“Thaler’s the only government guy whose office opens up at seven a.m. I’ll get on the horn to State Correction after nine. Just thought you’d like to know first thing.”
“How’s your patient?”
“Restless night. He was in a lot of pain. But they’re taking some of the tubes out today and hope to get him moved into a private room.”
“Battaglia arranged a full security crew for me until this thing is over. I told him I already feel like I have a human straitjacket wrapped around me. They’re driving me down to the office. Are you doing any interviews today?”
“If they have Mercer set up by the early afternoon, I’ll call you so you can come up to the office with me. I’m beginning to think it’s safer to let our interviewees drop by our place.”
“What did you do about sleeping?”
“Not as cozy as you. Nurses let me curl up on a gurney in the hallway.”
“Anybody I.D. the girl yet?” I asked, assuming the receptionist who opened the door for Mercer and me yesterday, whom I had first seen at Deni’s gallery, could be a link to the killer.
“Yeah. Name was Cynthia Greeley. Twenty-three years old, from Saint Louis. Bryan Daughtry claims that most of the time she freelanced. He insists that it was Deni who hired the kid, not him. And that Deni met her when she was working for Lowell, on Fifty-seventh Street. Lowell thought Cynthia had too many pierced body parts to be working the uptown scene, so he was glad to let her go.”
One more twisted path to unravel. “I’ll get down to work and wait to hear from you. Give Mercer’s hand a squeeze for me. Tell him I’ll come over with you tonight. Need a place to clean up this morning?”
“Nah. I can shower at the squad. Change of clothes in my locker. See you later.”
Battaglia had assigned two detectives from the D.A.’s Squad to accompany me from place to place for the duration of the investigation. I didn’t like the restrictions it imposed or the waste of taxpayers’ money. But he had given me no choice and had sent them to the hospital last evening. They had driven me to my apartment so I could pack a suitcase of belongings that would get me through the week, and then on to Jake’s home, not too far from my own. Front-door-tofrontdoor service.
I had reached there in time to find Jake watching the news on CNN. It was after one o’clock in the morning. “Turn it off and I promise not to tell anyone at NBC that you were checking out the competition,” I said to him when he embraced me at the door. “I don’t want to hear anyone else’s spin on the day, okay?”
I stripped my blood-soaked clothes off right there in the hallway and stood naked, offering them to him with both hands. “Take these to the incinerator and just throw them down the chute, would you please? I’m going to take a bath. I don’t suppose you have anything that passes for bubbles here, do you?”
“No, but the bar’s still open,” he said, kissing the tip of my nose. “If I can see through the steam, I’ll bring you in a drink as soon as I’ve dumped these.”
I soaked in the tub while Jake sat on the floor beside me, sipping his drink while I tasted mine. I told him how Mercer and I had walked into the trap that had been so carefully laid for us at the exhibit, and how terrified I had been at the thought of losing Mercer. Jake didn’t interrupt at all as I went on and on, stepping from the tub into the bath sheet that he wrapped around me; then I shivered for the first time in days as I tied the belt of his white terry robe on my waist and sat on the edge of the bed to call my mother and let her know that I was okay.
I stared into the masked face of our gunman-seeing nothing-for what seemed like hours, until I finally fell asleep on my side, with Jake’s arm resting on my shoulder.
At seven forty-five I was ready to leave for the office. “What’s your day like today?” I asked Jake, watching him knot his tie and ready himself for the crosstown ride to the NBC offices at Rockefeller Center.
“Kind of like yours, in the sense that I won’t really know until I get there. I’m supposed to be covering the secretary of state’s speech at the U.N. Do I have to worry about you as well, or just nuclear warheads, civil wars, and an erupting volcano in the Antilles?” he said jokingly.
“Battaglia has me under lock and key. So, your beeper will call my beeper?”
“Count on it. See you tonight.”
I was out the door and down the FDR Drive with my armed escorts. The early arrival gave me time to catch up on the matters that had come in on Friday, when I had stolen the day to get away to the Vineyard. I checked my appointment book. One of the assistants had asked me to pencil in a re-interview at ten with her witness in a domestic violence case.
