Cold Hit

by Linda Fairstein

  “Paula found a fabulous space on Twenty-first Street. Cleaned it up, put in some skylights, whitewashed the interior, and everyone who thought she’d been out of her mind realized what a genius she was. Deni and Bryan started buying up land on those blocks a couple of years ago, planning to open a new venture together. Real estate’s gone through the roof over there. Kind of sorry I ignored them in the beginning. I could have made a killing on the property alone.” Caxton paused. “Bad choice of words today, isn’t it?”

  Remorse wasn’t his strong suit.

  “And the cocaine? What were her sources for that?”

  “The problem only started four or five years ago. About the time that her taste in art changed so radically. Deni knew how strongly I disapproved of her drug use. I could only joke that one had to be stoned to appreciate the work she was trying to hawk to the great unwashed.”

  “Do you know who her dealer was?” Mercer asked.

  “I think she used to get it from the kids who hung around the galleries. Then, as she got hooked, she’d just beep whoever wasn’t in jail at the moment, and a delivery would arrive, brought up to our home by the white-gloved doormen. Usually camouflaged in potpourri or packaged in a bag with assorted foodstuffs from Dean amp; Deluca.”

  “Did she owe money to anybody? Any suppliers?”

  “No reason to. More than enough money to support all her habits.”

  Mercer was working the drug angle with good reason. Deni’s body had been found at the tip of the Thirty-fourth Precinct, which was the heart of Manhattan’s illegal drug operations. Colombians, Dominicans, and African American street gangs-Santiago’s Sinners, Latin Kings, and Wild Hightops-mixed it up with one another night and day as they pumped the streets of the city full of heroin, cocaine, and all their derivative forms. Even if Deni had been thrown in the water from the Bronx side of the creek, the odds were overwhelming that the site of the dumping was heavily infested with users and sellers of every kind of controlled substance.

  “Had either of you started divorce proceedings, Mr. Caxton?” I wanted to know.

  “Yes, yes, I had. More than a year ago. No rush about it, and not that I had any plans to go to the altar again, but the marriage was over and I wanted to be sure that I got out of it with most of the treasures I came in with, you see. The money was irrelevant to me, but I needed to protect the collection and keep it intact, as well as I could.”

  “What was the status of the legal action?”

  “Our lawyers were negotiating, Miss Cooper. I’m sure you know what that means. Trying to run up their bills at hourly rates with endless phone calls and meetings and suggestions- and general nonsense.”

  “I assume there was a prenup-”

  “Certainly there was. But most of its contingencies were useless after the marriage survived ten years. You must realize how much older I was than Deni. I thought a decade with her would be bliss. It’s like the salesmen who try to sell a man my age a watch with a lifetime guarantee,” the septuagenarian went on. “I always tell them that I’d be interested in a similar piece, but for a lower price and with simply a ten-year guarantee.”

  “So what was she fighting about?”

  “It wasn’t money, Detective Chapman. I’ve offered plenty of that, and she made quite a lot of it on her own projects. But she wanted more of the art, some of my pieces. Claiming an entitlement for many of the things I’d bought since we’d been together. As though I needed her judgment to lead me to a Titian or Tintoretto. Perhaps next time you’re here,” Caxton said, making it obvious that we were coming to the end of his hospitality, “you might like to see what it is I want to hold on to.

  “Unlike that mishmash of styles my wife favored, I’ve hung my favorites each in its own salon. My bedroom is devoted to van Gogh-Deni thought they were minor, but they’re quite wonderful, really. My office is the Poussin room, and my-”

  Chapman had just about had it with the self-importance of Caxton and the arrogant cataloguing of his wealth. “How about your inamorata’s bedroom, sir? How’d you decorate that one?”

  “Not a stupid guess at all, Detective. Yes, I’ve been seeing someone. She’s in Paris, and quite content to be there. And if you think it bothered Denise at all, you’d be wrong. We’ve been leading separate lives for a long time.”

  “Do you know who she’s been seeing?” I asked.

