lying.
* * *
Cole rushed past a small group of reporters lingering in front of the townhouse, then rang the doorbell. A moment later, a young Asian man in a crisp black suit answered. “My name is Uni. I am Mrs. Price’s assistant. I presume you are Jane Cole?”
She considered a dance-troupe joke, but thought better of it. “That’s me.”
She shot a look at the jealous reporters over her shoulder as she followed Uni into the two-story entry hall. Uni closed the door behind them, then led her into a large living room, nicely appointed with modern blue and white furniture, but not lavish in the way Cole had anticipated. She’d expected an old-fashioned elegance, but the house looked like it had been furnished by an upscale Ikea for rich people.
Margaret Price sat on a chaise lounge in the corner. “Jane, welcome. Would you like something to drink? I’m having tea, but Uni can make anything you like.”
Uni looked at her, one eyebrow raised.
Cole waved him off. “I’m fine, but I have a favor to ask. In a few minutes, my associate will appear at your back door. Please let him in.”
“Why didn’t he come in the front with you?”
“Reporters.”
“If he’s your associate, isn’t he a reporter?”
“Not exactly. He’s a cop.”
Price sat up a little straighter. “But why? Surely the—”
“Don’t worry, it’s not that. No one suspects you of anything. It’s for my story. He was nearby on the day of the shooting.”
The argument didn’t make much sense, but Price didn’t question it. “Fine, fine then. Uni, let him through the kitchen door.”
Cole sat in a chair across from the chaise lounge and cleared her throat awkwardly as she contemplated the best way to approach Price. “First of all, thank you for seeing me, Mrs. Price.”
“Call me Maggie.”
“Thank you, Maggie. And I’m sorry for the unusual entry of my friend…oh here he is.”
Warren entered, trailed by Uni.
Price studied Warren. “Oh, yes indeed. Men like you inspire me to give money to the New York City Police Foundation every year. If only they’d let me stuff my checks into the back of his trousers. Turn around honey.”
Cole stifled a laugh. “Please, Maggie. He’s a former Marine. Have some respect.”
Price growled seductively. “The few, the proud.” After an awkward silence, during which her eyes never left Warren as he took a seat next to Cole, she said, “Right then, ask your first question, Mrs. Cole.”
Cole launched a pre-planned series of questions about the building. How long had Price lived there? How did she like the neighborhood? Small talk. Questions to which Cole already knew the answers. This was a tactic she used often with tough interviews. Get them talking about easy stuff to lay the groundwork and get a read on them. If she was lucky, Price would lie about something Cole knew the truth about, allowing her to test her tell.
But she didn’t lie, so once they established a rapport, Cole shifted gears. “What were you doing on your trip at the time of the shooting?”
“Shopping. Nothing like Christmas shopping in Paris.”
Had she tilted her head slightly as she answered? Cole wasn’t certain. “Find anything nice?”
Price frowned. “How can this possibly be relevant to your story?”
Cole flicked the internal switch, turning off every part of herself except the amorphous static interior. Her eyes focused on Price like a laser. “Did you leave town because you knew Raj Ambani would be murdered from your rooftop?”
Price gasped. “Good Lord, no!”
She spoke the truth. Cole was sure of it. It would have taken a better liar to respond so immediately and authentically. “Did someone suggest that you leave town at that time?”
She hesitated half a second and steadied her eyes on Cole. “No!”
There it was! Just as she spoke, Price brushed her neck softly with the back of her fingertips. “I go to Paris in the winter. Every year. The new styles come out there months before they hit New York and—”
“Who suggested those exact days?”
“I just told you.” Price’s hurt look was quickly replaced by an imperious glare. “No one suggested anything. Uni, please see Mrs. Cole out.”
Warren wordlessly placed his body between Uni and Cole.
Cole stood and leaned into Price’s face. The socialite’s skin betrayed the tightness of a recent botox treatment. Her makeup was a thick shade of tan that looked unnatural close up. The room faded away and Cole’s awareness shrank until it contained only Price’s well-preserved face, awash in a sea of gray. “Mrs. Price—Maggie—just one more question. Did your husband tell you to leave town on those particular days?”
“Uni, please make them leave.”
“Did he?”
Price’s neck flushed crimson and she fanned it with both hands. “Please leave.”
Uni maneuvered around Warren and grasped Cole’s forearm. She immediately shook herself free. “It’s okay. You answered every question I had.” She faced Uni. “We’ll see ourselves out.”
24
Outside, Cole slipped on a pair of sunglasses as they walked through puddles that steamed and sparkled in the bright morning sun. They passed the Met, open again as though nothing had happened, and entered Central Park at 84th Street.
“How’d you know she was lying?” Warren asked.
Cole didn’t respond. She was coming down from the intensity of the confrontation with Price. Her nerves were fried.
