“So do I, but not enough to die in crosstown traffic. And for the record, ‘bad soap opera’ is redundant.”
We made it to West 62nd in under five minutes. There was a squad car from the 20th Precinct parked alongside the production trailer. A uniformed cop, Frank Rankin, was waiting for us outside the trailer.
“My partner and I got here two minutes ago,” he said. “The permit on the trailer says they’re part of the movie company that’s shooting at Fordham. The victim, according to the guy who called it in, is Jimmy Fitzhugh.”
“Did you or your partner go inside the trailer?”
“I did, but not too far. I didn’t want to contaminate the scene, but I wanted to make sure he was dead.”
“And?”
“Gunshot wound to the chest at close range. The Crime Scene Unit isn’t here yet to make the call, but I know dead, and this guy definitely is. There’s also a safe in there—door wide open. I didn’t check it out, but I figure if the door is open, whatever was in it is gone.”
“Who called 911?” Kylie asked.
“His name is Michael Jackman. Said he’s the assistant director. He didn’t see or hear anything. He came over for a meeting with the victim and found the body. He’s sitting in the back of our unit with my partner.”
“Keep him there,” I said. “We’re going to take a look at the scene.”
Fitzhugh was slumped in a desk chair, his gray T-shirt stained dark brown from the collar to the waist. There was a fresh bloody gash on his right cheek.
“Pistol-whipped,” Kylie said.
I shined a light inside the open safe. “The uni called it on the safe. It’s empty.”
“Except for the movie connection, this doesn’t feel like any of the other homicides,” she said.
“I had the same gut reaction,” I said. “The other three murders were planned out, artful almost. This just looks like a robbery gone bad. Vic working at his desk, perp walks in and says open the safe. Fitzhugh says no; perp gives him a convincer with the gun butt. Fitzhugh opens it, and the perp pockets the cash.”
“That’s a robbery gone good,” Kylie said. “If the perp got the money, why did he shoot Fitzhugh? Why up the ante from robbery to murder?”
“Fitzhugh recognized him,” I said.
“There’s only one hiccup, Zach. The man we’re looking for is a master of disguise. We have him on video, and we can’t even ID him.”
“So if it’s impossible to recognize this guy,” I said, “why’d he pop Fitzhugh?”
“That’s the question I just asked you.”
“In that case, it’s unanimous,” I said. “We’re both clueless.”
We backed out of the trailer and walked over to the squad car where Rankin’s partner, Robin Gallagher, was waiting for us.
“Mike Jackman, the guy who found the body, is all shook up,” she said. “He not only worked with the victim, he’s his brother-in-law.”
“Did he say anything worth repeating?” Kylie asked.
“‘Who’s going to tell my sister and the kids?’” Gallagher said. “Which you kind of expect. And one other thing which you wouldn’t.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“‘Fucking Levinson.’ He said it maybe half a dozen times.”
“Did he say who fucking Levinson is?”
“No, sir,” she said.
“Ask Mr. Jackman to step out of the car, Officer. If he’s up to it, we’d like to ask him a couple of questions.”
The CSU wagon pulled up. I was hoping I’d get to see the enticing Maggie Arnold two days in a row.
No such luck. The driver’s side door opened and out stepped the humorless Chuck Dryden.
“Hello again, Chuck,” I said. “You remember my partner Kylie MacDonald, don’t you?”
“Where’s the body?” he said.
I pointed, and he lumbered toward the trailer.
“What a pill,” Kylie said.
“Hey,” I said, “you’re lucky you didn’t know him before the department sent him to charm school.”
Chapter 42
THE CHAMELEON SLEPT for three hours.
When he woke up, Lexi was in the kitchen.
“What’s for breakfast?” he called out.
“It’s too late for breakfast!” she yelled back. “We’re having brunch. Pancakes. The real kind, not the frozen crap. And I went out and bought fresh raspberries. We can afford them now.”
He padded to the kitchen, still naked. “What do you mean ‘we can afford them now’?”
