“Do you have something quiet, Brigitte? It looks like you’ve got all of New Haven in here tonight.”
“Yes,” she concurred with a smile. “It’s a busy night in Connecticut—thank God.”
He rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand.
“Long day?”
“Terribly. I just want to eat and go to bed.”
“Jean Paul will fix you up something nice and hot. You’ll feel better with a belly full of good food.”
“Excellent, and the quicker the better. The drive up from the city was horrendous. I’m completely frazzled.”
A busboy was setting a table for two. Brigitte snapped her fingers. The busboy looked up and cleared one of the place settings. Brigitte offered Hartley the menu after he had been seated. “Not necessary,” he said. “I know what I want.”
“Yes, of course. What would you like?”
“Spinach salad and the organic salmon.”
“Yes, very good. Can I bring you something to drink?”
“Just bubbly water.”
“Done. Your first course will be right out.” As she raced off, she pointed at the nearest waiter. “Perrier for Mr. Hartley, right away.”
Hartley pressed his back against the chair and felt the tension release from his spine. The couple that Brigitte had abruptly disregarded in order to seat him was staring at him in a manner that made him feel odd. He looked away when the waiter approached to fill his water glass. “Good evening, Mr. Hartley. Is there anything I can get for you?”
“His dinner, Kevin,” said the chef, Jean Paul, who had just stepped up behind the waiter. “His salad is up. Don’t keep our guest waiting.” Kevin withdrew to the kitchen, and Hartley stood as Jean Paul approached the table. “Cronan, my friend, where is your lovely wife, Claire?”
“She’s in West Palm Beach for the winter.”
He nodded to express his understanding. “While you work like a dog. But tell me … spinach salad and salmon? Lovely choices, but where is your appetite? No oysters? No fire-roasted lamb?”
“That was the old Cronan,” he replied self-effacingly. “Doctor’s orders.”
“How about some scotch? I just opened a bottle of Lagavulin? That will set you right.”
Hartley met the offer with bloodshot eyes and a defeated sigh. “Gout.”
~~~
The valet brought Hartley’s Rolls Royce around to the restaurant entrance. Hartley tipped him a twenty and pulled the door closed on his own. “Call Claire,” he said aloud. His instructions were met with the actuation of the cabin speaker system. He could hear the phone dialing as he sped down Chapel Street.
“Cronan, love, how was dinner at Union Circle?”
“Ha! Are you having me followed?”
Claire Hartley laughed. “No, Darling, no one is following you. Phoenicia Cortland called me. She said you barged into the restaurant and went right to your table, ignoring her and her husband completely.”
“The Cortlands? Do I know them?”
“You should. You met them at the yacht club this summer.” Claire gave it a moment to sink in. “They were the ones speaking to Brigitte when you confiscated the table that was being set for them.”
“Oh my. I was almost out on my feet. I honestly didn’t remember their faces. That’s why I’m calling you now. I’m going to bed the moment I get in.”
“Then sweet dreams, love. I’m off to play mahjong with the girls. Kisses.” A pop emanated from the speaker as the call disconnected.
Hartley drove the rest of the trip in silence. He was weary and needed his full concentration to navigate the winding roads in the dark. He had just cleared the estate entrance gates when he felt a cold, steel edge against his throat and heard the mocking voice coming from the rear seat. “I’m glad you enjoyed your last meal, Cronan … Kisses!”
Chapter Twelve
A light snow had fallen overnight leaving a thin, white blanket on the Central Park lawn. It had snowed just enough to be pretty but not heavily enough to make a mess—the snow on the paths had already melted. Saturday morning in Manhattan: the day had that right-with-the-world feeling. Crisp air pinched my cheeks as I lifted a cup of coffee to my lips. “So tell me all about yourself.”
Steve Farrell looked decidedly more casual in his jeans and corduroy jacket. He kicked a stone off the path and then turned toward me grinning. “I might put you to sleep.”
“Boring stuff?” He nodded. “Embellish if I start to yawn.”
