Clever Fox

by Jeanine Pirro

  She reached her hands inside my shirt and ran her fingers along my back. Then she moved them to my front and ran them up my chest over my breasts. She was rough. Dropping to her knees, she ran her fingers along each of my legs. Satisfied, she said, “I’ll tell Pauly.” I’d finished buttoning my blouse and had put on my jacket when the giant lug who’d met me at the door rounded the corner, followed by a powerfully built, dark-haired man wearing an expensive black suit and Ray-Ban sunglasses.

  “You tried to frame my father,” he said. “Now you come here. What the hell do you want?” He removed his Ray-Bans, revealing ink-colored pupils. His nose had a ridge on it from being broken.

  “I want to help clear your father’s name by finding the real killer.”

  “Ain’t you a saint,” he sneered.

  “I need to know the name of Isabella Ricci’s lover.”

  “How’s that going to help clear my father’s name?”

  “It could help me understand why your father went there.”

  “If he wanted you to know that, he would have told you. You’re wasting my time.” He turned to leave.

  “Was it you?” I asked. “Were you sleeping with Isabella Ricci?”

  He stopped. “You think I don’t get all the pussy I want? You think I got to chase after Tiny Nunzio’s daughter to get laid? You think this is some Romeo and Juliet melodrama you got going here? Is that the best you got?” He started walking back toward me and with each step he got more animated.

  “You accusing me of murder? You accusing me of hanging that broad on a hook and butchering her?”

  He stopped inches from my face.

  “Listen, you smug bitch. I wouldn’t have fucked that scag with someone else’s dick. Now get out of my father’s house!” he yelled. I obliged.

  O’Brien was waiting at the sidewalk. The goons around him parted, like the Red Sea for Moses.

  We’d driven about a block away when O’Brien asked, “Was Little Pauly banging Isabella Ricci?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Great, we just put our lives at risk for nothing?” he asked.

  “No. I got the answer I wanted.”

  40

  Will was sitting on the top porch step at my house when I arrived home after work. He stood when I approached him. “A peace offering,” he said, lifting a bouquet of roses in one hand and a bottle of Dr Pepper in the other. “You said you wanted to focus on the Persico trial and needed space. Well, he’s dead now.”

  I slipped by him without speaking and unlocked my front door. “Let’s get this over with,” I said unenthusiastically.

  Will followed me to my kitchen, where I sat down at the table, leaving him standing awkwardly near the doorway. “May I sit down?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  He put the flowers and bottle on the table between us. “I’ve come to say, ‘I’m sorry.’ ”

  “You already did that and it wasn’t enough. It still isn’t.”

  “What else can I do?”

  “I don’t know. You hid information from me.”

  “Dani, we’ve been a couple long enough for you to know who I am. The past is the past. I made mistakes. I have regrets. What’s the point of going over and over the same thing? The reason I’m here now is that I don’t want to make another mistake. I don’t want to lose you.”

  When I didn’t immediately respond, he said, “I thought you loved me. But I’m not going to spend my life apologizing for things that happened before I even met you.”

  “You keep wanting this to be about what you did in college with Moonbeams, ” I said. “That’s not what it’s about. It’s about you not trusting me enough to tell me about your past.”

  “How do I fix this?”

  “I don’t know if you can.”

  Will had tears in his eyes. “I’m going to go,” he said. “But I want to tell you something. When I first heard you’d been kidnapped, it was like my entire world came to a stop. I couldn’t imagine what I’d do if you were killed—if I never saw you again.”

  “I know exactly what you would have done,” I replied. “You would have written a page-one story about it.”

  He let himself out the front door.

  PART FIVE

  THE PIECES COME

  TOGETHER

  I would rather trust a woman’s instinct than a man’s reason.

  —STANLEY BALDWIN, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER

  41

  I telephoned Adalina at the Three B’s beauty shop from my house before going to work the next morning and told her that I needed a favor.

  “With your hair?” she asked.

  “Always,” I replied, smiling. “But no, I’d like you to do some detective work.”

  “Goodie. I’d make a damn good cop.”

  “This has to be between the two of us.”

  “Honey, you’d be surprised at the secrets I keep.”

  “Can you find where Nicholas Persico’s daughter, Angelica, gets her hair done?”

  “Them mob girls travel in packs. I’ll find ’em.”

  When I got to work an hour later, there were six new domestic violence cases waiting on my desk. I started to read them, but I had a difficult time concentrating. I kept glancing at the photos on my wall—at a snapshot of Isabella Ricci from happier days, before she’d been sliced and tortured.

  “What am I missing, Isabella?” I asked aloud.

  “Talking to yourself now or the dead?” O’Brien said, walking unannounced into my office.

  “I was thinking about you this morning in the shower,” I said.

  “Now that’s an image.”

  “Not you, but what you said about fresh eyes. What if we started down the wrong path from the very beginning on these cases?”

  “How’s that?”

  “We’ve been looking at Isabella’s murder and the rest of them as being mob related. Ironically, I think Gallo might have been on to something when they told us that these cases were not mob related.”

  “What else would they be?”

  “What if they had nothing to do with the Mafia?”

  “Who else would have killed them?”