“I counted the money. There was forty-five thousand dollars. Can you believe he was going to give it all to a drug dealer? I hate drugs. I don’t understand why people do them.”
“You sure it was forty-five thousand?” he asked.
“Three bundles of Benjamins worth fifteen thousand each. I counted it twice. Pancakes in five minutes.”
He showered, slowly turning the water from warm to hot to excruciating. The remorse was overwhelming. He had killed two, maybe three people yesterday, and he would happily kill them all over again today without batting an eye.
But Jimmy Fitzhugh was different. Jimmy was one of the good guys.
Please don’t shoot. I got two kids.
I know, I know. Tracy and Jim Jr. But what was I supposed to do once Lexi blurted out my name? I had no choice.
Bullshit, Gabe—she didn’t pull the trigger. You did.
He edged the water up even hotter. The pain helped.
I’m sorry, Jimmy. Really sorry.
The pancakes were excellent—real butter, fresh fat raspberries, thick Vermont maple syrup—and so was the steaming hot coffee. If he had needed a domestic scene in his movie, this could have been it.
“You sure I yelled out your name?” she said. “I swear, if I did, I didn’t even know it.”
“You said, ‘Gabe, hurry up.’ That’s all it took.”
“Fitzhugh should have pretended not to hear me. If he’d ignored it, you’d have thought he didn’t hear what I said, and you wouldn’t have killed him. It’s just as much his fault that he got shot as mine.”
“No,” Gabe said. “Bottom line, it’s my fault. I’m the director, I’m the producer—I put too much pressure on you. It was too big a part. We didn’t rehearse. I shouldn’t have put you on the hook for such a big role.”
“It’ll never happen again,” Lexi said. “I promise.”
“Just to be on the safe side, I think you should stay behind the scenes for a while.”
“I’m fired from the production?”
“No. No. Just the opposite. I really want you to be my coproducer. We’ve got a new scene or two to write. I need you now more than ever.”
“What new scene?”
“I’m not sure yet, but we netted forty-five thousand, and we only need thirty, so I thought maybe we could come up with a couple of cool new scenes and buy some more of Mickey’s pyrotechnics. We have fifteen thousand dollars to play with.”
“Fourteen thousand, nine hundred and ninety-four,” Lexi said. “The raspberries cost six bucks.”
Chapter 43
MIKE JACKMAN WAS tall with broad shoulders, warm brown eyes, and an air of intelligence about him. On a good day he was probably just the kind of guy you’d want on your crew. But this was not a good day, and Mike looked like Bambi staring down the barrel of a shotgun.
“Did the lady cop tell you that Jimmy Fitzhugh is my brother-in-law?” he said.
“Yes, sir, and we’re sorry for your family’s loss. I’m Detective Jordan, and this is my partner, Detective MacDonald. With your help we can find the man who killed your brother-in-law. What can you tell us?”
“Nothing,” Jackman said. “Fitz and I meet first thing every morning to go over production notes for the day. I’m the AD; he’s the line producer. He always shows up before I do, so as soon as I got here, I went straight to his trailer. The safe was wide open. Fitz was dead in his chair. I called 911.”
“What was in the safe?” Kylie a
sked.
“Not my job to know.”
“Did you and Jimmy have a good relationship?” she asked.
“We were best friends. More like brothers than in-laws.”
“So your best friend, the guy you sat down with over coffee every morning, never gave you a clue about what might be in the safe worth killing him for?”
“No.”
“Maybe your sister knows. When we break the bad news to her that her husband is dead, we’ll ask her.”
“Don’t. She has no idea…”
“Sounds like maybe you do,” Kylie said.
“Mike,” I said. “You seem like the kind of true friend who would hold back information because you think it will protect Jimmy. But the truth is, you’re protecting his killer. Why don’t you tell us what you know? We won’t use it against Jimmy.”
“Jimmy’s dead. It’s not him I’m worried about.” Jackman shook his head. “Shit like this gets out, it’s my sister and the kids who suffer.”
