“It’s so hard to believe somebody would want to kill Buckland after his landslide election,” Mary Catherine said, shaking her head. “How many states did he win? Forty-four? Forty-five?”
“Forty-six,” I said. “Maybe that’s just it. He said he was going to shake up the status quo, and he’s got the mandate to do it. You have to think that there are a lot of folks with entrenched power at home and abroad who are feeling pretty rattled right now.”
“Rattled enough to put a hit on a sitting US president?” Mary Catherine said.
I looked at her.
I didn’t even want to mention the Russian tip from the FBI. That an attempt on Buckland’s life might have actually come from the Russians and that some new vicious revamping of the Cold War could right now be under way. It was too terrible to contemplate. I almost wished that I didn’t know.
Socky hissed, got a claw out, and raked my gloved wrist before I was able to subdue him with the towel.
“I don’t know, Mary Catherine,” I said with a shrug. “Who knows today? Anything seems possible.”
“Well, all that matters now is that you’re home in one piece,” she said, smiling.
“Couldn’t agree more,” I said. “Now let’s just hope Socky here will let me stay that way.”
Chapter 14
Next day around four thirty, I was uptown in Hamilton Heights, standing on the third-floor fire escape of a building on West 141st between Broadway and Riverside Drive.
Taking in the lay of the land, I decided that it had to be one of the most architecturally interesting crime-ridden neighborhoods I’d ever been to. There were stone row houses with Greek-columned entrances and apartment buildings with Juliet balconies. I noticed there was an equal number of reno Dumpsters and beat-up, tinted-windowed cheap Nissans and Mazdas in the street in front of the buildings.
Like everyplace else in the perpetually skyrocketing rent zone that is NYC, even the Heights seemed to be in the midst of gentrifying. Too bad I wasn’t looking to flip an apartment, I thought. A shooting had occurred here the week before, when an entire seven-member drug crew running an ecstasy lab in the apartment behind me had been slaughtered.
Such things happened from time to time in New York, of course, but the weird thing about it was how it had happened. Apparently, suppressors had been used. The power line to the building had been cut. In sum, it had the earmarks of a professional hit.
Just like the attempt on the president.
We were still stone cold in the leads department on the MetLife Building assassin’s whereabouts, so we were looking at anything and everything that might be related.
“Don’t jump, Mike. It’s not that bad,” Detective Jimmy Doyle said as he and Detective Arturo Lopez came out of the drug apartment and stood beside me by the snow-topped railing. My buddies and protégés from my special assignment in Harlem a while back were among the many Thirtieth Precinct detectives who’d caught the seven-body case.
“Yeah? Tell that to Chief Fabretti,” I said, flipping up the lapels of my overcoat as a cold wind sliced in off the Hudson to my left. “Now, one more time from the top.”
“Shots fired call comes in at eight fifteen,” Doyle said, Magliting the clipboard he was holding. “Responding officers were here in five. Straight off the bat, they see the first bodies slumped in the exterior sidewalk stairwell down there on the left, then head into the lobby. The other four they spot just off the lobby at the foot of the east stairwell.”
“All dead? Not dying? Dead?” I said.
“All seven well dead, with one-shot-kill head shots by”—Doyle flipped through some pages until he got to the coroner’s report—“.45-caliber ACPs.”
“Whoa. And nothing was missing up here in the cookhouse?” I said. “How much did you find again?”
“Nine hundred thousand in tens and twenties. Twice that in product.”
“Just sitting there?”
Doyle nodded.
“DEA had a theory about the crew but not much else,” said Arturo as he made a snowball. “They called them the no-name crew. By the setup here, the experts think they were easily one of—if not the—biggest ecstasy suppliers in the city.”
“Under the radar. The drug boss, Rafael Arruda, was a smart man.”
“That’s Dr. Rafael Arruda to you, Mike,” Arturo said as he chucked the snowball into the parking lot across 141st. “He was a Columbia University professor, after all.”