  “I don’t know, but what if someone did? Someone not even connected to the mob?”

  “Convince me.”

  “Okay, wash the mob out of your mind. What are the other links that tie these murders together?”

  “They’re all dead.”

  “C’mon, O’Brien, work with me.”

  “They knew Isabella,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “And the killer or killers used a knife,” he said. “That’s it.”

  We both stared at the wall and for a moment were quiet. And then I saw it. Grabbing Isabella’s file, I pulled her autopsy, Mancini’s autopsy, and finally Marco Ricci’s paperwork.

  “What the hell you doing?” O’Brien asked.

  “Solving these homicides,” I said. I held up a finger, motioning him to be quiet, and moved from my desk to the wall, where I studied the photograph of Donnie Gilmore.

  “Come here!” I said excitedly. “Look at his right hand.”

  O’Brien joined me. “Yeah, what am I looking at?”

  “He’s only got four fingers,” I said.

  “Maybe a fish ate one.”

  “Since when did sharks start swimming in the Kensico Reservoir? That finger was deliberately cut off! It’s a straight cut.”

  Hurrying back to my desk, I held up the autopsy photos. “Every victim is missing a body part. Isabella Ricci was missing her pinkie finger, Roman Mancini was missing a toe, Maggie Mancini was missing a thumb, and Marco Ricci was—”

  O’Brien interrupted me. “Missing his dick. Trust me, I remember that one.”

  “Now we got Gilmore missing a finger. They have that in common, too.”

  O’Brien twirled the toothpick in his mouth, which is what he did when he was thinking, as opposed to removing it, which is what he did when he was angry. “You ev
er hear about that nut the Feds caught in Montana a while back?”

  “Which nut? It’s a big state.”

  “Back in ’73, a kid, girl, only about seven, turned up missing from her parents’ campsite. She’d been abducted. No clues, so the locals called this new FBI unit at Quantico. They look at crime scenes. They predicted the killer was a white male, in his twenties. They said he’d kidnapped other kids. A few months later, they caught the creep and he fit the profile to a T.”

  I shrugged. “What’s your point?”

  “That killer was collecting body parts. Souvenirs. The bureau said he was a new type of killer. A one-man murder machine. This new unit specializes in nut jobs like that.”

  I glanced up at my wall of photos and said, “Is it really possible that one killer might have done this? And why? You’ve got to tell me if you think I’m crazy here.”

  “Call the FBI.”

  “Then you’re the one who’s crazy. Coyle and Longhorn are convinced these murders have been solved. They aren’t going to help me.”

  “Not them. That new unit at Quantico. They got fresh eyes.”

  I said excitedly, “I could just kiss you, O’Brien.”

  “Don’t, and stop thinking about me in the shower,” he said. “That’s creepy and I already got enough women imagining me naked.”

  I made a horrible look on my face while he grinned and reached for my Junior Mints, emptying the bowl on my desk. “You need more candy,” he said, walking out the door.

  My phone rang. It was Adalina. “You still looking for Angelica Persico? ’Cause she goes to a shop called Hair By Design, over on Broadway Avenue. One of the girls I went to beauty school with told me. She said Angelica’s got a manicure appointment two hours from now.”

  That gave me time to call the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit before driving to Hair By Design. “Behavioral Science,” a gruff voice answered. “Who do you want?”

  “I want to speak to you if you’re one of the FBI profilers I’ve read about.” I quickly introduced myself and said, “I need fresh eyes on the murder of a woman.”

  “Was she married?” the voice asked.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Then her husband did it,” he said. “Or her boyfriend.”

  “What?” I said. I thought maybe he was joking.

  “You just said you work for a domestic violence unit,” he replied. “And I just told you who probably killed her. We don’t waste our time on obvious cases. Goodbye.”

  The line went dead.

  I called back and when that same voice answered, I said, “Are all profilers as rude as you are?”

  In an irritated voice, he said, “Who exactly are you calling for?”

  I didn’t understand. “I just told you that I have a complicated murder that needs fresh eyes. I want to talk to a profiler.”

  “Young lady,” he said, “I know you want to speak to a profiler. What I don’t know is on whose behalf you are calling for.”

  I got it. Because I was a woman, he mistakenly assumed I was someone’s secretary.

  “I’m calling on behalf of myself, or to make it ever more clear for you—me, myself, and I. I’m an assistant D.A. in Westchester County, New York. I’m in charge of this murder investigation and I hope your skills as a profiler are better than your manners.”

  “I told you we only take tricky cases.”

  “I got a killer collecting body parts,” I said. “I’ve got five bodies so far.”

  The line stayed silent.

  I wondered if he’d hung up.

  “Are you still there?” I finally asked.

  “Yes. What kind of body parts?”

  “Fingers, toes, a thumb, and a penis.”

  “A penis, now that’s interesting. Send me what you got, especially photographs.”

  “It would help if I knew your name.”

  “Special Agent Todd Wheeler.”

  “The first victim was a woman named Isabella Ricci,” I said.

  “Wait while I grab a pencil.”

  When he came back on line, I spelled Isabella’s name.

  “Keep going,” he said.

