I sat down on the daybed. Sara flicked on an electric space heater, then found a book of matches on the desk and lit the joint, toking on it deeply as she stood there. “This is supposed to be my mom’s studio. She has this lame idea that she’s artistic. Trevor and I come up here to bone if she’s home, which she almost never is because she’s out boning her boyfriend. Get this, he’s—”
“The principal of her school, I know.”
She gazed at me curiously. “How did you find that out?”
“Part of the job.”
“God, Benji, my life is so messed up right now that I-I…” She let out a sob and threw herself into my arms.
I sat there with her, hugging her protectively. I was starting to feel responsible for Sara Weiner. Bruce was gone. She needed someone. That someone was me.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to blubber all over you,” she sniffled. “That just keeps happening.”
“Let it happen. It’s healthy.”
She took a deep breath and let it out, composing herself. Then moved over to the desk chair and sat, crossing her bare legs.
I perched on the edge of the daybed, trying not to stare at her smooth white thighs. I reminded myself that she was seventeen, grief-stricken and vulnerable. I reminded myself that I was not the sort of horny, low-class boor who would ever take advantage of such a girl in her parents’ garage while they were inside sitting shiva for her dead brother. That wasn’t me. Nope, not me.
Sara relit the joint, toking on it. “Want some, Benji?”
I shook my head.
Now she held that small, tissue-wrapped package out to me. “I made this for you,” she said shyly.
I unwrapped it. Inside, I found a hand-woven purple-and-pink striped bracelet.
“It’s a friendship bracelet,” she explained, coloring slightly. “And see? It has a silver bunny-rabbit clasp. That’s because your mom calls you Bunny. I-I only make them for special people. I’ve never made one for Trevor, okay? Here, give me your wrist.…” She put the woven bracelet around my right wrist, fastening it in place with the clasp. “Now, remember, you can’t ever take it off. Not until it breaks on its own. Otherwise something heinous will happen to you. Promise?”
“I promise,” I said, admiring it there on my wrist.
“You think it’s totally girlie-girl and stupid, don’t you?”
“Sara, I think it’s the nicest present anyone’s ever given me.”
“Now you’re just making fun of me.”
“I’m not, I swear.”
Her big brown eyes searched mine. “Really?”
“Really. I feel honored.”
She smiled, showing me those dimples of hers. “Cool.”
“So, listen, I sat down with Charles this morning.”
Her face fell. “How is he?”
“A wreck. He’s going to stay with his mother for a few days.”
“That must be nice,” Sara said, fingering her splotchy cheek. “Being able to share his grief with his mother, I mean. Mine’s the total bitch from hell. God, it’s just so awful here. My mom and dad hate each other. And they don’t even know I’m alive, I swear. Can I go back to New York with you, Benji? I really need someplace sane to crash for a few days.”
“Your place is here, Sara. Your parents need you, whether it seems that way or not. Besides, you have school, don’t you?”
“I guess,” she acknowledged grudgingly. “They gave me today off. I don’t want to go back tomorrow. Everyone’s going to be totally weird about Bruce and everything. Staring at me like I’m some freak.”
“You have your friends. You have Trevor. It’ll be okay.”
“No, it won’t, Benji,” she said quietly. “It won’t ever be okay.”
I studied Sara carefully, not liking what I was hearing one bit. Because I’d heard it before. She was another runaway in the making. I wondered if she’d show up at my door some night very soon, even though I’d told her not to come. I wondered what I’d do if she did. “Charles told me that Bruce had been trying to find out the details of his adoption. Your parents wouldn’t talk about it.”
Sara nodded. “They never talk about it. Ever. You’d swear the stork just left him on their doorstep.”
“Have you ever seen any of his birth records or adoption papers? Anything like that?”
“Nothing, Benji.”
“Do they keep a safety deposit box at a local bank out here?”
“I really wouldn’t know.”
“That woman who you told us approached Bruce at the mall…”
“What about her?”
“She’d already approached him at Canterbury a week before Thanksgiving. Charles didn’t see it happen, but I showed him a couple of photographs anyway. I was hoping maybe he saw one of the women around campus.”
“And did he?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Did you bring them with you?” she asked anxiously. “Can I see them?”
I had the DMV photos tucked in my coat pocket. I held them out to her.
Sara peered at them—and immediately tapped one of the photos with her finger. “That’s her, Benji. She’s the one.”
“Are you positive?”
“Totally. She’s the woman who I saw at the mall. She looked messier in person, but it was her.” Sara lifted her gaze at me. “Is she Bruce’s real mother?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, what’s her name? Who is she?”
“A great big pile of trouble.”
* * *
“SARA IDENTIFIED HER,” I informed Mom over my disposable cell phone as I drove away from the Weiner house. “The woman who accosted Bruce at the mall was none other than Bobby the K’s sister—Kathleen Kidd.”
I could hear Mom draw in her breath. “She’s positive it was Kathleen?”
