by Adam Mitzner
“That’s on me,” Henderson said. “We didn’t want to jeopardize our investigation. Also, I thought we could help you all out a little better if we didn’t disclose it right away. But this morning, Allison and another federal agent engaged in an undercover buy directly with Mr. Warwick. He’s on tape. All wrapped up with a bow. We arrested him on the spot.”
“Arrested him for what?” Asra said.
“Trafficking in stolen art. There’ll be other charges to follow. Money laundering, wire fraud. It’ll be a decent chunk of time he’ll be facing when it’s all added up.”
“Where is he now?” Asra asked.
“Federal custody. Over at the MCC.”
“How does keeping one of our prime suspects in a murder investigation on ice in federal lockup help us out?” Gabriel asked.
“Our initial thought was that maybe if we questioned him, you know, focusing on the federal crimes, he might let down his guard and give us something on the murder,” Henderson said.
Gabriel actually laughed. “Yeah, how’d that work out for you?”
“About how you figured it would, based on your sarcasm. He lawyered up instantly. We’re still going to hold him for the full forty-eight hours. Hoping that a taste of prison life might soften him up a bit. But once he appears for arraignment, we expect him to make bail on the art charges.”
“Well,” said Asra with a shrug, “at least we can take Allison off our suspect list.”
“And put Reid Warwick at the top,” Gabriel added.
Reid did not like a word of what Steve Weitzen was telling him.
He had been sitting in a prison cell for more than six hours now, clinging to the idea that he’d be out as soon as his mouthpiece showed up. Now that mouthpiece was telling Reid that he’d be staying put for a while.
In Reid’s line of work, keeping a guy like Weitzen on retainer was the equivalent of visiting the dentist twice a year. You wanted to check in every so often to make sure you were not going to have a more serious problem down the road, and if something came up in the middle of the night that needed immediate attention, you had someone at the ready to take care of it.
Reid had first retained Weitzen’s services ten years earlier, regarding a money-laundering investigation in which he had become enmeshed. He liked Weitzen’s bedside manner. The way he told it to Reid straight, and didn’t seem to judge him. Of course, he mainly liked the fact that he hadn’t been indicted that time around. Some of his associates hadn’t been so lucky.
Over the next decade, the advice of a criminal defense lawyer had come in handy in probably half a dozen instances. Usually they concerned Reid’s principal business, which was money laundering. Occasionally, they involved his side hustles, like trafficking in stolen art. None of them had ever involved murder, however.
This was also the first time he’d been in the unfortunate position of talking to his lawyer while incarcerated.
“I’m sorry, Reid,” Weitzen said. “I can’t push up the arraignment date. By law, they can hold you for forty-eight hours. I think they want to squeeze you a bit on the Sommers murder.”
“I don’t know anything about the murder,” Reid said.
Weitzen showed no emotion. Reid knew he didn’t care one way or the other about whether his client was a murderer, a money launderer, or an art thief.
“I hear you. The good news is that you’ll get bail when we get before the judge. The bad news is that they think you do know something about the murder, and that means you’re inside for two more days.”
“What if I give them my DNA? Will that give us some leverage with them to push up the bail hearing?”
Weitzen considered this for a moment in his lawyerly way. “It can’t hurt,” he finally said. Then he caught himself. “Are you absolutely certain that your blood isn’t going to be a match?”
Reid looked at him. “I’m not stupid, Steve. I wouldn’t be suggesting this if I had actually murdered the guy. My DNA will be at his office because I was there. But that’s not a secret at this point. I don’t know what they’re looking for with my DNA, but it’s not going to show I killed James because I didn’t.”
Jessica had been told that once she invoked her right to counsel, the police wouldn’t bother her anymore. Yet there they were, standing on the other side of her front door.
Even before she could tell them to leave, Lieutenant Velasquez said, “We have some news about the woman who was doing the art deal with your husband. The woman named Allison.”
She considered telling Lieutenant Velasquez that she didn’t care anymore, just like she’d said the other day. But that hadn’t been true then, and it wasn’t true now.
She opened the door. No harm in simply listening, she figured.
“Okay. So tell me about Allison.”
“It turns out Allison is Allison Lashley. She’s an FBI agent.”
If they had said Allison was Bigfoot, Jessica would have been no less surprised. “Why was an FBI agent involved in selling art?”
Detective Jamali smiled at Jessica’s mistake. “She was working undercover. The FBI was investigating stolen art. The pieces that your husband was selling with Reid Warwick—the Pollocks—were stolen.”
When Jessica finally made sense of what the detective was telling her, her sole takeaway was that James hadn’t been unfaithful. Of course he hadn’t. She was annoyed with herself for ever doubting him and hoped that, wherever he was right now, he forgave her.
“Did you hear what I just said, Mrs. Sommers? Your husband was trafficking in stolen art.”
Instinctively, Jessica wanted to defend James; then she remembered that he didn’t need her help. He had the best defense possible—he was dead.
Wayne looked forward to seeing Jessica when he arrived at the hospital. He was hoping that she might agree to have dinner tonight. She’d declined his offer the previous night, and he thought she was working on an every-other-night pattern.