“Embellish? I’m an attorney—I make my living embellishing. By embellish, I presume you mean make up copious amounts of bullshit?”
I nodded. “Nothing too heavy, just enough to keep me from lapsing into a coma.”
He smiled, showing off his dimples. “I spent my early years in Vermont—typical farm-boy childhood. I played baseball when the ground wasn’t frozen, skied … milked cows.”
I chuckled—I didn’t know many guys who knew their way around udders … well, not bovine udders anyway. “I haven’t met many farm boys.”
“A city girl like you … I didn’t think so. Anyway, my father sold the family property when I was about ten and made a bundle. My mom had grown tired of rural life, and so that’s when we moved to Manhattan.”
“So when did you decide that you didn’t like bad guys?”
“When the DA offered me a job.”
“That’s pretty honest. No call to justice? You’re not going to rant about ethics and morality?”
“Initially it was just a paycheck. My family has always been pretty private—I didn’t have a lot of connections to fall back on, so I took what I could get. After a while though, the job grabbed hold of me. I’ve been hounding dirtbags ever since.”
Some of the cops on the job didn’t think very kindly of lawyers, even public prosecutors like Farrell. It was something of a no-guts-all-glory mentality. I didn’t have a problem with them—guns and handcuffs aren’t for everybody. “Is that when you became the Brooks Brothers Avenger?” Farrell had that down-home lawyer look honed to a tee: gray, natural-shoulder suits, neatly cropped hair, and wire-frame glasses—like Clark Kent but without the comma of hair over his eye.
“Ha. You’re all right, Chalice.”
Just all right? Did you check out my butt? Wait a second, I’ll walk a few paces ahead. I’m told it’s not to be missed. I watched smoke puff from the rooftop of a nearby building. “What about your mom?”
I’m not sure why my question hit Farrell so hard. It took him a long while to answer, and he had a far-off look in his eyes when he did, “That’s a long story.”
It felt as if we were having a good time until I hit him with my bull-in-a-china-shop question. I wasn’t sure where to take the conversation after that, so I made the mistake of talking about the case. Sometimes I have the romantic instincts of a Doberman. “So Hartley was one step ahead of us.”
“The alibi affidavit? Gee, I don’t know; I kind of saw that coming. He was just doing what any good lawyer would have done. Hartley’s not exactly small time. As a matter of fact, I’ve been wondering how Quinlan can afford to retain him. Hartley doesn’t do a lot of pro bono work, and then when you told me that he gave Quinlan a place to stay …”
“Yeah, maybe that’s worth looking into.”
“I’ll see what I can find out. “
Our cell phones went off at practically the same time. We exchanged suspicious glances—there’s no such thing as coincidence in our line of work.
~~~
Max Blick adjusted the focus on his field glasses; the image of the young woman next to Farrell sharpened. She had just pulled a cell phone from her pocket and was gazing at it. He watched as she put the phone to her ear.
He scratched his thick sideburns and tugged down on his plaid cap until only the ends of his sideburns remained visible. He looked through the lens again—Farrell was now on the phone as well. Blick heard the ground crackle behind him and quickly angled his binoculars toward the top of a distant tree, just
as an elderly couple approached.
“Birding?” the gray-haired man asked. The couple came to a stop alongside Blick and gazed in the direction of the treetop.
Blick nodded. “I thought I saw a cardinal.”
“Oh, cardinals are so beautiful,” she said. “They used to feed in our yard.”
Her companion shielded his eyes, trying to get a better view. “Too far away for me to see,” he complained.
“Come on, Harris. Let’s not disturb him.”
“Enjoy your walk,” Blick said without watching them depart. He redirected his gaze back to the young woman and then to Farrell. “Another pretty one,” he muttered. “I don’t know how he does it.”
Chapter Thirteen
Blick leaned against the railing at Rockefeller Center watching two boys whip around the ice rink, hot-dogging it as they weaved around more leisurely skaters. Man, that looks like fun. One of them came too close to another skater and spooked him. The skater’s feet went out from under him. He winced as he slammed butt-first onto the ice. He swore, “Son of a bitch!” and shook his fist at the snickering boys.
