Cold Hit

by Linda Fairstein

  I closed my eyes and my right hand covered my mouth, trying to keep the words inside. “But you knew he was a rapist. How could you let him near Deni?”

  “I didn’t know that Anthony had been convicted of rape. It’s not a popular category of criminal acts among inmates. He always described himself as an armed robber. True, naturally. And a carjacker. True as well. He just neglected to tell me that he’d also raped his victims.

  “All he was supposed to do was steal the Vermeer. Obviously, Deni wouldn’t be able to report the crime to the police. That was the bottom line of my plan. She would have undermined her whole divorce settlement with Lowell if she had gone to the police. No judge would give her a nickel of Lowell’s fortune, or any of his art, if she was caught with stolen paintings. A Vermeer that had been missing for a decade? How do you walk into a police station and tell them that you were just carrying it around when you went to meet a friend for lunch? Then, there’d be me to deal with. She’d feel badly about my loss, and I’d be sure to make her feel guilty, and there she’d be, owing me more than two and a half million dollars, just because she’d been careless and lost our painting.”

  “Plus, you’d still have the painting. Or both paintings?”

  “Voilà!”

  “Where did the plan go wrong?”

  “Denise made Anthony angry.” Wrenley’s indifference was chilling. “First of all, he tells me that Denise didn’t have the painting with her in the car. Lots of cash, enough jewelry to make a splash at our lunch-he was entitled to keep those things, under our agreement-but no Vermeer. Now, between you and me, Ms. Cooper, this is still a point of contention between me and my old pal Anthony. He’s not beyond pulling a sting on me, either.

  “So he was angry with her. And then-well-you know this better than I do. What makes a man decide to rape a woman? Anger? Lust? Control? Or the Willie Sutton theory of robbing banks-just because she’s there?”

  I had been doing this work for more than ten years and I had never seen or heard any satisfactory explanation of what motivates a human being to force another into an act of sexual intercourse, the most intimate contact two people can experience. The only factors that were the same in every case were the vulnerability of the victim at a particular moment in time and the opportunity that this presented to the assailant.

  Wrenley stepped forward and moved closer to me, passing behind me and putting his left arm around my back, ready to lead me to the staircase going down to the street level.

  “Bailor denied assaulting Deni at first. Made up a whole story about Omar being along for the ride, and blaming the rape on him. That’s actually why he killed poor Omar-so that dumb con artist couldn’t tell me otherwise. Worked fine with me until I read the newspaper story about the DNA eliminating Omar. Not so tense, Alex. C’mon. I’m telling you all this so that you don’t waste the government’s money trying to hunt me down. I don’t have the damn paintings after all. I got screwed out of the Vermeer, and the Rembrandt was never actually in my control.”

  I pulled away from Wrenley and walked alongside him.

  “So Anthony and I had another meeting. That’s when he told me about getting mad at Deni for not having the painting. He knew I’d understand that, since I wanted it so badly. What he couldn’t make me understand is why he made her get in the back of the station wagon and, well… He said he never meant to get rough with her. He just didn’t expect her to resist, especially since he had a gun. Thought just the threat of it would make her tell him where the Vermeer was. But he couldn’t scare it out of her. Said she fought like a tiger. Claimed he had to hit her in the back of the head with the gun to shut her up.”

  I was biting the inside of my cheek so hard that I tore through the thin membrane and could taste blood in my mouth. I put my right hand in my jacket pocket and began to play with the case of Jake’s razor blades, sliding one out the open end of the container and squeezing it between two fingers. I thought of Preston Mattox’s description of Deni, so feminine looking but such a fighter, and his sorrowful certainty that she would have struggled against her attacker. For some women, resistance saves them from the completion of the assault, but for others it causes the attacker to use even more force to accomplish his goal.

  “There’s an object lesson in all this, Ms. Cooper.” Wrenley held his revolver up for a moment for me to see, as a reminder. “I’m going to tuck this back in my waistband during my short freedom ride, but I know you’re clever enough to understand that it’s not smart to make me angry.”

