by Клео Коул
“Joy’s not a suspect,” I said. “There’s no reason to get upset.”
“Not yet,” Matt replied, thrusting a fistful of cash at the Pakistani driver.
Matt had sobered up fast the moment Joy had called for help. Knowing we’d be dealing with outer-boroughs cops, he’d grabbed an old Yankees sweatshirt from his bedroom closet. He ripped the bottom of one sleeve to accommodate his cast and—suddenly no longer needing my help—forcibly tugged it over his expensive cashmere sweater.
I’d found my brown pumps, pulled an older parka over my sheer blouse and tight skirt, and we were off, leaving Matt’s cover-model leather jacket back where it belonged, in a multimillion-dollar West Village town house.
Now I swung open the cab’s door, and the November chill struck me like a hammer. It felt much colder in the borough of Queens. This wasn’t my imagination. Frigid wind blasts flowed down from Canada and across New York’s waterways, but the buildings were lower in the outer boroughs. Manhattan’s moneyed skyscrapers couldn’t shield you the same way here.
By the time I’d climbed out of the backseat, Matt’s muscular form was already barreling toward the yellow tape. Two cops near the flimsy barrier saw him approach and tensed. Both officers were so young they had to be rookies, and both were at least a head shorter than Matt.
Behind them, on the apartment house’s front porch, stood that big Irish-faced officer. He was younger than Matt, but at least a decade older than the rookies. He also watched Matt’s approach, but his expression remained bored.
I hurried to catch up to my ex, which wasn’t so easy in high heels, and I cursed myself for not taking a minute to dig out my running shoes.
At the police line, Matt grabbed the tape and lifted it. But before he could step under it, a rookie jumped in front of him, jammed a hand into Matt’s chest. “Where are you going, sir?” the baby-faced policeman said. His tone was respectful but insistent.
“I need to get inside,” Matt forcefully replied. “My daughter’s up there.”
“It’s a crime scene, sir. No one can go in there until the forensics people are finished.”
Matt stared down at the kid. The officer’s left hand was still on Matt’s chest, his right clutched the top of a long nightstick dangling from his belt.
“I know it’s a crime scene,” Matt replied. “Now take your hand away before you lose it, flatfoot.”
Oh, damn. Here we go…
The big cop, guarding the apartment’s front door, tucked his hands into his belt and swaggered down the concrete steps and across the sidewalk. His bored expression had suddenly become animated; in fact, he seemed genuinely pleased by the ugly turn of events.
Great, I thought. And here he is, for your entertainment! A willing subject for a textbook takedown and arrest! My ex-husband!
“Flatfoot?” the older cop repeated to Matt with a smirk. His hands were still tucked into his belt, but his chest was puffed out like a bantam rooster. “That’s real quaint. Who are you, Damien Runyon?”
The younger cops chuckled. The pub crawlers laughed.
“That’s Damon Runyon, you moron,” Matt snapped.
“Uh-oooooh!” a drunk in the crowd cried. “He’s in trouble now!”
“Matt, please—” I whispered, tugging his sweatshirt, trying to get him to back down.
My ex turned and looked down at me. I expected him to bark something nasty. But he didn’t. He met my eyes and winked. “Go!” he mouthed, jerking his head in the direction of the now unguarded steps.
Matt had purposely lured the big cop away from his post by the building’s front door. If I was fast enough, they wouldn’t be able to stop me. With Matt distracting them, they might not even see me.
The older cop ripped away the yellow tape, and it fluttered to the pavement. He faced Matt, toe-to-toe, thumbs still in his belt. He was younger than my ex, but Matt was just as tall and just as powerfully built.
“You got a problem, buddy?” the cop demanded. Beneath his badge I saw the name Murphy. “’Cause if you keep up the attitude, I can make both of your arms match, if you get my drift.”
“Yeah, I get your drift,” Matt shot back. “And I also have a problem with tin-plated fascists like you. I’ve seen enough of them in the backwaters of this world, and let me tell you something, flatfoot, you’re all alike—”
I slipped into the shadows, moving forward, past the knot of policemen and up the concrete steps. No one yelled or followed me. Either they hadn’t noticed or were too focused on stopping the big, angry jerk wearing that Yankee sweatshirt in the middle of Mets country.
