Cold Hit

by Linda Fairstein

  “You can do this the easy way, like a young lady. I’ll let you leave here with your mother, and put you in a taxi to go to Queens. Or you can do this the hard way. That means the detectives would have to handcuff you and take you there like a prisoner.”

  “Well, you can all go screw yourselves, ’cause I’m not going anywhere with her or with any of you.” She was screaming again and kicking the side of my desk. “I don’t care what you do with me, ’cause I’ll just run away again and Wakim’ll take me home.”

  Sergeant Maron raised a pair of handcuffs and looked at me questioningly. “I guess that’s the way our customer wants to go.”

  Ruth looked me straight in the eye and spat across the desk, hitting an old indictment on top of a pile of papers. “And you, you bitch, I hope you get what’s coming to you. I hope you-”

  “Attitude,” I said. “Attitude from a fifteen-year-old. Save your breath, Ruth. You know how lucky you are to have a mother who cares about you and who-”

  “Where’s Wakim?” She was screaming now, at full pitch. “I wanna go home with Wakim.”

  While Kerry Schrager cuffed Ruth behind her back, I called Witness Aid to make sure that Margaret Feerick, one of our social workers, could go with the detectives and Mrs. Harwind to Family Court. Pat McKinney came to my doorway and started yelling over Ruth’s wail. “What the hell is going on in here? This is an office, Cooper, and the rest of us are trying to get some work done.”

  I asked Sergeant Maron to go to Carol’s waiting area, find Wakim, read him the riot act about hanging out with a minor, and send him on his way.

  Eventually, the miserable troupe of characters was ready to leave the office, with Ruth Harwind in tow. By the time I got them off to court, contacted Bruce Johnson’s parole officer to find out if we could have his parole revoked for statutory rape-the sexual acts with an underage teen-wolfed down a light yogurt, and dealt with the stack of messages on Laura’s desk, it was a quarter of five and time to go to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

  With summer vacations in full swing, the elevators were practically empty as I rode down to the lobby. I chatted with some of the secretaries who were walking out onto Hogan Place with me, then made the left turn onto Centre Street for the short walk to McFadden’s office.

  The area in front of the Supreme Court, Civil Division, had been under renovation for almost a year in an effort to convert a cement triangle into a small green park.

  I crossed with the light and had just passed in front of the plywood frame of the construction area when a dilapidated livery cab with tinted windows veered across the sparse line of cars moving north on Centre Street. Brakes squealed and horns blasted, so I picked up my head to see what was happening.

  The gypsy cab was coming directly at the sidewalk, where I was trapped between a parked police car and the wooden fencing behind me. The driver slammed into the patrol car, which jumped the curb and was catapulted toward me, as I flattened myself against the plywood boards. The marked police vehicle caught its right fender on the fire hydrant in its path, but as the left fender made contact with the lumber, the fencing gave way and I fell backward into a small ditch.

  My embarrassment was greater than my discomfort as I lay on the ground in the dirt, my heart racing and my lip quivering. Three court officers had seen the accident from the steps of the courthouse and came running down to check if I was all right.

  “Are you a juror, ma’am? You’re gonna have some great lawsuit against the city,” the first one to my side remarked.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said as they helped me to my feet. I wiped pebbles out of my hair and brushed the soot off the rear of my pale aqua suit. There were long scratches on my calves and one of my elbows was bleeding.

  “Did you get a license off that car?” one of the men asked me, as onlookers gathered to see what the disturbance was about. “We’ll help you make out the police report.”

  “No, thanks. I couldn’t see the plate at all.” But I had no trouble making out the face of the driver.

  “Must’ve been a madman,” the second guy said. “Did you hear him?”

  I shook my head to indicate I had not. But as I thanked the officers and continued on my way to Kim’s building, the driver’s words-“You’re dead meat, bitch”-were still reverberating in my ears.

  16

  I walked into the conference room after clearing security on the ground floor. Mike and Mercer were exchanging war stories with four very buttoned-down federal agents while they waited for me to arrive. I didn’t need a mirror to tell me what was obvious from the expression on Mike’s face as he looked up to see me.