Much to his disappointment, however, she was not in the waiting area when he got there. He assumed that he’d find her with Owen, yet when he entered his son’s room, he saw that was not the case. Wayne’s spirits were nonetheless lifted by the fact that Owen was awake, which was not a common occurrence. In fact, Owen seemed to be on some type of sleep cycle that made 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. the middle of the night.
“So how are you today? Scale of one to ten.”
Wayne had read that this question was a good way to get information about Owen’s health. Asking “How are you?” was invariably met with “fine,” whether Owen was or not. At least a numerical evaluation gave Wayne a way to measure Owen’s progress.
“What was I yesterday?”
“Two, but almost three.”
“Holding steady, then.”
“I’ll take that.”
“Good, because that’s what I’m giving you.”
“You know, now that your mom isn’t here, and you’re lucid during one of my visits, I thought maybe we could talk about something.”
Wayne stopped, gauging Owen for some sign that he was receptive to the idea. As usual, his son provided little visual evidence of his thoughts.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Wayne said with a smile. “One of the things about being a teenager, if I remember, and I think I do, is that you pretty much have the perspective about life that you’re always going to have. Of course, it’ll change a little bit; the importance of certain things will grow or decrease. You won’t be as passionate about playing video games, for example. But who you are, how you feel about people . . . you already have a clear sense of that. Even though, as far as I know at least, you’ve never been in love, I suspect you have some sense about what that’s going to feel like.”
Another pause. The same blank stare from his son.
“But the one thing you don’t know, which you can’t know, is what it’s like to have a child. It utterly transforms you, in a way that nothing else ever could. And that’s not hyperbole, O. It’s the truth. We hu
mans are hardwired in certain ways. As a biology teacher, I can speak with some authority about this. There is a biological imperative for survival. So much of what we do is to protect ourselves from pain or death. You with me so far?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Good. So I think that’s the first order for every living species on this planet. There’s something inside that’s constantly telling you, Don’t die. Avoid pain. But then you have a child, and all of a sudden, it’s like a switch is flipped. Now that voice says something different. It says, Don’t let that child die. Don’t let that child suffer any pain.”
“Okay.”
“And the things that you’ll do to make sure that doesn’t happen, they may be things you never thought yourself capable of doing. People who run into burning buildings. Or those stories of fathers who know they can’t swim but still dive into the pool to rescue a child, which almost always leads to both of them drowning.”
“I’m not sure why you’re telling me this, Dad. Are you going to die for me?”
Owen said this with a chuckle, but Wayne could tell his son understood that it was not a laughing matter. In fact, he was reasonably sure his son understood exactly what he was saying to him.
Taxi TV is the service that plays in the back of New York City taxicabs. It’s annoying as can be, with its Jimmy Kimmel segments and easy Jeopardy! questions. Haley always muted it as soon as she got in a cab.
She followed that pattern for today’s ride as well. First, she told the driver where she was going; then she pressed the button to turn off the sound. As she did, however, a photograph of Reid popped up on the screen. In it, Reid looked tanned and slightly drunk. In other words, like Reid.
Haley turned the sound back on. The coverage was from NY1, the city’s local news station. A woman’s voice was providing the narrative.
“FBI agents said that Mr. Warwick, shown here, was selling stolen Jackson Pollock paintings. Jackson Pollock holds the record for highest sale price of an American artist’s work. In 2015, his painting titled Number 17A was sold for a whopping $200 million in a private sale. The US Attorney said that Mr. Warwick faces up to fifty-seven years in prison.”
The story lasted all of fifteen seconds before the screen morphed into an advertisement for a local steak house. By then, Haley was trying to find more information about Reid’s arrest on her phone.
She searched “Reid Warwick.” Too many hits. Then she filtered it to the last twenty-four hours.
The top hit was the website of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. A press release told the story in a bit more detail:
Press Releases
Department of Justice
US Attorney’s Office
Southern District of New York
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Art Dealer Charged with Trafficking in Stolen Art, Money Laundering
Abby Freedman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced the arrest today of REID WARWICK on charges of grand larceny, wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering. Specifically, WARWICK has been charged with the attempted sale of several Jackson Pollock works stolen more than 40 years ago from the home of Lee Krasner, Pollock’s widow.
Freedman said, “Reid Warwick, an art dealer, claimed that he was representing a client who had lawfully acquired numerous Jackson Pollock drawings, each worth approximately $1 million. In fact, Mr. Warwick was well aware that these works had been stolen.”
Freedman praised the outstanding investigative work of Assistant US Attorney Parker Henderson and FBI special agent Allison Lashley.
The charges contained in the Complaint are merely accusations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
Haley found it gratifying that she had been right all along. James’s deal with Reid was illegal. If he hadn’t been murdered, James would be in handcuffs now too.
Reid hadn’t been charged with murder, though. That meant they were still investigating. Which left open the terrifying possibility that they still could be coming for her.
21
Once Reid Warwick was in a talking mood, the man let loose like an open spigot. Information flowed out of him. Unfortunately, Gabriel already knew all of it.