  “Perhaps the help would know that, Miss Cooper. They change the linens here-I don’t.”

  That last exchange brought him to his feet, as he ushered us out of his wife’s office and back to the living room.

  Chapman wasn’t quite done. “When was it, exactly, that you left for Paris?”

  “Maurizio will give you all that infor-”

  “I’m sure Maurizio would give me oral sex if you told him to, Mr. Caxton. I’m not talking ancient history, here. This is Sunday-what day did you leave New York to go to Paris on your last trip? I’d like to hear it from you. ”

  Caxton’s veneer had worn thin, and Mike’s patience even finer. “It was Tuesday, Tuesday evening at seven o’clock.”

  “Any other homes that you and Denise owned? Any place that she might have gone if she left this apartment for a few days and you were holed up in Paris?”

  “Well, we’ve got a house in Saint Bart’s, but it’s not the season there, of course. I doubt it’s even opened up this time of year.”

  Chapman couldn’t resist the cheap shot. “Yeah, I know you two wouldn’t be caught you-know-what there off-season, would you?”

  Caxton ignored him.

  I knew the small Caribbean paradise well. My parents had bought a home and begun spending winters there after my father retired from the practice of medicine. The Cooper-Hoffman valve, which he and his partner had invented as young physicians, had revolutionized the then-new field of open heart surgery and made possible a lifestyle that allowed him to live in that French-owned resort while continuing to travel for his lectures and conferences all over the world. It would be easy for me to get information about the Caxtons from my connections on the island.

  “I’d suggest that when you speak with Bryan Daughtry you ask him about the truckload of paintings-mostly Della Spigas, I think, and quite ghastly-that was hijacked at the end of June. I don’t know if the art was ever recovered, but the hijacking had Deni completely crazed when it happened.”

  Mercer added the truck incident to his list.

  “May we spend a few minutes with Valerie?” I asked, hoping to get a closer handle on personal life in Denise’s wing of the house.

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t think of it before I excused her for the day. I told Maurizio to let her go after she prepared my tea. She’ll grieve enough for all of us, Miss Cooper. I’ll let her know you’ll be contacting her, of course.

  “Now I’ve got to ask you to leave so I can get ready for tomorrow. I must arrange for the services at Frank Campbell. Find a minister. Suggest an appropriate psalm. That sort of thing. I’m afraid the closest Deni ever got to a church was her frantic scrambling to buy that incredible Velázquez of Innocent the Tenth.”

  Caxton opened the door to the landing that put us at the elevator. “You know, Miss Cooper, there’s a poignant fact about values in the world in which Deni and I lived that very few people realize. More than ninety percent of the art sold in America will never again fetch anywhere near the same price when the buyers attempt to resell it.” He paused, not quite ready to turn his back on us. “It was like that with Deni, too, and I think that fact was even beginning to dawn on her. She had invented herself once-brilliantly-and sold the stunning result at the very top of the market. I’m not sure she could have done as well-repeated her success, if you will-the second time around. Very sad, that, don’t you think?”

  This time he closed the door behind him without waiting for us to be gone.

  8

  It wasn’t even noon when we emerged from the lobby of Caxton’s building onto the pavement in front of the Fifth Avenue co-op
. The temperature was already over ninety degrees and the humidity was best measured by the tiny ringlets that formed instantly at the nape of my neck.

  “Hate to say it,” Mike remarked, “but even this feels like fresh air after an hour with that pompous jerk. Where to?”

  “I’ve got to spend the day at my office. I’m supposed to finish-up the hearing tomorrow, and I need to put the finishing touches on the brief I’m submitting after the argument.”

  “Is P. J. Bernstein’s air-conditioned?”

  “Yeah.” The delicatessen near my apartment was my morning hangout on weekends.

  “Let’s grab some breakfast while we break up my to-do list. Then one of us can shoot you down to your office, okay?”

