“What trick?”
“Make him give up what else he knows.”
They did what they could to make Lafferty’s injuries look a little less shocking, but he still attracted some stares as they descended to the coffee shop that occupied the ground floor of his building. Despite the hour and the trip in from Larchmont, Smithson was waiting for them in a booth. He was wearing jeans and a windbreaker. Without the obligatory dark suit he wore for work Alicia almost didn’t recognize him.
He did not look happy.
He stood as they approached and nodded at Alicia.
“You’re looking well, Alicia,” he said.
“Considering the circumstances?” Alicia replied lightly.
Smithson’s gaze shifted to Lafferty. “I wish I could say the same for you, Lafferty. Looks like somebody worked you over pretty good. I guess whoever did it hasn’t heard about your leave of absence.”
“Guess not,” Lafferty said. “Or they didn’t care. Whether I’m officially on the force or not, I want to help Alicia, and that seems to be the problem.”
“That’s quite a shiner,” Smithson said, sitting again as they slid onto the padded seat across from him. “Funny what life brings you sometimes, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, life’s a riot,” Lafferty said. “Look, Smithson, I have a few more questions to ask about this Chinese place where Walker ordered takeout all the time.”
“The Howloon Dragon?” Smithson said warily.
“Yeah.”
Smithson shrugged. “I guess he liked the food.” He did not sound very convincing.
“No chance anybody was running a prostitution ring out of there?” Lafferty asked.
The waitress stopped and took their order for coffee and they waited until she had gone before resuming the conversation.
Smithson shook his head. “Look, man, that place is spanking clean. Check with your vice people. No girls smuggled in from the northern provinces to work the streets here, no drugs, no illegal immigration of any kind.”
“I did check. They say there’s nothing going on there but food service, with all licenses and permits up to date.”
Smithson opened his hands.
“Let’s try this. We know Joe liked call girls, and we know he used a number of escort services.”
Smithson glanced at Alicia and then away from her. “Right,” he said.
“Did he have a particular girl that he used more often than the others, maybe one that he persuaded to go indy for him, that he supported?”
Smithson looked uncomfortable. “Your partner asked me that,” he said.
“I know. I’m asking you again.”
Smithson hesitated.
“Look, Smithson, if you know something more than you’ve already said, now is the time to come clean with it. This lady is about to go on trial for something she didn’t do.”
Smithson sighed. “I didn’t he to your partner,” he said. “I told him I didn’t know one particular person, and I don’t. I don’t know who it is, or was. But I knew Joe had to have a steady thing on the side because he was leaving messages for somebody to meet him at the Manhattan town house several times a month, and there would be bills sent to the office for food and liquor and then a housecleaning service would come in the next day.”
“How do you know it was the same person all the time?”
“It was always the same phone number,” Smithson said, his eyes sliding away from Lafferty’s.
“The Howloon Dragon,” Lafferty said.
Smithson nodded resignedly.
The waitress returned with three coffees and deposited them at their table.
“You think Joe was seeing one of the employees there?” Alicia asked incredulously when she left.
Smithson closed his eyes. “I don’t know. With Joe anything was possible. I’m sorry, Alicia, but that’s the truth.”
“I know,” she said, not meeting his eyes.
“Anything else?” Lafferty asked.
“I assume you’re going to try to postpone the grand jury hearing on the basis of new evidence?” Smithson asked.
Lafferty nodded.
“Whatever you find out, make sure that your captain knows about it as well as other people in the DA’s office when you take it to Woods. Put it in the newspapers if you have to, but get the word out there. Don’t give it to him alone.”
“Are you telling me that you think Woods would try to bury it?” Lafferty asked.
Smithson held up his hand. “Just a word of warning. Woods wants to win the upcoming election, big-time. And he wants Alicia to be convicted because it fits his campaign profile of conservatives as lowlife hypocrites. Joe Walker’s murder was a gift from God in his view, a golden apple that fell into his lap at the right time. He will not be happy if somebody other than The Chairman’s wife turns out to be the guilty party.”
Lafferty looked at Alicia, who was turning pale.
“There’s a new ADA in the office, very sharp, Althea Bransford,” Smithson added. “She’s ambitious and she is not in Woods’ pocket. She has a reputation to establish and nothing to lose. I’d make sure she gets the same evidence Woods does. She’ll buck him if she has to—she’ll go right over his head to a judge.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Lafferty said.
Smithson nodded and rose. “So who do you think sent the greeting party?” Smithson asked, gesturing to Lafferty’s pummeled appearance.
“Hard to say. After fifteen years on the force I have made so many friends,” Lafferty retorted, smiling.
“Cui bono?” Smithson said. “Did they teach you that at John Jay?”
Lafferty nodded. When Smithson reached out, Lafferty took his hand and shook it.
“Think about that in light of what I just said,” Smithson advised. He looked at Alicia. “Goodbye, Alicia. And good luck to you. I mean that.”
“Thanks. Goodbye, Drew.”
They watched him walk away as the waitress refilled their cups.
“What was that he said to you?” Alicia asked. “Latin, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Cui bono? Literally, to whom the good? In other words, who benefits?”
