Murder in Hell's Kitchen

by Lee Harris

  She said, “Me too,” as she walked toward him, allowed herself the pleasure of holding and being held. Little sounds escaped from both of them. He held her away from him, then kissed her cheeks and rubbed his day-old stubble across her smooth skin.

  “I still love the freckles,” he said.

  She smiled. “There aren’t any freckles, Hack. They were there when I met you, but they’re gone.”

  “I see every one of them. Show me around. Then we’ll talk.”

  He admired the fireplace and the floors, the roomy office with all the still-unpacked cartons, the bedroom where he lingered, his arm around her. Then they picked up their coffee and ice cream and sat in the living room.

  “How do you like the new squad?” he asked.

  “You know about it.”

  “You know me. I know everything. I put you on it.”

  “You! I thought—”

  “Don’t think. I thought you’d like it better. I thought you’d like it so much you’d give up this fantasy of leaving the job for some damn dull insurance company.”

  “I do like it,” she said. “But I need the insurance company money to afford the apartment. And the City Hall case—”

  “You’ll get a raise on the job that’ll pay the rent. And the City Hall case was a dead end. After everyone in the city dried their eyes, nothing was there. That case’ll be open for the next ten years.”

  “It’s this cold case I want to talk to you about. It started in Hell’s Kitchen.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I went to Omaha last week.”

  “I saw the paperwork.”

  “Someone was waiting for me. A killer.”

  His eyes stayed on her face. He pressed his lips together, then relaxed them. “Who knew you were going?”

  “My team, Captain Graves, Lieutenant McElroy, the PAA, and anyone who handled my travel papers.”

  “You think there was a leak.”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “And it could have been in my office.”

  “Or mine or the commissioner’s.”

  “You’re telling me someone in one of these three offices is on the payroll of a killer.”

  “Or could be his girlfriend.”

  “Or his boyfriend, I suppose. What do you know about him?”

  “He’s Chinese, he’s very good at what he does, and the people he works for are illegally buying or stealing weapons-systems circuitry that could be used to launch missiles against us.”

  “You got yourself a hell of a case.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Somebody checking out my people?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll do my own checking.”

  “Thanks, Hack.”

  He smiled and she knew they were through with business. “Maybe we’ll go away for a weekend somewhere.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I said your name in my sleep.”

  “I told you you talked in your sleep. You never believed me.”

  “I believe you now.” His cup was empty and his ice cream long gone. “We done with business?”

  “I’m done.”

  He looked at his watch. “It’s up to you,” he said.

  She went over and sat on his lap, held his head against her, moved her lips through his hair, his ear, shivered with pleasure at his sounds, at the feeling of his arms around her. “It’s OK,” she said.

  “Just OK?”

  “I love you, Hack.”

  “That’s a lot better than OK.”

  She hung on to him after he said he had to go, knowing she had broken a promise to herself. “I wish I didn’t love you,” she said.

  “Wishing won’t change it. I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t met you.” He kissed her, got out of bed, and started to dress.

  She watched him as she had watched him so many other times, a silhouette near the window, a shadow near the bed. This was how she always saw him, in the dark, a beloved shadow. It had been ten years since they met, half the time she’d been on the job. It had been partly that round number that had prompted her to put an end to the relationship, or at least to try.

  “How’s your daughter?” she asked.

  “She hasn’t said anything, Jane. I’ve been very good for the last month and a half.”

  Month and a half. Had it been that long? “Your wife must know. How could she not know? There could be so much trouble for you.”

  “There won’t be any trouble,” he said. He bent over and kissed her. “I stopped smoking after the last time I saw you.”

  It made her eyes tear. She had wanted him to stop for years. “I’m glad.”

  “But now that I’m so goddamn healthy, I don’t have you to share all those extra years with.”

  “You’re hopeless,” she said.

  “Think of me when you eat the ice cream,” he said, folding his tie and stuffing it in a jacket pocket.

  As if she needed something to jog her memory. “Count on it.”

  He took his cell phone out and made the inevitable call to say when he’d be home and not to bother picking him up at the station. He’d take a taxi.

  “I have one of those now, too,” Jane said, getting out of bed and reaching for the robe he had gotten her a couple of years ago.

  “Give me the number.” He put it in his book. “If I learn anything, you’ll be the first to hear. I’m sorry I interfered, but I really didn’t want you stuck on a case that was going nowhere.”

  “It’s OK. This is the best case of my life.”

  “Think about it, Jane. Leaving the job?”

  “I will.”

  They walked to the foyer arm in arm.

  “You know I’m always there,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “I hope you feel as good as I do.”

  “I do.”

  “Last kiss then.”

  That was always the one tainted with tears. Tonight was no exception.

  After she closed the door behind him she knew how this case was different. It was the sum total of everything she had worked on in her career. It was all those drug busts in Harlem and Chinatown and Narco, everything that went down in the Burglary Squad, ten years’ worth of dead bodies in the Six rolled into one. It was the case that would decide the rest of her life.

