At last I sigh. No tables. Maybe next month. When I hang up the phone I say, “I’m sorry, Inspector. I was just negotiating a favor with a friend who might be able to score me a table at Rao’s next week.”
Elliott scowls and says, “Far be it from me to interrupt your off-duty life, Moncrief, but you may have noticed that your partner isn’t at her desk.”
“I noticed. Don’t forget, I’m a detective.”
He ignores my little joke.
“In case you’re wondering, Detective Martinez is on loan to Vice for two days.”
“Why didn’t you or Detective Martinez tell me this earlier? You must have known before today.”
“Yeah, I knew about it yesterday, but I told Martinez to hold off telling you. That it would just piss you off to be left out, and I was in no rush to listen to you get pissed off,” Elliott says.
“So why wasn’t I included?” I ask.
“You weren’t necessary. They just needed a woman. Though I don’t owe you any explanations about assignments.”
The detective room has grown quieter. I’m sure that a few of my colleagues—especially the men—are enjoying seeing Elliott put me in my place.
Fact is, I like Elliott; he’s a pretty straight-arrow guy, but I have been developing a small case of paranoia about being excluded from hot assignments.
“What can Maria do that I can’t do?” I ask.
“If you can’t answer that, then that pretty-boy face of yours isn’t doing you much good,” Elliott says with a laugh. Then his tone of voice turns serious.
“Anyway, we got something going on up the road a piece. They got a situation at Brioni. That’s a fancy men’s store just off Fifth Avenue. Get a squad car driver to take you there. Right now.”
“Which Brioni?” I ask.
“I just told you—Brioni on Fifth Avenue.”
“There are two Brionis: 57 East 57th Street and 55 East 52nd Street,” I say.
Elliott begins to walk away. He stops. He turns to me. He speaks.
“You would know something like that.”
Chapter 6
What’s the one question that’s guaranteed to piss off any New York City detective or cop?
“Don’t you guys have anything better to do with your time?”
If you’re a cop who’s ever ticketed someone for running a red light; if you’re a detective who’s ever asked a mother why her child wasn’t in school that day, then you’ve heard it.
I enter the Brioni store, at 57 East 57th Street. My ego is bruised, and my mood is lousy. Frankly, I am usually in Brioni as a customer, not a policeman. Plus, is there nothing more humiliating than an eager detective sent to investigate a shoplifting crime?
I’m in an even lousier mood when the first thing I’m asked is, “Don’t you guys have anything better to do with your time?” The suspect doesn’t ask this question. No. It comes from one of the arresting officers, a skinny young African American guy who is at the moment cuffing a young African American kid. The minor has been nabbed by store security. He was trying to lift three cashmere sweaters, and now the kid is scared as shit.
“You should know better than to ask that question,” I say to the cop. “Meanwhile, take the cuffs off the kid.”
The cop does as he’s told, but he clearly does not know when to shut up. So he speaks.
“Sorry, Detective. I just meant that it’s pretty unusual to send a detective out on an arrest that’s so…so…”
He is searching for a word, and I supply it. “Unimportant.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” the young officer says. “Unimportant.”
The officer now realizes that the subject is closed. He gives me some details. The kid, age twelve, was brought in for petty robbery this past February. But I’m only half listening. I’m pissed off, and I’m pissed off because the cop is right—it’s unimportant. This case is incredibly unimportant, laughably unimportant. It’s ridiculous to be sent on such a stupid little errand. Other NYPD detectives are unraveling terrorist plots, going undercover to frame mob bosses. Me, I’m overseeing the arrest of a little kid who stole three cashmere sweaters.
As Maria Martinez has often said to me, “Someone with your handsome face and your expensive suit shouldn’t be sent on anything but the most important assignments.” Then she’d laugh, and I would stare at her in stony silence…until I also laughed.
