Dead Cold Brew

by Cleo Coyle

  I remembered Esther’s “Open fire!” complaint last week about Nancy’s failed cook-out, and I prayed for the same alarmed reaction among the neighbors.

  “With luck, by the time our guard realizes firefighters are on their way, he’ll choose to make a clean getaway rather than risk sticking around and getting caught.”

  Madame nodded with enthusiasm. “The plan is afoot!”

  We quickly and quietly tore up the newspapers and dropped balled pieces through the hole in the broken window. Soon we had a nice pile of kindling on the ground next to the brick building.

  I struck up the Bic again and lit a paper and dropped it on top of the pile. Soon there was a bonfire. As the flames rose, Madame and I used more papers to wave the smoke away from us.

  The fire spread, as I kept feeding it. We were starting to cough when we heard the sirens. A moment later, I tensed at the sound of our armed guard trying to get in.

  “The firefighters and police are here!” I shouted through the door. “And we have weapons to fight you!”

  While I was yelling through the door, trying to scare away our would-be killer, Madame was breaking the windows and shouting, “Help! Help us!” at the top of her lungs.

  My plan worked. Within minutes, two firefighters heard our cries and came to break down the door.

  By then, the bodyguard with the dead cold eyes took my advice and ran. I didn’t care. I could ID him, and I knew where to find him.

  I had a much bigger concern at the moment—finding Matteo Allegro!

  EIGHTY-FIVE

  WITH my arm around Madame, we pushed through the Village Blend’s front door, just as Esther Best was preparing to lock up for the night.

  “Wow, boss lady! You look terrible!”

  “I smell worse.”

  “Yeah,” Esther said, holding her nose. “Like a fire sale.”

  I sat Madame down into the nearest empty chair. “What time is it?”

  “Twelve fifty. Last call was five minutes ago. We only have one customer left.”

  “Clare!” Lori Soles was already hurrying toward me. “I’ve been trying to call you for over an hour. I thought I would stop by to see what happened to Matt’s mother—”

  “I was kidnapped, twice, that’s what happened.” A breathless Madame patted my hand. “But Clare rescued me both times.”

  Lori blinked. “So you know the black Jaguar was rented to—”

  “Bruno and Donatella Campana.”

  “And that they are staying at—”

  “An Airbnb apartment in Brooklyn. I know.”

  “Then, should we pick them up?”

  “You might want to dispatch the Crime Scene Unit. An Italian man named Gino Benedetto was murdered there. The Campanas didn’t kill him, although evidence will look like they did. I’m a witness and can testify to their innocence—at least to murder.”

  “Talk about behind the curve,” Lori cried. “Why did I bother to get out of bed?”

  “To make the bust of your career.”

  “Huh?”

  “We have to go to the Diamond District, right now. I’ll explain on the way.”

  “But I just heard from my commander. Everybody’s being called in. All hell’s broken loose in Washington Heights, and down in Battery Park, too. Nothing is going on in Midtown.”

  “Yes, and that’s exactly the plan.”

  “What plan?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way . . .”

  * * *

  THE Diamond District was three miles from the Village Blend—a thirty-minute drive under “normal conditions.”

  Detective Soles was determined to make it in under twenty.

  At nearly one AM, traffic was light. Lori used that fact as an excuse to weave around the buses, cabs, cars, and pedestrians we did see. She blasted through a few red lights, too, but at least she didn’t blast the siren.

  “Tell me again what you think is going on,” Lori said. “And why you don’t want me to use the siren?”

  “Victor Fontana is behind a jewel heist that’s taking place right now. His hired people have taken my ex-husband hostage. They’re going to make Matt take at least one of their crew down to the Lyons Security underground vault, to steal the Eye of the Cat—and probably much, much more. There’s a fortune down there for the taking. And they likely have an accomplice inside.”

  Lori seemed unconvinced. “And you think this has something to do with the NYPD alert tonight?”