  “Mother of-jeez, what the hell happened to you? That picture’s got ‘line of duty’ written all over it. Someone messes me up like that and I could go out on three-quarters disability pay tomorrow.”

  Mercer came over to examine the scrapes on my arm and ask whether I was all right.

  “Yeah, I tripped into a hole on my way over from the courthouse.”

  “All those years of ballet lessons and you’re a regular twinkletoes. You got four city blocks to walk here, what kinda hole we talking about?”

  “I’ll explain later. Let’s get going here.”

  “You’ll explain now, blondie.”

  “Ran into somebody who doesn’t like me. Wakim Wakefield, a forty-something ex-con. Took his fifteen-year-old plaything away from him this afternoon and he didn’t appreciate it.” I told them a short version of the story.

  “Just another friggin’ Ponce de Léon looking for his fountain of youth,” Mike said. “Let’s call in a police report on your hit-and-run attempt.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “Just leave it alone. I’m not hurt. And this’ll blow over by the time he goes out tonight and finds himself another teen angel. It couldn’t have been anything more than chance that he saw me on the street as I was leaving and took out his frustration on me. I hate to tell you, but some cop’s going to walk out of Central Booking later tonight and find a radio car that got bashed up worse than my pride. Point me to the ladies’ room and give me a little time to make myself presentable.”

  Special Agent Rainieri chose not to delay the discussion until my return, since I had already kept the group waiting an extra twenty minutes. He seemed to be speaking in answer to a question one of the detectives had asked. “Yeah, we had a turncoat. That’s what started the whole investigation. Seems he got cheated out of a very big sale and decided to rat out some of the other dealers in the pack.

  “The point of these rings, you know, is to keep the prices of the artworks at auctions way down. One of them buys the painting at the public sale, then resells it at a vastly greater price-usually to a private client-and splits the big profit with his-or her-small clan of coconspirators.”

  “Denise Caxton?”

  “She was a player all right. Don’t forget, not only do we have ordinary business receipts and phone records, but we’ve got tapes of all the telephone bidding that goes on during an auction house sale. And the expense statements and each gallery’s credit agreements.”

  I had to remind Mike that beyond the social cachet and great expense connected with the grand auctions, art was one of the only objects in the world that could be purchased in any currency and from any location.

  “Do you know who her cohorts were in these deals?”

  The only female agent present, Estelle Grayson, answered. “She moved in and out of a few partnerships. Lowell Caxton didn’t mess much with auctions, and didn’t run with the pack. He has always had his own sources and paid dearly for them. Doesn’t leave much of a paper trail, and didn’t mix well in the sandbox with the other kids.”

  “Bryan Daughtry?” I asked.

  “He’s everywhere in this. Not up front, not sitting there with a paddle in the air. But he was pumping cash into her operation and trying to guide her into play with some of this very contemporary art inventory.”

  “Any names you can give us connected with the aucti
on investigation?”

  “Denise Caxton spent a lot of time at events this year. Sometimes she was with a personal client, a big collector.” Rainieri referred to his file and gave us a list of names, none of which sounded at all familiar. “Often she brought a friend or escort, and it’s hard to tell if there’s any business purpose instead of a social one. Chapman says you’ve been talking to Mrs. Caxton’s friend Marina Sette. She’s a figure at these things. Could be she’s just a big spender.

  “Two of the men Denise had been socializing with also show up-Frank Wrenley and Preston Mattox. Again, one’s an antiques dealer and one’s an architect, so we’ve got subpoenas out for their records, too. Nothing in on them yet. We just don’t know if they’re around for the fun or the profit.”

  “Well, do they buy anything?”

  “Wrenley does. But that’s a new twist, new buzzword in the auction world. It’s called ‘cross-marketing.’ So, when Sotheby’s has a sale of Impressionists, for example, they don’t start the program off with a Monet. Last spring at their big show, the first piece sold was a pair of silver soup tureens made by a French silversmith in the eighteenth century. Used to belong to J. P. Morgan. Went for more than seven million bucks. The houses are trying to lure art collectors into new passions.”