“Unbelievable,” I said. “What’s the family dynamic again? Could it have been the wife?”
“No. The wife of the Ivy League’s answer to Pablo Escobar checks out,” Doyle said. “She was his high school sweetheart. Goes to church every morning. You should see his house. He lived up in tony Bronxville. His daughter was home visiting from Georgetown.”
“Canvass?”
Arturo gestured out at the surrounding buildings with both hands as he nodded. “We busted our ass, but nothing.”
“All the windows facing the front, right?”
“Yep. Every vantage on the front sidewalk, where it went down. No surveillance cams pointing this way, unfortunately, and we got only a few people to open doors. They hadn’t seen or heard a thing. Which makes sense. It was the night of the big storm.”
“What time did you start the canvass?”
Doyle looked at his notes again. “Nine thirty,” he said.
“What time you got now?”
“Four thirty. Why?”
“Time to bust your ass again,” I said. “Call patrol and do the canvass all over again right now.”
“How’s that? It’s been a week,” said Arturo.
“That’s why you need to do it again. It’s been exactly one week since the crime. Someone who saw it could have left before you guys arrived on scene to question them. For whatever reason. Work. A date. People are creatures of habit, right? One week later, they’ll be home right now.”
“Hey, that’s smart,” said Doyle, looking at me. “Have you done this detective thing before?”
Chapter 15
The gallery was in West Chelsea on West 30th between Eleventh Avenue and the West Side Highway, directly across from the fenced-in Hudson Yards Penn Station Amtrak train yard.
The opening night installation was called Solar System: ten massive modern neo-expressionist canvases integrated with various materials. Burlap and stainless steel. Flesh-colored porcelain and black rubber. Brass and cardboard. The largest painting, titled Needing to Know #11, was embedded with a mosaic tile of cowhide and fractured plexiglass.
It had taken the artist, Soyi, a twenty-seven-year-old Korean prodigy from Queens, six years to complete them. They were meticulous yet somehow chaotically, primitively powerful, restrained while being simultaneously aggressively expressive. At least that’s what all the critics who had come to sponge the vodka and caviar were talking about.
Matthew, the dealer and gallery owner staring out at the paintings, hoped they were expressing, “Hey, billionaire! I’m what you want on the wall of your new penthouse!”
Matthew turned as a pudgy blond woman waved by the door after grabbing her coat. He smiled and winked and waved back at Hilda Breen, the critic from Art in America who had called Soyi a “definite new force in the art world.”
But would all the critical hype mean a sale? Matthew thought, sipping a vodka and tonic as he watched a pathetic and scarily dwindling number of people orbit the paintings. His client, Soyi, certainly needed a sale badly. Her unemployment was running out, and she was threatening to throw in the towel and go back to waitressing at her uncle’s restaurant in Flushing. Soyi had been so nervous about her show’s opening night that she’d actually fainted about an hour before and had gone home with her mom, the poor thing.
Matthew bit his lip as he thought about Soyi. Great reviews in the blogs and trade rags like Artforum and October were definitely scintillating, but keeping a brilliant young artist from a mind-deadening day job would be even more brilliant, Matthew thou
ght with another swig of vodka.
It was his downtown-born-and-bred wife, Sophie, who had passed on the dealing bug. She’d gotten it from her father, a former artist who had owned a gallery in the famous 420 West Broadway in SoHo in the seventies. He’d been friends with Warhol and had briefly represented works from Warhol’s famous Factory. He was actually now living in Palm Beach and mind-bogglingly rich from all the Warhols he had been given.
They were definitely not yet following in Daddy’s footsteps in the big-bucks department, unfortunately. The bills were piling up. Art was a big-money business, but so were the NYC rents. They were a constant strain, galleries: searching for cheap areas that then increased in value, forcing the galleries to find somewhere else to gentrify. It was hard to figure where the next area would be since even rents in Brooklyn were getting patently ridiculous.
