A Falling Knife (Hollow City Series)

by Andrew Case

  Mulino could tell that Leonard was sagging. He didn’t like getting bad news any more than Mulino liked giving it. Leonard looked up at Mulino; he wasn’t going to give up. “I let Christine down. She was working on this. She was working on this a year ago and none of us even knew it until she died. And the kid you’re looking for is her kid. So if I owe something to her, I owe it to him too. This guy who used to work for Eleanor was in touch with Veronica Dean. She was telling him that Davenport had found her out. There is something more there.”

  “Maybe there is, Leonard.”

  “We found some of what Christine had found out. But what if there was more? What if Armstrong was still looking for something that we didn’t find? Because I know Veronica Dean is still out there.”

  “You do what you have to do, Leonard. I have to try to bring this kid home.”

  Leonard nodded. He seemed a little disappointed, as though maybe Mulino would jump on board and carouse through the city with him on another adventure. But the truth of the matter was that Mulino’s knee hurt and he had only had one cup of coffee so far. Hitting the streets wasn’t his job anymore, and he finally felt worn out enough to be glad it wasn’t. Since getting the promotion, actually, Mulino had felt tired all the time. Funny how you ache for something for twenty years, and finally you get it, and it feels kind of like a pain in the ass. It had led Mulino to do some thinking about the job, actually. But that could wait. For now, he would sit at his desk and sift through the leads. Leonard would be able to manage on his own.

  “How’s the father? He holding up okay?”

  “He stayed at my place last night. He seemed okay this morning. I mean, under the circumstances. He’s staring out the window a lot.”

  “You’re doing a good thing looking after him.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Good luck, Leonard. Call up Peralta if it has to do with the murder. If you corner Hill and she confesses to taking the boy, give me a ring and I’ll be there.”

  Leonard turned and shut the door. Maybe Mulino had been too curt with him. He was doing good work, after all. And if there was a connection between the real estate firm and Veronica Dean, that would be worth knowing. Mulino had been sore for a year about the fact that she had gotten away. They had locked up a deputy mayor, eventually, on a couple of federal charges. The prison was in Myrtle Beach or somewhere; the sentence had been knocked down to twenty-four months. Elected officials can always find good lawyers. And somehow they can always get back in the game. Mulino figured he would hear from that one again too someday. But the fact that Veronica Dean had bet on sabotage, and for a good while had won, and then managed to slip away, had gnawed at him. Maybe Leonard would find her. Mulino had other business.

  But then he thought of something Leonard said. This Armstrong character. He hadn’t just been in touch with Wade Valiant. He had been in touch with Veronica Dean. And that means he had made an enemy of Christine Davenport. And Christine Davenport’s son was missing. So maybe there was something Christine had discovered that Armstrong needed, that he wanted to give to Veronica. He remembered that Leonard had said no one could find Adam all year. That he had been hiding out with his parents in New Jersey, no address, no phone, no credit card. And just a month ago he had shown up, out of the blue, in Brooklyn. Maybe Leonard hadn’t been the only one looking for him. But that was no reason to abduct the seven-year-old. It’s not as though a kid would have known anything.

  The work at hand was just too pressing. Another uniform came in with another stack of tips. Mulino took them with a heavy hand and started to page through them. It was going to be a long day.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Leonard slipped into the office to see Eleanor Hill looking out the plate windows onto the low waterfront skyline. She was alone in the office. With all the action in her business on the weekends—showing units, taking bids, closing deals—Tuesday morning was quiet and still. Leonard had been worried he would be late after checking in with Mulino that morning, but aside from Eleanor herself, no one was around. He walked past his boss’s office, gave a quick nod through the glass in case she turned to look at him, and slipped around the corner toward his own.

  Today he was reviewing permits before they were sent to the expeditor. Eleanor had given up on hiding the obvious: the building on Flatbush, touted as occupancy-ready in the spring, was months behind schedule. Frost was coming, and you can’t lay electrical and plumbing out in the cold and the snow. What everyone didn’t know was that the permits hadn’t even been filed. Ordinarily that would mean months of review by the Department of Buildings. But Hill and Associates, like every other developer, had a way around that.

  The stacks in front of Leonard had been prepared first by architects, then by the electrician, plumber, and HVAC subcontractors. Each one was forty pages thick. Leonard had to confirm they had been properly put together, then hand them off to a professional expeditor. The expeditor would wait in line at the DOB just like everyone else. But unlike everyone else, after the expeditor got to the front of the line, he would walk out with permits in less than half an hour. Most expeditors would work for multiple clients, carrying stacks of up to twenty permit applications at a time, even though DOB rules forbid you from submitting more than four at once. DOB rules usually require months for approval too. DOB rules can be funny that way.

  It was a strange job, being an expeditor. When the millionaires were in power, they wanted spires in Manhattan to house corporate headquarters or luxury apartments to be used as pieds-à-terre by kleptocrats and sultans. When the progressives took over, they wanted big apartment buildings rented out for as little as possible. The expeditor takes a professional fee, lays off a part of it as a reasonable bribe, and you get to break ground. When Leonard was at DIMAC, they had been specifically instructed not to bother investigating corruption between expeditors and permit officers at buildings. It could have taken over their whole office, and frankly, nobody cared.