  Frank Wrenley was standing at the top of the stairwell, lowering his arm from in front of my face as I took my fingers out of my pocket. With a single stroke, I sliced at his hand with one of the sharp cutting edges of the razor blade. The gun fell onto the steps beneath him and clattered to the floor below. Wrenley grabbed his wrist and howled in pain.

  33

  I ran as fast as I could go, in the direction of the double glass doors that surrounded the Hi-Line Railroad ties and opened out onto the antiquated structure leading downtown, several stories high above the streets of Chelsea. Wrenley had been at the top of the stairs, blocking my way to the patrol car in the rear of the building. I didn’t waste time; he might have reached the gun before I did, which would have been deadly. I knew I had temporarily disarmed him, but I also guessed the wound had not disabled him completely.

  The bolt affixed to the exit yielded easily to a twist of my hand. I yanked it back and was met by a blast of the hot August air as I escaped onto the tracks. For once-I prayed silently-don’t let Chapman’s stories be full of their usual exaggeration. I was trusting his brief oral history of the neighborhood to make my dash away from this callous killer, and I needed Chapman’s facts to be right.

  The rusted iron frame of the deserted railway rose on thick beams over Twenty-second Street and stretched out ahead, cutting through the center of the buildings opposite me. The track bed was wider across than most small tenements in the city. Looking down at the littered ground, I chose a path directly between the parallel lines that were vestiges of old track, hoping to avoid tripping over pieces of wood and steel that were obscured by weeds and garbage of all sorts.

  I screamed for help. I was headed south, and Brannigan and Lazarro were parked on the north side of Caxton Due. I knew they couldn’t see or hear me as I ran, but I was sure I could attract the attention of someone who would call for assistance. “HELP! POLICE!” I yelled as I crossed to the far side of Twenty-second Street, looking down for signs of life amidst the vans that had congested the entire block since before I had arrived at the gallery. I gasped for breath, holding on to the edge of the building adjacent to the tracks, but could see no people on the pavement below. Wrenley was charging at me from the open glass doors of Caxton Due.

  I started jogging again, slowing somewhat as I zigzagged around holes in the skeleton of the trail, afraid I would catch my foot and wedge myself in a crevice from which I’d be unable to retreat. There were shards of broken glass and dirty hypodermic needles, discarded sneakers and dead pigeons, and I danced around objects on the obstacle course, wanting none of them to bring me down in flight.

  Racing through the valley of warehouses that rose above the tracks on either side of me, I emerged onto Twenty-first Street, stopping to peer down and repeat my cries for help. Kids were playing ball at the far end of the block, near Eleventh Avenue, and they stopped to look as one of them heard and pointed up at me. “POLICE!” I shouted to them, not knowing if they could make out my words. I glanced back to see Wrenley gaining on me, so I ran again.

  There was open iron grillwork on the side of the guardrail at the next intersection. I gave a fleeting thought to climbing over and trying to lower myself down from it. I was still too high off the street to jump, but perhaps I could cling to a ledge until police arrived. Then I saw the rolls of barbed-wire fencing directly below me, spitting their jagged edges upward, so I propelled myself on.

  Wrenley was getting closer. His route was
a more reckless one than mine, straightforward and relentless in pursuit. Taller buildings rose around me as I followed the next strip of tracks, the intense glare of the sun briefly lost to the shade of the brick walls.

  I heard a grunt from behind me and ignored my own directive not to look back. Wrenley had tripped on something and fallen to the ground. Taking a deep breath, I surged ahead and ran on past the giant warehouses, onto a long open stretch of track. I must have been below Nineteenth Street by now. In the distance I could hear the faint wail of sirens. I had no idea how remote they were, or any hope that they would reach me in the maze of one-way streets.

  Lowering my eyes to the pavement below in search of the blue-and-white patrol cars that might be on their way, I saw only the tall traffic signs on the nearest corner, their bright red flashers urging me on. don’t walk.

  The length of the run had not been enough to slow me down, but the dense humidity and August heat were oppressive. I was gasping for air and felt like my body was running on fumes, trying to find oxygen in the stillness of the stale afternoon.