“Stop sulking!” said his wife, suddenly linking arms with him. “Think positive, now, Matthew. Smile. Light this place up like Times Square. That’s it. Turn on the charm. Sell, darling. Sell!”
“Yes, dear,” Matthew said through his wide grin. “Has our final chance left?”
“Not yet. See? He’s over by Crimson Falling.”
Their final chance was a tall, blond, bearded German gentleman who favored vintage jeans and plaid work shirts and who was known in the dealer world as the Berlin lumberjack. Not much was known about him except that he was a whale collector with edgy tastes and seemingly endlessly deep pockets.
“He seems interested,” Matthew said, still grinning to beat the band. “Not just interested. Look at his eyes. He’s mesmerized.”
“Mesmerized?” Sophie said. “He looks bored.”
“I’ve seen that look before. He’s just straining to appear so, the crafty German. If he’s bored, why is he standing there?”
Retrieving his next vodka tonic five minutes later, Matthew was barely able to contain his surprise as he turned to see the Berlin lumberjack at his elbow.
“Okay, fine. I need them,” he said in a deep voice.
“I’m sorry?” Matthew said, coughing Ketel One.
“No. You’re not,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I need them. All of them. How much?”
Before Matthew could open his mouth, the man continued.
“Now be careful, my friend. Do not be stupid. Do not gouge. There may be other people in the world intelligent enough to see the value of this work, but unfortunately for you and fortunately for me, they are not in this gallery space here that is bleeding you thirty thousand a month in rent. Choose wisely. Remember the goose with the golden eggs.”
Matthew did. But he knew he had him. He immediately came up with a ridiculous number.
And multiplied it by three.
Chapter 16
An hour later, they’d shoveled everyone out the door and called an ecstatic Soyi with the news.
“We did it!” Sophie said, kissing Matthew after they hung up. “We actually did it again. A three-pointer at the buzzer. As usual, we dodged another, um…bullet.”
“Never doubted it for a second, babe,” Matthew lied.
Finally with a chance to sit down, they were opening a bottle of champagne in the office when Sophie’s phone made a strange beep.
“What is it? A text?” asked Matthew as he struggled with the foil atop the bottle of Cristal they’d been saving just for this very occasion.
“No, an e-mail,” Sophie said, looking. “News alert.”
Matthew nodded. He knew what news she was monitoring.
The hit they’d done on Rafael Arruda up in Hamilton Heights the week before.
“Well?” he said with studied casualness.
“It’s nothing. A piece in New York mag about the life and times of the dearly departed, brilliant drug-trafficking professor. The cops are, as usual, clueless.”
“Have I told you that you were amazing that night?” Matthew said, leaning over and kissing her neck.
“Maybe,” Sophie said, smiling. “But tell me again anyway.”
Before he could say a word, Sophie’s phone buzzed again.
“Hold that thought,” she said. “I’m getting a call. It’s a FaceTime. It’s Victoria.”
Matthew, drunk on vodka and victory, felt a skyrocket explode in his heart when he looked over his wife’s shoulder and saw his daughter’s baby-bunny-rabbit-cute face suddenly appear on the screen.
It was for her. All of it. She would have the best of everything, always. The best for the best.
He knew that he and Sophie had in many ways failed. What kind of parents would do what they did? They’d participated in such…utter darkness. But in his heart, he knew that Victoria made it worth it. She was the sunlight that made it all worth it. Her angel’s face burned away their sins with every smile.
“Mommy, Daddy! Did you sell them? Did you sell Aunt Soyi’s pretty pictures?”
“Yes, we did, Victoria. Every one,” Sophie said.
“Hooray!” Victoria said. “So are we going to Grandpapa’s? Will we swim, Mother? All of us? Will we swim in the ocean like last time, with the glasses? Will we look for Nemo and Dory?”
“Soon, baby, soon,” said Sophie.
“Can I have a pretty new swimsnoot? Pleease?”
“Of course,” said Matthew, smiling at his daughter’s face. “Heck, make it two!”