“We have the merch all bagged,” says the other officer. The name Callahan is on his nameplate. Callahan is a guy with very pink cheeks and an even pinker nose. He looks maybe thirty-five or forty…or whatever age a cop is when he’s smart enough not to ask “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?”
“Thanks,” I say.
But what I’m really thinking about is: Who the hell gave me this nauseatingly petite assignment?
I’m sure it’s not Elliott. Ah, oui, the inspector and I aren’t exactly what they call best buds, but he’s grown used to me. He thinks he’s being funny when he calls me Pretty Boy, but he also trusts me, and, like almost everyone else, he’s very pleased with the bust I (almost single-handedly) helped pull off at Taylor Antiquities.
I know that my partner, Maria Martinez, puts out good press on me. As I’ve said, she and I are simpatico, to say the least. I like her. She likes me. Case closed.
Beyond that, anyone higher than Elliott doesn’t know I exist. So I can’t assume that one of the assistant commissioners or one of the ADAs is out to get me.
“There’s a squad car outside to bring him in,” Callahan says.
“Hold on a minute. I want to talk to the kid,” I say.
I walk over to the boy. He wears jeans cut off at midcalf, very clean white high-top sneakers, and an equally clean white T-shirt. It’s a look I could live without.
“Why’d you try to steal three sweaters? It’s the goddamn middle of summer, and you’re stealing sweaters. Are you stupid?”
I can tell that if he starts talking he’s going to cry.
No answer. He looks away. At the ceiling. At the floor. At the young cop and Callahan.
“How old are you?” I ask.
“Sixteen,” he says. My instinct was right. He does start to cry. He squints hard, trying to stem the flow of tears.
“You’re a lousy liar and a lousy thief. You’re twelve. You’re in the system. Don’t you think the officers checked? You were picked up five months ago. You and a friend tried to hold up a liquor store on East Tremont. They got you then, too. You are stupid.”
The kid shouts at me. No tears now.
“I ain’t stupid. I kinda thought they’d have a buzzer or some shit in the liquor store. And I kinda felt that fat-ass guy here with the ugly-mother brown shoes was a security guy. But I don’t know. Both times I decided to try it. I decided…I’m not sure why.”
“Listen. Good advice number one. Kids who are assholes turn into grown-ups who are assholes.
“Good advice number two. If you’ve got smart instincts, follow them. You know what? Forget good advice. You’ve got a feeling? Go with it.”
He sort of nods in agreement. So I keep talking.
“Look, asshole. This advice is life advice. I’m not trying to teach you how to be a better thief. I’m just trying to…oh, shit…I don’t know what I’m trying to teach you.”
A pause. The kid looks down at the floor so intensely that I have to look down there myself. Nothing’s there but gray carpet squares.
Then the kid looks at me. He speaks.
“I get you, man,” he says.
“Good.” A pause. “Now go home. You’ve got a home?”
“I got a home. I got a grandma.”
“Then go.”
“What the fu—?”
“Just go.”
He runs to the door.
The young officer looks at me. Then he says, “That’s just great. They send a detective to the scene. And he lets the suspect go.”
I don’t smile. I don’t answer. I walk to a nearby tab
le where beautiful silk ties and pocket squares are laid out in groups according to color. I focus on the yellow section—yellow with blue stripes, yellow with tiny red dots, yellow paisley, yellow…
My cell phone pings. The message on the screen is big and bold and simple. CD. Cop Down.
No details. Just an address: 655 Park Avenue. Right now.
Chapter 7
Cops and lights and miles of yellow tape: POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.
Sirens and detectives crowd the blocks between 65th and 67th Streets. Even the mayor’s car (license NYC 1) is here.
People from the neighborhood, doormen on break, and students from Hunter College try to catch a glimpse of the scene. Hundreds of people stand on the blocked-off avenue. It’s a tragedy and a block party at the same time.
Detective Gabriel Ruggie approaches me. There will be no French-guy jokes, no late-guy jokes, no Pretty Boy jokes. This is serious shit. Ruggie talks.
