Cold Hit

by Linda Fairstein

  Deni’s friend was certainly devoted to her. I could see she was going to go on bashing Lowell as long as I’d listen.

  “Are you aware that Three-you probably know it was his childhood name, and it made him crazy when Deni called him that-was never invited to join the Art Dealers Association of America?”

  Again, I shook my head to tell her that I was not.

  “In seventy-five, I think it was, and certainly before Deni, he was caught bugging the telephones of the most prestigious galleries in New York, long before hi-tech spying became a tool of the business world. He was checking on their inventory, as well as trying to get an idea of what their customers were searching for on the market. Lowell’s father had used a lot of his money to pay scholars to write catalogues raisonnés.”

  “Sorry, you’ve lost me. I don’t know what they are.”

  “They’re the key to individual artists and their works. Good ones are well researched and documented, and by controlling the catalogues of a particular artist, you control the price and value of his work. Many experts think there’s an aura of questionability about the Caxton catalogues, that histories and pedigrees have been altered for the family’s private gain. Several art historians have denounced the works publicly, which made Lowell furious. It threw into question his Vermeers, his Légers, his Davids.”

  “But Deni thought she could get her hands on those paintings?”

  “Well, yes-in part. She was also terribly frightened that she knew too much about them for Lowell to let her go. His first two wives had never really participated in his professional world. But once Deni learned it and loved it, he let her in. She knew things about Caxton and his father, and their manner of doing business, that Lowell regretted having told her once the bottom fell out. Her greatest fear-and she spoke of it to me often-was that he’d never let her walk away from him, knowing what she did about his dealings. She couldn’t stay with him, Ms. Cooper, but he wouldn’t let her go.”

  I wondered if Marilyn Seven knew anything about Deni’s partnership with the late Omar Sheffield. “Do you have any idea how desperate your friend was to get rid of her husband?”

  “About as anxious as you or I would be, if your life had been threatened like hers had.”

  “How and when was she threatened?”

  “Well, that answers that. I didn’t suppose Lowell told you about the letters Deni got last year, which practically drove her insane.”

  “No, so far he hasn’t mentioned any letters to us at all.”

  “I’ve brought you a copy of one of them, if you’d like to see it.”

  Marilyn Seven withdrew a xeroxed paper from her slim purse and passed it across to me. The copy was a page of lined white paper, covered with neatly printed handwriting and addressed to Denise Caxton. I scanned it quickly.

  My name is Jennsen, and I live in Brooklyn. I know you don’t know me, but I have been watching you since you got home from England. I know how you look like, and I know how to find you. Listen, if you go to the police about this, I will hurt you bad, or go back to Oklahoma and kill someone you really love. I know when you leave your house and go to W. 22 nd St., so I could follow you. I know you get your hair cut at La Coupe and you eat dinner twice a week at Fresco on 52 nd St. Your husband pays you $ 125,000 a month for your expenses. Are you getting this yet? I know where you buy your underpants and how much you pay for your wine. Now here’s what I want. Listen close. I want you to send $ 1,000 to my friend, who is in jail, and who’s address is on this letter. This is to show you that I am not kidding, by two ways. One is that I know every move you make, and the other is to show you that my best friends are locked up doing time, so you know I am not playing games. We know how to hurt people very bad. Lowell also told me who the five men are who are your lovers. Now you think I’m jiving? Send a check or money order to my friend Omar Sheffield, 96 B- 1911, Box 968, Coxsackie Correctional Facility, Coxsackie, New York 12051.

  REMEMBER NO POLICE. If you don’t send my friend the money, I will take charge by getting you in the near future. Include your phone number so we can talk.

  I looked up at Marilyn Seven. “What did she do about this?”

  “Certainly not call the police.”

  “Did she do what this guy wanted?”

  “What would you have done?”

  “Look,” I said, my impatience growing. “It’s not a contest about us trying to match wits. I didn’t get this letter.”

  “These letters, Ms. Cooper. A shoe box full of them. It was obvious to her that this man could only have gotten the detail about her from Lowell, and that Lowell had hired him to kill her. She knew she was being scammed, but of course she did as he told her.”

