“No one ever makes me. I totally disappear in public—unlike your man. Tall with receding black hair, am I right?”
“Yeah, that’s him,” he said grudgingly. “So what did Weiner tell you?”
“That a client of his named Frankie Donahue arranged the adoption. Donahue was a permit expeditor.”
“You say he ‘was.’ Does that mean?…”
“Yeah, he’s dead. Everybody’s dead.”
Legs nodded. “Or getting dead. Keep talking.”
“The Weiners hadn’t been able to conceive. They were getting nowhere through the conventional adoption route and they were desperate. Paul mentioned it to Donahue one day. Donahue told him he might be able to help them out.”
“Meaning that permits weren’t the only thing this dude expedited.”
“Hey, a fixer’s a fixer. They got a call from him on a Sunday morning in May. May the fifth, to be exact. He sent them to an address on East 39th Street. Donahue was there to meet them along with Peter Seymour, who Paul said acted like a real dick.”
“Hey, a dick’s a dick,” Legs said.
“A doctor and nurse were there, too. Both really tan. Paul said the doctor was in his fifties. That would be Sykes. And the nurse was maybe thirty—Martine Price. The baby boy was in a crib in one of the bedrooms. They were offered the boy and a check for fifty thou for ‘transitional expenses,’ courtesy of the Aurora Group, which is the same shell company that Seymour used to pay us. The doctor assured the Weiners that the baby was completely healthy and normal. Which Paul said he appeared to be—aside from one small discrepancy.”
“What discrepancy?”
“According to the baby’s Nevis birth certificate—and contrary to what Seymour told us there was a Nevis birth certificate—he’d been born to a Jane Jones on January 25, 1990. That jibes with what Mrs. Kidd said, right?”
Legs nodded. “Right.…”
“And it means the baby would have been three and a half months old when Paul and Laurie took possession of him on May the fifth.”
“He wasn’t?”
“Two weeks old is more like it. Paul said Laurie was positive of it. Bruce was born at the end of April, not January.”
“Hmm, interesting. But where the hell does that take us?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. The Weiners wondered about it, but they wanted a baby. And for fifty thou they didn’t ask.”
“No questions, no details. Sure, I get it. And Martine Price was killed because she knew some of those details. We had no idea she was out there but the people who are behind this sure did.” He glanced over at me. “That’s good work, little bud. Not too late for you to take the test, you know. You’d make a hell of a cop. Pay’s steady. Health and pension benefits are off the chart. And you’d have me for a rabbi. How cool is that?”
“That was my dad’s life. It’s not for me. And I still don’t get something. We’re dealing with a total pro here. Yet he used the same gun three weeks ago in Queens, two nights ago at Candlewood Lake and again last night when he shot at me. What kind of a pro does that?”
“A pro,” he growled, “who’s been told he doesn’t have to worry about my investigation.”
“The commissioner didn’t talk like a man who’s looking to shut you down.”
“The commissioner talked a lot. Who knows how much of it he meant. I don’t. I just know that he needs somebody’s head on a platter for the Charles Willingham shooting. And it’s not going to be mine.”
“There’s something else I don’t get. Why didn’t he kill me last night? He could have taken me out. Same as he could have taken me out at Candlewood Lake. Why am I still mucking around in the middle of this? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Not to worry, it will. Maybe not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. But we’ll get there.”
“I sure wish I had my iPod on me right now.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’d really like to listen to some Ethel Merman. Ethel’s a huge help to me when I’m searching for clarity.”
“Okay, I take back what I just said. You wouldn’t last one week at the academy.”
“Legs, why are we driving to Ronkonkoma to see a woman named Judith Heintz?”
“She’s Martine Price’s sister. Told me she wouldn’t mind talking about her. Sounded eager to, in fact.”
“What’s her story?”
“She works a cash register at Waldbaum’s. Her husband, Steve, drives for UPS. Plain, honest, working folk. Two kids, ages thirteen and sixteen.” He glanced over at me. “She’s going to think you’re my sergeant. No need to set her straight, okay?”