  I rode the short distance to Third Avenue with Mercer, who parked at a meter in front of the deli, a feat that could be accomplished only in August. Midtown Manhattan was a ghost town on summer weekends, between vacationing New Yorkers, others who commuted to beach houses and shared rentals in the Hamptons or on the Jersey shore, and daytrippers who made their way to Jones Beach or the suburban pool of a friend or relative.

  The three of us sat at a table in the rear, near the kitchen, each of us taking out a pad to make lists and notes for the next week’s work.

  “Any point in my gracing the funeral?” Mike asked, after we ordered.

  “The best reason to go,” Mercer offered, “is to try and get a look at-maybe even a copy of-the list of attendees. See if you can scope the sign-in book. They’ve always got one of those at Campbell’s. Might give us a jump start on some of the people in her business, beside what we hope we’ll get from her friend Bryan Daughtry.”

  “Already thought of that. There’s always some sweet old mick used to drink at my father’s bar who runs the show at that funeral home. If I spread a little cash around, I’m sure they’ll make a copy of the guest list.”

  The beeper attached to my waistband went off just as the waitress returned with my iced coffee. Mercer saw me slip it off the belt of my slacks and lift it to check the callback number. “Trouble for us?” he asked.

  I laughed when I read the dial. “It’s Joan Stafford, and she even added a nine-one-one after Jim’s number.” Joan, one of my closest friends, was vacationing with her fiancé on the Outer Banks off the coast of North Carolina. “Either of you want to guess what she thinks is so urgent she’s got to talk to me immediately?”

  Mike grabbed the cell phone from my hand after I dialed and heard it ringing. “Get your skinny ass out of bed with that foreign policy wonk and c’mon home to me. It’s lonely here without you-just the Cooperwoman to give me orders all the time. What’s with the emergency beep, kid-half-price sale at Schlumberger you gotta tell her about?”

  Chapman looked up at Mercer and me as he repeated Joan’s answer. “You wanna dish about a dead woman? Well, now that it’s been on CNN this morning, I guess all you art mavens will be calling in with useless information.” He paused to listen to something Joan was telling him, then glanced back at us as he said good-bye and turned off the phone.

  “It’s not enough we gotta deal with you. Nancy Drew’s on board, too. Joan just gave me the names of three of Deni’s clients and a couple of her lovers,” he said, writing in his notepad as he talked, “and also has the story about why Caxton was no longer welcome at Sotheby’s. She’ll be up this week-dinner on Tuesday. Y’think this is some of her fiction, or should we run with it?”

  Joan was a playwright, just back from London, where her latest satire had opened to brilliant reviews and full houses. “Go to the bank with her on this one. It’s the world she was raised in. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if she knew most of the players in the gallery scene-she’s got a marvelous collection herself, plus she’s been shopping the auctions to redecorate Jim’s place in Washington.”

  I looked at the list on my pad. “I need to do a search warrant for some of Deni’s things and have it ready in case you connect with her partner by tomorrow. The appointment book and calendar, records of sales and purchases-”

  Mercer interrupted me. “We’ve got to assume a lot of this stuff is on computers. Be sure you draft the warrant so we can walk out of there with the hard drives, disks, and anything else in the office. The guys can download the data and get information that way, too. We’ll search the gallery first to let you know what’s there.”

  “I can always amend the warrant if you see more than we’ve thought of by the time you go in,” I said.

  “I’ll reach out for Daughtry,” he continued, “and call the funeral home for details on the memorial service.”

  I finished my Raisin Bran while Mike worked his way through an omelette, home fries, a side order of bacon, and toast and Mercer picked at a bagel with cream cheese. “Who’s going to check out Lowell Caxton’s shooting incident in the Nineteenth?”

  “I’ll swing by there later tonight,” Chapman said, barely coming up for air between bites of his breakfast. “I’ll also take care of the ladder manufacturer-see how common the brand is and who sells it.” He aimed his fork at Mercer. “You see if you can run raps on all the employees at both galleries, and work on the art hijacking in June. What was it-Della Spigas? Who’s Della Spiga, Coop?”

  “I’ve got to go back to the books for that one. Ask me again at the end of the day.”

  “What’s your schedule like this week?”

