Law & Order Dead Line

by J. Madison Davis

  “Suicide?”

  “She rewrites the whole thing, gets her hopes up, and they say no. She gets distraught and so on.”

  “It works for me. Santonio lifted her purse and laptop and maybe some jewelry after she jumped. She put the room on Ralphie’s card just to zing him one more time. Shafting Mister Shaft,” said Briscoe.

  “It looks like the lieutenant gets her wish,” said Green. “We’ll be on the drive-by tomorrow. Think of the fine class of people we’ll get to canvass.”

  “The deaf and the blind. Hear no evil, see no evil.

  We need something to confirm her state of mind. Is there a turndown?”

  Green flipped more letters. “Not that I can find. If they hadn’t decided yet, or she wasn’t finished editing, she’s not likely to have killed herself over it.”

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  “Unless she got so depressed she couldn’t bring herself to finish,” said Briscoe. It would be too convenient that she got turned down Tuesday and killed herself Thursday, wouldn’t it? I never pull a case like that.”

  “So it hinges on this: if she’s still got hopes for her book, she isn’t likely to have done it and we’re looking at murder. If she’s been rejected…”

  “I hate trying to read a dead vic’s mind.”

  Green skimmed more letters. “There are several from an editing company. They go back over a year.

  The most recent…it says they’ve completed the ‘line edit.’ It’s dated July first.”

  Briscoe counted on his fingers. “The publisher says get a line edit, whatever that is. It’s finished by July.

  The book gets turned down. She kills herself. That makes too much sense.”

  “If it got turned down.” Green plucked out the May letter from the publisher and began dialing on his cell phone. “Let’s find out.” He waited and listened. “Answering machine. Leave a message?”

  “Tomorrow,” said Briscoe. “Maybe Chesko knows.

  We can stop by there before we chase the goose.

  What are the odds we can’t find this Ermilia Santonio?”

  “What are the odds that if we do, Santonio says she didn’t push anybody?”

  “Then it’s robbery’s problem.”

  “Wait,” said Green. “Instead of going back to Chesko…” He picked up the date book. “The writers’

  group. ‘Glenda’s’ it says. They’re meeting tomorrow at ah—eight. They’d know about her book prospects, right?”

  “They’d maybe know if she was depressed,” said Briscoe. “I doubt Ralph would have noticed, even when they were married.”

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  “Let’s make sure Voskov gets this place locked,”

  said Green.

  “Huh?”

  Green twisted his hand holding an imaginary key.

  “He turned it one way and couldn’t get in. He turned it the other and could.”

  “The door was unlocked when we got here. Sure.”

  He thought for a minute. “What are you thinking about?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it was just the exterminator.

  Maybe not. There’s a small chance the laptop Shamir gave us wasn’t Barbara Chesko’s. Hers could have been stolen out of here.”

  “Don’t complicate things.” Briscoe moved his hand creating a marquee in the air. “Ed Green for the Defense.”

  “There’s more than one Sony laptop out there.”

  “Take that manuscript and the letters. Maybe the book shows she was unraveling. And let’s remind Mr.

  Voskov not to touch anything.”

  “Let’s find Ermilia Santonio.”

  “But unless she confesses,” said Briscoe, “we’ll still have to look for Chesko’s recreational partner. There was somebody in that room using a condom.”

  “Now, you’re complicating things,” said Green.

  38

  SECOND AVENUE AND 110TH STREET

  MONDAY, AUGUST 26, 9:32 P.M.

  “Ermilia Santonio?” said Green, holding up his badge.

  A man stared out past the door chain. His left eye was white as if whatever had slashed the scar running from his forehead to his acne-scarred cheek had also taken its sight. He said, “She went back to Guatemala.” He moved to close the door, but Green held it firm.

  “Can we come in?” said Briscoe. “We just want to ask a few questions.”

  “What do you want?”

  Green spoke in Spanish. “We’re police detectives.

  We’re not from immigration. It’s about her job.”