  So Leonard thought that before he could hand these off to the expeditor, he had to be sure that they were in good shape. No one else was really going to look at them. He wasn’t an architect and he wasn’t a contractor. But he understood paperwork, and he could read enough of a schematic and do enough math to figure out if the permits penciled out.

  He had made it through the first one when he heard her at the door. Not that it mattered in an office where the walls were glass and the doors windowed. Eleanor Hill had a hint of agitation as she stood silhouetted by the morning light. Her body was still but her thumbs were tapping against her middle fingers: a quick repeated patter. Leonard set down his pencil and looked up.

  Eleanor was still and cold and stared dead into his eyes. His heart sank. She had found him out. She knew he was working for Mulino. She knew he had been through the company emails. She knew he was a mole. He started thinking of excuses, some way to buy time or explain what he had been up to. He was just trying to familiarize himself with the firm. He wanted to know as much as possible. He was only here to help.

  “Can I talk to you, Leonard?”

  Leonard could feel his heart reel out of control. He took a deep breath. Keep your cool. He looked up at her again. He prepared his list of excuses. You haven’t done anything wrong. “Sure. Come in. Sit down. Or should I come to your office?”

  Silent, she walked in and took the chair across from Leonard’s desk. Harder, less pliant than those she kept in her own office. Not that a comfortable chair would have dulled her alertness.

  “I have something I need to talk to you about.”

  Stay attentive. But stay calm. “Sure.”

  “The man who died last week. Wade Valiant.”

  “I read about it.” She hadn’t mentioned it when he interviewed. It had happened the day before. She hadn’t spoken of it Sunday night. He reminded himself not to appear too familiar with it.

  “The police tell me that the crane was faulty. That it hadn’t been inspected.”

  Leonard nodded
. The last thing he needed to do was correct her. If she found out that he knew anything about what the police thought, his game would be over.

  “Okay.”

  “Leonard, we don’t depend on the Department of Buildings to keep our cranes safe. I can’t afford to rely on them for that.”

  “You’re saying the crane wasn’t weak? That the DOB didn’t miss an inspection?”

  “I don’t know if they missed an inspection or not. But it didn’t just fail. Someone did something to it.”

  Eleanor was staring him down, calm. Leonard had come in worried she was about to turn him in. But now he thought she had another motive.

  “You think someone killed Wade Valiant? You should tell that to the police.”

  “Leonard, I think the police might not be telling me the whole story. I think they may believe he was murdered. And they might be right.”

  “Okay.”

  “And it isn’t safe for my business that I am not being kept in the loop. I may have another employee who is a danger to others. I have worksites that offer too many opportunities for someone looking to do harm. If there is a suspect working for me, I need to know about it.”

  Leonard thought about Manny Reeves, in his hospital bed. Eleanor didn’t even know that he hadn’t come in to work. Let alone that Mulino liked him for murdering Valiant.

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  She leaned close. “You used to work for the city. You have friends still. Some in the PD, I imagine.”

  “I investigated dirty cops. There aren’t too many NYPD officers who think they are friends of mine.”

  “There must be some.”

  “You want me to spy for you.”

  “I want you to find out information. They aren’t telling me anything. It’s bad for my business. It’s dangerous. If they think anyone at this business had anything to do with a crime, they should let me know.”

  Leonard could see the part she wasn’t saying. The part she feared. The reason they wouldn’t tell her about the suspect was that she was the suspect herself.

  “Okay. I’m going to call on a few friends in the city. What do you want me to do about the permits?”

  “You can give them to me. I’ll hand them off to the expeditor.”

  She hadn’t said anything about reviewing them first. Leonard didn’t want to ask. He stood up and handed them to her. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  And with that he was up, and after less than an hour in the office, he was out again. He couldn’t help but feel bad telling Eleanor he was going to spy for her, when he had been spying on her all along. She had to know more than she was letting on. And he had to keep his guard up, after all. But all in all, he was beginning to like her.

  Eleanor Hill looked over her shoulder as Leonard left. A little too quick, a little too eager. He almost leapt at the chance to go spy on his old friends. Something about that wasn’t right. She would have to let him in on what happened last summer eventually. But now she had him out of the office, after all. He stayed a little too late, worked a little too hard. Maybe he was desperate, but maybe he was up to something. And getting him out of the office was worth it, even if she had to handle the applications herself. It was just another stack of paperwork. After what had happened in the past two days, Eleanor had much bigger problems than one dead construction worker. The clock was ticking, after all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Detective Peralta put her feet up on the desk. She could get used to this. In the Homicide Bureau, everyone had an office. Even Detective Peralta, technically on loan from OCCB, had a door she could close and a desk of her own. It was the same gunship gray steel that was littered around almost every command in the department. But it was in an office. Not a cubicle like the one she had been sharing with Detective Bruder.

  Outside of the office was a real lounge. Couches. A mini-fridge. A corkboard wall. A television set too, though she hadn’t seen anyone turn it on yet. Probably used mainly for watching security camera footage. A coffee table. Peralta imagined joining in late-night sessions, photos of suspects pinned to the corkboard, the squad batting around ideas until someone hit on that stupendous moment where the whole thing suddenly became clear.