“And?”
“I think he was telling me that our esteemed district attorney sent the welcome wagon that rearranged my face.”
Alicia stared at him.
“He must have gotten wind that I was close to something and decided I needed a discouraging word.”
“I can’t believe that,” Alicia murmured.
“Why not? Was your husband what he appeared to be to the millions of people who would have voted for him?”
She closed her eyes and said, “What next?”
“I think we take a little trip to the Howloon Dragon.”
“What do you expect to see?”
“Won’t know until we get there.”
“Even Charlie says the operation is legitimate, and whoever Joe was involved with is hardly going to jump up and yell, ‘Yoo-hoo, here I am!’ And even if we do find the person Joe was calling, I don’t see how it is going to help us track down my sister. There is probably no connection at all.”
“Detective work is tedious, Alicia,” Lafferty said gently. “You have to be patient.”
“Patient!” she said disgustedly. “Thanks a lot, I’ll remember that when I’m answering roll call in the prison yard.”
Lafferty gave her a long, measuring glance and said, “It upset you to see Smithson again, didn’t it?”
Alicia didn’t reply.
“Look, he was your husband’s sidekick, but he’s trying to do the right thing now.”
Alicia sighed. “I know. But he’s such a powerful reminder of Joe and that charade I lived for so long.”
Lafferty reached across the table and took her hand. “It’s over, Alicia. That life died when Joe did. Try to put it aside and concentrate on your future.”
Her future? Alicia noticed that he didn’t include himself in that picture.
“The on
e I’m going to have in lockup?” she responded.
“The one you’re going to have once we find the real killer.”
Alicia could feel the tightness of tears growing in her throat again and pushed them back. She nodded.
“Now let’s go,” he said, and she stood with him.
By the time they got to Manhattan the Howloon Dragon was closing. It was a tiny hole-in-the-wall on the ground floor of a walkup with six tables jammed into a narrow space and a take-out desk where the phone was still ringing as they entered. The sole waiter was refilling sugar jars, and the older woman answering the phone was turning the Open sign to Closed in the window when she looked up and waved and smiled at Alicia.
Lafferty and Alicia exchanged glances.
“Is she waving at me?” Alicia asked.
“Looks like it,” Lafferty replied.
They approached the counter and the woman said to Alicia, “How you been, Miss Amy? No messages for you for some weeks. I answer phone all the time, I know. You away on trip?”
Chapter 10
“Miss Amy?” Alicia said, puzzled, but Lafferty was way ahead of her.
“Do you know this lady?” he asked the woman sharply, silencing Alicia with a gesture.
She nodded. “Why, sure. Miss Amy, she live upstairs.” She narrowed her eyes at Alicia. “You do your hair darker while you were gone? I like it.”
Alicia’s heart began to bang in her chest. Who was the Miss Amy who lived upstairs?
“Have you seen this lady on TV?” Lafferty asked tersely, his attention focused on the Chinese woman.
“On TV? No, no, I no watch TV. Don’t like it.”
“Let me commend your taste. Did you see her picture in the newspapers?”
“Newspapers no. I can’t read, I only speak. Three years this country.”
“Then you speak very well.” He took Alicia aside and said, “Keep on acting casual, I don’t want to alarm her. There’s an apartment on the second floor and I’m going up there. From what she says I don’t think she recognized you from the news blitz when Joe died—I have an idea she isn’t terribly interested in American politics. She thinks you’re your sister.”
“Oh, Mike.” Alicia could barely talk.
He squeezed her shoulder. “There’s a pay phone in the corner there. Call the precinct and tell the desk sergeant the message is from me. They need to send a car over here ASAP. I can’t question this woman officially. Now keep smiling while I go upstairs.”
Lafferty nodded at the woman, who was looking concerned by their whispered conversation.
“Something wrong, Miss Amy?” she asked.
“Nothing at all,” Alicia replied, smiling, her pulse racing, as Lafferty went out the interior door to ascend the dusty wooden staircase they had seen on their way in from the street. “I just need to make a phone call.”
“Phone not working upstairs? You turn it off?”
“Yes, while I was gone,” Alicia replied, feeling like a criminal for lying but more concerned about getting through to the police. She got an alert response when she mentioned Lafferty’s name, and then for good measure called Charlie Chandler, too, who sounded as if he was going to burst into tears when he heard her voice. But when she informed him of the details he said, “I’ll be right over there,” and hung up the phone in her ear.
Alicia turned to find the Chinese lady staring at her. “We closing, Miss Amy,” she said.
“Yes, I know,” Alicia replied, wondering how she could stall for time. Just then Lafferty returned.
“She’s gone,” he said, and Alicia knew how Chandler felt when she called him. Hysteria was just around the corner.
“The door is locked, I can’t break in without a warrant. Charlie will have to search the place later. But nobody has been there for a while, there was dust on the floor mat and the mail slot. No mail piled up, I guess she stopped it, but I found this trapped under the mat. She must have missed it when she left.”
It was a postcard from a video store alerting Amy Lester of an overdue rental, dated a month earlier.
“That’s the name she was using here,” Alicia said, and he nodded.