“Hooray!” said Victoria again.
Hooray indeed, thought Matthew as he finally got the champagne foil off and popped the cork.
Part Two
All in the Family
Chapter 17
“Dad, don’t do it. It’s not worth it,” Ricky said. “Please, Dad.”
“He’s right, Dad. We need you,” said Eddie, pretending to cry. “What will we do without you?”
“If this is good-bye, Dad,” said Trent, giving me a quick hug, “I just want you to know it’s been nice knowing you.”
“Exactly, and make sure you have your insurance card in your wallet,” said Jane.
“Ha-ha. Tee-hee. Very funny, you wisenheimers,” I said as we all did a Bennett family fire drill around the van out in front of Holy Name school the next morning.
All the younger kids were disembarking from the van for school, but Brian was switching to the driver’s seat. His road test was coming up, so for practice, I’d been letting him drive to his high school, Fordham Prep, in the Bronx.
The other kids, of course, were really helping out as usual by sharing their confidence in his driving skills.
“Don’t listen to them, Brian,” I said when we were finally alone in the van. “You can do this. Now, check your mirrors, okay? Don’t forget to look over your shoulder. Good. Nice and easy now, son.”
The van roared as Brian gunned it out onto 96th Street.
“Brian, no! That’s too much!” I screamed.
There was a violent screech as he slammed on the brakes. A box truck’s horn blew in my ear as it whipped around us close enough to almost shave off the side view mirror. More horns sounded over the pounding of my heart. Brian’s face was as white as a sheet. Mine was, too, as I swiped away the beads of sweat that were already gathering on my forehead.
Driver’s ed NYC-style was definitely not for the faint of heart.
“Don’t worry. Happens to everyone. You can do this, son,” I said.
“Nice job, son. I knew you could do this,” I said when we were safely stopped in Fordham Prep’s parking lot thirty white-knuckling minutes later. “See you at dinner, kiddo.”
“Wait, Dad. Actually, Coach Downey wanted to talk to you about something. He was going to send you an e-mail.”
Coach Keith Downey, Fordham Prep’s athletic director, was also an old friend. I checked my phone and saw that he wanted to know if I could pop into his office one morning this week.
“He mention what it was about?” I asked Brian.
Brian shrugged as he shouldered his bag.
No time like the present, I thought, getting out and following Brian into the school bu
ilding. It sounded pretty suspicious.
It turned out it was pretty suspicious. I found Coach Downey in the library, making copies.
“Mike, hey, thanks for stopping by,” the short and amazingly stocky Irish American said, smiling widely.
Coach Downey and I had gone to St. Barnabas grammar school in Woodlawn, where we grew up. He was a couple of years younger than I was, but I’d worked with his older brother busing tables at Villagio’s, the only Italian restaurant in the predominantly Irish neighborhood.
“Hey, Keith. What’s up?”
He put down the stack of papers in his big hands and looked me in the eye.
“No bullshit, Mike. I got a favor to ask you. If you can do it, great. If you can’t, that’s fine, too. It’s about Marvin Peters. You know how he carried the football team last year?”
I nodded. “Talented kid.”
“Three-letter athlete,” Coach Downey continued. “One of the best this school has ever seen. What you might not know is that he lives in a shit project in Morrisania.”
My job had made me familiar with that section of the Bronx for all the wrong reasons. It was a crime-ridden area dominated by drugs and prostitution.
“His aunt Althea was keeping him on the straight and narrow, but as Brian probably told you, Marvin’s aunt died two weeks ago. So another relative is scheduled to come up from the Carolinas to live with him, but it’s going to take a couple of weeks. He’s looking at foster care until then unless we get him set up somewhere.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “You want to know if there’s any room at the old detective who lives in a shoe’s place?”
“Hey, sorry for asking, Mike. I know things are pretty tight at the Bennett villa. I’m actually asking everybody I can think of. I don’t want to let this kid fall through the cracks, you know?”
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