  “She sent money up to the state prison?”

  “You bet she did. Early and often. The faster she sent it, the faster the ante was raised. By the time the guy finally called her, she must have already sent him twenty thousand dollars. She was terrified, and asked him point-blank whether her husband had hired him to kill her. He confirmed it for Deni. Told her that Lowell was trying to torture her first, mentally, and that’s why he’d given this guy Jennsen so much information about her movements and whereabouts. They were planning a way for the hit to happen sometime when Lowell was abroad and Deni wasn’t in her apartment-almost exactly the way it did happen-so it couldn’t be traced back to Lowell.”

  “But she kept the correspondence going, of course,” I said.

  “To stay alive, and to turn the tables on her beloved husband. It was her idea to outbid Lowell on this deal, too-and to get the Jennsen fellow to kill Lowell before he murdered her.” Marilyn Seven leaned in and put her hand on top of mine. “I told her over and over again that she was insane, and that it would be a deadly mistake for her to play with fire. She wouldn’t listen to me, of course, and my insistence that she abandon her plan took her further and further away from me. I don’t think, in the end, that she really had anyone left that she could trust.”

  “Bryan Daughtry?” I ventured.

  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t dignify that question with a response.”

  “Do you have any of the other letters that she received?”

  “No, I never saw them. And I have no idea where she would have kept them. The first one was the only one she sent to me, when she wanted my advice. I don’t know if they’re at her home, or office, or in a safe deposit box. I felt you should know about them.”

  She removed a fifty-dollar bill from her pocket and summoned the waiter to bring a check. “I’ll be at the hotel for a few days before going back home, if you need me for anything.”

  “Under the name ‘Seven’?” I asked.

  “Yes, of course.” She smiled. “Why, I suppose you tried to check up on me before we met, Ms. Cooper. It’s close enough to my real name-the Italian word for ‘seven.’ I used it briefly, almost thirty years ago, when I attempted a career on the stage. Did I stump you?” she asked, seemingly pleased by the idea.

  “In fact, you did. We came up blank. Much too blank for someone of your means.”

  “That is my name, in a fashion. I was actually born Marina Sette, in Venezia. My mother abandoned me when I was eighteen months old. Left my father and ran off with a very dashing American-Lowell Caxton.”

  I suppose that I was unable to stifle a slight gasp.

  “My father left Italy and came to the States, where his parents raised me while my mother raised her stepchild and had two more of her own with Lowell. She never glanced over her shoulder, not even to stop from being run over in that boating accident.”

  I had grown up with the most loving mother on the face of the earth and could not comprehend how any woman could leave a child to take off with another man.

  Marina Sette went on. “My father turned his automotive parts factory in Michigan into an integral part of the Ford Motor Company-Sette Moto-by the time I was six. If you can measure wealth in material ways-and believe me, I can’t-money has never been an issue.”

>   “But Lowell Caxton-surely he knew who you were.”

  “Perhaps he’d have recognized me if I were as breathtaking as my mother must have been. But he never caught on. Not for a moment. Then, after the fireworks in England, when Deni was looking for every conceivable way to hurt him, she couldn’t resist telling him exactly who I was.”

  “And his reaction?”

  “I wanted it to be rage, of course. I wanted it to cause him to agonize over me-or at least, if he didn’t care about my feelings, he should regret the loss of my husband as a rather substantial client. As I should have expected, all I got was indifference.

  “Surely you can understand why I thought Deni was on such a treacherous course with her pen pal. After all, there was no need to go outside the family.” Marina Sette removed her cigarette from the holder and crushed it in the ashtray on the table. “I could have killed Lowell Caxton myself.”

  12

  Laura stopped me on my way back to my desk, half an hour after I had left Mercer in front of the Four Seasons Hotel. It was almost three and I was making my first appearance of the day at the office. “McKinney was looking for you. He’s assigned someone to the investigation of the dead guy they found in the rail yards last night.”