“Joe must have left messages at the number down here when he wanted to see her. Then she would meet him at the town house and generate the bills Drew Smithson saw. It was a good system, the perfect cover. Anyone seeing the phone number on his records would just assume he patronized the restaurant.”
Alicia leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. “We came so close. Now we’ll never find her.”
“Yes, we will. Now that she can be connected to this place, and to Joe calling this place, there’s probable cause for an arrest warrant to be issued. We’ll put an APB out on her. Joe is dead. The Greens’ money isn’t enough for her tastes, so chances are she’ll go back to doing what she knows best. If she met him through an escort service she’ll turn up with one somewhere else, and we know them all. If she killed him she planned the whole thing, and she had a job lined up to go to when she left here, you can bet on it.”
Alicia shook her head. “It just doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would she kill the golden goose? With Joe dead, her income from him stopped.”
Lafferty shrugged. “Maybe he cut her off. Revenge is a powerful motive for murder.”
They both realized at the same moment that their audience had grown. The cashier had been joined by the waiter and the cook, and all three were staring at them.
A police cruiser pulled to the curb outside the restaurant and all three then looked scared.
“We don’t want no trouble,” the waiter said.
“There won’t be any trouble,” Lafferty said shortly. “The police just want to ask you some questions about the lady who was living upstairs.”
“This is lady,” the cashier said, nodding at Alicia.
“No,” Lafferty said. “This is her twin.”
Two uniformed cops entered with Chandler right behind them, a notebook in his hand.
“What are you doing here?” Lafferty asked him.
“She called me,” Chandler answered, nodding toward Alicia, who gestured helplessly.
Chandler whipped out his badge and showed it to the trio, who looked at it warily. Lafferty and Chandler conferred briefly and then Chandler said to the cashier, “Your name is?”
“Ling Ming Na.”
“Mrs. Ling?”
She nodded.
“You took messages for the lady upstairs when she was not at home?”
“When she was at home, too. The phone ring here and I write it down, tell her when she comes into Dragon.”
“So Walker never called her apartment,” Lafferty said, and Chandler nodded.
“You just told me that you can’t read English,” Lafferty interjected.
“I write down in Chinese, say to her in English,” Mrs. Ling replied.
“Very nice,” Chandler observed. “No pesky evidence scraps lying around written in English for the curious to read.” He looked at the cashier. “How often did the lady come in for her messages?”
“Everyday she check. That’s why when she no come for a while I was worry, so glad to see—” She gestured at Alieia, then threw up her hands.
“Was it always the same man who called her?”
“From the voice, yes.”
“Did the lady pay you to take the messages?”
The cashier nodded.
“How much?”
“Two hundred dollar a month.”
“Two hundred dollars a month to take an occasional phone message? Didn’t that strike you as a lot of money?”
Mrs. Ling shrugged. “Land of opportunity,” she said.
Lafferty and Chandler exchanged glances.
“Who is the landlord here, who owns the building?” Lafferty asked.
“Big Apple,” the cook said.
“Big Apple?” Chandler repeated.
The cook nodded and had a quick conversation with the waiter, who went behind the c
ounter and emerged with a payment book with some of the stubs ripped out. He handed it to Chandler, who read aloud, “Big Apple Triangle Trust.”
“What’s that?” Alicia asked.
Chandler snorted. “Snot-nosed yuppies running all the real estate companies.” He handed the book to one of the uniformed officers and said, “Make a note of that. We may be able to track this dame through her rent checks.”
“I doubt it,” Lafferty said. “She probably operated on a cash basis as much as possible.”
The cell phone in Lafferty’s pocket rang and he answered it. He listened for a minute and then said, “Thanks a lot, Roy. Good job. I’ll be in touch with you later.” He depressed the aerial smartly and replaced the phone.
Alicia and Chandler looked at him expectantly.
“Amy Lester was picking up her checks from the trust the Greens set up at a PO box in Fort Lee, New Jersey, just across the state line,” Lafferty said. “She cashed them in a bank in the same town where she had a checking account, which was used very little, drawn upon mostly for cash. There has been no activity on that account since the day before Joe Walker was killed.”
Chandler sighed. “Some little racket she had going. Grifting on the Greens in the wake of a thirty-five-year-old peccadillo and playing hootchie mama for The Chairman whenever he dropped some coins in a pay phone. Nice work if you can get it”
“So what blew it out of the water?” Lafferty asked. “She had a tiff with Walker?”
“Most likely. If they met by chance through an escort service and Walker got a kick out of the fact that this Amy looked just like his wife, but was willing to, uh, cooperate with certain activities his wife might have refused, that could have been something unique for him. We know he was attracted to Alicia’s type, he married Alicia. So suppose he comes across a hooker who physically is his wife’s double but who, for a hefty price, will do anything he wants. And I mean anything. I think from what we know about him a guy like Joe Walker would be interested, don’t you?”
“Do you think Joe knew she was my sister?” Alicia asked quietly.
“If he did, that probably contributed to his fascination, made his jollies even jollier, if you know what I mean.”
Alicia didn’t want to think about it.
An Officer and a Gentle Woman Page 18