“Might be an improvement.” Tolliver tossed his bag into the backseat of the Taurus, then climbed in behind the wheel. “Appreciate the good work, Charley.”
“Stay out of Brownsville,” McManus said. He looked at the piece of tape on Ben’s jaw. “And take care of yourself.”
“I’ll do that.” Tolliver started his engine and the men opened the gates for him. He drove past the lineup of wrecked patrol cars and out of the yard.
At this time of day, the Queens Midtown Tunnel would be his best bet. He was right: traffic was light. He made the Criminal Justice Building in just under twenty minutes.
When he walked in, Jack Mulloy jumped to his feet with a big grin. He followed Tolliver into his office.
“Man, am I glad to see you,” Mulloy said. “Where you been?”
“Took a few days off,” Ben said.
“And cut your chin shaving, right?”
“Right. What’s going on?”
Mulloy pointed to a pile of messages on Tolliver’s desk. “Lot of calls, people looking for you. Brannigan’s been asking me, and then yesterday Shackley was over here nosing around.”
Ben hung up his raincoat and sat at his desk, leafing through the messages. Captain Brennan had left word to call him, nothing urgent. None of the others seemed important; some of them were from reporters, and many others appeared to be of the nutball variety, from people claiming to have vital information.
“Hey,” Mulloy said, “you ready for the good news?”
“Sure—what is it?”
“That group I came across, the guys who were feeding each other information they got from boards they sat on? I got four more of them.”
“You sure?”
“Sure as I can be. And get this—one of them has a son who’s gonna marry the daughter of another one. It was in the Times. You believe it?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“The trouble is, I’m not crazy about laying it out for Shackley. I wouldn’t want to see this get shoved into the same shit can where all the rest of it goes. I was hoping you’d have some ideas.”
“Let me think about it,” Ben said. “Just keep it under wraps until I tell you.”
“Okay, will do.” Mulloy left the office.
Tolliver thought about this latest development. What Mulloy had uncovered was another pattern of illegal dealing, without question. Unfortunately, it also raised a further set of questions Ben didn’t know the answers to.
Resignedly, he resumed looking through his messages, tossing most of them into the wastebasket. One of them was from a woman on Long Island who said she wanted to talk to him about her sister, who was hospitalized. He crumpled the slip of paper and dumped it with the others.
At the moment, what he wanted most was to go to his apartment for a shower and some clean clothes.
68
When Jack Mulloy returned to his desk, he noticed Captain Brannigan standing in the doorway of his office, watching him. Brannigan had his arms folded, leaning against the door frame and wearing a shit-eating smile. The captain glanced over at Tolliver’s office and back at Mulloy, then turned away and went back to his own office.
The prick.
Mulloy had no illusions about the chances he was taking, hooking up with Tolliver. It was like walking a high wire across the East River. One false step and it’d be all over.
Maybe when it came right down to it, what he’d been doing was too risky, after all. It was one thing to latch onto a great opportunity when he saw one, but it was another to piss away everything he had.
And yet, would he really want to deal with this any differently? You never got anywhere unless you were willing to lay your ass on the line for what you believed in. And that belief started with yourself.
He looked at his desk: the records, his notes, all his work he kept carefully locked away in the drawers. What would happen if Brannigan got into the stuff and started questioning him—or if he told Shackley about it and the two of them worked on him? He’d be in deep shit.
He tensed, thinking about it, and then forced himself to relax. There was nothing he couldn’t handle. He’d just be extra-careful, that was all. Maybe it’d be smart to move the material, too, store it someplace else.
In the end, it was just a question of keeping his wits about him—the same as always. Jack Mulloy hadn’t made it this far without being one smart, tough operator.
He picked up his mug from his desk and went across the area to the coffee urn.
69
The helicopter was larger than any of the ones Shelley had flown in. It looked like a giant dragonfly, ready to buzz off from the southeastern tip of Manhattan. The aircraft was painted pearlescent white, gleaming under coats of wax, the main rotor blades turning lazily as it sat on the pad at the Port Authority Heliport. The pilot, a young guy in a crisp blue uniform, had stowed the baggage and was waiting for his passengers to board the aircraft.
There were two others besides Shelley: Laura Bentley and Claire, the senator’s widow. Laura introduced her to Claire and then the pilot helped them up the step and into the door. All three women were dressed casually in slacks and sweaters.
When they were ensconsed in the passenger compartment, Shelley was even more impressed. The seats were upholstered in glove-soft beige suede, luxuriously deep and comfortable. There were also magazine racks and a folding desk and a combination bar-refrigerator, plus a TV and a stereo. The floor was covered in thick carpeting.
In all, the helicopter was nothing like the thrashing machines she’d broadcast traffic reports from back in her early days in the business. Those were raucous and uncomfortable, while this was more like a flying limousine.
“The others went on ahead,” Laura said to her, “in one of the other helicopters. They always do that, so they can talk business. They leave this one for the ladies.”
“The camp followers, you mean,” Claire said.
