Angel’s Tip

by Alafair Burke

  “That’s my point,” Bell said. “That guy had, like, five felony convictions.”

  Seven, actually, Ellie thought. And he was on parole. His mere presence in that bar past nine o’clock at night would have been enough to violate him if his PO had known.

  “We don’t run that kind of club. I do background checks. We do drug testing. We have biannual employment reviews.” Bell ticked off each of his good deeds on his fingers.

  “Scott, calm down.” Rogan put his hand on Bell’s shoulder and gave it a small squeeze. It was one of the standard moves that Ellie rarely got to use. For Rogan, and about ninety percent of cops, a small touch like that was a sign of brotherhood, a soothing indication that the touch’s recipient was viewed as one of the good guys. From thirty-year-old Ellie, with her wavy blond hair and a body that men always seemed to notice no matter how modestly she dressed, that kind of contact was viewed—depending on the confidence of the recipient—as either provocative or emasculating.

  “When are you gonna clue in?” Rogan continued. “We are not code enforcement. We’re not vice. We want to find out who murdered this sweet college girl who was visiting New York from Indiana. That’s all we’re trying to do. There’s no problem here.” Rogan moved his hand across the gap between the two men’s chests. They were copacetic.

  “Yeah, all right. I got it on the computer in back. With the credit cards.”

  “Good man, Scott.”

  “I gotta call my boss, though, okay? The manager.”

  “You wouldn’t be doing your job if you didn’t. But you’ll tell him we’re cool, right?”

  “Yeah, no problem.”

  “Do we need to worry about him back there alone?” Ellie asked, watching Bell walk through an office door at the rear of the club.

  “I don’t get that feeling,” Rogan said, helping himself to a spot behind the counter to check out the labels on the various liquor bottles. “Do you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Just checking?”

  “Yep.”

  Ellie was grateful to have a few minutes away from Scott Bell so she could refocus her attention on the photograph of Chelsea Hart that had been bothering her.

  “Take a look again at this,” she said, laying the now-familiar image before Rogan on the bar. “Notice anything significant?”

  “No, but apparently I’m supposed to. What’s up?”

  “Earrings. She was wearing earrings last night at dinner, but not this morning when we found her at the park.”

  He squinted, mentally pulling up an image of the body he’d seen at the crime scene. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  He was silent for a few seconds, and Ellie assumed he was having the same thoughts that ran through her mind when she’d first made the observation. No pawnshop would buy what was obviously costume jewelry, so there was no point following that avenue. The earrings could have fallen out in a struggle. Or, more interestingly, they could have been removed as a souvenir.

  “Any ideas about how we use that information?” Rogan asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, at least we know what to look for.”

  “If only we knew where to look.”

  BELL RETURNED from the back office carrying a thin stack of paper just as Rogan’s cell phone rang. Rogan flipped open the phone, read the screen, and excused himself to the corner of the bar.

  Bell handed Ellie a two-page document, neatly stapled together in the upper left-hand corner. “This is a list of bills last night for parties with bottle service—amounts with form of payment. A couple of them paid cash, but there’s a bunch of credit cards there as well.”

  Ellie gave the single-spaced document a quick scan and had to suppress a cough. The two parties who paid with cash had racked up bills of nearly a thousand dollars each. Most of the credit card charges went into the four digits.

  “Are these charges just for drinks?” she asked.

  Bell folded his arms across his chest, his confidence returning for a subject matter that was familiar territory. “Depends on what you mean by ‘just drinks.’ We don’t serve food, that’s for sure. But people pay big for bottle service.”

  “That just means you pay for a bottle of liquor. Even if you use a triple markup, how much can that be?”

  “We don’t look at it as a markup.” His grin told a different story. “It’s not just a bottle. It’s bottle service. You get the VIP room. You get a private server assigned to your room to mix and pour the drinks. It’s the personal touch that people are paying for.”

  “That,” Rogan said, returning from his phone call, “and not having to wait in a five-man-deep crowd around the bar, just to get a drink.”