“You look...shook. Tired. Surely Maggie Price didn’t rattle the great Jane Cole. What’s going on? And what’s that mark on your face?”
“You should see the one on my back.”
“What?”
She let out a long sigh. “Last night I met the man who killed Ambani. The man from the video.”
“What?” Warren grabbed her by the shoulder to force her to stop walking.
Her hands quivered. “He sent an anonymous email. He knew stuff about me—about Matt. His death.” She hadn’t told Mazzalano these details and they sounded unreal as she said them out loud. She sniffled. “He knew details and I—”
Warren’s eyes widened. “Holy shit. You’re serious? Did you talk to the police? Jane, tell me what happened.”
She began walking again and, for the next ten minutes, she talked through the events of the previous night. “They’re not gonna be able to find him from the email,” she concluded. “Any guy with a decent laptop can run anonymization the NYPD can’t track. And I didn’t look back. Lieutenant I know is gonna rush the DNA sample, but
...”
“Yeah, that could take weeks.”
She shook her head, frustrated. “Damnit, I should have looked back.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. Remember what I said. This thing had ‘professional’ written all over it. If that’s what he is, guys like him genuinely don’t want to kill innocent people. But he would have. You did the right thing.”
“I can beat myself up about that later. Can we talk about Chandler Price? I had a hunch, and Maggie confirmed it.”
“Tell me how you knew she was lying?”
“Most people have a tell when they lie. Looking at the ground, over-explaining, offering too many details, shifting their eyes. You can learn all that with a Google search. Takes a while to get good at it, though. Takes a lot of self-control to really be with the person, rather than in your own head. I’m a reporter. People lie to me all day, every day. Helps to be able to know when. Maggie’s tell was easy. She brushed her neck. People feel vulnerable when they lie. Some protect vulnerable body parts unconsciously.”
“But how’d you know about her husband?”
“She was telling the truth about not knowing Ambani would be shot. But someone did. My guess was that whoever that was, they got her to leave town those days.” She shrugged. “Chandler Price still owns the building, still pays the bills. My hunch was that he was the only person who could get her to leave the house on those specific days. ”
“Pretty sure she wasn’t in on it?”
Cole nodded slowly. “I wondered whether her husband had a business deal with Ambani that went bad, or maybe they had a mistress in common.”
“Ambani was happily married, from what I’ve read. Plus, why nine rifles then?”
“Don’t know, but let’s look into the business angles first. Low-hanging fruit.”
They stopped at a bench beside a large muddy field. Cole crossed her legs and folded her heels under her hamstrings. Warren began a series of searches on his phone, combining the names Raj Ambani and Chandler Price. Together they read a few of the links, but the quick search didn’t bring up any obvious connections. Warren kept searching while Cole called Chandler Price’s office number. The man who picked up told her in no uncertain terms that he hadn’t given an interview in three years, and there was no chance he was going to change that policy today.
“Should we try for his cell number?” Warren asked.
“Maybe, but my hunch is that he’s a lot smarter than his wife, less likely to answer his own phone. And what his secretary said is true. He doesn’t give interviews. Even if we get him on the phone, he’ll just hang up on us. Maggie craves the limelight. He avoids it.”
Warren nodded down the path. “Let’s walk.”
“We don’t have much,” Cole said. “So let’s do an experiment.” As they walked, she did an image search for Chandler Price and held up the first picture to Warren. “Would you say he looks more like an Oompa Loompa or an over-steamed dumpling?”
“You must be a writer. I was just gonna say he looks short, pink, and sweaty. What else do you know about him?”
“His darling wife was involved in all sorts of charities, mostly liberal stuff, Hollywood stuff. She liked hanging with A-listers.”
“If I had my cop hat right now, I wouldn’t want to speculate. But I don’t, so I’ll just say it. From the moment I saw the post about the weapons, I thought it was some ultra-nationalist thing, maybe even a white supremacist thing.”
“Last night in the alley, the shooter asked me whether my source was a Jew. Said it with loathing.”
“So let’s run with that,” Warren said. “Let’s say it’s not a business thing, but a political or racial thing. Chandler Price wants Raj Ambani dead, he gets this old dude to buy the weapons, then makes sure his wife will be out of town.”
“Then he disables the video security on the townhouse, giving the guy the cover he needs to get up to the roof from the fire escape, take the shot, and escape clean.” Cole swerved to avoid a rollerblader. “That’s it.”
“What?”
“You just said it. ‘He gets this old dude to buy the weapons.’ If that’s true, there’s a paper trail. A money trail. It’s the oldest cliché in journalism. Follow. The. Money.”
“It’s a cliché in police work, too, but it’s a cliché for a reason. It works.” They turned back in the direction of the Met. “But even if there’s a paper trail showing the transaction, I couldn’t get those even if I was still a cop.” He stopped short and faced Cole. “But I know who can.”
