by Carrie Smith
He stopped in front of the diner Baiba had taken him to last Wednesday. He was, he realized, famished. The two slices of buttered whole wheat toast he’d eaten before his appointment with Judith had hours ago provided all the calories they could. He entered the diner and slid into a booth along the wall. A ponytailed waitress deposited a sweating glass of ice water on his table, held out a menu, and said, “Coffee?”
His head was throbbing and he couldn’t face the menu print. “Coffee, yes, and a bagel with cream cheese.”
When she was gone, he sipped the water and stared across the restaurant at the booth where Baiba had pressed the envelope with three thousand dollars into his hands. Where, he wondered now, had she gotten that money?
CHAPTER 35
Codella showed her shield to the first floor security guards in the Bank of New Amsterdam main lobby. One of the guards made a call. Then he walked her to a private elevator, swiped a card, and sent her express to the top floor. When the doors opened, a well-dressed, mature woman was waiting to receive her. “I’m Roberta Ruffalo,” she said. “Mr. Merchant’s executive assistant.”
Ruffalo had a short haircut that made her look younger than she probably was. She stared appraisingly through horn-rimmed Prada eyeglasses. Codella shook her hand and gave her an NYPD card.
“I wish you had called before coming all this way, Detective.” Ruffalo smiled with cool cordiality. “I could have saved you the trip. Mr. Merchant is not in the building. He’s been in meetings all afternoon. Is there something I can do for you?”
Codella smiled back. “You can call him for me, Ms. Ruffalo. You can tell him I’m here and that I need to speak with him in person. Tell him it’s very important.”
Ruffalo frowned. “His schedule is incredibly tight, Detective—as you can imagine.”
Codella nodded. “Which is why I didn’t ask him to come all the way uptown to my office. But I need to speak to him.”
Ruffalo stared at her silver wristwatch. “I’m not even sure I can get in touch with him. He may be on an investor call right now.”
“Why don’t you try?” Codella smiled again. “Tell him I’m here and that I’ll wait for him.”
“If I do get him, he’ll want to know what this is in reference to.”
“It’s about his wife.”
“Then maybe I can help you. I’m handling all the arrangements.”
“This has nothing to do with arrangements, Ms. Ruffalo. Call him, please. Now.”
The woman still didn’t oblige. “If he’s with clients, it could be hours before he’s able to return.”
Codella stepped past the woman into the sleek and spacious waiting room outside Merchant’s office. The wall across from the elevator was floor-to-ceiling glass and provided a dramatic view of Lower Manhattan and New York Harbor. The rich and powerful of New York City saw a very different skyline than the average soul on the street, she reflected. She turned to face Ruffalo. “I hope you’re wrong.” She sat on a couch. “Because NYPD detectives don’t like to be kept waiting any more than bank chairmen do, and I don’t intend to leave this office until I speak to him face to face.”
CHAPTER 36
Muñoz summoned a thick Spanish accent. It wasn’t hard. He’d listened to thick accents all his life. “I speak with Jackie Hartley?”
“Who’s calling please?”
“You are Mrs. Hartley?”
“What do you want?”
“I calling from Westchester Children Fund.”
Click.
Muñoz returned the phone to its cradle, pushed his chair out from his desk, and stood. She was home. He signed out a car, and five minutes later he was on the West Side Highway heading to Pelham Manor.
Jackie Freimor, now Jackie Hartley, lived in what looked like a hundred-year-old brick Tudor on Ely Avenue. He rang her front bell and stood under the glow of a bright porch light. The door opened, and the woman who answered looked startled to see his tall, dark figure. He held up his shield quickly and stated in perfect English, “Mrs. Hartley?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m with the NYPD. My name is Detective Muñoz.”
Her shoulders relaxed. “What can I do for you, Detective?”
“May I step inside?”