“Elliott is up there now. The scene is at the seventh floor front. He said to send you up right away.”
I walk through the fancy lobby. It’s loaded with cops and reporters and detectives. I hear a brief litany of somber “hellos” and “hiyas,” most of them followed by various mispronunciations of my name.
Luke. Look. Luck.
Who the hell cares now? This is Cop Down.
Detective Christine Liang is running the elevator along with a plainclothes officer.
“Hey, Moncrief. Let me take you up,” Liang says. “The inspector’s been asking where you are.”
What the hell is the deal? Ten minutes ago I’m supervising New York’s dumbest little crime of the day. Now, all of a sudden, the most serious type of crime—officer homicide—requires my attention.
“Good—you’re here,” Elliott says as I step from the elevator. I feel as if he’s been waiting for me. It’s the typical chaos of a homicide, with fingerprinting people, computer people, the coroner’s people—all the people who are really smart, really thorough; but honestly, none of them ever seem to come up with information that helps solve the case.
I’m scared. I don’t mind saying it. Elliott hits his phone and says, “Moncrief is here now.”
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“Just headquarters. I let them know you were here. They were trying to track you down.”
“But you knew where I was. You sent me there,” I say, confused.
“Yeah, I know. I know.” Elliott seems confused, too.
“What’s the deal?” I ask.
“Come with me,” Elliott says. The crowd of NYPD people parts for us as if we’re celebrities. We walk down a wide hall with black and white marble squares on the floor, two real Warhols on the walls. Suddenly I have a flash of an apartment in Paris—the high ceilings, the carved cornices. But in a moment I’ve traveled back from boulevard Haussmann to Park Avenue.
At the end of the hallway, an officer stands in front of an open door. Bright lights—floodlights, examination lights—pour from the room into the hallway. The officer moves aside immediately as Elliott and I approach.
Three people are huddled in a group near a window. I catch sight of a body, a woman. Elliott and I walk toward the group. We are still a few feet away when I see her. When my heart leaps up.
Maria Martinez.
A black plastic sheet covers her torso. Her head, blood speckling and staining her hair, is exposed.
Elliott puts a hand on my shoulder. I don’t yell or cry or shake. A numbness shoots through me, and then the words tumble out.
“How? How?”
“I told you this morning, she was on loan to Vice. They had her playing the part of a high-class call girl. It seems that…well, whoever she was supposed to meet decided to…well, take a knife to her stomach.”
I say nothing. I keep staring at my dead partner. Elliott decides to fill the air with words. I know he means well.
“The owners of this place are at their house in Nantucket. No servants were home…no…”
I’ve stopped listening. Elliott stops talking. The police photographers keep clicking away. Phil Namanworth, the coroner, is typing furiously on his laptop. Cops and detectives come and go.
Maria is dead. She looks so peaceful. Isn’t that what people always say? But it’s true. At least in this case it’s true. In death there is peace, but there’s no peace for those of us left behind.
Elliott looks me straight in the eye.
“Ya know, Moncrief, I’d like to say that in time you’ll get over this.” He pauses. “But I’d be a liar.”
“And a good cop never lies,” I say softly.
“Come back to the precinct in my car,” Elliott says.
“No, thank you,” I answer. “There’s someplace I’ve got to be.”
Chapter 8
It’s the southwest corner of 177th Street and Fort Washington Avenue. Maria and Joey Martinez’s building. I had never been there before, although Maria kept insisting that Dalia and I had to come by some night for “crazy chicken and rice,” her mother’s recipe.
“You’ll taste it, you’ll love it, and you won’t be able to guess the secret ingredient,” she would say.
But we never set a date, and now I am about to visit her apartment while two cops are standing guard outside the building and two detectives are inside questioning neighbors. I was her partner. I’ve got to see Maria’s family.
A short pudgy man opens the apartment door. The living room is noisy, packed. People are crying, yelling, speaking Spanish and English. The big window air conditioner is noisy.