Shelley was in the left-hand seat aft, with Laura sitting beside her and Claire facing them. As the helicopter lifted off, they had a marvelous view of the city. Late-afternoon sunlight was reflecting from a million panels of glass in the windows of the skyscrapers.
Claire opened the liquor cabinet in the bar. “Anybody want a drink? Besides me?”
Shelley shook her head. “Not for me, thanks.”
“Maybe later,” Laura said. “After we’re airborne.”
“Suit yourselves.” Claire got out a glass and filled it with ice and gin, then sat back and took a long swallow.
They leveled off, sailing over the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, and a little farther up went over the Williamsburg, the river like a wide gray-green ribbon below them. The pilot kept the craft low, which Shelley knew from her own chopper experience was so that controllers wouldn’t confuse them with the traffic on their radar screens, jets arriving and departing from the local airports, Kennedy, La Guardia, and Newark.
They crossed the Queensboro and at Hell Gate swung east, going over the Triborough this time, with Wards Island on their left. Then they ducked lower, following the air corridor that would take them past La Guardia. It seemed to Shelley that they didn’t clear the Bronx Whitestone and the Throg’s Neck bridges by more than a few feet.
Once clear of the TCA, the pilot lifted the helicopter to a slightly higher altitude, then the ship settled down for the trip out to the eastern reaches of Long Island.
Laura turned to Claire. “I’ll have that drink now. A Scotch, if the offer’s still good.”
Claire was already working on her second. “Sure. How about you, Shelley?”
“No thanks, I’m fine. Just enjoying the ride.”
“You’ll enjoy the whole weekend more if you stay slightly tanked. The alcohol tends to offset having to be around this bunch.”
“Don’t mind Claire,” Laura said. “She tends to judge us all a little harshly.”
“But accurately,” Claire said. She poured Scotch into a squat glass and handed it to Laura. “And who are you k
idding, Laura? You feel the same way.”
Laura smiled indulgently, as if putting up with a fractious child. “Maybe I just handle it better than you do.”
“That’s not true, either. You’re like this rug. You lie there and let Clay walk all over you.”
“That’s Eaton’s Neck down there,” Laura said, obviously anxious to change the subject. “Those tall smokestacks are a great landmark. And the ones farther ahead are Port Jefferson.”
Shelley looked down at the stacks, and at that point the helicopter changed course slightly, angling inland.
Claire was squinting at her. “You’re a TV reporter, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but not this trip.”
“Shelley’s helping me with some plans I have for a television appearance,” Laura said.
Claire kept after it. “After my husband died, didn’t you do a story on him and that woman?”
“I just read what they handed me,” Shelley said. “I’m sorry if it offended you. And anyway, that’s all over now. The story’s in the past; it’s time to move on.” Thinking, Listen to you, you liar.
“Even so,” Claire said, “you’d better stay out of Clay’s sight. He’s furious about all the publicity, and for once I don’t blame him.”
“Right now I’m just concentrating on interviewing Laura for television.”
Claire turned to Laura. “You don’t have any illusions about reviving your career, do you—after all this time? The audience wouldn’t know who you were.”
Laura smiled sweetly. “They don’t forget, not when you’re as big as I was.”
“Was is right,” Claire said, draining her glass.
The gin wasn’t doing the older woman much good, Shelley thought—she had a tongue like a razor blade. Thank God this wouldn’t be a long trip.
Coming out here was taking a considerable chance, she knew. And half-bombed or not, Claire was right about one thing: The rest of the Cunninghams wouldn’t be thrilled to have her show up at the estate—especially after the reports she’d made on the air. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so quick to jump into this. Or maybe she should have let Ben know more about what she was planning.
Which was a ridiculous thought. She was still angry with him for the way he’d reacted after seeing the last piece she’d done. And yet, now that her emotions had quieted down and she could look at the situation more objectively, maybe what he’d said when he called her was true: They’d both been wrong.
In any event, she wished they hadn’t quarreled and that she didn’t feel she’d been forced to swallow her pride. It would be lovely to feel his arms around her again.
And it would be good to have him with her now. She’d thought she was being so clever, worming her way into this. Now she wasn’t so sure.
The steady beat of the rotor blades underwent a subtle change and the attitude of the ship changed slightly. Their forward momentum slowed and they began to descend.
Shelley pressed her nose against the glass. Another helicopter was parked down there. As they slowly settled toward the landing pad, she caught sight of the house. As hard as she’d tried to imagine it, the great rambling mass of stone was more imposing than anything she could have conjured up in her mind. It was huge, dark, and foreboding.
What the hell was she getting herself into?
70
The woman’s voice on the telephone was hesitant. “Are you the Lieutenant Tolliver who’s in charge of the Cunningham investigation?”
“Yes, I am,” Ben said.
“I saw you on the news … after Senator Cunningham died. I called you earlier today.”
“I’ve been out of the office.” He wondered whether she was yet another nutcase.
“The reason I called is that my sister used to work for the Cunningham family.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. But now she’s hospitalized. The place she’s in is a private treatment center on Long Island. It’s called Brentwood, and it’s in Farmington, not far from where I live.”