She let him into a spacious vestibule. A vintage cast-iron coat rack stood in the corner beside the door. It held a man’s worn parka, several hats, and a child’s blue snow jacket with clip-on mittens. Beyond the vestibule was a corridor that led to the back of the house. Three toy trucks were parked at the side of this corridor. A small child—a little boy, Muñoz guessed—lived in this home. To the right of Muñoz, a staircase ascended to a second floor, and to his left was an elegant living room. Would Mrs. Hartley invite him to sit in there, he wondered, as she locked the door behind them.
But she only faced him and crossed her arms. “What can I do for you, Detective?” she repeated.
“Three years ago, you lived on Twenty-Third Street in Manhattan, correct?”
“Yes,” she said in a cautious tone.
“And your name then was Jackie Freimor?”
“What are you getting at, Detective?”
“In March of that year, you attended a party at the Grand Hyatt.”
Her expression instantly hardened and she shook her head. “I have nothing to say about that.” She moved toward the door.
“You filed a complaint against a man named Thomas Merchant.”
“No comment,” she said.
“Which you dropped a day later. I’m curious about that.”
“People change their minds about things, Detective. Now you really have to go.”
“Or did he change your mind, Mrs. Hartley?”
She stared at him with eyes that looked simultaneously frightened and angry.
“Did he take out a checkbook and change your mind, Mrs. Hartley?”
“I can’t talk about this. I want you to leave my home.”
“Why can’t you talk about it?”
“Please, you have to go.”
Muñoz gazed into the expensively furnished living room, up the carpeted steps, and down the long hall. “He paid you enough money to take you all the way to Pelham, didn’t he?”
She gave no response.
“Does your husband know?” And now tears brimmed in her eyes. “No, of course he doesn’t. You weren’t married then. You were—”
“I was a naïve young woman just out of college, Detective. I let myself be talked into going somewhere I shouldn’t have gone. That’s it. Now please, you have to leave.”
“I’m sorry.” Muñoz shook his head. “But I can’t go without answers.” He looked at his watch. “What time does your husband get home, Mrs. Hartley?”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“I need to know what happened at the Grand Hyatt.”
“I signed a contract, Detective. I—”
“You could have put him in jail.”
Hartley walked into the living room and sat on the couch. Her body folded into itself. She covered her face in her hands.
Muñoz followed her into the room. “You can talk to me now,” he said gently but firmly, “or you can still be telling me why you can’t talk to me when your husband gets home. Which is it going to be?”
She wiped at the tears on her face. “If Merchant finds out I violated—”
“He will not find out. I give you my word.”
She sighed what sounded like years’ worth of anxiety. A long moment of silence passed. Finally she cleared her throat and sniffled back her tears. “A friend of mine called me up that night and said she was in a suite at the Grand Hyatt and there were some bankers. She said I should come over and have a drink with them.”
Muñoz nodded. Keep talking, he thought. Keep talking.
“So I went over.” She looked up at him. “Don’t judge me, Detective. I was young.”
Muñoz sat beside her on the couch and put his hand on hers. “You don’t think
I’ve done things I regret, Mrs. Hartley.” It wasn’t a lie.
“Most of them were older guys. In their forties. Probably married.” She laughed ruefully, a reminder that hindsight usually revealed your blind spots. “I wish I had turned right around and gone home. But then he came over to me—”
“Thomas Merchant?”
She nodded. “I didn’t know who he was until he introduced himself. He was holding a drink for me. Champagne. He was very charming, very attentive. He didn’t come on to me. He just asked me questions about myself as I sipped the champagne. And then I started to feel a little dizzy. I thought the champagne was going to my head. He offered to walk me to a chair. He led me into another room—to sit down, he said. There was a bed in that room, and the next thing I remember, I was waking up and my clothes were off and I knew someone had had sex with me.”
“What happened after you filed the complaint?”
“A lawyer called. She wanted to cut a deal.”
“What happened?”
Hartley looked at her watch. “My husband and son will be home any minute, Detective. If I tell you this, you have to get out of here and never come back.”