That gave me a couple of hours to return phone messages and speak with friends. As my colleagues began to arrive, many dropped by my office to see how I was, express their concern, and ask about Mercer, having heard accounts of the shooting on last evening’s news. I finally shut my door to avoid a visit from Pat McKinney. There was enough salt in my emotional wounds without his venom added.
At ten fifteen I called Maggie to check whether her witness had arrived.
“She just called to cancel. Her husband offered to take her on a cruise over Labor Day weekend. She’d like to come see you when she gets back in two weeks. Guess she isn’t quite as frightened of him as I thought.”
That freed up another hour of the morning, or so I thought until Laura buzzed to say that one of the young lawyers from Trial Bureau 60 had been sent to discuss a new case with me. I opened my door and found Craig Tompkins waiting outside.
“Something different, at least for me. The intake supervisor thought you might have some ideas about how to charge this.”
“What have you got?”
“The security guards over at the Javits Center are holding a guy, but I’m not sure they’ve got a crime to arrest him for.”
“What did he do?” The Javits building was the city’s convention hall and regularly the scene of large group meetings, trade association gatherings, and exhibitions.
“He signed up to attend this week’s Trekkies reunion. Seems to have spent all day yesterday riding up and down the escalators, from floor to floor. Kind of got the guards’ attention ’cause he was sort of goofy looking, carrying around a big gym bag the whole time, but never actually went into any of the lectures or conference rooms. When he came back in this morning, the head of security took a few rides up the escalator, right behind the guy.
“This jerk’s got a video camera hidden in the bag. What he does is wait for a girl in a short dress to get on in front of him, then he rides up behind her, holding the camera so it shoots the view up her skirt. A thrill a minute, I guess.”
“So what did they do with him?”
“Arrested him for harassment. Confiscated the gym bag and the video camera.”
“Sounds right to me. What’s the problem?”
“Well, they don’t have any victims.”
“What about the women he was filming?” In order to make out the charge of harassment, there would have to be people who would claim that the amateur moviemaker’s conduct had annoyed or alarmed them.
“None of them ever realized what he was doing. They each just stepped off the escalator at the end of the ride, unaware that they had been immortalized on film. Then the security guys played back the videotape. Thighs, knees, lots of underwear-but nobody is recognizable from the angle of the shots. No way to figure out who they are.”
I thought for a minute. “How about trespass? That he was unauthorized to be in the center.”
“Won’t work either. He paid full price for admission and that entitles him to be in the facility.”
“Did he make any statements? Admissions?”
“Yeah, he gave it all right up. Married businessman from Connecticut, works for a public utility company there. Started doing this a year ago, just ’cause it turns him on.”
“Talk about arrested development. Guess he never got past the sixth grade.”
“Now he says
he can sell them to a Web site. It’s called U.S. Videos-only, the initials stand for ‘Up-Skirt.’ Lots of videocam voyeurs, he claims. Cops checked it out. Each tape sells for forty bucks.”
“And that’s exactly what’s on ’em?” I asked incredulously. “I’m not sure there’s anything criminal to charge him with. Let me call Mark.” The usual response for any of us in the Trial Division when we were stuck on legal issues a lot thornier than this was to reach out for the head of the Appeals Bureau, our in-house lawman. We waited for his callback, which confirmed that there was no recourse in the criminal justice system for the Trekkie’s actions. Craig used my phone to tell the Javits security force to let the guy go. The Internet was creating more opportunities for perverts than most of us had imagined, and law enforcement agencies were less aggressive than the cyber-geeks in coming up with solutions.
Mike called from Mercer’s room at eleven thirty. “Forget those surgeons you saw yesterday. There’s a lady doc here today, and a posse of very attentive nurses, and I think Mercer Wallace is really on the mend.
“I’m gonna scoot up to the squad at one. The pain medication makes Mercer pretty sleepy. His father wants to sit with him this afternoon. Varelli’s assistant is going to come in for an interview. Wanna be there?”
