Sergio had one hand on the door to the staircase. “Not that I know.”
“What kind of business then? Something legit?”
“All our members are legitimate, Detective.”
“Then I’m surprised they let that portrait of Mussolini hang in the bar for so long before they canned it.”
Sergio’s hand was over his heart. “Insult me, Detective, and you insult my heritage and my culture. That portrait was removed before you were born.”
“So what kind of job does this friend of Mr. Rouget’s have?” I asked. Maybe there was some business link that brought Luc to this place for dinner.
“A CEO, Ms. Cooper. The chief executive of one of the largest fragrance companies in this country.”
“If you just tell us his name,” I said, knowing we could get the rest of the answers from Luc, “we’ll get out of your hair and there’s no need for us to reveal you as our source.”
Sergio looked from my face to Mike’s, for an assurance that our word was good on that promise. “Rather sexist of you, Ms. Cooper, to assume this CEO is a man.”
I was startled.
“Mr. Rouget’s friend is one of Tiro’s most distinguished members. Her name is Gina Varona,” Sergio said, opening the heavy door and holding it back for me. “And now, I must invite you to leave.”
TWENTY-FOUR
I waited in the lobby of the club until Mike came out of the kitchen. I said the name Gina Varona aloud six or seven times, but it didn’t sound the least bit familiar to me. I couldn’t wait to get home to begin Googling her, hoping she was twice Luc’s age and had a dowager’s hump.
Mike approached me as though he was about to break into a trot, sweeping past me and going out to the street. “C’mon, kid. I got a little nugget of gold.”
“About Gina? Tell me she’s old enough to be Luc’s mother.”
“You worried about your love life or the body count?” Mike asked. “Luigi’s pals just gave me a piece of the puzzle.”
“What’s that?”
Mike took my elbow and steered me in the direction of Bleecker Street. “I’m putting you in a cab to go home.”
“And you?”
“One of the other waiters says Luigi’s girlfriend lives on a boat all right. It’s a houseboat.”
“So?”
“So it’s not an oceangoing vessel, Coop. The broad makes collages of crustacean legs, okay? Friggin’ tiny dead crab parts glued up on painted pieces of driftwood.”
“Sounds disgusting.”
“I bet I know where she gets the little bastards. There are five or six houseboats moored all along a section of the Gowanus Canal, this guy says. Luigi’s was behind a truck lot on Bond Street. Probably illegal, which is why there’s no official address for it.”
“You’re going—?”
“To give the Harbor cops and my drone a little direction. Get the Brooklyn DA’s office working on a search warrant for the houseboat. And don’t even ask, ’cause you’ve got a big day with Blanca tomorrow.”
At the corner of the busy street, Mike hailed a cab and I got in. He told the driver to take me to my home on the Upper East Side. Then, with the door still open, he leaned inside and picked up my hand.
“I know it’s been rough for you, Coop. Just hold it together another couple of days. No whining, okay?”
I took a deep breath. “Why can’t I call Luc now?”
“Just between us, I spoke to him today.”
“You what?”
“Real short. But he’s good and I explained that it’s best he keep off the phone with you until a few things are resolved.”
“Can I start the meter running?” the cabdriver was more impatient than I was.
“Sure,” I said, turning back to Mike. “What else did he say?”
“Trust me for another twenty-four, will you? I didn’t give him a chance to say anything—that wasn’t the reason for my call. You get some sleep. I’ll phone you in the morning if we come up with good stuff.”
He let go of me and slammed the door. The driver took off and I belted myself in.
Then I speed-dialed Joan Stafford at her home in DC. “Joanie? Is it too late to talk?”
“It’s not even ten o’clock. Where have you been?”
“Just on my way home from work. I’m in a cab.”
“What have you heard from Luc?”
“Nothing at all, Joan. How about you?”
“Same here. But then, I’m not the one who skipped town on him.”
“Hasn’t he even called Jim?” Joan’s husband was one of Luc’s closest friends.
