Audiences liked the show. Kylie hated it.
“I’m going with you,” I said.
We entered the lot and made our way past a man with a bloodied knife in his chest, a burned-out city bus, and two nuns on a smoke break. As unreal as it all was, nothing prepared us for the devastation inside Studio Four. It looked like someone had taken a wrecking ball to it.
Shelley was waiting for us inside the soundstage. “For the record, I’m not going to report what happened,” he said to Kylie. “You’re not here as cops. I called you because you’re his wife.”
“Thank you,” she said. Then she walked slowly through the shattered glass and splintered wood that had been the squad room. Desks were overturned, computers smashed, and the ultimate insult: the NYPD shield on the wall had been spray-painted red. I’m sure the choice of color was not lost on her.
She crossed the room to the other set—Katie MacDougal’s bedroom—stepping over the shards of broken mirror and glass bottles that had been on the vanity, steeling herself as she approached K-Mac’s bed, where the sheets, the pillows, and the mattress had all been slashed.
She finally turned away. “Shelley, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know he’s mad at me because I wouldn’t take him back into the apartment, but…”
“I kicked him out too. He’s mad at both of us, and he’s sending us a message.”
Kylie shook her head. “What kind of message is this?”
Shelley didn’t answer.
Whatever the message was, there was no nuance to it.
CHAPTER 11
“I’m invoking the DWI rule,” I said as Kylie and I walked back to the parking lot.
A faint smile crept across her face. When she gets riled up, Kylie drives like a NASCAR champion, so we have an agreement: no Driving While Infuriated.
“Come on, Zach,” she said. “I haven’t wrecked a car since way back in…”
“January,” I said. “You’re almost ready to get your three-month chip.”
The smile turned into a grin, and she tossed me the keys.
It was only a fifteen-minute drive from the studio to Lynn Lyon’s apartment on West End Avenue, and Kylie talked nonstop. The topics ranged from the Elena Travers case to the hospital robberies, and finally to how my new living arrangement with Cheryl was working out. The only thing Kylie didn’t talk about was the elephant in the car: her drug addict husband.
But I’m sure that was what she was thinking about. By now she had dismissed the advice she had gotten from the counselor at the rehab. Kylie was an action junkie, and, while Spence may not have hit rock bottom yet, after seeing the destruction he’d left at Silvercup, she was no longer capable of doing nothing.
We pulled into a parking lot at Lincoln Towers—eight high-end buildings spread across twenty landscaped acres in the middle of Manhattan’s trendy Upper West Side. Not exactly where I’d expect to find someone selling stolen medical equipment on the black market.
The head shot Hutchings showed us of Lynn Lyon hadn’t done her justice. She opened the door wearing jeans, a gray sweatshirt, and a sauce-spattered apron. Even with no makeup and her hair caught up in a blue bandanna, I got that rush men get when they’re suddenly face-to-face with a naturally beautiful woman.
We ID’d ourselves and told her we had some questions to ask her.
“I’m right in the middle of something,” she said. “Can you come back later?”
“No, ma’am,” Kylie said. “It can’t wait.”
“Neither can my risotto,” she said. “We’ll have to talk in the kitchen.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m a food blogger, and I’m working on my next post,” she said, leading us into a cluttered kitchen, where I picked up the earthy smell of mushrooms.
“My take on porcini-asparagus risotto,” she said, picking up a wooden spoon and stirring a shallow pot. “What’s this about?”
“There’s been a robbery at Mercy Hospital,” I said.
“Well, that’s hardly a big surprise,” she said. “I warned them.” With all the poise of a TV chef, she turned to the oven and took out a loaf of fresh-baked bread, set it on the counter, and picked up a camera.
“What do you mean you warned them?” I said.
“Some of these volunteers will leave the gift shop and run off to grab a cup of coffee,” she said, clicking off a few photos of the bread. “Instead of locking the place up, they hang a sign that says ‘Back in five minutes.’ They’re too trusting. It was bound to happen.”
“It wasn’t the gift shop, Ms. Lyon,” Kylie said. “They stole six new dialysis machines.”
“Six…I don’t understand,” she said, ladling broth from a stockpot onto the risotto. “I work in the gift shop, but…Oh my God—I was in with the new dialysis machines last week.”
“Taking pictures,” Kylie said, gesturing at the camera.
Most people—guilty or innocent—would respond with indignation: “Are you calling me a thief?” Not Lyon. She put the hand that wasn’t stirring the risotto to her mouth. Her eyes watered up, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “This is so embarrassing,” she said.
“What were you doing in a restricted area?” Kylie asked, all bad-cop body language and tone of voice.
“It didn’t say Restricted, and the door wasn’t locked. I have a friend who is a dialysis nurse upstate. I was telling her about this new equipment Mercy bought, and she asked me to send her a picture, so I did. That’s all. It was harmless. I can’t believe you’re accusing me of stealing.”
“Nobody is accusing you of anything,” Kylie said. “I’m just asking a few routine questions.”
“If you knew me, you wouldn’t ask things like that. I don’t steal. Cooking and volunteer work are my passions. My soul needs redemption, and I get that from both.”