  Ellie suddenly got the picture. In a world where a $15 martini bought you crummy service, the wealthy were willing to pay for something different.

  “So how much is, I don’t know, a bottle of Grey Goose, for example?”

  “We’re at $350.”

  Now she did allow herself a cough.

  “Bungalow 8’s at $400,” Bell continued. “I hear a few places are about to go even higher.”

  “Some of these bills are a few thousand dollars,” Ellie said, thinking of a month’s worth of take-home pay. “A group small enough to fit in one room goes through ten bottles of liquor?”

  Bell shook his head. “No. They order ten bottles of liquor. One guy drinks Goose. His girl likes Patrón. His bro prefers Jack.”

  “And if they don’t finish it all—”

  “It’s just money.” Bell handed Ellie a second, thicker printout, also neatly stapled. “I also got you our list of people here.”

  Ellie flipped through the document. Six pages. Two columns on each. Names, social security numbers, addresses, phone numbers. Bell’s boss must have instructed him to give full cooperation. Probably about sixty employees, all told.

  “Now, like I said, on that”—Bell pressed his palms together in a prayer position near his chin—“we do everything we’re supposed to. But we’ve got a lot of people, you know? And if someone squeaked through—”

  “I told you we’re not out to sweat you,” Rogan said. “We didn’t even mention the fact that this girl we’re talking about was underage.”

  “Oh, Jesus. We check ID. I tell the guys every night. And we really check them. Like, no way some kid’s getting in here with a Hawaii driver’s license that says his name’s McLovin, you know?”

  Ellie smiled. “Her friends say she had a fake ID, with a real name and everything. Thanks for this,” she said, holding up the pages Bell had given her. She retrieved a business card from the badge case she kept clipped to her waist and offered it to Bell between her index and middle fingers. “Give us a call if you remember anything from last night that might be pertinent.”

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

  They were almost at the exit when Bell called after them.

  “Hey, um, I don’t suppose there’s some way you could leave our name out of the reports or anything, huh? You know, my boss wanted me to ask.”

  “Sorry,” Rogan said, as he opened the heavy brown door. They both squinted as they emerged back out into the light. “That phone call earlier was from Florkoski at CSU. The latent she pulled from the button on Chelsea Hart’s shirt didn’t belong to the victim.”

  CHAPTER 12

  THEY HAD A LATENT PRINT. Now all they needed was a suspect.

  That left them back at their adjacent desks, divvying up their to-do list. In her one year as a detective, Ellie had gotten used to other cops assuming she would be the one to do this kind of paper-driven legwork, perhaps because she was junior, but most likely because some of the older detectives—at least in the general investigation units—were not yet comfortable with the technological end of modern police work.

  She and Rogan, however, were sharing the load. He had the list of the club’s credit card charges, while she ran the list of its employees through the department’s database of crime reports
and through NCIC for criminal records.

  Rogan scribbled something on the notes in front of him, and then thanked the person at the other end of the line before hanging up. “I still can’t get over these bar bills. Here’s one for three thousand dollars, plus the guy tacked on a five-hundred-dollar tip.”

  Ellie shook her head disapprovingly. “That’s barely fifteen percent. Cheap bastard. I’m never complaining again about paying ten bucks for a drink. And where I usually go, that’s with a twenty-five-percent tip.”

  “Only in New York,” Rogan said. “I got a buddy who just moved to the city a year ago from Atlanta. He says, his whole life, he thought he was doing pretty good. Had some money in his pocket. Then he came here and saw what money really is.”

  She saw her opening. “Well, if you don’t mind me saying, you at least look like you’re doing better than some folks.”

  “You must mean my fine ’do,” Rogan said, running one hand across his shiny bald head. “Thirteen bucks at the Astor Place barber.”

  “Nice. I meant the clothes. Sorry, I notice those kinds of things.”

  “That’s just taste.”

  Ellie didn’t respond.

