Cold Hit

by Linda Fairstein

  “This is a nice surprise. Are you here to see Louis or Nana for a haircut,” she said to me, then looking over at Mike, “or do you have a new customer for some streaks?”

  “We were in the building trying to get into the Caxton Gallery, so I thought I’d come by and see if you had any scoops for us.”

  “About the move? Nobody knows what’s going on. It’s all so sudden.”

  “Didn’t you have any connections there?”

  “No, one of the other girls here did highlights for the receptionist, though. Her name was Genevieve. She called yesterday and canceled her appointment. Said she’d been laid off and wouldn’t be working here anymore.”

  “Got a full name on her, and a home phone number?” Mike asked.

  “Let me check with Pat. She’s got a file on every client. I can get it for you before you leave.”

  “Have you ever spent time at Caxton’s?”

  “Browsing, sure. They always had fabulous things, stunning exhibits.”

  “D’you know either of them?”

  “Not more than to say hello to. He knew I worked here-I usually walk around with my smock on during the day-so he didn’t waste any time on me. He realized I wasn’t a buyer. But Mrs. Caxton had a good sense of humor and was always very nice to me. She wasn’t in the building all that much the last couple of years, but before that she’d often talk to me about what she’d picked up at auction or how much she’d sold something for. I didn’t know her well, but I liked her.”

  Elsa was petite and thin, with short dark hair and creamy porcelain skin. She worked in a black painter’s jacket, black slacks, and thick black clogs, exuding style and a quiet intensity. She took in everything that her surroundings-and her chatting customers-gave out. And as Joan Stafford always said, you could trust her like a grave to keep a confidence.

  “What else have you heard?” I asked.

  “Rumors. Nothing reliable.”

  “About her death?” I was incredulous, expecting that if she had heard anything, however unreliable, Elsa might have called me before our unplanned visit today.

  “No, no, no. There was a commotion a couple of weeks ago, maybe a day or two before Mrs. Caxton disappeared. Genevieve’s the one who told us about it. Sort of a row in the gallery.”

  “Between Denise and Lowell?”

  “No, I don’t think he was even in town, from what we were told.”

  That fit with what we knew of Lowell’s movements.

  “What was it?”

  “Denise showed up in the gallery one afternoon carrying lots of bags, as though she had just been on a Madison Avenue shopping spree. Genevieve told me that most of the staff had remained loyal to her, but the guy who managed the place for Lowell wasn’t a fan of hers. She did whatever business she had come in to do, and then left. The manager literally ran out of the gallery five minutes later, trying to stop Mrs. Caxton before she got into a cab. Genevieve says he accused her of making off with a painting-something small but valuable.”

  “Was there a scene on the street?” I asked.

  “Actually, it was in the lobby. He reached the ground floor before she did. Stopped Mrs. Caxton in front of that clerk at the building’s information booth and forced her to let him look through all her bags.”

  “Did she make a fuss?”

  “Nope. Knowing her sense of humor as I did, I expect she enjoyed the commotion. He pulled out all her purchases- lingerie, a peignoir set, a teddy-intimate items like that were flying out of his hands while everyone watched.”

  “And the painting?”

  “No painting. Off she went. At least, that’s the version we got down here.”

  Mike rested his elbow on the counter and looked at Elsa. “So, where did Mrs. Caxton stop on her way downstairs, so that he got to the lobby before she did, even though she had a good head start, huh?”

  “Maybe she popped into one of the other galleries, to see a friend?”

  “I’ll follow up on that. See if I can get the date of the squabble from this Genevieve, when we find her.” He paused. “But if Mrs. Caxton didn’t pay a social call, and just supposing for the moment that she was trying to take a valuable item out of the building, can you think of any likely place to hide something between the thirty-fifth floor and the lobby?”

  Elsa had worked in the salon for more than fifteen years. She had probably inspected every exhibit and office and nook of the Fuller Building during that time, shunning the elevators in favor of the back staircases, as she often told me, for exercise and to relieve the tedium of standing all day at a stationary place behind her work chair.

  “I know where Denise used to go to sneak a cigarette,” she said softly.

  “Whaddaya mean?”

  “Even before the city passed laws about smoking, Lowell never let anyone light a cigarette in the gallery. He had all kinds of special air controls for the maintenance of the art, especially because he had so many old paintings. Most of the staff would go all the way down to the ground floor and stand out in front on the sidewalk to smoke. Denise wouldn’t bother to go that far. She’d mooch a cigarette-I don’t think she did it very often-and she found my secret hideout. That’s where we ran into each other from time to time.”

  “You smoke?” Mike asked, like he was interviewing her as a prospect for a date.

  “No. But I like to clear my head every now and then. The fumes of these hair dyes can get to you after a few hours. I just go up there for a breath of air, some peace and quiet, and a great view of the city.”

  “What is it, like a balcony?”

  “Not even close. In fact,” she said, giving Mike the onceover, “I’m not certain you’ll fit. I’ll show you if you’d like.”

  We left the salon and Elsa pressed the button to go to the eighteenth floor, which was the highest level we could reach from the eastern bank of elevators. She led us to the large gray fire door and pressed her weight against the long metal bar that opened it onto the staircase. Together we walked up to the nineteenth floor, which was basically a darkened hallway connecting the two sides of the building.