“Jim’s in Moscow on business. How about I come up on Saturday and at least we can spend the evening together?”
“Forget my birthday. We’ll celebrate another time,” I said. “But would you do me favor?”
“Sure. If you do one for me.”
“Deal.”
“What’s yours?”
“Call Luc. I mean, it’s too late now. But call him in the morning and feel him out on what’s going on. He wasn’t even at the restaurant tonight. And he didn’t answer the phone at the house.”
“Maybe he’s with his boys.”
“They’re in Normandy, with Brigitte’s mother,” I said.
“So maybe he’s in Normandy, too. I get it. You don’t want to call there because you don’t want to deal with Brigitte?”
If that’s what Joan wanted to think, it was okay with me. “Exactly.”
“Fine. I’ll call in the morning. Ready for my favor?”
The driver was weaving erratically up Park Avenue. I told him that I wasn’t in a hurry to get home.
“Sure. What is it?”
“So I think I figured out what might be behind the whole Baby Mo case, and I really think you should tell Battaglia and your colleagues about this. Your boss is getting slammed in the international press, you know.”
“So I hear. And now my beloved friend, best known for writing fiction, is going to enlighten us before we head into the grand jury tomorrow. Shoot me.”
“You know the French think this is all a conspiracy, don’t you? A setup.”
“Oui, Joanie. Un coup monté.”
“So you get it?”
“We just can’t figure who framed the sucker,” I said, hoping the sarcasm in my voice wasn’t too off-putting. “There’s no sign of his Ivorian presidential rival anywhere in the Eurotel. No Ivorians anywhere, actually. And President Sarkozy didn’t leave any fingerprints. Totally disinterested. The guy in line to take over the WEB position worldwide seems as bored with Mo’s sexual escapades as any good economist would be. Who’s your perp in all this treachery?”
“Hold on, Alex. I’m serious,” Joan said. “Kali. His wife, Kali.”
“Of course,” I said, stifling a laugh as the cab screeched to a stop at a red light. “Kalissatou Gil-Darsin. Who was, by the way, in Paris at the time this happened. Motive? Coconspirators? I bet Battaglia will just fall in my lap when I tell him you solved this for us.”
“Who has a better motive than his wife? Are you kidding? Think of it, Alex. Suppose she knew about all this womanizing that’s obviously been going on forever. There she is, one of the most magnificent, most desirable women in the world, and her husband’s chasing every piece of tail there is. First young journalists in France, then coworkers, then the mother of the journalist. I mean, c’mon, Alex.”
“So Kali set up the maid?”
“Well, not personally. But she’s the mastermind behind all this. She hired thugs to do it. Who was in that room next to Baby Mo’s? The one the maid went in and out of, before and after? Do your guys know the answer to that?”
“How do you know about the before and after?”
“That maid’s lawyer was all over the news tonight. Even she made a statement. I’m so serious, Alex. Kali knows his weakness, his Achilles’ heel, better than anyone. He’s been embarrassing her for years with all his affairs and his harassment of women, whether it�
�s at conferences or in his own offices.”
“You’ve got a great imagination, Joanie.”
“Don’t dismiss me. You promised you’d tell Battaglia.”
“As soon as I figure out why Kali would want to humiliate herself so publicly by creating an even bigger scandal than whatever has been going on with MGD for years. She could have just divorced him, Joan. Or killed him. I’d do that before I’d spend the twenty or thirty million his legal fees are going to cost.”
“Well, this is the angle that intrigues me—a conspiracy, a frame, a setup. Jim has all his sources from the African bureau at the newspaper working on it.”
“Very helpful,” I said. “Excuse me a minute, Joanie. Sir, there’s a driveway on the left halfway down the block that you can pull into.”
“You still there?”
“I’m almost home.”
“Someday I’m going to solve one of your cases and you’re not going to know how to thank me.”