  “Go ahead,” Rogan said with a toss of his hand. “Ask.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” She typed another name into the computer and hit the enter key.

  “I don’t blame you. You want to know. You want to know how I can wear the clothes in my closet, smoke a decent cigar every once in a while, drive a decent ride. Even for a detective first-grade, it’s a stretch.”

  Ellie apparently wasn’t as curious as she thought. She’d seen Rogan smoking a cigar outside on Twenty-first Street two days ago, but hadn’t thought to wonder about its price. And she’d never even seen Rogan in his own car.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “It only makes sense you’d speculate. Who wants a partner on the take, right?”

  “That’s not what I meant—”

  “Or dealing drugs on the side. Maybe a few too many bets. When a brother’s got some extra spending money, he must be up to no good. Is that about right?”

  Ellie’s eyes were wide, and she was suddenly very aware of the teaspoon full of hazelnut spread in her mouth. Rogan just kept staring at her. Other detectives in the squad were looking at them. She had no idea what to say.

  Then Rogan slapped his hands together and began to laugh. At her, not with her. “Oh, lord, someone take a picture of that.”

  Other detectives joined the amusement.

  “He pulled that speech on me six months ago.” The voice belonged to John Shannon, the detective who sat with his back to hers, facing his own partner. Shannon might have grunted a hello to Ellie, once, a few days ago. “He gets everyone with that. Welcome to the club, Hatcher.”

  When the hilarity subsided, she leaned over toward Rogan. “Thanks. I’m in a club now.”

  “Sorry. I couldn’t resist. Works every time. Look, it’s no big deal. A few years ago, my grandmama died. A few years before that, she married the guy who sang ‘Just Between Us.’” Rogan hummed one bar, and Ellie immediately recognized the tune. “Anyway, she left each of us a little extra money. Not enough to treat the house at a place like Pulse—not like that shit—but, you know, invested in the right places, I can indulge myself once in a while.”

  “You don’t need to explain.” Even though she hadn’t meant to imply any type of accusation against Rogan, she found herself grateful for the information.

  “Like I said, it’s all relative in New York. Three thousand dollars for a night of partying. That’s some crazy shit.”

  “Do you have a sense yet who the idiots are who shelled out that kind of money last night?”

  “Investment bankers. Commercial developers. And, with at least some of these, apparently shortchanged shareholders and duped clients. So far I’ve already got three corporate cards.”

  “No known pimps? Rapists? Perhaps even a very naughty pornographer?” Ellie asked.

  “Not yet. Anyone worth checking out on your end?”

  Just as Rogan finished asking the question, the last employee on the list popped up clean on NCIC. “I gotta hand it to Bell. He wasn’t kidding when he said they ran a tight ship. Most of these places are run by lowlifes, but I’ve got nothing.”

  “Nothing? Impossible.”

  The arrest of the SoHo bouncer had revealed the flagrant disregard that bar managers showed for the city’s hiring regulations. That case had been a wake-up call, but only so much can change over a few years in an industry driven by profit margins.

  “That goes without saying, but it’s not much. I’ve got one guy—Jaime Rodriguez—with a six-year-old Burg II conviction and a couple pops two years ago for suspected drug distribution, but no convictions.”

  “How does he get popped twice without charges? How hard is it to make a drug case?”

  “Both times, he was picked up on the street in the Bronx,” Ellie said, looking at her notes. “High-crime neighborhood, late at night. Seen walking between open car windows and a nearby building. No drugs found in the searches incident to arrest.”

  It was a standard setup for street-level drug dealing. Rodriguez would’ve been the negotiator, coming to an agreement on price and quantity with the customers in their cars and then directing them to a nearby location. He’d send a signal to someone—most likely a juvenile—who would run to an area stash house and meet the buyers at the agreed-upon delivery spot. Rodriguez keeps his hands clean.

  “I get the picture,” Rogan said. “I wouldn’t call that nothing. The vic had meth in her system, and if it didn’t come from her friends, it came from somewhere else.”