  The man answered in English, but stepped back from the door as he did. “Her job? Which one? I told you, she’s gone.” Green could see that the man was wearing a full length jumpsuit. The embroidered logo on the chest said “Waterloo Hotel.”

  “We want to ask Ermilia about some missing property. It belongs to her or her sister or somebody in her family.”

  This seemed to confuse the man somewhat.

  “Do we have to talk through the door?” Briscoe asked.

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  LAW & ORDER

  The man disconnected the chain. Briscoe nudged Green and tapped his own chest to draw attention to the man’s jumpsuit.

  They stepped into the tiny living room. The one lamp was very nice, as if new, but the end tables and the sofa had been around for a long time.

  “So,” said Briscoe, “you work at the Waterloo, too?”

  The man stopped. He was either confused or nervous. “Waterloo?” was all he managed.

  “Is that where she got the laptop?”

  The man shook his head. “Ermilia works in a bodega on a hundred and fifteenth.”

  “But she’s a maid at the Waterloo hotel, isn’t she?”

  He hesitated. “We both work there,” he said slowly.

  “I have three jobs. She has two.”

  “Three, huh?”

  “A man has to live. This is New York.”

  “So was it you who got the laptop? Or was it Ermilia?”

  “What are you talking about? We can’t afford no computer.”

  Green shoved him against the wall and pinned him there with a spread hand. “We don’t like it when you play dumb. It tries our patience and makes us think you don’t trust us.”

  “What’s your name?” asked Briscoe.

  “Guillermo,” he said. He wasn’t a guy easily scared.

  Like a lot of immigrants he expected to be roughed around. He accepted it as his destiny.

  “Guillermo who?” said Green.

  “Guillermo Santonio. Ermilia is my wife.”

  “Now was that a nice thing to do?” said Green.

  “Send her all the way downtown to pawn that laptop?”

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  “I didn’t send her nowhere,” said the man.

  “So why’d she pawn it all the way down there?”

  “On Fridays, she cleans apartments in the Village.”

  “When you stole the laptop,” said Briscoe, “was Barbara Chesko in the room?”

  The man’s eyes grew wide. “I stole nothing! God is my witness! Barbara Che—?”

  “Chesko. You didn’t catch her name? She’s the woman you pushed out the window.”

  “No! I don’t know what you are talking about. I found it.” Santonio went pale as he suddenly realized why they were here. “Madre de Dios,” he mumbled.

  “What is it?” said Briscoe.

  “The woman who fell.”

  “Yes, her.”

  “What about her? Do you have something you want to tell us?” asked Green.

  “The computer was hers?” He looked quickly from Briscoe to Green and back. “I heard about her from Romero, the handyman. I didn’t think anything. He said she killed herself. She was robbed? I had nothing to do with that. I was never there!”

  “In her hotel room?”

  “No!”

  “You used your passkey,” said Green.

 
; “No! I don’t get a passkey! I clean the lobby and the trash bins. I work in the basement. They took the passkeys.”

  “Who?’

  “The managers. A month ago. More. Six weeks.”

  “Why’d they take your keys, Guillermo?”

  “They take everybody’s keys. They say there was pilfering.”

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  “You a pilferer, Guillermo?” demanded Green. “Is that it?”

  “I didn’t steal nothing!”

  Green’s forearm banged Santonio against the wall again. “Maybe you just wanted the woman? Had her, killed her, took the laptop as payment for services rendered.”

  “No!”

  “How’d you get the laptop, then? She woke up and saw you and you pushed her out the window.”

  “No! It was in a trashcan. The first thing I do every morning. The corner tore through.”

  “The corner of the laptop?” asked Green.

  “It tore through the plastic bag. I thought maybe the computer was broke. I thought I could get it fixed, maybe sell it.”

  “Maybe you had a little struggle with the woman who owned it. You didn’t really intend to kill her, did you?”

  “I don’t go to the rooms.”

  “Look, amigo,” said Briscoe, trying once more, “tell us the truth. The laptop and the purse were on the bed. She comes out of the bathroom—”

  “I don’t go into rooms,” Santonio said through gritted teeth.