“I promise.”
“I got a lawyer. My girlfriend’s brother. We met with Merchant’s attorney. What a hard act she was. She asked how much it would take to make the problem go away. My lawyer asked for one million dollars. She laughed in our faces and countered with a hundred thousand. I felt like a piece of real estate. In the end, she bought my silence for five hundred thousand. She wrote the check right then and there, and I signed a confidentiality agreement and dropped the charges. I was young, Detective. I felt responsible for what had happened. I shouldn’t have been at that party in the first place. I suppose I felt as if I’d gotten what I deserved. Believe me, I’ve regretted the decision a thousand times, but what’s done is done. I met my husband six months later, and he doesn’t know about it and he never will. He thinks we bought this place with a nice inheritance from my deceased aunt.”
“And you don’t need to tell him otherwise,” assured Muñoz as car headlights flooded the living room picture window.
“That’s my husband. Oh, God!”
“Let me handle this,” said Muñoz.
A moment later, the front door opened and a child called out, “Mommy?”
Jackie Hartley shot up from the couch and smoothed her skirt. “In here, honey.”
Muñoz got to his feet as Jackie Hartley reach down to lift her young son into her arms. Then a bald man in a black wool coat entered the room. “What’s this?”
“Are you Mr. Hartley—Jack Hartley?” asked Muñoz.
“That’s right.” Hartley dropped his briefcase. “Who the hell are you?”
The man was like a vicious tomcat with his fur up, Muñoz thought. Muñoz pulled out his NYPD identification card and shield. “I’ve been waiting for you, Mr. Hartley.” He smiled. “Your wife assured me you’d be home very soon, and she was kind enough to let me wait.”
Hartley relaxed marginally. “Oh.”
“I just need a moment of your time.” Muñoz reached into his wallet slowly, figuring out what to say. He brought out his nephew’s high school graduation photo. “We’re looking for this man. He’s dangerous. We received a tip that he was employed by your company.”
Hartley looked at the photo and shook his head. “No. I’ve never seen this guy in my life.”
“You’re certain of that?” persisted Muñoz. “Just look at it one more time.”
“I don’t need to look at it one more time,” said Hartley.
Muñoz returned the photo to his wallet. “Then I’m sorry to have interrupted your evening.” He nodded at Jackie Hartley, turned his back to her, and left. As he pulled the car away from the curb, he called Codella. “Where are you?”
“In Merchant’s office. Waiting for him to show up.”
“Well, here’s a little something you’ll find interesting.”
CHAPTER 37
The diner booth was comfortable, the coffee was hot and bracing, and the bagel was warm and crisp, but as hungry as Brandon was, he could hardly get it down. Had he inadvertently killed Lucy Merchant? How would he live with himself if he had? Should he go straight to the police?
A heavy anchor was dragging him down into a place with which he was all too familiar. His arms and legs felt numb. The sensation, he knew, was depression invading his body, taking hold, supplanting all the happy and hopeful feelings he’d felt this morning after leaving Judith Greenwald’s office.
He signaled the waitress to bring his check, still trying to make sense of what was happening. Why had Baiba really asked him to lie about the contents of that cup? Had she known that something bad was in it? Had Hodges known, too? Were they trying to set him up, to make it look as if he had killed Lucy? If that were so, then running away from Park Manor tonight would only make him look guiltier.
He paid his check and left the diner. He stood on the street, not knowing where to go. If he got on a train and went home right now, the anchor would drag him all the way to the bottom. Voices in that blackness would speak to him, and he knew what they would say. You’re all alone. You have no one. You don’t even have a job. Give up. It’s too hard.
Instead he turned west and walked toward Fifth Avenue. He sat on a bench a block north of the Metropolitan Museum. His hands were cold and his ears burned. He fished in his backpack for his knit cap. The lanterns along the edge of Central Park were lit, and the sky in front of him, facing east, was charcoal. Behind him, on the west side of the park, the final rays of setting sun would be casting a deep purple hue across the sky. In the Nostalgia Neighborhood, Mr. Lane would be wandering—he always wandered at this hour. Maybelle would be saying Where Brandon gone to? and Josie would be saying We better off without him. Or her, he thought. She would probably say We better off without her.