The tears were gone now. “I have a few questions of my own,” she said. “How am I supposed to get six dialysis machines out of the hospital? And what would I do with them if I had them? It’s not just embarrassing; it’s insane. Unless you’re planning to arrest me, please leave.”
We left.
“You bought her act?” Kylie said once we were back in the car.
“How do you know it was an act? You hit her with some circumstantial evidence, and she had a plausible explanation.”
“Oh please: pretty lady, at home in the kitchen, turns on the waterworks. Guys fall for it all the time.”
“So all of a sudden I’m a guy? I thought I was a cop.”
“I’m a cop too, and the first thing I thought of was, if I were going to send someone to case a hospital, I’d send someone who could fly under the radar. She fits the bill.”
“Well, right now we have nothing to go on,” I said.
“So why don’t you humor me? Let’s look at the other hospitals that were hit and see if Lynn Lyon volunteered at any of them.”
Kylie and I have similar instincts, and we’re usually in sync when we question someone. I was pretty sure I was right on this one, but this time her anger at Spence spilled over, and she took it out on Lyon.
“Fine with me,” I said. “You want to call the other hospitals?”
“Absolutely. Police work is my passion, Zach, and my soul could use a little redeeming,” she said. “Also, I try to never miss out on an opportunity to prove I’m smarter than you.”
CHAPTER 12
Until last night, the most expensive thing in Teddy Ryder’s tiny two-room apartment on the Lower East Side was a JVC TV he bought for two hundred bucks on Overstock.com. It was now outshined by the emerald and diamond necklace sitting on his coffee table.
Teddy hadn’t slept since the robbery. The guns had just been there to make a point. Nobody was supposed to get killed. His partner, Raymond Davis, had pulled the trigger, but he swore up and down that it wasn’t his fault. He blamed it all on the guy in the back of the limo who had grabbed for the gun. Then Raymond had stretched out on the bed and slept like a brick till seven that morning.
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Now Raymond was out trying to renegotiate the deal with Jeremy.
“Fifty thousand is bullshit,” Raymond had said once they’d watched the news and found out the necklace was worth eight million. “We’re upping the price to half a mil.”
It was late afternoon by the time Raymond finally got back from his meeting with Jeremy. One look at his face, and Teddy could tell that the negotiations had gone down the toilet.
“Jeremy is an asshole,” Raymond said.
“How much did you get?” Teddy asked.
“More than the original deal, but less than I was hoping for.”
“How much?”
“Ninety thou.”
“Apiece?”
“No. Ninety for the whole enchilada.”
“Is he crazy?” Teddy said. “We’re not asking for cigarette and beer money. We need enough so we can disappear.”
“Don’t you think I said that already?”
“Well, then go back and tell him we know how much the necklace is worth, and if he doesn’t give us fair market value, we’ll find a buyer who will.”
“Yeah, I said that too. He laughed in my face. Told me the dead actress makes it too hot to handle.” Raymond took the necklace from the coffee table and held it up to the light. “He’s right. I asked around. Nobody will touch it.”
Teddy could taste the panic welling up in his throat. His heart was racing, and he wanted to scream “The dead actress was your fault,” but he was having too much trouble breathing to waste his breath on Raymond.
He lowered his body to the armchair he’d salvaged from a curb after he’d done his last stretch at Rikers. “So now what do we do?” he asked.
“I’ve got it all worked out,” Raymond said. “Jeremy is coming over tonight. We pack up, give him the necklace, and leave for Mexico as soon as we get the money.”
“I’m not going anywhere till I say good-bye to my mom,” Teddy said. “As soon as I get my share, I’m going to go over to her place, spend the night, and ask her to make me a stack of cottage cheese pancakes for breakfast.”
“And how much will that cost you, Teddy boy? Five grand? Ten? How big a chunk will you be giving Mommy?”
“What I give her is none of your business.”
“It’s my business if we go to Mexico, and I’ve got forty-five thousand dollars, and all you’ve got is a belly full of cottage cheese pancakes. I’m not supporting you, Teddy. Or your mother.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Teddy said. “What time did Jeremy say he’d be here?”
Raymond shrugged. “He didn’t give me a time. He just said tonight. Wake me when he gets here. I’m going to take a nap.”
CHAPTER 13
I was at my computer when a message from Kylie popped up on the screen.
I have an update on the Happy Homemaker. Stop by my office if you want to hear more.
Kylie loves to be right. She loves it even more when I’m wrong.
Her office is the desk directly behind mine. I swiveled my chair. “It sounds like you have something to gloat about,” I said.
“Me?” she asked, gloating. “I just thought you’d want to hear the latest on the hospital robberies. I did a little research, and it seems your favorite risotto lady volunteered at four of the nine hospitals that were robbed.”
“Does she have a rap sheet?”
“She’s clean as a whistle. In fact, three of the volunteer coordinators I spoke to said she was one of the best they’ve ever worked with, and they wished they had a dozen more like her.”
I waited for the but.
“But,” she said, “I did find something interesting. Her father was a petroleum engineer. As a kid she moved around the Middle East. After college, she went to India for three years and worked for a charity that provided medical treatment for street children.”