Ooh! That’s got to sting. Blick checked his watch—it was exactly noon. The sun warmed his face as he withdrew his cell phone, dialed, and waited for his call to be answered. Five rings … six. He finally heard the call connect. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“Hold on.”
He heard an electrical whine in the background, which he recognized as the hum of a pool lift motor. He took a few deep breaths while he waited for the noise to stop and visualized the frail man being lowered into the heated swimming pool in the basement level of his Manhattan brownstone. Must be nice, he thought, allowing envy to surface.
“Right on time.”
“How’s the water?” Blick said, masking resentment of his employer’s ostentatious wealth. He pictured the large indoor pool and the wisps of steam rising from the water toward the ornate crystal chandelier.
“A steamy eighty-five, Max, but I’m not paying you for small talk. What’s going on?”
“I followed him this morning. He took a walk through Central Park with a pretty brunette.”
“Who is she?”
“I don’t know yet.” A long moment passed which Blick interpreted as passive-aggressive disappointment. He quickly added, “This is the first time I’ve seen them together. I was out in front of his building early this morning. I followed him into Central Park where he met up with said pretty young thing.”
“I need to know who she is immediately.”
“Hey, I can only watch one person at a time.”
“You don’t seem to have an issue cashing all the checks I send you.”
“I’m doing the best I can. If—”
“Hold!”
Sure, I’ll hold. Blick heard the sound of footsteps over the phone line and the slapping of slippers on marble. That’s got to be Chang, the physical therapist. He had only met Chang once—the conversation amounted to little more than an exchange of the word hello. The man had made no effort to be social or for that matter to act human. Blick remembered the small man marching his rigid, soldier-like walk alongside the pool and then slipping off his white robe to reveal his taut, overdeveloped physique. He had slipped into the pool so smoothly as to barely cause a ripple. He had then worked his patient’s body, massaging and stretching the diseased legs without making eye contact, kneading the muscles as if they were lifeless lumps of clay.
“I have to go. Chang is here. When will the coroner release Hartley’s body?
“Later in the week, I suppose—as soon as they’re satisfied they didn’t miss anything.”
“Be sure to let me know when they lower that bastard into the ground.”
Blick couldn’t help himself—he laughed and disconnected the call. What a piece of work.
Chapter Fourteen
I always attend a homicide victim’s funeral—people-watching. Who was there to show their respect? Who was there out of a sense of obligation? Who was there to see their victim take a long dirt nap? There are no sure bets in a criminal investigation, but sometimes … Well, just sometimes.
The issue with a high profile figure like Hartley was that the number of attendees at his funeral was staggering. Hartley had been a fixture in the Manhattan legal system for decades. He had a list of friends, acquaintances, and connections so large that it dwarfed those of the most powerful political figures. I waited in the cemetery parking lot, making note of who arrived. After a while, there were so many cars that they had to be diverted to a nearby parking field.
A Bentley convertible rolled up beside me. The driver’s window lowered and a man with an aristocratic countenance beckoned me to approach. “Yes?”
“I need room for my car,” he said flatly.
I pointed to the long line of cars crawling toward the overflow lot. “There seems to be room over there.”
“I don’t wait in lines,” he said informing me of his entitlement. I shrugged, a tough shit kind of shrug. “Do you know who I am?” he huffed.
A woman was walking by. I got her attention. “This gentleman doesn’t seem to know who he is. You think he might have amnesia?”
Mr. Importance gnashed his teeth. “Screw you.”
I pulled my badge and grinned. “Yeah, there’s a line for that too.” He glared at me and then was gone as the tinted-glass window went up. The Bentley sped away and stopped in a no-parking zone. Big surprise.
A Range Rover was one of the last cars to arrive—not one of the moderately expensive minis, but a full-size SUV, the kind used by big-game hunters to track prey across the Serengeti and by yuppies to impress their neighbors—a good seventy-five grand, even on fire sale. The driver was Steve Farrell. “Any place to park?” he asked.