“Absolutely.”
“I’ll swing by and pick you up, since I’m so close to your office,” Mike said. “Then I can bring you back here to the hospital tonight. The D.A.’s Squad can take over your chauffeuring duties from that point on.”
I called the Special Victims Unit to see who would inherit the day-to-day work on the West Side rapist matter and was relieved to hear it was in the capable hands of two veteran detectives who had worked with Mercer for years.
Then I stopped at Rose Malone’s desk so that she could see that I was physically unharmed and tell Battaglia that Mercer’s shooting had not unhinged me completely. Now that I was an eyewitness to the attempted murder of a police officer, I knew that the district attorney would assign another prosecutor to take over at least that part of the inquiry, just in case the crime was unrelated to our probe of Denise Caxton’s killing.
“Would you ask Paul to let me have a say in who McKinney assigns to Mercer’s shooting?” I asked Rose when she told me that Battaglia had just gone to lunch.
“Sure. I know he won’t get to it today. He’s got to polish up a speech he’s giving tonight, and I don’t think he’ll have time to speak to Pat McKinney,” she said, looking through the crammed schedule sheet that she kept on top of her desk.
“Great. If he wants me for anything, I’ll be up at Manhattan North.”
When I reached Laura’s office to pick up my case folder and wait for Chapman, she told me to call Marjie Fishman, my counterpart in the Queens District Attorney’s Office.
“Are you okay?” Marjie began the conversation.
I assured her that I was and gave her the update on Mercer’s condition.
“You don’t have any racetracks in Manhattan, do you?”
“No.” I waved Mike in when I saw him standing with Laura outside my room.
“Well, we’ve finally got a situation that you haven’t seen yet.”
“Try me.” There were days when my colleagues and I were sure there was nothing left that one human being could do to another that could shock us. And then, without fail, something else came along to prove us wrong.
“Last Monday, out at Aqueduct, a cop patrolling the stables in the middle of the night came upon, shall we say, an intimate encounter between one of the grooms and a horse. The defendant’s name is Angel Garcia. The officer heard a loud thud, which was the sound made by the naked Garcia falling off the plastic bucket he’d been standing on.”
“How’s the horse?”
“The vet says she’s fine. If you pass an OTB office on your way uptown, tell Mike to put some money on Saratoga Capers. Last Friday, after a thorough examination and clean bill of health, our horse came in third. That’s her best start in weeks.”
I hung up shaking my head in amusement, although I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the poor creature. Fortunately, there were laws against inhumane treatment of animals, and Marjie’s Special Victims Unit was prosecuting Garcia for abusing Saratoga Capers. Mike laughed out loud when he heard the story.
“Just feature sharing a jail cell with Angel Garcia,” Mike said. “Every other prisoner has pictures of Cindy Crawford or Julia Roberts or Penthouse centerfolds on the wall. Meanwhile, Angel’s got giant-size pinups of Trigger and Mr. Ed. Go figure. C’mon, blondie. Let’s blow this joint.”
“Wait a minute. Has anybody explored that part of Omar Sheffield’s background?”
“Whaddaya mean? Horseplay?” Mike asked.
“Cell mates-just what you were joking about. When Omar was in the can doing time upstate, who did he share a cell with? Do we have any names?”
Mike stopped and double-backed to my desk to use the phone. “I don’t think I asked that question. I’m not sure anybody did.” He dialed the squad and reached Jimmy Halloran, a baby-faced cop who’d been on the Homicide Squad for more than a decade but looked like he was still in high school. Jimmy had been added to the Caxton team last night, after Mercer was injured. He bristled every time Mike called him by the nickname he’d been given by his team-Kid Detective.
“Hey, K.D.,” Chapman said. “Squirrel around on the lieutenant’s desk. See if you can find the paperwork on Omar Sheffield. You know, the bad boy who forgot his mother told him not to play on the tracks. See if anyone checked the names of his roommates in state prison. Coop and I are on our way uptown. If you don’t find anything in the file, call up to the warden at Coxsackie and get some answers. And if they need a subpoena, call Cooper’s secretary and she’ll crank one out for us and fax it up for her signature. Make yourself useful.” He hung up the phone.