“And that’s interesting because…?”
“You heard what Gregg Hutchings said. Where do you think all this high-tech equipment is going to wind up? Lyon is a do-gooder, and she spent years surrounded by third world deprivation. My guess is she’s not even getting paid. She’s not only doing volunteer work for the hospitals; she’s doing volunteer work for the people who are ripping them off.”
“That’s brilliant police work, Detective MacDonald. The woman has no criminal record, but she’s seen poverty, so she’s decided to do her part for the underprivileged by helping a bunch of black marketeers traffic stolen goods,” I said. “Why don’t you run that by Mick Wilson at the DA’s office and see how long it takes him to kick you out on your ass?”
“That’s not the apology I was hoping for,” she said.
“So she worked in four of the hospitals. If I were a lawyer, I’d call it more circumstantial evidence. But as a cop, I’m willing to admit there’s more to like about Ms. Lyon than her porcini-asparagus risotto.”
“Are you willing to go back and bring her in for some serious questions?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’d rather let her think we’ve lost interest, then put a tail on her and see if she can lead us to someone higher up the food chain.”
“That’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said since you were suckered in by that teary-eyed Martha Stewart act. There’s hope for you yet, Jordan.”
My cell rang, and I picked it up. It was Cheryl.
“Hey, what are you doing tonight?” she asked.
“You tell me,” I said.
“How do you feel about Italian food?”
“Fantastico.”
“Can you be home by seven?”
“You bet,” I said.
“Great. Love you.”
“Love you back.”
I hung up the phone and let what I’d just heard wash over me. My brain was thinking about the night ahead when Kylie violated my reverie.
“Zach, did you hear what I said?”
“Sorry. Run it by me again.”
“I said we can’t tail Lyon. I know the mayor wants us on these hospital robberies, but they’re sucking up time we need for the Travers homicide. Let’s talk to Cates and see if she can drum us up another team to do the legwork.”
“Sure.”
She got up from her desk and headed toward Cates’s office. My body followed, but my head was still wrapped up in the phone call from Cheryl.
It was the first time I’d ever heard her refer to my apartment as home. It felt incredible.
CHAPTER 14
Captain Delia Cates is third-generation NYPD. She grew up in Harlem, and if you ask her where she went to college, she’ll smile and say, “Oh, there was a good school a mile from my house.” The school, as those of us in the know can tell you, is Columbia University.
She graduated at eighteen, got a master’s in criminal justice from John Jay College, and did four years in the marine corps before joining the department. She rose through the ranks like a comet, and when our previous mayor created NYPD Red, his consigliere, Irwin Diamond, tapped Cates to run it.
“It’s not that I was the best cop for the job,” Cates told me one night when we were having a drink. “But when most of your constituency is overprivileged white men, it’s smart politics to put a black woman in charge.”
The truth is, she was the best cop for the job, and most days I love having her as my boss. This day was not one of them.
“That’s all you’ve got?” she said when Kylie and I told her where we were on the Travers murder. “You two haven’t done squat since you met with the Bassett brothers last night.”
“We’ve got cops canvassing the area, looking for eyewitnesses,” Kylie said. “And there are at least twenty-five traffic and private security cameras at 54th and Broadway, where the shooting happened. We have Jan Hogle going through those.”
“And how about that extensive network of CIs you told me about this morning?” Cates said. “How’s that working out?”
“You’re right, Captain,” I said before Kylie could moun
t a defense. “We haven’t done squat on the Travers case. No excuse.”
Cates laughed. “Of course you have an excuse. It’s called politics over police work. The mayor and her husband want you on these hospital robberies. You’re stuck with it. But I can’t take you off this homicide. Which means you have to do both.”
“We can,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster, “but we could use some help. We have a person of interest—a hospital volunteer who may have been the inside person on four of the nine jobs. She may lead us to bigger fish, but we need to tail her. Do you think you can snag us another team to throw against it?”
“I’d be happy to,” Cates said. “Do you think you can snag me the perps who killed Elena Travers?”
“We’d be happy to,” Kylie said.
Cates ignored the wisecrack and looked at me. “You’ve got Betancourt and Torres,” she said, waving us out of her office without another word.
Five minutes later, we were sitting down to brief our backup.
Before they came to Red, Detectives Jenny Betancourt and Wanda Torres had more collars than any team in Brooklyn South. Betancourt is a pit bull when it comes to details, and Torres—well, she’s just a pit bull. Kylie and I had worked with them before, and we liked them—partly because they were new and eager to make their bones, and partly because they reminded us of us. They bickered constantly, like an old married couple.
“I agree with Kylie,” Betancourt said after we briefed them. “Lyon spent her formative years watching a lot of people die because of substandard medical care. That’s enough to give her a motive.”
“Bullshit,” Torres said. “I spent my formative years in the South Bronx. Five kids in my grade school died of asthma. Asthma, for God’s sake. How’s that for shoddy medical care? People who grow up in poverty steal steaks from the supermarket, TV sets, maybe—not medical equipment.”
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