  The only illumination came from the glare of the cherry red neon exit sign above the doorway we had just entered. My eyes tried to adjust to the gloomy corridor as I followed behind Elsa, with Mike bringing up the rear.

  Two-thirds of the way to the far end, there was a pocket in the wall on our right. Had Elsa not turned toward it, I doubt I would have noticed it at all. She moved surely in that direction and cautioned me to watch the two steps that she climbed, coming face-to-face with another, smaller fire door. As she turned the knob and pushed outward, the door gave way and a sliver of the gray midday sky appeared over her head.

  Beyond where Elsa stood was a perch, no more than two feet wide and three feet long. It extended like a small lip, high above the street and out from the side of the building, completely open except for a small iron railing that stretched across it at chest height. My delicate friend stepped onto the ledge, held the bar, and leaned forward to look over the rooftops below.

  Then she stepped back and suggested I do the same. “ Vertigo,” I said. “Not for me.” I held on to her arm and tried to stand close to the rail with my eyes open, but I couldn’t bear to stay out there. There didn’t seem to be enough barriers between me and the sidewalk, nineteen stories down. I offered the post to Mike but he declined, crouching on the floor with his fingers outstretched, trying to measure the size of this exterior shelf.

  “What are you doing?”

  He stood up. “Great place to stash a painting, then come back to pick it up later on. Does the building stay open after the galleries close?”

  “Sure. Our salon has much later appointments than the businesses do. Same for the dental offices. The only other office on this floor is the Malaysian Travel Bureau. It keeps regular hours but I’ve never seen much traffic there.”

  “Not that many people knocking each other down to get to Malaysia,” Mike said.

  Elsa s
miled. “I guess not. Of course, lots of the dealers see people by private arrangements, anytime that’s convenient. That’s why there’s always someone at the booth in the main lobby. Denise Caxton was well known to everyone here. She could walk in and out of this building whenever she wanted, without a problem. I just can’t imagine her stealing a painting, or anything else for that matter. That’s why I didn’t think the story was anything serious. The way Genevieve told it, the manager was either simply trying to embarrass Mrs. Caxton or he was making a fool of himself.”

  “Suppose she wasn’t ‘stealing’ anything,” Mike suggested. “Maybe it was something that was hers, a painting Lowell didn’t know about that she had warehoused at the gallery. Or that she had hidden up there in one of his storage areas.”

  Elsa didn’t know anything about the Caxton business dealings, so now Mike was talking to me. “Maybe it was something that she felt she had every right to take, but Deni knew that Lowell’s people wouldn’t let her leave his place with anything. She goes in with lots of bags, makes her rounds, gets what she’s after, and walks out before his manager can check what she’s got. Then she stops by the little ledge and leaves this package-which I expect is wrapped in something protective. Am I safe in guessing this spot isn’t very well trafficked?”

  “I’ve never seen anyone here except Denise Caxton. I’d be willing to bet that ninety-nine percent of the people who work in this building don’t even know it exists.”

  “She makes the drop and continues on to the lobby. Lowell’s guy is waiting for her there. He either assumes, or she tells him, that she stopped off to see someone else in another gallery. Gives her a perfectly valid excuse for a short detour on her way downstairs.

  “Then she comes back that same night or the next day to pick up her painting. Hell, she could even have circled the block in the cab and gone right back for it ten minutes later. Everyone says she was a risk taker.”

  Elsa looked concerned. “I hope this has nothing to do with her death. It was such a silly story-it didn’t seem worth repeating when I heard about it. I never connected the two things.”

  “No reason for you to have thought anything about it,” I assured her. Mike squinted to look at the number displayed on his beeper, which must have been vibrating on his waistband, while I went on talking. “At this point, we’re just grasping at anything. It’s good to know about this.”

  “Let’s get back to the phone. The lieutenant’s looking for me. This’ll go over big when I tell him I’m at your hairdresser’s.”

  We retraced our path back to the kitchen, where I had left my handbag. Mike called the squad while I asked Elsa to keep her eyes and ears open for information about the Caxton Gallery’s closing and move.

  Mike started singing the opening bars of Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” as he hung up the phone. “Either make yourself comfortable and let Elsa lighten up your silken tresses, or I’ll get you some escorts from Midtown North to take you back to work. I’m off to beautiful downtown Piscataway.”

  “What’s there?”

  “Man checked himself into the local hospital this morning. He’s got an infected wound in his groin that’s festering away. Told the E.R. staff that he had an accident on a construction site, but the X rays show there’s a bullet inside. Right now the Jersey troopers are holding him. Could be that Mercer hit the bull’s-eye after all. Patient matches the description of Anthony Bailor.”

  31

  It pained me to admit that Pat McKinney might be right about anything, but there was no point in my asking Mike to go along with him on the ride to New Jersey. If Anthony Bailor was the person under guard in a hospital, then it was likely that he had been the gunman who had aimed at me, shot Mercer, and killed the young receptionist in Chelsea on Sunday. I had no business being anywhere near him.