  “Everyone has been led to believe that Eduardo De Santis is behind the Panther Man shootings—Quinn, McNulty, and their squads.”

  “You know, right now, there are ‘shots fired’ incidents coming from uptown and downtown?”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Uptown and downtown, but not Midtown. Not anywhere near the Diamond District. Lyons Security runs an all-access vault, 24/7. This late at night, with the police intensely focused on alerts far from the area, it will be much easier to disable security systems, gas guards, and get away with hundreds of millions if not billions in precious gems and metals.”

  “Why don’t I just call this in?” Lori asked. “And warn Lyons Security that something is up.”

  “Because these thieves are holding Matt hostage, probably at gunpoint. If they’re trapped by security, they will use him as a shield if they have to shoot it out, and Matt may die.”

  “So we’re just going to sneak up on them?”

  “Kind of . . .” I said reluctantly.

  Lori stated the obvious. “That’s not a plan, Clare.”

  “No, it isn’t. But according to your own ETA, I still have five minutes to come up with one . . .”

  * * *

  FOUR minutes later, I still had nothing.

  “Okay, we’re here.”

  Lori pulled up to the Fifth Avenue main entrance to the Diamond Tower. The lobby lights were dim, and there was no sign of activity, normal or otherwise.

  “Nothing to see here,” Lori said.

  “Circle the block. Let’s look for a garage entrance . . .”

  We parked within sight of a large metal door. Sure enough, after ten minutes of waiting, it rose to reveal an illuminated loading dock. I saw the Lyons Security cat’s paw logo on the wall. A panel van and a black SUV were the only occupants. As they rolled onto the street, the SUV in the lead, I spied the logo on the side of the van—Village Blend Coffee.

  “Oh, for the love of—that’s them!” I cried. “Follow that van!”

  Lori hit the gas.

  “Why are we following your Village Blend coffee van?”

  “Because it’s not our van! Someone wants you to think it is.”

  “Why?”

  “To go where the delivery of a van full of coffee would not look out of place.”

  “Where?”

  “An ocean liner!”

  It all made sense, now . . .

  Victor Fontana invited the Village Blend to participate in the very public Andrea Doria coffee competition. It was a last-minute invitation, and now I knew why, because the Village Blend was the only coffee roaster that had a warehouse in Red Hook. And, thanks to Monica, Fontana knew all about the real Eye of the Cat and Matt’s connection to it!

  “They’re going to Pier 12, the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal,” I told Lori.

  From behind the wheel, she looked skeptically at me. “How can you be so sure?”

  “It’s perfect camouflage. A coffee delivery to an ocean liner sailing in the early morning. Only below the coffee sacks, this van is filled with billions in treasure from the Lyons vault. Once they had Matt get them inside, the sky was the limit. I’m sure they grabbed as much as they could.”

  “I think Matt might be safe so far,” Lori speculated. “If they’re smart, Matt’s driving. That way, if they’re stopped, your average officer will check his
license and think, Well, it’s the co-owner of the Village Blend, so it must be legit. And let them walk.”

  “Just like the cops let a woman walk through their perimeter the day Sully was shot.”

  “What?”

  “It wasn’t their fault. Thanks to my eyewitness account, patrolmen were on the lookout for a strapping male in a Panther Man costume, not a pretty, wide-eyed grad student from South Africa in a short skirt—even if she was carrying a backpack with a deflated Panther Man costume and a dismantled sniper rifle.”

  “Clare, the crime in progress now is my concern. And right now we need reinforcements.”

  “Reinforcements we can trust,” I noted. “Which means no McNulty or any of his people. For this collar, we need Mike Quinn, Sergeant Franco, and the entire OD Squad.”

  EIGHTY-SIX

  LIEUTENANT McNulty had dispatched Quinn’s squad to Lower Manhattan, to investigate the “fireworks” that panicked citizens around Battery Park. That’s what they turned out to be, too—more remote-controlled pyrotechnics meant to confuse and distract law enforcement.