25
An hour later, Cole and Warren exited the elevator at the 23rd Street entrance of The High Line, a public park built on a one-and-a-half mile elevated rail structure running along Manhattan’s West Side. The trees and bushes sparkled with Christmas lights. Red bows were tied around the garbage cans that dotted the pathway every few hundred yards.
“Who are we meeting?” Cole asked.
“Better if I don’t say too much.”
“Why are we meeting here, though?”
“‘Cause this is the last place I’ll run into someone I know on a cold December afternoon.”
They crossed a frozen lawn and sat on wooden steps that dead-ended at a stone wall. The park was deserted.
“In the summer,” Warren said, “this is a great spot for picnics. It’s packed. Today it’s a good place to get a cold ass.”
Cole scooched out of the puddle she’d sat in. “Cold and wet.”
“There.” Warren pointed at two men approaching from the south.
They were young, late twenties or early thirties, and not in uniform. One was tall and rail thin, the other short and dumpy. Why did she think she recognized them?
“Digital JTTF unit,” Warren said before she could ask who they were. “Guys I told you about. Fat pasty dude is Samuel Bacon. Tall black dude is Norris Ubwe.”
Ubwe approached Warren, ignoring Cole. Bacon stood behind him, looking around nervously. “What is this about?” Ubwe asked. He appeared to be the leader.
“You remember me?” Warren asked.
“Yes, I do, as I said on the phone. Who is she?” He spoke by-the-book English with a slight Nigerian accent.
Cole extended a hand. “Jane Cole, New York Sun.”
Ubwe took a half-step back. “You brought a reporter?”
Warren smiled. “She’s an expert in breaking stories about critical failings within the NYPD. And the JTTF.”
Bacon stepped toward them, a look of recognition passing over his face. “Wait, isn’t she the one who wrote about you?”
Warren grinned. “Ruined my career. So you gotta be wondering why I brought her here.”
They nodded in unison. “When I worked with you two that day in JTTF, we saw a post about a man seeking nine weapons. Do you remember?” They nodded again. “You refer that one out?”
“Probably,” Ubwe said. “FBI, most likely. I don’t remember for certain, but that is protocol. I can check.”
A cloud passed in front of the sun and a light drizzle started to fall. “I don’t like being cold,” Warren said. “So I’ll make this short. We believe the man who sought those weapons used one of them to kill Raj Ambani. And unless you want The New York Sun to print a story about how you guys blew that one, you’re going to help me. Deal?”
The two men exchanged a look, then Ubwe nodded.
“I’m glad.” Warren reached in his pocket. “There’s a name on this piece of paper, with a couple known addresses. I need his bank records for the last year. All of them. I need them emailed to the address that’s also on that piece of paper. Within an hour.”
“But that’s illegal,” Bacon said.
Warren ignored him. “You can get them off the dark web, I assume.”
“Maybe, but we might have to hack into—”
“I don’t care how you do it, but do it from a home computer. I don’t want you getting the department mixed up in this.” He looked from one to the other, his gaze cold as ice, then took Cole by the
hand and led her back to the elevator.
* * *
When the email arrived, Cole and Warren were finishing lunch at a diner in the West Village. It came in the form of four PDFs, one for each of Chandler Price’s bank accounts, ranging from thirty to over three hundred pages.
Warren forwarded the first two to Cole, who opened them on her phone. “When you have as much money as Price, there are going to be a lot of transactions. Start with today and work backwards. Look for anything unusual. Large cash withdrawals or transfers. If we’re lucky, personal checks.”
They worked in silence, Cole scanning two of the bank accounts, Warren scanning the other two. After a few minutes, Cole said, “Here’s something. A regular payment of $4,000 to Maria Flores.”
“Address?”
“No, and there are probably a hundred Maria Flores’ in New York City. We could spend a week looking for her.”
Warren looked up. “And it’s probably a mistress he’s paying off, anyway.”
“Could be the wife or partner of the killer. Maybe they sent the money through her to hide it?”
“Possibly, but if I’m right, this guy doesn’t have a wife, doesn’t live with a woman. We’re looking for a sad old white man in his seventies. Probably ex-military.”
“What about this?” Cole said. “Transfer to a guy named Michael Wragg for $25,000 three days ago. This was from Price’s Delaware Trust account.”
“That name…I saw that name.”
Warren scrolled furiously through a PDF. “Here. Michael Wragg. A payment for $99,000 on September first. That’s right around when I saw the weapons post.”
“That sound like the price of nine custom, untraceable rifles?”
“Sounds about right.”
Cole tapped her phone. “Already searching for his address. Two Michael Wraggs in New York City. One in the Bronx. One on the Lower East Side.”
Warren jumped out of the booth and threw on his jacket. “Then what the hell are we waiting for?”