“Sure thing, Loo.”
Ronkonkoma is a decaying middle-class bedroom community set dead center in the decaying heart of Long Island—which isn’t to be confused with somewhere near the water that’s nice like the Hamptons or the North Shore. The Heintz family lived in a drab little raised ranch on a street of drab little raised ranches. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen a raised ranch that wasn’t drab. And I ought to know. I grew up in one. There wasn’t much snow cover on the ground out there. Just a light dusting on the bare, brown lawns. The street was clear and dry. A Dodge Ram pickup and a Toyota Camry were parked in the Heintz’s driveway.
Legs kept on going past their house, circled around the block and came back. Making sure we hadn’t brought a tail with us. We hadn’t.
Judith Heintz opened the front door before we rang the bell. She must have been watching for us out the front window. “Come in, come in, please,” she urged us breathlessly. Her voice was unexpectedly fluty for such a large, fleshy woman. I got the impression that she’d recently lost a lot of weight. She still moved like someone who was circus fat, tottering from side to side as she led us into the entry hall. And the skin hung loose from her jowls and neck like rubbery dewlaps. Her graying hair was cut short. She wore loose fitting navy blue sweat pants and a matching sweatshirt that had several moist-looking tissues stuffed into its wristbands.
The house was small and cluttered. A television blared from the living room, where the ceiling seemed unusually low to me. Maybe because there was so damned much homey, crafty shit crammed in there. Framed macaroni art hanging from the walls, macramé planters from the windows. Everywhere I looked I saw samplers, quilts, coverlets, stuffed animals.
Judith’s lanky, balding husband, Steve, was stretched out on the sofa watching WWE Raw. He did acknowledge that Legs and I were standing there in his home. Sort of nodded our way. But he refused to take his eyes off of his steroid freak show. Talking to the police again was strictly Judith’s thing, not his.
She led us into the kitchen and the three of us sat around a dinette set. It was the land of knit cozies in there. The toaster had one. The coffee maker had one. The salt and pepper shakers. The paper napkin holder. You name it and it had its own cozy.
“I was pleased to hear from you, Lieutenant,” Judith said as she settled into her chair. “I hope you fellows will forgive me in advance but I’m still in mourning for my Marty and I can’t seem to talk about her without … I-I just keep on…” She broke off as her tears began to flow. “Poor Steve’s had it up to here with me. But I just miss her so much. She was my big sister and I’ve never been without her. I feel s-so lost.” She yanked one of those damp tissues from her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes. “Excuse me for asking, but what happened to Detective Wood?”
“We’ve taken over the case,” Legs explained.
“And have you caught Marty’s killer? Because you were a little vague on the phone. Gosh, please forgive my manners. Can I get you fellows some coffee or a soda?”
We both told her we were fine.
“What we have is a new angle,” Legs informed her. “This may sound strange, but an entirely different motive for Martine’s death has emerged in the past few hours. We no longer think it was a routine break-in.”
She blinked at him in surprise. “You don’t?”
“No, ma’am. The gun that
her killer used was also used in the murder of a young man in Connecticut two nights ago. We believe the two deaths are connected. We believe your sister’s death has something to do with an adoption that took place about twenty years ago, back when she was in the employ of a Dr. John Sykes.”
Judith’s face darkened. “Oh, him…”
Legs leaned across the table toward her. “You knew Dr. Sykes?”
“Only to spit at,” she answered viciously. “I tried not to judge Marty and her beloved Dr. John, even though it was just so wrong. He was another woman’s husband. A married man with three children. I told her he would never leave them for her. I told her and I told her. But Marty didn’t care.”
“She and Dr. Sykes were lovers?” I asked.
“Dr. John was the great love of her life, Sergeant. It was because of him that she never married and had babies of her own. Who knows if he felt that way about her. At first, I figured he was just, you know, using her for the sex. She was young and awful pretty. But it was no casual fling, I can tell you that much.”