“We’re not here to trash Jimmy’s reputation,” Kylie said. “We’re here to catch his killer. Please…help us.”
Jackman sat staring into Kylie’s eyes. He let out a long, slow breath. “Just make me a promise,” he said. “Whatever I tell you, it never gets back to my sister.”
“Promise,” Kylie said.
He nodded. “Okay. Fitz was a…I don’t know what the cops would call it,” he said. “Like a mule.”
“A drug mule?” Kylie said.
“Maybe that’s the wrong term. He was the middleman between the buyer and the seller.”
“Who was the seller and what was he selling?”
“Monte. That’s all I know. Just Monte. He was selling coke.”
“And who was the buyer?”
“Our boss, Bob Levinson.”
“Is that the guy you were cursing out in the squad car?”
“He makes great movies, but he’s the boss from hell. He’s got a ton of money and a never-ending supply of blow buddies. He buys by the kilo, but he doesn’t personally go near the supply chain. His line producers always act as the go-between.”
“And if the line producer says ‘no,’ he finds himself on the unemployment line,” Kylie said.
“Right,” Jackman said. “Levinson always hires top-notch producers. They’re always family men who need the job, and they’re always clean—no past, no drug history, no rap sheet.”
“How much do you think was in the safe?”
“Every month Levinson would give Jimmy four packets with fifteen thousand in each one. Monte showed up every Thursday with a key of cocaine, and Jimmy would give him one of the packets. Today is the ninth, so there were probably three packs still in the safe.”
“Did anyone else working on this production know about the drug deals?”
“People talk. Rumors fly around. So yeah, but I have no idea who knew what about what.”
“We need a list of every single person connected to this production. Grips, gaffers, catering truck drivers—everybody,” said Kylie.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll get you a printout.”
He started to leave, then turned back. “One question—are you going to arrest Levinson?”
“We would if we could,” I said, “but we don’t have anything we can charge him with.”
“Maybe it’s just as well. Keep Fitz’s memory clean,” he said, and walked off.
“You got a minute?”
We turned around and there was the humorless hulk of Chuck Dryden.
“You find something?” I said.
He gave me a look that basically said Dumb question. There’s only one reason I would ever interact with the detectives on the scene. Of course I found something.
He gestured with a short jerk of his head, and we followed him back to the trailer.
“Look at this,” he said, pointing to the window on the left side of the trailer. “Window Number One. Blinds down.
“Now this.” He pointed to the window on the opposite side of the trailer. “Window Number Two. Blinds down. Except these two slats are turned so a person could stand here and look out onto the street.”
“A short person,” I said. “The opening in the slats is only about five feet high.”
“But judging by the angle of the bullet in the victim, whoever pulled the trigger was a foot taller,” Dryden said. “You’re looking for two people. The shooter and a lookout.”
“Two people,” Kylie repeated. “We can’t even find one.”
Dryden shrugged. Definitely not his problem.
Chapter 44
THE WALTHER PPK was Gabe’s gun of choice, the perfect little pocket pistol—the same one James Bond used. But right now his was too hot to carry. Still, he wasn’t about to transport $45,000 on the subway unarmed.
He went to his closet and dug out the Glock 23. It was a .40-caliber, bigger than the PPK .380, so it was harder to conceal, but on the off chance that a cop stopped him, it wouldn’t connect him to the robbery-homicide on West 62nd Street.
He took the number 6 local uptown, got off at Grand Central, and transferred to the number 7. The ride was uneventful—pleasant, actually. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lexi. The girl was a genius. When he asked her to help him come up with a scenario for using the extra fifteen thousand, he was just trying to make her feel wanted. He didn’t expect much.
And then she came up with an absolutely mind-blowing idea. It made the script a thousand times better.
“I want to supersize my order,” he said to Mickey when he got to the loft.
“What kind of weapons of mass destruction did you have in mind?”
Gabe had sketched Lexi’s idea out on a notepad. “I’m not sure of the exact layout, but best as I can tell, it’s something like this. What do you think?”