  “Once I knock off the brief on Reggie X this afternoon and argue it tomorrow, I’m free. It’ll take the judge a couple of weeks to make a decision and write his opinion. The sooner I get downtown, the faster I get it out of the way.”

  Mercer pushed off from the table and took the check from the waitress, while Mike dredged the last few fries through the ketchup.

  “No point in you taking me,” I said. “My car is right up the street. Just keep me posted.” I waved good-bye and walked to my garage. I pulled the Jeep out and made my way over to the FDR Drive, while the all-news radio station wedged the story of Denise Caxton’s identification as the murder victim between the Yankees’ doubleheader victory last night and reviews of the Spice Girls’ concert in Central Park. Maybe Chapman wasn’t entirely crazy-live fast, die young, and be a good-looking corpse. Deni’s fortune hadn’t seemed to offer her very much more.

  I escaped the rest of the hot afternoon and evening by immersing myself in completing the court papers I had to submit on Monday morning. The case was an old arrest of Mercer’s, and my adversary had used his skills to challenge every aspect of the police procedures used in the investigation. The hearings we had just ended included the propriety of the arrest tactics, the legality of the search and seizure of evidence linking the perp-Reggie Bramwell-to the beating and rape of his estranged lover, and the admissibility of statements that Bramwell made to Mercer in the hours after he was taken into custody.

  The case was pending in front of Harry Marklis, a jurist from the old school who didn’t get domestic abuse at all. My last pretrial motion was an effort to convince the judge to allow my victim, Mariana Catano, to testify to two earlier episodes that involved the same defendant. One was an attempted assault that he had pleaded guilty to a year before, and the other was a confrontation in which he had threatened to set fire to her so that she’d look ugly enough that no other man would want her.

  I had argued myself blue in the face, but Marklis was clueless. “So, why didn’t she just leave him, Miss Cooper? What the hell’d she take him back for?” If I hadn’t been able to explain the complex dynamic of a relationship of battering to a justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, I could only imagine how the average juror would respond to the same issue. Yet over and over again, my colleagues and I would see the cycle of violence escalate in these cases, and attempt to understand the complicated panoply of emotional, familial, and economic binds that kept the partners in place.

  Mercer Wallace joined me in my office at nine o’clock on Monday morning. He was keenly interested in the outcome of Mariana’s matter
and wanted to hear my argument on this final pretrial issue. Marklis had directed our appearances for 10 a.m., although he was known for taking the bench late in the morning and quitting early in the afternoon.

  “Anything develop last night?”

  “Nope. Wasn’t able to reach Daughtry anywhere. Gallery’s closed on Sunday and Monday all through the summer, and his answering service just kept telling me they’d given him my message several times. Trying to get his home address so we can pay him a visit, but I’ll wait till you’re done upstairs. Allnighter?”

  “Not too bad. I was home before midnight. Polished this off and started a rough draft of a warrant on the word processor, ready to go when you guys come up with something.”

  “All work and no play…”

  “Don’t go there, Mercer. You’re as bad as Mike.” I gathered up my file folders and motioned to him to move so we could head upstairs to Marklis’s court part. “I’m fine. Got stood up for the weekend ’cause this guy I’ve been seeing was sent out of town on assignment. But thanks for asking.”

  The only people in Part 59 were the three court officers and Rich Velosi, the court clerk. I placed my files on the counsel table and asked if there was any word from the judge.

  “Yeah, Ms. Konigsberg just called,” Rich answered, referring to the judge’s law secretary. “He’s working in chambers, she says, so he won’t get up here for another half hour.”

  The court officers all laughed, knowing that “working in chambers” was just a euphemism for “The judge hasn’t arrived yet.” But neither had my adversary. “Prisoner produced?”

  “He’s in the pens.”

  Mercer began to schmooze with the officers while I reviewed my notes. From baseball they went to golf, from golf to the first pro football exhibition games, and from the games to the Bramwell case. “Y’think Cooper’s got a chance to get a decision on this motion before Labor Day?”