Then Baiba’s bloodshot eyes stared out at him from his mind. Baiba had pretended to care about him all these months. She was always touching his arm, winking at him, telling him how good he looked. And she had given him the three thousand dollars. Her act of generosity—what he thought had been generosity—had given him so much hope and confidence. She had made him feel special. It wasn’t the cold hard cash she had placed in his palms; it was the fact that this beautiful woman, who would never in her life have to apologize for who or what she was, had accepted who he wanted to be and was helping him on his journey. But it was all an act. He had never been special to her. And for all he knew, the money she’d given him had come straight from her banker boyfriend.
Tears burned in his eyes. Well, he didn’t want that money. He certainly wasn’t going to use it to pay for his operation. He didn’t want to have to think about Baiba having sex with Thomas Merchant every time he looked at his new chest in the mirror. Goddamn you, Baiba, he thought. Why did you do this to me?
And then he remembered Baiba telling him why she kept going back to Merchant. He brought flowers. He gave me another little Tiffany bag. If she really hadn’t liked what he did to her, would she have gone back to him just for flowers and jewelry? He told me he had to see me or he would go crazy. Had she really fallen for that?
Brandon rubbed his palms together to get the blood flowing to his numb fingers. What if Baiba wasn’t an innocent victim? There was no denying she’d had choke marks around her neck today, but what if she’d enjoyed getting those marks as much as Merchant had enjoyed putting them there?
Brandon closed his eyes, and all these thought fragments shifted together like tangrams into one monstrous picture in his mind. Baiba had set him up. She had murdered Lucy Merchant. She hadn’t called him over this morning because she’d needed him—her whole rape story was a big lie. He took me to the Four Seasons, she had said. It was so romantic. Baiba was mesmerized by Merchant’s wealth and attention. And she was afraid it would all go away. She knew better than anyone that Lucy Merchant could easily live five more years in her Nostalgia cocoon and that Me
rchant couldn’t possibly divorce Lucy without looking like a scoundrel. And she probably knew that sooner or later, he would tire of her and move on to a different attractive blond—that all the Tiffany gifts and meals at the Four Seasons would become a thing of the past—unless she seized her opportunity and became the new Mrs. Merchant. And so she had planned a murder using Brandon as her devoted pawn.
He rocketed off the bench. How would Baiba answer to those charges, he wondered. He stepped off the curb and waited for an opening in the downtown traffic. Then he jaywalked across Fifth Avenue and headed back in the direction of her apartment. What other lies would she tell him?
CHAPTER 38
Codella watched Thomas Merchant fly out of the elevator and beeline into his office as if she weren’t there. Ruffalo followed him in, and the door closed. Codella counted the minutes and imagined the back-and-forth they were having about her. Why is she here? Merchant would demand. And Ruffalo would say, Something about your wife. She wouldn’t tell me. She refused to leave. I tried my best to get her out of here.
When Ruffalo emerged from the inner office, she wore a smile that was only skin-deep. “Mr. Merchant will see you now, Detective,” she announced as if he were a head of state generously granting an audience to a pathetic supplicant.
“Thank you.” Codella played along.
Merchant was tall and thin. He had the good kind of gray hair, the kind that made you look distinguished without looking old. Even from twenty feet away, she could tell his black suit was probably worth more than the entire wardrobe in her bedroom closet. And the instant their eyes met, she realized that she’d never leave here with what she wanted unless she allowed him to feel like the winner of the encounter. She thought of McGowan saying, Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see you commit career suicide. She couldn’t let that happen. Somehow she had to make Merchant believe he was in control. But how?
She approached his massive glass desk, held out her hand, and said, “My condolences on your wife’s death.”