“Whose place is this?” Mickey asked.
Gabe told him.
Mickey let out a slow whistle. “You got balls, Benoit,” he said.
“It was my girlfriend’s idea. Can we do it?”
“I can get as much plastic as you’ll need,” Mickey said. “What kind of detonators are we talking about?”
“I don’t know yet, so mix it up—timers, remotes, something I can set off with a trip wire. Just keep it simple and idiotproof. Remember, I’m not a pro.”
“You got a budget for all this extra stuff?”
Gabe nodded. “I got a number in mind.”
“How much?”
“What can I get for another fifteen grand?”
Mickey’s eyes widened, and he coughed up a phlegmy chuckle. “My boy, for fifteen thousand dollars more you can get one hell of a lot of noise.”
Gabriel took the three stacks of hundreds out of his backpack and set them down on the table. “This is forty-five thousand.”
Mickey picked up a bundle, fanned the bills, and put it back. “I wondered how much Jimmy Fitzhugh had in his safe.”
Gabriel stiffened. “Who said anything about Jimmy Fitzhugh?”
Mickey lit up a cigarette and blew the smoke up toward the ceiling. “Nobody said anything. It was all over the police scanner. Robbery-homicide over at one of Bob Levinson’s production trailers on the West Side. Two perps involved. James Fitzhugh, producer, shot dead. What am I—stupid? You told me you knew where to get the money, but you needed a partner. I put one and one together. So, who did you team up with?”
“Your mother. And she sucked at it,” Gabe said. “You need the work or are you more interested in meddling in my private life?”
Mickey held up a hand. “Easy there, Gaby baby. I’m not meddling. Not meddling is the first thing you learn when you’re up there in Ray Brook. I was just making small talk. Forget I asked. Let’s talk about delivery.”
“Part of the deal was you said you could deliver tomorrow,” Gabe said.
“No problem. I still can.”
“Okay, but no later,” Gabe said. “I got a crazy production schedule.”
“Tomorrow, first thing. Right here
. Forty-five thousand worth of boom.”
“Actually, one of the packs is shy a hundred bucks,” Gabe said. “My girlfriend used it for groceries.”
“No problem. Tell the little woman the groceries are on me,” Mickey said. “Deal?”
Gabe didn’t hesitate. “Deal,” he said.
And they sealed it in the time-honored old-school Hollywood tradition. With a handshake.
Chapter 45
“I THINK WE finally hit pay dirt,” Kylie said.
We had two lists—the one Shelley Trager had given us with the names of everyone who had been on the set when Ian Stewart was shot, and Mike Jackman’s printout of all the people connected to the Levinson production.
We cross-checked the names, more than four hundred in all. Twelve people were on both lists, eight of them men.
“We could get this done a lot faster if we split the list in half and gave four to another team,” I said.
“We could get it done even faster if we got seven other teams to jump in and we all took one name,” Kylie said.
“I’m guessing my quest for departmental efficiency does not sit well with you,” I said.
“Absolutely not,” Kylie said. “First of all, you and I were at both crime scenes and it would take us way too long to get another team up to speed. Second of all, I’m consumed with ruthless ambition, and I refuse to let another team steal the biggest case of my career right out from under me. Now, just tell me which one of those answers you’re more likely to buy, and I’ll do my best to ram it down your throat.”
“No need to press any harder,” I said. “I think ‘consumed with ruthless ambition’ sums it up nicely.”
“Good. Make sure you put that in your report to Captain Cates. I don’t think she’ll hold it against me.”
By midafternoon we had struck out five times. Two of the possibles had been on the Ian Stewart set since seven in the morning, which ruled them out for poisoning Sid Roth at the Regency. Two others had solid alibis for Monday night’s bombing at Radio City.
The fifth guy was black. He laughed when he figured out why we were there to question him. “Didn’t you guys watch the video of the guy who firebombed Brad Schuck’s limo? That dude was white. You may want to adjust the color on your monitor.”
NYPD Red Page 11