“Where are you parked?” I asked.
“Behind the courthouse, on Baxter Street.”
“Good. Let’s slide out the back door. The fewer people I have to talk to about yesterday’s events, the better off I’ll be.” We went downstairs and took the elevators from the seventh floor to the lobby, walking past the arraignment parts and the roach coach, as the building’s snack bar was affectionately dubbed. It was half an hour before the courts recessed for the afternoon lunch break, so we navigated the hallways and went out onto the street without much delay.
As we walked into the squad office, Jimmy Halloran took his feet off the desk and stood to greet us, pointing out a young man who was reading a newspaper at a desk across the room. “That’s your one o’clock. The guy from Varelli’s studio.
“And those names you wanted from the warden? He said Omar Sheffield spent some of his time in solitary.” Halloran looked down at his notes. “Had three cell mates while he was upstate. Kevin McGuire, who’s done mostly burglaries, and Jeremy Fuller, who sold heroin to an undercover cop. They’re both still in jail.”
Again, he glanced at his notepad. “Third one is named Anton Bailey. Does this stuff mean anything to you?”
24
The Manhattan North Homicide Squad office was virtually empty. Every man and woman, whether on duty or off, had come in to try to crack the attempt on Mercer’s life. Those who were not officially in the field were pounding the pavement, leaning on informants to try to get a lead on which to follow up. The rest were filling the lobby at Saint Vincent’s, even though it was far too soon for all but the closest friends and family to visit with him.
“Cooper and I are gonna use the lieutenant’s office for this interview. Call Albany, call whoever you’ve got to, but get every single sheet of paper that exists in this state on Anton Bailey,” Chapman told Jimmy Halloran. “And when you’re done with that, call the Gainesville, Florida, P.D. and start all over again. Use both names, Bailey and Anthony Bailor.”
“Hey, Alex, how’d he get into the system up here without them picking up the Florida case?” Halloran asked me. “How come nobody figure
d out that Anton Bailey and Anthony Bailor were one and the same before today, huh?”
“Just lucky, I guess.” No one could be arraigned for a felony in New York State without a fingerprint check. But every now and then, all of the automated techniques failed. In some cases, if the interstate computer system was down and the perp used an alias, the fingerprint comparison was never actually made. The fine type at the bottom of the rap sheet, if the prosecutor or judge stopped to read it, said that the results were based on a name check and not a verified latent exam.
If the prior rape conviction had been reflected on Bailey’s record, then the larceny case would have drawn a mandatory prison sentence longer than the time he served. He would not have been free to have sexually assaulted Denise Caxton and to have set in motion the chain of deaths that followed.
“You must be Don Cannon,” Mike said, shaking hands with the man sitting in the squad room. “I’m Detective Chapman, Mike Chapman. And this is Alexandra Cooper, from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Thanks for coming in.”
I guessed Cannon to be younger than I am, in his late twenties, perhaps. He was a bit shorter than I, with a serious mien and horn-rimmed glasses. He seemed no more at ease than do most civilians who find themselves in the middle of a homicide case but express a willingness to cooperate, which few mean as sincerely as he seemed to.
“Why don’t you have a seat and tell us a bit about yourself?” Chapman asked. “I’d like to know what you did for Mr. Varelli in his business. That kind of thing.”
“You probably know by now that Marco was the master, the most meticulous workman in his field. Just about every important restoration project in the last fifty years has been offered to him. Those that excited him most, he worked on himself.
“I’m from Sacramento originally. Went to UCLA, have a graduate degree in fine arts. That the kind of thing you want to know?” He looked from Mike’s face to mine, tentatively, to see whether he was proceeding in the right direction. We both nodded.
“One of my professors had worked with Varelli on Guernica, back in the eighties. Do you remember, that was the Picasso that was defaced at the Museum of Modern Art by some deranged fanatic?”
Cold Hit Page 24