  “Wrenley bought those tureens?”

  “No, no. But he’s shown up often and bought a lot of silver pieces-old French royalty. And Denise Caxton had Preston Mattox bidding on a set of murals out of an old Scottish estate. So we haven’t reached a point of figuring whether this was business or romance.

  “Anyway, Kim asked us to start making connections between Mrs. Caxton and anyone who’d have a reason to do her in. We’re looking, and a few months down the road, when we have all the paper we need, something might leap out at us. In the meantime, if you guys have subpoenaed some of the same phone and business records that we did, we can cut through a lot of this and give you our copies. Maybe you’ll find things that wouldn’t mean anything to us.”

  I fished through my overstuffed pocketbook to pull out copies of the file folders with the subpoenas inside. The bag had turned upside down in my fall and was even more disastrously messed up than usual.

  “I don’t know how she finds anything in there,” Chapman said as I clasped lipstick, a compact, a handkerchief, Tic Tacs, four pens, and a wallet in my left hand, trying to free up the folder with my right. “What do you know about the Gardner Museum heist?”

  “Not our turf. We’ve talked to the team who’ve worked it for practically ten years, just ’cause they’re figuring the stolen items have got to surface somewhere before too long. So they’re watching the auction houses pretty closely, too. D’y’all know about Youngworth and Connor?”

  More than anything, Mike hated telling a Fed that there was something about which he was ignorant. He wouldn’t say no to them, so I did.

  “There are two guys in Boston, William Youngworth and Myles Connor. Youngworth’s an antiques dealer-been in and out of the can on minor things-and Connor’s a master art thief. Both of these men were in jail when the Gardner job was pulled, but word is, if they weren’t the brains behind the theft, they certainly knew about it.

  “Last year Youngworth claimed that he could broker the return of the missing Rembrandt for the five-million-dollar reward the FBI put up, along with immunity for him and his pal. You know about the chips?”

  Another thumbs-up for Joan Stafford. “Sure,” said Chapman, puffing. “Know all about the chips. Those assholes cut the painting right out of the frame.”

  “Yeah, well, Youngworth gave some Boston news reporter a few chips to support his claim that he could produce the goods. Our experts looked them over. Not authentic, not from the missing painting. That’s the latest on the Gardner case.”

  “Who was your expert? Got a name for us?”

  “No idea who it is. We’ll get it for you tomorrow.”

  We spent the next half hour sorting through documents to see which ones I was legally entitled to examine at this point. At six fifteen, Mercer suggested we close up. “Let’s get over to the funeral parlor before the seven o’clock visiting hours. Maybe we can chat up some of Marco Varelli’s friends and family.”

  Varelli’s wake was in a small, dark funeral home on Sullivan Street, in the narrow block just north of Houston. I had been in the neighborhood before, which had been home to Vincent “the Chin” Gigante, whom I had often seen there walking up and down the street in his bathrobe, feigning insanity, before his recent conviction and trip to federal prison.

  I stepped out of Mercer’s air-conditioned car and onto the steamy pavement in front of Zuppelo’s funeral parlor. “You think they got a TV in there?” Mike asked.

  “You are not watching Jeopardy! in front of the mourners,” I said. “Call your mother when we leave here and ask her what the question was, okay? Live without it for one night.”

  The three of us presented ourselves to the manager of the mortuary. “The only one here at the moment is Mrs. Varelli. You’re a little early. Are you friends?”

  “Distant relatives,” Chapman answered.

  Mr. Zuppelo looked skeptically from Chapman to me, then frowned at Mercer Wallace’s dark skin.

  “Northern Italian,” Mike said. “With a trace of Sicilian.”

  He flashed his badge at Zuppelo, who led us into a dingy sitting area. The odor of more than thirty flower arrangements-mostly orange gladioluses and yellow carnations- was especially stifling in the intense late-summer heat. The open casket was in an alcove at the far end of the room, and Mrs. Varelli sat beside it, clutching a set of rosary beads. The jacket of her gray suit seemed to overwhelm her delicate shoulders, and she looked as if she had cried all the tears she was capable of shedding in the past twenty-four hours.