“They were together for a long time?”
She nodded. “Years and years. Their romance, if you want to call it that, started when they were in the Caribbean on an island called Nevis. I’d never heard of the place until she went down there. Dr. John had to take care of a rich patient there for several weeks. He asked Marty to join him. This was … must be twenty years ago, like you just said, Lieutenant. I still have the photos and letters she sent me. I was just looking through them the other day.” She got up, tottered to the front hall and came back with a shoebox filled with snapshots and envelopes. She searched through the pictures and put one on the table for us to look at. “Here’s my Marty. Wasn’t she pretty?”
Martine Price was frolicking on a beach. She was big boned and on the horsy side. Not my idea of pretty. But she was certainly shapely in her one-piece bathing suit.
Judith showed us another snapshot. “And this here’s her Dr. John.”
John Sykes was sandy haired and considerably older than Martine, although he looked plenty fit in his swim trunks. He had a kindly face. He seemed happy.
“The two of them were together for weeks in that tropical island paradise,” Judith recalled. “Dr. John’s wife and kids were back home in New York. I guess something was bound to happen. Marty was like a dreamy schoolgirl when it came to him. Lordy, the stories she told me about them swimming nude in the moonlight and making love under the stars. Why, she practically made it sound like they were Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And it didn’t stop when they came back home. They stayed together as a couple, gosh, must have been twelve, thirteen years—right up until he died back in 2003. She went to work for Lenox Hill Hospital after he retired from private practice. But she still spent her vacation with him every year down in Nevis at his clinic. And she entertained him at her apartment in Forest Hills two or three evenings every week without fail. I guess he was devoted to her, too, in his own way. He left her the deed to that two-family house in Jackson Heights when he died. She owned it free and clear. Had a roof over her head and collected a nice income from her tenant. I guess it’ll become ours now. I still have to clear out her things and bring them here. I’m just … not ready yet.” Judith’s tears started flowing again. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said, patting her hand.
“Thank you, Sergeant. You’re very considerate. My Marty was a wreck after Dr. John passed. She just mourned and mourned. After six months or so I said to her, I said, ‘Marty, you have got to get on with your life.’ She was only forty-four years old. Still real good looking, too, believe me. Steve knew a couple of drivers, real nice fellows, who’d have been thrilled to take her out. But she wasn’t interested. When her Dr. John died she was all done with men.”
“My mom’s the exact same way,” I said.
Judith raised her eyebrows at me. “She’s a widow?”
“It’s been two years now.”
“She must have been awful young.”
“She still is.”
“I’m sorry for her. And for you, Sergeant. A young man needs his father. And I meant to tell you when you walked in just how much I love your friendship bracelet.” Judith took hold of my wrist, the better to examine it. Her hand was cold and clammy. “She made it with embroidery thread, didn’t she? Yeah, that’s awful cute. A whole lot of work went into it, too. She must really like you.” Judith released her grip and fetched a diet soda from the refrigerator. Popped open the can and took a sip. “I did wonder, you know. If Marty’s death had something to do with things she knew about. But Detective Wood was so positive it was a break-in, what with her jewelry and silver being taken. I figured I was just being flighty, like Steve always says.”
“You’re not being flighty,” I said to her. “And we’re extremely interested in whatever your sister knew about.”
“It’s all right there in her letters from Nevis.” Judith nodded toward the shoebox. “She didn’t just write me about her romance. She had other things to say.”
Legs gazed at her anxiously. “Like for instance?…”
“Dr. John was down there to see to a messed-up teenaged girl who’d gotten herself pregnant. Poor thing was barely thirteen years old.”
“What was this girl’s name?” he asked.