  “Tell him to listen to his voice mail. I called him this morning to tell him it’s part of my case. As nicely as you can say it, Laura, tell him to keep his hands off my corpses, okay? Boss back from Albany yet?”

  “Rose said not to worry. He’s in a meeting all afternoon with some of the lawyers on that foreign bank scandal. They’re offering millions of dollars of forfeitures-Battaglia hasn’t even asked about your case since he returned. But you’ve got an unexpected visitor, Alex. Mrs. Braverman is back. I’ve had her in the waiting area since lunchtime, but she won’t leave and she won’t talk to anyone else. You’re the only one who can help her.”

  “Tell Max to bring her in. I don’t think I’ve seen her in six months, have I?”

  “Got that search warrant ready for me yet?” Chapman asked. I knew he’d come down to meet me when he had finished at the M.E.’s Office, but I hadn’t expected him to walk through my door quite so soon.

  I lowered myself into my chair and groaned. “Slow down. I just walked in and I’ve got some social work to do. Just stand by for a few minutes. You’re about to meet my favorite witness.”

  “Do not ever go to an autopsy of someone run over by a freight train. I’ve seen some pretty gruesome sights, but this was like chopped-”

  “Spare me the details. The photographs will be more than I need to know.” It was mandatory for one of the assigned detectives to be present during the medical examiner’s autopsy proceedings on a possible homicide victim.

  Max walked in, leading a very obese elderly woman on her arm. Mrs. Braverman was wearing a garishly colored sundress and a chartreuse straw hat with an enormous brim.

  “Alexandra, darling, I’m so glad you got down here in time to see me.” The octogenarian dropped Max’s hand and waddled across the room to embrace me as I came out from behind the desk. “And who’s this handsome young man?”

  “Michael Patrick Chapman, ma’am, Miss Cooper’s favorite detective,” he replied, giving her his best and brightest grin.

  “Is he on my investigation now?” she asked me.

  “He’s the man. I brought him in specially for you. He’s solved hundreds of these cases. What’s been going on since the last time you were here?”

  She plopped into one of the leather armchairs opposite me, while Mike leaned against a file cabinet and listened to her story. “You were right about Christmas and New Year’s, Alexandra. They must have gone away for the holidays because I didn’t have any problems after I saw you. Then, of course, I went to Boca to be with my son and grandchildren for a few months. Now, ever since I’m back, they’re making life miserable for me.”

  “Tell Detective Chapman who they are, Mrs. Braverman.”

  “Extraterrestrials, son. In my day we used to call them Martians. But I’ve done a lot of reading up on this, and now I know they could be from anywhere out there.”

  Mike kneeled by her side and looked her directly in the eye. “What are they up to this time?”

  “They’ve moved into the apartment upstairs, where old Mr. Rubenstein used to live before his daughter shipped him off to a home,” she said, now slipping into a whisper as she talked to Chapman. “They’ve been flashing signals at me, beaming them through the ceilings and the walls. They’re trying to control my brain waves.”

  “Are they doing it through the toaster and the television set, too?” he asked, with the same degree of intensity that I had seen him question murder suspects.

  “Exactly!” she replied emphatically.

  “I told you he was good, didn’t I?”

  “Nobody in my family believed me, Mike-I could call you Mike, couldn’t I, sweetheart? The precinct wouldn’t do nothing about it. They sent me down here to see Alexandra after I told them about the time one of them fondled my breasts while I was napping. She’s been wonderful to me, really. I feel better every time I see her.” She cocked her head and looked over at me. “I try not to be a nuisance to her. Then, as soon as I saw her picture in the paper with this lady in the water, the rays became even stronger. I got worried that maybe the same people are after you, sweetheart.”

  “We’re gonna solve this for you, Mrs. B.,” Mike said, rising up and pointing to my top desk drawer. “Coop, gimme a couple of boxes of clips, right away.”

  “Clips, of course,” I repeated, sliding it open and removing two boxes of paper clips.

  “Not those, the giant-size ones. Those ordinary ones don’t work with E.T.’s.”