I shook my head as I moved, realizing Matteo Allegro was a whole lot smarter than I liked to give him credit for; but then the man would do just about anything for his daughter, even put a few extra brain cells to work.
Either way, I was inside. Now I had to find Joy.
There were two apartments on the ground floor. Both doors were shut tight. I hurried up the stairs to the first landing. There were two apartment doors here, and both were open.
Warm air poured into the drafty hallway from the apartments, accompanied by a hiss of steam from a nearby radiator. I glanced inside the first door and saw a uniformed officer speaking with an elderly woman wearing a woolen robe.
“I didn’t hear a thing, sorry to tell you. I’m a bit hard of hearing,” the gray-haired woman said in a faint but discernable Irish brogue.
Inside the second door, I saw a big African American plainclothes detective standing next to a much smaller uniformed officer. The detective was attempting to interview a young Asian couple who’d been roused from their sleep. The husband rubbed his eyes while he spoke in rapid-fire Chinese.
“What did he say, Officer Chin?” the detective asked.
The uniformed officer shook his head. “He’s speaking Mandarin.”
“So?”
“So your guess is as good as mine, Sergeant Grimes. My people are from Hong Kong, and they speak Cantonese!”
I crept past the door and moved onto the steps that led to the third floor. A bright photoflash suddenly lit the landing above me. Another flash came, and another. I moved halfway up the stairs and paused, listening to the voices coming out of the apartment.
“Tell me why you came here again. I didn’t quite get it the first time,” a man demanded.
“You heard the message Vinny left on my cell,” a young woman replied between sobs. “You know why I came here. Why do you keep asking me the same questions?”
“Joy!” I whispered.
I took the rest of the stairs two at a time, reaching the top landing in under a second. There were two doors on this landing. One was shut tight, newspapers and magazines piled up as if the person had been away. The other door was wide-open. I could see a number of officials inside the apartment: the first was a young man in a dark blue police uniform. He was standing in the small entryway. The second was an older, wider man in a gray suit, but I could only see his back. The third man in a dark nylon jacket was holding a small digital camera and snapping photos. A woman in the same kind of jacket was stooped over something on the floor.
I could only see bits and pieces of the room from here: there were plants and a large fish tank, some framed posters. I noticed a bank of windows along the front wall were all wide-open for some reason.
Finally, the large man in the gray suit moved aside, and I saw Joy, standing just inside the doorway to the apartment’s kitchen. She’d exchanged the chef’s jacket and black slacks she’d been wearing at Solange for a white turtleneck and blue jeans. One arm was folded over her stomach. She was wiping away tears with the other, and she was also shivering.
I took a step forward into the short entryway that led to the living room. The uniformed officer who’d been standing there suddenly blocked my path. “Whoa! Where are you going, ma’am?”
“Let me see my daughter!” I shouted.
Joy heard me and called out, “Mom!”
I charged, but the officer b
locked me again. “Stop, ma’am!”
“Joy, your father and I came as quickly as we could!” I called to her, trying desperately to get around the cop, but he started moving me backward.
“Back up, ma’am!” the young officer warned, his hand moving to his nightstick. “Back up, or I’ll have to restrain you!”
“Lopez! It’s all right!” called the older man, the one in the suit who’d been questioning Joy. The detective turned and moved toward us. He had thick, coarse, slate gray hair with bushy eyebrows and a seventies-style mustache to match. His gray, rumpled suit had lapels as wide as Queens Boulevard, and his loudly patterned green and orange tie was obviously chosen by a man who wore neckwear only because he had to.
I was out on the landing now, just outside the apartment’s front door. The detective stepped in front of the young officer and took a hard look at me. I looked at him right back, squarely in the eyes—easily done because he wasn’t much taller than I, though he was as wide as a fireplug, with beefy hands and an olive complexion.