  She had gotten in early, the only one there. The four middle-aged white guys were nowhere to be seen. She hadn’t heard from them since being sent to One PP to run the names of the outside entities through Frauds. Still, they had her name on the door. It was written on an index card and taped up, but she belonged.

  “Who is that? Anyone in there? Someone there?” Peralta recognized the tall one’s voice through her door. He was out in the lounge. She swung down her feet and opened the door.

  “It’s me, Detective.”

  The tall one was standing with a cup of coffee in the middle of the lounge. The stocky one was sitting on the couch, a bagel in one hand and a coffee in the other. The low table was just far enough away from him, Peralta figured, that he couldn’t set down one treat or the other without folding himself up too tight for it to be worthwhile. He looked up at her just as he chomped on the bagel, overstuffed with a double schmear. But it was the tall one who spoke.

  “Oh, Detective . . .” he stammered for a moment. Peralta could almost see the list of Spanish names rolling before his eyes. She could sense him trying to figure out if it was better to just pick one and probably be wrong or to admit defeat. Ramirez, Muñoz, Sanchez maybe. In the end, it seemed, he was going to settle on just “Detective.”

  “Detective. What are you doing here?”

  “I work here. I’m assigned to the squad for the Valiant case.”

  The tall one looked down at the stocky one on the couch.

  “Nobody told you? We solved that case.”

  Since nobody could remember her name, it wasn’t that surprising that nobody had told her. “What do you mean?”

  “No, you see. We did a real canvas yesterday. Not an OCCB canvas. And we found the guy that killed Valiant.”

  Detective Peralta stood her ground, remembering what Mulino had always told her about the difference between the who and the why. “We know who killed him. Manny Reeves killed him. We were trying to figure out why.”

  A smirk from the tall one. As though now he was talking to someone who had to have things explained to her very slowly. “Nah. Manny Reeves didn’t kill him. What you guys didn’t know is that Wade Valiant was dating the ex-wife of another worker on the site. What was the guy’s name?”

  The stocky one leaned his neck back and swallowed the hunk of bagel, a hyena throwing back a chunk of gazelle. He licked a smudge of cream cheese off his lip. “His name was Smyth. With a Y. But pronounced the same. Gabriel Smyth.”

  “That’s right. You OCCB guys missed the whole thing.”

  Peralta knew that Wade Valiant had been dating Gabriel Smyth’s ex-wife. She had interviewed whichever worker had told that to these detectives. She had it in her memo book somewhere if they wanted to challenge her. She also had found out that Gabriel Smyth and his wife had been divorced for ten years, that they weren’t exactly on speaking terms, and Smyth himself was remarried. It was hard for her to believe the jealousy bug could steam for that long and one day erupt into murder. But more than that, she knew that Gabriel Smyth hadn’t even been at work that day. He had stayed home with his sick son in Queens.

  “I thought he had an alibi?”

  “Alibi. You guys. What does someone who wants to murder someone do, first thing? What’s the first thing you do when you are about to go kill someone, Douggie?”

  So the stocky one was called Douggie. Peralta made a note. None of them had ever really introduced himself. “You get yourself a good solid alibi.”

  “That’s right, Douggie. So, Detective.” Again with the little pause. If he didn’t know her name before, though, it wasn’t going to suddenly come to him. “We went to talk to Mr. Smyth. After a couple of hours in the room, he admits that he wasn’t with his kid at all. He admits he to
ld Reeves to go get a cup of coffee. And while Wade was out of the cab, Smyth gets in and starts whacking the machine up against the wall. Till your Mr. Valiant falls down dead. Douggie here did the interview. We have a signed confession. The case is closed.”

  Peralta looked down at Douggie. A couple of hours in a room with him and most people would confess to murdering their own mother. Not to mention that Smyth certainly didn’t have a lawyer for this interview. Didn’t know that the police can say whatever they want to you when they interview you. Can lie. Can say they found your fingerprints somewhere they didn’t. They can say that another witness has identified you as being on the scene. They can tell you that you’re facing the death penalty and only if you open up to them and tell them what you actually did, do you have any chance of seeing your family again. Your kid. Your wife.

  The old-fashioned way of interrogating suspects was basically to find the guy with the best motive and hit him over the head until he confessed. Somewhere along the way, someone had told the police that they weren’t allowed to do the hitting-over-the-head part any more. But that didn’t mean they had to play fair. Peralta looked from one detective to the other. They had just arrested a man who was almost certainly innocent. And they were proud of it.

  “And where is Mr. Smyth now?”

  “Oh, he’s locked up in the six-seven. Don’t worry, Detective. We’ll put your name on the paperwork and everything. You can tell your kids you helped solve a real honest-to-god murder. Can’t she, Douggie?”

  Douggie was done with his bagel, so there was no real reason to open his mouth. Instead he just shrugged.

  “So we were going to kick back a little. I mean, we gave the confession to the ADA. We’ll close out the rest of the paperwork maybe tomorrow. But you can go back to OCCB. Find someone running a fake handbag ring or something.”