  Wrenley was closing in again. I didn’t have to turn my head to see him, but I could hear his labored panting over the noise coming from my own chest. We were somewhere below Seventeenth Street, and the entire structure of the railroad lay out before me, curving slowly around to the east, away from the surrounding buildings.

  I felt the tug on the tail of my jacket a split second before Wrenley pushed me down from the rear, landing with me in a tangle of legs and arms. My knees slammed against the metal tracks as I tried hopelessly to break the fall. The palms of my hands stung as they landed on pieces of rusted metal, rocks, and debris I couldn’t identify. I pushed up and kicked one leg out back behind me, smacking it against Wrenley’s chin or chest-I couldn’t see which-drawing a groan as his head snapped back.

  As I raised myself up on my feet, I grabbed at one of the empty beer bottles scattered along the path and carried it in my hand as I resumed my gallop, heading to the section of the Hi-Line that crossed out over Tenth Avenue.

  I was hugging the left side of the railing as the elevation passed over the piece of sidewalk edging the wide thoroughfare. I knew the danger that slowing down would bring Wrenley closer to me, but I also knew that this main artery running below me, four lanes wide, would be my most obvious chance to get help. I had no idea how much farther the tracks ran before they would corner me at the dead end of a brick wall on some abandoned tenement.

  As I looked down I could see the mesh fencing and barbed wire that bordered a parking lot directly below me. Beyond that, for the first time since I began my run from the gallery, I was free of the prickly metal underpass that would have ripped my skin apart had I landed on it.

  I was even with the curb of the sidewalk below me as I looked up the broad avenue. Moving against the sparse flow of uptown traffic were two patrol cars coming at us, lights spinning furiously atop them and sirens screaming their appearance.

  I stopped at that point and stuck one foot in the iron gridwork of the side rail, lifting my other leg over the top, half dangling above the street, hoping to make it easier for the cops to see me as they approached, and harder for Wrenley to get to me. My right hand was still clutching the bottle, and with my left I tried to balance against the top of a billboard frame that was posted along the rail.

  Wrenley was on me now, coming directly at me with his arms outstretched. His right hand looked like a road map, trickles of blood forming streets and highways. As he prepared to lunge at my neck, I shattered the bottle against the steel frame of the Hi-Line and screamed at him to keep back.

  His right hand landed on my shoulder. I anchored my foot in the open grille of the banister and pivoted out of his grip, my pants leg ripping as it twisted against the steel trim. He grasped again and caught a hunk of my hair, trying to pull me toward him, back onto the tracks. Gripping the billboard top to stay in place, I swung my right arm at Wrenley’s head, slashing him with the fractured end of the broken brown bottle.

  This time his screams were louder than mine, as I opened up a gaping hole between his ear and forehead, with blood erupting from the gash and spilling down into his eye.

  He staggered back for a step or two, then vaulted at me like a wild animal that had been mortally wounded in a hunt. His hands still wanted my neck, and as he charged toward me I shifted my weight and swung my leg onto the track, flattening myself against the back of the billboard.

  Blinded by the blood, Wrenley hurtled himself over the guardrail headfirst, onto the street below.

  I bent over to see his body crumpled against the blacktop like a deer on a dark country road, with cars screeching to a halt to try to avoid him.

  With in seconds the two police cars pulled up from the north, directly under the tracks. From above I watched Brigid Brannigan’s ponytail swinging as she yelled to Lazarro to check the body, while she ran in my direction, looking up to see whether I was the woman slumped over the railing, staring down at the corpse of Frank Wrenley.

  “Are you hurt?”

  I shook my head from side to side, not daring to try to speak. More sirens, and the large square shape of an ambulance lumbered into view. Too late to be of any use for Wrenley. What had Chapman called this street? I thought to myself. Death Avenue.

  “Can you stay up there till I get the Fire Department here with a ladder?”

  I nodded to her, then turned my back and sat down on the ground. I leaned against the railing, rubbing my calves with my scraped hands and trying to breathe at regular intervals.