  But I was onto the deception, and I laid it all out to Quinn while Lori kept a discreet distance behind the suspect vehicles.

  “Eduardo De Santis is being framed,” I explained. “That’s why your OD Squad was targeted. And the whole Panther Man thing was about rattling the cops, diverting the police from doing their jobs. Right now, Midtown is quiet because the jewel thieves wanted the police somewhere else while they robbed the vault in the World Diamond Tower . . .”

  We spoke over the phone instead of using the police radio. We both knew these thieves could be monitoring the police band.

  “Why has no one from Lyons Global Security raised an alarm?” Quinn asked. “By now someone must have discovered the robbery.”

  “They used some kind of knockout gas on Madame and me. Maybe they used it on the security guards, too. I’m sure the thieves have someone on the inside who prevented alarm triggers from going off.”

  “I follow you,” Quinn said. “And now we know why McNulty’s Inside Job Squad was targeted, too. His men were so distracted by the shootings they dropped the ball on what could be the biggest inside job of all time . . .”

  All caught up, Quinn now described his plan of action.

  “My guys are a lot closer to the Brooklyn Terminal than that Village Blend van. We’ll arrive ahead of time and set up a trap at the terminal entrance. It will look like a routine security check, until it isn’t.”

  “Be careful,” I pleaded. “Matt’s a hostage. If things go wrong, they might kill him.”

  Quinn’s reply was garbled, as I temporarily lost the phone signal.

  While I imagined Mike and his crew racing to the terminal to spring their trap, the Village Blend van and the SUV rolled downtown at a leisurely pace—a little too leisurely, like they had nothing to hide, and nowhere in particular to go.

  After thirty minutes, we’d tailed them all the way to City Hall. That’s when McNulty’s gruff voice barked over the radio.

  “Ten-seven, Detective Soles. Ten-seven. Ten-seven, immediately . . .”

  Lori groaned. “I never reported to my precinct commander. Now McNulty wants to know my situation. If I don’t reply, I’m officially AWOL.”

  “Detective Soles, ten-seven, at once . . .”

  Ignoring the radio voice, she gave me a sidelong glance. “I hope you’re right about this, Cosi.”

  Me too . . .

  Minutes later, as we rolled across the Brooklyn Bridge, something magical occurred. It was almost as if the spirit of the bridge cat—that legendary supernatural guardian of the Ponte Vecchio—suddenly filled our hearts, until our doubts were dispelled, and we were electrified with a new sense of resolve.

  Or . . . maybe it was the cop calling for help over the police radio.

  “All units, Midtown, respond immediately. I have a ten-twenty B on the corner of Sixth and 48th Street. Need assistance at Lyons Global Security. There’s been a robbery—”

  “You are right, Cosi!” Lori clutched the steering wheel, her expression determined. “Let’s nail these thieving, cop-shooting SOBs!”

  On the Brooklyn side of the bridge, the Village Blend van headed to the Cruise Terminal, just minutes away. But the SUV unexpectedly split off, heading deeper into the industrial section of Red Hook—an area I knew well.

  “Quick! Do we follow the SUV or the van?” Lori demanded.

  “Quinn’s intercepting the van. So let’s follow that SUV. I’m pretty sure I know where they’re going, and if I’m right, Matt isn’t in the van. He’s inside that car right now.”

  EIGHTY-SEVEN

  RED Hook was quiet as Lori dimmed the headlights and rolled to a stop in front of a shuttered auto-glass shop. Halfway down the block, the SUV we’d followed halted in front of the gate to Matt’s coffee warehouse.

  In the glow of a streetlight, I watched Matt exit the vehicle and punch in the code to open the gate.

  “He should run for it,” Lori whispered. “Lots of places to hide around here.”

  “He won’t. Matt doesn’t know his mother and I are safe. He’ll do whatever they demand of him in order to protect us.”

  We both started when the police radio crackled to life.