  She was living in the Six now, after all those years of working there. And the Centre Street office was in the Fifth, Chinatown’s precinct, where she had spent some of the best years of her life. In an eerie way it was all coming together, her work, her love, how she wanted to spend the next twenty years.

  Hack was clean; she knew that absolutely. They would find the leak. They would find Soderberg’s killer. She felt energized and excited, the way she had felt as a rookie, the way she had felt when she got her gold shield. I’m a cop, she thought. Can I ever be anything else?

  When she got into bed, she knew how she would handle Lisa Angelino.

  31

  THE WARRANT TO search Olivia Dean’s apartment was ready to execute first thing in the morning. Jane met Defino at Centre Street and they caught the subway uptown together after picking up the warrant at the district attorney’s office on Hogan Place. Bracken was already there, waiting in a car down the block. Derek was sitting beside him, looking lost.

  “Morning, folks. Derek here has the key to Ms. Dean’s apartment and he’ll open the door as soon as you show him your warrant.”

  Derek never said a word and never looked at Jane. When they got upstairs, Derek unlocked the door and then disappeared.

  “Fucking Derek,” Defino said inside. “He was playing with us. Thought we wouldn’t catch on.”

  They started with the living room, the first room they entered from the door. It was spare but livable: a couch covered with a foam-rubber mattress that could double as a bed, two chairs of a similar design, a television set, a couple of tables. On the floor was a carpet that extended into all the other rooms except the kitchen. I
f Olivia Dean moved around, no one downstairs heard her. A copy of People magazine with an October date lay open on the table in front of the couch; otherwise, there was nothing in the room to make it appear occupied.

  They moved on to the bedroom. Here there was a double bed made with military perfection and no spread. The sheets and pillowcases were striped, blue and silver on white. A dresser opposite the bed had two sets of three drawers and, on top, only a glass dish with straight pins, safety pins, and bobby pins.

  “Shit, I haven’t seen one of these in years,” Bracken said, pointing to the bobby pins. “Who uses these anymore?”

  Jane opened the closet. Most of the clothes were pants and jackets or other tops of a dark color. She pried open a large box on the floor and said, “Maybe someone who wears a wig.”

  “You found a wig in there?” Bracken said.

  “Nothing flashy, brown, short hair. Maybe she wanted to change her appearance. Maybe every day was a bad-hair day.” She backed out of the closet and let them in.

  “Looks like clothes for climbing on the roof,” Defino said. “You think she wore them out to lunch, too?”

  “What are the shoes like?” Jane asked.

  “Boots,” Bracken said. “Sneakers, coupla pair, one pair black heels. I guess that’s for having lunch out. Lotta black stuff hanging here.”

  “We’ll have to inventory the works,” Jane said. “Why don’t you guys do that and I’ll see what’s in the dresser.”

  The first thing she noticed was the jewelry. Everything was inexpensive and there wasn’t much: a few pairs of earrings, some bangle bracelets, a silver pin for the lapel of a suit. Maybe contract killing didn’t pay what she heard it did. The underwear was not provocative, just standard bras and panties with an emphasis on black. The bras were a small size, and most of the panties had been designed for comfort, not allure.

  In another drawer were the kind of socks you wear to keep your feet warm, socks meant for boots and sneakers, not high heels. A few pairs of panty hose were stuffed in a corner.

  There were stacks of black tights, plenty of knit shirts and sweaters, many of them also black. Absent were bright colors. This was a woman who kept a low profile, who melted into darkness.

  Jane pulled each drawer out of the dresser, checked the space in the dresser and the back of the drawer, then set it on the bed and lifted the front edge to see the bottom. There were no messages or keys or photos taped to the bottom. What was in the dresser was in the drawers.

  “Look at this,” Bracken said from the closet. He pulled out a box with high-grade rope arranged in circular sections and small metal D rings and nylon loops. “Probably good enough to climb Mount Everest with.”

  “Or tie some guy up and beat him to death,” Defino said.

  Jane touched it, rubbing it between her thumb and fingers. It felt smooth and springy, and was a dark red color with a green diamond pattern. “So where is she?”

  “How ’bout Omaha?” Defino said. “A nice little lady comes into the hospital to visit cousin Hutchins. Who’d stop her?”

  Jane felt a chill. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Mike Fromm’s number. “Mike, do you have Hutchins under guard?” she asked without any preliminaries.

  “I’ve got a man outside his door.”

  “It’s possible that a very dangerous woman is out there looking for him. She’s fairly small, maybe forty, could be wearing a wig that makes her look younger or older.”

  “So small is really all you’re sure of.”

  “That’s right. But she may be our kidnapper or a hired killer. She could come down from the roof on a rope.”

  “The windows are locked. It’s cold here. But I’ll have a talk with my men. We’ve got a log of visitors. Cory’s there a lot, and an aunt has dropped by a couple of times. I’ll check her out.”

  “Good idea.”

  “You have prints on this woman?”

  “Not yet, but we will soon. We’re going through her apartment right now.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “Where’d you get the phone?” Defino said when she hung up.