  Mike nudged me and told me to introduce myself. “See if you can get her outta this hothouse and away from her husband’s body. Bond with her, Coop. Be sensitive-if you still remember how to do that.”

  I left Mike and Mercer at the doorway and approached the widow. “Mrs. Varelli, I’m Alexandra Cooper. I’m-”

  “So nice to meet you, Miss Cooper. You were, perhaps, a friend of Marco’s?”

  “Actually, no, Mrs. Varelli. Would you like to come inside with me, to another room, and I’ll explain why I’m here?”

  “Sixty-two years, Miss Cooper. Never apart for one night in sixty-two years. What am I going to do without him?” She grabbed the side of the coffin and started to talk to her husband. “I’m just going to be a few minutes, Marco. I go with this young lady to see what she’s going to try to sell me.”

  She extended her hand, and I grasped the white cotton glove and braced her elbow, helping her to her feet. “Everyone thinks I just got off the boat from Napoli. Do I want a mausoleum, do I want a condominium, do I want a ticket back to the old country? I was born in Newark, New Jersey. Lived here all my life. These people think I’m stupid. Think I’m going to give away Marco’s paintings or turn his studio into the YMCA.

  “All I want is for Marco to get up and walk around the corner with me to have our dinner at Da Silvano, sitting on the sidewalk, like we did almost every evening in the warm weather. Artists would look at Marco with respect, Marco would look at the young ladies with longing, I’d have a couple of glasses of wine, and together we’d go home very happy. It’s awfully lonely after sixty-two years, Miss Cooper. You want to sell me something, or you want to buy?”

  As she talked, I walked her past Mike and Mercer and into an empty room decorated in somber, waiting-for-thenextbody tones of neutral palettes. There was an elegance to the old woman, with her perfectly erect carriage, fragile body, and very keen mind.

  “I’m an assistant district attorney, Mrs. Varelli. A prosecutor.”

  “Somebody make a crime here?”

  “I’m working on another case, a murder case. A woman who was killed last week. I understand that Mr. Varelli had done work with her. We-the detectives and I-had planned t
o come see him later this week. Then we learned about his death. I’m so sorry for your great loss. I don’t mean to burden you now, but maybe you could give me the name of your husband’s assistant, who could tell-”

  Her back was straight as a rod as she poked herself in the chest. “I am the only one he trusted with his work, Miss Cooper. He had several workmen who helped him with the physical labor, the movement of large pieces, the arrangement of supplies, and from time to time he had an apprentice. But there is nothing I didn’t know about his business. Who is this lady who was killed?”

  “Caxton. Denise Caxton.”

  Mrs. Varelli turned her face ninety degrees, away from me. She was silent.

  “You knew her, then?”

  “It’s not good to speak ill of the dead, is it?”

  “What kind of business did she have with your husband?”

  “The same as everyone, Miss Cooper. You know about Marco?”

  “I have to admit that I had never heard his name until this week. But all the people I’ve talked to say what a wonderful man he was.”

  “A genius. Did they say that, too? Mostly, he was a genius.”

  I nodded to her.

  “As a boy, in Firenze, he studied art at the Accademia. Paint is what he loved-not the canvas, but the substance that made color-and he had even more passion for that than for beautiful women. But he never did it so well himself-the drawing or the creation. What he did brilliantly was to find the beauty in the paintings of others who had gone before him.

  “Marco could stand in his atelier for hours, some eager dealer at his heels watching, working on what appeared to be a dirty old piece of burlap. He’d fasten his binocular headset on-that was the only thing that even looked like it connected him to this century. Gently, ever so gently, he would swab at the tired colors with a little touch of cotton.

  “Behind him, some greedy collector or dealer would be urging him on. ‘What do you see, Marco? Who do you think it is, Marco?’ You have no idea what treasures he has found over the years. Even so recently, his eyes saw things through the filth of centuries that no one else could dream possible.”