“Driver—stop!” I called out as he raced past the entrance to my building. He braked to a stop fifty feet beyond and I handed him the money and waited for change.
“I’m home, Joanie. Call you tomorrow,” I said, and shut off my phone as I got out of the cab and stepped onto the sidewalk.
I walked toward the mouth of the driveway that cut through in front of my building. Three teenagers came running from the opposite direction. I pulled my bag up on my shoulder and hugged it close to my body. But they weren’t interested in me and continued running ahead, toward the better-lighted avenue.
As I turned onto the pavement beside the drive, a man came forward out of the shadows and tried to block my path. I stepped to my right but he grabbed the sleeve of my jacket and tugged me back toward him.
I clutched my bag even tighter as I yelled out the names of a couple of the doormen, hoping that one of them would be on duty. “Oscar! Vinny!”
“Don’t scream, Ms. Cooper,” the man said as I wrenched my arm away and stumbled backward, almost falling to the ground. “Don’t scream.”
He was older than I and taller, unshaven, with dark, wavy hair and dressed in sweats. He didn’t look like a mugger and he didn’t have a weapon.
“You want money?” I asked. He started to extend his arm to me and I called out for the doormen again.
“Don’t be a fool, Ms. Cooper. I just want to talk to you.”
I took a step toward him and kicked him in the kneecap. I was aiming higher but was too tired and off-balance to lift my leg. He doubled over and I ran past him, grabbing the revolving door and spinning myself inside to the safety of the attended lobby.
TWENTY-FIVE
“We didn’t hear you or we would have come out,” one of the evening doormen said, looking to the other for support. “We thought you knew that guy.”
I was out of breath and wanted to be out of sight, not in the glass-fronted facade of the apartment building. I went straight to the elevator and pressed the button. “What gave you that idea?”
“He came to the door to ask for you several hours ago. Then he went away and came back with coffee.” I had stepped into the elevator when the doorman said, “He told us he was a friend of Mr. Rouget’s.”
I held the door open, my head pounding as I tried to think why any friend of Luc’s would intercept me at the door to my home. “I don’t know the man. If he shows up again, call 911.”
“Certainly, Ms. Cooper.”
Once inside my apartment, I bolted the door behind me, turned on the lights, played the three messages on my answering machine—one from my mother and two from friends—and poured an inch of a single malt Scotch that was on my bar, to drink neat.
I dialed Mike’s cell.
“Yeah?”
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Still in the car. On my way to the canal. What’s up?”
“Some guy was waiting for me outside the apartment, like for hours.”
“Did he get lucky?”
“Very lucky. When I kicked him I missed my target. I’m serious, Mike. He came at me and tried to grab me. Knew my name and had been hanging around waiting for me. Told the doormen he was a friend of Luc’s.”
“So he probably was.”
“That’s crazy. Luc would have given him my number.”
“Maybe not. I told Luc today I didn’t want either of you calling each other so your numbers wouldn’t show up on phone records, in case things went far enough for a prosecutor to ask for those,” Mike said. “Did this guy scare you?”
“Not as much as what you just said does,” I said, sipping on the Scotch.
“Lock the door, pour yourself a double—”
“I’m ahead of you. Just wanted to make sure Luc didn’t mention anything about sending someone to talk to me.”
“Not a word. I’ll call you in the morning.”
I undressed and took a steaming hot shower, scrubbing the smells of the Gowanus off my skin and out of my hair. I slipped into an aqua silk nightshirt and set myself up on the bed with my laptop.
I punched Gina Varona’s name into the search engine, and dozens of stories queued up instantly. I clicked on the third one, which was a ten-month-old profile that ran in The Wall Street Journal.
Forty-five years old, born and raised in Philadelphia, first in her family to go to college—Yale undergrad and Harvard Business School. It was totally a puff piece about Varona’s meteoric rise in the cosmetics and then fragrance industry. Brilliant, creative, consensus-building, outside-the-box thinker.