  Fifteen minutes later, after the body had been removed from the scene, I heard Brannigan calling my name again. I stood and looked down at the long red engine that had been summoned, watching as the ladder was hoisted into place. Two of the firemen climbed up it and over onto the Hi-Line tracks, introducing themselves and shaking my hand.

  “Can you make it down?”

  “I hate heights.” I gave them as much of a smile as I could muster, not able to explain to them what it had taken for me to be poised on the edge of the railing when Wrenley had come at me just a little while ago.

  “Nothing to it. I’ll be one rung below you, guiding you down. Harry’ll stay on top and load you on. Just close your eyes and trust me.”

  When I opened them again, I was on the street. The ad on the billboard plastered above my head was visible for the first time. It was a six-foot-tall vodka bottle in the shape of the fuselage of a jet airplane, with words beneath it in bold yellow paint: Absolut Escape.

  The cluster of uniforms around me, all meaning to be helpful, was stifling. Police and firemen were having a cordial turf battle over who would take me into their care-cops as first on the scene, or firemen as my rescuers.

  I pulled Brigid Brannigan aside. “Tell them I’d like to ride with you.”

  “Will you go to Saint Vincent’s so they can check you out?”

  “Yes. I think I’d like a tetanus shot.” I wasn’t sure what my knees and hands had been raked against. “But I want to make a stop on the way there.”

  She explained to the others that I was going with her. I got in the front seat of the RMP. Someone handed me my bag, which I had dropped in the gallery. The beeper was going off, so I removed it and saw that it was my office number. Brannigan began driving up Tenth Avenue, about to turn east to loop around downtown to the hospital. “Would you just go straight a few blocks, to the corner of Twenty-first Street?”

  I called Laura from Brannigan’s cell phone. She sounded concerned. “Mike’s been beeping you. He’s probably through the tunnel now, back in Manhattan. Says he hasn’t been able to find you. Are you okay?”

  “I guess I didn’t hear it. Would you call him back and tell him to meet me in Chelsea, the northwest corner of Twenty-first and Tenth, okay? I’ll wait for him till he gets there.” She’d know the rest of the details soon enough.

  The car came to a stop just past the traffic light. “Here?”

  “Yes.”
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  Brannigan looked at the small graceful building that I had noticed when we circled the block earlier today. “Want me to come in with you?”

  “No thanks. I just want to wait there for Chapman. Think anyone would mind?”

  She smiled back at me and simply said, “No.”

  I got out and walked up the four steps of the Church of the Guardian Angel. Its lovely Romanesque facade is bordered by two slim columns and a round stained-glass window. I pulled on the wooden door and walked inside, sitting down in the cool silence. I didn’t know where the nearest synagogue was, but I needed to be in a place where I could be alone and pray. Somehow the name of this lovely church lent itself to the circumstances of the day.

  Twenty minutes later I heard the door open and close, and the noise of a pair of footsteps walking toward me. I didn’t turn my head.

  Mike Chapman slipped into the pew beside me and looked at me, grimacing as he shook his head back and forth. He started to say something.

  “Not right now.”

  He put his arm around my shoulder instead. I closed my eyes and rested my head against him until I was ready to leave.

  34

  Mike was singing background for Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias-“To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before”-when Jake and I walked through the door at Rao’s a week later. He got off the bar stool when he saw us come in. “They’re playing my song. Best jukebox in the world.”

  Joey Palomino came out of the kitchen to greet us. “You got the first booth, Jake. Good to see you. Nice to have you back, Alex.”

  The tiny restaurant on the corner of 114 th Street and Pleasant Avenue was like a private club. An unknown caller might hope for a reservation six months ahead, but the handful of tables were filled by regulars who came on a steady basis when Joey gave them their dates. Once in, since there is no second seating, you could sit for the night and feast on luscious Italian food and wine for hours, to the accompaniment of great music from the fifties and sixties. Mike and I had been guests there a couple of times over the years, but Jake had worked his way up to a weekly berth after he hit the national news desk. Mike had asked Jake to set up a dinner to get me out of my dismal mood and to mark Mercer’s move from intensive care to a regular hospital room. It looked like he’d be released in another ten days.