by Andrew Case
“What about Manny Reeves?”
“What about him? Valiant wasn’t sleeping with his ex-wife. He didn’t kill the guy.”
“Who pushed him into the air shaft? What was he doing at 80 Smithdale? Why did he leave the scene and go to that building that afternoon? What happened to getting a cup of coffee, if you think he did that?”
The tall one took a long, slow sip of his own cup of coffee. He looked genuinely puzzled for a moment. When he spoke, he didn’t address Peralta at all. Instead he looked to his squat buddy on the couch.
“Douggie, did the guy in the hospital, Reeves, did he die?”
“No. Guy in the hospital asked for a lawyer. Lawyer hadn’t shown up. So we went out and solved the case.”
“But he isn’t dead?”
“No.”
“So whoever pushed him off the air shaft didn’t murder him.”
“No.”
The tall one looked back to Peralta. He took another sip of his coffee.
“Well, I guess, Detective, given that I’m a homicide detective, and Mr. Reeves is not in fact dead, that I don’t give a rat’s ass who pushed him, do I? I don’t investigate assaults.”
Peralta could have asked other questions. She could have asked how they thought Gabriel Smyth had gotten home to Queens after slipping into the cab of the crane and killing Valiant. How it was that none of the other people on the site reported him as being there. Who he left watching his son while he traipsed around town on his murder spree. But that would be missing the point, Peralta figured. Because the point was that these men had grown soft while their jobs had become easy. With only three hundred and thirty murders a year, spread through the five boroughs, and a couple of squads per borough-wide division, this team of four yahoos was likely to investigate no more than fifteen or twenty cases a year. You would think they would take their time. That they would walk down every possible lead in every case that came their way. They could certainly afford to. But they had settled into their routine twenty years ago—pound away until you get someone in lockup, and then move on to the next one. And if the next one is just an afternoon eating a bagel on the couch, so much the better. Joining the homicide bureau wasn’t a step up after all. Peralta tugged the index card with her name on it off the door.
“Okay, Detectives. Mulino could use me on the missing kid, I’m sure.”
“Call us if the kid shows up dead.”
“I’m sure someone will.”
With that, she turned down the hallway. The lounge didn’t look so special anymore. Nowhere to bounce around theories on the latest murder. Instead it was a break room at the factory, a place where thick men gathered with lunchboxes to pass the time until they had to go back out to the smelter. She would have thought it was funny if it wasn’t so terribly sad.
As she shifted down the stairway, her cell phone started ringing. Maybe Mulino, following up on the missing kid. It would be good to get back to him. To help on a case where it would really matter. Where a life can still be saved. She pulled out the phone. It was a Manhattan area code. Unfamiliar.
“Detective Peralta.”
“Peralta. This is Detective Simmons. Fraud Investigations Unit.”
A lot of good that would do now. She stopped in the stairwell.
“Hello, Detective.”
“I did some work on those companies you gave me. I found something that I thought you might want to know.”
Peralta looked over her shoulder, back toward the homicide detectives’ lounge. No point in telling them, whatever Simmons was going to say.
“Shoot.”
“One of the companies. One of the entities that bought a property, it’s based in Malaysia. It’s just an investment fund. Buys things all over the world. The land it bought probably isn’t much more than a blip on its portfolio. But you’re right it was oversold. It paid fourteen million for a plot that now it can’t sell. Last time it tried to market it was for eight.”
This was pretty much what Leonard had said was going on. The land was all pumped up to unreasonable prices. Then the outsiders got stuck with the bill. “Okay. That should be true of pretty much all of them.”
“It is. But this one has an unusual transaction. About three weeks ago, this company made a big payment. It translates into nearly two hundred thousand dollars. And the payment went to another real estate company here in Brooklyn. But no one bought any land. There is no other side of the transaction. They just shipped a lot of money to a rival of your Hill and Associates.”
“What company is it?” But she already knew.
“It’s an LLC. The members’ names aren’t public. But it’s named after one of the buildings it owns.”
“And which building is that?”
“80 Smithdale Street. It’s called 80 Smithdale, LLC.”
Peralta held the phone for a moment, catching her breath. “And it’s not just named after that building, Simmons? You confirmed that it owns the building too?”
“Absolutely. Isn’t that the building where your witness fell down the air shaft?”
“Thank you, Detective. He didn’t fall down the air shaft. He was pushed.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Detective Peralta stewed. If the homicide squad didn’t want her, they didn’t want her. But for them to make such an obvious hash of the investigation made her feel sick. Some dad from Queens was sitting in a holding cell and the two sneering detectives were going to railroad him into twenty years in prison. Nothing in the Patrol Guide tells you what to do when you see a couple of incompetents bumbling into convicting an innocent man. If nothing else, she could get her bearings back at OCCB. She could tell Mulino what was going on. He might figure out a way to do something about it.
There were two uniforms at the cubicle she had shared with Bruder. Both of them on the phone, speaking softly, taking notes. As soon as one of them hung up, the phone would ring again and he’d pick up. That would be the hotline for the kidnapping. That would be every crazy in the city promising he had the boy in his basement, hoping to end up on the cover of the Post. Peralta still ached knowing that Homicide had reached into Gabriel Smyth and dragged out a lie, and yet here was a flurry of false confessions, each of them self-important, willful, and meaningless.