  “Problem is, Rodriguez wasn’t working last night.”

  “Damn.”

  “We’ll get to him, but—”

  “Yeah, I know. Anyone else?”

  “I got a janitor. Leon Symanski.”

  “A Polish janitor? Insert joke here.”

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to say that.” Ellie wagged a finger in Rogan’s direction. “Leon the janitor has a prior conviction for sexual misconduct. But it was twenty years ago.”

  “Could you track down any of the facts?”

  “I already had the reports faxed over. He admitted having sex with a sixteen-year-old who lived in his building. Apparently the girl was a regular at the Symanski apartment—talking to the wife, helping with the baby, that kind of thing. The dad was snooping around the girl’s room and found some records from an abortion clinic. He pulled her out of the Symanskis’ apartment and was smacking her around in the hallway. All hell broke loose, and when the cops showed up, Symanski owned up that he was the one who got the girl pregnant. The girl said it was consensual, but at sixteen, of course, that doesn’t matter.”

  “Twenty years ago?”

  “Yeah. Symanski would’ve been twenty-six at the time. He got a year’s probation. No problems since.”

  “A year of probation? No time?” Rogan asked.

  “Weird, huh?”

  “I’ve got to think that even twenty years ago you got more for sleeping with a teenager than shoplifting.”

  “Right. So that’s why I don’t think we’ve got anything here. My Spidey senses tell me that whatever ADA caught Symanski’s case didn’t think it was a predator kind of situation.” Although all kids under the age of consent were legally off-limits, those in law enforcement frequently used their discretion to distinguish between men wrapped up in a precocious teenager’s March-September experiment and the true sex offenders. “Twenty years of law-abiding behavior since then suggests they got it right.”

  “I’ll call Mariah Florkoski at CSU to make sure she compares the latent from the victim’s shirt against both Rodriguez and Symanski. Maybe one of them somehow got left out of NCIC.”

  “Can’t hurt,” she said. It wasn’t likely to help, either. Florkoski had already run the latent in the NCIC database, which should have c
ontained prints for both Rodriguez and Symanski.

  “Well, on that uplifting note, I say we get some rest and start anew tomorrow,” Rogan said. “We’ll start with the biggest credit card charge and work our way down until we find the right VIP lounge. We should have a doodle from the sketch artist by then. That will help.”

  Ellie was never good at walking away from a case before she at least had a theory. She’d been that way even with her petty fraud cases. But fresh eyes and a rested mind could make up for hours of spinning the same old wheels. As much as she hated to leave, she could feel in her bones they weren’t going to break this case today. Starting again tomorrow sounded good.

  THE MAN WAS DISAPPOINTED to find a woman named Gail in the seldom-used lunchroom. She was one of a few different two-hundred-pound assistants who seemed to roam the building. He found her unpleasant to look at. Her hair dye was so black it was blue. She wore too much blush, too much lipstick, and too colorful an outfit for her amorphous frame.

  But he made a point of being pleasant, even to his most disgusting coworkers.

  “Hey, Gail.”

  Gail glanced up from her fashion magazine, grunted a hello, and removed her second Twix bar from the wrapper. The idea of a woman like Gail using her break to focus on fashion and beauty tips struck him as pathetic. Here’s a tip on self-improvement: Walk around the block and stop eating candy bars.

  The man fed a dollar into one of two side-by-side vending machines. It took three attempts before the machine registered his credit. He pushed the buttons B and 3 and watched the black metal spiral spin on the second row of the machine, releasing a bag of peanut M&Ms. He retrieved the candy and his quarter of change from the machine.

  On the muted television that hung on the wall next to the vending machine, the credits were rolling on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The man watched as Oprah peacocked across the set of her talk show in a red turtleneck and black pants, alternately pointing at the guests in their comfortable chairs and pumping her flattened palms robustly above her head. He could imagine her voice, imploring her audience to “give it up” for the earnest speakers.