  “The whip gave it to me for my trip to D.C. I give it back when the case is over.”

  “Don’t let MacHovec see it. He’ll need two.”

  They did a thorough search, checking out underneath the bed, between the mattress and the box spring, turning over furniture. From the bathroom they took two pill bottles that might have Dean’s prints, and from the kitchen a glass on the counter and a few dishes.

  Defino slipped on latex gloves and checked the shower, toilet tank, and sink. Then he took out a small penknife, opened it to the screwdriver, and began removing the plates from light switches and electric outlets.

  The front closet had a black raincoat in it, a navy-blue single-breasted winter coat with matching buttons, a black leather jacket that looked worn beyond hope, a black nylon shell with a zipper, and a black hooded sweatshirt jacket. On the floor were rubber boots caked with mud and a black umbrella.

  There was no desk in the apartment and no mail. The phone in the bedroom was stationary, but the one in the kitchen was cordless, and they tagged and bagged that for prints. They also took the answering machine tape for a sample of her voice.

  “She must have left before the first,” Jane said. “Stabile said she hadn’t paid the rent, and she always paid on time. I bet the bill’s in the mailbox.”

  “And she’s got the key,” Defino said. “Maybe Derek has a copy.”

  They gathered their evidence and found Derek, who unlocked the mailbox without a word. Inside was an envelope from Stabile. There was also a Con Ed bill and a phone bill. All the postmarks were different, but the letters had been mailed in the last week.

  “I came back from Omaha a week ago yesterday,” Jane said. “That was the first of November. She could have flown out there that day before she got her mail, or maybe the day before when Wang called her to say he needed help.”

  “So she’d be gone a week,” Bracken said. “From the apartment you can’t tell.”

  “But what’s she doing out there? Hutchins didn’t mention her. No one’s tried to harm him since he’s been in the hospital. It really doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe she’s your tail,” Defino said.

  “I didn’t think of that. She could alternate with Wang.”

  “And you live downtown now, so she stays at the Walker Street place instead of going uptown to sleep.”

  It sounded reasonable. Bracken seemed surprised that Jane had a tail, and she told him it was still iffy. “We’ll go through the place on Walker Street this afternoon. The warrant should be waiting for us by the time we get back downtown.”

  They split up on that, Bracken driving back to the station house only a couple of blocks south. Jane checked the time. It was still too early for lunch.

  “I need an hour, Gordon. I’ll meet you back at Centre Street.”

  “I’ll pick up the warrant.” He took the things they had bagged in the apartment and hailed a cab to get downtown. When he was in it, Jane hailed the next one and gave the driver an address on Sixth Avenue.

  The building was steel and glass, a perfect rendition of corporate America, with several banks of elevators. She found the ones that went to the twentieth floor and entered the first car that emptied. Three other people stepped on before the doors shut. She hated what she was about to do, but she realized now that she wanted the past to remain the past. In a few minutes that would happen.

  The first one out of the elevator, she faced a receptionist who looked up and gave her a friendly look. “I’m looking for Paul Thurston,” she said.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  Jane showed her shield and ID and said, “I don’t need one.”

  The woman’s eyes opened wide. “Down the hall to the end, then left. His secretary will be there.”

  The hall was vinyl tiled until she reached the circular area at the end. Then it was carpe
ted, a cool green. Sitting at a desk with a computer was the secretary, just putting down the phone. Around her were closed doors, each of which would lead to a windowed office.

  The secretary eyed Jane with a somber face. “May I help you?” she asked.

  “I’d like to see Paul Thurston.” Jane held the shield in her coat pocket, but she didn’t want to show it if she didn’t have to. She knew the trouble she could get into, flashing a police ID in a personal matter.

  The young woman swallowed. “May I have your name?”

  “Just tell Mr. Thurston it’s important.”

  The secretary hesitated, then got up, went to the door directly in front of her desk, knocked twice, and went inside. When she came out, she said, “He’ll see you now.”

  Jane walked inside, feeling the springiness of the carpet, seeing the light from the windows behind his desk, seeing Paul Thurston for the first time in twenty years.

  There was no mistaking him. The hair was a little thinner and a little darker but the build had not changed and the eyes were the same bright blue. In a way he looked even better, the cocky puffiness of youth having given way to a slim, sober handsomeness.

  “Jane?” he said incredulously.

  “Hello, Paul.”

  “They said—”

  “I’m a police detective. I wanted to see you without discussing it with a third party.”

  “Is this a police matter?”

  “It’s personal.”

  He had been standing behind his desk. He came around now and took her coat, hung it in a small closet, and offered her a chair. He sat in one a couple of feet away. “The freckles are gone,” he said.

  “Nothing lasts forever.”

  “How have you been?”

  It was a question she hated, when people asked for a recap of the years they had been out of touch. She disliked giving recaps as much as she disliked hearing them. “I’ve been fine,” she said, “and it looks like you’ve been fine, too.” On the credenza behind his desk and under the windows there were family pictures. “Something has just come up, some unfinished business. You and I had a daughter twenty years ago.”