She nodded to the two unis and their stacks of notes and turned to Mulino’s closed door. She knocked.
“Yeah, go ahead.”
She swung the door open and there was Mulino, his leg propped up on the little stool. In front of him sat a stack of cards, the leads that were coming in from the hotline. Welcome to your promotion. You get to read through a thousand index cards and separate the true lunatics from the merely wrong. And in the seat across from him was the civilian. Leonard Mitchell. Peralta figured that if Leonard got this much time with the supervisory detective, he couldn’t be all bad. Truth be told, she was kind of warming to him. He didn’t really think like a cop and he didn’t really hit the street, but he seemed smart enough and his head was in the right place. Working as a plant in the real estate office isn’t easy. Always worrying about whether you’re going to be found out. There must be some toughness under that cheap suit after all.
Mulino looked up at her. “Detective Peralta.”
At least Mulino would always remember her name. “So the homicide guys have locked someone up for the Valiant murder.”
“I got a call.”
“I think it’s the wrong guy.”
“That’s for the DA to figure out.”
“Those guys. Those Homicide detectives? They don’t listen at all. They just went out and found this guy. Their theory doesn’t make any sense.”
Mulino and Leonard looked at each other. Peralta almost noticed Leonard laugh a little. Mulino opened up with a broad, wan smile. She wasn’t saying anything he didn’t already know. The creases in the corners of Ralph Mulino’s eyes told Peralta that he had been through hundreds of mornings like the one she had just suffered. Her education was really just getting sta
rted. Then he spoke.
“Detective Peralta, we can only control what we can control. Homicide likes to close cases. They get their numbers that way. They get the wrong guy, let’s hope he gets a good lawyer. Let’s hope the ADA tells them that their case is nonsense. But I go in and tell the chief of detectives you think they have the wrong guy? You think I have that much suck? That way we both end up in traffic enforcement.”
Peralta looked over to Leonard. A civilian, he wouldn’t be able to help either. He had been at a city agency though, even if it was DIMAC. He had suffered his own indignities. Suffering indignity, Peralta was just starting to figure out, was a big part of being a police officer. You get it from the person who doesn’t want to get a summons for carrying around a beer and asks you why you aren’t out catching murderers. And when you work your butt off and give a thousand of those summonses, and a couple of hundred arrests, and they make you a detective, then you get it from the murder guys who think you aren’t fit for more than handing out summonses.
“I have something else, though.”
“Shoot.”
“I gave those companies to Frauds. The ones Leonard found out about. One of them has been giving a lot of money to 80 Smithdale Street.”
After she had been at Frauds, she had run off a couple of dozen reports on the building. You get money from the city, there is a lot that you are supposed to file. Management reports. Registration regarding the units. Tax abatement forms. The Department of Buildings and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development had them all, and they are all very cooperative with detectives. Leonard reached out first and took her stack of paper.
While Leonard started on the documents, Mulino looked up at Peralta. “You know, Detective. Manny Reeves is in his hospital bed and he has a lawyer and he’s not going to say anything. He’s happy that Homicide is looking at someone else for a murder he committed. But he’s still afraid of whoever pushed him off a building. Because I think whoever pushed him off the building was trying to tie up loose ends.”
Peralta nodded. “I’d thought of that.”
“And Leonard has just been telling me a very interesting story about a guy who used to embezzle from Eleanor Hill. Using Valiant as a beard. Fake invoices, fake deliveries, real money. Robert Armstrong. Maybe too common a name. But there are a lot of databases you could look in to track him down. I gotta keep working the kidnapping. Leonard is going to help me on that. But I can call it an OCCB investigation of the embezzlement if you want to try it. And if you get the guy, who knows what he might confess to?”
Detective Peralta didn’t like the idea of being a lone wolf. But there was a man in jail who was wrongly accused. And she knew enough to know that once you’re wrongly accused, you are more than halfway to being wrongly convicted. Mulino was offering her the chance to find a man who might have orchestrated a murder. She wouldn’t have interference from the blowhards at Homicide, and she wouldn’t have to babysit Timmy Bruder.
“Sure, Detective. Thanks for thinking of me.”
Leonard pulled a paper out of the stack from Peralta. He held it out as though inspecting it, but also like he might be afraid it could hurt him. “The first step would be finding Mr. Armstrong. Except you already found him. According to the filing with HPD, 80 Smithdale hired him six months ago to be its managing agent.”
Leonard smiled at Peralta. Mulino too. Both of them were proud of her, she sensed. She had done good work. She had always done good work, and she had always been proud of it herself. But there were some people in the PD who couldn’t see that. She took the paper from Leonard. It had a name, an address. A house in Sheepshead Bay. Way out in Brooklyn. Far enough out that it is almost a different city. Peralta would go there alone.
“Thanks, guys. I’ll let you know.”