“I’m Maria’s brother-in-law,” says the man at the door.
“I’m Maria’s partner from work,” I say.
His face shows no expression. He nods, then says, “Joey and me are about to go downtown. They wouldn’t let him—the husband, the actual husband—go to the crime scene. Now they’ll let us go see her. In the morgue.”
A handsome young Latino man walks quickly toward me. It has to be Joey Martinez. He is nervous, animated, red-eyed. He grabs me firmly by the shoulders. The room turns silent, like somebody turned an Off switch.
“You’re Moncrief. I know you from your pictures. Maria has a million pictures of you on her phone,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say. “She loves clicking away on that cell phone.”
I can’t help but notice that he calls me by my last name. I don’t know why. Maybe that’s how Maria referred to me at home.
I try to move closer to give Joey a hug. But he moves back, blocking any sort of embrace. So I speak.
“I don’t know what to say, Joey. This is an incredible tragedy. Your heart must be breaking. I’m so sorry.”
“Your heart must be breaking also,” Joey says.
“It is,” I say. “Maria was the best partner a detective could hope for. Smart. Patient. Tough…” Joey may not be weeping, but I feel myself choking up.
Joey gestures to his brother. It’s a “Let’s go” toss of his head.
“Look, my brother and I are going down to see Maria. But Moncrief…”
There’s that last-name-only thing again. “I need to ask you something.”
Now I’m nervous, but I’m not at all sure why. Something is off. The room remains silent. Brother is now standing next to brother.
“Sure,” I say. “Ask me. Ask me anything.”
Joey Martinez’s sad and empty eyes widen. He looks directly at me and speaks slowly. “How do you have the nerve to come to my house?”
I feel confusion, and I’m sure that my face is communicating it. “Because I feel so terrible, so awful, so sad. Maria was my partner. We spent hours and hours together.”
Joey continues speaking at the same slow pace. “Yes. I know. Maria loved you.”
“And I loved her,” I say.
“You don’t understand. Or you’re a liar. Maria loved you. She really loved you.”
His words are so crazy and so untrue that I have no idea how to respond. “Joey. Please. You’re experi
encing a tragedy. You’re totally…well…you’re totally wrong about Maria, about me.”
“She told me,” he says. “It’s not a misunderstanding. She didn’t mean you were just good friends. We talked about it a thousand times. She loved you.”
Now he pushes his face close to mine. “You think because you’re rich and good-looking you can get whatever you want. You think—”
“Joey. Wait. This is insane!” I shout.
He shouts even louder. “Stop it! Just shut up. Just leave!” He shakes his head. The tears are coming fast. “My brother and I gotta go.”
Chapter 9
When I get home, Dalia is waiting for me in the apartment foyer. Her hug is strong. Her kiss is soft—not sexual per se—just the perfect gentle touch of warmth. The tenderness of Dalia’s kiss immediately signals to me that she’s already heard about Maria Martinez’s death. I’m not surprised. The DA’s office has access to all NYPD information, and Dalia knows her way around her job.
Dalia is an ADA for Manhattan district attorney Fletcher Sinclair. She heads up the investigation division. The two qualities that the job requires—brains and persistence—are the two qualities Dalia seems to have in endless supply. Nothing and no one stands in her way when she’s hot on an investigation.
Every day at work she tones down her tall and skinny fashion-model look with a ponytail, sensible skirts, and almost no makeup. When Dalia’s at her job, she’s all about the job. Laser-focused. Don’t mess with the ADA.
Some evenings, when Dalia’s dressed for some ultrachic charity dinner, even I have a hard time believing that this breathtakingly belle woman in her Georgina Chapman gown is one of the toughest lawyers in New York City.
“We got word about Maria at the DA’s office late this morning,” she says. “I was going to call or text or something, but I didn’t want to butt in. I didn’t want to nudge you if you didn’t need me.…”
“You can always nudge me, because I always need you,” I say.
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