“I showed her two pictures. One was of Bobby’s wife, Meg Grayson Kidd, who Charles Willingham thought he recognized from the newspaper. The other was of Kathleen. Sara went right for her. No hesitation. I’ll pay a call on Kathleen as soon as I get back to the city. I have to talk to her. According to her driver’s license she lives at 131 Riverside Drive. That’s the Dorchester on the corner of West 85th, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“If she won’t see me I’ll stake out the building. She has to come out sometime. She’ll talk to me.”
“She won’t be doing any talking, Bunny,” Mom informed me. “She took a dive off of her sixteenth-floor balcony two hours ago. Kathleen Kidd is dead. It’s all over the Internet. According to a family spokesman she had a long history of emotional problems, which explains why she avoided the limelight all of these years. The Kidd family’s been shielding her. Hell, hiding her.”
I didn’t hear that last part real well. There was too much whirring going on inside of my head.
“Bunny, are you still there or did that cheap phone just crap out?”
“I’m still here,” I said quietly. “Mom, what in the hell have we gotten ourselves into?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t either. But I’m going to find out. And when I do…”
“Yes, Bunny?”
“Somebody’s going to be really sorry.”
* * *
“YO, HOW ARE YOU, LITTLE BUD?”
“I’ve been better, Legs.”
“Your message said you have something for me about our jumper.”
“That I do.”
“Then I guess you’d better lay it on me.”
“I guess I’d better.”
Detective Lieutenant Larry Diamond and I were hunched over cups of coffee at a Greek coffee shop on Broadway and West 89th Street, not far from where Kathleen Kidd had gone splat all over the sidewalk. It was 4:30 in the afternoon and the place was packed with grumpy, half-deaf old timers who were partaking of that day’s Early Bird Special—one-half of a roasted chicken, vegetable, potato, soup and complimentary glass of red or white wine. It was a bit like meeting
up at a senior center.
My dad had been Larry Diamond’s rabbi back when Legs joined the force out of Brooklyn College, where he’d graduated with a degree in English literature. My dad changed his diapers and whispered in the right ears when Legs wanted to make detective. He saw a rising star in Legs Diamond. Someone who was super intense, super smart and wasn’t afraid to ruffle feathers. Someone who cared. Legs is six years older than I am and is like a big brother to me. A big brother who happens to be a homicide detective working out of the two-four, which encompasses the neighborhood where Kathleen lived. Since she was a Kidd I figured that meant Legs’s boss would assign his best man to the case. Legs Diamond is the two-four’s best man.
He sipped his coffee, waiting me out. Our young waitress passed by and topped off his cup for him, undressing him with her eyes. Legs is the kind of guy who women stare at that way. He has a lot of wavy black hair, soulful dark eyes and a goatee. He wore an aged leather trench coat over a black turtleneck sweater, blue jeans and motorcycle boots. To be honest, he’s kind of my idol in the looks department. The only thing I don’t envy about him is his wary restlessness. The man never relaxes. Ever. He also has some nagging name-recognition issues, as in he really, really doesn’t like to be called Larry.
“They’re calling Kathleen’s death a suicide,” I said over the din of fifty or more old people slurping their soup. “Is there any chance it wasn’t?”
He sat there, one knee jiggling. “Meaning you think somebody pushed her?”
“I’m just asking. It never hurts to ask.”
“Actually, that’s not true. It can hurt a lot.” Legs ran a hand through his hair, thinking it over. “I examined her body and it plays suicide all of the way. No fresh bruising. No scratch marks. Her fingernails were clean.…”
“How about her apartment?”
“She was an artist of some kind. Had abstract paintings taped all over the walls. And her living room’s strewn with tubes of paint, brushes, canvases. The place is a real pigsty. Dirty clothes and dishes everywhere. But there was no sign of a break-in or a struggle. No furniture overturned. No scuff marks on the tile flooring out on the balcony.” His eyes searched mine. “We’re family. I’ll recheck everything from top to bottom if you give me a good reason why. But so far I’m not seeing one.” He pulled a notepad from his coat pocket, flipping it open. “Her doorman told us she had no visitors in the time frame leading up to her death. He also said the lady was a recluse. Seldom went out. Had everything delivered. Her psychiatrist, a Dr. Joseph Schwartz, told us we’d likely find a combination of antidepression medications in her system. The medicine chest in her bathroom is full of them. She practically has a pharmacy in there. Wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol on top of what she was taking but we found a half-empty bottle of Bordeaux and one glass on the coffee table in her living room. Also several empties in the trash in the kitchen. We’ve got her mixing booze with powerful meds and no sign of a break-in or a struggle. What does that tell you?”
“That whoever pushed her off of her balcony was someone who she knew—or felt she had no reason to be afraid of.”
Legs looked at me doubtfully. “It could be just exactly what it looks like.”
“Trust me, it’s not. Did anyone sign in downstairs shortly before her death? Someone who came to, say, visit another tenant or repair somebody’s cable TV?”
“Absolutely. It’s a huge building. A hundred and sixty-one tenants. We have a list of everyone who signed in with the doorman in the two hours leading up to her death. And we’ve got a man checking them out, one by one, just to determine if they saw or heard anything.”
“Can I see the list?”
“I don’t have it on me, but I can get it for you.”
“Was anything missing from her apartment?”
“You mean like jewelry?”
“I mean like a laptop computer.”