The men nodded to her. She folded the paper and turned on her heel, now on her own personal quest.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The elevators again. At least this time, Leonard was alone. At least he didn’t have a nervous man worried about his missing son, tapping his foot next to him. But that man would be waiting for him upstairs, if the elevator ever came. Adam Davenport had been cooped up in Leonard’s apartment all day. Leonard trusted that Adam could find a way to make himself a sandwich or something, but enough was enough and he ought to cut him loose for dinner. He had told Mulino he would bring him by OCCB. Keep an eye on him. Keep him safe. People in this kind of situation are likely to do just about anything.
Mulino had praised Peralta after she had left. A real legwork detective. She hadn’t run over to OCCB as soon as she got the news of the payout, either. She had collected her paper, gotten the reports from HPD. And that was how they’d found Armstrong. Bruder sat on his hands for two days waiting for a call back from TARU. Peralta had initiative. And Mulino had taught her that. Finish the work. Get the details. Do it right.
“I could be getting used to this being a boss thing after all,” Mulino had said.
“Don’t. Once you’ve got more than three or four of them to watch over, you can’t keep control of them. Eventually you can’t even keep them all straight.” Leonard spoke from experience. At DIMAC, working under Christine Davenport, he had managed sixty-five investigators. And the truth was that when the tougher cases came in, he still had to do most of the work alone.
The elevator finally came. The lobby was empty. The bright renovation hadn’t brought in any market-rate renters. It was hard to lure newcomers to Ebbets Field when there was new construction just south and east and west and even north of it. Never mind that the new construction was made mainly with Sheetrock, would start to leak after the second heavy rain, and half the buildings were in litigation within a year. Ebbets Field had its problems, but exterior leaks were not among them. Small windows mean heavy brick construction. The building was there to stay.
Leonard stepped into the elevator and pressed his floor. It waited, as though deciding whether it was going to work today, and lurched upward suddenly, catching Leonard off guard. It was always like that.
Mulino had stayed behind. He was running down the miserable stack of hopeless leads. To Mulino, Leonard was just running an errand. Bring back Adam Davenport. Better to have him watched at OCCB then fiddle around in the apartment. But Leonard was still thinking about what he had found at Eleanor Hill’s office. Not just about Armstrong stealing. And not just about him writing to Wade Valiant, but about the note from Veronica Dean. If someone thought that Christine had found even more damaging information, then they would still want to find it. Maybe they had been looking the whole year that Adam had been in New Jersey. Maybe he had been right to hide out. Look what had happened as soon as he put his name on a mortgage. The fact that Christine herself was already dead wouldn’t really make a difference. Maybe someone had taken the kid to find out what Christine had left behind. Maybe someone thought the kid knew. Or the father. There was always something the victim didn’t tell you.
Mulino hadn’t bought it. Why would someone kidnap a child for information his mother had found a year ago? Why take the risk? And they had Davenport’s investigation, after all. There was nothing more to it. So even if Armstrong had been feeding information to Dean—and Mulino didn’t doubt it, the investor had been scouring the world for leaks and tips, after all—that didn’t mean that he had anything to do with the kidnapping.
“You just bring Adam back, Len,” Mulino had said. “You let me worry about the boy. We are going to keep doing everything we can. We don’t need you making it any harder than it’s supposed to be. You’ve done good work, after all.”
Leonard had chafed, but nodded. Maybe Mulino was right. And Mulino, after all, was in charge now. That was part of the deal, taking the gig spying on Hill and Associates. He was back in the thick of it, back doing a real investigation, but he was reporting up the chain of command. And the PD was a chain-of-command organization, after all.
But Mulino hadn’t said Leonard couldn’t talk to Adam. Couldn’t ask
if he had seen someone matching the description Evangeline had given Peralta. A description of a man Leonard now knew must be Robert Armstrong: about sixty, with a bit of a stoop. No one could stop him from asking Adam how much he knew about what Christine had found out. Whether she had ever said anything more, had ever implied there was more yet to find. Once he got to the apartment he was going to have to bring the guy downstairs and downtown anyway. Plenty of time to talk. And maybe after being cooped up at Leonard’s for a few hours, Adam would have something new to say.
The elevator dinged. The door heaved and opened restlessly. It was a short walk down the hallway to Leonard’s unit. He noticed, for the first time in months, the sweet smell that used to fill the building almost every day. He had almost forgotten it. It reminded him, if he needed reminding, of the summer before.
He turned the corner. Something was out of place. It took him a moment to notice that his door was ajar. Just a half an inch, as though someone had left it to close without pushing it all the way shut and it had drifted into place. But no one would do that here. Because while Ebbets Field was not the crime scene it used to be, it wasn’t yet the kind of place where you would walk away with your door a little bit open. Nowhere in New York was. He crept down the hallway and nudged the door.
“Hello? Adam, are you in there?”
Cautiously, he swung the door open. His apartment was unchanged. The sheets were folded and set on the coffee table. But Adam Davenport was gone.
Leonard’s first thought was to call Mulino. He worried that Adam might hurt himself. Or take matters into his own hands and start running through the streets trying desperately to find his son. Leonard knew the little boy wasn’t going to be found just walking down the street somewhere, but parents do what they think they can. They go a little bit mad. Mulino had to know; the detective would have to start looking for two missing persons now.