Two things were missing from that piece. Balance—there simply had to be some bad news about her somewhere—and a photograph. She was reading too good to be true and she was bound to be better-looking than I had hoped.
I opened a second article on a fashion blog. There she was—Gina Varona on the red carpet at the launch of a new perfume named in honor of Britain’s popular young princess. I enlarged the shot to full-screen size. Varona was a sexy brunette with wavy hair that swept her shoulders and a full figure that was attractive and well-toned.
The annual philanthropy issue of Town & Country blubbered over her, too. She’d been photographed in her SoHo loft—a stone’s throw from the rifle club—and at her Vero Beach oceanfront villa. Twice divorced, no kids, two large black standard poodles, and a staggering amount of money donated to hospitals, wildlife conservation, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Italy.
I didn’t usually develop an immediate dislike for people other than child molesters and rapists. I knew it was jealousy that had me wound up about a woman I’d never met. I logged off and got comfortable in bed, organizing my notes and thoughts for the morning meeting with Battaglia while I finished my drink.
I turned off the light at midnight and slept fitfully until my alarm rang at six-thirty.
I worked out for half an hour before showering and dressing, brought the newspapers in from the hallway to see how the reporters were handicapping our progress in the MGD affair, and brewed a pot of coffee.
It was almost seven-thirty when the house phone rang. “Good morning, Ms. Cooper. You’ve got Mike Chapman coming up.”
I grabbed an extra mug and then met Mike at the door. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, which looked filthy, and carrying a large shopping bag, which seemed to be ripping off from its handles. “What’d you get?” I asked him.
“Breakfast, for starters.”
He came in and went straight to the dining room table, setting down his load while I put out plates and poured the coffee. He took a smaller brown bag from within the top of the big one and unwrapped an enormous fried egg and bacon sandwich on a club roll with a side of home fries. Then he helped himself to a glass of juice from the refrigerator.
“You got something in there for me?”
“I didn’t want to tempt you out of your Raisin Bran routine. You always work better when you’re regular.”
I poured my cereal and sat down at the table with Mike, swiping a slice of crisp bacon from his sandwic
h. “Let’s go. What happened?”
“First of all, that little drone is amazing.”
“You found Luigi’s houseboat?”
“Absolutely.”
“And the girlfriend?”
“Nowhere to be seen. There were three houseboats in the same area.” Mike had half an egg and some bacon well into his mouth as he tried to describe things to me. “One of them belongs to this so-called environmentalist—you know, solar panels for electricity and a composting septic system—he’s trying to bring back the canal all by himself.”
“Environmentally insane, living there.”
“The other two are these artist hipster types, one of whom is Luigi’s girlfriend. Three hundred square feet of crab collages, covered with blood.”
“But you actually got in?”
“Had to,” Mike said, washing his mouthful down with juice.
“Please tell me the Brooklyn detectives stopped to get a warrant.”
“First of all, you could see the blood through the window. Second, the damn houseboats are illegal. They’d have to be permitted by the Building and Fire Departments, and that isn’t going to happen for any of these dumps. It’s like a mini–trailer park sitting on a sludge pond, into which city dwellers deliver a million pounds of raw sewage a day. Third, the occupant of this particular shithouse has been murdered, and his roommate hasn’t been seen since the weekend, when she was sunbathing on the roof of the damn place.”
“Did you take anything out of there yet?”
“Not really.”
“That’s not the answer a prosecutor wants to hear, Mike.”
“I couldn’t find anything much to take. No weapon, nothing relating to Luigi that was laying around in plain sight. But there’s no question it’s where he got butchered. Crime Scene’s on the way over. They’ll do all the blood and print work and get it to the lab.”
“How about the drone?”
“Worth its weight in gold. Harbor moved its operation to this area off Bond Street and plopped the little ROV down again, and doesn’t she flash back some images from underneath the Squid’s hideaway.”
“You mean, something hidden on the outside of the boat?”
Night Watch Page 18