“Marty never told me the name of the family. Just the girl’s first name—Kathleen. I remember it on account of we had an Aunt Kathleen who used to collect antique cookie jars from the 1940s. She had dozens of them all over her house. That’s one of them right there next to the stove.” Judith gestured toward a biscuit-colored ceramic figurine of a round chef with a white hat. It was the only object on the kitchen counter that wasn’t covered with a cozy. “He’s called Pierre the Jolly Chef and he’s actually worth a couple of hundred bucks on eBay, last time I looked. Not that I’d ever sell him.” She took another sip of her diet soda. “Dr. John and Marty were there to deliver Kathleen’s baby when her time came. Her parents owned a huge shorefront estate there. They were hushing the whole thing up the way rich people do. And these were definitely rich people. They flew a Park Avenue doctor and his nurse down there and kept them there for weeks. Can you imagine how much that must have cost?”
“What else did your sister tell you about Kathleen?” Legs asked.
“She was a real handful. An angry, depressed little thing. Didn’t want the baby. Didn’t even want to be alive. Poor girl tried to take her own life with pills, Marty said. Almost lost the baby. They had to keep watch over her around the clock until she gave birth. It was a boy.”
“Do you happen to know when the baby was born?” I asked.
“Absolutely. It was on the twenty-fifth of April. That’s our cousin George’s birthday.”
Which backed up what Paul Weiner had told me. Eleanor Saltonstall Kidd had been quite insistent that Kathleen gave birth at the end of January. The Nevis birth certificate even said so, according to Paul. And yet the baby had been born three months later. Why the discrepancy? I could think of only one reason. But it was a mighty big one. If Kathleen gave birth in April then it meant she hadn’t conceived the baby during her previous school year at Barrow. She’d gotten pregnant over the summer—when she was on Nantucket.
“Judith, are you sure about that date?”
“Sergeant, you can read Marty’s letters if you don’t believe me. Heck, you’re welcome to borrow them if you promise to return them. They’re all I have of her now.”
“We’ll take good care of them.”
“The worst part of it is…” She bit down hard on her lower lip, her eyes avoiding ours. There was more. She was holding on to more.
“The worst part of it is what?” Legs prodded her.
“The poor girl went straight downhill after her baby was born. She was just plain mentally disturbed. Marty felt sorry for her and tried to be a friend to her. But Kathleen was such a messed-up little thing that she had to be placed in an asylum in Switzerland. Marty tol
d me Dr. John wasn’t the least bit surprised. I guess he’d, you know, seen it happen before.”
“Seen what happen before?”
“The way that Kathleen was acting…” Judith trailed off, swallowing. “It was pretty typical of those sorts of pregnancies. You know which kind I mean. The kind that decent people don’t talk about.”
Legs and I peered at each other before he turned to her and said. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
Judith nodded her head. “It was an ‘internal’ family matter. That’s what Dr. John told Marty. The father got her pregnant, I guess. Can you imagine? You hear about such things happening among uneducated, backwoods folks who don’t know any better. But people of wealth and privilege? What kind of horrible bastard would do that to his own sweet little girl?”
“What kind indeed,” Legs said hoarsely. The weight of her words had landed on him like an anvil.
I was plenty staggered myself. I wasn’t expecting to find out that the late Thomas Kidd, the distinguished ambassador, statesman and philanthropist, had raped his own daughter. So this was why the whole shitstorm was happening. This was the horrible secret that the Kidds were trying to cover up. Eleanor, his formidable Fifth Avenue widow, was trying to protect the family’s good name so that her remaining child, Bobby the K, could continue his march to the governor’s mansion in Albany. Peter Seymour and the Leetes Group were doing the old lady’s dirty work—even if that meant sacrificing Eleanor’s own daughter and biological grandson. Now I understood why Bobby had shown up at our office to trash his dead sister’s reputation. He was doing his mother’s bidding, too, no doubt. Keeping us off of the scent. What I didn’t understand was why he’d suggested that his wife’s family might be behind it. But I had no doubt that I’d understand soon enough. Because it was all starting to make sense now.
“Judith, you mentioned that your sister tried to be a friend to Kathleen,” Legs said slowly.
1 Runaway Man Page 17