  “What’s your plan?”

  “To get my ass down there to Piscataway before that pair of clowns from Major Case find out about it.”

  Physicians were required by law to report gunshot wounds, and some clever detective in the town where Bailor sought treatment, recognizing that there were no open cases in his jurisdiction in which anyone had claimed to have injured an assailant, had the great sense to notify police in the tristate area about the suspect’s appearance.

  “It looks good?”

  “Yeah, the guy’s a transient, a walk-in. Used a common name but has no I.D. to back it up, and gave a phony address- a street that doesn’t exist, in a neighboring town. Fits the physical scrip of Bailor. Elsa, she’s all yours for the next fifteen minutes. Loo got a uniformed detail from the North to ferry you around and keep you safe till I come back this evening.”

  There was no point arguing. Mike wasn’t going to undercut Battaglia’s direction that someone escort me from place to place. “Should I keep working on trying to find Caxton?” I asked.

  “Yeah, as long as you do it from behind your desk. If you get a lead on where he is, we can confront him tonight or tomorrow morning. What you could do, in the meanwhile, is let these cops take you to Denise’s new gallery on your way downtown. See if you can charm Daughtry into telling you what he found out last night about Lowell Caxton’s exodus from the city. You may do better with him if I’m over the border, Coop. Maybe you could coax him into letting you look around the storage area.”

  “Remind me what I’m looking for, exactly. The Vermeer? The Rembrandt?”

  “Maybe I’ll have a better idea of that after I talk to Bailor.” He looked at his watch. “Give me an hour to get out to Piscataway, and another hour to talk to him, then I’ll either beep you or call Caxton Due looking for you.”

  “Meet you at Mercer’s room when you get back tonight?”

  Mike was distracted. “Suppose you were Deni and you had something-a painting, in all likelihood-that someone else wanted. Where would you hide it?”

  “Let’s begin by recognizing that she had more options than most of us could even imagine. And who’s she hiding it from? I mean, if it’s Lowell, then I doubt she’d have it at home or anyplace they use together. If it’s Daughtry, then she wouldn’t hide it at their gallery. Depends, in part, on who she’s avoiding, don’t you think? It would help to know that first.”

  “Forget who it is. What I’m thinking is, if it’s any kind of artwork, she could have hidden it in plain view, if you know what I mean. She could have had Marco Varelli undo any restoration. He could re-create the cover of a restored painting, or obscure a masterpiece. She could hide something like that in a warehouse, and if she treated it casually, maybe nobody would pay it any attention. You’d need her eye, her knowledge, her tutor. Maybe Deni could even carry it around in a shopping bag and nobody’d think twice of it. Maybe what’s at the heart of this case is one giant optical illusion, Coop.” Mike’s idea wasn’t altogether crazy.

  “So I’ll crank up the search for Lowell, stop in to schmooze with Brian Daughtry and scan the gallery’s warehouse at the same time. Will I jinx things for you if I buy a bottle of champagne to open at Mercer’s bedside when you come back from checking out Anthony Bailor?”

  “Dom Pérignon. But you gotta promise that I can be the one to break the news to him. If you get over there before I do, don’t even raise his hopes. I’d hate for this to be a false alarm. If it’s the real deal, I want to tell Mercer myself.”

  Mike was ready to take off. “Great to meet you, Elsa. Keep an eye on blondie till the precinct cops get here.”

  I called Laura to check my messages. There was a note from McKinney, who wanted to talk to me as soon as I got back to the office. I had a couple of hours to kill until I could expect to hear from Chapman about the identity of the man with the gunshot wound, and I had no intention of returning to Hogan Place until I knew whether this new development could turn the investigation around.

  The more urgent message was from the sergeant at the Special Victims Squad, about a new case that had come in several hours ago. I phoned him immediately.

  “W
hat have you got?”

  “Victim’s at New York Hospital. Twenty-six-year-old businesswoman from Georgia, staying at a hotel in town. She’s being treated for an inner ear disorder, comes to town to see a specialist. Woke up this morning but blacked out on her way out of the bathroom. She was able to call her husband back home, and he phoned the manager. Two hotel security guards got into the room and radioed for an ambulance. Then the older one told the second guy to go downstairs and wait for the EMS crew. He assumed the woman was unconscious, but she was just too weak to respond. In any event, he ripped her pajama top off and started to molest her. Finally she came around and was able to tell him to stop. Reported it to the ambulance driver as soon as she got inside and they closed the doors.”

  “What hotel?”

  “Would you believe the Sussex House?”

  “On Central Park South?”

  “You got it. She paid six hundred fifty-three dollars for the privilege of being abused by a member of the staff.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Her husband’s flying up from Georgia this afternoon. Can you get her interviewed and set up the grand jury, so she can get back home when the doctor releases her?”

  “Absolutely.” I checked my watch. “I’ll go over and talk to her now-I’m just ten blocks away from the hospital. I’ll assign somebody senior to handle it. Need any help at the hotel? Are they being cooperative?”

  “One of her girlfriends met us there to pack up her belongings. She’s the one who found the two buttons on the floor- ripped off the shirt of the pajamas.”

  “Did you get the guy?”