Legs stared at me. “Now that you mention it, I didn’t notice a laptop.”
“How about her cell phone?”
“I don’t know. They’re still cataloguing everything.” He reached for his own cell. “I’ll check.”
I sipped my coffee while he did, serenaded by the cheery sound of soup spoons bouncing off of artificial teeth.
“No cell phone,” Legs reported after he rang off. “Not in her purse. Not anywhere.” He peered at me suspiciously now. “Where are you going with this? Because to me it plays suicide all of the way.”
“Of course it does. That’s what they want you to think.”
“Okay, who is they?”
“Will there be an autopsy?”
“Has to be. It’s an unnatural death.”
“Will the autopsy results be made public?”
“She was a Kidd. We’re talking about the wealthiest, most politically connected family in the city.”
“Does that mean no?”
“It means,” Legs replied, “that the family lawyer has already done some heavy leaning on Commissioner Feldman. Her autopsy results are to be kept sealed. First thing I was told when I was handed the case.”
“That’s because the Kidds know what it’ll show.”
“Which is?…”
“That Kathleen had a baby at a certain point in her life.”
“What point in her life?”
“I’d say right around when she was thirteen years old. This Kidd family lawyer who leaned on Feldman—was his name by any chance Peter Seymour?”
“How did you know that?”
“Because he’s the classy cocksucker who set me up.”
Legs Diamond took a slow sip of his coffee before he turned his penetrating gaze on me and said, “Start talking, little bud.”
I started talking. I told him everything I could, which is to say everything short of the name Charles Willingham and why Bruce Weiner had been staying in a borrowed guest cottage on Candlewood Lake. There was no need for Legs to know that. But I told him the rest. How Mr. Classy Guy had shown up at our office two days ago offering us big bucks to find the elusive Bruce. How I’d found him at the Warfield place on Candlewood Lake with three nine-mil slugs in him and his laptop and cell phone gone. How I’d learned from his sister, Sara, that Bruce had been adopted. And that Bruce had been approached on campus before Thanksgiving by a woman claiming to be his birth mother. Sara had seen a woman in her thirties approach Bruce at a mall in Willoughby over Christmas. And had heard the woman say, “You’re a kid and you always will be.” Kid as in Kidd. She’d identified the woman from her DMV photo as Kathleen Kidd.
“My car was bugged,” I informed him. “A three-watt UHF transmitter and a GPS tracker. Our office and our phones were bugged. The whole thing smells of the Leetes Group. We know that they’re involved—Seymour had them prepare the file he gave us on the Weiners. He used me to find Bruce so that Bruce could be taken out. And now Kathleen is dead, too. There’s no way her death is a random, coincidental suicide. It’s all part of a calculated plan to keep some awful secret from coming out.”
Legs let all of this soak in, his head nodding. “Yo, I see where you’re coming from. It plays. But it’s pure speculation. If I take it to my captain I’ll get nowhere. Not without hard evidence. And I’ll for damned sure get nowhere with Jake Leetes. He’s as tough and nasty as they come.” He paused, mulling it over. “Who’s handling the Weiner shooting out in Connecticut?”
“Some total prick on the major crime squad in Litchfield.”
“He’s not a Battalino, is he?”
“Yeah, how’d you know that?”
“Because half of the guys who have juice out there are Battalinos. They’re one big happy family. Which one is it—Rico, Tommy, Richie?…”
“Marco. Since when are you such an expert on the Connecticut State Police?”
“I’ve been seeing a woman named Claudia who’s a homicide investigator on major crimes out there. Met her on a case a few weeks back.”
“Hey, that’s great, Legs.”
“Well,
it is and it isn’t,” grumbled Legs, whose relationship train always seemed to come grinding to a halt at dysfunction junction. “She lives three hours away. The best we can manage is weekends, except we’re both workaholics so who has a weekend? Mostly, we just sext back and forth twenty times a day—which gets old in a hurry, believe me.”
“Oh, I do.”
He shot me a look. “You mocking me?”
“Never.”
“Good, because I can still pound the snot out of you.”
“What you two need is a week in the Bahamas together. Why don’t you both put in for vacation time and book a trip?”
“I have a better idea. Why don’t you and me get back to what we were talking about, okay, Dr. Phil?”
“Whatever you say.”
He tugged at his goatee thoughtfully. “If he’s a Battalino then he’s probably not overly blessed in the smarts department.”
“You can just go ahead and dispense with the word ‘probably.’”
“But he’ll be turfy. It’s his case and he won’t want any hotshot from New York City within ten miles of it. Maybe I could sell him that our two cases connect up. But first I’d have to sell my own captain. And I’m going to need more before I can do that.”
“You have two dead bodies. Kathleen Kidd’s is in the custody of the Manhattan medical examiner. Bruce Weiner’s is at the State of Connecticut’s lab in Farmington. Can’t you just take a DNA sample from each of them to verify that she was his birth mother?”
“Yes but no.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’d have to fill out a requisition. That means it has to be part of an official investigation. And there is no investigation into Kathleen Kidd’s death. If I mess around in this it could cost me my shield. By the way, did I remember to thank you large for dumping it in my lap?”
1 Runaway Man Page 9