“How did you get up here?” he asked. “This is a crime scene.”
“I just want to talk to my daughter.”
“Let my mom come in!” Joy cried from inside. “I want to talk to her!”
The detective turned his head. “Stay put in that kitchen, Ms. Allegro! And stay quiet!”
He turned back to me. “How did you know to come here?”
“My daughter called me on her cell phone before she called you.” I frowned and put my hands on my hips. “Look, she’s the one who found her friend and notified you. Why are you treating her like a criminal?”
The man folded his arms and scowled. “Fifty percent of the time, the person who ‘finds’ the body is the person who killed the body.”
“Then I was wrong.” My eyes narrowed. “I thought we could trust the police, and that’s what I told my daughter. But I guess I should have told Joy to leave here immediately and forget what she saw.”
The man’s hard expression changed after that. He didn’t exactly turn apologetic, but the scowl had lessened considerably. He exhaled, glanced at Joy a moment, and then turned back to me. “I will let you speak with your daughter, but I’d like to talk to you first, Mrs.—”
“Ms.,” I said. “Cosi. Clare Cosi.”
“And Joy Allegro here is your daughter?”
“I’ve gone back to my maiden name—if that’s all right with you.” I put my hands on my hips. “If not, my ex-husband’s downstairs. You could consult him.”
The man didn’t blink. He yanked a big radio off his belt. “Murph? It’s Ray,” the detective said into the device. “You got a guy down there says he’s the girl’s father?”
I could hardly hear the reply. “No, don’t arrest him. Just keep him there. Lock him up in the car if you have to. Just make sure he doesn’t come up here.” The detective shot me a dark look. “Like his old lady.”
I folded my arms. “That’s ex–old lady.”
“I’ll get back to you, Murphy,” the detective said, and returned the radio to his belt.
“All right, Detective,” I said. “You know my name. Would you please tell me yours?”
“I’m Lieutenant Salinas,” the man replied. His NYPD badge appeared and disappeared in a quick sleight of hand. “And I’m in charge of this homicide investigation.”
I tensed at the word homicide.
Seven
Lieutenant Salinas cleared his throat. “Did you know the deceased, Ms. Cosi?”
“If it really is Vincent Buccelli, then the answer is yes. I met him a few times.”
“You know his family?”
I shook my head. “He moved here from Ohio a few years ago to attend culinary school. As far as I know, any family he has is back in Toledo.”
“So you know him because of your daughter?”
“Yes, Vinny and my daughter were friends—”
“Close friends? Boyfriend and girlfriend friends?” Salinas asked.
“Just friends from school and work. Platonic friends. I’m sure Joy has told you all of this.”
“She has,” he said, “but I’d like to hear it from another source. How well did you know this Buccelli kid, Ms. Cosi?”
“I met him a month ago at a business event. He and Joy came into my coffeehouse several times after that—”
“Coffeehouse?”
“I manage the Village Blend on Hudson Street.”
The man paused as if considering his options. He pulled at his loud tie, further loosening the already loose knot. “Maybe you can help us,” Lieutenant Salinas said at last.
“I’ll try.”
“First of all, would you be willing to provide a positive identification? Your daughter refused to look into the corpse’s face. Understandable, if they were friends. So would you help us out? Make the ID?”
I frowned. “Right now? This minute?”
“Yeah,” he replied with a slightly irked look that said, When else?
I took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Taking my arm, he steered me off the landing and into the one-bedroom apartment. The place was spacious, and the living room looked neat and comfortable with plants and a fish tank. There was a pale green sofa and chair set, a glass coffee table, a small television, and a standing bookshelf filled with cookbooks. All of the framed posters on the walls had something to do with food: an artful photo of fruit, a sidewalk scene at a French café, a colorful day at a farmers’ market.
The only sign of violence was a small end table that had been knocked down. Some mail was scattered about, and the phone lay on the floor, its receiver off the hook. I saw a dusting of white powder on the black plastic and realized the police had tested the phone for fingerprints.