  Green’s eyes met Briscoe’s. They had tossed out the accident suggestion as a phony lifeline, but he hadn’t gone for it. Usually, a guilty suspect, feeling the waters rise, will grasp at any kind of rope floating near. Either Guillermo was a particularly savvy criminal or he hadn’t murdered her.

  Briscoe shrugged. Green lifted the pressure he had been applying to Santonio’s chest.

  “First Ermilia accuses me of stealing it,” said 42

  DEAD LINE

  Guillermo, “now you. I tried it and it light up, but it needs a password. I go to work. What does she do?

  Get thirty-five dollars from a pawnshop to buy baby clothes! It has to be worth two hundred.”

  “You have a baby?”

  “Soon,” said Guillermo. “Two months.”

  “I hope you’ll be able to see it born,” said Green.

  “We’re going to go down to the station. If you’re lying to us…”

  “No, please. I have to go to work. I swear. It was in the big corner trash can. I thought I was lucky.”

  “When did this happen?” asked Briscoe.

  “I don’t know. I get to work at seven-thirty. Must have been about eight-thirty, eight forty-five.”

  “Why didn’t you turn the laptop in to lost and found?” said Briscoe. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

  “It was in the trash! Someone threw it out. If it’s in the trash, nobody wants it, right?”

  “You wanted it. Where can we find Ermilia?”

  “She had nothing to do with it.”

  “With what?”

  “Finding the computer.” In exasperation, he muttered something in Spanish.

  “What was that?” asked Briscoe.

  “He says we have wax in our ears,” said Green.

  “I’m getting old, Guillermo,” said Briscoe, leaning toward him, “and Ed is easily confused. We need things repeated until we get them right. So where is Ermilia?”

  Guillermo licked his lips again. “At work. The bodega. Please, don’t upset her. It could harm the baby.”

  “We’ll have to check this out, Mr. Santonio. You’ll 43

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  have to come with us. What time did you say you got to work?”

  “Seven-thirty.”

  All they’d need was proof Santonio was in the hotel around the time Barbara Chesko died, Briscoe knew, and they might be able to close the case. Without physical evidence they wouldn’t be able to pin murder on him, but there was still a possibility in the DNA on the bedspread. “Let’s get Ermilia and straighten this out,” said Briscoe.

  “I work in forty-five minutes.”

  “At the hotel?”

  “No, my other job. I clean fish.”

  “We’ll call your boss for you,” said Green, taking out his cell phone.

  “Please,” Santonio pleaded, “the police, you know.

  I’ll get fired and I didn’t do nothing. Let me call in sick. It’s not easy to get a job. The baby.”

  “I thought you had three jobs,” said Briscoe.

  “We are needing every penny. Please.”

  Still holding the cell phone, Green looked at Briscoe, who said, “When we get to the station.”

  Santonio’s hand flashed out, shoved Briscoe into Green, and snatched the cell. As they lurched back, the detectives automatically reacted as if he had gone for their weapons. “Damn!” said Briscoe. Green reached at Santonio and just scratched the collar of his T-shirt as he ducked and rolled into the bathroom, slamming the door.

  Reassured by the warm feel of their pistols still in their holsters, they pulled their pieces and crashed flat against either side of the door.

  “Is there a window?” asked Green.

  Briscoe shrugged.

  “Guillermo,” shouted Green. “Don’t do this.”

  Briscoe tried the old metal door. The paint was 44

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  chipped where it had been dinked. “Locked.” They heard him talking.

  “Who’s he calling? His wife?” said Briscoe.

  “Come on out, Guillermo,” said Green. “Your baby’s going to need a father. Don’t let this get out of hand!” Briscoe backed to the window and watched the fire escape.

  “Come out, Guillermo, or we’ll have to break in!”

  “Call for backup?” asked Briscoe. “We’ll need a battering ram.” He tried to unlock the window to step out on the fire escape, but it had long been sealed by layers of paint.