  “Detective Soles, ten-seven, at once . . .”

  Lori muted McNulty’s voice. “Call Quinn. Tell him we need backup.”

  I’d tried to call him before, to warn that the vehicles had split up, but Quinn didn’t answer. He didn’t pick up this time, either. We both knew our timing wasn’t the best. The Village Blend van should be arriving at the terminal right about now, and anything could be happening, including a firefight.

  In desperation I sent a text message:

  Thieves SUV at java warehouse red hook. Send help, ASAP

  By now, Matt had deactivated the warehouse alarm, and opened the building’s big garage door. The SUV rolled into the bay, and the steel door descended behind it.

  “What do we do while we’re waiting for reinforcements?” Lori asked.

  “Go in.”

  Her eyes bugged. “That’s crazy, Cosi. We wait for backup.”

  “There’s no time. I watched Matt. He didn’t reset the gate alarm—”

  “So?”

  “So they won’t need him to unlock it, which means they’re not taking him when they leave.” I paused to let that sink in. “They’re going to kill him, Lori. Just like that bodyguard was supposed to kill Madame and me.”

  “But that SUV had tinted windows. We couldn’t see inside. We don’t know how many perps are in there!”

  I shrugged. “How many could there be?”

  “That model seats eight.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “Call Quinn again,” Lori insisted.

  I popped the door. “You call him. I’m going in.”

  “Fine!” Lori threw up her hands. “We’ll both go. But I take the lead. I’m the detective, remember?”

  We exited the car and stuck to the shadows as we approached the warehouse. Clouds blocked the moon as we slipped through the gate and across the parking lot. We didn’t stop until we hugged the warehouse wall.

  In my wobbly heels and party dress, I felt like a heroine in a French Resistance movie. Then Lori drew her weapon and things turned serious.

  “Here.” She passed me something hard and cold. “It’s Mace, and not the wussy kind. With that you could stun a horse.”

  Lori showed me how to use it, and I slipped the cylinder into my bra.

  “Okay, Cosi. You know the layout. What’s the plan?”

  “We’ll go in through the front door and slip into Matt’s office. They won’t even know we’re inside.”

  “Unless they’re in Matt’s office,” came Lori’s less-than-heartening reply.

  Fortuna
tely, once we got inside, we could see the office was dark and empty, except for dirty laundry and too many additions to Matt’s empty wine bottle collection.

  “I hear voices,” Lori whispered.

  “Me too. They’re still in the garage.”

  We peeked around the door, into the empty hall.

  “Give me the layout, Cosi.”

  “The door on the left, the one with the window, leads to the hermetically-sealed, climate-controlled space where coffee beans are stored. The door on the right is a bathroom. At the end of the hall there’s a door to the garage and interior loading dock.”

  We paused as more voices echoed from the garage.

  “Stay here,” Lori commanded. “I’m going to find out how many we’re dealing with, and figure out a way to get the drop on them.”

  Leading with her weapon, Detective Soles left the office and cautiously approached the climate-controlled room. She was about to peek through the window when the door flew open, striking her with a loud crash. Lori bounced off the opposite wall and tumbled to the floor.

  A Lyons Global Security guard burst out of the room, fist raised for a fight. But Lori was already down for the count.

  With an angry grunt, he very gently closed the climate-controlled room’s door. When he faced the unconscious detective again, his expression was anything but gentle.

  With a bull neck and broad shoulders, this rogue security guard could have easily played Panther Man. I watched while he used gloved hands to scoop up Lori’s gun and yank the clip free. He cursed when he spied the NYPD shield, but continued to search until he found a spare ammunition clip in her belt.

  He dropped the empty gun beside the detective’s still form. Still clutching the ammo clips, he turned—and headed right for me.

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  I raced across the darkened office and dived under the desk. But the Lyons man ignored the room and went directly to the front entrance. I heard the door open, then a long silence while he made sure the place wasn’t surrounded by police.