  I gave him the other victims’ names and said, “Let me give you some background about each—”

  Wheeler interrupted. “I got their names. For now, that’s all I need. I’m not interested in anybody else’s opinion. Just send the police reports and the photos. I’ll call you back if I’m interested. Don’t call me again. I’m busy. Goodbye.”

  42

  Prominently displayed in the window at Hair By Design was a neon sign advertising unisex cuts, but I didn’t see any men when I entered the Yonkers boutique. Good, I thought. If Angelica Persico was here, she was here without bodyguards.

  The seven chairs were occupied by twenty-something customers sporting big, rock band, teased hairstyles. The smell of aerosol spray permeated the noisy salon. Angelica was having her nails polished near the rear of the shop. The manicurist at the table next to her didn’t have a customer, so I walked over and sat down.

  Angelica gave me a casual glance and then did a double take. She spoke in Italian to the woman who’d just begun working on my nails.

  “I’m sorry,” the manicurist told me, “but I got another customer coming in.”

  I surveyed the shop and said, “When she arrives, I’ll gladly step aside. But why don’t you go ahead for now?”

  The manicurist gave Angelica a frightened glance and said, “I’m sorry but it’s time for my break now.” She walked away, leaving me at her table. During this entire exchange, Angelica had looked straight ahead, ignoring me and pretending she had nothing to do with what had just happened.

  I wasn’t going to be rebuffed so easily. Besides, I really could have used a manicure. “Angelica,” I said, “I want to ask you about your father and Isabella Ricci.”

  “Leave me alone,” she said.

  “I don’t believe your father killed her,” I said.

  “You prosecuted him!” she said angrily. She spoke again in Italian, this time to the woman polishing her nails, who immediately put down her tools and left the table.

  Confronting me, Angelica said, “My father was just murdered. Have you no respect?”

  It was time for my trump card.

  “I know your secret,” I said.

  She pushed her chair back from the table and stood to leave. I whispered: “It’s you.”

  I saw tears forming in her eyes. “Leave me alone,” she said, her lips quivering.

  I reached up and gently touched her arm. “I don’t want to hurt or embarrass you. I just need to know the truth—for your father’s sake.”

  She pushed my hand away. “Why? So you can sell some story to the tabloids? So you can be on television?”

  “No, so I can catch the real killer.”

  “I can’t be seen talking to you.”

  By this point, everyone in the shop was watching us.

  I took a business card from my purse and pressed it into her hand. “Call me.”

  She read the number and announced in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, “I told you to leave me alone!” She threw my card back at me and marched through the shop and out its doorway.

  I started to follow her but one of the hairstylists stepped in front of me, causing me to stop. Several customers said something in Italian and for a moment, I thought I might have to literally fight my way out of the shop. “I’m an officer of the court!” I yelled. “Get out of my way before I have you arrested!”

  The woman moved aside.

  By the time I reached the sidewalk, Angelica was nowhere to be seen.

  Our receptionist at the Domestic Violence Unit was waiting with yet another stack of pink return-call slips when I entered our lobby.

  “Some woman just called,” the receptionist said.

  I was only half listening. I’d lost count on how many callbacks I needed to make and didn’t care that another had been added to my list.

 
; Continuing, the receptionist said, “She refused to leave her name but said you two had just gotten your nails done and if you wanted to talk, you needed to call her in the next ten minutes or she’d been gone.”

  “When did she call?”

  “About ten minutes ago,” the receptionist said, curiously eyeing my unpolished nails.

  I hurried to my office and dialed the return number. It rang once, twice, three times. Then a fourth, fifth, and sixth time. I was too late. Just as I was about to hang up, someone answered. “Angelica?” I asked.

  “Are you tape-recording our conversation?” she replied.

  “No,” I answered truthfully.

  “Are you planning on having me testify?”

  “At what?” I said. “I don’t know where any of this is leading.”

  For a moment, I thought she might hang up, but she didn’t.

  “I don’t want to appear in court,” she said. “If you call me, I will deny everything. Do you understand?”

  I thought about telling her that she wouldn’t really have a choice if I put her on the witness stand, but there was no point in possibly frightening her even more than she already was. “I understand you don’t want to be called,” I said.

  “In the shop, you said, ‘It’s you.’ What did you mean?”

  “You’re the reason why your father went to that apartment and confronted Isabella Ricci. You’re her secret lover.”

  I could hear her breathing and crying.

  “We were so careful,” she said. “How did you find out?”

  “Isabella’s lover always wore a hat and coat. Why? Her lover refused to speak to Roman Mancini when they met each other in the stairwell. Why? But the giveaway was your father’s limo. He would never have allowed anyone else at the butcher’s shop to use his car except for a family member. That left only you and your brothers. One of them is married and Little Pauly has his own car and driver. That left you—you worked at the shop, you had access to your father’s car anytime you wanted it.”

  “I used it for errands,” she said. “Whenever we ran out of deli supplies, I had his driver take me out. When I first began going on Tuesdays and Fridays, no one noticed. Then my father got suspicious. He thought I was meeting some man. If it had been a man—even a married man—he wouldn’t have said much. But a woman—he couldn’t stand that.”