Nonetheless, Warwick confirmed Gabriel’s suspicions about the Sommerses’ money problems. Warwick also told them that the reason James Sommers had agreed to sell the Pollocks in the first place was to pay for his stepson’s treatment. “Without the money from those sales, James knew that boy was fucked,” was Warwick’s eloquent summation of the situation.
Warwick was most forceful in pointing the finger at Haley, however. He admitted that they sometimes slept together and that he thought she was angry enough at her ex-husband to kill him.
“There’s something not right about that girl,” he said. “She could go on and on about how much she wanted to kill James. If I were you, I’d focus my attention on her.”
Gabriel hardly needed the advice of a felon. But he did appreciate being able to cross Reid Warwick off his list of suspects. Warwick’s DNA didn’t match the blood left at the scene. And, of course, the man had an alibi courtesy of Agent Lashley, who’d confirmed that when Reid left James’s office, she remained behind to talk to James, and the victim was very much alive.
“It’s beginning to feel a little like that board game Clue,” Asra said. “We’re not any closer to finding out who did it, but at least we’re eliminating suspects.”
Every time his parents came to visit, the first thing they asked was how he felt. Owen understood why they did it. It was the standard question under the circumstances. The problem was that he didn’t know how to answer. At this point, it was almost a metaphysical query.
He felt terrible. About as bad as someone could be and still be alive. And yet, life continued to cling to him.
Telling that to his parents didn’t seem right, though. So he made something up about getting stronger, or not feeling too bad, or whatever else he thought they wanted to hear.
He did, in fact, reek of garlic. And just like Dr. Cammerman had suggested what now seemed like eons ago, Owen sucked on Life Savers to get that god-awful taste out of his mouth. And he remained terribly weak.
Despite how he felt, the doctors claimed that he was getting better. The stem cells were “taking” and “reproducing,” whatever that meant. Sometimes he wondered if they weren’t just feeding him the same sort of BS he was telling his parents. A never-ending cycle of lies.
“Every day that goes by is a good day,” Wayne told Jessica one afternoon at the hospital.
Four weeks had passed since James’s death. Two and a half since Owen’s operation.
It was typical Wayne, Jessica thought. Putting a happy face on a situation that was anything but.
“That’s one way of thinking about it,” she said. “The other is that the day of reckoning is that much closer.”
“I prefer my way,” Wayne said with a smile. “Maybe you should try it too.”
“Maybe,” she said.
“Focus on the positive, Jess. We’ve fully paid for Owen’s treatment. We didn’t think we’d be able to at the beginning of all this. Remember how desperate we were back then? And now the doctor says Owen’s doing great. He might be able to come home in a couple of weeks.”
The statement made Jessica’s blood boil. She knew Wayne hadn’t meant to directly equate James’s death with Owen’s life, but that’s all she heard out of his little pep talk.
“We paid for his treatment with James’s life insurance,” she said loud enough that the others in the waiting room took notice.
Wayne tried to calm her, but it was too late. That dam had broken, and feelings Jessica had held inside for weeks burst through. “I never begrudged you for hating him. And I give you high marks for always putting those feelings aside and doing what’s in Owen’s best interest. Not every man would. But you can’t imagine what it’s like to lose someone you lo
ved so much, suddenly, and under such terrible circumstances. Someone that you thought you’d grow old with.”
She knew she had gone too far the moment the words left her mouth. Maybe even before, which was why she’d said them.
“I think I do,” Wayne said, then walked away.
Wayne told himself he needed to remain in control. Sometimes he felt like Bruce Banner, struggling with his alter ego, the Hulk. He had to control that beast within him.
As much as he told himself that he and Jessica were going through this together, today’s rebuke revealed it for the fantasy it was.
He was alone.
If that was the case, he might as well get used to it. So, after leaving Jessica at the hospital, he went home, popped open a beer, and turned on a college basketball game.
Shortly before the first half ended, Wayne heard the sound of cars in his driveway. Then the slamming of multiple car doors.
They were coming for him.
The knocks on the door were followed by, “Mr. Fiske, this is Lieutenant Velasquez of the NYPD. We have a warrant and will forcibly enter if you do not immediately open the door.”
From the window his eyes confirmed what his ears had already told him. There were two cars in his driveway. One a dark sedan, the other a marked police vehicle.
Opening the door, Wayne saw that his visitors matched their modes of transportation. Lieutenant Velasquez and Detective Jamali were in plain clothes. Behind them were two uniformed cops.
“Mr. Fiske, you’re under arrest for the murder of James Sommers.”
The cop kept talking, reciting the Miranda warning that Wayne knew by heart from television. As the lieutenant uttered the words, the female officer grabbed his arms and applied handcuffs.
Wayne didn’t say a word.
“Does the name Howard Fiske ring any bells?” Lieutenant Velasquez said.
Wayne remained mute. When Lieutenant Velasquez realized that Wayne was not rising to the bait, he smiled, and said, “He lives in Portland, Oregon. We found him courtesy of a genealogy database. Unfortunately for you, your cousin Howard’s DNA was a partial match for the blood left at the crime scene.