I pointed to Mr. Grouchy Pants’ Bentley. “You can block him in. He’s not going anywhere.” Farrell parked where instructed. I walked over to his Range Rover just as he slipped an overcoat over his suit. “I like your car. It says that you’re rough and ready to spend your cash without shame. When did the DA’s office start paying so well?”
He had a smug smile on his face as he said, “You know better than that, Chalice—my position pays peanuts. I’ve always driven a Range Rovers. It’s a tradition.”
“Nice! That’s a much better tradition than poverty. I’m a Zipcar girl myself.”
“I like rugged cars.”
“Still, it’s not a Kia.”
“We have money,” he said. “I already told you that.”
“Of course. I remember—someone bought the farm, but in a good way. Besides, I have no issue with trust-fund men.”
Farrell grinned. “Did you get here early?”
“Early? I’ll say. Vampires were just returning to their coffins.”
He rolled his eyes. “So who showed up? Anyone qualify for your rogues gallery?”
“Quinlan’s here—nothing speaks quite as well as an acquitted murderer who pays respect to his recently deceased attorney. Every judge in Manhattan is here, as well as several people whose feet do not appear to touch the ground.”
Farrell chuckled. “It is Connecticut after all: the home of old money.”
I looked toward the gravesite. “I think they’re about to start.” Farrell and I joined the ceremony. Cronan Hartley’s casket was set atop his final resting place. I thought back to Saturday morning in Central Park and the moment when our phones went off at the same time—my call was from Sonellio and Farrell’s was from his boss, both telling us that Hartley had been murdered. He had been found in his car just beyond the gates of his estate. The postman spotted the car while making his delivery the next morning—he saw Hartley’s head slacked against the lambskin headrest and the driver’s window smeared with blood. The security camera recorded Hartley’s entrance onto the grounds. It had been angled to view the car as it entered and got a great shot of the front of the car and Hartley. Hartley’s killer was hidden from view, most likely pressed against the rear floorboard
of the expansive sedan. The digital time recording stamped Hartley’s entry at 9:58 p.m. and recorded it on the system hard drive, which was stored in the house. The system stopped transmitting at 10:06. The surveillance camera had been smashed, presumably so as not to record the fleeing assassin.
“Rough way to die,” Farrell said.
I placed my hand over my throat. “Slit ear to ear—not the way I’d want to go.”
“Nor I.”
Credit card records indicated that Hartley had dined at a nearby restaurant just prior to his demise. His killer could have slipped into the car while Hartley ate. The valets had been questioned but had not seen anyone suspicious. I wasn’t surprised—most valets drive like they’re committing grand larceny. Their MO is yank open the door, crank the engine, slam on the gas pedal, grab the tip … next.
The mood was more somber than the gray skies that hung above the cemetery. Claire Hartley was almost her husband’s equivalent in stature and appearance, tall and rangy with an asymmetrical face that was hidden behind dark glasses. Her sentiment was genuine. You don’t have to see tears to know how a person is feeling—you can sense it in their posture and the way they carry themselves. Mrs. Hartley looked like someone whose life had abruptly ended, as if the sun had departed and would never return. It was a terrible scenario: being informed of your husband’s death via phone, then the lonely flight back from Florida. I knew how she felt. It wasn’t that long ago that I lost my dad. The ache I felt at his loss rose in my gut—it was always there, waiting and lurking. Most times life helped to distract me from its presence, but not now. For a moment, I was as one with the mourners. Loss is loss, grief is grief, and there is a unity born from suffering. I could read it on the faces, almost smell it in the air.
And then one face stood out that did not seem to belong. There was something distinctive about the man with the thick sideburns and plaid cap, something about him that struck a chord. I was just about to put my finger on it when the ceremony began. The priest had a strong voice, and it pulled my attention as he began to speak, “We gather here today to celebrate the life of Seamus Cronan Hartley.”
First Kill Page 5