  I took two boxes of large clips out and Mike ordered me to make it four.

  “Now, here’s what you do. When you get home, take a couple of dozen out of the box, make yourself comfortable, and start to string them together, know what I mean?”

  Mrs. Braverman’s eyes were gleaming with delight at the attention she was getting. “Sure, sure. This I can do.” She nodded as Mike looped the metal pieces together to demonstrate to her.

  “Then, you take the top one and you attach it to the belt on your dress. You gotta have enough clips to make the chain reach to the floor. Then-you’re grounded. You’re completely safe because the signals run right through the chain and onto the carpet, missing you completely. Who lives beneath you?”

  “Mrs. Villanueva. Dominican, but very nice.”

  “No problem. Sometimes the waves go through to the apartment below, but Dominicans are immune to extraterrestrial interference. She’ll be fine.”

  Mrs. Braverman got up from her chair while I put the four boxes of clips in a plastic bag and handed them to her. “Costs the city a dollar forty-five, but it’s worth every penny for your peace of mind. Just call Coop if you need a refill.”

  “I’m gonna kiss you for this, Mike.” She puckered her lips and reached out for his face, planting herself firmly on his mouth. “Could I make a shiddach with you and Alexandra here?” I recognized the Yiddish expression for a brokered marriage.

  “Hey, Mrs. B., you’ll excuse me, but I don’t have the balls to take on a broad as tough as this one. Don’t you have a daughter for me?”

  “Three sons. An oral surgeon, an accountant, and one we don’t talk about. Plays the horses, best I can tell. I’ll leave you two to your business now. And you, don’t use that kind of language in front of my girl here,” she said laughingly. “Someday she’s gonna meet a nice man who’ll take her away from all this, right, Alexandra?”

  “Right, Mrs. Braverman.” I walked with her and Max to the door so that I could accept another hug and sent her off to the elevator.

  “Wouldn’t it be great if we could solve two percent of our cases that simply?” Chapman asked. I came back to my desk and waved him out of the way so I could get to the word processor to work on the search warrant for the Galleria Caxton Due. I told him about Marina Sette and
showed him the letter she had given me.

  “Looks like we need another visit with Lowell Caxton. And you’d better do a subpoena for Omar Sheffield’s prison records. Be sure and include the visitors’ log. Let’s check to see when Deni made her appearance there.”

  “Make yourself useful,” I said, as I filled in the facts to establish probable cause for a search of Daughtry’s gallery, from all of Deni’s property through the contents of Omar Sheffield’s locker. “Go tell Laura what you want and she can type up the subpoenas for me to sign. And ask her to hold all my calls for an hour so I can knock this thing out. That way you can execute it tomorrow.”

  I had almost finished the application when Chapman came back in the room and reached across the desk to pick up the blinking phone line of a call that Laura had put on hold.

  “She assured me you’d want to be interrupted for this one. Jake Tyler, with an overseas operator patching him through.”

  I took the receiver from Mike’s hand and spoke into it. “Hello?… Hello?” I waited for a response but there was none.

  “I thought this technology worked all over the world.”

  “So did I. My luck, he’s in the one little village in the middle of nowhere that can’t pick up the signals.” I held on for several more seconds and then hung up the phone.

  “So, what’s all the secrecy about this romance with Jacob Tyler, blondie?”

  “For one thing, I only met him last month-Fourth of July weekend, at a clambake on the Vineyard. It’s still very new. And for another, you know what a gossip mill this place is.”

  “Jeez, you’d think Mercer or me was gonna slit our wrists if you were getting laid.”

  The next look I flashed at him wasn’t so pleasant.

  “Mercer or I?” he asked.

  “It’s not the grammar I’m so worried about this time, it’s the sentiment.”

  Mike’s feet were up on my desktop now. “What do you hear from your friend Drew? I felt kinda sorry for that guy.”

  “He just wasn’t ready for anything that intense yet. As much as we liked to be together, he was still getting over the death of his wife. When Milbank offered him a transfer to their new law office in Moscow, he took it.”