An attractive middle-aged woman wearing a dark nylon jacket stood up and approached Lieutenant Salinas. She was petite, with high, prominent cheekbones and dark hair bunched up under a hairnet. She pulled a pair of latex gloves off, exposing long-fingered, mocha-hued hands and fingernails painted a scarlet so deep it was almost black. Behind the woman, the man wearing an identical jacket continued to snap pictures.
“What do we have here, Dr. Neeravi?” Salinas asked.
“This is most definitely a homicide,” the woman replied in an East Indian accent. “The victim died from a single blow with a knife to the root of the neck—”
She paused to touch an area of flesh between her neck and shoulder. “The knife was directed downward, coming in at the base of the neck, missing the collarbone, and doing major damage to the great vessels arising from the heart. In short, the victim bled to death.”
“You have a time of death?” Salinas asked.
Dr. Neeravi made a face. “That’s going to be a problem.”
“Come on, Doc,” Salinas pleaded. “Give me a ballpark.”
“Let me explain. Someone—perhaps the perpetrator—opened all of these windows. Now, perhaps it was done to dissipate any smell from the body, preventing a neighbor from alerting the authorities right away. Or perhaps the perpetrator knew it would help mask the time of the murder. Whatever the reason, the draft streaming through those windows is under thirty degrees Fahrenheit, which means the body’s change in temperature is not something I can use to pinpoint an exact time of death.”
The doctor tore the hairnet off her head and shook her shoulder-length hair loose. “If pressed, I’d say he was killed one to four hours ago. I’ll know more after the autopsy.”
“Was the assailant strong?”
I winced, because I knew what Salinas was really asking. Could the killer be a woman?
“The victim was not overpowered, and there are no defensive wounds because the dead man was struck from behind. Strength wouldn’t count as much as skill here, in my opinion. If the blade had struck the victim’s collarbone, he probably would have survived.”
“Skill, eh?” Salinas nodded. “Okay. The assailant may have had knife skills. That’s interesting. And there’s no sign of
forced entry, which means the victim probably knew the person who murdered him.”
Dr. Neeravi nodded. “At least casually.”
Salinas snorted. “Casually enough to turn his back on his own killer—unless the murderer had a gun or waved the knife as a threat to force the victim to turn.”
“Lieutenant,” the uniformed officer called. “Look what I found.”
Holding it by the edges so as not to smudge any fingerprints, the policeman displayed a copy of a men’s magazine—and I wasn’t talking Playboy or Maxim. This was a magazine featuring young, fit men in intimate poses. It was clearly a magazine meant for gay men.
“There’s a whole pile of glossy mags just like this one over here, hidden inside this hollow ottoman,” the officer added.
“Bag them up,” Salinas commanded. “We’ll check for prints later. With glossy paper, we might get lucky.” He faced me. “You didn’t tell me the victim was homosexual, Ms. Cosi.” The lieutenant said this in an accusatory tone, as if I’d been holding it back.
“I didn’t know. Joy knew Vinny better than I did. Didn’t she mention it?”
Salinas frowned. Said nothing.
“Do you still want my help?” I asked.
“Yes.” Salinas turned to Dr. Neeravi. “Can I try for a positive ID?”
The woman nodded. “Sure. The area around the body has been swept and dusted. The ambulance can take the victim to the morgue when you’re finished. Just be careful not to step in the blood. It’s pretty messy.”
Oh, God…
Lieutenant Salinas steered me around the couch, and that’s when I saw the corpse. Dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt, Vincent Buccelli lay on his stomach on the polished hardwood floor, sprawled across a brownish-red throw rug. I took a step closer and realized there was no rug, only a drying pool of the dead boy’s blood.
“It’s him. That’s Vinny,” I said, pushing my hair back. “I mean…That’s Vincent Buccelli, Lieutenant.” I swallowed hard, steeling my reaction to how violently he’d died.
“You okay, Ms. Cosi?”
I nodded, trying to commit to memory every grisly detail of the crime scene. Vinny’s arms were flung wide, though smears of blood on the floor told me he’d flailed around for several minutes.