He remembered then—he’d thrown the slip away earlier. And the name Brentwood was also familiar. “What’s wrong with her, Miss—what did you say your name was?”
“Demarest. Peggy Demarest. My sister is Jan. The trouble is, she has very severe emotional problems. They’re the result of something that happened almost a year ago. She was beaten and nearly died.”
Ben felt a crawling sensation at the back of his neck. “Who was responsible for the beating?”
“I don’t know. She’s afraid to talk about it. But I’ve gotten bits and pieces from her. She’s terrified whoever did it will come back and … kill her.”
“Go on.”
“This may sound crazy to you, but I think that what happened to her might have something to do with the Cunninghams. Or at least that they know about it.”
“Where are you now?”
“At home. In my apartment in Farmington. I work in a dentist’s office and—”
“Give me your address, please.”
“Seventeen Maple Avenue. The Morningside Apartments. I’m in Two A.”
“It’s important that I see you. Stay where you are and don’t talk to anyone until I get there. I’ll drive out, be there as soon as I can. Okay?”
“Yes, of course. But does this sound like—”
“We’ll discuss it when I see you,” Ben said. He hung up and, grabbing his raincoat off the hook, ran out the door.
71
Driving from Manhattan to the eastern end of Long Island on a Friday night was Chinese torture, the death of a thousand cuts. You crept and you crawled in the heavy traffic, bumper-to-bumper, on a road that had been obsolete for years. The road was laughingly called the Expressway, and after a few hours, you longed to be put out of your misery.
The one saving grace, Tolliver thought, was that this was late fall. In the summertime, it would have been worse.
Nevertheless, by the time he turned off and followed the route that led to Farmington, he felt as if he’d been traveling forever. When he arrived, he had no trouble finding the address he’d been given; this was a small village, and Maple Avenue intersected with the main street.
The apartment was in a Victorian house that had been converted into four units. He pressed the buzzer for 2A. When he identified himself, the door latch clicked open. He walked up the stairs to the second floor.
Peggy Demarest was waiting for him in her doorway. She was a good-looking young woman, but obviously upset. She was wearing an olive green sweater and a brown skirt, colors that set off the deep auburn of her hair. He showed her his ID and she asked him to come inside.
Ben stepped into the apartment and she shut and locked the door behind him. “I hope you don’t think this is nonsense, Lieutenant. I just didn’t know where else to turn.”
“Have you talked to the local police?”
“Not since right after Jan was hurt.”
“Then you haven’t told them what you said to me on the phone.”
“No. I don’t trust them, and neither does Jan. They’re the last people I’d tell this to.”
“Then suppose you tell me, but from the beginning.”
“Yes, of course.” She indicated a sofa. “Please sit down. Can I get you something to drink? Coffee or a Coke or something?”
He declined the beverage offer and sat, taking in his surroundings. The apartment was small and simply furnished, apparently a couple of rooms and a bath. The young woman sat on a chair opposite him, nervously twisting a handkerchief in her fingers.
“You said your sister used to work for the Cunninghams,” he said.
“Yes. At their estate, which is just a few miles from here.”
“Doing what?”
“Something in the office. It’s a big place, and they have people managing it. I don’t know what her job was exactly.”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty-one. Two years younger than me.”
“Go on.”
“Sh
e seemed happy enough while she was there, but then she left. Why she quit, I don’t know—I couldn’t get her to talk about it. And then after that, she was never the same. She changed so much, it was as if she’d turned into a totally different person.”
“Different how?”
“She moved into a fancy new apartment, got herself a new car and a bunch of clothes and jewelry. At the time, I had no idea where the money was coming from. When I asked her, she said it was none of my business, and then after awhile she wouldn’t talk to me at all. Then one morning …” Her voice trailed off.
“Yes?”
She wiped her nose with the handkerchief and took a deep breath. “Some kids found her in a ditch beside the road. She’d been stabbed and beaten. Her face had been slashed and there were stab wounds all over her body. They thought she was dead.”
“But she was still alive.”
“Just barely. An ambulance took her to the county hospital and the doctors gave her quarts of blood. Then they operated on her for something like seven hours. She was in the hospital for weeks. It was a miracle she lived. But it left her in a state that wasn’t much better than if she’d died. At least that’s what I thought at the time. She couldn’t talk, couldn’t walk. She wasn’t a vegetable, but close to it. The doctors called it catatonia. They said it’s rare, but not unheard of when someone has the kind of severe trauma she did.”
Ben had seen cases of it, as well. “And she went from there to Brentwood?”
“Yes. At least they offered some hope of treating her. And that’s when the Cunninghams got involved. They told the people at Brentwood they were fond of Jan, even though she worked for them only a short time. They said their foundation would take care of all Jan’s medical expenses, no limit to the amount for as long as she was sick.”
Ben remembered the name then. Brentwood was one of the places in the folder he’d been given, listing the recipients of charitable contributions from the Cunningham Foundation. “Were you surprised they were willing to do that?”
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