  Green thought of what Santonio might have in the bathroom. A gun? A razor? Keeping his gun leveled at the door he backed up.

  The detectives tensed at the sound of the latch turning. “Doan shoot!” they heard. “I give up. Doan shoot!”

  “Open the door!” shouted Green. “Slowly!”

  “Keep your hands high!” said Briscoe.

  The door creaked back. Santonio was on his knees on the floor, his hands over his head. Green then saw a dark shape in Santonio’s hand. Every muscle in his body went rigid.

  The cell phone.

  A flush of cold sweat instantly covered the detective.

  He had nearly fired. Green trembled with relief, then anger.

  “Get flat on that floor!” shouted Briscoe.

  “I could have killed you!” snapped Green, reaching for his handcuffs. “Just give me an excuse to hurt you!”

  45

  INTERROGATION ROOM

  27TH PRECINCT

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 12:32 A.M.

  Green, Briscoe, and Van Buren stood in the twi-light of the one-way mirror. On the other side, Guillermo Santonio sat still, his arms crossed. He sniffed every minute or so. He had wept in the car.

  “I pushed the redial,” Green was saying to Van Buren, “and it was the bodega. He was warning her.”

  “And she’s gone, I assume,” said Van Buren.

  “The way Ed drove, we’re lucky to be alive,” said Briscoe, “but she didn’t even take her sweater. The owner acted like he didn’t know her, but we didn’t let him get away with that.”

  “We circled the block in each direction,” said Green,

  “but she had about fifteen, twenty minutes to scoot.”

  “That was pretty dumb, fellows,” said Van Buren.

  “Hey, it was a phone,” snapped Green.

  “Watch it, Ed,” she warned.

  He spun away. “Okay,” he sighed. “It was dumb.”

  She studied the suspect. “He looks pretty tough.”

  “All he needs is a kni
fe in his teeth,” said Briscoe.

  “He says he was adopted by missionaries after his parents were killed. That blind eye was courtesy of the Guatemalan military.”

  “He’s legal?”

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  “A U.S. citizen like you, me, and John Walker Lindh. Ermilia isn’t. The green card in her apartment is a phony.”

  “They’re not married?”

  “Afraid to get anywhere near the legal system. She must have sneaked in, then met him.”

  “But if she just married him, she’d be okay, right?”

  “Maybe not if she sneaked in first. They’d make her go back and apply to be admitted.”

  Van Buren nodded. “Which they’d never do.”

  “On the other hand, if she gives birth…” said Briscoe.

  “She’s the mother of an American citizen.”

  “I checked with the hotel,” said Briscoe. “It’s true that they collected all the passkeys six weeks ago and issued new ones only to employees who need them regularly. Guillermo isn’t supposed to go up to the rooms.”

  “But he could have gotten his wife’s,” said Green.

  “Is the hotel admitting it has a theft problem?”

  Briscoe shook his head. “‘Had,’ they say. Six or seven rooms were boosted in June.”

  “Why didn’t they tell you this?” said Van Buren.

  “They don’t want it to get out. Lawsuits. Publicity.

  They say they don’t have a problem anymore.”

  Van Buren rolled her eyes. “Maybe we should check if anyone else ‘fell’ out a midtown window. See what thefts were reported.”

  “I’ve got a list on the way.”

  Green reached for the doorknob. “So, are we going to question this turkey or not?”

  “You read him his rights?” They nodded. “Maybe Lennie better,” said Van Buren. “You’re a little anxious, don’t you think?”

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  “Maybe I don’t like being jerked around.”

  “That’s what I mean, Ed.”

  Briscoe jumped between his partner and his lieuten -

  ant. “I’ve got such a history of being jerked around, it bores me.” He walked past Van Buren and opened the door to the interrogation room. Santonio acknow-ledged his presence with only a quick glance.

  “Thirsty?” asked Briscoe. “I can get you a soda. A coffee.”

  Santonio shook his head.

  “I don’t blame you on the coffee. It’s terrible here.”